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The Corporate Midwife

Three decades ago I thought I would become a career midwife.  The last two of my four births took place at home with the skilled assistance and good humour of midwives and I attended births myself –  most often as a second pair of hands.

Birth, and supporting that experience, was exhilarating and exhausting, joyful and sorrowful, mirthful and not. Yet always profound.

I became a better person with the birth of each new baby but especially each birthing mother I met.  Every woman comes to childbirth from a different background, mindset, birthing history, a different fertility history.  Different family, different values, different circumstances.

Meeting those women right where they were at to serve them best required introspection on my part and sometimes a mental crowbar to broaden my views.

There is nothing more humbling and powerful than being in the presence of a labouring woman at her time of greatest strength and greatest vulnerability.  It cannot help but rub off on you in the form of inspiration and reverence.

On my path to a career in midwifery, I was waylaid by chemistry.  It was a university course prerequisite for a midwifery degree but soon chemistry became requisite to my new career path – the chem department well represented at the pub on Thursday nights notwithstanding.  I did not become a midwife partly because I really need my sleep.

Trite but true.

But most significantly, the midwives important in my life felt a calling to the profession so strong it would be impossible for them to do anything else. That is why midwives are so good at what they do. I never felt that calling. Midwifery did not compel me.

But what I did feel deeply was a love for midwifery and profound respect for the women that are called to it. Think of what midwives do.

Midwives become expert in the wide scope of normal and are quick to spot detrimental deviations from it.

Midwives create a safe space for extraordinary events to unfold. They understand that they are not central to the event but are protectively part of it.

These two realities have value shaped everything I have learned and done since then.

My career now is within the healthcare realm.  I work for a large and principled corporation that is dedicated to improving the lives of mums, babies and their families through improvements in healthcare and the environment. But this is still very much a number driven business.

I view my world of travel, meetings, forecasts and spreadsheets through the lens of a midwife.  It shapes how I think, what I do and how I work.   In the land of profits and shareholders this is an anomaly, I grant you.

In upcoming posts, let me explain what I mean.

Lessons From a Dead Cat

I truly discovered how my kids’ thinking differed when I found our missing cat dead in the crawl space under the kitchen floor.

My three daughters ranged in age from four to eleven.  My son, my youngest child, was still in the -will eat anything of the floor whether it moves or not unless it is green -stage.

The cat had once been a sweet kitten that matured into a sweet old puss.  An unassuming, undemanding tabby that grew up with my children. Her name was Ouzo.  Cannot for the life of me remember why we named her that.  My kids called her Wuz or Wuzzle.  Wuzzle was subjected to non-malicious tail pulling, strangle holds, kisses AND bites, and, as my girls made the developmental evolution from pretend sibling play to performances that required audience Wuzzle also endured numerous costume changes as well.  All with minimal struggle, claws in check.

Wuz went missing one day.  We lived on a farm so we were not immediately concerned.  Our cats were all predator pusses and for me a two day disappearance meant they were bored with Purina Cat Chow and were looking to augment their diets with something that would struggle.

But Wuzzle did not come back. The kids were worried, then really sad and then accepting.  She was a very old cat after all.

About six months after Wuz disappeared our family decided that we’d rather not shiver through another winter in an uninsulated house.  This meant digging out the crawl space under the kitchen (with about a third of a meter clearance; I was much thinner then) pouring concrete and installing a vapour barrier and insulation.

The first day in the dark and dirt under the house I found Wuzzle.  Dead. Desiccated and pretty much two dimensional.  I came out and up to deliver the news.

“I found Ouzo,” I said.  “She is underneath the kitchen.  She is dead.  I think she was really old and tired and needed a quiet place to die.”

Well.  My daughters needed no prompting in terms of plans of action.  I did not even make the four steps to the kitchen sink to take off my gloves when daughter number two said, “Let’s bring Wuzzle up and have a proper burial.”

Daughter number one said, “No.  Can we just leave her there in peace?  Where she wanted to die?

“Can we put Wuz in a pot and boil everything off her bones and keep her skeleton?” said daughter number three. (Disturbing to think where she got that idea.)

And youngest child, my son,  “Can we have ice cream?”

That may be the first time I really saw it.  My children, all four raised with the same parenting philosophy, albeit dwindling parenting intensity, were astonishingly different in personality and temperament.  That was the moment it was clear why one size fit anything and everything would never work for my family. My children then and are now completely different from one another in terms of spirituality, pragmatism, attachment, all forms of curiosity and much more.

