Shoulder to Shoulder Revisited: The First Conversations with Anita Mbazi

For the next few weeks we’re going right back to where Shoulder to Shoulder began over two years ago, revisiting the first six episodes of the podcast and the conversations that helped shape the series. 

These early episodes introduced us to people with powerful lived experience, honest reflections on mental health, and a deep belief in the value of peer support. 

Listening back now, they still feel just as relevant.  These early episodes introduced us to people speaking honestly about lived experience, mental health, recovery, and what peer support actually looks like in real life. 

They still matter, because the heart of it was always the same, people who had been through something difficult, sitting alongside others who needed to know they weren’t on their own.

In this first episode of Shoulder to Shoulder by With You, we revisit where the podcast began with Anita’s powerful story of identity, culture, motherhood and peer support. 

She shares her journey from childhood in Africa to building a life in Manchester, reflecting on the challenges of adapting to a new country and the importance of connection during difficult times. 

At the heart of the conversation is the impact of peer support and how it helped her feel seen and understood, and why support from those with lived experience can be so meaningful.  Anita also talks about co-founding Holding Her Space, an organisation supporting mothers and families through pregnancy and early parenting. 

As we look back on the first six episodes, this conversation captures what the series set out to do: highlight the people behind peer support and the difference it makes in mental health and everyday life. 

Hosted by Cate Munro, Shoulder to Shoulder explores these stories with peer supporters from all walks of life.

Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

With-you consultancy: www.with-you.co.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hi there, I'm Kate Monroe, and I'd like to welcome you to a journey of connection, understanding, and empowerment. Join me on Shoulder to Shoulder, a podcast brought to you by With You, an organization based upon the principles of co-production, understanding, and long-lasting relationships. This podcast is dedicated to the incredible power of peer support. In each episode, we'll explore the stories of incredible humans who face the challenges of life head on, finding strength and solace in the support of their peers. Together, we'll discover the bonds that unite us, the triumphs over adversity, and the unwavering spirit of those who stand shoulder to shoulder, helping each other through life's toughest moments. So, grab a seat, lend an ear, and let's embark on this inspiring journey of resilience and hope together. Welcome to shoulder to shoulder. Anita, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time. I'm so looking forward to our conversation. Would you like to start by introducing yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Yeah, uh thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this. My name is Anita Mbabazi. I live in Manchester right now with my daughter, my three-year-old. I am actually from Rwanda. I was born and raised in Uganda, so I usually call myself uh East African. And I've been here a few years. But I'm a mother of one three-year-old, and motherhood is very, very important for me and to me, and I believe it's sort of it's one of my purposes for being here on earth today. I take so much joy and pride in that. Um I'm a community birth worker here in Manchester. And uh a lot of people would call me a doula. That's just a more popular term for what we do, but um I just have personal reasons for why I decide to just call myself a birth worker. And yes, I'm part of a non-profit organization here in Manchester, called in Hold High Holding High Space, and we support moms and families through their pregnancy, birth, and parenting journeys. And that particular organization is specifically for families from Black and Asian communities. Um I'm a peer support worker and I'm also part of the WeView Consultancy as an associate. I do online support coordination for them as well. And I'm also part of the Black and Asian network. I absolutely love dancing, and I just find that I've not had enough time in the past two years to dance. You know, obviously having a little one and um not much not much support with her. So I've just been thinking, you know what? Next year I'm gonna make time for dance, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you know, it just brings life to me. So yeah, I'm going to make time for that. I love colour, I love anything colour and colourful. I love food. I believe it's an absolute amazing love language, one of my main and you know, I love eating and feeding people and um nature. Uh, I think that's a little bit about me, and I'm very happy and honored to be part of this gate. So thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Anita, I'm happy and honored that you're here. I really, I really am because I find you absolutely fascinating and you're such a beautiful human. Um, it's an absolute joy to talk to you. You touched on in your introduction that you're passionate about birthing um and that process. Can you just share with us the reasons behind that?

