Saturday, February 14, 2009

The First Step in the Journey

Thursday the 12th and Friday the 13th, I had the honor and privelage to lead 8 wonderful, intelligent, energetic women through a DONA approved doula training.

Each woman brought to the training a unique grouping of life experiences and talents. It was amazing to watch them during those two days go from being quiet and cocoon-like to beautiful, blossoming doulas by the end of the workshop. Their own birth experiences will help them provide support to the women with whom they come in contact, from the homebirth, to the cesarean, to the multi-intervention, to the adoptive mother - they already had wonderful talents!

A doula training to me is part teaching but also part empowering them to recognize their instincts, their talents, and their own abilities. They will be able to serve women in their own unique way - different from any other doula. They will be able to perform deeds at labors and births that only they can do - in their own special way.

Did they need massage lotion, birth balls, massage tools, aromatherapy or music? No, they already had their two most powerful tools ~ their hearts and their hands.

It is said that we will not be remembered by our words, but by our kind deeds. Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. And for me and these 8 women, the moment when a new life comes into this world definitely takes our breath away.

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