Jane Hardwicke Collings - School of Shamanic Womancraft

An episode from the 2021 archives featuring Jane Hardwicke Collings, Australian women's mysteries teacher at the School of Shamanic Womancraft, menstrual educator, author, and former homebirth midwife of 30 years.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hi, I'm Sophie. Welcome to Big Things Little Things, a podcast series where I sit down with inspiring change makers to discuss the big things they're doing, the little things that make them who they are, and together we vision pathways towards a better future. Good morning everyone. It's week seven, and we're back today to speak with Jane Hardwick Collins. I'm not going to do a big intro because I asked Jane to introduce herself because she is such a nuanced, wonderful, inspirational individual, and I thought that she could probably tell us best who she is. But she definitely has an integral role in women and the feminine and historically in birth work, so she has a lot to offer on her insights into the world. And particularly today, we dive into rites of passage, which is really cool. I would definitely recommend for anyone who's interested in this conversation to go and listen to her well, go and read or listen to her short story, um her story, which we mentioned a bit later on, which gives a historical perspective of the female woman, those identifying with as a woman, um, the experience throughout history, and it starts 40,000 years ago, and it's just very, very interesting and really gives a big picture overview of just how we've got to this point in society where things are just a little bit out of balance and and just a little bit you could, you know, that's a bit an understatement of the century. But uh yeah, it shed some light on how we got here, and I'm not a history buff, but I found it really eye-opening and worth the read. Sorry, Margot Margot's here. So, yes, I hope you enjoy it greatly, and I look forward to hearing um your feedback on it. Jane's a bloody powerhouse, and I love her. So I'm stoked that we had this conversation. Enjoy, guys. Bye. Just to begin with, you you're a very accomplished person, and you you you've done a lot of things and you're doing a lot of things. So I was wondering if if you might be able to just explain to the listeners from your view who Jane Hardwick Collins is.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Well, she's a post-menopausal grandma and a former home birth midwife for 30 years. That's basically where I grew up in the world of midwifery from say 25 to 55. And that's a big story in and of itself. So I am a mother as well, and of grown-up adult children and grandma, as I said, of three grandboys, and I live in the country, and my work now. Well, during COVID, it's been a lot of writing and creating e-courses and finishing off book dreams I'd had. So that's been a wonderful, I guess, pause and interlude for me to be able to do all those things that I would never have been able to do otherwise. So I have um created, founded an international women's mystery school called the School of Shamanic Womancraft. I created that back in 2008. So that's well into her teenage years now, and whilst the international travel's been put on hold for a couple of years, and also domestic face-to-face, you know, like face-to-face workshops here in Australia have been on hold as well. So um hoping that that's all going to get back to some new normal soon. And my work is really about helping to do what I can to contribute to the healing of the wounded feminine and the wounded masculine in our patriarchal culture, and what that looks like when I focus in on the wounded feminine is kind of like spreading the word to wake up the witches, actually. And when I say witches, I mean wise women, and I mean women who are who are connected into the earth and the cycles that run our lives, whether we want them to or not, and living earth-honouring and sustainable lifestyles to do our bit. So, you know, I'm um doing what I can to contribute there.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Oh, that's so such important work. And I think um I love that you sort of have the approach of everything being being interconnected because I think it's so easy to be pigeonholed. You know, you could say, Oh, well, you know, Jane, she's a former midwife and she works with women. But no, you kind of your your role is is so much bigger than that, and um and so interrelated with the healing of the earth that is required. Absolutely, yes. Oh, and I just love it. And I mean, I had a couple, there's so many questions I want to ask you. Um, I guess my first I did have here a note that you've just referred to the wounded feminine, and that that plays a large role in your work. And I had a note here because I heard you talk about the wounded sisterhood. And I was wondering if you could explain to the listeners when you talk about the wounded sisterhood and the wounded feminine, to what you you're sort of um referring. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Good question. So the wounded feminine and the wounded masculine are basically the casualties of the patriarchal culture that we live in, and that's been going for several thousands of years. And what that means, or actually what it looks like, is a culture that discourages empowered women, yeah, because that's what a patriarchy does. You know, we live in a patriarchy, and what a patriarchy means is a culture that oppresses the feminine and women, and that also means the feminine in the masculine, and what that looks like are all the things we'll probably talk about soon with regard to menstruation and birth and menopause. And um the reason it's like this is basically because of the oppression of the feminine and what that means when that's reinforced over and over, in terms of how that impacts our lives and our lifestyle. So women have been seen as less than men, and um our bodies are unpredictable and troublesome and need to be controlled and unpredictable and all that kind of thing. And so how that affects a woman in her daily life is basically to be disconnected from her body and be living a life of menstrual shame, and you know, women, and menstrual shame is not something that just affects women, it affects everybody in our culture. It can't not, and so people might think, oh, I don't have menstrual shame, blah blah blah, but you can't not, as I said. It's it's actually sadly, and to quote um Sharon Maloney, a PhD genius from Queensland, that menstrual shame is one of the organizing principles of the patriarchy to maintain the oppression of the feminine and women. So that sounds really dodgy and it's true. And so the wounded sisterhood is another way the wounded feminine looks in terms of uh one of the tactics that's been used in the patriarchy to maintain a wounded sisterhood, is a classic war technique or tactic called divide and conquer. And that's what's happened to the sisterhood. And this has really happened since I guess the witch burnings back in the 1100s to the 1600s in Europe, and um women being burned at the stake, often just because they were a woman or they were a herbalist or a midwife, or they spoke against the controlling aspects of the church or the medical people, etc. So the wounded feminine looks like gossip and um backstabbing and comparison and judgment. And I think the way we see it mostly these days is on social media with judgment, out-of-control judgment in very rude ways that people speak to each other, which is like so not appropriate, and comparison. And you know, like think about all the current information coming out about how Facebook and Instagram know that they are increasing body dysmorphia and shame and therefore eating disorders and other wounded behaviors through the mechanism of compare comparing and judgment. So, like, you know, this is this is also this is a tragedy, actually. And uh the other thing that's come in is the pornography of our culture. So porn is the the what is kind of like the thing that's used to sell things and as sex education for our teenagers, unfortunately, and and just in increasing to um encourage this demeaning perspective of women or of on women that the patriarchy holds. So, you know, that that's a long answer to that question, but it's so interwoven and um happening and in so many ways that we don't even realize we are living the wounded sisterhood or the wounded feminine. It's just part of the way it is, and of course, we see that with in all women's health and mental health, and and of course, you know, as the way our cultures treat the planet Earth, because the earth is the ultimate feminine, and it's very well known that how a culture treats their women or how their attitudes to the feminine and women is reflected in how they treat the earth.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

