Tag along and read the transcript of a conversation between the three of us (Alisha/Birth Cultivated, Sarita, and Rowan) talking about the mission, the heart behind our Foundational Concepts Collective. If you’d rather watch or listen you can watch the video on our Youtube channel or listen as a podcast on Spotify! All under the name “Foundational Concepts for Midwives”!

Sarita Bennett
Well, I will have to say that the foundational concepts collective is really an answer to requests. And is growing organically the same way everything we seem to do grows, we began to really see a lot of people who were interested in what we were doing. But for whatever reason, either in another country or for whatever reason couldn’t attend in-person intensives. And the idea to turn it into a new version, same perspective, same basic information and approach into a new version that could be more accessible online to more people um really just kind of, I don’t know, it may have just been a spark of light that came down out of the sky and we went, oh, gee, that sounds like a good idea. Let’s see what that would look like. I don’t know, Rowan, did you see a spark of light come down out of the sky? I don’t know.

Rowan
I did. I’m so glad that you saw it as well. And one of the other pieces of that is, yeah, I mean. Everything we’re doing here is because someone asked us to. Really like that’s really like that’s you know, because that’s what you do when you are in community. People state  need and you meet that need. But there was also this thing that we were trying to imagine out of the intensives of a mentorship, an online mentorship, where we continue to the conversations, where we had things like case reviews and more restorative type peer review, if you will, to grow together. And from that, it was like, well maybe what we’re offering then is a mentorship maybe we’re opening it to people who haven’t sat with us in the intensives and then it became “Oh, actually, it’s this collective.” And the mentorship is going to be something different where it’s more the leadership training because you know from day one, we’re trying to work our way out of the job. Y’all are going to be doing this, not us so we’re all going to have fun in the meantime. And that fun is putting in the roots, right? It’s really studying the roots in of our innate knowledge. We have this knowledge. We’re reminding you to remember it. It’s the ancient wisdom like we talked a little bit about that with the tools that are so readily available. So we’re not necessarily looking at what’s in front of us and it’s not about discounting the tools. It’s really about bringing the ancient wisdom into modern practice and where’s that blend and that dance. And I think a year-long program online gives us I love the intensives and I think it’s not an either or it’s an and But it’s different in that we’re fitting so much into these six days. Whereas with this year long, we get to expand things and there’s going to be our platform, right? Where conversations can continue and we’re just going to just, we’re just going to see how that flows. I really think that people should do it right now and create it with us because that’s really how we’re going to do it.

Birth Cultivated
Yeah, there’s so much needed. And again, it was built from these community requests. So then if you’re putting it out to the community and they’re saying “this is great and…” then you’re answering this next and “oh, yeah, you know, we could have totally deepened or this monthly meeting would be so much better if we were able to include this or this would have added security, this would have added some ceremony, whatever it is.” Hearing the community is huge. And you heard them and I’m so excited to watch this flourish and come out. Can you give us an example of one of the monthly topics? You have 12 monthly topics.

Sarita Bennett
Yeah, pick one. What we try to do in these topics, just to give you an idea, is start with who we are as people and then follow through the course of a reproductive cycle of a pregnancy, a birth, the things that can go well, the things that you know we want to be ready to deal with, and then all the way through to postpartum and moving on then into how that affects the rest of our lives. So when I pick one topic, you know, it’s a little bit tricky because it’s a continuum of topics that each leads into the next one. Probably the one that I have the most fun with, to be quite truthful with you, is when we start to talk about physiologic birth. Because I like to bring in a lot of the understanding of how the brain and the uterus connect. And to really believe the physiology, you have to go back to remembering that the uterus knows best how to keep the baby safe. And that the baby only knows one way out and works to be born. So when we come at it from that perspective, rather than just a mechanical opening of a cervix and a expulsion of a baby, we can begin to really understand the dance. Understand the dance that the mother and baby do together and how she brings everything she is to that moment. It’s not a different day. We’ve tend to, with institutionalized births, to think of birth as happening over there. In a day that’s not part of the rest of our lives, in clothes that we don’t normally wear, right? So we’ve removed, that’s been part of the obstetrical colonization of childbirth, has been to remove it from our lives. And so when we start to talk about physiologic birth, we’re going to talk about how it is a manifestation of our lives, not separate from the rest of our lives. So that might give you an idea of sort of how the perspective is different. When we’re talking about how the muscles work and how the brain talks and how the hormones function.

Birth Cultivated
And this language that you use. This is a perfect example of the rest of it all. Because You guys really have this gift of breaking down topics that feel so ethereal, that feel so huge. That are only able to be accumulated into 1800 page book, but that’s not what we’re doing. We’re not birthing textbooks. We are not textbooks. And it’s huge to be able to have these topics, have these mindsets and break them down so practically/ simply in how our bodies work. And so then my next question. How does this one year collective differ from a year of midwifery school. Because you’re not selling a midwifery school. You’re not joining a midwifery school by joining the collective. Tell me how it differs.

Sarita Bennett
Rowan? Hmm, this is a hard one.

