Around the world, about four babies are born each second of every day. The circumstances under which they are born vary drastically. Each birth story is different and unique – and does not always follow the strictly joyful narrative we tend to hear. For too long, these complex stories have remained untold, especially for women and girls from marginalized communities.
In an exciting new initiative, birth advocate and midwife-in-training Mai Ngo is teaming up with Naomi Tessler of Branch Out Theatre to give us The Birth Talk Presents!, an innovative and transformative community project that will work with women from diverse backgrounds to help them write, perform, and heal through their stories, poems, and monologues. Building on the success of Mai’s Femmy Award-winning podcast, The Birth Talks, the six-week theatre program will conclude with a public performance to share stories from women of all backgrounds, through an intersectional feminist lens that considers how race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, age and ability affect a woman’s experience of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. The performances will go beyond mainstream narratives of pregnancy to discuss loss, access, privilege, joy, pain, life transition, mourning, and – most of all – healing and resilience.
You can learn more about their project and support their crowdfunding campaign at this link