Facilitations & Trainings

For those of us in relationship to children or who remember being children, we might be familiar with how early in life systems of oppression work to inform newborns and their families. I have developed a range of courses for parents, caregivers, fellow doulas and midwives and anyone who loves little ones and pregnant people. We all influence how little ones and the people who grow them understand their bodies and position in the world. These courses hope to offer some compassion, grace, and information on how we can do better for our babies and the pregnant people in our lives. These courses are open to all people in relationship to babies and birthing people. Courses listed below are available in person in Kjipuktuk and online. Keep a look out for upcoming offerings!

Gender & Birth

Available upon Request

  • Together we will explore the ways sex and gender show up for babies and the people who carry them. Are you curious about how to raise a gender fluid baby or how to start from a place of openness with a baby’s gender while navigating the external pressures that can come from family and the world at large? Are you a gender-diverse person navigating pregnancy and birth?  Then this is the course for you! Together we will explore how we can support ourselves and our babies as we navigate the sex and gender of our children and how these are met by the world around us. We will explore topics of intersex, gender reveal parties, gender markers on infants, and medical declarations of sex.

Sex & Pleasure while pregnant

Available upon Request

  • Together we will explore the breadth and boundaries of sex and pleasure while pregnant. In this course we will explore how pleasure can act as a guide for building intimacy and a nuanced understanding of what our body needs through pregnancy, birth and postpartum. We will unpack how sex can be used to support an embodied understanding of relaxing the muscles and parts of the body needed for delivery. We will also discover new and different ways to increase pleasure in our lives while pregnant if we are planning to use less or no substances while pregnant.

Fatphobia & Birth

Available upon request

  • Together we will explore the many ways size-stigma makes its way into how we think of our babies, often even before they are born. Fatphobia and sizeism show up in birth outcomes for fat pregnant people, how we talk about pregnant bodies, expectations of post-birthing bodies, and even how we share the news of our baby in their first moments in the world. Together we will explore how we can integrate more loving and affirming ways of talking about, and often not talk about bodies, how we can together shift fatphobia, advocate for ourselves and fat loved ones, and raise happy, funny kids who can know what it means to love, care for, and value their bodies from the moment they enter the world.

We move towards the worlds we long for by sharing space, naming these futures, and then embodying daily practices that bring them to life.

HIV+ and Birth

Available upon Request

  • Together we will learn about HIV: how it works in the body, how it is passed, and what testing looks like. We will unpack the way stigma influences all of these processes. We will learn about access to HIV healthcare, HIV treatments, and the way stigma can influence a person’s viral load. This course also includes discussions on disclosure laws and the way HIV is currently criminalized in Canada. With this information we will look at the intersections of living with HIV while pregnant and together develop the skills and knowledge to advocate for ourselves and HIV + peers navigating their status and reproductive rights.

Abolition & Birth

Available upon Request

  • Together we will learn how living in a police state manifests in healthcare. This course is specially designed for doulas and other healthcare professionals navigating power and relationships to other people’s bodies, rights, and consent in the health care system. This course focuses on specific examples to offer practical approaches to reducing harm and cultivating safety for our clients and patients. 

Community Care Practices

Available upon Request

  • Whatever the transition or change is, birthing little ones and new versions of ourselves is rich with opportunities for deeper alignment and cultivating structures of transformative justice in our lives. Pod Mapping and Mutual Aid are two ways of describing systems of care that those of us who are Black, Brown, and Indigenous know well. They are the approaches manifested through the warranted distrust of the state our ancestors have garnered for generations. These transformative justice practices come from rejecting white-supremacist assertions of scarcity and instead revel in the wonder of abundance and collective care not only as survival but as the necessary structures of facilitating joy, pleasure, ease, gratitude, and the spaciousness to hold the breadth of challenges transformation brings. These values are the cornerstone of my doula practice. In this course, I walk participants through the fundamentals and possibility of these practices as living maps to return when we need to be held in our change.

Ready to learn?

Please feel free to get in touch with me to learn more about how I can support you in your learning. I am available for group and individual education services.

  • Follow Em at on instagram @em.birthingtranformations to see updates on upcoming courses in Kjipuktuk.

  • I offer my services on a sliding scale for individuals and organizations online and living in Kjipuktuk. All services for Mi'kmaq and local urban Indigenous individuals and organizations are free. Costs vary on the length of education service and number of people attending.

  • I respond to inquiries 1-3 business days via email