What Makes a Good Doula These Days?
Have you ever wondered what’s the difference between a good doula and a bad doula?
If you’ve been wondering what you need to do to truly support and empower your doula clients, then get out a pen and paper, this episode is for you.
Things you’ll learn in this episode:
Why you might need to forgive the unforgivable…
How to leave your baggage at the door when showing up for women…
Why you need to stop being the “hero” for your clients…
… and a whole lot more!
Welcome back! It’s been a couple of months. We took a break in between our seasons, and I’m so excited to be back! Man, do I have some exciting things to share with you guys. Honestly, so much is changing that I can't even tell you in this blog post. So make sure you're following me on Instagram @theautonomymommy or @birthworkerpodcast because the Birthworker Academy is totally changing this year, and the Birthworker membership, our business membership, is totally up and running! It’s amazing, we have over 100 women inside right now. And to top it off, my team and I have even been talking about creating a childbirth educator course! So I am just so excited for 2023. I hope you had a wonderful New Year.
I know we have been talking a lot about business lately, but today I want to take it back to the foundation of the doula role, which I actually don't think many people truly understand. I've put together a four-pillar system that I consider the foundation of a doula role. This is what we teach inside the Birthworker Academy, our doula training program.
All of this came to me when I was talking with one of my friends a few months ago about advocacy. This was even before we started Birthworker Academy. We asked ourselves, “How are we supposed to teach new doulas how to advocate? Is it even possible to teach new doulas how to advocate?” And we came to the conclusion that advocacy is actually something that follows you through every piece of your entire life. Advocacy is not something that you take a doula training program to learn, right? Advocacy is more about who you are as a person, and that's honestly the foundation of the entire doula role. It's who you are as a person.
So today we're going to be talking about what I consider to be the four pillars of birthwork, and then the three core tenets of birthwork. Instead of giving you these practical steps to advocate (which I do inside our doula training program, Birthworker Academy), this is really going to be about helping you understand the pillars of what makes up the doula role.
The Four Pillars: Advocacy, Holding Space, Knowledge, and Trust.
Essentially what this comes down to is knowing when to speak up, knowing when to shut up, knowing when to educate, and knowing when to trust that everything is unfolding perfectly, like trusting the innate wisdom within us and within our clients. Now let's just jump right into the three core tenets of Birthwork, which again, are entirely made up by me. This is something that I have come up with over the years of being a doula and now training doulas. I didn't learn this anywhere, it's just something that came naturally to me. As I'm discussing these three core tenets, I want you to notice how the pillars, advocacy, holding space, knowledge, and trust are all like these golden threads that run through each of the three core tenets of birthwork. Sometimes it's in obvious ways, and then sometimes it's in subtle ways.
The first core tenet: open-mindedness.
As a doula, you are going to encounter people who have different opinions than you. As a human on this planet, you are going to encounter people who have different opinions than you. These could be issues like politics, religion, social movements, gender, racism, all of that stuff. And actually, all of those things I just mentioned will also come up in birthwork. As you start getting into attending births and serving more people, you will encounter people and their issues will arise that have to do with politics, religion, social movements, gender, racism, all of the same stuff. But here's the thing, we want the people around us to feel invited to express themselves without fear or judgment.
We want to cultivate that space for deeper work for both us and them. And that sentence alone leads to so many people unfollowing me every single year. I want people all around me to feel invited to express themselves freely without fear of my judgment, even if people disagree with me, even if people are saying horrible things, even if people are rude, and even if people are hateful… We need to, as birthworkers, let the people around us be invited to express themselves without fear of our judgment. I know that sometimes it's really not easy, but let me tell you, it is absolutely foundational for birthwork. It doesn't serve anybody to be reacting to our triggers, and that includes being hateful back to hateful people. And the way that we can remain open-minded is to remain curious about why people are the way that they are.
You can even say to them, "Mm, that sounds very important to you. Can you tell me more"? There's even a French saying that I love. I would love to get this tattooed on me one day, but my last several tattoos were text, and I don't need any more text on my body right now. But anyway, there's a French saying, I'm obsessed with it, that goes like this, "To understand all is to forgive all".
