The Maiden Version of Me

One reason I became a postpartum doula is because of her—the maiden version of me.

She does not know it yet, but soon she will give birth to her first child and to a new version of herself.

She will sit in the shadows, mourning the self she must release so that the mother can emerge.

She will doubt her intuition and question everything.

She will not know how to ask for help or where to find it.

She will feel the world moving on without her while her body and her baby ask her to slow down—something she has never learned to do.

I became a doula to hold that version of me.

To tell her she is not a burden.

To remind her she is worthy of kindness, even at two in the morning when doubts are loudest.

This unravelling is sacred.

In the quiet and the tears, something ancient awakens.

The mother is forged in soft surrender, not in doing.

And she will not walk alone—not anymore.

If any part of this speaks to you, I see you. You are not alone.