"Hatch has been a cornerstone for me the past nine months. The community has supported me in ways that have surpassed my expectations and exceeded my hopes. Most importantly, the Hatch community has encouraged me to engage in self-care on a deeper level than had ever appealed to me. By helping me solidify that my purpose and my passions align with being a caretaker for others, they’ve prodded me to hold myself, and those I love, accountable for being our own caretakers. Among the numerous tools I’ve been equipped with to hold space for birthing folks and their families, the greatest of these was learning to affirm myself, love myself, and take time for myself. If I am not mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically well, I cannot impact that of others to the best of my ability.
In addition, Hatch has directed my focus in narrowing down my ultimate career goals, by exposing me to experiences within birthwork that demonstrate where I can be most effective in responding to my vocation of playing a role in ushering in the miracle of life. I am thankful to this community and its directors for entrusting me, as a doula, with the journeys of birthing parents and their families before I truly understood the extent to which I would thrive as someone they could seek informational, emotional, and physical support from. Hatch saw the birth of who I would become, before I even attended the first birth of one of my clients, let alone the birth of who I am, today. I attribute this to their influences on me and how I think of myself, and the influences of my peers in the program. I am humbled to have been privileged enough to be in the spaces where already amazing, young people blossom into their passions even more powerfully than any of us thought we ever could. For these things and so many more that are too numerous to count, I am eternally grateful for how Hatch has challenged my growth as Brittany Hatcher Malone, first, then as a doula."
-Brittany Hatcher Malone (Cohort 3, Trainee)