Also, a Pregnancy Announcement

In this solo episode of Further Forward, Ashley gives a season two check-in, remembering how nourishing and exciting the conversations with Dr. Ndidiamaka Amutah- Onukagha & Eliza Shirazi were. Get caught up if you haven't listened!

Also, a pregnancy announcement! 

From there: the questions we ask pregnant bodies that we'd never ask anyone else, the guilt of being okay when someone else isn't, and the pull to be agreeable instead of honest, which lands her on the real thing: four things that get disrupted every time we act from fear instead of truth.

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Further Forward: Honest Conversations on the Art of Becoming, is hosted by Ashley Mitchell. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Further Forward Podcast. I am your host, Ashley Mitchell. Thank you for showing up to listen to this episode. Literally, I'm always amazed. Every time I look on a Thursday morning, because after I finish teaching, I always go back and double check. Did the episode post? Is anything, has anything gone wrong? Right. So the episode goes up at like four or five in the morning. I'm teaching by seven. So when I'm leaving the studio, I'm like, okay, is this, is everything okay? And it always amazes me that there are people who are listening to this on their Thursday morning. If you are on Eastern Standard Time, you are waking up with this podcast. And I think that is a big deal because how we start our day is everything. So thank you. Whenever you're listening, thank you. But for the folks hitting download at 5 a.m., oh, thank you. I love you. Okay, let's do a season two check-in. First two guests. What do you think? How are we feeling? First, we had Dr. Ndidiyamaka Amuta Onukaga. She is such a powerhouse. We had the most beautiful pre-show talk. It was just so nourishing for me as a mother, as a black woman. And then she just like came on the podcast and just did a sermon for 30 minutes. If you have not listened to it, I highly recommend. And then we just had Eliza Shirazi last week for a two-part episode that was not planned. It was not expected. But once we got going, and Eliza, we said this on the podcast, Eliza and I were peers and colleagues, but we never see each other. We just kind of bump into each other time to time. We follow each other, we support each other. So we had no idea that once we started talking, we would have all of these things in common, a lot of the same philosophies around teaching and owning a business and instructors and inclusivity. And it was so cool to have that experience with her. If you haven't listened yet, go back, listen to both parts. She has so much to offer, especially if you are in wellness, if you are in client-facing work, I think it's really, really great nuggets that you can gain from her if you're a small business owner, a solo entrepreneur. You know, there's we just touch on a lot of different things, which I think is really, really great. But the through line in both of those conversations, uh, even though it came at it totally different, this relentless belief in yourself, right? Like being unshakable and being organized enough to actually plan for what you want instead of just wishing for it, hoping for it, you know, sitting on your cushion being like, I'm gonna manifest. No, it takes so much intention and organization. And neither one of them said that they were perfect or getting it right. But what I noticed about both is that there is this kind of devotion to the preparation and to the steps that are private, so that by the time you get to whatever is public-facing, it likely looks a lot easier than it actually is, right? But that, but that takes so much effort behind the scenes. So I want to shout them out and I want to make sure you listen to those episodes. There won't be as many guests on this season. So when there is someone on this podcast, consider it special. Okay. The second thing coming up here, little check-in with me. I'm having a baby, y'all. 2027. Here we go. I'm so excited. I feel so good. This is totally different the second time around. Well, the first time around I had a baby during COVID. So just baseline, it's gonna be much, much different. I feel I feel more energetic this time around. I feel healthier this time around. Some of it I wonder if it is literally just the environment, socially, culturally, you know, the just by nature of being out and about. There's some aspect of, you know, I got work to do. I gotta go teach. I got stuff to do. I can't just kind of sit in it in the same way, for better or for worse, the first time. This uh podcast will obviously go on hiatus when I go on maternity leave. I am a generally a ride it to the wheels fall off kind of girl. But as it turns out, I don't I don't really like that. Last time when I gave birth to Zion, I stopped teaching on a Friday. And it was supposed to be, I think, three weeks before actually being due. Um, stopped teaching on a Friday, and then that Monday had to go to the hospital to start the process of birth. And I didn't like that. There wasn't enough time. So I will not be riding it until the wheels fall off. I will be stopping at a time that feels appropriate for me and my body, my family. That means teaching, that means this podcast, that means the courage campaign, that means whatever I am doing. I am giving myself enough space and time to just be a mother of one, to just kind of like do whatever I want to do. So we will be in touch about that. Did I want to say anything else about pregnancy? Let me look at my notes. Okay, yes. A couple of things, actually. So I had a little moment of panic, I'll be honest. And I had to call my OB when I was like, I'm good, and I think that's bad. I have no examples of like what what a pregnancy that feels good looks like. So I automatically assume that if I feel good, it must mean that something is is wrong, like something is not happening right. And she was like, Whoa, well, not true. You know, everybody is different. Every pregnancy is different, every everything is different, it's not a big deal. And so I had to, I had to just put that little piece out there because this is a thread to a sort of larger thing that comes up this sort of guilt that you're okay when other people aren't, or that in certain moments, right, you might be able to do a little bit more, have a little bit more, you might feel a little more happy or a little more energetic or something, and you know that like someone else is suffering. And there's just like a little bit of like, am I am I supposed to enjoy this when other people aren't? Am I supposed to have this? Am I? And it's just kind of silly, right? Because life is always gonna ebb and flow. And I'm very sort of trying to be in the space of just be where it is. It might be different tomorrow. It might be different next month, it