Shit We Don't Talk About
Shit We Don’t Talk About is the podcast that takes on topics we should be talking about more often and openly. Guests and topics will be incredibly diverse, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful but all things we need to talk about candidly to keep us all informed and connected. Some topics may be triggering so please listen with care.
Shit We Don't Talk About
Ep. 94 - Reimagining Power: From Control to Connection - Halley Kim
What if we reimagined our relationship with power? What if God wasn't an all-powerful ruler but instead a midwife, standing alongside us through life's messiest moments?
In this deeply moving conversation, returning guest Halley Kim introduces a revolutionary framework for understanding power dynamics in religion and politics. Drawing from her background in midwifery and her personal journey away from evangelical Christianity, Halley explores three distinct forms of power: power over, power together, and power within.
The dominant "power over" model is exemplified by dictators like Trump and the authoritarian God of many religious traditions – entities who control through force, manipulation, and fear. This framework sets people up for spiritual trauma when suffering inevitably occurs, leaving them wondering why an all-powerful God didn't save them from pain.
As an alternative, Halley presents the midwifery model as a profound metaphor for "power together." Midwives don't save women from the pain of childbirth; they bear witness, provide support, and accompany women through their journey. This solidarity creates space for individuals to access their own inner strength – their "power within."
The conversation takes an emotional turn when Hallie introduces her concept of "God as a midwife" – a divine presence that doesn't control everything but instead stands with us through life's challenges. This reimagining of spirituality offers healing possibilities for those with complicated relationships to religion and provides a framework for understanding community power in our current political landscape.
Whether you're wrestling with questions of faith, seeking to understand power dynamics in your own life, or simply looking for hope in challenging times, this conversation offers profound insights into how we might transform our relationship with power and with each other.
More about Halley:
Halley Kim is a writer and freelance editor in St. Louis, MO. Sheʼs also a former evangelical pastorʼs wife turned leftist heretic. In her nursing career she worked primarily with mothers and babies, also taking on the roles of doula, lactation consultant, midwifeʼs assistant, and educator. Halley spent a stint working in pastoral ministry herself within a progressive denomination (United Church of Christ). Halley is currently writing a book about power dynamics and Christianity, where she argues that a power-WITH God, such as a midwife, would have a dramatically more positive effect on society than the power-OVER God weʼve inherited. She and her husband Simon have three children, Gabriel, Phoebe, and Tabitha, and one fur-baby, Bruno. You can access her work on Instagram @maybe_gods_a_midwife or on Substack @halleywkim
Find Mia On Social Media here.
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Hey, welcome to the latest episode of Shit. We Don't Talk About the podcast that takes on topics that need more open and honest discussion, which means some of these topics are triggering. So please take care when listening and I'll always give you a trigger warning. For instance, here's one Every episode contains swear words.
Mia Voss:You've been warned, make sure to check out the show notes, which include an accessibility transcript of the podcast and all of the links for our guests at shitwedonttalkaboutpodcastcom. Mia Voss. In this episode, returning guest Hallie Kim takes us on an adventure exploring power dynamics within religion and politics. Yes, that's been a huge topic here on the podcast, but we also talk about how looking at power differently has huge potential. We also talk about how maybe God's a midwife and, spoiler alert this episode made me cry. Tune in it gets good. Here we go. All right. Spoiler alert this episode made me cry. Tune in it gets good. Here we go. All right, everybody, we're jumping in here.
Mia Voss:Hi, I'm Mia Voss and I have my returning guest, hallie Kim is back. Hi, hallie. Hello, I'm so happy to be back. Oh boy, we have a lot to say. Let's do our identifiers first. So again, mia Voss. Blonde, no glasses. Today I have this fun blue dress on that my darling fiance got me. I don't have my engagement ring on, but trust and believe it's here. And blonde hair. Hallie, tell me about you.
Halley Kim:So I'm wearing a light purple shirt today, with some sparkly hoop earrings. I do have glasses on. You're cute Doing my salt and pepper pixie cuts.
Mia Voss:um, so cute, yeah, that's that's me, and she has the collage of family photos behind her, which I absolutely love too. So, as you know, we had hallie on before and today I'm gonna read. I'm gonna read, read, because I messaged you this week. I said, okay, what do we want to talk about? And this is what she came back with exploring power over versus power together versus power within, and what this has to do with religion and politics. That's like a two hour show. Also, you know your handle on Instagram is maybegodisabendwife. We're going to talk about what that means to you and thinking about power differently. That actually has huge potential, and before we started, we haven't seen each other in about two or three weeks, and so this time-space continuum that we're in right now is so interesting because usually in an unprecedented times, there's maybe some things that have happened personally, but not these just huge, sweeping, grandiose, awful things that have been happening in our country, and it's just at such an accelerated rate.
