Mompreneurs: Ambreia Meadows-Fernandez

Source: Ambreia Meadows Fernandez / Ambreia Meadows Fernandez

On the latest episode of Mompreneurs, Ambreia Meadows-Fernandez speaks on Black maternal liberation. The mother of two and founder of Free Black Motherhood sat down with Mompreneurs host Nancy Redd for a stirring conversation about how a traumatic birth experience gave rise to a movement founded on reframing narratives around Black motherhood.

As the voice of Free Black Motherhood, Meadows-Fernandez broadcasts her message across a variety of mediums. She is a public speaker and facilitator, leading workshops and community programming from Cheyenne, Wyoming and beyond. The award-winning storyteller has penned hundreds of published essays and articles on motherhood, reproductive justice, health care education, advocacy, and more.

A traumatic birth awakened her to a greater injustice

Meadows-Fernandez detailed the difficult process before and after the birth of her son. The first time mom had to fight and advocate for her and her son’s well-being every step of the way, traveling long distances to receive adequate health care.

“The entire experience was incredibly traumatic and I would not wish it on anyone,” she said. “My traumatic birth experience is reflective of this denial of pain, invalidation, and invisibility that is cast on mothers everyday, constantly. We normalize this overwhelm, this stress, this lack of identity—and unfortunately for many of us, it starts before we even have our first child.”

As awareness around Black maternal health disparities grew, Meadows-Fernandez began to connect her birth trauma and “the lack of respect for my autonomy as a parent” to the normalization of trauma tied to Black motherhood.

‘I found myself overwhelmed by narratives that my motherhood should be anchored in trauma.’

As she worked on her master’s degree in American Studies, the thesis of what would become Free Black Motherhood was forming.

Her research on reproductive matters gave rise to the question: “In the work that I’ve done, highlighting maternal health disparities and sharing my own experiences … what are we offering Black mothers, advocates, and folks who read this content about what it means to raise children while Black?”

She came across the archaic legal doctrine, partus sequitur ventrem, which roughly translates to “the child follows the mother,” passed in the English colonies of the 1600s to legalize the idea that enslaved women gave birth to property, not children.

“It is this legal principle that was that turning point in history when enslavement (became) … something that you could inherit. It was something that was attached and weaponized within the Black womb,” said Meadows-Fernandez.

“I spent a lot of time sitting with that and realizing … how narratives of struggle and overwhelm have followed Black children, and then eventually Black adults, and how we define our experience.”

“But it occurred to me that if they could follow us to enslavement—whether it be literal and systemic bondage or emotional and mental overwhelm and struggle—they could also follow us to freedom. And in order for that to happen, I had to model that. I had to be more intentional about how I framed my mothering experience, how I connected with my little humans, and how I connected with myself.”

Free Black Motherhood is about breaking generational cycles and empowering future generations to thrive

She emphasized how essential it is for mothers and caregivers to invest in themselves and heal in order to uproot multi-generational cycles of trauma and pave the way for future generations to thrive.

“The standards we put on ourselves are ridiculously high,” said Meadows-Fernandez. “I don’t want my children to move through life thinking childhood is the only time that they deserve to be loved and cared for. I want them to feel loved and cared for across the lifespan, and in order for them to understand that that is a throughline of life, they have to witness me offering myself that care and compassion as I witness them.”

Get the full conversation. Watch this episode of Mompreneurs featuring Ambreia Meadows-Fernandez above.

Catch new episodes of ‘Mompreneurs’ every week.

Every week, we celebrate beautiful Black entrepreneurs who are simultaneously amazing business moguls and awesome moms. Join host and New York Times bestselling author Nancy Redd as these mompreneurs share their life stories and inspiring advice. Catch new episodes of Mompreneurs every Monday on MadameNoire’s YouTube channel. Or listen to the podcast online on the Urban One Podcast Network.

Categories: Entrepreneurship