Sacred Bridges

11/28/2024

From Autumn Cavender-Wilson:

Center for Indigenous Midwifery (CFIM) and NARM are co-hosting a listening session for indigenous midwives and indigenous midwifery students!

The landscape of indigenous birth work is wholly unique, and our collective wisdom is necessary to guide NARM forward during this transformation.

With every ounce of humility, I'm asking this whole community to come forward with your stories, with your frustrations, with your visions of opportunity at this crucial moment.

Wicanhpi Iyotan Win de miye ye!

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIkc-yspj0jGdFgQFpLPBLulNkNwLBU5PC2

10/28/2024

08/22/2024

In response to the announcement of Mad River Hospital’s L+D (Trillium Birth Center) closure:

In healthcare 🏥 options are accessibility and at the root of person/patient-centered care. Having options is trauma prevention.

For the community that births in our rural part of the world, it is a massive upset to lose a birthing location option.

Especially when that leaves just one hospital option left for an entire county.

After October, our local reality will be 1:40 between our northern coastal hospital-birth options and 2:40 between the southern hospital-birth options. This spans 3 counties.

I do not think this is the “end of the world”for our community, AND I’m very aware of the realities of such a change. And how the ripples reach further than options of where to birth in a hospital.

Our community’s birth culture will undoubtedly be effected by this closure. Even if all the same providers are absorbed by the remaining L+D.
Our local reproductive health options will be effected by this closure. This is going to be hard(er for some than others). I also have faith in our community’s birth culture to thrive. The dust will settle. We will find our way, together.

With the immediate shock of the news still swirling in hearts and minds, I want to remind our pregnant community that you are held. While it might feel like a rug has been pulled out from under you, there are strong arms and hearts around you keeping you from falling.

I’m offering discounted “Ask Me Anything” Calls to families feeling effected by the closure and wondering what to do, what your options are, and/or to feel heard with the mix of emotions this is rightfully bringing up. For more info email/dm me or visit my website linked in my bio {Birthwork -> Additional Birthwork Support Services}

Humboldt Fam: We are great gardeners; may we turn this 💩 into 💐

📣Let your voices be heard: tell your providers how you feel (compassionately). Ask your questions (none are too small or too silly). Just because a retroactive decision can’t be made doesn’t mean feedback isn’t necessary.

(Continued in comments…)

06/04/2024

This week has a few last minute openings: Wednesday + Friday 🙌🏽

707-223-5715 or SacredBridges707@gmail.com to schedule a session or a free phone consult

03/28/2024

Can’t wait for this next cohort!
I love being able to uplift and educate future birthworkers.
If you’re a birthworker/doula looking for comprehensive, evidence based, and inclusive full spectrum education check out Cornerstone Doula Trainings 🫶🏽

03/14/2024

Posted • Hey Southern Humboldt!! We are preparing for our Annual Community Baby. Please mark your calendar and tell your friends! Share the flyer as much as possible. Thank you for always showing up and celebrating new families! ❤️❤️❤️

03/11/2024

Updated 2024 Birth-Support availability for
🌷Spring🌼 through 🍁Fall🍂

🌕March: Full
✨April: 1 Opening
🌕May: Full
✨June: 1 Opening
✨July: 1 Opening
✨August: 1 Opening
🌕September: Full
✨October: 1 Opening
✨November 2 Openings

Birthwork packages include trauma-informed continuity of care, non-biased support, evidence based education and more!

Visit my website to learn more about all my birthwork offerings, including my Carnelian and Turquoise packages that include Labor + Birth Support.

Additional Birthwork Offerings separate or in addition to Birth-Support:
🐚Postpartum Support
🐚Prenatal Bodywork; Including Breech-Balancing Prenatal Sessions
🐚Postpartum Bodywork
🐚Infant Massage Sessions + Lessons
🐚Childbirth Education
🐚Placenta Encapsulation
🐚Traditional Postpartum Healing

Contact and Website 🔗link in bio.
Free Phone/Zoom consults available!

