A new side to my practice.
I’ve had a first time experience, I feel the completion of our family. This has allowed me to finally offer some of the services I’ve been slowly curating over the last 8 years. You may ask, why now? I can’t fully explain it myself but there seems to be a finality happening for me. I’m no longer bracing for the next child, the next maternity leave, or the next disruption in our flow. There’s a space to plan and see the future in new ways.
This shift in my practice began years before I ever had children. I’ve always been called to pregnancy, children, and the birth process. <Fun Fact: I majored in child psychology in college. > I started studying my own experience ferociously and attending births for several years now.
I have felt there are major holes in the care of our families, specifically pregnant people and after delivery of the baby. Our families are the Earths future and even if someone plans for no children, I hope they can see the value in supporting those who do choose children.
In the middle of building my family, I lost my mom to cancer and my dad to other health complications. I’m an only child and I live at least 2 hours from any family.
I grew up in a small community where people would randomly stop by and community was right outside the door. Moving to a big city and knowing no one, I’ve felt somewhat untethered for the majority of my adult life. It became obvious to me that creating community where I planted myself, was a matter of survival.
That’s not to sound dramatic, I’m alluding to the social nervous system. We need each other for our well being. This has become a fascinating topic for me to understand as I’ve navigated my own trauma healing.
I have set out to create community and failed quite a few times. It’s hard to create community when our daily messages speak work and production and rarely values connection and rest.
I do believe our culture is trying to re-navigate that healing and return to what our bodies and hearts desire to thrive. And the most obvious place I have found congruent messages to what I was innately feeling was through post partum support.
We do it wildly wrong in this country and here is my effort to supply to others what I desperately needed myself.
Reading in whatever spare moment I can find, I feel inspired and defeated at the same time. I read about elders and the gathering of women to birth and support one another. And then I look around and see the mothers I know desperately trying to work like they don’t have children and raise children like they don’t have to work. It’s unattainable.
Our current picture of support is gifts and maybe food. I think the majority of us are misguided on what a new baby or a new family needs. It’s not your fault. We haven’t been given the proper tools to actually know what we need. Even the new mother may look around saying, “I need something but I’m not sure what it is.”
Slowly, the hum of our collective needs are getting stronger. And if you’re seeking them like me, you’ll find that no one really connects enough to know. I’m not even saying I know. I’m just opening the idea that we aren’t supporting our families like they need.
This doesn’t mean I’m finished supporting you. I will always offer barefoot massage, I’m simply opening myself up to support more people in different ways.
If this resonates with you or someone you know, please consider sending them my information. I’m prepared to co-create amazing experiences for families and birthing pregnant people.
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Introducing: the sliding scale session
We notice the widening gap between what people can afford and what they need. We’re doing our best to meet everyone where they are while ensuring our families are taken care of as well.
This will only be available for 6 sessions per month and will be turned off after that. The sliding scale will be ‘pay what you can’ starting at $80.
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However, we also recognize that this may not be enough, so we have also started to offer 30 min sessions of Hot Ashi for $45 to fill in any of the gaps of your care you may be missing. You’re welcome to schedule this stand alone appointment by itself or in addition to your regularly scheduled session.
All of these can be found under the Barefoot Massage tab in our scheduler. And of course, if these are still beyond what you can afford, please reach out to us to discuss. We want to see you receiving some kind of care. We also want to respect your privacy, anyone is welcome to schedule the Pay What You Can Session and it won’t be mentioned in the appointment.
