I WAS BORN REMEMBERING

I was never meant to forget.

Even as a little Black girl with sun-warmed skin and an old soul tucked behind my eyes, I knew I had come here to return something. I didn’t have the language for it then, but my spirit knew. Knew that I was sent here as a bridge — between ancient ways and modern wounds, between medicine and memory, between birth and becoming.

My name is Jerriah Marie — and I was born gifted. By five, I was reading like a third grader, seeing what wasn’t said, and feeling what others tried to hide. But my gifts weren’t just academic. They were ancestral. I could sense the earth in my body. I could feel my grandmother’s prayers humming in my blood. I belonged to a lineage of women who healed in whispers, in kitchens, in gardens, in silence, and in song.

I didn’t learn herbalism — I remembered it.
I didn’t choose birthwork — it called me.

Years before doulas became hashtags and wombwork was a trend, I was watching the women in my family prepare herbal remedies, speak life into food, and hold folks through their hardest transitions with grace and grit. My work today is just an extension of that altar. Every tea I blend, every breath I hold space for, every baby I help usher in — it’s all part of a sacred loop that started long before me.

But even sacred work must evolve. As I grew into womanhood, I realized how violently the world forgets Black women — especially when we birth. I witnessed how systems fail us, how our pain is dismissed, how our joy is rationed. So I did what Spirit told me to do: I built a house for our healing.