Indigenous Peoples' Day

This will be a short post in honor of all the people who know the cost of who they are. 

I was deep into the process of giving birth to one of my kids. I was safe and all was going well but as every woman who has done this knows, it’s damnably hard. We (Len was with me) were in the birthing center at Chicago’s Illinois Masonic Hospital where, by then, I knew the midwives and they knew me. 

An intern was my midwife that evening though she under the direct supervision of veteran midwife Betty. The intern was getting nervous. (Not to get too deep in the weeds here, but we did have to throw my socks away later.) Betty told her to not worry, “Mary Beth has done this before and she’s good at it.” Someone mentioning that you are doing well is awesome encouragement in a rough moment. 

Then she said, as if just casually mentioning something at a cocktail party. “Once I attended a Native American woman. She was doing well until I happened to mention, ‘Oh, wow, it’s fifteen minutes till midnight. This baby will have a Columbus Day birthday!’

“That woman opened her eyes and growled, ‘No child of mine is having THAT birthday.’” 

“At which point she pushed hard and the baby was born.”

I heard the message. When nothing is going wrong, go as slow or as fast as you want. I pushed as hard as that unknown Native woman who inspired me - and my baby was born fine, healthy, and right then. 

Since that night, to me, Christopher Columbus has only ever been the guy who introduced the Western Hemisphere model for racism, rape, pillaging, looting, and enslavement.

So anyways. Know and honor the cost of who YOU are. We all come from the hard stories of our ancestors plus the hard work it has been to become the adults we are now.  We honor ourselves by honoring others. And vice versa.