May Link Round-Up: Birthdays, bodies, and bacteria

Each month I look back over the great links and discussions we share on Pagan Families’ social media and I compile the best and most enduring links and things in a monthly link round-up.

In May we celebrated the two-year anniversary of the Mother’s Wisdom Deck. We held our second Flash Points round robin, on the topic of children and sexuality in Paganism. In honor of International Midwives Day, we looked back at Pagan Families articles about midwives. Patheos celebrated its 5th birthday and featured a Pagan Families post on the main #Patheos5yrs page. And Pagan Families turned 3. Happy birthday to us!

We read a lot of great posts around the Pagan web about bodies:

• “My body is a site of connection. I am my own world tree, the axis of my universe. I am both my body and not my body.”
• “I insist upon myself: female, full, rounded and loud, complicated, desirous, furious, silly or thoughtful, confused or effusive or sexy as hell by turns. I insist on finding language to embody that woman. Me.”
• “I will honour my body and my soul through all the changes it has seen through these last forty years of my life. I will wear false eyelashes and glitter when I want to, but I will equally know my own face in its natural state as it changes over time.”

In the news: A fascinating new study about placental bacteria has implications for cesarean birth, use of antibiotics, even dental healthcare! The human body holds many complexities that scientists are still only beginning to unravel.

“It is essential to love ourselves no matter how our journey with fertility unfolds.” –Tami Lynn Kent, Mothering From Your Center