Organizers & Leaders

Natalie Arsenault

Natalie is the mother of five children, and has been working as an independent traditional birth-keeper serving New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for 16 years.  She has spearheaded many community initiatives including the “Birth Talk” movement and the “Broadview on Breastfeeding” support group, and is a pillar of wisdom for womyn all over the east coast of Canada and beyond.  The Annual Womyn’s Summit is the heart-child of Natalie, master gatherer of wise womyn, brilliant star, stalwart advocate, a force to be reckoned with.

 

Mara Panacci

Mara is a Mother, autonomous birth advocate, yoga teacher, witch and writer. Deeply embodying the sacred feminine, she spends time caring for her small homestead, preparing nutritious food, crafting, medicine making, and home educating her young children. Together with her husband, she cultivates a small hobby farm on Canada’s East Coast for most of the year, and travels to where divine work and intention allow.

 

Kate Varsava

 

Mother, Feminist, Midwitch, Medicine Maker, Yoga Teacher, Writer, Songstress, Serial-Entrepreneur, so many things.  With a deep reverence for traditional knowledge, natural healing, and old wisdom Kate lives life driven by passion and intuition in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  Solo travel, delicious coffee, and restorative yoga are some of her current inspirations.  You can find Kate’s musings and wildcraft at Your Local Midwitch.

 

Alison Capstick

 

Alison Capstick is Womyn’s Summit’s Healing Tent Coordinator extraordinaire!  A registered massage therapist and reiki healer, an energetic healer and a yoga teacher, she began a little side company called EL Mala last year when she couldn’t find the perfect Mala for her mediation practice. Her designs are inspired by nature, especially the ever-changing sea. When she isn’t traveling abroad with her family, or leading retreats in Mexico, you can find her living by the ocean in Prospect Village, with her French lover and their two children.

>>>>> Past Keynote Speakers <<<<<

Maryn Green

 

Maryn founded the Indie Birth Association in 2007. She began her journey in birth with her first child’s planned hospital birth is 2002. Disillusioned, she hired a midwife and had a homebirth with her second child, a son, and the rest is history. Maryn began a midwifery apprenticeship in Chicago when her son was only 4 months old, and continued learning in this ancient tradition for over 5 years. Her apprenticeship brought her to Arizona with her family in 2007, and she went on to become a state licensed midwife from 2009-12. During that period, Maryn discovered the truth about midwifery and birth that is “owned” by the State, and returned her license so that she could truly serve mamas, babies and her own Heart and Soul. During this time, Indie Birth evolved to become an internationally well-known radical resource for women and midwives seeking information, research and intuitive guidance and support that has remained mainly in the hands of traditional midwives or “birth servants”. Her podcast series, “Taking Back Birth” has been downloaded by tens of thousands of people, all over the world. Maryn is passionate about continuing to learn, study and research while honouring our past as true “wise women”.  Maryn lives in Sedona, Arizona with her husband of 16 years and is mama to 8 children and many animals.

 

Sister Morningstar

The path Sister took to seek the fullest expression of her divine nature was the path of instinctual living. It led her back into the simple and sacred ways of her Cherokee ancestors and forward into preserving those wisdom ways through ritual, story telling and community building with others longing to rebirth their own instinctual nature.  “Always there is a story,” say the native elders and healers.  There is indeed a long and beautiful story between those early awareness’s and the now full life Sister Morningstar enjoys as a Catholic Mystic, Cherokee Hermitess, Founder of MorningStar Community and Order of Morning Star Sisters and MorningStar Yoga, Owner of Shanti Publications and co-owner of Soul Blossom, lifetime volunteer for C.A.S.A, while being a mother, midwife, and visionary sojourner with you.

 

Carla Hartley

Carla created the first distance education program for midwives—Apprentice Academics—in 1981. In 1994 the name was changed to Ancient Art Midwifery Institute. She is the author of Helping Hands, The Apprentice Workbook, and several educational publications relating to birth. She has spent close to thirty years in birth work of one kind or another: childbirth educator, midwife, author, speaker, and midwifery educator, and she is the mother of four children and Baba to six. Carla is the founder and director of the Trust Birth Initiative whose primary work is telling the truth: Birth is Safe; Interference is Risky.

 

Sheila Stubbs

Shiela is an independent homebirth doula, mother, nurse, author of Birthing the Easy Way, and believer in women and birth.  She has written articles for Compleat Mother magazine, New Beginnings Magazine, Birth and Baby Magazine, and Mothers at Home Magazine and has been attending homebirths since 1986.  She is not a midwife.  Traditionally, a birth attendant was simply an experienced woman who came to help with – not to be in charge of – a woman’s birth process.  Sheila is proud to have no certification with any doula organizations, and therefore doesn’t subscribe to any organization’s rules.  Her philosophy is to allow the mother and her partner to manage their birth on their own terms.

 

Molly Dutton-Kenny