The Ode To Joy Podcast

Resilience Through Sacred Silly with Tabitha Crain

• Elena Box • Season 3 • Episode 2

Share episode

Send us a text

A conversation unlike any other unfolds as Elena Box invites her alter-ego Tabitha Crain—a former NPR correspondent with a BA in performance art and global economics—to interview her about resilience. The result is a profound, often humorous exploration of how we build strength through life's initiations.

The dialogue begins with Elena's earliest memory of resilience: a childhood playground moment that taught her about her inner magic and power. Through Tabitha's theatrical questioning, Elena shares the extraordinary experience of her father's passing, including a transcendent moment when golden light filled her room after his death—a sign that "he had made it and was sending a message to let me know all is well."

At the heart of this episode lies Elena's philosophy of holding "the sacred in one hand and the silly in the other," as she explains how levity serves as a lifeline during our darkest moments. This approach has shaped her work as a death doula and now informs her newest initiation: motherhood.

With remarkable candor, Elena discusses the gap between her expectations and reality as a new mother, despite her extensive preparation. "Our culture still doesn't know what proper support looks like," she reveals, detailing her mission to rebuild the village through women's circles like "The Mother's Well" at her ritual studio. Drawing inspiration from wisdom keepers like Jane Hardwick Collings and Sister Morningstar, Elena advocates for reclaiming meaningful rites of passage around birth, death, and transformation.

Throughout this intimate conversation, Elena and Tabitha weave together spirituality, humor, and practical wisdom about building resilience. Whether you're navigating grief, embracing a new chapter, or simply seeking connection in an increasingly isolated world, this episode offers a refreshing perspective on finding strength through community and self-trust.

Listen, reflect, and perhaps discover your own unique path to resilience. As Tabitha reminds us: "The more you trust yourself and your path and your gnosis, the more the world becomes whole."

Support the show

Buy your copy of Elena's book "Grieve Outside the Box"
Follow on IG @elenabox

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Ode to Joy podcast, a show where we talk about joy, how do we cultivate it, how do we maintain it and what are the things that get in the way. I am your host, elena Box, coming to you with a very special episode where I am, you know, trying something a little bit new and inviting on one of my characters to do the interview. I hope you enjoy. Welcome back, dear listener, to another episode of the Ode to Joy podcast. I am your host, elena Box, the hostess with the mostess, coming to you with a different episode than we've ever done before. I am bringing on my friend, tabitha Crane to come and actually interview me really about the subject of the season, because I am really in deep introspection about resilience. I'm asking myself a lot of questions and so I decided to invite on my friend, tabitha Crane, who is really something of a deep thinker herself, to come and talk to us a little bit and ask me a little bit of questions. So, without further ado, I give you Tabitha Crane Hello and welcome to Tabitha Crane's Hour. It is my honor to be a guest speaker on the Ode to Joy podcast by my dear friend, elena Box.

Speaker 1:

Just to give you a little bit of background about me. I am a former NPR correspondent until I was fired for being too literal, whatever that means. I am single. I identify as gay, I have a BA in performance art and global Economics. I am a pescatarian. I am currently enrolled in rabbinical school. I also identify as a Zen Buddhist and I have a cat named Mordecai. So I wanted to give a little bit of context about what kind of person I am before launching into this interview.

Speaker 1:

With Elena Box, we met during a silent meditation retreat and I saw her from across the room, deep in meditation, deeply ecstatic, and I thought this is somebody that I really ought to get to know. Unfortunately, when we came out of silence, I came to understand that she is someone who really contains multitudes in a way that can sometimes be quite loud. I don't mind this, but I'm open to new experiences. I've recently went through a breakup, and so my heart is telling me that I ought to open myself up to new avenues and, quite frankly, after being dismissed from NPR, I have really few outlets for my creative expression, which I can understand. You can understand, dear listener, that it's important and it's very dear and near to my heart to be creatively expressive, and so I wanted to launch into this episode by first just checking in with you, elena. It's actually just it's Elena, so you can just write Elena.

Speaker 1:

So I just wanted to start off with your childhood, which from my years in psychoanalyzations I know is deeply impactful and really shapes who we are as human beings. Experience with resilience, and when did you first have a taste of what that felt like for you to be truly resilient? Wow, thank you so much, tabitha, for that really cool intro. So that's actually a really fun question. I feel that one of my first experiences with being resilient I was in maybe about second or third grade and we were in gym class.

