Freedom

In this beautiful reflection, internationally recognized midwife Sister MorningStar reminds us of the infinite freedom available to us in every moment, and the miracles that transpire when we choose to recognize it. She encourages us to embrace that freedom as limitless possibility, no matter where we are on our midwifery, or life, journey.

Freedom is so easy. It is always available to us at any moment. In every moment we are the ones who, from within, awaken to our choice. No one on the outside can give us that consciousness. No one and nothing on the outside can give us freedom. I have watched the laws change to give freedom to midwives and they can do less to help the mothers. I have watched the mothers who birthed instinctually when the law said they could not.

Wading in the ocean just this week, I looked down at my feet and into my hands floated a part of the afterbirth of a large sea mammal… directly into my midwife hands. I looked out to sea and blessed the new mother and baby somewhere out in that great belly of the Great Mother. Our babies float freely in our wombs whether we are caring, loving mothers or addicted, wounded mothers. The entire universe is supporting our growth and movement and we are free to behold the vastness or not.

No one can give or take freedom. It is on the inside. We are born free and whatever culture or law or custom or error in thinking that limits our knowing and view of that vastness is temporary. Standing on the ruins of Tulum and making a stone altar on the edge of the Equinox Temple, I looked around me, feeling the presence of the Mayan ancestors, who time had swallowed up. Any greatness, or any errors in thinking, is all temporary; the living iguanas and trees that now inhabit the temples grow and roam freely.

We are a little planet in a vast universe. Freedom is above us, below us, around us, within us. No matter how imprisoned we may appear or how limited we may look from the outside, there is no moment, no one and no thing that can touch the vastness of our knowing if we have even a hint or hope of our freedom. That freedom dissolves all boundaries, all limitation and creates the space for miracles, for expansion, for the unfolding of mystery right into our hands… just like a floating afterbirth into the hands of a grateful midwife, waiting with great love, on the shore of all time and space, to make blessings to new life.

Sister MorningStar has dedicated a lifetime to the preservation of instinctual birth among native people. She was raised in the Ozark Mountains within the influence of Cherokee traditions. She birthed her own daughters at home and has helped thousands of other women find empowerment through instinctual birth. She has served on state, national and international l boards helping to oversee the development of midwifery certification programs. She serves on the CASA International Advisory Board helping to oversee the continued stability of Mexico’s first accredited Midwifery School and Maternity Hospital. She is the founder of a spiritual retreat center and author of The Power of Women: Instinctual Birth Stories (Motherbaby Press), as well as other books related to instinctual and spiritual living. She lives as a Cherokee Hermitess and Catholic Mystic in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri.