Meet Shantesica Gilliam, Doula

My introduction to maternal and child health was in high school where I was an intern in the Labor and Delivery, NICU, and Mother/Baby units at the local hospital. As a 17-year-old I witnessed live births, women experiencing infant loss, and postpartum complications. That experience inspired my journey now as a doula. This work is important to me because historically and systemically Black laboring folks have been silenced, neglected, and excluded in research, health care, and reproductive settings. I want to cultivate wellness spaces of support and empowerment where Black birthing folks can ultimately have autonomy over their choices, their bodies, and their sexual and birthing experiences. I know that I alone can’t dismantle these systems that have stripped away our autonomy, agency, and voices but I know that I can share the infinite amount of knowledge, tools, and resources I have had the privilege to gain to support and advocate for birthing folks.

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Birthing justice to me looks and feels like a space where birthing people can have autonomy and agency over their birthing, postpartum, and bereavement experiences. Birthing justice includes the intersectional identities and experiences of people where they ultimately feel like they can navigate health care and reproductive spaces without having to hide or suppress their identities. While I believe that systems and racial, gender, and class biases have a detrimental impact on health care quality and birthing rights, I also do believe that doulas play an important role in dismantling these systems that are often barriers to birthing autonomy, agency and justice. Doula care educators are people who provide support, people who educate, and people who center the voices- and advocate for- birthing individuals. The impact doulas can have on an individual is beyond birth, and it is different than what any other birthing professional can contribute to birthing and postpartum experiences. I believe that with greater access to doula support and services, where the voices of birthing individuals are actualized and prioritized, where there is a fostering of trust... we will truly see progress in maternal and infant health outcomes. Doulas are not only in the rooms with birthing individuals, they are also out in the community and on the frontline of birth and reproductive justice movements. Doulas foster a sense of community, doulas are needed, and doulas are important. 

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For the metro-Atlanta birthing community I want to be an ear, a voice, an advocate and a support for the voices and bodies who have been historically silenced and neglected in birthing and reproductive spaces. I want to introduce mindfulness, meditation, and yoga as birthing tools. I hope to provide services for uninsured, underinsured, incarcerated and teenage laboring folks.