One of the most important issues of our lifetime is the health difference that White, Black, and Brown women and babies have.  This is true in almost any part of the world where White peoples colonized indigenous peoples.  As a culturally White doula previously unaware of these issues, it can be really difficult to figure out how to address them. As doulas our primary urge is to care for something or someone. It makes sense that we want to act in caring ways when we hear about racial inequities. Because of the nature of our work and our caregiving skills, doulas can uniquely contribute to the mending of racial and other inequities in health outcomes for marginalized[i] communities. Healing is a lofty goal. If you were to ask, "What would be the ideal outcome of addressing these inequities?"  It wouldn't just be having things statistically even; a community would want to heal the wounds that have been created and unite. That's ideal. That's what we all desire to contribute to. But the paradox is, just like in other aspects of doula work, that we don't get to define what behaviors contribute to healing. We need to listen and let Black families and doulas lead. That's where this essay came from. I listened for a few years and paid attention. Two years ago I wrote this essay, circulated it, and refined it based on the comments of my Black perinatal colleagues and friends. These are the ways each doula can uniquely contribute, no matter who you are, where you live, or what level of awareness you have about marginalized communities. 

1.  Believe people’s stories and their perception of events. If someone were to share their birth story, we understand that their perception of events is their truth.  As doulas, we accept people’s realities.  People see what they see, they feel what they feel, they know what they know. We don’t try to explain the physician’s motives, or say that because an intervention wasn’t intended to harm that it wasn’t harmful.  People of color, especially Black women, need the exact same acceptance and validation when sharing their stories with you – no matter what that story was about.  If they experienced someone’s behavior as demeaning, insulting, or a microaggression, then that is the reality of what they experienced.  Period.

2.  Protect the space.  As doulas, we know all about protecting the space for our birthing or postpartum clients.  We create a bubble around them so they can do the work that needs to be done. As Loretta Ross, one of the founders of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, says, “Hold the container without trying to shape what’s in the container.”  People of color already have great ideas on how to heal from racism, what parts of any particular system need to be fixed, and how to bridge the gaps in racial inequities.  Why?  Because they are the people with the problem.  The people who have the problem are the experts on the solutions.  What is needed from us, in this case, culturally White doulas, is for us to hold the space for them to do their work. Not tell them how to do it, or what we’ve learned as White women who’ve been doulas a long time.  If we’re asked, that’s different.  But our job is to protect the spaces that Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people create in our communities for their own programs.

What does that look like?  It means that we promote doulas; we promote culturally specific doula programs and their methods of recognizing achievement; and we assist efforts to train doulas from affected communities to take care of their own.  Doulas already know how to empower another person and how to let them be in the center while we take a supportive role. Even if we think that person’s choices might not be leading them in the direction they wanted, we know to keep our mouth shut. For one, we could be wrong. Two, it’s better to let someone have their own experience and learn from it than interfere. Sometimes a second venture that results from the ending of the initial effort is better than the first effort could ever be. We didn’t create the institutions that support racial inequities overnight and we’re not going to shift them overnight either.  There’s time.  (A sense of urgency and that “there is only one right way” are actually features of White culture![ii])...(READ MORE - you're only on 2!)