It is so um ingrained in our society that this kind of wounded feminine um experience, and it is we we've grown up like this, so I think that it's very easy to just not see it and to think that the way that things are are the way that they should be. And I think that your work really highlights those areas of living that don't have to be this way and could be different and could be so much better. Um, and I guess for the the listeners, if they want to um hear a little bit more about the historical perspective of how women have got to this place, um, Jane has a fantastic uh it's like a short book, would you say? Um called Her Story. And you can you can access that through her website, which I'll pop in the show links. And also I listened to it um being read on a podcast. I'll I'll put it in the um the show notes as well. If you like to just listen to to the audio version, that was um very helpful. But in her story, it um it tell talks you through the historical events that women have gone through and how that has affected the collective experience of women and how that has got us to the place that we are today. And that we in living in society these days, we're still experiencing the trauma that was inflicted upon us through history, and it manifests in many ways that, you know, show up for us right now. So, for example, for myself, just thinking about, you know, growing up in quite a conservative family and as a woman and having the idea of um not speak out about things like when you get your period or or your emotions, and you know, having to conform to to a society and to a work culture where um I have to hide the cyclical nature of my body, for example, when I get my period or you know, when I'm pregnant, to to attend work and and I'm I take panodol to her hide that pain so that I can hide the fact that I have my period. You know, um, there's just so many different little manifestations of being a woman that that you're encouraged to hide. And that's a really big part of Jane's work is reclaiming the cyclical nature of being a woman and entering into our power.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Absolutely. And equality, you know, like has been such a big journey toward equality for um the sexes, and it it has actually meant that women are equal to men if they can do what men do.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

That's right, yes. I recently spoke to um Meg from Artista's Family, and she was talking about um that there's this toxic femininity that we're sort of encouraged to like if we're going to compete with that be on equal footing with men, you know, we need to put on our power suits and and attend the workplace and be really cutthroat and abandon sort of all of our natural inclinations that we might have that that don't fit into that patriarchal concept, so that we can be equal with men when really it's kind of forcing us to just act differently like a man.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Yeah, yeah. Be better, actually. Like, you know, to be fair, all the women who have risen to the top echelons of anything, whether that's politics or medicine or law or any of anything that that's mainly a male or has been a male domain, it's because they've been they've had to be more masculine than the men to even be seen and and to make it. So, you know, that's that's that's disregarding the feminine. And I and you know, when we say feminine, we don't mean like girly, we mean the yin aspect of the yin and yang combo.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Could we talk a little bit about what it is, what yin is?

