Doula training. I haven’t been able to write much about it yet. Here’s the thing: I really did go there to learn how to be a better doula. I really did go there to learn reflexology and anatomy and protocols and techniques. I really did think I was going To School.
About the time I started to feel like my head was going to explode-about the time I started catching myself listing off all the reasons why I could never get intimate with this crowd of women…That’s when the instructor stopped the class and honed in on me.
“I have more places to go today, for sure. But I’m feeling like maybe we should regroup and see where everyone is. What’s going on?” And then she looked right at me, and I burst into tears.
“I don’t know!” I blubbered. And it went on like that for a while, me blubbering, talking it out, and picking at the layers until we moved on.
We went to the movies that night, to see Xmen 3, which was perfect and distracting and on the way home I had the energy to talk more. I examined my need to have everyone I know hear my birth story. I examined why I feel guilty telling it, and why even though I wish I could stop telling it, I can’t. And why I need to relive it again and again. And I thought to myself- this is not why I came here. I didn’t come here to figure out my fertility issues or to make peace with ToddlerA’s birth. I came here to learn to be a Doula.
But I can’t be a good doula to you until I can make some peace with my own experience. People heal in the re-telling. We talked about the line between re-telling for therapy and re-telling as indulgence in fear, and I feel sure that I haven’t crossed over. Yet. But I was also feeling like, this story? It’s even boring TO ME. I keep telling it, and discussing it especially with people who were there, because there is something missing from it. And I’ve been feeling guilty for telling it, like no one wants to hear this terrible traumatic story, my family doesn’t want to re-live the scariest day of their lives, my husband can’t stand to think about it, but I NEED SOMETHING more from this story!
But what? TeenHer said, “There is something you need to see. You keep telling it because you’re hoping to see the thing you’re not seeing yet”
And she is right. Ultimately, through this last censored telling of the story, I got this:
I not only feel shorted by the universe because I didn’t get my homebirth- I feel shorted by the universe that while I was in there close to dying, I also didn’t get my spiritual revelation. Where was my white light? Where was my out of body experience? Where was my walk with Silas where he tells me he loves me but that I should go back now?
I spent years fantasizing about being near death. I spent YEARS, wishing for an almost-tragedy. I wanted to go there and come back. I wanted to see my dead friends. I wanted to wake up with that new appreciation for the universe and my family and myself. I felt like I needed it.
And finally, here it comes, and it is scary and panicky and I was afraid and then it was blackness and then I woke up. And Nothing was different in here. Nothing had changed inside me, other than what you expect when you make a baby. I was still THE SAME PERSON. I didn’t even know how close I was until the next day when the doc and the anesthesiologist came to see me, for fuck’s sake!
Where’s my payoff, Universe?! You took away my loving, cozy, natural birth, exchanged it for this nightmare of medical intervention and then left me UNCHANGED? What. The. Fuck.
This story is more complicated than that. There are still layers. Of fear, of grief. Of insecurity. But finally for the first time in a long time, I feel like I can take the story further. To the next place. Yes, it was a hospital and hospitals are scary. Yes, I almost bled to death. Yes, it was so close and so fortunate that the Dr. knew the right tests to order. Yes, my abruption was unique in that there were no symptoms other than the pain. And in the right context, that’s good information to share, all of it. But not in every context. Not in every single re-telling. The point is I don’t think I need to share those parts of the story anymore for my own healing. And I can now move into the real shit, the part that I only just figured out, about the payoff. Now, I can examine a whole other layer of feelings about this birth. Now, thanks to the doula training, I can accept that some people aren’t ready to talk about my birth and they then are not the right people for me to process with. And that’s not them shutting me down, that’s them trying to process the way they do.
Did I learn how to be a doula this weekend? Partially. But here’s the thing. I already know how to be a doula. I already know how to process this birth. I already know how to have a baby. School-therapy-lessons…I believe these are all just tools, things we use to help us get to places WE ALREADY KNOW HOW TO REACH. It’s just that being in a room full of people headed in generally the same direction just intensifies the access. I was positively vibrating with purpose after the birth of the twins, after the death of my grandfather, and after this doula training.
I can’t wait to go back. Two more weekends of training, and then another more conventional training in October.
Oh. And there was this other thing that happened. On the way home, we were listening to this quack therapist on the radio. The very first caller was a woman whose mother left her when she was a kid, and then came back a few months later with her female lover in tow, but never did come back emotionally to the role of mother. The guy said, “your truster is broken. You need to talk to someone, and you need to understand how mother abandonment can really fuck up a person’s psyche (I’m paraphrasing) and once you do that, and get some help, you can move on and start trusting women again”
Not like I haven’t heard this before, but it BLEW MY MIND! I just spent a weekend having to constantly remind myself to quit picking people apart and trying to create division. I spent the weekend feeling like no one liked me and the host hated me, and fuck it, I don’t like them anyway because they are to this and too that and we’re staying in a hotel next time because they obviously don’t want us there etc etc. And maybe that’s true. But probably not. And I’m going to trust this group to tell me if there’s something to tell me, and to take care of themselves. No one has hurt me, no one has been mean to me, and no one has singled me out for criticism. All the isolation was my idea. My choice.
I don’t see myself going to the next weekend with the flowy energy and metaphysical vibe of the rest of the group. It wasn’t that earth shattering, ya’ll, to change my whole personality. But I did leave and I will return with a new confidence and a deepr sense of trust. That we are all just doing our thing, here. That we are all doing the best that we can and most of us are doing well. That if we’re not doing A-OK, we’ll find the answers. When I look for answers, I find them, and that’s a fact. I just needed to gentle reminder that I shouldn’t stop looking.