Raising Wild Hearts
An inspirational show focused on growth from challenge and ideas to take the path less traveled. Ryann Watkin interviews experts and shares resources on education, creativity, nature, spirituality, mental health, relationships, self care, and more. Ryann is a passionate speaker, mom, wife, and educator who asks questions that provoke self-awareness, meaning, and purpose. Psychology, spirituality, family— and where they all intersect— is the heartbeat of Raising Wild Hearts.
Raising Wild Hearts
Conscious Birthing, Empowered Motherhood, and Raising Authentic Children with Queen
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And it's not let me fix you and mold you and contort you to force you to fit into the boxes that I myself have contorted myself into, and I don't feel good about it, but rather allow me to change my mindset so I can see really what it is. How do I need to show up in the world? What things have I got to change within my being so that I can meet you where you're at?
Speaker 2:Welcome, revolutionary Mama, to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. I'm Ryan Watkin, educator, mom of three, rebel at heart and passionate soul on a mission to empower and inspire you.
Speaker 2:Here we'll explore psychology, spirituality, parenthood and the intersection where they all come together. We'll discover how challenges can be fertile soil for growth and that even in the messy middle of motherhood, we can find magic in the mundane. Join me on my own personal journey as I talk to experts and share resources on education, creativity, self-care, family, culture and more. I believe we can change the world by starting at home in our own minds and hearts, and that when we do, we'll be passing down the most important legacy there is healing, and so it is is. Hi, friends, welcome back to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. So happy to be here today and to share this amazing conversation with you. I actually recorded this interview a while ago and somehow it got lost, slash hidden in my archives of the black hole that is my computer. So, yes, I'm sharing it with you a little late, but I know that it will be divine timing. I know it was for me. I was so inspired when I went back and listened to a few clips of the interview, and so I'm really excited to share it with you Today.
Speaker 2:I'm talking to Queen and we cover so much in this conversation and it's one of those conversations that get to the heart of the matter of parenting, of motherhood, and it goes pretty deep. Queen and I start off by talking about birth and pain and struggle, and how birth is a metaphor for the way we do things in our lives and how it's really a jumping off point for our children and the story that they're here to live out. Queen is a mama to eight and she is seeking to change the world by starting with birth, which, of course, I absolutely love. She has a wealth of knowledge, experience and wisdom to impart. She's a step-parent, also a childbirth educator and a doula trainer who has empowered numerous families during her decade-long service. She takes a very integrative and holistic approach. She believes in normalizing conscious choices, whether about breastfeeding, parenting, unschooling, home birth and nurturing postpartum wellness. My hope is that this conversation with Queen brings you some peace and some healing surrounding your own births or, if you have a birth coming up, to surround that experience with the positive energy and the love that you will need going into that experience. So, without further ado, here is my conversation with Queen.
Speaker 2:Queen, welcome to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm so happy to speak with you. I was doing some research before we started recording and I'm really excited to dive into the topic of childbirth. 'm really excited to dive into the topic of childbirth. I'm excited to dive into the topic of motherhood. All three of my birthing experiences obviously have been profound and all very different as different as my children are and I'm really excited to hear your take on things, because you're a mom of eight, correct.
Speaker 1:Yes, I have seven biological children and one stepdaughter. Excited to hear your take on things because you're a mom of eight, correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, I have seven biological children and one stepdaughter Amazing. So I just believe that you have some wisdom that you can impart on us. So, yeah, and the place that I really want to start, that I'm feeling called to talk about, is you said, I believe when we change the way women give birth, we change the world. What do you mean by that? How are we changing the world by changing the way we birth?
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, it's a big question. So yeah, wow, it's a big question. Um, so the way that we birth, essentially, what I mean is about the consciousness that we bring to the birth, so it's being fully aware and present with the process. At the moment, the way that it is in the UK is that it can be a highly medicated space which often allows the woman to detach from her body in many ways and to detach from the experience.
Speaker 1:We look at pain as something to fear, something to run away from, something to be scared of and then to numb ourselves from, and what I've learned is that the pain actually we can use and utilize in really bringing forth that which we're there to do, essentially to birth our children the contraction and lean into that pain, utilizing the breath and our conscious awareness.
Speaker 1:You know, just um understanding that our bodies were created to do this and that birth is a natural physiological process.
