ABOUT
Yamhill Valley Community Doulas is designed to provide accessible, culturally-matched birth support to families and communities that do not have, or cannot otherwise access doula services. This model of care is sustained by recruiting, training & mentoring doulas from diverse cultural, linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds. By offering authentic, culturally aware services, YVCD fills a gap for birthing families in Yamhill Valley. Thereby, supporting overall wellness and dignity, which creates stronger and healthier families and communities.
YVCD is in it's infancy stage, being nurtured to life by co-founders, Alyson & Eva. As avid community members in McMinnville with a passion for supporting healthy births and postpartum periods, they are delighted to be bringing a shared vision to life through YVCD.
TEAM
Alyson Larkin
Alyson is a doula and mother of three, living with her husband and sons on a farm on the Kalapuya land now known as Yamhill County, in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range. She is a third-generation birth and healthcare worker, and has delighted in her life's work of supporting women and helping to birth families since she gave birth to her own first-born in 2008.
She understands firsthand the isolation and overwhelm that can come with new motherhood, and seeks to listen, validate and support birthing people, giving them the opportunity to find the magic inherent in their process. She understands birth work as social justice and is eager to continue sharing her passion with the world, in ways that she hopes will reach those who need it most.
Eva Marie
Eva Marie is a mother, wife and doula whose family's deep Puerto Rican roots migrated with them from the island, to New England where she grew up, and now to Yamhill County, where she raises her own family. Throughout the process of having her own daughter, she discovered the many deficits and inequities that pregnant people face, and now her doula practice works to specifically support marginalized communities, and to empower those women to advocate for themselves in the birth room.
She understands that her clients are also birthing themselves into motherhood. And so in her postpartum work, she seeks to dismantle the expectation on new mothers to "bounce back to normal" after birth, recognizing that there is a completely new normal following such a life-altering experience.
She is eager to integrate her fierce values and compassionate practices through her work with YVCD.
