EcoBirth
Updates and Plans
Greetings!

It is so good to communicate with you again. Lots of activity brewing with EcoBirth- gestation would be a good descriptive word for it! Welcome to our newsletter updates which I will send out periodically, please unsubscribe below if you would rather not receive them.

I have built out our presence on FaceBook , You Tube and Twitter. I would press you to click into these links and follow EcoBirth! And be sure to LIKE and repost any interesting parts that you see, to spread the word about EcoBirth. Soon I will be posting portions of my presentation A Mother' Legacy-a Precautionary Tale on EcoBirth Blog - watch for the four generations of my family photos and the research upon which I based the presentation, as well as the websites that have the most helpful information on how to live a toxic-free life today. There is quite a bit of information on the EcoBirth Blog including a calendar of recommended events, books we like and tips on living a non-toxic life. S
oon you will hear about a new event in the East Bay in collaboration with Center for Environmental Health and MOMS MAKING MILK SAFE.

Please take a look at this video to see the loveliness of birthing without interventions, surrounded and delivered by love! Birth Day.
and see this wonderfully moving scene of a baby's first bath Bathing in Liquid Mind..
And I think this short and poignant video from Healthy Child, Healthy World is completely on point for EcoBirth.

My goodwill to you all and hope we will collaborate and brain-storm on the growth of EcoBirth's presence to the betterment of this world!

Molly Arthur


Table of Contents
Tea & Discussion, Sunday, Sept 19, 3-5 pm
EcoBirth Presents A Mother's Legacy- A Precautionary Tale, Friday, Oct 1, 7:00-8:30 pm
Sandra Steingraber: The Intimate Ecology of Motherhood, Thursday, Oct 28, 7:30 pm
EcoBirth Blog entry

Tea & Discussion, Sunday, September 19, 3-5 pm
How Did I Miss All This Before? Waking Up to the Magic of Our Ordinary Lives, By Alexandra Kennedy

Alexandra KennedyTea and Discussion is being offered at Molly Arthur's home in Tiburon on Sunday, Sept 19 with author and therapist Alexandra Kennedy, whose book "How Did I Miss All This Before?" is a riveting account about how to live in the real world with wonder and alertness. She has written about life's transitions and will lead us in a small group discussion that touches on the spiritual aspects of birth and parenting and letting go of your grown child. This will be a benefit for EcoBirth's production of Dr Sandra Steingraber's lecture. A donation of $5-20 will be collected and Alexandra's book will also be available for purchase.Alexandra's website with book info.
Tea & Discussion
Tiburon, California
Sunday, Sept 19, 3-5 pm
RSVP mollyarthur536@yahoo.com for directions
EcoBirth presents,Friday, October 1, 7:00-8:30 pm
A Mother's Legacy- A Precautionary Tale

You are invited to a special event in the First Friday Community Night Lecture Series at the Salmon Creek Falls Environmental Center, in Occidental, CA , 1935 Bohemian Highway, Occidental, CA

Molly Arthur will present the latest for parents regarding steps for a healthy environment, healthy moms, safe births and protecting your children from toxins. The presentation is centered on the story of women in one San Francisco family that links the possible effects of toxins and adverse interventions during their pregnancies, births and childhood through three generations. With an emphasis on current concerns, preventions and protections for the fourth generation.

Learn where to find out about the toxins in your own neighborhood. What products do you need to eliminate in your life? What are the safest birth options available to you now? What is your passion that will help create a better world for your children?

There will be handouts on what you can do to create a safer, non-toxic life.
Mom kissing me compressedMolly Arthur
EcoBirth presentation and discussion
Salmon Creek Environmental Center
1935 Bohemian Highway,
Occidental, CA
Friday, Oct. 1
7:00 pm
Donation $5-20
RSVP
Mollyarthur@yahoo.com

See more about the Salmon Creek Environmental Center:
Inspirational story of how a tiny school district built the first LEED Platinum certified school building in the state of California. Collaborative teamwork which included the school children inspired this revolution in innovative design.
First LEED public school

Map of Salmon Creek Falls Environmental Center in Occidental, CA

I am particularly honored to bring Dr. Sandra Steingraber to San Francisco on Oct 28. She has been a seminal leader in the environmental health movement. She is a biologist, journalist and riveting speaker about the environmental influences on our health. And most importantly for EcoBirth, she can speak to the health of our developing babies and children from her experience and profession. A feature-length film was launched this spring based on her book about her journey with cancer, Living Downstream.

In her book, Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood, Steingraber explores the intimate ecology of motherhood. She also reveals the alarming extent to which environmental hazards-from industrial poisons in amniotic fluid to the toxic contamination of breast milk- now imperil each crucial stage of infant development. In the eyes of an ecologist, a mother's body is the environment, and its one that should be inviolate.

