There are times in your life when you meet someone and they really shine before your eyes.
The more that they open up about themselves the brighter that light becomes.
This post is in response to the amazing contest created by @sfp-cebu. It always feels really good to be celebrating women, something I think we don't do enough of. So I was very excited to take part in this woman power contest. I feel very lucky to have some amazing woman in my life, who are supportive, active and warriors in their own right. I could write about many of them on here and maybe I will another time.
But today I wish to talk about a woman I met three years ago and who made a huge impression on me. I don't get to see her very often as she lives in South Africa, but she is with out a doubt one of the most inspirational, down to earth and passionate women I have met. I have the great pleasure of calling her my friend.
This is Ruth, I met her 3 years ago at Da-a-luz , an Alternative midwifery and holistic birth centre in Spain. I was on my path to becoming a Birth Keeper/Doula and she was running a course called Helping Babies Breathe. She has set up this course in South Africa, which aims at helping to educate birth attendants who attend rural home births, and have no means to get babies just born, who have problems breathing to hospitals.
We started the course getting to know one another and there were only 8 of us there. It was very intimate as we created a women's circle and talked about our experiences of birth. Ruth has 4 children, which she birthed at home. She is a big advocate of natural birth, something that I feel very passionate about. The more she talked the more I wondered how she had the energy and still had such passion to do what she is doing.
Ruth is a Doula and midwife in South Africa, she started up home birth Africa in 2010 along with another midwife. It is a web data base offering advice and information on home birth in South Africa and she also organizes home birth gatherings every 4 months which again offers support and information. Just being a midwife/Doula in a heavily populated area is a very demanding job.
On top of that she helped to set up a Support group in a settlement outside Cape Town Called Red hill. This project is all about bringing women together, women from very poor areas with no resources, together with women who have the means and resources to help their fellow sisters. A lot of these women suffer domestic abuse. They meet regularly and look at ways that they can support one another. Sharing skills and knowledge and resources.
Ruth has always provided her skill as a midwife free of charge, to those that can not afford to pay and who live in and around her community. These are women in the red hill settlement, many who have moved there from Malawi and Zimbabwe. They all live in tin shacks and she has been known, to run clinics from these shacks for women who need them.
And did I mention she is a mother to 4 home schooled kids. To be honest when I met her I was in awe of her generosity and huge capacity for giving to others. She literally keeps giving until she can't and that usually means she has become run down and needs to rest in bed. I do not advocate woman running themselves into the ground, but Ruth is quite simply an amazing person.
She has also written a book that every mother to be and partner should have. It is called the Basic needs of a Woman in Labour, and it really brings home the fact that all woman’s bodies hold ancient wisdom, that they know how to birth.
I really believe that we need to be creating more bridges in life, we live in a time where there is far too much segregation between us all. Ruth has been part of an amazing project that brings woman together to support one another and lessens that divide.
I also believe that in order for us to heal the earth we need to start to heal Birth and she is actively involved in doing just that. For me she is what being a woman is all about. Strong, passionate and community driven.
The What It Means To Be A Woman - WomanPower Writing Contest has been created to help fund one woman's project called The Lugaw Project. Please check it out here @sfp-cebu/what-it-means-to-be-a-woman-sfp-cebu-womanpower-writing-contest
I am part of the ecotrain, if you wish to read great content and be inspired please check it out. It is one train that is full of very diverse and creative passengers. And we all know that diversity is the spice of life.
