Phoenix Rising Birth Works

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Our Story

I am a Birth & Postpartum Doula, Lactation Counselor and Childbirth Educator. I started this journey with the seemingly simple goal of supporting women in birth and helping them to avoid unnecessary medical interventions during labor and birth, including cesareans. While I know that cesareans can be life saving operations, I also know that our country’s rate is incredibly high, roughly 31% of all births, and the rate is even higher for Black Women. Our rate holds steady at about 38%. I wanted to help as many women as possible avoid the fate that I had been dealt with my births; a major surgery that would not only take longer to heal from physically, but impact my breastfeeding relationship with my daughters, take a toll on my mental health (we can’t talk enough about the fact that traumatic birth experiences can lead to PTSD/depression/anxiety) and sabotage my trust in body to birth future children.

After my third cesarean birth in the Fall of 2018, which was the culmination of a home birth transfer, I felt like I was mistaken in believing that I was called to be a Birth Worker. How could I help others in their journeys when I had failed so miserably in my own? Who would respect me? Trust my expertise or knowledge? After processing my anger, disappointment, self pity and fear, I realized I had to fine tune my approach. I had to remember that there is SO MUCH work to be done in terms of improving the state of perinatal / reproductive health care for Black Women, there is certainly a space for me. Surely my story is not an anomaly!

My experiences with cesarean birth and VBAC access (or better yet the lack thereof) led me to create “The Journey: A VBAC prep workshop”. I wanted to create a workshop unlike any I had seen being offered in my area for birthing people considering VBAC. It explores various aspects of the VBAC experience - including processing past birth experiences, finding a supportive provider, demystifying uterine rupture, planning a gentle cesarean when a repeat cesarean is truly necessary and more. I am beyond excited to begin offering this workshop in September! I am also committed to creating awareness about what many consider to be the “cesarean epidemic” and how VBAC bans intensify this trend, as well as advocating for the reversal of VBAC bans and other restrictions to VBAC access in hospitals and birth centers.

The birth of my youngest also brought an epiphany about the connection between the sexual abuse I endured as a child and my difficulties with pregnancy and childbirth. While my pregnancies with my daughters had been physically uneventful, I had been plagued with varying levels of stress, anxiety, fear and dissociation with all of them. I used to think these feelings were due to the fact that I have also had several miscarriages over the years and the trauma from my 1st and 2nd c-sections, but I now understand that my history of CSA (childhood sexual abuse) is what laid the foundation of my inability to truly be one with the process and birth my children the way I wanted to. This realization was the catalyst for The Purple Lotus Project - a grassroots initiative with a mission to promote awareness about the intersections of childhood sexual abuse and birth trauma through community education, workshops for birth professionals and peer support spaces for pregnant and parenting survivors.

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