Songs from the Womb

Book excerpt: Just as Women Who Run with the Wolves helped women to reassert themselves, Benig Mauger shows that it is necessary for women to assert themselves and their genuine needs which are repressed by the technology surrounding the birth process. In a groundbreaking and highly readable book, Mauger places birth and life in the womb as a formative soul experience creating patterns we carry with us into later life. She argues that there is a "loss of soul" encountered by many due to our modern medicalized way of birth which strips nature of its spiritual dimension. Drawing on her work as a Jungian psychotherapist, she takes the reader into the therapy room to witness the healing of birth wounds. Based on her experiences as a birth teacher, therapist, and mother, the author writes about the joys and pains of giving birth and being born through real life/birth stories. The technology of medicine and its patriarchal establishment imbues women with a sanitized, pain-free birthing philosophy. Here are stories of joyful anticipation in pregnancy. The Wounded Mother is an archetypal energy in us, and this book suggests that we may need to question certain aspects of modern birth practices, to strive for a more holistic approach to pregnancy and birth so as to heal soul wounds that have become so prevalent today.