might be different six months from now. You just you don't know. So, so stop trying to. This is me talking to myself, stop trying to blunt the blessings because of what other people might be feeling or how they might perceive it or whatever. That's not your work. That's not your testimony. Your testimony is to just live how you're living and to be truthful in that. And sometimes it's gonna be great and sometimes it's gonna be not so great. So that's one. The second thing is I noticed while I haven't announced this on Instagram, I've just been, you know, I told my classes and, you know, if I've seen you in person, you likely know like things like that, right? And I've noticed the barrage of questions, girl, that we ask pregnant people. And I I don't know if it was like this last time because it was just it was just a totally different space five years ago. But girl, and I'm not saying that anyone is wrong or bad, but I have to talk, I have to talk about it. I have to talk about it. How far along are you? When are you due? Is it a boy or girl? Do you want a boy or girl? What do you have now? What does your son say? Did you tell your son? Does he know anything? How does he feel about it? What kind of delivery are you gonna have? Are you gonna be back? You're gonna have a C-section? Where are you delivering? How do you feel? And I'm like, oh my God. And again, this is not a judgment because I do this too, but it's made me pause to think about why do we ask? What's the intention behind why we ask? And and what's the why do I answer? I don't go up to anyone who's gotten breast implants and said, oh my God, you got your titties done when? How old are they? Where did you get them done? Who's your doctor? When will they have to come out? Are you gonna get them changed? Are they saline or are like I would never, never, would never go up to someone with a prosthetic limb and ask questions, would never go up to someone carrying an oxygen tank and ask questions, right? But it is interesting how we ask and expect pregnant people to narrate their condition. There's a level of privacy, but there's also this visibility that I don't know. It's like sometimes you're you're it feels like your body as a pregnant person is just open for discussion. And if we want to get deeper politically, right, we're talking about women's bodies, we're talking about black women's bodies. And I think that people forget how much uncertainty there is in pregnancy. So they're asking all these like certainty questions when on some level you're just like, God damn it, I just, I just want to survive this. I just want a healthy baby. At the end of it, I don't give a fuck what the genitals are. Can we can we just get to can we just get to the birth? Can we just make sure? Shit, I'm a black woman giving birth in America. Can I get to the end? That's what the fuck I'm worried about. That's what I'm thinking about. And I I know that I tend to be a little bit um unforgiving when it comes to other people. Like, I have these deep thoughts, and I'm like, well, why would we say that? And why would we ask that? And what is the intention and all these things? So I'm like, let me check myself. Let me text a couple of friends and see if they feel the same way I feel. And it was unanimous that it, that there are moments where it is genuine connection, and people are asking because they care and because they're a part of your life and your circle. And, you know, they're they're like somehow in it with you. And even then, there are certain things that can be invasive and unwanted. And also, there's just a curiosity, and uh uh people want to project and people wanna people just be people. People be people in. So I'm just gonna let that marinate in the space. The other thing in this, and I think that other women can and will relate, is this pull to be agreeable, to be likable, to to want to be a girl's girl, to be open, to be helpful, to be easy to talk to, to um, you know, it's this pressure to share. People want to know, people want to know. So you should share, you should tell people, you should, right? Like it's it's we talk about this as women in general, it's hard to have boundaries sometimes because you're not socialized to makes you feel bad. It makes you feel like someone's not gonna like you. And if you're if you're someone that no one likes, my God, that sucks. I'm sharing this because when we refuse to say the thing, do the thing out of fear of judgment, there are some things that happen. And I'm sharing that it's all connected, right? Because I'm talking about my pregnancy and I'm talking about people asking questions about pregnancy to me and in general. And I know that someone's gonna have big emotions about it. And I know that I have to speak my truth anyway. And I know that this goes so far beyond pregnancy. This happens to me. I can only speak for myself over and over and over again, right? That I'll be scared to really say the thing that I want to say, or be scared to say it the way that I want to say it. Or be scared to put something out there publicly because it may not vibe with people that I care about, or whatever, right? There's this fear of your own authenticity and vulnerability, which sucks, especially when you were someone who uh creates from a place of vulnerability and authenticity. So when I was thinking about this, when I was journaling this, I came up with four things that happen, four things that are disrupted when we act out of fear or don't act because of fear. So, number one, we diminish our power, which is really just our agency, right? Our sovereignty, our ability to stand 10 toes down. The second thing is that we diminish our capacity to hold discomfort and nuance and more than one truth at a time. And what this then does is it disrupts not only our connection with ourselves, but with other people. And we're not a fucking silo, right? So we have to figure out how to sit in the discord sometimes. Three, we stay stuck in lack or scarcity or old stories that aren't even true anymore. This is something that I talk about all the time. I carry a lot of stuff from particularly childhood and um, you know, like things that people have said to me growing up or ways that I was supposed to be, or, you know, things like that, like it sticks with you and it fucks with you, and it it makes you behave in ways that you know are not how you were put on this earth to behave, right? It makes you stay small. And fourth, we stifle our own growth. And then if we stifle our own growth, it means that we don't get the lesson. And then it means that we don't get the fruit of whatever was supposed to come after the lesson. If you're growing, and I'm literally sitting in this shit right now, if you are growing, it means you are making mistakes. It means you are failing. It means you are likely fucking something up or pissing someone off.

