Melinated MommyTalks the Podcast

S1E3 "Maternal Morbidity & Finding Your Voice" w/ Jasmine Winters Pt 2

• A Melinated Moms and William of Nazareth Productions Podcast • Season 1 • Episode 3

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What if the most honest love story is the one where joy and trauma sit side by side? In part 2 of our conversation with Jasmine Winters—mom, IVF survivor, and founder of Peaceful Minds Haven—we unpack the raw, complicated space between a beautiful baby and a birth that almost broke her. The conversation gets real about postpartum depression, relationship strain, and the way systemic bias can turn a routine appointment into a life-threatening ordeal.

We trace Jasmine’s journey from morbidity to meaning, examining how medical racism undermines trust even when a mother walks in as a healthcare professional herself. You’ll hear how harmful assumptions, dismissal, and credential-checking show up during prenatal care, and how those moments ripple into decisions about future pregnancies. Together we offer practical advocacy moves: bring a partner or doula, ask the “odd” question, document symptoms, push for second opinions, and keep personal copies of your records. We also talk about preparing for the fourth trimester with a postpartum plan that prioritizes rest, food, and support.

Beyond the clinic, we challenge the survival script so many of us inherited. We’re redefining what “normal” can look like for Black families: joy without apology, therapy without stigma, softness without suspicion. We honor repair over perfection—apologizing to our kids, learning from their fresh eyes, and releasing the fear of succeeding as parents. And we seal the conversation with pledges: advocate, unlearn, relearn, and share your story so another mother meets respect and safety when it matters most.

Tap play for a grounded, story-driven guide to healing after birth trauma and building communities where thriving is the standard. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review to help more mothers find us. Your voice helps this movement grow.

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Jaye Wilson:

H ey girl, hey, it's your girl Jaye. Welcome to another episode of Melinated Mommy Talks the Podcast, where we are talking about and exploring all things within the melanated mom spectrum. If you listened to our last episode, then you heard part one of our conversation with Jasmine Winters, a mom who experienced morbidity during her IVF pregnancy. Jasmine is the founder and executive director of Peaceful Minds Haven, a nonprofit focused on maternal health and wellness with a little extra attention given to the mental health aspect of the work. In part one, Jasmine told us about how her morbidity experience played out, and we dived into conversation about healing, depression, and the importance of partners being involved in all aspects of that journey. One thing that really stuck out to me is how crucial it is to be aware that the partners of birthing people who have these morbid encounters are also dealing with their own pain, depression, and confusion within the situation and cannot be left out of the discussion. In part two, we are going to talk about the question of regret, about the black trauma survival mentality, and so much more. So go ahead and pull up your metaphorical seat, tap in, and enjoy part two of our conversation with Jasmine Winters. So Jasmine.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yes, ma'am.

Jaye Wilson:

We're here talking about our momming. And we all know the reality of momming is not beautiful peaches and cream. It's not the baby sitting on a little fluffy cloud and smelling good and being happy. It's also, you know, having a little terrorist that is running your life. Right. Um, and you know, in some, in some ways that's still fun and, and all of the things, because, you know, this baby is new. So they're like, oh, this shit is brand new. I don't know what this is, what is this, right? But when we're thinking about it from the space of our birthing experience and the trauma that is attached to this beautiful blessing, I think of it as like a duality kind of thing. Having your baby, being able to say, I went home, I'm parenting him, I get to watch him grow up, that's a beautiful blessing. But what happens to those feelings where you look at him and it reminds you of those moments when you become triggered and it becomes this burden of, oh my God, if he wasn't here, would I have had any of these experiences? Would I be navigating any of these things in my relationship? Would these be feelings that I have with my other children? So, like, how are you navigating that burden of the trauma that's attached to that beautiful baby while also recognizing the blessing of who he is for your life and your family?

Jasmine N. Winters:

That's a ...that's a very real and raw question.

Jaye Wilson:

Yeah. And please answer to your comfort. I don't want to create trigger.

