Thursday, February 24, 2005

Will I Ever Get Used to This? Do I Want To?

Life as a doula continues along nicely, with some new clients and a few new births under my belt. I'm still so amazed and honored when people ask me to be their doula. Really? Me? Well, if you're sure ... OK! OK! Hooray! One birth seems to lead to a new referral which leads to another ... and so it really becomes something that I do. This is how it works. Fascinating.

Perhaps once you've seen birth a couple of hundred times you start to get used to it, but it still just stuns me. For days afterward I feel a bit off, like I just saw something, and it kinda blew my mind and I don't know what to make of it. It's a bit hard to wrap your head around something like that. Obviously, I'm not doing a great job of describing the feeling, maybe because there just aren't words. Afterward I'm not happy or sad or thrilled or maybe I'm all of these, but mostly I'm just stunned. It's all very normal and routine, happens every day. We've all been there in some way or another. Yet, there it is. Life.

Sometimes the only thing I can do after I get home from the hospital is sit on my bed, take off my socks and shoes and then continue to sit there, kinda blank. And then I go in my studio and draw weird images for hours.

The other day at a party when I told someone I was a birth doula, they asked if I had ever heard of a death doula. I had not. And I am amazed and awed at the beauty of such an idea. We can all use a little help with the big transitions.

1 comment:

Melaina RN, PHN, MS, CNS, ACHPN said...

Wow. I was fascinated reading about your experience as a doula. And was then pleasantly surprised by your death doula link. Thanks for the link.