This Sunday, December 11 at noon PST, our next cohort of Capstone US: Advanced Full Spectrum Doula Training BEGINS! Every cohort of each of our trainings is still (and I imagine and hope will always be) such a thrill to witness. We are deeply grateful to co-create these transformative experiences not only with each other, but with our collaborators - and most importantly with each of you who choose to come on this journey with us.

Capstone is a 14 week community-based learning experience that brings together facilitators from all over the US and Canada to skill share, story tell, guide, and support birthworkers who are interested in delving deeper into the full spectrum of reproductive care work. Our collective goal through Capstone is to deepen the practice of birthwork to become expansive, radical, revolutionary, and transformative.

Capstone picks up where your doula training left off. We dig deeper. We widen our lenses. We share our stories. We seek to expand the definition of full spectrum birthwork to mean supporting all folks through all their reproductive experiences, as varied as you can possibly imagine - and then some. We talk about systems, barriers, and advocacy - how they privilege and marginalize. We talk about autonomy, self determination, and healing. We talk about community building, harm reduction, and trauma informed care for ourselves and those we serve. We move through the content together, week by week learning about this work, each other, and ourselves.

If you haven’t signed up yet, here’s three reasons you should consider joining us for Capstone:

• This is an opportunity to dig deeper into your why and to determine what aspects of this work you want your practice to focus on.

• In this co-created safe(r) space, you can examine the positionality you bring to this work and how you can leverage your privilege to uplift community.

• Learning from the lived experience of guest speakers and community members that may vary significantly from your own offers you insight that can have great impact on how you are showing up for yourself and others

Our Capstone Canada director Anna Balagtas @pocketdoula had this to say about it: ‘I loved Capstone so much I was so sad it wasn’t in Canada that I literally pitched myself to Nickie so I could run Capstone Canada because the training was just that amazing - I felt like more people needed to have access to it omg!’

Today, one of our facilitators described Capstone as the “tapas” platter of full spectrum trainings, as we facilitate a collaborative space for our learners to discover many different ways to practice.

A lot of our past students tell us that they leave Capstone with a deeper understanding of where they want to focus their care work, as well as where they need to do more inner work.

Capstone started out as an abortion doula training. In developing the curriculum, Nickie and our friend and collaborator Lucy felt that they needed to expand the abortion conversation, and made a commitment to reimagine this full spectrum training to encompass all the conversations they wished were being had in the birthwork world. They grounded the course in abortion support, and branched out from there. This course has grown and shifted over the years, and will continue to do so in the future. Capstone is a living document, as is the work that we do in community. No one cohort is the same - in fact, a lot of the magic of Capstone happens in our group discussions during each live weekly virtual class (which are closed captioned and recorded for students to later replay).

Topics covered in Capstone:Abortion support, pregnancy loss, rural birthwork, harm reduction and supporting people who use substances, supporting sex workers, gender affirming surgery and transition support, supporting families who are navigating family regulation systems and CPS, supporting incarcerated birthing people, collective birthwork, disability justice, community building, and more.

Consider this your official invitation to join us! This cohort begins this weekend on December 11, 2022 through March 26, 2023. (No class on 12/25 and 1/1). Our live virtual classes are every Sunday from 12pm - 2:30pm PST.

Full tuition for Capstone is $767 and payment plans are available. If you’re ready, you can REGISTER NOW. If you’ve still got questions, send us an email. We would be honored to support you and give you all the information you need to decide if this is right for you, right now.

Folks tell us that what they most appreciate about this training is the breadth of knowledge and lived experience that our facilitators have, the space created for connection and community, the content of the course, and the space that our facilitators hold for our learners. We hope you get to have that experience for yourself, wherever you choose to learn.