Kindred’s International Editorial Advisory Board


Kindred’s International Editorial Advisory Board

Kindred is grateful to all of our advisors for the wise guidance and support they bring to our nonprofit work. With nearly two decades of insights into the New Story from over 200 contributors, Kindred’s vision of a sustainable and peaceful world would not be possible without their own trail-blazing work and belief in the Re-Generation.


Suzanne Arms
Suzanne Arms

Suzanne Arms

About Suzanne Arms, founder of Birthing the Future and author, Immaculate DeceptionShe’s a familiar name to many from her seven groundbreaking books (on pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and adoption), films, photographs, and the hundreds of talks she has given at conferences worldwide since 1975. She has been an inspiration behind the Birth Movement. Her 2nd book,Immaculate Deception was named a New York Times Best Book of the Year and inspired thousands of midwives, nurses and physicians, as well as parents-to-be. Arms is an advocate for holistic, sustainable health policies and practices and conscious parenting. Her focus – and the focus of Birthing The Future, the U.S. non-profit she founded and directs – is birth and the mother-baby connection, which lays the foundation for love and trust, health and resiliency, cooperation and community. Arms presentations range from large multi-media events, using films and her photographs, at conferences and colleges to workshops for professionals and students, and intimate sacred circles for healing and deepening community. She weaves a tapestry of knowledge from ancient and cross-cultural wisdom to modern science (cellular biology, neurobiology, psycho-immunology and attachment theory), with ecology, feminism and spirituality.

Read Suzanne’s work on Kindred.

Read her full bio here.


Four Arrows

Four Arrows

Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) is a professor at Fielding Graduate University. Former Director of Education at Oglala Lakota College, he is a made-relative of the Oglala and a Sun Dancer. Selected by AERO for their text Turning Points as one of 27 “Visionaries in Education” and recipient of a Martin Springer Institute for Holocaust Studies “Moral Courage Award” for his activism, he is the author of more than 20 books, praised by such notables as Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Henry Giroux, Darcia Narvaez, Greg Cajete, Sam Keen, Thom Hartmann, and many others. His books, chapters, articles and videos on Indigenous Worldview and its applications for sustainability can be accessed at fourarrowsbooks.com. He lives with his artist/photographer wife in a remote section of Mexico on the Costalegre. There is also a book on his work entitled Fearless Engagement of Four Arrows by R. Michael Fisher (Peter Lang, 2019).

Read Four Arrows work on Kindred.


Linda Bonvie
Linda Bonvie

Linda Bonvie

Linda Bonvie (pictured with her cat, Stevia, is a journalist, author, and consumer advocate with 20 years of experience around food safety issues. She has written articles for major newspapers and national publications around the country, including USA Today, the New York Times, NBC-TV’s Dateline, the New Yorker, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, New Age Journal, Vegetarian Times, and more. She lives in Little Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey.

Her books include Chemical-free Kids: How to Safeguard Your Child’s Diet and Environment,Chemical-free Kids the Organic Sequel, and The Stevia Story, about the FDA’s failed attempt to suppress the natural herb Stevia and the controversy that stemmed from a trade complaint reportedly filed by its competitor, NutraSweet.  She is a regular contributor to Food Identity Theft, by Citizens for Health.


John Breeding, PhD

John Breeding, PhD

John Breeding, Ph.D., has been a psychologist for over 25 years, working with adults, children and families in Austin, Texas and around the world. He offers a variety of services in his Austin office, by telephone, or in various speaking or workshop arrangements in your won community.

A significant part of John’s work involves counseling with parents and children. He lectures and leads workshops for parents and educators on handling the challenge of a child who is labeled a “problem.” One purpose is to assist adults in becoming more effective in their work with young people, offering non-drug alternatives to helping young people who are having a hard time. He is also director of Texans For Safe Education, a citizens group dedicated to challenging the ever-increasing role of psychiatry, especially psychiatric drugs, in the schools. Dr. Breeding is also active on other challenges of psychiatric oppression, including electroshock, and the psychiatric drugging of elders in nursing homes.

Dr. Breeding obtained his doctorate in School Psychology from the University of Texas. He is the author of four books: The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses, The Necessity of Madness and Unproductivity: Psychiatric Oppression or Human Transformation, True Nature and Great Misunderstandings, and Eyes Wide Open: Parenting and Life Manifestos for he 21st Century. You can read Dr. Breeding’s 21st Century Manifesto for Parenting on Kindred. He is also a contributing writer to the forthcoming, Parenting As A Hero’s Journey book.


