There’s a problem with mainstream medicalised birth. Whether you didn’t know that, or even if you already know you want to birth your children outside of the mainstream birth system, today’s episode is for you.
It’s a confronting, challenging and ultimately empowering look at medical birth and the alternative known as free birth. Emilee Saldaya is a founder of the Free Birth Society, which helps tens of thousands of women around the world to birth the way humans have done forever. They also train women in the radical birth keeper school, run an amazing podcast and a whole lot more.
Emilee’s experience and harrowing stories from working in the mainstream birthing industry give her a deep understanding of how humans are being ‘born into captivity’ through mainstream birthing methods.
May this podcast episode with Emilee Saldaya educate, inspire and empower your relationship with the miracle of birth.
Links:
- Free Birth Society Instagram
- Free Birth Society website
- Radical Birth Keeper School Course
- Complete Guide To Freebirth Course
- The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership book recommended by Emilee
Note that links may be affiliate links (I make a small amount if you purchase, at no extra cost to you)
Transcript
Welcome to we are already free.
Speaker:This is a podcast I've dreamed
Speaker:into being to support you on your path of self discovery,
Speaker:sovereignty, and remembering that you are already free in a society
Speaker:that's bred us to believe that we are anything but powerful, that we
Speaker:are anything but sovereign.
Speaker:This podcast is your invitation to
Speaker:return to that.
Speaker:The simple truth that we are
Speaker:already free. Join inspiring down to Earth
Speaker:guests as they share vulnerable stories and favorite strategies on
Speaker:how they live lives of beauty, joy, connection and meaning with
Speaker:the people they love.
Speaker:I'm your host, breathwork
Speaker:facilitator, empowering wordsmith, and intuitive guide Nathan
Speaker:Mainguard it's an honor to be here with you today.
Speaker:If you don't really get that, there's much issue at all with
Speaker:mainstream medicalized birth.
Speaker:Or if you'd like to both your
Speaker:children outside of the medical system, today's episode is for
Speaker:you. It's a confronting, challenging
Speaker:and ultimately empowering.
Speaker:Look at medical birth and the
Speaker:alternative known as free birth.
Speaker:Emily Saldivia is a founder of the
Speaker:Free Birth Society, helping tens of thousands of women around the
Speaker:world to birth the way humans have done forever.
Speaker:They also train women in the radical birth keepers school run.
Speaker:An amazing.
Speaker:Podcast and a whole lot more.
Speaker:Emily's experience and harrowing stories from working in the
Speaker:mainstream birthing industry give her a deep understanding of how
Speaker:humans are being born into captivity through this mainstream
Speaker:birthing methods. May this podcast episode with
Speaker:Emily Sadaya educate, inspire, and empower your relationship with the
Speaker:miracle of birth.
Speaker:This podcast is brand new at the
Speaker:time of this recording and any help that you can give to share it
Speaker:out. And more people is really
Speaker:important at this point.
Speaker:The more that you can share,
Speaker:subscribe and leave reviews, the more chance this has to be seen by
Speaker:tens if not hundreds of thousands more people through the new and
Speaker:noteworthy parts of the Apple Podcasts, etcetera.
Speaker:So please take an action.
Speaker:If you take any action, obviously
Speaker:after listening to this and if it resonates, please share it far and
Speaker:wide and let's help more people to remember that they are already
Speaker:free, I think now.
Speaker:More than ever is such a time for
Speaker:us to support one another, to share this kind of information, to
Speaker:share that there are alternatives to the disempowering stories we
Speaker:have been indoctrinated with by our failing and failed society.
Speaker:So this is with love, with joy.
Speaker:I'm so happy to be able to offer
Speaker:this episode to you.
Speaker:And please do stick around for the
Speaker:end where I have a few important things to share with you.
Speaker:But for now, please enjoy this uninterrupted.
Speaker:Episode with Emily Sardaa of Free birth society.
Speaker:How is death a part of birth or how is death present at birth?
Speaker:Or how does one need to confront death to birth?
Speaker:Well, there's certainly no one answer, but death and birth are
Speaker:the, you know, intros and outros of this time on Earth, right?
Speaker:And so death is a part of birth in that, quite literally, women who
Speaker:are the life bearers, you know, are also the death bringers,
Speaker:meaning that if you think about it from the time there's a spark of
Speaker:conception, that spark will die right it will die at some point,
Speaker:whether it's tomorrow, whether it's in 12 weeks gestation or
Speaker:whether it's 12 years old and so on yeah and so, you know, my old
Speaker:midwife I used to apprentice under would say we come to go and, you
Speaker:know, birth is the entry point and death is the exit point.
Speaker:And so you don't really have one without the other in the obvious
Speaker:sense that. They literally by design in
Speaker:arguably go together.
Speaker:Sometimes I refer to myself as a
Speaker:portal dweller because when you are drawn to birth, you're also
Speaker:often find yourself, you know, in what I call death midwifery as
Speaker:well, holding space on, you know, the other end.
Speaker:And sometimes, and it's not actually that uncommon, that death
Speaker:is a part of birth.
Speaker:Meaning still birth, miscarriage,
Speaker:you know, chosen termination.
Speaker:Obviously, people spontaneously
Speaker:die at all stages of life, right? So of course stillbirth is
Speaker:particularly tragic, but also really not rare yeah so I mean
Speaker:part of, you know, the work that I do, which is very specifically
Speaker:around. Birth work outside the medical
Speaker:system, outside the medical paradigm.
Speaker:There's a lot of contending with death because, well, I guess I'll
Speaker:say that when you birth in the system, you don't have to contend
Speaker:with death in the same way as the enormous social risk that comes
Speaker:with birthing at home, birthing without medical providers.
Speaker:You know, I would have lots to say, to win an argument about why
Speaker:that's actually safer and produces better outcomes.
Speaker:But women who free birth, which is birthing without medical
Speaker:providers? Hired professionals, women who
Speaker:free birth, you know, kind of kind of naturally then contend with the
Speaker:possibility of death.
Speaker:But it's more so rooted because
Speaker:we're doing something so different from societies, you know,
Speaker:mainstream. Of course the question we're
Speaker:constantly asked is, well, what if something happens?
Speaker:Yeah and so free birthers, you know, I that I find tend to be.
Speaker:Enormously mature and, you know, taking on a layer of radical
Speaker:responsibility to contend with these concepts, that when you just
Speaker:do whatever your doctor says and just go in for your induction, no
Speaker:one's explaining you know the likely risks and side effects.
Speaker:You know, and then you have the section you never needed.
Speaker:And then, you know, you hemorrhage and the baby goes to the nick you
Speaker:and the baby dies and the nick you.
Speaker:The framing of that is thank God we were there and we were able to
Speaker:try everything right? Whereas I'm in a very different
Speaker:consciousness where I'm like, well, it's very likely they killed
Speaker:the baby.
Speaker:You know, but my background is
Speaker:attending hundreds and hundreds of births within the system and.
Speaker:You know, it's just so painful.
Speaker:But i have seen babies be murdered
Speaker:from pharmaceuticals, from, you know, mistreatment, neglect, all
Speaker:sorts of stuff.
Speaker:And then, of course, there is just
Speaker:the spontaneous natural death that can occur at any stage of life.
Speaker:And actually what, you know, the name of your podcast is
Speaker:interesting to start with birth, because we are already free, is a
Speaker:beautiful idea and yet for the vast majority of humanity.
Speaker:At this time, we're born into captivity.
Speaker:We are born, not free, right? We are born into these.
Speaker:Deeply systemic structures that keep us captive and you know in a
Speaker:basically long standing sequence of consumerism and outsourcing and
Speaker:all of this stuff.
Speaker:And so I imagine this podcast is a
Speaker:remembering of who we are outside of that.
Speaker:But there's a lot of healing to do around the birth, you know of our
Speaker:own births and around you know.
Speaker:The global planet in the way in
Speaker:which we birth, because we're not Born Free like my daughter was
Speaker:Born Free, you know? But I'm a very tiny, tiny, tiny
Speaker:little % of women who are birthing freely.
Speaker:Yeah, I saw agree.
Speaker:I mean that's one of the things I
Speaker:think about is like that term we are already free.
Speaker:I think about it a lot.
Speaker:Of course, I think about these
Speaker:kind of things.
Speaker:I'm like, well, are we?
Speaker:And I think for me it's like, it's like a mantra.
Speaker:It's like, why do I say a mantra because I'm because I'm reclaiming
Speaker:something. I'm remembering, as you say, I'm
Speaker:returning to responsibility for something that is an inalienable
Speaker:truth. And yet I acknowledge that within
Speaker:the current physical paradigm and I just and actually this sort of.
Speaker:Highways into something that my I'm a home birth my the four
Speaker:myself and my three siblings from my mother were all born at home.
Speaker:I'm the eldest and so I feel deep gratitude for that at that time.
Speaker:My parents living in a little village on the tip of South Africa
Speaker:where they got it from all sides as you more than well know how it
Speaker:goes and what they had to go through just even to have a home
Speaker:birth with a midwife there, etcetera.
Speaker:But to navigate that and I was speaking with my mom a bit earlier
Speaker:today. I was just having a.
