CO-FOUNDER & PROVIDER

Innate Traditions Postpartum Care Practitioner

Lactation Education Specialist

200-hour certified yoga instructor

Certified pre & postnatal yoga instructor

I (she/her) am Paloma and Amaya’s mom, partner to Jason, daughter of Arlene Roque & Oswaldo Pacheco, granddaughter of Lene Alvarez & Arthur Roque and Estela Roque & Agosto Pacheco, and great granddaughter of Petronilla Macaslin & Bruno Alvarez, Modesto Fernando & José Roque, and Teresa Lopez & Ramon Pacheco. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area (Ohlone Territory) - shout out to Pacifica! I spent about 6 years in beautiful San Luis Obispo (Chumash Territory) getting my super useful college degree. And for the last 20 years, I’ve been in Southern California, currently residing in the South Bay of Los Angeles (Tongva land).

I have done a few 180 degree turns in my life career-wise…going from an Industrial Engineer in the aerospace industry, to working for a dance and music school where I did graphic design, event planning, community outreach and photography, to vinyasa and pre & postnatal yoga instructor, to homekeeper / stay-at-home mom. Tending to my family will always be number one priority, but now having a 7yo & 4yo, I feel the shifts allowing me to dive into the role of Postpartum Care Practitioner and co-founder of Fireside Sanctuary.

I was deeply impacted by my pregnancy, birth and postpartum experiences, so much so that they made me want to dive head first into all the lingering questions I had about all the intense transformations that were occurring in my body, mind and spirit. I realized that I was not alone in the joy, and also immense grief new parents experience because of how under-resourced we are in this colonized society. As a result of this self-inquiry, over the last few years, I have taken a Full Spectrum Doula training, became a certified Innate Traditions Postpartum Care Practitioner, got certified as a Lactation Education Specialist and am continuing my education to one day become a Lactation Consultant. The more I learn, the more I want to provide the support and share the knowledge I wished I had before becoming a parent.

The questions continued as I began to connect with spirit and my ancestors in recent years. I always wondered why I never quite “fit in” and why I was drawn to practices such as home birth, extended breast/chestfeeding, co-sleeping, holistic healing, and homeschooling among other things, despite never witnessing or seeing these practices modeled to me. As I connected with my lineage more deeply, the more I realized the constant yearning for something different was a decolonial re-membering of my roots. In my roles of Mother and Postpartum Care Provider and Educator, I weave these ancestral and decolonized practices I have learned, and continue to learn and integrate within.

I would not be where I am today without the loving support of my family and friends, without my ancestors having my back, without my confidant, business partner, and soul sister, Samantha who is the fire to my air, or without the guidance of my teachers & mentors: Reco Pontes, Jen Maramba, Rachelle Seliga Garcia, Melissa Barayang, Siobhan Diores, Jana Lynne Umipig, Katrina Valentin, and all of their teachers.

CO-FOUNDER

BADT Certified Full Spectrum Doula

Dual Bachelor’s in Elementary and Special Education

Reiki Level II Practitioner

Pre/Postnatal Certified Movement Teacher

Trained in Trauma Informed Care (TIC)

Currently Training as a Lactation Education Specialist

I (Samantha/she/they) am a fiery empath that believes open communication and safe boundaries are the most important aspects of any healing partnership.

Reproductive and sexual well-being through education and advocacy starts at infancy and is best implemented through community care. This is why I believe that when both individuals and family systems in our communities are strong, empowered and connected (whatever the family makeup looks like or however they function) it creates positive, powerful changes to everyone and every system around us.

After a few years of being a full-spectrum doula, I have found myself lucky and honored to reconnect with my very first passions of education and advocacy.

When I began my teaching career, as much as I loved working with the kiddos, connecting with the families was where I would get fired up. I kept finding myself showing the parents and caretakers all the ways they could utilize the systems in place to better serve their kids and themselves, instead of trying to fix it myself.

