Women medicine | POY Latam

Jenny Silva is a traditional midwife. She has served nearly 300 families as a traditional doula in California where she grew up. With four children, she defines herself as an indigenous Chicano-Mexican mother. This portrait was taken in Oaxaca, where Jenny traveled to learn from Enriqueta Contreras, another medicine woman.

Enriqueta Contreras is an indigenous Zapotec woman and midwife. She is also known as Doña Queta. She comes from a family of healers, who, given the lack of medical attention in her community, provided care to women, mainly for childbirth.

Backpacks full of herbs collected by Doña Queta, near the community where she lived attending births for many years.

Sofia Q. in Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca. This medicine woman reads corn and was also a midwife.

Corn reading by grandmother Sofia Q. in Huautla de Jimenez, Oaxaca.

Norma Yescas comes from a family of healers. Although her mother did not teach her her knowledge, Norma found it on her own. She is a connoisseur of plants and performs temazcales with women victims of trauma.

Norma Yescas boils medicinal plants to be used in a temazcal.

Three medicine women, Jenny Silva, Virgina Perez Diaz and Norma Yescas pose for a portrait in a birthing home run by Virgina Perez, midwife.

Jenny Silva’s shadow outside Norma Yescas’ house, both women medicine in constant learning.

The medicine woman is one of the most forgotten and repressed feminine archetypes in the history of humanity. She is the wise woman, the visionary, the seer, the intuitive, the healer, the sexual priestess and the possessor of truth from wisdom.

She holds the gifts of healing, energy, and expanded consciousness. She sees the past and the future and sees deep into the hearts of others. Her passion is to serve and restore harmony, balance and healing to humanity and the Earth.

She is the aspect in us that is ready to return as part of a greater human awakening. In our pre-patriarchal past, for hundreds of thousands of arguable years, the medicine woman held a celebrated place in her society. She served her community in all parts of the world in countless ways as shaman, wise woman, midwife, herbalist, oracle woman, priestess, seer and queen.

Her gifts of vision and healing were honored and integrated into each of the lives of those she served. She taught Goddess worship through honoring the cycles and fertility of the Earth. Her shamanic vision was an ancient medicine for the soul. Her myths and stories restored meaning to even the deepest suffering. She held the keys to her sexual power and that of the divine union between the masculine and feminine.