Speaker 1:Um, we can really use it and there there's a way that we lean into it, breathing, that we can go through the pain and out on the other side, the birth experience can actually become pleasurable and even orgasmic so we've heard of this term, orgasmic birth, for example. For example, and if women are able to um have the opportunity to experience birth in a conscious, aware and empowered way, then her birth experience shifts from what we're seeing at the moment, from being a traumatic one to a pleasurable, empowered one. And a pleasurable birth? Um then can often segue into a beautiful postpartum experience, you know um, because the woman um feels more euphoria after the birth, and so that helps her when she goes into that healing process for the next 42 days, and that way she's really able to show up. Conscious birth, conscious parenting and they they go hand in hand, and that essentially changes the world, because it changes the way in which these babies are coming in and our birth experience as a whole, so how we're able to show up and parent our children as well.
Speaker 2:Right, that's amazing. I am inspired by hearing you talk and I think that if we can like zoom up and out, even like a bird's eye view of this experience of birth, and utilizing the pain and feeling into even the pleasure that's available, I think it's such a metaphor for life.
Speaker 2:Like since we were little, we, everybody around us, told us like no, no, no, don't be hurt, don't be scared, don't be this, don't be that Right. And it's one of the reasons I'm so into emotional awareness, for myself and then for my kids too, and why I let them lean into what they're feeling, because we're human and this is like the human experience the pain, the pleasure, the agony, the bliss, like it's all of it, it's all encompassing, and so I really do see how you're saying it's going to change the world because it's setting the tone.
Speaker 2:It's setting the intention for how we want to live, how we want to do life and maybe how our kids will go forward in their lives and their path.
Speaker 1:I totally agree with you. I have an example of, for example, my son being in a um in an environment with other children and there was a moment where my son had um taken a toy and, um, he hit another child and the child, um began to cry. And what usually would happen is you know, we take the child away. Oh, we want to sanitize them. That was naughty. You shouldn't have done that. So we're labeling it, we're labeling the child, we're labeling what they're doing is bad. The other child cries. We're like, oh, they're there, and that's usually what happens.
Speaker 1:But, um, I was able to stop for a moment and pause and slow everything down and, um, I looked at my son and I looked at this child and I said look, see how he feels. And my son was able to witness this other child crying and that child was able to feel all the emotions that were there for that child, which that child was then expressing in tears, without someone stopping that child from having that experience. And my child could see firsthand what the action that he did caused. And he stopped and he observed, and he observed and he observed, and it didn't take very long, but the child that was crying and he stopped crying and then, um, there was like a moment, and then my son was so attentive, you know, like really looking into this, almost like looking into this other child's soul, and the mother said to me wow.
Speaker 1:She said that was amazing. She said thank you, thank you so much for doing that. She said, wow, that is such a good mum, such a good mom. And it made me feel like, well, thank you for allowing that process to unfold. Because we're so quick to jump in and it's like you said, we're so quick to jump in in the birthing experience, we're so quick to medicate a mother, and is that for her benefit or is it for ours? Because quite often, we're looking at that woman in pain and we're saying I can't stand to see you suffer. Therefore, I need you to not suffer so that I can feel better. And what we've got to do is learn to deal with the discomfort for long enough to feel all of it and allow that discomfort to be our teacher.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, my gosh. So I, in my birthing experiences, I did not invite anybody into the room except for my husband and our doula. You know our, our team and my mom later said I forget which, after, after which birth it was. She said, you know, honestly, I'm I'm glad you didn't invite me because I don't think I could see you in that much pain. And it's interesting because now to this day I'm 41 years old she cannot handle seeing me in pain.
Speaker 2:If I'm having a hard day, if I, you know, and's so interesting and whether that's a cultural or personal thing, we could debate that probably all day. And it's interesting, I still have this need to just be like, hey, it's okay that I'm having a bad day, that doesn't define my life, it doesn't define my overall happiness or fulfillment, right, and so being able to feel into these paradigms is just like it's. It's my part of my journey right now and of course, this conversation went there. It's, it's beautiful. I'm curious too. I love that example for your toddler son. I'm curious what you think today's children, all of them, need the most. What do our kids, this next generation of babies and toddlers and school-aged kids, what do they need right now?