Jasmine N. Winters:

It is, it's a very real question because I'm sure there are so many moms out there who may feel the negative aspects of parenting and mothering, but may not know how to speak up about it because of the shameful society opinions of, well, why did you have a kid?

Jaye Wilson:

For sure.

Jasmine N. Winters:

So I'm gonna lead with saying my bodily autonomy was my choice to start over at almost 40 years old and go through IVF to have a baby. That was my choice. I wanted that. I still want it and I am enjoying it. However, a failed incompetent medical system and setting that I was in created some traumas that have impacted how I parent, how I mother, and how I sometimes view what is supposed to be that blessing. My son did not ask to be here. He did not come to me in a dream and say, Hey, go through IVF. I'm, I'm trying to run the house and be a little terrorist, right?

Jaye Wilson:

Right.

Jasmine N. Winters:

We made that choice.

Jaye Wilson:

Yeah.

Jasmine N. Winters:

However, sometimes when I do look at my son, I am reminded of the trauma that was attached. Like, did you not make the right decision in choosing to start over? Should you not have gone through IVF?

Jaye Wilson:

Right.

Jasmine N. Winters:

If you didn't go through IVF, maybe your body wouldn't still be hurting from the postpartum depression. Maybe you wouldn't be crying randomly or being triggered or having relationship issues. You know, I was in a great space uh with my partner until our birthing experience, until having a child.

Jaye Wilson:

That's real.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And sometimes, yes, I, I would never use the word regret, but yes, sometimes I, I do look and say, maybe I should have made a different choice. Why did you start over, Jazz? Why did you do this? But then I'm also reminded at the new found me that came out of this. You know, I had a calling. I had a calling, and God used me as a vessel. And I had to go through that morbidity to be the vessel and the voice and the advocacy for birthing parents and moms who don't know how to use their voice, who don't know how to speak up and say their truth. It is okay to say, I think I messed up. It is okay to say, I think maybe I could have made a different decision with my bodily autonomy choices. It's even greater when you can find the joy that came out of that.

Jaye Wilson:

Yes.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And I found my joy and my purpose in that morbidity experience in choosing to have him.

Jaye Wilson:

Yeah. That's real. That's real. I remember navigating those same kind of feelings. So, you know, I have two girls. I've had four pregnancies. And my first pregnancy, I was 19. I was a sophomore in college. I was all excited, but I was scared and nervous and all of the feelings that you have. And when I went to my family and I'm like, hey, I'm having a baby, everyone looked at me like, what the fuck are you talking about? Right? So it was like, oh my gosh, this uncertainty. But then I'm like, okay, well, whatever. We're gonna have a baby. You know, I went to, I remember going to the doctor and asking, like, well, what do I need to do? And, you know, because we're not taught to plan for these things. It's just, it's reactionary, right? So you got nine months to figure it out.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yep.

Jaye Wilson:

Okay. And I remember going to my doctor and them just being like, because of your previous chronic health conditions, you actually have pre-clampsia, it's going to kill you, or this baby, or both. So make a decision. This is in my confirmation appointment. So at 19 years old, having to navigate that kind of decision and having to process what does this mean for me, not just with this particular pregnancy, but any subsequent pregnancies I may want to have. I've always wanted to be a mother. So to know, wow, these chronic health problems that I've had actually can inhibit my ability to go into another part of my life that I think is so important for me, that might not even be an option.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