To understand all is to forgive all.
If you as a birthworker can be curious enough and open-minded enough to really try and understand where people are coming from, that's where the magic happens. And if you're curious enough, it's actually really easy to see why other people are the way that they are.
The next thing that I'm going to share is personal, and it might be triggering for a lot of people. It's something that my partner has taught me because my partner has been through some crazy life experiences and trauma from a very young age. What he told me shook me so hard to my core and just blew my mind because so much made sense. He said, "Everybody wants to support the abused child, everybody's rooting for the abused kid, everybody feels bad for them, wants to lift them up, help them and protect them… until that child turns into an adult that abuses children."
The reason he said that to me is because I asked him, "Do you hate the person that did that to you"? And he said, "No, because it probably happened to them too". It probably happened to him too, and that's why he did it to my partner. He refused to look at this abuser as anything other than that child who themselves was abused. To understand all is to forgive all. And I know that example is way out there, it's almost as far as you can go, but we can actually use this when we're talking about disagreements about politics, or the words that we use to describe our body parts, or ourselves, or our gender. The most difficult work that we will do as doulas is dealing with our own egos and triggers, and leaving our biases and our agenda at the door when walking into a client’s space, or even walking into a virtual space like Instagram.
We have to leave our own shit at the door so we can actually support and hold space for people.
So can we hold our biases in our hearts as we listen? Can we hold our biases in our hearts and be aware of them as we read the room? Can we get curious? Can we notice our own triggers? Can we try to understand all so that maybe one day we can forgive all? Can we know in our core, truly know and understand that there's no objectively right way? Can we know that our beliefs are not objectively true? They're not objectively best, even though they fire you up and you can argue till you're blue in the face? I want you to zoom out a little bit and just get curious on that. I think this is such an important part of birthwork. It's the ability to remain open-minded, not only when we're supporting a birth, but in the way we present ourselves online, the way we show up with our children, the way we show up with our family, and even the way we show up with the people that trigger us most.
Something else that I've learned through my personal growth and through my work as a doula is that neutrality and genuine curiosity are sometimes the best de-escalators of anger and tension in a room. And so in life, in the birth room privately between you and your clients, or you and your followers on social media, or you and the trolls on social media, how can you deal with those people with genuine curiosity? If the room is heated, how can you use genuine curiosity to deescalate the tension in that room? This is huge in the birth room. When we're talking about advocating for our clients, genuine curiosity, a lot of the time looks like creating space by asking questions. If you're supporting birth in a hospital, it looks like asking questions to the providers, but then also asking questions to the person giving birth.
Asking questions is a very easy way to slow everything down, which is very useful when dealing with birth in any sort of medical environment. So I'll just say right here, right now that my bias is that birth happens best when it's home and it's silent, and no one's asking questions because nothing's being done and there's no medical support people touching the mom or even there in the room. That's my bias. That's what I love and prefer. That's what I love to support. But the cool thing here is that since I really practice this open-mindedness that I preach, I would consider myself on almost every issue, a radical centrist. I fully understand where everybody is coming from, and even if I strongly disagree, I can very easily put myself in that person's shoes and understand where they're coming from.
Having that ability as a mom, as a birthworker, and as a human really helps me navigate certain situations where other people might find them stressful, very triggering or a threat to their personality and/or safety. I don't find it that way. I do think that that makes a phenomenal birthworker. When we can hold space like that. When we can have the open-mindedness to be with people, even people we disagree with. So that's the first tenet, open-mindedness.
The second core tenant: silent listening.
Silent listening is truly a skill that needs to be practiced because it can feel really awkward if it's something you're just not used to. It’s very different from active listening. Silent listening is inviting someone to share their story with you, their entire story with all the details, and literally sitting there in silence and listening to their story. And like I said, it could feel awkward for you. It might even feel awkward for them at first because they’re not used to someone silent listening to them. The thing with silent listening is that you're not just listening with your ears, you're listening with your ears, your mind, your eyes, and your heart. You're not thinking about all the things that you're going to say when they're done. You're not trying to fix, you're not giving advice, and you're not educating. You are simply holding space for them to share whatever they want to share with you at that moment.