Halley Kim:So yes, it's more than any of us can keep up with. I think all of our nervous systems are just constantly on edge, trying to exist in this space. And yeah, I mean, every day there's something else, and of course that's by design and we're.
Mia Voss:I was just mouthing by design.
Halley Kim:Yes, yes, by design, and it's just like one foot in front of the other, like, okay, I woke up again today. What can I do today to make the world a better place? And sometimes that seems straightforward, and oftentimes it doesn't.
Mia Voss:And you have children and I don't and I'm painfully aware of that I think people talk about when you have kids, it's like wearing your heart outside your body, and I feel that way about my foster animals you know what I mean my pets and my loved ones. I can't imagine something that I created that's out in this world right now, at any age. So I'm very, like I said, painfully aware of that. But I think this topic of exploring power over versus power together versus power within is really perfect for what we're just saying, because we feel powerless. Yes, yes, we do so dive in.
Mia Voss:Tell us what to do, Hallie.
Halley Kim:Well, I mean Trump getting us into a new war in the Middle East? Yay, that's a perfect example of power over right, and this is the kind of power that dictators are famous for. And Donald Trump is absolutely a dictator. And this is we saw this, you know, with Hitler and Pol Pot and Stalin, all of them. When people who are narcissists and abusers and only care about themselves want to make stuff happen, they do it by force. They exert power over other people and you know, I mean this is, this is old hat. This is every single day of his first term, his current term, I mean the man's life, really, and there's a million ways to do it right.
Halley Kim:There's, I mean, january 6th you want to talk about. You know, force and violence, manipulation, indoctrination I mean that's a huge part of it too. Like you look at, like Trump's cult following, or cult followings in religion, or cult followings in religion, and a big part of being able to have power over others is changing what they think and believe, making them think you're a savior, like Trump says, I'm the only one who can fix it. You know, if you think something is a savior like Trump or like Jesus, then you're much more easy to manipulate. Like, oh, if you're afraid, you think you need saving and someone's like I'll take care of everything. And of course, there's a lot of fine print about how you know they actually really don't care about you and you're just kind of a long, you're just a pawn right In their quest for power. So that's power over.
Halley Kim:I'm working on a book proposal right now and I talk about power over as kind of shorthand for the idea of God that we've all inherited. It's absolutely the God of evangelical Christianity, but it's it's even bigger than that. I mean both in Judaism and Islam. You know, those are monotheistic religions in which there is an all-powerful, almighty God who is very distinct and over humanity, and you know you want to get this God's favor so you can be saved or holy or both, and this God tends to, at least in Christianity. I can't speak personally about Judaism or Islam, but I was an evangelical Christian for 20-ish years and it's like oh, god loves you, god is loving, but he's also just, and if you don't follow his rules you will go to hell, you will be punished.
Mia Voss:Super transactional.
Halley Kim:Oh, so transactional, that is a huge part of it.
Mia Voss:Yeah, I mean, even think about it and this is something that didn't occur to me until even I can't believe I didn't get it. I mean, I guess I knew it but didn't get it. I'd like the transactionality of even going on these trips abroad know trips abroad and things like that or helping out in the community how transactional that is that you have to buy into. You know we'll help you if you become part of this. I mean that's the ultimate in non-selfless and trickery right Going over and creating things that you know, holding things dangling right. Yes, yes, it's extremely transactional.
Halley Kim:And you know we're vulnerable to that kind of proposition because we're terrified of what the consequences might be or what the consequences are.
Mia Voss:Absolute power over.
Halley Kim:Yeah, so I mean, you know, unfortunately, because we're living in this Trump regime hellscape, his actions are, you know, the first thing that comes to mind when I think about power over. But we see this all over the place. We see it in pastors who are abusive, um ceos who, like like jeff bezos like jeff bezos and all of his amazon employees he's a billionaire and his employees are treated terribly um, so I mean it's, it's a huge part of capitalism, um patriarchy, white supremacy. I mean it's baked into all of those isms that create the social hierarchy that we all exist in.