“ . . . Michela provided assistance in ways I didn’t know I needed or was entitled to. She helped me process strong emotions about my delivery, she suggested foods that I didn’t know I wanted or needed (but were absolutely spot-on), and she provided cultural and traditional birth knowledge that I am thankful to know. . .”
-Carnelian Package Testimonial

03/07/2024

I’ve always been a note taker. When it comes to my bodywork sessions, I’m no different.

For almost 15 years I’ve been charting each client’s health history, goals, postural assessment, progress, and individual session notes.

Over the years it’s become a ritual as well as offering practical support. It’s how I am an active member of my clients’ health care teams when they request me to share notes with one of their providers. It’s how I reflect to them the progress they’ve made. It’s how I learn better what works and doesn’t work for each body, regardless of if it was helpful for someone else. I open the space for each client when I open their file for review before they arrive. It’s how I end the ceremony of each session and put down what I need to so I can fully step into what’s next.

The ✨ritual✨ and support charting offers me and my clients is well worth the extra space required for locking file cabinets.

03/01/2024

I’ll do a lot of things for my birthwork clients but there are also things that I’ll say “no” to.

Because I’m not a medical professional there are certain things that I can’t or won’t do for ethical, moral, or legal reasons.

Things like:
* cervical exams or vital checks
* fetal heart monitoring (Doppler or otherwise)
* catching your baby
* medical advice or decision making
* offering treatment plans
* prescribing or administering meds

Neither am I there to:
* replace your partner / primary family
members
* make decisions for you
* impose my personal preference on you

Because this is Your Baby, Body + Birth I am there to amplify your voice and preferences, educate, and offer all the advocacy and non-medical support possible. Not sway your choices or overpower you.

Knowing what is outside of my professional framework, informs the work I do within it. For myself and my clients. Because boundaries are healthy af, baby 💓

**some birthworkers are also licensed nurses, midwives etc. Their active licensure may allow them to practice differently.

Want to know more about what my birthwork offerings do and don’t include?
Ask for a free Consult Call✨

03/01/2024

Foggy morning blossoms + a bouquet of beauty from a bodywork client before the storm hit. The warmth of the flowers and the cold of the weather are pointing out just how close (and far) spring seems to me.

The potency of the in-between. It’s been being highlighted recently. . . Between seasons. Between the beginning and ending of the body’s healing process(es). Between the beginning and ending of pregnancy. Between the beginning and (hopefully soon) ending of genocide 🍉

We spend so much time focusing on the beginnings and endings, but the in-between is where our life is happening, where we spend most of our moments. To me the flowers we leave behind to be remembered aren’t just about what we started or ended, but how we held the in-between moments and what we did with our daily ceremonies.

02/26/2024

Compression versus stretching for space in the tissue.

One of my favorite things about our fascia is its interconnectedness and level of integration with the rest of our bodily systems, as well as its fluidity. The ability for our fascial system to have both solid and water-like motility is, to me, part of its magic. It’s also why I never assume what a clients’ tissues will need to find balance: compression or stretching.

This means staying curious to what the tissues are telling me.

Are they asking for an expansion of movement that creates distance between the joints?
Like a morning stretch that helps us unravel from laying down all night.

Or are they asking for compression and to be held; to not have to stretch any further?
Like when a hug can comfort, soothe and regulate our nervous system.

Finding the resistance can be how we find the way to balance. Sometimes it’s through pressure and an increase of stress; sometimes through space and being stretched further then we could have taken ourselves on our own.

“Thank you for helping me to return to my body” -L.N. bodywork client

02/23/2024

I love watching her come into her fullness.
This time of year moon-rise can be obscured by clouds so when Meztli appears it’s even more of a blessing.

We’ll see if Meztli’s fullness calls a client’s birth-waters to labor. If not, this will be their last full moon pregnant. Endings and beginnings all throughout.