Mentoria Green, owner of Black Paradise Doulas.
In February, we recognize the invaluable contributions of Black Americans during #BlackHistoryMonth. This article is part of this series, highlighting Black entrepreneurs, creatives and business owners from the Greater Manhattan, Kansas area. Want more stories on Black-owned business? Click here to read more.
Mentoria Green, certified doula and owner of Black Paradise Doulas, recalls that only six years ago, she had not even heard of doula services. And yet, it is now not only her career but her passion.
Mentoria discovered doula work in a roundabout way, after suffering from postpartum depression after the labor and delivery of her daughter, who is now five years old. On her healing journey, she searched for specific stories and representation from other Black women who had experienced and healed from postpartum mental health disorders. The stories she found were only mildly relatable, and Mentoria observed there was a massive gap in both support and representation for Black mothers. Mentoria’s own path toward healing took multiple turns before she really found her way, and she hopes to be an educating advocate who can help mothers, especially Black women, avoid her painful journey.
Despite experiencing prolonged, severe postpartum depression symptoms after the birth of her daughter, she was reluctant to seek treatment beyond medications. But it was the representation of other Black women in the medical field that led her to take the steps she truly needed to take.
“I had been trying different medications,” she recalls. “I had a Black doctor, and she told me, ‘Sis, you should try therapy’. I was like, ‘Black woman don’t go to therapy’. She said, ‘I do…. what’s the difference between you and me?” In that moment, Mentoria paused. She realized therapy was the one option she hadn’t tried, and hearing a medical doctor who looked like her advocating for therapy from experience changed her mind. After the doctor helped her with a referral, she connected with a therapist who she now credits with saving her life.
From being healed to healing others
Mentoria Green, owner of Black Paradise Doulas.
As Mentoria engaged in therapeutic treatment, she saw improvement in her mood and an overall shift to healing and resilience. It was a powerful experience for her, and she wanted to be an agent of healing for other women who had endured similar things. “From going to therapy and healing from it, I realized I wanted to help other women,” says Mentoria. Determined to make a change, she quickly joined a training where she became a Mommy Life Coach in 2019. She used her personal Instagram to share videos to promote her business and provide education.
She took on a handful of coaching clients, all of whom were Black women, and it was not long before Mentoria noticed a pattern. “[All my clients] had birth trauma.” She wondered to herself, “‘How can I help them not have birth trauma?’ From there, I started Googling endlessly, and I came across an article about a Black woman who was a doula,” says Mentoria.
As she read the article, Mentoria immediately recognized her new calling. “I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ Bells just went off. I can totally do this!” Wanting to learn all she could, she participated in three different training courses to learn the skills to become a doula and started taking her first clients. “In the midst of taking all of the trainings, I just kind of went into it,” says Mentoria.
Therapy continued to play an important role for Mentoria, not only for her own healing. As she pursued doula training, she recognized that she needed to be sure she had faced and resolved her postpartum mental health symptoms before she could serve other mothers. “I had to completely heal from my postpartum depression,” she observes. “One of my fears was that I was going to go to [a labor and delivery with a client], and it was going to bring up my own birth trauma. So I had to make sure that what I dealt with was cleared out,” says Mentoria.
“It was culture shock at first”
Born and raised in Georgia, Mentoria lived most of her life in a predominantly Black community. But in November 2021, her husband took a government contractor position on Fort Riley, and she and her family packed up and moved to Kansas.
Moving to Manhattan came with a culture shock, she recalls. “The first time we went grocery shopping, I looked around, and we were the only Black people in the store.” She remarked to her husband, “‘Oh my god, are we the only black people in here? This is insane.” Her husband, who had grown up in a predominantly white community, was unphased. “My husband was like, ’Oh, it’s not that serious. Calm down.’” She says she now feels more at home in the Manhattan area, but overcoming her culture shock was a challenge when facing her fears of business networking in a new community, which was her next challenge.
When she and her family arrived in Manhattan, she decided to continue her doula business, but this time, she determined to change how she networked in the Manhattan area, in comparison to her approach in Georgia, where she was less forward with her marketing. “When I moved here, I was like, ‘Let’s make your presence known,’” says Mentoria.
She reached out to other doulas and medical professionals in the area, and made connections with organizations like Black Entrepreneurs of the Flint Hills, all of whom assisted her in making important new peer and industry connections. Several months after her move, Mentoria took her first client. Being the one of the region’s few Black doulas gave her a unique brand position, and her services spread quickly through word of mouth.
“Our color is beautiful”
Mentoria takes an educational approach to not only her doula work with clients but also with her own children. As they grow up in a predominantly white community, Mentoria intentionally teaches them about their ethnicity, culture and history and creates opportunities to celebrate their uniqueness. “I don’t ever want their little insecurities to pop up. Like, ‘Why is my skin darker?’ I don’t want that. I never asked those questions as a kid because it never occurred to me because everyone looked like me. I’ve never been in an area where I was the only person that had melanin. So, I’ve tried to instill in them that our color is beautiful. Look at how we look in the sun!” says Mentoria.
Got other questions about a Doula? Check out Black Paradise Doulas FADQs.
In both parenting and work, Mentoria knows representation matters. Seeing someone who looked like her made all the difference in her decision to make the choice to seek therapy, ultimately leading her into her current work as a doula. She ensures her children also have representation of successful individuals and role models that look like them. “I try to find TV shows that show [people like them]. I need them to see themselves represented. It may not matter now because they’re children. But I don’t want them to have that moment when they’re a teenager like, ‘Oh, I don’t see Black people.’ I don’t want them to experience that,” says Mentoria.
As she learns more about supporting Black mothers during pregnancy, delivery and postpartum, Mentoria sees continued opportunities to expand her knowledge, her business and ultimately, her impact on improved health outcomes for Black mothers. This pursuit of increased impact led her to her newest educational pursuit: becoming a midwife. She hopes to train other doulas to join her team and be able to provide a holistic, supportive birthing experience for Black women.
Mentoria describes what her future business model will look like in action: “A client can come to me as a midwife, and also have one of my doulas [support] them,” she envisions. “When you have a Black birthing team, when you have that representation, that care, it’s a level of comfort that I feel like Black women are look for and I hope to be able to provide.”
Follow Mentoria and @BlackParadiseDoulas on social media to follow her journey and learn more about the book she is writing on her postpartum healing journey.
