S3 E14 *BONUS* - The Urgency to Protect Birth with Midwife Mmatshilo Motsei

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE MIDWIFE! 

To celebrate today, we have an incredible *BONUS* episode of the Hot+Brave Podcast.

Bianca had the absolute pleasure  of interviewing Traditional Midwife,  Mmatshilo Motsei who is transforming birth in South Africa. 

It is pure magic....

She is talking about and challenging the biomedical model in this episode and the wisdom she is passing on is not to be missed.  

We need to protect birth and the urgency is felt so fully in this discussion. 

 If you want to be a part of the protection of birth, don't forget we have our brand new birth doula training. 

 The course Mmatshilo discusses can be found here - please use code bebomia at checkout. 

⭐️  We have some links for you!! ⭐️

NEW BIRTH DOULA COURSE - www.bebomia.com/birthdoula

www.bebomia.com/doulaclub 💥 Get your free access to the Doula Business School in our club membership!

www.bebomia.com/freewebinar Free doula workshop and discount code 👍🏽

www.Instagram.com/bebomiainc  Follow for more goodies!

bebomia.com/bizshop/   😎 Grow your business fast!

www.bebomia.com/shop New Doula swag!!

7 Simple Steps to Double your Client Base 👈🏽 new course alert this week 💥 Use code SEVEN for 75% off

Our links page with lots of goodies  bebomia.com/links ❤️

Grab your doula training spot here (heyyy there's payment plans) 📚

How to Pay for Your Doula Training <-- check it out!

Go here to register for our CBE course and use the code CBE50

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:46

You are listening to the Hot and Brave podcast with Bianca Sprague from Bebo Mia, where you will hear brave stories, hot topics, and truth bombs that will either light fire to your rage or be the balm you need for your soul.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Hot and Brave podcast. I'm your host Bianca Sprague and happy day of the midwife today. And as you can probably tell, this is a bonus episode of the Hot and Brave podcast as we are right in the middle of our hiatus between season three and we'll be jumping into season four in June. We have so much happening here at Bebo Mia. Firstly, are you struggling to get your doula business off the ground? Do you want more clients? Well, grab your spot in the Birth Worker Business School, aka Doula Business School, for only this year. So 2024 only. It is less than$90. And why did we do this? It is so that we can get folks and their businesses going in this recession. It is going to go up to its regular price, which is over$1,300 starting next year. So highly recommend. It just opened up. Get your spot. Get your business. Get your scale up. Lots of cool things. We are also always asked to have a birth doula training, like a standalone. And we've been asked for about eight years now. And we finally made our first birth doula standalone course. Woo! Because we've only ever offered a full spectrum training and it opened its doors on May 1st. And the first 200 people registered will get$200 off using the code FIRST200. We'll drop that in the show notes as well. And we wanted to make this course wildly accessible. So with your discount code, it is only$479. We also have payment plans, which we always do. Okay, so why did we do a bonuses episode? Well, I had the absolute pleasure in interviewing an incredible woman who was doing magical work and I could not wait for the next season to tell you about her. Matsila Motzai is an author, healer, midwife, community development facilitator. She's a social science researcher and she is so committed to bringing, you know, this integrating this indigenous wisdom into with, you know, a modern innovation twist. She is the founding director of Africa Ekalife Plural University. She holds so many degrees, postgrads, diplomas that spans such a wide range of topics from nursing and midwifery, psychology, and even creative writing. She is a recipient of two honorary doctorates, like two, y'all, a PhD in community psychology and a social development professions PhD, and she's currently completing another PhD in sociology with a focus on the role of indigenous midwifery as a counter to obstetric violence. Oh my gosh, she's magic. She first started her career as a nurse, midwife, counselor, social science researcher, and gender transformation and rural development facilitator. And in 1995, she was seconded to the office President Mandela to start a process of setting up the National Gender Machinery And she has worked with women and men across Africa, including women who were raped during the war in Somalia. And beyond Africa, she has worked with institutions in North America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. And even in 2013, she took a seven-day climb of Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds for a local orphan project. She's the author of six books, which includes short stories, poetry, like just beautiful works. She's received numerous national and international awards, including including International Human Rights Award from the Human Rights Watch New York and the United Nations Scroll of Honor Award for her work involving men as part of the solution to violence against women. She is a member of the leading feminist voices in Africa leadership program, which is housed in King's College in London in the UK. And she has a intense interest in leadership as a spiritual calling with a focus on lessons learned from elder women. And we talk about that quite a bit in the podcast. Her scholarly work involves teaching various modules in different universities, such as feminism and healing, as well as indigenous knowledge and sustainable development. This is a conversation we had last week and she mentions an incredible new program she's offering. So please check that out in the show notes for your registration code. Enjoy this delicious talk. And while you're in the app, please hit those five stars. Without further ado, here is my chat with Matt Silo. Welcome back to the Hot and Brave podcast, everybody. If that wasn't an incredible bio, I don't know what is. Matsilo, thank you so much for joining us today. I am really excited for our chat.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