Mia Voss:And I was just saying it at another podcast episode I did yesterday with this other guest, Deborah Burgess. I mean, it is so ingrained and late stage capitalism is just woven into and baked into everything and unfortunately we are at a crux where shit just has to break down. It's really never been geared to work for many, but right now it's just so painfully obvious and he really is the figurehead that's reflective of a lot of shit in our society. Sorry, we're not being very upbeat, right now, but we're just telling the truth of life.
Mia Voss:It's hard to be upbeat. But again, but I love, at least I think some of the power in this because we're so overwhelmed is to call it out and say okay, I feel powerless for good reason. I think that's a good thing. To remind people is like if you're feeling powerless it's for a good reason, it's not because you haven't made. I mean, yes, there's stuff that we can all do mutual aid, community calling, making phone calls, being aware of what's going on but, granted, there's just only so much that we can do. So I think it's a good reminder for people. You feel powerless for a reason.
Halley Kim:Yes, absolutely, and that's part of the power over framework too. It's designed to make you feel powerless. It's designed to work against your sense of internal power. So I'm going to get to this idea of power within. But part of the evil brilliance of power over is that it erodes an individual sense of an internal power, so like you're being oppressed and you're also telling yourself through indoctrination that there's nothing you could do to. You know, get out from under this. This thumb, uh, divine or human. So, um, I want to move into what I mean by power together, and that's where I'll bring in the God is a midwife stuff.
Halley Kim:So when I was in college, I learned about this idea of midwifery.
Halley Kim:I got my degree in nursing, so you know there's so many different specialties of nursing and one of them is nurse midwifery and I was like midwives, what Isn't that like how people used to deliver babies, like a long time ago, and isn't it biblical, right, right, biblical or hokey, and like what's up with that?
Halley Kim:But I was also really drawn to it and I started researching it and I learned that midwives were nearly eradicated in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but they are making a comeback and in many other countries, midwives attend the majority of low-risk births, with obstetricians handling only the higher risk cases. So I was really intrigued by that and I'd always loved babies and I just absolutely loved this idea of being with woman. So that's what midwife stands for. Midwife translates to with woman, and it felt so like holistic and like there was so much solidarity in that and I've always been really passionate about, you know, women's issues, as it's called. I kind of hate that framing, because all of humanity should care about things that affect women, because it's half the population, because it's half the population, because it's half the population, right, like it's not like this little side thing.
Mia Voss:I know it's not a specialty interest, but it's made to be like a very we'll get to it when we get to it, kind of thing?
Halley Kim:Yes, exactly, but for lack of a better phrase, I was always super passionate about things that are particular to women or people with uteruses. So you know, I just started reading about midwifery and I went to like a childbirth conference and you know, I'm like 20 years old, like it was kind of a strange passion for a 20 year old, but I was just like all about it and I became a doula. I became politically active to get midwifery legalized in Missouri until 2008, from about 1950 something to 2008. Wait, wait, wait.
Mia Voss:I'm sorry, it was actually illegal.
Halley Kim:Oh yeah, Shut up. No, I'm dead serious. Oh my God, Sorry, Sorry audience.
Mia Voss:I just thought it was more not as popular, and I just want to ask you this question real quick. I'm wondering in what chapter or what part of your education did you learn that J Mary M Sims was a total fucking piece of garbage? Oh gosh, Known as the father of obstetrics. Everyone Look this piece of garbage up.
Halley Kim:Oh, it's awful. There's a statue of him in Central Park which I really hope comes down someday.
Mia Voss:Wait, sorry, I had to Google that. It says from 2018, it's been removed, wow. Yes, we got to go and stomp on that Experimented on slaves. There's a horrible graphic where, wow, yeah, so midwifery was criminalized in most, if not all, states during the 19th or 20th centuries.
Halley Kim:So since we're talking about that, what happened in the 20th century, and this had been building for a while. But in the early 20th century physicians, who at the time were all white men, went on a very effective smear campaign against midwives, who were primarily Black, Indigenous or immigrant, not formally educated, Many were illiterate because they were barred from education and just in every way were not privileged like these physicians were. So, you know, they utilized people's prejudices to convince them to come to them, the physicians for maternity care instead of the midwives, and it was, you know, just extremely racist, xenophobic. All the misogyny, and there's a lot of research from the early 20th century showing that midwives had better outcomes. They lost fewer mothers, they lost fewer babies. Midwives had better outcomes, they lost fewer mothers, they lost fewer babies, but that didn't matter it was?
