Carol Leonard: Of
Midwives and Bad Beavers
Riding the rails of
life from Woodstock to Bad Beaver Farm, Carol Leonard's life continues to
unfurl in miraculous ways.
Listen here:
I first heard about
Carol Leonard from my Alice who described her to me as one of the most
extraordinary people she had ever met. Anyone who knew Alice knows that she
did not use words like iconoclast, trail-blazer, pathfinder, lightly, perhaps
because she was just such a person herself, though she would have rejected the assertion by saying that she was just a "simple" person.
Carol Leonard is a
New Hampshire certified midwife, the very first in modern NH history. She is
also an extraordinary writer, now based in Ellsworth, Maine, where her family
roots are deeply embedded in the history there.
Carol, a
"foremother of the modern midwifery movement," was the first
modern-age midwife certified to practice legally in NH and has been practicing
for over the last three decades. She is co-founder of the Midwives Alliance of
North America (MANA) representing all midwives in the U.S., Canada and Mexico,
serving one term as President of MANA. Her work to improve maternity care in
Moscow, Russia, was featured on 20/20 and was written into Congressional
Record. She has delivered approximately 1,200 babies safely in their own homes
and as you will hear in this podcast and one to follow, she has midwived a good
friend and a New Hampshire Icon - Crow Dickenson - through his passing.
Carol is the author
of the best-selling memoir, LADY'S HANDS, LION'S HEART, A MIDWIFE'S SAGA, Bad
Beaver Publishing, which was awarded the Mother's Naturally award of excellence
for Outstanding Book, 2008.
Carol's new book,
BAD BEAVER TALES, LOVE AND LIFE ON A NEW SUSTAINABLE HOMESTEAD IN DOWNEAST
MAINE, Bad Beaver Publishing is a heart-warming and often uproarious chronicle
of she and her husband, Tom Lajoie's life-journey - building their dream homestead on 400 acres
of wilderness in Ellsworth. Bad Beaver is a tree farm. Together Carol and Tom
are doing sustainable timber harvesting.
Tom has a saw mill and a 19th century shingle mill there. . . co-habited
by somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 beaver and their respective ponds,
lodges and habitat, which they argue about on a daily basis.
Recently she has
teamed up with Director and producer Kyle Lamont and the very talented team at
Good to Go Studios LLC of Ellsworth, Maine to collaborate on a Podcast based on
Bad Beaver Tales, It is a beautifully produced Podcast doing justice to the sensitive,
funny and often profound writing of Carol Leonard.
The Episode of Bad
Beaver Tales included in this podcast was written by Carol Leonard and directed
and produced by Kyle Lamont of Good to Go Studios in Ellsworth, Maine.
GoodtoGoStudios,com
You can subscribe to
Bad Beaver tales -the Podcast - at the link below and leave a review.
$9.99
Often laugh-out-loud funny and irreverent, occasionally
disturbing and deeply sorrowful, LADY'S HANDS, LION'S HEART is the saga of Ms.
Leonard's fated journey as a young midwife. Her story intertwines three
threads: her dedication to the mothers and babies she was groomed to attend;
the growing renaissance, despite formidable opposition, of the profession of
midwifery in New Hampshire and then in the United States; and finally, a
powerful, tragic love story.
Bad Beaver Tales: Love and Life on a New Sustainable
Homestead in DownEast Maine, Volume I ~
The Cunnin' Camp (Volume 1) Paperback – March 31, 2012
All Carol's Books
Other Links
Wikipedia: The
history and details about Mid-wifery
Midwives
Alliance of North America
