Samantha Zipporah

TW: heavy bleeding & hospitalization HiReader, Some of y'all may know that part of my "wounded healer" story includes a uterine hemorrhage I experienced at age 21. On the second day of my torrentially heavy off-cycle bleeding I called the nurse practitioner my mom had taken me to since I hit puberty. The nurse offered me birth control pills as an option to curb the flow. At the time I was two years into practicing the sympto-thermal method of fertility awareness, was fanatical about my...

Dear Reader, I am delighted to introduce you to my FoK Buddy Stephanie Portell BSN, RN. Steph is an ER nurse with nearly 20 years of frontline experience, including rural obstetrics & trauma response. Her work sits at the edge of clinical precision & embodied intelligence, prioritizing autonomy & safety. She brings a steady, pragmatic perspective grounded in physiology & human thresholds. Stephanie currently provides rapid response & forensic nursing services in south metro Atlanta. She's a...

Corinne! My next FoK Buddy is the amazing creatress Corinne Loperfido! Corinne is a social practice artist who works on topics ranging from environmental activism & women’s empowerment to slow fashion. We met in 2015 at the Spirit Weavers gathering, where she says she ”was forever changed“ by taking my abortion options class. We have been weaving creatively ever since, & have co-created some truly epic edutainment community events including but not limited to Va-jay-jay Day, the Let It Bleed...

HelloReader, Menopause is yet another inaccurate & rather inept term for our rites of passage & experiences on the womb continuum. Meno is from the Greek word for ”moon”, “month”, & “to measure”. In this context refers to to menstruation. Pause is also Greek, & means to “halt”, “cease”, or "pause". Peri is also from a Greek word, & means “around”. In our culture the term pause is most commonly used to describe something that stops happening for a period of time, & will later resume happening....

Equinox Blessings, Dear Reader! It feels like a time of equal light & dark, not just in the sky. Grief & praise. Joy & horror. Whimsy & despair. All of these feel alive in me as I sit to craft my quarterly museletter. meme by @motherwortandrose I just returned to my nest in Astoria from a trip to Portland, Oregon where I led the third Blessing Our Bleeding: Plants & Practical Magic class at Hedgerow Herb Co. Each class focused on a single plant & how it may bless our experiences of bleeding...