I met a woman recently who changed my life. Not an exaggeration. The meeting was totally random but our conversation went deep, fast. She was an interesting one. A healer, spiritual type with a Harvard MBA, formerly an executive for a major corporation, currently living at a yoga retreat center in the Berkshire mountains. We spoke about balance and wholeness, and as we spoke she reflected her impression of me, noticing all the ways I appeared to be good at expressing mysel

Burnout rates amongst doulas are notoriously high. The shelf-life for many won't last more than a few years. Although I haven't found a formal study on this topic, most of my colleagues who attended births just a few years ago have since left the profession. And studies of burnout amongst midwives have exposed exceedingly high rates of occupational stress and career abandonment. I feel passionate about this topic because I love attending births as a doula and I didn't want to

Doula work is demanding for anyone, with or without children. Doulas with kids however do have the added challenge of needing to care for young ones at home who can demand a nearly equal amount of attention as their clients, if not more! As a doula who doesn’t have kids yet, I’m able to leave a birth and essentially do whatever I want with my time with little care for anyone else until I’m good and ready. Because of this gap in my experience I reached out to doulas who have c

You know the phrase, oh and that little law of physics, "what goes up must come down"? This is one of the things I was thinking about recently when it comes to doula life and self-care. There is no high like the high of birth. That special cocktail of oxytocin, endorphins and adrenaline makes any doula fall in love with their clients and leave births on a true high. Of course some births don't go as well as others, but still the adrenaline you're on just to stay the course in

I'm on a compassion kick lately. We are so freakin' tough on ourselves, there are just moments it feels especially shocking! This will be brief but I need to say something specifically to postpartum moms who worry about how emotional they may be feeling after giving birth. Who somehow imagine that they wouldn't or shouldn't feel emotional after giving birth. To which I say, um, how could you NOT?! Let's take a look at what's just happened in your life... You've just died! (Th