Unpopular opinion of the day.

You don’t need permission to be who you are. You don’t need anyone’s blessing. You don’t need approval from us, even if you’re our doula or midwifery student. Just because you have a teacher doesn’t mean that teacher controls your self expression. We are all students. We are all teachers.

We can be held accountable without being held hostage.

We can find the strength and wisdom to organically know how and when we are ready to serve, support, and educate. When we are ready to start shifting from student to master.

Do we need help along the way? Usually. Do we need support and love and guidance and direction? Usually. But ultimately you need to claim it (and it can be anything) for yourself. Until you’re ready to be a doula/midwife/astronaut whatever it is, WITHOUT a piece of paper or a law supporting you, you are not truly ready.

Read. That. Again.

If tomorrow your papers burned up and the grid crashed and you didn’t have them to lean on for legitimacy, what would you do? And if your answer is that you would continue to be the same person you are today, then ask yourself why you are buying into (literally paying for) that bullshit right now.

Where is the integrity in our culture? It might be under a stack of NARM or DONA paperwork.