Hey there, birth nerd. You're listening to the Birthworker Podcast. My name is Kyleigh Banks and I am totally obsessed with birth and equally obsessed with business. And this is the show where I help women turn their passion for birth into a sustainable, profitable, and most importantly, impactful career. All right, let's get into it.

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. It has been a couple weeks, maybe even a couple months. We were taking a break in between our seasons, and so I am so excited to be back and, man, do I have some exciting things to share with you guys. Honestly, so much is changing that I can't even tell you in a podcast episode. So make sure you're following me on Instagram @theautonomymommy or @birthworkerpodcast because the Birthworker Academy is totally changing this year, the Birthworker membership, our business membership is totally up and running. It is amazing. We have over 100 women inside right now, and my team and I have even been talking about creating a childbirth educator course. So I am just so excited for 2023. I hope you had a wonderful New Year. And yeah, welcome back to the show.

This is episode 22, and if this is the first time you're here, we kind of bounce between birthy topics and business topics. And today I really wanted to take it back to the foundation. I know we've been talking about business a lot lately. The world goes in cycles, of course. My passions go in cycles, but right now, like I said, I really want to bring it back to the foundation, the foundation of the doula role. And I really want to talk about that because I actually don't think the foundation of the doula role is what many people think it is. And so I've actually put together almost like a three pillar system, three things that we're going to talk about today that I have come up with and that I consider the foundation of a doula role. And this is what we teach inside the Birthworker Academy, of course, our doula training program.

And so all of this came to me because I was talking with one of my friends, her name is Aaliyah. We were talking a few months ago, and she was one of the mentors in the first cohort of Birthworker Academy, and she was like the doula mentor inside the program. And so we started to talk about advocacy. And this was months ago. This was even before we started Birthworker Academy. And Aaliyah and I were talking like, how are we supposed to teach new doulas how to advocate? Is it even possible to teach new doulas how to advocate? And we kind of just came to this conclusion that advocacy is actually something that follows you through every piece of your entire life. Advocacy is not something that you take a doula training program to learn, right? Advocacy is more about who you are as a person, and that's honestly the foundation of the entire doula role. It's who you are as a person.

So today we're going to be talking about what I consider to be, and this is totally made up by me. I want you to know that this is something that I have come up with and I use when I teach doulas inside my programs. But we are going to learn about the four pillars of birthwork and then the three core tenets of birthwork. So that's what we're going to dive into. And so instead of giving you these practical steps to advocate, which I totally can and I totally do inside my doula training program, Birthworker Academy. But instead of doing that today, I'm not going to give you the practical steps, but this is really going to be about helping you understand the pillars of what make up the doula role. And so for me and for what I teach, the pillars that I've come up with are advocacy, holding space, knowledge, and trust.

Essentially what this comes down to is knowing when to speak up, knowing when to shut up, knowing when to educate, and knowing when to trust that everything is unfolding perfectly, like trusting the innate wisdom within us and within our clients. And so advocacy, holding space, knowledge, and trust. And so now let's just jump right into the three core tenets of Birthwork, which again, are entirely made up by me. This is something that I have come up with over the years of being a doula and now training doulas. I didn't learn this anywhere, it's just something that came naturally to me. And so as I'm talking about these three core tenets, I want you to start to notice how the pillars, advocacy, holding, space, knowledge, and trust are all almost like these golden threads that run through each of the three core tenets of birthwork.

And sometimes it's in really obvious ways, and then sometimes it's in actually really subtle ways. So pay attention for that. So the first core tenet is open-mindedness. As a doula, you are going to encounter people who have different opinions than you. As a human on this planet, you are going to encounter people who have different opinions than you. These could be issues like politics, religion, social movements, gender, racism, all of that stuff. And actually all of those things I just mentioned will come up in birthwork. As you start getting into attending births and serving more people, all of these things are going to come up, or rather you will encounter people and their issues will arise that have to do with politics, religion, social movements, gender, racism, all of that. But here's the thing, we want the people around us to feel invited to express themselves without fear or judgment.

We really want to cultivate that space for the deeper work for both us and them. And that alone, that sentence alone, leads to so many people unfollowing me every single year, sending me DMs. This thought that I want people all around me to feel invited to express themselves freely without fear of my judgment, even if people disagree with me, even if people are saying horrible things, even if people are rude, even if people are hateful, we need to, as birthworkers, let the people around us be invited to express themselves without fear of our judgment. And I know that sometimes it's really not easy, but let me tell you, it is absolutely foundational for birthwork. It doesn't serve anybody to be reacting to our triggers, and that includes being hateful back to hateful people. And the way that we can remain open-minded is to remain curious, be curious about why people are the way that they are.

