Dec 10
I was led to connect with Pachamama, but instead of heading to the jungle in the East, I was led toward Mindo in the north west. So I thought OK, the clinic must be about the local people there. Then, I went to the Butterfly House, a cool tourist attraction, a beautiful place in a few weeks when construction is done that houses many kinds of butterflies in all stages of development. Very cool to learn about them. Beautiful and awesome in their sensitivity – they responded to my kalimba playing and within minutes, settled down and alighted on the flowers. Anyway, Rosie is the owner and a new friend. She sat with me and filled me in on the ways of Mindo living. Once people hear that I am going to live here, they immediately open up and the welcome is wonderful.
So I found out that the local people will not populate the Birthing Sanctuary. They are given free care at the hospital 15 miles from here. Rosie said they have been so spoiled by so many foundations coming in here to bring their specialty that they are given everything, Catholic education, medical care, Christmas gifts, …… so she said, don’t count on them unless you offer your services free: They don’t need anything other than the clothes on them, so they don’t work. They are not interested in becoming part of any work force – there is no motivation. (Hawaii 50 years ago.) – Until they buy a truck. Then they become drivers so they can make their truck payments. “So I hope I did not pop your bubble.” she said. I told her it just moved me back into my true purpose – A Birthing Sanctuary, not a birthing clinic.
Dec 11
I meet an older woman named Judy, who was an ESL teacher for years and we go to see her home that is a beauty in the back of a very moist ravine. She drew it on a napkin and ta-daa! She said she would give me the plans. I’m thinking, why did this just happen? and I sense that I will be building. She is a trip, and a chocoholic, and she knows where this special brownie place is, so we will be seeing each other again!
I meet the town OB, whose name I can’t remember. This OB is a woman of great heart who is here for a year, offering prenatal care. (Every doctor finishes school as a family practice doc, and then has a mandatory year in a rural place to give back to the country. Then they can specialize in their desired field.) Sara, a beautiful woman in her mid thirties, works next door at the Clinica del Salude, health clinic, and started her year in July. We have not spoken yet as I have to know what’s going on in me first. Our hearts are pulling us together though and we both feel it. What a meeting it will be when it happens. It feels to me like we will be working together.
December 12, 2009
Today the gringos who are all staying in this hostel go on a field trip. It’s pouring rain and we go up to the house that Karen and Gary are building. It’s going to be really beautiful. They are bird watchers and the house is built for that. (Did I say that Mindo is the bird watching capital of the world? With 1900 species!) Without children, their house will be left to Mindo as a bird sanctuary. This house in Hawaii would cost $8-900,000, and he said it should come out to costing $80,000. We then go down the hill to their neighbors who are camping out, as I did when I was their age, while planning and building their house. He makes jewelry and she is a full time doula, the real thing too! (She started 10 years ago but still had another job till 2 years ago.) Every question I ask, she answers with the same words I would say! She works with moms (and dads!) starting at 5 months until the birth. She said the doctors love her and hate her because they know that the women she works with will use no drugs nor have epidurals. And because it is she who is there, the doc knows they can come in at the last minute. She teaches that the drugs are not good for the baby and wake the parents up to this. What a meeting! They are working to move to Mindo instead of staying here for 3 days a week and in Quito for 4. She has an incredible heart and I look forward to knowing them.
Then we went to a bird watching restaurant in Los Bancos, with a spectacular view of a valley with a river at the bottom. Truly there were fifty hummingbirds whirling all around the feeders and ten kinds of Tanengers eating bananas. We topped off this rainy day with a gooey homemade brownie, made with homemade chocolate. Joe showed us every step of chocolate making and served this brownie that was better than anyone’s mom could make! And there were such tastes in this brownie, several different tastes that he said were from the individual beans. Wow, such a different experience of choc ko la te. (We called Judy to join us.)
Dec 13
I didn’t sleep last night after midnight when a neighbor came home making a lot of noise. What am I doing here???? Going out in a car around Mindo, and seeing Los Bancos yesterday makes it really obvious that this is such a third world country. Really nothing but shacks along the road, until you get to two big houses then shacks again. And I’m doing what? Why did I choose this place, I am asked by others continually. My small self, has not, my higher Guidance has. I have not even seen enough of the country to choose this place, except that it’s not Quito, the megamaxiopolis. Yet I keep feeling that this is exactly right. So whenever I get to the mountain of doubts from seeing this “reality” in front of my eyes, I go over all the reasons that I have discovered that make it right. So what are the reasons to go ahead?
