What’s the big IDEA?

Amy Johnson

What’s the big IDEA?

Singing the Circle: A Spotlight on IDEA Fund recipient Sarina Partridge

On January 20th I had the pleasure of speaking to Sarina Partridge over the phone about her project funded through the IDEA Fund. It was truly a pleasure as her spirit and commitment to changing the world through communal singing shone through in every response she gave. Here is some background information on her project, followed by the transcription of our conversation.

What is the name of your project?

“Singing the Circle: Birth and Postpartum Song Circles”

Who was this project focused on?

This project is a call to birthing folks, birthworkers, those on a fertility journey, and those navigating the depths of life in early postpartum to come sing in community, building connections and supporting holistic wellness through collective song.

What were the goals of your project?

Pregnancy, navigating fertility, and life postpartum are critical times to be weaving communities of support and healing for parents-to-be, new parents, and babies. Yet all too often, this is a time when folks feel intensely isolated and without resources for how to navigate such large life transitions. As a team of facilitators with extensive experience working as a birth doula (Jordan) and song leader (Sarina), we are committing to building spaces of song, listening, and supportive reflection that meet people in these dynamic life moments. We will use collective song as a healing modality to help alchemize these times of potential stress, isolation, and overwhelm – into spaces of collaboration, harmony, and nervous system regulation through music.

How did you come up with this idea?

This work is partially inspired by a UK-based nonprofit, Singing Mamas, which brings new parents and babies together through community singing. Sarina connected with their founder, Kate Valentine, in this past year and since then, she and Jordan have been building the idea for this project. In one study, they found that 73% of women who took part in group singing recovered from postnatal depression. This is groundbreaking! They found that singing helps parents bond with babies, connect with other parents, and feel more confident and self-assured. Singing releases endorphins which delivers pain relief and improved mood, and reduces stress hormone levels – producing particularly powerful results in the vulnerable and dynamic times of pregnancy, postpartum, and fertility challenges.

Transcription of phone call conducted on January 20 between Amy Johnson (IDEA Chair) and Sarina Partridge. This begins after general hellos and starting a recording.

Amy:

Sarina, how did you meet Jordan?

Sarina:

Well, Jordan came to a singing with grief workshop that I was leading at Lakewood Cemetery and then we connected about singing, community singing, and how it can support community building work. She has worked as a birth doula and also has done a lot of work with a really amazing organization called “You’re Going To Die” which is a program that facilitates conversations about death and dying and grief and aliveness in connection with that… so she and I connected. She hadn’t really sung before, but had done all of this awesome community organizing work and sort of starting courageous conversations and she was new to town, had just moved here, and I said you gotta come to community singing with me! Between our different interests, as I was starting to formulate the ideas for this group, we decided to work together, which has been a blast

Amy:

Yeah, sounds amazing! And how did you hear about Singing Mamas?

Sarina:

I was traveling in England and visiting community choir leaders in 2018 and heard about this group called Singing Mamas and – you know the way sometimes your brain puts something away for later and then it pops back up?

Amy:

Yeah?

Sarina:

That popped back up sometime in 2020-ish and I reached out to the founder of Singing Mamas, whose name is Kate Valentine, and she very graciously got back to me and we’ve been in touch since then. She’s been a real support in figuring out what are ways that community singing could be integrated into a bigger idea of health and wellness and healing- in particular focusing on populations and communities that are often pretty isolated and vulnerable. Her focus is on pre-and postpartum because she’s a nurse midwife as well as a person who loves to sing so that’s been her focus and that made a lot of sense to me.

I’m not a parent, but many people in my community are at a stage of life of being parents of really little kids or navigating fertility stuff and so the mission of Singing Mamas and the demographic that she focuses on really spoke to me. I think, also, this was 2020 in Minneapolis. Things were really unraveling that needed to unravel. [A] moment of huge reckoning and possibility and sort of reimagining. What normal were we gonna build back? So I guess that that was the moment it really clicked in and I wanted to begin moving towards that.

Amy:

Yeah, that’s amazing. Your application said you were going to do three different four-week sessions. Have you done all of those?

Sarina:

Well, we’re in the second one currently and we only got funded for half of what we said so we’re doing two – at least that’s the plan for this year – instead of the three because you can’t do one and a half. That’s weird.

Amy:

Yep, right!

Sarina:

We have two more weeks of this current session on Thursday mornings from 10:30 to noon at Hosmer Library in Minneapolis.

Amy:

And what group are you working with right now?

Sarina:

This is open to pre-partum, so pregnant people, postpartum with babies under one-ish, and birth workers. The people who’ve been coming are mostly in the category of early postpartum, so people with little little babies.

And it’s insanely cute!

Amy:

Oh, I can only imagine! Can you describe the feeling in the room when you’re doing these community sings together?

Sarina:

Yeah! I would say the feeling is relief. It feels like for the parents who’ve been coming that it’s a relief to be with other people navigating this very particular time in life. And that it’s a space where babies are welcome and sometimes people bring their other kids as well because if you’ve got a two-year-old you’re gonna bring them with you. But that it’s a space that’s focused on the adult experience seems to give people a real, like, out-breath of relief to be able to connect with other adults in a similar moment in life. And It’s a space where people cry a lot! You know in between songs or what a song brings up. People share a little bit about what’s going on in their lives. I’ll ask questions and prep some reflection here and there. And it feels like a pretty safe spot for people to share joys and challenges that maybe they don’t find many chances to share or such an understanding group of people to share with.

So there’s a lot of relief and lightness in being able to share also what’s really hard.

Amy:

Yeah, that’s beautiful!

In your application you said you have done a project like this before and this application was to expand that work. Are there any new takeaways for you from the way you’ve structured this with Jordan or any changes you made from the first time you hosted something like this?