Sarah Buckley
Sarah Buckley, MD

Sarah Buckley

Sarah J. Buckley is a trained GP/family physician with qualifications in GP-obstetrics and family planning. She is the mother of four home-born children, and currently combines full-time motherhood with her work as a writer on pregnancy, birth, and parenting,

Dr Buckley’s work critiques current practices in pregnancy, birth, and parenting from the widest possible perspectives, including scientific, anthropological, cross-cultural, psychological, and personal. She encourages us to be fully informed in our decision-making; to listen to our hearts and our intuition; and to claim our rightful role as the real experts in our bodies and our children.

Her bestselling book Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor’s Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices, published by Celestial Arts (US, 2009), builds on her acclaimed first edition, published in Australia as Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: The Wisdom and Science of Gentle Choices in Pregnancy, Birth, and Parenting One Moon Press, Brisbane, 2005).


Wesley Bugg, JD

Wesley Bugg, JD

Wesley Bugg, JD, is the executive director of Reaching Our Brothers Everywhere, ROBE. He is a 2016 graduate of the University of Miami’s School of Law (JD, LLM), and 2013 graduate of Emory University (BA). He is currently the deputy director of Court Vision International Inc., a nonprofit that promotes youth advocacy and conflict resolution. His current interests include legal compliance and business development, especially for startups and small nonprofits where these tasks are often expensive and difficult. In this spirit, he serves ROSE as the Legal Compliance Officer and financial assistant, aggregated into his role as Financial and Legal Operation Coordinator.

Read and download Kindred’s series, Meet the Men of ROBE here.

Wesley and his work with ROBE was also featured in Kindred Media’s Meet the Wayfinders Series produced for La Leche League International’s 65th Conference. Learn more about Meet the Wayfinders here.

ROBE and ROSE are Kindred World partners.


Julie Gerland

Dr. Julie Gerland

Dr. Julie Gerland is a pioneer and thought leader in the field of consciousness and co-creating a world of health, happiness and empowered creativity in harmony with universal laws. She lives in southwestern France.

Dr. Gerland is an international inspirational speaker, teacher, co-author and activist. She created the Holistic Parenting Programme: Preconception to Birth & Beyond working with couples and teaching professionals. She has taught and trained professionals in the world renown HypnoBirthing® method of natural childbirth and contributes to changing the current paradigm of birth. She also spearheaded the United Nations representation of an NGO on prenatal education for nearly a decade working to bring to the attention of global leaders the science behind prenatal education as a means to achieving our Global Goals.

Julie works tirelessly to empower people, couples, parents, organisations and NGOs showing them how they can live fulfilled, creative and abundant lives and pass this on to the future generations during their most influencial months of life before birth

Julie is the co-creator of Foundation VIE, Global Prenatal Initiative (GPI) and it’s Youth Delegation and the Birthing The New Humanity International Conferences.

Dr. Julie Gerland has received numerous awards:

HypnoBirthing® Visionary Award
National Guild of Hypnotists International Visionary Award
Honorary Doctorate in Holistic Medicines
World Family Organization Awards for Prenatal Education and Youth Empowerment


Marti Glenn
Marti Glenn

Marti Glenn

Marti is Clinical Director and Partner at Quest Institute. A pioneering psychotherapist and educator for over 30 years, Marti has led intensive healing retreats for adults through Esalen, the STAR Foundation, Feathered Pipe Ranch, The Center for ReUniting Families and Entelechy Institute. She is founding President of Santa Barbara Graduate Institute known for its MA and PhD degrees in somatic psychology, prenatal and perinatal psychology, and clinical psychology. She also served as professor of clinical psychology, integrating affective neuroscience with attachment, early development, and trauma.

Watch Marti’s video, The Origins of Birth Psychology, a Kindred exclusive, here.


Robin Grille

Robin Grille

Robin Grille is a father, psychologist in private practice and a parenting educator living in Sydney, Australia. His articles on parenting and child development have been widely published and translated in Australia and around the world. Robin’s first book,Parenting for a Peaceful World (2005), has received international acclaim and led to speaking engagements around Australia, USA and New Zealand. His second book, Heart to Heart Parenting (2008), was first published in Australia by ABC Books. Robin’s work is animated by his belief that humanity’s future is largely dependent on the way we collectively relate to our children. Watch the amazing video created from Parenting for a Peaceful World on You Tube.