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Well, you know, without wanting to borrow another culture's map, uh well, I do want to borrow it and I want to give thanks for it because it's a um wonderful way to explain it. And um, this is the eastern perspective of yin and yang, which is basically boils down to light or dark, actually. And um we could look at it in terms of a day, for example, to give us the qualities, the difference in the qualities between yin and yang. So yang would be from let's just say sunrise to sunset, so light on, bright, and yin would be all the rest of it. So the dark, the um the descent and uh the death and rebirth as a kind of metaphor. So um you could also look at the seasons to explain the difference between yin and yang, and yang is spring and summer, and yin is autumn and winter. So like everybody knows whether they wherever they live in the on the earth, what the difference between those two halves of the year are in the terms of the light and the dark. So then in terms of humans, like we all have an inner feminine and an inner masculine, so we can't not, right? And um, like I was mentioning before about the women who've been successful in a patriarchal culture, need to usually tap into them inner masculine, like they're not trying to create something new. We all have the capacity to access our inner masculine capabilities and tendencies and ways of thinking and being, it's etc. But that's not the whole story, which is how it has been seen, you know, because we we're in this patriarchal capitalist culture that is a growth culture and it's all about growth, and it's about 24-7 availability and on and instant gratification and go, go, go, and grow, grow, grow. And like, you know, with your focus on the climate and crisis, emergency, we can see the results of that particular way of running the world. It doesn't work, right? Because it shows the fact that we haven't, we don't honor, our culture doesn't honor the rest phase. And that is, and also the harvest, the harvest and reflective and evaluation side of things, then then the fellow time, the rest time, is disregarded by our culture. So that's a big problem, like I mentioned. We see that with the um perspective of the earth being a resource to be used and abused in brackets. Um, and so what we need to reclaim for everything the climate, the earth, our own well-being, uh the way we do business, the way we do everything are the the female, the feminine qualities. And those are things like in terms of leadership, and and you know, big businesses are know this and they're doing this, and they're they're doing it in so many different ways. But so, like, you know, some key words for female leadership would be collaboration, um intuition, group work, uh, like reflection together on stuff.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Mindfulness.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Mindfulness, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

That's a buzzword in big business at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Exactly, yeah. So all of those sort of things. I don't have my list of female leadership qualities in front of me, and um, but it's you know, it's very easy to find. It's as you said, it's it's a buzz thing because like business, which are probably the places in our culture that um do have to react to change and you know, the pressures from the zeitgeist and whatnot, you know, that feminine female and feminine leadership is really what they're looking at, as well as uncovering things like unconscious bias that's at the top level of businesses around the feminine and women and stuff. So, like, you know, this has to change, this has to happen. And and to just say again about what you mentioned earlier about the interconnectedness of everything, like this is everything is connected, it can't not be, you know. Yeah, and that's another way to frame that is the shamanic dimensions of something. Because shamanic is the you know, like adjective of shamanism, which is a worldview and what to do about it that sits at the at the beginning of every single culture, every single people on the planet, their their cultures began with some version of shamanism, which is basically an appreciation of the interconnectedness of everything. And, you know, so if we don't look at it like that way, and that would be a that would be a feminine way to look at something instead of just focusing on one thing. So big picture, you know, systems thinking, all those kinds of things are feminine, feminine thinking. So, you know, we have to embrace this, and we know this, you know, we we we know it totally. And how that will look when it's properly in place will be things like menopause, menstrual and menopause workplace policies, so that instead of doing what you were saying, we've all been encouraged to do, which is hide our menstrual cycle and just pretend nothing's happening and get on with it, you know, that that happens to at our peril. That maintains menstrual shame, which maintains the oppression of women, you know. So there's so many places within our actual daily lives that we can address this issue.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

That's right. A really intrinsic part of your work is um focusing on rites of passage. And I only heard about rites of passage. Like I I guess I sort of generally knew what they were, I don't know, in a random, loose way growing up, but never really had much respect for rites of passage or deep understanding. And I heard Anna Rubenstein talk about rites of passage, and I was like, whoa, that is so important. Why do we not learn more about rites of passage?

