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Come share some birth conversation with grandmother birth activists ​Jane Hardwicke Collings & Rhea Dempsey as they share through stories and ceremony the threads that are being eroded by trauma in the current culture.

Raising funds for

Thursday 17th October, 6:30-9:30 pm @ Mullumbimby Civic Hall
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Jane is a postmenopausal grandmother at the sunset of her life. She is a mother of a blended family with 4 adult children and 3 grandboys, and 1 granddaughter. She is a former Registered Nurse and worked in that capacity in Paediatric Intensive Care Units and Women’s Operating Theatres. She became a midwife at 26 and left the hospital system so as not to be complicit with institutionalised acts of abuse and violence on women and babies masquerading as safety. She ‘grew up’ in the homebirth world and was a homebirth midwife for 30 years in the city and then rural areas. Her own births have taught her who she is and what she is capable of. Her menopausal experience has taught her to focus on preparing for the great-great-grandchildren.

Rhea is a passionate woman of birth. She is the mother of three daughters, and grandmother of five delicious home born grandchildren. Her understanding of birth has been gained over four decades of working with pregnant and birthing women, their partners, support people, midwives, doulas and medical practitioners in home and hospital settings. Rhea is recognised as an insightful commentator on the difficulties women, who have a yearning for normal physiological birth, face in navigating contemporary birth culture. Her two books are a distillation of insights into birth gained from the countless experiences she has been privileged to witness both in the birth space and in the counselling room. Her first book Birth with Confidence: savvy choices for normal birth, explores the issue of embracing the physiological intensity, as well as mapping out a path for powerful birthing. Her second book Beyond the Birth Plan: getting real about pain and power explores the deeper emotional and psychological dynamics impacting birthing potential.

Rhea feels an urgency – a grandmother’s urgency – to continue agitating about birth issues whenever and wherever she can.

https://www.birthingwisdom.com.au/

Light refreshments will be served, please BYO cup to reduce waste. 

Please arrive at least 10 minutes early, event will begin at 6.30pm sharp 

Love, Jane and Rhea! x 

A booking confirmation will be sent via email immediately- Please check your junk or SPAM if you can not see this.

Photo via @priestessyourlife from Seven Sister’s Festival 2017 ‘Birth in Dystopia’