Crazy epic journey to meet midwives...

I'm sitting right now in an trailer park in Santa Cruz, on the Santa Cruz campus (yes, some of the students who go to school at Santa Cruz live together in this communal trailer park, crazy eh?,) and I'm starving and I'm trying to remember how I got started on this epic journey which will eventually end in El Paso Texas at the Maternadad La Luz birth center. Whew! Actually, hopefully it will end back at the Shitty Divet (that's the name of my house now,) in Portland if all goes well.

Ok, technically this journey began months ago when I started talking to my buddy Rowan about my desire to drop out of midwifery school. I was miserable, struggling with my schoolwork, unable to keep up with everything no matter how many hours I spent in the library and with private tutors. Also, I was piling up more bills then I'll probably ever be able to pay off; and as I talked with Rowan, I came to understand that part of the reason I was having such trouble with midwifery school (well there are several prominent reasons that stick out to me,) 1) hands on learning is definitely more my style, I did best in all my skills classes, lectures don't do much for me 2) I see midwifery much differently then many other people who study it, many people see midwifery as a "career" choice, I see it as a calling. To me, midwifery is a much too spiritual thing to be something you can just study and then make a career out of; you must be called to midwifery to do it well. As such, I believe becoming a midwife isn't something that happens during a three or four year degree program; midwifery is a lifelong pursuit and is much like becoming a shaman; you can't simply jump through all the right hoops and get handed a piece of paper that says you are a shaman and then you are; it is necessary to strive toward spirituality all of your life and then, eventually, in old age, someone might say "so and so the Shaman.." and at that moment you might realize that you've stepped into that role..

I feel that midwifery is the same way; I'll be most likely attending births for years before I feel confident that I am a midwife; perhaps I'll never give myself such a lofty title. Likely, I'll hear someone else say it about me before I'll admit that I'm a midwife, and certainly no credentials at any school will give me the needed confidence to practice midwifery wisely.

So thinking about all of that, I made the decision to drop out of school. I'd learned some very valuable clinically knowledge, such as how to suture, sterile technique, now to culture urine, how to start IVs and draw blood, etc, etc. These are important for any midwife to learn, no matter how "spiritual" she is, I'm not debating that. But now I feel it is time for me to pursue the more spiritual realm of midwifery, while learning in a more hands on, practical way. This is why an apprenticeship feels so right to me.

So I'm searching for an apprenticeship, or rather, several or many hundreds of apprenticeships. I decided to start my journey at Maternadid La Luz, the birth center/school in El Paso where my friend Katarra also studies midwifery.

More about these adventures to follow,
Love ya,
Carrot