I was extremely honored to be asked to provide a guest post on Rixa’s wonderful “True Face of Birth” blog recently. The post was a response to a comment-storm, generated by some people who were not prepared to see some pretty typical homebirther stuff online (although what they thought they’d see on a blog subtitled “Raw, Powerful, Ecstatic” is beyond me…)
Anyway, here’s my contribution to the fray, “Judgment, Fear, and Focus“.
A while back, before I had her permission to post, I wrote “Triumph” about Shaye’s birth. On Brighton’s one-month birthday, she’s now published the full birth story. It doesn’t show up well in firefox, so use IE. And prepare to be amazed. A few of my personal fave bits:
Way to go, Shaye. I am so so so proud of you, and of what you’ve accomplished. What a beacon of hope, what a trailblazer, to all the other women who are stuck where you were, and not sure how to get out. Because you did it, they’ll be able to see a path as well.
This is a guest post. I’ve been stockpiling ideas for a while, and in a fit of inbox-cleaning, have been unearthing gems lost in the clutter. I was going to riff on this idea myself, and then decided that Dawn’s words were so perfect, I’d just be messing with it. So here we go… Dawn Radcliffe-Snell, on Vampires and Unschooling.
Ah, I always want to post about something I’m reading on this list, and so rarely can manage the time and focus (even as I type my 3 yr old is trying to climb on my lap and put his had down my shirt! LOL!). It’s interesting, to really be present with my children, even as I try to squeak in writing. I do my best, and sometimes things slide into gear…
But this one I gotta respond to - I know pedophiles! Not a great claim to fame, but it is very true. Yes, I was molested as a child (like so so many), had three different pedophiles in my life, and at 19 put myself in therapy and then eventually went to the DA and prosecuted my dad. He was/is one of those sneaky pedophiles - not the kind that drags you off into the bushes, but the kind that gets into your head first. These are the dangerous ones. I’m not saying the drag-you-off-into-the-bushes guys aren’t to be avoided (wry grin), just that they are not the norm (most molesters know their victims) and they are more easily avoided.
The answer is not to make children afraid of strangers - in effect you are teaching them to be afraid of people, which ironically is at the root of a pedophile’s sickness. Pedophiles are afraid, feel completely alone (even if they’re not), and they are in pain you and I cannot imagine. They have become disconnected from their souls (it would take me a book to explain that probably), and yet are so hungry to feel better that they turn into, basically, vampires (I’m speaking metaphorically of course).
This is very much why I have chosen this path of unschooling, of radical parenting. Not because I am afraid for my children to be around other adults, around other “potential molesters”, but because I want my children strong, connected to their spirits. Children that maintain that connection to their inner knowing, to their instincts (I could use a lot of different nouns here, but basically I’m saying when they are happy and vibrant and soul-full) they KNOW themselves, they KNOW their world, they’re tuned in! Happy children with their voices and spirits intact do not make pedophile prey! My abusers did not molest me and then I was de-spirited, I was already mentally molested, I had already been emotionally severed, they just came in for the kill like any predator would.
Yeah, we could talk about my dad and how much of that de-spiriting came from him, but he was not the only one. It is all around, our society in many very well-meaning ways tells us as children to not hear our own voices, to ignore our selves. That is the root of it. (I cannot tell you how many well-meaning people have tried to tell my children to listen to them simply by virtue of the fact they are “adults”! Luckily my kids just look at them like they’re crazy! LOL!). Children are set up by our “control-based” society. You can try to avoid all the molesters you want to, but if a child is crippled and crushed, it’s a losing battle. Lift the child up, allow them to be who they came to be, happy and strong and loved. And as they are these things, they will naturally be protected (there’s another book to write of explaining…), they will be strong, loving, open, giving, which is why I say “Yes, honey, talk to those happy, nice people!” ‘Cause I know without a doubt that they won’t want to talk to the “unhappy nice ones”. Children get it better than we do IF WE LET THEM.
When I contacted her, struck by the metaphor of the vampire as pedoscele, she elaborated thusly:
And I have to thank you - I see so many connections ‘twix the two and assumed everyone else did too, that I didn’t think of the comparison as “potent”. But it truly fit for me, my joy (my spirit, energy, effervescence, self-belief…) was certainly sucked dry by some-bodies that couldn’t make it for themselves. It is interesting to think about, there are connections like:
- If you want to kill a vampire, put a stake through its heart (because that’s what needs to die, a faulty wretched heart).
- They can’t be seen in mirrors (’cause they’re not really there, they are living in the illusion of soul-lessness).
- They can’t stand garlic (garlic is a healer & blood cleanser).
- They can’t stand sunlight, they do their deeds in the darkness, hiding physically and metaphorically (bring them into the light and they fry!).
- They were bitten by a vampire themselves!
