I live with my husband and our three children, nestled amongst the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Southwestern Washington. I was thrust into the art of supporting women when my dearest friend asked me to attend her first birth nearly 10 years ago. In the decade following, my fascination with all things birth and motherhood has become undeniable as I have immersed myself in the depths of women’s wisdom through studying and practicing traditional midwifery, menstrual literacy, embodied movement, herbalism, and the biological laws of nature.

In my many years of studying various healing frameworks and modalities, I have come to realize that there is no substitute for lived experience. This is the kind of experience which can transform belief and second-hand information into embodied wisdom. There is a deep, deep knowing and a foundational trust in one’s sense of self and body that emerges when you come face-to-face with the unknown. And while every birth I have experienced has transformed me in some way, the free birth of my third child was a pivotal moment for me in learning how much I truly trust my body. It sparked a deeper curiosity in me of the adaptive and healing capacities innate within each of us. Her birth led me down a path of unraveling all that I thought I knew about how this beautiful human body works.

Women have been conceiving and birthing babies since the beginning of humankind. In their houses, their huts, their caves, women birthed babies. It is what we were designed to do. Allopathic medicine and the idea that women need help to birth their young is but a recent invention and distraction from this ancient practice. Animals in the wild do not require medical assistance to conceive or birth their babies. They are instinctually intact and they understand how to care for themselves in a biologically appropriate way. They know to seek food when hungry, to lick their wounds, to find a mate when ovulating and to seek a quiet, undisturbed place to birth their young. This biological, primal knowing is within your body, too. Domesticated human or wild animal, you were designed with the ability to conceive, birth, and mother without interference.

As a Mother and birth keeper, I am deeply devoted to the path of authentic midwifery and to serving women who choose to live and birth on their own terms. I invite you to join me as I continue down this path of unlearning, and re-imagine what it means to be a woman and a Mother.