Robin’s experiential, skills-based and informational parenting courses have helped many people to embrace parenting as a transformative, personal growth journey. Drawing from over 20 years’ clinical experience and from leading-edge neuropsychological research, Robin’s seminars and courses focus on healthy emotional development for children as well as parents; while building supportive, co-operative parenting communities.

To find out more about Robin Grille’s work, his books, articles and seminars visit:  www.hearttoheartparenting.org  and www.RobinGrille.com.

Read Robin’s articles, listen to podcasts and watch Kindred’s New Story videos with him here.


Pam Leo

Pam Leo

Pam Leo, is a family literacy activist, founder of the Book Fairy Pantry Project, the author of Connection Parenting, and a new poem, and future children’s book, Please Read To Me. Pam has worked with children and families for more than forty years. From her work with teen parents, parents in prison, parents in recovery, and low income parents, she learned that all parents want very much to provide for their own children. She has “never met a parent who didn’t want life to be better for their children than it was for them.”  Her enduring love of children’s  books, her passion for literacy, and her commitment to empowering parents, are combined in her new role as the founder of the grassroots literacy movement, the Book Fairy Pantry Project,  whose mission is “Books change children’s lives…for good.”

Pam Leo is a member of the board of directors for Kindred’s parent nonprofit, Kindred World.

Read Pam’s work and listen to her podcasts on Kindred.

Visit the Book Fairy Pantry Project here.


Myrna Martin
Myrna Martin

Myrna Martin

Myrna has 40 years of experience working as director of Nelson and Area Mental Health Services, therapeutically as a nurse, family therapist and craniosacral therapist. Her private practice focuses on early trauma resolution with babies, children and their families as well as adults. She teaches workshops and seminars around the world. Myrna is director of the Kutenai Institute of Integral Therapies which offers pre- and perinatal professional training, somatic trauma resolution and biodynamic craniosacral therapy. Her next pre- and perinatal professional trainings will be in Charlottesville, Virginia, beginning in April 2013 and Vancouver, British Columbia, in May 2013. These trainings provide professional education for a broad range of people working with pregnant couples and families with children in the early years as well as adults. Visit her online at myrnamartin.net.

Read her articles and watch her videos on pre- and perinatal psychology on Kindred.

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Miriam Mason Martineau, MA

Miriam Mason Martineau, MA

Miriam’s formal training lies in the areas of psychology, dance, choreography, and voice. She has a Masters Degree in Psychology from the University of Zurich, with a specialization in Youth and Child Psychology, and is also a certified teacher of Laban Modern Dance, as well as a singer and vocal instructor.

Miriam works in private practice as an integral therapeutic counselor for adults, couples, youth and children. She is vice-president of Next Step Integral, an organization that applies integral consciousness to parenting, education, ecology, and community. For the last 15 years she has studied and researched how parenting can be pursued as a spiritual practice. This has led her to offering courses on the topic, working as a coach for parents, and writing a book (forthcoming) titled Raising the Future – an Integral Evolutionary Approach to Parenting. She also leads workshops on authentic voice and movement, and has performed both as a soloist and in a variety of choirs such as the Swiss National Television Choir. From 1992-2002 Miriam lived in an integrally-informed intentional community and there honed the skills of group facilitation, conflict resolution and generative dialogue.

Read Miriam on Kindred.

Visit Miriam’s website.


Michael Mendizza

Michael Mendizza

Prompted by the attempted rape and murder of a female colleague in 1981, Michael embarked on The Betrayal of Intimacy, an independent research and public awareness project to prevent sexual violence. The sociopath, rapist, and abusive male are most often themselves victims of early childhood abuse, humiliation, and neglect. It is this betrayal of intimacy that creates a foundation for violence. If the absence of nurturing is a major contributor to juvenal and adult patterns of violence, then feeling safe, physical affection and play in early childhood will help prevent violence. In 1987 Michael founded Touch the Future, a nonprofit learning design center, upon this simple observation.

As documentary filmmaker Michael has traveled extensively researching sensitive issues: domestic violence and rape, the impact of media on learning, cultural and human development, the nature of intelligence, holistic learning models, the changing family, prenatal learning, creativity and peak performance. For two decades Michael has gathered and published interviews with more than fifty researchers, scientists, authors and performance specialists, including extensive works with renowned physicist David BohmJ. KrishnamurtiAshley Montagu and Joseph Chilton Pearce. Working closely with Pearce and performance specialists, Michael developed a revolutionary parenting and coaching model that applies the psychology of optimum experience, what athletes call The Zone, to parenting and to education. 

