Exploring BADT's Core Values Together: Part 3 Healing, Cultural Humility, and Community
Birthing Advocacy Doula Trainings is committed to operating from a values-based lens. As a community, we are building and growing and living out values that contribute to liberation for all. You can find our core values here. Please note that this is a living, changing document, which is periodically edited to reflect ongoing conversations in our field and our growth as a community.
This is the third and final part in our core values series. Find parts 1 and 2 here! In this series, we offer ideas for exploring each of BADT’s core values in your own life. We also acknowledge that none of these practices are one-and-done sort of things. Living values-first is an on-going, emerging practice. Thank you for engaging in this work alongside us!
Healing
“This is not a healing space, though healing may happen here,” and, “you don’t have to be a therapist in order to be therapeutic in your approach,” are two borrowed and often reused phrases we align with. We believe that learning spaces can be healing, and that the self-awareness that is a prerequisite for responsible full spectrum birthwork requires ongoing healing work.
Ideas for Exploring Healing
Find a coach, therapist, mentor, support group, or another avenue for healing. You might like to explore or tap into practices from your lineage or cultural tradition. You might like to find someone with whom you have a shared identity. One consideration: While some truly important healing can be done alone (while journaling or meditating, for example) being witnessed, seen, and held by another or a group can deepen healing. That said, however you choose to find healing is valid! If you are looking to start therapy, Inclusive Therapists is a great platform to explore, as it features professionals who are culturally responsive, inclusive, and anti-oppressive.
Explore and commit to daily practices that anchor and sustain you. The term self-care has been (literally) capitalized upon and made to be a thing of luxury and privilege. However, it is true that we all need practices that help us refill our cups and care for ourselves so that we can keep showing up for ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities. Read about the radical history of self-care here! Play around with different practices. Even seemingly simple things can become anchors in your day or week. Some ideas we enjoy are evening baths, reading for 10 minutes each morning, pausing and expressing gratitude for your body as you take your medicine and/or vitamins, sitting outside in the sun for 5 minutes, listening (like really listening) to a song start to finish, and lighting a candle to bring a scent into the space while you read or write or work.
Connect with your community. Show up and be in community. Share space with diverse groups of people. This could mean showing up to your city council meeting, Sunday dinners with family, a neighborhood coalition, the PTA at a child’s school, attending religious ceremonies, or networking events. Yes, this sometimes involves stepping outside of your comfort zone. Of course, we can’t all attend ALL the things, so consider where you feel most called or drawn, what spaces are asking for more participating, where you might have the biggest influence, and so on.
Cultural Humility
We believe that individuals are the experts in themselves, their bodies, and their needs. In order to support people in this autonomy, we understand that it is necessary to reflect back to individuals the aspects of their identities that are most important to them. This involves understanding that we all see the world through different lenses, informed by our cultures and experiences.
Ideas for Exploring Humility
Listen to others when they share their stories. As doulas, we are trained to ask questions with curiosity and care. We listen to what and how our clients and colleagues share. Rather than listening to get specific answers, we listen to witness the person or people who are sharing space with. At BADT, we believe that this way of relating can be powerful and healing in our personal and professional relationships and in our communities. We invite you to notice when you have an impulse to share before acknowledging what another has shared, notice when it feels easier to ask a follow-up question than sit with their share, notice accidental interruptions; slow down a bit and give your attention to the moment you are sharing with another human.
Get (or stay) in touch with your own story, history, and culture. For each of us, this path and journey will be unique. We recognize that some people will have strong connections to their ancestors, while for others this work may be new. This work may involve asking relatives about your lineage and customs. It may also involve reading or listening or singing or dancing or digging through boxes of dusty newspapers. This would could involve working with an ancestral healer like Ash Johns. It could also involve daily practices, mentioned above as a healing practice.
Build an accountability partnership or group to process your learning and unlearning. Being a human is messy! Being a human who is working to be anti-oppressive and to contribute to liberation is messy. There will be harms along the way. There will be painful realizations. There will also be healing and hope. In order to stay in touch with your humanity and the humanity of others, particularly those with oppressed identities, we recommend establishing relationships that offer accountability and space to process.
Community
We know that it is impossible to effectively and sustainably engage in full spectrum birthwork in the absence of community. Within our network of students and teachers, we aim to generate and support meaningful connections. As an organization, instead of engaging in competition, we seek to collaborate with other aligned leaders in the field.
Ideas for Exploring Community
Approach your communities ready to learn and build upon the gifts that already exist. Rather than showing up and saying “I have an idea!” or “I’ve got the solution!” it can be helpful to show up ready to listen and learn about what is already happening and what systems are already in place. This is especially important work for folks who carry identities of privilege. Rather than centering yourself and taking up space, we invite you to show up with curiosity and prepare to see the gifts and assets that already exist in the communities you are a part of.
Map your pod. In the words of Mia Mingus: “Your pod is made up of the people that you would call on if violence, harm or abuse happened to you; or the people that you would call on if you wanted support in taking accountability for violence, harm or abuse that you’ve done; or if you witnessed violence or if someone you care about was being violent or being abused.” Learn more and find Mia Mingus’ pod mapping worksheet here.
Build inclusive and broad referral networks. Representation matters and birthing people deserve to be supported by professionals who affirm their identities. Find IRL and online resources and professionals that you feel confident referring folks to. Invite people to virtual coffees (particularly during COVID), get to know them, and learn about their work and specialties. If you have a website, you might consider building a page for resources and referrals. You might also just keep your own spreadsheet that you reference so that you can keep track of and share all of the bad ass professionals whose work you love.
Take It Beyond the Screen
Again, it’s time to take the work beyond the screen. Individually and collectively we can show up for the world we believe in, the world we want to live in, the world we know our future deserves. This blog series is an invitation to explore our core values in deep and meaningful ways; the ideas presented in this article are simply food for thought, not strict guidelines.
If the ideas shared here (or our two other core values blogs) feel new and uncomfortable, we invite you to sit with that discomfort and just be curious. Where is it coming from? What is the discomfort trying to protect you from? Then, consider the next step you are willing to take.
Furthermore, we honor the ways you are already practicing these values in your lives, and we would love to hear from you-- what other ideas and practices would you add to this list?! Connect with the BADT community on our IG.
Finally, be sure to subscribe to our mailing list below to catch our upcoming articles and guest spotlights in 2021!