I grew up down the street from a maternity home for teen mothers and women living without family support, trying to finish school and work jobs while raising babies and children alone. Through my high school’s community service program, I spent time at the home preparing holiday parties and gathering Christmas presents for the children. While I could not understand the complex nature of what the young mothers had experienced, witnessing the loving container around these women and children, I did understand, instantly and succinctly, that intact mother-child connection and mother love was the be-all, end-all of the human experience.
Thirty years of birth and babies later, and I am still fervently in awe of how women create life and sustain life. I am also completely enamored with the ingenious medicine of the wild plants around us. I love bringing the spirit of the plants into everything I do.
Deepening my devotion to the mysteries of this life and to Great Mother Love is a constant, radical engagement– an apprenticeship of the mother heart.
My teachers and mentors along the way include Pam England, Tami Kent, Lynn Schulte, Suzanne Tully, Marijke van Roojen, Paula Wiens, and Teresa Acheson, Aviva Romm, Tieraona Low Dog, MaryLou Singleton, Dr. Bharat Vaidya, Matthew Wood, and Lisa Ganora.
Certifications & Licenses
- Licensed Midwife (LM), Idaho Board of Midwifery
- Certified Professional Midwife (CPM), North American Registry of Midwives
- Certified Practitioner Women’s Integrative Medicine Institute
- Holistic Pelvic Care™ Provider
- Certified Birth Healing Specialist at The Institute for Birth Healing
Education & Training
- 2021 Functional Medicine Training at New Medicine for Women Institute with Aviva Romm
- 2004 Postgraduate Certificate of Midwifery from The Seattle Midwifery School (Now Bastyr)
- 2003 – 2005 Student Midwife: Around the Circle Midwifery in Olympia WA; Siri Jackman CNM at Holy Rosary Medical Center in Ontario OR, Treasure Valley Midwives in Boise ID; Port Villa Hospital, Vanuatu
- 2001 B.A. in Women’s Health Issues and Art Therapy, New College of California, San Francisco
- 1998 Birthing From Within™ Doula Certification
Birth & Midwifery Experience
- 2014 – Present, Homebirth Midwife in Hailey, Idaho
- 2005-2013, Practicing midwife in New Mexico and Montana, homebirth and birth center
- 2000, Labor Support, San Francisco General Hospital, CA
- 1998, Doula, Albuquerque NM
How I learned about birth
Growing up in and around Washington D.C., I didn’t know anything about birth, or plants. I don’t recall ever hearing about midwives, and certainly nothing about herbalists — all foreign. I knew plenty about politics. I watched the Anita Hill hearings, just as I had watched every other political event unfold in real time on District televisions everywhere.
At some point, my longing for a wild life beyond the confines of cities, beltways and suburburbs became insatiable. I knew that I needed to be in touch with something more primal and connected in order to survive this world. When I was nineteen, I set out to slower, dusty New Mexico to find a mentor. (I had heard women talking about such things as finding “teachers”). I knew my teacher was there in the southwest, in some form.
Down the street from my tiny garage apartment in Albuquerque was a musty, cluttered, creaky, lost-in-time, antiquarian bookstore with a short shelf of birth books. I pulled out a copy of Spiritual Midwifery, raced it home, and fell in love with each and every page. These women not much older than my mother and giving birth in VW buses, living together in nature and tending to each other’s prenatal care and births. They were doing it themselves, in joy, and in safety. Giving themselves over to the sublime energy that has moved through women since the beginning of human time on Earth. My world shifted on its axis. It was suddenly obvious — nothing was as awesome and divine as women giving birth in their power. Why wasn’t everyone doing this? What the hell happened??
I swiftly fell into a birth community of passionate, wise-woman healers and midwives who were reclaiming centuries of authoritative knowledge lost, while actively healing the wounds of patriarchy. It felt like coming home.
