About me
I'm Jen, a doula, song sharer, space holder and mum, based near Falmouth in Cornwall. My work is built around the belief that people flourish when they feel held, heard and part of something. This belief has come from a life lived in community, by the sea, with singing never far away.
Singing has always been part of my life
My mum sang in a choir when I was young and used to take me along. As a teenager I pushed it firmly away… it was her thing, not mine! But singing has a way of finding you again when you need it most.
It found me during my PhD in Cornwall, when I joined a local choir almost on a whim when a friend suggested it. Something shifted. The following year I went back to a singing festival I hadn’t been to in over a decade. Singing together with strangers who became friends, including the man who would become my husband. My mum, meanwhile, took early retirement and now runs choirs of her own. The thread runs through all of us.
It was on my first maternity leave that I discovered Singing Mamas, a national community singing programme for maternal mental health. I went along not knowing what to expect and found something I hadn't realised I was looking for. I trained as a Singing Mamas leader, set up my own group, and haven't stopped sharing songs since, in all kinds of settings, including saunas!
Finding my way to birth work
Before training as a doula, I spent years working in marine science and conservation. My PhD fieldwork took me out on the Fal and Helford estuaries in Cornwall, talking to local fishermen and getting to know a landscape and the people who depended on it. What I loved most was never the data, it was always the human side: education, community, bringing people together around something that mattered.
Becoming a parent shifts your perspective on what's important. My own two births shaped me profoundly. My first arrived via an unplanned caesarean after a late discovery that he was breech. Not the homebirth we had planned, but an experience that taught me so much about surrender, advocacy and the unexpected. My daughter's birth, at home, was calm, powerful and deeply healing. Those two experiences, so different from each other, have made me a more present and compassionate support for the families I work with.
Singing and birth work might seem like an unlikely combination. But they come from exactly the same place, a belief in community, in holding space for people during life's most significant moments, and in what becomes possible when you feel less alone.
A little more about me
I grew up on the beaches of Dorset and Pembrokeshire, the sea has always had my heart. I now live in Cornwall with my husband Jake and our two young children, who keep life wonderfully full, and two bonus children who visit. Jake is a heritage plasterer specialising in lime and traditional construction, with a past life as a blacksmith, farrier and train driver, and a sideline making wooden bowls, cups and spoons. It's fair to say that neither of us has taken the straightforward route in life! When I'm not working, you'll find me outside, usually near water, often with our dog (or a child!) at my heels.
