Quotes on Midwife

In all cultures, the midwife's place is on the threshold of life, where intense human emotions, fear, hope, longing, triumph, and incredible physical power-enable a new human being to emerge. Her vocation is unique.

Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

If we want to find safe alternatives to obstetrics, we must rediscover midwifery. To rediscover midwifery is the same as giving back childbirth to women. And imagine the future if surgical teams were at the service of the midwives and the women instead of controlling them.

Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.

A film director is not a creator, but a midwife. His business is to deliver the actor of a child that he did not know he had inside him.

Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath.

Every midwife knows _x000D_ that not until a mother’s womb _x000D_ softens from the pain of labor _x000D_ will a way unfold _x000D_ and the infant find that opening to be born. _x000D_ Oh friend! _x000D_ There is treasure in your heart, _x000D_ it is heavy with child. _x000D_ Listen. _x000D_ All the awakened ones, _x000D_ like trusted midwives are saying, _x000D_ 'welcome this pain. _x000D_ It opens the dark passage of Grace.

The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.

When you are in hard labor, remember that the length of labor is usually proportional to the number of people around. Avoid the presence of anybody who might release adrenaline. The best situation I know for an easy birth is when there is nobody else around than an experienced, motherly and silent midwife who does not behave like a guide or an observer.

Speak tenderly; let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well.

Birthing is the most profound initiation to spirituality a woman can have.

The sobs and tears of joy he had not foreseen rose with such force within him that his whole body shook and for a long time prevented him from speaking. Falling on his knees by her bed. He held his wife's hand to his lips and kissed it, and her hand responded to his kisses with weak movement of finger. Meanwhile, at the foot of the bed, in the midwife's expert hands, like the flame of a lamp, flickered the life of a human being who had never existed before.

Socrates called himself a midwife of ideas. A great book is often such a midwife, delivering to full existence what has been coiled like an embryo in the dark, silent depths of the brain.