What I Learned From Sara Crewe About Being A Doula… Without Realizing It
I’m reading Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “A Little Princess” with my daughter. It was a childhood favorite of mine and I am cherishing every moment of sharing the story with her. Yes, it’s a Victorian British novel and definitely has some Victorian British problems, but it’s also got beauty and substance that thrill me, even in a re-read almost three decades after the first time I read it.
A few days ago we read the chapter featuring Lottie, the four-year-old who was sent to boarding school after her mother died and her father didn’t know what to do with her. Shudder. I look at my four-year-old girl, and I just cannot even imagine. Poor Lottie has a great deal of grief and anger (duh! See, #VictorianBritishProblems, just some of them). And she cries/has meltdowns frequently (also duh).
During one of them, both of her adult teachers (fairly incompetent women, in different ways) are alternately cajoling, bribing, and chastising her to try to get her to stop a loud meltdown. It’s chaotic and awful. And Sara Crewe, the Little Princess of the story, hears what’s going on asks if she can help. The teachers leave out of frustration and anger. And what does Sara do when she comes in to the room with Lottie?
Nothing.
Well, okay. She does sort of something.
“Sara stood by the howling furious child for a few moments, and looked at her without saying anything. Then she sat down flat on the floor beside her and waited. Except for Lottie’s angry screams, the room was quite quiet…”
As my daughter read this aloud, I had a mini-epiphany. This scene in the book is one that left a huge impression on me as a young girl. Sara knew instinctively that sometimes when people are going through big emotions or hard things, they don’t need someone else talking to or at them. They need someone at their level, quiet, and ready to listen. Maybe that’s not a realistic thing to expect ten-year-old girls to instinctively know, but Frances Hodgson Burnett certainly taught it to my ten-year-old self, and probably many other little girls too.
When I started doula training, communication was one of the first training topics. It was intensive, involved material that I appreciated so much… and that I realized I had the groundwork for because of these beautiful moments woven in my mind from childhood. Lottie didn’t need Sara to tell her to buck up and get over her feelings. Lottie needed Sara to listen. Birthing women are obviously not four-year-old-girls, but they can have their own crises. A doula isn’t there to tell a woman everything she should be doing; a doula’s presence should be a safe one for a woman to share herself, her feelings, and the things she needs to process in order to handle pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period. And I’m so thankful to the vivid impression Sara left in my heart, so many years ago, helping me see this power long before I would need it.