I have always been so stubborn in my desire to be independent, that I would always find a way out of letting others help me. I just really felt this need to be able to do it all on my own, I mean that is a true sight of strength isn't it?
How wrong I have been, for sure I have a fairly tough outer shell and that shell has really helped me down through the years, but opening myself up to the kindness of others has been life changing for me and a huge part of my healing journey!
Sometimes it comes in the most unexpected ways, a simple word or touch even! There is nothing more powerful than human touch, when you are suffering with some much pain, that it feels like it will rip you apart. Sometimes it is enough just to be seen and heard, to be acknowledged and to have your pain acknowledged.
I have sat with this question, since I first saw it posted and I have had a few examples come to me. Memories that have reminded me how lucky I am and how amazing us human beings are.
The Kindness Of Others!
Just over 11 years ago, when I was living in Ireland, I attended a Woman's Day Festival that a very good friend of mine organized. She had arranged for a lot of speakers and I remember being excited to hear a local community midwife talk about trauma in birth. By this stage I had my first daughter, after a very traumatic birth and I had been struggling to come to turns with it.
I sat at the back, eager to hear what she had to say and I found it very emotional. The talk happened in this lovely little cafe and afterwards I went to one of the little cubby holes that were in their just to gather my thoughts and process what I had heard. I was experiencing so many different emotions and a lot of what she said really resonated with me and how I was feeling.
Around That Time With My Youngest Daughter, I love that expression o her face!
I was there a few minutes when that same midwife came to me, she said that she had noticed me sitting at the back and that it was pretty obvious to her that I had suffered a traumatic birth. She wanted to see if I was okay and if I wanted to talk.
I remember telling her my story, my birth experience ad being in tears by the end of it. When I was finished, she told me that I had been treated really badly by my midwife and that I had experienced birth rape. Hearing those words, made me feel even more emotional, but also relieve that someone understood me, could actual understand what I went through and see the injustice.
I had never really spoke to anyone about what had happened or how I felt and for that reason, I never really knew if I was entitled to feel so angry. She assured me that I was and that in order for me to move on, I needed to write a letter to my midwife (whether I posted it or not was up to me) and that I needed to really honour what had happened to me.
Because of this woman, who only a few hours earlier was a stranger to me, because of her I felt seen and heard. I can not describe how healing that was for me and also how it put me on the path to become a Doula and made me determined to promote natural birth and every woman's rights in birth.
That meeting with her, her act of kindness, in seeking me out, it changed my life! It began my passion for freedom of Birth and it helped me reconnect with my own feelings, my own self worth!
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