The Birth Path
Welcome to The Birth Path.
Some truths at the core of this new path:
I do know a bit about birth.
I do not know what path your birth will take.
I do know that preparation, support, and care will make an impact on how you move through birth and how it all feels in the parenting journey ahead.
The Birth Path is a newly recalibrated, elevated version of sweet, old Wind & Water Doula Care. The essence of her will still carry forward into this new and exciting chapter, and my goodness, this…The Birth Path…is an evolution I’m very excited to share more about.
I’ve actually been sitting with my new business name, logo, and model for a while now, and I knew I needed to let it flicker to start; then, let the fire rise a bit- until the timing was just right to cozy up to it.
I knew I wanted a new logo, but I loved my first logo so much. I wanted it to hold the strength and center of that, the colors of it, the movement of it, the nature-esque vibes of it, the recognizability of it, the “Oh! I think it’s wind and water something. Jen Walts’s business. That one!” That first logo was a little dream. A funkily draped moon releasing stars toward its name. Wind & Water was exactly what I needed it to be, and now, so is this.
The Birth Path came to me in the middle of the night, as most cool, breath-like thoughts do, and I wrote it down along with a list of other half-as-cool-but-related words just in case a mightier combination came up and out of my coffee the next morning.
I created my first website in the middle of the night when my little one was just a babe, adorably and annoyingly breastfeeding every five seconds and melting my creativity away, so I figured I should probably act swiftly and put together a website that could sustain itself for years to come. Tonight, quite randomly, my now 4 year old kiddo fell asleep in the grown-up’s bed. He hasn’t done this since he was a baby (admittedly - and without too much silly shame - he does sneak in here most nights around 3am!), so I took it as a sign, as any doula would, to make meaning out of mundane- perhaps a cyclical reminder that although motherhood is draining, this kid really does inspire creation in the coolest sense, so I opened up my laptop and started swiftly plucking away at the keys, once again.
Owning and nourishing a business that is the same age as your child has its inspiring and confusing moments. The ebbs and flows often mirror the seasons of calm and the times of challenge, and of course, the new beginnings and understandings invite the newest and healthiest ways forward. The award-winning moments mock the other things you were not paying nearly enough attention to, and the slow times create enough space for you to figure out what was once in the celebratory fog.
My hope is that this recalibration of my business, website, the brand, the name, the offerings, will answer what this business will look and feel like for the next several years as I continue to balance what else life itself is offering to me.
A lot of birth workers actually burn out after 3-5 years of this work, and I began to see some of that in myself. With a necessary pause, I noticed where I can truly make the most impact with my strengths and passions. I am an educator, a facilitator, a connector, a guide, and a doula. I am someone who plans to continue to provide truly transformative care.
My background in education and organizing lights me up. It is that inner flame that brought me to prepare for birth in a way that felt right to me, it is what keeps me up at night dreaming & scheming of ways to connect families to their options, to their intuitive sense of self, and to the autonomy that is possible in whatever birth path they are hoping to take.
Just tipping into 100 births into this work, and I still continue to carve new shapes of my belief systems around birth and my support of families through the process. The offerings of The Birth Path will reflect this and are filled with opportunities to grow, to check in with yourself, to tune out the noise, and to honor what path you imagine taking, to bring with you some important tools that will guide you beyond the moments of birth and through whatever this next season presents.
The Birth Path is educational, helpful, spiritual, and reflective. It is exactly what you need it to be. It is preparation, and it is also surrender. It is trusting of the self, and it is leaning on the support you’ve curated around you. It is all of the resources and community that you imagined would hold you through transformation.
The Birth Path is yours. It is the path that unfolds before you. It’s the winding, curvy, messy, confusing, magic, loud, mystery of birth. It is the path you choose to take, who you choose to take with you, and how you imagine moving through twists & turns that arise. It is the very human emotions of the nervous system experience that is birth. It is a path to your family’s expansion. It is a path with guidance and resources and richness of connection & community. It is a stretching of the self. It is an identification of strength and inner power that you’ve always had in reserves.
The Birth Path is a gift of offerings and wisdom that will continue to evolve as more families teach me what they know about what it means to be human through the process of birthing another.
The Birth Path is transformative care.
More to come…
Logo design by Iman Jordan at https://designlightbulb.com/
