I jumped without a net.
This week I gave notice of my resignation at the BIG CITY HOSPITAL. Walked past a woman laboring in the hall, all nicely hooked up to IVs, wearing her "property of the hospital" gown like a good girl and it turned my stomach a little.
I want to imagine something different.
I find it massively fucked up that it's totally okay to go to school, and get an education on how to care for children...as long as they're not your own. It's great to get a degree in educating kids...as long as they belong to someone else.
So ironic, when Sage was a baby, I felt COMPELLED to work (actually WAS compelled to work as the "state" was providing it's meager provisions to me and mine) just so people wouldn't think I was a "lazy" welfare recipient. But sneaky me, I got jobs, nothing sexy, which allowed me keep my baby with me, and until he was eighteen months old, and I was back in school for a few hours a day, he never was without me.
Now, dare I hope, after waiting so long to have another baby. After doing it by the book I could stay home and take care of my baby? Not likely. The capitalist machine keeps grinding.
But
I have a plan
There is a possibility that I might be able to do what I love. Educate women about birth, care for pregnant women, without being a nurse. I'm talking, of course, about being a doula. Not labor, not yet, not while Poppy's so small and needs me so much, but rather a post-partum and pre-natal doula. God knows, with as many high risk pregnancies out there I'd have a niche.
I wonder though, why it is that I lack the faith in myself to try to do this? I'd like to believe that I'm stronger than that. That I haven't swallowed the message that a) nothing can be done with out the permission of the capitalists and b)you must continue to live at the level of comfort to which you are accustomed.
Fuck that, let's live dangerously! Let's throw out the cable T.V! Dig up the dirt in the back yard for a garden, sell beautiful things! MAKE beautiful things! Grow rich in character and experiences and not in stuff!
I think I can do it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Thanks for this. Living in a city and struggling to make ends meet while Papi and I struggle to keep our relationship solid, our relationships to Stinkapee and the Shmolian solid, keep our relationships with our own selves solid, we have to also struggle against other people's ideas about what is expected. I get attitude from my father who doesn't think I'm working hard enough. He doesn't see me working outside the home. He doesn't understand my writing as my work. He doesn't think I'm bleeding and sweating and breaking my back enough. He likes giving us money. But like any good patriarchal overseer, he wants to see us jump more. I don't believe in working and struggling for the sake of working and struggling. That's not a value system I share with my father who is a workaholic. I believe that building life, family, intellect, spirit and home are right work that should be able to support us. I love what you've written here. I love the way you want your work to serve you and your family, as you serve other wimmin, rather than you just pursuing a career for the sake of being able to say you work outside the home while sweating and breaking your back. Congratulations.
Post a Comment