Angela Gallo: Master Doula and Womb Witch
Angela Gallo’s vivacious spirit and infectious energy comes through in all she does. She is a doula, author, speaker, entrepreneur, and coach whose work speaks to the “womb and pussy portal.” In truth, there isn’t a title that fully captures her magic or the expansive nature of her message.
She is here to help women-identifying individuals connect to the creative power that resides in the womb space, and in doing so change the world. If there was one thing everyone would learn having crossed her path, it’s that self-knowing and the permission we seek externally is authentically found within and therein lies our greatest freedom. With that, please meet Angela Gallo who shares her wisdom in her own words …
meet angela gallo
AG: I am Manifestor Generator split down the middle between hermit & heretic, ENFJ-A Protagonist, Aquarius Sun, Taurus Moon, Virgo Ascendant. Eclectic, romantic, dreamy, visionary, motherfucking panther woman. I have been very much leaning into the powerhouse culmination of all these things this year...and it is blowing my mind.
My ideal lunch as a 5-year-old would be rocket ship candies and chocolate milk and poutine.
My ideal lunch today would be SPICY AF colorful THAI FOOD!!!!! A soda water with lime.
I am bloody obsessed with cinema (not many people know this) and cinema has impacted me in huge ways. Eternal Sunshine For The Spotless Mind, Interstellar, Blue Valentine are some of my favorites because they cut me until I bleed through.
Music....well...it is my blood. Where do I start? I try and get my hands on instruments at every opportunity. I sing all day long. The sensory experience of art and expression....it is my medicine and fuel.
When it comes to my life, doing less helps me do more. I have an inherently obsessive, tantric, slow and sexy relationship to the work I do and days I lead the charge from. I move with what feels good, moment to moment. Because of this, I have no choice but to remain flexible so I can respond to inspiration when it strikes, rather than stick to the to-do lists and deadlines. I can't force anything or it doesn't work. I say yes only when I mean it, and I my ability to show up when I say I will.
What could I do less of? Doubt my ability to do great things.
What could I do more of? Believe in my ability to do great things.
There are an infinite amount of things I source pleasure and joy from! They are where I get my vitality from — I would not exist without them, I could not show up every day without them. My absolute necessities are morning dance parties, bulletproof coffees, making my children laugh at every opportunity, walks with my doggies, sunshine (specifically lying out half-naked in the sun at every opportunity I can!), swimming, sweating, crying, reading and writing. Tee that with sensational food, self-pleasure marathons (sometimes 3 hours long!), tons of bodywork and massage, poetry and long conversations about aliens with my best friends...and I am a happy clam. I make it a point to find ways and reasons to inject pleasure into my life every hour of every day. (Have I mentioned I love naps?)
How do I practice self-respect? My distinctions.
I take my needs seriously.
I aggressively assert boundaries.
I’m worth a billion dollars.
I’m only available for the things that align with my values.
When it comes to having mentors, coaches and teachers, I am forever learning from the individuals I manifest into my life. I have been working with a leadership coach Hayley Carr for almost two years - she is a god damn angel. Erika Cramer and Dr. Danielle Arabena have not only become great friends, but also huge proponents of my spiritual and emotional growth over the last 6 months. I want to be learning — always. And keeping the kind of company that up levels me is ... everything.
At the moment, I am leaning hugely into my indigenous Italian, Irish and Scottish roots, and amalgamating them into shamanic practice and the intuitive energy work I am called to. Levatrice. Stregheria. La Vecchia Religione. My bloodline is DEEP and something I have been either desperate to know or terrified to find out about. I knew it all along. I got the story in pieces. But now I am finding out more and more that is blowing my mind.
My (great-grandmother) Nonna Maria, was famous in Paolisi for being a midwife, Doula, and healer. Apparently, she never lost a baby or a mother — not even once in years and years and years. She was the one to midwife my Nonna Angelina through all her pregnancies (my father's mother) and the one I was named after. My father almost died as a young boy. The tailor even came to make a suit for his little body and his funeral. But Nonna Maria wouldn’t have any of it. She pushed the doctors away. Took the milk of a mule and brought my father back to life in ways “the doctors didn’t understand.”
She never went to school. She knew how to heal before she even knew what healing meant. Women came from far far far away to see her. She held the veil at the portals of birth and death long before Catholicism made it their territory. Did you know that contraception and witchcraft faced the same condemnation? It was midwives who knew ‘too much and had too much power over fertility, ancient knowledge of birth control + sexual or reproductive health.’ Midwives made medicine out of plants and herbs, they knew the secrets of what sustained us - the church systematically persecuted midwives and as a result the hunt to kill, burn and excommunicate each of these women begun. Almost immediately, death at birth began to increase. Dialogue and wisdom disappeared. Religious morality all but destroyed them and in the process destroyed us....but the KNOWING was never lost. It is what I FEEL in me today.
What lives in me without understanding how it is possible I know such things. I come from a line of STRONG women. Healers and hustlers. Women renowned for ‘knowing things they should not know because they haven’t went to school’. Nonna Maria, levatrice, healer, rebel and a keeper of indigenous Italian medicine. Nonna Antonia, the unofficial mayor of Cervinara — a powerful woman of influence no one dared screw with. 14 children, astutely clever, scary even. Our soprannome is Cavaliere — given to us because we were so robust, so strong, so convicted, and because Nonna Antonia’s father rode a horse like no one had ever seen. Aptly translates to the person trained in arms and horsemanship, the mounted soldier, the dancing partner — the women in our family became all those things.
My Nonna Angelina, my best friend, taught me everything I know by having me midwife the dozens of animals we had. I watched them all birth and feed and care, this is where I learned to trust my instinct, observe, feel. I tried to breastfeed a kitten when her mother rejected her. I remember so vividly being in the basement with her small body, trying to put my nipple in her mouth and feeling hopeless and weeping. No one taught me this. In the village of my ancestors we had ‘sorelle di latte’ and everyone breastfed the other children, everyone was connected by the milk shared. Nonna taught me about food, generosity, affection, medicine and the power of a matriarch who knows their strength. I watched her wither and die, after her husband Nonno Giovanni (a dance teacher!!! she rebelled against her mother to date, ride bicycles with, and marry him, which was the scandal of the town) passed away.
I was in Australia when she died. I killed my attachment to MY ancestors when this happened because remembering hurt too much. My family and my story and my blood and my beginnings MATTER because they make up who I am, so I have spent so much time leaning into every womb that made me — unleashed and using my voice to reclaim the things they told us would get us killed if we didn’t renounce. In addition to this, my mother, her mother, and her great-grandmother....well that is a whole other bag of tricks and completely mind-bending. The more I learn, the more it makes sense as to why I am here. Every last detail influences who I am. I am a tapestry of lived and non-lived experiences that not only make me who I am, but are taking me where I need to be.
When it comes to making wellness more available to the general population, the digital landscape and social media is without a doubt, the way to make this accessible.
If I could draw my last breath knowing that every person who came across me left our interaction with one thing, it would be that freedom comes from proving yourself wrong - not from proving yourself right. I would want them to know that self-actualization is self-delivered, and that the permission we are looking from others has to actually come from us. If everyone knew this, a league of visionaries would be born and the world might actually have a shot at reinventing itself for the better. I just want to help people feel free to explore their potential and expression.