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/

In this episode, Kimberly and Chris dive deep into the impact of travel on their lives and the consequences of tourism in places they call home. As two world travelers, who have each spent a decade living abroad, Kimberly and Chris consider what they have learned about home, hospitality, and culture from places far from the lands they were raised. They discuss how the pandemic impacted travel to where Chris resides in Mexico, one of two countries that kept its borders open? How Air BnB’s, second homes, and passive income have changed the real estate landscape for future generations? They wonder what it would look like to re-imagine the set of relationships and responsibilities one has if they “belong” to their neighborhood? They ask what if we imagined both our “leisure” and our “work” as connected to the place we live? And how does the question of confinement to home, so relevant to new mothers, show up in the “post-pandemic” summer of 2024?

Bio

Chris Christou is a writer, educational curator, and activist. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, he moved to Oaxaca, Mexico in 2015 after a decade of delirious wanderlust. In 2016, Chris began concurrently working in and writing about the tourism industry, founding Oaxaca Profundo, a deep learning organization focused on food culture and radical hospitality. In 2021, alongside friends and strangers, he organized and launched the End of Tourism Podcast. He is the author of a book of poetry entitled the Black Braid of Memory, as well as forthcoming books on the psychedelic culture, the unauthorized history of tourism, and radical hospitality. Finally, he is a student of all things chocolate and cacao-related.

What You’ll Here

• Being at home in other places
• Are places “back to normal”?
• Are we “post-pandemic”?
• Mexico as an escape route for coping with Covid culture
• How is a sense of home impacted by tourism?
• What does it mean to be forced to stay at home and the response is to get as far away as fast as possible?
• Wanderlust - wanting to be everywhere and by virtue of that not wanting to be anywhere
• How much of tourism an unwillingness to be where one is?
• What does it mean to consider what the place you call home needs? And what you can offer that place?
• I don’t think you can be responsible to a place if you’re elsewhere
• The history of mobility in north American Culture
• How to re-neighbor
• Seeing places as temporary makes them disposable
• How the pandemic led to lots of profit-driven real estate aquisitions
• The impact of Air Bnbs in tourist destinations
• Do we make our homes for ourselves or for our parents and others we want to welcome people
• How do locals become second class servants or mascot for Instagram world views?
• Dehumanization is a two way street in the tourist industry
• Leaving one expensive city for a less expensive city you bring the landlords with you.
• The un-sustainability of second homes
• Hospitality is complex - learning a culture to invoke hospitality with the stranger
• How difficult staying at home is for a new mother?
• Feeling confined when trying to make home with a baby
• Having family in and of two cultures
• Travel vegans vs. living it up

Resources

https://www.chrischristou.net/

chrischristou.substack.com

IG - @zajorino / @theendoftourism / @oaxacaprofundo

In this episode, Kimberly and Lauren discuss her teaching journey, which led to the restorative exercise techniques Lauren offers in the women’s health field. As a lifelong mover, Lauren went through several different yoga trainings and anatomical frameworks to arrive at a simple truth: there isn’t a right or wrong, good or bad when it comes to understanding your body’s needs. They discuss re-writing injury stories, and consider what leads women to medically intervene at different phases of life. In addition, Kimberly and Lauren talk about raising teenage girls. In this open hearted conversation, two somatic experiencing practitioners talk through their way of practicing what they teach.

Bio

Lauren Ohayon isan internationally recognized yoga + Pilates teacher specializing in core and pelvic floor issues. She has been teaching for the past two decades. Lauren creates online exercise programs that are challenging, unique, safe, sustainable and life-changing.

In addition to yoga and Pilates, she is certified as a Restorative Exercise Specialist™, in Neurokinetic Therapy® and in Anatomy in Motion. The web site Holy Shift yoga was her first online baby and has since become this web site under her own name. Nothing has changed but the name. Learn more at www.laurenohayon.com

