Before becoming the editor of Fat Nugs Magazine, I worked as a birthkeeper and postpartum care provider for nearly a decade. I still do this work for my community because it has become undeniable to me that birth and motherhood have innumerable characteristics in common with plant medicines and the shifts they invoke. From the fact that both mind-altering plants and mind-altering birth are burdened by illogical rules and regulations to the truth that birthing and tripping in captivity amongst strangers is a seriously bad idea, the two worlds are really one, and it’s time to restructure our lives accordingly.
My perspective comes from knowing that birth itself is a psychedelic trip meant to catalyze families into a paradigm of love, connection, and oneness with the universe, just like mushrooms do. Allow me to explain this through the lens of story and intuitive knowing.
BIRTH IS THE MEDICINE
I gave birth to my third daughter, freely and without the presence of anyone but my husband, on my bedroom floor. I retrieved her from the depths of my soul, where hers was entangled with mine—a depth I had never before accessed. She led me there. I could feel her tiny legs propelling her deeper into the portal, asking me to assist with the expulsion she so desperately wanted. She was ready to traverse the realms and breathe the air, as opposed to the waters of her private ocean. She was born wet, slippery, pink, and wide-eyed into her father’s hands. She and I couldn’t take our eyes off each other as we processed, together, the most holy of experiences available to humankind.
This is not the way I describe my first two daughters’ births. They were mechanical, medicated, scripted, manipulated, violated, and stolen from me. The epidurals numbed me. The doctors rushed me. I felt no tiny feet pushing against my ribs to move toward the light. I felt no depth. I felt nothing at all. My mind was preoccupied with texting people updates. Hands went inside of me, measured me, stretched me, emptied bags of my urine, inserted needles, and took my blood.
Sounds like a pretty bad trip, yeah?
We are now in the Age of Aquarius. Secrets are being shared, truths are being revealed, and we are moving toward a new way of being human. This new way, which is really the old way, which is really the eternal way, centers nature and all of her gifts. Many of us have realized, with the assistance of plant medicine especially, that we are connected to nature; we are nature; and we are meant to live embodied lives in congruence with our natural surroundings.
“Trust. Let go. Be open.” – Bill Richards (Clinical Psychologist/Psychedelic Researcher), and Every Birthkeeper That Ever Was
This has led to a modern-day renaissance akin to that of the 1960s and ‘70s, a time during which psychedelics and natural birth were weaving themselves into the fabric of society, making governments and medical complexes everywhere feel threatened. We’ve all heard of Timothy Leary, but the story of Stephen Gaskin, professor of creative writing and semantics turned psychedelic thought leader, and his wife, Ina May Gaskin, self-taught independent midwife, reveals the deeper nuances of this time beautifully.
Ina May is known for co-founding The Farm and writing Spiritual Midwifery and Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, both containing powerfully psychedelic birth stories. Along with other self-taught midwives, she supported the births of 11 babies during a bus caravan for the Astral Continental Congress tour, calling in a spiritual and social revolution.
In the year 2022, we still want to free our minds, our plants, our bodies, and more. So long as we have access to people who know people, legalization is just a small hurdle. We grow our own mushrooms, synthesize our own LSD, and birth our own babies.
Yes, we birth our own babies. Doctors don’t “deliver” them, and real midwives don’t “help them out.” Sovereign mothers birth their own babies with their own bodies, thanks to a divine synthesis of hormones and internal desires made real. When allowed to do so freely—without observation, interjection, or shaming—the process of bringing our babies earthside unfolds as the most epic of all psychedelic trips.
