Doula Training complete

The fall Doula Training was held this past Thursday, Friday, Sat. and Sunday (today) till noon. We had 18 participants and loads of local Doulas facilitating, helping, cooking, and just being as useful as possible. Our local group of Doulas is such a wonderful source of love, support, information, help and nurturing that it is unbelievable. This is not only for our clients, but for each other. We truly do nurture, lift up, and empower all the women in our lives. It is such a blessing to be associated with all these women.

I think one of the main reasons why this is such a cohesive group is because of our founder and director. The tone of a group is always set by its head, don't you think? She has been quietly and tirelessly working to build this group for more than 10 years and thousands of families have been served in that time. She never misses an opportunity to encourage each and every one of us and to tell us how much she cares about us.

Many of the 18 participants and now prospective-Doulas live in other areas and won't be joining our group. I really hope that they will find something similar in their hometowns to help them on their journey of serving women. For the others that are here locally, I will be looking forward to seeing them at upcoming meetings, in the office and assisting at the next training that has already been scheduled for April, 2010.

Being a Doula is truly a labor of love and I am so glad I found my way to this path at this particular stage of my life. I can't imagine anything I would rather be doing. Isn't it amazing when you find a calling and then find a way to be compensated for doing what you would do for free? It just makes it that much more satisfying and rewarding to know that your services are of value.

What things do you do or what things would you do if you could do anything you want without regard of the money? It's sad that we get stuck in a rut of spending 60 - 80 hours a week doing something we hate, in a place we hate, and away from our families just so we can pay the bills. There isn't much time left for doing things that nourish your soul, is there?

Recently I was thinking that if we were growing as much of our food as we could with the small piece of land that we have available to us, we could cut way back on working outside the home. Work just enough to pay for the electricity and utilities that we need. What else do we need? We all have way too much "stuff" so we don't need to keep buying more, do we? Food and utilities made the top of my list of consumables. Most everything else is not really a necessity, but rather a desire or a luxury.

Anyhoo, I think since I have found something I love doing that fills me up emotionally, and spiritually, but not necessarily financially. What I am doing now is finding ways to make the financial *needs* match the income rather than the other way round. Does that make sense? It makes sense to me in my head, I am just never sure that I express myself clearly outside my head!!

I hope you are doing good works that help you to be fulfilled and if you aren't able to do that right now I hope that you have other things that make up the difference for you.