SPEAKER_00 21:23

The right question.

unknown 21:24

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

And so I was hoping that maybe just to start out, I could get you to explain um about what are rites of passage.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Sure. Okay, so they're not a new thing, it's it's a traditional, pan-cultural, pan meaning every and all over the place. Every culture, traditional culture had rites of passage. And there are many rites of passage that happen in our lives now, and they are either cultural or physical, and sometimes they're both, and so the rites of passage that most people Are familiar with are things like weddings and significant birthdays, like you know, becoming 18 or 21, depending on where you are, and that being some sort of um step into adulthood, for example. So, what the what it is, and then there's the physical rites of passage, and these are these happen to males and females, and these when they happen to women and girls, they're called the women's mysteries or the blood mysteries. So, so women and men, boys and girls, go through rites of passage at similar times in our lives, but women's, girls and women's rites of passage are much more significant physically and lifestylishness, in that's not the right word, but you know, impactful in their lifestyle than they are for men. Like, and and I'm not trying to say women are better than men or men are whatever. I'm just wanting to say that there's a very big difference between giving birth to a baby, whether that's by you know, a spontaneous vaginal birth or a cesarean for whatever reason, there's a very big difference to that experience compared to a man becoming a father. So, and likewise for menopause, you know, which is today uh is World Menopause Day. So is it? I didn't know. Yeah, we'll just honour that in that moment. And um, so like midlife for a man, which is significant and kind of in a terrible tongue-in-cheek sort of way, seen as when they get their red sports car or have a have a midlife crisis or whatever, you know, what am I doing with my life? That kind of existential questioning, that compared to menopause for a woman is very, very, very, very different. I can't stress that enough. So these rites of passage happen to women in a much more significant physical way than they do to men. So, just so that that's clear. And they rites of passage create and reinforce culture on the inside and the outside. Now, what I mean by that is that what happens at a rite of passage, and the significant ones that I'll refer to now are our own birth, so when we're born, uh so speaking to women here, our menarch or first period. So for boys that would be puberty, and puberty obviously is part of menarch for girls, and then pregnancy, because every pregnancy results in a birth, whether it's an early pregnancy loss, which we're changing the use of the word miscarriage to that, because that miscarriage has got a little bit of a you know connotation that something happened to the carriage, the mother, you know, which is not always the case. So every pregnancy results in a birth and needs to be honored as a rite of passage, and then menopause, and then death. So these times that I've just mentioned are times of great transformation. So not just change, transformation, which means you turn into the next version of yourself, never to return to the previous version. So once you've been pregnant, and then you become a mother and never to return to not that, and regardless of how the pregnancy ends, as I mentioned, because things change physiologically in you and in your head, in your in your psyche. And so, you know, same as menopause and same as as um menarch. So we the these times of transformation, um, these rites of passage have a huge effect on us, whether we realize it or not. And what uh before I go into that, I just want to say that our culture has forgotten about rites of passage, you know, the impact and the importance of it, but that doesn't mean it goes away. The thing is that whatever happens at these times becomes the rite of passage. And what that what happens at a rite of passage is that whatever happens, whatever's said or not said, whatever's done or not done, and whatever's going on in the world or the woman's environment or world around her, everything all adds up together to teach her, the woman going through the rite of passage, on a subliminal level, which means she doesn't even realize she's being taught. So everything that happens teaches her on a subliminal level about how her culture values the next role she's going into. So at Menarch, that's womanhood, at pregnancy and birth, that's motherhood, and at menopause, that's the second half of her life in the wise woman years. So whatever happens teaches her how her culture values that, and therefore how to behave to be accepted by the culture. Now, you just highlighted the earlier the effect of menarch on a woman, how she manages her menstrual cycle. So, you know, take a panodile, pretend nothing's happening, blah, blah, blah. And that's the result, and the very common, almost, you know, everybody experiencing that kind of reaction from their menarch because you know, mostly what happens at menarch is what you said. Here's the pads, welcome to the curse, good luck, don't let anybody know, carry on, don't show it as a weakness, and whatever you do, don't leak or smell, and or you'll shame us all, you know. Like there are women now, and there have been for some generations, who are changing that, but it's a very slow pickup rate, you know. But there's women now who are your age and older who just don't want their daughters to have the same or anything like the experiences they had. And so they're they're doing their own inner work to heal their own menstrual cycle perspective and the roots of that, and then raising their daughters and welcoming them to womanhood at their menarch in an empowering way. And you know, if that happens, or shall I say, when that happens, everything will change. And that because men's one rite of passage leads to the next. So how we're born affects our entire life. Our experience at menarch affects our experience of menstrual cycle and our experiences of giving birth. And all of those add up at menopause because everything that's been swept under the carpet prior to menopause, average age 50, everything comes out. And as Dr. Christian Northrup calls it, the mother of all wake-up calls at menopause, and that everything that's been swept under the carpet comes out at menopause because it's a rite of passage that's designed to heal all the unhealed parts of us. So the thing I mentioned earlier about creating and reinforcing culture on the inside and outside, so what that looks like is just using that menarch as an example, um, that the culture on the inside is the mindset that the experience creates, so the beliefs, attitudes, and