PART TWO:
DONA & DTI Trainings + the use of certification to reinforce white supremacy, the medical industrial complex, the theft of indigenous and colonized peoples’ ancestral methodology+terminology
There was this shifting moment, an elder at my then church home… lost his wife….. who was PEAK HUMAN to me, during childbirth. A family that would be welcoming a new member home, hopping on their meal train, being the “go-for”. This family was instead planning a homegoing for the person who made this family possible. Do you know what it is like to go to a funeral….. instead deliver massages, food, baths, balms, teas, prayer, community support to someone you sought out for advice as a mother of sons, and a woman of God? That was my personal awakening to black women dying bringing life into the world. She was educated, employed, healthy according to American healthcare standards, a mother two times over already…….and gone. My own mother’s cardiac arrest on the operating table during my arrival did not register due to a narrative fed to me by my birth family and society. My mother’s heart stopped because of drug use. Not a whole damn bold ass life of racism, systemic incarceration, and weathering. Not a the third C-section. Then, it all made sense. They were treated (or not “treated”) the same in the same setting. Not listened to, ignored, demeaned, judged, set aside, dehumanized, generalized. I took a major look at my own child’s arrival and how I had already began changing the narrative of my lineage. After that, I became the doula friend, the breastfeeding help friend, the infant care friend, the home remedy friend, the person people could trust their home and children with…….and with that came the free support, of errrrrbody and anybody.
I started actually calling myself a doula with certainty after I supported a neuroscience lab mate during the prenatal and postpartum periods in mid-2011. The image of the little person who set that in stone was given to me by their mother. It rests on my altar. I did not call myself a doula until that tiny person’s parent gave that picture as a First Birthday gift. It was that picture that told me that talking to butterflies, bees and babies was my gift. A reminder that I have a selfless and empathic soul. I could look at a person who will become a parent and see the magic of DNA, life’s transgressions and triumphs, a soul learning life and then also see very clearly this tiny person who was of them but not them. This person did not have a family support system, as I did not as a former military spouse. But this person was able to reach out to someone they trusted, and found their footing as a parent. This person was me, and I was them. Trying to begin this new life with addressing many of the needs we as now adults feel we lacked as children. Building a better lineage, one change at a time
I reached out to DONA after googling “doula certification”. This was 2011, yall. I had a legit birth center down the street, midwifery acquaintances, attended hospital, birth center and home births, and I was on these innanets looking for certification on doing something I did above and beyond everyone I heard was doing it. I was out here trying to do that absolute most to be accepted by this healthcare system that already was not about that holistic care life? But, I hit a wall when I was not able to afford the course, the required reading list (yeah kindle wasn’t that bih yet, still had to buy actual books), membership and travel to where the course was being held. Y’ALLLLL. All while working full-time, going to school and raising a human. I reached out via email (receipts KEPT over here) and realized I was asking to have a discount as a single mother, in school, paying for bills with my student loan payouts……to an organization where no one looked even a lick like me.. I had to pay for the packet toooooo? GTFOH. I departed that effort without a second thought…….but damn did I start to realize my need for validation via certification. Decolonization of the mind is a continuous, intensive, life-long process for me, as long as I dwell in this body. Thank God I had people that reached out to me despite not being “DONA Certified”.
I could have joined another local volunteer organization, but I did not feel aligned with their mission at the time. Hospitals were not places they desired to go and home birth for colonized bodies is revolutionary. But, I am a moderate. Folk cant get free if they don’t feel safe and at the time. Liberation of the mind requires meeting people where they are, and allowing them to unlock the chains themselves upon being educated about their validity and agency. I should know, folks did that for me. Safety and Security are two very different things. Texas Medicaid/Healthcare Policy Legislature was (and still is) pulling all kinds of fuck shit to prevent people from receiving adequate care, if they sought to birth outside of a hospital. Things have since changed at that organization, and it brings me joy that they along with other congruent orgs support marginalized people in hospital, birth center and home settings. Oppressed, colonized folk deserve to have allllll the options, and time available to decolonize. Those who live and benefit from white privilege need to be on the fast-track of accountability towards co-conspirators. No excuses.
On my about page. These are the organizations that need to be consulted about healthcare policy & doula training.
