When I first met Marissa she had just opened The Lemon Grove and we met there to take a tour. That day she had the help of her adorable twins and I was in awe over the welcoming space, especially the floor to ceiling mural when you first walk in. I was just as impressed by Marissa’s drive when she told me that she celebrated her twins first birthday and opened this special business in the span of months. Marissa is determined to provide the care needed by so many parents and parents-to-be in the North Shore Community. Continue reading to learn more about Marissa and The Lemon Grove.
Meet Marissa Hathaway
Where are you from originally and what town do you live in now?
Our family moved from Marblehead to Essex when I was ten years old. I now live in Haverhill with a family of my own.
How many children do you have and what are their age(s)?
We have 16 month old twins; Eloise is our daughter and Waylon is our son. Eloise is 5 minutes older, and somehow they both know it!
What’s your favorite family activity on the North Shore?
Ooh – starting out with the tough questions; it’s so hard to choose one! Haverhill has a lot to offer, so we love walking to our local farmer’s market, I treated myself to a cut-your-own flower share from Old Wild Farm as a birthday present and we love going as a family. We also have a membership to Bradford Swim Club which has oodles of events and a splash pad. We enjoy the parent and child classes at the Waldorf School at Moraine Farm in Beverly and any events through The Trustees of Reservations and Audubon Society.
Where’s your favorite place to eat and/or shop on the North Shore?
Our first date postpartum – like, 10 months postpartum – was at Grove at The Briar Barn Inn, in Rowley, and we loved it. I don’t drink alcohol, so it feels inclusive to have a fabulous mocktail menu that is just as intentional as the boozy choices. My favorite sandwich is the VBC from Shubie’s in Marblehead – the only tragedy is that it’s so far away from us, so it really does feel like quite the treat when I do get one!
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to start The Lemon Grove.
I began my career in global health and human rights, originally wanting to focus on global maternal health issues. I have always been interested in the concept of who has access to quality maternal and reproductive care & justice, from both the physical and emotional perspectives. I went to Israel for my Masters in Public Health, and had an incredible opportunity to work with a program that brought together Israeli and Palestinian midwives and doulas, as a way to share best practices and to build peace.
I dreamt of becoming a doula when “life slows down” – which it doesn’t. So during the pandemic, I took a doula training with the person I knew I wanted to learn from, and started taking a few clients per month with a program that was essentially a pilot to the MassHealth Doula Program. I really fell in love with the work, and despite being pretty type-A at heart, quit my full-time job and became a full-time doula and childbirth educator. In the 3 years since, I have supported almost 150 births, many families through infertility, some through postpartum, have grown into having a 20+ doula agency team, and a perinatal wellness collaborative space that just opened in June 2024.
Where is The Lemon Grove located?
We support families throughout all of Massachusetts, most of New Hampshire, and Southern Maine and Southern Vermont. Our main areas of support are still within Greater Boston and the North Shore. Our physical space is located in Boxford, MA, just off of Routes 97 & 133, and a quick jump from Routes 95 & Route 1.
What services does The Lemon Grove offer?
We are a trauma-informed, evidence-based, LGBTQ+ affirming doula agency team & perinatal wellness collaborative inclusively supporting families from trying to conceive through the early years of parenthood. We help build confidence & community as families are built. We offer full spectrum doula support, photography, education, events, and support groups. We center our work around the values of education, advocacy, and community.
Full spectrum doula support means that we work with families as they are trying to conceive (often through infertility treatment), pregnancy, miscarriages, abortions, birth, and postpartum, and we also provide sibling doula support for families are expecting their second child and beyond so there is childcare coverage for when their next baby arrives. Many of the doulas on our team also provide aligned perinatal services, such as placenta keepsakes, sleep consulting, yoga, lactation support, babywearing consultations, and more. For photography, we offer pregnancy announcements, maternity, newborn, and family sessions, and also love providing birth photography as an add-on to doula services.
What is your mission for The Lemon Grove?
My mission for the families we serve is to continue our commitment to provide inclusive, comprehensive support to their whole selves, throughout the full perinatal period. My mission for our doula team and the perinatal professional community is to continue our commitment to be a source of education, collaboration, and advocacy.
You are open about the loss and infertility you experienced in your journey to become a mom. How does this inform your work?
We built our family through IVF after recurrent pregnancy loss, with our losses happening while I was at clients’ births. About 90% of the clients I personally support and just under 80% of the families supported through the agency have experienced loss or infertility or both – and that isn’t coincidental. Over the years, between our own family building story unfolding and my ongoing commitment to supporting families-in-the-making that have already endured quite a bit, we have established ourselves as a team that uniquely understands infertility and its impact on pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.
