Mothers and children gathered Tuesday afternoon at the Ute Mountain Ute Recreation Center for a class centered on postpartum health, the second in a series of courses that educates participants on maternal and infant health through culturally relevant foods and traditional practices.
Through a collaboration between the Southwestern Colorado Area Health Education Center and the Ute Mountain Ute WIC program, the classes are scheduled every Tuesday of July at 3 p.m., totaling five separately themed courses. The latest class offered pathways for mothers to address their own well being after giving birth through the traditional use of herbs.
Tuesday’s class was facilitated by Rebekah Roanhorse, a Certified Holistic Health Practitioner and founder of Walking the Holistic Way, a Farmington-based company that sells herbal tinctures and preparations.
About a dozen attendees, both adults and children, gathered around tables to listen in on a presentation by Roanhorse, diving into the changes a woman experiences following birth.
“We go through this huge shift spiritually and mentally after we become moms,” Roanhorse said to the participants.
She pointed to an overall increase in postpartum depression, a psychological condition that burdens many women after they give birth. Studies have shown that the condition is the rise, Roanhorse said.
A study published last year in the Journal of American Medicine, for example, showed that the prevalence of the condition roughly doubled, growing from 9.4% in 2010 to 19.0% in 2021.
Roanhorse focused in on five herbs and the ways each plant can help a women recover after birth.
In her presentation, she referred to dandelion leaf and its detoxing abilities, nettle as an energizing plant, red raspberry leaf’s robust vitamin content, the calming effects of motherwort and the wound healing possibilities of oatstraw.
The use of these plants have deep ties to ancestral practices, Roanhorse said. The consumption of these herbs in the modern day is a form of revitalizing that ancestral wisdom, she said.
“We’re reclaiming all of this,” she said.
Roanhorse said that her knowledge comes from lived experience. She is the mother of five children and has experienced postpartum depression, she said. But the herbs offered her guidance during the times of hardship.
Attendees of the class laughed and chatted as they passed around bags to fill with some herbs to take home. Kids drew in floral coloring books.
As the class winded down, herbal tea and blue corn mush with fruits were passed around for people to enjoy.
Venus Mills, director of the Ute Mountain Ute WIC program, said she was happy that the class could be offered for the community.
The goal of these classes are always about “keeping tradition alive,” Mills said.
“Our indigenous foods are healthy,” she said. “They have meaning behind them. It’s important to the younger generation.”
The remaining three classes will be take place during each of the following Tuesdays of July at 3 p.m. at the Ute Mountain Ute Recreation Center.