That's crazy. And for 14 weeks, almost actually 15, almost 15 weeks, I carried that pregnancy. And every time I will go to the doctor, there was no encouragement. There was no compassion. It was, are we scheduling your termination today? Are we scheduling your termination today? How are we gonna continue this pregnancy? Didn't you, didn't, didn't you hear us then when you told you they were gonna die? You know? And I had to make a decision that I don't feel like was a decision for me. Like we were saying earlier with this the societal thing, right? It's like you're 19, you're in college, you don't have a plan, you don't have this. And I'm not saying that, that, I'm not saying that to encourage people to be like, yeah, you don't have a plan, just figure it out. Sometimes you do have to just figure it out, even when you do have a plan. But I'm like I don't, I don't feel like the decision was mine. I feel like it was made for me and I had to consent to it. So my first pregnancy was a termination and it, it devastated me because I didn't think, I didn't think that I could ever go through something like that intentionally. So a few years later became married, I became a nurse, I moved, and we found ourselves pregnant again. And I was like, all right. We did it the right way. We did all of the things that they told us we were supposed to do with the last one, now we're ready and we're prepared. And we went right into the same type of treatment where they're still talking to me as if I'm not a person in the room, where they're still minimizing my existence and my ability to be competent in the decision of moving forward with the pregnancy. They're minimizing the fact that I'm now a healthcare professional. Right? I'm, I'm like, hey, I'm a whole nurse now. My husband is an engineer and you know, we're doing all of the things. We're ready to have this baby. And they're still like, Well, are you in the right office? Well, is this real, is that really your husband? They, they literally asked me to bring my um my marriage license. Oh yeah. I was like, what the hell you need that for?

Jasmine N. Winters:

What state was this?

Jaye Wilson:

New York.

Jasmine N. Winters:

That's crazy.

Jaye Wilson:

Oh, well, uh, we just need it for the chart. I said, No, you don't. You don't need that for my diagnostic here. Nothing about my diagnosis saying you need a marriage license. And I'm saying this because going through those two experiences, and unfortunately, that second pregnancy ended in a stillbirth, I had no idea that I can exist outside of those two experiences and want to intentionally go for a third time to become a mother. You know, the first time it was a termination that I don't feel like was my decision, but I had to consent to. The second time, for years, it was this stillbirth that I felt like God was punishing me for making a decision that I didn't really want to make. So he took away a baby that meant everything in the world to me because I decided to let someone else make a decision for me. You know what I'm saying? And...

Jasmine N. Winters:

But you know that's not true.

Jaye Wilson:

I know it's not. I know. But when I think again about this burden versus blessing, did I put the burden on myself by making these choices based on these people who are supposed to have my best interests? I don't know.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And see that, that's something else we touched on in our own private conversations at one point is that, you know, the way the systemic racism in our healthcare settings is set up, it, it is discouraging. Because you asked me, are you done? Would you do it again? We had two embryos left after IVF, and they were both boys. And we talked about going again right after Cairo, maybe waiting 18 months. And we ended up, we ended up discarding of those embryos because my experience was that traumatizing that I don't never want to take a chance on my life and not being here for my friends, my family, my community, and more importantly, my home, my children. And so these healthcare systems, maybe they do know what they're doing. Hopefully they don't. But we know better.

Jaye Wilson:

Yeah. We know better.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Are creating such traumas that it, that that in itself is causing women to choose to not, black women to want to choose not to give birth. I don't know if you've you've seen this, the statistics and the numbers, but black women are having children later in, in life now.

Jaye Wilson:

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Jasmine N. Winters:

You know, young women, young black women are scared to get pregnant and go full term. They are afraid because we're dying.

Jaye Wilson:

Yeah. My kids have told me that already.

Jasmine N. Winters:

That's a problem.

Jaye Wilson:

My girls are 13 and 16. They're like, mommy, I don't know if I ever want to have children. This is scary. We're watching this stuff in real time with you. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to consent to that being fact?

Jasmine N. Winters:

To you taking my life or nearly taking my life?

Jaye Wilson:

Yes.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Because you don't like how I look. And my degree and my address doesn't qualify me to be treated with human decency.

Jaye Wilson:

Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Jasmine N. Winters:

It's horrible.

Jaye Wilson:

And the assumptions. Because they don't know what you're walking in there with. I can walk in as a physician and you will still question, well, what school did you get your medical degree from? Why the fuck would does that matter?

Jasmine N. Winters:

And what was your grade point average? Because guess what? The doctor that graduated with a C and the doctor that graduated with an A is called a what?

Jaye Wilson:

A doctor. And they both sitting in front of me, looking at me stupid.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Watching me bleed out.

