it's not called inDoctrination for nothing.

i am in the throes of a ritualistic initiation. medical school, nursing school, schools of fish: one must become to belong.

each with their very own set of cosmologies in which subject and object are delineated and refined to particular tees.

yet what helps me to be a better practitioner? knowing the context within which i work.

it has made me a better doula (and human, for that matter) to have expectations that do not exceed the sometimes very stifling realities in which many women work to birth their babies, yet to still have expectiations nonetheless.

'expectations' have gotten a bad rap, poor little things. their redemptive capacity lies in them not being static, nor even tethered to ideas about 'outcomes'.

no, 'expectations' are more about the dynamics of a situation, about being able to stake out positions on moveable ground and to support others in putting up their own mutable stakes as well. it's about respect.

we all have claims to stake, which is cool, until ya start claiming other people's stakes.

there will be more about the implications of all this stake-claiming. it has only just begun.