Hello! I am so glad you’re here.
I am honored to serve as a full-spectrum doula, childbirth educator, astrologer, and creativity ally.
I am a birth keeper and a guardian of transition, transformation, and growth. I am an educator and an advocate for voice, creativity, and curiosity in the journey of life and in preparation for childbirth and growing a family. I am also an astrologer, and I am deeply connected to the planets and the rhythms and cycles of the cosmos.
I believe that when we allow ourselves to be deeply supported, to be seen and held in our present experiences by a loving, trusting witness, we will always reach for hope, renewal, and possibility.
Like a tree who only knows how to grow, we too know how to root deep and rise toward the light, when we are given all we truly need to be who we are. And along the way, we can experience unimaginable Love, Wellness and Belonging.
I believe when we cultivate greater confidence and trust in our bodies, before and during times of transition, we can hold the places of doubt and fear in compassion and understanding and come into a deeper sense of embodiment and grace. And we are not meant to do this journey alone.
I strongly believe in the dignity and sovereignty of every person I serve.
As a birth doula, my intention is to serve mothers and families to feel supported and prepared for their birthing and postpartum journey. It is my intention to help create safe, loving, trusting birth environments. When the environment feels supportive and clear, a woman/birthing person can connect deeper with her instinctual, animal body, settle the part of her mind that organizes, plans, and worries, and allow the birthing process to move through her.
I am here to help my clients navigate their unique birthing journey in all that it asks for. Giving birth is a powerful portal, and I cannot imagine and have not known a more fundamental rite of passage than birth.
I offer presence, guidance, and education for the perinatal journey of pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period. I hold and reflect respect and deep care to the families, teams, and spaces that I support.
I work with all families, and support the entire birth team. It is also my intention to support and empower partners in their understanding and strength during the birth as they move through their own transition into parenthood.
“Verana was one of our fairy god mothers for the birth of our baby. Her ability to hold space and give unbiased info is unparalleled. She is gentle and kind and curious. Everything you would want during a huge transition. Prenatally she gave us the info we needed and maybe even more importantly listened to us as a couple as we noodled out our thoughts and feelings on birth, postpartum and parenthood. She felt like a friend, a sister, and a confidant. During our homebirth she was present to everyone’s needs, highly communicative, took stellar videos, and soothed my nerves. She’s the kind of human who holds you and encourages you to trust your body and your wisdom. WE JUST LOVE HER! I’d hire her again and again.”
I also work as an archetypal, counseling astrologer, and this work feels deeply connected to my work as a doula. I find myself ever more weaving the two, and walking my astrology clients through their own birthing journeys.
I see over and over again that when we are guided back to our center, with a loving witness, we can find and receive a quality of Love that will transform even the deepest fears and darkest nights into the light of the Sun.
From here, anything is possible. I believe in all that is possibly inside you.
I see people. I meet them where they are. And I see where their soul wants to go.
I am here to help guide you home. Through trust. Through your body. Through connection.
We are alive at a wildly challenging and important time, where we are asked to be mindful, embodied, and organized individually and collectively to face this world with courage, grace, and authenticity.
I am very passionate about anti-racism work, especially in the birth room. I am committed to unpacking and unraveling my own whiteness and internalized racism, and to help walk beside individuals and organizations, committed to uprooting patriarchal systems of oppression, and doing so in community and in connection.
BLACK LIVES MATTER!
I serve women/birthing peeopl and families in the East Bay and San Francisco, CA areas.
I am support hospital births, home births, and birthing centers births.
I serve all birthing persons, partners, individuals, and families of diverse backgrounds.
I feel honored and grateful to work with LGBTQIA families.
I value respect, care, mutual understanding, honesty, and trust.
LOVE IS LOVE.
How did I get involved in this work?
I had been traveling abroad in South America for a couple years when both birth and astrology found their way into my heart in 2013. I was in the midst of a Jupiter/Moon transit when I received my first astrology reading and began to study my own natal chart. I began noticing changes in my body and relationship with Spirit, Life, and Love. Through the guidance of the stars and the earth, I felt encouraged to move to California in the fall of 2014.
I had been working as a nanny for many years and was invited, seemingly randomly, to a birth-keeper conference in 2015. I suddenly found myself in a room full of birth professionals, and I immediately recognized the profound sense of homecoming and the deep need for this work at this time. I could feel what a wild honor it is to stand beside those at this extraordinary threshold of bringing babies into the world at this time. I felt a strong sense of coming home to something primordial, powerful, and True. I
I feel deep care and connection to mothers/birthing persons, families, and the importance of how we bring babies into the world and how this impacts, empowers, and heals us. I believe bringing babies into the world today in the presence of a loving, caring, educated support team is an act of courage and liberation for all.
This work changes me. Evert birth, every reading, every client is a gift and a teacher for my Soul. I join you on this path of liberation, healing, and bringing more wholeness into our bodies and hearts. The more I tend to my own path of healing, grace, power, and creativity, the more I feel confident in each of us to transform, to break free of the stories we tell ourselves that are no longer true, and to come to rest in the deep center of our being. I believe in you and all the life you carry inside.
I have been very fortunate and privileged with opportunities to study, live, work, and travel in South America and Africa for some formative time, spending growthful and meaningful time with different people and lifestyles, languages, music, biomes, schools, orphanages, and healing centers and have received deep messages from the jungles, the oceans, the mountains, and inside my own beating heart. I value self and collective exploration, creative expression, and mindful integration of our complex, beautiful, and seemingly fragmented selves, families, and societies.
When I am not in the birth room or exploring the planetary movements, I love to sing, play music, dance, drum, write poetry, play with puppets, and spend time with my beloved family, friends and with this extraordinary earth.
ASTROLOGY QUALIFICATIONS
Student of Trust Psyche © School of Astrology and Depth Psychology 2017-present
Transit Astrology: the art of living, 2021
Counseling Astrology for Professionals, 2019
Deepen Your Astrological Practice: A Psychospiritual Journey through the forty-five Planetary Combinations, 2018
Student of Michael Morris, Cusco, Peru, 2014
DOULA QUALIFICATIONS
Childbirth Education Certification with BADT (Birthing Advocacy Doula Trainings LLC)
Student Liaison for Doula Thrive, 2020-2022
Doula Thrive yearlong doula mentorship completion, 2018-2019
Creative Ways of Making Space for Baby training, 2019
Rebozo skills and embodiment training, 2019
Birth doula training completion with Natural Resources, 2018
Postpartum doula certification, 2018
Volunteer doula with Homeless Prenatal Program, 2018
Elizabeth Davis' Heart and Hands Midwifery Intensive, 2017
200 hour Yoga Teacher Training Certification with Namaste Yoga, 2015-16
Volunteer doula with San Francisco General Hospital, 2015-16
Doula training completion with Birth Matters, 2015
Advanced Spanish proficiency
Intermediate Portuguese proficiency
Child/Infant First Aid/CPR certification
Photo of rose by Koa Kalish
At Embody Your Birth, I believe in honoring the power, beauty, and magic of our earth, courageously confronting systemic racism, and paying homage to the lands upon which I live and work. I pay an annual land tax to Sogorea-te as one small step in acknowleding that I live on the beautiful and stolen land of the Chochenyo-Ohlone people of the East Bay, and I encourage you to do the same. I am committed to unlearning inherited beliefs that cause harm and learning how to be in right and clear relationship with all of life, through deep listening, embodied living, pleasure, and joy.
It is a gift to be alive at this time, and I am so grateful.