Mia Voss:you know it was optics, it was yeah, the optics of these you know white men, which you know they just get away with so much because the appearance of safety, again, that's what's been baked into society as well, as opposed to these women and in different settings, as opposed to the sterile thing. Wow, what an effective smear campaign. Yes.
Halley Kim:So by around the 50s. So in the year 1900, about half of all births happened at home. Well, that's not right. I forget what the at-home number was that particular year, but half of all births were attended by midwives in 1900. By 1950, it was close to zero, except in the American South, where Black midwives, who are sometimes called granny midwives the preferred term that I like is grand midwives those amazing women continue to care for mothers and often like their entire community, into the 70s.
Halley Kim:Before they were also squashed of who's in control of maternity care and it was very much a turf war, and the privileged one. So midwifery was illegal in Missouri until 2008. It was legal and this is I don't want to get too much into minutiae because it's not like really the heart of what we're talking about today but there were and are nurse midwives who are registered nurses, who are also midwives. Those midwives have been legal in Missouri and all states for a while, but they are generally restricted from practice through other means, like, okay, you're legal, but you can only practice with physician supervision and none of us are going to agree to supervise you. So that was one issue.
Halley Kim:And then there's another kind of midwife. In the US it's called a certified professional midwife. Other countries have other names, but it's a midwife who didn't first become a nurse. She just entered directly to the profession of midwifery. These midwives were illegal until 2008 in Missouri and they are still illegal in numerous US states. So I became active with that.
Mia Voss:You're advocating for that, then yes.
Mia Voss:And think about that too, because you know someone like me again, not having children, if it's not something that directly affects me. Now, don't get me wrong, I really do pay attention to that as well too, but you don't even know what you don't know because it's so I'm so incredulous about it. Um, but what if I mean talk about the power over and that they boy I mean. And then when you add that in and I don't know if you saw the link I sent to you, I might have been in Instagram about this this, uh, florida state, I believe a state representative who had an ectopic pregnancy.
Mia Voss:Have you seen this whole story. Anyway, irony, yeah. Now she's blaming Dems like the oh, they had a, they had a, they had a beef against me. And they're like, no, this is the law that you set up, that they're terrified, they can't do anything, they could go to prison if they treated you. So talk about these family party, of family values and taking care of families If they're taking this away from the care that contributed to a lesser maternal mortality rate. Right, I can't anyway, yeah, keep going.
Halley Kim:I mean so that history there between midwives and obstetricians. There's just another example and a huge pile of examples of how it's never been about life. It's always been about power. Right Control and power, absolutely yes.
Halley Kim:So I started attending births. I got to shadow a couple of midwives. I became a doula and I loved going to births. I don't do it regularly anymore, but it is the most magical thing and I was like this is the coolest thing ever. I started assisting with prenatal appointments. I became like an apprentice, essentially for a local midwife. For a bit I was also an RN, so I worked at a birth center and then I had my doula clients, so I was around birth a lot and I just fell in love with the model of midwifery, which is very much about power together.
Halley Kim:So what do I mean by that? I mean bearing witness when a woman is in labor. A midwife and I mean doctors of course can and should do this too, but I really saw it with midwifery. You know it's about being seen, and being seen is so crucial and midwives, unlike physicians, unlike the Jesus that I was taught about in evangelical Christianity, they're not about saving Like I mean.
Halley Kim:It's just a reality, especially if you give birth at home or in a birth center, you're you're probably not going to have an epidural. Well, definitely not at home, that is not. You know you got to go to a hospital for that home. That is not. You know you got to go to a hospital for that. And so they're not saving you from your pain, but they're witnessing your process. They are accompanying you on this journey, not just labor and birth, but the pregnancy too, the whole process. So I hired midwives for my own prenatal care with my kids. And you know my friends would tell me about their appointments with their OBs where it was like you know, it's like 10 minutes and I mean every single one of my appointments was an hour, mia, because it wasn't just like you know how much you weigh and let's measure your belly. It was also like how's your marriage, how's your husband doing with this? Wow yeah.
Mia Voss:How are you feeling? Sure, this integrative questions and experience, and you know that that is incredible because it does become so clinical.
