Returning to the Garden: Why Rural Black Doula Chronicles is Back

In Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, she writes of the women who came before us—those whose creativity, power, and inner lives were often stifled by the brutal realities of racism, poverty, and patriarchy. Yet still, they created. With scraps of time and shards of hope, they passed on something sacred. Walker reminds us that “our mothers and grandmothers...handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see.”

As I return to Rural Black Doula Chronicles, that quote lives at the forefront of my mind. This platform was never just about sharing the ins and outs of doula work. It has always been a garden. A place to remember. A place to honor. A place to grow.

This return is both a homecoming and a reckoning. In the quiet moments of my journey into motherhood, I’ve come face to face with the echoes of the women in my lineage—their pain, their resilience, and their dreams deferred. I’ve also felt the thunder of joy, the spirited belly laughter of sisterhood, the ache and triumph of marriage, and the hard-won lessons of healing. All of it has reminded me that this work—doula work, public health work, heart work—is a sacred offering. And it's time I share that story again.

This season, we’re diving deeper.

Rural Black Doula Chronicles will be more than reflections from the birth space—it will be a vessel for storytelling rooted in truth and transformation. You’ll find stories and insights around:

• Entrepreneurship: The grit and grace of building Black-led birthwork businesses in rural America.

• Wellness: Honoring our bodies, boundaries, and brilliance in a world that often demands our burnout.

• Sisterhood: The ways we hold one another up, pass the mic, and pour back into the well of community.

• Joy: Yes, joy. Because in the midst of the work, we deserve to dance, to rest, to celebrate our becoming.

This is an invitation—for doulas, mamas, aunties, public health warriors, and every Black woman cultivating something beautiful in her own corner of the world. Whether you’re just beginning your journey or already making waves, this space is for you. For us. For our mothers’ gardens.

May we remember why we do this work.May we honor the legacies that guide our hands.And may we continue to sow the seeds of freedom, love, and possibility.

Welcome back to Rural Black Doula Chronicles. Let’s grow.

Why In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens Still Matters: A Reflection in the Era of DEI Backlash

In 1983, Alice Walker gave us In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose—a collection of essays, speeches, and meditations that carved out sacred space for Black women’s voices, experiences, and creative legacies. More than 40 years later, her words remain not just relevant, but urgent.

Walker introduced the term “womanist” to articulate a framework of care, healing, and liberation rooted in the experiences of Black women—one that goes deeper than feminism, acknowledging spirituality, motherhood, sensuality, and culture as central to our power. In essay after essay, she lovingly examined the lives of Black women who, in the face of violence, erasure, and exclusion, still created. Even if it was just a garden, a quilt, a lullaby, or a whispered prayer.

“These were the women whose lives...had been wasted, who knew no education, who lived in extreme poverty. Yet, they had the secret of what it meant to be a woman, and they passed it down to us.”

Reading Walker’s work today, especially in a climate where Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are being dismantled, feels like an act of resistance and remembrance. Across the U.S., we’re witnessing the removal of DEI positions in academic institutions, hospitals, and workplaces. Curricula are being stripped of Black, Brown, queer, and Indigenous narratives. The message is clear: some stories are no longer welcome.

And yet—Alice Walker reminds us that our stories have always existed in the margins. We’ve always found ways to remember, to create, to build. DEI may be under attack, but our gardens bloom anyway.

Her writing reminds us that honoring the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual labor of Black women is not an “initiative”—it’s a lifeline. It's essential. And it’s intergenerational.

As a Black woman in maternal health and public health, I read Walker’s essays as a map and a mirror. In a world trying to render us invisible, she teaches us how to see ourselves and those who came before us—with reverence. As doulas, as creators, as educators, as mothers, and as advocates, we are continuing the work she wrote about: cultivating spaces where our communities are cared for, heard, and loved.

Walker’s words are timely because they call us back to legacy, to truth-telling, and to the power of art and storytelling to disrupt the erasure.

Even without institutional support.

Even when our contributions are minimized.

Even when the world pretends we don’t matter.

We still build gardens.