fears, and so that runs your life. And and then culture on the outside is just by everybody conforming to the same belief system or fears and and attitudes. And you know, that's that's what's going on. And if you apply that to childbirth, you know, like here in Australia, it's like a quarter or so of women have their labours induced because somebody says that their baby has an initiated labor at the time that they say is the right time, which is an absurd concept and not even evidence-based. And so a quarter of women go into motherhood, whichever time it is, first, second, third, whatever, baby. I mean, knowing that their bodies don't work, according to the experts. Their body doesn't go into labor at the right inadverted commas time. And that is really not a good way to start motherhood, thinking your body doesn't work. That's right. Very dismal. And and now with the COVID pandemic, we've been able to see really clearly the impact on a rite of passage, particularly birth, when there's a pandemic on, because like things have taken from our control uh in the birthplace, of in terms of how much support you can have or can't have, and also face-to-face or on Zoom or telephone, you know, telehealth. I think the pandemic has shown us just how our culture here in Australia, and it's been happening all around the world the same, how our culture doesn't value birth and motherhood. So, like what we've seen, and it's changing now, but it had a terrible effect, what we saw with the restrictions around the pandemic was 10 people could go to a funeral, five people could go to a wedding, and zero to one person could go to a birth. So birth was at the bottom of the list of priorities in rites of passage. And, you know, if that doesn't tell a woman how much she's valued by her, how much birth and her experience is devalued by her culture, I don't know what else can because that to my mind is absolutely dreadful. And the the impact that's gonna have, we'll see, you know. Well, we already are, you know. Mental health for new mums is something that we need to pay very much attention to, helping everybody come out of the pandemic when it finishes. There's like there'll be two years of babies that have were born, and the mothers going through the newborn experience in without village, without community, without without realizing that they're goddesses performing miracles.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Yes. Well, I think your discussion around childbirth is so important, and it ties a little bit back into our initial discussion about that um yin-yang, masculine and feminine imbalance in society, because the way that childbirth is viewed is um as an illness in the medical profession. So it's not viewed as kind of a natural phenomenon that um can can proceed uninterrupted. It's um like you said earlier, that the feminine is viewed as unpredictable and that we need to control it, right? So something just through I've had two daughters, uh Sylvie and Margot, and through, I guess I've experienced a few different um birthing environments. So one of those, Sylvie's birth, was in a hospital and Margo's birth was a home birth, and that was in 2020. So it was a pandemic birth. And yeah, just in the hospital, you know, I I was quite fortunate that I had um a very supportive midwife, and I had made my intentions pretty clear to her about how I wanted the birth to roll out. But being, you know, my first birth, my mentality going into it was like everyone said, just just roll with it, don't have a plan because a plan plans change, you know. And that's at the time I thought I'm being flexible, you know, I'm being relaxed going into this birth. But really, I was disempowered because I didn't understand my what my choices were and I didn't understand how the system worked. So I was lucky that when I went into that birth, I I had a midwife who was I think her style of of uh you know helping guiding me through that birth process was quite aligned with what I was hoping to achieve. So that was good. Um, but you know, it could have gone the other way depending on which midwife I had on the day. Um, but yeah, just that that need to control childbirth is is just shown through, you know, the the policies that the hospital has in place. Yeah, for example, like you you the moment they the midwives kept telling me before I came in, wait, stay at home as long as possible because as soon as you get into the hospital, the clock starts ticking. And if your body doesn't go along with the time frame of the policy, then you proceed to a higher risk category, which you know, everything these days is about the red tape and avoiding lawsuits and um the hospitals thinking, okay, if if she hasn't progressed to to this stage of labor by this time, well, our risk increases. So then we should give her Picotin or um syntosin or I don't know, forgotten what the things are. Give her these interventions to to um to speed up the the process. And you know, for every intervention that comes in, you know, you you're kind of messing with this natural balance of hormones that you have, which may lead to you needing more interventions. So this need to control things, uh, I view as like a very um masculine interpretation of a woman's rite of passage, and you know, part of that is you know, it's it's this is our business. Like we're the ones who are birthing, we should have more trust in ourselves and we should have more say in how things go. And and I just yeah, yeah. And I I only just I was completely unaware of this whole part of society before I had children. And just interestingly enough, like I was really interested to talk to you a little bit about um like rites of passage and and especially childbirth, just because for me, I I think that childbirth was the first rite of passage that I really reclaimed for myself. And so with Sylvie, um, Sylvie's birth in hospital, um, you know, we had a natural birth and um and I was able to kind of get through it. But even though it wasn't like a traumatic birth, I still left the hospital feeling traumatized. I bet. Yeah, like because I just I was so fearful of the process. And, you know, even when I presented into the hospital, the midwife said to me, You're not in labor. I can tell. You don't look like you're in labor. I would know. And she made me lie on a bed, taped to a machine that monitored my contractions for eight hours. Oh, um, and said, you know, and just kind of told me, you know, no, I can tell you're not in labor. I would know by your face, you're fine, you can talk to me. You can probably just go home soon. And you know, by the end of that eight hours, I was like, she said, Oh yeah, okay, I think you might be in labor now, but I'm going home, so I'll just give you to the next midwife. And, you know, like just it's just that experience is so disempowering.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