Magical Parent – Magical Child, the Optimum Learning Relationship, a book written in collaboration with Pearce, offers this model of peak performance and optimum learning to parents, preschool, Head Start, and child care providers, public educators and amateur athletic coaches. Michael has presented these and related works at national and international conferences in the United States, Eastern Europe, The Netherlands, in India and the United Kingdom.

Read Michael’s work on Kindred.

Visit www.MichaelMendizza.com and Touch the Future.


Marilyn Milos

Marilyn Milos

Founder and Director, National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC)

On March 15, 1986, a group of healthcare professionals in the San Francisco Bay Area, led by Marilyn Milos RN, announced the (1985) founding of the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC); the first national clearinghouse in the United States for information about circumcision. In its first decade, NOCIRC grew into an international network and now has more than 110 centers worldwide.

NOCIRC provides educational material about the structures, functions, development, and care of normal penile anatomy and offers information about circumcision and the care of the circumcised as well as the intact penis. NOCIRC suggests that circumcision be performed only when it is absolutely medically necessary, after all non-invasive therapies have failed, or when an adult gives consent, after he has been fully informed about the risks and harm of the surgery. NOCIRC’s position is based on the fact that not one national or international medical association in the world—including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association—recommends routine infant circumcision and now, recognizing the harm and life-long consequences, some are recommending against it.

Read about circumcision on Kindred.

Find resources on circumcision.


Stephanie Mines, PhD

Stephanie Mines
Stephanie Mines, PhD

Dr. Stephanie Mines is a neuropsychologist whose unique understanding comes from her academic research as well as her extensive work in the field. Her stories of personal transformation have led many listeners to become deeply committed to the healing journey. Dr. Mines understands shock from every conceivable perspective. She has investigated it as a survivor, a professional, a healthcare provider, and as a trainer of staffs of institutions and agencies. Her blend of Western and Eastern modalities offers the best of both paradigms. She is devoted to ending the lineage of shock and trauma for individuals and the world. To this end she has developed the TARA Approach for the Resolution of Shock and Trauma which is taught internationally and is a clinically tested comprehensive treatment design.

The TARA Approach is also a non-profit organization dedicated to providing alternative health options for a broad spectrum of populations. Dr. Mines, as Director, is responsible for disseminating information to communities in need, especially people suffering from illness that results from shock and trauma, survivors of domestic violence, families and children, and people living with neurodiversity including autism and other sensory integration challenges.

Dr. Mines also developed CLIMATE CHANGE & CONSCIOUSNESS. Our Legacy for the Earth. She convened a global gathering in Northern Scotland in April 2019 with keynote leaders like Bill McKibben, Charles Eisenstein, Vandana Shiva and others who inspired the intergenerational community there to take direct action that is now sustained by a movement serving throughout the world. CLIMATE CHANGE & CONSCIOUSNESS NORWAY 2021 will be the next iteration of this assembly of visionary activists.

Dr. Mines’ books represent a compilation of the diverse aspects of her mission to build grassroots empowerment based sustainable healthcare. These include: We Are All in ShockNew Frontiers in Sensory Integration and most recently They Were Families: How War Comes Home.

Dr. Mines’ CV

To reach Dr. Mines directly, email her at tara-approach@prodigy.net

Read Dr. Mines’ articles and listen to her interviews on Kindred.


Catherine Myers

Catherine Myers is the director of Family and Home Network, which has been listening to parents’ thoughts and feelings since our grassroots organization was founded in 1984. We offer affirmation, information and advocacy to parents who spend generous amounts of time with their children in order to establish and maintain intimate, nurturing relationships. We focus especially on the experiences of at-home mothers and fathers, parents who’d prefer to spend more time with their children, and those who cut back to part-time employment or tag team (alternating employment/caregiving hours with their spouse or other family members). We know there is no one-size-fits-all way to care for children and that parents need flexible public policies that support all care for children (including but not limited to child care services). Mothers and fathers want to know what developmental science says about the needs of infants and young children. They want to be supported in making choices about the care of their children—and supported in changing those choices over time. 

We reach out to parents to share the work of our nation’s renowned developmental scientists, whose findings emphasize the importance of parent-child relationships, generous amounts of time together, and societal support for parents. We affirm the value for parents of time spent at home with children, the potential for personal growth and learning, the opportunities to build skills and reenter the paid workforce after a few years or many years. 

