live AND
learn

As a social, urban person I live a comfortable life. Yet, I am a creature from nature that lives in a natural environment. There is no contradiction in this. I do live where there are others, there are streets where there could be trees, but at the same time, every cell in my body is natural, and therefore inextricably intertwined with nature. It is a rule of life that I would never question. Until I went into labour with my first child. The moment when all my beliefs about my place in nature would be fundamentally tested. 

​

Prenatal preparation of any sort had not been part of my plans, as I was convinced that giving birth was something natural and would therefore just happen as part of the natural circle of life. I was going to go into it unprepared. The result was an excruciating experience – both mentally and physically – which rocked my view of life and humanity. 

​

​Was it genuinely possible that human beings – the self-proclaimed epitome of creation – were faulty at heart? It would make us the only creatures on earth that could not give birth without help. Human kind is capable of everything, but needs help with its propagation? I refused to believe that. This key experience would resonate with me until I was pregnant with my second child.

​

The knowledge, the archetype for “how to give birth” that I was searching was out there, there was no doubt about it. However, not in front of my nose and not in my society. I decided to take a different approach. What I had experienced was not what nature had in mind for us, and I was going to prove that by getting the birth that every cell in my body had anticipated. History would not repeat itself, this much was clear.

​

​When I commit to something it is with my heart and soul. Submerging myself in this world is the only way to reach the fulfilment of a project. So, I plunged into this new experience, head first. My research in the web was quickly stalled by singing groups and water births somewhere in neverland. This was not the world that I could identify with, and I was neither striving to create a new society nor acquire new friends. It proved to be more of struggle to find my way than I had expected.

​

​Breathing techniques and hypno-birthing turned out to be the key. Thanks to thorough preparation I gave birth to my second child naturally and peacefully, with minimal pain. This was the proof: we are not faulty; we can do it. Nature knows best.

 

This thought and the experience that comes with it have stuck with me since. When my child got stung by stinging nettles, my google search came up with buckhorn as a remedy, which happens to grow side by side with the stinging nettles.

​

Nature thus presents both problem and solution. I am in awe of her holistic approach each and every time. Nothing is as it seems. To question, experiment, establish what does not work and why, these are the cornerstones of my life. And being authentic through it all; living life authentically and taking a risk by doing so. When new ways and new perspectives fall on deaf ears, the time is not right. Yet, the right time will come. I can wait.