Hi, my name is Laura Interlandi and I am an interdisciplinary mother of three living on unceeded Q’uwutsun and Malahat land on Vancouver Island. My work centers on reproductive health and human rights through direct doula services, community care, and educational accountability.
Before I became a doula and a mother in New York City, I was a professional performer doing theater, singing, traveling, writing, and generally had my hands, arms, and brain free to follow my creative and intellectual whims. In retrospect, it was a pretty fun time, and yet in the midst of this most creative and professionally successful chapter I could already feel that motherhood would one day be the most potent catalyst and continuing education program of my life.
My children and my passion for serving people in the postpartum period (this most sacred of life’s seasons, anti-capitalist nurturance focused healing and connecting and slowness) made me realize that if life is but a stage, and the people merely players - then we better ask who’s directing this thing and more importantly, which production company is making this much money off our suffering?
Other questions I keep asking:
Why did I learn to think when I left formal schooling?
Why do all of our systems seem stressed all of the time?
Why does research indicate that trauma informed models of relational care benefit every place of work, medicine, education and social care and yet most instituional learning glaze over these As I started asking better questions, I realized that knowledge is not the same as deep knowing and that in every role I’d ever played I was only ever searching for the realest thing, a feeling that would activate and orient the audience toward connection.
One of my life’s greatest turning points was when I met my Birdsong co-founder and forever collaborator Erica Livingston. Together we build a friendship and a business and whole new frameworks of thinking about care. She changed my life and I will never not quote her and create with her. We have written and taught curricula in New York and LA, and online, training and mentoring over 300 doulas (represented on 5 continents! That’s a lot of broth!) I am my smartest and funniest when I am with her and so if you’re here inquiring about large corporate trainings or speaking engagements you should probably click here to book us together.
My local consultancy work includes agencies that span reproductive care, family services, mental health services, education and anywhere that these systems overlap, interact or could benefit from creative problem solving.