Rebozo & Emotional Intimacy
Disclaimer: This post is going to be long and rambly! It’s more or less a journal entry while all of this wisdom imparted on me from 50 amazing birth professionals is still fresh on my mind. If you just want a summary, copy and paste it into ChatGPT or something, haha.
This past weekend, I was lucky to be able to attend an amazing rebozo workshop with Naolí Vinaver, a traditional Mexican midwife with 40 years of experience attending 1800 births. Melissa Chappell at Utah Birth Suites did such a great job hyping up the experience as something transformational for her, and honestly, that’s all I needed to know. Attending a workshop was near the top of my 2025 business goals — I’m committed to continuous education to help me be a more well-rounded birth worker, and I loved the day of our Birth Worker training where our class with Seasons and Angie joined Melissa’s doula class to practice counter pressure techniques, massage techniques, and rebozo techniques, to help relieve pain and help labor progress.
Despite me repeatedly putting my intentions into the universe of attending a workshop this year to expand my skillset, I actually spent a couple of weeks trying to talk myself out of going. I kept telling myself, I just have FOMO, I’m just insecure about myself and seeking opportunities to make myself feel confident that I belong in the birth space, I can’t justify the expense right now, I don’t have the funds set aside in my business account to cover this and I’d have to pull the money out of our savings to cover it, and I still haven’t paid back what I pulled out of savings for the Birth Worker class… I don’t need to go, I’ll be fine missing out on this experience - and so on.
But I registered for the retreat anyway. I’ve had a rebozo in my birth bag for months now, and haven’t used it a single time, despite repeatedly offering it as a tool for my clients - and it’s not because I haven’t offered it! A day or two before the retreat, I attended a birth where the mom had been struggling to progress for about three hours. We could see the top of baby’s head, full of dark hair, for quite a while, but it took a lot of movement and position changes to finally coax that baby to full crowning. She and her husband kept looking at the midwife and repeatedly saying, “What else can we try???” My rebozo called to me from my birth bag, but she wasn’t interested. This has happened at a few births this year. And, each time, I wish mama would accept my invitation to give it a shot, but I don’t want to be pushy, so I let it be - dismissing my thoughts with the intent to be respectful of mama’s intuition that it’s not what she needs. But, if she’s asking her providers to give her a new option to try… maybe it is what she needs, after all, and I need to trust my intuition when I can practically hear it calling to me as I visualize different things I’ve learned that I think may be effective. But I’m insecure about making suggestions people don’t like.
I feel like this workshop with Naolí came at such a perfect time, while a birth that I feel could have really benefitted from utilizing my rebozo was so fresh on my mind. I needed a refresher on these techniques since it’s been nearly a year since I’ve been able to use them on somebody… and I needed the confidence to help me be more reassuring to my clients that it can produce amazing results and provide much needed pain relief and comfort that will help the flow of oxytocin.
As I prepared myself for what to expect at the workshop, I figured we may be invited to introduce ourselves, and maybe tell the group what we do. Hi, I’m Jordan, I’m a birth photographer, a birth assistant, a phase 1 student midwife, a doula… Or maybe we wouldn’t do a round of introductions, and we’d spend a lot of the time in the workshop listening to Naolí and taking notes. Maybe I’d introduce myself to a couple of acquaintances I recognized, say hello to a few new people, and otherwise mostly keep to myself if I was feeling intimidated, and stick to quietly taking pictures.
Haha. No. We were going to get straight to making the oxytocin flow… by starting with a bit of adrenaline.
I grabbed a spot near my sweet doula and birth assistant friend Cherish, very close to Naolí, near the windows. Naolí gathered us in a large circle. She started talking about Colds and Hots. Colds are the things we carry in our hearts that weigh us down - our fears, our insecurities, our secrets, our trauma, our pain, our baggage, our doubts, our grief. Colds hinder connection, they create barriers to establishing a relationship and an environment where oxytocin can flow as we establish bonds of trust with our clients. Hots are like the fire within us that help labor progress. Naolí talked about how the cervix cannot stretch wide enough to carry our baggage along with us through birth and into motherhood. And then she said we’d go around the circle, say the names of everyone who went before us, tell everyone our name, and then say a secret.