unknown 16:34

Dr.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Ndidia Maka said it, you know, there's no comfort in the growth zone, and there's no growth in the comfort zone. I will carry that with me for the rest of my life. It is true. It's the, it's the the what comes after the failure, what comes after the mistake, the repair of that is where the the juice is, it's where the ultimate growth is. And yet we're so afraid to to even go there in the first place. I have this. Hold on, let me grab this book. Oh. Um, I really, really love listening to Sarah Jakes Roberts' sermons from time to time. I don't listen every Sunday. I'm a heathen, I know, but I do have her book. It's called Power Moves, holding it up if you're watching this on YouTube. And she has this quote that I highlighted. So she says, our function on the earth is not to be just viewers, but to actively engage in such a way that the earth looks different as a result of our presence. Right? You're not just supposed to be here lurking and wasting time. You're supposed to be doing stuff that leaves an impact. What is that? What is that? What is that thing? I was journaling about this this morning. Hold on, now I have papers, journals, books. You know I have all my materials. Um, intention, immediate next steps. What's holding me back? What do I want? How do I want my days to go? My life is about to change dramatically. Right? We hit that new year. Things are gonna get really real. I better get really clear on what I'm after. My friend Adara said, motherhood is the ultimate editor. And I was like, bitch, yes, yes, because you don't have the time. You don't have the bandwidth. You just don't. How do you want to feel? What's the desired outcome? If you're looking back over your life, what would you want to see? Who are you? Who do you want to grow into? If we don't know, we just start borrowing from other people, from what we think we're seeing on social media, from our parents, from society, whatever. And that's why there's so much friction. If you don't know who you are, if you don't do that interrogation, if you don't get comfortable with saying shit that people might get pissed off about, if you don't get comfortable living your life in a way that lights you up. Because let's be honest, right? If you're living in a way that lights you up, it's likely gonna have a ripple effect, right? The ripple effect of that is going to be so great to the people around you. Because it's gonna do two things. It's either going to give them a mirror of where they're not stepping into their truth, or it's gonna give them permission to keep going and to go deeper. When we are authentic and vulnerable, and when we say the thing and do the thing and feel the fear and do it anyway, we are creating impact and legacy. We are being examples for our children and our sisters, and we are making our ancestors proud and we are moving things forward, and we are. When we are not passive in this life, magic happens. That's where I want to be. I don't know about you, but that's where I want to be. All right. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If this podcast resonates with you, when you stop the episode, you're gonna keep your app open and you're gonna give this podcast five stars, and you're gonna be like, further forward is so great. I love the solo episodes and I love the guests. Woo woo woo woo woo. And I'm gonna be so grateful. Okay. Oh, God. I will see you next time. Well,