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. I think what our children are really crying out for is is what I described earlier, is that conscious presence, that awareness of the parents to really hold space, to be able to be attentive to them, to their needs, and to be able to meet their needs where they're at any given moment, moment by moment. Because what I'm seeing um, with my own array of children, but also I'm seeing this on a bigger picture, so like my children is a microcosm and then there's a macrocosm and we've got this thing that we call a spectrum, and there are so many children that are on this spectrum and we can give them labels, we can say, oh, they're autistic, or they're neurodivergent, or they're Asperger's or something like this, and obviously one end of the spectrum is very severe and one end of the spectrum is light and we're kind of like spread across it. And what I'm seeing with these children is that they are a blank screen, almost. That is projecting an image back to us of ourselves and the society in which we live in as a whole. And I see that these children are basically saying to us like, wait a minute, can you see the world that you live in? Do you see how messed up it is. But you've decided to play along. Don't ask me to do it. And they want the truth.
Speaker 1:I know that when I came in, I wanted the truth. I looked to my mother and father to speak the truth to me. They were incapable, so were my teachers, so were my university lecturers, so were the police, so were the governments. And as children, we feel that back and we think there's something wrong with me. I don't fit here, I don't belong.
Speaker 1:But we need to be able to be honest enough and real enough and present enough and authentic enough so that we can validate our children and be like. You know what you're right and it's. Not. Let me fix you and mold you and contort you to force you to fit into the boxes that I myself have contorted myself into and I don't feel good about it but rather allow me to change my mindset so I can see really what it is. How do I need to show up in the world? What things have I got to change within my being so that I can meet you where you're at? So it's going to take a radical change of mind in the collective consciousness, and it starts with the parents.
Speaker 2:Drop the mic. Okay, bye everybody. I mean, it's like it's so profound, it's. That was beautiful, and I just want to double click on the word truth that you used, because to me and then I'd love to hear, obviously, your interpretation to me, that truth that you're speaking of is the truth of our divinity, the truth of our true nature, which is simply love, that's just pure love. And so we've blocked off that love for ourself, we've lost that North star in our own awareness, perhaps from years of not allowing ourselves to listen to our bodies, to listen to our intuition, to truly get to know ourselves, grounded with our feet on this earth, right ourselves grounded with our feet on this earth, right.
Speaker 1:So to you, what is that truth? Yeah, essentially it is, as you described, the fundamental, uh, you know being that's like at our core, whether you call it soul or spirit, um and love. And you know, in scriptures it says like god is love, and so it's like it's your true nature, it's coming in um, closest to source, because that's what the babies are. You know, the, the, the mother, as a portal, as a doorway between the, the unseen realm and the seen realm. Right, so we're manifest as we're bringing, like a soul from the cosmos, from the unseen realm, merging with a physical body, a vehicle, and giving life to that.
Speaker 1:So are we a soul encompassing a body or are we body encompassing a soul? And allowing these children to be the divine expression that they have come in to be requires us, as parents, to look at them and say well, who are you? What is your mission here on this earth, what is your purpose, and how is it that I can assist you in that? How can I guide you? What things, essentially, will I need to learn to be able to support you being the true and fullest expression that you are on this plane?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what helped you step into your mission? Truly, you're a mission-driven person. You've got this big mission that you're here, this big message that you're here to share. And I'm curious did you always know? Was there a forgetting for you? Did you remember once you became a mother? How was that journey for you?
Speaker 1:Well, I feel like I was connected to it as a child, because I just remember that my mom, she felt that I had psychic powers, literally, and she would literally consult me and my grandma would consult me, and I remember this happening, but the more and more as I said earlier that that truth wasn't being reflected back to me in the world, I became shut down and therefore, through my teenage years, suppressing that being, I became something else.
Speaker 1:So it's like we put on personas, we wear masks, we want to fit in, we want to belong, and so I went through all of that and I think I've played all the characters and I've played the roles so well, you know, to the greatest of my ability.
Speaker 1:And then there's a moment when you know you can sense that you're not being authentic, and so then I've been like an onion, just literally peeling off the layers, peeling off the layers, and I feel that parenting um, being pregnant, giving birth, that all of these things, they're almost like um, you know, a hack, if you like.
