WHY WE EXIST
Restoring What Was Always Ours
Across this country, and especially in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, pregnancy and birth have become sites of danger instead of power. Families are navigating systems never built for their thriving, and the outcomes show it clearly:
Birthing people are over-intervened on but under-supported
Parents are isolated instead of being held
Babies arrive in a world unprepared to honor the sacredness of their beginnings
These are not individual failings. They are the predictable outcomes of a society where maternal death, infant loss, and systemic neglect fall hardest on Black, Brown, and Indigenous birthing people, not because of biology, but because of racism, historical trauma, medical violence, and the deliberate dismantling of the communal systems that once kept us safe. It’s not that we have forgotten the village; it is about the village being fractured by design. And we, in this generation, are piecing it back together.
Sacred Birthing Village exists to remember what colonial systems attempted to erase, and to restore what our people never lost: our wisdom, our sovereignty, our collective power to thrive.
We Exist to Restore What Colonial Systems Attempted to Erase
Sacred Birthing Village exists to remember what was stolen,and to restore what our people never lost: our wisdom, our sovereignty, and our collective power to thrive.
Birth is Sacred
Birth imprints a child.
It shapes the spirit of a mother or birthing person.
It influences a family, a lineage, and a community.
When birth is honored, families strengthen.
When birth is harmed, the ripples last for generations.
At SBV, we spiritualize birth again — not as performance, but as our most ancient technology for:
emotional & spiritual regulation
community cohesion
ancestral continuity
protection of life & purpose
This is not romantic.
This is physiological.
This is cultural.
This is liberation.
THE BIRTHING PERSON AS BLUEPRINT
Birth is not only the arrival of a baby — it is the initiation of a birthing person into a deeper version of themselves.
When a birthing person is witnessed, supported, and honored, their entire family constellation rises.
When they are dismissed or unseen, the whole community feels the rupture.
We safeguard the birthing person’s wholeness because:
They are the portal.
They are the blueprint.
They are the foundation for seven generations of thriving life.
We Exist Because Our People Deserve Better , And We Are Building Better Ourselves
We are not waiting for systems to change.
We are not begging institutions to become humane.
We are not recreating programs designed to manage symptoms of oppression.
We are returning to what works:
collective responsibility
intergenerational wisdom
reciprocity over extraction
community-led healing
ancestral memory as medicine
This is our Web of Care —
not a model,
but a living practice that activates the brilliance already in our families and communities.
We Exist to Remember, Reclaim, Revive, and Restore
“Remembering
What our ancestors knew about birth, family, and community.
Reclaiming
The sovereignty that was interrupted, but never lost.
Reviving
Ceremonial, relational, physiological practices that strengthen us.
Restoring
Thriving life as the norm, not the exception.”
We Hold the Truth Without Being Defined By It
We are not led by crisis, but we do not look away from the truth.
In Bristol County, between 2019–2020, the infant mortality rate was the highest among target counties in Massachusetts. For Black mothers, that rate was twice as high as for white mothers.
On the Southcoast, low birth weight rates surpass state and national averages. And while teen birth rates continue to decline nationally, Southcoast youth still birth at higher rates than the rest of the state.
These numbers are not just statistics, they are signals. They are echoes of systems designed to fracture, extract, and neglect our people. But they are not where our story ends.
At Sacred Birthing Village, we meet these truths with rooted action and radical care.
We don’t treat symptoms, we nurture the soil.
We don’t just name disparities, we build something different.
These statistics may reflect the urgency. But it is our people, our traditions, and our vision that reflect the way forward.
We hold the numbers. But we build from the knowing that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
4.57%
or 47 out of 10,290 births
Bristol County from 2019-2020 had the highest infant death rate of counties within the target populations (Bristol, Suffolk and Worcester), which is twice as high for Black mothers as it is for White mothers (US Health, Resources and Services Administration)
9.5%
of babies born were low birth weight
on the Southcoast, compared to 7.4% in the state and 8.2% in the US in 2020 (MA Department of Public Health Registry of Vital Records and Statistics)
4.9%
born to mothers
between the ages of 15 and 19
on the Southcast, compared to 2.1% of births to mothers less than 20 years of age in the same year for the state, compared to 15.4 per 1,000 females ages 15-19 in the US overall in 2020 (MA Department of Public Health Registry of Vital Records and Statistics)
100.4 per 10,000 deliveries in 2020
From 52.3 per 10,000 deliveries in 2011 to
The Massachusetts’ 2023 report of Racial Inequities in Maternal Health, shows the rate of severe maternal morbidity (SMM) for birthing people increased significantly between 2011 and 2020. For Black, non-Hispanic birthing people the rate of SMM in 2011 was twice that of white, non-Hispanic birthing people and by 2020 it was 2.5 times higher, a 25 % increase over the decade.