Jane Hardwicke Collings

Jane Hardwicke Collings is a grandmother, writer, teacher and facilitator, and a former midwife. She was a Registered Nurse who worked in paediatric intensive care units and women's operating theatres. She became a midwife at 26, then left the hospital system and went on to work as a homebirth midwife for 30 years, first in the city and later in rural areas. She is a mother in a blended family of four adult children and has three grandsons. She lives in the bush on the edge of a large forest in NSW, Australia.

She travels to give workshops on the wisdom of the cycles and the spiritual practice of menstruation. Her teaching also covers preparing mothers and daughters for menstruation, the sacred and shamanic dimensions of pregnancy, birth, mothering and menopause, and the reclaiming and healing of rites of passage. She offers teacher training in this work and speaks at conferences and festivals. Her aims include helping women release menstrual shame, heal traumatic birth experiences, and use the transformative power of menopause.

Jane carries the lineage of Shamanic Midwifery from her teacher Jeannine Parvati Baker. In 2009 she created the School of Shamanic Womancraft, formerly the School of Shamanic Midwifery. It is an international Women's Mystery School, and it includes an ongoing live teaching path called The Womancraft Way. She is also one of four co-creators of Hygieia Health, a not-for-profit working to create free-standing birth centres and fund homebirth.

Her books include Blood Rites, Ten Moons, Thirteen Moons, Spinning Wheels and Becoming ~ a Woman. She has also written Herstory, which she narrates herself in the audiobook. She has made e-courses for women who cannot attend her workshops, and she created Spinning Wheels, a holistic menstrual cycle charting app. She describes herself as an Agent of the Goddess and a Priestess at the altars of transformation.