In a nutshell:
I’m going to nursing school as the next step along my path to becoming a nurse-midwife. It’s not the most expensive program but it’s not the cheapest either and I’m looking for support from my community to help me through! So much appreciation for anything you can contribute. <3

 

5 minute story:

The first thing I ever wanted to be “when I grew up” was an obstetrician. Maybe I loved the feeling of the word in my 6 year-old mouth, the distinguished sound, the honor bestowed on the person responsible for receiving new life — the new life who was to be my beloved brother, Benjamin. My mom was pregnant, and I was beyond elated to have a sibling, to be becoming a sister. I wanted it more than anything in the world. My mom was 45 — it was a miracle! My parents had tried for so many years, I knew without knowing the mechanics. I was completely obsessed with my mama’s pregnancy, her growing belly, the evolving nature of the being inside. I devoured children’s books on the topic, learning everything I could about gestation and reproduction and genetics in mammals, birds, and bugs. For years I was sure I wanted to be an OB, then a fertility specialist or geneticist (strange child, I was). I sustained my interest in these ideas: that somebody’s role is to tend birth and catch a brand new human; that a life could grow inside another.

 

Eventually my interests shifted toward the world. I became drawn to politics, social change, and the international sphere, convinced that women and people at the margins bore the greatest potential for leading radical global transformation. That strand of women’s leadership, education, and empowerment led me to work for a nonprofit that facilitated collaborative leadership and nonviolent communication between young Israeli and Palestinian women; to become a founding teacher of media literacy at an all-girls high school in Brooklyn; and to coordinate health, education, and social services at a youth shelter for pregnant and parenting teenagers experiencing homelessness and housing instability. Curious about how civic education could support the democratization and decentralization of our leadership, I began to pursue a Master’s degree in Politics and Education. But it felt dry, and I felt empty at the thought of being separated from the fruits of my labor, like I might not ever directly experience the results of my work.

 

When my dad became ill, I left grad school, my teaching job, and New York City to take care of him, fully intent on returning. While tending him as he died, it became really clear that direct care and service made me feel most alive, useful, and on purpose. I was meaningfully utilizing what was previously a side- but long-held interest in holistic wellness and energy healing. I was coordinating his care and advocating for his needs to medical professionals and insurance bureaucracy inside what I became aware of as a completely broken and corrupt healthcare system. And we were traversing difficult conversations related to his transition with grace. When he passed, I experienced the power of being in that sacred portal space with him, on the cusp of life and not life. I felt strong and awake there, highly attuned to all that was happening with him and in me, and sought out additional spiritual training as a kohenet (a Hebrew priestess) to better be able to navigate that doorway for myself and others.

 

I couldn't go back to the life I had built before. I recognized that I needed to find a line of work at the intersection of my skills and passions: advocacy, racial justice/policy, education, feminism, health, transformation, and the sacred. After so many years of financial struggle, I needed something economically reliable and supportive. From more than a decade in the restaurant industry, I knew I thrived thinking fast and being on my feet, responding to needs as they arise. I also liked listening with my intuition to more subtle energies; working at the tender meeting place of raw, stripped down human and Divine power. One day, my horoscope prompted me that in order to move forward I should think back to the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up…and it just clicked with a massive “AHA!”: Nurse-Midwifery.

 

To test the waters, I returned to NYC for my training as a community-based full-spectrum (prenatal, postpartum, abortion, miscarriage) doula. 

Then my brother died.

I felt cursed, surrounded by death, drowning in grief. I also felt blessed by the fierceness of my friends’ support, which held me up and held me down. I experienced that community care is truly foundational to individual and collective wellness. 

The need to bless my life with birth energy became more pressing, and after a bit of time, I saw that becoming a midwife was one of the greatest ways I could honor the memory and the miracle of Ben’s aliveness; that precious time when my mother’s pregnancy and Ben’s birth represented all the potential and possibility of the biggest love, and someone to share it with. I want to be there to hold and protect that process and moment, to tend the huge transitions and transformations around birth, miscarriage, and abortion, whatever the circumstances.

 

The United States has the highest and most racially unequal maternal morbidity rate in the developed world. There is *so much* work to be done in this field: to demedicalize birth; to make birth a safe, equitable, and empowering place for Black, indigenous, and people of color, for queer folks, for migrant people; to restore and regenerate agency and power back to birthing and postpartum people; to uphold body sovereignty and autonomy; to support our communities to care for new parents (and really everybody); to integrate ancient and modern, spiritual and scientific birth care practices. I’m inspired by herstories of rural Yemeni Jewish and Muslim midwives who traditionally worked together, supported each other at births, honoring each others' respective practices, and organizing their communities in solidarity as they did their sacred work. As a nurse-midwife, I’ll have the privilege of serving AFAB bodies of all genders and backgrounds, and through all life stages and reproductive health needs, while also organizing and priestessing in a field in deep need of radical transformation at systemic and psychospiritual levels. Nurse-midwifery feels like the most poignant and potent way that I can serve community in a time of collapse, within and as an alternative to our failed medical industrial complex. Beyond parity, the idea of midwifing a new paradigm invigorates me.

 

I have 5 years of school ahead of me to culminate in a Doctorate of Nursing Practice — Goddess willing! My next step is nursing school for my BSN, which I’m so ready to begin this summer through a dual degree program between Central New Mexico Community College and the University of New Mexico. I’m turning to my community for support to get me through this 20-month push. Nursing school is full-time and full-on, and I’m looking at majorly reduced work hours (and income) and a lot of energy spent commuting from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. I’d be so blessed with whatever support you can contribute toward this financial goal, which I’ll put toward tuition, books, fees, and other scholastic needs. I’m applying for many scholarships, but the bulk of my education will otherwise be incurred as more student debt.

 

I am in deep appreciation of my life-affirming people who have sustained me through some seriously tumultuous years, and who have held the possibility of my own healing, recovery, and blossoming. Blessings, gratitude, and So! Much! Love!!!