For decades, FAHN has participated in media, cultural and political conversations about families. We are informed about data, knowledgeable about misconceptions and alert to the influence of special interests. With our Campaign for Inclusive Family Policies, we call for a paradigm shift in family policymaking: instead of family policies crafted to meet the needs of working families, family policies will abide by fundamental principles of inclusion, supporting all families. When parents are affirmed for their unpaid caregiving, informed about the irreducible needs of children, and supported by inclusive public policies, they will be better able to embrace elements of the The Evolved Nest, with short and long-term benefits for themselves, for their children, and for society. 


Darcia Narvaez, PhD

Darcia Narvaez, PhD

Darcia Narvaez is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. Her prior careers include professional musician, classroom music teacher, business owner, seminarian and middle school Spanish teacher. Dr. Narvaez’s current research explores how early life experience influences societal culture, wellbeing and sociomoral character in children and adults. She integrates neurobiological, clinical, developmental and education sciences in her theories and research about human nature and human development. 

She publishes extensively on moral development, parenting and education. Recently she has been studying the Evolved Nest and how it influences wellbeing, sociality and morality. 

She hosts interdisciplinary conferences at the University of Notre Dame regarding early experience and human development (the talks and/or powerpoints are available online).  In 2016, she organized a conference on Sustainable Wisdom: Integrating Indigenous KnowHow for Global Flourishing (talks available online). 

She is the author or editor of numerous books and articles, see The Science page for listings. 

She is an advisory board member of Attachment Parenting International and the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health, APPPAH

Her recent book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom (2014), won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association, as well as the 2017 Expanded Reason Award. She is former executive editor of the Journal of Moral Education.

Darcia serves on the board of directors for Kindred World, is a contributing editor for Kindred Media, and the founder of The Evolved Nest educational initiative.

Read Dr. Narvaez’s articles and interviews on Kindred.


Carey Sipp

Carey Sipp is the Director of Strategic Partnerships PACEs Connection. She is a science, brain, health, and parenting enthusiast who learned about the ACE Study almost 20 years ago. As the Southeastern community facilitator for PACEs Connection, Carey uses four decades of experience as an award-winning writer, marketer, fundraiser, and campaigner to help PACEs initiatives in 11 states create communities on PACEsConnection.com, find resources, and leverage opportunities to take trauma-informed practices into new and existing sectors. She also supports interest-based groups, including PACEs in the Faith-Based Community and the Trauma Informed Healthcare Education and Research Group. As an PACEs Connection lead in communications and social media, she’s raising awareness of PACEs science across all sectors: government to healthcare; education to juvenile justice; airlines to zoos. Carey’s work has also included service on boards of directors for several non-profits supporting leadership development, nutrition, and underserved youth, and volunteering at residential treatment centers for mothers recovering from alcohol and drug abuse. Carey graduated with an MS in Communications (Journalism) from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

Visit Carey’s website: www.CareySipp.com

Read Carey’s writing on Kindred here.

PACEs story: I grew up in addiction and abuse. When I had children, I vowed they would have a saner, calmer childhood than my own, so I joined a recovery group for family and friends of alcoholics, immersed myself in parenting education, and quit drinking, just in case. Somehow I knew children’s brains are wired for peace and calm or for agitation and addiction. In 1996, when I started working on a book about breaking cycles of addiction and abuse, I called the National Association for Children of Alcoholics for resources. In 2000, one of the pieces of information they sent was the ACE Study. I read it and wept. My score explained my health issues; my prognosis was grim. Instinctively, I delved deeper into recovery, spirituality, parenting, exercise, nutrition. A few years later, hope came when advances in brain science showed the brain has plasticity, the body wants to heal. In 2008 I started contributing articles about PACEs science to a medical information website. Five years later I met Jane Stevens, and five years after that, I was hired at PACEs Connection. My work comes full circle as I write about how PACEs lead to addiction and addiction leads to PACEs, and that PACEs science and trauma-informed communities hold solutions to preventing multi-generational cycles of addiction and abuse.


John Travis
John Travis, MD, MPH

John Travis, MD, MPH

John W. Travis, MD, MPH completed his medical degree in Boston and a residency in general preventive medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Strongly influenced by Halbert Dunn, MD’s, 1961 classic, High-Level Wellness, which he discovered in 1972, he subsequently founded the first wellness center in the US (Wellness Resource Center, Mill Valley, CA, 1975) favorably portrayed in a 1979 60 Minutes segment with Dan Rather. The center was transformed into a non-profit educational foundation, Wellness Associates in 1980. He is the author of the Wellness Inventory Online (wellpeople.com), and three editions of the Wellness Workbook.

