Coffe, Drinks, and Conversation

A while ago I posted that I had went had drinks as a wind down/detox with my fellow black midwifery students and that the conversation was a little...dry. (see the last point of this post) Well, we tried again, the conversation was much better...much more personal...much more rewarding, for me at least.

I mentioned how I was saddened/concerned/frustrated with women's relationships right now. I said that I thought homophobia was one reason why we're so stagnant and distant from eachother. How I wish I would have developed the kinds of relationships I had in high school with my male friends with some women friends. Even my closest female friends have not been as close, literally, as my male friends have been. I struggled to define I wanted, what i was talking about as they asked me to clarify. I used the analogy of how I saw a movie once where three or four married couples went on a yearly retreat to discuss their lives for that past year...their goals, what they needed from others, what they were missing, asking for advice, sharing their expertise, etc...but also that they took walks and cooked together in the mornings, at dinner together and, importantly, everyone's business was on the table for real, honest discussion. I want that, but with women, specifically. I think it's sad that women only hold hands if they're in an intimate relationship....best friends don't walk the down the street holding hands anymore. I think it's the same, or worse, for men...I'm thinking about how in some cultures men great eachother with kisses on the cheek, but not the men I know (or the women). How even our hugs are almost non-existent. Even that yearly ritual of cooking the holiday meal together is lost because now we all just show up individually with a prepared dish. It used to be that everyone met up in the morning and cooked together. I used to have this when I was very very little because I was very close with my female cousins. We shared the laps of our parents, and especially grandmothers. We took baths together, in bathtubs and even sinks when we were small enough. And then we got older and of course that all that changed. But what also changed was the touch. I mean simple touch. Like when you were little and you whispered something to your girlfriend by putting your hand around her ear and you leaned into her ear to say it...remember that? Or when parents and grandparents use to hold your face in their hands when they spoke to you? We don't do that anymore. We used to smooth eachother's clothes, we used to put eachothers' hair in place....all lost arts, or diminishing. I have a few cousins who probably still interact this way with, but not many at all. And no women friends who I interact this way with. And we talked about how this affects birth, especially home birth because it's more personal. I thought about how I'd like to be surrounded by certain women at birth, but how that probably wont happen because how impersonal we are in real life will get in the way of the touch, and talk, and comfortableness we would be able to achieve in the birth environment. I also mentioned that when my friends was home with cervical cancer it would have so natural for me to bathe her, but how it would never work because she could not/would not allow it...it's such a vulnerable place...but women used to do this all the time, and in other parts of the world, and some underground parts of this world, they still do...what happened to us? One of my friends said that she thinks I will see at the black midwives conference this year because a lot of what I'm talking about still exists there (she went last year) they stand in a circle and hold hands, talking, sharing. They give eachother massages for the touch aspect, too.

I'm still thinking on this...

chime in wherever...