Mia Voss:You know the end of the bottom line, one of the bottom lines I think with with power within that does come from listening and it comes from intuition and it sounds like and I have a couple of episodes on birth and death, doulas from about two years ago that I just have been fascinated ever since of like how, how beautiful that can be, but again it is you're listening to them and then you're empowering them to listen to themselves instead of like, oh, it's just indigestion or something like that. Right them to listen to themselves, instead of like, oh, it's just indigestion or something like that, right, how dangerous is that to not have to, not be empowered to actually listen to yourself and advocate for yourself and then have somebody that makes it easy for you to advocate for yourself or advocates for you.
Halley Kim:Right, I mean it's it's night and day from the power over dynamic, because I had said earlier that power over erodes a sense of power within and with that, a sense of power together like there's. You're not really motivated or even aware that you could resist or do differently because of the indoctrination and the manipulation and the enforcement, like, if you try to go against power over, you will be quickly punished or someone you care about will be, but within a power together dynamic, which I first experienced with midwives, you're being seen, they're bearing witness, you're being accompanied. So you're going through something really hard and difficult and transformative, but you're not alone and there's so much solidarity, this idea of like yeah, I've been there too. I know how much it sucks and you're doing this, you can do it too. I know how much it sucks and you're doing this, you can do it. So power together helps you tap into power within.
Halley Kim:So the actual power together itself is incredible. We saw this with the no, the no Kings protests right, you know just millions of us coming together in solidarity to resist the Trump regime. That's amazing. It also has an effect of making you, the individual, believe in yourself more, like oh I, um, and this is getting you know, to move into power within that's. That's the birthing part. Right, like the midwife is there with you as you go through this hard thing, she's having power together with you, but you're the only one that can birth this baby and this is you know. There's a metaphor there, but when I say birthing, I mean that can mean anything right, that can mean having a hard conversation with someone.
Halley Kim:That can mean taking your career in a new direction. That can mean writing a book. That can mean running for office. Right, Right, right. It requires your power within.
Mia Voss:Right.
Halley Kim:So we're talking about like agency, we're talking about self-worth, we're talking about responsibility for yourself. Yeah, and you know, that's kind of it's not a downside of power within, but part of the reason that power over is initially compelling to people is that it's like a, it's like an easy button right, like, oh, you're going to take care of me, you're going to save me, you know best, you know best, right, right. And this is very much the opposite of it.
Halley Kim:It's I create my own destiny and some of the work is going to be, but I'm the one who's in the driver's seat, yeah, yeah, so it's. And it's individuation too, like, okay, that person's over there doing their thing, what's my thing, what is mine to do, and who am I? Because, oh, I don't have to be, you know, reduced to this role of sinner or um, helpless citizen who's I don't know what Burden on society, all the things.
Mia Voss:And one thing that made me think of that, when and I keep, I have my little notes over here, but again with with the power together, and then when we, when we, when you, went into the power within, the question that popped up into my mind that can occur for people is what else can I do? Right, and that's that, that birthing piece that you just you just mentioned. If you've got a, yes, that's the ultimate goal, obviously, with the, the birth doula, for health for everyone. But the, what else can I do, is such an interesting for the power within. But you're right, that really does come with what can seem like a double-edged sword initially. Now, people like you and me, we've been doing this for a while. So, right, we might make it look easy in some ways because it is a bit more natural, but it has taken some time.
Mia Voss:And that is one thing from a multi-generational piece that I love. I do feel like the different gens younger than us, because I'm elder, you know, at the top of the of Gen X. So then there's what Gen Z? I get it mixed up. There's millennial Gen Z, all that I really do love how much more naturally empowered they are. They take a lot of shit, but they, they, they question things a lot more than my generation or your generation did, I think, and so it took us a while to get to that, but I do feel like it gives me hope that there there's more of an ease to the power within than we had at our age. Yes, absolutely, to give them a shout out.
Mia Voss:Yes A lot of shit, just like we did back in the day.
Halley Kim:Yes, greta, what's her name? Thank you. Her climate activism is just like so amazing and you know when she started so unapologetic, you're like a little girl and you are just like telling everybody the way things should be, and you a hundred percent right and this is fantastic and that's, I mean, that's the power that we all have inside.
Mia Voss:She's. I think it's the unapologetic piece which I really like, which also leaves room to be wrong about things. I think we get it mixed up a lot with this taking over the power that then we have to get it right. I know that's me.