Speaker 1:It's like your evolutionary process on this planet speeds up by becoming a mother, and so going through that process, um, allowed me to fine-tune my intuition. It allowed me to hear the voice within my own being and to listen to it, and when I listen to that and then I follow it allows me to trust it even more. And in trusting that that voice, um, and being fine-tuned to it, it's also meant that I'm fine-tuned to hearing the songs, like I've been speaking to my babies before they came out of the womb, for example. I've had that experience and um, in that I've heard the babies and what they're saying, that they want, and therefore, in listening to them and hearing them, I've had to change myself in order to show up for them, to be that which they are asking for, and that's ultimately what's been carving me out to be the being I am in this moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and how do you be all the things to all the people under your care and still be you?
Speaker 1:Yes, that's such a good question and that is something that, at different times, I have struggled with. And yeah, it's still being you. And recently I've given myself full permission to be all of me. And the way that I had to do it was realize and see I don't have to dim my light, I don't have to dumb myself down, I don't have to be lesser than who I am to be able to fit in and to be able to relate to people, because by doing that, I'm just keeping that level of consciousness um, there, um, rather, by being the full expression that I am, then I can actually help to raise the consciousness.
Speaker 1:And what I had to do was give myself permission by saying look, the world is big enough for all of us, including me. Therefore, I do not need, I am not required to make myself small in order to give space to others. There is space enough for them, and also there is space enough for them and also there is space enough for me. And by affirming that it's allowed me to be grounded and keep myself with my whole presence. And that's all encompassing, because there's no judgment here. We're all on a path, we're all on our journeys. We're we might be on different segments of the journeys and different states at different times, and I may have been in that state, so I have empathy and I can have an understanding of where someone's coming from. I could use my experience to be able to support them if that's what they're seeking.
Speaker 1:But you know, I think what Molly said every man has the right to decide his own destiny. So I wouldn't interfere with someone else. If they say, oh, this is what I want, I'm going to go on this way, then it's fine, they go on that way and there's no judgment there. But what I do provide is for the people who want this, who want what it is that I am here to represent, that they too can also have an opportunity and a choice to have this, because it's not a one-size-fits-all, is it? It's, it is an array. There's so much diversity. So if you want natural birth and you want conscious birth, you want to fine-tune your intuition, you want to understand about conscious parenting, I can help you deep dive into that, you know. And if you don't want it, there's still a love and you choose what you want and all is good, and that's how I feel that I manage yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:So I want to talk about the postpartum period. You say say it's 40 days, sometimes it's called the fourth trimester. What do you think is the symbolic and spiritual significance of that pretty short window of time, considering the span of a child's life under our care? What's the significance of that short window of time for us?
Speaker 1:Well, the three trimesters of pregnancy are like 42 weeks, aren't they? So we've got a 42 week window of pregnancy where the body is expanding to receive life, and then there's the birth, and then there's a portal that's open and the body expands and it opens up to allow the baby to pass through, expands and it opens up to allow the baby to pass through. And that 42 um, uh, days after is like the three trimesters and the woman, as I described, being a portal, a doorway to bring life through her. That portal is open and so it takes literally those 42 days for that portal to close itself down. During that time, the woman needs protection because people come into her domain.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you know families visit, for example, they're all over the baby, but that can sometimes make the woman feel like she's ignored. Or they're like, wow, isn't the baby gorgeous? Doesn't the baby look like her dad? And you feel, wait a minute, where am I in this? And people are saying these things and it's very unconscious and it's very innocent. There might not be maliciousness in it, but yeah, it's hurting us because we're so open, we're so vulnerable, hurting us because we're so open. We're so vulnerable and sometimes people come in and they're absorbing that energy because there's a lot of beautiful energy, the baby's giving off energy, the mother too, and then then people, they've sucked it up and they go out the room and they're so energized and feeling great visiting mom and baby. Meanwhile, mama, mama's energy is depleted she's suffering, so what?
Speaker 1:we want to do is we want to hold a reverence for this time. We want to protect the mother. We want to allow the mother to allow her body to heal, to shrink back through the stretching and the opening, to allow it to shrink and to heal.
Speaker 1:We want to be able to nourish her and give her foods so that she can create nutrients, dense milk.
