On Expertise or Knowledge-By-Experience

What I’m not: I’m not female or a mother, so I have never given birth. Nor am I a typical male, and I’m not a father, at least not that I know of. I occasionally fantasize that a son or daughter might appear out of nowhere looking for me; if so they haven’t found me yet.

By now they might have had their own families and this is where some healing might lie for me personally, not having made a family of my own.

For these reasons I am not an expert on birth from a parental point of view. However I am also not prejudiced in favor of families, over-bearing, controlling or over-protective of babies or kids as many parents are today. Nor is my behavior aggressive, dictated by instincts or driven by genetic mandate to pro-create the human species. So, I am not a parent in the literal sense, but figuratively speaking I am re-parenting others through Transitions and even in the family to which I was born…

In this aspect I am also not very original. I was born… and I have experienced my own birth. Another thing I’m not is an academic, but I’m curious, and I was born, so I studied my own birth. I studied with many fellow experts who were studying their own births. I’m not a scientist either thank goodness, but I was born and researched my own birth. Not in some ivy tower or laboratory, right here in my own body where I was born, where it becomes self-evident. Nothing special to set me apart from humanity, observing bodily sensations are proof enough to know (-by-experience) that I was born…

Last year I found some turtles in my garden the size of small coins. Eyes not yet open, they were already determined to get somewhere, though right at home in their shells. They knew where they were going, and ‘never mind the view’ was the new prevailing attitude and condition. I was reading recently about the birth of a horse. The gestational period is about 11 months and the colt normally kicks its way out of a sack-like structure and is standing and walking within hours. How does it know to do that?

Like 60 billion other human beings before me, I had to negotiate the birth process, for better or for worse. Like most of those human births (if vaginal) I had to rotate my head in order to find my way through the birth canal and the bones of my mother. How did I know what to do? I was born… In the mammalian species/genus/family this turning of the head, away from the midline and away from the heart is only necessary as human beings. This distinguishes our birth from other animals and it makes human birth much more impressionable in terms of experience. Anything that we do for the very first time is more impactful, therefore more consequential on many levels thereafter.

While passing through transitions, those intersections in life where choices must be made, I find that I either know too much or too little. It brings me to the very human questions of knowledge. How do I really know after all? What makes me care? Why do I ask? Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Can I not believe in mutually exclusive notions, fact and fancy alike? This may seem contradictory, but in Reality it’s much closer to the Truth. Let’s not limit our selves or the Creative by arguing in favor of any particular line of thinking about Birth. This will allow more possibilities for healthier Transitions, that is, movement and change, which is Life.