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My background is quite diverse from studying as a midwife, an herbalist, a nurse-practitioner, and a yogi. I value Earth Medicine, conventional science, and the innate healing power of our own bodies. I respect plants, my clients, and the planet. When I work with clients, I do have a sense of philophies that guide me and this is where I connect with my clients. Having the spirit of a healer is both an art and a science. It is about compassion and meeting each person where they are at on their healing journey. It's about empowering them to be their own best healer. These philosophies are my compass of sorts, a way of engaging with my clients. Each Individual is an Evolving with Their Own Inherent Wisdom From our very core, at the cellular level, each of us have an inherent healing power. My goal is to support the body so that its natural state of dynamic balance can do the work of healing. Sometimes my craft is about nudging that healing process. This may be identifying noxious influences in the environment to improve the system, such as detoxifying our diet, our home, our relationships, and our thoughts and perceptions. It may mean using botanical medicine or food to support the body's underlying well-being and functioning in order to allow intrinsic healing to occur, but it will also include nature, sleep, joy, and maybe, at times, herbs or pharmaceuticals. Our bodies can be overburdened, exhausted and need rejuvenation so recognizing that, identifying the need and the degree of support necessary, is my role. Yours is investing in self. Empower through Education & Guiding in Self-Care My heart has always been education. I feel education is empowering and I love to share knowledge so you can delight in all the beauty this life journey has to offer, along with me. I do feel though that we are each responsible for our own well-being and do not see my clients as dependent upon me for healing. I'll provide guidance, resources, and encouragement, even community, but the work is yours. I know well though, that knowledge doesn't always equate to application. There is much working against us, so creating a healthy lifestyle that enables you to independently maintain a state of optimal well-being, and to have the knowledge to make modifications and adjustments necessary to maintain optimal health, can still be an incredible hurdle alone. I am transparent about my own struggles, my own hurdles and my desire is to offer you community and accountability. This is life long work. The Client Maintains Power and Authority over Self This maybe defines me as a practitioner more than any other principle. My relationship with my client is not based on a hierarchical model. Rather, it is based on a partnership model, that values equality between the practitioner and the one seeking care. Midwives and herbalists, and clinicians, should not have authority of their clients, but neither are we ultimately responsible for the client. This healing journey again, is your work. We are the resource, the educator, and the compassionate listener. We are on a mutual journey together in effort to best understand your condition and needs, and to gather the necessary resources for improving the client's condition. Responsibility is in your hands, and certainly shared with me, but you know your needs best. Offer an Integrative and Holistic View First I listen, a lot. I take a broad view of the many factors in your life that impact your health and wellness. My plans are then broad and based on many factors that impact dis-ease rather than just focusing on symptoms or illness, or a single manifestation of dysfunction. If you come to me to address a chronic herpes outbreak, we will talk about stress, your emotional triggers, your boundaries, and part of your treatment plan will include attention to stress reduction along with utilization of adaptogens and nervine herbs to support both immediate and long term stress. We won't simply utilize antiviral herbal medications. Healing is an Opportunity for Personal Growth We don't seek out these hurdles so we can grow and heal, but they are opportunities for us. Illness provides us an opportunity to consider our place in the universe, our place in our life's journey, and also our place in our family, in our relationships, and in out lives. It provides a great time for reflection and introspection, and an opportunity to re-invent oneself. We can evaluate our lifestyle habits, our mental habits, and even our beliefs and how they may be interfering with our well-being. My role again is compassion and understanding as you work to find meaning and opportunity in these times. Treating the Person, Not the Symptoms This isn't a PR stunt; it literally means my philosophy is to go deeper than the body's warning sign and identify the root problem of any issue. Giving medications to silence discomfort is like pulling the batteries out of your smoke detector. Ignore this without correcting the problem and eventually your house will burn down. Many discomforts are your body's natural attempt to replair, heal, or protect the body. Symptoms are our allies. They are the cookie crumbs that walk us towards the work that needs healed. Empathetic, Caring, & Non-Judgmental My work is to offer you a safe place to heal, and recognize and honor the highest ideals in each individual. We are all human and in our own way, doing our best. I have no rigid set of rules, no routines assigned to everyone. Rather, I engage in the belief that equilibrium comes from our choices, our freedom, and the consequences of such, not part of a cycle of guilt, blame, and punishment. Our choices too, are so incredible complex and unique to each of our own journeys. Our patterns differ, as do our coping strategies, our traumas, our environments, and our resources. Again, we are all just doing our best. I offer flexibility, acceptance, and patience. I will offer you therapeutic connection, but this work is yours. Unique Approaches for Unique Individuals There just isn't ever one presentation or one approach or one way to manifest health and wellness, no matter how similar two things or people may present. Patterns emerge and decades of experience can help me discern potentials, but this is a mutual journey we identify together, as well as craft plans and engage in healing. Your personal experience is as important as my expertise in the science and art of healing. Intuition is also part of our work together, part of decision-making, as is intellect and emotions. We must pay attention to all the nuances of healing, but intuitive knowing comes from academic understanding and decades of diverse experience. I am open to all the various forms of knowing. Dis-ease is always seen in the context of your lived experience.