Jaye Wilson:

Watching me bleed. Watching me bleed, right? So for, to that point also, so you know, a lot of things that come up in the black community is putting trust in spaces that typically have shown us that they are untrustworthy.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

Particularly our healthcare system and so many other things. But for the context of our conversation, healthcare. So when we talk to other moms and families who've gone through morbidities, mortalities, traumatic experiences, they often justify it as, well, you know, I mean, we ain't white people. That, that's what white people do. This, you know, I'm black. This is how we gotta figure it out. We just, we gotta suffer through it. We gotta struggle. We gotta survive. You know?

Jasmine N. Winters:

We don't.

Jaye Wilson:

We don't.

Jasmine N. Winters:

We gotta live.

Jaye Wilson:

We have to thrive. It's not just about, I made it, I crawled to the finish line, you know, I, I drank sand and I came out on the other side. Like, you don't have to do any of those things, right? And I think there's this huge misconception in the black community that our culture is tied to having trauma. If we didn't have a traumatic experience, it didn't count, right? And it's like, I don't want you to change what my culture is and equate it to how traumatic it was for me to get through. Kind of going back to what we were talking about with relationships and stuff. Like, I don't want to feel like struggle love is the only love that I can have. You know, I want a partner that loves me wholly and I can pour into them in a reciprocated manner. I want to be able to have those wonderful feelings and also um replicate those in our children, right? But it, it takes us unlearning and relearning new ways of love and accountability and integrity showing up in who we are as people and who we love around us, right? So they also can um reflect that back. So my question to you is how do we change those kind of conversations of this is the black experience to this may have been the experience of people that look like me, have had, but that is not my generational choice.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

I choose not to continue. I don't like to call them curses because I don't feel like we are cursed. We are very blessed people. We are the only people that have gone through generations after generation after generation of adversity and still found ways to rise to the top. We are the most...

Jasmine N. Winters:

Resilient.

Jaye Wilson:

...resilient, we are the most imitated people that live on this earth, but we don't get our own credit for it. And we don't even give ourselves credit for how innovative and, and beautiful we are with making nothing out of something, making something out of nothing. So yeah, so that's my question for you. So how do we how do we change those conversations from this being, this is my culture versus um I'm just trying to assimilate to what they tell me I'm supposed to be because this is what the black experience is supposed to look like?

Jasmine N. Winters:

Redefining what normalcy in the black community is.

Jaye Wilson:

Okay.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And it starts with conversations like this. You made a comment, you said for me, how I comprehended the statement was almost a comparison and competition of trauma. Yeah. Well, you grew up with two parents in a household, and I grew up with one. My mom was an alcoholic, my dad was a drug dealer, you know. Is, there's a comparison thing? Whose trauma is more? Yeah. And that validates you and that gives you street credit.

Jaye Wilson:

Right.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Well, we need to redefine what normal is. Why is that so talked about? Why is it every other black movie or black culture movie replicates of 'Boys in the Hood'?

Jaye Wilson:

That part.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Why are we not redefining what normal looks like in our communities by comparing education?

Jaye Wilson:

Yes.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Degrees, you know, and not in a competition form. That's how the traumas are looked at. Like, yeah, I grew up like this. You you don't know what government, government cheese is. You don't know what... well, why do I want to know what that is? Right. Why do we want, why does our community, why does our culture have to know what that is? And girl, that's a whole nother podcast topic because we're gonna start going down a rabbit hole about... Lord Jesus.

Jaye Wilson:

You're not lying. You're not lying.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Girl, but that's what it comes down to. Once you know, you have to do better. You know, and the Bible calls you a backslider, right? Okay. Once you know Jesus and once you know the way, if you are a believer and that's what you choose to believe in, and in the Bible, it's called a backslider because you now know, but you still chose to do.

Jaye Wilson:

To do something different. Yup.

Jasmine N. Winters:

When you know better, you do better.

Jaye Wilson:

That's it.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And that's where we have to go with helping to reach the community. And especially in our black and brown communities, our marginalized communities. We have to be intentional with redefining what normal looks like.

Jaye Wilson:

Yeah.

