Tigerlili Cavill

2008 Acrylic and Gold Leaf on Canvas

Goddess of Birth

I painted this during April 2008, as I was going into labour with my daughter Rosie

In the USA where I now live, the c-section rate is astronomical, not because women really need them but because after a cascade of medical interventions, starting with ‘a little pain relief’ and ending where the mother cannot feel anything from the waist down, it’s much easier for the doctor to cut them open and whip that baby out.

Women today have been taught that they are not responsible or capable of being in charge of the births of their own children, that the pain will be too much for them to handle, and so they give all their power to the hospital staff and often end up being drugged up and not ‘present’ at their births, divorced from the natural bonding process, which in some cases can lead to problems breastfeeding and also the lack of the body’s natural painkillers that are released after a natural birth. The rising rates of post natal depression attest to how brutal this process has become.

I don’t think that C-sections when needed are wrong, I also feel that the medical profession is fantastic in emergency situations. But I think that the balance is all wrong. In third world countries where so many women die in childbirth, there are not enough doctors, more than 348,790 Mothers died in 2008 according to statistics on the UN Population Fund Website. Where are the doctors there? The ones who are working with women in places like Niger don’t have enough funding to save seriously endangered womens lives and the Ob-Gyn’s here are overcompensating for having nothing much to do by complicating normal births.

What a total Cosmic Fuck Up.

I feel it is another symptom of how lost we are as a society when we deny that there is a Great and wise Mother Creator as well as a Loving, protective Father Creator. Women are disempowered and allowed to die, and dying in childbirth…has got to be one of the most horrific things that can be imagined.

I chose an unmedicated homebirth. It was tough work. It was woman’s work. Don’t tell me there is no Female Creator. (Although I have to say that the Late Freddie Mercury singing voice helped during a crucial and very unglamorous part of the birth, when in agony, the only thing that kept me going was listening to “We are the Champions” over and over again! Ah Freddie… what a voice!)

Look, luckily I was in a position where I could choose to have a natural birth in safety. Of course it was an awesome and terrifying experience. I needed a strong female guide to watch over through the birth itself, and connect me to my ancestors before me who had no choice but to do it this way. I created Her image during the labor and then completed it over three weeks following the birth. She now resides at the offices of my incredible midwife, Cara Muhlhahn, in New York.

The Goddess has also been reproduced in “The Opening” - a women’s zine for the Edinburgh Zine Festival.