TONI

From ‘Cradle to Grave’: Toni Jones on Midwifery in Mississippi

story and portrait by LINDSAY PACE

t the head of the mother is a doula, an educator invested in motherhood. At the womb is Toni Hill.

Hill, owner of Blooming Moon Midwifery in Tupelo, is a Black, certified traditional midwife. She wears other titles: doula, doula trainer, lactation consultant. A midwife, though, better executes her vision: community-based care for people with periods.

To understand Hill’s work is to understand inequity, especially in Mississippi, a state where Black women face even bigger obstacles to medical care. Hill’s career asks not only who is worthy of life, but who is worthy of life-giving care.

Hill began midwifery nearly ten years ago, and for six of those, she was the only Black midwife in the state. She says there are only two Mississippi hospitals with Certified Nurse Midwives, or nurses with a Bachelor of Science who later receive a midwife certification.

“[This trend] is ridiculous when it comes to equity. Especially when there are Black working people who should have a choice in having someone that looks like them,” Hill said.

People in Mississippi, if they’re wealthy enough, can choose to birth children how they’d like to: at home with a certified midwife, or in a hospital with a nurse. Economically marginalized Mississippians, like those on Medicaid, do not get to choose how to birth their children. Midwifery is only considered a certification in the state, not a license, and is not covered by private health insurance or Medicaid. All costs for midwifery models of care in Mississippi, except for certain doula services, come out-of-pocket.

“To me inequity is anytime somebody can't get the same thing that their neighbor did, because of something that they have no control over,” Hill said.

Hill notes that not only is midwifery a traditional model of care, it’s traditionally Black. Modernized healthcare (think: insurance and public health systems) forced people to choose hospital births.

“Midwifery existed before hospitals and private insurance became a thing, and before Black people could have babies in the hospital became a thing,” Hill said. “For a long time, we didn’t have that choice. There were lots of poor people of all ethnicities that were not allowed to give birth at the hospital because they didn’t have money. And midwives served everybody”

When midwifery resurged, the field was dominated by white women – people who had access to capital and education. Even now, midwifery certifications are costly, and with no midwifery school in the state, students must either travel to nearby Vanderbilt or complete courses online.

Hill’s work demonstrates this inequity. Though she is one of three Black midwives in the state, she says 75% of her patients are white. It’s not that BIPOC people don’t inquire, most simply can’t pay for her services out-ofpocket. What was once the only option for Black women is now out of grasp.

“Midwifery is about advocacy for women to have those choices, but also about education,” Hill said, “about how we take care of people. Little people and big people.”

To ensure people have access to basic care and education about their bodies, Hill operates the Northeast Mississippi Birthing Project and the Mississippi

ACenter for Birth and Breastfeeding Equity; the former earning her a Harriett Tubman Trailblazer of the Year award in 2010; the latter being the only diaper pantry in northeast Mississippi. Hill wants people to know that midwifery care is holistic, encompassing not only birth, but all stages of life, everything from ‘the cradle to the grave.’ It’s about ensuring people have equal-access to necessities like menstrual pads, or educating people on their menstrual cycles. “Midwifery care is not just what's going on with your uterus,” Hill said. “It's also about, ‘Do you have diapers this month? Do you have a carseat? Do you have these things that you need for your baby?’” To be clear, Hill believes in choice. That is, if a birthing person prefers a hospital birth, it should be their right – but they should also, in practice, have the option to choose otherwise. Hill hoped to use a midwife during one of her four births. With her firstborn, she didn’t know midwives existed (“You know, we didn’t have Google back then”). During another pregnancy, there were no midwives in her area. Later, on the Gulf Coast and pregnant again, the financial ruin brought by Hurricane Katrina put midwifery out of her reach. Now, her life is centered around providing for others the care she couldn’t receive herself, and advocating for barriers, like the ones she faced, to be torn down. “If you want to have a surgical birth, great. If you want to have a birth in the pond outside your mama’s house, great,” Hill said. “Whatever you decide is right for you to bring your person, your people, here, then you should have support in that.” M

or years, Stevi Self and Mary Solomon taught yoga F classes at different gyms in Oxford. Eventually, they started doing workshops together. "And then one day, Stevi was like, 'Oxford needs a yoga studio,'" Solomon said. "We found this spot, and it was doable, and we've been here 13 years."

That spot is Southern Star Yoga Center on North Lamar in the Midtown Shopping Center. It's open 365 days a year. "Having a place that's just a yoga studio — it's different than a gym, where there's no peace element," said Solomon, who has been a certified yoga instructor since 2005.

Self, 46, said from the beginning, the women's goal was to have classes for every level of fitness. They offer gentle yoga, beginner classes, hot yoga and advanced classes. "A beginner class assumes you don't know anything about yoga," Self said. "In a stronger class, for people who have been doing yoga for a while, you might do deep backbends or inversions. We wanted to make sure we had something for everyone, to make it accessible to everybody." They also offer yoga therapy, for people with special needs, and ayurveda, a sister science of yoga.

Opening page: The entrance to Southern Star Yoga Studio in Oxford. This page, clockwise from top left: Singing bowls used for sound bath meditation. The bowls are made of crystal, and when the rims are struck with a crystal mallet, sound reverberates. Different tones are thought to affect different chakras in the body; Self performs acroyoga with the help of her colleague; Self (left) and Solomon.

"Yoga is the practice of body movement and breath," Self said. "Acroyoga involves diet and lifestyle."

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Southern Star Yoga was offering about 40 classes a week, taught by Self, Solomon and another 16 to 18 teachers. "Now, we're down to about 25 classes a week," said Self, who has been a certified yoga instructor since 1998. "Before COVID, we offered meditation classes, but when we had to do that over ZOOM, it just wasn't the same," said Solomon, 54. "But one good thing about ZOOM is that we had students from all over the country, from all over the world, taking our classes."

January, February and March are the busiest times of year for the studio, Solomon said. "The first couple of months, people are trying to keep their New Year's resolutions, and they're not exercising outside," she said. "And then in March, we see a little swell in numbers, maybe because spring break is coming, and folks are going to be baring more skin."

The studio offers several membership packages for classes. There are monthly rates, yearly rates and drop-in rates, or passes that can be purchased for five or 10 classes. All the classes are also offered online. "When someone calls us about classes, we just tell them to wear something comfortable," Solomon said. "You want something you can move around in."

The studio provides yoga mats, bolsters, blankets, blocks and straps — everything needed for a class — though most people bring their own gear because of COVID, she said.

The studio is one of the only ones in the state that has advancedlevel teacher training, Self said. It's also one of the only ones to offer acroyoga. "Acroyoga is a partner practice of mutual support, communication and trust," Self said. "Yoga is more about connecting to yourself. Acroyoga takes your personal practice and makes it a community practice."

Solomon said one reason people enjoy yoga is because it's a good stress-reliever. "If you're looking great, but your mind isn't feeling great, yoga can help take care of that," she said. "It's self-care we all need."

Self said while there are lots of different types of yoga, she and Solomon have tried to keep the longstanding traditions of yoga intact, even as they teach in a modern world. "We want to keep them a part of our practice," she said.

Solomon said all the teachers at Southern Star Yoga are welleducated, and the longstanding traditions of yoga are important to them, too. "It's our job to remind them of the bigger picture of yoga — the connection to higher self, whatever they see that as," she said. M

This page, top to bottom: The interior of Southern Star. On warm days, instructors may opt to practice yoga on the porch instead; Self (left) and Solomon demonstrate singing bowl meditation; Equipment used in practice.