Jasmine N. Winters:

You know, too often we hear our skin folks saying, that's what white people do. You wanna go play golf.

Jaye Wilson:

Right.

Jasmine N. Winters:

You doing what? We are, white people do that.

Jaye Wilson:

You traveling? Why you going all the way over there?

Jasmine N. Winters:

Why you traveling there? Why are you going to Japan? What's in Japan that you can't read in a book? What? Ain't no black people there? How you know? You ain't there. You sitting here. Exactly. Exactly. We have to start redefining what normal looks like and not fit in to what society and what the government and that box and bubble they have placed us in. Because they know what they're doing.

Jaye Wilson:

They do. They do. I think this is also a good point of pulling in that um intergenerational piece. There are things that we may have been taught that we're not passing on to our children. Case in point, learning from them. When I was growing up, there was nothing I could tell an older person because their wisdom supersedes any idea that I had. But I learn stuff from my kids every single day.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Every day.

Jaye Wilson:

They inspire me so much. I'm like, how did you figure this out, girl? Like, what are you talking about? Oh, mommy, all you have to do is this. Well, did you have to think about it from this? And and it, it, it just brightens my soul to know that they have such a level of awareness around parts of the world that I don't see anymore.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

Because now I'm, I'm grown, grown. I ain't been a kid in 30 years. So like that take a long time to get to this point. I, I, I recognize my wisdom that brought me to this place, but I also know that there is a bunch of things that I just don't have time and space or bandwidth to pay attention to anymore. But I always can learn something.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah. Yeah. And that's true. But you have to be willing to learn.

Jaye Wilson:

And that's it.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Because I know some 60, 65, 70-year-olds that think they just, oh, because of my age, I know it all.

Jaye Wilson:

That's it.

Jasmine N. Winters:

I've been there, did that, I was here before you. I did this. But you know what? We're in different times now. And me now as a 40-year-old, I could teach you something, 65-year-old, if you slow down and listen.

Jaye Wilson:

That's it.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Because we are all, we can all learn something new, even if it is from someone younger than you, even if that someone is your child. But you have to be willing to be humbled enough to learn what it is they're trying to pour into you.

Jaye Wilson:

Right. Right. Yeah. I, I, I will always tell people I am forever a student. There's nothing.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yes.

Jaye Wilson:

I know a lot of stuff.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

A lot, a lot of stuff. Like...

Jasmine N. Winters:

But you don't know it all.

Jaye Wilson:

I don't know. And I will never know it all. And I'm so excited because I will never know it all. That means that there's so much more room for me to grow.

Jasmine N. Winters:

For growth.

Jaye Wilson:

It is.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Because once you reach that one growth goal, that one growth marker, guess what? Time to learn the next thing.

Jaye Wilson:

That's it.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And even if you are an entrepreneur, you might reach the top. But there's another top. There's layers and levels to this onion.

Jaye Wilson:

Oh, yeah.

Jasmine N. Winters:

You got to keep going. You have to keep going.

Jaye Wilson:

And speaking of that, you know what everyone always says, like people, it's it's the failure, the f um, the the fear of failure. I think there are more people that are afraid of success than they are of failure.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Talk about it.

Jaye Wilson:

You know? And it honestly even relates to what our, you know, our initial com uh conversation is about. So we can fail. We can fail 10 times in a day at what we thought a mother is supposed to be and how we're supposed to parent and how we're supposed to show up for this kid. But the actual fear is how successful am I going to be at this? Every single day this baby keeps waking up. Oh shit. I fed them enough. I loved them enough. I taught them enough. I gave them enough insight so that they feel comfortable and confident. Like when you watch Cairo go from the little arm baby, to the lap baby, to the sitting on the floor, to the standing up, to the walking around, to speaking...

Jasmine N. Winters:

To a terrorist.

Jaye Wilson:

To a terrorist with love. A loving terrorist, right? But you, but you you watched all of those parts of him come together, not just because it's a milestone, but it came from the confidence that you poured into him.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

So there were parts where you was like, damn, he failed. That means I failed. I failed as a mother. I didn't teach him how to teach him how to stand up well.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And that's such a real feeling because it never goes away.