Rowan
Well, this is a hard one. I’ll say… One thing that I think is standing out to us is what we’re creating is what we are hungry for. So I loved the program I took. I loved all the programs. I was always hungry for more knowledge. Right, and what we’re creating isn’t just a basis of the knowledge. You can find that. You can find it on Google, honestly. Ai can tell you about anything you need to know in a structured, a very academic way. But we’re coming together by a very sacred virtual fire every month also. And we are going to together weave all of that together within story within the practical thing of our day-to-day life. Like Sarita said, this isn’t separate, because what we’re doing is we’re building relationships and we’re setting that blueprint to create relationships within your community with the families that you will serve. Hopefully you know them because you are a community leader long before they’re even pregnant. And so, of course, you’re the one they choose. And so, of course, you’re just part of their daily life during that reproductive year right during their childbearing year. And you’re coming over and you’re creating the soup together and you know them. So when you do come into their home you’re just part of the family. You’re part of that. You’re behind here, you’re over out of the eyesight, right, Sarita, as we talk about. But you’re not disruptive because you’re part of the fabric. Like it’s really we’re weavers. And we’re storytellers. And so we’re weaving these stories together and we’re becoming part of the fabric of the story of this birth, this life. Whether they keep inviting us to the sometimes to the birthday parties or not, like we’re still part always of the fabric of that story and so we’re going to become the fabric of each other’s story of how we become more fully ourselves and more fully these community members and leaders. Because midwives are, I’m sorry, if you’re a midwife, you’re a community leader.

Sarita Bennett
You’re a role model of some sort.

Rowan
And, you know, you are. You are. So we’re going to take care of each other and learn to take care of ourselves in the way that we care for our families. So that we are already modeling that. And we all get to, you know be creators together in it like it’s not a hierarchy and coming together with that knowledge i think is just something different. I think our fireside chats makes us different. I think that we’re going to have a a case study every month that you, the people who are signing up are going to bring a birth, maybe one you attended, maybe your birth, maybe you know, one that you were primary on and we’re gonna we’re going to do a case study of that birth. We may be bringing some if there aren’t more and because we’re doing this as a childbearing year, it’s a year from conception to postpartum there may just be a project where there’s a continuum birth that you’re going to be managing as a team, not managing, but being part of as a team that we unfold. And at the end, we’re coming together at the dinner table, so to speak, to tell the story of that year of birth.

Birth Cultivated
I love the yin and yang of this we’ve got “we’re going to know this so deep physically and and physiologically”, but then “you’ve got we’re the weavers. We are the leaders. Leaders, building leaders. We’re training the trainers.” And that to me is so radically different than what we’re seeing, what you would call is this these institutionalized birth trainers, right? Like these MEAC schools for instance and then you’ve got these other programs who have more of this weaving, but there’s this really beautiful middle ground that I think you guys have really honed in on really, really well. So we’re having the clinical. We’re having this physiological talk of “Let’s in depth know preeclampsia. Let’s in-depth know HELLP.” But also, how can we build community? How can we… Be the community leaders to buy this house, set this house, to call in families of, “you want to know your own cervix. You want to know your own fertility. Let’s do that. What does my community need today? Do we need a bunch of dad classes let’s do dad classes. Do we need cloth diapering classes?” So again, like you’re saying, it’s not just this single container of pregnancy. It’s after, it’s the before. It’s everything surrounding it. And it’s going to be so beautiful. Anything else you want to add about this collective? What else do we need to know?

Sarita Bennett
Well, that’s… So that’s midwifery, what you just described, right? Because midwives traditionally didn’t just go to birth. They understood that the community needed clean water. They understood that you needed quarantine when there were viruses that went through, like midwives work. Typically, they knew the home remedies. They took care of you when you were injured right like so we understand this learning, as broader than being birth centric or even you know cervix centric or even you know reproductive centric in many ways, but that is much broader than that. It’s about who we are as people. And as we can learn who we are as people by delving into reproduction and all the many issues that surrounded, right especially in our culture in our in our current dynamics, but we also have an opportunity to do is tell a new story. Right. Like we’ve been telling a story of trauma for a while. We’ve been telling a story of throwing each other under the bus or into the fire as the case may be. Or, you know, “I’m going to get licensed so I’ll be safe.”, and “that one over there isn’t as good as me” or, you know, whatever. We all know. We all know the stories that we’ve been telling that really are dysfunctional. And so one of what I believe is one of the missions that we have in our hearts, it really is to begin to grow pods of women who no longer believe those dysfunctional stories. And create together a new one. That involves recognizing our humanity and our ability to actually find justice in a world that leads to some kind of peace, you know, like world peace you know that sounds kind of corny, but that really is it, right? Like we can be the new, the people leading the new world into a new way of thinking that respects nature and humanity.

Birth Cultivated
And it’s not credential specific. We’re going deeper than credentials. We’re going to the heart.

