secret babies

When I was 15 or 16, I started getting into the concept of natural birth and midwifery. I read everything I could find, which at that point, around '88 or '89 (no internet) were mostly hippie books from the 70's and 80's from the library. I found Conscious Conception and Hygieia, written by Jeannine Parvati Baker. Even back then I was a total researcher, and I wrote to everyone I could write to, asking for more info! I began a written communication with Jeannine and worked through the first lesson of her womancraft course, which was basically autobiographical inquiry. I think at that point I was 17. She responded deeply to everything I wrote, and told me I was her youngest student. I still have that work, and it is a precious gift. Jeannine was a guide and a teacher to me through all of my pregnancies and births and my life, she was and still is a huge influence. In 2005 my family and I took a summer trip out to Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and California, and we visited her on her deathbed. Me and my husband and my children sat on her bed and talked about kabbalah and she vented and looked into my baby's face. We sat with her and I thanked her for imparting her wisdom. She died a few months later.
Jeannine wrote Hygieia with Tamara Slayton. She was another inspirational woman (who also died young); I didn't know that much about her except that she was in Jeannine's circle and I knew she created the Menstrual Health Foundation, which made the cloth menstrual pads I got from my health food store when I was a teenager and proudly soaked up my blood with. I know she was powerful. She touched many. Last night, under an intuitive inspiration, I was doing some research on menarche rites of passage--I looked up Tamara because I had heard that she created a guidebook of sorts about coming into teenager-hood. I was shocked to find out that Tamara got pregnant when she was 15 and relinquished her child. It comes full circle. I read her book probably when I was 15. I think my mother was 15 when she got pregnant with me. So many lives were begun in secret, secrets underlie the lives of so many people that are crucial in my life. Its mindblowing.