Crip Doula

Offering Care, Divergently

This year I’ve had some beautiful opportunities to share my research and practice. One thing that has become clearer to me is that one of the roles I hold naturally is the role of a Crip Doula.

A crip doula walks alongside disabled people through the thresholds of life; illness, change, birth, grief, and death, offering care, advocacy, and accompaniment rooted in disability justice and crip care. Unlike birth or death doulas, there is currently no formal training for crip doulas. My practice is shaped by disability justice and the work of activists such as Stacey Park Milbern, who coined the term, and Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu. Crip doula work grows from community care; the ways disabled people have long supported one another in navigating a world not built with our bodies and minds in mind. It recognises that becoming disabled, living with disability, or moving through illness can be a profound life transition, one that deserves care, time, and companionship.

Many of the people who come to see me are seeking art therapy, mentoring or coaching but often they are looking for something more: a mix of advocacy, environmental care, expressive support, creativity, crafting, walking practice, gentle attentiveness, and soft, relational care. Spaces where grief, joy, and memory can coexist; where bodies, minds, and hearts are truly seen, heard, and held.

I’m now working with a charity, and if we secure funding, we’ll be offering walks and gentle meanderings in parks; exploring the power of feet, wheels or skin on nature, neurodivergent and autistic sensory care, light, and slow movement. Walking practice becomes another form of care: environmental, embodied, relational, and restorative.

In my practice, care doesn’t follow a single model. Together we might:

• make space to talk and be witnessed

• think through access needs and boundaries

• share strategies for navigating systems

• explore rest, pacing, and environmental care

• move gently through experiences of illness, grief, birth, or change

• connect with nature through walking and sensory attentiveness

Sessions take place online or in person (once funded, in parks). This work isn’t about fixing or curing. It’s about accompaniment, advocacy, and tending the journey; much like tending a garden, with patience, attention, and care.