Speaker 1:

Now I am not a naturally like athletic person. I really like like solo sports. That's why I do yoga, I like kayaking, I like rock climbing, I like anything where kind of there's no team involved and we were playing sort of like a form of kickball, but with a little puffs of balls of yarn, so like they wouldn't hurt if they hit you in the face, but like you're still being pelted with, like you know, balls of yarn and the. I was very good at dodging them, I guess, because I wasn't really interested in, like getting involved. So I kind of just like stayed out of the way and I guess I was really good at staying out of the way, which I didn't really realize at the time but the whole rest of the class had been, you know, pelted I suppose. And so there's a whole lineup of kids on the wall and it comes down to me and so, like my whole class is standing there on the wall and they're watching me and they're like come on, alayna, you can do it.

Speaker 1:

And I have like the whole other side of the class like ready are they called the little pom-poms in hand, ready to pelt me? And so I remember looking down at my shoes, which were, of course, these bedazzled white sneakers, and I remember just having this feeling of almost a power-up moment where I was like you can do this, elena. You're strong, you can do this right. So I take one of the pom-poms. I have terrible throw To this day. If you ask me to pass you something, it's not going to make it to you. It is going to either hit you in the face, be either too close, too far, nowhere near.

Speaker 1:

I'm terrible at throwing. I throw one of the pom-poms. Of course it doesn't land anywhere. That would have been helpful. And simultaneously the whole other side of the class just starts pelting me. I mean, I'm getting demolished by these pom-poms and of course we lost the game and the whole class was just on me, so pissed off as if it was all my fault, which I mean, they're the ones that got out to begin with. It shouldn't have been left up to me. I did my best, right?

Speaker 1:

So I remember the next day or something, I was out on the swing set and I loved to go on the swing set because I would close my eyes and pretend that I was in a big circus tent and flying as as if it was like on a trapeze, like I was flying through the air, and there was this big tree canopy up overhead and I would point my toes to try to like, touch my toes to some of the leaves, and so I would look at these little bedazzled like flowers on my white shoes and try to touch my toes to the, to the leaves, and every swing I'd be kicking closer and closer and closer until I finally got it. And there was something about this moment that sparked this inner resilience within a young girl, knowing I was powerful, knowing that I had magic and knowing that that was something that nobody could ever really take away from me, no matter what other people said that. It was something that really lived within me and as long as I maintained this inner spark, this inner strength, I would be okay, no matter what the world threw at me. Really, that was incredibly moving. Elena. I really see this vision of you as a young child and I can see how that would have really been a character defining moment, really solidifying you as a leader in your class, a leader of your times, as somebody who's really able to garner and hold this magic within you.

Speaker 1:

My cat, mordecai, always stares for me from across the room and when I'm sitting there doing my late-night crossword puzzles and I'm stuck on a question, I don't know the answer, despite my quite extensive vocabulary and really, quite frankly, encyclopedic mind. I find I look at him, he looks at me, we blink together, sometimes in unison, quite miraculously, and I say, dear Mordecai, I think I can do it. We take a deep breath together. He is also a Buddhist and I somehow always find the way through. I find the answer that I'm looking for, which I think really comes to mind when we think of resilience is that it is something that can be hard earned, perhaps, and something that one must really build over a lifetime. I don't think any of us are exactly born with resilience. I think it is something that is hard won. I know this myself.

Speaker 1:

I'm sorry, I find myself getting really worked up, really quite emotional here, which is rare for me, something that my former employers at NPR News let me know that was inappropriate for my line of work. I can't help it. I am a performance artist at heart. I can't help it. I am a performance artist at heart, and so deep within me lies this inner well of creativity, of spontaneous. Elena, now I'd like to really land us here in this moment of your father's death. Now, I know that that was also quite a character-making moment for you, and you know I had a bit of time to peruse your book, if we can call it that quite frankly and I came across this we could call it a passage and I just thought we'll let the dear listener decide for themselves what to garner from it. Here we are, we are within the chapter that is called Rites and Rituals. Now, I know that you are a certified death doula and so you felt only appropriate after takes a lot of guts to do something that perhaps you're not really qualified to do, and that's okay. You know, I studied for years performance art and, as I said, global economics, and it took me quite a bit longer out in the field to really feel comfortable, and you seem to have just launched right in. So here we go.

