...have since been privileged to participate in hundreds of births. In 1996 an additional pathway was opened to me--the opportunity to facilitate the labor assistant training workshops for ALACE.

I have since seen the "birth" and continued growth of hundreds of women as they embrace the power and opportunity to be "agents of change", vessels for transforming experiences in the people they work with as well as in themselves. All of these experiences were leading me to the greatest challenges of my life thus far.

In the summer of 2004, my second child, Chances, announced that he and his partner, Gwenhyfar, were expecting a baby in early 2005. They planned a homebirth in Colorado. There are so many emotions attached to hearing that your child will be having a child, that your child will be a parent. But my emotions, my thoughts, my ideas had to be put quietly aside. I played the same role as when I am hired by a client. There were many opportunities to listen, to breathe, to bite my tongue, and only answer what was asked of me, as well as remind them that if there was anything they needed or wanted from me, I was there for them. The mantra in my head was one I teach in workshops, "This is their birth not mine".

On February 1, 2005, Rhythm Osiris Shivaiya was born but did not take a breath into this life. To say that this shattered the world would be understating my feelings. Life altered in a profound way. Here I was mother of six children--five born at home (Chances was my first homebirth), attendant at hundreds of homebirths, teacher, believer in the normalcy of...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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