It's really hard. While you're doing this, I don't even want you to take notes, and I don't want you to do active listening. So I don't want you to make noises, I don't want you to nod your head, I don't want you to make facial expressions, I don't want you to repeat what the person's told you in your own words as a question to clarify, none of that. Because all of those things suddenly take away from your ability to listen with your whole body. When we're doing those things, we're listening with our ears, but we're not listening with our mind because our mind is busy nodding our head and making facial expressions and making sure that someone knows we're listening.
And so even though it can feel really strange and difficult, doing this silent listening exercise frees you from the demand, the instinct of fixing, or there's something said and I need to give my input, or there's something said and I need to relate to that, right? It frees you from that. It frees you from the demand of also formulating a response and that obligation we feel to show that we're invested. A lot of times in doula training programs, they teach active listening, but I just want you to take a step back and see how you can start to incorporate silent listening with active listening so you're able to, at some points, listen with your whole body.
Over time, as you do the silent listening more and more, it will feel a lot more natural. And like I said, the goal here is that we're freeing you from that demand of trying to fix and of trying to formulate a response. If you're one of my students and you're listening to this, you already know this really well, but I teach a self-mastery module in Birthworker Academy all about conscious leadership, biases, and personal development, all the self-work, and the fact that being a doula is sometimes really hard because a lot of times we want to be the hero. We want to save people, we want to fix things, we want to prevent birth trauma, and we want to educate. And there's a level from which we can operate all of those things, right?
There is a level where we can do all of those things in a helpful way, but there's another level where we are stepping into that hero persona. When we're in that hero persona, we are subconsciously creating a victim in every scenario in which we are the hero. In every scenario where you are preventing birth trauma, you're creating a victim. In every scenario where you are fixing your client's birth, you're creating a victim. In every scenario where you want to save people from obstetric violence, you are creating a victim. And in this case, the victim that we're subconsciously creating by stepping into that hero persona in most cases is our client.
Something that I say often, especially on social media, is that moms don't need me. Women don't need me, women don't need doulas. Nobody “needs” a doula. The reason I say that is because I want people to understand that they're not lacking in anything, that they don't need someone to save them, that there's no victim here, and that they have everything they need. And if they want my help, awesome, cool. If they want me to be their doula, amazing. If they want me in the room while they give birth, sweet. I would love to support them, but I need my clients to know, and every woman to know that they don't actually need me. I think it's really easy to get caught in that hero role. And if you're in that hero role and you're sitting in a room with one of your clients telling her story, you're going to want to fix it. You're going to want to give advice, you're going to want to nod, you're going to want to make expressions and all of these things, but that's not necessarily what's serving your client best at that moment. That's what I want you to understand here.
And yes, doulas should be able to feel confident responding verbally and have that ability to express themselves in a way with their clients and with care providers and the birth team and such, but we need to be aware of why it is that we're talking. Is our client at this moment actually benefiting from what we're saying? Or are we just saying something to be heard? Are we just saying something to sound smart? Are we just trying to push an agenda? Are we trying to be relatable? Are we trying to be funny? Are we trying to make a good impression? Are we doing what our doula training told us to do? And this is actually a mindset that you can take into everyday life, right?
Really just taking a step back and honoring the pauses and recognizing the beauty in those quiet moments. And to realize that not every story needs your input. Not every story needs your advice. This one is probably pretty radical, but not every cry for help even needs your advice or needs your story. Sometimes it's even a cry for help that just needs you to witness their cry for help.
The third core tenant: emotional allyship.
