FAM uses the metaphor of “nourishing the soil of midwifery” to describe how to advance midwifery. As a doula and board member of FAM, this represents supporting midwives – not only through their work but also through their seasons of #healing and #transformation.
Commonly, soil is a metaphor that describes nourishment, vitality, or foundation, but as the environmental crisis and Copper activists have shed more light upon, the soil cannot always be these things. To be good soil, you need a season to heal. So, nourishing soil also means tending to it while it heals to provide us with more food in a different season. When my mother, a former partera, was a young girl in the deep rural countryside of Mexico, she saw her grandfather and uncles practice controlled burning on the fields that healed while crops grew elsewhere.
So in my understanding, healing is a time of pain that transforms into understanding and purpose if there is a healthy community tending to this process. I believe it is the mission of FAM to nourish midwives in all their seasons because they are the ones advancing their work.
~ Cristina Marisol Urista, FAM Board of Directors, Doula, Student Midwife
Donate today to support Cristina’s vision!
