Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode, Kimberly and April discuss her most recent book of poetry titled Matter / Mother which shares about April’s experience of traveling through the underworld of grief, hardship, and heartbreak while mothering her young child. Together, they share their desires for a culture that makes space for the depth of mothering experiences and stories through all of the different seasons of life. They also discuss how to bear the pain and responsibility of both creating a world we want our children to live in while simultaneously inhabiting the one that currently exists. Overall, their vulnerability and honest reflections from their differing seasons of mothering offers language to those deep experiences and possibility for all mothers.

 

Bio

April Tierney is a poet, activist, craftswoman, mother, and lover of stories. Her work follows threads of ecopoetics, myth, culture, and lineage. She has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and featured in Orion Magazine, Deep Times: A Journal of the Work that Reconnects, Clarion Poetry Magazine, and Real Ground Journal, among others.

 

What She Shares:

–”Matter / Mother” poetry and mothering

–Mothering in the upper world while traversing the underworld

–Creative process while mothering

–Motherhood hardship and joys of different seasons

–Creating the world we want our children to inhabit

 

What You’ll Hear:

–Latest book “Matter Mother” of poetry

–Reading of “Birth Story” poem

–Birth as animalistic and mythic

–Decision behind black cover on book

–Longing for more mothering stories from underworld journey

–Writing a book during early mothering

–Listening to experiences not from our own

–Finding language for mothering experiences

–Finding the right voices on mothering experiences

–Birth culturally accepted as traumatic

–Mothering in the underworld while raising children in the upperworld

–Mothering as existential

–Heartbreak of mothering in these times

–Unable to talk about lived, ongoing way while holding children

–Fantasy of modern motherhood

–Modern living as kind of trauma we learn to cope with

–Four forest fires in three days

–Evacuating from home from forest fires

–Pausing from writing and trusting the quiet places

–Writing as torture until its tended to

–Bringing forth for the world what is asking to come through

–Books as living, breathing things

–Creative portion of mothering in tension with energy and needs

–Kimberly’s surprise of mothering young adulthood

–Grieving and loving during mothering in all phases

–Importance of sharing from different stages of mothering

–Physical versus psychological demands of mothering

–Noticing the glory spots of mothering

–Sending children out into the world

–Creating the world we want our children to live in

 

Resources

Website: https://www.apriltierney.com/

IG: @apriltierney11

 

In this episode, Kimberly and Marysia discuss how they’ve navigated the challenges and benefits of single motherhood. In many ways, their lives and stories run parallel: surprising pregnancies, marrying into another culture, becoming single mothers with babies, and living out single motherhood while being entrepreneurs. This honest, raw, and tender conversation offers vulnerable testimonies and nuggets of wisdom for other single mothers. They emphasize the difficulties but importance of building kinship and community, undoing internalized shame, and tending to community. Marysia’s School of the Sacred Wild is now open for enrollment with Kimberly as a guest teacher!

 

Bio

Marysia Miernowska is a teacher, author, Earth activist, green witch, folk herbalist and healer rooted in the Wise Woman Tradition of Healing. Born in Poland, she carries with her a lineage of European folk herbalism. Marysia honors plants as sentient beings, elders, healers and teachers. As a Plant Spirit Communicator, Marysia channels messages from the Earth spirits and guides students to connect with plant spirits through meditation and through their bodies, to receive guidance and learn about the constituents, energetics and properties of plants. Registration is now open for the School of the Sacred Wild and can be accessed through the link below.

What She Shares:

–Journeys into pregnancy

–Trauma and shame around single mothering

–Finding kinship and community

 

What You’ll Hear:

–Marysia’s surprising journey into motherhood

–Managing cultural differences as a couple

–Traumatic experience becoming a single mother with a baby

–Kimberly’s pregnancy and divorce

–Single motherhood sisterhood

–Navigating single motherhood challenges and joys

–Marysia entering single motherhood

–Receiving judgment for divorcing

–Physical manifestations of wounds and healing

–Functional freeze reactions for survival

–Finding the village as single mothers

–Fairy godmothers and aunties

–Bringing in chosen family for children

–Cultural differences in background and local living

–Anticipating the death of empty nest

–Reviewing mothering choices

–Grief and cultural isolation

–Predictability and calm in hiring anticipatory help

–Working through shame in asking for more help

–Nervous systems and being trapped

–How culture is physically organized disruptive to kinship

–Spontaneous social interactions

–Taking risks and extending our ways of gathering

–Doing it imperfectly and letting go of shame

–Tending to the ecosystem of families, parents, and single mothers

–School of the Sacred Wild herbalism program

–Creating kinship and a deep sense of belonging between human & non-human

–Holding vitality of the Mother archetype and cutting back, releasing, and discerning

–September 7th registration closes

–10% off code for listeners

–Kimberly to guest teach in School of Sacred Wild

 

Resources

Website: https://www.schoolofthesacredwild.com/

IG: @marysia_miernowska

Course Link for Listeners: here

 

With special guest host Stephen Jenkinson, Kimberly and Stephen consult with three engaged couples and an unmarried woman to wonder aloud about the institution of marriage. 

