MOE Letter No. 17 🤎

For the to and through

With every journey, with every client, at some juncture, I share this knowing I've gathered: our pregnancy, our birth, our postpartum experiences - they live alongside the layers of our lives. It would be convenient, wouldn't it? Comforting, is it (hey fam in Joburg), if we could just nestle and flow with one thing at a time?

Yet we are joyfully pregnant, and challenged by the grief of what natural and domestic and political and foreign disasters we see.

Yet we are in our complete power in labor and close to the glory of birth, and missing our mother, who went to see God before she could hear her name, Grandmother.

Yet we are exhaustedly postpartum and confidently there for our family who needs us deeply in every capacity we have left to give.

We are never just pregnant. Never just giving birth. Never just postpartum.

We are journeying the layers of our lives.

And it is every wonderful thing, to have someone steady alongside, for the to and through.

There was a question that the hour lacked space for during our webinar. I thought it may be nice to share here, that question and my answer:

What do you wish Black women and families knew?

That doula support is for every body. Its for us. For every birth. Any way to birth. Every way through birth. Every experience of loss, of joy, and every journey through postpartum. Whether you choose medical care from a midwife or an OB or both, whether you identify as earthy or bougie, whether you have intimate partner or good friend support, whether you’re planning a cesarean birth or preparing for an unmedicated labor and birth. Whether you have private insurance or medicaid, whether funded by public grant or personal savings, whether you choose birth at a hospital or free-standing birth center or the comforting embrace of home - doula support is for you.

And for the people who find their way to me - by referral, by some search or prayer - know that here, with this particular doula, this continuum guide, this lactation counselor, this childbirth educator, this mother, this woman - you will earth a rare gem of support. It is deep, and it is wide. It is before, and it is beyond. It is to, and it is through.

with love, kris

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