Month: June 2023

Categories
Anti-Oppression decolonization indigenous doula national indigenous peoples day Uncategorised

Let’s Celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1687365796950{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]Aaniin Doulas!

This month is National Indigenous History Month, how have you been celebrating?
The Indigenous excellence at DTC shines bright, and we are so grateful for the many contributions Indigenous birth helpers have brought to the community, historically and currently!
We hope this Indigenous Peoples Day, Indigenous and Non-Indigenous folks can reflect on how to create more accessible care for Indigenous families, co-resist against systems, and use their doula roles to uphold Indigenous rights.
Some ideas on how to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day:
  1. Learn whose land you reside on. www.native-land.ca
  2. Attend a local or virtual Indigenous Peoples Day event
  3.  Donate to Indigenous-led organizations upholding Indigenous rights today
  4. Pick a film to watch from the National Film Board of Canada’s catalogue of over 200 Indigenous-created films
  5. Follow and amplify the voices of Indigenous people through social media platforms
  6. Read through the Indigenous Ally Toolkit or How to Become an Indigenous Ally
  7. Find a CBC Reclaimed playlist and explore the many different worlds of Indigenous music, or start by watching the documentary Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World
  8. Understand the issues facing Indigenous reproductive health in Canada
  9. Join me June 29  from 12-3 pm EST,  for a Celebrating Indigenous Changemakers: NIHM Watch Party and discussion on Turtle Island Heros. This is open to Indigenous and Non-Indigenous members. We will be screening some Indigenous pieces, including clips of award-winning documentaries, spoken word pieces, and music to celebrate Indigenous culture and history. We will also be having an open circle discussion about the pieces being viewed, and how they relate to doula care in Canada. register here
At Doula Canada we continue working toward our goals outlined in the DTC Truth and Reconciliation Action Plan for 2023, and we are so excited to announce the launch of our Indigenous History and Allyship module, compulsory in all doula streams, starting in July. This is a three-month pilot, where we will take feedback and then relaunch a final module based on surveys afterward.
We are on Indigenous land, and we must know how to be good relations with one another.
Happy Indigenous Peoples Day and Happy Summer Solstice!
I look forward to seeing you all on June 29 from 12-3 pm EST.
Kayt

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1687096542163{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]Kayt (she/her) Inclusion and Engagement Lead, is an Anishnaabe kwe from Bonnechere Algonquin territory and the owner of Sweetgrass Solace Wholistic Support. Her post-secondary education includes a Bachelor of Social Work and Bachelor of the Arts in Indigenous Studies from Trent University (2021). She is also a certified hatha yoga teacher and a certifying birth and postpartum Doula.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Categories
Anti-Oppression community connection Equity intersectionality LGBTQ2S+ Newsletters pride understanding bias vulnerabiliity

Unlearning the Nuclear Family

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1685714926487{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]When I was a kid in the 80s, the family sitcom dominated television. From the Huxtables to the Keatons, to the Seavers, it was always Mom, Dad, and 2.5 kids. By then, the nuclear family had become the norm, so usually, both Mom and Dad worked outside the home. 

I always knew I wanted to be a mom someday. Even though my family didn’t look like the ones I saw on TV (I was raised by an Aunt and a Grandma), somehow it never occurred to me that the family I made someday would look different from the ones I saw on TV. I always pictured Daddy, babies, and me.

As I got older and came out as bisexual, my visions of future family life expanded to include the possibility of parenting with a “Daddy” or another “Mommy”, but I was still locked into a really nuclear understanding of what “families” looked like. 

Now my life has taught me a lot better. I do parent my only child with my wife, but welcoming Baby into our family made so much more than three. Our chosen family comprised of friends and partners from our queer and polyamorous communities has always been a huge part of our parenting journey.

We know many beautiful families configured in ways that transcend a couple with kids. We know quartets of a lesbian couple and a gay couple who have chosen to co-parent. We know gay and lesbian besties who have chosen to co-parent with their respective biological and chosen families behind them. We know lesbian couples with a known sperm donor who is deeply involved in their child’s life. There are triads or “thrupples” (a partnership involving 3 adults) who choose to raise families. This could look like a mom having a baby with each of her two male partners, or two women each having a baby with their male partner or any other number of ways of creating a family.

The reality is that Queer and Trans Culture isn’t just about having a life partner who was assigned the same sex as you at birth. Our cultural norms are forged from a history where the most conventional, nuclear way that we could have a family was still socially unacceptable. Many of us and our queer elders were rejected by our biological families for being honest about who we are. As a result, our community has been resourceful and resilient in carving out new ways of defining “family” and building family units that allow us to be whole. We create our own villages that know who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going to support us while we child rear and do this thing called life.

5 was a vital turning point for queer and trans families. It made the relationship to the child the focus of parental rights, rather than biology. The law also makes it possible for more than two people to be the legal parents of a child. This legal change was extremely important, but it’s only a fraction of the needed social change.

We must unlearn the idea that “parent+parent+kid(s)=family”. There are infinite equations that can add up to a family. As professional support people, we can embrace the expectation that clients seeking our help could come in ones, twos, or more, reflecting any mix of gender identities. 

