My Revolution is in Birth Work
As I reflect on what this tumultuous year has brought for me, I am reminded over and over again that my revolution is in birth work.
I want to take you on a journey.
A journey into discovering one’s purpose. Trekking mountains of hardship, grief, and triumph. Mga kwentuhan ng ating kalayaan (storytelling of our freedom). Drawing up strength from the Earth: ancestral wisdom, community building, and perseverance. Sowing seeds for a sustainable and just future.
Birthing Bodies as Earth Embodied
I am taken to a place of no beginning and no ending
A child slips down from the river of millions of stars and cosmos
The first breath, the first birth
A shapeshifting child—purity.
And I look at you, chrysalis transformed into a butterfly
Immersed from the dark, red womb cave
An initiation to parenthood
There’s deep silence, yet ancient wisdom remains
Like walking through old growth redwood forests
The candlelight goes out,
At peace as a new world awakens.
—written by me, one stanza from the original poem, inspired by the first birth I attended as a doula in autumn 2019
I attended three births this year as a birth doula to powerful and radiant birthing women of color. Each birth I witnessed, I became more humble to my knees. Sharpened clarity, alignment, and trusting of the Great Mystery.
I had already dedicated many years to healing myself and listening to the divine feminine within me. I sat and facilitated rituals and ceremonies. I sat next to people who shared with me their deepest longings, grief, and all about love. I take pride in being a deep listener. I love care work. I love being in spaces of deep transformation and crossing thresholds.
I remember the first time I heard the call from my ancestors to walk the path of birth work. I had a dream of seeing all red, blood red, like I’m in a dark cave, warm. Back in the womb. Mga lola and tita ko (my grandmothers and aunties who raised me as a child) embracing me from the ancestor realm. The word “birth” washed over me when I woke up, crying in ecstasy after feeling their warm embrace and visceral knowing to pursue birth work. My ancestors continued to visit me in my dreams after that, especially when I do shamanic drumming. Animism was/is the spiritual practice of pre-colonial and indigenous spirituality in the Philippines. When I drum, I journey to listen to the wisdom of my ancestors. They have told me the powers of breast milk, village-mentality when raising a child, and restoring/cleansing my energy from the ocean after holding space for people.
Growing up in the Philippines, I was surrounded by my big family and extended families. Child rearing in our barangay (village) was the environment I lived in and thrived in. One of my aunties who I was very close to had about thirteen children. When she was fighting cancer and was about to become an ancestor, she told my father, her brother, she wanted to see me. I remember flying from San Jose (where I went to college) to Batangas. I remember holding her hand, placing a clear quartz crystal on her, and gazing into her eyes. She had always treated me as one of her children.
A sense of inner knowing and connectedness to my ancestors became my inspiration to seek my birth community.
When I attended Roots of Labor Birth Collective doula training for people of color in the summer of 2019, my life dramatically changed. I felt shakingly alive, radicalized, and life-affirmed. A sacred pause after years of assimilating (in order to survive) ever since I immigrated back here from the Philippines. (More of this later…) My doula training was the tangible beginning of my decolonization path.
Flash back to the three births I attended in the beginning of this year. The last birth I attended to was in the week of Valentine’s Day. Then came March when shelter-in-place was announced due to the global pandemic of COVID-19. I was deeply immersed in the stages of grief. I think I’m just about to be walking the last stage, which is acceptance.
Maybe the stages of grief will start up again, who knows?
I haven’t attended any births since the pandemic started. Everything was happening so fast, I was doing my best to find my center. I lost my day jobs. I was almost mandatorily evacuated from my home in Sebastopol when fire season came. I moved houses a few times. I moved out of an intentional community where I was tending to the land daily, took on some leadership roles, and facilitated councils. I experienced friendship breakups—this one I had no preparation for… Who knew it would be so painful and that we don’t talk enough about coping from friendship breakups in our society?
I moved back to Eugene, Oregon in the middle of October, and on the second day of being in my new home with my beloved partner, I experienced the most physical pain of my life. I was in pain for many hours, shaking uncontrollably, I felt like I was going to die. My partner called 911 when my body couldn’t stop shaking, and I was driven to the ER by the paramedics.
Thankfully, the hospital wasn’t packed and I wasn’t on the floor where they were treating COVID patients. They diagnosed me with chronic appendicitis after running a few tests, then they performed appendectomy surgery a few hours later. I was treated with a lot of care and kindess from the hospital staff throughout, and my partner was with me the whole time. I felt so much gratitude and relief that my chronic pain will finally pass.
I had been battling undiagnosed chronic appendicitis for as long as I can remember, being in pain almost daily. After my surgery, I am rebirthed anew. A new me with no more chronic pain! I am still recovering from post-surgery, had been getting acupuncture and cupping once a week, and still trying to find the words from this immense journey…
I Am Poem
I am a walker of the thin veil of life and death
I am a disruptor of intergenerational trauma
I come from prophets, storytellers, innovators, people who belong to the Land
I am a womb carrier, though it hasn’t always been easy to discover the sacredness of my womb when I went to war
The familiar war where violence is inflicted on the Great Womb
May I remember the Truth and experience liberation through radical love
I am rising, ang araw na tumataas mula sa dagat (the sun rising from the ocean)
I am deeply rested, I am trusting, I am demanding radical love in action
In this Earth body, I am a walker of the thin veil of life and death
—written by me, a few stanzas from the original poem, inspired by Decolonization School from Center for Babaylan Studies I attended this summer. I also performed this as spoken word during a fire circle.