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yes, so um, well, pregnancy and birth has always been very amazing and special to me. I mean, as I'm I'm remembering from way back growing up, you know, in Uganda, I've just always been drawn to, you know, pregnant women and babies. And because of, you know, the culture and the way we grew up, I was, you know, I'm an I'm a firstborn child. So having been the eldest, especially a girl in the families, for most families anyway, you take on the role of, you know, almost like a second mom. And, you know, there's pros and cons to that, growing up too fast and maturing too fast, there's privileges to that, but also, at least in my my personal experience, there's things that you miss out as a child. And I think on my motherhood journey, I've had to go back to those places and try to heal my inner child and just try to sort of take care of those wounds because they do come up, at least they've come up for me in the adult life. So that's a journey that I'm on, and I've been on, and it's beautiful, and it's helped me with my motherhood journey, you know, just with the way I parent my girl Tete and you know how we relate. It's just it's really healing, and it just makes the journey so much more uh fulfilling, more joyful, more purposeful. But um, yeah, so I was always helping out, you know, with the aunties, with the little children. You know, my siblings, I grew up with lots of cousins because, you know, my mom, I didn't grow up with my mom, you know, so she she was over here in England with my younger siblings, and I grew up back at home with her sisters. So the two sisters took it in turns to have us, so all of the children grew up together. So a lot of my cousins are actually my siblings. You know, we call each other sisters and brothers. I wouldn't know how to, you know, experience them as cousins. So, and that's very common. So that was beautiful in so many ways that in growing up, I didn't feel like there was a lack. I didn't feel like, oh, my mom's not here, I don't have a mom. No, I had extra moms, you know, and I never at once felt like I didn't have my mom, you know, because you know, they're all and they're still my moms, you know. The two of them live here in Manchester, and they're absolutely still part of our lives. I still call them mommy, and it's just beautiful. But yeah, so we, you know, I was always part of that, helping out with the little ones, being part of that journey. But um, and then I just realized that, you know, I don't know, maybe I could be a midwife, you know, when I grew up a bit. And I tried to go down that journey, you know, trying to get into midway free, but then there was something about the medical system that didn't work with me. You know, I couldn't align with that. And and that just comes back to how I am naturally as a person, my personality, my values, my lifestyle. I'm so much more of a nature person, you know. I absolutely respect and adore plant medicine. So if there's something, I'm like, there's a plan for that, you know, you can eat this. There's an app for that, there's a T for that kind of thing, you know, before I would think of popping a pill or, you know, something more medical. And that's not to say that, you know, there's no respect in that field. It's just what works for me. And maybe that's probably from the way I've grown up. You know, my great-grandmother was a medicine woman. You know, I I have memories of her sitting down under the manga tree at the family house and just working with plants. You know, people would come with broken arms, and she would literally, I have this vivid memory actually, particularly. She dug a little hole, you know, under the manga tree with a little stick. Just she dug a hole, just pat in there and she does spit a lot. She used to spit a lot. She's not here now, you know. She's transitioned a few years ago. But so she would she dug a little hole, then she would spit in there, and then she'd get the herbs, she spit on them, you know, sort of make a paste, you know, rub them in their hands and make a paste and then she'd put them in the hole and do whatever she was doing. And people used to actually get healed, you know, with physical issues and emotional stuff. So it was amazing. And I only realized that much later when I, you know, got into my practice, developing a relationship with the plant medicine, working with plant alongside my work and personal life, that I'm like, oh my gosh, okay. So that was amazing. And that was yeah, that's part of my lineage, you know. I believe for me it's been a transitional journey. It's not something I just woke up and picked up, it's just been a journey. And then for me, just realizing like going into trying to go into different career paths, the supporting role has been, you know, like I think a prevailing um commonality on my journey.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

I absolutely love that story, and I love the fact that you were so inspired by your grandmother by watching what she used to do. How magical is that? I can just picture it in my mind's eye. So, how would you define peer support then? And what does it mean to you personally, Anita?

