Alison Ritchie

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Canada
Winnipeg, MB
Alison Ritchie

Walking with Women through Birth & Rebirth
Folk Herbalist | Healing Arts | Deep Nourishment | Wild Feminine
Let’s Begin 👇🏼🌸

I am here to activate, inspire, repair, and help create a new path forward for mothers, birth workers, wild women and the next generation.

15 years ago I began my journey into motherhood where I deep dived into all things surrounding the childbearing year, herbal medicine, food therapy, and regenerative & holistic health. I became utterly fascinated with the human body, what makes it tick, the great mystery of life and how everything is mirrored in the cycles and rhythms of nature. I am acutely aware of the crossroads we stand at in our collective human history. I move through this world awake & aware, soft & tender, but also with the protective & fierce spirit of Mother Bear energy. The revolution we all feel brewing isn't coming from outside ourselves - it will come through us. It starts with you and me, here and now, in our bodies, our kitchens, our homes, our gardens, our frequencies, our businesses and communities. We are the ones we have been waiting for. In birth, in health, with our food, in all aspects of our lives...this is the chapter of the story we take it all back!

11/04/2025

Body oiling is a non negotiable for me as we move into the dark season more every day. 🕯️There is something about connecting with myself and all the beautiful plants via the oils that make it such a better experience. This is part of what preventative, self-reliant health care looks like for me. The massage and lymphatic drainage I feel is especially important in the slower months when I’m less active.

So… How to Practice Body Oiling?

🌿Choose Your Oil: Select a natural oil like sesame, coconut, almond, or one of my herb infused high vibe oils! Try to choose an oil that would grow in the environment you live in.
🤲🏽Warm the Oil: Rub the oil in your hands to generate heat before applying it to your body. You could warm it in a pot on the stove but I personally feel for my daily practice it’s an unnecessary step.
💆🏽‍♀️Massage: Apply the oil in circular motions over the joints and long strokes along the limbs, working towards the heart. I start behind my ears and on my neck and work my way to my feet. 🦶 There are so many nerve endings on your ears, hands and feet so make sure you get those!
🪷Let It Absorb: Leave the oil on for at least 15-30 minutes to allow oil to deeply absorb. This is why I love doing this when my pores are open because my skin absorbs it so quickly. I have a robe I throw on afterwards so I don’t get oil everywhere, but it really does absorb quick!
That’s it! This creates a barrier that locks in moisture but also feels SUPER grounding to my nervous system. It really helps me unwind at the end of the day and set myself up for a good sleep. It helps stimulate blood circulation, reduces stress and muscle tension, encourages lymphatic drainage, and delivers nutrients to the skin!
I have a variety of herbal infused oils made from herbs I’ve grown in my garden or wild crafted available for you to experience! Comment NATURE below and I’ll send you over to my shop. You can use code NATURE at checkout for 15% off your order!
Cheers to your vibrant health! 🌿

10/20/2025

Perhaps I’m romanticizing things a bit, BUT I think there is a lot of truth here, too.
At one time, recipes used to be handed down through songs and rhymes that had a rhythm to them so that they could be easily recalled and always “on” the person when they needed them.
Our lives greatly revolved around being on the land growing and raising food, harvesting, preserving, and sitting around a table together and taking in that food.
It seems to me that the further we have gotten away from our food the further away we have gotten from health. We eat bananas from the tropics here in Canada in the middle of winter - a complete circadian light mismatch… but think nothing of it. We think little of how that food would be designed to support people living in the tropics , and how it could disrupt our bodies in the subarctic.
I remember when my kids were little and had a bout of cold and congestion, and as I made soup specifically thinking about them and how I could support their little bodies to do their healing… that intention, love and focus made it extra potent. Their congestion cleared up within a day which may have been coincidence but part of me thinks there is more to the story that what we can see with our eyes.
With women moving into the workforce during WW2, a whole wave of medicine women left the kitchen, and in came the microwave and the packaged, factory made dinner - the birth of convenience food.
I believe a real flex these days is having someone holding down the kitchen, using ingredients local to them, dialling us into our environment to match up with the seasons, and creating art, beauty, and nourishment through food. What do you think?
Ok full transparency here - this is a post I made from last year. It’s Day 12 or 13 of the messengers challenge and I had so much on the go today I had to use an old post. Still showing up though! 😉

10/18/2025

When we are paid accordingly, we can then make the choice to give certain families a discount who truly need it because we aren’t just scraping by.
People are paying 50k for a wedding, a photographer, the dress, all this stuff but want a discount for birth work. I’m just so over it. Figure out what you value, what health and wellbeing are worth to you, and if traditional birth and postpartum work doesn’t fit in there somewhere, cool.
I love this work. I truly do. But I won’t work for crumbs and you shouldn’t either.
Photo of and I by

