Simple Sustainable Sovereign

My life, in summary . . .

I am a young woman committed to simplifying my existence, reviving the traditional ways of life, living from a place of radical responsibility and presence, and supporting others to do the same in the capacity that is achievable for them.

I am 25 years old and I was born and raised in a small mountain town in California. When I was about eleven I decided that my goal in life was to one day get married and become a wife and a mother.

My husband and I fell in love the summer after I turned 15. After several years of growth and development in our personal lives and our relationship, we were married on August 29, 2021 at 20 & 21 years of age.

We spent the first year of our marriage living in Santa Barbara, California while my husband finished his bachelor’s degree at UCSB and I worked in the service industry. From there we moved back to our hometown of Tahoe for one more summer off together before we started “real life”. In fall of 2022 he began a job that brought us to Sacramento, California. One year later we were relocated once again to Salem, Oregon, where we currently make our home.

I had developed an interest in homemaking skills such as cooking, baking, and housekeeping as a pre-teen in home economics. In my teenage years I began experimenting with ferments such as sauerkraut, kombucha, and sourdough. In the years since, my interest has only deepened and my skills and knowledge of these topics have expanded.

In my late teens, I was awakened to the excess of waste that we create as consumers, which compelled me to become hyper conscious of my habits, attempting to create as little waste as possible. This coincided with my discovery of minimalism. My perspective of what was truly important in life began to shift away from the material world and focus more intently on the things that cannot be bought.

When we got married, it was the first time my husband and I had lived outside of our parents’ homes. This brought many changes, including our decision to drastically reset our eating patterns by committing to eating as healthfully and homemade as possible; partly out of motivation to better ourselves and partly out of frugality. Since then, we’ve only continued to go deeper down the path of ancestral nourishment.

Following the fiasco of 2020, I began to discover and contemplate many people speaking out about the ways that we lack understanding of what true health is, where it comes from, and whose business it is to protect one’s individual condition.

The mainstream method of thinking – that doctors should tell us what we need, that medical intervention in biological processes is necessary, that someone else is responsible for keeping me healthy or vise versa – was one I had been raised to question and I soon saw was rather illogical.

As I have watched the unfolding of world events over the past years and grown in awareness of myself and others, I have come to believe that the responsibility of health belongs solely to each individual.

Today, this belief is only stronger. I truly think that we are each given responsibility for our own selves by our creator and called to steward this gift. Accepting the responsibility for this sovereignty can be both the most frightening and most important step any human can make in actualizing true presence in their life.

Birth is one of the most important areas that we quickly give up this sovereignty. I have felt the call to birth work since I was around 16, but medical midwifery never quite felt like the right path for me. I have no interest in women outsourcing their individual authority and responsibility to me in the most important moment of theirs’ and their babies’ lives, and I have no interest in taking that authority from them.

In 2022 I found out about the Radical Birth Keeper School (taught by Yolande Norris-Clark and Emilee Saldaya of Free Birth Society) and I knew I had found a path I could walk.

I completed the RBK school in Fall of 2023 and for the first time in my life I felt like I had found my calling. The school gave me a foundation of the language and tools necessary to support women through birthing and mothering in full integrity, and I am only continuing to build upon it.

I believe that we each possess the power to choose an autonomous life and I desire to learn and share the simple and sustainable habits that support this vision. This is the reason that I have created Simple Sustainable Sovereign.