It’s been so many years (three to be exact) since I’ve written an actual blog post that I almost don’t know how to do it. I wanted to start this the way I would start an email newsletter, because that’s the closest approximation to this kind of writing in my life these days.
But today is exactly twelve years since I launched this little site, and so I felt like it was time for some reflection, and maybe a few updates about what I’m up to and where this project is headed.
Twelve years! It’s hard to wrap my mind around that amount of time, and where I am now. Also where the movement for birth activism is now. Things have changed so much, mostly in really really great ways.
I say this often when I speak, but the reason that I started Radical Doula is now obsolete. I started this site because I felt really alone in the birth activist community because of my identity and my politics–as a pro-choice, Latinx, queer, genderqueer, activist doula. I felt alienated and hungry to connect with other people who saw doula work fitting into broader social justice work, and who didn’t think you had to look or be a certain way to be a doula.
It’s been many years (maybe like ten?) since I’ve felt alone as a doula for any of the reasons above. There are so many doulas and birth activists who share my identities and my politics. I think that’s partially true because the doula world has grown so much–there are just exponentially more doulas now than there were back in 2005 when I did my training. And many of those folks are activists, and queer and trans and people of color and reproductive justice supporters.