It's so amazing. I mean, we are chatting for the second time online, but it feels like I know you forever.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Thank you for the education. It's because we jumped right into talking about grief.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Even with the first time we spoke, when you emerged on the screen, we didn't even introduce harm, so and so, da, da, da. We just jumped in. It's quite weird, you know?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

I like it. I like it. Friends across the pond here. So, I mean... Your work, it's just profound. All the areas that you've contributed to feminism of sexual abuse survivors, gender-based violence, obstetric violence, including men in the conversation. It's amazing all the different perspectives. But what shifted for you to focus so specifically on reproductive health and justice?

SPEAKER_02 6:54

I started off as a nurse and a midwife in my 20s. early 20s as a young woman. I trained as a biomedical midwife in a village far away from home and fast track that like three decades later, four decades later, here I am in the same geographical area that shapes my thoughts about birth. But I'm now here to dismantle what I have been taught. Tear

SPEAKER_01 7:31

it all down.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

So call it a full circle. And as a healer as well, something that is amazing is that area represents a deep connection for me, a deep ancestral connection for me, which I'm discovering now. And So to answer your question, what made you go back? I would say I don't know. It's one of those things that, you know, your life path is inscribed in a way that you have no idea where the kind of turns are going to come through. Sometimes it feels like you are walking on a treadmill and you feel like, This is it. I want out. And sometimes you end up in the wilderness. You have no idea when, where the next step is. So for me, it's just this full circle, which makes sense now. It did not make sense when I was going through the journey. You know, in a sense that it looked like, as the elders would say, what does she want? What does she really want? I mean, one minute she's here, she's doing this, she's doing that. Yesterday I was talking to someone and I was saying to them, this journey, this entire journey, this path, I am at the right age to be doing what I'm doing. Because now I'm an elder, you know, and I don't only bring... knowledge in terms of qualifications or experience but I also like bring the spiritual humility in terms of you know what life broke me down into pieces and I had to put myself together again so when you go through that you bring a certain kind of energy to your work which I find quite beautiful especially when I watch it in other people, especially in rural women, I find it quite attractive. And because we don't understand that kind of power, we might look at it as submission

SPEAKER_03 10:04

when in

SPEAKER_02 10:05

fact it's power. So it's this long, long winded answer to your question to show my long winded journey.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Well, it's a beautiful journey. And I think it's a, It's a calm that our elders bring. Like, you know, there's the certain, there's the, like the crone, but that, I don't know. I just think it's a really nice energy to be in space with. Miss Charlotte's Bebo Mia's elder. And I just like. Yeah, you told

SPEAKER_02 10:39

me about her. You told

SPEAKER_01 10:40

me about her. Yeah. Yeah. And I just think that her, she brings just this, like okay puppies like let's sort this out this calmness this knowing like her soul her soul has seen some stuff and she's here to like help us really like navigate through that and and you have that same energy and it's it's really beautiful yeah

SPEAKER_02 11:02

yeah the one of the responsibilities of of elders elders i keep us of shrines um you know uh and what i call spiritual assets. They take care of spiritual assets. And a big part of our spiritual assets is personal mastery. And that's what elders are there for, to kind of help us master ourselves as people.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

That's beautiful. I love spiritual assets. Oh my goodness, I can't wait to have my shelf full of spiritual assets. I just got a few, a few started on my shelf. I can't wait to see it overflowing with, with my tchotchkes of spiritual assets. So, I mean, your journey started with this adoption and, you know, you subscribe to this, um, this biomedical model through your nursing midwifery. And now you've come around to adopt this traditional or indigenous midwifery model. What do you think is the most urgent to be readopted over the biomedical model? Like if you had to be like, this feels the most urgent to, you know, bring

SPEAKER_02 12:23

back. The most urgent to be adopted is the indigenous model.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Which element of it do you think though?

