The Doula

I’m Helen.

I believe there is so much more to birth than bringing a baby into the world.

There is a woman crossing a threshold. A woman whose life, body, relationships, fears, and dreams are all coming with her. A woman who may feel joy so vast she cannot contain it—and fear, guilt, anger, grief, or uncertainty just as deep.

I want her to have room for all of it.

I want her to put down the comparing, the performing, the need to have everything figured out. To be seen in her most honest, bare-bones form and feel that she is still held.

I believe we are meant to walk this path together. Mothers helping maidens cross. Women sitting beside women, reminding one another that we do not have to carry it all alone.

This is the story of how I came to this work.

Before I was ready

Before my son was conceived, he appeared to me in a vision and asked to be conceived right then.

I was not ready.

I tried to bargain for more time. There were things I still wanted to do, a career I was building, a life I thought I needed to live a little longer before becoming a mother.

But the feeling was so vast, so much bigger than me, that I found myself wondering: Who am I to say no?

And then another thought: people try for years. What was one try going to do?

During conception, something happened that I had never experienced before. My mind began almost chanting, inviting this baby in. I remember saying, “I allow my body to get pregnant.”

With those words came an overwhelming feeling of release and openness. I felt as though I was both the observer and the composer of what was happening. I felt the binding of the seed inside my fertile earth.

And then, somehow, I went on with my life.

I returned to my work as a project manager and the everyday rhythm I knew. But every waking moment, I could feel that something was different in my body. I felt life blooming inside me, even as I remained in complete denial.

The message

When I was about three weeks pregnant, my husband and I were sitting in our backyard when a bird approached me.

Animals sometimes communicate with me, and I felt that she had a message. I asked if it was from my grandfather, who has passed and often communicates with me, or perhaps from my father-in-law. The answer I felt was no.

The bird kept returning, almost yelling the message at me. For about forty minutes, she came back again and again, but I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me.

Finally, I said, Please send the message to me through my dream tonight.

The next morning, only seconds after waking, I heard my own voice—almost shouting—say out loud:

“You’re pregnant.”

I ran to the bathroom, barely able to open my eyes, and took a pregnancy test. I hoped I might have a moment to catch my breath before it gave me an answer.

Within seconds, there were two clear lines.

I was pregnant.

The beginning of becoming

I wish I could tell you that the first thing I felt was joy. But what came over me was fear.

I started crying. I wasn’t afraid of birth. I was afraid of my life changing forever.

What about my job? Am I going to lose it? What am I going to do with my life? Are we ready? I needed more time.

Somewhere inside me, I could already feel how much of the person I knew myself to be I might leave behind on this journey into motherhood.

I came out of the bathroom sobbing. My husband saw me and rushed over, worried. Barely able to catch my breath, I told him I was pregnant.

He was over the moon. He hugged me, spun me around, then paused, looked at me, and asked, “Why are you crying?”

I told him I was scared—of my job, of everything changing, of whether we were ready. He held me and told me we would be okay.

And so my journey of preparation began.

Finding my way to birth

There was one thing I knew immediately: I wanted to give birth at home.

Home was where I felt safest. It came as a shock to my husband and my family, and some of the people who loved me tried to persuade me otherwise until the very end of my pregnancy. But I had no doubt about where I felt safest.

What I didn’t have was knowledge. I was going to be a first-time mother, and this was the first baby in my family. There was so much to learn, and sometimes I didn’t even know what questions to ask.

I read more than fifteen books on pregnancy and birth. I wanted to prepare my mind, body, and soul. I felt that if I learned everything I possibly could, I would feel safe enough and confident enough in my decision to have my baby at home.

I found two wonderful midwives who guided me through the physical and spiritual dimensions of pregnancy and birth. I also worked with my somatic therapist through some of the big emotions that came to the surface.

And throughout it all, I felt my baby beside me.

I felt his guidance in the books I was drawn to, in the things I needed to do to prepare, and in the quiet knowing that pregnancy and birth were something we were doing together.

That connection gave me a sense of power and trust—in my body, in my baby, and in our journey.

The Birth Cave

Exactly one month before I gave birth, I wrote this poem based on a vision I had during my pregnancy:

I can feel it — as the moonlight shines on my marble maiden skin, I can feel the ripening of my yoni. Soft, vulnerable, tender…
I can feel the night is close.

Deep, tucked within the sacred forest of Mother Earth, the cave — the dark, mystical, sacred gorge — is softly calling me in.
My heart, tender with humble excitement and anticipation of this transition that awaits.

As I make my way toward the cave, I feel and hear the echoes of every woman who walked before me. My body soft and vulnerable, my mind almost hypnotized by the magic of the night.

I take my last barefoot steps on the earthy body of my mother forest. As I step into this whooshing cave, fully ready to surrender, to bare my mind, body, and skin as the cave receives and devours me into its cauldron of transformation.

Take me, have me — I surrender. I surrender in the arms of the countless sisters who were here before me. I trust, I give in, I worship.

As I let this sacred initiation run through me — through every bone, through every cell — rebuilding and shaping me, I can slowly see the path that guides me out of the cave into another dimension.

