We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Leena Pacak. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Leena below.

Leena, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s go back in time to when you were an intern or apprentice – what’s an interesting story you can share from that stage of your career?

Midwifery apprenticeship is a really interesting experience. We spend a LOT of time with our preceptors over the course of 3-4 years and it turns out we are learning so much more than just the skills of midwifery. During my apprenticeship I learned so much about myself, my gifts, the areas in which I still needed tremendous growth, etc…Many stories from my apprenticeship come to mind but one from the early days is this: I had just been apprenticing with this preceptor for a few months and I was really struggling with the idea that I may not have what it takes to finish the training process and ultimately be a midwife one day. In a vulnerable moment for me I asked her if she thought I had what it takes or if she thought I would finish, and with a loving tone she said, “Leena, I can’t answer that question for you.” It was NOT what I wanted to hear and at the time I felt really disappointed and worried that her lack of an exuberant YES meant that she in fact did NOT think I had what it took. What I came to learn and appreciate deeply in the years that followed was that this was the perfect and only helpful answer for me. Much of my apprenticeship was about moving past my interior voice that said I couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t be good enough, I didn’t have what the others had, etc….And I frequently looked outside of myself to check those assumptions and find affirmation. But midwifery wouldn’t let me take the easy way out and in the end I realized that these answers could ONLY come from within me. And now when I look back on this exchange with my preceptor I have so much gratitude for the way that she knew I needed to find that confidence and assurance within myself.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a licensed midwife in Austin with a private homebirth practice. I am also the Programs Director for Black Home Birth Matters ATX. As a midwife, I provide prenatal care throughout the pregnancy, attend births at home and then follow up with six weeks of postpartum care. Midwifery care is centered around the idea that individuals are the experts in their own bodies and have the right to make informed decisions about their health and bodies. I trust fully in my clients to do just this. The care midwives offer is holistic and makes space for all aspects of a person’s health and wellbeing, including the physical, psychological/emotional, spiritual, etc…My role is to come alongside women in their pregnancy/birth/parenting journey and hold the space for them as they find their own internal strength and resources and capacities to navigate these parts of life. I became a midwife after first earning a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology. I see the work in these two fields as being quite similar in many ways, actually. It is the holding of space, creating the safe container for the process, and the ultimate trust in the client to find what they need within, that drew me to both of these fields.
We have many wonderful midwives in Austin and I am lucky to practice among such great care providers. We are all unique and have special things to offer our clients. I am one of the few midwives of color in Austin and it is particularly important to me to provide loving and sensitive care to other BIPOC individuals.
I have learned to find pride in myself and the things I have to offer over the years, although this is a growth area for me as confidence can be hard to come by in my own mind! But as I reflect I think I am proud of the fact that I provide really compassionate, attuned and thorough care to my clients. I am also proud of my intuition and ability to help clients explore their own thoughts and feelings to find authentic answers within themselves.
I was invited to partner with my dear friend and sister midwife in 2020 when she decided to start what later became Black Home Birth Matters ATX. This small, local non-profit provides funds to support Black families who choose to birth at home. My friend Ulrike Schmidt started this organization as a way to help mitigate the disparities in outcomes for Black women and infants in the maternal healthcare system. We believe strongly in the importance of birth occurring where and with whom women feel the safest, and for many women of color this is NOT in the hospital system. I am extremely proud of the work we have done in the last 4 years.
Black Home Birth Matters ATX provides funds that can be used towards midwifery care, doula support, and lactation/postpartum support. We also have a mission to help support our local Black student midwives with the vision of more Black midwives to serve Black families in the coming years.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

In regards to Black Home Birth Matters ATX, this little organization has become known amongst birth workers and Black women in the Austin area mostly through word of mouth and possibly social media. People have come to learn that BHBMATX is a resource if they are desiring a homebirth but unsure of how to cover the out of pocket expenses. Past birth fund recipients are also sharing their stories of receiving funding and having peaceful, empowering births at home! We have not had to do much to build our reputation besides continue to work hard to raise funds, share success stories, and be available to those who need our support.

In regards to my midwifery practice, I am not a marketing, social media type. Promoting myself isn’t really my style and so I’ve chosen to just take the perspective that the right clients for me will come to me. I trust that I will work with the people I am aligned with and I have invested my energy in holding this belief. I think providing safe and loving care over the past 4 years, especially to women of color, has helped to build a reputation as a safe option for these clients. I am aware of the gaps in care options for BIPOC women in Austin and look forward to the day when clients have many more midwives to choose from!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

My journey to becoming a midwife involved the unearthing of many of my deeper insecurities, internal roadblocks, etc…I often had to find the tiny parts of me that believed I could make it to the end, despite the overpowering voices in my head which said otherwise. One particularly hard moment came when I was approximately a year away from finishing my apprenticeship. My twin brother had just had a heart attack a few days prior, we were 39 years old, and my own body was reacting in the form of severe thyroid symptoms. And on an internal level, I was full of immense fear and grief. However, life kept going and I ended up at a birth 3 days after his heart attack. I can’t recall all of the events at that birth, but what I remember is my preceptor pointing out an area in which I needed growth and the tears just falling. I stepped outside and was overcome by an immense sense that I just could NOT do it. Whatever it was, it felt impossible to me. I cried and cried and drove home from that birth feeling as if I had hit an insurmountable obstacle and I had nothing in me to get to the other side. All of my deepest doubts about myself surfaced. In the coming days an internal battle raged and I came face to face with all the parts of me that felt inadequate, my fear that I wasn’t enough, my anxiety that I had made the wrong choice and wasted years pursuing something I was never meant to do. Through some important conversations with my preceptor and community and my own internal work, I started to emerge with the determination to stay on this path and trust that I was here for a reason. Over time I chose to believe that I had something unique to offer and that there is no way I had been on such a transformative path for no reason.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shaktimidwifery.com, www.blackhomebirthmattersatx.org
• Instagram: @shaktimidwifery, @blackhomebirthmattersatx

Image Credits
All these images are shared with permission. The personal photo of me is by Julie Swec (Julie Cope Photography), as are the black and white photos on the next page. The other images are taken by photographer Dominique Adeniyi