Cesarean Voices -A web site by, for, and about cesarean born people
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Writings and Art by Jane English

My own interest in the implications of being cesarean born was not purely intellectual. It was motivated by chaos and discomfort in my personal life. Beginning to understand what it meant to have been born non-labor cesarean seemed to bring some clarity and direction into what otherwise seemed to be a hopeless morass of emotion and failed social and relationship situations in my life. It also connected my body and feelings to the sense of light I was pursuing in my photographic work.

Who knows what it really means to be cesarean born! I am not just cesarean -- I am also white, female, living in far northern California at age 55 in 1997 (and at age 77 in Vermont in 2020). I can only write about what happened for me during the years I have used "cesarean born" as a lens through which to look at the world and at myself. I have been beginning to define the term "cesarean born", at least the psychological and spiritual aspects of it. Others will extend, refine and change the definition. They will reshape the lens from the inside through their experiences. The lens can also be reshaped from the outside through observations and scientific studies of cesarean born people. Both kinds of redefinition are useful. They are complementary.

It has been an amazing journey. The works listed below show the evolution of my thinking - the later works not necessarily being better or "more true" than the early ones! My intention with this website is to give away the goodies that have come my way during these years of exploration.



The Big Picture - Being Cesarean Born - a one page summary of 50 years of exploration - 2021

The Gift of Expanded Boundaries - stories and musings from a non-labor cesarean born person - 2021

An overview by Jane English - with art and writings (1.6 mb pdf file)

Birth Poem and photograph - 1981, included in Different Doorway

Cesarean Birth and Psychotherapy - first published writing by JE about cesarean birth - 1982

Story of the first cesarean birth - from a shamanic journey - 1984

Different Doorway: Adventures of a Cesarean Born - 1985 - a book

Being Born Cesarean: Physical, Psychosocial and Metaphysical Aspects - a paper published in the journals of both APPPAH and ISPPM - 1992 and 1994

Four Perspectives on Being Born Cesarean - talk in Heidelberg, Germany - 1995

Cesarean related paintings by Jane - some are color versions of Different Doorway illustrations

Technological Birth - brief notes

Review of William Emerson's video on healing cesarean birth trauma

Cesarean birth as a different native culture - notes

Questions for further study - notes 1984

Jane's homepage - more about her and about her photography and publishing business.


Birth Poem - March 9, 1981

Snail squirming grey slime

Tail long in water

Forming

Unforming

Clear starlight silver shimmer

Soft fire above me

Breath exploding in fragments of light

Expanding to the limits of the universe

Disintegrating

Dying

Heavy stone

Holding me against the explosion of

Light & Touch & Sound & Breath

A cool still dark center

I am



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