Speaker:Like, I needed a mum moment.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I just like was like, oh, I miss Mum and I, so I just called her up
Speaker:and was chatting that up would be chatting with you.
Speaker:And she thought she shared a line from the Bible.
Speaker:She finds a lot of huge amount of wisdom and peace in the Bible.
Speaker:It's not something I've ever really read, but I she offers me
Speaker:these little Nuggets and she said this one, which I'll read to you
Speaker:is from Exodus 1312 It says thou shalt set apart unto the Lord all
Speaker:that openeth the matrix.
Speaker:And when she read it to me, I was
Speaker:like, did they really use the word matrix in there?
Speaker:Like, is that a real thing? And she said, yes, let me go
Speaker:check. And she checked the meaning in
Speaker:Hebrew, the original what's translated as the matrix also
Speaker:means womb. So that's it's one meaning.
Speaker:And then if you go to the actual, like the old, what they call the
Speaker:primitive route in the Hebrew, it is to love deeply, have mercy, be
Speaker:compassionate, have tender affection, have compassion.
Speaker:And I just, I just thought that was a phenomenal.
Speaker:Meaning of the word matrix as a root, where now we think ohh get
Speaker:out of the matrix.
Speaker:But actually what we're in is a
Speaker:man-made prison and the actual matrix is the womb is the is the
Speaker:portal. So I don't know if you have any
Speaker:thoughts on that, but I thought I'd share that.
Speaker:Well, I'm just, I'm thinking about how in Kundalini yoga I was taught
Speaker:that matrix means Maya and Maya is the physical.
Speaker:You know reality and ohm, you know, is God before physical
Speaker:manifestation and Maya is the physical manifestation.
Speaker:So that's kind of, that's different.
Speaker:But I did know that the origin of matrix in Hebrew was womb, which
Speaker:is so cool, so cool.
Speaker:Well, has that been changed?
Speaker:Yeah, exactly. So I'm curious to know about your own journey, like
Speaker:what I've known of you and seen of you through your and heard of you
Speaker:through your podcast and through your page and what you're offering
Speaker:in the world.
Speaker:Is you seem from my perspective to
Speaker:be someone who is sovereign and empowered, and you are a leader
Speaker:and you are really taking profound action in a direction that you
Speaker:align with. And I'm wondering what was your
Speaker:life like before you reclaimed your sovereignty or before you
Speaker:claimed that part of yourself? Or have you always felt that way,
Speaker:or how was that journey for you? Well. I mean, in my childhood you
Speaker:can find every corner of me trying to, like, carve out my space and
Speaker:you know, dig my heels in about, you know who I am and make that be
Speaker:known. You know, there are stories of in
Speaker:my, in my childhood when I was, I let me make sure I'm saying this
Speaker:right 12 just really didn't like my family dynamic.
Speaker:My parents had split, things were not great and I sat my parents
Speaker:down. I was really into soccer and was
Speaker:playing on some big, you know, national teams.
Speaker:And that was my first dream was to be a professional soccer player.
Speaker:And so I sat my parents down when I was twelve, they were divorced
Speaker:and I got them together and I said, look.
Speaker:We all know I'm too young to run away.
Speaker:That would be just not the move for success.
Speaker:And so would you be willing to send me to boarding school far,
Speaker:far away from all of you, where I can start on varsity, you know, at
Speaker:in ninth.
Speaker:Grade and I need to get out of
Speaker:here, you know, and thankfully, my parents had the resources to say
Speaker:yes and the willingness.
Speaker:So I go to boarding school for two
Speaker:years. I wind up having this really
Speaker:horrific knee injury soccers out of the soccer's out of the picture
Speaker:now, for me, I'm, like, relearning how to walk.
Speaker:On crutches for a year.
Speaker:It was really a big deal and so I
Speaker:came home, I tried that for a couple of months in Florida, where
Speaker:I'm from.
Speaker:And then the same thing happened
Speaker:again. Now, four years later, I sent my
Speaker:parents, sat my parents down and I say.
Speaker:Look, I'm 16.
Speaker:We all know this isn't working,
Speaker:you know? Side note, I was going to public
Speaker:school for the first time in my life.
Speaker:I had always been in private and I wasn't going and I was making
Speaker:straight A's It was a joke.
Speaker:It was such a joke.
Speaker:The whole thing was such a joke.
Speaker:And I hated it.
Speaker:And I knew I was wasting my time.
Speaker:And so, yeah, I sat my parents
Speaker:down and I said I'd like to withdraw from school and leave.
Speaker:And I had been working at this little bakery.
Speaker:And I had 2000$ US saved, which felt like.
Speaker:What can't I do? You know what can't I do with
Speaker:2000$ when you're 16? And now?
Speaker:That's hilarious.
Speaker:But yeah, and so I told my parents
Speaker:I'd like to withdraw from school.
Speaker:I'd love your support.
Speaker:I don't need it, but I'd love it would make getting an apartment
Speaker:easier, and I'd like to go to LA and start my life.
Speaker:And they were like, OK, yeah, that seems right.
Speaker:And so I did, you know, so I went not really knowing anything i was
Speaker:freshly 16 years old anyway, so there's those stories, you know,
Speaker:in my in my childhood that are very obvious that I.
Speaker:You know came in to this life with a lot of fire and a lot of just
Speaker:determination and clarity and.
Speaker:You know, I would say throughout
Speaker:my twenties I've always been in birth, I've always attended
Speaker:births. I started attending births when I
Speaker:was 17. And I'm 36 now.
Speaker:And so for what is that 19 years and?
Speaker:I don't know how much you want to go into the whole Dula journey and
Speaker:the medical midwifery path, but it really took me too long in my
Speaker:opinion, to figure out.
Speaker:How bad?
Speaker:You know, the medical paradigm of birth was I was indoctrinated into
Speaker:doula life, which is all about being the Savior.
Speaker:All about, you know, holding the woman's hand while she's raped
Speaker:with instruments. You know, and at least you're
Speaker:there, and at least you're going to remember her story.
Speaker:Yeah, it was really quite dark and sick actually.
Speaker:And so I had a very successful dual business.
Speaker:For over a decade in Los Angeles and a lot of what I do now, which
Speaker:is not that is, you know, attempting to bridge that gap for
Speaker:birth workers so that it doesn't take 10 plus years for them to
Speaker:figure out and connect the dots and get the language provided for
Speaker:not only how deeply unethical you know, the monopoly of childbirth
Speaker:and obstetrics is, but also how we enable it in all these different
Speaker:ways, you know, believing.
Speaker:And reform fundamentally, which I
Speaker:no longer do.
Speaker:So yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker:sovereignty. I don't think I even knew that
Speaker:word until I was probably 30.
Speaker:Now it's like trending and it's
Speaker:everywhere. But, you know, birth work is
Speaker:spiritual. Work it's so.
Speaker:It's so intense and there's so much that you have to learn how to
Speaker:hold because you're working with the most inner, inner fabric of a
Speaker:family dynamic. It's really intense.
Speaker:And you even in normal physiological births, you know,
Speaker:you're still, like I mentioned at the beginning of the show, you're
Speaker:still dealing with occasional stillbirths or, gosh, so much.
Speaker:I mean, family dynamics are so complicated, right?
Speaker:There's abusive dynamics.
Speaker:There's loss, you know, of family
Speaker:members while the woman's pregnant.
Speaker:There's so much that goes on within a family, you know,
Speaker:becoming a family.
Speaker:And you are just like right up in
Speaker:that mix. So it's A and then you times that
Speaker:by how many? Science you have, it requires an
Speaker:enormous amount of maturity and spiritual growth, and you know
Speaker:it's inside out work.
Speaker:And so no one taught me that
Speaker:that's what we teach about now.
Speaker:But this was a pretty lonely
Speaker:journey for me in my twenties, trying to sort all of the layers
Speaker:of this workout.
Speaker:And for anyone listening now who's
Speaker:kind of new to everything we're talking about.
Speaker:And he's kind of going, but I thought, you know, like home birth
Speaker:is cool and but it's all like, why does this sound so intense?
Speaker:And I'm curious, how did you go? Because it is intense.
Speaker:I mean, if I think of if someone has to open the door to this one
Speaker:thing, it's like what else has to collapse for that to become in
Speaker:someone's awareness? And in your case, like you stayed
Speaker:in that industry, you said for about 10 years and then how so,
Speaker:like using your journey as a way to kind of.
Speaker:Illustrate that shift and what happened for you within that space
Speaker:and moving out of it yeah you know, so for the vast majority of
Speaker:us, we're just kind of born into the mainstream.
Speaker:And then, you know, I assume if you're listening to this podcast,
Speaker:you're, you know, like us where at some point you start to question
Speaker:it and move outside of it and, you know, look at more radical, you
Speaker:know, which back to root, you know, ways of life and ways of
Speaker:thinking and, you know, altering your consciousness, you know,
Speaker:beyond the kind of mainstream.
Speaker:And so, you know, in my, in my
Speaker:earlier years. I was just being asked to attend
Speaker:births. And it was an obvious, yes, it
Speaker:felt like a deep calling.
Speaker:You know, many midwives say that
Speaker:it's just kind of with you your whole life.
Speaker:And it found me really young and I didn't know any other way.
