Midwife, Who Are You?
Integrity, embodiment, and midwife betrayal.
The most effective form of insurance (in every area in life, really) is honesty, openness, and integrity.
But what is integrity?
Integrity is knowing yourself fully, knowing what you stand for, and consistently expressing congruency between what you say, what you do, what you value, and who you are.
In the context of birth-support—midwifery, doula-work, and the art and practice of sitting with women and holding the intensity of body and spirit as we move through the various forms of initiation into motherhood and beyond—integrity is at the absolute core of the the profession.
In fact, “success” as a midwife—whether or not your business thrives or dissolves—is a direct result of one’s level of maturity and emotional intelligence, both of which express and are derived from integrity. Integrity is our primary resource.
Can integrity be learned, or acquired? Yes.
I know this from my own experience of tilting my life away from fracture and towards wholeness. This is an ongoing process, to be sure, and my self-professed expertise in this area is no claim to perfection, or of having reached a particular destination or status, but an admission of just how far I’ve come, given the mess I had made, or was making, of my life, at a certain point.
I shared a post recently on Instagram, about my experience of working with women over the past 15 years, who have experienced birth-related trauma. In that short video, I observed that the number one reason that women come to me for support, over and above even just traumatic hospital birth experiences, is midwife betrayal: they thought their midwife worked for them, they thought their midwife would be an advocate for them, they thought their midwife would support their autonomy and their right to “informed consent,” and they thought their midwife practiced “natural birth.” But in the end, often at the last moment, often during the birth process itself, these women discovered that their midwife was actually fully enmeshed with the medical system, a representative of the medical system, and beholden to the medical system.
What I didn’t share in the reel, is that most—maybe all— mothers in this situation are operating, to some extent, from a familiar kind of willful ignorance and bypassing of instinct. Despite having been given multiple chances to elect to see exactly who their midwives were showing themselves to be, they chose not to—not to see, that is. Because what then? Betrayal, disappointment, and outrage are often far more familiar (and safer, in a way) than personal responsibility. Fragmentation (a shortage of integrity) is usually present to some degree in both victim and perpetrator (and of course, we all do this from time to time, in various areas of our lives).
I began my career in birth a vociferous critic of the medical cartel’s appropriation and regulation of midwifery, but I’m far more circumspect now. The real problem, though, isn’t the medical industrial complex, it’s our collective reticence to see the world and the people in it, as it is and they are. Obstetrics and obstetric midwifery are not at issue for the many mothers who are seeking a highly medicalized experience, nor, apparently, nor for the many medical functionaries who enjoy and take pride in their jobs.
Problems do inevitably arise, however, when there is no consonance between who we say we are, and how we behave.
Things get even more complicated when we are unaware of the nuances of power, or of our own status and degree of rightful authority (or lack thereof) in a given situation. If we don’t take the time to understand the nature of responsibility, and of what (or who) we are responsible for, not to mention to whom we are responsible, the debts we carry, or contracts (written and implicit) we are subject to, waters get muddied and relationships may become convoluted and even dangerous.
In recent years, technology has fundamentally altered not only the nature of power or the ethical questions that arise, but the very scaffolding of moral ontology. And even as the invitation to refine our relationship to power, authority, and identity has become more urgent, the motivations and opportunities to do so seemingly decline.
Especially in recent years, I have seen a proliferation of birth-related content that is not just repetitive but hypnotically mimetic—people simply repeating slogans, copying each other’s memes, and parroting talking points, without, it seems, having any embodied experience. This is true in every field these days, of course, from psychology to relationship coaching, to spiritual leadership.
The replacement of embodied knowledge with the surface affect of mastery is simultaneously the germ, the symptom, and the consequence of so-called “artificial intelligence.”
We are being steadily and more progressively conditioned to believe that mimesis—duplication—is learning. But the consumption of scattershot information is not understanding, and it may even be the opposite. Devouring information in the absence of praxis—the consistent application of theory and practice (embodiment, in other words)—is, it is increasingly clear, not just empty, but actively inhibitory, and has the effect of inflicting both mental fracture and delusion.
Dis-integration is incentivized and naturalized, in every area of life, but notably in the realm of birth in every aspect, from the experience most mothers have of it within the medical industrial system, to the forms of service and roles that birth necessitates or justifies, on whatever end of the spectrum of pathologization.
It’s not all bad. I have so much faith, in God, in my own orientation to purpose (as I speak to extensively in my bestselling book and online course, Portal), and in humanity. We live in a time of potential and possibility, and I have witnessed and known intimately, the positive impact of connective technologies on the revival and conservation of holy, primal, spontaneous birth. The women whose births I have supported in my community here in Nicaragua in the past few months have all found me thanks to the power of our the digital web initially, and it’s the internet that has transmitted the concepts I put forth in The Complete Guide to Freebirth, and the work my colleague and business-partner Emilee Saldaya and I have done together in the RBK School that has reached thousands and thousands of women and seeded the collective reawakening of our power as women.
What Emilee and I are dreaming of—and seeing come to fruition as we are connecting with the most beautiful women who have enrolled in our year-long mentorship, The MatriBirth Midwifery Institute (enrollment is open now with limited-time bonuses, classes to begin in September)—is greater numbers of women actually setting aside their devices, summoning true discipline around scrolling and quick-hit online courses and consuming more than they’re practicing and creating, and actively seeking those rare teachers who are embedded in the work of midwifery and motherhood and birth in their day-to-day rhythm—as a life, as a practice, as an art.
Being a woman, a midwife, a teacher, a guide, requires integrity that is only accessed through full embodiment—and that takes getting out into the world and living and learning and failing and actually getting your hands in the dirt as you become the wise woman you claim to be. It’s less about what’s being said, and more about who you’re being, which comes through depth and devotion to your art.
If midwifery and serving women in birth in integrity is your calling, if you feel being with women is the art you’re looking to become masterful at, then join us inside The MatriBirth Midwifery Institute: Classes to begin in September, but enrollment is open now with a 3-part ceremonial workshop series included as a bonus for those who enroll before July 26th. You can learn more about the bonus here: https://www.freebirthsociety.com/resourced-woman-bootcamp.
And if you’re on the fence or you’re wanting to learn a bit more before committing to this year-long business and midwifery mentorship with me and Emilee—join us for a series of FREE masterclasses and Instagram lives coming up in July and August. You can register here: https://www.freebirthsociety.com/mmi-masterclasses.