“Amazing. You are incredible,” I whispered to my client in a slow, deliberate voice. I wiped a few beads of sweat off her forehead with a cool washcloth and offered her a sip of water. Her dry lips wrapped around the straw. She exhaled audibly. Exhausted from ten hours of childbirth labor, this mama was in it. The only way out was through.
“Release your jaw. Relax your shoulders. Let everything soften.” I stashed her water cup on the bedside table and ran my hands through her matted hair. I heard her softly moan. It was 4:30 a.m., and only those working the overnight shift were awake, which did not include her husband. Curled up in a fetal position on a twin-size pleather pull-out couch, he was sound asleep.
I’d been a certified doula for nearly five years and knew that each birth required me to dig deep. My role as a doula was to support and encourage women in labor. I did not intervene with medical advice. Instead, my calming presence, positive encouragement , and counter pressure support helped my clients feel less afraid and alone. Being a doula was not a career many, including my mother knew about. My mom had a few questions when I started.
“Do you deliver the baby?”
“No, Mom. The mother delivers the baby.”
“Oh. Do you catch the baby?”
“Nope. The midwife catches the baby.”
“Well, then, Sara, what do you do?” It was a fair question. If you asked my clients what I did for them at their births, many of them would likely say that they couldn’t imagine their labor without me. My experience as a doula soothed my clients and their partners who often were overwhelmed and unsure how to help their beloveds.
I learned quickly that patience is paramount. Nothing generally happens quickly in labor. A birth could be like sitting on a mediation retreat – nowhere to go, nowhere to be. I often repeated the same suggestions: “Focus on your breath. Take each contraction, one at a time.” My clients asked me, “How much longer?”
“Stay curious,” was my standard answer. One birth, I walked into the hospital on November 2nd and did not leave until the 4th. My husband’s birthday was the 3rd
As that example suggests, doula work became unmanageable for my life. The uncertainty and unpredictability of the work wore on me. I pushed “pause” on that career and accepted a part-time position at a psych hospital teaching mindfulness and yoga. This gave me more time to write and flexibility to travel. A few weeks ago, I was on in a zoom call with my writing community “The River” and reflected on my 2025 writing practice. I told my teacher Sarah Sentilles that everything I learned about writing, I learned as a birth doula. The power of intention, releasing control, building community, and finding connection were the pillars of my doula work. They are the same in my writing life.
Intention is a key ingredient. Without intention, I’m like an IKEA shopper walking around in circles. Each session as a doula, I asked my clients to set an intention for our time together, for their upcoming birth and for postpartum. The conversation formed the framework for our time together and helped them be more clear on what exactly they wanted.
Similarly, I place attention on my daily intention which is to write. I feel better in my body when I write. In order write a few sentences, scenes or stories, I carve out time. When I use that writing time to fold laundry, empty the dishwasher or talk on the phone, I feel blah.
My daily writing practice was a long time coming. For years, I thought about being a writer. I read books about writing. I listened to podcasts and even dreamt about future book signings. I spent time doing almost anything but writing. Stephen King said in his acclaimed book On Writing ,“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Check check on reading. I love novels and literary magazine articles. It was time for me to write. I needed to get serious and set an intention. I had to say no to distraction so I could say yes to art. Around the same time, I worked on loosening control, building community, and finding connection with other writers.
A few of my perinatal clients touted their organizational skills like a superpower until they had a baby. Then they came unravelled. Sweet mamas. They were humbled by the mess. I noticed the correlation between spreadsheets and struggle. The women who accepted the chaos and released perfectionism tended to ride the postpartum wave with a little more ease.
Like birthing a baby, bringing a creative project into the world requires patience, grace and trust. It’s not perfect. It’s messy. Progress is nonlinear and not always in our control. The tighter I hold on to a writing project, the slower it goes. I wrote essays all year. I thought by January, 2026, I’d have more projects complete. I planned to have a rough draft for a memoir done and I am not even close. I have to tamp down my disappointment. A plan is not the problem. It’s my attachment to the plan that weighs on me. Loosen. Loosen.
As a doula, I encouraged my client’s to substitute the word “presence” for “plan.” If a woman did not want an epidural or induction, I encouraged her to call her wish a “preference,” in order to remain flexible. I’d warn her. “Hold your preferences loosely. Plans may not work out the way you want.” I have to remind myself to also to remain flexible. T.S. Eliot reminds me, “the journey, not the arrival matters.”
Finding my people has been essential. Community helps normalize my experience. As a doula, I encouraged my clients to find postpartum community. I told them an ocean of rapture and challenges awaited. It’s easy to settle into a routine with a baby and a partner, but isolation can creep in like a cold summer evening in San Francisco. It’s sneaky. I watched how community helped build confidence and settled anxiety in many of my clients.
I finally found some writing people to call community. “The River” meets twice a month over zoom to write, reflect, and share insights. These Australian and American women speak my language – albeit most more eloquently than me. I bathe in the warmth of their support. I cheer them on and feel the same love and kindness radiate back to me. Finding like-minded souls on my path has been a delight, like homemade apple pie á la mode.
If “The River” is like a constellation, Barb is my star - light and bright. She’s my accountability partner. Barb has transformed my writing practice. Last June, I met her on a Spirit Rock retreat in Northern California. She’s a nearly eighty year old poet who shoulders an unfair burden of health challenges. A year-long yoga dharma training brought us together. We met on the second to last day of the program. Like me, Barb was an aspiring artist who thought about writing more than she wrote. After commiserating and discussing our desire to write, we decided to try something new: accountability. We read an article by Aimee Bender “Why the Best Way to Get Creative is to Make some Rules” for inspiration and then customized an artist’s contract. After agreeing on our commitments, we drew up a contract, signed it, and began.
We text the other person one word after writing: “done.” The other person texts back: “check.” A day we do not write, we text “Rain check.” If we do not hear from the other, we gently check in. I know Barb in my corner, as I am in hers. When we go on vacation or know we will be off the computer for a few days, we let each other know to keep ourselves accountable. Every few months we hop on zoom to renew our contract and share highlights and lowlights of our creative endeavors. We end our sessions by reading to each other and saying, “I love you.”
Magic appeared when I started being accountable to Barb. It feels similar to a feeling I had the summer I planted string beans in a community garden plot with my friend Becca. After a few weeks of sunshine and water, the beans sprouted. I couldn’t believe it. I brought my small kids to the garden. We picked and ate the delicious beans. I called myself a gardener that one summer. I felt proud for months. Working with Barb is the same. I feel proud to call myself a writer. I am a writer and a doula.
Instead of bringing my presence and encouragement to a birth room, I bring it to the page. Each day, I remind myself the same thing I told my clients again and again. “Stay curious.” I never know what’s next.
