My work: practicing visual artist, community/clinical herbalist, and pelvic steam hydrotherapist PHc (intern) who offers pelvic steaming support with advanced steam plans (via a consultation process), and herbal allies found in the Botânica.
I was raised by an elementary public school teacher and a disabled alcoholic in a rural setting, so I can relate to not being able to afford care. Due to this, I am passionate about offering mutual aid in the free pelvic steam clinic.
My lifelong engagement with plants continues as a mutual love story. I wholeheartedly nurture and protect them with the understanding I have, and they come to my aid consistently. I have begun my fifth decade of life and each year learning with/from the plants does deepen my understanding and simultaneously forms more new questions. I wouldn’t have it any other way…there is no end to this learning!
When working with plants for body/spirit care it is miraculous to discover that they support you in the physical realm (tissues, organs, fluids), they support you in the energetic realm (emotion, tension), and they support you in the spirit realm (connection, belonging). In this unseen realm, plants shift perception and open up a felt sense of being in communion with the earth, with them.
Growing, tending, ethically wildcrafting plant allies in a reciprocal, slow, and intentional way to be able to offer care widely to community is difficult in our current culture (who supports the healers?), and many times I have considered keeping it for my family, co-workers, neighbors…but people find me and the offerings grow as they are needed…and the plants so far always meet me to participate in this care. So here we are. 🌿
Steph’s Herbal Education:
the plants themselves are my teachers, mentors, family
20+ years of herbal practice as a community herbalist
4 years of self-paced clinical study with 2 years of clinical intern practice
book learning
workshops and classes with herbal teachers who have been studying and practicing with the plants longer than I have in the systems of Western Traditional Herbalism, Mexican Traditional Medicine - MTM, and Traditional Chinese Medicine TCM (specifically for the female reproductive system), and various other ancestral herbal traditions from my native Brazilian roots. including the materia medica of the mediterranean.
Some recent entities and people I have learned from are: Plantsman Chris Cosby, The School of Evolutionary Herbalism, Blue Otter School, Ember of Wild Current Herbalism, Pānquetzani of Indigescuela, Keli Garza of Steamy Chick, and the Healing Clinic Collective, Herbal Pregnancy Prevention with Midwife, Molly Dutton-Kenny.
I am a certified Peristeam Facilitator PFc and a Peristeam Hydrotherapist Intern working on my practicum to receive a Peristeam Hydrotherapist certification: PHc, through the Peristeam Hydrotherapy Institute. Peristeam Hydrotherapist and pelvic steam therapist are interchangeable terms.
Art
I was born into this world as Stephanie Camille dos Anjos native to a land colonized by the Portuguese who claimed it as Vitória, Espírito Santo. It was and still is the home of Guarani, but became cruelly populated by Europeans fighting for ownership. These invaders were responsible for forcefully bringing enslaved peoples from the various regions of the great continent known as Africa, to the land known as Brasil. I am a mix of these converging cultures and people on my father’s side. From my mother I inherit yet more of a mix of Irish/English/French ancestors. My current work centers around the human body as place worth protecting and caring for, and liberation from colonizing forces.