My mission in supporting your transition

Through the creation of space for self-empowerment and self-advocacy in my families, I contribute to society in fostering an equitable start or ending. My role in supplementing the provision of healthcare includes ensuring quality of life, but access to basic needs/education/public resources/mental and physical health. My competency concerning the American healthcare system exists to guide clients through insured, and non-insured interactions. My hope is that you are seen, heard, cared for, and guided to anchor YOU to improve the health of your life AND lineage.

Healthcare does not just need navigators, it needs facilitators and guides. Creating and managing projects/programs/systems that serve to improve it’s function is a passion that parallels the mission held in homes.

 
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But really, What kind of human being am I?

Maybe this picture of my squishy heart in the presence of a puppy helps gives some insight.

But, click below to check the “Between Transitions” page to get the juicy backstory to HEART Rituals.

Between Transitions

Heart Rituals Tenets of Care

  • Birth & Deathworkers should create opportunity, and encourage self-empowerment.

  • Advice and decisions are examined through holistic health, Evidence-Based medicine, socio-cultural and economic lenses.

  • Reparations in the form of mutual aid for Black families are a necessary response to systemic racism and incarceration.

  • Creation of rituals fosters land-mind-body connection.

  • Service is based in compassion and respect for autonomy.

  • Birth and Death are factual processes that have require sensitivity, spiritual and cultural awareness.

  • Gender and race are social constructs. Preferences are honored and open for education.

  • Education and support are designed to develop and increase self-efficacy.

HEART RITUALS is ROOTED IN health and death equity.

WHY?

““The most disrespected person in America is the black woman.
The most unprotected person in America is the black woman.
The most neglected person in America is the black woman.””
— Malcolm X, in his speech delivered May 22, 1962

For an Equitable beginning….

Please watch the above video as a small lens into the African-American Maternal Mortality crisis. Shoutout to Mamatoto Village (https://www.mamatotovillage.org/) for doing this for us, by us.

The very foundation of obstetrics and gynecology was built from unethical experimentation on the bodies of black women. The ripples of racism which prevent the upward mobility of marginalized populations present themselves even when one is anticipating new life. Birthworkers hold space for black, brown, colonized and marginalized individuals to demand with self-efficacy the equity we deserve.

rACIALIZED, COLONIZED, MARGINALIZED FOLX HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE STEWARDS OF RITUALS CONCERNING ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURE.

HEART Rituals seeks to create a community of families that support an equitable start for all. TOGETHER, WE ACKNOWLEDGE THE VARIOUS LAYERS OF SYSTEMIC OPPRESSION. and as a result, WE BUILD TOGETHER A more equitable future.

For an equitable bereavement…

The end of one’s life is projected in this country as reflective, gray and a winding road to death. But, this is not how life operates in reality. De ath comes as a sudden as new life. The use of grief counselors, end-of-life and estate planners are largely absent from the life courses of black and brown families in this country. This absence is held with the expectation by those same families to endure systemic racism, and navigate the loss of a loved one.

HEART Rituals seeks to illuminate life planning, de-stigmatize death, allow grief to be moved through without racial and systemic oppression.

Texas dshs cERTIFIED nURSING aSSISTANT (cna)

Texas DSHS Certified Community Health Worker (CHW)

ALPP Certified Lactation Counselor (clc)

PMI Project management professional (PMP)

Se habla Español + parlant français

Photography by Rasalin Neudeck