human animal

Less than a month to go; and I'm struggling with my fears. The last time I went abroad to study, in 2005, I'd just finished a 6-month contract lecturing History at my alma mater. I won a scholarship, which I really hadn't been expecting to get, and so I had to think quickly - where would I go; which programme would I chose? There was never a question of choosing not to go at all. The option existed, but it also didn't. After all, pretty much everyone I knew was expecting me to work in academia. I even accepted that that's what I would do with my life, but only because I'd never really taken a moment to think all that much about it. And then there's that word - 'accepted'... Is that really how I wanted to make a career choice? Resign myself to it?

So I chose Scotland - St Andrews. And the year I spent there was an almost unmitigated disaster. Writing my thesis eventually became painful, like squeezing blood out of a stone. Yet, until that point, I would've called myself passionate about the subject itself (environmental history and policy). But it's one thing to be passionate about reading about environmental history, and thinking about it, and talking about it. Passionate in the way that I'm passionate about my other 'hobbies' and intellectual interests. It's quite another to contemplate being paid to be an 'expert', and to dance the puppet dance of modern academic life, every day, for decades.

One day, perhaps, I will post about the joys of Scotland. (I did say, 'almost unmitigated'.) There were some redeeming moments, some redeeming friendships. But now my mind somehow associates studying overseas with a deep anxiety and loneliness and 'stuck'-ness. It's perplexing because, in so many areas of my life, I am not afraid of the unknown. I consider myself a courageous person. And crossing a vast ocean to establish a new home, new friendships, a new rhythm - this is something that would make any person anxious (consciously acknowledged or otherwise). We all have fears to face when we must leave behind everything we know and open a new door.

But what if, behind this new door, I know that someone is waiting for me? And that someone is me?

And this time, I am beckoning to myself, calling out to myself - Come! You can't see yet what awaits you here, but you do know that this time, it will be different. This time, it's on your terms. The loneliness you fear will be met with fellowship and love, the stuckness will be unfrozen and your rivers will flow. The cold will be met with warm mittens and warm hearts. Midwife hearts.


"Midwives talk about the connection between mind and body, the importance of understanding the social and emotional life and connections of a woman in order to understand her body in birth. The relationship is ever a deeply embroiled one; they do not deal with women on either a purely intellectual or purely emotional plane. Yet they do not reduce women to bodies only, as they see obstetrics doing. ... What is at the core of birth, of life, is what it really means to be alive, to be human and animal: midwives do not see these as contradictory, but as central to who we are. A casual conversation with midwives can incorporate a discussion of piss, vomit, and shit: the body is present. Midwives are dealing with the non-plastic, non-consumerist, non-capitalist essence of what it really means to be alive, from the mundane to the exalted. What midwives love is quite different from 'choice' in meaning: choice is about individualism, consumerism, capitalism. 'Love' is about whatever is left when consumerism and the lot is taken away. 'Love' is about what really matters, about 'real' experience, not a manipulated, purchased, smoothed-over, wallpapered version of it. It is this 'real' life experience that midwives love, the 'real' in the woman, and in the 'animal' act of birth."

-- From Laboring On: Birth in Transition in the United States, by Simonds, Katz Rothman and Meltzer Norman.