Leah Roshel Fellers

10/17/2025

Trauma can significantly shape how a person experiences pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period. During birth, these trauma responses often manifest through the lens of the nervous system’s survival modes: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.

Here’s how each might show up in a birth context:

🔥FIGHT RESPONSE
What it looks like during birth:

A strong need to control the environment or people around them.

Arguing with or pushing back against medical providers or birth partners.

Anger, irritation, or aggression (verbal or physical).
Resistance to being touched or directed.

Hyper-vigilance perceiving threats even in neutral situations.

🔥Underlying feelings:
Feeling trapped or unsafe
Past trauma being reactivated by loss of control or perceived authority.

🏃‍♀️ FLIGHT RESPONSE
What it looks like during birth:

A desire to leave the birthing space, hospital, or situation entirely.

Panic attacks, restlessness, pacing.
Mental “checking out”ruminating on escape, wanting the birth to be over.

Urging for unnecessary interventions as a means of escaping the experience.

🏃‍♀️Underlying feelings:
Fear of being harmed, retraumatized, or overwhelmed.
Birth reminding them of a previous trauma (e.g., assault, medical procedures).

❄️ FREEZE RESPONSE

What it looks like during birth:
Going silent, shutting down, or becoming unresponsive.

Difficulty making decisions or advocating for themselves.

Numbness, dissociation, or detachment from the body or surroundings.

A “foggy” or dreamlike feeling; disconnect from the birth experience.

❄️Underlying feelings:
Overwhelm to the point of collapse.
Nervous system goes offline to survive what feels unbearable.

🤝 FAWN RESPONSE
What it looks like during birth:
Agreeing to things they don’t want (consent without true consent).

Appeasing providers or partners to avoid conflict.
Smiling or being overly accommodating despite discomfort or fear.

Suppressing their needs or pain to not be a “burden.”
Underlying feelings:

❄️Fear of rejection, punishment, or abandonment.
Learned survival from past abuse stay safe by keeping others happy.

10/11/2025

🏵️What low AMH means: It indicates a lower ovarian reserve (number of eggs), not necessarily poor egg quality or infertility.Many women with low AMH still conceive naturally or with assistance.It’s a data point, not a life sentence.

🏵️Being hardworking often means high stress. Chronic stress impacts hormones.

🏵️Try:
🏵️Mindfulness
🏵️meditation
🏵️Breathe work 🏵️Regular gentle exercise (walking, yoga, strength training) no more than 3x a week . Therapy or coaching if you’re feeling overwhelmed.
🏵️ Prioritizing sleep 7-9 hours a night

🏵️A woman with low AMH may have fewer eggs, but those eggs can still be of good quality especially if she is younger or takes steps to support her reproductive health. Egg quality refers to the health and viability of the eggs, which affects the chances of fertilization and healthy embryo development.

🏵️Consider the Mediterranean diet, which has been shown to improve fertility outcomes.
🏵️Prenatal Vitamins: With methylfolate (not folic acid), iron, and B12.
🏵️Omega-3 Fatty Acids (DHA/EPA): Anti-inflammatory and hormone-supportive.
🏵️Vitamin D3: Supports reproductive hormones (check your levels).
🏵️Smoking damages eggs directly and accelerates ovarian aging
🏵️Alcohol: Limit to 0–1 drink/week if trying to conceive
🏵️Caffeine: Keep under 200 mg/day (~1 cup of coffee)

🏵️Know this ! AMH is not a fixed number and can change. AMH can change due to:
– Stress (yes, even emotional stress!)
– Hormonal imbalances
– Weight changes
– Thyroid health
– Certain medications or birth control

🌿 How Mercier Therapy Might Support AMH
✔️Improved blood flow to the ovaries may enhance follicle health and responsiveness.
✔️Reduced pelvic congestion and inflammation may help normalize hormone signaling.
✔️Support of endocrine function can indirectly influence ovarian hormone production.
✔️Some women report a slight increase in AMH or improved follicle count on ultrasound after several sessions.

Come see me as your Mercier Therapist in KC 💋

10/07/2025

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🕯️ Remembering Our Loved Ones 🕊️

As the leaves fall and the days grow shorter, October gently reminds us of those who are no longer with us.
We carry their memories in our hearts in quiet moments, in shared laughter, in the warmth of a fall breeze. 🍂

This month, we honor them.
We speak their names.
We celebrate their lives.
We hold space for love that never fades.
Tag someone you’re remembering this October. Let’s lift their names in light and love. 💛

10/04/2025

Ritu Nanos is a death doula, martial artist, poet, sacred energy mover, and deep soul whisperer.
A 5th degree black belt in Kenpo, Qigong master, and dedicated practitioner of Vipassana meditation, Ritu’s practice and study of mortality through the lens of martial and energetic arts spans the course of over 30 years. Her continuous curiosity and personal experiences of the creative dance between life and death opened this question within her: what would life look like if we learned to walk it alongside the honesty of death? Her contemplation led to training with Alua Arthur, owner of Going with Grace, and receiving her Death Doula certification in September of 2024. Through art installations, community conversations, reflective workshops, and ceremonies, Ritu opens and holds the container for people to gently explore their own relationship with death, and how by doing so, they may invite in a more authentic life and build a more compassionate world. The heart of Ritu’s work centers embodiment, empowerment, transformation, integration, movement, and compassion.

