Radical Doula

I’ve been working on updating and expanding the resource pages on this site so that folks looking to become a doula have somewhere to find information. There are now three resource pages:

Becoming a Doula

Doula Trainings

Volunteer Doula Programs

Thanks to everyone who emailed me or commented with the information about volunteer doula programs! There are now 20 programs listed.

If you know of volunteer programs or doula trainings, send them my way!

After much work and thinking, including the talents of Sinclair Sexsmith and Jill Raney, Radical Doula finally has a new look! I’ve been working on this since the two year anniversary of the blog and am happy to see it finally done.

A few new elements:

A “Becoming a Doula” resource page: I often get emails from people interested in becoming doulas, so this page is meant to be a starting place for learning about trainings and volunteer doula programs. If you know of a program or organization I didn’t list–email it to me and I’ll add it!

Radical Doula Profiles page: This is a series I’ve been doing for a while, but wanted a place to collect all of the awesome radical doula’s that have been featured here. Are you a radical doula? Email me to be featured on this site.

Updated and slimmed-down blogroll: I revised my blogroll extensively. I was overwhelmed trying to keep up with the broad categories, so I’ve decided to focus on birth and doula blogs. A number on my old list hadn’t been updated in over six months so I took them down. Know a great blog, or author one that relates to doulas/birth? Email me and I’ll add it to my list.

An actual logo!: The logo is courtesy of Sinclair Sexsmith, an awesome blogger and graphic designer. We put a lot of thought into creating something that would represent the feel of this site and what I’m trying to do here. I struggled with how to represent the work of doula’s visually. In the end I choose to rely on the commonly used image of the pregnant belly. It was not without recognizing that pregnant women are often represented by just a belly, and that it can be strange and disembodying, particularly in advertising. The main reason I chose to use the silhouette of only the belly was that I wanted something which wasn’t particularly gendered–I struggle often with using the super gendered language of pregnancy and birth and wanted a logo that didn’t denote this gendered nature.

Thanks to everyone who has read this site, emailed me with their stories and commented or contributed. You’ve all made this passion project more enjoyable than I could ever have imagined, and made me feel supported by a large community of radical doula’s out there.

I finally did what I’ve been meaning to do for a long time now, I’ve edited the Radical Doula??? page. I’m going to repost it here, so you can all read my new description of what this blog is all about. Things haven’t changed radically, but I’ve tweaked a few things here and there to reflect the way I talk about what it means to be a radical doula (particularly from a personal perspective). The new page is after the jump!

I’ve also updated and expanded my blog roll. I decided I wanted something more comprehensive and that actually reflects what blogs I am reading on a frequent basis. (Thanks Google Reader!) You can see that I now have broken it up into categories (look to your right!). I will try to keep it updated, but bare with me. Also, if you have a blog you think I would want to read, email it to me or link to it in the comments! I promise I will check it out, and maybe you will even make it to my google reader.

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