Cheryl tells the workshop group about the incredible birth of her second child.
Now, if you’ve spent more than an hour with me, I’ve probably opened up to you about something I’ve been through. I’m an open book. I don’t carry a lot of shame. I don’t hide myself. And I often like to be the one to push conversations deeper, opening myself up to a more vulnerable connection, and inviting others to feel comfortable being themselves without fear of rejection. What secret do I have that I can share? I mean, I was raped when I was 15 - but I spent a year in trauma therapy to handle it back in 2018, and I don’t have panic attacks about it anymore. I had an abortion when I was 17, during an extremely dark time in my life when I knew without a doubt that bringing a child into the world would be setting it up for trauma and pain, and I’d likely end up committing suicide within the first 3 months - that choice allowed me to have children when I was much more capable to provide for them. I’ve been deeply suicidal multiple times in my life, but I’m in a much better place now, and it’s one of those things that people I consider close friends all know about me, so it’s not exactly a secret.
She continued on to say that it could be something hurtful that we carry in our hearts - trauma, grief, insecurity… something vulnerable. Something tender. Obviously we’re the only ones who could know just how deep we were digging to unearth a Cold to share with the group, and choosing to share something that wasn’t heavy would only rob ourselves of the opportunity to connect with the group, so she encouraged us to be honest with ourselves and have the courage to say something truly Cold.
And then it came to me. One of the deepest aches I’ve carried for decades. Something that goes all the way back to childhood. Something that doesn’t really come up in conversation, so I was pretty sure the only person in the entire room of 50 women who already knew this about me was my sweet sister-in-law Angie that I’d opened up to about this just a few days prior. A deep insecurity that chokes me up to think about. Naolí was still talking through how this exercise was going to go, and I could feel a panic attack rising in my chest. It was becoming hard to breathe. My eyes stung with tears - the kind that burn and are often quickly followed by loud choking sobs. I tried to control my breathing. Embarrassment welled up inside me. Shame that I am too emotional, I am too sensitive, and my pain would be an unwelcome disturbance while someone else is trying to talk. I was the 5th person to talk. It was moving too fast. The girl next to me finished talking sooner than I expected. Was I even going to be able to finish a sentence without bawling? Should I get up and collect my emotions in the bathroom? I realized that excusing myself to blow my nose was not the appropriate move in the moment. I needed to have enough respect for myself and every woman in that room to ugly cry and wipe snot on my shirt without shame and fear.
I have so much to reflect on and share here about this workshop, and I’m sure I’ll write at least one more public post about the techniques and heritage of the rebozo. But I wanted to start with the first lesson I learned from Naolí. That the rebozo is a symbol of vulnerability, empathy, compassion, trust, honesty, and respect.
Allowing ourselves to open up and be vulnerable with our clients is necessary to establish a foundation of trust and safety. When our clients know that they do not need to hide their Colds from us, and we open our own hearts to them first before inviting them to open theirs in return, we show them that we’ll be right here by their side the entire time - particularly when things get intense and they need us to lend them our strength the most.
My previous clients can tell you that we go deep in our conversations. We talk about trauma, and fears, and hopes, and grief, and mental illness, and insecurity, and everything in between. I encourage them to tell me as much as they’d like to, and I’ll read it all. Their pain will never be too much to bear, I won’t run away. But I think Naolí has a great point that it is our responsibility to take the first step to establish that foundation of safe, honest, vulnerable communication. It is our duty to show our clients our heart and soul. If we expect our clients to share their hearts and souls with us, we should be the ones to take that very first step.
My darling clients, I am committed to sharing my soul with you. I have enough respect for you to do the scary thing, and go first to be vulnerable. Please know you can ask me about anything. You can ask me about the painful things I carry. You can ask me to share secrets with you. I will show you my insecurities, my fears, and my grief. Because if I’m supposed to be someone you’re comfortable enough around to literally welcome me into the room to witness the moment your labia tears and you scream your baby into the world… girl, I’ll gladly tell you a secret.
