Mama Loup is a response to what I have heard, seen, and experienced as a woman and a midwife.
It is a response to seeing people disempowered, resourceless, misinformed, or manipulated for the benefit of a system. After seeing people making decisions based on trauma, in reaction to or against the system instead of taking decisions in their power, confident and trusting their bodies and minds. We decided to respond with the most comprehensive, holistic and evidence-based courses we could provide to all people who want to take charge of their care and navigate their fertility, pregnancy, birth and postpartum
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About Mélanie.
I have been a primary care midwife with a specialization in global health and human rights for most of my adult life. Parallel to my medical practice, I have been an educator to thousands.
During my 20-plus years of teaching experience, I have taught obstetrical skills and preventative medicine to nurses, doctors, midwives, traditional birth attendants, and students. I have owned yoga studios and taught yoga teacher trainings, and meditation retreats. As co-founder of École Quantik Doula, I have trained hundreds of doulas around the world as our full-spectrum doula school quickly became the largest doula school for the French-speaking community. Concurrently, I am a 2nd year Masters Candidate in Evidence-Based Teaching for Health Professionals at Johns Hopkins University. While I comfortably navigate the academic and medical worlds, my passion is to merge contemporary and ancestral knowledge.
As a lifelong activist, I have fought child sexual abuse, worked in harm-reduction in the context of gender and sexual-based violence, and promoted access to respectful care for the LGBTQ+ community.
My daughter was born at our home in Kenya, as the hyenas called out to me in response to the sounds of my labour.
Values
Affirming Diversity
Mama Loup supports, celebrates and affirms diversity in all forms. Our teachings aim to be inclusive of all races, ethnicities, gender, sexual orientation, identity, socio-economical status, body sizes, physical abilities, neuro-diversities, ages, and family structures.
At times we will speak about “women’s bodies” to acknowledge the political & historical need to advocate for men to no longer be the standard upon which we can understand women’s health. However, we also acknowledge that there are people across the gender spectrum for whom “women’s bodies” is exclusionary and who experience menstruation, pregnancy, and other seasons of reproductive health.
Reparations
Mama Loup acknowledges the Pueblo peoples as the rightful stewards of the land on which we live and work. Thank you for having protected the land, the water, the medicinal plants, the seeds, and the animal. Your work, prayers, and ceremonies have blessed and continue to bless this land of enchantment.
For this reason, and in response to the systematic discrimination against Pueblo peoples, all Mama Loup courses are given free of charge to the Pueblo peoples.
Giving Back Knowledge
For generations, knowledge has been withheld by a narrow and privileged group of people. Mama Loup strives to reclaim and democratize knowledge, and we are reclaiming intuition, ancestral tradition, our relationship with nature, our body, our lineage, as integral parts of knowledge building and resources.
For these reasons our courses provide evidence-based knowledge as well as holistic approaches, functional and herbal medicine, and rites and rituals practices in all our Journeys.
Origin of the name Mama Loup
In Kenya, where I gave birth, there is a tradition to call people by the name of their first born. For exemple, If your first born is named Sophie, you are called Mama Sophie or Papa Sophie for the rest of your life, even if you have more children. I birthed my daughter in Kenya, next to a national park and where the hyenas were faintly laughing in the distance between my labour sounds, as if they were responding to my moans. I gave her the middle name of Loup—which means wolf, in French, my native language—and in the spirit of this tradition, I name this platform Mama Loup.
Beyond this platform