SPEAKER_02 12:31

The relationality of it, the ability to bring sacred energy into birthing, just even in its challenging ways that it's a process that this is almost like a spiritual rite of passage. When I listened to some of the women in the village, one of them was saying, when I'm pregnant, my grandmother sleeps with me and was even describing what happens when they get into labor. And I was like, just imagining that the power of relationality. which in indigenous terms is one of the key principles of indigenous knowledge. So there's a lot there that is not just about birthing. Yeah, I agree. It's about being in this world. There's a lot there that is also about healing multi-generational wounds because by being pulled away from the way that we are born into the world, we suffered all kinds of wounds. It's not just about obstetric violence in a healthcare facility, but it's also a loss because indigenous midwifery is about when a baby is born, a baby is introduced to a culture and an entire ecology, entire cosmology. And even all the rituals that are done are done to connect the baby to ecology. I mean, an example would be some of the naming ceremonies that are done. They would be done during the time of full moon and like the toddlers in the family would be singing the song of the moon And the message is the moon is your friend. And I always make this example. It's fascinating for me that a baby who can't talk, who's like a month or two or three months old, get to hear this song that says, look up, the moon is your friend. So it's not just about physical birth. It's about bringing back the knowledge that we have lost It's about bringing back the sacredness of childbirth. And it's also about less interference.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah, of

SPEAKER_02 15:27

course. Less interference. I mean, if you imagine the number of times you have to go through a vaginal examination when you're giving birth in a hospital or in a healthcare facility, and elders don't. Some of them say, no, as long as there are no complications, we don't do vaginal examinations. So the unnecessary interference as well is something that makes me think, are babies, I mean now, are babies born or are we yanking them out of their mother's womb?

SPEAKER_01 16:05

That one, that one. That's what we're doing here. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So when we're looking at this, like, because I know over here in North America, we are working on, there's pockets that are focusing on traditional practices and free birth is, you know, making a resurgence because that's really the only model that you can adopt is like, then you can't have a healthcare provider because we're regulated so heavily in Canada and the US. Like, I feel like one of the key parts is the birther and the birther's community to be like taking up the same reclamation of traditional birth and this uninterrupted birth and the spiritual birth. I feel like we're so, the system has broken us over here that it feels like so far out of reach. Like I'm only interested in being a part at this point in spiritual birth. Yeah. I can't, I can't even find it around me. Like I can't talk to a person that, that, that could subscribe to it. That's not like, yeah, but I'll have like a, a, you know, I call them med wives, like I'll med wife ready. That's cheeky. Sorry, midwives for this thing. I just like, I'm really, we need to get birth back. And so like, I'm not interested in somebody that's, that doesn't want to do it in the way that it's like, this is a magical thing. And so, yeah. Do you think you're closer to having people go back to a traditional or indigenous practice than we are here in North America where we've just been obliterated by our

SPEAKER_02 17:46

medical system? I've met women in the villages who have given birth to so many babies and they have never said food in a hospital and they're proud of it. They don't even know what a hospital looks like. as compared to North America, but obviously there's a lot of indigenous communities in North America who are also reclaiming that knowledge. And the amazing thing is me finding, reading through the material that comes out of North America from indigenous communities and just being fascinated by how similar you know, their cultures are across the world. So you do have what I would call, you know, a well that you can draw on in your backyard. But even when I say that we are closer here, we are not as regulated, but indigenous midwifery is not recognized. It is recognized, but it's not recognized. Yeah, I understand. In the sense that it's not included as part of national guidelines on maternity care, as an example. So it's something that's still perceived as outside of the system.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

It feels disappointing that There's so much that feels disappointing about it because we do have really beautiful pockets of traditional midwifery happening here with our indigenous peoples in Canada and then in the U.S. along the south for sure there's so many of the Latinx community that have you know they're protecting that goes down from the southern U.S. into Mexico and Latin America that are you know really protecting that indigenous those indigenous practices and there's some pockets of like the diaspora in the US that obviously have a drawback to African roots that have this indigenous and then there's just a whole bunch of settlers that it feels hard to draw upon because we've gone through and colonized in all of these regions and are kind of at a loss and we're paying for with this biomedical model because it's hard to draw upon something that doesn't exist right because

