BOLD Red Tent

“In our BOLD Red Tent we did body-awareness and movement, shared wisdom and birth stories, and made an artistic collage of our birth stories. It was very moving. Women laughed
and cried openly!”

- Nicole, BOLD 2008 Red Tent Organizer,  Nashville, Tennessee

In addition to BOLD performances of Birth, a play by Karen Brody, in 2007 BOLD introduced a new event option for communities: BOLD Red Tents.  Today hundreds of  communities around the world have held BOLD Red Tent events from Atlanta, Georgia to Paris, France.

The goal of every BOLD Red Tent is simple: to provide a safe listening space for women of all ages to share birth stories and create sisterhood. BOLD Red Tents have been held in living rooms, yoga studios, outdoors, as well as in prisons and teen mom programs. In some communities BOLD Red Tents raise money for a project or organization committed to making maternity care mother-friendly. In other communities, BOLD Red Tents are free and provided by a local mother-friendly maternity care organization or provider.

At each BOLD Red Tent women tell their birth stories surrounded by a community of women who support their story through deep listening. Telling birth stories can be a very powerful way to process an individual’s birth as well as a way to get to know how mothers are giving birth.

BOLD encourages each community to create their unique BOLD Red Tent agenda – some belly dance, others offer yoga, and many offer tea and conversation after storytelling.

Silence, not Silenced

Mothers today are silenced by a culture that does not encourage women to tell their birth stories in detail. The BOLD Red Tent is a space that changes this dynamic.  Each BOLD Red tent invites mothers to tell their birth stories in vivid detail and receive the transformative power of telling their story in silence. This is why we only have one strict rule within the BOLD Red Tent: no talkback. What this means is each mothers who tells her story is allowed to tell it without any comments (even positive ones!) from the women in the circle. This silent, deep listening from compassionate women in the circle allows each mother to stand in her story and process it how she needs to.

A Gift

Storytelling is an ancient ritual – a gift – with tremendous power and value in society. The more we tell our stories the more we know the oral history of our lives and greater probability that we will be inspired to take action. Storytelling has the power to heal and transform our lives on a profound level. With maternity care systems ailing so deeply it is crucial to tell our birth stories, celebrate the happy ones, heal from the unhappy ones, and unite as a community to create the best births possible for mothers.

If you are inspired to bring a BOLD Red Tent to your community click here.

To view video montages of past BOLD Red Tents click here.