So disempowering.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

And yeah, like you're a child who's being told you don't know what's going on with your body. And you know, through that that labor, I was just terrified of the pain and and I terrified of, you know, these people who kept doing these like cervical exams and and like even and just kind of even with the afterbirth, like prodding my stomach, and and it was 10 minutes later, jabbing the the needle in my leg and pulling, you know, pulling the placenta out. Um like that's all standard practice. People would say to you, that's just normal. You must apply um pressure, you know, when you do cord traction. Um, but having an like an organ ripped out of your body, like that's fucking traumatizing. Totally. Yeah. And so I went into motherhood. Um, you know, I had so many problems breastfeeding. Um, we we never established proper breastfeeding. And it was just this really, I don't know, it wasn't a nice start, really, to motherhood.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Exactly. Exactly. You know, and that's not what we want for our mums.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

That's that's right. And but on paper, you know, people would look at that and say, Well, you didn't have any tears, the baby was a good weight. Uh, you could be discharged within a few days. It was a good birth. Um, but I felt terrible. And then I actually had my, you know, my daughters are quite close together. So Margot, I had her. Um Sylvie was 16 months when I had Margot. Wow. Yeah, really close. My poor pelvic floor has really copped it.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Um, your strong pelvic floor.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Um, so when I was pregnant with Margot, I just thought everything in me was like, I just don't want to have that same experience. And I think I I allowed myself to to lean into my intuition a bit, and I I felt a real draw to to um to a particular dueller called um Michelle Palacio. She works in um Brisbane. And I just reached out to her basically as soon as I knew I was pregnant with Margot and said, I think, I think I want to have a dueler in my next hospital birth because you know I just didn't really feel great about how the first birth went. And it was really great that um experience with Michelle because I guess to me before what Michelle did would seem kind of woo-woo and like a bit like witchy or something. Um, and but it was so important, and she helped me psychologically um reflect on that first birth and reflect on my own birth, my own experience of getting my period, and how that maybe in influenced my birth of Sylvie, and then got me to think about, you know, the more psychological components of this next birth and and post-birth, and and how I could empower myself to really be in my element and reclaim that as a rite of passage. Awesome. And oh, she's just honestly, I cannot even explain how important the role of duelers is in childbirth and midwives, you know. So I had Michelle as my dueler and I had a private midwife, which I was extremely like privileged at to have both. Um it's you know, it's you can't get any Medicare rebates for that in Australia, and I I think we should be able to. Um, and yeah, in my second birth, so Michelle through that process of being my doula, she she she saw that I wanted a home birth. I sort of had indicated to her, oh, I I kind of want one, but I I don't know. And she built up my confidence so much that I I felt like I could actively choose that. And that was, you know, seen as pretty crazy to my family and my friends. They my sister said to me that her obstitution had told her that he wanted her to be in Brisbane from 30 weeks because she would she would die if she had a baby in a country hospital.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

