Compassion + Humility
This weekend, I taught my first birth class since Elder was born. It was really fun to teach and super satisfying to have a group of pregnant, birth-curious, and planning-to-conceive women here in my home. I’ve always previously taught classes and workshops at the Maryn’s Indie Birth office here in town, but since she has moved and I’m going to be starting off on my own path, I have pivoted to offering classes and gatherings here in my home! (If you’re interested in attending a class or a women’s circle/prenatal clinic, please tap on the “Services” option in my main website menu to see what is coming up in the next couple of months, depending on when you’re reading this!)
What really came through for me during this workshop (and has been the general theme for me lately, as well) is the idea of compassion.
I have previously been so passionate about what I care about, that I have sometimes not had compassion for other people and where they were in their own journeys. Plus, I feel that a lack of compassion for others is representative of a lack of compassion for self (super true for me, at least!).
During these crazy world times, I often see this in others too… There is a hard edge in many people, where they are not able to understand or have compassion for the choices others are making.
People who want to wear masks judge people who don’t, and people who don’t want to get vaccinated judge people who do. I have been super judgmental about this and lots of other topics in my past, too, so I’m not exempting myself from this description!
Anyway, when it comes to birth, I feel there is a lot of judgement that we kind of enforce culturally on each other, too.
People really can’t win. If you have a home birth with a midwife, someone will judge you. If you give birth in a hospital by scheduled cesarean, someone else will judge you. And everything in between is judgement-worthy, too, to one person or another.
What is it about being a human being having a human experience that makes us want to shun people who are making different decisions than us?
Maybe this is just another example of herd mentality.
People who make “alternative” choices to the mainstream are often just as quick to judge the mainstream for being “sheeple”… but maybe judging those who make different decisions than us, regardless of where we are on the spectrum, is just propagating this same mentality of “if you’re making different decisions than my group of people, you’re wrong.”
Where did this come from?
From the 40s and 50s? The industrial revolution? Capitalism?
Have we been conditioned to produce for our country, to give our time and life force energy to the State, so much so, that any sort of ideas that are different are supposed to be squashed so people don’t get the wrong idea and stop producing?
Or maybe just by pitting humans against each other, we avoid them organizing and going against the structures of power in our country?
ANYWAY… I’ll stop thinking out loud :)
Compassion in the childbearing years, to me, looks like trusting in the idea that everything is happening according to divine plan and the greatest good of us all.
This supports my belief system, at least. I’m sure it doesn’t resonate with everyone else completely, but you get the idea.
Compassion also looks like being gentle with ourselves, quieting the judgmental inner voices we have in our minds, and then being able to truly project that energy and lightness outward from within ourselves towards every other human around us.
Seeing the growth opportunity in each experience.
What does your ideal birth look and feel like?
Do you actually believe you DESERVE that experience?
And do you feel that experience is in alignment with your highest path, your greatest good, and the good of your family and your community?
Can you have compassion for yourself if your actual birth diverges from that vision?
Can you have trust in the idea that it is all happening exactly as it should for whatever growth your soul is supposed to be experiencing at this point in your incarnation in this strange and magical reality?
And can you be equally as gentle and loving towards anyone else, whose plans, desires, and paths differ from yours?
The other piece to this thought blab of mine, is humility.
To me, humility is disconnection from ego. It’s realization that I don’t know everything and probably know much closer to nothing than to something. :)
In that vein, how could I possibly feel that I know what someone else should be doing for themselves, in pregnancy, birth, mothering, or anything else?
How could I possibly think or feel that I can come close to imagining what someone else’s divine path is?
Or even, my own?
Don’t get me wrong, I believe wholeheartedly that we can connect to divinity and our higher selves and truly know and feel what is best for us in the moment…
But I also know that things come up and scenarios present themselves that are outside of our comfort zones, and we often have no idea of the “why” behind it all..
That is humility, to me. That realization that I don’t know the why.
I only get to decide on the “HOW.”
And the HOW, to me, is with compassion and humility.
So…
That is how this class made me feel this weekend. :)
Honored to be of service to what I perceive to be the greater good of my community. Compassionate for others who have different paths and different experiences than I. And in humility, the feeling that I am in the right place at the right time, doing what I need to be doing in this present moment, but open to the thought that something else, some other path, could present itself, and that could be just perfect as well.
