Amanté WhileLaboring: Ieshia Lee’s Vision to Advocate for Community Leadership, Empowering Mothers with a Caring Heart
In December 2023, Ieshia Lee received the Vital Village Networks Unsung Hero Award for her outstanding leadership as an advocate for children and communities. She wears many hats, fulfilling different roles and capacities. She is a mom of six, a doula, a lactation counselor, an intensive care coordinator, a mediator, and has recently started her own business called Amanté WhileLaboring.
In our recent conversation with Ieshia, she shared an overview of all the valuable work she does within her community. To highlight a few, she participated in the United Against Race program with Mass General Brigham Hospital as a doula. She is also a certified participating doula through DONA International. She is currently getting a certification with Mama Glow as a Childbirth Educator.
In 2023, Ieshia was awarded scholarships through Vital Village Networks and the Boston Breastfeeding Coalition to participate in the Reaching Our Sisters Everywhere (ROSE) Peer Lactation Community Transformer Training and the Certified Lactation Counselor Training through Healthy Children.
With her recent venture, Amanté WhileLaboring, Ieshia does “a little bit of everything.” She started this organization in 2022 and has since been providing support in lactation and foster care, soon starting a baby cafe called Baby Cares, and acting as an Intensive Care Coordinator - working with children with behavioral issues and being the advocate and liaison for women and children.
Ieshia is also trained in mediation and will be taking on a role to help the Department of Children & Families (DCF) facilitate permanency for children who are in custody.
Dedication to Family & Community Care
Being a teen mom at 14 years old inspired Ieshia. She knew what services moms and communities could benefit from and dedicated much effort to helping others and ensuring a positive outcome.
“My focus is making sure that there is an outcome and progress is made.”
Ieshia acknowledges the importance of leadership in this type of work because it means so much to so many people, while equally emphasizing the role of self-care.
Love Thyself - Importance of Self-Care
Ieshia closed out our conversation by sharing a few words of inspiration:
“If there's anything that you think you want to do, step out and do it because you can do whatever you put your mind to. You just [have] to be courageous enough to do it. And if you [are] courageous to do it, you probably get a great outcome.
The key is making sure you care for yourself 110% so that you have the other 10% to lend out for everybody else because if you don't take care of [yourself], you can't take care of [others]. And that's why my business is called Amanté WhileLaboring because Amanté means love thyself.”
Being able to lend oneself out to others who need support is at the core of what community connection means to Ieshia because “it takes a village to help the community.” In our conversation, she referred to her community connections as tree branches that are available for others to reach out to. For Ieshia, doing the work that she does is not just about helping one person, but to help whoever in whichever way they need.
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