Friday, September 10, 2010

Pondering a name shift, and hosting shift

If it's before September 14, you may (or may not) have noticed my poll.  So far, my results are one for No! and one for Why?

The only one I can address is Why?, so here it is.

I love doulary, I really do.  I'm passionate about birth, I believe every woman who wants one absolutely deserves access to a doula, I believe the presence of a doula can really augment and improve the birth experience, whatever that experience is.  I believe in the work... I just haven't been participating in it, not once since my training in July of 2008.  I have a doula heart, but not the street cred, if you will, and out of respect for the work and the professionalism of my fella doulas, I'd prefer not to refer to myself as one "professionally" (this is still technically my business' blog) until and unless I get my ducks in a row.  When it comes down to it, I'm a birth junkie massage therapist more than a doula.

I know I just included myself in the world of doulas while excluding myself just a moment ago.  I do still consider myself doula, but in a very casual way.  If someone came to me and said, "I really want you to be my doula", I wouldn't automatically turn them down.  I would be honored to be there for them, especially someone I love.  I know perfectly well that being certified or not doesn't mean a lot from a legal standpoint; no one's going to come and say "You can't call yourself a doula because you're not certified!"  However, I'm making my own distinction.  It's a little like saying, "I sometimes go hiking with my friends" rather than proclaiming "I'm a hiker!"  I love the work, but it's not my Work; massage is my Work and in time I hope to add labor massage to my repertoire, but that's not doulary.

Added to the above, the subjects I like to talk about here in my blog and on Twitter have a range that extends beyond pregnancy and labor into general health, herbalism, healing, spirituality/religion, child development, and life in general.  I try to look at life via the Wise Woman way: very holistic, working toward healing/wholeness/holiness with (shocking enough!) wisdom, and compassion, and looking at "problems" as opportunities to progress, rather than something that must be fought against and conquered.  I've been reading Susan Weed's Healing Wise, which is a fabulous book that helps outline what the Wise Woman way is, and serves to remind us that very often, we already know it.  I'm learning a lot, and gaining deeper understanding of a lot of things about this way, but it's not necessarily new; these are mostly concepts I've been introduced to before, whether by others or by my own pondering.  Given all of this, I'm feeling this reawakening urge to be a Wise Woman, to heal in ordinary ways, to nourish, teach, and follow the invisible traditions of my foremothers.

Healing doesn't always need to be an elaborate concoction of expensive mechanical protocols.  Sometimes those measures are called for, even in the Wise Woman way, and when they are, aren't we all glad we have them?  I wouldn't have some very dear people in my life without mechanical protocols, but they are not always indicated, and it is that path--seeking for healing/wholeness/holiness even as you accept the truth of what is--that I want to follow and present in my eclectic way.  It is that very eclectic nature that says to me that I need a broader term than only calling myself a doula (when I barely am one) or only a massage therapist (especially since that's such an awkward term; can you imagine a blog called "The Abundant Massage Therapist?"  Where's the subtle poetry in that?)

So there my long-winded reasons for considering the name change.  Huzzah.

In other news, I'm waiting to hear back from my current hosting company about canceling my service.  I've been with them since their start-up in 2006, and they're a very good company with a good service for providing massage therapists with user-friendly, decently attractive websites, especially if you don't want to spend gobs of money initially paying someone else to build your site.  However, I've found the amount of money I've spent in four years compared to the clients I've received as a result of the site to be, shall we say, grossly disproportionate.  I also want to integrate some features on my site that are impossible to achieve through their service.  Therefore, I'm hoping I will have authority over my domain by tonight, or Monday at the latest, and can begin building a new site.  You might even see this blog become the front page of abundancemassage.com in the interim!  We shall just have to see.

UPDATE: I have control of my domain name.  Woo hoo!

Jena Vincent of Abundance Massage

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