Speaker 1:We want the mother to be in the theta connection, so she's consciously connected to her baby. She's bonding there's the oxytocin, she's feeding the baby and not out there thinking I've got to survive, I've got to pay the rent, oh, washing's not done, the drying's not done, oh, the other kids need seeing to. We want all that to be taken care of so that her mind doesn't have to wonder, she can just focus in, look after the baby. So really it's like having this consciousness around the care for the mother. I think we have it enough for the baby, but realistically the mother takes care of the baby and the baby needs really to be with the mommy. You know, skin to skin, breastfeeding, sleeping with the mom and all of that, and therefore our energy and care can go to the mother. But again, it's going to take a shift in our mindset to really understand where the mother is and the level of the support that's required for her to just do that, because that in and of itself is enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's a large level of support. There are a lot of moving pieces, especially if you have multiple other children, a partner, a job, this I mean it's. There are a lot of moving pieces and, as you were talking, it made me really miss that time with my third child. It was. I mean I had a full 40 days. Like by the time the third one came around, I had it like perfected. I knew what I wanted, which was nothing except food and to nurse and to lay down, like that was it. I mean I didn't even go outside for a long time. My neighbors were like we just wanted to make sure you were okay.
Speaker 2:I was like I am great, I was like basking in this, like bliss. I was like taking a bliss baby bath. It was so lovely and I missed that, you know. But the first time I had no idea. I had no idea I had people popping into the hospital right as soon as I fell asleep. I had, I mean, I let the nurse take my baby to the freaking thing, the nursery, with all the other babies where they're all crying Like I, you know, I just I didn't know.
Speaker 2:And I think me, like, looking back, going, well, I didn't know what I didn't know. And this could be the ballad of motherhood maybe, of like I didn't know then but I do know now. And something we talk a lot here is like feeling through and weeding through that guilt of not always doing the right thing and making the choice that today you look back on and go, oh, that wasn't the right choice, and fearing that we may have put our kids in danger or in harm. And how have you navigated that personally and how do you, you know, advise other women to navigate those really complicated and nuanced feelings within themselves?
Speaker 1:true, yeah, my first four births were in hospital, and so I've been there. I've been there. I've been, I'd say, like, unconscious and trusting in the system, believing that they have my best interests at heart, believing that everything that they were doing was for the greater good, and having to learn that it's not necessarily that way. And so, yeah, it's an experience, and what I don't label it is like bad or good. It's an experience, and experiences are beautiful because we can learn from them. And that's it. I've learned and I keep learning.
Speaker 1:I'm still learning, you know, I'm still learning so much and as time has gone on, by the seventh baby, I had a full 42 day and actually when I came out of the 42 day bubble, I wasn't ready to come out. I actually needed an extra month because then I was at the other side with this baby and it was almost like the world's not a safe place for my baby. I need to stay longer. You know, I just didn't want to, like, pollute the child almost. I had to stay longer in that bubble because I felt the protection of it, you know, and, yeah, it was so nourishing for me. So, yeah, it does. It takes us to have these experiences, to learn, to grow, to apply what we know. So this is it we have information, and knowledge is power, and you don't know what you don't know. But then, once you come to learn and then you apply it, you get a new experience, and by doing that you can then support other people to do the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I'm hearing you say is it's all a learning experience, it's all part of the journey.
Speaker 2:You learn things by walking through the fire, and that's very much been for me like the metaphor of the onion layers coming off. That has been absolutely my experience, and yet I still have moments where I look back and I get this you know, feeling and having to sort through and process those feelings has been, you know, my work of a lifetime and maybe will continue to be forever. I'm curious. A lot of this for me is related to authority and intuition, which I know are things that you talk about. So how did we come to a place as a society where our authority as women and our intuition is not valued? I don't know if it was ever valued. Maybe you have better insight than me on that, but how do we start to put that now on the forefront for women and girls even?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is a like what you call it like a million dollar question or more, because this is a question that needs to keep on being asked and, as a as a, you know, conscious women at this time, to keep asking this question and to be able to find those answers because, um, it's fundamentally important that we do. And what I am aware of is that there is a program that seems to be running, there are agendas that seem to be running, and those agendas and those programs that are detrimental to femininity and I don't mean femininity, like you know, like feminism, because that to me seems another agenda and it's been backed by men, but more so, femininity is like God given or like the cosmic mother given, so our divine expression, divine soul and the expression thereof. So, yes, it's detrimental to that and it came in through this like patriarchy, and you know the burning of the witches, but you can maybe like start there in England and things like that, but when you look at like who were the witches and what were the witches doing, we have a lot in common with those people. We are like modern day witches. If they were still doing those types of behaviors today, we'd be burned, we'd be choked out.
