Carol Leonard papers

Carol Leonard was born in Bangor, Maine on June 10, 1950. She received a B.S. in biology from New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire in 1974. She trained as a midwife from 1975 to 1977 with Dr. Francis Brown and has been a practicing midwife since 1978. In 1979 she co-founded the Concord (New Hampshire) Midwifery Service, where she practiced until 1987. In 2000, she founded the Longmeadow Farm Midwifery Service and Birthing Home at her farm in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, one of only two midwife-owned and operated, free-standing birth centers in the state. Leonard was a board member of the New Hampshire Feminist Health Center, where she trained and was a well-woman health care provider, as well. She was the first midwife certified to practice in New Hampshire (1985) and a charter member of the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) (1982). Through the years she held numerous positions within MANA and was elected president of the organization in 1986. In 1984 Leonard received the Bronze Medal for Bravery from the Australian government for saving a man's life, and in 1990 she went to the former Soviet Union to study birthing practices. This trip was videotaped and featured on ABC's 20/20 in April 1991. Leonard is on the faculty of Birthwise Midwifery School in Bridgton, Maine, a nationally accredited program. She is the author of Lady's Hands, Lions Heart: Memoirs of a Midwife (2008), co-author, with Elizabeth Davis, of Women's Wheel of Life: Thirteen Archetypes of Woman at Her Fullest Power (1996), and published a two-part series on menopause titled Women of the Thirteenth Moon: The Baby Boomer's Survival Guide to Menopause.