Welcome to Butterfly Hyve
Where women are supported. Families are strengthened. Healing is held in community.
Maternal wellness, whole-woman wellness, family connection, advocacy, and remembrance.
Welcome to the Hyve
Butterfly Hyve centers Black women and women of color through maternal and whole-woman wellness, family support, advocacy, and community connection. We welcome women who connect with our mission while keeping these voices and experiences at the forefront.
We’re creating space where women and families don’t have to navigate pregnancy, postpartum, motherhood, loss, healing, and wellness alone.
Here, there is room for your health, your voice, your identity, your creativity, your grief, and your joy.
You deserve a Hyve.
A place to feel safe. Seen. Heard. Supported.
Why We Exist
Women deserve to be heard, supported, and comfortable in their own shoes.
Pregnancy, postpartum, motherhood, and loss can change how a woman sees herself—and too often, her own needs get buried beneath caring for everyone else.
Butterfly Hyve exists to make room for her whole experience.
We center Black women and women of color because their voices, concerns, and experiences deserve to be taken seriously—especially in healthcare.
We believe respectful care means listening, answering questions, honoring informed choices, and responding to concerns without dismissal or judgment. Through education, community connection, and advocacy, we help women build confidence in their voices while calling for greater accountability in the systems meant to care for them.
The responsibility for respectful care belongs to healthcare providers and systems. Women deserve support without having to fight to be believed.
Listen
Make space for women’s voices and lived experiences.
Educate
Connect families with understandable information and trusted resources.
Support
Build community where women and families can ask for help and feel a sense of belonging.
Advocate
Support women in expressing their needs and participating in decisions about their care.
Being heard should never depend on how hard a woman has to fight.
Our Focus Areas
Maternal Wellness and Education
Pregnancy, postpartum, body awareness, and maternal health education that helps women ask questions and participate in decisions about their care.
Community and Connection
Gatherings and supportive spaces where women and families can build relationships and find belonging.
Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support
Compassionate connection, remembrance, and resources that honor babies and support families impacted by loss.
Family and Partner Support
Recognizing fathers, partners, and the wider family journey, including their needs for information, connection, and support.
Whole-Woman Wellness and Self-Expression
Movement, nourishment, rest, creativity, identity, and feeling comfortable showing up in your own shoes.
Advocacy and Awareness
Storytelling, education, community partnerships, and advocacy for respectful care and stronger support.
These focus areas guide Butterfly Hyve’s existing community work and future program development. Stay connected for announcements about available experiences.
Something Beautiful Is Growing
The Butterfly Hyve Cohort
In Development
Butterfly Hyve is developing an intentional maternal and whole-woman wellness experience with Black women and women of color at its heart.
We’re exploring experiences centered on maternal health education, everyday wellness, emotional well-being, movement, nourishment, gardening, creative expression, personal style, family connection, and community resources.
Our vision is for each woman to leave more informed about her health, more confident using her voice, connected to trusted support, rooted in who she is, and comfortable showing up fully in her own shoes.
We’re building thoughtfully, with room for community input and meaningful collaboration.
Dates, format, and participation details will be shared as the program develops. Joining our interest list does not constitute enrollment.
An Annual Butterfly Hyve Experience
Wings of Remembrance
Wings of Remembrance creates space for families impacted by pregnancy and infant loss to gather, honor their babies, speak their names, and experience community.
Whether a loss happened recently or many years ago, every baby remembered and every family’s journey matters.
Our Gatherings
2024 — Lake Merritt, Oakland
Our first Wings of Remembrance gathering.
2025 — Alameda Beach
Our second annual Wings of Remembrance gathering.
We Carry You In Everything We Do.
Meet the Women Behind the Hyve
Nikia Jermell Armstrong-Smith
Co-Founder | Maternal Health Advocate
Nikia is a mother, community leader, and maternal health advocate whose work is rooted in lived experience and the enduring love she carries for her son, LaSaaun. Through LaSaaun Lives Foundation and Butterfly Hyve, she brings pregnancy and infant loss awareness, remembrance, and whole-family support into community spaces and advocacy conversations.
As Butterfly Hyve’s co-founder, Nikia helps shape a vision of wellness that makes room for a woman’s health, identity, creativity, confidence, and joy. She wants women to feel heard, trust their voices, and feel comfortable showing up in their own shoes—with a community beside them.
Courtney Hooper
Co-Founder | Doula | Womb and Holistic Practitioner
Boujee Baby Doula
Courtney brings her perspective as a doula and womb and holistic practitioner with Boujee Baby Doula to her role as co-founder of Butterfly Hyve. Her work centers compassionate support and care for the whole woman, making space for physical, emotional, and personal wellness throughout the maternal journey.