You can visit her website and blog here.


Dr. Sandra Steingraber

biologist, mother and award-wining author


The Intimate Ecology of Motherhood

One of our nation's most inspiring

leaders of the environmental health movement-

called The "Rachel Carson of our day" by the Sierra Club.

With a panel of local experts from the environmental, birthing and medical communities answering your questions on how to live a safer, non-toxic life.

Thursday, Oct. 28, 2010, 7:30 pm

at the Jewish Community Center San Francisco,

3200 California St. San Francisco, CA 94118

Buy your ticket now, only $18 -

phone 415.292.1233 or click

http://ecobirth.blogspot.com/

molly6@pacbell.net, 415-435-8031

Directions to JCCSF
Dear Sponsors,

Thank you so much for your support and promotion of Dr. Steingraber's appearance in San Francisco on October 28. I salute your good work to create a healthier, more just and safe world. We support you!
I look forward to your pariticipation at the Steingraber lecture, Oct 28 with handouts and more information on the work you are doing.
Great Job!
Sponsors of Dr Sandra Steingraber lecture are
Getzwell Pediatrics
Campaign for Safe Cosmetics
Center for Environmental Health
Physicians for Social Responsibility, SF Bay Area
Pesticide Action Network
Women's Voices for the Environment
Mothers of Marin Against the Spray
Sage Femme
Teens Turning Green
Breast Cancer Fund
Moms Making Our Milk Safe

Please BUY your ticket to this important appearance of Dr. Sandra Steingraber at this link

Buy ticket $18

and pass out the flyer
Steingraber lecture flyer
You can also include this copy about the lecture in your newsletter to help promote it!
Below is a recent Blog entry, click through to see the most current entry about my granddaughter's arrivals!

Numinous time before birth of my granddaughters

I feel as if I am in a numinous space and time, waiting for my granddaughters to be born (yes girl twins, natural and fraternal-sororal, if you ask! due now). I see them in my daughter-in-law's belly and feel them move and kick . " There's the butt, there's one head, there's the other head!" Anticipation is delicious in a certain way.

But they are not here yet, even though they are alive and kicking! And I do not have the physical, embodied relationship with them, that I had with my two children. So I am not sure how I feel, but the feeling is intense and moving. When they come into this realm, I will be immediately different too, a grandmother. Our relationship will be immutable, unchangeable, and there are very few unchangeable things in this world. I cannot even call their names, and I cannot know who they will look like.

It is such a transition time, germinating, not really fallow, but yes, they are seeds that have been growing in the dark, protective womb of their mother. Right now all that they need and their potential life story is contained and held. Somehow their spark of life happened, through love, I believe. But there is the biology of it too, that manifests this mysterious life force. And this biology can be effected by outside forces, not by the conscious will of their mother, not by any truly rational choices of our culture and influenced by place and time.

I believe this changeable biology creates a responsibility on me, because I would never want an action that I do to harm my grandchildren. But I know I have done harmful things and continue to do them. I realize that how I live on this earth is what my granddaughters will inherit. I understand that my relationship with my all-encompassing Mother Earth somehow is immutable too, just like my relationship with my granddaughters. And I feel that my Mother Earth, who holds and nurtures and feeds me is beneficent. She would not want to harm either, yet she accepts what is happening to her, with involuntary surrender.

I understand that I hurt my environment with my choices or ignorance. And those choices invade my daughter-in-law's body and my grandchildren's development. This is not right on so many levels, perhaps that is why this is such an emotional time for me. I am so close to the effects of my actions being exhibited in my granddaughters. Yes, that is it.

I am conscious of the delicate dance with my daughter-in-law of being helpful, not pushy, supportive but not being a know-it-all; understanding that I have a unique relationship with these as yet unborn creatures, that confers a particular joy and responsibility that only I have. Perhaps if I keep this numinous space in my awareness, I will better understand what I can do to help my earth and my grandchildren. Then when the embodied birth happens, like my granddaughters very physical appearance in this realm, I will also realize and do what is real in this world to help all my relations and my sustaining mother earth.

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EcoBirth

We want to ensure that there are no more toxins in our bodies or in our developing babies. We want our babies born in a caring, natural way and raised in a safe, non-toxic world. Help us protect our earth, our babies and birth. Pure Life: a clean world, safe births and healthy children.

EcoBirth is the study of and practice in Deep Womb Ecology. It links and relates the environments of Earth and Birth. EcoBirth recognizes that the experience of childbirth is an indicator of how we care for mothers, babies and the earth.

Molly Arthur
mollyarthur536@yahoo.com
415-435-8031