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Peer support to me is a two-way relationship and that you know involves receiving and giving support or help and just relating to each other as humans. And for me, it involves shared values, shared commonalities, but at its core, as human beings, you know, we, you know, we're we're peers, right? Because we share that. But also it goes beyond that. And I'm thinking about shared respect, shared values, maybe experiences from the past. It could be our heritage, and maybe in my case, I do, you know, I do a lot of peer support work here in Manchester, but it's about shared experiences and parenting. So, you know, we support mothers and there's that mutual understanding, that mutual experiences that underpins the work that we do and the support that we give to each other. And, you know, there's empathy, there's understanding, there's non-judgment. I don't particularly know your story or understand your journey, but I can relate to it because you know I've sort of been on a similar journey or I've been in the neighborhood kind of thing. There's that mutual respect that there's no power, what's the word? Power dynamics. No, like I'm a doctor and you're a client, or you know, I'm a social worker and that. But we are sort of on the same grounding and we have that love and respect and honoring of each other as humans, first of all, and then whatever else that we're having in common, I feel like there's also a sort of a belonging. We went through that, or we've experienced that, or we've seen that. So we sort of belong in the same, maybe in the same community or in the same circle. And I found that one of the things that beer support has been able to give the communities here where I work is, you know, that village, that belonging. You know, we we talk about uh it takes a village, you know, to raise a child. I was literally raised by the village growing up. So for me, for me, that that's that's a literal experience of me. But also a very um major thing we're trying to do with the community work that I do here is rebirthing that village. Because the biggest issue we're finding that mothers, especially mothers that are suffering with now is isolation and all the problems that are coming with that. Sure. For me, PSP is very, very important. It's very crucial. I believe it saves lives, you know, it saves time, it saves money, it's it's it's amazing. I absolutely love it, and I'm absolutely honored to be a part of it, you know, from a receiving end and also from um given end.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

That's beautiful. I could literally sit and chat to you all day about this, Anita. Um, I'm really interested to know how peer support has impacted your journey. Can you share any examples or experiences from your own life?

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah, so um, what comes to my mind now is my pregnancy journey. So I had my baby in 2020. Um, you know, that was COVID time. So, you know, there was a lot going on there for a lot of people. Sure. All over the globe. That was an interesting time to have a baby. And I was not particularly bothered by the whole isolation and the COVID because I'm, you know, to my, you know, in my heart, I'm I'm a true introvert. So I love the peace and the quiet. Um, so that was okay, but being pregnant and um separated from my family as a whole other thing, you know, because I remember going to my family home, you know, my one of my moms that I grew up with, and she could not give me a hug, Kate. I stood at the door and she said, We're not allowed to hug each other. Brutal. That broke my heart. Brutal. It did. I think I was about seven months pregnant. I mean, she used to cook food for me and bring it to work, you know, but she couldn't hold me, she couldn't hug me. You know, Nator. And everything was okay up until the point I just realized, what is this? How can a human being think this is okay? That this is normal, that because somebody on the radio has told you that you can't hug your families because of this thing with all the unknowns. And like, I I I I wanted to hug her, and not because I was maybe in a bad place. And no, it's just, I mean, it's how we greet, hug and kiss, you know, this is this is this is our way of showing love. This is a very simple act of humanity over something that was just bizarre. I I I spoke to her, I didn't even get into the house because we're not allowed to get into the house. I was just like, this is some crap. So, you know, but I had to respect that people are where they're at, you know, everyone's feeling and experiencing this whole thing very differently. And I can't take that personally. So I had to just take myself away from that. You know, I had um I had friends that see things the way I did and I do. So that was comforting that we can have talks about this and see things and laugh about things. And at the time, I was going through a relationship breakdown. So that was a very interesting uh journey, you know. But um, I have a sister friend who is also a birth worker in a community. She's a mother, and you know, she was she was like my pillar at that time. I would say the community in the bathwork, they were my pillar during that time. You know, I could I could talk to them. I received peer support from that, and I was heavily into there's a community called um Mama Primitiva, and we we were studying traditional midwifery there. You know, Mama Mama Claire is a traditional midwife, amazing woman. She's based in Hawaii. So we used to have Zoom calls and all of that stuff online, and we just kept the connection that so I wasn't in that sense, I wasn't alone. You know, it was it was amazing, it was helpful, you know, I was getting support with my pregnancy. And this is the time where people were not actually being able to even have birt support, you know, mom's work, having babies and having to choose between either their partner or their bath worker or doula, you know, because you're not allowed. And it was frustrating as a person that was supporting people that you couldn't do that, and the mom had to choose between you and their partner or their mom. So we were fighting a lot of battles on that front, and it just felt amazing having, you know, my village with me and behind me instead of doing that work with me, and just not being alone in all of that, keeping me sane during my, you know, the waves I was riding with my relationship. Because that, yeah, that nearly broke me, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Absolutely. You've talked about how you've been impacted by the power of peer support. How did you become involved in it yourself?

