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10.31.2008

The Community Behind This Site

I am loving how the site has evolved in such a short time! Thank you all for participating, reading and sharing.

Here is a quick update on what will be happening over the next few months:

  • Articles focusing on pregnancy, Midwifery and families will be posted by the 15th of every month. The first article in this series is titled, "Making Peace with Holiday Stress" and provides insight for pregnant women on relationships, setting boundaries and truly taking care of themselves during the upcoming holiday season.

  • The featured December article will focus on easy, healthy and nutritious recipes that are perfect for mothers-to-be.

  • Every few months I will be calling for submissions from readers. Most recently I asked for birth poetry and received such touching personal stories. The next call for submission will focus on birth art, so get your crafts and cameras ready. You can expect this posting mid-November.

Again, thank you all for participating. It is so important that we have a forum to connect with each other and share our stories.

If anyone would like to see something that is not posted, feel free to comment and let me know.

Hippie Sister Born at Home - Poetry Submission

Santa Ana winds call to her
Roasting LA, cooking us
Mom floating naked in the stealthy pool
No splashing, no voice
Only the treacherous moon

Patchouli and Jasmine kiss me good morning
Trips to Ventura keep it all very cool
Digging sand pits around the tummy that will soon
Be a sister

Lamaze classes with Carol King in the front row
Dreamy times for hippie children
Our lives turning out to be a Tapestry

Up all night, my first time knowing
Dad and I late Olympic coverage
Then watching Dondi
Fading into the celebratory mist of dreams

Awakening to the strange Moscow circus
The symphony of coordinated pain and breath
And joy, watching sister get born
Olive oil and boiling pots
Naked not transforming
In mom and dad's bed
In Van Nuys

There was music that day, always
Dad greeting the birth in song
Then a Pepsi and a filet for mom
Just one day old
Molly watched the green sparklers
As she and America celebrated their birth
One with the other


Michael Deasy Jr.10/31/08

10.21.2008

Pregnant Woman - Poetry Submission

She is beautiful and strong
She is sensual and unafraid of being naked
She has excellent balance because she is rooted to the Earth
She is dancing because her swollen body wants to move
Her belly is like the full moon and the tides move within her
She smiles because she knows a secret. The secret.
She is a goodess – she can choose whether to bring life or send it away
Her heart is full and swells with blood
Her breasts swell with milk and nectar
Her belly swells with life
She is tender like a deer and ferocious like a tiger
She is radiant and people smile as she passes
She shares her body with her child as Mother Earth shares hers with all of her children
Magick is happening in her and to her and with her

Written by Chandala Tso Shiva
January 11, 2008

Before Air - Poetry Submission

It's not a baby. And it's not my politics
saying this, it's experience. A baby is
everyone's: grandma holds it, aunt
changes it, brother kisses it. But a
fetus does not breathe air, cannot live
on its own, and if it is anyone's other
that its own, it is mine, solely mine.
Perhaps you can't love a fetus, need it
to be a baby, an air breathing being that
looks like you. I need only to know it
is inside me, feel it pushing its way around
its tiny home. I love the almost baby because
it is not yet a baby. I love the fetus not
for its potential but for what it is right now.
Its own self, connected and separate. Mommy's
constant companion swimming without a name.


--Lisa Alden

10.20.2008

Fully Empowered - Pablo Neruda - Poetry Submission

Births

We will never have any memory of dying.

We were so patient
about our being,
noting down
numbers, days,
years and months,
hair, and the mouths we kiss,
and that moment of dying
we let pass without a note -
we leave it to others as memory,
or we leave it simply to water,
to water, to air, to time.
Nor do we even keep
the memory of being born,
although to come into being was tumultuous and new;
and now you don't remember a single detail
and haven't kept even a trace
of your first light.

It's well known that we are born.

It's well known that in the room
or in the wood
or in the shelter in the fishermen's quarter
or in the rustling canefields
there is a quite unusual silence,
a grave and wooden moment as
a woman prepares to give birth.

It's well known that we were all born.

