Told in Care began as a way to learn about how the
2021 NYC Citywide Doula Initiative (referenced in the recordings as “CDI”) – a policy covering doula care under Medicaid in select NYC boroughs – was impacting BIPOC doulas and their communities. As of January 2025, “a total of 15 states plus Washington D.C. have enacted access to doula care for Medicaid enrollees, up from five states in early 2022” (Doula Medicaid Project). These oral histories are windows into Doula modes of resistance and connection, and the role that birth has played in their own lives. To emphasize what is expressed repeatedly in these recordings: doula work resists pathology, while centering ancestral knowledge, cultivating well-being beyond survival, and uplifting individual and collective embodied agency. Doulas are highly specialized folks who transform the lives of the individuals they support as they interface with the Medical Industrial Complex. To sustain this deep and taxing work, birth-workers build alternative and localized networks. Through those networks, they find belonging, transformation, and healing community.
Told in Care is interested in oral history as a slower, sensorial, relational mode of engaging with past, present, and future. This is a living archive. It aims to be part of organizing, inviting people to gather resources around birth workers, build coverage initiatives that truly pour into doulas, and commit to structural change beyond the limits of their work in the medical system.
These interviews were facilitated, filmed, edited and produced by Simone Klein through the Royce Fellowship, in partnership with the Mama Glow Foundation for their Department of Modern Culture & Media Honors Thesis. Several interview questions were asked to all the doulas, while others were specific to each individual. The interview structure was flexible, and Simo’s voice is present in the cuts when necessary for the informational flow, or when the moment was particularly connective. Neisha, Halimah, Lwam, and Analí all support CDI clients. The other doulas currently see clients outside of the program. Most, but not all, of the doulas on this site completed their doula training though Mama Glow. This project imperfectly attempts translation through its curation, and Simo understands that work as ongoing, and inherently political.
Thank you to Latham Thomas, Macarena Gómez-Barris, Andre Willis, Leona Hariharan, Isaac Ensel, and Em Freedman for your invigorating and insightful support throughout this process. Deep gratitude to the birth workers who shared their energy, time, honest stories, and living rooms with this project in service of uplifting birth worker voices. Thank you also to Brown Arts Institute, and the Swearer Center at Brown University. Additional interviews not represented on the site include: Assistant Commissioner for the Bureau of. Brooklyn Neighborhood Health Dr. Zahira McNatt; Deputy Manhattan Borough President Keisha Sutton-James; transgender abortion doula & activist Ash Williams; documentarian Abby Epstein; Professor Liz Amaya-Fernandez; founder of Embodied Black Girl Thérèse Cator; Isa Hererra; Yasmine Fequiere and Mama Glow doulas Brandi and Shaunté.
Note on language adapted from Doula Medicaid Project: The term “doula” comes from the ancient Greek word for “female servant” or “female slave.” In the current day, this word has evolved to represent a professional who provides non-clinical physical, emotional, spiritual, and informational support across the full spectrum of reproductive health. With intentional reflection,
Told in Care uses this term because of its continued presence in the Mama Glow doula community — alongside “birth worker.”
