Discipline of Mind, Creativity of Soul, and the Heart behind Eshema

As a child, the rules of scientific query were my lifeline, inspiration, obsession. It was a space of order exploring beauty and complexity with answers and repeatable systems. What a contrast to my ADHD mind of pictures and concepts. I loved setting up an experiment, filing journal after journal of observations, methods, results, calculations and hypotheses. The way it peeled back simplicity to reveal complex systems and resolved chaotic mechanisms into simple formulas tickled me. I remember begging my mom to buy the botany text books, the anatomy and physiology 3d models, the electron microscope, and an endless supply of beakers and tweezers.

But the rigidity of the science came to represent an infallibility of its conclusions and a cold approach to the living world I was studying. And the wonder of my youth became dampened by the monotony of pipets, tables, graphs, and heady technical language. It never left, just became sluggish, tucked away behind the dulling effect of growing up.

What kept that spark alive was my art. Like twin sides of a coin, as my passion for science grew, so too did my love of illustration, design, painting, sculpture, and poetry. I found kindred spirits (without the prodigy) in Da Vinci, Linnaeus, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Maria Sibylla Merian, Samuel Morse, John James Audubon, and Anna Atkinson. My shelves were filled with journals, textbooks, magazine clippings, doodles, articles, references, little bobbles and bits of nature. Everything was a question prompt, every item treasured and somewhere on the investigation workflow.

Passion & creativity, systems & order flowed through me in the dance of hobbies, responsibilities, dreams, and goals. But they also warred with one another, competing and complementing in a somewhat confusing spiral.

Pregnancy, birth, and motherhood that matrescence journey has been a familiar and fulfilling return to that balancing scale. Discipline and surrender emerging with equal opportunity to teach. Equal but different roles in bringing wonder and confidence to the birth space. Unique voices offering insight and advice for all the stages of birth. The questions you ask from the scientific physiological perspective look at data, intervention, body positions, safety, risk, information and preparation. The questions you ask from the intuitive surrendered birth perspective are ones of emotional awareness, environment, mental clarity, heart posture, openness, instinct, consent, and preparation. These worlds should be together. These questions cannot be asked in isolation. Their answers are not separated, but depend on one another.

All too often we are afraid of one route or another. The passion, the intensity of intuition bleeds into intrusive thoughts and unresolved conflicts. The research, those charts of numbers and de-identified stories can turn risk into giants of concern and side effects a petty woman’s petulance.

We were created for both the passion and the research. We were given intellects to study, draw conclusions, establish truth, and gain common insight. We were given creative souls that want to build, create, respond, dance, and experience individually. Pregnancy and birth invite you to marry those aspects: prepare with intention, then birth in surrender and mother with creative attentiveness.

Why do I believe this? Let’s explore an excerpt from a titillating work of reflection and provocative questioning called The Beast that Crouches at the Door, by Rabbi David Fohrman.¹ A wonderful read looking at the story of “Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, and Beyond.” In chapter ten Rabbi Fohrman dissects an aphorism from the 18th century that, in Fohrman’s teaching of I can paraphrase, claims God created us with passion and drive as the defining characteristic of humanity. But that this creative drive has gone awry and to complement it, to direct it, to transform it into something good and beautiful again, God has given us Scripture. The creative intuition reigned in by principle, order, and direction. Without this direction, our creative inclinations and intuitions veer wildly off course and into destructive if sometimes beautiful ends. But with direction, these are the “highly flammable fuel that combusts inside us and makes us go” (Pp 66).

So the Talmud suggests that the passion to create has gone awry, but God gives us the scriptures as a direction for our desire to create. This includes the creation of life. This includes the pain of childbirth and the wilderness of motherhood. This includes the often overwhelming onslaught of pregnancy symptoms and postpartum emotions. The answers do not lie in the calculated formulas of statistics and trends. The way forward is found in the harmony of surrender and directed preparation. In life, in pregnancy, in birth, in career: if we chose a path forward fueled by passion and in alignment with His design then our creation (our jobs, tasks, pregnancy, labor, etc) suddenly has purpose, meaning, power, and life.

I’ve always been obsessed by the research and enamored with the creative. But birth teaches me to appreciate their coexistence and mutual dependence. So you’ll still find science texts, diagrams, random samples and research journals strewn about my house. You’ll see messy fingers and charcoal stained clothes or furniture. And you’ll see a mama, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a doula trying to walk in the state of surrender and discipline. Answering the call of life to listen and respond with heart, soul, and might.