I am writing at the end of March, 2021. More than a year after I started working from home, coccooning in the safety of my West Hollwood cottage, and more than a year after my bodywork training prgram went on hiatus. At this point, I am lucky enough to be fully vaccinated through my job at a Federally Qualified Health Center, and at this point, I am feeling confident about new ways of doing and being with people and clients.

For me, practicing manual therapy and being a birth worker means releasing and unlearning the structures I had in mind for this work. It means being more playful, casual, and flexible with clients. It removes a layer of formality that I am actually glad to have scrubbed. When you come to my garden for a session, you may meet my pup, you may see how I pile my shoes up on the front porch, or I may offer you a cup of tea from the pot I brewed for my family. No, this is not an office space with a waiting area and water cooler, but circumstances have forced us into a format that is actually much closer to a community care model. Closer, more intimate, and more connected.

Before I began birth work, I had a vision of squeezing the hips of a laboring parent, breathing with them, holding their hand and giving them water to sip on between waves and surges. Physical support is important, no doubt, and we will return to it soon. But having physical distance as a new doula is a blessing in that it has sharpened the most important skill a support person needs- the ability to hold space. As I wrote in a post after my first client birthed her first baby, “ I wasn't there to hold her hands, catch her gaze, give her words of encouragement, or hold her hips. Distance pushed me into the deeper energetic practice of holding space for her from afar. I grounded my sacrum, felt my spine, pulled back my energy and will, and listened to her, acknowledging that her body guides every step of the way. Deep trust and surrender to her process. In many ways the distance became irrelevant.”