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I wrote recently about stepping away from being a doula and while on one hand I’m disappointed in myself (I don’t like quitting!) I’m really glad.

I was stretched too thin and ended up putting a lot of weight on. It’s because I was expected to support my kiddo overnight (they’re a terrible sleeper) AND work out of the house AND do all the house things that my partner just simply didn’t do.

Giiiiiiiiiirllllllll, let me tell you I was MAD. This man did no housework and still made me pay for house related things. Fuck that shit. After several blowup arguments we finally came to a situation where I wasn’t draining myself literally 24/7.

I now have a retirement account that he fully funds. Over 36k in it now.

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And he’s paying for everything. Like 90% because that man brings in so much money and I’m STILL doing the crappy overnights with our son. Like, sir, can you just fuck off? I know having a baby can put a relationship in jeopardy, but I never thought a grown-ass man would let his partner suffer for so long. Fucking patriarchy.

So, when things are going well I’m trying to find myself again. And I’ve wrote about some gyms that I love, but one thing I really want to do is to get back on the tennis court. But again I have this internal dilemma because tennis is a skinny white person sport and while I am still two of those three things, skinny is not one of them.

It seems like tennis has gotten more and more elitist since my childhood. Maybe the disparity seems greater than reality because I grew up on poorly maintained city-run courts. There were always weeds growing through cracks in the pavement, or gates that didn’t close all the way, but there were still courts, and it was first come, first serve (lol, pun intended!).

And I never had problems finding a court to practice on. But now? It’s a whole lot different. Now there are tennis court booking software apps that you have to download because it seems like all the courts have clubs associated with them? Granted I’m no longer in my small town of my youth, but there’s like schedules and the availability of finding an open court, especially on the weekend? It’s hard.

I would love to start banging out groundstrokes again, I’m not sure if I can muster up the courage to fit my now heavier postpartum body into a white tennis outfit. Ugh, I hate this. I just want my life back, my body back, and my good mental health back. I know that I need to move my body in order to feel good, but the lack of sleep and the self-consciousness is making it hard. And it’s early summer too, so the weather has been exceptionally beautiful. I need some sun.

So, I have some bad news. I started this blog as a doula, trying to figure out how to support people in their post partum experiences. Unfortunately, I have stopped.

I just couldn’t do it anymore. My home life has its ups and downs and the decision to work mainly as a care-giver just wasn’t feasible to maintain over time. And I feel kinda sad about it, but also no. On one had, my postpartum doula mentioned that most doulas burn out in three years or less. So I definitely fall into that category. My main inspiration for becoming a doula was my own postpartum experience and I didn’t want anyone else to have similar experiences. But these feelings apparently don’t make for good financial decisions.

The reason why I don’t feel too bad about it was that I kinda got stung by a client. It was a bit messy, she was a friend and then a client. But what ended up happening (at least from my perspective) is that she and her husband used me while I was offering an introductory rate and then dragged their feet on paying me a more competitive rate. Additionally, I think what they really wanted was a mother’s helper and not a doula. So by the end of it I was essentially cleaning her house and doing laundry exclusively. Not very doula-y.

But the one thing that down right pisses me off is the fact that they were loaded. Like, 10 million dollar house loaded. And I remember when I was telling her that my introductory rate was expiring that she said they couldn’t afford a higher rate. My introductory rate was 15$/hour! I needed to get paid more and I think I ended up at maybe 22? And it was a whole process, in which she needed to
“ask her husband” about paying me higher. Bitch, this isn’t a request.

Admittedly, I ended the relationship badly. But I was so over cleaning her mansion while getting paid well under market rate. It just pissed me off that at the end of the day I would come back to my apartment (that wasn’t clean!) and leaving her in a better off position.

That was the hard part. I needed more support at home to be a working mother with a small child. Especially when my kiddo first started going to daycare! It was brutal, and I gained a bunch of weight. Looing back it’s because I still wasn’t sleeping at night, then I would have to travel around and support others all day. By the time I would get home I was wasted.

So, yeah. No more doula work for me. It’s such an important role but not one I could sustain long term.

