Hi sisters, elders, seekers, witches, changemakers, farmers, dreamers, birth keepers, brothers, and mothers!
 

I am Heather DeWolf Bowser, the creator and mama and medicine maker behind moon & honey. I am a farmer, a birth keeper, a wild plant medicine woman, a mother, a partner. This space is the intersection of the work I do in the world - birth work and plant work and women’s work. 

 

I am the mother to four babies birthed at home, one with a licensed midwife, and three transformative, powerful freebirths. I have three little ones earthside and one daughter born too prematurely to stay. Obviously, in addition to serving women and making medicine, I spend most of my time immersed in the silly, exhausting, joyful, ancient work of mothering. Navigating intentional, mindful parenting is an enormous task in this culture, and the creation work of our family inspires so much of what I do.

I birthed my first son at home with a licensed midwife, and navigated my first year of motherhood as most women in our culture do - mostly alone with an infant, working tremendously hard to honor my own intuition about how to mother in a culture that is adamantly opposed to trusting women, aligning with nature, or respecting children. Two years later, my daughter Luna was stillborn after my waters opened in my second trimester - too early to survive. Her birth at home, alone with my family in my farmhouse bedroom with only a firefly to witness us, sparked a deep transformation in my life. I was initiated into the truth about women’s sacred work in the world - our totally simple, profound, and immensely powerful role as the portals of life and death. The keepers of nature and blood and mystery and spirit. The awakening that happened for me after her birth made it impossible to compromise any longer with the restrictions of licensed midwifery - which inherently center the midwife and the legal regulations above a woman’s own authority over her body, her baby, and her birth choices - and make truly undisturbed birth as mammals in alignment with our physiology impossible.

My third baby led me to take total responsibility for my birth and he was free born at home in pure bliss and raw primal power. His birth (three days after my waters opened) would absolutely have been a hospital transfer had I stayed with a licensed midwife. Our shared wisdom in choosing freebirth was so affirmed by his birth story!

Our fourth baby was also a simple, beautiful freebirth at home. Messy, gorgeous, excruciating, absolutely joyful mammalian birth on a sunny afternoon while my young kids played in the next room. 

I have been in birth work for more than 10 years. After working as a hospital based doula for a brief time before my first birth, I have been walking with women choosing to birth at home for the last 9 years. Since moving back to the Bay Area, California, I have been serving women in person and via long-distance connection who are exploring what it means to take full responsibility for their babies and births - who want to embody normal, wild, physiological birth and our sacred rites as women. 

I serve women prenatally and postpartum in reremembering our innate wisdom around all of our blood mysteries, as well as offering support in exploring fertility, wild pregnancy, birth choices, nutrition, and support after loss or pregnancy release. My work centers on the intrinsic power of women to choose how to birth and mother their children - and the perfect wisdom of undisturbed, physiological birth that ALL mammals are programmed for. My relationship with birthing women is one of wise woman support, council, and sisterhood. I believe that women know how to birth, and deeply trust all women to navigate their own journey bringing their babies into the world. 

Before birthing my four children, I worked for more than 10 years as an organic farmer, growing vegetables, milking pasture-based cows, and chasing pigs and chickens on several regenerative, biodynamic farms in the Northeast. After my children were born, the intense, all consuming work of full time farming alone just wasn’t working with the also full time, all consuming work of raising babies. In my many years of farming, I was taught by wise women, elders, and nature itself about the wild plants we found in the fields and forests native to the land.

 

The spark of mystical wonder about plant medicine started in my first year of apprenticeship as a farmer, when I made fresh st. john's wort oil in the sun on the rock wall of the greenhouse garden. The alchemical transformation of sunshine yellow blossoms to blood red oil with just the power of the sun, or time, or medium was definitely one of the things that sold me on plant medicine. It's just... magical! My love for plant medicine grew as I worked the cultivated land through those early years. One of my most important practices as a farmer became using teas and ferments brewed from the native botanicals around our farmland on the crops and soil we grew - integrating the lessons of the wild world around us in how to best sustain our food crops. Herbal medicine for plants themselves. Nature knows so much. 

When my oldest was born, I slowly began to transition away from full time farming and started to grow my plant medicine work in order to be able to better integrate mothering and my farm business. We grew and foraged medicine plants on our farm in New Jersey for many years before returning to the Bay Area in 2018.

 

I was born and raised in Oakland, California - occupied Chochenyo Ohlone land, and I'm deeply thankful to be back here. moon & honey has grown into a thriving, vibrant medicinal plant shop where we create teas, baths, balms and salves, tinctures and potent herbal oils - and now plant dyed fibers and clothing. We grow much of our own plant material and support regenerative local farmers. Our work is focused on centering ancestral wisdom, practicing the respectful harvest, and celebrating everyone's innate connection to the living land around them. 

 

Thank you for being here, for supporting local sustainable ecology and wild woman ways.

You can always connect with me at heather@moonandhoney.love or follow our journey on instagram.