Co-Founder Emeritus

Hi, I’m Laura. Interlandi is my married name, which reflects who I am in a lot of ways. My birthday is the Equinox, and I feel that in myself - I am often feeling two things (seasons) at once, and the merging of ‘both and’ which creates a third kind of feeling. I am ‘between’ or ‘inter’ in a lot of spaces, and I can see the connections and bridges that are possible to build. As someone who supports the transition of people between life phases, I often feel like I am witnessing people ‘between’, shedding and becoming themselves in the same moment. I am grateful to my husband and his lineage, for this name. Fun facts: I’m a singer, a twin (plus!) Mom, a high school debate champion, quarantine inspired amateur gardener, I secretly watch bad TV on nights when my husband goes to sleep early (he’s a filmmaker/media snob), I make the best snack plates, sing ALL the time, and am genuinely terrible at crafting.

I live on Vancouver Island and am a white woman from British/Irish ancestry. I was brought to Canada as a baby and have lived mostly between Canada, England and New York City. After 14 years of city living, I returned to British Columbia with my husband and three children; I am learning to live guided by repairing relations with the land and Indigenous communities here, residing and raising my children on the unceded WSANEC territory. Through many seasons of living, and having babies, away from this land, I want to live my gratitude through an embodied relationship to where I live. I was not raised, or taught in institutional school any grounded framework to understand colonization, racism or privilege and oppression. New York City was my portal for activation, and while I thought living there would spark my artistry, really it activated me politically. I credit the BIPOC leaders, teachers, speakers and birth workers that I had/have the experience of learning from with my ability to ever in any way understand or speak to the necessary upturning of oppressive systems.

I never meant to become a “teacher”, but it is very clear to me how and why I am in this role now. I was raised on the campus of an elite boarding school; I still have memories of playing My Little Pony under my Dad’s desk in a science lab while he taught. Born in September, and raised in a school, educational spaces feel like home to me. It should be noted that the timeline of my upbringing paralleled Indigenous Canadian children being taken from their parents and traumatized in residential schools (the last residential school closed in 1996). I was living comfortably on a campus focused on educating some of the wealthiest children (mostly white) in the world and it would take me over 30 years to discover the connections embedded in my own upbringing surrounding racism, privilege, education and what I believe to constitute actual learning. My lineage is full of educators, my maternal Grandmother attended university and was a teacher. My father earned a scholarship to Cambridge University and is still teaching Environmental Science; one of his sister’s was also a career educator.

My ancestral lines are all lower/working class, with extreme poverty for many of the large Irish Catholic households (I am proudly ancestrally connected to the ‘pit brow lasses’ who were women too worthless to marry, instead sent to separate coal). I think it is important to understand that education can be used as a social and economic ladder and I am mindful how people in my own lineage have had to work through their very real hardships and yet been able to rise in this system because of education; there is complexity there. Many other people in my lineage are like myself, naturally curious thinkers not formally awarded by institutionally recognized degrees and I am extremely proud of these people (shoutout to my Mum who’s wit cuts through pretense with impressive immediacy). My paternal Grandmother’s emotional intelligence and devotional nature is the real reason I am in a service role, if only University could teach all that she is. Despite all of these thoughts and feelings I think a lot about “getting a degree” - which is hilarious, and yet might totally happen some day.

My hope for the future is to see people, families, and communities cared for in ways that are meaningful to them. So much of birthwork is about education - and creating accessible curricula that makes a felt impact for the learner, is so important to me. My invitation to educators is to ask less about the what and the how, and more about the WHY - why are you teaching? That answer is so clear to me when I am teaching something to a parent or doula. I see intersectionality as a pathway we can travel to better understand and support one another - not simply as a politicized tool, or buzz word. I want to know who you are, how you came to where you are now, what your dreams are, what you are here to heal for yourself and your lineage and what support feels like to YOU.