Arms Wide Open: A Midwife’s Journey is a prequel to The Blue Cotton Gown by Patricia Harman. It tells the story of how she came to be a nurse-midwife in West Virginia. Patricia definitely took the road less traveled and did not set out to be a nurse or a midwife. It just seemed to present itself in her life through experiences and opportunities.
Full disclosure, I did not like this book as much as I liked her first book The Blue Cotton Gown. Because in Arms Wide Open: A Midwife’s Journey Patricia does not tell as many stories about the women she has encountered throughout her career. Instead, she focuses mainly on her own story. Focusing a lot on her time living sustainably in Minnesota and in a commune in West Virginia before she and her husband Tom started their private practice.
I enjoyed reading about someone who lived the counter culture in the 1960s and protested the Vietnam War, while at the same time trying to live sustainably. Not many people were this forward thinking back then. Or even now. And how that journey can be hard and feel overwhelming. I suppose rarely do you know you are truly changing the world, until after the change has happened. During the change, in the thick of it, you don’t know if it is working or not. You just know you are going through it.
“I used to think I had the answers, knew how to make the world better. All we had to do was start a revolution. Now I feel so confused and I guess I don’t think we can overcome…I get it now. It doesn’t matter if we overcome, we just have to take it, step by step, and keep our eyes on the prize.”
You never really know the moment you overcome. We just have to keep going. On this revolution, I have been overwhelmed and destroyed for years. And I often wonder will ever I get to come out the other side and see the fruits of my labor? It is hard. And I don’t know or have all the answers. I don’t even know much of anything most days. But I do know that everyday we are accumulating an advantage. The more days we go on and the more people we reach, the more of an advantage we have. Some battles are won in a day. But wars take longer. I remind myself today is a battle, but what really matters is the war. And wars take longer. They take patience and strategy. One foot in front of the other, day by day, doing the systems of processes that we have found to work. This is how we accumulate an advantage and win the war. Some people just live at war and never get to see the times of peace that are the fruits of their labor. I hope to not be one of those people. But I understand that may be my fate.
“Do not give up hope. In these difficult times the sun still rises, there is light on the water, and the full moon shines, once a month, in the dark sky.”
Many people throughout history have fought for the freedom we have today. And none of their lives look the same. And most of them never got the freedoms we have today. So, maybe we should be more grateful for the freedoms we do have. Because we have more freedom than ever before in a lot of ways. And many people who came before us have died in the effort to get us those freedoms. We need to be grateful for what we do have, before we will get more. If we aren’t grateful we won’t remember to work for more day by day, little by little. It will seem futile. Unless we remember that is the way it has always been done.
Patricia Harman is a great writer and very relatable. We all have difficulties in life. And we all question the journey because we don’t know if we are doing it right until the end. And who is to say what is right and what is wrong for you? Life is a choose your own adventure. Patricia definitely adventured.
I recommend both The Blue Cotton Gown and Arms Wide Open: A Midwife’s Journey.