We can also expect that folks living outside the parental binary are seeking our support specifically because they can expect that other parts of the health and social service systems don’t expect them, and might be hostile toward anything or anyone that challenges their expectations. We can create an unconditional blanket of compassion and support around all the beautiful shapes and sizes that families come in. That blanket is also a shield against fear and hate that preserves the sacredness of the parenting journey for all people.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][mk_padding_divider][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1686178152124{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]

Keira Grant (she/her) Inclusion and Engagement Lead – Racialized Communities

Keira brings a wealth of experience to the Online Community Moderator role. She is a Queer, Black woman with a twenty-year track record in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) education, projects, and community building initiatives.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Categories
Anti-Oppression intersectionality LGBTQ2S+ pride Uncategorised vulnerabiliity

Why Representation Matters.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”502714″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][mk_padding_divider][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1685976157863{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]As Pride month comes to a start, I decided to write a more personal piece for the Doula Canada blog. As many queer people know, the process of coming out isn’t linear nor a one time deal. Queer people often come out over and over, in every day interactions. We decide whether or not its safe to come out, whether or not it will have repercussions professionally, socially, and within our family circles. Pride comes with a lot of baggage. Working at a feminist vocational school, that celebrates diversity and inclusion, I know that writing this is a safe space. 

You see, I’m freshly out. I’ve been “out” as pansexual for about five years, but being “conceptually queer” and “actively queer” feel very different. Not that pansexuals do not struggle, we do, but we have one of those “border” identities where we can experience privilege and oppression at the same time, i.e. “passing”. Being able to pansexual while being in opposite sex relationships had a sense of “safety” in it. I could identify as queer, but also feel accepted and included by following compulsory heterosexuality. 

What is that you ask? Compulsory heterosexuality is the concept that society favors those who act in heterosexual ways. Our social norms favor heterosexuality, and it is assumed to be the default. You see this when someone asks you if you have a spouse of the opposite sex. When teachers can speak about their partners freely (as long as they are straight) and we assume things about strangers we do not know. Being conceptually queer, but passing as “actively straight” kept me safe. I didn’t have to have uncomfortable conversations, debate whether someone would be accepting of my partner, or wonder if it would be a deal breaker for a job. Until one day, passing didn’t work for me.

I’m 28 years old from a rural area in Northeastern Ontario. I went to a Catholic school where bringing a partner of the same sex to prom was forbidden, and we were told our “lifestyles” were unnatural and against God. I came from an area where queer people were (visibly) few and far between, and if they were outed they were ostracized for being “predators” or other horrendous, homophobic things. At one point, I thought I was queer when I was about 14 years old. A school counselor told me that all girls feel that way at some point, and I believed her. As I grew up, I thought I was emotionally bankrupt to all my boyfriends, that perhaps I was asexual, or traumatized, and that one day I would marry a husband. Asexuality and trauma are valid, but for me, it was a mask that seemed “more appropriate or acceptable” than the thought that I may be attracted to women. I didn’t realize that most women don’t see finding a husband as a begrudging task on a to-do list. This was compounded by the “ball and chain” rhetoric of a heteronormative and often misogynist society. Dating, sex, and marriage is supposed to be disappointing if you are a woman with a man (we’re often told).  It was easier for me to believe I may be asexual or traumatized than to think I may one day marry a woman. This is when I realized, I may not be attracted to men at all. But I didn’t know what that would look like.

Representation matters, because I had none. 

I was 20 before I saw a lesbian in a professional role, that wasn’t actively trying to hide her identity from the institution she was employed from. She was my Women’s Studies 1000 professor, and I thought about how brave that was. I didn’t realize that queer women could be out in positions of power without punishment.

I was 24 before I realized that you could be queer without ostracization in a bigger city. I was surrounded by queer friends who were living their joyful lives, loving their partners, and living (mostly) without harassment.

I was 26 before I met my first queer couple with children. I was downtown Toronto and finally seeing lesbian and gay couples living loud and proud, and simple and boring just like any other couples. I had never seen pregnancy and childrearing in queer couples, and had always tied my dream of having kids with being in a heterosexual relationship. Representation changed this for me.

How does this relate to doula work? Easy. If you’re a queer doula, you are actively showing the world that queer people belong in the doula space. If you’re creating inclusive advertising for trans and queer people, you are telling them you see them, and they belong in the reproductive health discussion. When you use a trans person’s pronouns, you are validating their experience and showing them you respect their identity. When you learn about surrogacy, IVF, and adoption support, you are creating more services for queer people to access.

Representation matters because it shows queer youth, and queer adults that their experiences are normal, and can be expansive and joyful. It shows others the possibilities within being queer. It shows us our dreams can exist in a comphet society, and that we don’t have to give up a part of ourselves to be happy. So this pride, when you hear someone say “Why do they have to be so LOUD about it?” tell them its for every queer person who is forced to live quietly, and is silently listening.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”violet”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1685976337654{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]

Kayt (she/her) is an Anishnaabe kwe from Bonnechere Algonquin territory and the owner of Sweetgrass Solace Wholistic Support. Her post-secondary education includes a Bachelor of Social Work and Bachelor of the Arts in Indigenous Studies from Trent University (2021). She is also a certified hatha yoga teacher and a certifying birth and postpartum Doula.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]