SPEAKER_03 20:27

yeah

SPEAKER_01 20:29

you know I mean it's also the consequence of white supremacy and and obliterating indigenous cultures but but as far as as far as for this next generation of birth and trying to have a reclamation around it it puts us at a and an interesting situation in Canada and the US specifically. One of the questions I wanted to ask is, I mean, again, here, birth work in North America is how normalized obstetric violence, like the violence of birth has become, like it's not even perceived as abnormal or violence, it's just considered birth. And so you've been doing- It's routine. It's routine, yeah, like it's- And I hear stories and they're like, my birth wasn't so bad. And when they start talking, I'm like, terrible things happened to you and your baby. Like that was terrible. And I obviously don't want to plant this. That's terrible if they're not perceiving it, but their body knows it's terrible. Like their body knows something bad happened to them. And so you've been doing a lot of research on obstetric violence. And, you know, what are some of the areas specifically you've chosen to tackle within this massive umbrella? And what are some of your findings?

UNKNOWN 21:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

My specific question was the role of indigenous midwifery in countering obstetric violence. Because even the way that we define obstetric violence, we kind of limit it to the physicality of the violence or maybe the psychology of it. There is no mention of the loss of culture and loss of knowledge is a form of violence. I mean, earlier you used the word an obliteration of cultures. That obliteration of culture is like a big kind of violence. So what I found is that, as you say, we have so normalized violence that when it happens, we don't see that it is. Like for instance, a woman saying that when you are in hospital, When a doctor comes in, you know that you're going to have a vaginal examination. You don't even wait to be told to open your legs. You are expecting to be invaded. And the person who does the examination does not even greet you. They don't see you as a human being. You are just this body that is carrying something that needs to... needs to be taken up. So the difference then is, would be when you birth, I have already said, when you birth with an elder, what they have is time as compared to the hospital. Hospitals are kind of founded on the, the foundation is profitability. So in a sense, it's almost like a conveyor belt. And I was reading the other time that, I mean, in South Africa, for instance, the postnatal policy is you can discharge a woman after six hours of delivery if there's no complications. And it's been found that quite a significant number of maternal deaths happen after discharge when the complication starts because you know, the woman, the complications got worse without being attended to. But the flip side is a woman who goes through a caesarean section, What I found in the research that you go through a caesarean section, you are not even able to breastfeed your baby. You are not even able to get out of bed, you know, to get your baby out of the port, the baby cot and breastfeed. So what I found, what was amazing is the women in the hospital, it's like a community, you know, You know, the one who's been there for some time and her wound has healed a bit is the one who will just come out and drag her feet and help you to get the baby. So they create the community that you have in Indigenous midwifery. Because the one thing about birthing at home is that birth is a social event. It's not a medical event. It's a social phenomenon in a sense that you have You have a village surrounding you. You would be in a room with three, four women. The eldest of them could be there at the corner, and her role would be just to invoke the spirit for the baby's safe landing and your well-being and health. And then there would be one kneeling in front of you, depending on your position, waiting to catch the baby. One or two could be massaging your back and talking to you. And there's almost like a runner who goes out in and out of the birthing heart to get whatever you need. So the baby is born into a village. And maybe that's why that phrase of it takes a village to raise a child comes from. Because from the very beginning, the baby is born into a village so cultural safety is one of the main findings of my research and that I argue that we need to redefine what safe birthing means if it doesn't include if it obliterates people's culture then it's violence it's not safe birthing

SPEAKER_01 26:33

yeah I love the posters in our hospitals here that say like their commitment to healthy, healthy baby, healthy. They always say mother, which also is a little problematic, but, and, but I'm like, what are we measuring health by a heartbeat? Oh, two saturation. Like, but what is, what is healthy because we're leaving with these birthing people traumatized and broken. Like they feel broken inside and out their bodies, their spirits, their, you know, like the rate of PTSD from birth here is the numbers are staggering. And so I just think the idea of this village, you know, capturing or like capturing this, this spiritual moment and holding it and, you know, protecting it and guiding the baby. It's

SPEAKER_02 27:26

just beautiful. There are others who are waiting outside to hear like, yeah, The minute the baby comes, then someone will say, what? You know, almost as an announcement that it's here. And there's invocations. Imagine a baby coming out and the first thing they hear is this kind of sound, you know, from elder women. Yeah. When I think about that, I always feel that birth workers should work like secret societies. We have such a deeper spiritual role to play in shaping the world. Imagine if we understood our power as secret societies and changing the world from what it is now. I