Speaker:And so no one in my awareness, globally, in my awareness was
Speaker:doing what I do now, which obviously I'll explain in a little
Speaker:bit. So the path.
Speaker:That was laid before me.
Speaker:When you're interested in birth
Speaker:work in the early two thousands is you take a dual of training, which
Speaker:essentially a doula is a non medical woman who is kind of like
Speaker:a hired friend.
Speaker:She's going to know about birth,
Speaker:she's going to have someone like comfort measures.
Speaker:But my critique of doulas is that really, you know, the profession
Speaker:is enabling an enormous, you know, industrial machine of abuse and
Speaker:torture of women and children and so.
Speaker:I started as a very proud doula, started going to birth.
Speaker:I didn't know any better.
Speaker:You know, I didn't have language
Speaker:for anything I'm about to talk about.
Speaker:And, you know, I remember my fourth, birth which was horrific.
Speaker:And the mother was a family from Ethiopia in a County Hospital in
Speaker:LA and she.
Speaker:Yeah, she was brutalized with
Speaker:torture instruments. She had an episiotomy cut, you
Speaker:know, so very sharp scissors, cutting her perineum.
Speaker:Down to her anus.
Speaker:The baby was ripped out while she
Speaker:was being pumped full of drugs that she never consented to,
Speaker:dipping in and out of consciousness.
Speaker:When she would wake up into consciousness, she would be
Speaker:screaming. It was horrific umm.
Speaker:And her perennial never repaired, you know, she as last I knew her,
Speaker:which obviously was a while ago, but she went on to have one more
Speaker:child and she never was able to experience sensation down there
Speaker:again anyway. So that was my fourth birth and I
Speaker:remember taking that story to my mentors, which I used very
Speaker:loosely, just more experienced doulas.
Speaker:And I was completely gaslit by how with how upset I was.
Speaker:And they were like, yeah, you know?
Speaker:This is the, I'm sure the doctors did their best.
Speaker:And, you know, sometimes you gotta see some hard stuff and, you know,
Speaker:you're there to help her reframe the birth because, look, she has
Speaker:the healthy baby and she had a vaginal birth.
Speaker:So that was my exposure, you know, for many years I didn't have
Speaker:anybody validate. How horrific the treatment of
Speaker:women and children, you know, was that I was not just witnessing but
Speaker:being paid to witness, which is also pretty disgusting, you know.
Speaker:And I believed that I was helping because I would hold her hand, you
Speaker:know, when they would force instruments inside her and not
Speaker:explain why. And you know, the doctors would,
Speaker:you know, let me know how much they needed me to keep her calm
Speaker:and. You know, I just saw, you know, 10
Speaker:years of birth in the in captivity, you're gonna see some
Speaker:gnarly ass shit.
Speaker:And so I felt very purposeful in
Speaker:my doula work.
Speaker:I cared a lot.
Speaker:And I had no language for.
Speaker:The secondary trauma I was
Speaker:experiencing and for how completely honest, unsustainable
Speaker:what I was doing was, it was all pretty gross, actually.
Speaker:And when I would try to talk about something horrific that I saw so
Speaker:and so do, or try to rally the doulas and be like, can't we all
Speaker:leave Yelp reviews like we've all seen him do.
Speaker:This one thing you know, can't we all talk about it?
Speaker:Like surely there's something we can do?
Speaker:They would all be like, well, you don't want to get on the bad side
Speaker:of the doctor.
Speaker:Because then you won't be invited
Speaker:into the birth and that could, you know, affect your income.
Speaker:And what's interesting about this is, you know, many doulas will
Speaker:probably acknowledge how horrific some hospital births are.
Speaker:But there's this implication in the birth world and the mainstream
Speaker:birth world that home births with a licensed, you know, medical
Speaker:midwife is like as good as it gets.
Speaker:Like, that's the, that's the.
Speaker:That's the best thing you can get
Speaker:hired to go see.
Speaker:And to go support.
Speaker:And so I did a lot of that.
Speaker:I was The Apprentice to the
Speaker:busiest. Cnn in Los Angeles.
Speaker:And so I went to tons and tons and tons of medicalized births at
Speaker:home. And, you know, in some ways it's
Speaker:even worse. Because women are hiring women,
Speaker:believing that they're going to keep them out of the hospital
Speaker:system, believing that scraping together 6000$ and paying this
Speaker:woman to come to their home is going to have them prevent an
Speaker:unnecessary surgery or transfer or induction or what have you.
Speaker:And it's not the case at all, right?
Speaker:And so there's medical midwifery is incredibly unethical and lacks
Speaker:transparency, and no one's really acknowledging, especially medical
Speaker:midwives, that they are agents of the state by way of their license.
Speaker:And so, yeah, I kind of forget what your original question was,
Speaker:but the tracking of my twenties.
Speaker:Was going to birth after birth
Speaker:after birth. I'm talking 5 to 10 month Like a
Speaker:lot of births in different roles.
Speaker:Sometimes the assistant to a
Speaker:medical midwife at home, sometimes as a doula in all settings,
Speaker:including scheduled C sections, accidental side of the road births
Speaker:where no one was there.
Speaker:You know, like every setting,
Speaker:right that you could really conceive of.
Speaker:I've probably been there for.
Speaker:And my spirit was.
Speaker:Not OK.
Speaker:I was not OK.
Speaker:I was coming home after birth and.
Speaker:You know, needing a glass of wine
Speaker:or smoking a spliff and just like crying in my partner's lap, you
Speaker:know, and just felt this overwhelming sense of dread and I
Speaker:didn't know what to do about it.
Speaker:And I think a lot of doulas are
Speaker:there are in that place where.
Speaker:You are making money.
Speaker:You are doing your best.
Speaker:You are seeing unimaginable
Speaker:brutality and violence.
Speaker:And for context, because again,
Speaker:you know, maybe there's people listening who have no idea what
Speaker:I'm talking about.
Speaker:You know, obviously violence
Speaker:happens on a spectrum, but I'm talking about, you know, women
Speaker:saying, no, I don't want a vaginal exam and then having an entire
Speaker:medical staff climb on top of her and physically hold her down.
Speaker:In labor while they force their fingers inside of her.
Speaker:You know, I mean that's rape, obviously.
Speaker:Definition of rape is, you know, the insertion of any instruments
Speaker:or body parts, you know, into an orfice that is basically unwanted,
Speaker:right. And yeah, this is all totally
Speaker:normalized within the medical industry and within the dual
Speaker:industry, which is all wrapped up together.
Speaker:So, you know, back to for someone who's brand new.
Speaker:Let me think about where I want to go with this.
Speaker:So for someone who's new to this, I want to say.
Speaker:That the takeover of obstetrics, which has been going on for just
Speaker:about over 100 years or so.
Speaker:Has eradicated.
Speaker:Not just authentic midwifery for the most part, but it has
Speaker:completely changed how women Orient around their bodies and
Speaker:around the normal biological process of childbirth which.
Speaker:Spoiler alert.
Speaker:We've literally been doing for
Speaker:forever, right? And so for the last hundred, years
Speaker:it's been incredibly.
Speaker:Different you know, the white man
Speaker:came over from England to America with his little white lab coat on.
Speaker:You know, the first wave of physicians.
Speaker:The history of obstetrics in North America is incredibly interesting
Speaker:and depressing. And so they come over.
Speaker:They do all these incredibly.
Speaker:A successful moves to get the
Speaker:birth out of our homes where it's always been and really not that
Speaker:long ago, I mean just a couple generations into clinics and then
Speaker:hospitals and. You know, you can watch these
Speaker:horrific old videos of women being drugged and babies coming out just
Speaker:so drugged, which is where the spanking came from because babies
Speaker:were being born on ether like in the fifties you know, and then you
Speaker:just, you move into all these different trends of drugs and
Speaker:twilight sleep and, you know, and today we have the epidural, which
Speaker:is widely accepted and used and it's just hardcore narcotics and
Speaker:anesthesia. I mean, it's absolutely drugging.
Speaker:Our mothers and our babies and babies are absolutely born on
Speaker:drugs. But it looks a little different
Speaker:now than it did in the sixties So, you know what's important, I
Speaker:think, to say, to contextualize this whole conversation is.
Speaker:How what we said about women birthing in captivity.
Speaker:When you birth in an industrial setting, you are treated like.
Speaker:You you're joining an assembly line.
Speaker:There are.
Speaker:You know, it takes proceduralism
Speaker:to a whole new level.
Speaker:You do not have human rights.
Speaker:You do not have patient rights.
Speaker:The myth of informed consent is
Speaker:such a fucking joke, and you'd only know this if you worked in
Speaker:it, you know? I mean, you could listen to my
Speaker:podcast where there's hundreds of women also sharing their
Speaker:narratives and you can start to get a grasp of the truth.
Speaker:But what's so brilliant about what they've done is they've brought
Speaker:birth, which was always a family.
Speaker:Event you know, out of the family
Speaker:they bring it into, you know, concrete walls full of strangers.
Speaker:They torture and abuse and extract the baby from the woman.
Speaker:And, you know, then there's a couple days of that and then they
Speaker:send them home and the woman will never see the staff again.
Speaker:The woman will possibly never go back to that hospital.
Speaker:And so abuse in all settings really thrives in the shadows
Speaker:right That's kind of how abuse is perpetuated.