Mia Voss:Personally, I can really tell that that'll come into play with for me and I've been taking a look at it pretty closely of like this almost low grade, horrified that I want to make mistakes on something, or when it's like and so I've really been leaning into that as well to have easily transitioning of like, because men really have a lot more ease about eh, okay, right, and I feel like Greta Thunberg actually really embodies that as well. So I'd really like to encourage people as well to to know that when you're, um, taking over from this, this power together, or this power within that they're, they're also just trying and really look for the ease in being okay with having getting getting something incorrect, but not actually. It doesn't mean you're like, oh, you're just so wrong about it, but just more like all right, let me change that up, yeah totally, and that's another thing I love about the birth metaphor it's messy.
Halley Kim:Oh my God, right there's blood and poop and it's you know it's messy, there's blood and poop. It's not like a tidy one, two, three kind of process.
Mia Voss:Let me confess something Again as a non-mom, I'm just putting all my business on the highway, but I did not know about the bleeding afterwards and that it went on for a while until somebody mentioned about this is this is how recent it is. So and I'm 60. Okay, so, but when Meghan Markle, I think with her first baby, she came out in a, in a, in a dress, a dress that was either like white or beige or something, and somebody was like man, that's bold. I'm like why, what, what? And they're like oh, you know, you're wearing like a giant pad. For a while I'm like I didn't know that. So now you know, if you didn't know either.
Mia Voss:But I think normalizing that too is so important because they just, I mean, think about I had an episode a few weeks ago about, about multi-generational period shame, and that goes right in with that as well too. And then you think about all the messy attitudes about breastfeeding and things like that. So it's really quite. It's, across the board, a lot of demonization of it, but I agree, just being so like putting it out there, of how messy and beautiful it is, that messy is beautiful how messy and beautiful it is.
Halley Kim:That messy is beautiful, messy is beautiful. And so, if I can go a little further with my my power dynamic thing, um you better, we've all inherited this god. That is very much power over and that very much is our politics. I I mean obviously currently, but even before Trump. I mean America has some serious issues.
Mia Voss:It's just a really recent shitty episode of this show we call the United States. Yes, it's actually been an entire series.
Halley Kim:Uh-huh. So power over is what we know in politics and religion, and something that I feel strongly is that the way we conceive of God makes a really big difference in human behavior. And you know, I don't believe quote unquote the way I used to. I don't even really know what that word means. Honestly, it just has lost all resonance for me. But it still really matters to me because I see it's the impact of who we are walking around thinking of God, as In the literature they call this God image and it's argued that everyone has a God image. It doesn't matter if you believe in God or not, that's irrelevant. You have an image of the God that you either believe in or don't believe in. People say God and everyone has some idea of what that is. And if you think that God is a power over, volatile, unpredictable, all-powerful, all-knowing asshat, then that's going to affect the way that you vote and live and be in relationship, and I mean just everything the way you operate in this world and show up in community everything.
Halley Kim:Right.
Halley Kim:So, I love this idea of God is the midwife because for numerous reasons.
Halley Kim:I mean I just finished writing a sample chapter for my book about you know this idea that God is in control of everything, and how that falls so flat when you experience a trauma.
Halley Kim:That falls so flat when you experience a trauma and you know so. There are so many people who have to deal with spiritual trauma on top of you know, the car accident or the cancer or the divorce, because it's not just that thing itself, it's also so like God. You let this happen to me, like you're supposed to be in control of everything and I thought you were good, but you didn't save me from this awful thing, right? And that's another huge problem of this power over God, whereas if God is a midwife, if God does not have power over, but instead has power together, then God is, you know, witnessing you in the divorce. God is in solidarity with you in your cancer journey. God is, you know, the midwife who is telling you that you can do this when you're. You know you're really tired of going to physical therapy for that horrible car accident you were in Right.
Mia Voss:I have to find a tissue. Yeah, oh my God, that's really getting me, because I have such a complicated thing with religion. Oh my God, yeah, I didn't see this coming. This is so good. Oh, mia, thank you for that. Oh, I think so many people need to hear that.
Halley Kim:Yeah, well, it makes such a difference, right, Because you know I never want anyone to get this idea that like I'm going to use my dress. I can't find Kleenex. Use your dress, Use your dress. I never want anyone to think that I have this thing with like people have to have natural births because I don't. Yeah, thing with like people have to have natural births because I don't. But this is a metaphor. So in the metaphor there is no epidural because there's no life. Epidural, right. Like painful things happen to us. That's guaranteed, right. So we set people up for such intense psychological and spiritual pain when we tell them that God is all powerful and is going to save them, Because then that doesn't happen. But if we tell people instead, if our God image as a culture was someone who can't save us but is going to be with us in the shit, that would have such a huge impact on everything.
