February 12, 2020

Meet Angelina Ruffin of Touch of Osun Midwifery Services in Stone Mountain

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Angelina Ruffin.

Angelina, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Touch of Osun (pronounced oshun), was founded by Angelina Ruffin, Certified Nurse Midwife. Offering memorable prenatal care, birth experience, and family care in the home environment. Angelina has lived in multiple cities such as Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and Detroit. She entered into healthcare in 1995 as a patient care technician and held various jobs as a medical assistant, phlebotomist, medical assistant instructor, community educator for Planned Parenthood. It was then she decided that she needed more and returned to school to receive an associate degree in nursing in 2007. Immediately, she worked in the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. Through her time there, she still desired more. She would say, “I want to try to help stop the train before it crashes.”

This leads her to Emory University in 2010, where she pursued a Masters of Science degree in Nursing specializing in Nurse-Midwifery and Family Nurse Practitioner. She decided that she wanted to be able to treat the family, not just one aspect of the family. She believes in community health and well-being. During this time, she served as a representative for the Emory Graduate Nursing Counsel. She was a voice for graduate nursing students and helped plan extracurricular service learning for students. She’s participated in the Lillian Carter Center global health initiative in Eleuthera, the Bahamas wear she participated in education and health screens. Locally, she continues to work with homeless women and children in Atlanta.

Angelina has worked as a labor and delivery nurse at various hospitals in Atlanta and California. She has experience working with unmedicated births, waterbirths, medicated births, and cesarean births. She also believes in the effectiveness of doulas. She’s inspired to empower women in pregnancy, labor, birth, and parenting. She is also a family nurse practitioner who believes that a family is a unit of health, not just one aspect of an individual as well as pursuing her doctorate degree at Emory University.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has not been a smooth road. I was a single African-American mother going back to school to become a midwife. I didn’t feel as if I truly belonged in the model of how I was being trained, which others had expressed that they did not think midwifery was for me. I knew there was more for me out there and that I defined my own destiny.

Please tell us about your practice.
I have been in practice as a midwife since 2014. Two years are practicing as a hospital based midwife and four years owning my own home birth business serving the metro Atlanta and surrounding areas. I have had a quick television appearance on Little Women of Atlanta as Tanya’s midwife. I’ve also worked on some projects for local documentaries. I am currently the Vice President of the local GA ACNM chapter for certified nurse midwives. I offer prenatal care, women’s health services, home births, education, preceptorship for upcoming student midwives. I’ve delivered about 500+ babies. I am a marriage of traditional/ herbal midwifery and the medical model. I sponsor and hire other women of color and support their growth as business owners.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Success for me is accomplishing anything that has been placed in front of you. For some, it’s learning how to walk when they couldn’t. For some it is watching your children grow into successful and productive adults. For me, it is helping as many women/people of color be the best them and have the best experiences they can while learning to give back and help the next generation. Each one teaches one.

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