SPEAKER_01 28:29

firmly believe that we could we could get our footing that we could even challenge oppression if we could change how we birthed like i believe so fully that this is the key because as soon as you break someone in such an intimate critical time this this transition it's like it's so hard to politically motivate women it's for women to say no ever again like because they said They couldn't say no in this time that was, it's a journey. It's a spiritual transformation that you go through in birth. Yeah. I feel very passionate. One

SPEAKER_02 29:06

of the things that one of the elders said, said at the moment when the baby's about to come out and the healthcare worker is sleeping, you know, the parent is, And the parent gets into a state of shock. The baby also gets into a state of shock. And she was saying, imagine the baby moving back a little bit and hesitating to come out to say, oh my God, is this where I want to be born into? So I'm reminded of this thing when you talk about you think that will change the world by changing the way that babies are born. So imagine the number of babies in this world who are born violently. Imagine the fear with which they step into the world just by how they are received when they are born.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Yeah. My daughter, she was yanked from my womb, even though I worked really hard to have like nobody touched me in my birth and then they they get you at the end they're like you made it through two days of not being touched we'll make up for it now and she was vacuumed out and it was very violent very very very violent and it did tremendous physical and emotional damage to both of us and when she was about three we did a ceremony together and she actually remembered like she talked about her soul journey we used to do really weird stuff to get you like the whole time but she talked about her soul journey and then that she she was watching and she had this like reluctance to like come into her body and she knew like she said this voice was like this is it's time to start and that she remembers being like oh I don't know about this and being like this it's time like you have a journey and and she still talks about like she lives in a way that she had this kind of like fragmentation of you've got to go do this thing. Like you're, this is your soldier name being like, I don't, I don't know about this. And that's literally how she still lives her life is you can like feel that energy. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Yeah. And the thing about elders is knowing that birth is not just a physiological phenomenon. They are not just receiving this physical body. They are receiving a soul. Yeah. And that's why I, you need a village to receive a soul, a new soul that's been birthed into the world.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Yeah. You're doing just amazing work with gathering and protecting that information around Indigenous midwifery, traditional midwifery. What are some of the biggest gifts that you've noticed from these gatherings? Because it feels so important and so urgent to capture and pass this information on? You know, what stands out for you?

SPEAKER_02 32:12

It's so urgent. I mean, I'll give you an example of how urgent it is. At one time, I went to see an elder who's a healer. It was a Tuesday. And she had in-depth knowledge and information about, you know, indigenous midwifery. We agreed to meet on Friday. Friday morning, I called the daughter to say, I'm on my way. And the answer was, no, she passed peacefully last night. So that made me aware of how urgent that is. But also the sad thing is that quite a lot of it, we are almost at the age of losing losing this knowledge and that's what what makes it urgent as well um the generation of elders that i'm working with now one of the midwives is turning uh 80 in june um yeah and that generation is the generation that has got the knowledge and they're all going and uh so the agency for me is to document as much as I can. But I also see that as such a huge privilege. It's such a humbling experience that they accept me. You know, they are willing to teach me. And therefore, you know, how, you know, we can end up postponing and say that I'll go there you know, for a week that time. So I'm always pulled by this thing that I don't understand. I'm always pulled and reminded by this thing that says you have to go and spend at least a week there. Because the tendency, the kind of shortcut could be, okay, I'll go and spend a day and do interviews. No, it's not enough. Staying there, doing the rituals, I'm going to the mountains with them to pick the herbs and understand how they work and know their names. You know, people can just make it sit and tell me this and this. It won't be the same as experiential learning. And experiential learning is me spending time there with them. And this is where the idea of retreats came from. as well. Just by me spending time with them, I thought that it would be wonderful for groups of parents and birth workers to go through this process. And we had our first in November last year. We co-hosted with the Black Women's Blueprint in the US. There were about 20 20 midwives. And it was amazing to watch the impact on them. I think because I'm here and I'm kind of engaging with the elders every day, I forget the magic. I forget the effect of the magic. And it was just fascinating to see to see them transform as we moved from one elder to the other. And it was not always the same person. We would go to one elder, I'll make an example. We went to one elder who works with other women who use theater to teach the community about birthing. We didn't even know that one of, the group was like using theater for social transformation as part of her work. And she was the one who was in the deepest trance of that day. And there was another one because we had to go into the labor room. The elder has got a labor room at home. And she said, her voice kept on saying, don't go in there, don't go in there. But she couldn't not go in there because we were a group. And as soon as we stepped in the room, there's something she felt in her. She kind of just transformed in front of us. So it was always amazing to watch. At different points, you get different lessons. And most of the time, the lessons are not through words. The lessons are more through feeling. because we live in a society that numbs our ability to feel by participating in a ritual or a ceremony you kind of open up something inside of you that your body knows but that your body has been deprived from experiencing for a long time so And that's why we're also continuing with the retreats beginning of 2025, because we feel that for me to do an online course or for me to be the one speaking is different from sitting at the feet of the elder and listening to them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

