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Jacqueline Hope Medford , CPM
Jacqueline Hope Medford recently founded Artemis Institute of Women's Healing Arts. This is an integration of her skills as artist, midwife, drummer, and community education coordinator. She is very excited about this opportunity to bring together a curriculum and community of women which powerfully reintegrate the creative arts with the healing arts; to approach health education holistically as our foremothers did.

Hope began attending births in 1997, where she trained at the Northern New Mexico Women's Health & Birth Center under the supervision of Elizabeth Gilmore in Taos, New Mexico.

She graduated from the National College of Midwifery in 1999 and became a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) in 2000. After a small private home birth practice, she moved to Portland to work at the Andaluz Waterbirth Center and earned her Oregon State Midwifery License in 2001. Currently, Hope continues to practice midwifery as MotherTree Birth's staff midwife. (www.mothertreebirth.com)

The creative spirit is the heart of birth. Always having been an artist, Hope's paintings often express aspects of women, in rites of passage and pregnancy (www.fullmooncreation.com). As a musician, she has co-facilitated drum circles for around 2000 participants, of women, children, and families. Working with such groups as Portland Sun Schools, Domestic Violence shelters, Portland Public Libraries, Drug Rehabilitation centers, and Boys and Girls Aid Society of Oregon, her intention has been encouraging communication, confidence and community building.

By 2002, a small Portland community farm under threat of development caught and held her attention, and by 2003 she was one of the founding board members and grass roots organizers who formed a non-profit, Tryon Life Community Farm. With earned support of the city, the new non-profit purchased the land, put it into public land trust to protect it. Hope became the education coordinator for an education program which continues to serve youth and the greater community of Portland, facilitating and teaching classes about environmental sustainability, natural building, permaculture, social justice, and environmental arts.

Though she loves to act locally, she thinks globally- 1994-5 Hope was trained in Tibetan Yoga and Indian Massage & Bodywork in Dharamsala, India, while living near the Dalai Lama.

In early 2007 she worked in a birth center in Senegal, West Africa with the African Birth Collective. The African Birth Collective is a non-profit organization that has grown out of the need for greater safety and empowerment of women in their birth experiences and a desire to bridge the gap between traditional and modern midwifery in West Africa.(www.africanbirthcollective.org)

In early 2008, Hope returned from visiting midwives and doulas in Peru, South America. There she was learned about current doula training, traditional healing and birth practices, as well as taught natural birth techniques to staff in a local hospital.

Hope was recently selected to represent Tryon Life Community Farm at an international communities conference in Zimbabwe, Africa in October 2008. This conference, The Berkana Exchange Project, connects pioneering leaders from 14 intentional communities from throughout the globe around their shared commitment to making a difference in their country. These leaders are developing the capacity to solve their most pressing problems—such as community health, ecological sustainability and economic self-reliance—by acting locally, connecting regionally, learning globally and sharing what is learned through education projects.(www.berkana.org)

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artemishealingarts@yahoo.com ~ 503-758-0899 ~
Artemis Institute · 2021 SE 34th Ave. · Portland, OR 97214