Jaye Wilson:

It doesn't.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Because Cairo is two, but I have all I, the other three, they're teenagers.

Jaye Wilson:

Yeah.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And every day I wake up and I say, I'm gonna put my best foot forward and I'm not gonna yell at them. I'm not gonna complain about nothing. I'm not gonna remind them about the dog.

Jaye Wilson:

I don't even lie to myself about that no more.

Jasmine N. Winters:

This mess needs to be picked up and all this stuff. And the neighbors probably think we're crazy, and I'm yelling at them. Come get this shit up now. You know what I'm saying?

Jaye Wilson:

That's it.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And, you know, at the end of the day, when the house is quiet and I peek my head into their rooms for their goodnights and they're sleeping and it look peaceful. I'm talking about the teenagers. I'm like, dang, now I gotta hit the reset button and try again because I want to be a good mom.

Jaye Wilson:

Yeah.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And being a good mom to me means being more calm, more slower to respond, um, less excitable elevations in my voice, aka yelling because I done had to tell you something 20 times, you know? But it, I don't know.

Jaye Wilson:

But can I, can I reframe that thought though? Can I reframe that thought, that thought for you? Because I, I had that same, I had a very similar experience with my girls because I, I'm a yeller. Like, get this shit up.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

Right. But I've learned a good mom is not a mom who doesn't yell. It's not a mom who loses her patience. It's not a mom who's like all over the place going chaotic. It's a mom who thinks about those things and who thinks about the impact of that on their children and is willing to listen. She is willing to apologize. She is willing to shift the way that she still creates that same balance through discipline and through understanding. That makes you a good mom. Not those actions, right? You sometimes, you do need to have an elevated voice. I love to use sentence enhancers. So you're gonna hear, you're gonna hear me say what the fuck is this? That's probably my most used line in my house.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And why the fuck am I telling you for the 22nd time in an hour?

Jaye Wilson:

That part. Because when I said it nice and calm, your ass didn't hear me. So now I gotta turn on my mommy advocacy voice and say...

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah, because I gotta advocate for myself.

Jaye Wilson:

Because I gotta advocate for me. I gotta advocate for me, right? Exactly. But if we don't recognize that, that piece of, oh my God, if I was this kid, because I'm, I, I often do that. I will put myself in my kids' shoes.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Me too.

Jaye Wilson:

I'll have a crazy day, and I'm like, damn, I'm wondering how these kids are experiencing me right now.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

Then that, that prompts you to say...

Jasmine N. Winters:

That guilt kicks in.

Jaye Wilson:

Yeah. Well, sometimes. Sometimes it's guilt, but sometimes it's, it's just again a different level of awareness of like, damn, I really spent 10 hours sitting at this computer. I didn't eat today. I did a little hoe bath. I did a little bit of a little

Jasmine N. Winters:

Not a hoe bath.

Jaye Wilson:

A little wipe down. But I have to remember I'm not here alone. I am isolating myself in this one thing, and I'm taking away from what my babies need from me. Yeah. And sometimes it's just your presence. Yeah. Let me step away. Yeah. Let me take a moment. Let me move this to another day because the work is always gonna be there. Right? So having that level of recognition that actually helps you to see your motherhood, not from a space of guilt, but honestly, this, that to me is like a badge of honor.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

You know, we get the opportunity to keep doing it over and over again and to check in with them. How can I make your experience with me better?

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah. That's so real.

Jaye Wilson:

How can I make sure that you are seeing the value in this experience? Because, again, I may not have been here to tell you this. And we don't have to like guilt trip them into that, like I almost ain't make it.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

Right. But we recognize the beautiful gift of what comes after the morbidity.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

We can heal, we can grow, we can create accountability. We can encourage other people to have these moments, right? We can educate them so that they feel more prepared, right? Now they can ask the good questions. Now they can say the weird thing that is going to save their life.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

Now they can actually pull their partner into these kind of conversations so that they're not sitting with these thoughts by themselves. Right. Now we're encouraging them to actually look for Peaceful Minds Haven and how to use that as a platform to talk to both partners and not just moms. With our podcast, this is the brainchild of Melinated Mommy Talks, which is our virtual support group that we do every second Saturday of the month, right? We connect with our moms all over the place. And one thing that we love to end on is a pledge. So I always ask, how can we create more accountability for us to keep this work going, right? Because this conversation is dope and we're going to keep talking, right? But what is a pledge that you would like to give to our audience who may have experienced morbidity and in that same space? What kind of pledge would you give them?