Fast forward to Spring 2016, and I have to complete a doula training in order to take prenatal clients with what appeared to be a moderate local volunteer organization. WTF….here we go again. I did the on-call portion of being a volunteer. Quickly, I became the Spanish speaking go-to. Now, this time a heaux had the coin. I made it clear when I joined the organization, I was there for oppressed folk only, no white folks beyond incarceration and on-call shifts…My exposure to a certain prominent local birth center chain let me know real quick the level of privilege and access white birthing people have in this area. Permission was granted, but I had to do the course for their grants and data.…FUCK, but noooooo why? Insert DTI……nope, take it out. Then, it was the white feminist (still is honestly) “trailblazer with lifetime certification for one fee”. A bih would bleed her heart out at a couple of attempts despite stellar references and birth experiences for a scholarship….NOPE. DENIED. Every time God be telling me to mind my business and do what I do, I was out here in these streets trying to be valid in the eyes of the people who would fund my business. White women. All while watching them appropriate black folks into shaping their business for profit, using their proximity to a certain struggle as social collateral. The proclamation of anti-racism, but operating with colorism in full display…….again, 400 PLUS YEARS of observing your teary-eyed, audacity. Colonizers gonna colonize.
Yes, I cuss if you have not figured that out by now. I keep it under wraps in professional contexts, but this is my whole damn space. Paid and maintained by ME. So, you gonna get the WHOLE TOBACCO FIELD, CIGARETTE/CIGAR/CIGARELLO MANUFACTURING PLANT AND LIGHTER HERE. Go censor ya racist ass mama, daddy, grandparents, cousins and them…….
I haven’t. Fifty-three percent in 2016, and FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT in 2020.
If upon reading thus far you think I haven’t or do not support white birthing folk, you are stupid. I am fortunate to have been at transitions with some phenomenal white accomplices, and some legit fools. As I have said before, I was that friend that someone knew that was a doula. And I took every single one of those lives into my heart when I served any family. Ignorance is one thing and can be worked through. Willful ignorance is a whole, ‘nother conversation.
Sept 2016
I sat in a white run, white staffed birthing center, in a room a white DONA trainer from the east coast minus an Arab Italian woman who was auditing the course for a college research project (there was one queer person also there, let me not forget….who was catching my side eyes, let me not act brand new).. I did what was asked of me in all of the exercises, code-switched and played the role of participatory student. I didn’t live my whole life to let this keep me from serving me and mines in Austin. I kept my own personal input and voice quiet for the 2 days of content. On the third, half day, the East Coast trainer called upon me after a whole day of silence. I was tired AF. “Rasalin, Is everything ok?” LOUD AND CLEAR, NO, ITS NOT. I sat in that room for those hours of my life and listened to her teach indigenous knowledge and the profits she’s made upon it. I listened to her other and exclude LGBTQIA+ folks as if Austin did not have a rep and a member of the community wasn’t in the room). I listened to her reinforce western medicine as the pinnacle birth place and gleam about NFL players’ wives as clients. “NO, ITS NOT. You talk like this, you’ve been talking about birth and its it not like this for me and my people. You talk about things as if we all have a capacity to buy let alone need all of this stuff to have a baby. You are disconnected to what it is like for people who don’t look and live like you.”
MUTHAFUCKIN CLASSIC WHITE WOMAN UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCE…………then, her rebuttal…..
CHARITY, bih. That she “has grown her practice to the point where she can take less fortunate families pro bono”…..BIHHHHHHH like this is some Save the Children bullshit? Some legit…….”I used your knowledge to make money and when it serves me, I’ll support them for free?” focusing on NFL players’ partners……….Did I mention that three now prominent Austin doulas (one has since relocated, thanks IG for suggesting people I don’t care for) were in that training also. They heard this exchange. They felt (or did not feel) the tension in that room. I have a personal issue with two of them, as George Floyd somehow gathered their limited sense. The public execution of that man…… The other, I knew what that was from the get go.… You may call this petty. I call this a prime example of not listening to a black woman. So yet again, my light-skinned privilege, holding back in silence let this white woman say she trained a black woman without any accountability for her curriculum, behavior and audacity. So damn harmful this silence has been.
