Unleash the Courage

New Moon Rising – Art by Marylou Falstreau

Have you ever gotten goosebumps from reading a quote or a passage? This one did it for me. Perhaps because it articulates one of the very deepest reasons I believe, with so much conviction, in the power of home birth. It’s why I continue to push myself to challenge convention. It’s what I wished I could have said when people looked at me, wide-eyed, and said rather flippantly: “A homebirth? Well, you are brave…” or “What if something happened? Aren’t you scared?”.

Because it’s not that I didn’t consider the health of my child. On the contrary, one of the driving factors behind our decision for a home birth was because we believe it is safer than a hospital. It’s because we came to the conclusion that fear would not be the ruler in our household, minds, and bodies. Because, truly,…

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” – Ambrose Redmoom

We deserve so much more than to be driven by fear, ruled by the guilt of “what if’s”. We deserve more than to be so paralyzed with fear that we are unable to question what we have always known or been told. We deserve to discover our own truths, recover our own ecstacy , reveal our own path, and reclaim a world of possibility. We all knew how to do this once…

Fear asks for permission. Courage needs no permission.

With birth, with life, there must be a moment when you make that leap of faith that indeed something else is exceedingly more important than fear. Past the years of hurt, just past the people who told you that you “couldn’t/wouldn’t/shouldn’t”, and right down the corner from the voices that tell you you aren’t enough…is the courage to stand alone, shivering and electric, on fire and so vulnerable, with the universe spiraling inside you, and scream the primal “YES!”. The same primal YES we all screamed the instant of our very own birth into this world. And at that moment, even the courage doesn’t matter. You will be plugged back in. Connected. Alive.

You will have unleased the goddess within.

What are you waiting for?