OM.Love story
OM. Our Midwife. OM. Our Matriarch. Why both? Known as the Queen of duality—perhaps it’s time for a brief re-intro and a little back story. My name is Tanya. A 6ft divine, active, earth woman with a strong lineage of warrior women before me. I’m a farm girl at heart, with half Italian blood line! When I first established my private midwifery business in 2020, I was at the time, also working as a midwife in the public health system. However, I quickly became known as Our Midwife, offering private midwifery services. Not long after that, life took me on an unexpected journey that found me leaving my role as a hospital midwife. This lead to the community of women I served both in and out of the hospital, crowning me as Our Matriarch. A gesture which has inspired me to rise into this archetype with commitment and devotion.
After becoming a Midwife and Mother simultaneously at the turn of the century, 1999, I embodied a unique life journey. A captivating dance of duality, not quite like any other….
I spent 25 years supporting women to birth in hospital, whilst I birthed my own five children at home.
I taught hundreds of women in Childbirth Education programs, whilst bypassing any such thing for my own journeys.
I gave pharmaceuticals to many people, yet I haven’t swallowed a Panadol in 25 years.
I suppose one could call my journey a juxtaposition! There is so much to converse about on this but that’s for another time.
Walking away from my position as a midwife in the public health system after 25 years stands as a testament to my unwavering commitment to body sovereignty. I worked in a small rural maternity unit. A place that felt like my second home. I was even born there myself. As were my siblings, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, niece & nephews.
The community of women I served were the fires that lead my purpose and passion during that lifetime and the unfolding of OM; a love story of duality as Our Midwife rising as Our Matriarch.
Crowned as Our Matriarch
One of my big missions in this era was the co-founding of a consumer group called @amama.info (Atherton Midwives and Mothers Alliance). This grew to be a feisty group of local women who passionately supported and advocated for local access to continuity of midwifery models of care. The rising of this tenacious group of women have been fire to my soul. It was these women who crowned me as Matriarch when they gifted me a poem titled “Seasons of a Woman” at a ceremony held in my honour as I closed out my journey as a hospital midwife and moved into supporting women to birth at Home. This poem beautifully describes the different energy that is harnessed when one moves from the archetype of woman to Matriarch.
Seasons Of Woman
Women, since always and for always, will be the ones who care...
Who nurture..
Who feed..
And create a welcoming home.
Women carry the eggs that hold the potential for new Life.
All women are Mothers, regardless of having birthed a physical child or not, we are seen as mothers.
When a woman becomes a Matriarch, she holds a position of leadership within her community,
She is well-respected and sought after, for her experience & knowledge.
A woman knows without knowing how she knows.
A Matriarch accesses this knowing, combines it with her trained skills and wisdom and applies it to specific situations & events.
A woman hears with her heart even that which is not spoken
A Matriarch listens to the unspoken & considers it as choice, an option or solution.
A woman sees what is missing, what is needed to create a whole.
A Matriarch weaves it into the matrix, an invisible strand that secures the greater good for her people, her community, her women & mothers.
She is the very fabric that brings community together, the one who holds you in her heart, no matter what.
She is the one, who is held in the Hearts of many, with deep gratitude, Love & respect, since always and for always
Author ~ Unknown
With deep honour, my connection with all the women I served in the hospital setting, will forever be etched in my heart and never lost.
As I choose to lead with love and pleasure, guiding women HOME to themselves I create a safe space for your stories to be told and your voices to be heard.
Our Matriarch is here to magnify the rising of women and their redemption in birth, motherhood, relationship and Sisterhood.
OM.Love,
Tanya.X.
