Yaya DaCosta Opens Up About Her Work as a Doula (Exclusive) – ryan

• Yaya DaCosta reveals she has been a birth worker since 2010
• The actress is currently hosting the Black Maternal Health Festival online through April 17
• She aims to educate women and destigmatize traumatic stories surrounding childbirth

Yaya DaCosta is ready to share another one of her passions.

The actress came on the scene as a runner-up in cycle 3 of America’s Next Top Model before transitioning to acting with roles in All My Children, Whitney, Chicago Med, Lincoln Lawyer — and her latest role as Monique Smith in Lifetime’s Not My Family: The Monique Smith Story.

At the same time she was charting a path for herself in Hollywood, the actress was nurturing another passion in private: birth work. DaCosta says it’s been a deep interest, and she is finally ready to share it with the world as host of the first annual Black Maternal Health Festival online.

“I’ve been a birth worker since 2010,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. “One of my teachers, a midwife, Sumayyah Franklin of Sumi’s Touchis putting on this huge online festival where people are going to be chiming in from all around the world, discussing the Black Maternal Health Crisis, but from a place of solution finding, from a place of celebration,” she says.

The conference will focus on the important work of doulas, midwives and other birth workers and how they can turn birth into a beautiful journey instead of a scary one.

After being in the space for 15 years, DaCosta has seen an increase in conversations about birth work and an overall positive evolution in maternal health — but not for Black women.

“The most recent study has shown that since legislation and policy changes have been in the works, since doulas have been included in healthcare for people to be able to use their insurance, since all these changes have been made, the numbers of maternal mortality have decreased for white women, for Asian women, for Hispanic women, indigenous women, basically every demographic in this country — except Black women. Our numbers have worsened,” she says.

DaCosta does not want to contribute to the fear that exists surrounding birth; instead, she wants to confront challenges with tangible solutions so that every person can have the safe and peaceful birth they desire.

“This is a very serious thing, and we are going to be talking about it (during the festival), but we’re going to be talking about it from a place of solutions,” she tells PEOPLE.

“Because so many people have this concern. They’re reading these articles and these moms are just scared. And so we need to know that other options are available that have not been shown to us,” she says.

“When it comes to the masses, the movies that we watch all have the same screaming crisis representation of birth, the stories that we hear from our mothers and our aunts and our grandmothers, right? We’ve heard our whole lives things like, ‘Oh, that was the worst pain of my life,’ Or, ‘You’re so lucky to be alive, (childbirth almost) killed me,’ right? All these things that make women who are pregnant enter this state of fear… It’s time for us to stop telling these fearful stories and to just show that there are other opportunities.”

For DaCosta, the option of having a home birth is not one she just preaches about, but one that is personal to her as well. The actress gave birth to her son in the comfort of her own home back in 2013, an experience she says has informed her work.

“I personally had an ecstatic home birth, and I did that after I was already a birth worker, so I know the importance of preparing our minds for this process of undoing, unlearning, basically throwing away all the programs that have been imprinted on us since we were kids,” she explains.

DaCosta continues: “My favorite thing is home birth because it’s just like, you can do what you want. You can play your music, you can dance, you can dim the lights, you can use all of the tools available to us, including pleasure, including your partner if they’re present in the process, understanding that there’s a correlation between the way that we get pregnant and the way that we get unpregnant.”

And while she is in full support of home births and fellow birth workers, she also recognizes the importance of doctors and other medical professionals who step in when things don’t go according to plan. Her mission, though, is to educate women and let them know that they have a multitude of options.

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“Home birth is just free,” she concludes. “And it allows (birth) to be experienced in its full capacity as something so sacred. Obviously, it’s not always possible, but I think it’s possible more often than we think because of what we’ve been told.”

The Black Maternity Health Festival coincides with Black Maternal Health Week and goes through April 17. You can find more information here.