What You’ll Hear

• Supporting women in training their bodies
• The intersection of Anatomy and the Nervous system
• The pelvic floor world
• Movement as soothing
• Injuries as a yoga teacher
• Needing to dig less healing wells, instead dig one deep well
• Set one on a path of a more mindful way of moving
• Re-writing the stories of our injuries
• Distinguishing anatomy and biomechanics
• Somatic nervous system approach to exercise
• Feldenkrais technique was a big influence
• Letting your body teach you
• What leads us to try and intervene in our bodies as women at different life phases
• Good filters for not entertaining the cult/“you should” mindset
• Diet and protein
• Being sensory following nature and desire for warmth
• Parenting teens
• A mother who was a very experimental/exploratory teen
• Consent communication and safety
• Restoring your core- a central support system that receives and transmits
• To be restorative is to not approach the body through good/bad right/wrong anatomical frameworks
• Accepting the body’s changes with aging

Resources

IG: @thelaurenohayon

Website: www.laurenohayon.com

With fellow educator and Orphan Wisdom Scholar Johannah Reimer, Kimberly discusses Johannah’s long cultivated journey with Girl Groups that work on collective rites of passage. They explore the difference between weekend and longer form rites of passage processes for girls crossing the threshold to adolescence and womanhood, as well as ways to de-emphasize soul work that doesn't center "the self." Johannah emphasizes the impact she has seen guiding Girls Groups and their families into relationships that reflect boundaries, values, and connection. Johannah talks through her passionate approach to the Matricarchical archetype, as well as their shared thoughts on being a single parent. Johanna describes her upcoming 9-month Girl Group facilitator training “Pathways to Womanhood” where she shares her elemental curriculum, which has been honed over 10 years of work with girls of all ages. Links to a free workshop and the facilitator training below.

Bio

Johannah Reimer is a soulcentric educator, ceremonialist, teen mentor, and an artist of many trades. Trained as a Waldorf teacher, Johannah has been working with children of all ages for over 20 years and holds a particular passion for tweens/teens striving to meet their developmental needs for mentorship and initiation in a culture that has forgotten how to do so. An apprentice of visionaries: Sage Hamilton and Melissa Michaels of SOMA Source, Johannah has worked for many years as a Waldorf teacher under the guidance of her elder Sage, and as an embodied leader for international youth in movement based Rites of Passage with Golden Bridge & Golden Girls Global.

What She Shares

• Initiatory rites for girls crossing the threshold into adolescence

• Village mindedness in a Culture without village norms

• Severance - a death happening in rites of passage

• Stepping into a threshold, into a new phase of being

• What does it mean when girls go on a quest to leave childhood behind and then return back to their parents and community?

• Parents also cross a threshold when their children go on such a quest.

• A year long process that she does with 5th graders

• The conflation of big experiences with rites of passage

• Distinguishing between a rite of passage vs. a threshold

• How short-term retreats are often not living up to the term rites of passage

• Girls Groups are designed for a longer-term structure within a collective

• The power of collective work vs. over-emphasis on the self

• Working with teens you sometimes need an iron fist and a velvet glove

• The power of improvisation when working with teens

• The power of parents letting go of control

• Parents fear of their own children: important to assert boundaries/values and stay connected

• Parents: “Stay true. Stay the course.”

• As a child of divorce, the challenge of being a single parent

• Gathering the men around the son of a single mother

• She describes her upcoming free class for anyone who feels the call to be a village auntie, as well as her intimate 9-month Girl Group facilitator training.

• The power of the Matricarchical archetype and Village Aunties.

Resources

Pathways to Womanhood - Girls Group Facilitator Training

Becoming a Village Auntie (Free Training)

www.wakefulnature.com

In this episode, Kimberly discusses wild mothering, elder mothers, and mothering from our centers with Tami Lynn Kent, returned special guest, women’s health healer, elder mother, and teacher of previous Jaguar classes. We discuss how to remain in true relationship with the feminine, unlearning how we’ve embodied patriarchy, and living and mothering from our feminine centers. She also discusses the challenges of mothering during these times, especially for mothers of teens and young adults. Ultimately, she offers deep wisdom and medicine for staying true to our centers during these fractured times.

Bio

Tami Lynn Kent is a women’s health physical therapist, founder of the original method of Holistic Pelvic Care™ for women, and author of “Wild Feminine: Finding Power, Spirit & Joy in the Female Body,” “Wild Creative,” and “Wild Mothering.” She is passionate about the potential in our female bodies and cultivating this vibrant energy that’s meant to run through all aspects of a woman’s life. She draws upon hers daily in mothering three sons now all young adults themselves. Her previous book, “Mothering from Your Center,” is being re-released as “Wild Mothering,” which includes new elder mother wisdom.