But if that abrupt translation
from not being to existing, to having hands,
to seeing, to having eyes,
to eating and weeping and overflowing
and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,
of that transition, that quivering
of an electric presence, raising up
one body more, like a living cup,
and of that woman left empty,
the mother who is left there in her blood
and her lacerated fullness,
and its end and its beginning, and disorder
tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers
till everything comes together and adds
one knot more to the thread of life,
nothing, nothing remains in your memory
of the savage sea which summoned up a wave
and plucked a shrouded apple from the tree.

The only thing you remember is your life.


Pablo Neruda: (from "Fully Empowered", translation of "Plenos Poderes" 1962)

10.16.2008

Zen White Sale - Poetry Submission

Heat hovers
Like whispers close to the ear
In a room lit by an August moon
Quiet light warms your feet
Like slow moving water

The small of your back
A sweet dewey cup
The curve of your collarbone
The slope my fingers ride
The strand of hair wending across your forehead

My thrill

From the summit of this dizzying height I willingly leap onto the shores of your life and die happily in your love
White linen sheet cool as reprieveScented with loam Floats
In the hollows of your shapely bones
Lays delicatelyOver your undulating grace
The impossibility of your beauty
White seeps into every corner Ever expanding my fulfillment.

Its fibers
A trillion tiny stalks
Quivering with joy that they were plucked from the earth in time to enfold you


First published in the PoetSpeak anthology for their November 2004 poetry reading event. Written by Kim A. Steffgen

Sharing Thoughts From Danielle

Danielle sent the following note to me:

I am not one to write poetry but I was drawn to write you this email after reading your blog page. Quite a few things struck so true to my hopes and desires that I just HAD to share.

I have been waiting to find someone, and receive my reiki attunments for nearly a year now, I am so anxious to start doula work and to be fully entrenched in such miracle work. I think it was first the blog about "off timing" and then your amazing ability to see missing a birth as a lesson that just inspires :)

I've been struggling to let go that an acquaintance of mine that seemingly has no interest in birth work "fell" into a job at a birth center! Now I have never been the jealous type but I just cant let it go. Everyday she updates on myspace how she is at work and having a great day. I try and see it as lesson but have yet to get to that place.

I think I was even more drawn to you because I too plan to use reiki during labor and pregnancy. I found an awesome article online about repositioning baby(using reiki) during labor and avoiding a c-section last minute.

Every way I turn something seems to be blocking me, I can't help but wonder if it's not meant to be at all but this is what I want and feel so passionately about!

I've stopped by to see my midwife and talk doula paths/work, and all three times she was not there. Part of me feels crazy for writing this to a stranger but the other part feels I'm suppose to. Don't be afraid to just tell me I'm wacky but if nothing else I just wanted to share that I pray to be on a similar path soon and wish you well along your own!

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts Danielle. I feel strongly that Midwives, Doulas, women and mothers need to have a place to connect with each other and share their joys and sorrows. And what you just wrote is evidence that everything happens for a reason.

Timing is Divine, not human. For 10 years I searched to find the perfect job. I tried everywhere, only to stumble upon Midwifery when I wasn't even looking. It took a lot of inner work and a major release of hurt and anger that I carried around from childhood, and only then was the gift of Midwifery available to me.

The greatest gifts come when you open yourself to love and forgiveness and it sounds like you are on that path. When you are able to release all hurt and open yourself to serving others, that is when everything will fall into place.

Thanks again for sharing.

Birth Poetry

I never expected to be so moved by the words mothers have sent me. I have chills reading their poems and feel humbled by the greatness of life.

Thank you for this gift.

Miracle? - Poetry Submission

A Woman waits, as
a Girl maybe of curls, yet
surely of cuddles

From the time of mud
puddles to the Rain from the
Moon, her Rain, her Reign...

Empowered as none
might even feign to know, 'cept
as, HerSelf under-

stated...Unabated
vibrancies we cannot see,
Empowered as none

might even feign to
know, tho'... And then the Love Be-
yond-Beyond, and to

The Plan... of a first
knowing Nau; draw the shudders
un-the-string, soon the

mutterings...in the
Spring, my Darling, in the Spring!
We will taste the Wine's

Sublime... Yet, how do I
Feel me to You? I do, want
two...Alas, It is

Yours to know mine as
Mine, and you of three in Me
Feel this Miracle!

H.e.m.
10.15.MMviii.


