Who I am How I got here
I'm Lauren Jackolyn, and I'm real glad you're here. ​Native Texan, had my Sag rising wanderings, have landed in Austin. Cancer sun - food as currency, care as modality. I can cook for you and hold space unfazed. Depth and emotion are where I feel divinely me. I cycle, I season, and I move with earth's rhythms. ​My background is in teaching, though I transitioned to both birthwork and farmers' market work about 3 years ago. Over the past few years, I've juggled these two things separately. Now I get to see them merge.
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As a kid, I wanted to be a chef. Food was my original creative language. It's always been there. For holidays at my grandparents' cabin, they would let me choose a recipe from a magazine and get me the ingredients to make it, too. Not stopping at food, I collected fallen leaves around the property to use them to decorate name cards for the table. Creating, sharing food, delighting in the details, crafting experiences for my people - that's what I instinctively gravitated towards.
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Working for a local mushroom farm at the farmers' markets, I was gifted the opportunity to connect with local farmers, be fed with local produce, eat better than I ever had, create meals with integrity and curiosity, and be around all kinds of growth. Being around plants and place and plant people places was a medicine and a magic. That sprinkled some twinkly dust onto the dormant seeds and germinating ideas I had within me.
Simultaneously, birthwork came on my scene and had her way with me. Nudged into birthwork at the urgings of a friend who saw me saw me, I partnered with GALS (Giving Austin Labor Support), and started my birthwork journey there. After attending my first birth, I knew in my soul that I wanted to keep doing that.
As I found my things, I found my dreams. As I found my places, I found my people. And I also found me. Doing the things that lit me up, being supported in therapy, growing in community, and slowly finding my way, helped all parts of me begin to feel safer to come online. My queerness openly came forward during this chapter, too. And queerness influences much more than just my sexuality. It's a model and a framework for expressing regardless of "norms." It's how I'm shaping my business. It's how I play with words and language and non-linearity in streams of thoughts and using words in wonky ways. It's weaving creative self expression and magic into everything. It's how I aim to challenge extractive capitalistic models with accessibility models, community support, and interdependence.
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So we end where it starts. With the birthing person. With birth. With care that cradles us into existence. Care as a superpower, care that is beneficial, consensual, and welcomed, care that can spark ripple changes out. That's what birthwork is and feels like to me. Supporting birthing people, both in birth and through postpartum foods, feels like my small yet mighty way of changing the world. It's the future I want to create. It's the 100-year-scope. It's ancient. It's revolutionary. It's ritual. It's art. It's me expressing fully.