In all cultures, the midwife's place is on the threshold of life, where intense human emotions, fear, hope, longing, triumph, and incredible physical power-enable a new human being to emerge. Her vocation is unique.
Interpretation
The midwife plays a crucial role at the critical moment of birth, embodying the emotional and physical challenges of this transformative experience.
This quote by Sheila Kitzinger highlights the significant position of midwives in the birthing process, emphasizing their presence at a pivotal moment of life. It reflects the deep emotional and physical dynamics involved in childbirth, portraying midwives as essential guides who facilitate the powerful transition of bringing new life into the world. Their vocation encompasses not just technical skill but also an understanding of the profound feelings experienced by both the birthing individual and the new life emerging.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a childbirth education class to highlight the importance of midwifery.
Fathers' sharing in the birth experience can be a stimulus for men's freedom to nurture, and a sign of changing relationships between men and women. In the same way, women's freedom to give birth at home is a political decision, an assertion of determination to reclaim the experience of birth. Birth at home is about changing society.
In achieving the depersonalization of childbirth and at the same time solving the problem of pain, our society may have lost more than it has gained. We are left with the physical husk; the transcending significance has been drained away.
It's been phenomenal, but everybody keeps congratulating me on my resurgence and my big comeback. I haven't been away, guys. I've been working steadily for the last 63 years.
There's no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.
Growing up is difficult. Strangely, even when we have stopped growing physically, we seem to have to keep on growing emotionally, which involves both expansion and shrinkage, as some parts of us develop and others must be allowed to disappear...Rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world.
The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.
You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different.
I don't have a career, I have a life. I don't have an exterior judgment on what would be good or bad for me.
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