Transform with Leisa Masters: Stories of business, birth and life

On this episode I talk with Gess Adana, a talented and caring doula who felt held back by her imposter syndrome. She shares with us how she broke through this block and discovered a whole new way to work with Muslim women. Using her background in hospitality, Gess delights her clients with incredible nutritious offerings and in-person mothering gatherings. Gess also has a passion for the personal work and the transformations it brings to birth preparation.​Gess can be contacted via her @gess.adana.birthwork or her website gessadana.comMusic credit: Vanlig by Jahzzar (CC BY-SA), Slow Epic by Lite Saturation (CC BY-ND) - Free Music Archive

As an experienced freebirth doula, Saima Kara (livewildbirthfree) shares her own experience of her decision-making through preconception, pregnancy and birth. She takes a deep dive into her own conditioning and behaviour, and how investing in support helped her be aware of her own ability to self-sabotage. One year on, Saima reflects on her birth story, rejoicing in its simplicity, and acknowledging how easily in the industrialsed maternity system it would have most likely been derailed. Saima can be contacted via her Instagram @livewildbirthfree or her website livewildbirthfree.com Music credit: Vanlig by Jahzzar (CC BY-SA), Slow Epic by Lite Saturation (CC BY-ND) - Free Music Archive

Danielle shares how as a doula she became disillusioned with the commonly-held New Zealand narrative that they have the 'gold standard' of maternity care. After seeing so many women traumatised and abused, not just in hospital but at homebirths too, she started to delve deeper into what was actually going on. Forced to examine her own behaviours and conditioning, Danielle began to see what was really needed to help women in their births. Danielle can be contacted via her Instagram @daniellejamescoaching or email: [email protected] Music credit: Vanlig by Jahzzar (CC BY-SA), Slow Epic by Lite Saturation (CC BY-ND) - Free Music Archive

Kelly shares her story of following her calling to become a midwife in her teens. Despite her desire to serve women, Kelly found herself unable to do so, in a system set up to hurt and control. Even though she continued to seek out models of care outside the hospital, she found over time, they kept moving towards medicalisation and betrayal, and led to her burnout. This eventually culminated in her leaving the system, to unlearn decades of indoctrination and arrive in a place of caring for women how she'd always envisioned. Kelly can be contacted via her Instagram @bloom.birthkeeping or email: [email protected]

Barbara, originally from Brazil, shares how her powerful first birth experience led her to become a birth educator and doula. She wanted women to know the lessons she had learned that had helped her navigate the hospital system. But as time went on, Barbara began to witness and hear so many birth stories, especially from foreigners like herself, which made her realise the education course she was teaching wasn’t enough. This coupled with her doula work and attending births in hospital, began to take its toll on her mental health. Barbara knew it was time to make a change. Hear how she decided to walk away from her thriving birth education business to start offering the type of work with women that really lit her up. If you would like to find out more about Barbara’s work in Brazil, you can connect with her via her Instagram @barbarafeliciano_br And if you are interested in her birth support for women who don’t live in their home lands, please contact her English Instagram page @barbarafeliciano_birthmentor

My friend, author and writer Kim Lock shares with us many of her life lessons. She talks about her shock first pregnancy, and its traumatic post-partum, and how she became a breastfeeding and mothering mentor. Kim explores her change of career from graphic designer to published author, and the devastating affects anxiety and panic attacks have had on her ability to live her life freely. And finally, she offers up the wisdom she discovered by learning to find and value her true self. Kim can be contacted via her website https://www.kimlock.com.au/

Overcoming the birthing culture she grew up with in Brazil, Carolina chose to birth her first baby at home. She was then devastated by a hospital transfer that led to caesarean, as well as the appalling after-care she and her baby received. Carolina is then faced with an unexpected pregnancy, and is overwhelmed by fear and her need to know all the things. To have the birth she wants she knows she must go deep to prepare. When her partner reveals his fear and trauma and wants her to birth in hospital, Carolina continues to do the work so she can believe in her ability to freebirth her baby.

After her own five births, Claudia shares how as an emerging birthworker it became vital for her to understand her decision-making, and to recognise how deeply it had influenced each of those births. Claudia reveals her regret upon realising that so many decisions in her life have come from a place of pleasing others and how ready she is to release herself from that. As both a Muslim woman and a radical feminist, Claudia shares with us her love for female only spaces, the prejudice Muslim women face in hospital births and her vision for Muslim women globally reclaiming their power for their births.

After birthing her first baby in a midwife assisted homebirth, Tina knew she wanted her next baby to be born at home alone. But after the death of her beloved father altered her whole world, her ability to step into this space of responsibility fell apart. Hear how Tina cycles back to herself to reclaim her power to birth exactly how she'd always envisioned, and filled with absolute love.

On this episode I talk with Nelle from Wild Wombyn – a folk herbalist. After running her birth business for several years Nelle realised it was no longer working for her. Hear how she taps into what she truly loves, moving past her blocks to create a business working with plants and nutrients, that lights her up. Diving deep into old habits and finding ways to release them, enabled Nelle to take radical steps in her life including reaching out to connect with her biological father in a move she’d been afraid to make her whole life. Join me as Nelle describes her vision of women reclaiming their ancestral knowledge of wellbeing for themselves and their families.