Autumn note to community | Mabon seasonal note

Good morning from the Central Coast,

Long Summer (and Fire/Smoke Season, a mirrored, layered happening) brought with it fantastical dreaming, the bustle of end-of-season blooming days bringing forth the wane, the classical call to rest with September’s arrival, and a settling as the Summer’s dust settles.

Here on the Central Coast, especially on the coast itself, Summer is a Fog Season, and September brings forth the Sun. It can be an intense change, especially as internally I am feeling called to move more inward, just as the Sun chooses to spend most of the day up overhead. I have been dancing with the rhythms of rest, work, play, adventure, and inner tending, as is the case with every season. Eternally, it feels like, discerning what feels most nourishing to me, how I can sustainably extend my care to others, and when I need to reel it in.

Years ago, a mentor of mine taught me a practice of sensing where my energy was, and drawing it back towards me. As if it were a fog itself, is how she described it. I close my eyes every so often, most timely at the book end of a day, and visualize where this fog reach of self lands in the moment. It can be tethered and tendriled towards families in my care, hospitals, the birth center, the coast, or ways away to other homes I’ve known & loved. It can be extended to certain people, and sometimes is almost always with a few. With a keen eye and a swipe of the hand, I cut ties as needed, draw myself back, and the fog dissipates in some ways, centralizes and becomes more dense in other areas.

As we sift & shift into this thinning veil season, I highly encourage a practice such as this. One that brings forth more clarity and mid-line tending and tethering of the self, one that asks awareness of how we spend our time & where we send our energy (and where/how/why we let it linger). The world, this modern spiral chaos, asks so much of us, our attention, our mind-stuff. We owe it to ourselves to discern, dismantle, settle & resettle, again & again.

With the arrival of the Equinox, we welcome balance, and tip into the darkness. I’m here for it. We’re moving through Mabon Season, as we wander towards Samhain (the Irish new year, at least how I feel it in my bones & spirit). For more thoughts on that, you can head to this recent share on my Substack.

Amidst it all, under these sunshine adorned Central Coast days, with an occasional, welcome, dreamy foggy morning, I am finding myself deep in my studies, moving towards more rest, falling into creative rhythms (alongside many beloveds — just the best), and tilting easily into more daily rituals inside the home (hearth tending season is just oh so grand).

Thank you all for being here. Continue reading for other life updates, doula offerings & availability, & a wee closing prayer.

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Wholly Held • A Nourishing Postpartum Offering for this Winter • In Collaboration with Community Herbalist Sadie Krier •

A centering thread amidst it all, inquire here, for the innately deserved postpartum care of all our dreams. Officially launching by the month’s end — we’ll begin working with families, offering in-home care, this Winter!

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Additional gatherings & offerings on the horizon:

• The Forest Gatherings: Labor & Birth Prep in my home in Los Osos. Saturday, October 3rd 2:30-4:30pm. RSVP via email. Feel free to share with friends & loved ones who are growing their families! They need only send me a note, and I’ll loop them in on the rest the week prior to our gathering.

• Empowered Birth Education at Intimate Journey Birth & Wellness Center in SLO. Held once monthly on a Saturday morning from 9-11:30am. Pre-register here. Our next class is Saturday, September 26th, and the following class lands Saturday, October 26th. Ideally attended within a few months of your estimated due date. Limited spots available to allow for an intimate & well-connected class.

• Broom Making Class at Estero Bay Art & Craft, October date has landed on Saturday, October 10th 2-4pm! Full broom making class coming shortly thereafter, I know folks have been asking :) Register here via Estero Bay Art & Craft.

• The Forest Childbearing Years Portal: An Online Education & Nourishment Platform. Continually tending to this offering & dreaming it alive, ideally coming to be in Winter/Spring time.

• The Rose Garden Doula Mentorship: Curated by request & on its way, arriving this Autumn/Winter, and I’ll be sharing more any day now. Three tiers of Mentorship will be made available. Intended to pour forth what my cup holds, and continue to expand the circle of birth attendees aligned with empowered, truly holistic, and embodied space tending, advocacy-lending, and medicine weaving. Here’s a sneak peek.

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Some general life & business updates to close this note out!

• Midwifery school —

Come October, it will be 1 Year of formal schooling completed for me! I am looking back on this year and feeling the palpable, tangible growth & steadiness that has come from regular studies, plenty of birth attending, and a call to go deeper, farther yet, in this year to come.

I’m working steadily through the ‘Enrichment Modules’ for my didactic studies, and preparing to enter my Primary Phase in my apprenticeship, where my hands will be the first to welcome so many babes. It’s the greatest honor, and a responsibility I do not take lightly (how could anyone?).

I am blessed with many a mentor, and a counselor offering EMDR therapy so the births that are a bit more sticky & stuck-in-time-like do not impact my care moving beyond them. Learning the ways of a sustainable, well-tended midwifery practice now, in the hopes of crafting a life-long path for myself in this ancient realm of family & birth tending.

For more anecdotes on recent birth-world happenings, you can hop over to my Substack.

• Availability for the calendar year —

A lovely lil list for ya! Share with your friends if they are in need of birth support and may want to grab a spot on my calendar ~

— January: 1 birth available (Ideally due date towards mid-end of the month). *1 Postpartum Family.

— February: 1 birth available. *1 Postpartum Family.

— March: Fully booked. *1 Postpartum Family.

— April: 1 birth available.

— May: Taking off, Postpartum Care available.

— June: 1 birth available (Ideally due date on/after 6/21). *1 Postpartum Family.

• Welcome to the Late Summer Babes!

Within my Doula Practice, we’ve welcomed four babes, all darling little girls, since early August!

Two first time mothers, two welcoming their second daughters. It was a joy & a journey to tend to and work with each family.

The end of the year has 7 more births pending ~ looking forward to all that they bring for each of us on the birth path & in the portal.

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Many, many blessings & thanks for being here, in whatever capacity & through all the wavelengths between us, as we land at Mabon. May it be soft, though rooted. May the days tilt sweetly, the apples fall into our baskets just so, and the final harvests of the season be something of a hymnal.

Many blessings & happy Equinox, blessed Mabon,

Caroline