Meet
Sharon Ifayori Awofolaji
My full name and title is Iyanifa Apetebi Ifayori Sharon Awofolaji (Iya Ayinde), though I am often lovingly called Sharon, Iya Ayinde, or Auntie Yori within my community.
I am a community birth worker devoted to serving Black families through sacred, culturally rooted care. My work is grounded in the understanding that birth is not merely a physical event, but a spiritual rite of passage — a threshold where life, legacy, and divine purpose meet.
Although I am trained and certified as a Full Circle Doula, with additional training in mental health support, traditional herbs and medicine, and breastfeeding support, my deepest qualifications come from lived experience, spiritual alignment, and ancestral inheritance. I had the blessing of knowing three of my four great-grandmothers — each of them a “mother” in her community. From them, I inherited the heart work of nurturing, protecting, and uplifting our people. Their wisdom lives in my hands, my voice, and in the way I hold space.
My formal training in birth work has been guided by my teacher and mentor, Oloye Yeye Alaweye Agbebi, a traditional midwife whose leadership and instruction have profoundly shaped my understanding of birth as sacred work. Under her guidance, I learned to honor the spiritual dimensions of pregnancy and childbirth — to see birth as ceremony, initiation, and remembrance.
My journey as her student also carried me to Nigeria, where I was able to witness, learn, and immerse myself in traditional African birth practices. These experiences deepened my reverence for our ancestral ways and strengthened my commitment to restoring dignity, spirituality, and cultural continuity to the Black birth experience.
Central to my path is my spiritual surrender to the ways of Ifá. Through initiation, I was crowned an Iyanifa, entrusted with the wisdom and responsibility to walk in purpose and truth, rooted in goodness and divine intention. I was given the name Ifayori — “Ifá has come to put me in the spotlight” — and Elegbede — “the manifestation of Egbe here on earth.” These names are sacred reminders that my work is guided and that my service carries spiritual responsibility.
In my role as an Iyanifa, I offer the tools and resources for divination and deeper spiritual understanding within my birth practices. Divination, in the tradition of Ifá, is the sacred act of consulting Ifá regarding the past, present, and future of a situation. Through this spiritual consultation, guidance, insight, and instruction are revealed — offering clarity, alignment, and pathways toward greater outcomes and blessings. This spiritual guidance can be offered during pregnancy, labor and birth, as well as in the postpartum period — which is traditionally honored through naming ceremony. At each stage, divination provides deeper understanding of what is unfolding spiritually, what support may be needed, and how to align both parent and child with their highest good.
While divination is an important foundation, it is not the end of the work. Guidance must be followed by action, and insight must be integrated into intentional, practical steps. I fully support families in caring for themselves holistically — spiritually, emotionally, and physically — throughout their journey. Whether through spiritual prescriptions, ceremony, resource connection, or grounded preparation, my role is to help families move from awareness to embodiment.
Between the wisdom of the women who raised me, the teachings of my elders and mentors, my spiritual commitment, and my lived understanding of the Black birth experience in America, I offer care that is both grounded and elevated — practical and prayerful. It is my honor to walk beside families during one of life’s most sacred transitions, holding space with intention, protecting the spirit of the moment, and ushering in new life with reverence, strength, and love.
Honoring ancestral wisdom while supporting families through the sacred journey of birth.