SPEAKER_01 16:11

I think again, I'm gonna say it's been a journey. You know, I've probably touched on this and how I've come into the work that I do. But um really, I think I would say it's uh when I started a community bathwork here in Manchester when I co-founded um Holding Has Space with another sister, she had a vision for community to support families, you know, on their pregnancy journeys. And I was on the other end looking for the same community, well to build the same community. So we sort of had the same vision, but we didn't know each other. And it's only until I think she reached out to somebody that knew somebody that knew me that said, Oh, we've got Anita in in Manchester, you know, she's a birth worker. And so she reached out to me on Instagram, I remember. And, you know, we we instantly connected because we had the same vision. We saw doula work or birth work the same way. We had the same vision for the community, and we just wanted to create something for you know for other moms and families. And we got together and you know, it was just instant. It was just instant. So holding her space got birthed. We we started the work, and what we do is we support moms one-to-one, but also we we have workshops, we we have peer support groups, we have monthly workshops, and we've got, and over the time, it's you know, it's just grown onto partnerships with other local organizations. So, you know, we've got into educational training as well. So it's just I think I think it's been a journey for me, to be honest, because you know, the work I've done is mostly been with women. I've always just arrived supporting women as it just felt like, first of all, I'm a I'm a human being, you know, so we had that, and then I'm a woman. So I think that was the most basic and you know the biggest thing that connected us and still connects us, and that's why my work has always been with women, whether it's been in the hospitals or with it's been shared care or it's been in homeless um accommodations or you know, all that kind of thing, and the maternity journey and that kind of support. So it's I think for me it's it's been that and it remains there.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Wonderful. Anita, just remind us of the name of the organization you founded and share a little bit about its mission and what it does.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Okay, so we support women and families through their maternity journey. So whether that's conception, pregnancy, birth, or early parenting, and we're not midwives, it's not clinical support, but we, you know, we we help we support emotionally, physically, practically, psychologically, you know, education from simple things as just um talking to mums about their options during their pregnancy, because a lot of time we find that people don't know that they can, you know.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Sure. Did you think that this information wasn't being given previously to women, that they weren't being given the information you're sharing? So they, in effect, couldn't make an informed choice.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Yeah, and that's that's still happening. I mean, you women see the midwife for all of what 15 minutes? There's no time. There's time enough to take your blood pressure, you know, maybe listen to your baby's habit. Or midwife don't know the the woman's story, the woman's journey. You know, midwifery means to be with women. You need to, you're working with somebody on the most, the most amazing journey, the most important journey on earth, you know, giving birth, birthing humans. This is the most important job in the world. The woman needs feel safe, the woman needs to be loved, the woman needs to be respected, and feeling that helps their journey, not just through pregnancy, but through the birth. And, you know, when you ask me what a woman needs to have a beautiful birth experience, they need to feel safe and loved when you, you know, you just bring it down to that. There's a lot of midwives that do care and would love to do their job well, they just don't have the resources to do that. So, you know, they have how many mums to see? And you've got a 15-minute slot, and they just have, you know, this question they have to take, they have to put this on the system.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

There's just no time to find out. So, how is the service you provide different to that then?

