Who We Are

Samara’s passion for birth-tending began with the birth of her daughter in 1995

She went on to train in Shiatsu at the Zen School in London, and in 2000 began to specialise in Shiatsu for Maternity Care with Suzanne Yates of WellMother. Over several years, Samara completed the Diploma and Teacher Training and became a WellMother Teacher.

In 2002 Samara moved to Ashland, Oregon and began training with CPM Maureen Mitchell of Helping Hands Midwifery, and continued to learn from Maureen up until her death.

Upon Samara’s return to Wales in 2004, she continued working as a Community Doula and Traditional Birth Attendant.

Both of Samara’s son's were born at home in 2005 and 2008, and she then put her energy to building a roundhouse for them to live in and tending the land and animals, continuing her work as a Doula

In 2013 Samara founded WellMama CIC , and began to teach the WellMama Holistic Doula Training, she was soon joined by her two apprentices, and together they formed WellMama Community Interest Company, based in Wales, which continues to offer services and training to support and celebrate the Childbearing Year.

Samara volunteers annually at the Chinamhora Birth Clinic in rural Zimbabwe, and supports their efforts to establish a purpose built Birth House.

Samara is a certified Counsellor, Healing Tao, Chi Kung and Tai Chi Instructor, and a visiting lecturer for the School of Midwifery at Swansea University.

Samara has a calling to learn, weave and tend Traditional Midwifery Skills and Herb Lore in order that women and their families continue to have access to this ancient knowledge.

Samara has attended more that 120 births, and supported numerous women and their families throughout the Childbearing Year.

Ruth was born in Switzerland to a mixed race couple, Carol, her mother, a Cape Coloured woman from South Africa, and Justin, her father, an Irishman. They had begun their secretive relationship (illegal in the eyes of the South African law) in South Africa but her mother applied for refugee status in Switzerland and gave birth to her and her sister Kate there.

One way both her parents were a strong influence around birth was that they both had a very relaxed attitude about it. Her mother was born at home in Athlone, Cape Town, South African in 1950, attended by a local midwife on a bicycle like all women of colour were at that time in South Africa. Her father too, was the son of an Irish midwife and doctor, born at home, a farm boy, he had a strong affinity with horses and dogs and had observed these animals as well as sheep giving birth to their lambs.

She wanted to study to become a midwife after this experience but after researching her options in South Africa, she very quickly realised that the options were very different from what she imagined and had envisioned and so she put this plan to rest for a while. She went on to have 4 children, all born at home, all incredible experiences with deep learnings. Along with mothering her four beautiful children, San, Sai, Ayo and Kaira, she believe these first birth experiences, protected and safe, were her earliest and biggest teachers on this path.

She was one of the directors of The Compassionate Birth Project, a project aimed at addressing the abuse being experienced in South Africa’s labour wards. They taught compassion as a regular tutorial to 4th and 5th year medical students for 10 years, as well as running retreats for MOU (Midwife Obstetric Units) staff.

True Midwifery was born in 2014 after she left my abusive marriage and needed to find my way having only officially qualified as a CPM less than six months before. True Midwifery in many ways became her home as it offered shelter and an income through pregnancy care and birth attendance, her writing and my teaching. She is forever grateful to what True Midwifery has been for her over the years.

She have taught, given talks, run retreats and given workshops in South Africa, Italy, Portugal, Swaziland, Canada, Sardinia, Spain, Turkey, Malawi and Kenya.

She live in Kommetjie, a small seaside village near Cape Town, South Africa. You can read more about her on her webiste.

Alex Kula became passionate about birth after she gave birth unattended to her 2 daughters in rural Africa. She feels a deep connection to the sacred circle of women who she feels committed to serving in many ways. She weaves her life between being a supportive mother, her work as a devoted birth keeper for the last 12 years, masseur therapist for over 15 years, works with the placenta and umbilical cord, makes natural cosmetics, organizes sacred rituals like blessing ways and closing of the bones ceremonies.

She lived in Africa for over 10 years, in Brasil, Europe and Asia where she worked with local traditional midwives which gives her a multicultural honouring of women and their different realities.

Hannah Grace is a performer, performance maker, & healer who creates at the intersection of art and holistic healing. She is a powerful guide who combines a playful spirit with fierce devotion to support people through the many twists and turns of their journey home to themselves through art & healing work.

