Finding Your (Hybrid?) Village

I was writing out a (yet to be posted) instagram post the other day and felt like this deserved a permanent spot in a memoir. Villages are so often referred to yet so sparse in our society. Everybody is so excited to exclaim how they want to love and care for you when you are pregnant, but how often do they show up for us in a way that suits us? I have done quite a bit of editing and elaborating to this space as opposed to the instagram post, which is much more limiting. I hope this finds you well and offers some encouragement that you aren’t alone, no matter how lonely this seems.

-Jess, a fellow mom in search of her village

With society becoming more and more chronically online, it can be so hard to feel and receive the love of a true, community based village.

Here I am, in my third trimester with my second little girl, still feeling a longing for my true village. A feeling that feels far too familiar from my pregnancy with my first, and a feeling that has never truly been fulfilled. It’s so hard in these times of endless anxiety (and tending to a little one) to find the time to prioritize my little community, yet I am consistently yearning for connection, only to find that I feel like a failure at the end of the day when I am unable to take steps towards building said village.

This pregnancy I have tried to better prioritize curating an intentional community of women who make me feel empowered and supported - except this time I didn’t feel as much pressure to search in person like I had previously felt necessary. I naturally found myself researching and turning to doulas, midwives, and moms online whose morals and practices fully align with mine. I am a chronic researcher, and since I had spent all of my last pregnancy learning the in’s and out’s of what my body is was going through, it felt like this time around there was more of a space to fill by directing my research towards the pressing issue of building a village. One of the biggest resources that helped me achieve this were actually books that were written by people who I felt needed very minimal filtering in order to align with my beliefs. In my last pregnancy, and truthfully every day since, I was constantly having to overlook, filter, and fact check the “support” surrounding me, which made more work for me and was exhausting. For some reason, (capitalism), the medical system in the U.S. seems to know very little about the female body in general, much less in and around pregnancy. If we don’t feel like we can trust the medical system, then why the hell would we feel like we can trust the opinion of the generations raised before us who had the very same medical system shoved down their throats? It seems like everyone has something to say and some kind of advice to offer when it comes to the making and birthing of a baby, but so few of those people have any evidence or research to back it up. I’m not saying that doulas or midwives have all of the perfect answers and can quote every study ever done to back up their methods, but I am saying that they tend to be much more intentional about the information and care they provide as opposed to the doctors who are driven by a broken system and are literally told what to say to women as if it is a script, and then expect every woman and her body to respond in the same way.

I say all of this because I have had to receive my prenatal care from an in office OBGYN for both of my viable pregnancies, and there are so few people who have made me feel acknowledged as an individual in that space. I am typically made to feel as if I am an item on someones checklist that they have mentally marked as a five-minute task, instead of feeling like someone actually wants to take the time to guide me and provide helpful resources for me. It seems that due to the rushed nature of the U.S. medical system, women are deprived of a space where they can go and easily find members of their village. I don’t feel like a single person from my medical team is in my village, but I feel like they should be the place I can go to for support - how does that work?

It doesn’t. I truly believe that’s one of the reasons the size of pregnant women’s’ villages seem to be shrinking - we are losing free access to support. Is this why all of a sudden we have to be the ones to put in the extra work to find support when we have been promised for so long that our village will just show up? I’m not sure, but it’s got to be part of it.

Having intentionally sought and gained access to resources so in tune and equally as in awe with the raw beauty of pregnancy and birth as I am has truly been game changing this time around. Now, thanks to the resources and community I have emerged myself into, I have more support and empowerment being poured into me than I do negativity and misinformation - it’s beautiful.

While I am so, so eternally grateful for the support I receive from my friends and family, I often find that I have more of passion and a need for intentionality regarding everything pregnancy and birth related than the average person - which is where online resources have offered so much value to me. Not to mention I am an ADHD and anxiety having, hormonal pregnant lady, which makes seeking intentional connection in person extremely challenging for me. Even if the opportunity to connect with someone presents itself in my life, I often struggle to maintain an intentional connection with that person, despite my best intentions. Throughout this pregnancy, though, I have been able to find women online who are just as passionate about every little detail surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, which is truly a community more empowering than I ever could have imagined. It can never replace the beauty of interpersonal connection, but it certainly acts as a beautiful aid to it. Hence, a hybrid village.

I think I’m really becoming okay with the idea of having part of my community of my tailored resources and support online, rather than needing the physical support and guidance of the original village-sized support team we are made to expect will show up for us throughout these intimate times.

A hybrid village.

A phrase I’m not fully sure how to feel about, but am finding myself growing more fond of by the day.