Speaker 1:Why? Because what we are demonstrating by our being, by embodying the truth, the authentic expression of who we are, and living up to that moment by moment, we undermine the church, we undermine authority, we undermine the need for anything or anyone external to ourselves and, as women, if we come back to that, there's no way that we would give over our authority. We wouldn't do it, we would be grounded and then nobody could shift us or tell us what to do. And I feel that really, this is what the time is calling for, essentially that we, as women, we feel our innate nature and what it means to be woman and that we give ourselves permission to be that, to live that and to support our sisters, um in that, not competing with them, not beating the other woman down, but really like camaraderie around our womanhood. Because it's then, and only then, that we can raise that frequency.
Speaker 1:And in matriarchal societies, the harm that we see, in a patriarchal society, it just doesn't exist. It's not there. Why? Because we're nurturers. We nurture ourselves, we nurture our children, we nurture the earth. Everything we do is in um symbiosis with the natural order of you know, and everything that I'm seeing that the agendas are pushing it goes against that.
Speaker 1:So, yes, let's keep asking these questions and having these conversations and essentially coming back to our own true divine nature, that which we are essentially giving space for to come through our children, and I think that's what we are. You know our parents. They didn't have the capacity to do it somehow and we were born to those parents and maybe it was hard for us and we had a negative experience with those parents. Sometimes we have a positive experience, but we were here, we are here, essentially that this next generation that's being born through us, that we can raise that level. Because how do we change the world? It starts and ends in me. Whatever happened in the past was the past. But I have a choice in the now moment to say I refuse to continue the pain, the suffering, all the crap from the past. Basically, I have a choice right now, in this moment, to say no more. It doesn't have to exist for me. I'm going to change so that my children don't have to experience the same and my children's children.
Speaker 2:Yeah, amen to that.
Speaker 2:I remember taking a feminism class in college and being like this does not compute, and that was.
Speaker 2:It was way before my deep dive, let's call it, into my own femininity, which didn't start, funny enough, until I birthed my first child. It was my fast train, it was the ticket to speedy self-awareness and for me it was really related to. I just remember being like, oh, like, look at what my body just did. Like I was so amazed and I think, up until that point, it was my first time that I was like, oh, here I am, like, here's, this is my body, this is my life, this is my uterus, this is my like.
Speaker 2:I just felt so embodied for the first time and I've, you know, come in and out of that since. But I'm on the journey, you know, back and I'm like, oh, I'm here. And to feel that like we have to be able to feel into what's true, what's right, to feel into that love and again it comes back to this is coming full circle, that avoidance of pain that which quite actually serves us in our journey and serves our children, because they see, look at my mom living imperfectly, look at her being a human being, a woman nourishing us, nourishing herself.
Speaker 2:It's the journey, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1:It certainly is. Hearing you speak that reminds me of the fact that I birthed my first three sons and every time I was pregnant, I wanted a boy. I wanted a boy because I felt like I was incapable of having a girl, because I did not know what it meant to be a woman. Therefore, how could I have a daughter if I could not raise her properly? And when I was pregnant with the fourth and I had a scan and I saw that it was a girl, I cried my eyes out because I didn't know what to do and I felt incapable and I honestly did not come into my femininity until around 2018.
Speaker 1:It's a recent thing and the last two years have been the strongest of me actually living that. So it's been a much longer journey for me. I mean, I've had five, six children, you know and, and still didn't get there, but but I'm, I'm getting there now and, um and with that, it's a blockage, right, it's a blockage because I didn't know or I didn't feel I knew myself as a woman and then I realized I've been in masculine survival mode for 20 years and I certainly didn't understand how to break out of that and for me, it was the hardest thing ever, and just like looking at some little things on Instagram, I learned that, oh, a woman can only give up the masculine when she feels safe, and this is the thing it's like. It's safety that's required. If we can't, if we have got that program running like I have to be the strong person that had to do everything right in order to survive we can't give that up. We continue running that program and perpetuating that program and therefore our external reality mirrors that program back to us.