The retreat, it makes me think of kind of the preparation for slowing down, like even the concept that you have to go for a week rather than just like have them write these herbs for these things. It prepares you for that slowing because I even can think of through my own birth work journey is how I felt so anxious to like see how far along we were almost 20 years ago when I started versus now that I've just... I can feel a different energy. But I always had a, like, how much longer do I think I'm going to be here when I supported birth again when I was in my 20s. And now in my 40s that I even can feel, like, that slowing. I mean, like, it's going to happen when it happens. And, like, my life will be on hold until it does. And this is where I'm supposed to be. And so it's your preparation is, like, no, not just notes

SPEAKER_02 38:56

for a week.

UNKNOWN 38:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

It's the slowing down and the, like, reduce the noise in your head. It's hard. Because we carry so much noise in our head. So when I'm there for a week, if I'm just going in and out, I just kind of land with my noise. I listen and hear what I miss out quite a lot. And then I drive back. there for a week and wake up there for some time then noise dies down and you know then I can hear there's a phrase in my language they say that I'm listening to you with three ears so when the noise is down then you can start listening with three ears

SPEAKER_01 39:47

I love that Mancilla, seriously, I'm packing my bag. I'll be there in a week. I'm coming. So you had your retreat last year, and you have a retreat in 2025. But this year, you're doing a course on a non-retreat year. Tell us a little bit about the course that you have coming up.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

The course is my attempt to edify the small age. And I draw a lot of it from my research of the past four years, my spending time in the past four years with elders. Indigenous research methodology believes that there is no one knower of knowledge, that knowledge is relational. So somehow the course is a way of edifying the knowledge and passing it, but also because it's online, it gives an opportunity to connect with birthers or parents from across the world. And it opens up your perspective about what indigenous midwifery is because the other day I would, for example, I would be speaking to a group of women from Europe And you wouldn't be thinking about them having lost Indigenous knowledge just because they are in the world, right? And then amongst them would be a member of some Indigenous women from Norway whose soul is also crying for the lost knowledge. And I would be speaking to someone in Japan who's going through the same thing. So the... The exciting thing for me, the thing that I'm excited about is engaging with, you know, kind of parents and birth advocates from across the world and redefining what indigenous knowledge is, but also expanding the notion of our loss, our collective loss. And each one stepping out with an intention to heal the generational traumas of birth that we carry inside of us. And if we can't find the knowledge, we can recreate it. You mentioned earlier that because you are so regulated and the free births, they're recreating their own sacredness of birth in the way that they define it. It doesn't necessarily have to be that particular way of doing, but I think the main thing of the course is to raise an awareness about the spirituality and sacredness of birth. So I use African spirituality as an example, but I know that the idea is to just kind of rekindle it in all of us, that we carry that in all of us.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

Oh, it's beautiful. I'm very excited because I will be taking the course alongside. I'm very, very excited about this. We're going to have all the information about how folks can register. The start date is May

SPEAKER_02 43:15

30th.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

So May 30th, everybody register. Grab your spots. We will, again, in the show notes, have the links for how to register. We have a code there for you, too, so that you can get a little discount. And it runs for how many weeks, Matsilo?

SPEAKER_02 43:38

It runs up to November 15th. And how it works is that we... I mean, the information will be on the online platform on our website and people can go through the material on their own time. I'm loading recordings, videos for people to just go through that. And then we meet every second Thursday, meaning that every month we meet twice. until November 15th. But the bigger chunk towards the end, it's now the sharing of birth stories. And that's what I call words as medicine. That big chunk will give us an opportunity, you know, through journaling, through creative writing to share listen to what our bodies are saying because we've been receiving this information and what is our bodies saying about this and writing that down and sharing. Who knows, maybe we could have a global collection of birth stories coming out. I love that. I love that. That would be amazing. From different corners to show the oneness of human life. Birth is not just physiological, it is cultural. It depends where you live and where you give birth. So the course will run like that. And because I'm a creative writer, I will be also incorporating poetry, poetry of birthing. opening up the webinars will open up with poetry of birthing the first one on the 30th has got this amazing healer who's a poet who's going to do a ceremony of opening the passageway and she has a presence and so there's elements of poetry there's elements of you know different kinds of ways of learning because we're trying to What's the way to kind of bypass the screen? You know, we are trying to bypass the screen because we're meeting via the screen, but we're trying to bypass it. Different topics, biomedical model of childbirth, indigenous model of childbirth, childbirth rituals and ceremonies, birth architecture, design and furniture, and how that impacts on birth outcomes. You know, all of that will be part of the course. And of course, the last one before redefining cultural safety will be birth stories, words as medicine. So I am really looking forward to

