e may have heard the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” I have come to believe that it also takes a village to raise the person raising that child. I am a community midwife. The setting of that village spans from a client’s lanai, holding a newborn so a new parent can eat with both hands, to the street, conducting a reproductive health check-in for one of our unsheltered families. Years of working in international and rural settings have taught me that a midwife’s role can extend far beyond mother and baby, becoming a presence of support that reaches the whole family. When hands are offered, they are meant to embrace everyone within reach. Given time, my favorite questions are, “How are you doing?” and “Who is your support system?” We may discuss breast- feeding, recovery, or nothing particular at all. At the end of the day, I go home to my own two kids, a two-year-old and a four-year-old, and most nights I am just as tired as the parents I spent the day sitting with. Watching a family find its footing again and again has become its own kind of strength for me, one I find myself borrowing. I think about the nights when I have asked myself, “How am I doing this?” at 2 a.m. while nursing, only to catch a second wind when my toddler wakes up wanting Mommy cuddles. Parenting has a way of finding the very edge of our capacity, and then asking us to stretch a little further. Doing this work does not exempt me from needing a village. If anything, it has taught me how much I need one. Care Is More Than a Visit I had both of my babies while working at Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition of Hawaii. The team of mana wahine became my village to endure the early hard yards. Living in a multi-generational household with both my mother and my mother-in-law became the backbone I found again after labor. Birth had left me feeling unmoored in my own body; evW NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2026 Hawaii Parent 113
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