It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!

Did the Romans know the exact day that their empire had collapsed? Did the Egyptians know the exact day their civilization had ended? Did someone look at their watch, and say um yep, tools down, the Egyptain period is now over. Go home everyone! How do we know the dates when things change, when the world shifts, when the old is replaced by the new?

Sometimes changes are brought about on the waves of a cataclysmic KA-BOOM!!!!!! And sometimes civilisations topple without a fuss. We reach the end of a journey and hit a brick wall, or dead end, forcing us to turn back.

Is the end of the world the Mayans predicted a literal ending? Or a seismic shift, a chapter closing in the book of humanity?

I remember during my A-levels getting turned onto the concept of history as being like a gyre - a rising and falling of beliefs and civilisations, behaving like overlapping back-to-back cones - ideas starting with a pin-point moment and then widening to their peak before retracting again just as another new idea takes seed.There's something rather beautiful, mathematical, geometrical - even  poetic about all this swirling isn't there? It pulsates and swells in an endless movement, graceful and completely perfect.

I love the sense of movement and dance suggested in this way of looking at the world. The thread of time becomes a whirling dancing dervish. Isn't there something beautiful about this flow, this endless flow -  onwards.... onwards... onwards...

I believe we are dancers in this life, swirling and swaying, swimming and flying on the tides. Making the world turn with our actions and thoughts. Sometimes we ride the waves and sometimes they get the better of us - Learning how to surf the waves of life seems the only way to go happily with the flow.

How should we embrace the un-apocalypse? The end of the world that the mayans predicted? The moment that things shifted but we barely felt it? The end of this civilisation to make way for the next?

Gandhi once said "Be the change you want to see in the world"

I plan to embrace and be the change gently but with passion in 2013 and beyond. I hope to ride the turning tides towards saner, more healing times.

I was really surprised when a friend turned to me today and said "You know what ? I have had such a shitty year. But coming to your home has been like soul medicine for me. I come here, and breathe slower, I feel calmer. I feel more at peace with everything, and find it really relaxing just being around you"

I laughed at first. I was like "Are you serious? I always think my house is a really lively place with the boys flaring up at each other throughout the day, mess everywhere, and an atmosphere chaos!!!"

She said "No, seriously. I come here and feel calm, leaving a little less stressed than when I arrived."

Many others have said the same thing to me.

I think I sometimes forget that my family, my home, actually has a healing effect on others, because I get so caught up in the chaos of it all, the swirling, crazy whirling dervish of it all! It can be hard to look past the mess, the paddies and tantrums, and see something beautiful, something peaceful! Maybe it is because of our dancing, because of our chaos that others are drawn to us?

And maybe you do that too.

Maybe you forget that just being you is pretty fucking awesome too. In all your messy, and flawed  glory. That your gifts to the world are all inside you.

It's not about what you have on the outside, your external success or material stuff. All that is just the dressing, the wrapper. In the wider sense, the Western world needs to step back from being so unsustainably materialistic, so constantly obsessed with more more more. With how things look on the outside. With how much stuff they have, and the pursuit of it - at what cost?

So as the old world ends, what will you do to heal yourself and the others around you? How will you honour your gifts to the world? This is surely our real work on this earth - no? To be a medicine to each other?

Everyone, everyone has their part to play, everyone has their own unique gifts and contribution.

Through my birth work, I hope to play my little part in the revolution towards gentler birth after the rise of male-dominated, sterile and rather brutal birthings became the norm.

I hope to help keep the world turning in my own small way, with healing hands, healing touch and healing presence. I hope to offer up a really useful birth book to contribute to the great body of work from the loving writer-midwives and Doulas who have come up with such amazing books that have shaped a gentle way forwards out of the overly clinical era we have found ourselves in.

This is my contribution but there are so many millions of actions we can all do to heal the earth we're all part of, that we're all connected to, that we all share, and that we are all dancing upon. Each person dances their own dance, dreams their own dream, and heals the world in their own particular way just by being true to themself.

Happy Solstice, Welcome back sun, and happy new world everyone!!!