Stephen describes his experience, when he was asked to marry several couples, how he did his homework. 

• What does it mean to approach matrimony as something other than a predictable, foreseen conclusion? 
• Are weddings overly performative?
• Is it possible for a wedding to feel authentic? 

Kimberly describes what she learned from having a wedding in the working terreiros culture of Bahia, Brazil. 

Stephen describes why a ceremony has no audience - it only has witnesses and participants. Stephen and Kimberly contend with how contemporary couples, longing for ceremony in their matrimony, strive for integrity in their union.

This episode is just the tip of iceberg.    Starting February 25th, Stephen and Kimberly will start their 5-part Online Series "Forgotten Pillars: Patrimony, Matrimony, Kinship, Ancestors & Ceremony."   They will dive much deeper into the lessons gleaned from working cultures of the past to inform meaningful ways for couples, families, and communities to come together for experiences that linger long past the "big day."    Find out more or join us: https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/forgotten-pillars/

In Jaguar Bites, Kimberly draws from her new book "Call of the Wild" to break down some big nervous concepts into bite-sized pieces. The bites clarify some of the major ideas in somatic experiencing, polyvagal theory, sexual education, and the birth world. 

In this bite, Kimberly talks about how yoga and meditation impacts the nervous system is not always obvious or straightforward.

Elizabeth Lesser is the author of several bestselling books, including Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes; Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow and Marrow: Love, Loss & What Matters Most. She is the cofounder of Omega Institute, recognized internationally for its workshops and conferences in wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change. She has given two popular TED talks, and is one of Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul 100, a collection of a hundred leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity.

 

The Skill of Culture Building, The Making of Tribe, Spiritual Colonialism, and Grief Practice with Matthew Stillman.

 

We dive into the big questions of where we are at in this point in time- what is community? How do we make it? Are we right to want tribe, and if so, what does that really mean? We also touch on the deepest parts of our connection from Earth and place, and how that can come to bear with "medicine," Ayahuasca and spiritual colonialism.

 

What Matt Shares: 

-How the city you are from is different than the place you are from -Origin of the word “tribe" - tribe is much more than an affinity

-How race + culture intersect, and the origin of culture

-The history of Ayahuasca and spiritual colonialism

-The need for grief practice

 

 

Luisa Muhr joins me to talk about her work in Family Constellations Therapy, including intergenerational trauma resulting from the holocaust as well as racial trauma within the United States. We talk about the importance of community space in a therapy setting, why working within an energy field is so effective, and staying somatically engaged while online. 

What She Shares:

• What Family Constellations is and how it works
• The importance of honoring our ancestors and those in our systems
• How working with the impact of the Holocaust has shaped her work in the world

 

What You’ll Hear:

• Working within an energy field
• Unwinding old patterns through ancestry work
• The difference between drama therapy and Family Systems
• Who is included in our family systems
• The importance of speaking a story out of secrecy
• The value of processing within community 
• How working with archetypes can help us process and heal
• Restoring appropriate predator energy
• Creating space for healing intergenerational social traumas
• Weaving Family Constellations into your own work
• Processing beyond the overt narrative
• The importance of ritual in healing
• Connecting into the energy field even when separated by geographical distance
• Identifying what you need
• Using technology to continue our somatic practices in community
• The difference between the outer relationship and narrative, and the internal experience
• Centering yourself in your own healing work
• How your healing impacts your children

 

Resources

Website: www.familyconstellationsnyc.com 
Website: www.luisamuhr.com 
IG: @familyconstellations.nyc

 

Luisa Muhr is a New-York-based artist and healer, specializing in Family & Systemic Constellations. As the descendant of her great-grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, Constellation work has always played an integral part in Luisa’s life. She provides group workshops and one-on-one sessions.

Liz Koch rejoins me for a third interview, this time to discuss whiteness and colonization in the body. We explore how those pieces show up in the physical body and sensory systems, why it matters, and the importance of physical movement in anti-racism.

