Imagine a life with no shame… what if you were free to think and feel and act from your heart? What if you could show who you are with your Whole Heart? This is my topic this week on The Whole Woman, September 1st, 2011. www.VoiceAmerica.com or i-Tunes – The Whole Woman.
I see many women who would like to have a home birth but hold back because they want to make husbands, mothers, in-laws or even their own children feel comfortable. The courage to declare what you want without the fear of people being angry with you or losing their support is what it means to operate without shame. Shame is about the fear of disconnection.
To give birth and allow yourself to feel fully all the sensations of birth, both the intensity of the experience and the bliss following it is also what it means to operate without shame. Birth is not neat and tidy, it is alive and messy and vital. You cannot numb out just the “bad” parts, you have to be willing to have a Whole Experience. Part of this is a physical dimension of being seen – having discharges of blood, amniotic fluid, sweat etc. is also all part of being vulnerable and exposed (and alive)…
I love this quote by R.N., Susan Diamond:
“Most Western women have never been physically tested until we go through labour and birth,,,, have not gone eighteen or twenty-four hours without food or sleep…allowed ourselves to go a day or two without a bath or shower, without brushing our teeth and doing our hair and makeup. Even fewer of us would allow anyone else to see, smell, or touch us, unwashed, sweat-soaked, naked, oozing mucus, blood and feces from our nether regions. When faced with the forces of labour, we can’t hide the fear, the anxiety the responses to pain… all the inhibitions and trappings of our social selves are peeled away as our bodies thrust and heave, vomit and grunt, cry and leak. The animal is there for everyone to see.”
isnt’ that brilliant! who would want to pass that up? HA!
be alive.
for more on this topic check out this insightful Ted Talk by Brene Brown on Shame and Vulnerability.
We will be discussing the work of Brene Brown and her findings about shame and connection on The Whole Woman this Thursday, September 1st/11