It's happening

I say yes, I am a midwife. The shift happens and every decision I make is routed toward and around that knowledge - it isn't a matter of 'I hope to', or 'if it works out' or 'if I can afford it.' It's just going to happen, like I will get older, I will pay taxes, I will be a midwife. There it is. Plain and simple.

When I say this out loud, the question gets bounced back to me, "Where will you go to school?" I have no idea. I'm not even thinking about it. It doesn't even matter right now. I have a young child who needs me home right now and we can't afford to think about school anyway. For once I don't feel like I need to map out my future.

I trust completely that this is going to happen in its own time. I see the minute shifts that happen in the way I talk about birth, in the way that I feel when talking about midwifery politics - I chuckled at myself today while having a great discussion with some ladies about the politics of keeping your head down and not rocking the boat. I thought it was funny that just weeks ago this conversation would have confirmed why I would never be a midwife (you know, someone who catches babies), and today I listen and open my heart so that I can meet this when it will surely arrive when I become a midwife (you know, serving women).

I don't fantasize about homebirths. I fantasize about being with women and their partners as they make the myriad shifts into parenthood, into the new phase of their relationships. I think about promoting whole-ness, well-ness, into the lives of other people. Birth is a natural extension of that, not the center of it.

This doesn't live in my head, it's in my heart and bones, and wow, what an immense difference that is.