I am passionate about building momentum for infertility doulas to become more mainstream, such as through teaching workshops for doulas and speaking on the subject publicly at summits, conferences, and on podcasts, as well as sharing my experiences personally and professionally with supporting this community with other perinatal providers so that they can provide more sensitively informed care. We provide support for grieving families, and I was mindful of diversity among family building strategies when choosing artwork for our space. We also offer support groups for families undergoing infertility treatment and in their pregnancy/parenthood afterwards, and I teach a private class, “Infertility Treatment 101: What to Expect”.
What types of classes do you offer for prenatal moms?
For prenatal moms, we offer lactation, childbirth education, mindfulness & self-care, newborn care, support groups, nutrition, yoga soon to come, and more, as well as fun events to build community.
What types of classes do you offer postpartum moms?
For postpartum moms, we offer support groups, nutrition, babywearing, yoga (coming soon), sensory play, music, and more, as well as child-free events to build community.
When I visited The Lemon Grove space I was drawn in by the beautiful mural on the wall. Tell us a little bit about the artist and meaning behind the elements in the mural.
Our mural was beautifully and thoughtfully designed and painted by the spectacular Caroline Armington, a resident of Manchester-by-the-Sea. We are connected by my best friend from middle school, and I am forever grateful for that! Caroline is a child life specialist and a dedicated, exceptional mother to three kids. The four types of flowers featured in the mural represent the three trimesters of pregnancy, and the fourth trimester, meaning the first of postpartumhood.
The peonies are the flower we planted for our first miscarriage, and the calla lilies represent families that have grieved along the way, in any meaning, and within the calla lily section is a butterfly with the initials of the first family I supported through the stillbirth of their daughter. The ten lemons in the tree of life represent the ten months of a typical pregnancy, and the creatures in the mural represent the size of baby from head to rump/head to toe during pregnancy, and the size of baby’s stomach on the outside, so we can utilize the mural as an interactive teaching tool during our prenatal classes for families.
It was important to me to have meaningful art inside our space that was intentional, inclusive, and subtle, so that it was both illustrative of parts of families’ experiences and protective in a way as not to be triggering for those who have had challenges. This is true of our breastfeeding artwork, (such as tandem feeding twins, tandem feeding toddler and infant, parents receiving professional support, pumping, and SNS), and our birth art (such as plus size water birth, preemie delivery, vaginal breech birth, cesarean section delivery and more).
Any tips for balancing work & motherhood?
I feel immensely grateful to have the opportunity to spend so much time with my kids, especially while they are still so young, and I feel very satisfied with how much I have accomplished in a few years and while building and raising our family. I think it helps to consider “balance” as an imperfect, fluid concept, because the reality is that the “balance” will never be a perfect split between caring for myself, parenting, and being a business owner in the day-to-day, especially as a birthworker, when I don’t know when I am leaving or coming home. There are times I feel so overstimulated as a parent and times I feel like I have so many competing, consuming ambitions as a business owner. But, if I can remind myself to take a step back, and try on the perspective of appreciating the balance over the course of a week, month, or season of life, it feels like a more fulfilling assessment of balancing.
What is the best piece of mom advice you ever received?
I don’t know if it’s necessarily advice I received, but the advice I would offer would be to build and nourish meaningful relationships and to welcome – not fear – shifts in who your “people” become in this new season. Something I am most proud of as a parent is knowing that my husband and I felt present during each phase postpartum, rather than wishing a phase would happen sooner or last longer, even though we loved moments of each and were happy to say goodbye to some!
What’s your favorite thing to do when you need some “me” time?
I’ll own that these last questions have been the hardest for me, and that I need to renew my commitment to my own prioritization of self-care. Before kids, I scheduled an appointment to have my head massaged, hair washed and braided every 5 weeks. Now, it’s more like every 5 months, but I am steadily closing the gap on that, and it does feel gratifying. The behind-the-scenes of those longer stretches is balancing trying not to feel guilty, having childcare, not wanting to cancel on the professional if I am called to a birth, etc. But, I know I show up as a better version for my kids, my marriage, and the families I support when I feel my needs are being met, and then a bit extra.
Learn more about The Lemon Grove at www.thelemongrove.care and follow them on Instagram @the.lemon.grove and on Facebook @thelemongrovedoulaagencyperinatalwellness.
…
This post is sponsored by The Lemon Grove, but all opinions present are my own.