We just got into this, but let's dive a little bit deeper because this adds an additional layer on top of what we were just talking about, which is the hero role and victim role. I want you to think for a second if there are any relationships in your life where someone keeps coming to you all the time for advice. They count on you for advice. They turn to you in hard times. They always want to know your opinion. They count on you. They might even say that they feel lost without you, or that they couldn't do it without you. And so think about your role in that relationship, being the one in that hero role, and think about how that makes you feel. Do you feel really happy to help that person? Does it make you feel really smart and wise and strong? Does it make you feel like a good person? Do you feel needed? Do you like to feel needed? Taking that to a deeper level, ask how does stepping into this helpful role affect your relationship with that other person?
I hope you're smiling right now, because even as I'm reading this, I'm just, ugh, yes, just yes. How does this person coming to you for help affect your relationship with that person? How do you view them? How do you talk about them when they're not there? (Because I'm sure you do) Can you notice that maybe there's a subtle idea that maybe they're weaker than you, or maybe they're just a little bit lost, or maybe they're just a little bit helpless? I bet you can see it. That dynamic of someone that needs help and the other person continuing to help, it's a very common and very natural thing. There is nothing wrong with it. Often it comes from a very loving and pure place, yet still, it creates a subtle power imbalance.
The person who is helpful, they're the one that holds the answers, and therefore they hold the power in this relationship, in this dance between these two people. So the question that I want you to consider is, can you consciously step away from that role of hero? Instead, can you step into something that's more like an emotional ally? You could even call it a coach. I've learned a lot of this from the Conscious Leadership Group, and they call this the coach.
I want to ask you, can you make it very clear that you don't have all the answers to other people's issues? Can you make it very clear that you also stumble, that you also fail, you feel overwhelmed, and sometimes you have no clue what the F you are doing? And just consider how much more relatable that person would be than the hero who just always has all the answers. As a doula, can you recognize your shared humanness with your clients and be honest about the fact that you don't know the right answer for them, and that you'll never know the right answer for them? Instead of just giving them answers to all of their questions, and doing all the research and decision-making for them, giving advice and educating, can you begin to step into a place of curiosity?
Can you ask questions to open up the space for your client to be their own goddamn hero? Our clients don't need us, and it is so, so important that every single doula that comes into my world, every single doula that I mentor or teach, it is so important that they know that women do not need doulas. I don't know what's best for you, and I will never know what is best for you. I will never know what is best for my clients. I am just a human too. I make mistakes too. I'm overwhelmed too. And by doing this, I am giving my clients and my students the greatest gift, the gift of being their own heroes. And, so can you open that space in the room? Can you create that curiosity and start asking questions to allow them to feel their power, their innate power, and allow them to empower themselves?
When your client comes to you asking you questions about interventions and what they should do, turn to them and ask:
Well, what's your biggest fear?
What are the pros and cons for you?
What are your goals?
What's your gut telling you?
What's the worst thing that could happen if you make the wrong choice?
These five questions in this order can completely transform your clients’ lives. These are amazing questions for when you feel yourself slipping into that “fixer” role or that “educator” role. Can you instead ask these questions and become more of a mirror for your clients rather than an authority? Can you turn to your client and say, "Sometimes I just don't know what I'm doing, and sometimes I don't make the right choices, and I don't know what the right choice is.” Can you turn to your clients and say to them, "I don't have an answer for you. Let's find this out together”?
The hero doula feels really proud for telling her clients the best way to go about things, because the hero doula thinks: I know, I've been around, I understand. Let me help you. Let me tell you how it's going to be. Let me tell you how to go about this to get the best experience for yourself. The hero doula feels really proud that her client is so relieved to finally have an answer. So relieved to have someone that she can turn to and ask all these questions.
But a doula who truly understands their role is able to hold space for her clients while her clients are dealing with their shit at their own pace. Can you turn to your client and say to them, "This is really hard. There is no right answer. I believe in you. No matter what decision you make, I will not judge you, and I am going to hold your hand while you struggle"? Do you feel a difference there? I really hope you do. Stepping into the doula role that we've talked about in this episode helps our clients empower themselves.
