Hmm, we need an accountant and a lawyer.

As I plug away working on the business plan for the holistic health center we're dreaming of, and study the rules for becoming a non-profit organization, I'm realizing two things - we need an accountant, and we need a lawyer. Handling money (and pretty much anything to do with numbers) is not my strong suit, so while I have the best of intentions and a clear vision for how this whole thing needs to be set up, somebody who is specifically trained in handling money should give their professional insight before we get started. Same thing goes for the lawyer. I want to make sure we're following the law along the way so we don't run into problems later, and especially where health care is concerned I just want to make sure we're doing everything the way we are required to. There will be a lot of legal documents along the way and I want to have someone who speaks that language on our team.

So just to put this out there, if you or someone you know has financial or legal expertise and an interest in holistic, natural health care, and would be willing to collaborate and share your insight on this project, we would be so very appreciative. It would have to be pro bono at this point but when we are up and functioning and have a budget to work with these will be available as paid positions! Nobody wants to work for free but maybe there are a couple of people out there with these qualifications who can share our vision for a beautiful, rural setting with several small, quaint office buildings where natural health practitioners such as naturopaths, massage therapists, midwives, counselors, and more can meet with their clients in a peaceful environment that is far from the typical medical office atmosphere. Surrounded by community gardens and areas for group events, where clients pay one low monthly co-op fee and have access to a wide variety of holistic practitioners, to promote a lifestyle of wellness and disease prevention, using more natural options when some kind of treatment is necessary. A birth center with full-time midwives and on-staff doulas, a center for pregnancy care, natural birth, and postpartum care for the mothers of Ramona and the surrounding communities. Sliding scale payment options to make natural health care an affordable choice for low income people, as well as a full time on-site case manager to help coordinate services and support for individuals and families who need it. If this is something you believe our community would benefit from, something you have an interest in and would like to help make it a reality, please take a moment to fill out this form and let us know how you'd like to help. Even if you don't know the first thing about accounting or legal documents, if you have an idea for how you can help with this, we'd really love to hear it.

Click here for the form where you can enter your contact info and what you want to help with. So far everyone we've talked to about this idea has been very supportive and positive, and I truly believe that we can make this happen!

My dream - a health care and birth co-operative.

For years now, since my pregnancy with our second child, I have had this little idea in the back of my brain that has grown and taken different shapes and forms, and sometimes I haven't thought much of it for long stretches of time but it's always there. It's a combination of some of my biggest passions - holistic health, natural birth, community-style living and work, family support, good quality health care available to ALL people - and the best part is that my husband is fully on board and supportive of this plan. So after a great deal of discussion and brainstorming, we've decided that it's time to put one foot in front of the other and start moving forward towards this plan, even if it's at a snails pace. We have a name and a vision and even a pretty solid plan that we've talked out, so I don't feel like we're flying blind. I'm not fooling myself into thinking it will be easy - in fact I think it will be a ton of very hard work. But we're ready to try!

What I'm envisioning is a large piece of land where we can set up multiple buildings, where we can live and also where we can have office space to rent out. My main vision is of a health center with a focus on pregnancy and birth, but I'd love to be able to offer whole life services if we can get enough interest and participation from providers. We would provide a beautiful space - complete with community vegetable gardens, workshops, and other activities to get people together and helping each other - where natural health care providers can come together to serve clients, outside of the standard idea of a hospital or clinic. A place where we can come together to promote wellness and good health, and take a holistic approach to managing health care by making it easy for the entire team to come together to help the ENTIRE client. Are you feeling me? I'm very excited about this, and I'm even more excited about how into it my husband is! I can see this being something our whole family would work together on.

One place for your natural health care. This plan originated when I learned about The Farm in Tennessee, the midwifery center which was started by the wonderful Ina May Gaskin, a pioneer in modern midwifery in the US. As soon as I learned about what she does, I wanted to create a place similar to that where women and their families could come to ease into a comfortable and safe place for birth, a haven where they would have access to midwives, doulas, maybe aromatherapists, massage therapists, counselors, and more. And yes, recently I've gotten into the show Private Practice (late to the party, as usual!) and I love the idea of a health care co-operative. Expanding beyond pregnancy and birth services and offering options to all age ranges - pediatrics, family practice, in my wildest dreams even hospice services, because I believe that we all deserve a peaceful birth and a peaceful death.

Services to support the entire life span. Workshops, not only about health and wellness related topics, but also about good old fashioned life skills. Community gardens, and workshops where we can learn how to work in the gardens and what to do with the food we harvest from them. Cottage style homes so that we could offer the different practitioners an on-site place to live, or at least a comfortable place to stay while waiting on a laboring mama. Birthing rooms, or birthing cottages, where the entire family can be comfortable for the whole duration of labor, where supportive and safe people are on premises to help care for the older children while the parents work through labor and birth together. The ability to have sliding scale payments or bartering services so that low income families can have access to the same good quality health services. 

This is an enormous plan and feels overwhelming, but we'll never get anywhere by sitting and thinking about it, so after a great deal of discussion we've decided to go for it. And it still feels overwhelming, and I'm still not quite sure how to get it going, but we've been gathering lots of information about how to create a nonprofit organization and we're slowly heading down that path.

What we need now is to know who will be enthusiastic and supportive of this plan with us. Who will our supporters be? Anyone who would want to be involved with a project like this. A practitioner, a client, a lawyer, an activist, or "just" a caring community member. And ultimately we'll need to start fundraising. It will be slow going because I will be carefully looking into laws and regulations at each step along the way to make sure that we're doing things properly right from the start. But I believe in this plan. I believe that this is something that will fulfill a major need, and I believe that it is possible to make this happen. I believe that it will be a TON of work, but that it will be well worth it when we see it take shape.

My Pinterest boards, aka too much time on my hands?

A while back I finally caved and joined Pinterest. Sometimes there will be a really long stretch of time where I don't go on there, but I really do have so much fun when I do. One of the things I do with my boards is try to name them with great quotations, because I'm a sucker for great quotes. I also have a few different boards for photos and human interest type stories. Here are a few of my favorite boards. Please follow me if you want to!

Of course, if I'm going to be using famous quotes as the titles of my boards, there's got to be an actual quotations board, right? "A proper collection of quotations is the whole world digested." -Terri Guillemets. There are some really good ones on here.

Spirituality is an incredibly important aspect of my life, and when I neglect this side of myself, I feel the negative effects in a variety of ways. This board has quotes, prayers, altar inspiration, meditations, interesting thoughts and whatever tickles my spiritual fancy. "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience." -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Photos of beautiful, happy, resilient children. They are such amazing little people. <3 "The soul is healed by being with children." -English Proverb

In a future snapshot of my life, I see myself tending lots of beautiful garden space and growing a great deal of our food. This board is a collection of gardening tips, tricks, and inspiration. "I have always thought a kitchen garden a more pleasant sight than the finest orangery." -Joseph Addison

Human bodies! Old, young, male, female, all different shapes and sizes. What story will your body tell? "Our bodies are apt to be our autobiographies." -Frank Gillette Burgess.

Poverty is a problem, all around us, right under our noses. "Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient." -Sydney Smith

People who have made a difference. "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." -Dr. Seuss

Meaningful lyrics are one of my favorite aspects of music, and here one of my favorite boards is a collection of lyrics, artfully arranged. "Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent." -Victor Hugo

And for a laugh, my someecards collection. I LOVE these. someecards hilariousness!