Doula Trainings International Custom Graphics

Doula Trainings International came into the world to offer a new model of doula training appealing and accessible to all. They offer a comprehensive 9-month program that includes ongoing mentorships, business skills and in-depth video classes, a rigorous initial workshop, an extensive reading list, and practical experience requirements.

I partnered with DTI in March to create a series of custom illustrations for their Childbirth Education Training Program! And I'm so excited to say that I'll be continuing to work with DTI on a monthly basis making graphics like these, as well as engaging with other elements of their beautiful brand, like Instagram! Birth + Design = All My LOVE!

L A B O R   P O S I T I O N S

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7 Apps I Use Everyday And How They Won My Heart

I'm on my phone a lot and I am not a fan of selfies, so what do I do with all that screen time? Pretty much everything. I'm talking tracking my work hours, tracking my sleep, listening to amazing music/podcasts, even saving money everybody! While I'm working, sleeping and listening to amazing music and podcasts! Without any further delay, you're welcome:

NPR One

When I wake up in the morning I roll over, tell Alexa to stop making all that noise, and turn on NPR One (Life Hack: Want to listen to stuff on your phone in the shower? Just put it in a ziplock plastic bag! *Learned that trick at the geothermal pools in Iceland*). 

NPR One is like the Pandora of public radio. It learns what kinds of stories I'm interested in hearing, so now it plays a lot of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me (as you can see) and Code Switch and other radio productions I find interesting. 

My only complaint is that I can't tell it what I do not like, so I keep getting these stories about bug science and I just don't want to hear anymore about the dietary habits of beetles, you guys.

Afterlight

This is my favorite mobile photo-editing tool! If you like my Instagram feed, you like Afterlight. There are so many quality filters in here, and a couple in particular just fit my aesthetic perfectly.

You can actually create your own filters in Afterlight, it's this feature called Fusion. But I have such an established rhythm in this program that I haven't used it. Plus I like to have room to tweak. What is my rhythm you ask? All I'll say is, I love the depth of shadows, and I love the pop of light, and I love my white space. :]

I've tried a lot of other photo-editing apps. Nothing's ever topped Afterlight for me.

Spotify

I've been asked many a time why I use Spotify versus Pandora, iTunes, or Soundcloud and it comes down to the playlists.

Spotify is so on point with delivering me new music I really enjoy from artists I've often never heard of before (totally just sounded like a commercial) with my personalized Discover Weekly playlists. I like that I can download my playlists and listen to them offline. And I also really like the playlists Spotify puts together, like Soul Coffee. And the Artist Radio playlist for Andra Day. Ah, perfection.

I pay for Spotify of course. I figured I'd want to do that with whatever service I used, to avoid the ads and get all the features. When it's the same price as Netflix, and I use it everyday (like Netflix, too), it's worth it.

Podcasts

You already know I love listening to podcasts, whether about major issues happening today, or birth and motherhood, or anything honestly.

And where do I go to find my podcasts? The iTunes Podcast app. Sort of anticlimactic, I know. It's probably already on your phone just sitting there sadly, unused or underused. And it could easily become one of the favorite parts of your day!

Podcasts is a simple app. You choose what podcasts you want to subscribe to and new episodes pop up automatically in your feed. You can download them for offline listening, too! So take it with you all over!

Digit

Here's the one you've all been waiting for. How do I save money while I go about my regular day? Digit.

Digit puts aside small amounts of money from my bank account each day. It's smart about it, too. It alters the amount of each day's savings based on what's in my account, and what I tell it to do. And it sends me text updates sometimes. That's the most fun a text about money has ever been!

I have it on an average savings mode, but I can tell it to save more or less at a time, or that I have a specific goal to meet by a certain time and it'll calculate how much to put aside daily. TECHNOLOGY IS THE BEST.

Toggl

As an entrepreneur who bases her pricing on how long it takes to complete various projects, tracking my time is really important! And tracking time in writing is just really tedious and inefficient. It's a lot easier for me to remember that I'm tracking time on my phone than in my notebook.

I have both the desktop and mobile app versions of Toggl. Whenever I start working, I just start that project's timer and let it go until I'm done! It's beautiful to be able to look back at my week (and month!) and see where all my time went.

Sleep Cycle

About a year ago I started getting curious about my sleep health. I've always had a hard time falling asleep, so I wanted to track different things I did before bed and see how they affected my sleep quality. Did I sleep better if I had a banana before bed? If I did yoga? If I walked a lot that day?

I've now used this app for over 365 days! I can go through and see what my average amount of sleep time has been for the year, what my resting heart rate is, and what my nightly sleep cycle tends to look like too.

Curious, too now? The app is free, though I did eventually pay a one-time cost to upgrade and get all the features. I've found it really useful! I have some exercise goals now that I'm basing off of this data!

BONUS: Countable

Staying politically engaged is not a question in my mind, it's a necessity. Countable is my favorite of the 3 apps I discovered this year that keep you politically engaged. I wish I could honestly say that I do check it every single day. But I do my best to keep up to date and on top of what my representatives are up to.

I also use it to check out other reps who aren't from my area. When someone was bad-talking Auntie Maxine Waters, I used it to look at her most recent votes and confirm with my own research that she's not just talking the talk, she's making the votes that count, too.

Seriously, get Countable.

What apps are a part of your daily routine? Tell me about them in the comments below!

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Sumi's Touch Doula Manual

Sumayyah Franklin is a doula, educator, artist, and an aspiring midwife. I had the most amazing time collaborating with Sumayyah to redesign and add colorful illustrations to her beautiful manual!