For most of you, the difference isn't significant enough for you to even notice, particularly if needing primary care services. There isn't a ton that a primary care physician would do differently, with regards to clinical care, or could do differently than a family nurse practitioner. Each practitioner, whether nurse practitioner or physician can specialize, find their niche, and really make a name for themselves in any particular area of healthcare, gathering referrals throughout the community. Primary care practitioners in general is the clinician who manages your overall health. We consider all the necessary screenings you may be an appropriate candidate, particularly as you age, but primary care practitioners also evaluate mental and emotional health, lifestyle behaviors, and we lean into wellness. We manage acute care issues, but the mainstay of our practice is management of chronic healthcare conditions. Primary care clinicians typically serve individuals from their first day of life through their very last. Our culture though has this perception, stemming back many decades, that the nurse is subservient to the physician. Women were typically nurses and men were physicians, so as the nursing profession has advanced, which historically was not long after that of the physician, it was assumed the nurse would still fall under the supervision of the physician. Our training hasn't done this though; the patriarchy has. Physicians pay lobbiests great riches to assure state rules and regulations maintain their monopoly in healthcare so they can continue oppressing their greatest competitor. Nurse practitioners are trained to meet the full scope of needs of their primary care clients; in fact, they are recognized as experts in their field. Advanced Practice Nurses can Provide Comparable Levels of Care & Achieve Similar Outcomes as Physicians, if not Better When studies evaluate the care provided by nurse practitioners as compared to physicians, the literature is not only supportive of nurse practitioners, it starts to question if physicians should ever be higher on the hierarchy than nurses. Nurse practitioners are far less expensive, not just to employ, but their care demands less of the healthcare infrastructure. This is great for our national healthcare financial burden, but this doesn't appeal to hospital financial advisors seeking to pad the pockets of their administration. Physicians are more likely to order expensive diagnostic tests and recommend surgical procedures as compared to nursing clinicians, so you'll find more advanced practice nurses in the military, at the Veteran's Hospital and in all government funded clinics, but large corporations will continue to support physicians as long as capitalizm runs amuck in the United States. We have some of the worst healthcare outcomes, the worst in fact of all industrialized countries in maternal and child health, but dollar for dollar, we are by far the most expensive with which to attain healtcare. Advanced practice nurses have been found to save nations around the world billions of dollars (NHS England, 2014). Nurse practitioners have also been found to have superior outcomes when researchers evaluate chronic disease outcomes, wait times and even time spent with clients, as well as client satisfaction (Htay & Whitehead, 2021). The role development of advanced nurse practitioners is usually congruent with the four defining pillars of advanced practice, which are clinical practice, leadership, education, and research, and reflect the level at which advanced nurse practitioners are able to operate. Restrictions are political. Requiring written collaboration or even supervision, does not improve clinical outcomes; it only restricts access to care. Nurse Practitioners are now considered essential in meeting the complex needs of patients and generating overall improvements in the quality of care patients receive, and their overall safety. A 2009 study with researchers Dierick-van Daele et al found patients perceived the high quality care by both nurse practitioners and physicians, but it was nurse practitioners who offered them more time in their consultations and better follow-up and this mattered to the patients. This same outcome was also found in a 2000 study done by Venning et al. A 2003 study found that Nurse Practitioners improved asthma outcomes in a pediatric clientele compared to pediatricians, and a study published in 2000 by Kinnersley et al., found patients care for by Nurse Practitioners were more satisfied with the care they received compared to physicians. The patients of the NPs felt they received better communication, more informationa bout their illnesses and its cause, and more of them would choose an NP upon their return. Outcomes were improved among the elderly when cared for by NPs as compared to physicians in a 2007 study published by Krichbaum. Blood pressures are lower when cared for by nurse practitioners (Mundinger et al, 2000; van Zullen et., 2011), Rheumatoid Athritis is improved (Ndosi et al., 2014), incontinence is improved (Ryden et al., 2000; Williams et a., 2005), and satisfaction in those cared for by NPs as compared