I specialize in guiding women through their own healing and transformation.

my calling

Professionally, my path has led me to notice the impact of trauma on the mind and how that blends with the lasting imprint it leaves on the body. 

Throughout my entire 20+ year career focused on providing evidence-based holistic healthcare from within the medical model, I have always been a magnet for and passionate about helping women overcoming trauma. I am trained to prescribe medications that often don't fix the underlying cause. Years of clinical experience and a strong neuroscience background illuminated the direct connections between trauma, chronic stress, the nervous system (especially the vagal nerve) and health that isn’t being fixed with pills in 10 minute appointments - unresolved traumas left to fester manifest as somatic ailments.

Looking back, I have always been a midwife - my Barbies were forever giving birth, I insisted on helping my cats breastfeed and was jealous I couldn’t lactate, at slumber parties ever since 5th grade I would hypnotize friends to relive their birth and in utero experiences. 

For 9 years I ran my home birth practice (Savannah Midwifery LLC) - providing gynecology care to postmenopausal women and intellectually disabled young women in their homes, and helping women heal old trauma by supporting them through the transformative yet empowering pain of birth. Through my own personal journey through grief, life trauma, and 6 pregnancy losses, I experienced my own painful growth and transformation… I realized how healing is a state of connection, to yourself and the world around you. I started seeing large numbers of women with unresolved sexual traumas which no provider had ever asked about, manifesting as a wide variety of reproductive and health concerns including depression, anxiety, chronic pelvic pain, vaginismus, vaginitis, difficulty with intimacy. I realized my calling is helping women find the connection between their trauma and their physical health issues and release it, while also providing evidence based, preventative focused, wellness oriented high-quality care that incorporates integrative modalities to diagnose and treat a broad range of issues as a licensed medical provider.

I want to offer the missing piece in women’s healthcare, and deeply help women heal.

my experience with helping women heal trauma through giving birth

Intimacy, sex, orgasm are all facets of birth - their root is all in oxytocin, and opening, a form of exquisite surrender, release, but we need to feel safe to flow into these states. 

As a former homebirth midwife, I wiped sweat, blood, and tears for women, held their hand as they crossed through the most painful and transformative pinnacle moment of their lives. 

Women birthing at home often have histories of trauma - they choose homebirth to feel safe in their homes and have control over how they are touched. Women who have been mistreated often relive that through their bodies as they birth - it is again pain, out of their control, against their will, in the most intimate part of their body; but this time they can choose to surrender and even embrace it, to birth their beautiful baby and become a mother. I helped them embrace the sensations (pain is, after all, just a passing sensation) and ride the waves. Women who have so much fear and push against that surrender have a hard time opening to birth their babies, leading to more tearing and cesareans. One woman who had been raped and was birthing with me had a flashback during a contraction while my fingers were holding her cervix. Under my fingers, I felt her cervix contract from being wide open to closed again, contractions stopped, and her labor stalled. We did breathwork, and worked deeply together to help her feel safe and held. As she let go, her cervix rapidly dilated and labor resumed and she quickly birthed her baby girl. We know the cervix is innervated by the vagal nerve , which also is integral to our parasympathetic response - the response of tend and befriend (which is the neurochemical-based female stress response, not fight or flight), of orgasm, of connection. 

credentials

I am a nationally credentialed Certified Nurse Midwife (CNM) Certified Professional Midwife (CPM), and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner (WHNP). I hold a Master's in Nursing and Midwifery (Frontier University), a Bachelor's in Nursing (Emory University), and a Bachelor’s in Behavioral Psychobiology (New College of South Florida). My thesis focused on neuroscience and mind/body connection of human reproduction. I have 11 years of higher education related to my work, endless additional trainings, and 21+ years experience in my field. I completed training in Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM), and am an Accredited Sexual Health Provider™ through the Beuhler Institute.

experience and growth

• First and foremost, I am a Mother to my three beautiful babies, birthed at home

• certified in hypnosis and Hypnobirthing®

• master herbalist (coursework through Aviva Romm) and creator of natural remedies

• Apprenticed in Mexico with Angelina Martinez (5th generation traditional Mayan Mexican midwife) - learned Mayan uterine massage, cupping, herbology, and Rebozo techniques. Also studied Arvigo Mayan Abdominal Massage.

• Studied Vipassana meditation, Iyengar yoga, cleansing krias, and Ayurvedic massage in India

• Volunteered with Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team working with rural midwives and teaching pregnancy prevention in Ghana and Nepal

• Provided maternity care to rural native Alaskan women beyond Nome, Alaska

• Worked with maternity bat colonies in Australia, Florida (Lubee Foundation) and Utah

• Worked for Birthlight while living (and giving birth) in England, studied the infant dive reflex

• Worked on organic farms around the world through WWOOF

• Grow medicinal herbs for custom remedies and teas for clients, studying permaculture, creating a space for women’s healing circles on my land

• Red Cross disaster relief provider since 2002

• experienced babywearer - founded Savannah Slingers in 2010