Sumi's Touch Doula Manual is a comprehensive guide for doulas everywhere, covering significant areas of knowledge including: stages of pregnancy; comfort measures during pregnancy, labor and postpartum; communicating with clients; abortion and loss; working with queer families; and more!

From Sumi: "When I first sat down on my bright red vintage couch in the wee hours of the night I had not one clue what I was getting myself in to. What I intended to be a few pages of the essential things a doula needs to know for my doula training workshop, became an almost 20,000 word manifesto!"

Want to learn more about Sumayyah? Visit her site here, or her Instagram here.

BEFORE

AFTER

12 Podcasts Tackling Major Issues You Should Know About

The way I do it, multitasking is like an extreme sport. There are a lot of things that are important to me, and only so many hours in the day, and I only have so much mental capacity, and emotional wellness capacity, too. Podcasts meet me halfway in so many ways. I can listen to a story while I design, or drive, or make dinner. I can learn about significant issues from these reputable sources. And if I need to pause, to take action, or breathe, or cry, or all three — I can.

This list may seem overwhelming. As I was creating it, I thought, Who's going to actually listen to all these? I don't know if you will listen to all of them, or any of them. But I hope you'll listen to one, or at least let your interest in one of the topics be piqued, leading you to learn in whatever way may better fit who you are and/or your season in life.

The New Normal
Latino USA

How does a mother prepare her toddler for her possible deportation? A church with a history of providing refuge for Mexican immigrants, sparks a modern nationwide movement. How a man who was mugged ends up detained and priority for deportation.

Police Videos: Cincinnati
Embedded

On April 16, 2015, police officer Jesse Kidder encountered a murder suspect named Michael Wilcox in a suburb outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. What happened next was caught on video and surprised a lot of people, including police. And the incident tells us a lot about how these videos have changed us.

Shots Fired: Part 1
Radio Lab

A couple years ago, Ben Montgomery, reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, started emailing every police station in Florida. He was asking for any documents created - from 2009 to 2014 - when an officer discharged his weapon in the line of duty.

Testosterone
This American Life

An interview with a man who lost his testosterone. An interview with a transgender man, who started life as female and began taking testosterone injections several years ago. And a group of coworkers get their testosterone levels tested, to see who has the most and least.

Object Anyway
More Perfect

At the trial of James Batson in 1982, the prosecution eliminated all the black jurors from the jury pool. Batson objected, setting off a complicated discussion about jury selection that would make its way all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Back to School
This American Life

What should kids be learning at school? What does a difficult home life do to the brain of a school kid — literally to the biology of the brain?  How does it make it difficult to learn? What are non-cognitive skills? Do they give kids the skills they need to get out of poverty? And the story of Kewauna, the Chicago teenager, who talks about the dramatic ways in which she changed her life.

I'm Brown
Radio Ambulante

Marco Avilés is a journalist from Peru. When he moved to Maine to be with his now wife, Annie, he was enamored with the countryside and not really bothered by the whiteness. But as the presidential campaign picked up, the Trump signs began to pop up, and his interactions with white neighbors shifted from mostly harmless microaggressions to outright hostility, to hard to tell apart. Marco, renowned in his own country, tells the story of what it's like to be just a brown man here.

Solitary Confinement: Cruel and Unusual
Stuff You Should Know

In a series exploring crime and punishment, SYSK takes a look at the practice of solitary confinement. Does it have its place in prisons, sometimes for protection of the inmates themselves? And what about when people are left in solitary for weeks, months and even years?

The Russian Passenger
Reply All

Somewhere in Russia, a man calls for a car. Somewhere in New York City, Reply All producer, Alex's phone buzzes. He's paying for a stranger's Uber rides in another country. And he's not the only one. This episode chases this story into the Dark Web, where people buy and sell Uber accounts — buy and sell peoples' usernames and passwords to many kinds of applications. You might want to change your passwords after listening.

Busted: America's Poverty Myths
On The Media

A "poverty tour" of Athens County, Ohio. Why we need to dispel the notion that poverty stems from a lack of will power and a poor work ethic. Why America as a land of equal opportunity and upward mobility for all is a myth (even for Ben Franklin, from whom the term 'rags to riches' derives). How government assistance leaves most needy falling through the cracks. And how to steer clear of stereotypes and seek insight when reporting on poverty.

It's Working Out Very Nicely
This American Life

What happened when President Trump’s executive order went into effect, and the way it was implemented. The stories of immigrants and refugees who were mid-flight when the order was released, leaving them stranded in airports around the country. A conversation with the people who vet immigrants and refugees. What's up with the process? What is the whole story about the connection between the visa process and the attack on 9/11? What are we really achieving with this order? Who are we securing?

A Bittersweet Persian New Year
Code Switch

It's springtime, and the celebration of rebirth and the New Year in Iranian-American communities is tempered by the recent rise in Islamaphobic incidents and ongoing uncertainties around the travel ban. To mark Nowruz, Gene and Shereen talk about what's bitter and what's sweet with Nilou Motamed, the Iranian-American editor-in-chief of Food & Wine magazine, and visit with Code Switch friend and comedian Negin Farsad.

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If you listen to any of these podcasts, tell me about it. What did you listen to? What did you learn? What bothered you (about the stories, or even the way they were told)? What questions do you have? And if you have other podcasts you'd like to share, please share them with me in the comments below.

This Month in Music: March Vibes

I listen to music constantly. Work, eat, workout, play — these are some songs that have been traveling with me through March. What songs have been getting you through your month?