Earth And Birth Are Woven Together
Like two threads in the first blanket ever to be knitted, birth and land, have since the beginning of time, been woven together. Where we have gone wrong is in our forgetting of this.
All Indigenous cultures all around the world know of this. They go to land for answers, sit with country, watch closely to cycles and how they interweave, change, birth and die. They deeply understand that land births and birth lands, us - connecting us to earth, body, purpose and belonging.
Birth is seen to ensure a spiritual connection to the land for the newborn. How and where we birth grounds our ways of knowing, being and doing in the world. And is why birthing on country is so important for Australian aboriginals and all people (and needs the deepest of protecting).
“Sometimes in my minds eyes, I see myself standing beside a woman as she births - loving presence and fierce protection abounds - but the image of her flashes back and forth between a gumtree and a womans body.” -our protests are the same x x
On birthing Gumbayygnr Country where I lived, Uncle Miklo told me that the souls of the babies enter the mothers wombs as they swim in The Never Never River. This story foreshadows the interconnectedness and vital importance of women being with land as they grow and birth their children. And these stories, songlines and dreaming tracks run through all cultures and lands across the globe.
Traditional Māori culture aligns women with the land because the land gives birth to humankind just as women do. As the world was born from the land (Papatuanuku) so humankind is born from women. A woman’s womb, called te whare tangata (the house of humanity), is seen as the same as the womb of the earth. And where she births and buries the babies placenta imprints her childs connections and destiny forever.
My own life journey has been one of deeply reconnecting my chords to earth, body, purpose and belonging. In the arms of Indigenous Midwives I have cried rivers of grief from feeling separated, disconnected and uprooted from these things from the moment of my own birth. A destiny confirmed by their ancestors and chosen so that I may walk embodied.
When people hear of my life path they often assume that I love birth, a ‘birth freak’ or fanatic of sorts. The truth is - what I love and am fighting for is just as much about the trees, the waterways, our bodies and the earth. It is about how in every action we see ourselves as nature or separate from it; and how this the informs how we live and act in this world.
If spiritual than here is a ‘spirituality’ deeply rooted in science, in land, in earth. One that runs bone deep, like an ancient river which often gurgles up from the wells of my heart, pouring out of my hands and into my words and the bodies they touch.
In such times when many religions and destructive systems fight and muder, when earth and womens bodies continued to be violated, destroyed and massacred - may we all be gently led home to the very one we all share…. Body. And. Earth.
Earth as our Home.
Humanity as our Race.
Love as our Religion.
x x
