Hi, I’m Grace Nowakoski. I was born at home in Brattleboro, VT surrounded by family and friends. I was welcomed into the world by ten people that day, and have loved big birthday parties ever since. I gave birth for the first time in 2018 and was fortunate to be supported in labor by my loving partner, a wonderful doula and skilled midwives, as I caught my firstborn, in 2021 I gave birth to my second child.
I was called to doula work in the summer of 2015. It was a summer in which my life and those of my friends were filled to the brim with the enormous diversity of life’s experiences. I found myself holding space for friends experiencing new beginnings, loss, grief, and profound joy, and intuitively knew that the time for me to embark on a career in birthwork had come.
In September of 2015 I completed Warm Welcome Birth Services’ Birth Doula Training and quickly launched my doula career, attending my first birth that October. Since then I have supported families laboring at home, attended births at Seven Sisters Birth Center, Baystate Franklin Medical Center, Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Cheshire Medical Center, Wesson Women and Infants’ Unit at Babystate Medical Center, and Holyoke Hospital’s (now closed) Birthing Center.
Trainings:
2015: When Survivors Give Birth with Penny Simkin
2015 & 2016: Babymoon and Beyond Postpartum Preparation Workshops
2018: GPS Group Peer Support leader training
2023: Spinning Babies Workshop
I have worked as a prenatal and postpartum educator and parent support group leader for the past six years.
As a doula I am honored to be invited to hold space for each family’s unique journey. I offer prenatal visits tailored to your specific needs, and offer encouraging, compassionate care before, during and after labor, including postpartum doula care. I offer myself to your family with no agenda. I believe that each family has a different path in birth and beyond, and that my role is to support you to feel whole, safe, and held throughout your journey so that you can choose what is best for you.
I spent much of my childhood imagining that I might become a midwife. It is a career that I knew could combine many of my passions and skills; an innate knowledge of how to care for others, a passion for the healing power of plants and presence, my fascination with the wondrous workings of the human body, and a lifelong love of babies.
I have come to thoroughly appreciate the non-medical nature of the doula’s role which allows me to be fully present with each client while nurses, midwives and doctors monitor their health and that of the soon-to-be-born baby.
I started dancing at 3 years old and loved the combination of rhythm and artistry and expression it requires. Music was my primary focus during my teens. I played oboe and sang throughout high school. I realized during college at Wesleyan University that to be free of the joint pain I’d suffered through my teens, my body needed a lot of focused attention. So I returned to the passion of my youth and chose dance as a major, deepening my understanding of the incredible abilities and subtleties of the human instrument.
While living in Portland, Oregon after college, I completed the Elderberry School‘s Herbalist Training Program, delving into the healing plants of the Pacific Northwest. Now reunited with the New England woods of my childhood, I am gradually reacquainting myself with the healing plants of our bioregion.
If you’re curious to learn more about what it would mean to invite me to accompany you on your journey of birth and learning to care for your new baby, click to schedule a no-obligation, free, up to one-hour interview with me!
I have never felt more supported during any time in my life than during this birth.
– Lisa K.
HELD 