My book of poems, FAT DAISIES, is coming out in 2015 from Big Lucks Books!

I hadn't seen that article, and good lord, I wish I hadn't. Home birth only seems like a "white person" thing to do because opting out of our problematic, expensive, and racist system of maternity care is something that is largely only possible for people who are higher on the socioeconomic spectrum. And that's bullshit for an infinity number of reasons. AARGH.

I am a white doula (who has written about doula-ing for this very site, in fact) and am sharing this widely in my birthworker circles. As you undoubtedly know, there is SO MUCH offensive cultural appropriation and racism (both advertent and inadvertent) that goes on in the birth community, so the more voices and ideas like yours are amplified, the better. Thank you for this piece.

I'm pretty sure my mom gave me a racy romance novel when I was like 12 on purpose, so that I could have sexy feelings but in a way that was parent-sanctioned. I think I still have the book under my bed somewhere. Books were one of the main ways that I learned about sex, from "The Mists of Avalon" to "Fear of Flying" to "Gone With The Wind" to this INSANE very sapphic book about a Scottish teenage witch who was burned at the stake (and written by a woman who is purportedly the witch reincarnated. "The Heart Of The Fire" By Cerridwen Fallingstar. BUY IT Y'ALL) but I've never even thought about the fact that my children won't likely have that kind of literary introduction to sex, whether they like reading as much as I did or not. Now it feels like a worthy parenting goal in some ways.

"Why do I even care? What's wrong with me" is my usual stage 4-20 million until I get to fuck everything and then start a new day with new stuff to write. UGH THE INTERNET.

My goal in writing this piece was to show that doula work is connected to supporting women's reproductive choices, not merely to say having a doula is a great choice that should be available to women. What I meant, and I think what I wrote, is that I became a doula because I believe women should have autonomy over their bodies. There's a lot of complicated issues related to birth and reproductive choice, and the availability of doula care (and ALL reproductive health care) for lower income women and uninsured women is certainly one of them. But that's not something I was trying to back up in my essay, because that wasn't the focus, for me. That's why I mentioned some of the problems with birth work, briefly, in just a few sentences, basically because I could write a whole other essay just about that topic and it didn't seem prudent to attempt to hash out all of those complicated socioeconomic issues in this particular essay. If you're interested in the specific populations of women I've served in the past, shoot me an email at carriemurphydoula@gmail.com, I'm happy to share that with you.

The BIKE SHORTS THING, and then how her friends were wearing bike shorts at her funeral?! My friend and I cried so hard at that part. It's so good, the whole book.