Tideshifts: A Midwifery Mentorship Collective

Admissions to the 2026-2027 cohort of Tideshifts are now live! Find the application here. We’re so excited to shift the tides with you.

Do you find yourself struggling to reconcile your values within the landscape of midwifery and obstetrics around you? Do you fear you may never gain the confidence or competence you want to safely serve your community? Are you burned out and disheartened by bullying, hazing, and toxicity from those who are supposed to be nurturing your growth? Simply need other midwives – including an experienced elder midwife who has practiced in a variety of settings–  to regularly process this wild, wonderful, and sometimes wearying life with? Tideshifts is for you.

I know you became – or are becoming – a midwife because you truly believed in the liberatory potential of birthwork. No one embarks on this journey without a desire to make a difference. But being a birthworker in a culture hostile to birth can be an incredibly isolating place. Not only do we bear witness to vulnerabilities, strengths, and terrors most people don’t, many of us end up disillusioned, burned out, and depleted from shoring ourselves up against an endless tsunami of defensive, racist medicine practices and/or horizontal violence in our schools and workplaces. You deserve real support and community to initiate, validate, and inspire you.

I believe liberation happens in community. So let's build one.

Tideshifts is a year-long, virtual container for midwives and student midwives practicing in any setting in any location. Thoughtfully designed to build a nourishing, collaborative, non-hierarchical collective, our time together will be spent learning, processing, and supporting each other. Far from being another “course” that spoon-feeds “expertise” to a group, the Tideshifts cohort is a space of radical co-creation where each individual is celebrated as a source of inherent wisdom and strength. The cohort is kept intimate so that we can be authentically in relationship with each other, establishing connections that both feel safe enough to facilitate the deep work required of us and meaningful enough to sustain us long after the end of the program.

Our programming is composed of biweekly group calls along with regular 1:1 sessions with Robina. Members also have access to office hours and opportunities to meet as smaller affinity groups.

We move in rhythms of biweekly group calls tentatively scheduled for Wednesday nights at 6-8pm EST. Our rhythms are composed of four different elements: Currents, Estuaries, Harbors, and Shoals.

Currents

So named for the continuous and directed movement that exist both on the ocean's surface as well as in its depths, and flow both locally and globally, Currents are group discussions about the forces that affect us personally as midwives, shape our practice, and trickle down to the lives of our clients. These could be clinical practices, socio-emotional demands, or "business" concerns.  Winds, water density, tides, coastal and sea floor features, the moon and stars, and even the earth's rotation drive ocean currents. What are the analogues in midwifery? Let's process them as a group.

Estuaries

So named for the bodies of water formed where rivers meet the sea, and where fresh and saltwater mix to produce unique and productive ecosystems of plants and animals, Estuaries comprise group work around specific cases and clinical scenarios. We may role play informed consent together, grapple with the so-called “management” of particular scenarios (such as premature rupture of labor, second stage of labor, common complications like shoulder dystocia, long gestations and so on), and analyze specific cases together. Regular opportunities for cohort open case review will also be provided.

The topics and activities in our Currents and Harbors will be chosen responsively according to the particular cohort’s needs.

Harbors

Harbors are named for the landforms where a body of water is protected and deep enough to allow anchorage, and are our reading groups.  Our harbors are places where we can anchor our practice of midwifery in the history, theory, and hope other writers and thinkers have offered. Harbors readings are chosen by consensus-based decision making.  Readings chosen by the 2023-2024 cohort included Medical Bondage by Deirdre Cooper Owens, Let This Radicalize You by Mariama Kaba , Birth Work as Care Work edited by Alana Apfel, Health Communism by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun Harrison, and Dawn by Octavia Butler.

Shoals

In bodies of water, Shoals, or sandbars, occur where the waves are breaking and sediment builds.  For our purpose, shoals are 1:1 meetings with Robina: a place for the sediment to rise up, for us to sift through it and find what’s there, or for us to walk together between waves.  Shoals are directed by the Tideshifts member and can be used for whatever purpose they want: to process particular cases or interpersonal or professional relationships; to discuss or review clinical management or research; to ask questions of Robina's own experience; to work through the nitty gritty of building a practice or choosing a job; to grieve or celebrate; to ponder self preservation in this intense calling; and so on. You can show up to your shoals knowing exactly what you want to talk about, or you can see what comes up organically: it’s up to you. Each member gets one 45-minute long Shoals call per quarter (so 4 over our year together), with additional opportunities during periodic open office hours or when there is an acute need for more support.

Tideshift members also receive access to a private community to further deepen our connections and support for one another.

Testimonials

Application Guidelines & Tuition

Admissions for Tideshifts are open until February 8, 2026. Decisions, including financial aid offers if applicable, will be announced on February 18.

We commence our work on the week of the Spring Equinox, March 18, and run for a full year, completing our work with a closing celebration on March 19, 2027, followed by an optional in-person gathering in summer 2027.

Tuition for the 2026-2027 cohort is $4400. Early bird pricing, which applies to applications submitted by January 18, will be $3999, which translates to just $333 a month. Because accessibility, justice, and equity are key values inherent to the mission of Tideshifts, we are committed at the outset to meeting the needs of a diverse community and reducing barriers to access. In the prior cohort of Tideshifts, 60% of applicants and 56% of admitted members applied for financial aid; scholarships were prioritized according to many intersections, but 95% of the total aid requested was granted. All tuition may be paid in lump sum or payment plans according to the members’ preferences.

Questions about programming and admissions may be submitted here.

Midwifery is our collective past, and it is also our collective future.

It has been estimated that 83% of maternal deaths, stillbirths, and newborn deaths worldwide can be averted through expansion of midwifery care (The Lancet 2014). But so many of us suffer from high levels of burnout and disillusionment and the average length of midwifery practice clocks in at just 7 years. We cannot improve others’ survival when we cannot survive more than a few years of midwifery ourselves. Tideshifts seeks to lay a foundation that will help you build the resilience and supports necessary to do the work for years to come.

Ready to shift the tides, together?