Creating Space and Trust Through the Sacred Window

Known as the Sacred Window in Ayurveda, the first forty days of life emphasizes the vital bond between newborn and caregiver established both prior to and soon after birth. We wish to expand the idea of this time window to the first 1000 days of life where more than half of our long-term health is programmed. Turning towards this portal we all have passed through, we will consider the caregiver-child bond as a source of culture and belonging, the beginning of dreams and aspiration, and the infinite manifestations of bringing life to being. In an era rife with alternatives to traditional laboring practices, transformations in contemporary birth culture, and illuminations of novel birthing environments we welcome all who have interest in the experience of being born to this imaginative discussion on the role of early life for our collective long-term health and well-being.

Facilitator Bio

Chalice Stroebe is pursuing her Master’s of Divinity at Naropa University. She has supported families through the perinatal period and beyond as a doula. Chalice has a proclivity for individual’s expression of their narrative and partners with them to help make sense of their experience rather than the objective outcome. Chalice attempts to seek a state of homeostasis in and between persons. She is passionate about what exists in the space between people – the kinetic energy of connection and dissonance. 

Adam Hoverman is a Family Medicine and Public Health Physician with Multnomah County Health Department, and Clinical Instructor at the University of Washington School of Public Health, Department of Health Systems and Population Health. Adam began his narrative medicine & health humanities journey as a paramedic in rural Northern California, before entering medical school at A.T. Still University, in Kirksville, Missouri, motivated to study osteopathic medicine by Dr. Still’s pithy phrase, “the objective of the physician is to find health; anyone can find disease.” Adam completed Family Medicine Residency at the University of Minnesota, and worked with the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic before completing a Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Most recently Adam has completed a second residency in Preventive Medicine at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, along with a Masters in Public Health in Health Management and Policy. His research, teaching, and writing focuses on health systems strengthening via Community-Based Participatory Research and Community Health Worker training for improving Maternal and Child Health and Indigenous Health, program evaluation for Global Health training programs, and the co-production, co-creation, and co-design of health and social care. He facilitates narrative medicine small groups for students and health care workers, and writes poetry and songs of love, hope, & belonging in his spare time.

Rachel Chapman is a Black feminist activist anthropologist who uses alternative and native (alter/native) anti-racist approaches, and an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Washington, and adjunct associate professor in Global Health and Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. Professor Chapman’s research focuses on global health disparities, suffering and resistance through an inter-sectional transformative justice lens, as well as identifying and addressing the effects of systemic racism in health institutions, policies and practices on communities of color. Her expertise encompasses race, racism and reproduction; survivance and liberation practices among African and African Diaspora communities; impact of structurally violent economic austerity policies on health and decolonization movements; and reproductive health trauma. She has conducted research in Los Angeles, Cleveland, Mozambique, and Seattle. Her core projects include Black women’s reproductive care-seeking; the impact of gender violence on health; HIV treatment during pregnancy; perinatal care-giving in refugee and immigrant communities; teen peace-making and restorative justice in urban communities.

Event Details

October 5, 2021
6:00-8:00 pm
Online