to cardiologists were improved in a 2004 study (Stables et al.). Nurse Practitioners are Client-Centered Collaboration throughout the healthcare infrastructure is paramount, but it need not be required because our system depends on referrals. Nurses and physicians are complementary practitioners. Neither can truly work independent of the other, but just as you visit your primary care physician and recognize they will refer to a specialist when your needs are outside their own expertise, this is true as well for nurse practitioners; however, the vast majority of your primary care needs can be met by your family practitioner and according to the literature, your outcomes and overall satisfaction are likely to be greater with the Nurse Practitioner. References Htay, M. & Whitehead, D. (2021). The effectiveness of the role of advanced nurse practitioners compared to physician-led or usual care: A systematic review. International Journal of Nursing Studies Advances, 3. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Mundinger, M. O., Kane. R. L., Lenz, E. R., Totten, A. M., Tsai, W. Y., Clearly, P. D., Friedewald, W. T., Siu, A. L., Shelanski, M. L. (2000). Primary care outcomes in patients treated by nurse practitioners or physicians: a randomized trial. JAMA, 283(1), 59-68. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10632281 Ndosi, M., Lewis, M., Hale, C., Quinn, H., Ryan, S., Emergy, P., Bird, H., Hill, J. (2014). The outcome and cost-effectiveness of nurse-led care in people with rheumatoid arthritis: A multicentre randomised controlled trial. Ann. Rheum. Dis., 73(11), 1975-1986. http://ard.bmj.com/content/73/11/1975 Ryden, M. B., Snyder, M., Gross, C. R., Savik, K., Pearson, V., Krichbaum, K., Mueller, C. (2000). Value-added outcomes: the use of advance practice nurses in long-term care facilities. Gerontologist, 40(6), 654-662. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11121082 Stables, R. H., Booth, J., Welstand, J., Wright, A., Ormerod, O. J., Hodgson, W. R. (2004). A randomised controlled trial to compare a nurse practitioner to medical staff in the preparation of patients for iagnostic cardiac catheterisation: the Study of Nursing Intervention in Practice (SNIP). Eur. J. Cardiovasc. Nurs, 3(1), 53-59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejcnurse.2003.11.002 van Zuilen, A. D., Blankestijn, P. J., van Buren, M., ten Dam, M. A., Kaasjager, K. A., Ligtenberg, G., Sijpkens, Y. W., Sluiter, H. E., van de Ven, P. J., Vervoort, G., Vleming, L., Bots, M. L., Wetzels, J. F. (2011). Nurse practitioners improve quality of care in chronic kidney disease: two-year results of a randomised study. Neth. J. practitioners in primary care. BMJ, 320(7241), 1048-1053. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10764367 Williams, K. S., Assassa, R. P., Cooper, N. J., Turner, D. A., Shaw, C., Abrams, K. R., Mayne, C., Jagger, C., Matthews, R., Clarke, M., McGrother, C. W. (2005). Clinial and cost-effectiveness of a new nurse-led continence service: a randomized controlled trial. Brit. J. Gen. Pract., 55(518), 696-704. https://bjgp.org/content/55/518/696.abstract

Consider that much of modern medicine has been about respecting the physician as the authority. This is not our philosophy. Rather, we see ourselves as equals for our clients to establish a mutual respecting relationship. This means creating a mutual goal for your wellness. We do not see ourselves as the fixer or the rescuer but ultimately a resource of information specific to the context of the encounter. The midwifery model of care was a great foundation for me as a clinician in that we seek for the woman to maintain her power and authority over herself. We want the responsibility of this work we do together to really be in the hands of the client, and while we share in that, we certainly are not the ultimate power and authority. Our goal is to assist our clients in moving towards self-care and self-knowledge as a healthy person in an optimal state of living. We provide resources for that and loads of opportunities for connection, but we do encourage you to be independent and to see yourself as capable of healing yourself. Our bodies are well-functioning, complex organisms with needs and workings best known by those who embody that physical form. You are your own expert. Conventional medicine has not historically placed the interests of women or children first. The focus has long been profits, not wellness. Our clients seek an alternative. As more and more women and men turn to natural methods of healing and seek to identify that underlying concern, to really govern themselves and learn to self-protect, we have discovered they are moving away from a system that sees them only as a mechanical organism that needs fixing. We are a guide. We extend compassion and empathy. We embrace science, but balance that with art. Health and wellness is about more than drugs, tests, and procedures. It's also about physical, emotional, and spiritual presence. We have resources for healing the whole person. We want to understand who you are today and who you see as your favorite self. To that, we will guide and support your efforts.