‘We are Our Own Medicine’: Reclaiming Care Beyond Roe v. Wade

Our ancestors–and fellow community members–have created ways of healing when their bodily autonomy and access to care have been restricted.

In the wake of the leaked Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, Resonance Network is conjuring an event grounded in community, storytelling, and ancestral wisdom around reproductive care.Join Black and Indigenous healers of various traditions (bios below) in conversation together as we ask: What practices of care can create options when the state restricts our choices?

Date: Thursday, June 16, 5-6:30pm Eastern/2-3:30 Pacific

Zoom: A Zoom link will be sent to you upon registration

Closed Captioning and simultaneous Spanish/English translation will be available for all participants.

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Practitioners, Healers, Storytellers:

Deoné Newell is a Navajo/Black entrepreneur, Breathwork Facilitator and Women’s Life Coach. In 2017, Deoné was featured in Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the year’s CEO’s to keep an eye on. She has also consulted for SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) to educate youth on how Native arts/culture serve as protective factors for mental illness.  

As a woman who hails from the Navajo Reservation (Window Rock, AZ), and has seen the effects of systemic oppression and generational trauma firsthand, Deoné has dedicated herself to making ancestral healing, and its forgotten wisdom accessible to as many BIPOC women as possible. Allowing women to break generational patterns and step into true self-discovery, generational healing, and spiritual sovereignty; decolonizing wellness one practice at a time.

Karen L. Culpepper is a clinical herbalist and educator living in Southern Maryland. She has been a practitioner and bodyworker for over 14 years and is the founder of the clinical practice, Embracing Rhythm. Karen’s particular focus areas are intergenerational trauma and its impact on physiology and womb restoration. Her study and knowledge of cotton root bark as an abortifacient and source of sovereignty for descendants of captured Africans in the US and beyond offers insight into the role of plant spirit healing in the context of political changes.

Karen was a member of the Oxalis Collective, a BIPOC healing justice practice that supported organizers across the country, and has taught at numerous herb schools and herbal conferences across the US and abroad. Karen is currently on sabbatical dreaming up what liberation looks and feels like in her bodies. She finds joy being in soil and sunshine and is elated to be “MiMi” to her granddaughter, Ava.

Qiddist Ashé is a medicine woman and female health educator who holds space for transformation as we cultivate the inner and outer resources we need to live fully in our power. She is the founder and creatrix of The Womb Room, an online community for female health & spiritual sovereignty. Informed by her maternal lineage of Ethiopian midwives and her own work in authentic midwifery, functional health, herbalism, somatics, and spiritual sovereignty, Qiddist merges the science and the spirit of female health, orienting to all the ways we can reclaim agency and responsibility for our bodies and our lives.

Qiddist’s work is rooted in “womb to tomb” midwifery, spanning all parts of our generative lives from menstruation and fertility, to pregnancy and birth, pregnancy prevention and abortion, cervical health, postpartum, menopause and beyond— and all the death/life cycles that come with these phases. She believes that through models of community care outside our existing institutions, we can remember that we are our own medicine, we do not need to ask for permission, and that it is our birthright to know how to tend to our wombs and our vitality.

Camila Barrera Salcedo is a mother of 3, doula, midwife, sexuality therapist, psychotherapist, and TEDx speaker. As a holotropic breathing and fertility therapist, she delves into the depths of the unconscious via the physical body to identify blockages that disrupt the evolution and transformation of individuals and generate illness.

She develops workshops to re-establish the feminine consciousness through acceptance and knowledge about the body and its processes. She is a student of nutrition, yoga, exercise, massage, natural parenting, and other techniques for mental, physical, and emotional balance.

Camila holds a certification in body therapy from the University of Southern California; is certified in experiential education by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia; and is a certified doula trained in the Dolphin Doula method. She completed midwife courses at The Sanctuary Birth and Family Wellness Center in Los Angeles, CA. She is an experienced midwife and dedicated student of alternative medicine focused on birthing, as well as feminine anatomy and physiology.