Why am I doing this, anyways?

Tonight I sit on my living room couch with a mug of Tension Tamer Tea because my jaw has been sore ever since a rough birth three days ago. Said rough birth in the medical industrial complex has me revisiting my values as a doula. 

Or, why the hell am I doing this to myself? 

Or, after a good night’s sleep, what keeps me grounded in this work? 

In October of this year I attended the Doula Guidepost meeting at the Birth Center of Chicago, which is a group that attempts to support doulas in answering those exact questions. One of the coolest and also most difficult things about running my own doula business is that my work can be whatever I want it to be. Sometimes it feels like too much freedom and I can be paralyzed by it. So Doula Guidepost offered some extremely helpful insight into making my doula practice something that works for me.

The mentor led us in a common (but new to me) exercise where we mulled over a list of values and picked the two that were most important to us. She got the list from Brene Brown’s Book Dare to Lead. (Brene Brown has some interesting stuff, but I could take or leave her and find her lack of class analysis pretty offputting. Nevertheless I must admit that as a white woman I’ve read a lot of her stuff, obviously.)

I spent a few hours with the list one afternoon and eventually narrowed it down to two. Kinda. I narrowed my list down to contentment and vulnerability. Keeping an eye towards these values, or even thinking of them when I’m trying to make a decision about my work has helped me stay true to myself and what kind of healing practitioner I want to be.  

Reading the list of values gave me a feeling of longing that it took me a while to name; The sense I had of wanting balance, caring about making a difference, craving ease while also wanting to do work I was passionate about. I named the thing I was longing for “contentment”. I think it breaks down like this:  making a difference + balance + financial stability = contentment. 

Contentment for me certainly means making a difference through my work. It took me a minute to accept this wording, because as a cynical Capricorn, I am repulsed by anything cheesy or cliche. But at the end of the day I became a doula to “make a difference”. I usually say something extremely pretentious like I am “social justice oriented” or “approach birth work through a feminist lens”. But when it comes down to it, I just want to make a difference. Feminism and anti-racism are the values I hold at the center of my practice.  I became a doula after learning about the maternal mortality crisis in Illinois. At the time I was teaching teenagers about social justice and I decided I could make a difference in people’s lives as a doula instead of just talking hypotheticals all day.  Even now as a private doula I have a sliding scale fee and I volunteer with Chicago Volunteer Doulas. I take pride in being trained in queer competent and anti-racist birth work. 

Also inside of my longing for contentment is a desire for balance. I want a meaningful career where I work hard, but also deeply embrace leisure, rest and relationships in my life. Balance also includes the tension between my desire to only work with supportive providers with the need to fill my calendar enough to pay rent each month. I’m manitfesting a client load of 4-6 births per month with clients choosing home birth, birth centers, or unmedicated or deeply empowered hospital births. But I’m not there yet. And Contentment also means financial stability. 

That’s contentment for me. The other side of the coin is vulnerability, the other value I landed on. 

Vulnerability brings out the mean voice in my brain. When I read Brene Brown’s work on vulnerability and wholeheartedness it struck a big cord with my Enneagram 8, Capricorn self.  I have an aversion to feeling weak, vulnerable or uncertain. Doing things that are hard, or new or messy are not my preferrence. But Dr. Brown says that people who lean into vulnerability (aka. new, hard, messy or uncertain things) have the lowest rates of shame and highest rates of happiness in their lives. So I chose vulnerability as a core value not because it’s a desire (like contentment was), but because it’s an aversion. 

To me, centering vulnerability in my work ultimately means being humble. 

What I really mean is as a birthworker, I value de-centering myself. This lens helps me unravel years of toxic white-womaness that teaches me to be pleasant, agreeable, well like, conflict-avoidant and subservient to everyone around me. Decentering myself doesn’t mean ignoring my own needs or emotions. It means releasing my ego, my need to feel correct and important, to make room for the birthing people to do their thing and get what they need. I came to this definition through some weird mix of Transcendental Meditation, Catholicism, and Brene Brown’s work. 

Humility is something I’ve come to through learning about anti-racism and white supremacy as well. When I first became a doula, I literally envisioned myself being a savior to the BIPOC women most affected by the Maternal Mortality Crisis. Needless to say, believing I was going to single handedly save people from medicalized racism was…lacking humility. Through the abolitionist movements that gained popularity in 2016 and 2020 I was gifted the chance to re-imagine my role in the birth justice movement as an ally and a co-conspirator, instead of a savior.  

 But unlearning white feminism will be a long journey, possibly one that never ends. I read a life changing book about being a healer that said “As a healing practitioner your job is not to be liked, your job is to tell the truth”. That really hit home. I have been conditioned so long to want to be liked that I’ve lost my ability to tell the truth when it matters most.

(did I ever have that ability? Is that something you’re born with or a skill to be developed?) 

 As a doula, it’s my job to advocate for people and use my expertise to the fullest. That doesn’t always butt up against being liked, but when it does, BOY is it an exercise in embracing vulnerability. 

So now the idea is that I can ask myself: 

“Is this decision leading me to contentment and vulnerability?”

I am constantly thinking about what clients to take and how to build a business that is viable and fulfilling. Ultimately I’ve decided that the best way to have control over that is to become a midwife. I have a vision for my future home birth practice that is inclusive, abundant, rooted in community and serves the needs of pregnant people. Whether or not that vision is realized in the way I expect, I’m excited for vulnerability and contentment to guide me there. 

So, why the hell am I doing this to myself? I guess it’s for good reason.