Shifting from Teacher to Mentor
We believe that birth workers are mentors, walking alongside parents on a journey of co-discovery.
Where teaching is a model in which the teacher holds the wisdom and the student receives it, mentorship is a profound partnership, where wisdom flows between the mentor and the mentee.
Here are three core principles of mentorship that can help you embody the role of mentor:
Empower through Empathy: Start with compassionate listening and authentic validation. Strive to understand your clients' fears, hopes, and desires without judgment or attachment. Most of the time, the people in your clients’ lives are likely responding to them by immediately giving them advice as to what they should or shouldn’t do. When you start with deep listening and validation instead, you will offer something unique that allows your clients to feel seen and heard in a new way.
Trust Your Client's Wisdom: A foundational belief in mentorship is that the people we are working with actually have their own solutions within. They may just need someone to gently guide them towards those solutions. Your clients know themselves better than you do; rather than offering ideas from the outside, you can offer inner discovery by asking thoughtful questions, sifting through their personal stories and rules, mining their own wisdom and resources, and expanding their possibilities.
Show, Don't Just Tell: Information is important, but it is not the only thing parents need to prepare for birth. When we move learning from the brain into the body, we can anchor that learning in a way that will be more accessible when they are in the altered state of labor. Use embodied experiences like Birth Art or ice holding to activate imagination and make coping skills more accessible.
Embracing the role of birth worker as mentors fosters a collaborative journey of co-discovery with parents. By prioritizing empathy, trusting in clients' wisdom, and emphasizing experiential learning, birth workers can empower and prepare parents holistically for birth. Through compassionate listening, belief in innate solutions, and immersive experiences, they cultivate resilience and confidence.
Shifting from teaching to mentoring is one of the foundations of Birthing from Within. Learn more about this and other pillars in Foundations of Birthing from Within: Heart of Mentoring, a self paced course that includes a year of membership.
