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Having attended every Symposia of NOCIRC-International, I would be here
today if able - yet in the middle of life's journey I have been waylaid by a
blood sacrifice ritual performed almost 35 years ago on my post partum
body as a rite of passage. In our culture, medical ministering is not seen as
"ritual" but rather a rational response and even necessity for optimal
outcome. As the Symposia speakers have declared in a myriad of languages
these past days, nothing could be farther from the truth. Be it "doctor",
"shaman", "mohel" or whoever holds the violating tool, the result is the
same: mutilation of the body and spirit of not only the one being cut, but of
the world soul.
Through this myth of "doctor knows best", I have deeply suffered this year.
Indeed, I rattled the fiery gates of hell, flirting with mortality -- yet through
the healing prayers of my dear friends, and my indominatible life
affirmation, I am regaining my health. The consequences of that ritual have
rendered me virtually unable to work and travel this season. I mourn the loss
to my soul for not being with you today, my favorite people on this Earth.
The effects of this sado-medico ceremony enacted January 25th 1970 were
not apparent until the end of this last year when I succumbed to a disease
whose name did not yet exist when I first gave birth. I was subjected to an
obstetrical experiment, given with the best intentions in the hospital. But
without evidence based research to the long term effects of this experiment,
thousands of women have died over the years from this supposedly harmless
procedure.
After my first baby's birth the new Rho-Gam inoculation was administered
with the assuring words, "this shot will save the lives of your future
children". What did I know? I trusted my doctors, and the wisdom of my
elders - indeed, I put my life in the hands of the scientific culture in which I
had come of age.
How does this relate to the topic of changing blood sacrifice rituals while
honoring the world's wisdom about children? Those of you in attendance
who have heard me speak at all of the other International Symposia know
that I have great pride in protecting my children from not only genital
cutting but any medical procedure that inflicts pain. This is no small feat to
have the only intact sons in a big Jewish family whose members all follow
doctor's orders. (Yet parenthetically I might add none keep kosher kitchens
much less observe the Sabbath.)
My pride knew no bounds. I also kept my own body intact during childbirth
by refusing the standard episiotomy - the cutting of my perineum during
delivery. I became a champion of prenatal yoga, any position but supine and
numerous other modalities to disallow a mother from the most common
brutal mutilation of obstetrics. I reason, and wait to hear from you, my
esteemed colleagues, the evidence beyond anecdotal that cutting the mother
is connected to cutting the baby. Until that time, I consider proof a lack of
imagination and unabashedly continue to educate mothers in ways to give
birth without episiotomy.
Being gravely ill this long year forced me to turn the angle of my mind from
a searing analysis of society's ill treatment of women and children in the
perinatal period, to my own body of grief. Bedridden for many moons
provides, if nothing else, an opportunity to investigate the epidemiology of
illness. The question all of us ask about the malaise of circumcision, I have
been exploring in the most vulnerable tissues of myself - and that is, how
can I stop the sacrifice of the flesh?
To answer this query, first I must respond to another question -- How did I
get here?
I have been motivated to devote my entire adult life to deconstruct obstetric
and pediatric normative abuses and do something about them. All of the
while I have been steadily falling prey to an iatrogenic disease from a
contaminated blood product in the only hospital birth I had for my six
children.
After the one and only hospital birth and Rho-Gam injection I had, I woke
up. Why pay people to be paranoid for me? Every cell of my body felt the
Rho-Gam shot was poison and yet it was too late. It had been given with
authority by a revered member in the cult of the expert and I had accepted it
on faith that it was for the best interests of my unborn children.
I wasn't aware that I had such literal inner motivation to focus on the harm
medical mythologies do when mechanistically applied to childbirth and
pediatric care. Yet it was as if my cellular consciousness understood that if it
could happen to me, it could happen to anyone. Hence the canon of Hygieia
College is "Healing one mother is healing the Earth".
This brings me more pointedly to the closing keynote topic - in order to
change the motive for blood sacrifices of our children, we must stop the
mutilation of mothers in childbirth. The mother and the baby are one and
what is done to one, is done to both - indeed to all.
How do we change something already accepted as the way things have been,
and/or already are and therefore de facto should be? As the venerable Zen
master Suzuki Roshi remarked, "Everything is perfect. Yet there is a lot of
room for improvement."
What I am suggesting is that we are more effective in changing the world
when we also change ourselves. An effective procedure for this
transformation is to first investigate ones personal motives for engaging in
social/educational action, especially one as intimate as genital mutilation.
I have confessed my motive. I am a mother and though I didn't realize it for
over 30 years, a wounded mother. As Hygieia said, "The wound reveals the
cure." Hence my personal motive in ending circumcision issues from my felt
experience in being harmed by the obstetrical community. Easily bored with
the victim stance, I laid down my arms and became a healer by doing all I
can to make sure no other mother (or father) is victimized.
Perhaps those of us who have heard the call to protect children are also
guarding an inner child of our own. To understand our own experience and
precisely what resonates with the social disease of hurting children gives us
a unique credibility that can translate into inventive action. There just may
be as many ways to end mutilation as there are mutilators.
I learned this through many years practicing midwifery. To clear the road to
birth, any disconnection within the mother was explored and honored. My
goal was not to change the mother as much as understand that her obstacle to
natural birth made sense in her universe. To remove the obstructions without
the healing connection had a consequence that would invariably show down
the road. When it was understood how this or that mythology or false belief
about ones incapacity to effectively birth and care for the newborn
originated, it then could be changed into what really served the mother and
baby.
The Tibetans call this process "feeding the hungry ghosts". In the case of
genital mutilation, the past is ravenous and how we satisfy its blood lust is
by compassionate understanding. Practice this with yourself: Intactivist, heal
Thyself! See how your own personal wounds, if you have any, make you all
the more effective as an advocate for you already have the wisdom to
transform yourself from victim to survivor to healer. How do I know this to
be true? You are sitting here right now.
Allow one last query, please. What is it within you that commanded your
presence in Padua, attending an academic symposium, rather than be
outdoors in the glorious Italian landscape?
You could be doing anything else and yet, here you sit through your own
volition, your captivating inner call, to make the world a kinder and more
caring place for children.
NOCIRC International holds no hostages. Each of us works as hard as we do
in as many ways possible to stop the mutilation of children. With every child
we protect, we free another soul to likewise be kinder to all our relations and
the Earth. There is no more noble work on the planet than this - with the
exception of rocking the birth machine to free mothers to give natural, intact
birth.
Let me close with a poem, based on the Greek myth of Prometheus - the immortal
who stole the fire from the Gods to give to human beings and whose punishment
was to be tied to a rock and have his liver endlessly gnawed away by an eagle
-- only to have it grow back again. His nightmare is analogous to the horror
felt by those of us who have been violated. I wrote this poem during the acute
phase of my illness -- it is entitled "Stolen Fire".
Stolen Fire
Promethean task to undo the purpose of my life
Each night I re-grow faith beneath my ribs
To patch the heart that was pecked apart by the dark eagle.
Nightmares return the pilfered light to the Goddess
Trust -- Her original gift (or so I thought) by falling in love.
By my own recognizance I rise out of the trance of identity
No longer a shattered wife nor a whole woman.
Piece by piece the dawn regurgitates my soul one dream at a time.
Freed of immortality I return to the bedrock begging God,
Take back the fire.
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