ABOUT ELEANOR
I'm a mama of two (plus two that didn’t make it), a wife, a full spectrum doula (birth, postpartum, abortion, miscarriage/loss), herbalist, writer, scholar, and organic gardener. In truth I think of myself as a multi-disciplinary artist whose creative pursuits range from birth work to gardening to making herbal teas and tinctures, to reading academic articles on the cultural practices of placenta care, to mothering to home tending to making zines.
I was born and raised in South Carolina, alongside Pine trees, torrential thunderstorms, fairy tales, and my Episcopal church family. Love, organic farming, and adventure called me to Lopez Island, WA where I lived for a decade. Since 2018 I’ve been making home on 10 acres where my husband grew up outside Everson, WA. I currently divide my time between there and my hometown, Columbia, SC.
My path has been long and full of zig zags....with many seeds planted along the way, some composted, some flourishing.
Some Seeds Along My Path
One seed was planted in 2007 when I became pregnant for the first time. I met a home birth midwife who lent me the book Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin. Ina May's book changed my life by instilling in me a deep faith and trust in my body, that my religious Southern suburban upbringing and public schooling had almost stripped and shamed out of me. It was this deep faith and trust that supported me through my miscarriage only 11 weeks later.
Another seed was planted in 2009 when I became a mother. Birth was the most intense thing I'd ever encountered, and months later, alone all day with a new baby I was plunged into postpartum depression, anxiety and grief that went unchecked. Though we'd had a beautiful meal train for the 4th trimester, and I attended Baby and Me groups, none of the other moms I knew spoke much about the intensity of postpartum, the loneliness, the grief, and the isolation. I knew something was missing but I didn't quite know what.
Yet another seed was planted in 2010 when, inspired by my own birth and first year postpartum, I attended a week long doula training, called "Sacred Doula Training," that centered the care of spirit as much as the practical parts of attending a person in labor and postpartum.
Wild Beloved was birthed in 2013 when I heard a voice say, "Why don't you set up a sex and love advice booth?" So I did. I listened, witnessed, and gave homework while folks sipped an aphrodisiac herbal tea. It was birthed out of my newly un-partnered self and a just weaned toddler. It was birthed out of a desire to talk honestly about things our culture often hides, shames, and laughs uncomfortably about. It was birthed out of a deepening love and awe of medicinal plants. It was birthed out of the intersections of birth, nature, care, sexuality, relationship structures, untended hurts, love, heartbreak, and the herbs who took care of me in pregnancy, postpartum, and post break up from my son's father, the herbs and plants who were continuing to care for me.
Wild Beloved was re-birthed in 2021, after the birth of my daughter. Thrust back into postpartum during a global pandemic and tossed around from care provider to care provider, it was birthed out of yearning for a different kind of model for birth and postpartum care. A world where a person's spirit, mental, and physical well being are respected and cared for. A world where birth and postpartum are treated with deep care, reverence, and love.
My Qualifications
2005 BA in English, University of South Carolina
2010 Sacred Doula Training, DONA, with Carrie Kenner
2014 Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault volunteer training, SAFE San Juans
2014-2016 Orphan Wisdom School, with Stephen Jenkinson
2014 Herbal Medicine for Women, Dr. Aviva Romm - ongoing
2016 Stirring the Cauldron, Sexuality Training, with Elfi-Dillon Shaw
2018 SAR- Sexuality Attitudes Reassessment with Dr. Roz Dischavio of ISEE
2018 Clinical Herbalist Training, Wildroot Botanicals, with Leslie Lekos
2019 Masters in Teaching, Anti-Racist pedagogy, Secondary English, WWU
2019 FLASH training (sex education for grades 6-12), Bellingham Public School District
2020 Herbal Practitioner Skills- Blue Otter Herbal School
2022 Holistic Doula Training, The Matrona Institute, with Whapio Bartlett
2022 Postpartum Doula Training, Whole Body Pregnancy, with Erika Davis
2022 Permaculture Design Certificate- Inspiration Farm, Jane Campbell &Paul Kearsley
2022 Certificate in Perinatal Support Washington, Best Practices in Prevention, Identification and Treatment of Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders
2023 - ongoing, WARM line parent volunteer, Perinatal Support WA
2023-24 Community Grief Tending facilitation training with Thérèse Charvet, Laurence Cole, and Mary Hart
2024 Pagan Ritual Songs with Danica Boyce
The Meaning of Wild Beloved
W I L D
adj. Old English before the year 800, wilde, in the natural state, uncultivated, undomesticated. Old Frisian wile, Old Saxon wilde, middle dutch wilde. Its many modern day connotations include: that which is untamed, free, loose, unbound/unruly, or unknown.
B E L O V E D
adj. late 14th century, from past participle of verb belove (c. 1200), from be- + loven "to love" (see love (v.)). Noun meaning "one who is beloved" is from 1520s. From Middle English belove, from Old English belāf, first and third person singular past indicative of belīfan (“to remain”).
Wild Beloved is in honor of the parts of us that are uninhibited, embodied, and fully able to be our whole selves. Wild Beloved is in service and devotion to our deepest longings, our ancestral and intuitive ways of knowing. Giving birth is one way to connect to that uninhibited part of ourselves, as we labor to bring one who is deeply beloved to us earth side. Wild Beloved honors our full range of feelings that initiatory/rite of passage experiences tend to reveal- bewilderment, excitement, fear, joy, grief, love, pain, loneliness, heartbreak, tenderness- the sheer vulnerability of the human experience- whether it be in birth, new parenthood, or loss.