Speaker:It's not happening on the streets nearly as much as it's happening
Speaker:behind closed doors, right.
Speaker:And so this is just kind of an
Speaker:industrial example of that.
Speaker:Does that mean that every single
Speaker:woman having hospital birth is going to agree with my, with my,
Speaker:like, really intense assessment of it?
Speaker:Of course not.
Speaker:You can certainly find women who
Speaker:love. Their hospital births you can find
Speaker:women with emerging from their births with less intervention and
Speaker:abuse than others.
Speaker:But of a famous feminist quote
Speaker:that my friend says to me frequently is if it doesn't work
Speaker:for all women, it doesn't work for women and I would apply that.
Speaker:To industrial birth.
Speaker:It's I'm finding it so
Speaker:interesting. One of the most, well, not the
Speaker:most striking, but something very striking about what you're sharing
Speaker:right now is just how much trauma.
Speaker:You're expressing like, how much
Speaker:just the worst kinds of human on human abuse.
Speaker:And yet, when I look at your, when I listen to your podcast,
Speaker:generally I haven't listened to many episodes, but the ones I have
Speaker:listened to and specifically, more commonly when I watch the videos,
Speaker:these birthing videos and the stories of women that they share
Speaker:on your Instagram, I see something that is like.
Speaker:It's like the most inspiring thing.
Speaker:It's just on a whole.
Speaker:So it's it to me.
Speaker:There's a profoundly impactful juxtaposition or parrot or not
Speaker:paradox, but juxtaposition of this horrific trauma and then what it
Speaker:is that free birth society is facilitating in the world.
Speaker:And so I would love to hear for those listening what?
Speaker:What is that experience like? I know it's unique every time, but
Speaker:like what is the general where you've illustrated what it's like
Speaker:in the medical system? What's it like out of the medical
Speaker:system? Yeah well really what we're what
Speaker:we're talking about is birth like what is the design of birth and
Speaker:it's quite magnificent and it really, you know all mammals
Speaker:follow pretty much the same design.
Speaker:So we birth like the zebras and the gorillas.
Speaker:It's not it's not.
Speaker:Actually very different at all,
Speaker:other than our neocortex yeah and so the design of birth is meant
Speaker:for the mother and the baby to experience euphoria and bliss in a
Speaker:way that, you know, we could break down the hormones and all of the
Speaker:physiological, you know, setup of it.
Speaker:But what I want to say before we dive into that is, you know, it's
Speaker:no, it's not surprising to me that in patriarchy where women have
Speaker:been property and enslaved, you know, everything that we know
Speaker:about the history of patriarchy, that the successful eradication of
Speaker:one of our most significant power, points you know, in our life has
Speaker:been not allowed, right? Has been completely taken.
Speaker:Or attempted to be, I mean, obviously it's still, it's still
Speaker:going on. Yeah, and so.
Speaker:I guess I'll tie this into my story, which is to say that once I
Speaker:started to get language to all of this and, you know, really got
Speaker:clear that medical midwifery was not for me.
Speaker:And, you know, understanding my know helped me find my yes, which
Speaker:I think is important to say kind of in all areas of life because.
Speaker:Sometimes that's how you're yes comes in is to really know what
Speaker:doesn't feel good.
Speaker:And so I had no idea I was going
Speaker:to, you know, become who I am now with this work.
Speaker:But I knew I didn't want medical midwifery because of all the
Speaker:inherent sabotage and sister on sister violence and betrayal and
Speaker:all of that.
Speaker:And then obviously I'm not going
Speaker:to be in the system.
Speaker:So in my late twenties, I just put
Speaker:it all down.
Speaker:But I was very popular and so I
Speaker:was still getting a lot of requests and I went to my first
Speaker:interview. Putting everything down, and it
Speaker:just happened to be a couple that wanted to birth at home, but they
Speaker:couldn't afford a medical midwife and they didn't even particularly
Speaker:want one. And I heard myself say pretty much
Speaker:the unspoken not allowed words of Adoula, which was, well, if you
Speaker:wanted to just stay home and not hire anyone else, I would totally
Speaker:come and, you know, support you guys as best as I can.
Speaker:And they were like, yes.
Speaker:And I was like yes.
Speaker:And so that was my first birth after.
Speaker:You know, hundreds and hundreds of births in captivity.
Speaker:That was the first wild birth I had ever seen, and I'm bringing
Speaker:that up now because it was like the first time I was seeing birth,
Speaker:even though I had spent almost 1010 years at that point,
Speaker:witnessing humans come out of humans, you know, but to watch
Speaker:birth completely unmanaged.
Speaker:With no assessment and diagnosis
Speaker:to watch. The woman not have to game out
Speaker:when to transfer or, you know, feel worried about the rules and
Speaker:regs that we're going to influence her birth.
Speaker:I mean just to give birth like the wild animal that she is.
Speaker:With no containment outside of, you know, the spiritual
Speaker:containment that I was providing, which really is authentic
Speaker:midwifery to me.
Speaker:It was contagious.
Speaker:It was unforgettable.
Speaker:And I watched her, you know,
Speaker:travel through the underworld and her self doubt and you know, all
Speaker:of the stuff that pretty much comes up for all of us when we
Speaker:birth and access power, you know, access like real power and bring
Speaker:her baby, you know, here.
Speaker:And so from that, moving forward,
Speaker:just to contextualize this anecdotally, because I feel like
Speaker:people always remember stories better than then, you know,
Speaker:statistics and all that.
Speaker:I've seen women.
Speaker:Healed after physiological births.
Speaker:I've seen, you know, women who
Speaker:have been making themselves throw up after meals for 9 years, you
Speaker:know, or since high school have a physiological birth, have a, you
Speaker:know, birth outside the system.
Speaker:And stop self harming.
Speaker:I mean that's huge.
Speaker:You know, I've seen women, tons of
Speaker:women including myself stop, you know, stop shaving and stop
Speaker:wearing makeup and stop wearing high heels and stop doing these
Speaker:self harming. You know, rituals that we're
Speaker:trained to do from little girls.
Speaker:And yeah, so, like the potential
Speaker:of impact is quite large when a rite of passage is met with the
Speaker:reverence you know that it deserves, right?
Speaker:So does that mean that if that you can have a free birth and
Speaker:everything is going to change? Of course not.
Speaker:But what it means is that when you experience these kind of.
Speaker:Portals or rites of passage, you know that I think are intended for
Speaker:the human spiritual evolution and experience.
Speaker:The potential for great transformation is now there.
Speaker:Are you going to claim that potential or not?
Speaker:Well, I don't know.
Speaker:That's up to you.
Speaker:And you know, for some women I see their needle move slowly.
Speaker:I know lots of women who free birth and are in abusive
Speaker:relationships, for example, and it's a big deal that they did this
Speaker:one thing, but they still have to really clean up their life, right?
Speaker:Because they're still in a super toxic, scary dynamic, and so the
Speaker:needle might move real slowly.
Speaker:Whereas other women will like,
Speaker:shed everything and burn their shitty life to the ground and
Speaker:have, you know, major transformation really quickly.
Speaker:So it's certainly not a guaranteed recipe or any of that, but you
Speaker:know what I mean, that it's these like, it creates the potential for
Speaker:enormous transformation.
Speaker:And it's very similar, you know,
Speaker:to me, it really helps.
Speaker:I like to teach this through the
Speaker:lens of sex because it's very similar in lots of ways, but if we
Speaker:think about.
Speaker:Let's say a young woman and her
Speaker:first sexual experience.
Speaker:Could be on the spectrum of gang
Speaker:rape, which many women I love.
Speaker:That's their first experience,
Speaker:being drugged and raped.
Speaker:Ok, so that's, you know, as bad as
Speaker:it gets or somewhere in the arena.
Speaker:I mean, I guess we could come up
Speaker:with ways it's worse but pretty bad, pretty horrific.
Speaker:And then all the way to the other end of the spectrum of a first
Speaker:sexual experience could be, you know, thankfully, more what I had,
Speaker:which was, you know, fumbling through with my very best friend.
Speaker:My partner of five years in high school and just total love and
Speaker:respect and playfulness and communication and just kind of a
Speaker:best case scenario of play and sweetness and safety and the
Speaker:difference of how a woman, a young woman, emerges out of either of
Speaker:these ends of the spectrum.
Speaker:And of course there's anything,
Speaker:you know, everything in between really determines a lot for who
Speaker:that woman becomes.
Speaker:How she relates to her body, what
Speaker:her sexual patterns become for the rest of her life and so on.
Speaker:It's the same thing with birth, right?
Speaker:Birth kind of makes or breaks you, just like sex does.
Speaker:You know? It really determines a lot of how
Speaker:you show up in the world, how you feel about yourself and what
Speaker:happens next. Do you feel like that's the same
Speaker:for? Because I know you've spoken about
Speaker:the woman.
Speaker:I mean that to for the baby as
Speaker:well, right? Like so being birthed into?
Speaker:A medical environment of trauma and pain and just like all the
Speaker:stuff that's going on and then all being both where your mum's all
Speaker:relaxed and she's laughing with the husband and then like going
Speaker:through, I mean, there's got her and so how?
