From my earliest memories of my grandmother speaking in tongues and “laying on hands,” I inherently understood that humans are portals capable of channeling a force greater than ourselves. We are divine, we are powerful, and our energy can heal ourselves and others.

When I had a daughter of my own, I felt that energy greater than me takeover my whole body & being. As I surrendered to wave after wave of contraction and moaning, I sensed a great transformation happening in me. I hadn’t yet been exposed to the idea that birth was the greatest tribal initiation possible for a woman, but something in me sense that I would never be the same. I had crossed a threshold of no return…

And yet, my life carried on as if nothing much happened. I mothered alone most days. Sleepless nights and new mom anxiety mounted, but I pushed on through graduate school after year one and kept on keeping on. I managed to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania with a graduate degree in Social Work. I dove right into some of the most devastating women’s work - sexual abuse & exploitation.

After burnout from the lack of tribe & community to help me stay integrated and whole through this intense women’s work - both mothering and caring for women with disorders of extreme stress and trauma - I landed in an outpatient mental health office offering the 4D model of integrative care. I would come to understand this model as the medicine wheel, an ancient circle used by tribes all around the globe for gathering community, healing all manner of malady, and holding ceremony.

Here, in this undercover sanctuary place, I began consuming every modality for mental and spiritual healing that I could take in: mindfulness-based stress reduction, consulting hypnosis, shamanic drumming, Reiki, EMDR, tapping & EFT, brain mapping, and the list goes on. Check out the button left & below for an exhaustive list! Most poignantly, I took in the tip of the ice berg on CPP (chronic pelvic pain).

After this office closed, I jumped deep into the alternative & tribal healing communities. Attending lodges, holding women’s circles in my yurt office, and ceremonies in the forest became everyday life for me. I studied Holy Womb meditation, mantra, & healing. I traveled abroad for tantra & European shamanism transmissions, and I came to integrate my own tribal roots through PA Dutch braucheri and Celtic magic.

Finally, I started to feel that birth initiation & transformation come fully alive in my body!

I could begin to embody what had started coming through me at Naomi’s birth - a fervent belief that bodies are holy and women’s bodies are the holy grail! I was off to the races!! I studied in a sisterhood with a yoga therapist and tantrika who taught us yoni mapping and massage in the most honoring-to-women’s-sexuality way I’ve ever seen or heard. I ate up Tami Lynn Kent’s Wild Feminine material and then attended her Holistic Pelvic Care class. And finally, I returned to CPP and the medical study of the pelvic bowl with the International Pelvic Pain Society (IPPS).

As a member and clinical foundations student of the IPPS, I am highly encouraged that the whole world is beginning to see and believe just how special and powerful these bodies are! The treatment of pelvic issues is so beautifully complex and important. Helpers and healers can be fully competent and capable of addressing the most primal, sacred unifying zone of the women’s bodies - the holy grail & medicine bowl, the pelvis <0