Mia Voss:I can't. Even even my cat's like are you all right? Mom Picked up your kitty. Betty wanted to get in on this. She's like dang mom, I, you know, and I'm I'm even thinking in terms of you know, obviously I was just getting into my own situation, but when you think and that's just as heterosexual white women right and then you think of what people go through from the LGBTQIA community, from the trans community, anything that's not what you almost got the kitty booty there for a second. This is probably going on YouTube what anybody who doesn't, who falls outside the norm of what the fascio Christian or what the evangelical world thinks is normal. I mean the pain, the pain, but I love that, hallie, oh my gosh, I love that of going along with woo girl, you got to write that book. I'm working on it.
Halley Kim:I know you are. I'm working on it.
Mia Voss:Oh, that is beautiful.
Halley Kim:I'm working on it. I know you are working on it. Oh, that is beautiful, yeah, and I, I thank you. And often I I see this binary thinking among people about religion where essentially, they don't have a concept of power together. Right, so it's, either it's either we have this power over God Well, actually, I would argue that most people think of God in that power over way, and they're either on board with that and they're good little Christian soldiers, or they rightly reject that idea and they're atheists. And people can be atheists Totally fine, right. But there's also another option for God it wherein and this is where I go back to it doesn't actually matter if you believe, because God as a concept ain't going anywhere. Yes, it matters what that concept is. So what about the idea of a God who doesn't actually have very much, you know, power in terms of the way we think about it, right?
Mia Voss:Power over, not power over, like it's so traditionally. Wow, what a load of shit we've been, I know, right A long time, and rightly so. It's been used to get what people want, like what we started off saying in the beginning of this right Yep.
Halley Kim:Yep, yeah.
Mia Voss:So yeah, but I love that point too. That is such a distinction, because it's the fighting amongst each other of my way is right, right, and I mean that was certainly. I spent 10 years in a, a born again Christian cult, that you know just. I mean they were so staunch mid. You know, those Midwesterners got to love it when they get ahold of shit. Central Illinois, boy, can I go wrong? But it's, it's so interesting. But I think if we could get past that too, god is infinite in a way, even if it's something, even if you are agnostic or what's the other one I just forgot Atheist. Thank you, yeah, yeah.
Halley Kim:I love that. And not only is that image of God so much healthier and I don't know.
Mia Voss:It just helps your power within, because I think if you get it right, if you get it right in your head, then you really can rely on your power within, exactly Because you've given it away to God, or you've given it away to politics or to leaders and so forth. Ooh girl.
Halley Kim:Exactly, that's exactly where I was going with that. Love it. When you start seeing what we think of culturally as absolute power, when you start thinking of that power as power together, it inherently leads to a power within, because it just does. Power together is so different from Power Over.
Mia Voss:It's incredible, and we're seeing the extremes of it right now. I really do feel that. I mean again with the no Kings, as you mentioned, that really was a wonderful example of that too. In the face of what's really becoming quite grim circumstances, our neighbors are being taken, rights are being taken away. So yeah, I agree, I agree, I think that they're going to go hand in hand with each other, all right. Well, that concept works. You nailed it. I think we're going to end on that, because I just don't think we can get any better than that. Where can we find you? I know it's going to be in the show. I just don't think we can get any better than that. Where can we find you? I know it's going to be in the show notes, but what's coming up for you and where can we find you? You're obviously writing a book, yay.
Halley Kim:Yes, I'm writing a book. My Instagram handle is maybegodsamidwife and there are underscores between all the words, so maybe underscore gods, g-o-d-s. Underscore A underscore midwife. And then on Substack at Hallie W Kim.
Mia Voss:Love Substack man. I think that is just the new thing that's going to stick around. I think it's independent journalism. So everybody go look for Hallie on that. I'm sure she'll be back on another topic, but this was good. I didn't see the getting me out of cry on my bingo card. Nice, that was really good. I appreciate you. All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in, thanks, bye. Hey, thanks for tuning in. You can check out the show notes and guest links at shitwedontalkaboutpodcastcom. If you like this episode, please subscribe and give it a like or leave a review, especially if it's a good one. See you next time, bye.