Over the past three years, through my pregnancy and postpartum journey, every time I felt like I had my footing, the rug was pulled out from under me. But each time, I caught my balance, while holding my baby, and intentionally took another step forward. I lost my partner, unexpectedly becoming a single mother, and I lost the support of both of my parents, which I never saw coming. As I have been repeatedly stripped of the resources and support I thought were built into life, my vision and tenacity have grown: I need to be the support for women and others that I have lost.
Almost immediately after I was awarded my doctorate in oboe performance from the University of Illinois in 2019, I walked away from music as a profession. Music has always been deeply rooted in my being, but the joy of it was wrung out of me in graduate school and academia. Burned out and navigating the pandemic, I moved back to Boise, Idaho, started waitressing at a fine dining French restaurant, settled into the most perfect North End apartment, and joined the hot yoga studio four blocks away. As I started my yoga journey, I felt like I had revealed a past life because of how naturally it came and how at home I felt in my practice. I signed up for yoga teacher training at Hollywood Market Yoga. I took the time to come back to myself, immersing myself in the practice.
I soon left my well-paying waitressing job, after meeting my partner, to take on more yoga teaching opportunities. Supporting myself off just a teaching income proved difficult, but I was happy doing what I loved, and I had my partner’s help with finances. Unexpectedly, I became pregnant. Although I was terrified and the timing seemed wrong—by society’s standards I hadn’t “checked the boxes” of what I should have done before becoming a mother—but I felt my soul being oiled towards motherhood. The connection I felt even then with the life inside of me is still indescribable.
Pregnancy, homebirth, and postpartum opened new depths of purpose and transformation in my life: the birth not only of my daughter, but of myself as a mother and as a woman. After the initial shock of pregnancy, I immediately immersed myself in a holistic approach to pregnancy starting with whole, nutrient dense foods, and the best prenatal supplements, and natural, physiological birth preparation. Holistic wellness and women’s health have been with me throughout my life through exclusively cooking at home, trying herbal remedies, and avoiding big pharma. Only finally in pregnancy and ultimately my postpartum journey did women’s holistic wellness become the defining value and pursuit in my life. I couldn’t possibly know enough. I was so full of purpose and wonder with pregnancy, and I needed to set my child up as best I could to enter the world. I’m their mother. This is the most important thing I will ever do. I dove in, fell in love with everything about the process.
I felt called to home birth, but thought it wasn’t an option on Medicaid. I’d never known anyone who had birthed out-of-hospital, none of my friends had babies, and I knew nothing about birth. After a single appointment with an OB, I received a full body, intuitive answer: I cannot give birth in a hospital. I quickly found many home birth midwives accept Medicaid, did a few interviews, and found “the one,” a woman I’m still convinced is my guardian angel, Jenny, who goes by Red Tent Midwives. Every appointment was in-home ,at least an hour long, and felt like true womanhood like I had never experienced before. I had a list of questions for each meeting, and loved every moment of my prenatal care. How are hospitals still giving mothers only an average of eight-minute prenatal appointments? My midwife was incredibly patient and told me she was amazed at my thoughtful and eager questions. Throughout pregnancy, I also kept my inversions practice, consistently practicing handstands. And I even attended a sound bath at a friend’s space—my baby had never wiggled that much my entire pregnancy! I hope for that experience for every pregnant mother.
Unfortunately, the lack of resources and support I received throughout the process and especially in postpartum were eye-opening and heartbreaking, and made it infinitely more challenging for me to live my truth as a mother and as a woman. My partner was unable and unwilling to deal with his growing alcohol addiction, and therefore unable to show up for me and our baby. Finances were tight, my parents were distant and judgmental, and my partner’s family visited infrequently. The only close and loving support came from my long distance best friend and an occasional visitor. I clung to the reverence I had for pregnancy, birth, and for my daughter. I was elated and filled with purpose and joy, and I ignored the rest.
All my friends supported me leaving the father of my child because of his addiction and his lack of presence with no signs of change or improvement. I jumped, first moving in with a friend who’d offered me her spare room for a year or two. Three weeks later, she told me it wasn’t working, that my nine-month-old baby cried too much. Already heartbroken, I turned to my mom. On her terms, I could stay only a few months. I went back to waitressing, created this website for my yoga offerings, and paid off all my debt just in time to be evicted when my mom wanted her life back. With inadequate savings to get my own place, no success finding roommates, and no other options in Boise, I took my dad up on his offer to stay with him just outside Austin, Texas. Still trusting the promise of family, I loaded up a storage unit, packed up my Honda Civic, and headed south.
I took a part time job in Austin and found an amazing Montessori school for my daughter, all while pursuing resources to start my own business. I joined the doula mentorship Birth Belongs to Women, completed a 50-hour in-person continued education yoga certification, and shared pay-what-you-can yoga classes to grow a following.
Since my daughter’s dad failed to send childcare payments, leaving me spending more on childcare than I was making at work, I began to look for a different job and different childcare. Although I was lucky to have a place to stay, I found my father unwilling to offer logistical or emotional support, not wanting to help with his granddaughter. All I wanted was to enjoy these fleeting moments with my daughter. But I was doing everything, and all by myself. It was reminiscent of the time we were at my mom’s. Her inability to be available as a grandmother shone light on her lack of presence in my childhood. I refused to mother like that. My daughter would know she always has access to me and to my love. She would grow up feeling respected, heard, and so incredibly loved.
During this period, I was consumed by my desire to be back in the birth space, thinking constantly about my and my daughters’ birth and about the women and mothers I had met over the past two years. I needed to help women pass through this portal, and with more unconditional love and support than I experienced. When I was only a few months postpartum, I had met with a fellow yoga instructor who was also a doula. She had let me drop into one of her prenatal yoga classes. I needed to know more about the birth world. With a baby only a few months old and no legitimate support, I had no right to even dream of going into birth work, but the call was there. Now in Austin, I became friends with a young woman who worked as a doula and owned a prenatal yoga studio downtown. I picked her brain about all things birth and business, eager and desperate to finally break into this work. I baked sourdough bread and took it, along with my business cards, to local birthing centers to show my face and begin to get familiar with the local birth community.
Just weeks before my daughter’s second birthday, my dad told me I had a month to get out. The way I was pursuing motherhood and my professional life did not fit with the prescribed image he held of a single working mom. He expected me to get a 9-5 job and put my daughter in full time childcare. But I knew that if I could just get into birth work, come back to teaching yoga, and work towards expanding my offerings instead, I would be able to provide myself and my daughter with the kind of lifestyle that brought us purpose and joy, and that allowed us to be together more often than we were apart. Despite attempted conversations with my dad, he could not approve of my parenting approach, my career goals, or my general lifestyle.
I knew I didn’t want to stay in Austin—the only reason I went there was for family, which proved the opposite of supportive—and I didn’t want to go back to Boise. So, alone with my daughter, with all other options exhausted and the promise of family failed, I turned back to an old dream. Bend, Oregon. I missed the northwest with its seasons and mountains, and I wanted to be part of a community that is smaller and more centered around nature. With $1,000 in the bank, I booked an Airbnb with a credit card, and loaded up my car again.
Now settling in Bend, I am coming to terms with the depth of what I’ve been through, the impossibilities of the situation I found myself in and how this was exacerbated by lack of support, and how much I have missed me. No mother should feel like I have felt. I am eager and hopeful to create community and support for mothers and women in general. I see my purpose more clearly, how to bring the various facets of myself together in the unbelievable honor to serve women and mothers.
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