So, I'm blogging.
I have resisted this for the LONGEST time.
I used to blog, many years ago when it was trendy. I blogged about quitting sugar, current affairs, and my rant* of the week. One summer I even blogged "the 12 Breakfasts of Christmas" where I went to a different cafe every day and played pretend food and coffee critic to my audience of inter-web friends, like a true Melbournian. That was expensive. Delicious, but expensive.
Mostly I blogged because I felt like I had something to say, even if it was as frivolous as rating coffee and table service and cafe decor. Then I blogged a few times about slightly more important stuff like women's economic empowerment during my 10 year career in the international humanitarian sector.
I have resisted blogging again for a few reasons. It's felt like 'another thing to do', like it has to have a sense of consistency to it or it's not worth doing at all. And, does anyone even do this any more? Does anyone even want to read more than 148 characters at a time? Is blogging like so 2003?
I'm calling bullshit on myself on this now. It's been a very convenient excuse to not 'show up', to stay small, to stay in my insta-lane, to not upset any apple carts, to avoid the shame generated by fallout, to avoid being misunderstood, to control the narrative about myself.
I've got important shit to say. And I'll say it with kindness, with honesty, with frank-ness, with whatever degree of gentle brutality it needs to be said with to uncover truth and inhumanness and injustice and wrongness and just general WTAF-is-up-with-that-ness. Sometimes I'll craft words over and over until they're juuuust right. Other times the message will be too urgent and you'll have to forgive grammatical errors and made up words and even a little over-the-top-ness.
Because, shit is going down.
Shit is going down for birthing people around the world. We're shackled. We're bullied. We're mis-informed. We're coerced. We're messed with. We're seen as dollar signs. We're fed with fear and lies to make us pliable and weak and dependant. We're denied access to life saving treatments because of the colour of our skin. We're abandoned. We're literally raped while we're giving birth. Our babies are taken against our will. We're treated like we're not in the room. We're told where and how and with whom we can birth. Our rights are being violated on a daily basis.
My only request of you is, please don't discount these experiences just because they haven't been your own. Please come to this space willing to learn and engage with me and others about important issues that affect us as women, as queer, as brunettes, as tall people, as imprisoned people, as humans having a human experience, as humans with spirits and souls and stories. Because no label that is placed on us should dictate how we are treated as human beings.
But shit is not just going down in the context of birth. The world that our babies are coming into is changing - rapidly, scarily, gravely. And we need to wake TF up if we care about their own experiences of what it means to be human, on a planet that is dying.
No more resisting the resistance.
Not just a Doula.
So welcome, to Karli Smith | Doula, The Blog. I might blog once a week, it might be once a month. Whenever it is, it will be with purpose.
You and your passion are welcome here.
*have recently stopped using this word 'rant'. It sounds like an excuse or apology for something you have to say, like a disclaimer. Your impassioned, thought out, kind yet honest and real and raw opinions should not require a disclaimer, people.