Speaker 1:

After a person dies, there is a strange sense of time, there is a feeling of what now? Everything has led up to this moment and now that they're gone, there is a not knowing what to do next. There is nothing to do, there is loss, there is void. There is that moment between the exhale and the inhale spaciousness, a very tender time that is incredibly special. Dad died in the early morning. We spent time honoring his body, closing his chakras, laying yellow roses over him, taking photos and snipping off a lock of his hair Very Victorian. After sitting in quiet contemplation, we called the hospice nurse and funeral home as the funeral care directors packed up his body into a black body bag.

Speaker 1:

I was playing with our cat, pandora, in the backyard. She helped bring a sense of levity and joy to a very strange situation. We played till it was time to say goodbye. Beneath the mid-morning sun, we stood around his body on our front walkway, across the street. Roofers watched in quiet amazement as we said goodbye to his earthly shell. We joined hands around him then zipped up the body bag, forever sealing into our memories what we knew of his hair, his face, his hands, his ears.

Speaker 1:

Then there was that feeling of what? Now? I went back to our family friend's house where I had been staying part-time. I laid in the brass framed bed, surrounded by pink flowered wallpaper, the sun streaming through the white lace curtains. I phoned my friend in Denmark via FaceTime. We spoke for a short while, her face beaming back at me with a smile surrounded by flaming red hair, a true Viking woman. She offered soft words in a comforting ear as I recounted the glorious story of Dad's passing. Then, all of a sudden, I felt something start to happen. She could feel it too, a sense of birth, of a shift. I couldn't put my finger on it. I told her hold on, something is happening. I closed my eyes and felt into it. My heart began to expand jubilantly. I felt around me a pouring over of something of the most unimaginable bliss and exaltation. I opened my eyes and saw that the entire room had been filled with golden light, cascading from the ceiling and down around the walls like a bright, white and gold blast of heavenly bliss and joy. I knew at that moment my dad had made it and he was sending a message to let me know all is well and he was happy where he had landed.

Speaker 1:

Only do you speak about a very surreal moment of sending off your father in the body bag in your front yard, but also you bring to mind calling in levity playing with your cat in the backyard, as something very different is happening in the front. You speak of having this revelation, this experience of what I can only understand is true bliss. Now, I have had experiences similar to this, certainly during my meditative practice, but I have never had an experience quite like this, and I'd really like to open up the conversation to you about how. What role does levity play in your life? Um, how have you found it, how do you maintain it, as you say in this show, and and, and how does it help you in in these moments? Um, of difficulty, because what I imagine is this is perhaps a big role in how you have built resilience. So, just to repeat the question what role does levity play in your life and how do you cultivate it and how do you maintain it, as you say, wow, tabitha. So that's also a really great question.

Speaker 1:

I'm so happy that you asked me that Levity, for me, is it's like my bread and butter. I really like to say that I hold the sacred in one hand and the silly in the other, and I find clients, people, are most drawn to me if they have that ability as well, because to me you can't have one without the other. If somebody were to come to me and, of course, loss life, really grief, all of these really big experiences, it's not to minimize the devastation. I think to invite levity, to invite humor, even in the darkest of moments, in the of places, represents sort of like this it's a lifeline. It's a lifeline back to the light, because just because we are in the dark, being in the deepest of darkest nights of the soul, almost implies that there is the opposite of that. There is the light, there is that, like hallelujah, moment of joy, of bliss, and it was an amazing gift that my father gave to me that day.

Speaker 1:

And for anyone listening who's experienced birth or death of a loved one, I wonder if you've also had a similar experience To me. It was really like I've never experienced it since. But I can say similarly to you, tabitha, I have reached it during meditative moments, during orgasm. You know, it is that ultimate experience of what I might call the divine, what some people might call God. It is the all that is, and it's something that to me encompasses really all of life's experience, which is the joy, which is the sadness, which is like those deep moments where, god, we are begging to literally be buried beneath the earth because we're crawling our way through what seems like the underworld. So to me, I always needed to have a finger on this lifeline of humor.

