Update on Midwife International:

Just a quick update. We now have a complete board of directors--9 outstanding women who are fully behind what we are doing. Also, this week our stellar team of two in Guatemala traveled to the city along with one of our future students to present our program. There were 17 officials present, ranging from high level ministry of health officials and their aids to representatives from the UNFPA, the Panamerican Health Organization, and the public University of Guatemala. The overall spirit of the meeting was extremely supportive of our project and more meetings are scheduled to discuss how to move forward! We seem to be getting a green light at every turn.

It is my conviction that if we can build truly collaborative relationships with all of these players--the ministry of health officials, officials from the international health bodies, officials within the education system, the student midwives, our staff and board, the existing community midwives, the families themselves, the medical staff in the hospitals and health posts, and a wide base of donor support--then we can create a maternity care system that puts the needs of women and babies at the center and finds the way to truly serve those needs. That will be a new day.

An ending and a beginning

"An idea whose time has come...

Cannot be stopped....

By anyone...

Plant your seeds...

In fertile ground

There ain't nothin'...

Gonna keep it down"

From "We Can Do It" by Pat Scanlon


I left Guatemala but Guatemala has not left me. The work I started there continues to unfold and the vision in my mind of young eager midwives and families who deeply value midwifery and home birth stays with me as a powerful motivating force.

It is with great excitement and pleasure that I am announcing the launch of Midwife International and Ixchel-Atitlan: Intercultural School of Midwifery. The school will serve both Guatemalan and international students and provide a comprehensive education that will prepare students for out-of-hospital birth practice and international work. Participating in the conception and gestation of this school (the birth has yet to come) has been a process of watching the divine in action and miracles unfolding.

I am convinced, now more than ever, that God needs our eyes and ears, and our voices, hands and feet to create the heaven on Earth so many of us wish to experience and some of us know is possible. We will know what this is when we join with others to make a fierce commitment to love. We cannot afford to wait for the winds to shift. It will require the gifts of every person who is at all awake to a higher consciousness. It is our willingness to make ourselves receptive and available and to respond to the needs at hand with the best of who we are and what we have to offer that is going to make or break our collective future.

Of this I am sure. I’m hardly an evolved soul but I can still do what is given to me to do as I learn to live more consciously.

Ixchel-Atitlan is a dream come true. Not my dream but a dream that has found its way into any receptive space it could find.

Our little team (four out of the seven of us) had a celebration feast just before I left Guatemala and I got to hear a story that was profoundly inspiring. Ester, the indigenous midwife at the root of this project, told us how this all began. In 1986, when she was a young woman and a new midwife, she had the opportunity to travel to the U.S. with her parents for a conference of some kind. While she was there, she met someone who asked her what her dream was. She thought about it and said, “I want to create a school for midwives.” The woman asked her to write it down and hold on to that dream. Fast forward 15 years and Ester again had an opportunity to travel to the U.S. At that point she had many years experience as a midwife. This time she went to a midwifery conference with the help of American midwife, Cindy Waterman. Again she met someone who asked her what her dream was. Again it was a school for midwives. Again she wrote it down. Fast forward nine more years to an auspicious and synchronistic moment in time. I showed up at the lake. At the same time, Mariu Gobbato, a young mother and aspiring midwife, moved to San Marcos and Corina Fitch, a midwife who grew up on the Farm, also showed up for a visit. Alicia DaCristaforo had been talking to Ester about the idea of the school and she managed to gather us all for a conversation. From that first meeting, the ball started rolling.

There have been many moments in this process that have been pivotal and miraculous but three stand out that I will mention. The first happened before the idea of a school was even much in my consciousness. I was talking to a friend of mine in San Marcos, Dr. Bill, (one of those rare physicians that really “gets it” about midwifery). He had just finished reading my book. I remember him saying, with a lot of intensity, “I want you to dream big. What would you do if you could do anything?”

That of course, is a good question for anyone.