And you can even say that to them like, "Mm, that sounds very important to you. Can you tell me more"? And there's even a French saying that I love. I would love to get this tattooed on me one day, but my last several tattoos were script, were text. And so I don't need a more text on my body right now. But there's a French thing, I'm obsessed with it. And it goes like this, "To understand all is to forgive all". To understand all is to forgive all. And if you as a birthworker can be curious enough and open-minded enough to really try and understand where people are coming from, that's where the magic happens. And if you're curious enough, it's actually really easy to see that it makes so much sense that other people are the way that they are.

And this next thing that I'm going to share is personal, and it might be triggering for a lot of people, but it's something that my partner has taught me because my partner has been through some crazy life experiences and trauma from a very young age. And so this is actually something that I've learned from him. And what he told me shook me so hard to my core and just blew my mind because so much made sense. And he said, "Everybody wants to support the abused child. Everybody's rooting for the abused kid. Everybody loves to support the abused child, support them and feels bad for them and wants to lift them up and help them and protect them until that child... Because what that child's gone through now turns into an adult that abuses children". And the reason that he said that to me is because we had this conversation and I asked him, I said, "Do you hate that person that did that to you"?

And he said, "No, because it probably happened to that person too". It probably happened to him too, and that's why he did it to my partner. And so he refused to look at this abuser as anything other than that child who themselves was abused. So to understand all is to forgive all. And I know that example is way out there. It's almost as far as you can go. And we can actually take this when we're talking about disagreements about politics or disagreements about the words that we use to describe our body parts or ourselves or our gender. The most difficult work that we will do as doulas is dealing with our own egos and our own triggers and leaving our biases and our agenda at the door when walking into a client space or even walking into a virtual space like Instagram, leaving our own shit at the door so we can actually support people and hold space for people.

So can we hold our biases in our hearts as we listen? Can we hold our biases in our hearts and be aware of them as we read the room? Can we get curious? Can we notice our own triggers? Can we try to understand all so that maybe one day we can forgive all? Can we know in our core, really know and really understand that there's no objectively right way, that our beliefs, my beliefs, your beliefs are not objectively true? They're not objectively best, even though they fire you up and you can argue till you're blue in the face that you are objectively right, I want you to almost zoom out a little bit and just get curious on that. And I think this is such an important part of birthwork, really I do. It's that ability to remain open-minded, not only when we're supporting a client to actually give birth, standing in the room as they give birth, but the way we present ourselves online, the way we show up with our children, the way we show up with our family, and even the people that trigger us.

And something else that I've learned through my personal growth and through my work as a doula is that neutrality and genuine curiosity are sometimes the best de-escalators of anger intention in a room, sometimes. Sometimes neutrality and genuine curiosity can deescalate a room if there's a lot of tension or anger going on. And so in life, in the birth room privately between you and your clients or you and your followers on social media or you in the trolls on social media, how can you deal with those people with genuine curiosity? And if the room is heated, how can you use genuine curiosity to deescalate the tension in that room? And this is huge in the birth room. So when we're talking about advocating for our clients, genuine curiosity, a lot of the time looks like creating space by asking questions. If you're supporting birth in a hospital, it looks like maybe asking questions to the providers, but then also asking questions to the person giving birth in some situations.

So asking questions is a very easy way to slow everything down, which is very useful when dealing with birth in any sort of medical environment. So I'll just say right here, right now that my bias is that birth happens best when it's home and it's silent, and no one's asking questions because nothing's being done and there's no medical support people touching the mom or maybe even there in the room. So that's my bias. That's what I love and prefer. That's what I love to support. But the cool thing here is that since I really practice this open-mindedness that I preach, I would consider myself on almost every issue, a radical centrist. I totally understand where everybody is coming from, and even if I strongly disagree, I can very easily put myself in that person's shoes. And like I said, I can understand where they're coming from.

And so just having that ability as a mom, as a birthworker, as a human really helps me navigate certain situations where other people might find them stressful or other people might find those situations very triggering or a threat to maybe their personality or their safety. I don't find it that way. I do not find it that way. And I really do think that that makes a phenomenal birthworker when we can hold space like that, when we can have the open mindedness to be with people, even people we disagree. So that's the first tenet. It's open mindedness. And the second one is silent listening. And silent listening is truly a skill that needs to be practiced because it can feel really awkward if it's something you're just not used to.