Sarina:

The first time we tried we hosted it at the Minnesota birth center- their Saint Paul location. It was really cool to be in a space that’s devoted to persons on the birth process and healthcare, but we’ve since shifted towards being in public spaces.

So this series is at one of the Minneapolis public libraries and I feel like it brings people in a more welcoming and open way, which I just love. It just seems accessible in a different way, which is surprising to me because the Singing Mama’s model (and a part of it that really appeals to me) is that they’re based out of hospitals and clinics. So they’re trying to build this relationship where people went for their birth and well baby check ups and this is just another service that we offer! Which seems awesome, but it wasn’t working at the birth center. It was a little bit outside of their normal stuff so they weren’t really comfortable with promoting or sharing it.

It ended up feeling like less of a great fit and now we’re at the library and it’s – you know – people will walk by and stop and listen for a minute and I feel like there’s this, kind of, indirect community building.

Even just that way of being among parents of young kids for other library patrons – that feels like a side benefit I didn’t see coming! So with this round of the grant funding we’ve been able to come to the library and say hey, we have funding for this program – ACDA thinks we’re legit! That helps the library in their process of determining programming  so they know: OK these people are not total cuckoos! They’ve been endorsed and supported by a respectable organization, so sure! We’ll host your program and put it on our library programming website! That broadens our audience and helps us reach a more diverse group of people in a really welcoming and accessible way, which is really exciting.

Amy:

Yeah, I’m so glad that ACDA could help in that way! I didn’t even think about that being a possibility, but as we were building this fund, you know, this is exactly what we were hoping! [That] it doesn’t just broaden the idea of what “choral” means, but you know it would help more people see themselves in community through song so that’s amazing!

Sarina:

Yeah, it’s totally amazing! An anecdote that somebody shared from last Thursday that just really has stuck with me was: Usually as we’re singing we’re connecting, reflecting, and then at the very end we go back and just sing through each song again without really talking in between and make a voice memo. A lot of people want it AirDropped to them and they take it with them to help them remember the songs. On those little voice notes you hear a baby crying or squawking or a door opening and closing. It’s not a recording session or anything, but it is a real capture of the group sound. One of the moms at the group shared that those voice notes are one of the only ways she can get her baby to be chill in the car!

He’s there at the session while we’re recording this so he recognizes the songs probably! This is an under one-year-old and she’s like “it’s not even if I sing the song it’s like the sound of the whole group does  something for this baby that’s calming and stabilizing!”

Isn’t that wild! So these little voice notes have just become a really important part of their family survival strategy for car rides, which I just thought was so cool!

Amy:

Amazing! I just got chills thinking about that. I have older kids now but I remember those days of “how am I gonna get through the next 10 minutes in the car with this baby?” So what a gift!

Sarina:

And it’s a gift that I couldn’t give by myself. It’s something that the group creates which I think expands this idea of “what is choral singing and what is it for?” is really I feel that in that anecdote. It’s one of our best technologies for surviving and thriving, in the sense that a technology is something that makes life livable.

Amy:

Yes!

Sarina:

Communal singing: that’s a powerful technology for belonging and regulating our nervous systems and maybe raising our kids, too!

Amy:

Amazing! I feel like I could print what you just said and post it everywhere I go!

I’m so glad the IDEA Fund was available to help create this project. Did you find that application approachable?

Sarina:

It was super approachable- yes! More so than many grant applications I’ve so enjoyed writing over my time.

Amy:

I’m so glad to hear that and I hope when people read this article they’ll feel like they can also apply.

The last question I have is: if people wanna know more about this project or be in contact with you to learn more about the community singing that you’re leading, where could they go to learn more?

Sarina:

Thanks for that. Well, I have a website which has information about my different offerings and I send out a monthly email newsletter with all the stuff coming up and how to sign up and all that jazz. You can sign up for the email newsletter through my website too!

Amy:

Just to confirm that is https://sarinapartridge.com/ 

Sarina

That’s right, and my name is spelled different from Serena Williams, you know.

Amy:

Do you have to clarify that a lot?

Sarina:

It’s an unusual spelling, my name. Sarina is from the same route as Sara – it means like little Sara.

So that’s different from the Serena that’s like “oh, I’m calm and serene.” ‘Cause that’s not me, you know!

Amy:

Well when I go to your website right here, I see a picture where what I see is joy!

Sarina:

Awesome! Thanks.

Amy:

Thank you so much for your time! Is there anything else that you want to say about the project or make sure that I include?

Sarina:

Well, can I share one more little wee thing? It’s that my vision for the next phase is how do I move into a train-the-trainer model? And one thing that really inspires me going back to Singing Mamas again is that she has created this program where now the people leading these circles are mostly parents who gave birth at that clinic so that it’s a hyper locally-run program where the facilitators are people who were facilitated and so they’re bringing forward their positive experience.

I think that’s really cool and I’m curious how I could move forward. All these people who’ve been in the circle could totally lead a circle. There’s a certain ease that comes with being a really comfortable teacher – which I am and that’s my background (classroom teaching), but there’s also such value in the leader and facilitator being maybe not a rockstar singer but really rooted in the experiences of the people in the group. That’s something that I don’t bring so I’m really curious about how I could support the next round of facilitators who can really bring something different to more communities farther out and just spread the joy!

Amy

Oh, amazing! That would be thrilling to see!

Thank you, Sarina, so much for your time! I really appreciate it.

Sarina:

Thank you, it’s great to talk to you!

Amy

Yes, agreed! And we’ll talk again soon. OK – take care! Bye!

Sarina:

OK, awesome! You, too! Bye-bye.