Speaker 1:

I think from a very young age I was really thrust into a lot of pain, abandonment and betrayal of people really closest to me, ever since I was 12 years old and I write about it in the book, and that was really when I started to play around with characters and I started to play around with learning about other people's experiences and how they had really alchemized their pain into, I guess, themselves as a person, because I found some of the strongest, funniest people had experienced like the most pain and have found out how to make light of it and I found those people to be most intriguing and I wanted to learn how they did it. So I think my whole life has kind of been this character study of other people and just kind of being like, oh my God, like you went through that, like that's, that is woo, you know, and yeah, and finding out how, how did they, how did they stay alive through that? Like, how did how did you maintain your heart, how did you maintain your sanity, how did you maintain yourself? And so this is why I've been, you know, bringing resilience in as this topic for this whole season, because I feel like in life, we're always sort of coming to like this next level of resilience. You know, I think something you said in the beginning was like, you know, we're not born with resilience. It's something that we like slowly build over time. And I feel like it's sort of like, you know, if life was a video game, we level up every time. You know, we level up, we level up and we're kind of like, okay. So the the kind of awkward part about resilience is we might know we're going through a change, we might know we're going through a transition. What we might not realize is that during that time, we're also building resilience. But the awkward part of it is we're learning new tools, so it feels kind of janky and it feels a little bit like God. This is weird and I'm moving into new areas and I'm having to learn how to become this next version of myself. And what does resilience really grant us as we go through that? What does it teach us? These are really like the questions that I'm like masticating on and yeah, I think that's kind of where I am with it all. What else did you ask me? I guess levity. I mean the other thing that I really want to pull in there too, is just like the wisdom of the animals, because so like in that moment, my cat understands death and I might even get emotional about. I mean, you know, you have your cat Mordecai, like he gets it too.

Speaker 1:

Cats are also just on another level. I truly believe they are real allies. If you are doing any kind of spiritual work, especially if you're working with the other realm, the spirit world, your ancestors, anything like this, they are a wonderful ally to have. I highly recommend having them if you can be in a safe place indoor, outdoor, because cats are not actually fully domesticated? Do a Google search, they're not. So they need to be out in the wild.

Speaker 1:

Cats understand death. My cat she's not a menace around town per se, but you know she's had her fair share of killing. You know small creatures like birds and squirrels and mice and you know she'd sometimes bring them into my bedroom kind of like half alive. And to animals I don't know that there is a real fear of death, because in their experience it's something that they're very kind of close to. In a sense it's sort of hard to describe. There's an okayness with it all. There's a understanding that we're really all in this cycle of life and so not really putting a good or a bad to it, and not to say that I don't think animals feel grief after one of their loved ones dies. Certainly I know many people have witnessed that.

Speaker 1:

But I think, bringing in the wisdom of the animals who are if I can speak specifically about my cat who have a connection to the spirit world, and so you know I remember putting my cat on my dad's hospice bed when he was still alive and she'd like hang out there and not too much, she just kind of was like doing her own thing. There was nothing about you know, his, his death room and his death bed that she was freaked out by. You know, she was just kind of like, yeah, this is what it is. And then after he passed, it was the same thing. Like you know, she was just kind of like, okay, she wasn't, she wasn't like, oh my God, like he's dead. You know, she was just like, okay, you know, yeah. So I think I hope that helps answer your question. Tabitha, I know that was like a little bit rambly. Yes, indeed, it was a bit rambly, but I think I understood a fair bit of that.

Speaker 1:

Now I wanted to really shift things here. Yes, no, elena, I want to shift things here to speaking about one of the tools that you talk about in your book, which is called Ignite, the Flame Entering into Initiation. Now you've spoken a little bit in your work about how initiation and the acknowledgement of initiation is something that is really missing from our culture, and so I wanted to read a little passage from your book Grieve Outside the Box, a little bit about what you shared here. Okay, and here we go. Have you been feeling the urge to make some huge, radical shift since your life has changed? Wanting to shave your head, go into the woods and live in silence, craving a rite of passage that marks your new life that has somehow shifted in what may feel like a blink of an eye.

Speaker 1:

Our culture often ignores these rites. In other cultures there are grand spectacles for each passing of life's experiences. Each passing of life's experiences. The men's groups go out into the jungle to learn from the elders and go through their own tests to become men and enter back into the tribe. The women marking the passage of a girl into a woman when she gets her first bleed. There are initiations into secret societies, religious groups or medicine wisdom keeper circles. Often we are left alone. As we know, we are somehow very different, and yet there aren't any practices set up to acknowledge this. Where have they gone? Silenced by colonizers, shunned, made to be seen as radical or evil? They've been systematically erased until all we have is a small whisper that comes on the wind as a leaf travels down. While we sit on a park bench alone in Brooklyn wondering how, there must be someone, anyone who should be here, telling me that, yes, this is a big moment for you. Where are they? Where have they gone? Why are we having to navigate this alone.

