ABOUT SOFT CENTRE

Soft Centre was birthed from my desire to create an inclusive and safer space within the reproductive health, birth and wellness fields — for all birthing folk and families. To bridge the gaps within the current perinatal and reproductive health system, to offer compassionate continuity of care, and to reconnect more deeply to community.

Soft Centre is a resting place, a looking inward, and a gentle reminder to be softer with you. It urges you to remember the wisdom of your body, and celebrates the wonder found in all birthing bodies. It asks you to consider the stories that you have been told, and the stories that you tell yourself about pregnancy, birth and parenthood. It asks that you approach this journey and these spaces with reverence, with honour and with intention.

Soft Centre places focus on holistic, multifaceted wellbeing and healing through bleed, birth, family and parenting — however that looks for you. It is expansion, reflection, empathy and lifelong learning. It is coming home to your softest centre.

Soft Centre is grounded in connection to Self, connection to community, and connection to the Earth. It asks us to tread softly and listen deeply. It strives to create spaces where the interconnectedness of all things is acknowledged and strong emotional bonds are woven. It recognises the importance of balancing independence and interdependence. The yes/and. It is a space for the curious, the inquisitive and the courageous.

It is a space for you.

A letter from Lilly

Soft Centre was founded by myself, with the intention of building a home for the work that excites my soul, to connect with and cultivate community, and create safer spaces for birthing and being.

I grew up in rural Victoria, on Waveroo country, close to muddy rivers, endless paddocks and ancient rocky outcrops. Those rocks, riverbeds, paddocks, trees and earth are a part of my memories and my bones. It was there that my sense of connection to and respect for this Earth grew, honouring it’s seasons and cycles, and recognising these rhythms reflected within my own body.

My formative years where spent roaming this beloved, wild-yet-familiar landscape, and I’ve felt it’s pull as far back as I can remember. Collecting wild nettles with my mother for herbal brews and broths, tending to our garden and newborn animals, stargazing and storytelling on the old weatherboard veranda, attending farmhouse home births and the births of my siblings. Growing up, I witnessed and held space for ritual, ceremony and birth — in all its manifestations — long before I came to birth-work.

My academic background lies in visual arts, music, design and psychology, and I have always been curious about the intersections of creativity, parenthood, birth and holistic well-being. After completing post-graduate studies in psychology and taking the first steps into my own family building journey in early 2019, I began exploring full spectrum doula work. I also carry with me a lived experience of having a menstrual cycle, pregnancy and early birth, queer family building, and navigating in-home and assisted reproductive support.

Soft Centre is a union of these lived experiences, learnings, landscapes and loves, and it is my honour to share with you the offerings that have grown from this fertile soil.

As a full spectrum doula I honour and hold space for all birthing people, family structures, and pregnancy outcomes. As a queer doula, I recognise that birth, reproductive health and personal/ collective healing does not exist within a vacuum — and that our bodies, our sense of safety, our wellbeing and personal agency are shaped within layered contexts. With this in mind I approach this work from a place of radical acceptance, awareness, and with an intersectional lens.

Lastly, it is my belief that doulas and birth workers are here to provide services at the intersections of our most essential human rights: the right to give birth, the right not to give birth, and the right to safely parent our children in a way that feels most aligned with us — the primary pillars of reproductive justice. I believe that birth work is deep healing work. It is anti-racism work. It is community work. It is justice work. It is energy and soul work. It is the golden thread of ancestral work.

It is ongoing and forever work, and I am committed to lifelong learning.

This work is woven into my being.

The pillars of my offerings — emotional, educational and physiological support, self-advocacy and autonomy — are firmly grounded in community connection, earth and body based wisdom, reproductive justice and person-centred care.

As a queer, able-bodied, university educated, cis white woman living on unceded Wurundjeri land — I am deeply committed to being actively anti-racist, to ongoing learning, unlearning, listening and showing up. To doing the personal work that relates to releasing any internalised/externalised white supremacy and patriarchy, to acknowledging my own privileges, and to keeping my heart in this work.

I am committed to making Soft Centre as safe, accessible and as inclusive as possible. I recognise it is up to the individual to determine what safety looks like for them, therefore I am commited to creating a space that centers the individual person as the expert of their body, their experience and their boundaries. I will always strive to uplift, affirm and celebrate the voices of marginalised communities — including Bla(c)k, Indigenous, people of the global majority, 2SLGBTIQ+, and people with differing abilities. I aspire to engage in ongoing conversations to encourage racial equity, and to center working class female, femme, queer, and trans BIPGM in these conversations.

I am committed to supporting all growing families regardless family structure, or their use of genetic donors, surrogacy, foster, kinship care or adoption in building their family. To advocating for the reproductive rights of all birthing people regardless of ability, race, religion, class, gender or sexuality, to providing continuity of care that is person-centred, affirming and culturally appropriate, and to showing up fully with kindness, compassion and self-awareness.

I believe that every person has the right to self-determine their own gender, sexual identity and expression — and I honour, uplift and advocate for the multitude of gender identities that exist within my community.

I am committed to providing support, services and pricing that is fair, accessible and honours both myself and those that I work with. I currently offer sliding scale pricing which is available on all my birth and labour packages, and on my early pregnancy loss/release and abortion support offerings. Payment plans are available also.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT & ANCESTRY

I currently reside in what we now call Melbourne, Australia. I acknowledge and pay my deep respects to the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, who are the traditional custodians of this land. I recognise that sovereignty was never ceded and that I am an uninvited guest on this land.

A great starting place to learn more about the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people, their cultural heritage, lands and language can be found here. For those in living on other lands in Australia, you can learn more about the country you reside on and its traditional owners here.

My maternal ancestors came from Scotland, Ireland, Northern England and Germany. I honour the healing practices, wisdom, gifts and guidance which they offer me, while also acknowledging the irreparable harm we have done as colonizers. I also pay my respects to and acknowledge my paternal ancestors, who came from the Antillean islands to Lutruwita (Tasmania).

I have a monthly reparations budget which currently goes towards paying the rent and a percentage of my birth support packages goes towards the Rodanthe Lipsett Indigenous Midwifery Charitable Fund.

STUDIES, EDUCATION & TRAINING

As a full spectrum doula and a lifelong student, I remain committed to continual learning and unlearning, self-study and heart-felt expansion. I acknowledge and offer deep gratitude to the many teachers of whom I have had the privilege of learning from — both indirectly and directly — over the years.