- They are considered damned.
- They are usually shown as suave, sophisticated, clever, slick, alluring, charming…
And I thought it was interesting how one of the producers of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” spoke of how the show was a mirror of the “vampires” teens have to kill to truly grow up, be whole w/themselves. It was why the show was popular he said. Now, I don’t plan on my children having to kill vampires to grow up, I plan that they are, by the nature of their very strongly already “being alive”, naturally avoiding it, but I completely get what the producer was saying - most kids today do have to fight many different kinds of “suckers”!
Thanks Dawn. Even though you wrote this post over a year ago, it still resonates. Vampires, indeed.
Tooth #2 is officially gone!
It’s the matching bottom tooth, so now he has a great gap front n’ center bottom, through which to whistle, or rest a straw. The Tooth Fairy brought him a lovely silver dragon charm, which he has not physically let go of in 24 hours or so.
This one hung on for very little time, compared to how long the other one was wiggly, which tells me that I’d better get busy stockpiling Fairy gifts.
Oh, and how’s this for cool? Picked it up off a homeschooling list… sometimes, when there’s no tooth at all, the Tooth Fairy randomly shows up with new toothbrushes, encouragements to brush, and other dental hygiene goodness. How cool is that?
More fun tirades from me about Digital Natives!
http://lifewithoutschool.typepad.com/lifewithoutschool/2008/04/digital-natives.html
Enjoy!
As usual, things are nutty in the birth advocacy world. It’s not worth going into the details, but recently, I was questioned by someone who basically said that because I was a mother of sons, not daughters, my birth advocacy work didn’t have the urgency that the work mothers of daughters had. You know, because my boys were never going to get subjected to what women here routinely do.
That part’s true. My sons will never be the direct physical victims of the physical, emotional, and mental abuse that passes for birth care in this country.
My sons, like their father before them, are likely to end up being helpless observers as the women they love are gutted like halibut. Woken up from a restless sleep in an uncomfortable chair to discover that other people have decided that it’s time to take your firstborn child by surgery. Completely discounted, completely marginalized, completely ignored. Here, put this surgical suit on; we’ll let you into the OR so you can see your wife’s intestines, smell her skin roasting when we do cautery, hold her hands when she starts convulsing, and have a moment of sheerest panic when we take the baby to the nursery; here, decide on a dime who needs your presence more, your helpless newborn or your helpless wife. Try really hard not to guilt yourself for either decision, but do so anyway.
My sons, like their father before them, will head home with a woman who underwent a surgery that everyone minimizes. Who is a shell of herself. Whose world was ripped apart and reassembled with vicodin and steri-strips. And they will be looking at between a year and as many years as the rest of her life, wondering when they get the woman they married back. And in the meantime, if she’s lucky, she’ll figure out that it’s the system, not her, and get her act together. If she’s not lucky, she’ll spend her days sitting in a rocker pulling on her hair, trying to figure out what’s wrong with her. Maybe she’ll get medicated, maybe she won’t. And my sons will be there, trying to deal with that and a newborn, and wondering where it all went wrong, and powerless to do a damn thing about it.
I have nothing to worry about. I’ll just be the mother in law, watching the impending train wreck, with no way to get in there and be useful to prevent … anything.
Friends… my urgency is huge. And there’s not nearly so much time as we think. In the time since advocacy groups began howling about the rate of cesareans, ours here in the US has skyrocketed from 5% to just over 31%. At that rate… by the time my sons are having children, my scenario is far more likely than the chance that the mother of their children will have a normal birth.
I could get lucky. They could hook up with women who know the score, who know how to fight, who are strong enough to have a normal birth. And of course I wish that for them with all my heart. But you know… *I* didn’t know any better. And in the years I’ve been doing this birth advocacy thing, I have met all kinds of women who are the sorts of women who could love, cherish, and honor my sons, who didn’t know any better. Not the first time, at any rate. Sometimes not even the second or third, and by that point, the fight to birth normally is insanely difficult, and uphill every step of the way, in the snow, both directions. I can’t assume my boys will hook up with women who are birth advocates. I have to assume they’ll be normal women, having normal lives, who are unaware of the monster of US obstetrics.
I can pray that I’ll have a relationship with them based on respect and support, and that maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll have earned the right to be involved in their process. It does happen; I myself have a wonderful MiL. But I can’t assume that.
Which means that I have serious work to do, on behalf of all women. And there simply isn’t much time.
This link, from the inestimable Raquel:
http://www.consciouswoman.org/2008/04/01/conscious-woman-of-the-month-april-2008/
I knew about Tatia; when cesarean activism is your thing, you start seeing a lot of maternal mortality. And in ICAN’s world, cytotec is considered to be nothing short of the most evil chemical in the world. All my admiration goes out to Maddy and the work she’s doing.