About Naima

I’m an experienced doula and childbirth educator with a deep understanding of grief and loss.

In 2014, I co-founded For Your Birth, an intentionally diverse doula agency that centered the experiences of Black and queer birthing people. Through the years, I’ve supported hundreds of expectant parents as a doula and agency director, and many more as an instructor.

When I gave birth for the first time it was a year after having experienced a miscarriage, four years after my father died, and six years into my brother’s battle with bipolar disorder.

I was open with my loved ones about my pregnancy loss because grief had been a steady force in my life for years, and I didn't want to suffer in silence. I was determined not to feel shame.

What I didn’t expect after sharing my pregnancy loss, was that so many of my friends and relatives would share with me that they too experienced miscarriages and even stillbirth.

Pregnancy loss is a secret shouldered by too many.

It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that I deepened my studies with The Institute For The Study of Birth Breath and Death and started to think more about loss, grief, fear, anxiety, and the childbearing years.

I interrogated how my practice as a doula and childbirth educator could fully integrate the challenges and the joy that birthing people are experiencing.

For some of my clients, that means celebrating their pregnancies, preparing for their births, and holding space for the losses that came before.

For others, I am holding space for the grief surrounding infertility.

And increasingly, I’m holding space for my clients who are Black women and fearful of giving birth within a racist medical system that threatens their lives.