Hi, I'm Hayley
I live in South Devon with my fiancé and daughter. I’m trained as a sensory herbalist, birth story listener, solution focused therapist, natural family planning educator and regenerative horticulturist.
Before all else I am a mother. Becoming a mother was the most transformational and healing thing to happen to me. Part of my mission is to return mothering and care to the centre of our values and culture.
I'm here for the messy, rich journey of living through times of collapse & transition,
for remembering who we truly are,
for uncovering the medicine stories we're becoming,
for restoring relations with body, cycles, soul & the land that supports us,
for the life sustaining future we all need.
A flavour of my journey
A myriad of health conditions throughout my life have led to an ongoing exploration of what it means and what it takes to be well in this culture … particularly as a highly sensitive, empathic woman and mother.
I’ve been on a continuous unlearning/healing journey that continues to bring me into deeper connection with myself, my body, community and land.
This process has revealed how interconnected physical symptoms are with our emotional life, psycho-spiritual health, relationships, lifestyle and the wider culture/systems we live within.
I have walked my way in and out of the labyrinth of illness and dis-ease myself many times. I know that deep healing, when we tend to the emotional root causes of what is happening to us, is not comfortable or easy.
I believe illness and dis-ease can become some of our greatest teachers where we are willing. This has been consistently the case in my own life and is something that gets heightened when working with herbs.
I arrived to my work steadily through illness & deep cultural, ecological grief, paired with a wide eyed wonder for life & the natural world.
The journey to me offering this work was heavily shaped by a 7 year soul initiation with bees which instilled a need in me to work in service and relationship with land and the more than human. I arrived at the herb garden in 2016 with 2 colonies of honeybees and from there my work grew.
I am motivated by a deep reverence for our true selves, animal bodies, real feelings & our innate belonging to the web of life.
I am working to create a menstrual health culture where the cycle is understood as an initiatory pathway to health, wisdom, cultural and ecological restoration.
The challenges/ gifts I’ve experienced through the power of my own menstrual cycle continue to be a source of great transformation and healing.
I want our experiences and stories around fertility, conception, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, matrescence and menopause witnessed and received so they can be honoured for the power and significance they carry for us all.
Powerful ancestrally assisted experiences during conception, pregnancy and birth have steered me towards a life with mothering at it’s centre ~ not just the holding and caring for children but centring the mothering for all of life.
What do I bring that's different?
Beyond formal training, I draw from various initiatory life experiences:
~ cultivating deep belonging and nourishment from neglect
~ a range of rural, village, suburban and city work/life experiences
~ departure from a male dominated profession to follow a calling
~ intimate with the terrain of anxiety, depression, chronic illness, fatigue and burn out
~ recovering party girl, people pleaser, over-worker, over-giver, rescuer and co-dependant (phew!)
~ lovingly inviting and ending pregnancy in my body, witnessing pregnancy loss and stillbirth
~ navigating life as a highly sensitive, introverted, empath
~ ecological awakenings/ embodied experiences of innate membership in the earth community and greater web of life
~ gracefully/ungracefully navigating the aftermath of parental divorce
~ moving in and out of times of estrangement within my family of origin
~ decades of menstrual cycle awareness, tracking, charting and menstrual wellness practices
~ decades of conscious connection in partnership
~decades healing through tending land: unlearning and decolonising alongside soil, plants and bees
~ surrendering to long periods of debilitating pregnancy nausea, illness & physical injury
~ experience being disabled, chronically ill and medically housebound
~ retraining and building a business to work around motherhood
~ transforming birth trauma following on paper ‘perfect’ home birth
~ surviving postpartum in covid lockdown
~ raising a secure, wilful, spirited daughter
~ ongoing cultivation of self care alongside community care: showing up perfectly imperfect with village heartedness
Qualifications
Birth story medicine ® (BSM)
Trained Birth Story Listener working with the BSM process. Completed training in 2021 with Pam England as teacher and mentor. Member of the BSM school receiving regular ongoing advanced training and mentoring. Fully insured to offer BSM sessions.
Sensory Herbalism
Studied Sensory Herbalism with Karen Lawton and Fiona Heckels 2017-2020. Qualified as a Sensory Herb Practitioner in 2020. Guiding clients with this healing framework in mind since 2018. Fully insured to practice as a Sensory Herb Practitioner in the UK.
Natural Family Planning (NFP)
Became certified NFPTA teacher of the Sympto-Thermal practice of Natural Family Planning in 2017. Personally working with the method since 2016 both as both a form of natural contraception and to achieve conception. Mentoring menstruators and couples for greater menstrual awareness and fertility empowerment using this method since 2017. Fully insured to offer this work.
Regenerative horticulture
Apprenticed in Sustainable Horticulture during a 6 month residency at Schumacher College in 2014. Completed Permaculture Design Certificate in 2014. Forest garden training with the Agroforestry Research Trust 2014-2016. Worked as a vegetable and salad grower at School Farm CSA 2014-2017.
Beekeeping training with the British Beekeeping Association in 2012 and later, the Natural Beekeeping Trust 2014-2018. Too many bee books to mention, dedicated observation practices and years spent sit spotting, listening and being in the company of honeybee colonies and wild bees. I am forever indebted to the magic of bees.
Architecture and Design
2005 – 2019 worked in the field of architecture and design (qualifications: BA Hons First class, MArch Commendation and ARB registered 2013-19). Wide range of architectural, landscape design projects and natural playscapes. Architect for the community led development, Atmos Totnes 2015- 2019.
Associate design tutor, The University of Plymouth 2014-2019. Visiting tutor Portsmouth University 2010/11, Hooke Park, Architectural Association 2015/16.
Experience & influence
Further training/experience/ workshops with following people/organisations:
2024-
Where do we go when healing becomes ill with Bayo Ackomolafe. Ancestral medicine with Daniel Foor. Active bystander training.
2019-2023
Self Employed Mums support group. White women book club (anti-racist group enquiry). Activist with South Devon Parents for Peace. Wim Hoff Method. GAPs protocol at Regenerative Cooking School. Red Tent women’s group. Feminist Marketing with Kelly Diels. Patriarchal Motherhood with Dr. Sophie Brock. PMADs training with The Motherhood Centre, New York. Association for Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology & Health. Rewilding Mythology with Sophie Strand. Grief tending with South West Grief Rituals and Grief Tending in Community. Cyclical business with The Red School. Bond 6 with Upfront. Re-villaging with Beth Berry at Revolution from Home. Trauma Informed Parenting with Mama Manon. The Aware Parenting Institute. Transformation through Mothering with Marion Rose.
2013-2018
Activate your inner Jaguar with Kimberly Ann Johnson. The Orphan Wisdom School. Extinction Rebellion. The Oxford Real Farming Conference(s). Wild Mother with Rachael Alaia. Bird language with Chris Holland. Shamanic journeying and drum making with Suzi Crockford. Forest gardening training with Martin Crawford at The Agroforestry Trust. Wild food and foraging with Ffyona Campbell. Tools for Conscious Collaboration training. Listening to the bees at Embercombe. 6 months living at Schumacher College. Friends Of The Earth volunteer. Studio In The Woods. Shelter volunteer.