SPEAKER_01 46:54

this. Me too. I can't wait. I

SPEAKER_02 46:59

want to take your course as well. I want to take your course as well.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

Okay, great. Yeah. Okay, we'll sort that out. Let's do that. Yeah, no, it's a loss and I'm really happy that you have taken up the really important torch of, you know, gathering that information and kind of making sure it proliferates the globe because I can feel the grief of this loss of like a genocide of birth. Yeah. It's, you know, it's just, it's becoming.

SPEAKER_02 47:38

Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 47:40

it's been coming up a lot for me, but it feels untimely seeing as there's a literal genocide, multiple literal genocides happening in many corners of the globe. But I think a simultaneously really systematic genocide of birth knowledge and birth wisdom and birth safety has been happening for the last couple hundred years, for sure. So you have a big job, and I'm grateful that you're doing it. The

SPEAKER_02 48:12

nice thing is I know that I don't have to do it alone, number two. I know that there's so many other people around the world who are doing this that we don't know about. When the world is about to change, There are people on the ground who are doing kind of the necessary work to prepare the planet for that shift. And birth work is one key area that prepares the rebirth of the planet. So I bump into online and mostly. I bump into amazing people in Mexico, in Kerala, in India, in Peru, you know, everywhere. And every time when I bump into someone doing amazing things, I'm like, oh, okay, these are the ground soldiers. These are the ground soldiers whose work is to prepare the planet for the shift. So there's many things. many others who are doing the same. And I think as much as we should grieve the loss, we should celebrate the fact that, I mean, here I am talking to you today about this. It means that there's an opportunity to revive it globally.

SPEAKER_01 49:43

Yeah. Fanning the flames. That's what I, that's literally the mission of why I started this. It's just like these little embers just.

SPEAKER_03 49:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:53

And bring them back to life. And it's going to be, it's going to be the biggest, the biggest bonfire you ever did see when, when as a collective group, we remember. And

SPEAKER_02 50:04

that it's, you know, that bonfire is not going to be the flames. I'm not going to engulf us. No, no. It's going to happen swiftly and silently. And we look back and where did we turn the corner? And we realize that we have turned

SPEAKER_01 50:25

the

SPEAKER_02 50:26

corner. That's what the bonfire is going to do for us.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

I can't wait while I'm fanning right beside you. right beside you, fanning away. We will remember. We will get this flame going. And gosh darn it, we're going to be a powerful group of unstoppable women and queer folks. It's going to be incredible.

SPEAKER_02 50:50

When you talk about the flames, just finally, is that the first thing that elders do when someone is in labor is to make fire. Yeah. That's the first thing they do.

SPEAKER_01 51:03

My analogy, it's come full circle.

SPEAKER_02 51:06

Yeah, well, you're talking about burning the flames. So yeah,

SPEAKER_01 51:12

yeah, no, it's it's beautiful. And I'm just really grateful for you. I'm grateful for your work. I'm grateful you got to come on the hot and brave podcast, which our logo is a flame because we want everyone to remember the the heat and the bravery. Thank

SPEAKER_02 51:30

you so much, Bianca.

SPEAKER_01 51:31

Thank you for being here. And we'll share all the information about your work and your program in the show notes. And y'all grab your spots. Seriously, this is important information. And we're on a time crunch to ensure that we remember and that we get this information into every birthing person's hands. It's critical.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

Thank you.

UNKNOWN 51:52

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 51:55

Want to keep hanging out? We have created a free mindset mini course to help change makers and birth workers find bliss in their business. You're not in this alone. Let's build together. Head to www.babomia.com slash bib to grab your space and a free retreat. Once again, go to www.babomia.com slash bib to grab your spot. We will see you next time on the Hot and Brave Podcast. podcast.