Speaker:I don't know what do we do about that, acknowledging that most
Speaker:people in the world right now have come through the portal in that
Speaker:way. Yeah, I mean, we don't care about
Speaker:babies in our society, you know, like babies are seen as these.
Speaker:Like blobs that lack intelligence and sentience.
Speaker:And, I mean, people still circumcise their sons, you know?
Speaker:I mean, whoa, like, that is crazy.
Speaker:Like, we are actively hurting our
Speaker:babies, you know, worldwide in all sorts of different ways.
Speaker:And so, you know, babies are an extension of the mother, right?
Speaker:And so for as long as we're abusing mothers, we're abusing
Speaker:babies. It's not, it's not gonna be, you
Speaker:know, we're not going to make a distinction there because our
Speaker:babies are. Us but, yes i mean i, think you're
Speaker:speaking to the kind of.
Speaker:Obvious and inherent trauma that
Speaker:is blanketing this planet when the vast majority of.
Speaker:Us are coming into the world.
Speaker:Through violence, you know, and to
Speaker:be clear again, like, I'm not being dramatic, what I mean, you
Speaker:know, I would call incredibly violent when a, you know, when a
Speaker:mother is drugged and numbed and disassociated from her body and,
Speaker:you know, strapped to a bed, has a catheter inside her because she
Speaker:can't walk, you know, to release her bladder and she's literally
Speaker:high on fentanyl or morphine and a stranger who she's never met
Speaker:before is going to come in and cut her premium.
Speaker:And extract a baby with instruments and then the baby will
Speaker:be cut from the mother not getting, you know, all of the
Speaker:placental blood transfusion that is intended, which is enormously
Speaker:important and the baby you know is received into glove latex, you
Speaker:know, hands by strangers.
Speaker:It's the first you know, touch of
Speaker:physical environment is gloved by strangers and then cut and the
Speaker:baby is taken over to a little plastic bin where strangers who
Speaker:are masked and you know all look like.
Speaker:And aliens are, you know, deep suctioning the baby and, you know,
Speaker:putting tubes up the nose and down into the throat to clear the baby
Speaker:out as if they're not about to do that themselves.
Speaker:And wrapping the baby up and having the baby.
Speaker:And if they're lucky, now the baby comes over to the mother, who is
Speaker:now being shot full of pharmaceuticals to force her
Speaker:uterus, you know, to contract while the doctor is putting his
Speaker:hand, you know, all the way in his forearm inside of her to manually
Speaker:remove the placenta, you know, while the baby now has no smell.
Speaker:Being emitted because they're completely covered up and the
Speaker:mother is drugged receiving this bundle of cloth.
Speaker:And that's just like a normal birth for most of us.
Speaker:That is a horrific picture.
Speaker:Yeah, it's horrific.
Speaker:Not even section, you know? Well, I was going to say so.
Speaker:C-section like, for anyone who is listening, who might be like, oh,
Speaker:that sounds like an extreme case I.
Speaker:Just it's like.
Speaker:30 thirty 30 % plus of births in
Speaker:America. In America are C sections and in
Speaker:South Africa the number is closer to 70 % are C sections.
Speaker:So if, and I mean anyway it's.
Speaker:All over the world.
Speaker:I mean Brazil is like 90 Dominican Republic.
Speaker:Is like 90 plus.
Speaker:Costa Rica's over 60.
Speaker:I mean, it's very high.
Speaker:Russia has a crazy high.
Speaker:I can't remember if I want to say the wrong thing, but yeah.
Speaker:What was your question about C sections?
Speaker:No, just saying that for anyone listening who might think that the
Speaker:story you've shared is sounds like an extreme case.
Speaker:It's like that's not that's what's happening and totally average.
Speaker:It's like how important it is to note where we are right now and
Speaker:then also acknowledging because it's interesting, because I hear
Speaker:you talk about that and then I see the way that you act and what how
Speaker:do you stay.
Speaker:How have you stayed so not just
Speaker:hopeful, but action oriented like you?
Speaker:You have helped tens of thousands of women around the world to birth
Speaker:in a completely different way.
Speaker:That includes things like bliss
Speaker:and safety and connection and joy like how do you?
Speaker:What is it that drives you in that way?
Speaker:Yeah, well, what else are we going to do?
Speaker:That's not really my personality to just complain.
Speaker:But before I answer that question, I just, I want to offer one more
Speaker:thing I think that might be helpful for wrapping people's
Speaker:brains around. This is from a biological design
Speaker:perspective. You know, these babies us are not
Speaker:being born intact.
Speaker:And what I mean by that is there
Speaker:is a hormonal matrix, there is a biological sequence for optimal
Speaker:mother baby thriving.
Speaker:Ok. And we can talk, we can get
Speaker:back to that if you want because I'm happy to explain that, but
Speaker:it's not very complicated.
Speaker:It's just that when you understand
Speaker:how medical birth works, it interrupts that sequence at every
Speaker:stage. And so we are not born intact.
Speaker:Our hormonal matrix is not born intact.
Speaker:So just to like make so that can make sense, for example, with a
Speaker:C-section baby. When a baby goes down through the
Speaker:vaginal canal, they're getting their cranium is getting pressure,
Speaker:right, it's going down through the canal, and there's all these cool
Speaker:sequences that happen, but one of the things that happens is the
Speaker:pressure on the cranium will essentially alert to release a
Speaker:hormone that once the baby is born, the hormone will now start
Speaker:to have a smell that comes out the fontanel the soft spot of the
Speaker:baby's head. And so then when the.
Speaker:Mother, just naturally because she's holding her baby smells that
Speaker:it triggers her production of milk.
Speaker:And so there's all these sequences like that.
Speaker:That's just one of them.
Speaker:I mean, there's tons.
Speaker:And it'll just blow your mind and just make you fall in love with
Speaker:life, you know, because it's so perfect and it's so profound and
Speaker:it's so beautiful.
Speaker:And as a as a midwife, I see the
Speaker:difference in babies who have the full intact sequence right.
Speaker:And then I see the difference and the challenges and I want to say
Speaker:here, like, you're not just like fucked if you didn't get your full
Speaker:sequence or if you had a traumatic birth and.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Well, I mean, you know, like we do
Speaker:have to start somewhere and humans are amazing.
Speaker:And we're so our capacity to spontaneously heal is always here,
Speaker:you know, and so.
Speaker:You know, we want.
Speaker:I think that the healthy framing of this is yes be devastated and
Speaker:be, you know, so upset about what's happening and what we've
Speaker:missed and then move on, you know and do better and adapt and heal
Speaker:and create better, you know.
Speaker:So that's all we can do.
Speaker:We are where we are in our story yeah and so how I keep going is
Speaker:one of my favorite commitments that I work with is this
Speaker:commitment that says, are you willing to be the resolution that
Speaker:you want to see? And I use that a lot when I hear
Speaker:myself complaining. I used it a lot during the COVID,
Speaker:you know, nonsense, because that felt very terrifying to me in a
Speaker:way that I had never felt before.
Speaker:And I spent a couple months
Speaker:complaining and freaking out and judging everyone and criticizing
Speaker:everyone and creating lots of disconnect in some of my
Speaker:relationships. And then I remembered that
Speaker:commitment and was like, well, what would be in the resolution
Speaker:look like? Like what?
Speaker:What would that even be, you know? And that's what brought me here to
Speaker:65 Acres of beautiful land with independent water and you know, in
Speaker:a town that never masked and like, I'm living the resolution with my
Speaker:family that we wanted, you know, to see we created it somewhere.
Speaker:And so it's the same thing with birth, you know, it's the same
Speaker:thing with everything that I do you want to complain or do you
Speaker:want to do the thing? And it's not hard, you know?
Speaker:It would be way harder to know about the horrors and not do
Speaker:anything about it.
Speaker:That's weird.
Speaker:And then what we have on our side is biology.
Speaker:You know, this is what I say to women all the time when they're
Speaker:like, I'm really afraid of birth.
Speaker:You know, what do I do about that?
Speaker:Like, what's it matter? Who cares?
Speaker:Be afraid.
Speaker:A baby is coming out of your
Speaker:vagina. One way or another, it doesn't
Speaker:matter. If you're afraid, it's fine.
Speaker:Who's not afraid? It's fine.
Speaker:It's literally not a big deal.
Speaker:Just don't self sabotage yourself
Speaker:right you can totally be afraid.
Speaker:Just stay home.
Speaker:Your body will run a whole sequence.
Speaker:Your baby will emerge, you know, from your vagina.
Speaker:You will catch your baby and you will have.
Speaker:You know, evolved from the fear that's, you know, 4 generations
Speaker:deep in your system.
Speaker:You know, it's fine.
Speaker:And one of my favorite quotes is from one of my girlfriends,
Speaker:Yolanda. She says I feel fear, but I'm not
Speaker:afraid. And I love that so much.
Speaker:Like, can we just feel the fear? But that feels real different than
Speaker:being afraid.
Speaker:Yeah, so I think when you know
Speaker:these paradigms are so interesting because when you.
Speaker:When I have chosen to actually put.
Speaker:My whole life into creating the paradigm I want to see in the
Speaker:world, everything got really easy.
Speaker:I started making more money than
Speaker:I've ever made.