Hannah’s journey began through her young initiations into mental health struggles. Although she had to navigate dark, stormy internal waters from a young age, she managed to maintain a connection to Great Spirit throughout and knew she needed to discover a better way of healing when pharmaceuticals and traditional talk therapy didn’t work to truly heal her.

After realising her Christian upbringing no longer resonated as a way to connect to the divine, Hannah met Spirit through movement, & proceeded to train in over 400 hours of accredited yoga teacher training, become a devote meditation practitioner, reiki healer, Rapid Transformational Therapy Hypnotherapist, Inner Voice Facilitator, menstrual mentor/womb guide, and begin her training in traditional birth support with WellMama, True Midwifery, and the Red Tent Doula Collective at the same time she completed her Bachelor’s & Master’s degrees in Contemporary Dance Performance.

Hannah believes that only through connecting deeply to our own bodies and releasing our trapped emotions and trauma, can we truly Come Home to our authentic soul expression and step into our dharma. She believes not in prescribing projections onto people, but guiding people inward to connect to their own soul medicine.

Alongside her healing work, Hannah is a professional dancer, singer, & choreographs multidisciplinary performance art works in London. You can learn more about her & see her work through her personal website. She is Samara’s operations assistant at WellMama, teaches courses here and through her company, Coming Home Embodiment, and offers 1:1 mentoring and healing sessions.

Isabelle Wolf is originally from Germany but based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

She passionate about bringing women together in circles and in intentional communities, working as a facilitator with nonviolent communication and as a translator/interpreter in my day job.

Whenever she finds the time, she also love to do crafts like weaving, as she believes that remembering ancient skills of hand-making our clothes is a meaningful part of her work in these times.

Isa works with WellMama as our primary communications assistant, so if you email us you will probably hear from her first! She also acts as a wonderful anchor in our circles and holds and incredibly loving and gentle presence.

Mmatshilo Motsei, is Founder of Afrika Ikalafe, an organisation that specialises in personal and societal transformation that is founded on African spiritual principles. Her overall aim is to uncover the old truth that Africa is great and powerful and that, because of the poisoning of our mind, our soul is afflicted. Consequently, Africa’s traumatic past has led to a condition which calls for multigenerational healing, hence the name Afrika Ikalafe, which means Afrika Heal Thyself.

An African mystic, author, healer, and midwife, Mmatshilo started her career as a nurse, midwife, nursing lecturer, social science researcher and community development facilitator. With a BA Hons in Psychology and MA in Creative Writing, she uses writing as a tool for healing. She is an author of six books which includes Kanga and the Kangaroo Court: Reflections on the Rape Trial of Jacob Zuma, Hearing Visions, and Reweaving the Soul of the Nation, a collection of essays in African spirituality, politics, and feminism.
In honour of the work, she received numerous awards which includes UN Scroll of Honour Award for her work in involving men as part of the solution to violence against women. She is a recipient of two Honorary Doctorates i.e., Community Psychology by the University of Zululand for her integrative healing work with women and men and another in Social Professions, Faculty of Health by Nelson Mandela University for her work in using the indigenous healing justice framework in responding to sexual violence in South Africa.

She is currently completing her PhD in Sociology at the University of Pretoria. In her quest to decolonise childbirth practices in post-apartheid South Africa, her research focus is on the role of indigenous midwifery in countering obstetric violence.

Vanessa Brooks is midwife and Birth activist having traveled the world with Midwifery today, alongside Ina May and her fantastic colleagues, she studied the root causes of the troubled present birth culture. What she discovered was that midwives were trained in a medical model not at all suited to good birth culture. From this realisation Da a Luz Oasis was born. A centre of excellence in holistic midwifery.

Nicola Mahdiyyah Goodall has been involved in birth for over twenty years, helping women through their journeys alongside her own births & raising her family. Officially trained in 2002 with Michel Odent as one of the first Paramana Doulas & a founding member of the Scottish Doula Network after moving to Edinburgh, where she still resides. She works actively not only as a doula, but also is a part of many birth initiatives which promote natural childbirth.

Becoming the main facilitator for the Mindful Doulas training programme gave her the experience & push found The Red Tent Doula training initiative in 2014 which has taken off in several countries. Nicola is also the director of the Wysewomen workshops—a series of learning circles aimed at women sharing with women through storytelling, publications, & healthy social media to bring back traditional practices in our modern world. Red Tent now includes End of Life Doula, Traditional Postpartum, TCM & educator preparation.

