Why did I become a doula?

I want to be a part of rebuilding the village. The “village” being the community that is built on collective care and follows nature’s rhythms of life and death. Birthing and dying people have had many hands, of matriarchs or medical staff, and millennia of passed down knowledge beside them, helping to labor, birth, heal and die. “It takes a village…” to raise a child; to teach them about the world, to help them develop and understand how to show up in it. And every person deserves a village to honor their life, to prepare a place for them to rest, to remember and reminisce, celebrate or mourn them. Even if it’s just one person.

I believe in being of service to others, and being as prepared as you can be for bringing new life into the world. Makes this big change a little less scary! I believe the same thing about contemplating the end of one’s life. In as tender a way as possible, confronting the reality and preparing for what you can is healthy step towards having peace of mind and enjoying life.

So when the time comes, there is space to live the last moments in what feels like the most authentic, natural way for the individual, family and friends, as opposed to any one person watching a loved one pass on while navigating the logistics of what happens next.

There are so many questions at the beginning and the end of life. I don’t claim to know it all by any means, but I feel empowered to help those who need it along the way, and during a time when the demand of birthing people’s bodies is increasing while the care for their bodies seems to be decreasing on the world’s stage, I hope those I help feel empowered to be active participants and owners of their experience.

Why “La Doula Rasa”?

When I was thinking of a name for this doula practice, the term “La Doula Rasa” like tabula rasa came to mind; something many people learn about in elementary school, basically meaning, “a fresh start” or “clean slate.” I thought it a cheeky play on words, but through my readings for birth and postpartum care, “rasa” popped up for me as a very real, not just theoretical, part of life.

In Ayurveda, Rasa is the “taste” or essence of a substance. In “The Fourth Trimester, a postpartum guide,” Kimberly Ann Johnson describes rasa in Ayurvedic tradition as being, “[t]he most important tissue…the plasma part of our blood…the basis of all other tissue formation and detoxification” (130).

While a play on words, La Doula Rasa became more significant to me, as a confirmation that assisting people through ushering life into the world and through the end of their lives or through loss is something to hold hand in hand. Not in a morbid sense, but with reverence for the essence of a person, who they might become, who they are, were, and what they leave behind.