I, now reborn as a mother, holding my blood and my bones, my son, my light, take my first steps out as the sun starts to slowly rise over the soft shoulders of the mountains…
The fresh air of the new day and the new beginning fills my lungs as my ears ring with the cries of my bairn.

That vision stayed with me. Later, as I found my way into birth work, it gave a name to the space I hoped to create.

The Birth Cave.

A place where a woman can feel safe enough to turn inward. Where she can bring all of herself and be held through the unknown, in the company of women who have walked before her.

The night he came

During my pregnancy, I felt that my son had told me when and how he would be born.

He told me it would be under a full moon. That I should walk beneath it, look up, and, when I was ready, say that I was ready. Then my contractions would begin.

That evening, I took a short walk under the moon. It was around nine o’clock. When I came home about fifteen minutes later and sat down on the couch, I felt my first contraction.

I sent my husband to bed so he could get a good night’s sleep. I chose to sleep on the sofa because I wanted that privacy—those first hours to be just me and my baby.

And dare I say it, I enjoyed early labor.

I was somewhere between sleeping and waking, in a different reality. I saw souls guiding me through each contraction. By six in the morning, I was fully awake and ready for the birth.

My midwife came around nine, and I continued riding through the waves. Eventually, I got into the birth pool, and that afternoon, I gave birth to my son.

My birth felt good. It was comfortable, pain-free, and I felt how everything I had learned, together with my particular circumstances, allowed me to work with my body as my labor unfolded.

I also tore significantly. The birth of my baby was only the beginning of what my body and I would need to move through.

The other side

Postpartum was hard.

I experienced a myriad of breastfeeding issues. I was healing from my tears, navigating changes in my mood, and learning how to care for a baby while becoming a mother myself.

During pregnancy and the early postpartum period, I also came to understand how much work my own ego had to do in the passage from maiden to mother. There were parts of myself and my life I was being asked to meet in a new way.

There was so much joy. And there were emotions that felt enormous, complicated, and sometimes difficult to speak aloud.

I kept thinking about how many women go through this. How many babies are born every day—and how many women are being born into motherhood alongside them.

And yet, how little room our world often gives to the fullness of that experience.

The fear, guilt, shame, anger, grief, joy, and unimaginable ecstasy. The questions that feel enormous and the ones that seem so small: What do I buy for the baby? Do I have enough? Am I missing something?

Before my own pregnancy, I never considered having a doula. I didn’t feel I needed one. But looking back, I realized how much I had taken on alone—and how much it could have meant to have another woman beside me through it all.

A life changing

After I became a mother, the weight of everything in my life changed.

The job I had been so afraid of losing no longer felt like the place I belonged. The thought of leaving my baby and returning to conversations about Gantt charts, milestones, and Excel files felt almost impossible after everything I had experienced.

I couldn’t simply walk out of this passage and pretend it didn’t exist.

I wanted to talk about birth. About women. About our magic and our power. About everything that happens to us as we become mothers.

The thought of going back brought me anxiety and panic every day. I was privileged to know that, although leaving my job would mean financial struggle for our family, we would not go hungry. Eventually, I made the call and resigned.

I felt an enormous sense of relief.

And then came grief.

I had spent years building my career. Letting it go felt as though worlds were falling apart. A part of me mourned what I was giving away, even as everything in me knew I could no longer keep living exactly as I had before.

Slowly, I understood where I wanted to be.

I wanted to be with women. I wanted to be in birth work.

So I followed that passion here, with the hope that perhaps one day it may lead me to midwifery, too.

Why I’m here

There is a dance between a mother and her baby that, for me, began before pregnancy and continues through pregnancy, birth, postpartum, early parenthood, and beyond.

There is also a dance within us as women. We are not linear creatures. We move through seasons and cycles, through versions of ourselves, through passages that ask different things of us. I find meaning in the archetypes of maiden, mother, and crone because they give shape to some of the depth and change we experience throughout our lives.

I don’t believe our world always recognizes that depth. It doesn’t always make room for women to speak openly about everything they feel, or to be held through the immensity of becoming.

I want to do my part to bridge that gap.

I want to hold my sisters and their journeys with the depth they deserve and the recognition they need. To sit beside a woman as she prepares for birth, as questions arise, as old stories surface, and as she discovers what safety and support mean to her.

I want her to know she can bring her joy and her fear. Her certainty and her doubt. The parts she is proud of and the parts she may be afraid to say out loud.

I want her to feel seen. Heard. Deeply supported. And in the company of a fellow woman.

Your story is yours

My story is my story. It is the story of my birth, with this particular baby, at this particular time in my life.

Your story will be yours.

Your beliefs may differ from mine. The place where you feel safest may look different. Your pregnancy, birth, and the meaning you make of them may unfold in ways neither of us can predict.

My role is not to help you have a birth like mine. It is to help you prepare for your birth—to explore your choices, understand your preferences, ask your questions, and feel supported as you make decisions that are right for you.

I believe birth is an initiation. I also know that each woman’s experience is her own, and that no one else gets to decide what it should mean to her.

Whatever your journey holds, you deserve care that sees the whole of you.