"You Have To Be One Tough Bitch to Be a Doula"

...This is the learning my recent students took most to heart....

I had the privilege of being invited to teach the MotherWit Birth Doula Training Intensive in Edmonton at Birth Source Inc, hosted by Tracey Stolarchuk. With great excitement, I packed my bags and flew on over from Montreal. At the airport, I met up with my friend, former student, and doula sister Sue Appleton Elliot, who is a birth doula at Apple of Your Eye Doula Services in St. John, New Brunswick. I was overwhelmingly grateful to have Sue's grounding presence, because I was nervous. Very nervous. Not because I was about to teach a 60 hour doula preparation class in six days, but because I was minutes away from seeing my father for the first time in over 15 years. I was so glad not to have to do that alone. Not that I was dreading the meeting, it was just so surreal.

Meeting up with my dad and his wife was lovely. It did my heart good to see my father doing well and living a life that satisfies him, having existed in the throes of terrible addiction for most of his life. I'm pretty proud of him for having climbed over a huge mountain of struggle to choose a healing path, and am amazed he made it out alive. He was proud to hear of a new grandchild (my sister's) and her marriage last year. We spent that evening having a lovely supper with them, and my father made plans with me to meet for dinner later that week. I had put Sue in charge of teaching that evening's topic so I could spend some time with my father.

It is always so exciting to meet in person the women who have, out of all the doula trainings available in North America, chosen mine to put them on the path to this crazy work. It makes me feel extremely humbled, and extremely responsible. You certainly can't teach someone how to be a doula in 60 short hours, but you can give them the overview of how to proceed, and set the tone for the beliefs they may bring to the birthing rooms they visit in the future. I was happy to see a feisty, dynamic bunch with lots of stories to tell. I knew we were going to have some fun.

My message is always very clear, that a "holistic" birth doula is not someone who believes an undisturbed environment and a healthy spritz of lavender will create the perfect birth outcome all the time. The fact is, most women in Canada give birth in hospital, and the fact is, most women want to, even though it reduces the normalcy of the process. So our work has to be tailored in support of each individual woman, in support of each environment she chooses to birth in. A good, healthy birth honours not only the precious biological blueprint of the birth process, but the resources, inner and outer, a woman brings to birth. An all natural birth can be an incredibly healing journey for many. Yet for others it is potentially an endeavour in terror, flashback, and trauma. We meet women exactly where they are, in love and support, and provide the most comfort and encouragement we can as she brings her baby into the world, on her terms, in her way, from her place of empowerment. If she comes through feeling amazing and powerful, even if it doesn't match our vision of "perfect", then this is healing and trans-formative for her. We rejoice. And if she doesn't feel that way, we are there to lean on to help her sort things out. A holistic doula nourishes the whole woman; her strength, her fears, her challenges, her choices.

After the first day of the training, I read a blog our hostess Tracey had written. It talked about her retirement from doula work, and that her parting gift to the new generation of doulas was the MotherWit Intensive she had invited me to bring to her home town. I felt an even stronger commitment to bring my absolute best to the women who wanted to learn, to live up to that faith someone I admire very much had in me to enrich the knowledge of aspiring doulas. I took that challenge and opened up, way up, and gave from a more spiritual, more emotional place than I have in the past, committing myself to my own authenticity, as I challenge my students to connect