The Monday morning following my intense weekend of emotional release through bodywork (Spontaneous Shedding), I woke up renewed and recovered. I had plans to reconnect with a good friend of mine over tea and I decided to show up at the lounge early and do some work.
I opened my email and found a note from someone I never met before. She was a woman in Seattle who was several months pregnant and moving to Tampa to co-parent with her mom. Somehow she came found me through looking up open mics and came across my business website. She was also looking for someone that does energy work to be at her birth and wanted to know if I was interested.
It took me a minute to soak in the implications of this email. Only five days earlier I had my first experience at a birth center and my first experience of being with a family immediately after a birth, which left me with an intense desire to seek more experiences like that. It was all a little weird. How did this woman, on the complete opposite side of the country, contact me of all other energy workers in this area? This is all immediately following one of the most intense and emotionally draining and clearing weekends of my life. I had finally returned back to "feeling like myself" and I was greeted with an invitation to attend and assist in a birth for someone I had never even spoken to.
Immediately I rose to the challenge. I wrote Sara back and explained my recent experience at the birth center and what I can offer with the cranial work that I practice as well as the ability to use Reiki energy. Reiki is a simple, yet powerful form of energy work, usually described as the "laying on of hands." In my head I was thinking, it sounds like she is looking for a doula.
After some positive correspondences, we decided to meet once she arrived in Tampa in December. Even after our first emails I could feel a great rapport building between us and I looked forward to getting to support someone through this life-changing experience. I also started to look into what exactly a doula is and how one goes about becoming one.
I remembered the first time I heard the word doula was in massage school. My friend in class was looking through a massage magazine and saw on article on massage therapists who are also doulas. "What's a doula?" I remember inquiring, and she explained to me that it is a woman who helps with childbirth, massaging, comforting and supporting the mother.
"Wouldn't that be amazing?" she asked me. I thought, "Yeah, if you want a super high-stress job...I think I would rather become a yoga instructor." Haha.
Before all of this I really new nothing about childbirth. Nothing. I have been too busy learning about bodies in general, that gendered bodies seemed too complicated. But almost suddenly this all shifted. The more I corresponded with Sara, the more interested I became in actually doing this work. Even before we met in December I had already silently committed to her birth and started to learn a little about what happens in labor. I was still working on the last semester of my Master's program at USF but dreams of becoming a doula started to creep in. I had started to consider how this profession would reshape my life and wondered if it was really for me.
It was at this time that I finally started to recognize that I was being called to do this work. Thoughts of being a doula were at times more present than the last term paper I had to write. It felt right.
There was one final conversation that solidified this choice for me. A few weeks later at the same tea lounge I met with some friends I had not seen in a while. One was a midwife and I started asking her some questions about the process and she mentioned that she was a doula before she was a midwife. She explained that the process of training for a doula wasn't nearly as strenuous as for a midwife and that you just start with a workshop.
If you've invited me to any event on a weekend, there is a good chance you may have heard me decline because "I have a workshop." In a variety of capacities, workshops are a frequent part of my work or school experience. A workshop is very doable for me, and after talking with my friend I started to look into local doula workshops.
As it turns out, the only tampa doula workshop is literally blocks from my house. It couldn't get any easier for me. I felt like that was the universe making the choice obvious.
So tomorrow is the first day of my three-day doula workshop and after that I will be "trained." I have been blessed to very quickly find several births to attend so in a few months I will have some real experience.
A world beyond what had become ordinary has really started to open up. I have devored all sorts of literature on prenancy, labor, birth, and motherhood. A whole community of childbirth professionals has started to reveal itself to me. I am even in the process of starting a collective with several other doulas and we have big dreams of what we can create here on a local level. Everyone that I have told about this decision has been greatly supportive, most confirmming for me that I was made to do this work. I realize this is only the beginning.
I am so thankful I was able to recognize the sound of the call and that I was able to muster up the courage to answer.