Mother Nature is pristine. Major reason.
I understand that building here is so much cheaper, and this allows me to see that a Birth Sanctuary can finally be built exactly as is my vision. Major reason.
Knowing that I can simply build what I want and not have someone from building, permitting, or whatever, say no. Major reason.
Hearing that the land has been prepared for birthing, that it has what is needed. Major reason.
Mindo, (pronounced ‘Meendo’,) is just about to take off and become an alternative haven for the country. It attracts many people from Quito on the weekends and in the summer. Global tourists all the time – which is how we had a gringo field trip. Right now it needs everything. Anyone’s passion is welcomed, (which is how there is a chocolate factory.) There is little infrastructure aside from the roads and there’s an amazing system of busses so cheap transportation is possible all over the country. This too is major. Hopefully more people will stay, bringing their gifts.
It hit me just two days ago that I am to start with raw land. Wow! What a shift, after thinking that I could start with a B&B and have part of it done. That is so huge when I am alone and not with a group, or at least somebody who is as committed as I am to this vision. It’s probably why I am so overwhelmed. So how do i do this????? But as soon as I get it, the next pieces come through
This morning I hear the question, “Why do you think that you are so utterly alone here on the physical plane?” The answer is, so that I can see my level of creation. It’s all my creation, the good and the not so good. So how am I going to do it? Go home? Look in another place, only to end up here in Mindo again if it truly is the place where this is to be? I’ve been shown these two wonderful women, the doula and the OB. That is stunning Support of Nature that should help me to say, “OK! I’m going to build the Birthing Sanctuary right here and right now.” But I see how few services are here, how there is no infrastructure, how the needs are so different than I thought. So what will I place my attention on? The overwhelming reality that IS? Or, what I know can be within a year?
Everybody who speaks English is a support system for me. They are all blown away that I am here to do this and each has offered their help. Susan, Rosie, Karen and Gary, Judy and Renee, the man I met yesterday at the restaurant. Support everywhere I look, and each offering help with building to make it seamless, instead of the karmic experience they each had. The nature support is there for building, towards becoming a resident, toward helping me. I better look for land. I guess I’m building.
Dec 21
My, how time warps for the days have flown, yet it’s only been weeks since I came – Dec 4!! But on the inner planes it’s been 3 months since I’ve arrived since night time is as productive as daytime. After a very hard 3 days where the waves of culture shock kept rolling through, everything has been rearranged and I understand / remember where I am being led. I can’t possibly share the journey that I was taken on, because there were so many steps to it. And un-ravelings. But this morning after the noisiest night possible, the dawn breaks and clarity arises to make sense of all the pieces I have been given through time about the Birthing Sanctuary.
The purpose of the Sacred Birthing Sanctuary is
to renew the wisdom of the indigenous cultures of the world.
Remembering and reinstating birth in the ways of Natural Law
protects babies,
their higher states of consciousness, their ability to be present,
& their innate self-love.
These babies know they are born to hold and renew their culture’s ancient ways, the ways in alignment with their Divine blueprint, for this is their culture’s unique footprint on the face of this Earth that holds their purpose, their offering to Great Spirit.
I saw it: The buildings, the school, the birthing temple, the community, the gardens and orchards, the animals, the pristine place in nature with clean waters running by and through it. I saw the first family who came to cook and build. I saw the elders choose and groom the young parents who would carry the baby to ressurect the ways of their people. I saw the parents who came in their indigenous clothes, carrying the pride of their tribal ways. I saw them come with their lovers and their mothers and sisters. I saw us teach them the ways we’ve learned to take back to their people in their land. I saw how it would work.
I saw the people involved as the holder of this Sanctuary, and how it came into being. With my Christmas plans already erased, I am on to the next part of this adventure: finding the players of this incredible Sacred container. This is why we have all worked so hard! Thank you each of you. Thank you and Merry Merry Christmas. May all blessings pour over you all. May the love and light from this work that we are honored to do together, be as a balm poured over you in all the ways that you need. May we each know the importance of the piece that we play so that together Sacred Birthing flourishes to accomplish the task that was set for it.