The Pink Pussy Hat Brigade:
George Floyd’s public execution apparently made me all of a sudden good enough for a DTI scholarship….but they, as many white doulas and midwives in Austin have, used poor oppressed peoples’ bodies for their certifications only to serve their own…..REBOZOS ON FULL DISPLAY. Saying “Sis,” like they were the mitochondrial DNA that ties humanity to Africa…..again….GTFOH. Explain to me how different they are from the fools in the Medical Industrial Complex? The Prison Industrial Complex? The US Food Supply Chain? I’ll wait. And educate yourself on systematic racism in those contexts while you are gathering a rebuttal. They trying to save their pockets, that is about it.
If you are a marginalized person working for/with DONA or DTI, do you Boo. But remember how much you paid/are getting paid, how much they made and are making on the knowledge of your ancestors. Remember how y’all out here in these streets having to discount services to serve us, but white doulas are demanding the absolute most with NONE of the same barriers. DTI recently removed rebozo training from their curriculum. So, y’all gonna refund a portion of folks’ fees or go ahead and fund the reclamation of ancestral ways by those parties yall appropriated or what? Maybe pay for the education of marginalized midwifery students? Just some suggestions. Because black folks should not be out here with GoFundMe pages while living y’all most publically applauded lies. I aint attended a single “Mentorship call” since I saw the “updated” reading list. White women, doing white women things. And having their ethnic employees do the field research for their fuck shit. Nope, y’all not getting none of this literary heat outta me. Especially, when grief/loss/death are still wholly unapproached and conversed about. When yells of justice from the bodies snatched from black community have been documented historically, researched scientifically, but only pertinent ‘cause you saw it on your phone/television/laptop and could not escape seeing it?
This organization holds a conference every year where white folk parade their wokeness and look for willing representatives from marginalized communities to share/lead/guide. This is also where they systematically gaslight these representatives. But, that evidence was taken off the innanets. Because of the shame of the honesty of what birthwork looks like here in Austin. Their social media pages look like a contest for a Target aisle display. Because civility over justice, comfortability over confrontation. Bih, I aint forgot. Put all the black folks you want in certain positions bc of Sandra, Breonna and George…….facts are that you built this off of the undervalued and underpaid work of marginalized folks, and your personal lives do not reflect a damn speck of truth. Your colorism is showing tf out.
And this audacity is RAMPANT in birth-workers in Austin. If a non-white doula, nurse, midwife, doctor, BODY of focus opens up the discourse on accountability, she is immediately treated as if she never could compose a coherent sentence. UNLESS she is light-skinned and comes in the tone they find comfortable. The hushed smear campaigns, social media shitstorm (overt and covert) and general professional ostracization based on depth of melanin and respectability politics….LAWDT. These white folk be legit appointing themselves as the orators and scales of justice “on behalf of all birthing peoples”,……. AFTER THEY HAVE READ A FEW BOOKS, WATCHED A FEW DOCUMENTARIES, AND SOME TED TALKS. But you feel you are now more than capable of laying your hands on a black birthing body????????? These are the same people that “donate” baby items that are stained, not cleaned, significantly used, close to expiration. Because they do not want to waste and the lesser valued is not sacrificial, the used is not truly sacrificial.
But a gathering of majority white women, at a conference created by a organization created by white women who charge insane amounts of money for a “lifetime certification”, with oppressed folk having to rehash trauma to validate competition over scholarship slots to learn from books written by white women can gaslight their non-white speakers and presenters without recourse? Change from an NPO to a corporation on colonized peoples’ birthrights….literally…….But anyway, let me get back to the point. Even though that is the point. Now they’ve “changed” quite a lot since then, but I know weeds when I see them. Monsanto Round-Up Ready GMO soybean asses. If you have to show the world you are decolonizing your mind, you are doing it wrong. How your behave and how uncomfortable you are NOT WILLING to be tells volumes.
My record of DONA’s training locations over a lengthy period, the curriculum I was taught, the inconsistencies of your trainers (‘cause folks have to seek out a certain trainer to be not othered), or is putting highly traditionally educated black folks on your board and staff selecting your checkboxes? Single handedly these two orgs are doing to doula work, what western medicine, NARM, MANA, NACPM and ACNM did to midwifery…….disenfranchisement filled with white, cisgendered audacity with some conforming queer folk sprinkled in. And it works in the same order EVERY TIME, first we appear inclusive to queer folks, THEN to black and brown folks. But, in this whole race to touch and support black birthing folk, they not acknowledging that the Maternal Mortality and Morbidity stats INCREASE with socio-economic status and education? AFTER THEY HAVE READ A FEW BOOKS, WATCHED A FEW DOCUMENTARIES…..took a training, hired some new staff, made a DEI Statement, you know all of the things that do not require decentering themselves.