And so silent listening is actually really different than active listening, and I can talk about that a little more in a little bit. But silent listening is inviting someone to share their story, their entire story with all the details, inviting them to share that with you, and literally sitting there in silence and listening to their story. And like I said, it could feel awkward for you. It might even feel awkward for them at first, because I'm not used to someone silent listening to me, and I'm not used to silent listening to other people. And the thing with silent listening is that you're not just listening with your ears. You're listening with your ears, your mind, your eyes, and your heart. And you're not thinking about all the things that you're going to say when they're done, right? You're not trying to fix, you're not giving advice, you're not educating. You are simply holding space for them to share whatever it is that they are sharing with you in the moment.

And it's really hard. And so while you're doing this, I don't even want you to take notes, and I don't want you to do active listening. So I don't want you to make noises, I don't want you to nod your head, I don't want you to make facial expressions, I don't want you to repeat what the person's told you in your own words as a question to clarify, none of that. Because all of those things suddenly take away from your ability to listen with your whole body. When we're doing those things, we're listening with our ears, but we're not listening with our mind because our mind is busy nodding our head and making facial expressions, and making sure that someone knows we're listening by nodding our head and doing all this stuff. And that takes away from your ability to listen with your whole body.

And so even though it can feel really hard and really strange, doing this silent listening exercise, what it does is it frees you from the demand, the instinct of fixing, the instinct of there's something wrong and I need to fix, or there's something said and I need to give my input, or there's something said, and I need to relate to that, right? It frees you from that. It frees you from that demand of also formulating a response. And these demands that we essentially put on ourselves that we think we should do to show that we're invested. And so a lot of times in doula training programs, they teach that active listening. But I just want you to almost take a step back and see how you can start to incorporate silent listening with active listening so you're able to, at some points, listen with your whole body.

And maybe over time, as you do the silent listening more and more, it's going to become a lot more natural for you. And with that, like I said, the goal here is that we're freeing you from that demand of trying to fix, of trying to formulate a response. And so if you're one of my students, and you're listening to this, you know this really well, but I teach a self mastery module in Birthworker Academy, and it's all about conscious leadership and biases and personal development. All the self work, and I talk about this a lot, the fact that being a doula is sometimes really hard. Being in that doula role is sometimes really hard because a lot of times we want to be the hero. We want to save people, we want to fix things, we want to prevent birth trauma, we want to educate. And there's a level from which we can operate all of those things, right?

There is a level where we can do all of those things in a way that is helpful, but there's another level from which we can operate where we are stepping into that hero persona. And when we're in that hero persona, we are subconsciously creating a victim in every scenario in which we are the hero. In every scenario where we are preventing birth trauma, we're creating a victim. In every scenario where you are fixing your client's birth, you're creating a victim. In every scenario that you want to save people from obstetric violence, you are creating a victim. And in this case, the victim that we're subconsciously creating by stepping into that hero persona in most cases, is our client. And so something that I say a lot of times, especially on social media, is that moms don't need me. Women don't need me, women don't need doulas. Nobody needs a doula, quote unquote, "need".

People don't need doulas, and the reason that I say that is because I want people to understand that they're not lacking in anything, that they don't need someone to save them, that there's no victim here, that they have everything they need. And if they want my help, awesome, cool. If they want me to be their doula, amazing. If they want me in the room while they give birth, sweet. I would love to support them, but I need them to know, my clients to know, and every woman to know that they don't actually need me, because I think it's really easy to get caught in that hero role. And if you're in that hero role and you're sitting in a room with one of your clients and your clients is telling her story, you in the hero role, you're going to want to fix it. You're going to want to give advice, you're going to want to nod, you're going to want to make expressions and all of these things, but that's not necessarily what's serving your client best in that moment. That's what I want you to understand here.

And yes, doulas should be able to feel confident responding verbally and have that ability to express themselves in a way with their clients and with care providers and the birth team and such. But we need to be aware of why it is that we're talking. Is our client in this moment actually benefiting from what we're saying? Or are we just saying something to be heard? Are we just saying something to sound smart? Are we just trying to push an agenda? Are we trying to be relatable? Are we trying to be funny? Are we trying to make a good impression? Are we doing what our doula trainings told us to do? And this is actually something that you can take into everyday life, right? Really just taking a step back and honoring the pauses and recognizing the beauty in those quiet moments. And to realize that not every story needs your input. Not every story needs your input. Not every story needs your advice. Not every... Okay. And this one is probably pretty, pretty radical. Not every cry for help even needs your advice and needs your story.

