The Power of Women, Instinctual Birth Stories

Every time I visited my Great-Grandma Gertie, she fascinated me with tales of her childhood. I always gained incredible insight and understanding from her stories, even when I found it challenging to bridge the gap between her reality and mine. Reading The Power of Women, a collection of intimate personal stories of powerful and empowering childbirth experiences, I almost felt like I was reconnecting with my great-grandmother. I was awed, intrigued, sometimes mystified, and continually inspired. The author, Sister MorningStar, is a long-time midwife who uses the art of storytelling as a venue for exploring the mysteries of birth, death, and womanhood. She openly expresses her spiritual beliefs and her philosophy of maternity care, and she is not shy about addressing difficult topics such as stillbirth, homebirth, poverty, unwanted pregnancy, and misogyny. She also gives expression to the voices and visions of dozens of other mothers, daughters, and midwives, recounting how each woman discovered her own inner power and drew upon the power of others around her in order to meet life's challenges with feminine strength. Sister MorningStar asserts that storytelling is an effective way to share information and an important way for traditional midwives to teach the next generation of maternity care providers. "See with a thousand eyes," she says. Through The Power of Women, Sister MorningStar passes along the stories that have touched her own life as a woman and a midwife, letting her readers see through many eyes. Life stories are never simple: thus, this is a complex book, raising as well as answering questions. If you want to think deeply and learn compassionately about the feminine mysteries, the struggles of women, and the art of midwifery, you will want to read The Power of Women.