Black Lives Matter movement accelerated, civil uprisings, the presidential election, collective fatigue and grief from the countless COVID deaths, Filipinx frontliners/nurses dying at disproportionate rates, and so much more exasperated issues that were already happening in our society continued while I was also dealing with my own personal issues and internal battles… It was hard to keep up.
Even though I haven’t attended any births ever since the pandemic, I attended more than ten classes, and webinars related to birth work while also coping from a global pandemic. I wasn’t on the streets protesting against the police brutality on Black and Brown bodies. I was at home studying tirelessly, with sustained focus on how I can help lower the maternal health crisis that BIPOC faces compared to their white counterparts, especially for Black birthing women.
This was the time where I am reminded again from my ancestors: village-mentality. Reach out to my community, heal with my community. With the birth classes I was taking, along with becoming a trainee for a grassroots BIPOC-led transformative justice cohort, I felt held and supported from the community of people I was building with. As a birthworker of color, I know our true power lies in community building and healing justice. This work is not meant to be done alone, it’s actually impossible to do.
My revolution starts in the birth room.
I find joy in supporting birthing people step into a sacred rite of passage and witness them transform no matter what the birth outcome is. As a full spectrum doula, I hold space for the in-between of life and death, the liminal space, the Middle Path.
As someone who was born here on Turtle Island (so-called USA), severed from my mother as an infant to live back in our motherland, the Philippines, for about a decade, I have always felt like I am living in the in-between. Not American enough, not immigrant Filipinx enough.
My Body’s Ecology
My body’s ecology reaches for the deep jungles, warm oceans, eating bangus and rice on banana leaves, next to ginataang hipon, mixing and cupping them with my hands and in to my mouth. Kamayan* na tayo mga pamilya ko (Let’s eat with our hands, my family).
My body’s ecology reaches for the redwood sequoias, mystic top of Mt. Shasta, murmuring ferns on Douglas firs, and foggy summers in San Francisco.
From the East to the West, I am expanding, rooting, growing wherever I am planted.
*Kamayan as traditional Filipino culture
Drawing inspiration from Adrienne Maree Brown’s Pleasure Activism book, “when I am happy, it is good for the world... The deepest pleasure comes from riding the line between commitment and detachment – commitment to your process, to what you are doing, paired with detachment from outcomes.”
As a new doula, I feel humbled by so much I still have to learn, unlearn, and catch up on. Whether that’s learning Black and Indigenous history in America or learning Philippine history, disrupting and moving away from Euro-centric and colonizer’s narratives. Reclaim and preserve our traditional birthing practices as modernity advances, especially the ways COVID-19 has affected home births in the Philippines.
As a colonized and displaced person, I know that I don’t feel alone in my experience, especially other people doing decolonization work, as a means to live fully and truthfully during this time, or as the Buddha calls: the path of right livelihood.
When I say I want to decolonize birth, I am healing.
I am healing my ancestors who have been displaced because of colonialism and white body supremacy illusion. I am healing as a survivor-thriver who experienced multiple violence in their short life thus far. I am healing my inner child, re-parenting myself with deep care and a warm embrace of acceptance and love.
Many people have compared this pandemic as a birthing process. Lama Rod Owens says, “We are giving birth to something new. These are the labor pains of this birthing. We must trust the process no matter how unsteady and fucked this feels. We have to trust everything.”
And just like in birth and labor, the pain is all worth it.
A rush of feel-good hormones washed over me too..
A Gentle Landing
As I look to admire the cedar trees next to the full moon from my window, I feel ease and warmth. A welcoming, safe haven here with my beloved partner and my cat, Smokey Obsidian.
A kitten that magically appeared in my life in the middle of this year, heaven-sent. Smokey was only about 8 weeks old, and it’s been a joy raising him during this time.
I’m starting to build meaningful relationships with friends I cultivated here, connect with radical birthworkers, welcome new connections, and deepen my relationship with my loving and warm-hearted partner.
We are held and protected here in Kalapuya land.
Maybe my revolution is simply living my life, thriving, celebrating, reclaiming my queer Brown body. I know that the real work in birth work is healing myself.
There’s so much to look forward to. I have been preparing, studying, and building my birth work with ecstasy and whirlwinds of pain and pleasure. I tenderly await the next time I get to go to a birth again.
And just like after giving birth, you are never the same. We are never the same, we will no longer go back to “normal.” We are forever changed. We will rise up. We will fight and protect for our deserving sustainable and just future. We will listen to our innate wisdom to live our ancestors’ dreams and vision.
Sowing Seeds & Weeding Out
For the next new year, I will sow seeds of:
-Radical self-love, trusting myself more, being gentle with myself more
-Generative ad healing relationship with myself, loved ones, and my communities
I will weed out:
-The weight of “putting the world on my shoulders,” helplessness, and self-doubt
My affirmations:
I pour from an overflowing full cup. I will rest. I am deserving and worthy. I am protected.
If you find yourself reading all the way to the end of this blog post, thank you. Drink a cup of water or warm tea. I hope moments of inspiration and resilience sparked within you. Let’s hold each other in community. During this historical time we’re in, reach out to me if you feel inspired.