About

Hey! I’m Veronica, creator of Kapu, LLC, a holistic care company for women.

I'm a wife, mama, clinical herbalist, RH (AHG) and certified Fertility Awareness & Sexual Health Educator living in northern California. I run my herbalism practice, named Kapu, and am also a faculty clinician and teacher at the Berkeley Herbal Center in Berkeley, California. 

I love making things that don't yet exist, but ought to. I started by making pelvic / yoni steam stools in 2017 (since then have retired my stools), then self-published the first edition of the Menstrual Calendar Journal in 2018 and the second edition in 2024.

Kapu is dedicated to supporting women who want to live in tune with nature and their bodies. (Kapu means taboo or sacred in Hawaiian, scroll down to learn more)

Warmly, Veronica

People like to know why / how I became an herbalist. Here's the short story:

I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, South America. It began with my host mom teaching me about the medicinal plants that grew in our yard, and piqued when I befriended a 90+ year old man who taught me how he stayed so healthy —boiled toad bones (bone broth) and herbs!

When I returned to the states, long story short, I decided to do something about my persistent acne. I got off oral antibiotics for acne AND decided to get off hormonal birth control, too! 

That left me with one option: figure out how to resolve acne and learn how to "manage" my fertility, naturally. 

Remembering how much I loved learning about herbs as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, I felt encouraged to join a 4-year clinical herbalism program at the Berkeley Herbal Center. 

Separately, I learned the SymptoThermal Fertility Awareness Method of natural birth control. This shook my worldview forever and I realized that I was the best, most qualified person to manage my own fertility needs.

Once I became a certified clinical herbalist and began seeing my own clients, it became clear that women are simply not taught about their bodies, and so struggle with PMS, PCOS, infertility and more. 

I took a 2-year training to became a certified SymptoThermal fertility awareness method instructor so that I could better support and teach my clients about their own bodies.

I love pairing herbalism with fertility charting as the ultimate form of self-reliance and self-care, and teaching other women how to do the same. 

Interested in having an herbal consultation with me? Get in touch here!

Interested in learning the SymptoThermal Method for natural birth control? Get in touch here! 

Read below to find out what sets me apart as a certified Fertility Awareness Educator recognized by the Association of Fertility Awareness Professionals. 

 

Excerpt from the Association of Fertility Awareness Professionals website:

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CERTIFIED BY AFAP

Currently, there are no specific licensing or certification requirements for becoming a Fertility Awareness Educator (FAE) by state, province or national regulatory bodies.  Each training program that does exist is independent and has its own set of standards.

Moreover, it can be difficult to distinguish between an instructor who has spent years studying, working under supervision, and obtaining certification, and another who has a good grasp of social media, but no formal training.

 

For Fertility Awareness Users, AFAP Certification means:

• AFAP-certified educators have demonstrated mastery in the AFAP core competencies and are highly qualified to provide instruction in Fertility Awareness-Based Methods (FABMs).
• In evidence-based studies that demonstrate high efficacy for FABMs, users received standardized training and follow-up from experienced instructors. Professional instruction can facilitate quicker learning and increase user confidence.
• AFAP-certified educators are skilled at helping clients address a variety and complexity of experience (e.g. coming off hormonal contraception; trying to conceive; preventing pregnancy in the post-partum period, during breastfeeding, and when approaching menopause; PCOS; infertility; endometriosis.)
• AFAP-certified educators respect all persons’ rights to receive inclusive and non-prejudicial professional care and competent reproductive health services.
• AFAP strongly recommends (as does Toni Weschler, in Taking Charge of Your Fertility) that people wishing to use an FABM, especially for the prevention of pregnancy, obtain professional instruction from a certified FAE. Community and peer support can be valuable, but are not a substitute for professional instruction.

 

 

Kapu

Kapu, pronounced kah-puh, is a Hawaiian word, meaning Taboo or Sacred among its much broader history and meaning. Kapu were rules that guided the Hawaiians in their way of life, but ended in 1819 as it did not treat women fairly. I’m not native to Hawaii, yet I chose Kapu to represent the essence of this company. I do this with respect for the indigenous Polynesian people who created this word in their language, respect for the people who have Hawaiian ancestry, and respect for Hawaii. As a woman born in California in the 1980’s, I’ll never fully grasp the concept of Kapu as I did not live in the time nor place where the law of the land was Kapu. But, I value the word in this capacity: it recognizes that something can be sacred, and still taboo, much like women's health topics have been throughout the world’s most modern history. I seek to keep women's health every bit as sacred as it always has been, with less of the taboo quality. These are my own thoughts, and have no bearing on what Kapu actually meant for Hawaiian people. This all brings me to my next point, cultural appropriation. 

Cultural Appropriation

I can not run this business without addressing Cultural Appropriation, meaning the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not one’s own, especially without showing an understanding or respect for this culture. Cultural appropriation happens all over the world, but I’d say especially in the United States. As a melting pot with diverse ethnicities, ease of travel, and globalization, we often take other people’s customs and adopt them as our own. Many everyday items —the clothes in our closet, the foods we cook, alternative medicines, etc. —stem from other cultures’ customs and traditional knowledge. I think this is actually wonderful and makes living that much more colorful and exciting, but only when respect and credit is given to the culture where it came from.

Any questions? Please reach out! veronica@kapu.community