Speaker 1:

Now I wanted to shift the conversation to your recent matricence. You recently became a mother to your daughter, to Lorraine. Now I wanted to ask you about that initiation and do you feel that you had the support that you needed as you were going through it? And what does that kind of support look like? And what can other women who are interested in building resilience, who are perhaps going through the initiation of motherhood, what kind of world really can we envision for them to feel supported through their initiation so that they can emerge from motherhood resilient? Okay, so wow, tabitha, like you hit the nail on the head with this question.

Speaker 1:

It's something that I've been really passionate about and still kind of unsure how to speak about it, because in many ways it feels so aligned with my work. But at the same time, I've really been sort of like a um, I want to say like a spectator. I've been gathering knowledge about birth, honestly, since I watched the documentary called the Business of being Born by Ricky Lake. I watched it back in 2007 or 2008 in like a college class and I can't even remember which class it was and I watched many of my women friends become mothers and really reclaim their birth or claim the birth of their babies. And so I've been studying a lot of elder wisdom keepers, elder midwives, and studying from different doulas and to really understand how we can support women through this.

Speaker 1:

And sadly, despite all of my preparation, despite all of the wisdom and knowledge that I had I've been thinking about this a lot Our culture still doesn't know what that looks like and so, sadly, I didn't have the support that I really needed. I had support Certainly I had far more support than many other people have and unfortunately, a lot of it landed on my husband and I love him to death. He's not a woman and I I had, you know, like I had my doula come by, I had you know if I could have paid her, if I could have afforded to pay her to just be there all the time, like I would have, you know. But but my circle of women? Obviously they have their own lives, but like I think how do I say it? They did their best, certainly, and we are in like, almost like a crisis of motherhood where we're not actually supporting each other.

Speaker 1:

And what I found super wild is like even women who had been through birth, had been through having children, like they still hadn't kind of gotten it to be like, oh, it's not about the onesies, it's you know, it's. It's not about kind of all the cutesy, you know, stuff that comes along with being becoming a mother. It's like how are we actually holding these mothers, how are we nourishing them and how are we maintaining that? So it's, it's been a fun, fun and funny, but like actually like tragic, funny experience too, and it's something that I had anticipated. But I'm still kind of blown away by.

Speaker 1:

And still really digesting is like similar to the world of death. Birth has so many parallels and I noticed like at least one of the parallels is like when you go through the initiation there is, when you go through the initiation of birth, very similar to when you go through the initiation of the passing of a loved one is everybody rushes, everybody rushes in to be like congratulations, like here's a soup, here's a casserole, like here's this, here's that, and you're kind of still reeling, kind of still reeling. You're kind of still like in this really soft, gushy, like fleshy portal that deserves to be held with reverence, that deserves to be held with kindness, and the mother in this case deserves to, you know, be massaged, have her feet massaged, have, have people hold her while she holds her baby, have people feed her while she feeds her baby, for her to even be wondering where her next meal is going to come from, like Patrick was slaving away in the kitchen or just ordering us in meals all the time. It's not right, despite all of my efforts, to say like hey, I want to start a meal train, I want to do this, and and and people around me assuring me, oh no, it'll happen. People will do and and listen, if you brought me soup, thank you. It did not go unnoticed, I have to say. My one friend brought me a whole bowl of congee. It saved my life, like the first, I think, like week of motherhood, um, and even so, it's initiation. You get as much initiation in motherhood that is proper, that is life giving as you can afford. Like I said, if I could have afforded to have my wonderful doula, alex, come and just like be there all the time, I 100% would have. We had a registry it's called Be Her Village that I highly recommend anybody check out. It's a way for people really to gift you money so that you can afford postpartum care, pelvic floor therapy, massages, all of this body work.

