African Birthing Practices

LaKendra Howard is a professional dancer who has a passion for supporting mothers and families in pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. She believes in educating to empower, and deliberately approaches birthwork as a doula honoring the cultural practices of the Black Southern traditions. She has received training from Sista Midwife Productions, DivineBirthWisdom, National Black Doulas Association, Doulas of Discernment, and Shades of Blue Project, all Black women owned organizations. She currently serves as an advisory committee member for the Galveston County Teen Parenting Coalition, a non-profit organization created to educate and support teen parents.

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Brittany, Mother to 4, is a Somatic Womb Healing Guide, Doula, & Foliage Faerie. Her work is centered around re-claiming and re-embodying Yin energy, connecting to, creating & birthing new realities through the magic of our cycles and psychic womb. She is passionate about the erotic as it serves as a creative energy that is reclaimed in our mothering, language, dance, love, & our work.

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Olivia Patton is a Doctoral candidate in the department of Africology at Temple University. Olivia currently serves as editor for Imhotep Journal. Olivia served as a conference planning committee member for the student organization OAAAGS and a peer reviewer for Imhotep Journal. Olivia’s research interests center on African women’s epistemology, ultimately seeking to discover what the cultural knowledge base is for African women on the continent as well as throughout the diaspora and how it has manifested itself prior to and after colonization. Olivia is currently working on her dissertation titled Cultural Legacy of the Southern African American Midwife.