All The Birthy Things

Do you feel it, Reader?! Or is it just me?? It seems like the collective unconscious is engaging in choreographed movement away from the virtual world. 🔅[Print] magazines are making a comeback, and subscription letter services are gaining traction. 🔅I've noticed friends putting old VHS/TV combos in their kitchens. 🔅There are a myriad devices on the market designed to help lock us out of our devices so we can focus on the tangible world. 🔅Book sales keep rising. 🔅Sales on purely vitual, online...

Dear Reader, In recent years, I've started paying attention to the saints. As someone who was not raised in the Catholic or Orthodox traditions but reveres and respects them (and has landed in the "middle way" of Anglicanism), I've been curious to dive into the treasure trove of the lives and examples of the saints, that "great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1) who are already participating in eternal, heavenly worship around the throne of God. Though my beliefs around the idea of canonized...

Wanted you to be amongst the first to know, Reader: I'm doing something new with Embrace Birth Journey... We're going LIVE!!! Yes, cohort-style. Meaning, a small group will all start and end simultaneously. Course content will be dripped out each month and paired with a live Zoom call. Between calls, we'll keep in touch with the voice- and text-messaging app, Telegram. You will be supported. Seen. Heard. You will meet some amazing EDD buddies. And you'll be armed with some of the most...

Dear Reader, "That's impossible. That couldn't be happening right now."⁠⁠I hear these words around women's health -- and in pregnancy and birth -- far too often.⁠⁠Let me give two examples.⁠⁠1️⃣ When a mama is in her first trimester and expresses that she has felt her baby move. As if she cannot be trusted to recognize the sensation of an independent life moving within her body or differentiate it from gas!⁠⁠2️⃣ When a mama states that her baby is coming NOW. As if she cannot accurately assess...

I have some big news for aspiring doulas and birthkeepers, Reader! In the birth world, Lauren and I saw a "gap." The gap was in the place where autonomous birth and deep faith in YHWH overlap. In that place, there was not one doula or birthkeeper training. But over the years we've learned that sometimes if you SEE the gap, it may be that you're meant to also FILL the gap. And so that's what Lauren and I set out to do with Hearthmother Journey. (Same with the birth podcasts landscape, which is...

Dear Reader, I thought it would be fun to hit on one common "objection" to home birth that I often hear, and maybe you sometimes hear it from people, too, when you share your plans for a home birth. Let this little article help you know how to respond, or put your own mind at ease. HOME BIRTH HANG-UP:⁠ "It's MESSY and we don't want to clean it up."⁠ ⁠ Friends, birth is a little messy no matter where it happens, but it's really not THAT messy. And the cleanup is quite simple if there's careful...

Dear Reader, Today I'm sharing a poem of sorts, one I wrote a few years ago. A Birthkeeper's Hands My hands are in service to you and your baby.⁠ Before I came through the door of your home and into your sacred birthing space⁠ I dedicated them to God and offered them up to be used on your behalf⁠ ⁠ I have intentionally trained them and thoughtfully informed them to know which touches are ⁠ therapeutic⁠ comforting⁠ needful for assisting when things feel scary or are going awry⁠ ⁠ My hands are...

Dear Reader, Raise your hand if you are basically ALWAYS up for a good birth story! 🙋♀️ What makes a birth story "good?" Human nature is drawn to the incredible, the unlikely, the dramatic, and the suspenseful. But when it comes to birth, the stories that are simple and straightforward are equally as awesome. One mama whose birth story I shared on my blog a while back was a little shy about sharing at first because she was afraid it was boring. I think we are in need of "boring" birth...

Dear Reader, Today we're in part 7&8 of a series on the Way of the Hearthmother, a Christ-centric and holistic framework to navigating resolution/healing as developed by Lauren Hall and as we teach within Hearthmother Journey. You can catch up on the other steps here. Today I'm combining the last two steps: Step 7 is Forceful Intervention Step 8 is Invasive Intervention Though these are two separate steps, they do tend to bleed into one another a little bit. As a reminder, we approach these...

Dear Reader, Today we're in part 4 of a series on the Way of the Hearthmother, a Christ-centric and holistic framework to navigating resolution/healing as developed by Lauren Hall and as we teach within Hearthmother Journey. You can catch up on the other steps here. Today -- after a nearly month-long break from this series (hello, holidays!) -- I'm pick up with Step 6, which is the first in three layers of intervention that sometimes become necessary in cases when all proceeding steps don't...