Charlene, Owen (Papa) & Owen (baby) are a travelling family of 3 who are ready to settle somewhere in this exotic world. Charlene has been trained to do pre and postnatal yoga, believing in the spiritual preparation that will bring all families the support they need. As a fresh family who have journeyed with Samara of WellMama, from pregnancy, birth and beyond, we thrived in knowing that we are naturally, lovingly and spiritually supported by strong and wise people all around the world. “To be able to experience another life as your own”, is what parenthood is all about. The knowledge and tools that we have been blessed with during our birthing journey are ones that will see us through to parenthood and beyond, setting the roots for ourselves from within.

Joy Horner was a Registered Midwife for 21 years and registered nurse for 20 years before that. She has worked in consultant-led labour wards, birth centres, and has attended Birth in people's homes for 16 years as an independent midwife.

 She became a Sacred Birth Consultant and Birth keeper in 2021 and carries a small caseload of clients. She has taught childbirth education classes since training with the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) in 2002. She provided private consultations for Birth planning, Birth debriefing, VBAC, and Breech birth planning. She specialises in supporting families whose previous birth experiences have been traumatic and caring for those who have suffered adverse events in childhood, or as an adult.

As an Independent midwife she learnt breech birth skills from Mary Cronk MBE, worked with her for 5 years, and taught breech skills with her at universities and conferences nationwide. She has learnt from other midwifery greats like Ina May Gaskin at The Farm, from Gail Tully in her Spinning babies Shoulder dystocia workshops, Jane Hardwicke Collings shamanic womancraft training, and Integrative Baby Therapy training by Matthew Appleton.

Now retired from clinical practice she teaches midwives, doulas, parents and sometimes even doctors at conferences worldwide. 

She also has a new platform for Birth workers - The Wise Woman Collective

Deborah Rhodes is originally a UK formally trained midwife, now a holistic birth keeper. Supporting home births for 21 years, she currently lives in Spain & supports local births, as well as travels for them. She is passionate about families choosing the birth that's right for them, sharing skills & knowledge between us. Debs loves breech, twin & vbac births & support the running & development of Da-a-Luz Traditional Partera School in Spain.

Karin Slabaugh has specialized in the care of the newborn, recognizing that both biological and psychological needs must be met. She has been studying with Montessori newborn specialists who, in the 1950's, were the first birth and postpartum doulas. Since 1992 she has worked with children under three years of age and most recently with the very youngest children and their parents, in a manner that acknowledges that the newborn is learning from the very beginning and how important it is to realize all that we do is "education from birth".

Nadia Maheter is a wife, a teacher, an organic product formulator and a mother to 5 children - 3 of whom she mothers on this Earth and 2 angel babies who are mothered in heart and memory.
She serves women & familes in their homes as a birth doula, bereavement doula and professional postpartum care provider in Cape Town, South Africa.

She has been invited to share her personal journey of love and loss with you. All the tragic, yet deeply beautiful moments experienced with carrying two back-to-back, lethal pregnancies, have taught her a lot in her journey with their births, grief, trauma and healing postpartum.

Autumn Garner is a mother of two, whom she has nursed across 5 years, alone with her first and tandem feeding with her second. She is trained as a breast feeding peer supporter and has been involved with running and supporting local and online breastfeeding support groups for the past 3 years. She is embarking upon a new journey as a breastmilk donor which is teaching her so much...gifting her a new lens to look through at the beautiful complexities of breastfeeding.

Her belief is that breastfeeding is natural, but it is not always easy for everyone, and she has found that majority of the challenges with breastfeeding she has encountered come from a lack of support for mothers and families and from insufficient breastfeeding education to those in professions providing support. It is her personal mission to help provide more education on natural term breastfeeding within her local community and further afield and to provide as much support as she can for the mothers and families who want it. She believes with every fibre of her being that women's bodies are exceptional at growing, birthing and feeding babies...this done in many different ways...and she is blown away by the fierce determination and strength which mothers hold to have their babies thrive...and in the best scenarios, she has been blown away by the friends, family and communities who support these mothers to do it.

She is so very passionate about breastfeeding, it has soaked into all of the threads of her life journey these past 5 years, and she is very excited to share with our WMW cohort some of her experiences, feelings and wisdom, and to receive theirs in return.