jaime Shapiro | licensed midwife • arvigo therapist™ • holistic living and design

I am a Midwife by training but so many other things by way of living and being. I am the wife of a beautiful baker, I am a mother to two incredible daughters, I am a clean-living advocate, a cook, a creator, a gardener, and a designer. There is a strong guiding ethos that folds its way into every corner of my life - it is the thread that strings all of my passions together and offers a very specific point of view from which I move through this life. Unearthed is my attempt to share the things that light up my life in a meaningful way. A place where we can embrace our multiplicity together and find wholeness through a deep connection to all of our many parts.

MY HEALTH AND WELLNESS BACKGROUND

My healing journey really began in my early teens - Like so many young girls, I struggled with loving my body as it was and developed an unhealthy and disordered relationship with food, which resulted in years of amenorrhea. It was absolutely clear to me though, even at a very young age, that the answer did not lie it taking a pill to bring on a menses. I knew this was skirting the real issue and I became determined to heal myself. This was the beginning of a lifelong path. The plants and food became my greatest allies, my medicine, and a way of connecting with the natural world - and ultimately my self healing potential.

At university, I studied local and global food systems and their respective impacts on women and children’s health around the world. My curriculum was a beautiful blend of courses in international development, sustainable agriculture, women’s studies, and nutrition sciences. After college, I worked in East Africa with small women’s bio-intensive farming groups and helped develop supportive nutrition guidelines for women living with HIV/AIDS. Eventually my focus narrowed and my desire to work one on one with women in a healing capacity became clear and my call to Midwifery took shape.

I am a Licensed Midwife under the Medical Board of California and a Certified Professional Midwife under the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM). My formal education and training consisted of the completion of a 3 year accredited Midwifery school and 3 years of apprenticeship with a busy homebirth practice. I also spent time as a student in Senegal, West Africa at a small but busy, rural maternity center.

Throughout the years, I have studied many other non-allopathic healing modalities - including herbal medicine, homeopathy, lymphatic drainage, holistic nutrition &  lifestyle support, etc. I am also a practitioner of the Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal Therapy™ and a level II Reiki practitioner. The body is truly a magnificent vessel - constantly processing and digesting the energy and information it is receiving from the world around us. Its truest nature is wholeness and balance and it is prepared to bend and flex and adapt as it needs but it also has a rigidity and strength to hold its ground when its being asked too much, when its boundaries are being pushed, when unprocessed emotions are left untended. She will remind with a gentle nudge and then with a more persistent and bolder push when we need to tune in, make a change, address whats not serving us, and integrate. At the core of my care is the reflection that each of us holds a tremendous capacity to heal, that we are each our own most powerful healers.

I am deeply honored to midwife women throughout their lives, supporting them in their continuous journey of birthing the self.

MY DESIGN BACKGROUND

I am not formally trained in the design world but it is in my bones. Being the daughter of an architect, I grew up with a keen sense of space and an awareness of our relationship to it. I am a deeply visual person and have felt moved and affected by my environment since as long as I can remember.

I cannot deny my love of beauty. There is a real felt experience for me in interacting with the aesthetics of places and things, the stories they tell, the visceral connections they make, the nostalgia they elicit. Creating spaces that awaken a sense of belonging and comfort has always been a very intuitive thing for me. A feeling more than anything else. Drawn to places that cue a sense of awe and inner calm, that deep resonance in the body that centers something within, I take my inspiration from the natural world. For me, the beauty is in the imperfections, the constant shape shifting of materials that age and change along side us.

My love of design and my joy in supporting people in creating beautiful and well spaces is not separate from the care I give as a Midwife. The places we reside in and work in and love and learn in can be places that inspire, places that contribute to our overall sense of wellbeing. The materials we choose to live with in the spaces we occupy impact our whole being. It is a deeply enriching experience to guide people in the process of creating spaces that not only serve a practical purpose and help their lives function more fluidly but also elevate their senses and deepen a feeling of connectedness and sense of self.