Sometimes it's even a cry for help that just needs you to witness their cry for help. And so if you go into birth or birthwork with assumptions, and I have an entire lesson on this in my doula training program, because assumptions themselves, that could be a whole nother podcast. But all of this comes down to allowing the space and honoring the pauses, and sitting with that so you can get out of being caught up in that hero role. And so the third tenet that we are going to talk about is what I call emotional allyship. And we just got into this a lot, but let's dive a little bit deeper because this next one, it adds on an additional layer on top of what we were just talking about, which is that hero role, the hero role, the victim role. The hero's like that savior. We see the hero role a lot in birthwork and in the medical community around birth. Absolutely.

And so I want you to think for a second if there are any relationships that you're in, or if there's someone in your life that keeps coming to you for advice, they come to you all the time for advice. They count on you for advice. They turn to you in really hard times. They always want to know your opinion. They count on you. They might even say that they feel lost without you, or they couldn't do it without you. And so think about your role in that relationship and being the one in that hero role, and think about how that makes you feel. Do you feel really happy to help that person? Does it make you feel really smart and wise and strong? Does it make you feel like a good person? Do you feel needed? Do you like to feel needed? And I want to take that to the next deeper level and ask, how does you stepping into this helpful role, how does that affect your relationship with that other person?

And this one, I hope you're smiling right now, because even as I'm reading this, I'm just, Ugh, yes, just yes. So how does this person coming to you for help affect your relationship with that person? So how do you view them? How do you talk about them when they're not there? I'm sure you do. Can you notice that maybe there's a subtle idea that maybe they're weaker than you, or maybe they're just a little bit lost, or maybe they're just a little bit helpless? I bet you can see it. And so that dynamic of someone that needs help and the other person continues to help, it's a very common and very natural thing. There is nothing wrong with it. And often it comes from a very, very loving and pure place. And yet still, it creates a subtle power imbalance.

The person who is helpful, the sage or the hero, they're the one that they're, that holds the answers, and therefore they hold the power in this relationship, in this dance between these two people. And so the question that I want you to consider is, can you consciously step away from that role of hero? And instead, can you step into something that's more like an emotional ally? You could even call it a coach. I've learned a lot of this from the Conscious Leadership Group, and they call this the coach.

And so I want to ask you, can you make it very clear that you don't have all the answers to other people's issues? Can you make it very clear that you also stumble, that you also fail, you feel overwhelmed, and sometimes you have no clue what the F you are doing? And just consider how much more relatable that person would be than the why sage who just always has all the answers. And so can you as a doula, recognize your shared humanness with your clients and be honest about the fact that you don't know the right answer for them, that you'll never know the right answer for them? And instead of just giving them answers to all of their questions and answers and answers and answers, and doing all the research for them, and the decision-making for them, and giving advice and educating and doing all that stuff to stay in that hero role, can you begin to step into this place of curiosity, that place that we talked about earlier?

Can you ask questions to open up the space, so your client can be their own goddamn hero? Our clients don't need us. And it is so, so important that every single doula that comes into my world, every single doula that I mentor or teach every client that I have, it is so important that they know that women do not need doulas. And I don't know what's best for you, and I will never know what is best for you. I will never know what is best for my clients. I am just a human too. I make mistakes too. I'm overwhelmed too. And by doing this, I am giving my clients and my students the greatest gift, the greatest gift, the gift of being their own hero. And, so can you open that space in the room? Can you create that curiosity and start asking questions to allow them to feel their power, their innate power to allow them to empower themselves?

When your client comes to you and asking you questions and asking you about interventions and asking you, what should they do, turn to them, ask them, "Well, what's your biggest fear? What are the pros and cons for you? What are your goals? What's your gut telling you? What's the worst thing that could happen if you make the wrong choice"? And I'm going to repeat those five questions because these five questions in this order can completely transform your clients' lives. And so all of these questions are amazing questions for when you feel yourself slipping into that fixer role, that educator role. And can you instead ask these questions and become more of a mirror for your clients instead of an authority? Can you turn to your client and say, "Sometimes I just don't know what I'm doing, and sometimes I don't make the right choices, and I don't know what the right choice is"?

Can you turn to your clients and say to them, "I don't have an answer for you. Let's find this out together"? So the hero doula feels really proud for telling her clients the best way to go about things, because I'm the hero doula. I know, I've been around, I understand. Let me help you. Let me tell you how it's going to be, let me tell you how to go about this to get this best experience for yourself. And the hero doula feels really proud that her client is so relieved to finally have an answer. So relieved to have someone that she can turn to ask all these questions.

