Mars created the Abuela Doulas primarily, but not exclusively, for Black and Brown women and birthing people. We look forward to welcoming you!
I became a doula in 2004, after I took my twins to a coffee morning and overheard a conversation about doulas. I had no idea that conversation would set off something I’m still doing 22 years later.
I walked into this work excited. But something kept nagging at me. I couldn’t find other Black doulas.
It wasn’t that they weren’t there. They weren’t visible.
Around the same time, I learned about the Black maternal health scandal. When I raised it, I was told birth was birth. That the race or ethnicity of the person giving birth was immaterial.
So Abuela Doulas grew out of my own practice. I took the monotone landscape of birth and started colouring it in.
That meant training new doulas to support the communities they came from, and to serve every community well. Different marginalised groups came through that training and took the work out into the world with them. The birthing community changed because of it. Training organisations started adding cultural competency modules. Marginalised communities started building their own cultural competency work, on their own terms.
Mars created the Abuela Doulas primarily, but not exclusively, for Black and Brown women and birthing people. We look forward to welcoming you!
Abuela Doulas is the UK’s first Black-owned and founded doula training organisation, and it grew directly out of that work. What started as a passion for birth became a commitment to making sure everyone in the birth space, the person giving birth, their partner or parent, and the workforce around them, can access care that’s culturally safe and held with a justice lens.
As that need grew across doulas, birthworkers, midwives and complementary therapists, I started running cultural safety workshops, speaking to Parliament, NHS Trusts, conferences and summits. I sat on RCOG’s Race Equality Taskforce and the Birthrights Legal Inquiry panel. Three awards came out of that work too.
That’s the work behind both pathways here. If you’re new to birthwork, the Birthwork Pathway is where you build the foundations properly, with the justice lens in from day one, not bolted on later as a module. If you’re already practising, the Anti-Racism Pathway is where you go deeper, into your own practice, your systems, and what you’re prepared to hold for the people who need you most.
Abuela Doulas is a standard bearer and a pioneer in this work. The conversation about Black maternal health that’s now happening in training rooms, in Trusts, in Parliament, exists because I started having it, back when I was told it was immaterial. 22 years on, birth in the UK looks different. Abuela Doulas had a hand in that. There’s more colouring in to do, and that’s what I’m still here for.
Abuela Doulas started with me, but the vision for change was always bigger than one person. As that vision grew, so did the team carrying it.
Some hold the methodology and take it into the next cohort. Some bring expertise I don’t hold myself. Some stay with our doulas after they qualify, when the real questions start. Different roles, same purpose: making sure this work outlasts me.
Each of our facilitators and mentors brings the traditions of their own heritage into the room, alongside the methodology. This isn’t separate from the training, it’s part of it.
What does a mentor actually do? Whatever you need them for. Setting up your business, getting ready for a client you’re nervous about meeting, talking through a birth that’s still sitting with you, or a postnatal visit that didn’t go the way you needed it to. Some of it’s practical, some of it’s just needing someone who gets it.
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Abuela Doulas recognises that as well as doing the work, they need to support the work of others. With that in mind, here are some links to support not only us, but other organisations that we are involved in.