Part 4: FINDING TENDER HEARTS ONE BREATH AT A TIME

 

“…the only way out of domination is love…”

From bell hooks: “I believe whole-heartedly that the only way out of domination is love, and the only way into really being able to connect with others, and to know how to be, is to be participating in every aspect of your life as a sacrament of love” (Yancy, 2015) 


Being held in an intentionally slow, present and supportive space is love. 


The survival energies from the imprints during the pre- and perinatal time are BIG. In that newness we are completely dependent on our primary caregiver. When anything interferes with that bond, it is — and feels like — life or death to the dependent newborn. 


To meet and heal these imprints, slow support in small groups, held within a larger group, is necessary. 


In that slow support, inner potency and health emerge.


Finding my tender wounded and living heart has helped me see others’ tender wounded and living hearts. 


This is the beginning of relational individual change leading to relationship and community change. If large numbers of people heal, they may become more relational, find and build healthier communities, and work towards social change.


What are other folks doing about this?

UNICEF - United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund- has a lengthy and transparent website addressing early childhood development. They are collecting international data about: the quality of care within a child’s home environment, access to early childhood education, and overall developmental status of children (UNICEF, 2022)

WHO has developed a guideline to “provide global evidence-informed recommendations on improving ECD” [early childhood development] (WHO, 2020).

The Australian Center for Perinatal Excellence (2024) shares this list in healing from difficult birth experience:

  • Do not judge or blame yourself

  • Seek practical support

  • Seek and accept emotional support, talk about your experience of traumatic birth

  • Acknowledge the feelings you have toward your baby

  • Consider the impacts on your relationships, partner 

  • Try to get the details of what actually happened from midwife or obstetrician

  • Access of debriefing service

  • Make a formal complaint

  • Be gentle on yourself

  • Give yourself time

The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health PPN Psychology (2024) share the baby’s perspective:

  1. Babies in the womb and in the world are sensitive, perceptive, cognitive and conscious.

  2. Babies in the womb and in the world are social, communicative and building relationships.

  3. Babies in the womb and in the world have innate needs that are intricately linked to the mother baby bond.

  4. Babies in the womb and in the world develop an epigenetic blueprint that is long lasting and may be passed onto the next generation.

Birth Psychology

Birth Psychology is a field of scientific research and observation that explores the impact of our earliest experiences – in the womb, during birth and throughout infancy.

  • We learn how these early experiences affect our current lives as adults, impacting our physical health, our emotional capacity, our mental beliefs and our social lives.

  • We come to recognize our early adaptive patterns and explore various modalities to re-integrate and heal any traumas or disruptions that might be influencing our foundation of health.

  • We use what we have learned to support a holistic approach to conception, pregnancy and birth that includes the baby’s experiences as well as those of the parents, family members and the professionals who support them.

Nicaraguan Psychologist Martha Cabrera: On Healing Society

Social change requires personal change. Personal change is key to organizational processes. There can be no social change without personal change, because one is forced to fight every day to achieve that change. For organizations:

  1. personal sphere, which is where crises, wounds, health, the conception of healing, lifestyle and holistic health habits come in

  2.  historical-cultural, in which we try to understand how our personal life is marked by the country’s history and the national culture and we explain how many dysfunctional strategies our culture has and how they are expressed.

  3. organizational one (needs clarified)

  4.  dedicated to development

Acknowledge, express and reflect on what happened to heal.

Inspiration from Justice Robert Yazzie

“Navajo healing works through two processes: first, it drives away or removes the cause of illness; and second, it restores the person to good relations in solidarity with his or her surroundings and self.

The Navajo understanding of "solidarity" is difficult to translate into English, but it carries connotations which help the individual to reconcile self with family, community, nature, and the cosmos-all reality. The sense of oneness with one's surroundings, and the reconciliation of the individual with everyone and everything, makes an alternative to vertical justice work. Most importantly, it restores good relations with self” (Yazzie, 1994).



Resources

Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health (2024).

APPPAH's Four Foundations of Birth Psychology - https://birthpsychology.com/apppahs-history/

Cabrera, M. (2000’s?) Living and Surviving in a Multiply Wounded Country - https://www.medico.de/download/report26/ps_cabrera_en.pdf


Center for Perinatal Excellence, (2024). Recovering from a Traumatic Birth. COPE Australia - https://www.cope.org.au/preparing-for-birth/things-dont-go-plan/recovering-from-a-traumatic-birth/


Unicef, (May 2022). Early childhood development - https://data.unicef.org/topic/early-childhood-development/overview/


WHO, (2020). Improving Early Childhood Development: WHO Guideline. Google Books - https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/T49FEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA5&dq=global+importance+of+attachment+in+early+childhood


Yancy, G., hooks, b. (2015) bell hooks: Buddhism, the Beats and Loving Blackness. The Opinion Pages. The New York Times - https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/bell-hooks-buddhism-the-beats-and-loving-blackness/


Yazzie, R.(1994). Life Comes from It: Navajo Justice Concepts, 24 N.M. L. Rev. 175 Available at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmlr/vol24/iss2/3