And lemme tell you, AND they love putting the lightest possible person of color forwards and fucking center. Especially, if again makes it seems like their eyes are open wide. Bih, y’all told on yourselves. Your foundation is sweaty, runny and I can see how hard you tried to make that bronzer work, boo. CLOCKED. Y’allllllll these websites done ticked up like a tanning salon at the Jersey Shore after a Cristiano Ronaldo and George Hamilton sighting in the same week.
They deny my humanity in private, and then at an increased intensity my peoples’ humanity because they trying to be Ina May and Penny Simkin, Hilaria Baldwin with a Ruth Bader Ginsberg collar? Spiritual Midwifery out here looking like a blue-eyed, blond haired Jesus, a fair skinned Krisha, a Vineyard Vines wearing Allah, a pale panel of Greek Goddesses. I look at the Duggar family and these folk and see no difference. Projection, marketing, and media versus reality. Ya rugs are not only bulging from the amount of bullshit you done swept under, but dusty and crusty af. Especially, considering I AIN’T LEARNED A DAMN THING NEW from either organization. I have learned more in the baby sections of Craigslist, AliExpress, Amazon than I did in either one of those trainings. Maybe it is because being out here for years is why I know so much, and there is no comparison between learning their curricula vs experience. I am telling you……a classic hallmark of the permeation of American academia is the abundance of filler fuck shit to get ya coin, teachers who cannot be taught and students who are trained that they know nothing. I have spent a majority of my life as a student, and I plan to remain learning as long as I have breath in my body. But when I say my time was amply wasted, picture a night out scene from The Real World: New Orleans. I aint Danny on some Dont Ask Dont Tell bs. I’m telling. Omg, I just realized who these people remind me of…….. Beth from the New York cast. LOLOLOLZ ANNOYING AF.
Always got something to say, never got time to actually internally reflect and learn.
I’m so mad at God that we have lost black pillars of midwifery, remnants of how this country came to be, to a disease exacerbated/caused by racism and its weathering, but Ina May still alive? Talm ‘bout it is our diet that is killing us. A cornerstone, Afua Hassan, defended Ina to me at a time when black and brown birth-workers were coming for her blood. Afua explained revolution, change, care in her career, her personal account. She kept me in check quite a few times. Still blows my mind. The defense of a person’s humanity even when being dehumanized. Afua’s departure transition still causes me to box with God. Died from a disease spurned and fed by chronic stress & weathering. The systematic strain of carrying the torch of ancestral ways in a society that is at war with your Divinely, intentionally made calling and existence. She ushered in whole ass percentages of lives in Texas over the course of her career. These midwifery regulating bodies are complete trash concerning her passing and preservation of her lineage. While no coincidence, a prominent white care provider employed at prominent local birth center said some racist trash to me upon a transfer, in front of the treating physician and medical director of the birth center. But she out here living her most privileged life. CANCER FUCKING FREE. Let her pass, there will be a whole social media storm, news crew and public call……but for Afua? Nah. Honestly, her memorial was so much. I still cannot believe it. I am no one of import in her inner and immediate circle. But the grace, dignity and unapologetic blackness filled my soul and gave me the fuel to come home and write these experiences. It is clear to me that we lost a National Library of Congress sized wealth of knowledge. I equate her death with the burning of our ancient scripts, erasure of our native tongues, condemnation of dances, museum displays of our sacred talismans, and the denial of our humanity. She was taken from us. Claudia was taken from us.
Y’ALL……I am a humanist, but this shit is getting my on last fucking nerves. And silence is HARMFUL AS FUCK, when you are witnessing trash of EXXON VALDEZ, OZONE LAYER HOLE, AMAZONIAN FOREST sized proportions. I wholly acknowledge living in moral shit, trying to eat it to seem safe and credible, be accepted by a population of image huffing dumpster fires, and all in a effort to serve my own? Nahhhhhhhhh. I quit ya’ll. Nope Noppity Nope Nope.
