In Memory of BFF Co-Founder and Midwife, Kirsten Kowalski-Lane

We want to uplift the memory of our beloved friend and collaborator, Kirsten Kowalski-Lane, who died suddenly earlier this year. Kirsten was our “BFF,” one of the 9 co-founders of the Birth Future Foundation. Kirsten was a force of nature, bringing her honesty, curiosity, playfulness, creativity, tenacity, and fierce loyalty to bear on our collective work. She was a passionate midwife who was revolutionary in pioneering out-of-hospital birth centers in Massachusetts and has been dedicated to increasing midwifery access through her work with many advocacy organizations. We were proud of Kirsten when she stepped away from BFF to focus on her new birth center, Seven Sisters Midwifery and Birth Center in Northampton, Massachusetts. Kirsten, we have tremendous respect for you and your contributions to midwifery and to our community. We love you and we miss you dear friend.

Taking a pause to reflect on Kirsten and the many midwives who experience premature morbidity and mortality, we at BFF want to call attention to the substantial weathering in relation to the stress that can occur as a midwife and midwifery student. From this, we feel it is imperative to dispel the concept of martyrship within midwifery and instead invite incentives to care for the caregiver. This year, BFF has created a new grant inspired by Kirsten's memory and the memories of other beloved midwives we have lost too soon. BFF's Tending to the Soil: Caring for the Caregiver and Cultivating Community Grant commits resources to supporting and caring for midwives and future midwives.

Midwives: we love you, we appreciate you, and we want to see you thrive.