I know this is this kind of crap that like people are still talking about. Like, no, you if you're listening, you are capable of giving birth in the way that you want to give birth. And if you want to give birth at home, you can do it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, like, I I had the second birth here in my home, and you know, compared to the first one, which was about 30 hours, it was like a four-hour birth in in um just in my living room. And um, you know, there was a little time where the midwife was slightly concerned about um Margot's heart rate, and she just was very calm and said, Okay, well, let's just change your position up and and we'll just see if if maybe the baby's a little bit happier when you when you're in a different position. And it was very very simple, very, very peaceful. And and Margot was born and Margot didn't even cry. And I was like, is something wrong with her? Why is she not crying? And and they said, Well, babies don't have to cry when they're born, she's happy, like she's fine, you know, and it was just so different, and that experience transformed my entire life. Like that birth is why I'm doing the work that I'm doing, because I feel like it re-birthed me as a person and and allowed me to reclaim my my like true self, and and just I don't know, I've been much more connected to my own intuition and my own purpose. And I think that that is the power of the rites of passage, and that is why I wanted to talk to you today. And I'm sorry I've just rambled on for so long.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Oh no, what an awesome example of you know, like this is what women need to hear. It's not a woo-woo wacky thing to want to give birth in the way you want to give birth. That's what you're supposed to do. You're an animal, yeah. You know, like animal. So I think just want to go over a few of the things you said. So getting, don't go to hospital until blah blah blah, you know, like what's going on there is the first negation of the process of birth. Because what I'm guessing you were doing at that point, which is what women do, is at some point in their labor, they need to find their nest. And often women will want to find their nest before labor really gets going, so that labor can get going. Yeah, you know, so I think we need to remember we're animals and that we're actually mammals, which means we animals that suckle our young, and there are certain conditions required for mammals to give birth, and the primo one is to feel safe. And you know, like you, you were your story, then was an example of you looking for your nest to then settle into and feel safe so that you could go into labor, not lie on your back with a machine telling you whether you're in labor or not. Like that is so bad. And the other thing, you know, Michel Odont, if if if your listeners don't know. About him. He's an epic, very old man now. He's probably in his night early 90s. He's a French obstetrician who's a champion of midwives and home births. And he was um came onto the scene like decades and decades ago with a movie about vaginal breach births in his uh birth center in Petivier in France. But he says wonderful things about birth, and that is that we can't help birth, you know, like you can't help birth, it it but we can hinder it, which is what we're doing, and so much so. And your your story there about um your you know pretty good hospital birth, yeah, to be to be fair, you got out with a vaginal birth. Most midwives and most doctors in their training never even see a normal natural birth. Normal isn't the right word to use anymore because normal just means average, right? So it's not average, you know, it's just like hardly anybody has a completely physiological birth these days because of the way third stage is managed, like you said. Yeah, but you know, so I just wanted to say that uh your story of basically waking up to your first birth and seeing the trauma in it as opposed to, well, I should be okay, I've got a healthy baby, that's the only thing that matters, blah blah blah. And I'm saying that with tongue in cheek because it's not the only thing that matters, but for you, you you had what we would call a sh a shadow awakening from your experience of your first birth there, where you saw you you you didn't feel right, so to speak, like whatever that would be for any individual, and you did the thing that shadow awakenings do, which is you asked yourself and the experience and of the experience, like, what happened? Why did that happen? What is this, what is what is this teaching me, such that you then realized, with the guidance of Michelle, that uh yes, your intuition to have a home birth was exactly the right thing for you to do. And the thing to say here is that for all women, that the the single most impactful decisions that you make that impact your birth experience and therefore your rite of passage into motherhood and how you believe in yourself or not as a mother, and and also what initiates your baby's complete life pattern, the the decisions are the primary carer and the place of birth. And you just said your sisters are class, you know that if you don't if you give birth in a country hospital, you're gonna die. Like, what a lot of bullshit! Like so much fear is used to coerce women, and women are groomed in labor. That's a perfect example that you got to be in Brisbane from 30 weeks, otherwise blah blah blah. So um, groomed toward risk, oriented toward risk, all the tests, you know, it's bound to be something wrong with you. Let's just find it and don't worry, we'll help, we'll we'll rescue you, you know. So, so how we birth is a political act, and and like you've just explained, it's paradigm shifting.

SPEAKER_01 47:17

Yeah, yeah. It was so I you know, it just it still shocks me how how much it really has impacted me and who I am and in such a positive way. And it's definitely just made me so passionate about you know how different the world could look if we reclaimed the rights of passage.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Yours is an example, everything you've just said is an example of the transformational powers of a rite of passage. And you know, and another story that could go along with it would be the transformational rite of the the effects of the transformational rites of passage of like a really interventionist birth, you know, because that that makes that woman into who she's gonna be with the mindset that that creates in her. So, you know, whatever happens makes us into the next version of ourselves. And you have had that thank the goddess experience of a like birth under your steam, like it's not that much to ask, to be fair.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

Yeah. Oh, it's it's so interesting, and I feel like it's connected me to something. I'm still working it out. Like I feel like I'm connected to something bigger. And all of this sort of process of this work that I'm doing has just been unfolding before me. It's like I'm some kind of vessel through which, you know, this energy is being channeled.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

You are, you are, that's exactly what you are.

SPEAKER_01 48:49

Yeah, and it's just it's it's it's just crazy because all these ideas, you know, are kind of coming to me. I don't know where they're coming from, and I'm just putting them, I'm kind of giving birth to them into this, you know. I I've created this kind of a few different um different projects that I'm working on, and and all of them are really aiming towards, you know, healing the earth at different levels, community levels.

