My Story

Hello, Stranger!

Whatever brings you here to sit by the flames of my digital hearth, I sincerely hope you find something nourishing.

I am not a brand.

My identity is distinct from my strategy for capitalism. The praxis & gnosis I have cultivated in decades of devotion, service & study can’t be bought or sold, yet they infuse all of my offerings with a quality of soulfully lived experience that no amount of book learning or credentials can provide.

A parentified child who was often called an “old soul”, I have been intellectually ravenous & promiscuous, politically anarchist, spiritually Jewitch & animist all my life. I’ve been keeping a journal since I was six years old, & have the receipts to show my embrace of both critical & creative thinking, spiritual & scientific inquiry has been lifelong. I thought I wanted to be a singer, or a lawyer when I grew up. Those journals reveal that my study of the art & science of womb-wellness started at age eight, when my mother had a full hysterectomy. A few years after my mom’s hysterectomy, my older sister’s periods began, & resembled scenes from the film the Exorcism. These terrifying experiences inspired me to actively seek a different way of being in my body than the examples around me provided.

As my peers began to bleed & become sexually active I became an informal counselor as early as 6th grade, when I remember guiding a friend with her first tampon insertion. I went on to support the abortion of a dear friend with nourishing food, herbal medicine, & ritual at age 14. Classmates voted for me to be one of the school’s few “peer counselors” in 8th grade, which is when I started volunteering at Planned Parenthood as a peer educator. The volunteer job became a paid campus organizer position in college, & I later served as a patient advocate & abortion doula in Planned Parenthood’s clinics in Portland, Oregon.

At 19 I began studying traditional midwifery, folk herbalism, & to attend birth. A few years later I completed Elizabeth Davis’s intensive midwifery training Heart & Hands, & proceeded to spend the entire decade of my 20s on-call for birth. Throughout my birthwork era, I continued to support miscarriage & abortion, teach the fertility awareness method as contraception, & serve as a community health-worker offering counsel & care for a myriad of gynecalogical processes.

In my 3rd decade I leaned into my craft as a writer & educator, & built a business online. I self published several books, created courses, & spent way too much time sitting still, staring at a screen.

I just turned 40, & I never know how I should answer people when they ask, “What do you do?” Sometimes I like to reply simply, “Whatever it takes, babe.”

Click here to learn more about Fruit of Knowledge membership!

Your donations make it possible to make my courses available on a pay-what-you-can basis, while sustaining myself & this vital work.

Donate