Dear Mama...

Since it is not the role of the birthing person to hold us as the support person as we download these emotions, these memos have been left alone on my phone until now. But the more I dig into the birth worker role, the more I believe that the way to avoid burnout in these roles is to benefit from space being held for you in the way that you hold it for others.

So here I am, stepping into a little vulnerability of my own - on the internet, of all places - sharing some of my own downloaded thoughts and hoping you might share along with me and that we, as birth workers, might create this space together.

Dear MamaKatherine MorrisDecember 18, 2019birth doula, dear mama, lonely, loneliness, holding space, processing, emotions, vulnerability, trust

trauma sucks. don't sell your house.

Example: Let’s say A is a female-identifying salesman with a passion for art history and a best friend, and one day, her best friend dies suddenly. Now, not only did A go from being someone with a best friend to being someone without a best friend, but now she’s a female identifying salesman with a passion for art history without a best friend who has come to see death in a very specific and intimate way. So when A gets a new job and has to move cities, you think she takes her job and her hobbies with her, but leaves behind her relationship with death? No way. Whether she knows it or not, this relationship packed its things and hopped on the moving truck in a box labeled “trauma.” But don’t worry, it stuck itself in the back near the keepsakes and holiday decorations.

Katherine MorrisSeptember 25, 2019trauma, moving, processing, moving box, boxes, grief, aces, casa, doula, birth doula, labor doula, birth trauma, sexual trauma, physical trauma, emotional trauma, milestones, transitions