Spoonful’s Katherine Elmer is doing a talk at the UVM Health Equity conference!

Presenters: Katherine Elmer, MS NBC-HWC (she/her) and Whitney Smith MSN, CNM (she/her)

Register:

https://www.uvmhealth.org/classes-and-support-groups/2025-health-equity-summit

Learning Objectives

• Describe characteristics of the power of the divine feminine and how they contribute to more inclusive and equitable healthcare spaces.

• Summarize historical events that have led to delegitimizing and excluding characteristics of the divine feminine and BIPOC sovereignty in healthcare settings.

• Reflect on ways that they might uplift and reintegrate divine feminine qualities in their personal and professional lives, and create brave spaces for their patients and colleagues to do the same.

This workshop is a brave space to collectively reintegrate feminine healing wisdom for practitioners and providers of all genders.  The 500 year period between the 12th and 17th centuries in Europe is known as “The Burning Times” due to the millions of people, mostly women, who were executed for the “crime of witchcraft.”  The majority of those executed were “Wise Women” who were the skilled folk healers and midwives of these times. These wise women carried ancestral knowledge and practiced healing in alignment with nature’s rhythms. They specialized in guiding reproductive sovereignty and protecting mothers and babies. Much of this wisdom has been lost and/or excluded from modern medical practice.  The ideology of labeling folk, earth-based and femme-affirming healing practices as a crime is foundational in the delegitimization and exclusion of such healing practices in contemporary healthcare settings, and has limited our ability to provide inclusive and affirming care to all patients, but particularly to women and BIPOC individuals. 

In this workshop, participants will learn about the historical foundation of this contemporary issue so that we may enhance equity and inclusion, particularly for people with identities that have historically been marginalized in healthcare institutions.  Katherine and Whitney, an herbalist and a midwife with several decades of experience as faculty members and healthcare practitioners at the University of Vermont, will summarize relevant erased histories and the ways that perpetuating the ideology of these histories (often unconsciously) limits our capacity for human flourishing and planetary health today.  Through journaling, grounding mindfulness practices with gentle herbs, and guided introspection, participants of all genders can continue the process of welcoming and reintegrating divine feminine qualities for themselves and in their professional practice.