All The Birthy Things

Dear Reader, It's so nice to be writing to you today! Just a heads up that further down in this edition of the newsletter lies a feature I've never included before: a painting and article written by a member of our community! I'm excited for you to read what Emmalyn has to share, so please don't miss it. In keeping with the topic of that painting -- which is titled Five Days on the Bed-- I'm going to share some things about postpartum today, too. Postpartum is truly the final frontier of the...

Dear Reader, I used to write this newsletter every week! That's funny to think about, given how impossible it is to imagine that regularity at this point in my life. If you're new here, you're coming into a phase in Sister Birth when the communication and content creation has come to a slow crawl. You can expect the "normal" will be 1 or 2 newsletters per month. If you've been around a minute, did you notice the decrease in communication? I'm sorry for doing that without announcing intentions...

Dear Reader, I went digging through old posts/writings to find the main content for this edition of All The Birthy Things. I wrote this in Jan 2022 and I still stand by it (perhaps with a few additions). Do you ever think about what kind of an elder woman you want to be? Do you have a vision of how you’ll carry yourself and what you’ll carry within you when you are old? Do you recognize that your elder self could be the wise woman the young maidens and mothers around you need? Will you be...

Dear Reader, I'm writing to you fresh out of the birth vortex and subsequent recovery period. I had the immense privilege of walking with a couple as they labored to bring forth their firstborn son. 32 hours of support that looked like walks in the woods, prayer, worship, hip squeezes and back rubs, words of encouragement, facing fears, nourishing snacks and beverages, transitioning on a blanket in the backyard under glorious, sunny skies then completing the process indoors while tornado...

Do you feel it, Reader?! Or is it just me?? It seems like the collective unconscious is engaging in choreographed movement away from the virtual world. 🔅[Print] magazines are making a comeback, and subscription letter services are gaining traction. 🔅I've noticed friends putting old VHS/TV combos in their kitchens. 🔅There are a myriad devices on the market designed to help lock us out of our devices so we can focus on the tangible world. 🔅Book sales keep rising. 🔅Sales on purely vitual, online...

Dear Reader, In recent years, I've started paying attention to the saints. As someone who was not raised in the Catholic or Orthodox traditions but reveres and respects them (and has landed in the "middle way" of Anglicanism), I've been curious to dive into the treasure trove of the lives and examples of the saints, that "great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1) who are already participating in eternal, heavenly worship around the throne of God. Though my beliefs around the idea of canonized...

Wanted you to be amongst the first to know, Reader: I'm doing something new with Embrace Birth Journey... We're going LIVE!!! Yes, cohort-style. Meaning, a small group will all start and end simultaneously. Course content will be dripped out each month and paired with a live Zoom call. Between calls, we'll keep in touch with the voice- and text-messaging app, Telegram. You will be supported. Seen. Heard. You will meet some amazing EDD buddies. And you'll be armed with some of the most...

Dear Reader, "That's impossible. That couldn't be happening right now."⁠⁠I hear these words around women's health -- and in pregnancy and birth -- far too often.⁠⁠Let me give two examples.⁠⁠1️⃣ When a mama is in her first trimester and expresses that she has felt her baby move. As if she cannot be trusted to recognize the sensation of an independent life moving within her body or differentiate it from gas!⁠⁠2️⃣ When a mama states that her baby is coming NOW. As if she cannot accurately assess...

I have some big news for aspiring doulas and birthkeepers, Reader! In the birth world, Lauren and I saw a "gap." The gap was in the place where autonomous birth and deep faith in YHWH overlap. In that place, there was not one doula or birthkeeper training. But over the years we've learned that sometimes if you SEE the gap, it may be that you're meant to also FILL the gap. And so that's what Lauren and I set out to do with Hearthmother Journey. (Same with the birth podcasts landscape, which is...

Dear Reader, I thought it would be fun to hit on one common "objection" to home birth that I often hear, and maybe you sometimes hear it from people, too, when you share your plans for a home birth. Let this little article help you know how to respond, or put your own mind at ease. HOME BIRTH HANG-UP:⁠ "It's MESSY and we don't want to clean it up."⁠ ⁠ Friends, birth is a little messy no matter where it happens, but it's really not THAT messy. And the cleanup is quite simple if there's careful...