My Journey to becoming a life transition doula

TL; DR: First off, what do I mean by life transition doula? Not to be mistaken with end-of-life doula, I consider myself a life transition doula because I love supporting people as they go through big life changes. Life moments that change the course or direction of our path deserve recognition, honoring, and care. Read more to find out about my journey in discovering how I arrived at this place.

My training and work as a postpartum care provider gave me a beautiful opportunity to learn how to tend to the preciousness of life.

Supporting the needs of parents with newborns is one of the most tender, surreal, and challenging spaces I have been in. I stepped away from my postpartum doula practice when I started to face my own triggers around family systems and babies. So much of my inner work was coming up; I was still healing from previous abortions, I was going through transformations around my gender, my queerness, and my relationship style. Who I was becoming was a very different version of myself than the person I was when I had started my path as a doula years prior. Even if my clients were queer and polyamorous like myself I was still in deep emotional recovery from my pregnancy releases. Being around newborns-although I loved it so much-began to feel hard. I felt unsure if I even wanted to raise a family myself. I still feel unsure about it, to be perfectly honest.

I am glad I stepped away from this line of work that was asking so much of my heart, body and soul in order to find a more aligned version of what it means to be a doula. My clients deserved more from me-and I stepped away quickly after I felt the disconnect starting to occur. I am grateful for allll of the support I received and for the grace that the universe provided in empowering me to create something new. And like a steady stream running through my being what existed at the core of my work then, and what remains now in my work today is my strong value around community care.

I will always be grateful that I learned and witnessed is how rich, potent and VITAL to the healing process it was to hold space for my postpartum clients in offering Closing the Bones rituals. That’s where I felt the real spark inside. And when I began serving clients post-abortion, post sexual assault, post big life transitions, I knew I was finding my sweet spot.

Because really, I feel that we are in a deep lack of proper initiations and rites of passages for life events that don’t always look so pretty from the outside. Things like divorces, pregnancy losses, death of loved ones or gender changes can involve SO many logistical matters and can feel so isolating at times. It is during these major life transitions that we are in DEEP NEED of spiritual grounding as well as energetic and emotional nourishment. Tending to those aspects of life transition is often not prioritized. More often than not it is downright ignored.

My intention with cocooning is to infuse the skills, experiences, and knowledge I gained as a postpartum doula into supporting anyone through their process of transformation. Creating a womb-like chrysalis from which my clients can go within, be witnessed, swaddled and bathed in sound to emerge with a more settled nervous system and perhaps better understanding of where they are at lights me up.

I don’t mean to undervalue or underplay the need for postpartum ritual too. I am happy to serve clients that feel drawn to work with me, even though I feel like I am more on the fringe of birth work rather than the epicenter at this point. I wholeheartedly am in support of families getting the support they deserve post-birth because it truly takes a village. I feel that families deserve support from attuned people that are readily available, present and passionate about facing the challenges of bringing new life into this world. I feel SO much gratitude for those that serve families with newborns. It is HARD work, and I commend all birth workers for showing up for families they way they do. I commend all FAMILIES for bringing children into the world especially during these tender times of a global pandemic!

AND, individuals need doulas too. I want to contribute to creating a culture of honoring life and the passages we go through, regardless if we are birthing a child or birthing ourselves anew. 

That’s why I consider myself a Life Transition Doula :)