10/17/2025

I spent the day in the graveyard, tracing the names and stones of my family line. It’s the second time this year my Mum and I have walked this cemetery, piecing together fragments of history, trying to stitch stories to places. There’s something about standing at the actual resting places of my kin that adds weight to their lives. You feel it in your bones. It’s sobering and humbling, especially as I stand in my own midlife. It also exciting and feels like stepping into our own movie, where the past and present overlap.
Together, Mum and I have been digging through bags of old writings left by my great-grandmother Wilhelmina — Willa for short, the woman my daughter is named after. Through her work and words, we’ve been able to trace a woman on our family tree as far back as the 1500s (more on her another day as she is in the history books), with roots stretching through Scotland, Ireland, and England.
Willa wrote in depth about her life. She had a pet crow. She went to Sundance in the early 1900s. She wore a buffalo hide jacket and lived in a Tyndall stone house. She tended the fire through brutal prairie winters, waking throughout the night to keep the flames alive when temperatures plunged below –20 for weeks on end. She planted lilacs around her home — and today, I touched those same plants with my own hands. Imagine that.
It’s incredible, really, to stand in the town and by the home of this family. MY family. Did she ever imagine that one day her great-granddaughter would be tracing her path? I look back on my Motherline and know of her only in my heart. I look forward on this same line, and know my great-granddaughter only in my heart. And somehow, I feel held in that echo. (((❤️)))
Through nearly 17 years of birth work, I’ve come to understand inheritance as so much more than physical traits. We are carried inside our grandmother’s wombs, imprinted by the waters of her body, marked by the stories and sorrows she held. We inherit ways of seeing, feeling, and being that can’t always be explained, yet live within us like whispers from another time.
It amazes me how people I’ve never met are so intricately woven into my story — how the choices and lives of those before me ripple into who I am now. A family constellation, each person holding their place, each star part of the pattern. And God willing, more stars will reveal themselves as time goes on.
So much more to share on this in the days to come.

10/15/2025

I write this as someone who very much operates as a lone wolf, with the exception of a few women who are my closest confidants and allies.

I spend loads of time in solitude, by choice. On one side it’s where I feel my best and most connected to nature and God. I feel creative here and there’s room for me to bloom. And on the other side, I suppose it’s a sister wound.

Betrayal and mistrust has been a wound I had to lick for many years. Love, real deep trust, and being in a true sisterhood with women that eventually fell into shadow is some of the deepest heartbreak of my life. I learned so much from those sacred relationships and they continue to teach me to this day. I am very grateful to those women.

When we give our hearts and tell our stories to others we are taking a chance with them. To share our inner world, our inner child, the delicate nuances of our lives with another in hopes they will cherish it, and that we in return, will do the same.

It’s what it truly means to be seen by another. It is a kind of intimacy (into me see) that if you get to experience in your life, you are a blessed human. Connection that weaves your story together, if only for a chapter or two.

We can hold a lot on our own, but there’s a depth we can only touch when we are with other women. It’s a filling of the well. A recharging of the battery like no other.

I am realizing this more and more as I get older.

There are no guarantees in relationships or in life. Sometimes you just gotta take a chance with people when the resonance is there.

I’ll be gathering with women on Nov 15th out in the Boreal 🌲 to laugh, to learn, to sweat, and stare into the fire. Come join me in this midseason get together? All the details are in my B I O.

Day 9/28 of the messengers challenge.

10/14/2025

📣Calling my Manitoba women….
Come spend the day with and I out in the Boreal getting strong in our body, mind, and spirit.
We’ll be eating and drinking delicious seasonal food, making fire cider, sweating it out in the sauna, gathering around the fire, and restoring the body with yoga.
We’ll be in the mid-season time between Autumn and Winter. The perfect time to gather in community and fortify for the dark months ahead.
Type FORTIFY and I’ll send you some info! To your vibrant health! ❤️

10/12/2025

Up until three months ago, I would have said I was pretty much “symptom free” when it came to perimenopause. Then, right after my 44th birthday, it was as if I walked through a door that slammed shut behind me. No looking back, no gentle transition, no one last hurrah. Just right f’n in it.
In many ways, it feels like the floor has dropped out from under me and my whole life is being restructured. It’s strange cause I’m still here, in my same life — but through this new hormonal profile, everything looks different. Clearer. Sometimes alarmingly so.
I’ve noticed how, in my “old life,” when estrogen flowed freely, I was wired to serve, host, tend to everyone and everything. And now that bandwidth is gone. I wonder if this is nature’s way of preparing us to loosen our grip on our children as they grow, to practice letting go. So much to ponder, really.
Mostly, I’m just witnessing myself — the emotions that rise and what they have to teach me, the shifts in my body, the rewiring of my brain, and how all of it mirrors changes in my outer world. There’s grief. There’s necessary solitude. There’s the ache of an era ending.
But there’s also presence. And when I look in the mirror — at the changes, at the woman I’ve become — I see a body that has carried me for 44 years, and I love her.
Welcoming it all, with as much grace as I can.
Day 6/28 of my IG messenger challenge.

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Winnipeg, MB

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https://linktr.ee/this_grand_voyage_

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Welcome!

I am so pleased you’ve found your way here. Whether you are giving birth to a new baby, or a new way of life, you came here looking for more. My heartfelt desire is for you to have the courage to dive deep with all that you are - and make the most of your journey, on all levels.

I am an Earth and Birth worker. A student and stewardess of the ever changing seasons and cycles of mother earth and women alike. From the spring time blossoming pre-teen, to the wise, winter, silver crone, I work with women in all ages and stages. I study, create, grow and work intimately with plant medicines that assist women in their lives.

I am a women’s herbal educator, teacher, full spectrum holistic birth and postpartum doula, entrepreneur, gardener, wife and mother. I love studying ancestry, aromatherapy and astrology, spirituality and the metaphysical, thrifting vintage, eclectic fashion and home decor. I love travelling, music, Harry Potter, and of course my dogs, my family and our home.

I feel my work with women and birth in particular keeps me close to the Great Mystery of life, and serves as a great reminder that we, too, will venture back into that beautiful unknown at some point, so every day we wake up is a gift. Here I am on the grand spiral, and it brings me great joy knowing that I have awoken into this life and live in my passions, doing the work I have come here to do.