Speaker 1:We get exactly what we're pushing out right, and so I had to really let go and it was one of the hardest things that I ever had to do and to be in the feminine and you know, it's a completely different energy from going out and penetrating the world and getting, which is very masculine, to being like you said. It's you said feeling, and it we're dropping out of the head and into the body and allowing us to feel all that there is, to feel in every moment, and then we can be. And you know our children and the people around us they don't learn necessarily by what we say. They learn when we are being, that they feel it. It's an energetic transmission. They feel it, they pick up on it. They feel our peace, they feel our beauty, they feel our softness, they feel our nurturance. So it really does start and end in us really that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:I was crying as you were talking about birthing your boys and then having a girl, and because my first two children were girls and I very much always was like I'm a boy mom, I'm a, I'm a boy mom, I'm a boy mom, and I didn't find out what we were having until we had it all three times, till we had the babies all three times, and it was just, of course it was a girl I do, of course it was, you know, and it's just, it's so funny. And then again the boy on the third time. I was like okay, and it was very interesting how my perception of what I needed versus what I wanted was a little skewed and I got exactly, you know, the birth order and everything that I was designed to have to step into the woman I'm meant to be, the mother I'm meant to be, and it was interesting the way it was backwards of what I thought it would be, because, like you, I've spent decades in my mind an achiever, a go-getter, you know, like going out and doing and forcing and pushing and to like just softly let those things go and I'm still in that process of softly letting them go has been a journey. Because you mentioned safety. It didn't feel safe to put it all down because for years I was told pick it all up, carry more than you can hold, do all the things look good while doing it, like be sexy, be cute, be hot, be this, be that, be sexual, but only in this way and only at this time and only and only and only, and then the rest of the time you go out and you get yours. And it was like this really strong woman, strong girl type era.
Speaker 2:I was born in 83 and my mom worked the night shift when I was an infant and was proud about doing it. She like had this high position and this managerial thing and it was like a big deal for a woman to have that position, and so that what I saw was you go out and you work hard, at all costs and something. But it's uh, it's a process, though. It's not just change one day, it's not just, you know, it's decades of choices and daily remembering what we want and what we're here to do. So yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, this conversation is such a gift. Your wisdom is such a gift. As we start to wrap up, I'm going to ask you the three questions I ask everybody at the end of the interview. Before I do that, I'm curious if you could share a little bit about Mama Haven Project and our hummingbirdcom. Tell me about your projects. You've got going on.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the mama Haven project is uh, I'm fundraising basically to uh purchase a house, property, um, with around seven bedrooms or more, where women who have given birth, they could come to this house and they could literally have their 42-day healing process in the house for all the reasons that I outlined earlier.
Speaker 1:The ancient Indian tradition, ayurveda, it says a day for a year. So literally, if you look after the woman for 42 days, you've set that woman up for the next 42 years of her life. I've just had my seventh baby at 42 41, going into 42 years old, and I have the health and vitality that I did when I was 20 years old I believe it's because I got the postpartum care right. So I really know the gift that the 42 days is because I've lived it, and so I believe that, like all mothers should have the opportunity to have this experience if they want it. If they don't know they want it yet, they could come to understand that they could have it but that a place exists for them. Um, and this would also partner as like, a learning experience too, because I'm a birth educator. People come to me for training and I've gone out and delivered it in like classroom setting styles, but I actually find that the best is deep immersion and it's a transmission, you know, by being in the energy and being with, with the people. So therefore, the house would also welcome students who want to learn how to give postpartum care. So it would be under my supervision and guidance, so a woman would be being trained and a woman would be receiving all the care that there is um to be based up on that woman and then the person that's trained. They would go back to wherever they are and now they're set up to give postpartum care, so they could continue to deliver that in the woman's home, or actually they could set up a mama hate them for themselves.
Speaker 1:So this is something that I envision where we adopt one, we have a good blueprint of what it looks like, we can get the data say we run it over a year or something like that and then it could be something that could just be like multiplied, because the more I speak to people, we need a mama haven, like everywhere, everyone should have a mama haven, you know. So this is the vision. Um, so this is, uh, the vision and I just I received it. Um, uh, ghost passing with my seventh son, just really, you know, just connecting with my children and being immersed in just being a mother and nothing else. Um, and so that's what the mama haven project is.
