Throughout time, each culture and most religions have had their own methods of purifying a space, sick room, or temple. Clearing your new house before you move in is a way of releasing it’s past, and starting with a sort of “clean slate” for the future. Clearing your house, in your own way, supports the presence of your home in being a nurturing haven for your family. There are many ways to cleanse a space. And, there is no exact recipe or perfect way to do this. The intention is to invoke clearing, cleansing, and release.

Our modern palate has little idea of how special cabbage has been through the ages, how its mild flavor and crisp texture is wonderfully adaptable, and how beyond brilliant it is for our health. Cabbage is rich in a number of really healthy nutrients, such as vitamin C, sulforaphane, indole-3-carinol (I3C), and Vitamin K. I reinvent this cabbage recipe a few times a year. It checks a lot of boxes for me – it feels warming in cool weather, cooling in hot weather, a little exotic when I’m wanting carry-out, and healthy when I’m trying to stay on track.

There are many things that you can do in the immediate postpartum to help your newborn maintain their birth weight or start gaining. This is the information I make sure every one of my birth clients have received over my 40+ years in midwifery as a midwife and family natural health coach, and the majority of their babies GAINED weight by their one week check-up!

Canker sores are small mouth lesions that unfortunately cause great pain! They often last a few weeks, but here are many approaches that you can add to your family’s ‘natural medicine chest’ to ease the pain, speed healing and prevent reoccurrence.

Here’s a quick summary of the PFAS issue, and natural options to effectively relieve our bodies of PFAS’s toxic accumulation and reduce our continued exposure. Tap water is confirmed to be a major source of contamination, and there is specific mineral supplementation to consider in helping to shift the bio-burden of PFAS out of the body.

Pure, clean air is increasingly less common, which is challenging our families’ health. Whether from large scale wildfires to industrial pollution, having some options and idea available will improve your kid’s health, lower anxiety for all, and support your informed and proactive protection. Download our free eBook, “How to Protect Your Family From Poor Air Quality, Naturally!”

Adrenal deficiency is a very real effect of the modern life we’re living, and the consequences include symptoms that are now rampant among my midwifery clients, such as disrupted sleep, anxiety, racing thoughts, heart palpitations, allergies, elevated blood pressure, depression, headaches, and decreased tolerance to stress, just to name a few. The very good news is that real change can be felt quickly through precise supplementation and small changes made with awareness. The first step is to have a new understanding about the scope of stress that is our life - let’s start with this fascinating ‘stress inventory’ that you can take right here!

“What life skills are your kids working on? What do you think 10-year-olds should be able to do?” It’s no secret that it’s a crazy, challenging, full-time job raising our children to be capable, contributing adults. And in the rush of coping and surviving, it's super easy to feel overwhelmed in that critical middle ground where our children develop essential life skills . I’d call it the window between the delight of infants starting to walk, and the anxiety of teens starting to drive. Yet, it's during the stress of everyday life that these practical skills are cultivated and honed.

Herbal baths have traditionally been used by midwives to help mothers and babies soothe and heal after birth. Sometimes however, birth does not go as hoped and planned. There may be grief about small details, or tremendous pain from difficult circumstances. It was in response to these challenging times that mothers and I came up with “The Do-Over Bath.” In this case, the herbal bath is also used as a ceremonial time to honor the closing of a chapter, and to make room for an emotional reset.

Cleavers also known as Lady’s Bedstraw, has a long history of use in folk medicine. Cleavers ability to assist in moving lymph and breaking up fibrous tissue makes it a wonderful herb to be considered when there are fibrocystic breasts with cysts or other congestion in the lymphatic system. It is mild, entirely non-toxic, easy to harvest, and is actually very valuable plant medicine. Cleavers are considered very helpful for mastitis or other swollen lymph in the breast.