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. 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.
You can read more about my philosophy here.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in Humanities with a concentration in women’s reproductive health from the New College of California I completed my postgraduate midwifery education at the Seattle Midwifery School in 2004 (SMS has since merged with Bastyr University). I have apprenticed with all manner of midwives, from self-taught to European trained, in various clinical settings – home, birth center, and hospital, both in the US and abroad. I have been attending births since 1998 and have been a Licensed (LM) and Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) since 2006. I have over twenty five years of experience working with women and families in pregnancy, birth and early parenting.
My commitment to safe, holistic, and woman-centered midwifery practice involves regular continuing education and advanced learning opportunities for midwives ranging including clinical skills, pre and perinatal psychology, and neonatal neuroscience. In addition to being a clinical herbalist I also hold certifications in Holistic Pelvic Care, Birth Healing, and Functional Medicine.
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, Lisa Ganora, and Nils and Jill Bergman.
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
And If you really want to know about me…I am not one of those midwives who grew up watching babies being born on a farm. The only herb I was familiar with as a child was cinnamon (still a favorite). I was born in Washington D.C. and raised among the cultural crossroads of an internationally oriented city. As a child I would set out on solitary adventures seeking out any wild spaces accessible to a ten year old on foot, which at the time were the city’s wastewater storm drain channels. Alongside these ditches and tunnels grew an urban jungle canopy of arching trees, messy vines, flowers, berries, and “weeds.” A perfect place to connect with the wild pulse of nature amidst the cars and concrete.
After we moved out of the city, I still walked the storm drains in the hidden untamed spaces of an otherwise manicured place. On my way home from wandering I would pass by the Baptist Maternity Home for teen mothers. Eventually, through my high school’s community service program, I would spend time at the group home preparing holiday parties for the residents and gathering Christmas presents for the children.
The complexity of the trauma and challenges of young women living at the group home was beyond my full understanding; I was a cultural outsider. What I could grasp, however, was the unbridled and exuberant love the mothers had for their children. It hit me like a storm surge. Some of the women even breastfeed at time when formula reigned supreme. There was a recognition in my cellular memory. A kindling of what women instinctively know how to do. What they know is right. I knew I was witnessing something powerful and primal. The presence of older women in charge leading the young mothers amplified the sweet feelings of caretaking and belonging. Those times at the maternity home planted the seeds for my understanding that intact mother-child connection is the cornerstone of the human experience
A few years later, having heard the groovy women around me talk about such things as finding “their teachers,” I set out to slower, dusty New Mexico to find my mentor when I was nineteen. Down the street from my tiny garage apartment in Albuquerque was a musty, cluttered, creaky, lost-in-time, antiquarian bookstore with a tiny shelf of birth books far above my head. I pulled out a copy of Spiritual Midwifery with it’s 1960’s patterned blue spine, raced it home, and fell in love with each and every page.
Women in this book were giving birth in Volkswagon 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. My world shifted on its axis. WHY had this never been revealed to me before??? A universe unzipped before me. Suddenly nothing else made sense, and everything made sense. Why wasn’t everyone doing this?
I swiftly fell into a birth community of passionate, wise-woman healers and midwives who were reclaiming centuries of authoritative knowledge, while actively healing the wounds of patriarchy and the medical domination of women’s bodies and birth. It felt like coming home.
I began working for Pam England at the Birthing From Within office helping her to market her new book to midwives. Pam taught me how to tend women in birth. 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’m sure it did).
Monica was entirely at ease in her fierceness, working her baby down. I gently added some rhythmic contact with my hands, praying I was doing something helpful. When she finally reached down and gathered up her tiny baby, 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 my mind was blown again. 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 homebirth.
Over a decade later, I became a practicing midwife and was initiated as a mother with the birth of my own baby, Wyatt. A congenital misalignment in my legs and pelvis made birthing extremely challenging. I birthed him triumphantly in the hospital with my midwives and allies, but I was left with more questions about birth than answers. How could I have prepared my body differently? How would I heal my wounded spirit? I knew there was repair work to be done with my baby as well but no one spoke to me about any of that. I understood there were huge gaps in education of all maternity care providers, including midwives. No one was thinking about pelvic mobility and how to optimize birth. (The internet barely existed then). And no one was taught to understand and address the baby’s experience of birth.
I spent the subsequent decade addressing these topics. I needed to understand 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 body. Most importantly, I learned to understand and recognize, in real time, how nervous system states create tissue states, and how this affects the birth process, postpartum healing, and long-term mothering.
Over time, I started to serve women in much more holistic, intuitive, and embodied way. Integrating pelvic bodywork and principles of pre and perinatal psychology was far more fulfilling to me than the standard course of clinical maternity care. I began to see the microcosm of female ecology as the basis for connected, joyful mothering and by extension, connected, joyful communities.
In my third decade of midwifery, I am still fervently in awe of how women create life and sustain life. The magic of mothers and babies in love is the heart of our species, wherever we are, however old we are. I no longer roam the cities. I’m tucked into a little cottonwood forest by a wild river. Wholly enamored with the fertile and genius plants around us. I love reuniting people with the spirit of the plants.
More about the Mother and Baby Space
Mission:
To foster maternal and child health and bonding through the establishment of a community space, a hearth, a gathering spot for learning and growing together with the provision of midwifery and breastfeeding services, education, newborn therapies, and bio-intelligent women’s healthcare.
Vision
A sanctuary for women and babies during the childbearing year and beyond. For any woman or mother to show up, exactly as they are, be seen, be given a warm hug and cup of tea. To be nurtured and resourced. To share in the collective strength of other women. Free midwifery care available to every woman wherever she chooses to give birth. Skilled breastfeeding support and holistic mother-baby care.
This house will be a living embodiment of inter-generational experience from babies to grandmothers. Girls and women need to see the paths and roles of embodied women around them. They need to see how we are constantly changing and growing along a continuum. This is how we understand our lifespan, our creative power, and our role as life givers and transmitters of culture.
The center will house WRM and other maternal-child health providers as space allows. There will be a classroom and movement space for dance, yoga, birth preparation classes, and related events.
Why:
The health and happiness of our species relies on the health and happiness of our mothers and their intact bonds with their offspring. Humans have a biological blueprint for ensuring mother-baby attachment, attunement, and love. As mammals, we are designed to experience an exquisite, often ecstatic, always messy and sleep deprived period of matrescence.
As a culture, we have lost our way with birth and mothering. Birth is often a lonely and anxious experience.
Women largely give birth in hospitals without community or comfort, and leave traumatized and unprepared for the hardships of early mothering, breastfeeding, and life postpartum. More than ever, women feel alone, isolated, and disoriented after the initiation of birth, lacking the once built-in support structures of multi-generational family groups that would carry them through the vulnerable transition to motherhood.
Our local community lacks gentle gathering spaces, particularly for new mothers and babies to convene and be nurtured in the presence of other women. Our existing holistic care environments are mostly inaccessible to the average pregnant or postpartum woman in the valley. Sadly, breastfeeding in public is a rare event. Women sense that there has been a severing of their collective wisdom. They know there is more for them to experience but they have not been shown the way. The mother-baby center will be a lighthouse honoring the vulnerable and unique experience of matrescence.