That lesson served me well. There is nothing homogeneous in the way people view the world.

Getting to know people and understanding their particular lenses and filters has helped me in many situations.  For example, supporting a woman in her last month of pregnancy who is feeling ambivalence and not the joy and anticipation that our society broadcasts as normal.

In business it serves to figure out what motivates a decision maker.  Trailblazing?  Accountability? And then it is possible to meet them where they are at and move forward together.

My children now have very different careers in professions that were vaguely foreshadowed decades ago about by Wuzzle the cat corpse.

But I accept, though, that there may be some universal constants.  Like ice cream.

Late Night Friend

 

I was braver in the 80’s. A community activist. Physicians for Social Responsibility, Mayors’ Campaign for African Famine Relief.A Leche League Leader. I wrote letters to the editor. I volunteered as a low-level producer at a community television station. I wore bold colours, put henna in my hair and danced like a whirligig. The only conservative thing I did then was the Jane Fonda workout.

By happenstance, on May 28th, 2017 I was watching Canadian broadcaster, Charles Adler accept a Lifetime Achievement award from the Radio Television Digital News Association with a speech that made me cry.

I don’t know Charles Adler. I know I should but I don’t. Now I want to after hearing him speak. Google his speech and then I think that, you too, will want to know his work if you do not know it already.

He spoke about the late Barbara Frum.

That was a surprise tear trigger and I sat for more than a few minutes weeping on our sofa trying to figure out why.

Barbara Frum was important to me at a particular, sensitive point in my life. She was significant to me during my long, long, long childbearing decade when I was pregnant with child number 2…and 3……and 4.

I was breastfeeding and puking then for the better part of 7 years. My social activism dwindled to hassling my parents about recycling.

My world contracted. Bam!  Daughter number two had the sleeping genes of a bat (still does at the age of 32). Completely, utterly, nocturnal and only 11 months old when daughter number 3 was conceived. (Don’t even. Story for another day.)

Daughter number 2 also produced teeth like in sci-fi movies where monsters force themselves out of mammals from throbbing, erupting giant blood blisters.

Much to the chagrin of my mum, I did not accept the advice of her time – to drug myself or my kid. And so, I spent hours of my third pregnancy dry-heaving first trimester with a distressed baby/toddler who would only be consoled with pacing in my arms or at my breast.

Who consoled me then was Barbara Frum. Barbara kept me company when I thought I did not have the stamina for one more nocturnal minute.

But more importantly, Barbara Frum was a trusted connection to the outside world.  

Do you remember Barbara Frum? She was a CBC radio and television journalist. She hosted the CBC newsmagazine, The Journal, which aired 22 minutes after The National. She died of chronic leukemia in 1992. I mourned when I heard. I thought she looked tired on TV but like most Canadians did not know why. She kept that secret well.

She had her own controversies to be sure. But I connected with her. I connected with her when social media did not exist.

Barbara Frum reported with a balanced and sometimes uncomfortable view. She did this with context. CBC liberal bias aside, I trusted her. In 1986, Barbara Frum seemed to capture and distill the muddle and triumphs of current affairs in a way that I could not, given the constraints of the all-consuming but beloved fruit of my loins. She was a trusted world wide angle lens when I did not have the energy to rely on my own personal resources to try capture and understand the big picture myself.

I was thankful for that. I was grateful for that. I miss it today.

The world is different now. I get news alerts on my apple watch. No context. No trust. The stories are too complex and perplexing. It takes forever to wade through today’s complicated truths.

When Charles Adler gave Barbara Frum a shout out maybe I was crying about the memory of the loss of a perceived late-night friend. Maybe I was crying the loss of a perceived trusted journalist. Maybe I was crying for the loss of journalistic context today where our attention span is measured in tweet units. I still haven’t figured that out.

But my take home after the fifteen tissues soaked during and after the Charles Adler speech is, be braver. To seek truth, no matter how uncomfortable, in today’s reporting in whatever form. And to seek the same truth within my soul. And to honour the people who made that their own life’s purpose.

Shout out to Barbara Frum.

Postscript

Recently I have been watching Judy Woodruff on the PBS Newshour. From a Canadian perspective a fresh and balanced view of US and world politics.  Try watching it.