For me, the wholesale loss of normal birth as a human experience on a global scale is a major tragedy. A heartbreak for humanity. Because the opportunity for re-membering the truth of our interdependence and the love we are made of through the experience of birth compares to nothing else. It’s an incredible gift that is being squandered. Drugged and surgical birth just aren't the same. For whatever reason saving birth has become part of my mission in life. My answer to his question was, “I would save midwifery here in Guatemala BEFORE its gets lost.” He just smiled and nodded his head. In that moment I was given permission to be totally audacious--in a good way.

The second moment (a series of moments) was several months later when I was riding the public boat to San Pedro, late for a meeting with some potential students and Ester. Stephanie Bonin happened to be on my right and she struck up a conversation with me about my project. On my left was her friend, visiting from Colorado for a week vacation. He overheard the conversation and told me I should meet his wife, also named Sarah. She was in the back of the boat and he introduced us when we disembarked. Several days later Sarah and I met at the clinic and Sarah did an interview with me for her blog, Mother’s Advocate. The link to the interview is below. As I explained to her the vision for our school, tears started streaming down her face. As it turns out, she had had a similar vision many years earlier of an international school for midwives. Her vision was to create a school where North American student midwives could get their education in a place where the need was great, alongside local women who would be serving their own communities. She had also recently been asking the universe for a way to use her talents and time in service to something bigger. She had found the answer to her seeking.

One thing led to another and Sarah Kraft has become our executive director, contributing tremendous amounts of time, skills, talents, vision, and commitment. I could not have invented a better executive director in my imagination. I am forever grateful to hand off that piece to someone who has skills in organizational development and fundraising. I want to focus my efforts on midwifery practice and mentoring midwifery students. I have a vision of mentoring midwifery students in a way that I craved during my training but never experienced. I think of it as “midwifing the midwife.”

So here is the really interesting piece....Sarah Kraft had a vision of somehow getting involved with midwifery in Guatemala (separate from the other vision I recounted) when she attended the midwives conference in New Mexico in 2001. That was the first conference that hosted traditional Guatemalan midwives, Antonina Sanchez and Berta Juarez, to teach a class on herbal medicine. It was because of them that I went to that conference and when I met them I knew I needed to go to Guatemala. I had a vision of being involved somehow in midwifery in Guatemala but I didn’t know what that looked like. Ester happened to be at that same conference though she was there only as a participant. That’s where she wrote down her dream for the second time. Ester still has those two slips of paper.

So how’s that for synchronicity? I continue to watch with rapt attention as the process unfolds.

The third moment, was shortly after I met Sarah, we were sitting at a gathering and she asked the people gathered to each tell about the biggest transformation we had experienced this year. I remember surprising myself by saying, “I have moved from trying to figure out how to make my own life work to wanting to make things work for a lot of people.” It is a very fulfilling and energizing place to be. I am still very much motivated by this drive.

Our website tells more: www.midwifeinternational.org

Here is the interview that Sarah Kraft did with me:

http://mothersadvocate.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/676/

Also, my slide show is up on youtube now. Much easier to watch and better resolution: http://youtu.be/fGROuZCq5-U

For those of you who are passionate about global birth change like me, you have got to check out this new social media project called One World Birth at

oneworldbirth.net

Your comments are appreciated!

Peace,

Sarah

Update from Guatemala March 1st

Hope you enjoy the slideshow at the bottom.

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Anything we love can be saved”

-- Alice Walker

I am six months into my Fulbright year, with about 4 months to go. In many ways things are just getting started. I have started attending births with some of the local midwives and most likely will be on call until I leave. I am still working at the clinic as well. Much of my focus has also been on moving forward this initiative to start a midwifery school here at the lake. It has been an incredible process and seems to have a life of its own. There are many people who want to see this happen and we all feel profoundly supported by unseen forces. Even the pieces I am doing feel like they are being handed to me one by one and are simply coming through me.

