Rochelle

My cousin-in-law Rochelle died last weekend. It was completely unexpected. She had been suffering from severe headaches in recent weeks, and the autopsy revealed a fast-growing type of brain tumor. She was 36 years old. In addition to her husband, my cousin, she leaves three daughters between the ages of three and ten.

Rochelle was a minister, an astrologer, a wedding officiant, a philosophy student, and a generous source of support and advice. She was passionate about her family, and about motherhood. At a family gathering when Isaac was six or seven months old, he kept reaching out for her long hair. Instead of being upset that he was burying his hands in her hair (and yanking on it), she instead said proudly, "He can sense my mama energy."

As Rochelle liked to share her wisdom by giving guidance to others, I thought the best way to honor her memory would be in her own words. All three of her daughters were born naturally at home, and she was a great source of childbirth support and inspiration for me. The following are excerpts from two email messages she sent me. (She always wrote in purple type.) She wrote the first while I was still pregnant and worrying about the birth, and the second immediately after Isaac was born.

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It is a "classic" anxiety that we all experience in preparing for childbirth, and yet it's so personal and individual, there's really nothing that can compare to your own experience. And, no matter how much preparation you do, there is always the reality that it isn't anything like any other experience you have yet had, and the intensity of it will shock you. I only say this because it is true! Birthing my children has been simultaneously the most challenging, and the most rewarding physical / psychological / emotional experience I have ever had. There are so many feelings that come up through this amazing journey of parenting, it's almost as if the birth experience brings you to the realization that "a conscious surrendering to the process" is really the only choice, and the whole parenting thing just keeps reiterating this idea over and over. It's quite beautiful, really. We learn to trust that a process of nature is at work, creating the next generation.

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I'm so glad that your birth experience was a powerful and positive one! I must say, though, that you mention being "lucky" and that "most of how well it went was in fact out of my direct control," but I think you deserve more credit than that. In my opinion, a woman like you, who explores her fears and doubts while she is pregnant and takes the time and the courage to face these, educate herself and explore all the possibilities, is embracing the entirety of the experience with bravery and honesty. This choice, to fully embrace the experience, is what I think makes the difference between a positive or a negative birth experience. It might possibly be that when a woman does not do this, that she allows her fears and doubts to remain suppressed in her subconscious, and in so doing, inevitably calls them forth during the birth process, where you and I both know, nothing goes unrevealed. During birth, all is exposed and raw and all pretenses fall away. You are bare, dressed only in the stuff of which you are really made, whatever that is. For you, it seems to have been in courage and in strength. What a gift!

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I could use some of that courage and strength right about now. I can't help but think that birth and death must have something in common -- that denial and fear can only make the experience more difficult. Rochelle lived her life with "bravery and honesty," and I hope that we can learn to face our lives without her in the same way.