A Bowl of Soul provides postpartum support for Black women | MADISON MAGAZINE

In 2020, collard greens gave Qwantese Dourese Winters an idea.

While tending a plot at Troy Community Gardens on Madison’s north side, Winters, a doula and culinarian, grew the nutrient-dense leafy greens that are commonly served braised in the African American culinary tradition.

It reminded Winters of a time when her own mother had cooked her collard greens to bring her back to health.

Winters was working with a newly postpartum mother at the time and decided to bring her a meal of collard greens from the plants in her garden. Winters then began to make meals for more clients, mothers and their families, as well as other people she knew who needed extra support.

After five years of self-funding an informal effort to feed mothers recovering from childbirth, Winters has found a name, a supporting partner and a source of sustainable funding for her program. A Bowl of Soul operates out of Willy Street Co-op’s community space, Aubergine, and serves low-income or single Black mothers in the community at no charge — harnessing financial support from the Dane County Partners in Equity Food Project Grant Program and Willy Street Co-op’s 2025 Community Reinvestment Fund. The program procures local, seasonal ingredients from REAP Food Group’s partner farmers; Alex Booker at Firm Footing Farm; and Kim Fruin, chief agriculturist at FarmHer Greens Regenerative Farmstead and a grower with Occupy Madison at Troy Farms.

“I know from personal experience that food is medicine,” says Winters, who has prediabetes and premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD, an endocrine disorder that causes severe premenstrual symptoms and mood shifts. Eating nutritious, whole foods has helped her manage these conditions. Winters applies that same logic to postpartum care. “If you look at other cultures, food is a really big part of their postpartum care experience,” she says, noting that mothers are encouraged to incorporate specific ingredients into their diet that aid with milk supply, tone uterine muscle and stem bleeding.

With A Bowl of Soul, Winters prepares meals — which she delivers to three mothers at a time once a week to feed them for the first six weeks of postpartum — with herbs and ingredients that are known to boost postpartum health, like red date tea, raspberry leaves, nettles, calendula and moringa. The offerings might include soups, stews, collard greens, bone broths and cornbread — dishes that are comforting to a healing body and use ingredients familiar to the Black diaspora.

“It’s so important for me to make sure that we’re serving specifically Black women who are low-income and who are mothering or parenting alone,” says Winters, who also offers educational postpartum workshops and rehabilitative programming for all new mothers in the community. According to Public Health Madison and Dane County, local Black women experience the highest rates of postpartum depression, and local Black households are at the highest risk for food insecurity. Winters believes that access to food, health outcomes for Black people and poverty are interconnected issues — and she’s quick to debunk the stigma that low-income, single Black mothers aren’t working hard to financially support and nourish themselves and their children. On the contrary, she notes that these women are stretched extra thin between working long hours and taking care of their children during any remaining hours of the day. It leaves them little time to cook a healthy meal.

“[I’m] taking away the need for them to use any of their [remaining] energy to cook their own meals so that they can just rest and do what they need to do to heal,” says Winters. “[When] someone can remove that labor of having to cook for yourself, that’s medicinal in and of itself.”

Emma Waldinger is food editor at Madison Magazine.

In the 2024 Milwaukee Press Club’s Excellence in Journalism Awards, “Back of House” won Bronze in the “Best Column” category.

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