INDONESIA

In Bali, nothing exists on its own. Not a stone, not a tree, not a body. Everything is inhabited by spirit and everything carries a god within. People move through their days with an awareness that feels almost forgotten everywhere else, that life can't be owned or controlled and it's never taken for granted. Offerings are placed on the ground every morning, small woven baskets filled with flowers, rice and incense. Gratitude is not an emotion, it is an everyday practice. Nothing here is assumed and everything is thanked for. This way of being shows and shapes how people relate to land, to family, to illness, to birth. Pregnancy is not something that happens to a woman, it is something the whole community participates in.

I couldn’t help but notice how birth sits at the intersection of devotion and control. On one hand, pregnancy is deeply respected, women are surrounded by rituals, family, and meaning yet on the other hand, birth itself is largely medicalised. Indonesia has a high rate of obstetric intervention, with caesarean sections increasingly common, especially in urban areas and private hospitals. Planned home births and water births are not legally supported, and many women give birth in highly standardised clinical settings. I felt like women are being held spiritually, but not structurally. Their bodies are respected, but also tightly regulated. Maternal mental health remains a particularly quiet topic. Shame, silence, and social expectations still surround pregnancy complications, birth trauma, or emotional suffering. As in many places, women carry their pregnancies within complex expectations which are shaped by family, culture, and medical systems. And still, within these structures, I met a women who carves out moments of softness and dignity, not by opposing the system, but by caring differently within it. This women is Ibu Robin Lim. Robin moved to Bali more than 35 years ago. What began as a personal journey slowly became a life’s work. She founded Bumi Sehat, a community-based birth clinic offering free, respectful maternity care to anyone who needs it, regardless of background, income, or status. But to describe her work only in terms of services would not do her justice and miss the whole point.

Robin doesn’t position herself as a saviour. She doesn’t speak in grand declarations. She simply shows up, consistently, quietly, relentlessly for 35 years now. She listens, she trusts women and she believes birth is not something to be managed, but something to be supported. Birth, to her, is not a medical emergency it is a physiological, emotional, and social process, that unfolds best when women feel safe, respected, and seen.

She often says that what women need most during birth is not control, but presence. She shared stories of births she has attended, of families she has accompanied, of how care changes when it is rooted in trust rather than fear. This woman built a foundation that doesn’t just talk about care, it practices it, every single day. Through Bumi Sehat, Robin Lim and her team run five community-based clinics, offering free, respectful maternity and reproductive care to women who would otherwise have little or no access to it. Their work doesn’t stop at birth. When emergencies strike, earthquakes, floods, typhoons, medical teams from Bumi Sehat go directly to affected areas in the whole of southeast asia to provide care where it is most urgently needed. Her work is not driven by recognition, but by conviction. It feels impossible to imagine Robin ever stopping as long as women and birth are not met with the respect and dignity they deserve.

She has received international awards for her work.

Check out Bumi Sehat and Donate if you like : https://bumisehat.org/en/ And then she told me a story that holds so much of Bali within it. In Balinese belief, a child is never born alone. Each baby arrives together with four spiritual companions , guardians who remain with you throughout life. One is linked to the body. One watches over the mind. One guards the spirit. And one holds the connection to ancestors and lineage. They are symbolically linked to the placenta, the blood, the umbilical cord, and the amniotic fluid, the elements of birth are not discarded, but remembered. Guardians that accompany the child through life.

The placenta " Ari-Ari " is one of these guardians. It is honoured, wrapped with care, and buried in ceremony on the same day the baby is born. Not as waste but remembered and treated as an older sibling that passed, as a protector. In Bali every child knows where their Placenta is burried and on every birthday, the Placenta get's celebrated just as the child. Working as a midwife in Germany, I always felt that something was a little off when it comes to the placenta. An organ that nourished the baby, carried oxygen, allowed growth, breath, and life in the womb being reduced to waste...thrown away, medical waste. I always loved it when families chose to take their placenta home. It felt natural, it's something that belongs to them. Something that had done essential work and deserved more than disposal. In Bali, the placenta is not separated from the story of birth. By burying it, it is given back to the earth, not discarded, but returned. Rooted and Remembered. To me there is something profoundly healing in that.

There is no right or wrong way to give birth or what to do with the placenta. No tradition holds all the answers. What Bali offered me wasn’t a model to copy, but a reminder. A reminder to listen more closely, to our intuition, to our bodies, to what feels right before we act. To move with more intention and to pause. To ask what deserves care, and how we show it. The Island of Gods taught me that nothing around birth is neutral. Every gesture, every decision, every way we treat the body carries meaning. And maybe honouring birth begins there, by recognising the work our bodies do, and choosing to meet it with respect.