Sarita Bennett
Right, right, right. It’s kind of an unschool, you know, like we even said that when we started putting it together, like, you know, is this a school? I was like, yeah, I know. I think it’s an unschool. Because it’s not because it’s There may be a blueprint there may be a basic infrastructure based on foundation of perspectives, but it’s not a “you have to know this or graduate, you know, like it’s just all of us using a foundational structure to learn together and to get better at what we do. Be it reviewing cases or, you know, serving clients or Whatever it might be. It’s about becoming more fully who we are so that we can do a better job of whatever it is we do.

Birth Cultivated
And outside the hierarchy, like was mentioned. You’re expecting to learn from your participants, just as they’re expecting to learn from you.

Rowan
Right. Always. Everyone brings a different experience in life to the circle. And I want to know that. Like that’s how we learn. I was so blessed with my preceptor because she just never had that. Like she’d attended 1800 births when I started with her. We’d leave a birth and I thought everything was just normal and everything and she’d be like “well, I never saw that before.”
All righty then. You know, it’s that you’re never going to arrive. You’re never going to know it all. You’re never going to see it all. So we all have a unique perspective on things because of our experience. And that’s what we get to learn from each other and And one of the things I think that We’re also trying to instill is death is part of life. That is nature, the natural cycle is death and the traditional midwife/wise woman did sit death with the elderly, with the injured, with with birth. Sometimes they go hand in hand. There has to be the burning down of this belief system that somebody did something wrong.

Birth Cultivated
You’ll never know someone did something wrong. You’ll never know that birth/that that death wasn’t just meant to be. that this baby, this person at whatever time frame hadn’t already fulfilled their purpose. That’s not ours to know.

Sarita Bennett
Right.

Rowan
That’s not ours to know. We are not saviors. We are not… fortune tellers, we’re not we can’t see the future. What I do know is… when loss happens. There is a way to hold that family. There is a way to hold the whole community because the whole community grieves when there’s a loss. And there is a way to do that in a sacred and holy way where we’re still in service, we’re still walking with this family, hopefully, if they allow us to like sometimes we’re a reminder and it’s not okay, but we have to hold all of that. So we may be holding the sister who had the last while were also leading from behind and serving the family. We may have to hold all of that to be true. And… I just… I think that that’s missing in a lot of places because we don’t want to believe, we don’t want to believe that babies don’t live, that babies have historically always not always lived. And one of the wisest things I heard an elder grand midwife say was “sometimes that baby’s only purpose was the womb walk and sometimes that mother’s last mission on this planet is to birth a baby.

Birth Cultivated
We’re not used to honoring death as we’re honoring life. And this is going to come full circle within this collective this is  absolutely something we talk about in person in the intensives, especially during our fireside chats.

Sarita Bennett
Right.

Rowan
Yes.

Sarita Bennett

Yeah, so we would move from babies transitioning without troubles to babies that need a little help to babies that need a whole lot of help. To babies that nothing’s going to work no matter how much you help them. And so that would be the full circle of that kind of a topic that we would cover in the the events of a month. Just to give you another example. What happens when it doesn’t work?

Birth Cultivated
Right. Let’s talk about what happens when NRP doesn’t work. When do you call that? What’s next?

Rowan
Right. Or also even before that, like what if because people ask often.

Sarita Bennett
What’s a transport look like?

Rowan] And this is something that I had a conversation with. A community midwife recently about because What if… we’re looking at things right so because people are like, well, “why do we take heart tones? Well, why do we do this?” Well, if you see something’s up and you do, and you’re able to have that conversation we’ve had a demise. This baby’s already gone. Then all the performative shit, if I may just say it, can go away and we can talk about how to bring this baby into a sacred place and protect this bubble of them saying hello and goodbye. And all of the things that they need to do to come to that that place instead of, okay, we didn’t look at anything. We didn’t see anything, even though we had, maybe we had that intuitive hit. Maybe we thought we should, but we’ve had this agreement that we weren’t going to interrupt Or maybe we saw that that MEC that we know is that Okay, this baby’s not okay but we didn’t have that. It’s how to have that conversation, how to do that so that we don’t have to do performative CPR. We don’t have to do pro formative NRP if we already know.

Birth Cultivated
Because that could be even more traumatic.

Rowan
That this is… For everyone involved.

Sarita Bennett
Totally. Totally.

Rowan
For everyone involved. Because you’re given a hope where there’s no hope.

Rowan
Right. And so Because, you know, you know when that baby is not coming in.

Sarita Bennett
Okay. Immediately, pretty much.

Birth Cultivated
This one is good. And what goes right hand in hand with what you’re telling us is autonomy. There are so many conversations that need to be had of us just really nitty gritty getting down to “What is autonomy? What is my own autonomy? What is this client’s autonomy?”

Sarita Bennett
Yeah.

Rowan
Yeah.

Birth Cultivated
And how can we prioritize and value and honor both of those? And that’s a huge topic.

Rowan
Huge. Yes, it does. It’s one of my favorites.

Sarita Bennett
So that just happens to be one of the fireside chats.

Birth Cultivated
Yeah. When these conversations circle for so long, you know, we got to hit on it.

Rowan
You can bring tea.

Sarita Bennett
Right, right, right. Yay.

Rowan
Yeah. Yeah, awesome. Thanks for the questions.