Category Archives: Myth, Folklore and Ritual

Angelina the Midwife

By The Midwife | December 10, 2007

I just discovered the most amazing videos over on You Tube about a traditional midwife working in Mexico. I’m sure many of you have probably seen them already, but I was just blown away!! It’s amazing to watch the way she uses her hands to massage, assess, palpate…turn a breech baby. A midwife’s greatest tool [...]

Also posted in Birth Education, Homebirth, Labor and Birth, Midwifery | 7 Comments

Female Genital Circumcision revisited

By The Midwife | November 1, 2007

A few weeks ago, Dark Daughta over at One Tenacious Baby Mama asked me for a contribution to her new weekly series entitled Reloaded, which happens every Sunday and features old posts that are worth posting and reading a second time (oldies but goodies, as she calls them). She wanted posts that I was particularly [...]

Also posted in Choice, Education, Feminism, Politics, Sex and Sexuality, Violence Against Women | Leave a comment

Blessingways and Rites of Passage

By The Midwife | June 24, 2005

I attended a fantastic workshop last week entitled Birth Altars and Blessingways: Using Ritual to Transform Birth, which really got me thinking about the major rite of passage inherent in birth, and how our society has a tendency to gloss it over with a thick veneer of materialism and call it a done deal. While [...]

Also posted in Pregnancy | 2 Comments

Gods and Goddesses of Birth

By The Midwife | May 6, 2005

I’ve been writing a lot of activist, news-focused, political posts lately, so I thought I should borrow a page from Monty Python: and now for something completely different! Birth is an awe-inspiring thing. It’s one of the few moments in a person’s life when the constructs of our reality crack wide open and we come [...]

Posted in Myth, Folklore and Ritual | Leave a comment