Intentions for Taos Birth Storiesfeatured

As I bounce on this ball with my 2 month old baby girl sweetly sleeping (and suckling) in the ring sling I feel an urgency to create this website TODAY. This is a project I have talked about since I was pregnant with my first 3 years ago, when I was reading birth stories constantly to help me prepare to meet with birth for the very first time. We’ve all read the Ina May stories which feel ancient and from a place I’ve never been to and with the internet everyone seems to be in Hawaii but that can’t be possible… I kept saying there should be stories from HERE, place-based stories told so I can draw inspiration from all around me, up through my feet as I move through this valley. Taos is a place of great stories which attracts the varied people who call this wild place home, I can feel those stories in this place but where are the birth stories? At the time I knew only a few women who gave birth in Taos, they told me all sorts of random anecdotes, one who wouldn’t tell me her story until after I gave birth, and a good friend who would just holler noises at me like “oooh girl you’ll see”. I’m simply creating what I wanted at the time that I was just entering into the most exhilarating, life-changing, soul-rearranging dance of my life: Motherhood, capital M as it is a rite of passage to be celebrated and published. What I did (giving birth) should be told amongst the great stories of this valley, of this world, it should be shouted from every rooftop or played from a little speaker when you walk past my house. The history books are filled with stories of men killing men, what about stories of women birthing babies? “Herstory” the missing pieces of this place – tell me of the women who birthed, fed and raised those men, surely their mothers imparted on them their strength and will.
Tell me how she stared death straight in the face to bring her baby here,
Tell me who she is, who she really is when its all stripped away in birth,
Tell me about the courage she had to summon,
Tell me what she overcame,
Tell me how she walked through hellfire, middle earth & the heavens with her babe in her pelvis,
I want to know all the stories, not just the “good” ones – as if we can even qualify a story or give it an adjective. Story is simply the truth of the storyteller, I want to hear her truth, your truth.

I realized what potent medicine there was in telling my birth story to a group of women. After I gave birth to my first I was ashamed, embarrassed, and really in a dark place and it wasn’t until I was in a room of new mothers telling them how I got there, letting the tears flow and feeling them seeing me and hearing me that I realized this was the medicine I needed. The day I told my birth story to them is the day I started to heal from the out-of-control reality that was the birth of my firstborn.

I want that kind of healing from this forum for all the women who have birthed in the Sangre de Cristos. I want expectant mothers to draw courage from our words. I want to connect us across this valley from the depths of birth, depths our men cannot know, depths that only mothers can claim and use to increase their potency as women, as the future wise women of this place. Our birth stories shape reality, just as hollywood has sold us the simple story of pain raped of spirit…they left out the essence, lets reclaim that essence. I want to run into you at the farmers market and fall to my knees in awe of you and what you did to bring your baby here. I want to look to you for strength should I be fortunate enough to meet birth again. I want to look into your baby’s eyes and see what they required of you to be here and know the work they did to be here with us. I want to hear all the stories of birth even the ones you ‘aren’t supposed to tell’. Let us release ourselves from the shame our untold stories can hold in us. I want to celebrate you and me and all the mothers before us and after us.

Mostly I want my daughter (still sweetly sleeping) to read these stories one day should she face birth and do so with open arms, given strength and lacking fear from reading our words wherever she chooses to birth.

Sacred portals we are, let’s hear it.

I’m just the custodian here in service to our precious words,

Jennifer