BOLD is a play that was written by Karen Brody after interviewing 118 women on their birth stories, and then picking a few of them to portray. It is a play that shows how low risk mothers in America are giving birth today. Karen Brody writes "... I am a firm believer that childbirth must be mother centered. When the mother is happy and well cared for so is the baby because happy mothers instinctively protect their babies. Unfortunately childbirth today is not that simple."
Many stories warmed my heart. Women trusting their bodies and their intuition. Women feeling loved, supported and validated by their carefully chosen birth teams. Women knowing that their experience of birth matters. Women telling the truth of birth, both reassuring and warning women who have yet to face it. Women learning, as Ina May Gaskin is famous for saying, that their bodies "are not lemons". Women gaining access to the deep and lasting power of birth, knowing soul deep that their "body rocks", that they can meet any challenge. The play ends with all the women saying "I did it".
Some stories made my heart ache. Stories of fear and pressure in birth. A woman questions why she was told her baby was too big to birth vaginally (and then having a average sized baby). A woman who was told that her baby may die if she didn't have a cesarean (she had a very healthy baby). A woman with a breech baby who just wanted to go into labor on her own, to know her baby was ready to be born, to feel contractions before surgery- and was denied the experience of a birth her body would recognize.
Not only was this a powerful play, but it was for a great cause. GALS will be given the proceeds from the BOLD performance. GALS stands for Giving Austin Labor Support. GALS provides trained and experienced volunteers to support women who show up at Brackenridge Hospital in labor and have little or no support. Volunteers are doulas, nursing students, case workers, massage therapists, student midwives, and other mothers who are touched by the program.
BOLD was a group effort of many CTDA doulas giving a little to accomplish something so big: helping spread the word about the play, attending the play and giving moral support and hugs, sharing ideas, taking pictures, providing food, and more.
There was also a small group of doulas who gave really big. They gave so much of their energy and time to make BOLD possible. Our President Veronica Rice spent months organizing BOLD and finding the funding for it. Other cast members said she was calm and collected throughout. Gena Kirby gave CTDA the idea to do BOLD, and as Director planned rehearsals. Sally Leissner and Katie Stotts also helped find funding. Shelley Scotka was honored after the BOLD play because she doula'd the crew with emotional and physical support, and soup! The cast of BOLD all put in so much time to make the play the success it was:
Veronica Rice
Gena Kirby
Ruth Phy
Lisa Sanchez
Sally Leissner
Majbritt Rayas
Charlotte Del Toro
Nicole McCharen
Julie Garcia
© 2011 Sarah Webb, CD(DONA). All rights reserved.
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