I’ve wanted to be a midwife since I was 12 years old, but, as it often does, life had a funny way of delivering me to this point of my life. When I first became a nurse, I lived in Alabama, where midwives were not allowed to practice and so I did the next best thing and became a labor and delivery nurse. By 2015, I had moved to Georgia, but I had plenty of good reasons not to pursue the dream. I was established in my career, after all, and certainly “too old” to go back to school and put myself through all those rigors again. Being a labor and delivery nurse was close enough, I thought, and I was very happy to be present for my friends as they navigated that beautiful and vulnerable journey of becoming mothers.

Still, a quiet, persistent voice kept calling me back to this buried dream of mine. It was a literal phone call from a friend’s husband that brought that voice back up and this time, I chose to answer the call. My friend was having a (unplanned!) home birth and she needed help. I hastily drove 5 minutes to her house, grabbed the one glove I had in the trunk of my car, and immediately confirmed the baby would indeed soon be arriving (on the next contraction, as it turned out). The experience brought the voice and the dream back to the forefront and I couldn’t bury it anymore. So I returned to school in my late 30s and began my new career path in my early 40s.

My favorite part of being a midwife is getting to know and care for the moms–meeting them right where they are–and getting to be a part of the sacred journey with them and their families.