What Liz Shares: 

• The interconnection between how we use our bodies and our racialization of bodies
• Racialized movement patterns 
• Recognizing racialized nervous system responses
• How the idealized body in fitness is not only white, but also male, and how that impacts female fitness

What You’ll Hear:

• Noticing how performative behaviors re-iterate a frozen spine
• Changing our view to see Body as Process, rather than Body as Object
• Valuing the expressivity of the human body
• Re-assessing the idealized human body to include expression
• Developing your sense of self through knowing primal responses
• Examining your ancestral relationship with colonization
• Using movement patterns to re-enforce or interrupt white body supremacy
• Engaging with your psoas to feel more grounded 
• Letting go of control as decolonization
• Becoming available for genuine responses rather than socialized reactions
• Questioning what whiteness looks like in the white female body
• Tracking subtle whiteness
• Healing ancestral trauma through owning your Eros
• Decolonization as an ecological imperative
• Participating in society as a community member, not as an individual
• Re-membering into culture and community and out of strategy
• The more animal you are, the more human you become
• Animal body as coherence
• Pre-empting anti-racial work through movement and the sensory system
• If your body can’t move, you can’t feel your instincts

 

Resources: 

https://coreawareness.com/

IG: @stalkingwildpsoas

 

Liz Koch is an international teacher and author with 42 years of experience, focusing on kinesthetic intelligence and somatic awareness. She is the author of “The Psoas Book,” “Unraveling Scoliosis,” and “Stalking Wild Psoas: Embodying Your Core Intelligence.”

-Story of the Apollo/ Artemis birth

-The role of twins in mythology- two sides of a coin

-Artemis is the goddess of childbirth, when she is born, she immediately midwife’s her brother’s birth

-Artemis- Moon Goddess, darkness, untamed;  Apollo- Sun God, bright, civilized

-How are these archetypes helpful in birth preparation?

-Ordered culture over wild nature

-In an Appolonian setting (hospital,) how do you bring Artemis?

-Kimberly’s birth experience and handing over power in Apollonian way to midwife

-Pandemic popped the Apollonian illusion of control and tossed us into Artemisian realm

-Children are Artemisian

-How do we compromise the Artemisian in Apollonian structure in spite of our ideals?

-Parents beating themselves up in pandemic for kids falling behind

-The blurring of public and private

-Did birth move you to be more Apollonian or Artemisian?

-The grief and loss through the pandemic

 

Dr. Britta Bushnell (she/her) is a wife and mother, author of Transformed by Birth, veteran childbirth educator, celebrated speaker, mythologist, and specialist in childbirth, relationship, and parenting. For over 20 years, Dr. Bushnell has worked with individuals and couples as they prepare for the life-changing experience of giving birth. Her work with parents has been enriched by her doctoral work in mythology and psychology, her years spent as former co-owner of Birthing From Within, as well as her dedicated study of solution-focused brief therapy, storytelling, sustaining sexual vibrancy, and helping romantic partnerships thrive even during parenthood.

What Clelia Shares:

• Her journey with money coming from generational wealth
• Accepted gender roles within her community and her work with Mama Gena and Barbara Stanny 
• Turning point in her journey about her role as a woman came with having an abortion
• How she came to terms with money, wanting to enter the “marble hall of the daddies,” and getting there

What You’ll Learn:

• What gender roles look like in communities with generational wealth
• System of dependence in humanitarian aid paralleled system of dependence of being wealthy and feeling that you will be taken care of
• Women are outside of the worlds of money + commerce
• Revenue - costs = profits
• Assuming she would have a non-accretive job, and a virtuous, non-threatening in dating
• Thinking business school was a “world of benevolent daddies”
• Business school is 75% male, 25% female (the one professional school that remains disproportionately male)
• What business school is really like
• The shift to be motivated by money and power
• Interviewing women in business, and if they’d left, why had they left?
• Shifting structures and logistics in keeping women in workforce, but there is something much more profound than “solving” the logistical problems
• Generations and stages of feminism in business, the metaphor of a building
• Few models for feminine leadership
• Codeshifting women do in corporate jobs
• Online businesses are operating outside of the core systems of power that exist (real estate, technology, finance)
• The US is not a true capitalist country, it is a corporatist country 
• We give corporations (not people ) welfare, with bailouts
• Market-based system, where both people come as empowered transactors
• What about reparations- how do we level things so people are empowered transactors? How do we level set the system?
• What rich people really do or think- are they Democrats or Republicans?
• Economy managed on merits, based on financial outcomes
• 2500 years of white supremacist patriarchy that we’ve lived in, and we are in a transition
• Developing a vocabulary of collective questioning
• Being a channel and gauging with her intuition when deciding whether to invest
• Why it’s taboo to state your sex within business, even if that may be informing your communication style
• Does she look for female-run companies to invest in?
• Masculine as triangle, feminine as a circle