You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Daily.

This talk features activist, lawyer, and filmmaker Valerie Cower, recorded live at TED Women 2017.

Vaikuljika Kausa, Vaikuljiki Fatay.

There is a moment on the birthing There is a moment on the birthing table that feels like dying.

The body and labor stretches to form an impossible circle.

The contractions are less than a minute apart.

Wave after wave, there is barely

time to breathe. The medical term, transition. Because feels like dying is not scientific enough.

I checked. During my transition, my husband was pressing down on my sacram to keep my body from breaking.

My father was waiting behind the hospital curtain more like hiding.

But my mother was at my side.

The midwife said she could see the baby's head, but all I could feel was a ring of fire. I turned to my mother

and said, I can't, but she was already pouring my grandfather's prayer in my ear. Thotty,

the hot winds cannot touch you. You are brave, she said.

You are brave.

And suddenly,

I saw my grandmother standing behind my mother.

And her mother behind her,

and her mother behind her, and her mother behind her.

A long line of women who had pushed through the fire before me, I took a breath, I pushed, my son was born.

As I held him in my arms, shaking and sobbing from the rush of oxytocin that flooded my body,

my mother was already preparing to feed me,

...