SPEAKER_01 20:16

So, we are not time restricted, is number one. And we don't have a a system or protocol that we that we have to respect and follow in a sense of this is the tick box, this you have to get this, this, this, and this. So, we have time to sit down with the mom and find out what does she want? And every mother is different. What would you like support with? What do you need? What would you like your experience to be? You know, what's happening at home? And then we have the time and the luxury to look at the whole picture. And, you know, we're not looking at the clinical side or the medical side, that's for the clinical professionals. So as a human being, how can we support this journey?

SPEAKER_00 20:57

So you're seen as a a woman, not just a number or a statistic.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Yes, a number, yeah. Which is the problem in the, you know, in the maternity system right now, is it's about statistics. We hear black women are four times more likely to die in childbirth and pregnancy, which is a true statistic. Four times more Asian women dying, two times more. These are numbers, you know. It's you know, you find middle that don't know the woman's name because they don't care. There's just no time. So we help each other, we solve problems. There's things that we can do within, you know, the group as a peer support network, but also there's things that just need somebody else outside, and we're able to get that support with the moms and with that mutual understanding that that's what she needs. That's what she wants.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. I'm just looking at your website, Anita, and I love the quote on it to change the world, we must first change the way babies are being born.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Yes, an amazing doctor said that. Yes, I think it's It all starts with you know birth and it ends with birth. I'll talk forever about birth.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

And that's and that's a beautiful thing in itself, Anita. So your organization, Holding Her Space, is a non-profit community organization. What are your aspirations for it? What's the vision?

SPEAKER_01 22:19

So we we serve the world, that's all we say. But because we're based geographically in my in Manchester, we are, you know, physically serving the greater Manchester area, but we do have online support work, you know, especially during when COVID started. That's when we, you know, we started doing a lot of more work on the internet, like everyone else. So we do see moms sometimes that are maybe based in London, or we've had people coming from the States or even Africa reaching out and finding out. So we do online stuff that is open to everybody. So we do plan to actually train birth workers, but it's because we've just been a little busy this year. We've got a project that I can talk about briefly. But we are planning to create a training that's culturally appropriate. For us, it's about just reminding women that, especially black women, reminding them of their power, just reminding people of their power, just reminding them of how great they are, how amazing and sacred, and all of these beautiful things. So then they can just step into that, you know, and just do what they're here to do. And it's amazing when you see somebody just remembering who the hell they are.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

And then that obviously has a knock-on effect to the way that they are able to mother, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Exactly. Yes, of course. It's it's amazing. People are, you know, people are parenting more more intentionally now, more consciously now, you know. And they're not just mothering their children, but they're mothering themselves and their inner children, which is healing. Because we heal one woman, we're healing generations back and generations ahead, you know?

SPEAKER_00 23:56

It's a lot of things in a child.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

So that's that's one of the visions for holding her space, is that we we close that gap, we bridge that gap and stop those disparities because there is no reason why black women should be dying at four times more than white counterparts.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

You mentioned earlier that you're currently working on a project. Could you tell us a bit more about that?