Speaker 1:So it would have two aspects to it. One would be like a business element, so people that could afford to have the service and could afford the students they could pay for it and that would run the Mama Haven. But it also has a charitable arm so that what we do is we can collect fundraising donations, all that sort of thing, fundraising donations, all that sort of thing, so that a mother that really needed the care but she didn't have the financial means, she could have the care anyway because the charity would cover that. The same, with a student, a student that really wants to give that service and really wants to learn, that the financial means would not be a block to that. So we could, she could tap into the charity and get a scholarship or something like that to cover the cost of her tuition. So that's the vision for mama haven and I'm also open to expanding that.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, as things grow organically, as they do, and where are you located and where will the mama haven location be?
Speaker 1:at. I was thinking about doing it in the UK. I've spotted a house, loved it. I was like right, this is going to be Mama Haven and the way that I am, it's like I see the vision and it's all happening now. And then you start to like get it done and you realize time is just not working like this. It doesn't happen now. And that house actually sold. So I said okay, said okay, look, the house sold, it's okay. It just means that I can't be attached. What it means is wherever we can develop the first one, we do it there. So I'm open to wherever the support comes from. The call is the greatest that we can just begin a mama haven, wherever that be in the world.
Speaker 2:Amazing, speaking of femininity and receiving and waiting for things to unfold. I'm very much like you in that, like oh, I've got an idea, I want it done now, like build the thing, like just do it, jump in and there is a time for waiting, and so that's beautiful. Thank you for the work that you're doing. It's very important. Like you said, if we change the way a woman births, we will change the world, and I love that. I have a very, very strong feeling and belief that that is true.
Speaker 2:So it's very related and parallel to the work that I do here on the Raising Wild Hearts podcast and the work I do in my own home all day, every day, you know. So, yes, this has been a beautiful conversation. I'll put all your links down in the show notes and now I'm going to yeah, now I'm going to ask you the three questions I ask everybody, the first of which is what's bringing you joy today?
Speaker 1:Oh, what's bringing me joy today is this conversation. Me too, you and I, having this conversation, is just like resounding in me. I'm feeling all the feelings of like everything that we're talking about just reliving the experience and the beauty that is ours to behold as the feminine, and how we can really change the world.
Speaker 2:So good, Savoring that too. The next question is what, if anything, are you reading right now?
Speaker 1:I'm reading a book called the Dolphin Way and I'm surprised by this book because it kind of jumped off the shelf at Mount Shasta in California and I started to read it and it's all about being a parent guide to our children and it's phenomenal that the way that it's saying that we need to be in terms of the shift of consciousness, it's like I've been doing this for two years with my son, who I went to swim with the dolphins and it's like wow, the synchronicity of man. So I recommend the book.
Speaker 2:Oh cool, that's on my list. Is it talking about how dolphins raise their young in the wild, it does, it does.
Speaker 1:It gives the similarities between the, the way of the dolphins, and then how we bring that into our own parenting style as conscious parents it's amazing.
Speaker 2:That sounds awesome. All right, and the last question is who or what have you learned the most from? Who or what Just recently I've been learning a lot from a speaker from the 1920s called Neville Goddard. Ok, thank you so much, never heard of him. Ok, what's his message? What's the core?
Speaker 1:of the teaching.
Speaker 1:Essentially, it's about changing your mindset completely and like the mind being like an earth or a garden that we need to caretake, literally, so that we grow the lovely things and any unlovely things we can weed out, you know, and cut, and any unlovely things we can weed out, you know and cut. And because if you, any man that's in a garden, a garden can be beautiful. You know, you, it's like for me and you like as the feminine. We plant the seeds and the flowers, grow, and then the hummingbirds and the bees and the butterflies. They come to us, but if you're chasing after a butterfly, it would run away. So it's like the mind being that cultivating the mind is that beautiful garden. Uh, and a man that is not um in in a garden, it's not a garden, it's just wild and it grows freely, doesn't it? That's what nature does. It just grows and it's wild. So we want to cultivate our minds Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much again for being here. This was a wonderful conversation. Thank you, hi again. Friend, if you're listening to this, you made it to the end of a Raising Wild Hearts episode Yay. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so you can hear more amazing conversations just like this one. And here's the deal. If you made it this far, go ahead and hop down on your podcast app and rate and review the show. Your words and five stars truly mean the world to me. Thank you for your support of the show. Thank you for showing up and listening. Week after week, I will be dropping new episodes every Monday, so tune in then and I will talk to you soon.