Speaker:The women showed up.
Speaker:The clarity came like it just got really easy.
Speaker:And the big psychological shift I made very purposefully because I
Speaker:wanted to see what it would be like to run a business this way
Speaker:was. And the kind of question I played
Speaker:with at the start of FBS was what would it feel like to run a
Speaker:business and do my work in the world without trying to convince
Speaker:anyone? Because pretty much everything I
Speaker:was doing in the birth world prior was trying to convince women not
Speaker:to go to the hospital.
Speaker:Which didn't work.
Speaker:You know, they all still went.
Speaker:It didn't work yeah and so that
Speaker:has, yeah, it's been pretty great.
Speaker:And it feels really different.
Speaker:In my system, I have so much more creativity and spaciousness, and
Speaker:boundaries are easier.
Speaker:Like, everything's just easier now
Speaker:that my.
Speaker:Like the psychology of my work for
Speaker:myself is I'm just kind of over here celebrating and doing my
Speaker:thing. And whoever wants to come play
Speaker:with me over here is totally welcome to.
Speaker:And if you don't like, great, best of luck.
Speaker:There's no savior complex anymore.
Speaker:And you know, I realized
Speaker:essentially that my hero.
Speaker:You know, my savior was
Speaker:unsustainable and it was actually fundamentally disempowering to the
Speaker:women, you know, that I was trying to serve.
Speaker:And so learning the tools of how to step out of that and create a
Speaker:non hierarchical midwifery practice and, you know, run all
Speaker:these different. Branches of this incredible
Speaker:platform from this.
Speaker:Like real respect and trust in
Speaker:women. And that they don't need to be
Speaker:saved. Like yes, it's horrific what's
Speaker:happening, but. They also can choose something
Speaker:else. And so I want to be a part of, you
Speaker:know, the paradigm that it gets as big as possible where finding
Speaker:those other options are as easy as possible.
Speaker:And that's what's happened with the podcast that I've done for the
Speaker:last five years is, you know, women.
Speaker:Just hearing that this many women just say no thanks, I'm going to
Speaker:just stay home.
Speaker:Has created, you know, a level of
Speaker:impact that I didn't I didn't know would happen.
Speaker:You know, it's just taken off like wildfire and I think that's a good
Speaker:reminder of how easy all of this is, because we have biology on our
Speaker:side, we have nature on our side, we have life on our side, right?
Speaker:So being in alignment with life.
Speaker:Is such a personal spiritual
Speaker:choice. And to enact natures biology
Speaker:through, you know, a woman's body.
Speaker:It's like a pretty simple choice
Speaker:to make in a lot of ways.
Speaker:Does that make sense?
Speaker:Oh, absolutely. yeah you've given me so many little pods I'd like to
Speaker:follow. I don't know if we'll which one
Speaker:will stick but the one is just to reflect and say that when I heard
Speaker:you speaking a moment ago, it resonated deeply around the place.
Speaker:I've written these poems that I wrote over the last few years like
Speaker:that we are already free poem that I shared.
Speaker:Everything you've just said was exactly because I when the whole
Speaker:like COVID thing kicked off at first I was like, here's these
Speaker:other stats, here's these things you should know.
Speaker:This doesn't make sense.
Speaker:Look, it doesn't make sense and it
Speaker:just caused.
Speaker:So much polarity.
Speaker:I was trying to convince people and show you and I realize like
Speaker:it. Within a few weeks I was like, I'm
Speaker:exhausted. I don't wanna do this anymore.
Speaker:And I just, I just went quiet, like I just shut.
Speaker:I shut up.
Speaker:But then I kept feeling this thing
Speaker:I'm like, well I still have truth.
Speaker:That is my truth.
Speaker:And how can I do it differently? And when the poems started coming
Speaker:through, it was exactly that.
Speaker:It wasn't to try and say you're
Speaker:wrong. It was just to say here is my
Speaker:story and if anyone else wants to come play like exactly what you
Speaker:just said, really resonate with that so it's beautiful to hear
Speaker:that impulse is such a universal impulse that if someone is feeling
Speaker:that impulse in themselves, not to prove other people wrong, but to
Speaker:embody fully their own truth, that that's really a valuable impulse
Speaker:to follow, that that's probably the one worth following.
Speaker:Well and I mean that's maturity right like that's a mature thing
Speaker:to do, to just kind of focus on your own business and put that
Speaker:out, right. That's like emotionally
Speaker:intelligent and mature.
Speaker:And so of course, good things come
Speaker:out of that.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah. And then you said
Speaker:around like the tools and the techniques etcetera that you use
Speaker:to build this business that you've done.
Speaker:So just on a practical level like what are the even just one of them
Speaker:a thing that has really been critical in you being able to
Speaker:sharpen the world? Say that you do.
Speaker:Well I work with, I worked with the same mentor since I was in my
Speaker:mid twenties and she's one of the main coaches of this company
Speaker:called the Conscious Leadership Group and so their website is
Speaker:conscious. Dot IS so anyone can check them
Speaker:out and they have lots of cool free resources and videos and
Speaker:stuff. So she is in the gay and Katie
Speaker:Hendricks lineage, the Byron Katie lineage, lots of amazing people.
Speaker:And so essentially she has taught me a framework to.
Speaker:Step out of blame helplessness, save your complex and how to be
Speaker:like we just said, kind of returning to my business and
Speaker:working with these 15 commitments.
Speaker:So there's this book anyone can
Speaker:get called the 15 commitments of conscious leadership.
Speaker:And it's kind of a funny book because it's written for the
Speaker:corporate world. So you kind of have to look past,
Speaker:you know, the examples will be like Henry's late on the supply
Speaker:chain at the factory, you know? And in the boardroom, the CEO's
Speaker:upset. Like, it's kind of silly and
Speaker:doesn't relate to my life at all right.
Speaker:So, you know, if you can kind of get past that, it's an incredible
Speaker:book and it teaches these 15 commitments, which they didn't
Speaker:necessarily make up.
Speaker:They just compiled a bunch of
Speaker:amazing tools yeah and so there are things like a commitment to
Speaker:taking responsibility and so really unpacking that concept and
Speaker:understanding how to apply that to my life, certainly not just in
Speaker:birth work. But in my marriage, in my
Speaker:mothering, in my social dynamics, my relationship to money, my
Speaker:relationship to my body, I mean, everything is material for these
Speaker:tools. And I got pretty obsessed with
Speaker:them in my mid twenties and yeah, just made a real commitment to
Speaker:them. It felt like I was finding the
Speaker:Holy Grail. It felt like.
Speaker:I tried all sorts of therapies and different modalities and, you
Speaker:know, I had a daily sodna practice and I was doing kundalini every
Speaker:day. And, you know, I was so
Speaker:enlightened and yet, you know, still had.
Speaker:Still felt quite victimized by others or felt, you know, really
Speaker:controlled by my own righteousness or whatever it was.
Speaker:And so these tools gave me really quick, applicable ways to shift
Speaker:out of those and into, yeah, radical responsibility, self
Speaker:discovery. And so some of the questions I
Speaker:work with that I just love are.
Speaker:Like one is.
Speaker:How is what's happening for me? And if you're, if you're
Speaker:interested in trying on, you know, some exploration into radical
Speaker:responsibility, you have to kind of go out and find it because we
Speaker:are completely programmed and there's nothing wrong with this,
Speaker:but we're completely programmed from a survival consciousness to
Speaker:experience the world as it's happening to me, right?
Speaker:We're at the effect of it.
Speaker:We live in an almost entirely
Speaker:reactive state, and it's not all bad.
Speaker:It's reacting to positive stuff too, right?
Speaker:It's not all just doom and gloom, mental suffering or something, but
Speaker:it's still pretty much all.
Speaker:If you track it, you'll see a
Speaker:reactive state, and so this is a whole different arena to play in
Speaker:of it. They refer to these three states
Speaker:of consciousness. When you shift out of victim
Speaker:consciousness to me, consciousness you shift into either through me
Speaker:as me or by me consciousness and so.
Speaker:Yeah, that's kind of just what I've been playing with now for the
Speaker:last seven eight nine ten years of what does it feel like to own my
Speaker:commitment to blame? What does it feel like to own my
Speaker:commitment to feeling victimized by XYZ?
Speaker:And what does it feel like to look for how I created this, look for
Speaker:how what? You know what's here for me,
Speaker:what's here for my learning and.
Speaker:You know that's about as powerful
Speaker:as it gets.
Speaker:Because when you are living in a
Speaker:bind, me through me as me, state of consciousness, you're
Speaker:completely allied with your life, like everything that happens.
Speaker:Can be played with, right? Everything that happens.
Speaker:Every hate mail I get, every person that betrays me, every, you
Speaker:know worry about money.
Speaker:Every single thing that happens.
Speaker:Is part of this playground right? So yeah, it's lots of fun, and it
Speaker:just gets more fun the more you do it.
Speaker:And that's pretty much where I hang out.
Speaker:And so I wanted to see what a business would look like kind of
Speaker:based on, yeah, taking radical responsibility being the
Speaker:resolution, which is one of the commitments.
Speaker:And I'm not saying I don't like still villainize like, obviously I
Speaker:do, but the maturity and, like, the skill for me has lied in
Speaker:owning it. You know?
