Birth, Breath, and Death: Meditations on Motherhood, Chaplaincy, and Life as a Doula

Birth in other cultures is Initiation

Rather than disengaging from the mother, we are seeking a wild and wise mother. We are not, cannot be, separate from her. Our relationship to this soulful mother is meant to turn and turn, and to change and change, and it is a paradox.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, it is the women who transmit the living heart of religion, lighting the candles, singing the prayers, cleaning up the afterbirth, and bathing the dead.

What started as a personal quest to unravel the mysteries of birth and death became central to my professional work as an adult.