The Never Ending Circle of Life

So, tonight as I assisted my mother and watched her work in the kitchen to pick up some things and techniques prior to our big day tomorrow: Resurrection Sunday as well as my younger brother's 16th Birthday! --we watched some movies. And may I say BET did not do too shabbily as they normally do in my humble opinion, we watched a couple of movies. A refreshing end to our long and busy day of running errands gathering rations for our feast, as well as luaghs, memories, and grand times with my Aunt Lisa, one of her three older sisters, closest in three years in comparison to the two eldest.

I must say, I love my family, down to their bone gristle. They helped nurture me, like a gardener with their careful hands, into the woman I am today. I am digressing from this post's intended purpose...the movies we watched were Tyler Perry's "I Can Do Bad All By Myself" which I was finally able to see through to the end, despite it's premiering in 2009, and Funny Valentine's starring Loretta Divine and Alfre Woodard. Their on screen chemistry is amazing, as it should have been seeing they had played sisters in the film. In the movie, the woman who delivered Dearie B (Divine's character) was approached by Joyce Maye (Woodard) after Joyce discovered Dearie B's birth certificate and discovering they were indeed sisters, who shared the same biological mother, and not first cousins -Dearie B was raised by their aunt as her own child.

Before this specific visit to the doula, Joyce visited with Dearie and had her tell the story of how she was born breech, which she had loved to hear. The doula had confirmed the story, adding more--including how she always buries the placenta from children she helped bring into the world beneath a rosebush, and not a tree.

I found this highly interesting, so of course I had to search it! My search was 'why do women bury rosebushes or trees on top of a woman's afterbirth?' and after a condescendingly gentle correction of women to people, I came upon this and several other webpage results.

Such amazing traditions and analogies I had found! From the continuance to everlasting life from being buries under a tree to affecting a woman's future fertility.

This makes me want to look further into the natural birthing process, and also watching The Business of Being Born, produced by talk show host and author Ricki Lake.

I hope this brought new light on an occurrence that takes place the world over each second of each day, and you take away some information with you that will open you up to more in life, if anything more appreciation of how you got here in the first place! :-}

Here are some supplemental links on similar topics:

Placenta Encapsulation 
The Spiritual Art of Natural Birth
Placenta Benefits
How Home Birthing Helps Black Women Connect With African Roots
Erykah Badu on Natural/Home Births & Importance of Birthing Plans