Everything is birth work because life is riddled with thresholds.
Thresholds of birth, death, loss, new projects, grocery stores, break ups, classes, Saturn Returns, choices we know will change it all, choices we know will change nothing, starting a new day or ending a shitty one.
We aren't reborn with every choice we make. Even when we catalyze seismic shifts, we bring our bodies, bank accounts, and baggage across the threshold of change. This is where the doula approach behooves us.
According to me, doula work is supporting someone across a threshold of birth, loss, and/or great change. Sometimes all three at once. Sometimes more. In my practice, this support is grounded in ceremony, inner wisdom, trust, and community care. There is a traditional way I bathe before a birth or death. Ceremonies I hold. I grow herbs, oil and cover my braids. I smudge.
I am honored to be called upon by my community to be a witness and holder of great changes. With great honor comes great responsibility (hahaha, that feels so patriotic and weird to write. I know that isn’t what JFK said, and I know he wasn’t using his platform to galvanize doulas.) ANYWAY, I take it seriously when other people tap me as their doula and am now playing around with taking my role as the doula of my own life seriously as well. Hear me out.
When we approach life’s thresholds with a doula mindset, we approach life’s changes with care, possibility, and ceremony. We let ourselves be held and nourished. We let transformation present her surprises with less resistance.
I often hear birthing people talk about “returning to normal” in reference to their schedules, relationships, and bodies. I understand the draw to a return. I also wonder how expansive it would be to focus, instead, on what is possible after transformation and change. How might we strive toward reimagination rather than return? This type of imagining is possible when we doula ourselves – and others – through transitions rather than constricting against and/or denying them.
Life guarantees change. How can we guarantee that those changes are met with softness and possibility?
Over and over we doula ourselves through great change. Knowing you will be your doula and will care for yourself across small thresholds creates internal trust that you will build the structures and supports needed for larger transitions.
I am writing my first book and it has required the same doula skills as a 72 hour labor. My garden needs a doula. So does my grief. Stories need doulas. We should all have a doula to help us understand insurance paperwork and tax refunds. Doulaing ourselves through life lets us hold transition with compassion. So, BYOD (be your own doula) and, then, of course, call upon other doulas as well. Just like JFK would have wanted.
Indeed. I just got certified as a death doula and am looking forward to doing this important work.
My birth experience was also my first close-up experience with death. After my daughter died in labour and was stillborn, I was left to live a life I never could have imagined…I didn’t have a doula, and none of the care professionals in my hospital or community were able to be the support I would have liked to have had during that time where both my motherhood & my grieving were brand new. It’s taken some time for me to realize that I can be that person for birthing people, especially those experiencing loss or a pregnancy after loss, as a doula. Thank you for your words. They’re right on time for me 🤍