Empowering Doulas Through Mentorship

I have started offering mentorship to doulas in my area because there is a severe lack of guidance and support for people choosing this career. This line of work is tough, it challenges you in all the ways, but it also is a huge gift to our community and ourselves. Through supporting other families we have the potential to create deep wells of compassion, understanding, hope and healing inside of us and within our little corners of the world. Not only is this work lonely because most of us work alone, but it is also isolating when we are expected to jump out of training and into building a whole business and brand without guidance.

When I was just starting out work as a doula, I was pretty intimidated by the more established doulas. Clinical and non clinical birth workers seemed to gatekeep some of their expertise and heavily judge whenever I would ask local doula groups for advice or support, which made me stop reaching out to that lifeline for support out of fear of shaming or assuming things about my practice. There was one single mentor in our area who I had tried to get connected with but they never facilitated that space. This was 8 years ago, and things have changed. There are significantly more families choosing doulas, especially since we can now be covered by the State Medical Insurance. There are more training options, more styles of doula work and a growing interest in our areas of specialty and expertise.

Because I didn’t have a mentor or anyone really to support, validate and celebrate my work when I was just starting I had some fears around if I was even meant to be a doula, if I would be good at it, etc. These thoughts and professional insecurities led me to not charging my worth and doing way too many free or cheap births because I just was happy to be hired to do what I love. It took me 4 years to charge what I felt I was worth, and had I had someone telling me that I deserve to be paid I may have not spent so long undervaluing myself.

I also did not have a website, or a google review page, which forced me to rely on marketing through parenting groups on social media and through word of mouth referrals. This is NOT a sustainable or efficient way to gain clientele, because you are having to post to compete with other doulas who have been tagged or promote themselves. Once I set up my website and optimized it for search engines online I rarely had to expend energy to market or promote myself.

I had to bomb interviews to learn how to do them well, so now I provide a script for meetings to my mentees. I had to doubt myself over and over before I finally gained the confidence to own my work, so now I hype up my mentees by reminding them of their necessity, their strengths and talents as a doula. I had to take months off at a time after overstretching myself, so now I coach my mentees on self care and taking care of themselves to avoid burnout. I had to fail at trying to be a neurotypical doula before I confidently embraced my spicy brain differences, so now I love to work with neurodivergent doulas and offer my mentees unique ways to approach running a business that works for them and their own wonderfully spicy brains.

Most popular training programs cover the textbook variations of birth and and it’s physiology, and speaking from my personal experience with numerous training programs for postpartum and birth, the education kind of stays there. I remember leaving my trainings with no idea how to start and operate a business, and just diving in head first making plenty of missteps that I learned from over time. My hope is that after working together, my mentees feel empowered and excited to support families, skipping past all the awkward growing pains I had to deal with. More confident doulas, means more supported families, which means happier families and happier communities.

I’m incredibly thankful for Alex's mentorship. Despite my doula trainings, I felt unprepared for real-world scenarios until I worked with her. Her practical insights and hands-on guidance were invaluable, boosting my confidence and skills in both birth and postpartum care. In fact, when I had a tough postpartum doula shift, she helped me debrief it and gave me tips/encouragement for my future shifts. Without Alex, I would have stopped my doula journey there. Also, shadowing and co-doulaing with her provided an essential experience. She personally found a client that we could work with together. My learning and growth was priority for Alex. She made time for weekly check ins and was available whenever I had questions. She readily shared her work materials which was useful for me as a new doula. She also helped me with my website which was a huge plus. Highly recommend for anyone looking to excel in the doula field! Worth every penny and I found her packages to be quite affordable compared to some of the other mentorship programs out there! - Nazma N.

Just as our clients deserve a supported and positive experience as the birth their new family member, doulas deserve to a supportive and positive experience as they “birth” their new endeavor in this life. Choosing doula work is not for the faint of heart, it takes a courageous and compassionate heart to stand by the side of someone through their most vulnerable and intimate experiences without judgement. Those called to birth work are called to a career that is deeply heart centered and at times very emotionally and physically taxing. There are births that last for days, and births that end in tragedy. But there are also births that feel like a miracle and births that end in celebration. It is the wide ranging variation of outcomes that makes this work so important to be supported through. Just as I tell my clients that there are no rewards for suffering through birth and postpartum, there are no rewards for suffering through the creation of your practice as a doula, and you deserve to T H R I V E not just SURVIVE!