From the Theater Stage to the Birth Stage

22 years ago, while performing 6 shows a week as a cast member in one of the longest running shows in the history of Chicago theatre, I had no idea that just over 2 decades later, I would have supported close to 1,000 women as they gave birth!

Really…how does a girl with a BFA in musical theatre, end up owning her own business as a Licensed Massage Therapist, birth doula and lactation educator?!

My clients over the years have asked this question many times, as they learned more about my past and it made me pause and truly consider the question…HOW??…and maybe even more importantly, WHY??!!!

I was always a performer; sang in church & school choirs, participated in theatre productions starting in elementary school, rocked my character shoes through years of show choir and eventually decided to attend Syracuse University to study musical theatre. During my senior year, I was lucky enough to have been cast in too many shows to hold down a job to make extra money, so I turned to an interest of mine, that I had absolutely NO training in…massage! Over the years (mostly in friend’s basements!) I had become really good at squeezing shoulders and working out knots, so I thought, why not create a business?! I made flyers and put them up all over the theatre - $20 for a massage seemed legit - and people ACTUALLY booked with me!

After graduating, and moving back to Chicago, I went on my first professional audition…and was cast! For the next 3 years, I played 5 different characters in the production of Tony ’n Tina’s Wedding in Piper’s Alley. While there, I performed with Frankie Avalon, sang nightly with the Wedding Band, danced to Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman” countless times, met multiple random celebrities attending the show, found a new level of performing as the cast found our footing performing directly after 911, watched fellow cast mates fall in love, witnessed the spontaneous death of an audience member, figured out how to finish a show after a disgruntled fellow actor decided to walk out well before the end of the performance, and a million other peccadilloes! The most notable take away from those years, though, was meeting & getting to know my husband, as we worked side by side for those 3 years.

I left the show when I felt I had grown as much as I would there and decided to go back to school for massage therapy so that I could ACTUALLY KNOW what I was doing, and be able to have a flexible schedule while still auditioning and performing. Long story short…I fell in love with the work…particularly with the prenatal, postpartum and infant special population I was lucky enough to work with during my degree program. I worked with teenage mothers who were living in a girls home in Chicago and it was an incredible experience. I found my heart shifting daily towards this new passion and it felt organic, exciting, scary and perfect.

After graduating, I trained to become a Birth Doula. I loved the idea that the knowledge I gained from that program could help me offer more well-rounded support to my clients. And then I jumped…attending my first handful of births…having never SEEN birth and certainly never GIVEN birth, it was absolutely incredible!

What occurred during the second birth I ever attended, helped clarify my passion & allowed me to better understand ME; how my musical theatre self could find such fulfillment in this work that seemed a million miles away from the stage.

We were in an un air conditioned apartment in the city, on 4th of July weekend. The client, who I had seen for prenatal massage, had happily agreed to have me shadow her doula. I was desperate to observe & learn from this veteran birth worker, as the fireworks quickly slipped into second place for the most exciting part of the evening. The baby was coming soon and we needed to make our way to the hospital. Loribeth graciously let me support our client solo, while in the bathroom (a favorite place for those working hard at bringing their baby!), and I’ll never forget that moment. While having a powerful surge, this warrior mama looked at me, deep into my eyes, as only a laboring woman can do. I instinctively matched her birthing sounds to encourage her low tones and connect with her, and in that moment, I felt the rush I felt many magical times before, when the curtain would rise, the cast would step forward and we would take our bow…the curtain call. It is a feeling like no other…until THAT moment. There it was…my WHY!!

Years went by and as I attended birth after birth, I also became a postpartum doula, a lactation educator, a placenta encapsulationist, and most importantly, a MOTHER! I was a decade into doula work when we welcomed our daughter into water, in our home. It was all I thought it would be, nothing I expected, and everything in between. So many times I’ve been asked how giving birth informed my work moving forward and the best way I can describe it is that it DEEPENED the work for me.

The connection, the empathy, the intensity, the confusion, the “out of body” sensations were all the more tangible to me and that allowed me to support my clients even more fully.

It was then that I realized another major through line between my “other life” and where I was now.

The ultimate goal of any actor is to help facilitate change in an audience member. Speaking one line, singing one note, delivering one message that makes someone watching them see the world in a slightly or massively different way, even for just a moment. Being side by side with a birthing person, as they transcend all they thought they knew about themselves, about their partner, about pain, about love…that’s the stuff right there. I don’t begin to take the credit for facilitating the change, but I have witnessed countless moments where one specific phrase, a certain touch, the encouragement to pause, the ability to normalize awakens a newfound freedom in the birthing person that may, indeed, change the way they feel, think, see themselves in that moment for the rest of their lives…and that’s pure magic.

Even in the hardest moments of this work, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Creating a supportive, nurturing, empowering space for expectant and new parents to lean into as deeply as they need is exactly what I was put here to do. THEY are my WHY.

Leah Lichy is Labor and Postpartum Doula, Lactation Educator, Massage Therapist, and Placenta Encapsulationist.  You can learn more about her services by following her on IG at @mamassage or visiting her at www.blissfulmamadoula.com.