Book Review: Healing Birth, Healing Earth

by Shirley Ward

Published by Twin Flame Productions, 2019
ISBN: 9781880765906

Reviewed by Ursula Somerville

Shirley Ward’s first book Fractals from the Womb: A Journey through Pre and Perinatal Psychotherapy (Ward, 2014) has been re-published and given a new skin and title which is far more in keeping with the language of our life today. The message is still as important and as vital, but the structure of the book makes it far more accessible to the majority of people interested in the evolution of humankind, the world and universe. The book opens with The Conversation which was published in a recent Inside Out journal (Ward, 2019) and this gives the reader a lovely sense of the author, and how what she is saying in the book is spoken with true experience.

The book is contained in 219 pages and divided into four parts: part one covers Pre- And Perinatal Psychology, part two talks about Pre- and Perinatal Influences, in part three we welcome some case studies of Shirley’s and her colleagues’ work, while in part four we meet the ‘Wider Implications: Fractals from the Womb, and the way forward’.

For the lay person the information is laid out in bitesize reading as the author describes, among many things, the birth scripts we carry in our life which can relate to life in the womb and, at times, even earlier. Our womb life forms our character and influences how we relate to each other and the planet.

For the professional, the author writes with authority and compassion but mostly with the confidence of the knowledge she has in this field of work. She places this knowledge while she references well known practitioners and theorists in this most important work.

Part of Shirley Ward’s message is that everything we see in life and on our planet is what we have created. In the devastation of our planet, she urges that it has to change and we are the only ones who can change it. “We are the ones truly responsible for the future!” (Ward, 2019, xxv). She talks about our loss of sacredness of birth, spirituality, of the mystery of life. Her passion and research show it comes from conception and pregnancy, and she offers an explanation of why so many new gentle birthing practises and complementary medicines have evolved over the years.

Psychotherapists would benefit from having Healing Birth, Healing Earth on their book- shelves as a great reference book and one that can be recommended to clients as their life scripts present in the work for healing and reparation.

This book, Healing Birth, Healing Earth, is the first of a three-book series and we can look forward to Shirley’s next book in March 2020 entitled: Birth, Earth and Our Future and then her third book Global Healing. The series is entitled Healing Birth to Save the Earth. Her style of writing is so accessible to all and her message so important.

Ursula Somerville is a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor ac- credited with IAHIP.

References:
Ward, S. (2014). Fractals from the Womb, a Journey through Pre – and Perinatal Psychotherapy. CreateSpace Amazon ISBN-13: 978-1500187224.

Ward, S. (2019). Ursula Somerville in Conversation with Shirley Ward. Inside Out, Spring 87, 3-11