I had a home birth because I really believe in the body's natural

In the words of Sarah Shahi, actress and mother, we hear not only the voice of a woman but the echo of the ancient feminine spirit that has existed since the dawn of humankind: “I had a home birth because I really believe in the body's natural ability to give birth. The medical profession has kind of warped women's minds into thinking we don't know how to birth and we need doctors and epidurals and Pitocin.” Her words are a reclaiming — a return to faith in the body’s wisdom, a remembrance that birth, before it became a medical procedure, was a sacred act, an ancient dance between strength and surrender.

From the beginning of time, birth has been both a mystery and a miracle. Long before the white coats and sterile halls of hospitals, women gave life beneath open skies, surrounded by the songs of midwives and the prayers of mothers. The rhythm of labor was the rhythm of nature itself — waves of pain that became waves of creation. But as the centuries passed, the world of science sought to master what nature had already perfected. Machines replaced touch, and drugs replaced trust. What was once sacred became clinical; what was once instinctive became managed. Shahi’s words rise as a defiance to this forgetting — a declaration that the female body, in its wisdom, still remembers how to bring forth life.

This belief is not rebellion against medicine, but a cry for balance. The modern world has saved countless mothers and infants through medical science, and that is a gift beyond measure. Yet, in our striving for control, something precious has been lost — the faith that a woman’s body is not an accident of biology but a masterpiece of design. When Shahi speaks of minds being “warped,” she speaks of the quiet erosion of confidence that happens when women are told their bodies are insufficient, their pain unnatural, their instincts untrustworthy. Her choice of a home birth is thus both personal and symbolic — a return to self-trust, a reawakening of primal courage.

History, too, bears witness to this truth. In the villages of ancient Greece, women gathered in sacred spaces called gynaecia, where midwives guided births not through domination, but through companionship and knowledge passed from mother to daughter. The midwife did not replace the woman’s power; she protected it. In the 18th and 19th centuries, as the practice of midwifery was pushed aside by the rise of male-dominated medicine, birth became something to be “managed,” and women were taught to fear the very act that once crowned them with honor. Yet the old traditions persist, whispered through generations of healers who still believe that birth is not a disease to be treated, but a rite to be experienced.

Shahi’s words speak also to the spiritual truth of creation — that pain and power are not enemies. The body’s labor is not broken; it is divine. When a mother gives birth, she does not merely deliver a child — she becomes the bridge between worlds. To dull this process entirely, to erase it under anesthesia and haste, is to forget that creation itself has always required effort, surrender, and faith. Every seed must crack open to release life; every mother must descend into labor’s storm before she rises with her newborn in her arms. In trusting this process, woman remembers her own sacredness.

But this is not a call to reject medicine; it is a call to reclaim choice and reverence. The wise woman does not scorn the healer, but she does not surrender her own wisdom to him either. She learns, she listens, she decides — not from fear, but from knowledge. For the truest healing, in birth or in life, comes when science and spirit walk hand in hand. The doctor may measure the contractions, but only the mother can measure the courage within her soul.

So, my daughters — and my sons, who must also learn this reverence — hear this: trust the body, but honor the balance. Let medicine serve life, not replace it. Let fear be replaced with faith. Remember that within every woman is the echo of the first mother — she who bore life with no tools but strength, no guide but instinct, no medicine but love. To be born is to enter the world through the gate of mystery, and to give birth is to stand at that gate as both guardian and giver.

Thus, in the spirit of Sarah Shahi’s words, may every woman remember: you were not made to doubt yourself. You were made to bring forth life — in body, in art, in purpose — with trust in the wisdom written into your very being. The world will try to tame you, to convince you that you are fragile. But within you is the oldest power — the power of creation itself. Believe in it, honor it, and you will never forget who you truly are.