If we are the hero doula and we have all the answers, we know exactly what to do to prepare for birth, and we know everything, then as soon as our client faces a challenge, they're going to turn to us for help. That's not at all empowering for our clients. The best thing that we can sometimes do is remind them to stop looking outside of themselves for all of the answers. We can be that mirror, ask those questions, and get curious. And just like everything else that we're talking about here today, this is something that you can practice every single day in your life with every single relationship that you have. With your kids, your partner, your parents, and with your doula clients.
See how it feels to not rescue people. Does it feel like you're letting someone down? Sometimes it feels that way at first, but what does it feel like when you create space for your clients to empower themselves? That is what being a doula means to me. That is what birthwork is about to me. That is why I created a doula training program to mentor new and aspiring doulas. And that is why moving forward, Birthworker Academy is going to be much more narrowly focused towards women who want to understand what it's like to be a doula in this role that we've talked about today. I'm no longer interested in trying to save women. I'm no longer interested in teaching doulas how to save women. And I am only calling in the new and aspiring birthworkers to join me inside the Birthworker Academy who are ready to have hard conversations like this, are ready to come down from that hero role, ready to stop creating victims of our clients, and are ready to help their clients have truly transformational journeys into motherhood.
Not just something where a stranger hires us online to be at their birth because their friend liked us and we meet them a few times, we attend their birth and call it a day. I'm done with that. I'm done with that for me, I'm done with that for my business, and I'm done with that for birthworkers all around the world. If you are new to birthwork, or maybe you've already taken a doula training program, but you left that program and found yourself asking, "Okay, but what do I actually do to support women through the most transformational period of their lives? What do I actually do to create these packages and offers that take women through a transformative journey so they can have that autonomous birth experience and they can look back on their birth and say, Kyleigh, I didn't need you, I didn't need you as my doula. I could have done that by myself"?
No more celebrating when clients tell us “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
2023 is the year of change for the way that I support women, the way that I teach doulas to support women, and the way that I run my doula training program. We are changing Birthworker Academy from a cohort-style program where we have had 100 students at a single time, to a program that is three months long, a true mentorship-style program where we will accept 10 people every month. It will be a six-month-long program where you will have one-on-one calls with me, weekly calls with the community, and a private, off-of-social media community for all of us to hang out, ask questions, collaborate, and work through our problems together.
And the goal with this new and improved Birthworker Academy is, again, that we can have these hard conversations on a really deep level. We don't have to say stay surface level anymore. You don't have to just watch some videos, fill out some homework, and voilà, you're a doula. That's not interesting to me anymore. I just hope you are ready to take this journey with me because I am so excited to see what kind of women find themselves inside Birthworker Academy this coming year. We are opening the doors to 10 women every month as I said, and we are starting in March of this year. So in just a few months!
If you are reading this and you are thinking, holy crap, yes, that is what I need in my doula business or in my birthwork business, shoot me a DM on Instagram. Go over to Instagram, you can find me @theautonomymommy or @birthworkerpodcast, and shoot me a DM with the word “impact”, and that lets me know that you want to continue this conversation and you want to learn about how Birthworker Academy might be able to help you cultivate this transformation in your clients’ lives.
So I’ll see you over in my Instagram DMs. Thank you so much for being here. I really enjoyed the break, but we are back at it. And this is something else I have not mentioned, but we are starting 2023 with two podcast episodes per week. This episode is coming out on a Wednesday, and starting this week, every single Friday we are doing a Q&A episode where I'm answering all of your biggest and best questions in 15 minutes or less, right over on the podcast. I would love for you to ask a question for the next 3-in-15 episode! You can do that by going to this form where you’ll submit your name and your question so I can answer it for you right here.
I will see you right back here on Friday. Thank you so much for being here. See you soon!
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Meet your host, Kyleigh Banks, a side-gig doula turned CEO of a multi-six-figure birth-focused business. Her passion? Teaching birth nerds, like you, how to build an incredibly successful doula business that allows you to quit your day job, stay home with your kids, and most importantly, make a lasting impact on the world.