I traveled down some very familiar roads last week, Thursday September 24th, and learned a little more about a woman I never really had the chance to know.
My great-grandmother Bertie (Bertha Mae Ransom Thompson, for those of you who may have had her on your great grandparents birth records and are armchair geneaologists,) was a homebirth midwife, dedicated to serving other women. I learned that she was also known for being brutally frank.
Well.
Apparently some things really do run in the family.
Then I looked more closely at the old photographs of her and realized something else.
I have her eyes.
I can’t quite explain how comforting that is. The same eyes, a bit of the same attitude, and generations apart, the same calling to serve women.
So, in the very brief time I had before I needed to return to Arkansas, where we’ve become very busy, I had the chance to sit beside the AuSable River in Mio, Michigan, and reflect.
I will gladly remain brutally frank if it means giving women the chance to have informed consent and to be in the driver’s seat for their pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience.
Brutally frank doesn’t mean unkind.
Sometimes it means saying what needs to be said. Sometimes it means asking the question no one else has asked. Sometimes it means making sure a woman understands that she has choices, that her questions matter, and that her voice belongs in the room.
It means being what she needs, whatever that is, to help make sure her needs are heard and respected during this transformative time of life.
And then there’s another part of this story that makes it even more meaningful to me.
My cousin Paula Branam has the same great-grandmother. Yes, that Paula here at Bright Blessings.
And Paula seems every bit as driven to care for women, particularly during the postpartum segment of their childbearing journey.
Now I have the privilege of having her learn from me as she prepares for her own work as a doula.
There is something deeply meaningful about that.
Bertie could never have known where her work would lead. She couldn’t have known that generations later, two of her great-granddaughters would find themselves drawn to caring for women and families.
More than a hundred years ago, Bertie served women in her community as a midwife.
Today, I’m still doing the work. Back at my desk in Arkansas, less than a week later, as I prepare for the doula training program to launch, for the upcoming Doula Conference for the Doula Alliance of Arkansas, and continue to work on health care credentialling – which means signing contracts to be in network with insurance providers here in Arkansas.
And now I get to teach Paula some of what I’ve learned, while both of us, in our own ways, honor the woman who came before us.
Different generations. Different kinds of birthwork. Different communities.
But that same thread keeps running through our family.
Same eyes.
Same calling.
And another generation carrying it forward.
I think our great-grandmother would have been pretty pleased by that, too.