What do infant mortality and elephant poaching in Africa have in common?

Plenty. Researchers have, for the first time, observed a direct connection between elephant poaching in Africa, and poverty, as expressed in high rates of mother and baby deaths in humans.

This is just one of many examples of how life on this earth is so richly complex and interdependent. It’s awe-inspiring. This year my focus overall is going to be to get as many people and organizations as possible to understood that birth and the Primal Period (pre-conception to the child’s 1^st birthday) is the nexus point, or center, of everything…whether or not we understand it to be so. Why? Because the problems facing humanity and this earth require a good number of people actively involved in finding solutions for humanity’s heavy footprint.  Shall I list the big ones: climate change; environmental toxins; which are killing off whole species and even found at high levels in breastmilk and the cord blood of newborns; the ongoing abuses of women and children and vulnerable populations; and overpopulation.

I’m always on the look out for good news, to counter my tendency to see the underbelly. Here’s a piece of good news I came across…If every woman alive today was to have just one child, the population of the world would drop to a mere 1.9 billion by the turn of the next century. Think of it, and of how many of our problems would be lessened if there were just a lot fewer humans. 

So, back to my main point, that it all begins with birth. Making it possible for people to be healthy happy, creative and involved – in short, thriving, means they start life and brain/body development off on the right foot, getting all of their needs met. We need young people, adults and elders who are not so pre-occupied with coping that they have no energy or time to get involved. And that leads us back to birth, because we need a good number of babies and mothers whose bond has not been damaged by high levels of stress and/or trauma. This is what it takes for babies to develop fully in the primal period and for mothers to parent with a sense of confidence and ease. I’m wanting to see thriving, not coping.

I feel happy that more and more people and organizations are using the term “mother-baby” rather than mother and baby. Because they really are one, symbiotic and inter-dependent system. What we do – or fail to do for one of them – we are also doing to the other. Here lies brain development and consciousness of the next generation:  in how we treat women as mothers.

I believe it’s time to get everyone in this loose-knit international grassroots “birth movement” to transform birth to understand that this primal period literally is the key to whether or not we human beings develop and live out of a core senses of fear and defense … or love and trust. It’s that basic, because how the baby in the womb (pre-nate, if you will) senses the world to be – safe or unsafe – determines how it organizes it’s billions of cells, organs and entire body and mind for its lifetime.

I maintain, and my whole life affirms this to be a truth, that we humans have been the aggressive, anxious, and destructive (and increasingly self-destructive) creatures that we are, because we and our history are rooted in trauma. Unresolved trauma… Lots of it.

Think of it: from conceptions that are unplanned or unwanted, and our mothers being under great stress when we were growing inside them, to being born in traumatic ways and then separated from our mother, not breastfed (or not for long enough), not picked up when we cried, nor held and slept with and “worn” long enough…to living in families full of secrets and lies and un-grieved griefs, and often raised to feel shame about ourselves and our natural feelings and instincts. Then there is the history so many families the world over, have…generations of unhealed historical trauma (famine, war, slavery, annihilation, dislocation from homeland …).

I say it’s time to break the long chain and cycles of suffering and trauma and wake up into who we really are. We humans are really amazing creatures, capable of so much more. Think about all that humans have accomplished despite carrying anguish in their hearts. How much more could we be, if we had the chance to grow (develop) fully, as nature/God/Allah intended! Wow!

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick-to-death of war and making enemies of people and seeing good midwives arrested and babies and young girls and boys having their genitals mutilated, or kids and girls being treated badly or sold into slavery or abused in other ways, including by their family.

I’m so excited about the various movements on the planet… grassroots movements all of them… to bring about equality and justice and compassion and end greed and domination.

Next month on February 14^th (Valentine’s Day in the USA) we’ll see another outpouring of women – and good men too – around the world, celebrating and dancing in the streets to same dance, and singing, and YES, demonstrate, that women will no longer tolerate being abused. That’s One Billion Rising (onebillionrising.org). Find a group in your community and learn the simple dance and get out there in the streets on February 14^th! We owe it to women and children and men everywhere.    Love, Suzanne