Now What?

Last week I got my final marks back for the Childbirth Educators course that I have been doing on and off for the last 18 months. The modest me wants to say that I am pleased. The less modest me feels completely stoked, not only that I am finished, but that all the way through I got good marks and great comments.

As I submitted the last bits I started wondering why it had taken me so long to finish it in the first place? I was getting good marks, I found the work interesting and I had the time.

A millions questions went through my head. Now that I'm not a student anymore does that mean I'm just a mum? Now that I've finished, what do I do with it? Do I go back to work? How/where do I go back to work? Do I want to even do this anymore?

After a few days of pondering I realised that the main reason was that I was afraid to finish studying was that I felt I now had to answer the question 'now what?'.

'Now what?' Is one of of those questions that comes up in everyones life once in awhile. It is usually accompanied by two distinct feelings, fear and excitement.

My dad and Inge had a similar 'now what?' moment recently. After much though and pondering they decided that their answer was selling up and moving state. It's an amazing thing to watch your parents decide that the best thing to do is to challenge the 'now what?' and see where it takes them.

I think often when we have a 'now what?' moment we decide that it's all to hard to make any major changes, or we don't see a clear path. So we wait and hope that something will come up. But what happens if your still waiting?

Have a think, has your life hit a stagnant place? Do you find yourself thinking 'now what?', what are you going to do about it?

I hope that I find the answer to my 'now what?'. I hope that I can see a clear answer. And if a path doesn't seem clear, then I hope I can be brave enough to throw everything in and start walking even if I can't see the end. In fact I hope we all do!

Busy, Busy, Busy

It's been a hectic week here. I finally finished my childbirth educator studies. My Doula website is finally live. I had a lot of client calls, emails and one relaxing client tea and cake meeting. An all afternoon/night kids birthday party. And today we had Jacks school fair, which I worked most of the day on and had multiple meetings about during the week.

As always when life gets busy, blogging takes a backseat. And tonight I'm just too tired to write anything of much interest. So I thought that I would share this photo. Jack has been asking me for almost a year now to have some fairy floss. And today at the fair what should be there bit a real proper fairy floss man. I'm so glad that I captured this moment. Seconds before Jack takes delivery of his first ever stick of fairy floss. Have you ever seen a face so full of excitement. It was one of those moments I have been excited about sharing with my kids for a long time and this photo captures how worth the wait I think it was.

So I hope that next week is a quieter one. Although with all the planning for our trip to India I still have to do, it may be wishful thinking.

Bad Day at Work

Recently I seem to be encountering people being cranky in their workplace. Hmm I said recently but I'm sure its an everyday occurrence everywhere. There are three situations that have cropped up recently though, where friends of mine have had run ins.

1. A teacher at Jacks school was approached by a parent who wanted to discuss her childs reaction to an event. The teacher in a very defensive and dismissive tone told the mother "I did tell everyone they had another option but your child was not listening". She then turned her back and walked away from the flabbergasted mother.

2. A teacher at Hamish's preschool was seen grabbing two crying children in what was described as a rough way and raised her voice at the other staff calling "would someone help me with these two children, I have things to do". Unfortunately for her it was the mother of the a fore mentioned children who saw the event.

3.  Recently while at a pub, a friend and I asked an employee to change the air-conditioning temperature. While we waited we decided sit elsewhere and told the employee as he returned. When he went back behind the bar he exclaimed to his colleague that he thought we were "f**king stupid c**ts". Unfortunately for him my friends husband heard the comment and a situation occurred.

We all sometimes have bad days at work. Or just days where we are cranky. When is one able to make allowances for that?

Personally I don't think any of these situations are ok. Some of them though I think are understandable.   Trust me I have bad-mouthed clients behind their backs. The problem is that these people got caught.

I didn't mind that the pub worker called me a name. I'm sure he had had enough of difficult clients that day. But even Andrew said that if he had overheard the conversation he would have addressed the guy and felt right in doing so.

The first two cause me more of a problem. I could imagine feeling frustrated or dismissive with children and parents if I worked as a teacher. But these are our children and no parent would like to think that their teacher is not treating them with love and respect.

And yet what if these teachers were having a really bad day? Can we not make allowances?

In the end I guess the answer is no! Do what you want to us but if we ever catch you speaking that way to our children or in relation to our children, mumma bear will raise her head and bite yours off.

Circle of Life

When I was growing up my aunt and uncles loo used to be covered in little handwritten quotes, or sayings people had thought were funny, thing like "the meek shall inherit the earth, if that's ok with the rest of you" or "bad spellers untie!" One that was at eye level was " the first 3 minutes of life are the most dangerous, the last 3 are pretty dodgy too" 

Sometimes I am surprised at how much of my life seems to be about birth and death.  When you are around both things so often it makes you realise how close these things really are.  We all talk about it, everyone says it, but I wonder how many people realise how right it truly is. 

Today I was thinking about the career path I have chosen being there at the beginning of life (well autonomous life anyway) and it suddenly struck me that I had once spent some time with a woman who was a funeral director (Michelle), we talked about her job and what it entailed and she mentioned that she thought that I would make a good funeral director, at the time I was a little taken aback but the more I think about it I realise that the role of a doula and childbirth educator is very similar to that of a funeral director, you could even think of a funeral director as a doula for the dying, or for the dead.

I didn't make that term up, there are actually people who call themselves doulas for the dying and I think that a good funeral director is exactly that.  Michelle counseled my family when my mum died suddenly, she sat with us for hours while we grieved, she walked us through the decisions we had to make, she cared for my mums body and our families hearts during this time.  When my Aunt was told her cancer was terminal we all got together and Michelle came out to her home.  Libby talked about what she hoped for after her life was over and we talked about the details that we, her family, needed to know, what would happen, what choices were available etc.

In the same way as in birth the dying and the family of the dying need support, guidance and most importantly they need love.  I wonder if I would ever have the strength of character needed to make a career in the end of life , I wonder if like michelle I could find the gift in loving people through the last experience they will ever have.

Death is sad and scary and every time someone I know dies it lays heavily in my heart, but that is just one side of death because as certainly being with one aunt who died and another living with the knowledge she will soon die has given me cause to grieve and rant and mourn it has given me many more gifts, insight into my character, the ability to show love and peace with the ideas of life coming to an end somehow at sometime.

Birth and death are bound together so tightly, that the closer you look the more you realise how similar they really are, and what a gift it is to be around both.