Helen Diallo, a Monterey resident, intimately understands the mix of emotions that come with pregnancy and childbirth, having experienced both joy and heartache. As an African American woman, Diallo empathizes with the fears and anxieties that many expectant mothers of African ancestry face. Drawing from her own experiences, she has been supporting pregnant and postpartum women through a WhatsApp group, connecting them with experts and each other. Now, Diallo is taking her passion a step further by pursuing certification as a doula through a program at the Parenting Connection of Monterey County (PCMC). Studies have shown that trained doulas can significantly improve birth outcomes and reduce anxiety for pregnant women, leading to fewer C-sections. The road to recruiting doulas for Medi-Ca...
Ginger Joy Johnson’s path to becoming America’s 2024 laughter champion was as unconventional as it was transformative. The 45-year-old Pacific Grove native, now a massage therapist and life coach in Monterey, found laughter as a means of healing after a painful divorce. Her spiritual journey, which included studying with a guru in Taos, New Mexico, and traveling to India in 2019 to learn “laughter yoga,” led her to the unique practice of using laughter to enhance both physical and mental health. In 2022, after returning to Monterey to care for an ailing relative, Johnson co-hosted the first American Laughter Championship and became a competitor herself. The event, held over Zoom, challenges participants to showcase contagious and diabolical laughs, with rounds judged by viewers and fellow ...
On a sunlit day in late June, a crowd gathers at Indian Canyon in California’s Gabilan Range for the 27th Annual Storytelling Gathering. Amid the cottonwoods and sycamores, a legacy of Indigenous preservation unfolds. This unique stretch of land is the only remaining Indigenous-owned property in the region, and serves as a refuge for ceremony and reconnection, led by artist and educator Kanyon Sayers-Roods. But it is Anthony Mondragon, great-grandson of Ascencion Solorsano—the last full-blooded Mutsun tribe member—who is on a quest to preserve his tribe’s history and establish a physical home for the Mutsun people. Mondragon, a Seaside resident, is not an academic or activist by trade, but he is driven by his deep connection to his great-grandmother’s legacy. Solorsano, who passed in 1930,...