09/24/2025

🍂 Fall Equinox Is Here And The Babies Are Coming Through !! 🍂 Love all the positive pregnancy from clients lately 🫶🏻

Is it your season for conception ? As the light and dark meet in balance, so too does the body find its rhythm.
The Fall Equinox marks more than just a seasonal shift it’s a sacred portal of harvest, grounding, and transformation. And for many, it’s also a time when spirit babies choose to arrive. 🌕✨

🍁 The cooling earth energy brings us inward.
🌱 The womb space stirs with deep wisdom.
🌀 And those on the fertility journey may feel an intuitive pull — a sense that now is the time to nourish, receive, and align.

This season is rich for:
💆🏽‍♀️ Fertility bodywork
🌬️ Releasing summer heat + stored stress
🧘🏾‍♀️ Balancing the nervous system
🌿 Inviting in new life — physically, energetically, spiritually

If you’ve been walking the fertility path whether you’re trying to conceive, healing after loss, or simply reconnecting with your womb this seasonal transition holds powerful medicine.

✨ Honor your body.
✨ Listen to your womb.
✨ Open to the shift.

Fall babies are coming through. 🌾🕊️

09/14/2025

Reclaiming Birth: Returning to the Wisdom of Women
For centuries, birth was sacred. It was a rite of passage, guided by women, held in the safety of home, and honored as the powerful, physiological, and spiritual process it truly is. But over time, this wisdom was pushed asideburied under fear, control, and medicalization. Today, we are being called to remember.

✨ It’s time to restore women’s rights to birth at home safely, supported, and with full autonomy. Home birth is not a trend; it is a return. A return to trusting the body. A return to honoring the mother. A return to choosing who is present, how we move, how we breathe, and how we bring our children into the world.

🌹 Or****ic birth is not a fantasy it is a mindset, a remembering of what birth can be. When a woman births free of fear, interruption, and trauma when she feels safe, loved, and fully in her power birth can be not only pleasurable, but ecstatic. Because birth and sexuality arise from the same source. Both require surrender. Both require trust. Both require us to be fully in our bodies.

🌀 And at the heart of this restoration lies the Wise Woman Midwifery tradition the village midwives, the birth keepers, the herbalists, the elders who passed down knowledge woman to woman, generation after generation. These were the caretakers of physiological birth, the holders of sacred ceremony, and the protectors of women’s autonomy.

Let us remember: Midwifery is not a backup plan. It is a sovereign, ancient calling. Midwives are not assistants to the system they are guardians of a forgotten power.

🌿 To restore home birth rights is to restore trust in women.

🌿 To embrace the possibility of or****ic birth is to reclaim joy in what has long been feared.

🌿 To revive the wise woman traditions is to heal a wound that has lived in our lineage for too long.
Birth is not a medical event it is a miracle, and every woman deserves the right to birth in safety, sovereignty, and sacredness.

🌍We are remembering. We are reclaiming. We are rising.

08/25/2025

Join us for coffee, laughter, education, and business conversation 🎉

I know if your a doula you can feel like you're on a Island 🏝️ Doing the work alone is never easy.

Come meet some of the birth community and share about your business. We would love to meet you 🙏

This months speaker is my acupuncturist is . An incredible women’s leader in health and wellness!

08/22/2025

Kids are back to school - let’s nerd out with a book club!

Are you interested in a free book club this Fall? Vote below 👇

Tell me which morning of the week would work for you M-F.

08/22/2025

Kids are back to school 🍂 It’s fall you’ll 🍂

Would you be interested in free book club guided by a certified fertility wellness instructor for 6 weeks mid October - November to nerd out on fertility awareness ?!! Considering the back room at pilgrims coffee / or if there is a bigger interest for those out of state we can zoom . Let me know if this idea intrigues you . I’ll be making a sign up sheet for those interested . I have books to share if you want to borrow on for this group if we meet in person .

08/20/2025

04/25/2025

This has been a project!

✨Building a space from almost scratch is not for the faint of heart —

Here is what you are looking at -
💆Yoni steaming room - 4 steam chairs for clients
🤰Castor oil and red light therapy bed
🎊Classroom for the community 🤰
💕bodywork room
✨1 extra practitioner room for a women who is centered on mama /baby care ( we should talk ;)

Located in Grandview ✨

🥂🥂🥂 Greatful

03/15/2025

I have completed training and am now on her provider list to help babies out with common issues such as :

🫶 Torticollis
🫶 Body restriction
🫶plagiocephaly
🫶Tongue ties
🫶Stress
🫶Digestion issues
🫶latch issues

What is bodywork for babies? It's a series of stretches to help your body feel comfortable and unrestricted in their body. This helps release tension and stress with cranial sacral holding and body-release maneuvers.

Know your baby is struggling not being comfortable in their body? I would love to see you both in my office, let’s help your baby out with a holistic approach to baby care. There are so many times I needed more tools for helping babies after birth and I am thankful to have this work now in my toolbox.