Speaker 1:

Everybody always thinks about the baby. Yes, the baby's important, 100%, and at the same time, most of the time, I would say, unless there was some kind of medical situation with the baby. Like the babies are pretty, they're pretty good, you know, whereas the mom has just built a whole life inside of her body and she's learning now how to feed this baby. She's sleep deprived, like there's. She's bleeding, you know, like I bled for 12 weeks. I would have loved and this is something I'd still love to do I had really envisioned doing a closing of the bones ceremony and again, it's not that I can't afford it at this moment, it was just kind of one of these things that felt not superfluous, because I think it is super important, but again, it's like an initiation that it felt like.

Speaker 1:

Even going for body work felt indulgent, even though I knew it wasn't. I don't know, I don't even know how. And I'm still kind of reconciling that, because if I were speaking to a new mom now, I'd be like get the body work done, go to pelvic floor therapy, get the ceremony. I guess because soon after my daughter was born and because it was so different than we had anticipated, we were in survival mode. What I would love, what I would love the initiation of motherhood to look like, is a true village coming together, and everybody always says like it takes a village right. So there's a lot of women now, and especially like in these, in these birth wisdom schools, that are really talking about building the village yourself, and so that's what I'm focusing on right now. My friend and neighbor who really did and has shown up for me consistently is my friend Melanie Wedeking. She's a licensed massage therapist and she and I are starting this women's circle for mothers. Babies are welcome to come as well. It's here in my new ritual studio. It's called Calliope Commons Ritual Studio and it's a village making women's circle. It's called Calliope Commons Ritual Studio and it's a village making women's circle. It's called the Mother's Well, and when I say the Mother's Well, it's like this is the place where we can go and draw nourishment from. This is the village and we're building it right now.

Speaker 1:

I can't sit here and expect to wake up tomorrow in a sane society and culture that knows how to do birth well, that knows how to do death well. We're awkward over here, for whatever reason. I'm just going to say this. It's as if our society here and our culture in the United States has felt and I hope I can articulate this well has forgotten their need for God, has forgotten their need for the divine, has forgotten their need for connection. We've become so self-serving and so secluded, you know, in that American dream of everybody has the house and the car and the kids and the da da da. We're so separated that even now we're afraid to go over to our neighbor's door and knock and borrow a cup of sugar. You know, and, and and it might seem really silly to be like, oh, I wish it was like back in the day, you know, but yeah, I think there's a lot of that village making that we are bringing back now. So Melanie lives right up the street. We often, you know, we'll cook something and say, hey, I'm going to bring you, you know, some chicken I made or some soup I made. And hey, you know, she often, you know, lets me borrow her hand-me-downs of baby clothes.

Speaker 1:

You know, and, and we're becoming this kind of self-sustaining little web of moms and learning by doing instead of just waiting for it to happen, and my hope and my prayer is that, by building this network and building these roots, that we can start to do it better, you know, little by little, by sharing these stories and by learning how to support one one another in a way that is in the realm of honest and open, real feeling, real presence, not hallmark presence, not, you know, signing your name on a card and being like happy. What are these? What are these cards? Even say, like, welcome baby to the world. Like it should be a card. That's like, hey mama. Like you know, um, how's your nether regions? You know, how's the stitching healing up? Can I come and give you an, a shoulder massage? Like, do you need me to stay with the baby for a few hours overnight? Like, can I do the night shift? Like giving people little IOUs.

Speaker 1:

You know and I just wanted to mention before I forget, if this is something that you know somebody who's listening is interested in some of the teachers that I have really been resonating with is Jane Hardwick Collings. She's an Australian midwife. She started the School of Shamanic Midwifery, which then had to be changed to the School of Shamanic Womancraft because Australia didn't like the words shamanic and midwifery being in the same breath. I wonder why. And gosh, she just has so many wonderful tools out there. She's got books. She's on many podcast episodes.

Speaker 1:

She's really in this train of badass women who are bringing back these rites of passage for young girls, even honoring that path of maiden to mother, to crone, and making it a village endeavor so that we are witnessing women as they're having their first bleeds, we're witnessing women becoming mothers, we're holding them. You know there's a pot of stew, you know on the stove, and for our mothers becoming grandmothers, you know for them to understand they're also a part of the circle, and an integral part of the circle. Which leads me to Sister Morningstar, who I love. It's a dream for her to be a podcast guest on the show and I really hope we can get her. I was blessed to go and study with her for three days when I was gosh, I want to say like two or three weeks from my due date. I went and I studied with her at Earth Grounds, which was started by Nubia Martin, and there's just a wonderful group of midwives and doulas. The work that they're doing is also amazing. I also would love to have her and those women come on the show.

