Birth Story weaves together the hand written birth stories of nearly a dozen women, using their words on paper as weft with textural handspun and handdyed yarns. Tapestry techniques combine with a loom controlled multishaft weave pattern, and are accented by braided plaits and twisted fringe to tell a multi-voiced story of bringing new life into the world - combining experiences of joy and of trauma - that pulls from a rich history of “women’s work” including weaving, midwifery, and parenthood while it looks looks towards a future where birthing bodies are honored and supported in their most vulnerable and sacred moments.

Birth Story physically represents the collective wisdom and life experience found in sharing stories of the birth experience. At times joyful and empowering or even orgasmic, at times traumatic and disempowering, and at times everything in between; birth is often a pivotal moment in the life of the bearer. This piece represents these experiences by literally using the handwritten accounts of over a dozen firsthand birth experiences of women across the USA and Europe as weft. Weaving ink-and-emotion-on -paper into this piece was a profound experience and I’m so honored and humbled that my collaborators were willing to share their experiences in this way.

Birth Story was woven in 2019 as part of the Birth collection. It was exhibited in the 2019 64th Parallel, Fairbanks Arts Association’s annual juried art show featuring Interior Alaskan works. It currently resides in a private collection.

This morning, cuddled up with my babe, gazing down into her cooing smiling face I told her "I love you more than all the world."

In that moment of hearing the words come out of my mouth I realized it wasn't true. The sentiment behind the words burns fiercely in my heart, make no mistake. I love her just as much as I ever dreamed I was capable of loving. And then some.

But this morning I paused. I looked into her wide eyes with the impossibly lush lashes she did not inherit from my genetics, and I told her that it wasn't true. I told her that mama loves her just as she loves all the world. I told her mama loves her to the moon and back, loves her the distance between every star and back. But she is OF this world, and in that moment this morning, I realized with startling clarity that I cannot love her more than that which she is.

This Earth that we live on is a part of us. We are a part of her. The interconnectedness of this web of matter and energy and will and volition is impossibly deep. We speak the deepest of truths when we say "Mother Earth."

“Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu
-may all beings experience happiness and freedom, and may I contribute in some small part to that happiness and freedom-”

As mothers we are granted visceral access to that space within the human being that has the capacity for unconditional love. It is like a spiritual fast track (advance to go, collect two hundred dollars). Our eyes are primed to see this one small piece of the universe as utterly precious.

As women, whether we choose to bear a child in our womb in this lifetime or not, we contain within us the ability to create new life. To nurture that new life. And to love it unconditionally.

It is our job - our duty, our dharma - to use that gift of perspective, that gift of capacity, that gifted wellspring of unconditional love to encompass all the world. This is how we heal the world.

If we as humans cannot heal from a place of fear - and we cannot; fear stimulates the sympathetic nervous response and its cascade of stress hormones, the physiologic antithesis of the healing process - how can we expect to heal the world from a place of fear? How can we expect to heal the political and personal divides and ailments that fill the news with stories of carnage and heartbreak and horror from a place of fear? How can we expect to heal the imbalances in our climate, halt and heal the destruction of ecosystems and species from a place of fear? Of hopelessness and dread? We cannot. We can only hope to heal the world from a place of love.

As mothers, nay as humans, we bear the sacred capacity to love.

Unconditional love. Love that is without conditions. What would that look like in our world? On a large scale? What - truly - would you see if you were to look at your neighbor, your elected officials, your in-laws, the cashier at the grocery store through the lens of unconditional love? Let's get radical for a moment. What would happen if we saw the refugees flooding Europe with unconditional love? What would happen if we saw the jihadists and terrorists through eyes that love unconditionally? What about the black men and boys that disproportionately fill our prison systems? The welfare mother? The indigenous peoples the world over whose lands are being bulldozed and drilled in the name of progress?

And what would happen if we - globally as humans, locally as people, intimately as women and men - acted from that place of unconditional love?

This is the revolution I would like to see. This is how we heal what is broken and hurting in the world. It is as simple as seeing the ills in our world as tears on the cheeks of an infinitely precious child.

We had this discussion this morning, my daughter and I. Deep spiritual philosophy. She laughed and reached to pull the glasses off my face. Clear vision, indeed. "I love you as I love the world."