Speaker:Like, I'm not confused anymore.
Speaker:I know when I'm blaming.
Speaker:I know when I'm victimizing.
Speaker:I know when I'm heroine.
Speaker:And once you like my mentor says, conscious people know when they're
Speaker:below the line is the term they use and get willing to shift.
Speaker:And that's amazing like, that's all.
Speaker:That's all.
Speaker:That's the trick.
Speaker:You know? That's the generic shit right
Speaker:there. A young padawan.
Speaker:Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker:That's beautiful.
Speaker:So i really only have one more question for you, that is, and I'm
Speaker:curious to know.
Speaker:So as a man, as a penis Harrow,
Speaker:sorry, I couldn't resist umm.
Speaker:How do you see men?
Speaker:Responding to this movement, to the Free Bird society, like, how
Speaker:is it? Because I have.
Speaker:I mean I actually fortunately, you know, we've just moved to a new
Speaker:area here and I think all of our friends are free birthing or at
Speaker:least home birthing with extreme like even one of my friends has
Speaker:just done the radical birth keepers.
Speaker:And so, like, it's a Baron Daniel.
Speaker:Oh yeah cool yeah, you live in her
Speaker:area. Yeah, yeah. So I've known Baron
Speaker:and Peter. They have been hugely influential
Speaker:in my life and we've been friends now for quite many years.
Speaker:And my fiance and I moved to this area specifically because there's
Speaker:a good crew of folks here.
Speaker:It's one of the main reasons
Speaker:because we just were a bit isolated where we were before,
Speaker:totally. And so it feels amazing because we
Speaker:haven't yet had a child and we're super keen and it's like on the
Speaker:cards, definitely in the next, like, I don't know, 18 months, I
Speaker:guess. I don't exactly know, but yeah.
Speaker:And so to be out here and have that support and I guess for
Speaker:myself, like, I'm one of the beautiful parts of seeing the
Speaker:videos, and obviously I focus on this because I'm a dude, but like
Speaker:watching how the men who are with their women when they're birthing
Speaker:there is a there's a fucking vibe.
Speaker:Like it's a vibe.
Speaker:And so just from your side, like how is that for men?
Speaker:I don't know if you can speak to that at all.
Speaker:Well, I mean, the short answer is it depends on your level of
Speaker:internalized misogyny. Ok, interesting.
Speaker:Now so like the misogynists don't like this right wait,
Speaker:Explain that. I don't.
Speaker:I don't get that, Tommy.
Speaker:Well, you know, massage, you know, misogyny is.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah right so essentially anti woman's liberation, right?
Speaker:So men who are narcissists, you know, entitled, run the household,
Speaker:very patriarchal.
Speaker:You know, everything centers
Speaker:around them. They like to control their women,
Speaker:you know, they run the show, you know, like, obviously I'm talking
Speaker:about a lot of men out there.
Speaker:They are not 13.
Speaker:Yeah, they're not too keen on women or their women.
Speaker:You know, going rogue, essentially, and.
Speaker:Cultivating, you know, ecstatic, let you know, layers of confidence
Speaker:and embodiment.
Speaker:So it really does it really, I
Speaker:mean it sincerely, like, it really depends on the level of misogyny
Speaker:that the man carries, how he orients around this, you know, so
Speaker:the spectrum is quite wide.
Speaker:I mean lots of men have fear
Speaker:around this and concern and I do feel compassion for like the
Speaker:average bear because they were not raised.
Speaker:Trusting birth, trusting women.
Speaker:You know, we're in a very anti
Speaker:woman culture, you know, in these respects.
Speaker:And so, yeah, lots of fathers to be feel very nervous about
Speaker:birthing without medical providers.
Speaker:It kind of seems like men go in two different directions once
Speaker:they've seen their women be traumatized in the system.
Speaker:The majority of them don't understand why the woman wouldn't
Speaker:go back, which is very odd to me.
Speaker:But there is such a deep level of.
Speaker:Ok, this is kind of a tangent, but it's like through the lens of
Speaker:misogyny. I would explain it this way, that
Speaker:men unconsciously, very frequently do not understand how a woman
Speaker:could birth without management.
Speaker:And so someone needs to be in
Speaker:charge of her.
Speaker:And when you take a doctor away,
Speaker:then it means it's got to be him.
Speaker:And so all these men, frequently I
Speaker:talked to them all the time, are like, well, I'm not a midwife.
Speaker:And they're completely missing the third option, which is crazy, but
Speaker:she could actually be in charge of herself, right.
Speaker:She's actually an adult, like it's so, it's so offensive.
Speaker:But you know, we have to kind of presence that we have many
Speaker:generations of this idea forming that a woman in labor is
Speaker:hysterical. You know, that birth is just death
Speaker:waiting around the corner.
Speaker:That it's so dangerous, that you
Speaker:know, and the like fabric of our society says that women can't be
Speaker:trusted and women, you know, can't make their own decisions.
Speaker:I mean, it's very alive today, so.
Speaker:That's why it's kind of some
Speaker:context under why I said it really does depend on your level of
Speaker:misogyny. It's OK to feel nervousness, of
Speaker:course, but birth is a woman's game.
Speaker:You know, men are not birthing.
Speaker:Men, if invited, have the enormous
Speaker:privilege to witness something, you know, quite unique and quite
Speaker:special. And it is incredible to see.
Speaker:I would say most fathers I have been with in birth are quite
Speaker:awkward and don't know what they're doing and so it is nice to
Speaker:have. Another woman there kind of
Speaker:helping massage the energetics of the house.
Speaker:But also, of course, I've seen like my partner was amazing and
Speaker:was the quiet tree.
Speaker:Didn't say a word, but held a lot
Speaker:of energetic space for me.
Speaker:Never wavered.
Speaker:You know, never furrowed a brow at me.
Speaker:Was just.
Speaker:The tree and that.
Speaker:That's been an analogy.
Speaker:I use a lot with fathers because I
Speaker:coach a lot of fathers.
Speaker:You know how to support their
Speaker:women and that's the vision i you know, offer it to you if in case
Speaker:we never talk again that that's kind of your role, you know with
Speaker:your partner is.
Speaker:You know, she's like the fairy
Speaker:who's going to fly in and out of the tree and she's gonna fly out
Speaker:to the cosmos or go down to the underworld.
Speaker:And it's a lot.
Speaker:She's got a lot of work to do and
Speaker:it's going to be crazy.
Speaker:And, you know, it might be very
Speaker:physical. She might be pooping and puking
Speaker:and crying and begging for help, or she might be like gone and she
Speaker:might be, you know, having like a full on psychedelic experience or
Speaker:a little bit of both and.
Speaker:Your role, you know, as the father
Speaker:of the partner umm.
Speaker:I think of it for myself as a
Speaker:birth attendant is like, to be this oak tree that is very in the
Speaker:room. I'm not birthing.
Speaker:You're not birthing.
Speaker:And so it's not our job to fly all
Speaker:around and be ungrounded and be untethered.
Speaker:And we're not going to the cosmos to bring this little soul here.
Speaker:We're not, like, in dialogue with the spirit world.
Speaker:We're here in the room.
Speaker:And so how do we hold that space
Speaker:and, you know, feel our, you know, like the tether from our spinal
Speaker:cord going all the way down into the earth and feeling really held.
Speaker:By the physicality of your home and the earth.
Speaker:And I think of this tether, you know, from the from the partner's
Speaker:heart, you know, out to the woman so that she can kind of fly away.
Speaker:But she still has a tether here so that it's fine wherever she needs
Speaker:to go. Even if she needs, like, lose her
Speaker:mind for a while, it's fine because we have her and we're
Speaker:going to stay in the room umm.
Speaker:Yeah, because especially now that
Speaker:I've had a child that shit gets crazy.
Speaker:It is very psychedelic and who it is really wild in that altered
Speaker:state of consciousness and my husband Johnny really just knew
Speaker:how to root down and hold and not disrupt, not ask, not disturb
Speaker:ever. He just held it and it he didn't
Speaker:make it about him.
Speaker:And that's I see men who are used
Speaker:to having things made about them.
Speaker:Maybe they're very emotional,
Speaker:maybe they're very self involved, maybe they're very nervous, maybe
Speaker:they're very insecure and they don't know how to step out of that
Speaker:and just let this be about her.
Speaker:You know, and of course, like
Speaker:you're having an experience, you're becoming a father, you're
Speaker:getting to witness the miracle of life, like you're a part of it, of
Speaker:course, but.
Speaker:She's literally doing all of the
Speaker:work, you know, the spiritual work, the physical work, the
Speaker:social work, like all of it, you know?
Speaker:And so anything we can do to.
Speaker:Step back and see what happens
Speaker:when a woman becoming mother is truly centered.
Speaker:It's just magnificent and it sets her up for a blissful postpartum,
Speaker:you know, blissful mothering relationship anyway.
Speaker:So yeah, i think with good intention.
Speaker:Men can show up and be really awesome, but it requires some
Speaker:serious maturity to contend with, the parts of it that scares you,
Speaker:and the parts you want to control.
Speaker:And the parts that aren't about
Speaker:you? That's kind of where I see men
Speaker:struggle beautiful thank you so much.
