We were lucky to catch up with April Kline recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi April, thanks for joining us today. Can you recount a time when the advice you provided to a client was really spot on? (Please note this response is for education/entertainment purposes only and shouldn’t be construed as advice for the reader)

Having clean, clear boundaries is almost as important in the one-on-one work that I do, as having a huge heart. I used to think that having these boundaries was not nice or was kind of uncaring. I was brought up to think that I needed to care more than anyone else about everybody’s everything—that I must always be available and responsive and give, literally, the shirt off my back if someone needed it. That the way to really care was to carry someone’s pain and difficulty as if it were my own.

When I was going through massage therapy school, everyone told me how my deep empathy and ability to feel other people’s stuff was such a gift. But I couldn’t even practice as a massage therapist once I graduated, because if my client had a pain in their left knee, I would have a pain in my left knee after they left. It was terrible. But I had no idea how to not do that… because I had been taught that this was both correct AND a gift.

But I was gifted with such a great education from my clients when I became first, a doula, and then, a midwife: I learned from my clients that their births were exactly that—THEIR births. Not mine to shape or influence or take on as my own. THEIRS. And that I was honored to simply share whatever knowledge I might have, and then support them NO MATTER WHAT CHOICES THEY MADE. And no matter what the outcome of those choices were.

This understanding of how to create and hold a space of knowledge and unconditional (zero judgment) support for my clients, creates the best possibility for them to find their own power—and allows me to serve and love my clients without fear of being consumed or getting burnt out. I can do five-eight heavy private client sessions in a day, and go directly to a birth, and be completely attentive and present.

I am so grateful to my many clients who allowed me to learn this essential lesson with them. It makes me a much more ethical provider, and increases my capacity for the amount of good work I can do.

April, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I thought I was going to be a musician my whole life. I started playing piano and violin when I was five years old, went to music camps, attended conservatory. But that all changed when I decided I needed to go to massage therapy school… and found out I was pregnant the day after I paid for the whole thing. This was a happy surprise as it turned out, because I found my true life’s passion as I learned about bodywork while going through my first pregnancy. This juncture of body, mind, spirit and birth has been my passion ever since… 22 years, over 1,400 births, and counting.

First, I became a doula—a person who supports people through the non-medical parts of pregnancy, birth and postpartum. But I quickly became frustrated by the lack of power. So I went back for my masters in midwifery and became a Certified Professional Midwife, a homebirth midwife, and attended homebirths in our community for over thirteen years. It was an amazing life. My kids attended prenatals and played with my clients’ children in all types of settings. They helped me continue expanding my knowledge by being my study buddies for prenatal massage workshops, advanced CranioSacral Therapy trainings, SomatoEmotional Release trainings, and as I did my 1,500 hours and studied for the International Board Certification Exam to become a Lactation Consultant.

I had been teaching lactation, prenatal care, postnatal care, and nutrition at my alma mater this whole time, and began feeling called to transition from primary midwifing to pregnancy education, extreme nutrition support, postpartum care and especially working with babies who were having a hard time regulating their nervous systems and nursing well. I have had a very full-time practice doing this work since 2018.

Along this beautiful journey, I have gathered so many wonderful practitioners who I refer back and forth with. It is great to have these people to refer to as needed, but my clients were running all over to appointments with these practitioners and then back to me, and that’s hard with a newborn and maybe older kids in tow. So, I decided to bring all my favorite practitioners under one roof with me. My dad had died in 2017, leaving his office building where he had been a psychologist for thirty years empty. My family sold me that building and, after a year of serious renovation, The Well: A Center for Wellness was born.

Our grand opening was in August, 2022, and our twelve practitioners are now fully booked with waiting lists! We have homebirth midwives, a Physical Therapist who specializes in pelvic floor work, Licensed Massage Therapy, Clinical Reflexology, a Social Worker, a Clinical Counselor, a Life Coach, a Cancer Doula, Birth and Postpartum Doulas, an Advanced Practice Nurse specializing in women’s wellness, CranioSacral Therapy and Lactation Consultants. Our practitioners work separately and collaboratively to provide a new paradigm of true healthCARE—based in Whole Person ListeningTM and the core belief that our clients know their bodies best, that they want to be healthy, and that we can offer a broad range of information and unconditional support, and they will choose what is best for themselves.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your firm or practice?

I am so not your typical business person who plots and plans and pulls together a team and investors. I am more of a “See a need, fill a need” kind of person. I have led with my heart my whole life and, while the way I have built my wellness center might not look like the smartest business model, it has been very fulfilling and has definitely helped a lot of people—and has grown into a profitable business as well.

My business, The Well: A Center for Wellness, is a collaborative of twelve disparate, but like-minded practitioners who provide a new paradigm of healthCARE. Our approach is based on Whole Person Listening and the belief that every person has the ability to live a healthy and meaningful life. I built out The Well with very little planning and a lot of faith. I had $14,000 of my own money in the bank which was enough to get the architectural drawings done… and for each of the things that needed to happen from then on, there was always enough money—somehow.

The biggest turning point was when I finally got a business loan to cover most of the construction costs. I was turned down four times by institutions that proclaim how much they support minority and women-owned businesses. But I finally got that loan, and everything from there on flowed so much more easily. The loan officer suggested I talk with his friend, a business advisor, who helped me write a proforma and make projections. Now, I am working with other wonderful advisors who are helping me make The Well sustainable and scalable.

I got the cart in front of the horse for sure—but now we are going back and getting that horse out in front where it belongs!

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

The three most important things I have learned about creating and maintaining an ethical community culture are: 1) Mindfully create a set of criterion or expectations and a training for each member of your team. There is no one at any level who is exempt from these criterion. Model these criterion yourself at all times. One example from our expectations is: “Well Collaborators are committed to the practice of healthy boundaries and therefore are able to support fellow Collaborators and clients to make their own choices, even when they do not personally agree.”
2) Do not be afraid to both positively and negatively reinforce behaviors amongst your team. This is not always easy to do, but looking away from small indiscretions, undermines the integrity of the culture very quickly.
3) Offer grace for mistakes, while also firmly expecting accountability and appropriate amends. Model powerful vulnerability by being willing to apologize simply and then moving on gracefully when you make a mistake.

Contact Info:

• Website: thewellforwellness.com and loveaprilkline.com
• Instagram: thewell4wellness and love_aprilkline
• Facebook: Love, April Kline