The name Greenwood is intentional.
Greenwood takes its name from Tulsa's historic Greenwood District, the community once known across the country as Black Wall Street. It was a place where Black families built businesses, institutions, wealth, community, and opportunity despite the barriers surrounding them.
That history is also personal to me.
I am a descendant of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which devastated Greenwood in 1921. So when it came time to name the midwifery practice I was building in Tulsa, Greenwood felt like more than a name. It felt like an opportunity to honor the people whose lives, families, and legacies made mine possible.
And there was something particularly meaningful about using that name for birth work.
My own family carries a history of midwifery. Generations later, I found myself building a Black midwifery practice in the same city where my ancestors had built lives before me.
Greenwood Midwifery is my way of honoring what came before while helping care for what comes next.
Every family that welcomes a new child is building a legacy of its own. My hope is that Greenwood can be a place where those beginnings are treated with the care, dignity, knowledge, and reverence they deserve.
Long before midwifery became my profession, caring for women during pregnancy and birth was something I found myself naturally drawn to. What began at 15 years old eventually became a calling shaped by family, motherhood, tradition, education, and the community that raised me.
The Beginning
I was introduced to birth at 15 years old, when my favorite aunt became pregnant at 19.
I didn't know much about pregnancy or birth then. I just knew I wanted to take care of her. I rubbed her feet, made her meals, made sure she got to her doctor's appointments, and found small ways to support her throughout her pregnancy.
When it was time for her to give birth, I snuck into the delivery room.
I remember making a conscious effort to act like I belonged there. I stood a little taller. I made eye contact with the doctors. When nurses asked questions in the middle of a contraction, I spoke up when my aunt couldn't. I rubbed her back, encouraged her, and made sure her questions were answered and her wishes were heard.
I didn't know it then, but I had stepped into the role of a doula.
Afterward, I told my great-grandmother that I wanted to become a doctor. She responded by speaking something over my life that I had never heard before:
“You're going to be a midwife.”
I didn't even know what a midwife was.
But life began aligning itself with those words.
Not long afterward, I supported a high school friend through her birth. Then I became the person people called when they were pregnant or in labor. Birth work wasn't yet my profession. It was simply something I found myself doing.
Before I Knew the History
After high school, I pursued pre-nursing. As I studied, though, I began to recognize a disconnect. The model of care I was learning didn't feel as personal or relational as the way I had naturally learned to care for women.
Then, during a visit with another of my great-grandmothers, our conversation turned to the birth work I had been doing.
She told me something I hadn't known before.
I came from a family of midwives.
She told me that she herself had been cared for during her births by my three-times-great-aunt, who was a midwife.
Suddenly, what I had been drawn toward since I was 15 had a history.
My education in midwifery began long before I enrolled in a school. I sat at the feet of elders and listened. I heard their birth stories. I learned how women in my family and community had given birth at home, how complications were recognized and handled, and how herbs and traditional knowledge were used in caring for mothers and babies.
It was an education passed through stories, memory, observation, and generations.
Motherhood Made It Personal
When I became pregnant with my first son in 2018, I wanted a midwife of my own. During that search, I realized something that stayed with me:
I couldn't find a Black midwife in Oklahoma to care for me.
I eventually hired a midwife, although financial circumstances meant I wasn't able to continue care with her. But the experience clarified something for me. I knew I wanted to work toward becoming the kind of midwife I had searched for.
I continued doula work on and off, and after the birth of my second child in 2021, I finally began formal midwifery education.
By then, the landscape was beginning to change. Black traditional midwives were beginning to practice in Oklahoma City, and Oklahoma had its first Black licensed midwife. Over time, more Black midwives would enter the profession here.
I wasn't stepping into an empty story.
I was becoming part of its return.
Today, after years of learning through elders, apprenticeship, formal education, motherhood, and more than 75 births, I practice in the community that raised me.
Greenwood is the culmination of a journey that began before I understood what midwifery was.
In many ways, my great-grandmother saw it before I did.
Years Serving Families
Births Attended
Midwife
Black Midwife Practicing in Tulsa in More Than 50 Years
You deserve the opportunity to ask questions, understand how I practice, and decide whether Greenwood feels like the right fit for your family.