I am a child of divorce who ended up divorced myself. 

I was diagnosed with unexplained infertility and have had three natural, successful pregnancies.

I have considered myself an atheist and earned a masters in Catholic theology.

I have been a sugar addict and a health coach.

I have a degree in marriage and family and had to watch as my first marriage and family fell apart.

I have doubted my body for all my life and groaned my way through three unmedicated homebirths.

I parented my first daughter by myself, even though I was married.

I was a divorced single parent to my second daughter for three years. 

I have been incapacitated by chronic illness and worked to become virtually symptom-free.

I have pitied myself for having a daughter who cannot see and raised $16,000 to get her a service dog.

I had a breast reduction as a fifteen-year-old and breastfed all three of my daughters.

I have sobbed as my second daughter sobbed through hospital days and calmly challenged her doctors.

I have never given birth to a son and am now raising and homeschooling my bright and active stepson. 

I am joyfully married to my best friend, and blending families can sometimes be a nightmare.

I see the faces of my other children in my newborn baby and want to cry, laugh and pray all at the same time.   

I have never been happier than I am now, and my grief has never been deeper.

We are all walking contradictions and patchwork tapestries of our shortcomings, dreams, and those few things for which we refuse to accept failure.

Because my first daughter was only given two years to live, I will never take my life for granted.  Because my second daughter cannot see, I will never take my sight for granted.  Because I lived through a toxic marriage and divorce, I will never take my husband for granted.  I am still in the process of picking up the shattered pieces of myself, and, yet I feel constantly broken apart in gratitude for the wonder and beauty of my life. 

There is no going back: not as parents and not as humans.  There is only the choice to stand up and continue, even when you feel like that’s the last thing you can do.  There is learning to accept what you cannot change—to live with it, to carry it, day by day, and thereby increase your endurance.  And there is the fight to take back what you can—to take back those things that belong to you and your children by right of your humanity.

mission 

In 1597, Francis Bacon wrote, “Knowledge is power.” This precept defines the ethos and scope of our modern technological age.  We have finally defeated religion and mysticism, crowned knowledge supreme, and deified science. We have stood on the shoulders of giants and harnessed the power of the natural world to serve our needs and desires.  The age of information impartially perpetuates the illusion that we can control biology and destiny alike.  Food, medicine, shelter, and community are mediated to us via technology.  We should be happier and healthier than ever before.

The ugly reality is that the institutions that determine what is “safe” and what is “healthy” for the general population are influenced by corporate conflicts of interest.  We are constantly being sold the myth that pills and shots can solve our problems, then offered shrugged shoulders or more pills and more shots when these “solutions” cause new problems. Parenting today involves trudging through the increasingly swampy waters surrounding how we give birth to, feed, and educate our children. There are too many choices and opinions—too much information and “misinformation”—too many promises and false idols. 

My lived experience with my first and second daughters has caused me to deep dive into questions of medical ethics and patient advocacy in an age of technologized medicine.  Too many times, I have watched my second daughter traumatized and screaming through medical procedures while impatient nurses and doctors looked on.  I have rocked her to sleep in the white exhaustion after a day spent at the hospital, unable to sleep myself for questioning every choice I make for her.  Time and again, the hours have slipped into the still and creeping night as I tunnel down the rabbit warren of peer-reviewed studies on PubMed. 

Some of us have woken to find our families are being sacrificed on the frontline of a war we didn’t realize we were fighting. But the age of information is a double-bladed weapon, and the resources to educate ourselves are literally at our fingertips.  Knowledge is powerful—yes—but not just for corporate and commercial interests.  Each individual consumer has power in a capitalist economy, and groups of consumers can rally together to effect change on a large scale.