Dear Student,
Embarking on the journey of becoming a professionally trained SBD doula might have meant that there were a great deal of really big feelings, hopes and fears, along with expectations – of the training, and of yourself – all coming together to bring a great excitement, along with a heightened anxiety or pressure at your enrollment.
If you have enrolled in the training and are now facing some timing issues, facing a pregnancy in your life or if you, or someone you know, is experiencing a loss, or if family pressures or other personal challenges are presenting themselves to you, it can feel extremely discouraging – really fast.
I want you to know that if you are a bereaved mother, the worth of the legacy of your beloved baby is not conditional upon your earning a credential behind your name. You are already worthy. You matter, and so does your story, and so does your baby.
When I say that this training is both academically rigorous and emotionally intensive, I mean it. And by the time you’re reading this, you may know this to be true. It is not uncommon for a student to enroll into the program with a hope of serving families, only then to gain the realization that the training is speaking into your own heart. Neither is it uncommon for someone to believe that enrolling in the training is purchasing a friendship and that Heidi will engage with you immediately and frequently, and it hurts me to know that sometimes the student is hurt as he or she come to the realization that what they had expected won’t come to be. I understand that it can feel like a fresh loss all over again, to feel like you’re not sure what your place is in the training, or how to purpose healing from your most intimate wounds. I promise, the heartcry is familiar to me. I lead the training and it is truly a collegiate level course, but I also know what it’s like to be broken, what it’s like to be wounded, what it’s like to scramble to make sense out of the darkness. I want to come alongside every student, in the capacity that is needed. I cannot serve every student fully, and if you are feeling like the training is too intensive for you, or not filling you emotionally, it is OK to take a break. It is OK to put it aside for a time.
The main registration information for the training is established in a professional way to let you know upfront that this is an intensive course, and with that, the re-enrollment fee, the tuition for a returning student, is set there as $50. But, I want you to know that I hear you, and that if you just need encouragement to open the next chapter, the student leads in the class are there for encouragement. And if you’re feeling like the training isn’t serving to you what you thought it would, and you want out for a little while, that’s OK, too.
If this particular training session isn’t the right time for you, you have a couple of options. You can consider opening up the 12 week session timeframe and just more loosely turn things in. Or, you can start fresh by re-enrolling in another session.
About Re-Enrolling
When you re-enroll, you’ll be placed on the class roster for the class you register in. You’ll receive the class start email along with your new classmates. The session will keep in line with the recommended weekly exams. If you’ve completed some of these exams, you can choose to copy and paste your saved answers and resubmit them, which gives you a chance to evaluate your answers, which is a great thing to do. Or, you can choose to skip those exams, not participate alongside those weeks, but just gear up mentally to jump in when the week rolls around that you stopped at in this session.
Either way, I prefer starting fresh as a re-enroll rather than turning in lingering exams (but it’s fine if you prefer that) because it lets you not only learn things, but remember them, and often the more mature doula in all areas is the one who has taken that commitment to start fresh. If you start fresh, I’d like to honor your courage to identify your needs and your endurance to come back to work again, by reducing the re-enrollment fee even further, to a mere $25. You can just click the little box below to do so, and send in the little note below. Whichever you choose, you are worthy. Thank you for listening to and serving your own needs. Learning to doula our own hearts can be the hardest task we are ever charged with. It is a hero’s place who does so.
{ re-enrollment tuition here }
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