Alongside Nikia, Courtney is helping develop community experiences that connect doula-informed knowledge with lived experience, creativity, and whole-woman wellness. Together, they envision a Hyve where women can ask questions, build relationships, reconnect with themselves, and feel supported through life’s changes.
It Takes a Hyve
Butterfly Hyve welcomes conversations with healthcare professionals, doulas, birth workers, wellness professionals, educators, advocates, community organizations, businesses, and supporters who share our commitment to women and families.
There are many ways to contribute—from sharing knowledge and facilitating an experience to connecting families with resources or supporting future programming.
Have expertise, resources, or a heart for this work?
Let’s explore what we can build together.
Our Connection to LaSaaun Lives Foundation
Rooted in Purpose
Butterfly Hyve’s work connects with LaSaaun Lives Foundation’s commitment to remembrance, pregnancy and infant loss awareness, maternal health advocacy, and family support.
Through maternal and whole-woman wellness, Butterfly Hyve creates additional opportunities for education, community, creativity, and connection across the family journey.
There’s Room for You in the Hyve
Whether you’re preparing for pregnancy, expecting a baby, navigating postpartum, parenting, healing after loss, seeking community, or interested in collaborating—we’d love to connect with you.
You deserve support that makes room for all of you.
Butterfly Hyve
Where women are supported. Families are strengthened. Healing is held in community.
Maternal wellness, whole-woman wellness, family connection, advocacy, and remembrance.
Butterfly Hyve is more than a program.
It’s a community created so women and families don’t have to navigate pregnancy, postpartum, motherhood, loss, healing, and family wellness alone.
You deserve a Hyve.
A place to feel safe. Seen. Heard. Supported.
Why We Exist
Listen
Women deserve to be heard.
Educate
Families deserve information they can understand and use.
Support
Women and families deserve connection throughout their maternal wellness and healing journeys.
Advocate
We bring lived experience and community voices into conversations about better care and stronger support.
Our Focus Areas
Maternal Wellness and Education
Pregnancy, postpartum, body awareness, and maternal health education.
Community and Connection
Gatherings and supportive spaces where women and families build relationships.
Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support
Compassionate connection, remembrance, and resources for families impacted by loss.
Family and Partner Support
Recognizing fathers, partners, and the wider family journey.
Whole-Woman Wellness and Self-Expression
Movement, nourishment, rest, creativity, identity, and feeling comfortable in your own shoes.
Advocacy and Awareness
Storytelling, education, community partnerships, and maternal health self-advocacy.
Something beautiful is growing.
The Butterfly Hyve Cohort
Status: In Development
Butterfly Hyve is developing an intentional maternal and whole-woman wellness experience centered on health education, everyday wellness, creativity, confidence, family connection, and community.
We want women to feel informed about their health, confident using their voices, connected to trusted support, and comfortable showing up fully in their own shoes.
We’re building thoughtfully, with room for community input and meaningful collaboration.
Wings of Remembrance
An Annual Butterfly Hyve Experience
A gathering where families impacted by pregnancy and infant loss can honor their babies, speak their names, and experience community.
We Carry You In Everything We Do.
- 2024Lake Merritt, Oakland
- 2025Alameda Beach
Meet the Women Behind the Hyve
Nikia Jermell Armstrong-Smith
Co-Founder | Maternal Health Advocate
Nikia’s advocacy is rooted in lived experience, motherhood, loss, and the belief that women and families deserve to be heard and supported.
Through Butterfly Hyve and LaSaaun Lives Foundation, she brings that experience into education, advocacy, remembrance, and community building.
Courtney
Co-Founder | Doula
Courtney brings a doula’s perspective to Butterfly Hyve, helping shape supportive experiences grounded in education, compassion, informed care, and family wellness.
Together, Nikia and Courtney are creating space where professional knowledge, lived experience, and community wisdom meet.
It takes a Hyve.
Butterfly Hyve welcomes conversations with healthcare professionals, doulas, birth workers, wellness professionals, educators, advocates, community organizations, businesses, and supporters who share our commitment to women and families.
Have expertise, resources, or a heart for this work? Let’s explore what we can build together.
Rooted in purpose.
Butterfly Hyve’s work connects with LaSaaun Lives Foundation’s commitment to remembrance, pregnancy and infant loss awareness, maternal health advocacy, and family support.
Through maternal and whole-woman wellness, Butterfly Hyve creates additional opportunities for education, community, creativity, and connection.
There’s room for you in the Hyve.
Whether you’re seeking community, interested in future programming, or ready to collaborate, we’d love to connect with you.
Butterfly Hyve
Community • Wellness • Advocacy • Remembrance