Death Midwifery from this Mystic’s Soul-Eyes

6 minute read

Unfolding as roses for the great primordial mother; that’s how I envision the death workers who come into my care. Each one, a gift to the creative source of nature.

My calling as a death midwife includes midwifing midwives to the path of death midwifery. This is a path that is a lifelong journey of personal and collective reclamation.

What can be effective art, activism, advocacy, soft business that rewrites the value of caregiving, and a spiritual path all at the same time? Death midwifery.

The word ‘midwifery’ has an ancient vibration to me.

Though the definition of the word midwifery is “a woman who is with” (usually with another person in childbirth), I feel that the word is non-gendered. As I’ve been this word for almost ten years, I know midwifery as a creative flow for art, a spiritual path, and a divine force that moves through vessels of its own choosing.

Where does the calling originate? I teach that the calling is born from the pulse of the collective-one-heart. It is from the source of all creation, it is from the ancestors, and it is from the earth’s push to survive. To me, the great primordial mother energy beckons our return to land, to community, to rest, to art, and to liberation for all.

This midwifery, like a bell, rings clarity through the one carrying it by clearing the cobwebs that keep them from fully embodying their death midwifery.

It magnetizes situations and people that need its touch to the one who carries it. What do my apprentices say about the nine months that they spend in Nine Keys Apprenticeship? They’ll say that it amazed them with magic, that it opened their eyes and minds and hearts, that it fully prepared them to be death midwives in their communities, that it crumbled the obstacles that impeded them from their work, that it amazed them with its whimsy and creative flow, and that it brought them into great intimacy with what it means to be alive.

The great primordial mother’s energy moves death midwifery through people that she chooses to carry it, be it, know it, and deliver it. When the midwife develops a secure link with their own midwifery and truly understands that they are the vessel for this movement, the work begins to take form on the material plane.

They become the rose, the photosynthesis, and the gardener.

Have you ever met a death worker who said that they don’t know why they are called to death work, but they just know that they are? The question “When did you get into death midwifery?” has always been an existential invitation for me. The answer truly is, “Death midwifery got into me. I was born with it.”

You may know the children who have the midwife’s nature. They may have a curiosity for all things that can’t be explained. They may exhibit a deeply caring nature for sick family members or animals. They may be quiet, acutely attuned to the subtleties in the room, or noticeably observant children. They may talk about things unseen and unheard as though they are seen and heard. They may be labeled or praised for their sensitivities. They may see right through people.

The death midwife who keeps the channel clear between their calling to the midwifery and releases strong attachments to the outcomes of their work will find that their midwifery speaks to them as a guide.

When a death midwife connects to their practice with reverence and an open mind, the calling within them speaks clearly. This is how I guide my death midwifery apprentices to find their death work. I cannot “train” them how to be a death midwife.

I can teach them everything they need to know about the art and the practicalities of the work, I can fill their baskets with the information they need to know about our current death care culture and what to expect when their work takes material form, but I can’t tell them what their death midwifery is. I love to be the mirror that helps them see their work!

Over the years of guiding death midwives, I have witnessed miracles in my apprentices’ and mentees’ death midwifery. My own death midwifery is a string of holy serendipitous moments.

It also weaves throughout the moments in my day-to-day living.  Some of my apprentices live their death midwifery in a cloistered sort of way, their calling brings them into deep devotion for the collective grief. Some of their midwifery takes form through their art and poetry. Some create a business for their work, simultaneously midwifing death while rewriting the value of ‘women’s work.’ Some of their callings weave in and out through all three incarnations.

No matter if their work is cloistered or very visible publicly, they are in service to their communities.

When a death midwife, through their soul-eyes, sees their calling taking shape out in the open, they are met with an added challenge, to remain close to the source of their calling and to relinquish expectations and timing to this midwifery.

When they find their balance between devotion and diligence, their midwifery brings forth the people and places that need their care. The creative flow for the mystical death midwife is powerful. It must be grounded through play and conscious day-to-day living. It has its own timing. It challenges the midwife over and over again to release, to let go, to lean into uncertainty, and to be receptive to its guidance.

I have witnessed miracles for death midwives who answer to their calling this way. I have seen how their work takes shape into something that is beyond their limited ideas about the work. When this happens, I see the great primordial mother’s hand.

Death will take away everything that keeps us from being pure consciousness. In the end, it takes away our body so that we can realize ourselves as pure love.

Death midwives who accept the invitation to this work as a spiritual path and a lifestyle tend to live in liminal places. They have a true understanding of the life/death/life cycles everywhere, and they know the temporary nature of everything. These knowings exude from them. They tend to gather around the threshold that sits between what has died and what is being born.

As we reclaim our sovereignty, as we lament what we’ve done to the planet, and as we bear witness to the violence of white colonial imperialism, the mystical death midwife puts their ears to the ground and their eyes inward.

Their hands remain available to help, and their hearts, breaking and mending, grow to be greater containers of love and creative flow.

They know what being alive in their body truly means.

Narinder Bazen