Birth story listening

Birth is a profound experience. It is the most vast physiological experiences that a body can naturally undergo. When we are submerged in profound and fundamental life experiences, it is often the case that we take time to digest what took place.

Sometimes birth can be incredibly confronting and we can come through the experience with unresolved thoughts, beliefs, somatic experience and emotions. Birth trauma isn’t something that happens to us, trauma occurs when an experience is too huge or challenging for us to digest and assimilate. No matter whether your birth experience appeared traumatic or ideal, it can be completely normal to feel troubled by some of your experience or to still feel as though some of the experience you had is still unresolved.

Storytelling not only helps to describe but also to shape our experience. Sometimes we can modify stories so that they be socially acceptable or sometimes we can inherit narrative from those around us (such as a doctor or birth keeper) about our birth story and this can alter our tale. Birth storytelling and listening facilitates an environment within which you are invited to tell your unfiltered story.

Birth story listening is work for anyone who feels like they still have something to process or digest around their experience of giving birth, experiencing pregnancy loss, termination.

The work is also for partners of birthing people, birth doulas and midwives.

This work is not a substitute for process orientated therapy. It is work that is facilitating inner reflection and noticing. The work isn’t about enforcing change, it is about bringing awareness to how we might re-frame our relationship with what happened.