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

In this episode, Natalie and Kimberly dive deep into the choose your own hormone phenomenon. They discuss an evolutionary biologist's perspective of individual vs. group think when it comes to women’s health, the connections between hormones and reproductive health issues like endometriosis and PCOS, as well as the evolutionary case for grandmothering.

Bio

Natalie Dinsdale, PhD is an evolutionary biologist, a researcher, an astrologer, a dancer, and a mother. She investigates how evolutionary dynamics shape features of sexuality, reproduction, and health & disease in humans.

What you will hear:

• Carl Jung as inspiration for ideas on individual experience vs. groupthink - mass psychology
• The true person vs. The statistical person
• While individuals matter, her research is on patterns of populations changing over time
• Pregnancy screening for women in late 30s
• Trusting intuition around medical choices
• Endometriosis - is menstrual fluid the cause of legions?
• Bi-polar disorder’s connections to oxytocin
• Do people with PCOS have a uterine that contracts less?
• How does Natalie’s research relate to connective tissue, collagen, and parasympathetic responses?
• Oxytocin doesn’t only mean good
• Trade-offs in evolutionary biology - activities and functions that have to happen for evolution to occur.
• What is the effect of high testosterone in women and PCOS?
• How do females of a species obtain the resources they need to reproduce?
• Choose your own hormone phenomenon in menopause treatment
• There is good evidence that grandmothering has benefits to mothers and daughters

Resources

website: https://www.nataliedinsdale.com/

substack: https://natalield.substack.com/