Speaker:That a lot of that resonates with me around my own work in showing
Speaker:up in the world and how I show up in my own shadow.
Speaker:And I can hear a lot of reflections in there that are of
Speaker:value to me and I hope for any other men who have listened to
Speaker:this. So yeah.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Thank you, Emily.
Speaker:It's you're welcome.
Speaker:It's a real pleasure.
Speaker:And if there is any last thing that you'd like to share, just
Speaker:something that maybe for those who are at the beginning of this kind
Speaker:of journey of realizing that things aren't what we've been told
Speaker:and that they actually have to.
Speaker:Be responsible for it all.
Speaker:And like, how intense that can be.
Speaker:Well, yeah, it's true.
Speaker:The invitation.
Speaker:Once you have the invitation, it's
Speaker:like it's anyway.
Speaker:So yeah, just any.
Speaker:Like, I would yeah i mean, I would just plug how to find me so that
Speaker:if you're into this, you can just dive in.
Speaker:You know, there's so many different ways to interact with my
Speaker:work in the world and the women that I work with.
Speaker:We've referenced the podcast throughout.
Speaker:And so that's a free resource, obviously, that you can find.
Speaker:It's just called the free Birth Society podcast and that has five
Speaker:seasons. We're heading into our sixth
Speaker:season primarily of women sharing births outside the system and
Speaker:they're very redemptive yeah and how many flavors it can look to
Speaker:learn to take responsibility and say yes to what you really want
Speaker:and in your life and creating the family dynamic that you want.
Speaker:So we have the podcast is amazing.
Speaker:And then we have a private
Speaker:membership where I hang out.
Speaker:That's, you know, for women only.
Speaker:And you don't have to be a mother to join.
Speaker:And we have the complete guide to free birth, which is an incredible
Speaker:course that breaks all of this down from a childbirth education,
Speaker:you know, lens.
Speaker:And then you reference the radical
Speaker:birth keeper school, which is an authentic midwifery program that I
Speaker:teach with one of my business partners.
Speaker:Her name is Yolanda Norris Clark.
Speaker:And it's just incredible.
Speaker:And it's really breaking down a lot of the stuff and way more
Speaker:detail and learning how to cultivate the self.
Speaker:Authority to do this work in the world if you're called towards
Speaker:authentic midwifery and yeah.
Speaker:Lots of stuff.
Speaker:You can just go to freebirthsociety.com
Speaker:freebirthsociety.com thank you so much.
Speaker:But yeah, I will definitely share all the links that you've shared
Speaker:in the show notes and make sure that everyone gets total access to
Speaker:all of that.
Speaker:And you know, your Instagram is
Speaker:also a great starting place for anyone who's kind of wanting to
Speaker:dip their toes into that world.
Speaker:And I don't know if you have time,
Speaker:but I wanted to offer you something just as a thank you from
Speaker:me to you.
Speaker:I would like to play you a song
Speaker:and it's totally fine if you don't have time or if you aren't into
Speaker:it, but let me know.
Speaker:Go for it.
Speaker:I'm free till noon, yeah fantastic.
Speaker:So this is a song that is called radical and it's actually a song
Speaker:that connected me with the lovely Freya.
Speaker:Who I think you guys are connected.
Speaker:Very fair kellett i don't know how to say her surname, but anyway,
Speaker:she. This is a song that I've been
Speaker:thinking about for a long time.
Speaker:And it was again, in response to
Speaker:everything that's unfolding right now or has been unfolding for
Speaker:generations, actually. And that's this last COVID thing
Speaker:for me was like a real kick in the ass to actually see, like, I'm
Speaker:not, I'm not, I'm not in for that.
Speaker:I'm in for this.
Speaker:And yeah.
Speaker:And so this is the song that kind
Speaker:of talks to that, and that's why it's called radical.
Speaker:And also it was, it was amber of mythic medicine who told me that
Speaker:the word radical is that which rises from the root.
Speaker:Of that which comes from the root.
Speaker:And I just think it's such a
Speaker:powerful reclamation of language to reclaim a word like that.
Speaker:So yes, thank you.
Speaker:This is for you, just honoring you
Speaker:and your work in the world.
Speaker:And thank you so much.
Speaker:It doesn't matter what you say or do.
Speaker:I already feel true.
Speaker:Blossoming real deep inside of me.
Speaker:Radical is bearing fruit, so I'll say this with our love to you.
Speaker:Fuck you if you think I'll uproot myself just to play a part in your
Speaker:living hell.
Speaker:Fuck you if you think I'll sink in
Speaker:the light, I rise for light and life.
Speaker:As the fruit contains a living sea, our mother will restore.
Speaker:Act on this and we're already free.
Speaker:Maria, raise your ears.
Speaker:Raise your roar once more.
Speaker:Fuck you if you think I'll uproot myself just to play a part in your
Speaker:living head.
Speaker:Fuck you if you think I'll sink in
Speaker:the lie I rise for light.
Speaker:Please don't mistake me for
Speaker:replying, old fighter.
Speaker:I'm the heart of love.
Speaker:I'm shining brighter.
Speaker:If you misplaced or misaligned
Speaker:your power, join us.
Speaker:Sing it louder.
Speaker:Fuck you if you think I'll uproot myself.
Speaker:Just to play a part in your living hell.
Speaker:Fuck you think? Thank you, candlelight.
Speaker:I rise for light and light.
Speaker:Is that one titled fuck you?
Speaker:Maybe it should be.
Speaker:It's called radical, but maybe
Speaker:fuck you is a more appropriate title.
Speaker:I love it sketchy.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:Thank you again, Emily.
Speaker:Thank you and blessings on the
Speaker:path. I look forward to connecting again
Speaker:and I hope to have you back on here someday when we can talk
Speaker:about wow remember back in the old days when people used to birth in
Speaker:hospitals? Oh my God, seriously, let me know
Speaker:when your girl gets pregnant and we'll talk.
Speaker:I definitely will.
Speaker:That'll be an exciting day.
Speaker:Thank you, Emily blessings all the best.
Speaker:Take care.
Speaker:Alright, beautiful people.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Thank you, thank you.
Speaker:What a blessing to share this with you Emily.
Speaker:Fantastic Free Birth society.
Speaker:Be sure to check them out at all
Speaker:the places you mentioned.
Speaker:You can find them on Instagram,
Speaker:free birthsociety.com etcetera. They've got loads of
Speaker:free epic stuff as well as paid phenomenal memberships for women
Speaker:and courses on birthing and all kinds of amazing, wonderful stuff.
Speaker:So thank you for this, for joining us, for this episode of we are
Speaker:already free, this beautiful simple remembrance that we can
Speaker:reclaim. Our sovereignty, we can reclaim
Speaker:that inalienable, inescapable truth, that we are already free,
Speaker:that we are the divine experiencing itself, and we come
Speaker:in through the portal of birth and it is critical how that happens,
Speaker:and it is critical that we reclaim that.
Speaker:And we take responsibility for that.
Speaker:At least that is the invitation.
Speaker:It is the choice.
Speaker:So thank you again to all of you.
Speaker:Please do be sure to check this
Speaker:podcast out further.
Speaker:Nathan dot Africa forward Slash
Speaker:podcast. There are going to be amazing
Speaker:guests coming up and I'm just so excited to be sharing this with
Speaker:you. I wish you well.
Speaker:Take care of yourselves.
Speaker:Take care of each other.
Speaker:And remember we are already free blessings hey there.
Speaker:This is Nathan again.
Speaker:Just one quick more thing.
Speaker:I that previous outro i recorded just after the session with Emily
Speaker:and I really just wanted to reiterate and request that this is
Speaker:the time.
Speaker:If you're still listening to this,
Speaker:please go to Apple Podcasts.
Speaker:Go to all the places where
Speaker:podcasts are. You can actually go to Nathan dot
Speaker:Africa forward Slash podcast and I will make sure there's a button
Speaker:there so you can easily go and subscribe and leave a review and
Speaker:share and all those things.
Speaker:It may seem like a small action to
Speaker:you. It'll take 30 seconds a minute,
Speaker:and what it will mean is that this podcast.
Speaker:Show up for many more people.
Speaker:Someone sees a review, they go,
Speaker:oh, that might be something I should listen to.
Speaker:Or if enough people review and subscribe in the first few weeks
Speaker:and months of this podcast, then it means it'll show up in the new
Speaker:and noteworthy parts of Apple Podcasts, which then could be seen
Speaker:by tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people who could then
Speaker:get these beautiful messages directly into their inboxes.
Speaker:I mean, what a phenomenal thing.
Speaker:This is so awesome.
Speaker:So please take that action.
Speaker:It makes a difference.
Speaker:It matters.
Speaker:And that really is it for today.
Speaker:So thank you.
Speaker:Again, it's been a real pleasure
Speaker:and I hope to hear from you sometime soon.
Speaker:It's one of the strange things about podcasting is I don't know
Speaker:who's out there, so find me on Nathan dot Africa forward Slash
Speaker:podcast. I'll have links to my socials.
Speaker:You can send me an email, you could leave me a voice note.
Speaker:I would love to hear from you and I would love to collaborate and Co
Speaker:create this podcast together.
Speaker:So thanks again.
Speaker:Blessings on your path.
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