The Long Version of My Story
Years ago I was working as an occupational therapist at a local hospital for adults in the neuro-rehabilitation unit. I had only worked there a short time before realizing there were many limitations to what I thought would be my dream job. I loved working with the patients but everything was based on insurance: how often we saw them, how long they could stay, and the types of activities we could do with them. Progress of client’s was often slow because we could not offer the attention they really needed. In addition I was hired as PRN, meaning as needed. So when the hospital was busy I could work, when it wasn’t, I would get called off.
The inconsistency of my schedule and the dictation of the insurance meant inconsistency of creating relationships with my clients. For me, relationships with clients are key to the healing process. In addition, I was struggling with not feeling part of a team. I was constantly asking my manager to hire me but there was no room in the budget and this was not how “policy” worked at a hospital.
I was really struggling. I had spent three years in graduate school learning something I thought was a perfect fit for me. I chose this degree because it was a perfect blend of medical world meets holistic world. But once I was working, I realized how much policy dictated everything I did, not the patients.
During a particularly slow time when I was getting called off a lot, I was ski touring in the mountains by myself. I saw a small bridge covered in snow and decided to take a rest. I was thinking about my life and felt lost. What was I doing with my job? Was it what all that I hoped it would be? Was I really making a difference?
In a moment of desperation, I started to pray to the Universe. I said I was confused and I was ready. I was ready to do what was best for me no matter what that looked like. That I would listen to its prompts without question. I took a big sigh and skied down the mountain.
A few days later a friend of mine randomly told me that the local children’s hospital was looking to hire a full-time occupational therapist. The timing was too perfect to not take this as a sign from the Universe, or Divine intervention.
In the interview, I told them that I recently started learning and practicing craniosacral therapy. The manager actually knew what this was (most people do not) and she was intrigued that I could offer this to the children and babies. I accepted the job not knowing this job was catapulting me onto a whole new path. It was this job where I started to integrate my work of craniosacral therapy and occupational therapy and two seemingly unrelated worlds collided.
I started to incorporate craniosacral work with children who had a lot of pain, children with cancer, babies who would not calm down, children with head injuries, and spinal cord injuries. I fell in love with working with babies and how a simple touch or release of tissue could help relax their nervous systems.
At the same time, I had started my own practice specific to craniosacral therapy. This allowed me to work with people outside of the hospital. One of those clients, we’ll call her Sylvia, was pregnant. We did craniosacral therapy from the beginning starting with her IUI conception. She was pregnant on her first try after seeing me the same day as her implantation. We worked together once a month and halfway though she asked if I would attend her birth.
At her birth, between contractions, I would do simple craniosacral work on her head. Sylvia had not slept in a few days and had not eaten since breakfast. The simple treatments on her head helped restart the nervous system and prepare her for her next contraction. Simple releases on her sphenoid bone allowed her pelvis to prepare to open. I also provided the energetic vibration of love throughout the birth. From our sessions before her laboring, my client has learned to listen to her body. She was ready to take on the process of labor and was confident her body would know what to do. After 7 hours of labor, her little baby was born. Parents were ecstatic and the baby was happy and healthy.
At one point during the labor, the experienced doula looked over at me and said, “this is not normal, I am hardly needed here.” Post labor the doula commented again that “births are never this easy, especially a first”.
It was this moment of birth when I knew I belonged guiding pregnant mothers in their birth journeys. I knew because of our work together over the previous nine months that her baby was born with ease and love. I clearly understood the relationship between working with pregnant women early in pregnancy and with conception leads to a better birth. I saw first hand that when a woman is connected to her body and deep inner wisdom a baby is birthed into this world with love and decreases the chances of unnecessary intervention. My training of the nervous system, trauma, emotions, babies, and the hospital world provided me with a unique perspective unlike any other.
After that experience I vowed I would listen to the wisdom of my body, no matter illogical, to study and learn anything that would help me better understand the relationship between conception, pregnancy, birthing, emotions, trauma, and the nervous system.
For the next six years I traveled the world to learn. I continued to take courses in craniosacral therapy specifically with courses related to conception, birth, and trauma. I enrolled in a psychosomatics school that taught me how emotions and trauma show up physically in a person’s body and how to help process them. I headed to Australia to learn a modality called the Spiral which taught me the tools of kinesiology and human consciousness. There, I studied and mentored under a womb practitioner to understand the process of activating the womb for conception, birthing, and the womb gates. I took a year long family constellations program which taught me the basics of family systems and how intergenerational trauma can be passed forward from previous generations and how to heal it. I certified as an Integral Facilitator to learn about human development and facilitation. The entire time I listened to my intuition and I trusted my body completely.
Years ago when I wanted to be in the birth room I did not listen to my inner wisdom that this is my soul’s calling. As more and more of my clients have had empowered and smooth births connected to their bodies, I started to fully understand what I have to offer. From my pieces of different trainings and from my own journey I see now that I needed to learn ALL of it before I could offer it to the birthing world. Each training and certification I have completed created a wider perspective of birth and a more holistic approach to the body.
It is my life’s purpose to work with conception, pregnancy, and birth so the cycle of trauma can stop and not be passed on. If a baby is conceived, housed in the womb, and birthed without imprints there will be an increased attachment in the 4th trimester, and decreased chances for future trauma for the child. Birth CAN be traumatic but it DOESN’T have to be.
And if you are one of the thousands of women who experienced a traumatic birth, together we can journey somatic trauma resolution so that your body is in a place of wellness. This will increase your resiliency and connect you back to your body and baby for increased attachment and bonding.
In this approach a newborn can start their life, fresh. Without any stored emotions or cellular memories passed down from the mother’s body or the birth. This is what we all want for our children, isn’t it? The gift of life. Pure & untainted.