I was told in one of my last peer reviews that I needed to “take off my social justice hat and put back on my teacher hat”. I realized then that I needed to find a better way to stretch my skills and also that teachers are a special brand of badass.

Since then, I have become a parent of 3 incredible kiddos. My partner, Dave, and I learned early on that there is no either/or, no all-knowing and no actual parenting gurus …and truthfully, that kind of sucked. At the same time, it’s brought us to a space of exploration as parents, individuals and partners and we’re working on looking at this as an adventure rather than a pre-written story.

Please don’t think we do any of this shit on our own. We are beyond lucky to thrive on the support we seek and gain from friends, family and community members; especially when we are existing in all the darker spaces parenting bring us - loneliness, exasperation, confusion and beyond.

The binary doesn’t exist in parenting and that gray space is where we are learning alongside our children, and hopefully alongside you.

DANCING FOR BIRTH PROVIDER & POSTPARTUM DOULA

Professionally Trained By DONA International

Pediatric CPR & First Aid ADE Certified

Certified Lactation Educator Counselor by UC San Diego

Babywearing for Birth Workers & Beyond by MamaBird LA

Art and Science of Lactation & Sleep Workshop by Moorea Malatt, CPD, CLC, CLEC

Certified by DONA International as Postpartum Certified Doula, CPD

Labor & Birth Doula Training by DONA International

Multicultural Postpartum Recovery - Malaysian Style- by Valerie Lynn of Eco Postnatal Care

I was born & raised in Kanagawa, Japan and came to the United States in 1999 as a college student. To study abroad was sort of a wild idea to most of my friends and family as English is my second language, but I earned a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Oregon (Eugene is such a lovely and free place to be !) and established my career as a designer in California. At that time I fell in love with the love of my life and had gained so much confidence and a sense of accomplishment.....

While working in a corporate world pushing myself to meet project deadlines and sales figures for a decade, I did not think for a second that making a family would be any harder than that. Well, I had no clue. I was finally fortunate to go through a viable pregnancy after miscarriages, infertility treatments, and a high risk pregnancy. When I thought my rough path was over, I was hit by an overwhelming postpartum life: bodyfeeding challenges, sleep deprivation, and loss of my identity. As euphoric as the experience was, I felt discouraged. I felt underqualified.

"No one told me how hard it'd be. How the heck am I supposed to do THIS?"

I soon realized that this society lacks support and understanding for the vulnerable time. Family leave is not mandated or too short, not giving your body and mind the time it needs to heal. Healthcare system is so broken that new parents are basically left alone. Expectations of new parents are so high that they feel so pressured. My perspective shifted entirely after my first birth. Although I was staying in a corporate job a few years after, my heart was in the birthing and parenting community. I jumped on a professional postpartum doula training at the age of 40 as my birthday gift to myself. And after a few years of postpartum doula practice, I also got trained in labor & birth doula to widen my knowledge to better serve the community.

Childbirth is transformative and it should be celebrated by compassionate and continuous support. My mission as a doula is to nurture new parents' confidence and help build their resilience during this transformative experience. As our ancestors did, this journey is not meant to go through alone.

YOGA, REIKI AND SOUND BATH PRACTITIONER

Hi! I'm Randi (she/her/they)! I've been practicing yoga since 2001, where I took my first yoga class at Santa Monica college. I was pursuing an education in Physical Fitness and it was open. I fell in love, with how to felt and how much other aspects of my fitness improved. But as much as I loved it, I didn't feel like I 'fit in' in the yoga community at the time. This kept me from seeing myself in the seat of a provider, only a student. Throughout the past decade, yoga has given me not only the strength but the drive to push past personal hangups and be present, for myself and others. As a Black woman, I felt that there was a need to represent the underrepresented community of Black women and women of color that do love and live yoga. I felt that I needed to do MY part to give everyone, especially women and non-men, a space to be seen, heard and valued. After years of ignoring my inner voice, I decided, with the help of friends and close family, that it was time to get out of my own way and share this enriching and self developing practice of yoga with any and everyone I can. With hard work and dedication, I completed my first 200 hour yoga teacher training April 12, 2015. Since then, I have completed 750+ hours of training, with well over 1,400 hours of classes taught. I strive to give the best knowledge to those I hold space for, so continuing education is a must. I am always a student, regardless of how much I learn. Yoga is a constant teacher. With that being said, I just completed a 300 hr yoga teaching course, December of 2021! Currently, I teach BasicFlow (power vinyasa or power flow) YinFlow and Yin+Soundbath (restorative / yin practice accompanied by Crystal Singing Bowls, a steel tongue drum and chakra meditations). E-RYT 200 / Reiki Master / YACEP

