Close your eyes. Imagine you are in a room with twenty-five of your favorite midwives. In this room you are able to ask them any question. Why did you become a midwife? What obstacles did you face? How did you balance family life and midwifery? What was life like when you first got started? Were you scared? Who inspired you? What advice do you have for aspiring midwives? Seasoned midwives? Where do we go from here?
Now open your eyes. You have manifested in front of you “Into These Hands-Wisdom from Midwives” edited by Geradine Simkins.
This book is nothing short of sacred. Twenty-five stories from twenty-five beyond incredible women. Filled with a combination of personal story, history, politics, inspiration, tips, tools, and advice for the future. The reader is brought back to a time many of us long for. The sixties and seventies. A time of social upheaval, getting back to nature, the counter-culture, human rights, a woman’s health revolution, “Ourbodies, Ourselves,” you get the picture. What was it like to be called to midwifery when all of this was going on around you? How did midwifery present itself to you? (more questions to ask when in that room).
“Into These Hands” permits the reader to gain a better understanding of the roots of midwifery and women’s health. The words and stories are powerful enough on their own but when viewed along side the cultural context of then and now-they are intensified. We read this book to tap in to this energy, this revolutionary spirit to remember what work is still left to be done, continued. For most if not all of these women it was and is about more than just midwifery. It is about community, education, and basic human rights.
That essence that draws us to midwives is captured in this book. If you weren’t already a midwife groupie (like me) then be prepared to become one. Seek out a midwife in your community and do whatever you can to spend as much time with her as possible. It’s addicting!
The women that shared their stories come from all over the world, from different backgrounds and cultures, have received different training and have different initials behind their names but regardless of their personal beliefs they are all united for one common cause.
The stories are a connection between midwives (any birthworker) past, present, and future. The very idea of how many thousands of lives were touched by the personal care, attention-by the hands of these midwives is almost unfathomable. Lives changed, lives saved, women empowered and nurtured, babies welcomed gently, families strengthened.
I had just moved to the Monterey Bay area when I began reading this book and I was delighted to have the opportunity to read about Maggie Bennett. Reading the story she wrote for Into These Hands was like reading a history lesson not only of midwifery but of the community I had so recently become a part of. As a doula and childbirth educator it was exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. Thank you to Maggie Bennett for the work you have done for this community and for donating a copy of the book to the Parents' Place library.
If you still have not grasped just how much I adored this book let me put it to you this way. On more than one occasion I woke up in the middle of the night hugging it. Having fallen asleep reading it in my arms because I just could not let it go.
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