Marie's Journey to Birth Work & What She Loves about Being a Sacred Birth Worker

This week I am starting to introduce some of my Sacred Birth Worker Graduates to you. Giving them the space to share their story about What Drew them to Birth Work, What they Love about it and How they Work as a Birth Worker Today. Giving You an insight into how differently one can work in this vast and magical field.

Today we start with Marie.

Enjoy!

What I love about being a Sacred Birth Worker

I love being a sacred birth Worker.

I love it even more than I thought I would when I started the mentorship.

I love the depth in sacred birth work. 

I love having lots of practical knowledge and resources as well as bringing the embodiment piece into working with women - which I feel is something that is lacking with many care providers.

I love being able to unwind big topics with women and offer them new perspectives on birth and pregnancy.

I love being able to turn questions around to them and assist them in accessing their own inner wisdom instead of needing to convince them of what I think is ‘right’. I love not having the tiniest interest in making any decisions for them and knowing that every woman can and will make the right choices for herself and her baby. I love giving women the opportunity to tune in and find answers within themselves.

I love how surprised women are when I start talking about their own birth imprints or sexuality and I love seeing the aha-moments and their eyes light up when things begin to make sense to them.

I love explaining physiological birth and what serves it and what doesn’t.

I love reassuring a woman when she feels overwhelmed or stressed and I love witnessing that oftentimes it is not having the perfect answers but my mere presence that makes a woman feel more confident, calm, grounded and connected.

I love that for the most part being a Sacred Birth Worker is less about being hands-on (something I thought ‘being a doula’ would be) and more about giving space, witnessing and centering women.

When I can meet her woman to woman, sister to sister, knowing that she knows best for herself, somehow magically she starts to believe that, too.

I love the word sacred and being able to give women a sense of sacredness around their entrance into motherhood.

What brought me to birth work

I discovered birth coincidentally (or rather synchronistically) through an influencer sharing her birth story on Instagram.

After hearing that story I dove into all the birth story podcasts out there (through which I also discovered Anna) and became a student of birth.

Birth taught me many many things about my body and about life and the process of birthing projects and new versions of ourselves.

I was deep in a phase of coming back to my intuition and figuring out my mental health and relating to life and to my body.

So many birth stories felt like they were describing exactly the different phases and stages I found myself in.

It was clear to me pretty quickly that birth is profound and that birth is a lot more than a merely physical mechanical process through which a baby comes out of a woman’s body. Somehow it all made so much sense to me.

For some years I was listening to birth stories day and night whenever I was free and slowly the idea started to form that MAYBE I could also serve women in birth as a ‘profession’.

A few days after I had started looking into doula trainings, Anna announced her mentorship and a few months later I sat in the opening circle to the Sacred Birth Worker Mentorship.

How I work today as a Sacred Birth Worker

Today I work with pregnant women every single week, which is amazing and gives me so much insight.

I offer Prenatal Special Classes twice a week, in which we move and sit together in circle. All women have the chance to share what is on their hearts and minds, big wins and successes, insights, growth, challenges, questions, fears, everyday things and emotions that come up on their journey of becoming mothers.

I also support women in 1:1 settings in their pregnancies, assist them in preparing for their births and guide them to make their own decisions around various questions.

I serve women in the birth portal as a sister, space holder, loving and firm hand, hip squeezer, advocate and constant reminder of their beauty, strength and amazingness - serving her in the birth portal also includes debriefing her birth together with her afterwards.

I facilitate women’s circles and full & new moon gatherings and I also host a podcast called ‘The WOMEN Podcast’ which is not only about birth and motherhood, but weaves together all aspects of being woman, the feminine, sacred feminine practices, the menstrual cycle, female sexuality and more (all of these topics are covered in the Sacred Birth Worker Mentorship, too!), so that women can dive into a deeper understanding of themselves as woman, as mother and as daughter of the earth.

I want to say here, too, that I also notice in my personal community and private life that sisters, friends and friends of friends are reaching out to me with more and more questions and curiosity around womanhood, the menstrual cycle and birth. I feel many people are very curious and inspired by these topics, even if they don’t know it yet, and having someone in their community who works with that, opens up doors to those who otherwise might have never asked certain questions or looked at certain topics.

And that feels so amazing.

How the mentorship has prepared me to be a space holder & advocate for the rite of passage of birth

Throughout the whole mentorship Anna has kept saying to me: ‘your ability to be the clear channel and to be fully present is enough’.

That has helped me a lot, because quite opposite from birth (I had never been to a birth before) that was and is something I am very familiar with and have been practicing since many years. So this was maybe THE key for me to feel confident in stepping into the birth space.

Beyond that, the mentorship has prepared me to know that not all that is ‘normal’ in today’s maternity care is also evidence-based and directed towards facilitating natural physiological birth. It has given me the resources to provide women with good-quality information and it has also helped me understand that supporting women in and around birth is way more complex than simply giving them good information - even though that of course is one part of it.

The mentorship has taught me to assist women in diving into their relation to the feminine, their female body, their relation to birth and motherhood and to guide them to understand that it is their own embodiment that will be one of their greatest tools in birth and in motherhood.

How the ongoing mentorship community supports me

I am so grateful for the monthly Q&A’s and the option to ask questions any time in the community. I would not know how to deepen my knowledge and experience without a place to go back to and ask all the questions and debrief births. We all have such different experiences, so even when I don’t have a question, I learn a lot through the other women’s questions and comments.

But it is not just about questions - being in circle with the other women, participating in their offerings in the community and also holding space for them myself, witnessing different paths and journeys - that is so helpful.

Find Marie

Lately I have more and more women reaching out to me - with questions or thinking about becoming a birth worker and seeking advice -  and I love being a big sister to women and not only serving in and around birth but also by weaving sacred sisterhood all over the globe.

I love hearing from people and it is so much fun to connect.

You can find me on Instagram @untamingthefeminine, on my website www.mothersandbirth.com or simply send me an email to [email protected].

You are so welcome.

Big love,

Marie