It’s as if the midwifery school is in gestation and wants to be born-- a school that can be an avenue for women to receive an education that will strengthen their communities and safeguard their rights to give birth safely, in dignity and in freedom. I am simply helping to midwife the birth of this school. I am answering that call.

We want to create a program that incorporates Mayan healing practices with the midwifery model of care, holistic medicine, clinical practice in home and hospital settings, leadership training and women’s circles.

I want to incorporate women’s circles as a core part of the curriculum. This is partly based on my experience of leading birth circles for two years in Western Massachusetts and watching it grow (even after I left) into a thriving women’s community--something I could not have predicted. Some of the most powerful experiences of my life have been while I was sitting in women’s circles. In fact I believe that women’s circles have the power to transform the world. Truly when women start to own their power and their vision there will be a healing force unleashed that cannot be stopped because the world is hungry for it--men, women, children, and nature alike. I believe it is already happening and we just need to tune in to each other and to our own callings.

Little did we know, but this midwifery school project has developed at an incredibly auspicious moment. Just two weeks ago a new program of the Ministry of Health was initiated that brings indigenous healers and indigenous health practices into the official health care system. This program is being born in San Pedro La Laguna and I was privileged to be at the election of Guatemala’s very first ever indigenous health council. It consists of the Minister of Health and 6 indigenous healers, including two midwives. (Photos in the slide show) There are only two men on the council. From now on, all community health issues such as water quality, infectious disease, health policy issues, any kind of community-wide problem--all go through the health council and they will decide what needs to be done. When Ester and I approached the Minister of Health about a meeting regarding our project he said, “You need to understand that anything you do has to incorporate and respect the indigenous health care system.” I told him that’s exactly what we are doing and he said, “In that case, we can meet next week.” We will be meeting with him and later this month traveling as a group to meet with the top ministry of health guy in Guatemala City. Donato Camey, from the Ministry of Health (pictured in the slide show) told Ester and me that this is a really good time to be initiating this type of project because for the first time in a very long time the ministry of health is actually very open and we have a chance of success. We aren’t asking for their money, just their blessing and official recognition. I’m blown away that we have gotten this far. And it all started with two women who were called to help the midwives, support home birth and to save women’s lives. They simply said, “We want to start a school. How do we do it?” And from there, all the right people started showing up at the right time (like me) and adding their energy, ideas, connections, skills, and resources and now this project has a life of its own. This is what people working together for a higher purpose can look like.

Each of us has a calling, whether we are in touch with it or not and each of our callings are needed to shift humanity’s consciousness on this precious planet. All hands are needed on deck. You need not have resources as much as you think. You’d be surprised how providence moves to meet you and carry you when you commit yourself to your calling. Life is no longer about your petty concerns. Its about making your life mean something, and doing your part whatever that is, and inspiring others to do theirs, whatever that is. Your deepest longings are actually life longing for itself and life has a way of organizing itself around you when you decide to say “yes.”

I feel deeply called to save and revive midwifery and home birth as a sacred practice. Not just here in Guatemala but at home as well. This is not something I invented in my head. Its something that is coming through me and I cannot suppress it. Every time I witness the power of birth the commitment to that calling is deepened.

Everything you do matters. What matters in not what you do or how big it is but that you do what your heart most deeply desires- and that you do it with full faith and all the love you can summon up from the depths of your soul.

If anyone wants to support the school or be involved somehow, please write to me and I will send you our proposal for starters.

We will need highly qualified people for our board, Spanish-speaking midwife teachers, and especially supportive, generous and enthusiastic donors who understand the value of home birth and indigenous life-ways, want to make a positive impact, and are willing to take a leap of faith with us on a new project. We are taking a leap of faith as well as we are walking into unchartered territory. If anyone knows of someone who might be an “Angel Donor,” someone who is willing to invest in the planning process--before we can officially open our doors--please let me know, or forward my blog to them.

Please post or send your comments. I love hearing from people.

Sarah

This slideshow is about 60 MB and takes around 4 1/2 minutes. It's much better quality if you watch it in the small size.