Hello…

welcome to my world…

Mother. photographer. doula. entrepreneur. activist. artist. yogi.

These are just a few words that describe who I am and the different roles I play in my life to make a difference for others. This is at the core of what I do and in my life and work.

I have a background in many areas of expertise. The journey that has led me to now has not always been planned but has been led by my heart and intuition.

My passion for photography was discovered when I was in high school as the sports editor for the year book. I learned photography the old-fashioned way with a film camera and a dark room. Photography was always a secret passion of mine but for some reason I never realized or believed I could do it professionally…until many years later. In 2013, when I decided to start my own business doing birth photography, I had already been a birth doula for 9 years at the time (I will get to that part) and had been attending births off and on while raising my two girls. With my love for raw, documentary photography and my knowledge and experience in the birth space, I started Little Plum Photography. It has grown into all types of photography, and even videography, since then. The soul of my work comes from a documentary angle and style.

In 1995, I began practicing yoga in my living room in Oklahoma, which is where I was born and raised. Because there were no yoga studios or classes to be found, I bought a Rodney Yee VHS tape and started from there. I continued my practice for a couple of years, with the same tape mind you, and experimented and learned about other types of yoga after moving to Los Angeles in 1997. I studied various styles and tried out different studios. One that really resonated with me was Kundalini yoga. I was at the Golden Bridge Yoga about three to four times per week and often I would go to class right after I had hiked Runyon Canyon. On Wednesdays, they had a women’s class and I decided to go one day because a modeling job fell through. I have worked as a model and actor for years, which was the main reason I moved to Los Angeles. Anyhoo…on that particular Wednesday, in 2003, the teacher, Gurmukh, mentioned a prenatal yoga teacher training coming up. I had already decided that I wanted to become a yoga teacher that year. Naturally, it all came together in one enlightening moment and I realized that was the kind of yoga teacher I would become…for mothers-to-be. I took the training a month later and immediately began teaching. One day after one of my classes, a student approached me after class and asked me to be her doula. I said to her “I am not a doula”. She replied “I don't care, I want you there. You help calm me down”. I agreed and called a friend and fellow yoga teacher who was a doula and asked her what I should do. She recommended a few books to read and said “call me if you need me”…that is how my path into birth work began.

I have been attending births since February 2004 and took my DONA certification training in 2006 while I was pregnant with my first daughter. I am hypnobirthing trained and also have taken rebozo training workshops and perinatal psychology workshops with Anna Verwaal. I have experience with hospital, home and birthing center births, cesearean, breech, twin, VBAC and HBAC births as well as supporting couples who have surrogates, who are LGBTQ, and also who are advanced maternal age and high-risk. No matter what kind of birth your pregnancy journey leads you to, I believe all women deserve support, deserve to be heard and most of all, to feel empowered and at peace with their own birth process and journey.

I am a registered dietitian with a master’s degree in nutrition, DONA certified birth doula, certified prenatal yoga teacher, instinctive meditation teacher, member of SAG-AFTRA since 1998 and professionally trained actor.

To this day, my most cherished accomplishment has been becoming a mother to my two girls, Savannah and Shiloh.