When I found out that Anne Grace Glenn had recently given birth in front of 24 people, I said, "I need to interview her!" Anne grew up bilingual in Ottawa, spent a year in Japan as a kid, and was raised watching her parents actively live out their faith, one she'd spend years wrestling with herself, including a serious season discerning a call to become a Catholic nun. Anne grew up with nearly all her grandparents and great-grandparents present in her life, and watched her family care for them, all the way to the end. It was "so normal," she says, that she never learned to fear death. Birth found her early too, at 16, while babysitting, a mother's labor moved faster than anyone expected, and the baby was born on the bathroom floor with the father catching her. Anne was entranced. She met her husband, Coleman, a minister, through a fun love story of their own. Together, they've faced, what many might consider, to be more than their fair share of brushes with illness and mortality, and neither has let it shake their faith. A few years into their marriage, Anne was diagnosed with metastatic neuroendocrine cancer at 28. She wasn't expected to make it to 30. Facing her own mortality and still here, she went on to bring five more children into the world after that diagnosis, seven in total, through hospital births, midwife births, unplanned unattended home births, and most recently the home birth deliberately witnessed by 24 people, a true birthday. We talk about what changes when a woman feels safe during labor, the difference between pain and injury, the history baked into modern obstetrics, and why she's since pursued doula and death doula training, not as a career, but as a way of showing up for her community at both ends of life. Anne also recently finished her Master of Arts in Religious Studies at Bryn Athyn College, walking across the graduation stage holding her children's hands. Her thesis, Render Them Blessed, is on the theology of children, and it threads through everything we talk about here. Welcome to episode 62. Check Out: To read Anne’s thesis, Render Them Blessed, email mailto:anne.grace.glenn@gmail.com and she will send you copy Our Love Story - https://colemanandanne.wordpress.com/our-love-story/ Coleman’s poetry - https://alittlelightverse.substack.com/ Midwife Krystina, Baraka Birth - https://www.barakabirth.com/ Maria Montessori - https://themontessorinotebook.com/the-montessori-child Godly Play - https://www.godlyplayfoundation.org/ The Heart of the Homestead by Ruthann Zimmerman - https://ruthannzimm.com/the-heart-of-the-homestead/ For contacting Anne/learning more: @annegraceglenn on instagram @reddoorbirth for doula related things @reddoormontessori for homeschool content @red.door.homestead for homestead/gardening/chickens Elevate the Experience Help bring better audio, video, and filmed episodes to life: Venmo. I tithe 10% of all contributions—half to the All Secure Foundation (supporting soldiers’ transition home) and half to the Academy of the New Church High School.