Soon I was working at the Birthing From Within office and Pam England was teaching me how to tend women in birth. I was enraptured by every minute of it. On the night of my first birth as a doula, my heart trembled as I walked into the dark, nearly silent house. I saw candle light flickering through a crack in the bedroom door, and found Monica squatting at the foot of her bed with a midwife on each side holding her. Speaking soft, decisive words of love beside her. I tiptoed in, praying my presence would not disrupt the magic. I wondered, why was I even there? Monica was entirely at ease in her fierceness, moving her baby down. After a few primal pushes, she reached down and gathered up a tiny baby to her chest. The midwives watched in silence, all was well. Nothing else needed to happen in that moment. In fact, anything they might add to that moment would detract from its sacredness. The clarity of their wisdom was piercing. This was happening in homes everywhere, across this whole Earth, and I had no idea. I felt like I had been let in on the humankind’s biggest secret.
I stepped out of Monica’s home just before dawn, bathed in the sweet, glowing light of the harvest moon anchoring the sky above. An everyday miracle. This birth was my initiation into the exquisite, unparalleled, wild beauty of birthing at home.
Over a decade later, the birth of my first baby was extremely long and difficult. Not only did I have irregularities in my pelvis from congenital misalignment in my legs, I had injured my sacrum more than a few times, and already had arthritis in my spine. I was left with more questions about birth than any answers. How could I have prepared my body differently? Why didn’t my baby rotate? How would I heal my wounded spirit?
I spent the next decade and beyond answering these questions. I needed to understand the real deal of how the mechanics (and energetics) of the pelvic organs, bones, and soft tissues worked in a much more sophisticated way than is taught in obstetrics. I learned about the the symphonic hormonal nature of the childbearing year, embryological sensory- motor development of the fetus, abdominal and uterine bodywork, healing pelvic wounds, the nature of trauma and grief, and bio-intelligent practices and therapies for the female system. Most importantly, I learned to understand and recognize, in real time, how nervous system states affect tissue states and how this affects birth and postpartum healing and long-term mothering.
Over time, I felt myself sensing and serving women in an entirely new way. I began to see the microcosm of female ecology as the basis for connected, joyful mothering and by extension, connected, joyful communities. My midwifery practice is a living matrix of everything I understand about women’s bodies, birth, and babies, along with humble surrender to all that remains unknown, and that is unknowable.
More about the Women’s Space I wish to create in Hailey:
What:
Women’s initiations and rites of passage are experienced by all females. They are defining cornerstones that underlie our lived experiences as teenagers, maidens, mothers, matriarchs, elder wise women and crones. Yet we’ve lost our collective witnessing of these initiations and the celebration of our changing roles in society. More than ever, women feel alone, isolated, and disoriented after initiations like birth, where they are literally new women, but lack the once built-in support structures of multi-generational family groups that would carry them through the vulnerable transition to motherhood.
My goal is to create an independent, woman run healing arts space dedicated to our connection, wisdom, solace and growth through all female life stages. It will be a cross-generational, safe landing place for women to be witnessed and resourced, have shared experiences together, and receive care from resident women’s health providers. A place for women in need to show up, exactly as they are, be seen, be given a warm hug and cup of tea by loving staff, take a load off, have appointments with resident providers, receive skilled help with breastfeeding, or just take a dance class with other women.
Because my expertise is in the childbearing year, the women’s house will be a haven for everything related to the childbearing year. But unlike most maternity-specific centers, this house will be a living embodiment of generational experience from babies to grandmothers. Girls and women need to see the trajectory of the women around them. They need to see how we are constantly changing and growing along a continuum. They need to see paths ahead, and the roles of the women beyond them. GradnThis is how we understand our lifespan, our creative power, and our role as life givers and transmitters of culture.
The place wish to create is a living container for all of the above.
Mission:
To provide women with opportunities to reconnect with their innate, sovereign power and energetic radiance through midwifery care, homebirthing, conscious mothering, bio-intelligent women’s healthcare, womb healing and plant medicine.
To provide fathers and families with opportunities to reconnect with the gentleness, joy and magic of homebirth, and to rediscover the unlimited capacity of embodied women to create transform society.
Vision:
Free midwifery care available to every woman wherever she chooses to give birth.
I wish to create a physical space for women’s embodied exploration of self, motherhood, birth, and women’s community through our daily lives and rites of passage. Shared space will house movement, dance, support groups, gathering circles, workshops, and events.
The center will contain will contain the spaces necessary for the provision of bio-intelligent healthcare services involving midwifery, adolescent, and maternal and child health.
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