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Yes, so um, so it's a bit of a creative project, it's the heritage project, and uh we were funded by the national lottery to do something that's about sharing our experiences as Black and South Asian women and families, and it's about our pregnant, you know, our pregnancy journeys, our birth experiences, and also culture experiences. And the goal for this is first of all to share our experiences for the world. Number two is to inform, because we find a lot of times healthcare professionals don't know, they're not aware. So, you know, they're like, we don't know about those cultures, or we don't know about this and that. So through sharing our experiences and our cultural practices, we're informing and educating not just other women or other families, but also the people that care for us. So we're sharing these stories for you know for so many reasons. We're doing that in different ways. Yes, so we have an art exhibition um launching on the 13th of January, and it's going to be there for a few weeks up until March. So that's at um Manchester Central Library, and basically we have these amazing portraits of the women on the journey. Some of them have their babies with them, some of them don't, and it's just really telling their story visually, and then there's a QR code on every, you know, on every portrait where when you scan on it, it takes you onto our website, and there's the woman's story. So some mamas have shared on video, they've had a video recording, some of them it's just an audio recording, some of them have actually written their story, and some of them it's a combination. We also have a mom that's doing an art piece just telling, you know, whatever, how that's telling about her journey. It's just it's giving me chills. It's just amazing that women are just expressing and telling the most beautiful and vulnerable and personal stories, but in their way. So I'm really, really excited for whoever is going to come and join and sharing that. And yeah, so we're sort of busy right now preparing for that, but it's looking great. So we also have a live production. We actually have a theater production in March. So March 9th, and in honor of International Women's Day and Women's Month, we're going to do that at a Contact Theatre in Manchester as well. And yeah, so we're again we're sharing these experiences and these stories on stage, and that's gonna be amazing. Dancing and drumming and sounds, and yeah, is I'm looking forward to that. And we're also in in partnership with the Central Library where we're doing the art exhibition, we are doing oral histories. So all the stories, we're gonna get more stories and more stories, and we're collecting all these stories, and they're gonna be stored for like a hundred years in the archives. So people will be able to come and actually listen to their story, come and read about their story for generations and generations and generations.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Wow, what a legacy you are creating. It's remarkable. You are remarkable, Anita. I've got a couple more questions that I'd like to ask you, if you don't mind. I'm asking everybody who takes part in these conversations the same two questions at the end. And the first one is what is your greatest achievement? Clearly, you've got so many to choose from. I think I want to say being Tete's mama.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

I call myself Mama Tete. And I, yeah, I think for me, doing that how I my motherhood journey, just being me, being the mother that I am, being the mother that I chose to be and continue to be intentionally. I think for me that that's what it is, and remembering who I am, even when I could have just broken, right? Even when the world would just did not make sense at all during my whole journey to have my motherhood journey impact in the you know, in the work that I do with other moms in the community in every kind of way, but also very healing for me as an inner child, all the things that I missed out on, all the you know, the mother wound that I had and all of that. I learned so much from my daughter, she's amazing. Like she's just teaching me every day. I'm learning every day. Um, you know, we're guiding each other, and I think for me, everything is a knock-on-effect.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

Oh, that is so beautiful. That is so beautiful. And the last question today, Anita, is who's your biggest inspiration?

SPEAKER_01 28:51

You know, it's it's not anybody on the outside. I'm gonna say me. You know, I'm going to say the me that I've become going from uh uh a very agreeable people pleaser kind of person that always puts everyone else first, coming from a place where everybody came before me, me sacrificing a lot, even sacrificing my values at some point just to maintain relationships or maintain the peace, but just coming to that space where I'm just like, okay, nope, let's take it back. It can be healthy, you know. I can still love, but I can still honor myself first and stand, you know, honor my values, be in integrity and still love and put those boundaries up. It's been a very, very huge journey for me and less than what amazing, and it's it feels great. Love for me is the greatest thing ever. You know, I don't think anything is greater than that. And I am love. I if there's anything that I can do just so easily, so naturally, is loving and nurturing. But we find ourselves that, you know, so many times that you can, you know, it can be abused, or you can, you know, you can lose sight of your boundaries and do that in a very unhealthy way. So yeah, I think that's been amazing for me, and that if I continue to be that woman, then I'm I'm fulfilling my purpose.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Oh, Anita, you know, I could sit and talk with you all day. You are incredible, you're such an inspiration, and I wish you nothing but continued success with all the amazing work that you do, and I really mean that from the bottom of my heart. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Kate. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Shoulder to Shoulder by With You. For more information about our organization and access to additional resources, please visit our website at www.wizu.co.uk. Remember, you're never alone when you've got a shoulder to lean on. Stay connected.