But a doula who truly understands the role of a doula is able to hold space for her clients while her clients are dealing with their shit, in own in their own discomfort while the client is figuring it out at their own pace. And so can you turn to your client and say to them, "This is really hard. There is no right answer. I believe in you. No matter what decision you make, I will not judge you, and I am going to hold your hand while you struggle"? So do you feel a difference there? I really hope you do. So stepping into the doula role that we've talked about in this episode helps our clients empower themselves.

If we are the hero doula and we have all the answers and we know everything, we know exactly what to do to prepare for birth, as soon as our client faces a challenge, they're going to turn to us for help. They're going to come to us for help the second they have a challenge. That's not empowering for our clients. And the best thing that we can sometimes do is to remind them to stop looking outside of themselves for all of the answers. And the way that we can do that is to be that mirror, to ask those questions, to get curious. And just like everything else that we're talking about here today, this is something that you can actually practice every single day in your life with every single relationship that you have with your kids, your partner, your parents, and your other job with your doula clients.

See how it feels to not rescue people. Does it feel like you're letting someone down, right? Sometimes it feels that way at first, but what does it feel like when you start to actually allow the space for your clients to empower themselves? And so that is what being a doula means to me. That is what birthwork is about to me, that is why I created a doula training program to mentor new and aspiring doulas. And that is why that moving forward Birthworker Academy is going to be much more narrow focused towards women who want to understand what it's like to be a doula in this role that we've talked about today. I'm no longer interested in trying to save women. I'm no longer interested in teaching doulas how to save women. And I am only calling in the new and aspiring birthworkers to join me inside the Birthworker Academy mentorship, who are ready to have these hard conversations like this and ready to come down from that hero role ready to stop creating victims of our clients and to help their clients have truly transformational journeys into motherhood.

Not just something where a stranger hires us online to be at their birth because their friend liked us and we meet them a few times, we attend their birth and call it a day. I'm done with that. I'm done with that for me, I'm done with that for my business, and I'm done with that for birthworkers all around the world. And so if you are new to birthwork, or maybe you've already taken a doula training program, but you left that program and found yourself asking, "Okay, but what do I actually do to support women through the most transformational period of their lives? What do I actually do to create these packages and offers that truly take women through a transformative journey so they can have that autonomous birth experience so they can look back on their birth and say, Kyleigh, I didn't need you, I didn't need you as my doula. I could have done that by myself"?

No more celebrating the fact that clients tell us I can't do it without you, or I couldn't do it without you, right? So 2023 is the year of change for the way that I support women, the way that I teach doulas to support women and the way that I run my doula training program. And so we are changing Birthworker Academy from a cohort style program where we have had 150 students at one time or 100 students at a single time. And we are changing it from that type of program that is three months long into a true, true mentorship style program where we are going to be taking 10 people every month. It's going to be a six-month-long program. You are going to have one-on-one calls with me, weekly calls with the community, a private off of social media community for all of us to hang out and ask questions and collaborate and work together, and work through our problems together.

And the goal with this new and improved Birthworker Academy is again, that we can have these hard conversations on a really deep level. We don't have to say stay surface level anymore. You don't have to just watch some videos, fill out some homework, and voilà, you're a doula. That's not interesting to me anymore. That's not interesting. And so I just hope you are ready to take this journey with me. I am so excited to see what kind of women find themselves inside Birthworker Academy this coming year. We are opening the doors to 10 women every month, like I said, and we are going to be starting in March of this year. So in just a few months.

Now, no matter when you're listening to this, if you are listening to this and you are thinking, holy crap, yes, that is what I need in my doula business or in my birthwork business, shoot me a DM on Instagram. Go over to Instagram, you can find me @theautonomymommy or @birthworkerpodcast, I'm on both of those. And shoot me a DM with the word impact, and that lets me know that you want to continue this conversation and you want to learn about how Birthworker Academy might be able to help you cultivate this transformation in your clients' lives. And so I will see you over in my Instagram DMs. Thank you so much for being here, everyone. I really enjoyed the break, but we are back at it. And this is something else I have not mentioned, but we are starting 2023 with two episodes per week. And so this episode's coming out on a Wednesday and starting this week, every single Friday, we are going to do a Q&A episode where I'm answering all of your biggest and best questions in 15 minutes or less right here on the podcast.

So I would love for you to ask a question for the next 3-in-15 episode, and you can do that by going to birthworker.com/ask, and you'll be able to submit your name and your question so I can answer it for you right here. All right, everyone, again, send me a DM on Instagram. If you want to continue this conversation, just DM me the word impact, and we will talk about how you can build a truly impactful business that truly serves women through the most transformational journey of their lives. All right. I will see you right back here on Friday. Thank you so much for being here. Talk to you soon.