LMFT

I am a Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in trauma, families, children/adolescents, and parenting. I am certified in Child Parent Psychotherapy and am trained in additional trauma informed evidence based practices that allows me to effectively work with children, adolescence, and adults exposed to trauma. I maintain a private practice in Huntington Beach, CA and offer in home therapy for an additional price.

I work from an attachment perspective. Our earliest attachments form our way of responding to stress throughout our lives. Sometimes these attachments are healthy and at times they could be traumatic. We will work together to reconstruct unhealthy attachment patterns, create new attachment patterns and strengthen existing attachments. Taking this approach allows us to develop new coping skills and new interpersonal skills in order to promote a healthier life.

Licensed Midwife

Certified Practicing Midwife

Jacqueline Natasha Boyd (aka “Tasha”) is a wife and mother, midwife, wellness enthusiast, musician, vegetarian and founder of South Bay Birth a birthing center. Tasha has worked in the holistic health field for 18 years, which began after she left the music world to begin a journey of healing. She worked at a wellness center in Santa Monica where she began working with people from all walks of life, who were seeking better health. During this time Tasha became immersed in herbal traditions, natural health, massage, cleansing and holistic treatment of diseases. Her time at the wellness center included working with people who experienced infertility, PCOS, endometriosis, hormone imbalance and reproductive health concerns. This experience and along with giving birth at home to her two children with a midwife were the catalyst for Tasha becoming a midwife.

Tasha is a Licensed Midwife (LM) by the Medical Board of California and a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) through the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM). She holds an Associate of Science in Midwifery degree from the Midwives College of Utah, a MEAC accredited school, and a Bachelor of Music degree in Woodwind Performance from Florida State University. She maintains current certifications in Neonatal Resuscitation and Basic Life Support for Healthcare Providers. Additionally, Tasha is a DONA Trained Doula, ICEA Trained Childbirth Educator and Placenta Encapsulator. Tasha has attended hundreds of births and has been assisting babies into this world for 10+ years.

When not at a birth or with clients, you will probably find Tasha spending time with her family, reading a book or enjoying time at the beach.

DOULA & SOUND BATH & BREATHWORK PRACTITIONER

hen I was 9 years old, me, my pregnant mother, and 5 year old sister moved out of my fathers home into a small bedroom. My mother began to teach me about what to expect during her labor.

About 5 months later, at the age of 10, I became her doula.

I knew that my role was to stay grounded and offer her support. This came naturally to me, as I was always quite calm in times of chaos, perhaps a survival skill.

As she breathed through each contraction, I served her water, ice chips, and listened to her careful instructions as I gathered our stuff for the hospital. By her 3rd birth my mother knew and explained that there was no need to rush to the hospital too early, so once we arrived it didn’t take long for her to start pushing.

During sacred births, the wisdom awakens the Divine Self. The womb offers us the natural ability to nurture, no matter the age. Naturally my instincts kicked in and my words of encouragement flowed into my mothers birthing space.

I remember holding her hand in amazement, thinking “Wow, my mother is so strong.”

The moment my sister was born, with tears in my eyes, I thought “I want to feel this moment forever.”

Today, I am proud to say that I am a doula.

I am here to provide ongoing support and non-judgmental space that creates love, transformation, and harmony in your beautiful birthing experience.