L'Histoire

I am in my first term of midwifery school, and it's been a long journey to get to this point, so I am determined to savor every single drop of this experience.
I feel like this is the first profound thing I have done with my soul purpose in mind. Not "sole" purpose, but S.O.U.L. purpose. What I am meant to do. The work that my soul demands that I do.
Feminism, female-ness, birth, feminist theory, the relation of women to women fascinates me.
It captivates me and resonates in me.

As I am writing a paper on the history of midwifery in America, I am struck, finally, by a sense of innate belonging.
Something I have heretofore glimpsed, only.

I'm a mixed woman, from a poor family. Growing up, it was mostly my mum and I alone, in my formative years. My mum's family know very little of where they came from, and our ties to one another are, sadly, not very strong at all.
The older I get, the more I have come to regret and resent my lack of heritage.
I grieve for the lack of strong women and strong female ties in my upbringing. 

It is this grieving, regret, and resentment that have caused me to "mother" myself.

I have found my history in the history of American midwives. I have found it in the thousands of women-healers burned during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Europe during the Inquisition.
Those were my ancestors.
I'm not sure of the exact linear relations, but I know the blood of these women flows through my veins.

I speak with their voices, and see through their eyes.

I look at my hands, and realize that, these hands, in new skin, have been around for centuries.
They've caught babies for thousands of years.

This is my history.