Believe it

I am an opera singer.  I've been singing amateur opera for just over four years now, and began my training back in 2004.  Before I began training, I had been singing folk and contemporary Christian music for years.  I have been told that my voice is lovely, easy to listen to, very enjoyable, and have been asked by professionals if I have perfect pitch.  But every time I open my mouth to sing, I doubt myself.  Every.  single.  time.

Why? Because when I was 21, a 'friend' (note the sarcastic quotation marks) told me that my pitch was usually flat.  At that time, I was singing with a band at a monthly church service for young people.  The thought that my pitch was consistently off and being mic'd, subjecting the entire congregation to bad singing, was totally mortifying.  I was entirely riddled with self-doubt after that day.

It was since then that I began my classical voice training, and and since then that I've had greater and greater successes with my singing.  It was since then that it was suggested that I may have perfect pitch, or at least perfect relative pitch.  But still my 'friend's' words echo in my ears. Your pitch is usually flat.

When I had my first lesson with my vocal coach, I asked her at the end: how do I sound?  She said I sounded nice, and that I should definitely continue pursuing singing.  Then I asked her: So, I'm not flat?  "No", she responded, looking perplexed.  "Why would you think that?"  I told her, "A friend told me I was, once".

"No," she said again, looking horrified. "No.  That's not true.  Don't believe that.  Anyone who tells you that is no friend.  No.  You have a lovely voice.  Just forget you ever heard that.  That's a terrible thing to think.  No."

Why am I telling you about this?  What bearing does it have on, well, anything to do with birth or pregnancy or birth choices or even breastfeeding?  One sentence, spoken by someone whose opinion is of very little weight or value to me, spoken nearly a decade ago, which has since been repeatedly and consistently refuted, continues to haunt and shake me.  I continue to doubt myself.  I continue to doubt my abilities.  If such a small matter can weigh so heavily for so long, how can we then withstand all the noise which tells us that we cannot birth?  How do we arm ourselves against the onslaught of anxiety and pessimism which is so common and so debilitating in our society today?  How do we protect ourselves, our babies, our births, against the voices which would have us believe that we are incapable, that we are reckless, that we are somehow dysfunctional?

I can't honestly say that I know.  I don't know precisely how I was able to withstand those voices, that noise, that fear.  I do know that I believed, without a shadow of a doubt, that I could - and would - birth my baby without intervention or 'help' (again with the sarcastic quotation marks).  Perhaps a belief in one's ability to birth goes deeper than an appreciation for our talents.  Perhaps our ability to birth is so much more primal, so much more fundamental to who we are, not as individuals, but as human beings, as mammals, as creatures, that our belief has more substance than were it merely a personal talent.

My optimism, however, is not universal.  Too often I speak to expectant mothers who say they are going to try for a natural birth, who express doubt, not only in their ability to withstand pain, but in their very ability to actually birth their child.  Too often I hear of women who have been told - and have been convinced - that their pelvis is too small, their uterus too weak, their body too fat, their constitution too fragile.  And how terribly often do I speak to women who have likewise been told and believed that their breasts are too small, too large, their nipples too flat, too inverted, too large, too small, their breasts incapable of producing milk, and that they are unable to breastfeed and should simply not try.

How can we imbue other women with this confidence?  How can we eliminate generations of our undoing?  I try by speaking truth and confidence to the women I meet.  And I write this blog.  All in the hope that it will help.