What She Shares:

–Deep relationship with the feminine

–Undoing internalization of patriarchy

–Mothering teens during challenges

–Embodied mothering during fractured times

What You’ll Hear:

–Walking in deep relationship with the true feminine

–Boundaries around values and work

–Unlearning embodied patterns of patriarchy within us

–Overcompensation in business

–Bodies giving out from overcompensation

–Women giving up space instead of centering

–Coming into truth of where energy and body are

–Over-extending out of perfectionism and wanting safety

–Helping children find their centers gradually

–Mothering young adults with internet, pandemic, polarization, etc.

–Information is not wisdom

–Importance of listening to embodied wisdom and those with it

–Mothering as a wild journey

–Prioritizing the body and face-to-face

–Embodied presence important to mothering

–Weekly family facetime meetings

–Going through the pandemic with males

–Strain on mothers and families feels higher now

–Lack of safety webs and social supports

–Trends of delaying independence from youth

–Determine of pandemic on isolation and young adults

–Assessing nervous systems after isolating during pandemic

–Embodied care versus smoothing discomfort

–Creative, inspired, moving towards passion, tracking health, connection

–Increase of body images issues in boys

–Getting boys out of looking and more of feeling/felt sense

–Fear of interacting in world

–Tracking and noticing people around us is embodied mothering

–Lost art of tending to home and those around us with presence

–Monitoring screen time for young adults

–Playing online with real peers

–Encouraging children to verbalize online interactions

–Rules as child-specific and season-dependent

–Building trust bridges

–Checking in and checking on

–Creating daily embodied moments with children

–Embodied mothering as the tether

–Presence with children creates more presence within themselves

–Stories we tell our children, stories they hear

–Balancing heavy times as parents

–Lack of deep containers taking toll

–Energetic force pulsing through life

–Reaction versus resonance

–Always new medicine and new hope in true feminine

–Not disassociating from deeper problems

–Living in deep relationship to feminine field

–Tending to our parts of the field is the mending

–Using connection to mystery to do our part

–Repairing a fractured web

–May 11th Mini Mother’s Day Retreat!

Resources

Website: https://www.wildfeminine.com/

IG: @tamilynnkent

In this episode, Kimerberly interviews Ajaye, the founder of The Project PT, a fitness center creating major social change in the community of Oxford, England. They discuss Kimberly’s experience at the gym, similarities of fitness culture in the U.S. and U.K. and how it is intimidating to many kinds of people interested in exercise. They also discuss the decrease of physical movement in schools and how that motivated The Project PT’s mission of supporting teen girls in health and fitness. They also discuss other community outreach programs that The Project PT runs as well as the importance and business model of ethical bonds and balancing service-related businesses with motherhood.

Bio

Ajaye is the driving force behind The Project PT, a fitness center committed to ethical business standards, social justice, and community outreach. Ajaye has over 18 years of experience in the fitness industry and is a fully qualified personal trainer, crossfit coach, Olympic weightlifting coach, and a sports therapist. The Project studio runs several social work programs in the Oxford community and continues to expand.

What She Shares:

–Intense gym culture and The Project PT

–Diversity and inclusion in fitness spaces

–Supporting youth in fitness

–Community outreach

–Balancing business & motherhood

What You’ll Hear:

–Different physical needs after motherhood

–Intense gym culture

–Diversity at Project PT Gym

–17% in UK attend gyms, 83% do not

–Forming community for Project PT

–Representation and informed professional development

–Limited physical movement in schools

–Working with fitness and teenage girls

–Skateboarding, boxing, and weight-lifting for girls

–Focusing on enjoyment in fitness

–Long-term goals for Project PT

–Forming a blueprint for other fitness centers

–Policy change needed

–Working with vulnerable young people

–Providing confidence and skills for young people

–Crime prevention program working with police

–Run social impact reports to study findings

–Importance of studies and representation

–Fitness, business, and motherhood of 3 children

–Struggling to find balance in business and parenting

–Kimberly navigating perimenopause and physical/emotional changes

–Accepting limitations and being open to change

–Adopting children and business thriving

–Ethical Bond

–Ethical Exchange supporting business bonds and shares

–Offering employee shares

–Collaboration and community with other businesses

–Ethics platform for housing, energy efficiency, etc.

Resources

Website: https://www.theprojectpt.com/

IG: @theprojectpt