By way of an introduction I want to elaborate on my tag line - "Support, Education, Advocacy". Having a marketing professional for a spouse, I appreciate the importance of a concise, memorable tag line and I think there is a lot you can learn about me and the work that I do from those 3 words. Today, we’ll tackle the first word – Support.
On the surface, support is probably the most straightforward of the three to understand. I promote the interests and causes of my clients. I validate and reassure. When serving a woman as her birth doula, support is woven throughout our relationship; as an educator and a public health professional the support is a wider net, cast over the interests and needs of groups as well as individuals.
Because it is so easy to understand and appreciate the value of support, I wonder if people think this is the easiest part of my job. People like being supported and most of us understand what it means to be supportive of others. It sounds simple, passive, doesn’t it – being supportive? And maybe now, after over a decade of practice, it is an instinctive and natural role that I play. But being supportive is not passive at all, it requires a lot of awareness and work.
People are self-centered by nature. This is not a design flaw, just a design characteristic. We see the world relative to our own selves and experiences. When we hear about the lives of others, we imagine how it would feel if their lives were ours. This imagination is what makes us capable of empathy. And remembering that they are not us is the root of compassion. Compassion and empathy are necessary in order for me to be a supportive doula, educator and public health worker.
Compassion and empathy allow me to accept the diversity of what is possible in the world without judging some parts as right and others as wrong, some choices as good and others as bad. Releasing judgment through compassion and empathy requires me to release my own ego. To let go of the illusion that any of part someone else’s experience has anything to do with me.
As a birth doula, when I’m with a couple in labor, supporting their experience, I am challenged to function in two worlds at the same time. Key parts of my job require me to be aware of the laboring woman’s experience. I have to keep an eye on her needs and desires, an ear to her words and her thoughts as labor unfolds, to take care of creature comforts for her and her partner - making sure that she and her partner are eating, hydrating, staying warm and are as comfortable as possible. I have to be in touch with them both emotionally and physically.
But in order to be the best doula I can, I have to keep track of my own experience as well – I have to eat, hydrate, stay warm, and get enough sleep. I have to build relationships with the hospital staff and midwife/doctor so that I can continue to be welcomed into labor & deliver units as an ally.
As an educator, I have to remember that I am there so that my students can learn, not so that I can teach. Plowing quickly through material just so that I can say that we covered it does not serve my classes. Using teaching techniques that are easy for me is pointless if my students need other methods in order to master the content.
As a creator of public health programs, supporting the needs of a community is crucial to success. The desire to improve the health outcomes of childbearing women must be accompanied with the humility to recognize that what I think the community needs in order to be healthier doesn’t matter as much as what the members of the community themselves think they need in order to be healthier.
As a doula, educator and program developer, I have all kinds of strategies and tricks to help women and their partners, students and communities cope with all kinds of situations. But all those neat tricks don’t mean a thing if I have my ego wrapped up in my client’s labor or a community’s needs. Supporting, whether it is of a woman in labor, a couple in a childbirth education class or a community trying to improve its health status, requires constant release of my own expectations and experiences.
In order to support well, I remind myself that I don’t know what is going on in someone else’s life; I don’t have her relationships, her memories, her expectations, her challenges or her resources. I also don’t have her blood pressure, her nervous system or her hormones. I have no idea what she is experiencing, except for what she tells me.
In order to support well, you have to be truly listening to and respecting the place others are coming from. Anyone who tells you that this is an easy thing to do is probably lying to themselves (or maybe just to you!). But you can build your compassion and empathy skills. You can remind yourself that everyone has different experiences and needs. You can learn more about groups and individuals who hold positions and make choices you don’t initially understand. You can do this until it becomes very easy, most of the time.
Except when it is not. As the blog unfolds, I’ll share more lessons I’ve learned about support.
Thanks for reading!
