10/07/2025
We don't always speak of what this work asks of us. We are more keen on sharing the happy birth stories and less about what we experience. As I enter my next year as a doula, I reflect on this work and all that it entails. The honor and the sacrifice. This is for the doulas who go. The ones who keep showing up.
We go -
quietly, faithfully,
when the call comes in the still of night.
When the world around us rests,
we gather our bags,
kiss the foreheads of the ones we love,
and step into the unknown
to be someone’s anchor as they bring life into being.
We go -
even when our hearts ache to stay.
We go -
because this is what love looks like in our hands
steady, unhurried,
rooted in something deeper than words.
We have missed birthdays and soccer games,
holidays and dance recitals,
family dinners and morning snuggles.
We have left warmth for sterile light,
comfort for courage,
familiar arms for trembling ones that need holding.
Our families learn this rhythm
the soft sound of the door closing,
the long silence before sunrise,
the way we return changed,
carrying the weight of stories
we can never fully tell.
We carry birth in our bones.
We hold memories of strength so fierce
it takes our breath away.
We remember the tears,
the laughter,
the stillness before a cry.
We have seen women rise
from fear to power,
and it humbles us, every time.
There are births we will never forget,
the first cries that stitched themselves
into our bones,
that found a home in our hearts,
the silent moments that reshaped our faith in strength.
We've held fear,
We've held hope,
We've held hands trembling with both.
We’ve witnessed power and surrender,
fear and faith,
and learned that every birth
teaches us something new about love.
We have learned that sacrifice
isn’t a loss when it’s given in love.
That presence can heal,
and that our absence at home
has meaning when it holds space for another’s beginning.
This work asks much—
our sleep, our time, our ease,
our hearts again and again.
But it also gives back—
in moments so sacred
they reshape who we are.
We live between worlds—
home and birth,
family and service,
the life we nurture
and the lives we help begin.
And though the world may never see
the depth of what we give,
we know.
We know what it costs to hold this calling.
We know what it means to be called back—
again, and again, and again.
To be a doula
is to live in devotion.
To give, again and again,
knowing that each moment we miss at home
makes room for another woman’s beginning.
So here’s to us—
the ones who go.
The ones who love through sleepless nights,
who give quietly and without measure,
who stand at the edge of miracles
and call them holy.
We are doulas.
We are witnesses, keepers of calm,
holders of sacred space.
And though we give so much away,
we are made whole
every time a mother finds her strength
and a child finds their first breath.
With all the love,
Staci
For the ones who go,
for the ones who give, and
for all the love that lives in between.
© Nicole Bertrand Photography :)
