Maria Chowdhury, Creatrix and Steward of Birth Song Botanicals Co.
I remember growing up in the mountains of Northern California and playing outside as a child. We had a clearing on our property, a little way away from our house. This was my favorite place to play. From this spot, I could see off into the distance in three different directions, and there was a cropping of rocks that had been ground down by the Native American women that lived there long before. These stones are where they ground their nuts, herbs, food, and medicine.
I would play out there for hours, making "medicine" in those ancient stones. From a very early age, when people asked me, what I wanted to be when I grow up, my reply was: "I want to grow up to be an Indian woman." When they asked why, I said, "Because they know how to make medicine."
Growing up, most of my peers were born at home. My mom was friends with a midwife. When I was 15 years old, we moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and we moved down the street from a midwife.
In 2000, I moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where I immediately got a job at Ozark Natural Foods Co-op and applied for midwifery school. I committed the next three years of my life to midwifery school and my apprenticeship. In my final year, I got married and gave birth. I loved my birth, and I gave birth outside in a pool of water in July 2004.
One month later, I took my 8-hour state midwifery exam with my baby breastfeeding in the sling. I passed at the top of my class. By October, I was back to births. Since then, I have attended hundreds of births as a Certified Professional Midwife and established an herbal company.
When I was pregnant, I worked in the health food store and was surrounded by midwives who knew a lot about herbs. But at that time, there were not many herbal products intended to support women through pregnancy and birth. The available products either did not taste good, look beautiful, nor were they easy to take.
My own herbal experience while being pregnant and breastfeeding motivated me to make custom remedies for my midwifery clients. It did not take long to see the pattern of remedies that clients needed again and again. Thus, Birth Song Botanicals was born in 2009.
What Grew After 2009
What began as custom remedies for my midwifery clients slowly grew into something much larger.
As Birth Song Botanicals expanded, I continued to attend births, support families, and listen closely to the patterns that repeated themselves—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The plants became long-term allies, not just for acute moments, but for the ongoing rhythms of womanhood, parenting, stress, grief, and change.
Over time, Birth Song became less about individual remedies for pregnancy and birth and more about cultivating relationship all the seasons of a woman's life, with the whole body, the breath, the land, and the community.
A Shift in the Work (2018)
In 2018, after many years of attending births and holding intense thresholds of life, my work shifted.
I stepped through the birth portal of an active midwifery practice, and moved beyond it, not because the calling had left, but because it had transformed.
The medicine asked to move upstream—from the moment of birth to the cultivation of vitality, presence, and resilience that supports all of life’s seasons as rites of passages.
Qigong, Ceremony, and Subtle Energy Medicine
Today, my service expresses itself through Qigong, ceremonial work, teaching, and the continued crafting of herbal remedies.
Qigong offered me a way to work with the same forces I had always been in relationship with—breath, blood, spirit, and the intelligence of nature—but in a way that is sustainable, spacious, and deeply nourishing.
Rites of Passage Ceremonies allows us to mark what modern life often rushes past. Each rite of passage honors the gifts and lessons of what has been, while offering a living map for what is emerging, so you are not lost in transition, but guided, witnessed, and supported as you step more fully into who you are becoming.
Birth Song Botanicals remains rooted in the same values it was founded on—care, integrity, and reverence for life, while the forms of service continue to evolve and grow as I do.
An Invitation
If you are here, you may be standing at a threshold of your own.
Perhaps your body is asking for gentler support, menstrual supporting herbs, lactation supplements, and mineral-rich herbal teas that work with your body, not against it.
Birth Song Botanicals is here to walk alongside you, with plants, practice, and presence.
Credentials
- Arkansas State Licensed Massage Therapist, 1996
- Graduate of Arkansas Midwives School and Services, 2003
- Certified Professional Midwife--International Certification, 2004
- Licensed Midwife- Arkansas Department of Health, 2004
- International Certified Infant Massage Instructor, 2010
- Graduate of Global Institute for Alternative Medicine--Master Herbalist, 2011
- Feminine Power Transformation Facilitator The Institute for Woman-Centered Coaching, 2021
- Temple Guide Priestess Presence Temple, 2021
- Holden Qigong Instructor, 2022