Jasmine N. Winters:

What kind of pledge would I give? So I'm not sure I understand the question. Okay. What you mean by pledge?

Jaye Wilson:

Like a promise. So...

Jasmine N. Winters:

Okay.

Jaye Wilson:

...when you think about a pl uh a like think of like the pledge of allegiance.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Uh-huh.

Jaye Wilson:

Right. So like if I'm pledging, if I'm pledging to end morbidity, maybe my pledge is...

Jasmine N. Winters:

I got you.

Jaye Wilson:

Yeah, yeah.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Okay. So um I would say a good pledge is to continue to practice advocating for yourself. Advocate, unlearn, relearn, and share your story.

Jaye Wilson:

I love it. I love it. I love it. Yes. And I pledge to continue to create these safe spaces and places for moms like you and I to keep these conversations going so we can learn, unlearn, reframe, and renew ourselves in these journeys of moms and the margins. So we don't have to continue to stay in these margins.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yes.

Jaye Wilson:

So I thank you so much, Jasmine. Like...

Jasmine N. Winters:

Aww, Jaye.

Jaye Wilson:

Girl.

Jasmine N. Winters:

This was so nice.

Jaye Wilson:

It was.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yes. And another form of healing and advocacy and story sharing.

Jaye Wilson:

Amen.

Jasmine N. Winters:

And I appreciate you even just creating this platform in this space to invite moms of the community and in this advocacy work to come and just chop it up.

Jaye Wilson:

That's it. That's it. We heal through conversations. We are, we are storytelling people.

Jasmine N. Winters:

We are.

Jaye Wilson:

You know, before they, this gonna sound messed up, but before they realize, dang, we taught them how to read, we let them read. Before we were allowed to read, we have never lost our stories.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Never.

Jaye Wilson:

So there are things that have come all the way from when we were considered property...

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

...that have been passed down as actual ways of us keeping our authentic um roots.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yes.

Jaye Wilson:

You know? So if we don't have that, the ability to tell our story, then somebody's gonna tell it for us and say that we liked it.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jaye Wilson:

Thank you for telling your story. Thank you for being the mom that other moms need. Because moms need moms too.

Jasmine N. Winters:

We do.

Jaye Wilson:

We do. We do. I'm tired of moming sometime. I'm like, hey, get somebody else to do it. Let me tag her in.

Jasmine N. Winters:

Yeah, fuck 'dem kids.

Jaye Wilson:

Yes, fuck 'dem kids.

Jasmine N. Winters:

But not my kids. Because y'all watching. Not my kids. Just 'dem kids. I mean whoever 'dem are.

Jaye Wilson:

'Dem, sure. And on that note.

Jasmine N. Winters:

On that note, thank you, Melinated Moms.

Jaye Wilson:

Thank you, Peaceful Minds Haven, thank you. Melinated MommyTalks the Podcast is your place for authenic and raw conversations about what it means to be a melinated mom. So make sure to subscribe on all of the platforms where you listen to your favorite podcasts. Make sure to like and share. And if you want to continue seeing our podcast grow, make sure to become a paid subscriber for exclusive bonus content, or become a donating listening supporter. If you're interested in becoming an individual or corporate sponsor of this podcast, go to melinated moms .com / podcast for more information. We can't wait to have you with us and enjoy our next episode. So keep listening, stay connected, and stay tapped in.

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Jatesha "Jaye" Wilson, LPN

Host
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William of Nazareth Productions

Producer
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Jasmine Nia Winters

Guest