Yoko Smiles - Poetry Submission

effervescence hinges the high notes
while dreamy eyes blink
slow light
as fishes float lilac blue;

vermillion wonder flashing
fierce mother-Love through my fatal heart,
piercing the
foggy, breathless dreams.

i hold her softness with
careful memory:
golden glowing baubles,
aquatic gestures, when!

a sudden beam
smashes bittersweet tears
into the ache of Time
(a dilated sigh)

she, my yoko, smiles!

slipping silvery sands
cross my round belly,
over moony breasts;

through the untouched guise
i drift on the magick spell
of yoko’s newborn eyes.

katalin december, 2004
written a week or two after her birth

Rubybleu Puja - Poetry Submission

I.
Venus has returned in early morning sky.
we called it your star, Ruby's star.
it shimmers over dark November stones, as i stumble
remembering, remembering, remembering...

II.
her brilliant beginning: soft, red skin, misty eyes wide open
Birth: the smell of blood and salt in dark night.
wonder saturated the air, heavy as smoke,
in the finite hours of one precious day.
Suddenly! newness gave way to blueness; birth gave way to death.
a breath between one second and the next.

Death waxed calm terror as your Spirit flew fast
like a whisper over the ocean, fading like Moth wings at dawn,
lost among the waves of the world.
Dear one, came to leave, born to die, master of Samsara
Time spinning and i am holding you even as i am letting you go.

III.
somehow the aching nights turned over.
dread days became lighter weeks,
sun revolving moon reverberating flow.
we floated your ashes, blue bone and red copper
down the Ganges, the divine Mother.
swirling amidst flame and hibiscus, a tiny vessel of Hope,
of Spirit transmuted
the fragile joy cracked open, shattered and revealing;
an illumined spark of the Divine,

Rubybleu essence: glowing burning seeds of truth.
and finally i can cast mine which is not mine
Beyond the you who is not you into the quiet unknown.


I wrote this poem about my daughter who was born in 2002, then died just a few days later.. She was born at home, but then was in the hospital for a couple days until she flew away.. katalin

10.15.2008

A Return to Love - Marianne Williamson - Poetry Submission

My deepest fear is not that I am inadequate,
My deepest fear is that I am powerful beyond measure.
It is my light, not my darkness that most frightens me.
I ask myself
who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who am I not to be?
I am a child of God.
My playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people will not feel insecure around me.
I was born to manifest the glory of God that is within me.
It is not just in me; it is in everyone.
And as I let my own light shine,
I unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As I am liberated from my own fear,
My presence automatically liberates others.

10.14.2008

Off timing

During class last week, 3 women announced that they may not be able to apply to the Midwifery program this year. Things just weren't lining up for them the way they needed it to - finances, complicated circumstances...

My hope is that these awesome ladies see that what they are meant to do will happen, but it all revolves around divine timing rather than human timing.

I know that is not an easy thing to see when you're stuck inside your story, but when you're meant to do something, it will happen.

10.13.2008

Call for Submissions - Birth Poetry

My intention with this blog is to create a community site where women, Midwives, Doulas and families can contribute and share their stories, insights, art, poetry, words, photos......

I'm interested in any type of submission and am specifically seeking poetry this month. If you're interested please leave me a comment and we can continue the conversation via email.

Application Complete

It was a nice feeling to hand in my Birthingway application this afternoon. Rather than a sense of relief, I felt like I was stepping into the next branch of my path. There is definitely a surrender to this process.

I knew on the third read of my fifth draft that everything was exactly the way I wanted it and any further edits would only detract from my words.

Everything feels really good right now.

10.06.2008

Monthly Articles Coming Soon

Beginning in November I will be posting articles about pregnancy, birth, the Midwifery industry, babies, nutrition and healing - basically anything that can serve mothers, families, and women who guide birth and care.

Expect the first article before the Thanksgiving holiday.

10.02.2008

Wildly Successful

The pre-req Human AP class at Birthingway has truly been a blessing for me.

I never really applied myself at Penn State, mostly because I didn't care about Landscape Design and I was partying way too much. All the academic classes I took to enhance my professional growth fell flat against my enthusiasm meter and again, I never truly applied myself.

As a result, I've always doubted if I was smart enough to really be successful. Because of this class and because I care so much about Midwifery, I have proven to myself that I can wildly succeed at school. This has been a huge boost for me.