Happy 7 years (a little late) @jtschoonhoven ❤️
I couldn’t be more grateful to have set up our matching tents next to each other and smooched under a giant oak tree all those years ago.
Thanks for building an incredibly full life with me where a wild adventure and tackling all the mundane life tasks both feel like exactly the right thing. 🪓 🪵 🤲🏼💧
You are endlessly supportive, capable, playful, and thoughtful. Loving you and this new person we made together is such a joy.
2023 was a year filled with relentless celebration and the overwhelm that frequently accompanies.
@jtschoonhoven and I had 4 weddings that embodied the spectrum of things we value and ways that we show up in the world. We also were able to join so many people we love in the celebration of their love.
I had the joy of immersing myself deep into wild beautiful spaces, one of my greatest loves.
I had some truly crippling anxiety and heartache regarding the state of world and my ability and responsibility for showing up for others and myself.
I felt deeply connected to, held, and loved by my community, both intimate and broad. I’m in awe of the capacity for play, creativity, integrity, bravery, softness, silliness, activation, vulnerability, and overall commitment to nurturing one another that the folks in my life carry.
I continued supporting people in their transition into parenthood, their choice to end pregnancy, and their emergence into personhood and the world. It continues to be deeply gratifying and deeply exhausting. Our medical system is still an absolute trash fire filled with people giving all their love and care, in case you hadn’t been keeping tabs.
I’m trying to hold all this immense joy and sorrow and confusion and clarity and these fleeting moments and long lessons, and carry them, bursting at the seams, into the new year.
Co-sidekicks to infinity and beyond ❤️💫
(We’re engaged ☺️)
Maybe a longer gushier post on what it means to us to love well and share a life later. I’ll take any wisdom you have in the meantime.
Coming in hot to 33 with simultaneous feelings of elation, grief, gratitude, and exhaustion.
It’s been a year of living in community with others who value sharing space, time, resources, ideas, and care.
A year of deepening into queer community and relationships.
A year of being a midwife and reproductive health provider.
A year of supporting people in choice about their bodies.
A year of welcoming over 100 new humans into the complexity of personhood-already fraught with so many expectations.
And 2.5 years of choosing to not continue growing a flicker but to instead grow a flame.
I’m so grateful for my choice to have an abortion and will keep fighting to provide others the ability to choose what they want to nurture in their lives.
Jon and I are wandering back to the Bay Area around October and are looking to land in a community home in the East Bay.
If you know of a silly/bright/sweet/lil’ bit weird place looking for house trained humans let us know! 🏡❤️
I’m 32 today!
This year I…moved 6 times, welcomed 60 brand spankin’ new humans into the world, sang more than usual, spent a lot of time naked in water, graduated from my masters’ program to become a Midwife and reproductive health NP, wore more bright colors, spent a lot of time on a magical farm, felt big crushing feelings, asked a million questions, and ate my weight in peanut butter cups.
In rare form, these are all pictures of me.
I don’t have any groundbreaking bite sized internet wisdom for you (beyond the salty-sweet PB cups), but I’m working on spending more quality time with the people I love, so maybe we can hang out and talk about all the silly and beautiful and sad of life sometime soon. ❤️
A few days ago was my Birthday. It’s something many of us celebrate every year for ourselves and the ones we love. We often take the day (or many days!) to go on trips, eat good food, receive gifts and kind words, reflect on what we’ve learned up until this point. It’s a celebration in our culture because it marks our safe arrival into being alive for as long as we’ve got.
We tend to celebrate things because they are of significance. Worthy of reflection. A big deal. Choosing to bring a new life into the world is no small thing. It’s a radical transformation physically, mentally, spiritually. It’s a big deal.
Reproductive Justice is a framework developed by women of color honoring that it is important that we give people choice in regards to their personal bodily autonomy and safety, having or not having children, and allowing people to parent children in safe and sustainable communities. It’s big. This is the work I’m committed to, and we still have a long way to go to ensure there is equitable treatment for all who are choosing to take care of their own bodies, give birth, and raise children.
Please join me in supporting the Midwives at Highland Hospital and Black families with safety and joy while they welcome new life:
/f/black-birthing-families-matter
In training more Black midwives, because medical providers hold power to change they system and teaching institutions are slow to concretely support change:
PayPal: [email protected]
Venmo: @midwivesforblacklives@asmara.gebre is a local Black SF midwife who graduated from my program at UCSF and is taking a grassroots approach to supporting both these causes here in the Bay directly.
Venmo: @asmara -gebre
First photo credit: @michael_escobar_photo
Signing on to voice support and solidarity. And to make a commitment to listen and learn and try harder when I inevitably waiver, miss the point, or act selfishly.
Not a single one of us {white and white passing people} has an empty boat.
Signing off back into the world where there is no shortage of unlearning, radical rebuilding, and discomfort to be had. Do not forget that the system was intentionally built this way, and it will take active, hard, imperfect work to change it.
Please reach out if you are interested in resources but are overwhelmed and aren’t sure where to start. If you feel ashamed about not doing or knowing enough, the best remedy is to start.
#blacklivesmatter