During the 80s and 90s, along with his wife, Meryn Callander, he focused on developing peer support networks of helping professionals that embraced a partnership model in order to reverse some of the negative effects of authoritarian model in the medical system.  Realizing in 1991 that how we raise children has far more influence on their later wellness (and the estrangement that leads to dominator systems) than any other factor in our lives, he expanded the focus of his work to include infant wellness. Along with Meryn and 11 world experts in birth and child development he co-founded The Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children (aTLC.org), which fosters individual and planetary wellness through changing the norms of how babies are born and treated in their early years.

During the last decade, he has focused on bringing together all aspects of wellness within the concept of full-spectrum wellness, where the focus is on interconnectedness, both throughout all the stages of the human development, from conception to death, and within all levels of the environment around us—from inside our skin to the whole planet.  He summarizes 38 years in the wellness field with the expression: The currency of wellness is connection.   He was appointed an adjunct professor in the Master of Wellness program at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) University in 2008 and teaches Wellness Assessment in their online curriculum.

His new work is with the Fathermore Project and resources the book, Why Dads Leave: Insights and Resources for When Partners Become Parents.


Kelly Wendorf

Kelly Wendorf

Kelly Wendorf is a writer, author, public speaker, facilitator and social entrepreneur. Having spent much of her life between the Native lands of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, to the devotional places of India, and finally the vast expanse of Australia, she has spent years exploring the practical application of spiritual awakening to daily life, social change, sustainable business practices and innovations in community learning. This lead to her work as founder of Kindred magazine, and eventually the Kindred online community, where she continues to contribute her valuable articles, which are enjoyed by many. She is also the editor and contributing writer for the anthology, Stories of Belonging (Finch Publishing).More recently, Kelly co-founded The Institute of the Southwest along with her husband Wayne Muller, an educational organization. The Institute’s self-mastery program, The Equus Experience, works with individuals, organizations and corporations to explore collaborative leadership through co-facilitation with horses. Working alongside her team of horses, Kelly works with people to discover how nature reveals their innate wisdom and strength. Kelly currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband, Wayne and her two children.

Kelly is the founder of Kindred. Read her work on Kindred here.

Visit her at Equus Inspired here.


Laurel Wilson

Laurel Wilson

Laurel Wilson, BSc, IBCLC, RLC, CCCE, CLE®, CLD, CPPFE, CPPI owns MotherJourney in Morrison, Colorado. She has her degree in Maternal and Child Health – Lactation Consulting. With over twenty six years of experience working with women in the childbearing year and perinatal professionals, Laurel takes a creative approach to working with the pregnant family and perinatal professionals. She is co-author of best-selling books, The Greatest Pregnancy Ever: The Keys to the MotherBaby Bond and The Attachment Pregnancy: The Ultimate Guide to Bonding with Your Baby. She is also a contributing author to Round the Circle: Experienced Doulas Share What They Learned the Hard Way and original editor of the CAPPA Lactation Educator Manual. She currently travels the world presenting on such hot topics as Social Media and the Pregnant Family, Epigenetics and the Microbiome and First Foods, and Cannabis and Perinatal Health.

Read and watch Laurel’s work with the Greatest Pregnancy Ever on Kindred.

Read and watch her individual work on Kindred.

Visit Laurel’s website Mother Journey.


Suzanne Zeedyk
Suzanne Zeedyk, PhD

Suzanne Zeedyk, PhD

For the past 25 years, I’ve been an academic researcher, studying babies’ innate ability to communicate and connect with other people. I have loved what the field of Developmental Psychology has taught me – why it is that a child’s earliest years have such a profound effect on their later years, including their emotional security, their trust in others, their self-confidence, and their relationships. Now I want to help ensure that this knowledge is spread as widely as possible. I frequently act as partner or speaker for a wide range of organizations throughout the UK and abroad – including police, educators, health workers, nursery staff, parent groups, and children’s theatre groups – helping them to better understand the neuroscientific, biological, and psychological evidence concerning the human need for emotional connection. If we overlook the early years, then we all pay for it, through the services that governments need to fund, such as prisons, mental health programmes, hospitals, fostering arrangements, and others. Tackling many of society’s challenges can best be done by paying attention to the emotional needs of babies.  

Visit Dr. Zeedyk here.  Watch her collection of research films here.

Listen to her Kindred feature on Making Scotland the First ACES Aware Nation here.