Healing the Healers: Tending to the Soil of Ourselves
Birth work is sacred work — and it is human work. Every birth, no matter how joyful or well-supported, carries the possibility of risk, complication, and heartbreak. We know this. We enter the birth space with open hearts, trained hands, and the deepest of intentions. Yet no amount of skill or compassion can remove all suffering from the process of bringing life into the world. And so, many of us carry invisible stories — the births that went differently than planned, the moments that left an imprint on our hearts and nervous systems. We call it secondary trauma or vicarious trauma, but what it really is... is the body remembering.
Within healthcare, this experience has also been described as the second victim phenomenon — when a midwife is emotionally impacted by an adverse or unexpected outcome. The weight of responsibility, guilt, or grief can quietly take root, and over time may lead to burnout — a deep exhaustion of body and spirit that disconnects us from the joy, intuition, and purpose that first called us to this sacred work.
The system doesn’t offer enough support. Long hours, lack of debriefing, and the cultural myth of the “self-sacrificing midwife” have taken a toll on generations of healers. The healthcare system won’t change overnight — but you can begin the work of healing today. What is within your power is how you care for yourself, how you cultivate resilience, and how you tend the soil of your own body and spirit.
Understanding Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP):
Ketamine is medicine for the mind and a portal for the soul. The journey invites you into a non-ordinary state of consciousness — a place beyond the linear mind where clarity, forgiveness, and reconnection can unfold. When paired with intention, sacred space, therapy, and integration, KAP becomes fertile ground for renewal — an opportunity to soften old stories, release guilt, and root yourself in steadiness once more.
For the birth worker, this process can be life changing. It can help heal the echoes of traumatic deliveries, moral injury, and chronic overextension — not by erasing the memories, but by transforming the meaning within them. In doing so, the heaviness of the second victim experience begins to lighten, and the exhaustion of burnout gives way to restored vitality and purpose.
This is the medicine of renewal.
This is the reclamation of the healer.
This is Flourish.
I invite you to consider a session — individually or as a pair/dyad — to explore what healing might feel like when your own soil is tended, your nervous system is met with reverence, and your story is ready to transform.