Black is the colour of my soul. Not in a sick kinda way, but in a metalhead kinda way. I’ve wrote before about how I don’t always fit in, especially with other doula websites. But for always and forever I’ve felt uncomfortable with strongly expressed femininity. I guess that’s why this vibe fits me so well. Give me motorcycles, give me manual labour, give me metalheads… those are my people.

So do you know where else I sometimes have trouble fitting in? Gyms. And I don’t want to sound like a hater, that girl boss babes or the baddies I inherently don’t like. Bu maybe it’s a self-confidence thing? Maybe I can remember my high school’s bully too vividly. Or maybe I can remember the unique pain of not ‘fitting’ in with all the girlie-girls. But some gyms I do not fit in at all. But I have found two. One is Fortis Fitness is Toronto, the other is Beyond Fitness, a gym in Victoria BC. These two were my absolute favourite experiences I’ve had recently.

So I’ve always been athletic and before I got pregnant I was running, biking, and doing yoga. I was fit, happy, and healthy. But once I conceived it all stopped. I remember trying to go for a jog but I had a funny feeling in my lower abdomen and it did not feel good at all bouncy around. I was able to bike for a long time and I think my previous condition really helped in healing from birth. But I’ve had some strong feelings afterward which has led me to try to get as strong as possible.

I don’t like really talking about it, but I had an urgent C-section and the following recovery just really sucked. I can remember having the hardest time trying to sit up in bed. I simply could not. Mind you, nine months prior I was doing inversions for fun and now in order to get up I had to so this weird sort of roll thing to get up from sleeping. It sucked.

So at about nine months postpartum I decided I wanted to get as strong as possible. Never again would I struggle to get out of bed. Never again would I need my body to do a thing, and then it fails. So I called Sarah-Jane at Beyond Fitness when I was out in Victoria visiting a friend and she mentioned that Fortis Fitness was a good place back in Toronto. But also she was so kind to help alleviate my fears that I was only going to be a weakling for the rest of my days. Apparently having a baby is hard on a body and the cultural narrative about ‘bouncing’ back is a false one.

So, maybe I’ll be a baddie after all. Or maybe I’ll go for a muscle mommy who knows…

Parenting is the hardest thing I’ve done, but at least I can still cook

Most doula websites seem to be ultra-fem; soft images, pretty colors, gendered language, and hetero couples. That’s fine, there’s no shade on those type of sites. It seems like they all follow an invisible pull to arrange their sites in all the same way. There’s always a big picture in the header, often with a pregnant person, or their own face. Also why is there so much pink? Now I’m not anti-pink, because a color has no inherent meaning, meaning is dictated by society. But it’s curious that all the doula sites look the same. I’m not sure if it’s the case of the blind leading the blind or there’s some reason behind it all.

No matter, here in my blog you will not get that vibe. I am into motorcycles and pizza (obvs!). Also, good food, mostly made by me. This will include pics of my grill which does include meat. So, if you are squeamish about that, this is not the place for you. I let you know up front so you can prevent yourself from seeing images of food that you would rather not. This blog will be a place where I can finally be myself, a person who struggles with feeling like they don’t fit in.  

That’s the story of my life really, I’ve never felt like I’ve fit in anywhere. However, for my training I did find an awesome doula training agency, BADT. They are a black-owned, queer-run doula training organization. They’re f*cking awesome, I did feel like I fit in with their training courses. Because while this blog may come off as with a slightly more conservative feel (motorcycles!) I am in no way conservative whatsoever. And this informs my doula work, becasue we’re often thought to be advocates. And I would totally agree with that. We advocate for the pregnant person; we advocate for those recently postpartum. We advocate for a change in reproductive health care in whatever country that we’re in, making us in my opinion quite liberal and left-y.

So, if the initial vibe made you uncomfortable, sorry. I hope you stick around for some motorcycle and pizza talk. There will probably be doula-talk along the way. I’ve met some pretty rad people, people I would have never met except if I was in this line of work. Doulas are f*cking rad, they are some of the most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met. They’re also pretty hardcore. They help babies exit other’s bodies. I won’t get into it here, but that’s nuts. Anyways, thanks for being here I hope you stick around.