<I think we need to hold a big slumber party...Also we will need
lots of chocolate, chips and beverages. No one will be allowed to wear
make-up or a bra, and we can all paint our toenails..."
My women friends and I just had exactly such a slumber party! We are all
nurses in maternal/child health - a couple of midwives, me, the others in
public health nursing now, all having "escaped" from hospital nursing, and
none of us would go back for all the money in the world. We formed an
intense women's group a couple of years ago, and meet monthly, and every
fall we rent a cottage on the lake for a weekend. Mostly we don't talk about
work, but the shared experience and shared orientation to mothers & babies
is a "given". It colors everything else about us, it's what we're all about
even when we're not working or talking about our work. Every time I am with
these dear friends, it gives me hope and love and strength, and repairs some
of the damage from the "regular" world.
We don't waste our time "trashing" or "bashing", though. At our retreat last
weekend, we held a celebration and ritual acknowledging the two of us who
have just "released" our daughters off into the wider world of college &
living outside of our sheltering wings. PLus we ate potato chips with actual
sour cream onion dip! Toe-nail painting too!
I think that all of us who work in the under-paid, under-valued,
frequently-overlooked work of supporting the health and well-being of
mothers and babies need something like this. It feeds us, as breastmilk
feeds growing babies. And the more stressed or distressed one of our number
is, the more she needs this group nurturing, just the way the sicker or
weaker a baby is the more it needs its mother's milk.
Cathy Bargar RN, IBCLC Ithaca NY
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