Speaker 1:

Sister Morning Star, she is also an elder midwife. She works a lot, or how do I say? I found her through Free Birth Society and that podcast and I know she goes and she teaches at their yearly I want to call it a conference, but she's just a wonderful, wonderful human. She's on many podcasts as well. I can give you some resources here that you can learn from her.

Speaker 1:

But the thing that I wanted to share about her is, during those three days, my mom so my mom came with me, which was really wild and super outside of her comfort zone. Like my mom's never been in a women's circle, she's never been in a sharing circle. It was super edgy for her and she had volunteered to come with me. I mean, I was driving up to Yonkers like however many weeks pregnant she's, like I'm gonna go with you, and for those she came to two days. On the third day she tapped out. She was like they're long days. It was a long day. She was like I can't do it anymore and I give it to her. She really pushed her edges there and she was honored.

Speaker 1:

So, sister, morning star put every woman in the circle according to where they were on their what do you call it Menstrual cycle. So there were me, it was me, a few other pregnant women and then it was women who were all through the whole, all phases, and then there and then there was the group of crones as well. So it really like landed us in this space of honoring that every woman is kind of in this different stage and not to like put one up on top of the other, but to know that we're all in that circle together and we're all in that web together. And my, my mom was there crocheting in this wonderful chair that they like put her in very like regal, and she got to be this like crone, wise woman who mostly, mostly, mostly, she sat and she witnessed and she listened and she took in as much as as she was really able to. And I remember sister Morningstar, kind of just like telling me, telling her that, that she was a crucial part of that, like the grandmother sitting there, that she was a crucial part of that, like the grandmother sitting there crocheting little hats and and and sweaters for the baby coming. That that's a crucial role. And not to say that, not to minimize wise woman as as being quiet and sitting in the corner and crocheting, you know, like their, what their stories matter too. But but what I, what I mean to say is like there's the different like energy, energy levels of of all of these women and it's and it's important to have all voices, all stages, be represented. Um sorry, I'm so sorry, tabitha, I've really gone on like a long tangent here. I just this is something that I'm really passionate about now and I'm excited to continue to talk about this as I continue to open back up to sharing and talking about this work.

Speaker 1:

But when I think about resilience as far as becoming a mother goes, when I first became a mother, or maybe even before, like maybe even during my pregnancy, I feel like it might've been. The theme song of my pregnancy was the rising Appalachia, rising Appalachia song, where it goes like I am resilient, I trust the medicine. You know it's. It's a gorgeous song and that was something that really got me through, I'd say, the hardest parts of being postpartum. It was something that I just came to like in those moments where I felt tapped out and I felt like I had nothing in the tank. I would just sing that to myself, I would sing it to my daughter and yeah, I think that's. I think that's kind of where I'm at, I feel I think I answered your question, tabitha. I'm pretty sure I did Well, elena.

Speaker 1:

I think what you have shared here is something that is going to be truly resonant to many of your listeners, and I really just thank you for sharing that revelation, that revelation, and I am very much looking forward to how you continue to tease out this narrative around initiation through motherhood and its parallels with death. It has been an absolute honor to be with you here today, despite Despite my ego speaking up as I prepared, saying it's not NPR, tabitha, I am here and I have enjoyed having this conversation, and I'd also like to thank you for listening to me and for trusting me with your story. I will absolutely be talking about this with Mordecai tonight as we share a little salmon filet. I'm going to close this out really by inviting our listener to return back to their body, to check back in with your breathing, with your belly, with your heart, and taking whatever gems of wisdom that felt good for you to receive today and also letting fall away anything that did not feel useful. We can breathe into this spaciousness within ourselves and returning back to your inner, knowing your inner compass, because the more you trust yourself and your path and your gnosis, the more the world becomes whole. This has been Tabitha Crane. I will see you again. This has been Tabitha Crane. I will see you again.

Speaker 1:

This has been another episode of the Ode to Joy podcast and I'm so happy you stuck around and listened to the whole thing. And listen if you liked it, it would mean so much. Go ahead, give us a review, Throw us a couple of stars and pass it along. You know, share it with a couple of friends that you think might enjoy it. And let me know, was this totally crazy, or should we do it again sometime? Talk to you soon.