SPEAKER_00 49:12

And well, they they're coming from you, okay? They're not coming from anywhere else, they're coming from you, and it's you accessing all of that information and that way and that flow because you're in line, you're aligned now, you're aligned with your own inner power, and you know who you are and what you're capable of. So well done. Thanks, Jane. This is what the world needs. This is what the world needs. Women who can wake up around significant rites of passage. Don't have to wake up during a rite of passage because there's plenty of women who don't have babies or a well and truly post-menopause or whatever. We just have to wake up. You know, we've been we're under a slumber spell, a patriarchal slumber spell, and it gets reinforced and reenacted every rite of passage. But it's never too late, you know. We just have to lick our wounds, wake up, lick our wounds, do our inner healing, and just get on with the business of now, which is bloody saving saving ourselves. And I don't think we can save the earth. I don't think she needs to be saved. We just need to stop messing things up. And you know, it's when people, women like you have the experiences that you have that's that you become a leader in the world and help the other women and people recognize it. So power to you, sister.

SPEAKER_01 50:37

Oh, thank you. Yeah, I I I just feel like you're the right person to talk to about all this kind of stuff. It's um yeah, it's really quite cool. But just what you said then, I think that even just the how we approach giving birth compared to um how we're approaching dealing with the world right now, you know, it's analogous to one another because we're trying to control the world and we're thinking they're thinking, how can we create the technology to capture the carbon to fix things? Well, actually, probably the the direction that we need to do is to take that more yin approach, that more um feminine. You look at this pandemic, and in a way, like that's a forced um harvest reflection fellow period where we've been forced to stop. And and you know, probably And look what's happening. That's right, everybody's starting to question everything. Everyone's thinking, why is it that I I, you know, sit in a car for two hours every day to go to work both, you know, directions and and why do I have to work six days a week and I only see my kids, you know, for 40 minutes before bedtime? Or um, you know, everyone's starting to question everything. And I think that um one way that so the government's leading us in one more controlled, regimented direction in terms of the world, and let's control our environment so that we can survive. But you know, I guess the other the other way is to reclaim the more um traditional indigenous way of thinking and and slow everything way back and become much more localized in our approaches and and individualistic and and listen to the voices of our community and create our our micro solutions that suit us. And and um part of that is just slowing down and and listening to our intuition.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

Yeah, getting the children off screens and into the garden. Yeah, you know, and my my teacher, uh Janine Pavadi Baker, who I met back in the late 90s, um she was she's dead now, but one of her famous one-liners was to heal the earth one birth at a time.

SPEAKER_01 52:48

I believe that that would work from my experience. Exactly, exactly. Yes, because people think that yeah, birth is is this sort of little area that's just specific to women, but it's how we all enter the world. And so every person has this um, you know, imprint from their birth and it impacts how they live their life. So if we could rethink how we enter the world, it could really transform how we live in the world.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

Yeah, as it clearly has you and your family.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

That's right. I guess something I I wanted to just touch on because I'm very conscious that so many people don't have the the you know the access to this information um because it's not in the mainstream, and a lot of people have, you know, gone through um their birth experiences and and you know have have probably had a few different interventions and they might feel like, oh, you know, my my rite of passage wasn't wasn't like that, or my rite of passage was wrong because I had these, you know, interventions. Uh how would you approach um people who who have had highly medicalized, I mean, for example, with you know, your period, you could have been on the pill and skipped your period for 10 years, or you could have had a highly medicalized birth. You know, I don't want these people to feel like they've done anything wrong, and I want them to be able to embrace the rights of passage. So, how how do you sort of work with women who have been through these kinds of experiences?

SPEAKER_00 54:18

Absolutely good question. And, you know, that's the majority, to be fair. So I think the first thing to know is that a rite of how you experience a rite of passage is not a curse. Like it's not gonna, oh you know, now I'm fucked, now for the rest of my life, blah, blah, blah. That's it's not the case. Basically, our rites of passage create a pattern that we need to recognize, and like so for birth, that's debriefing it and figuring out what the birth taught you about yourself, and for menarch, it's about reclaiming menarch and giving a new message to your maiden, and menopause, it's about honoring the wise woman, for example. So it's not a curse, it's a pattern to figure out what the pattern is and how to work with it, not against it. So we're doing this, we the way, and there is nothing, there is no wrong because just like so. For our menarch, our first period, we are probably having the experience, like the next generation experience of whatever our mother had, because it's the mother or mother equivalent, if there isn't a mother, that has the biggest impact on a menarch experience for a girl. We've found this out from research. And so this is it's at menarch that we see generational trauma be passed down and menstrual shame. So, mostly what happens at Menarch until recently, because as I mentioned before, women are waking up and wanting their daughters to have better experiences than they did. But so then come to childbirth, and that's often when women wake up, like you said, because they're more aware, you know, they've got like when you're average age for menarch is 13, you know, you're not doing cultural examination of rites of passage of first periods, you know, like you're just doing you're just having whatever happens. Yeah, but then um come childbirth, there's this waking up concept, and and that's a good thing, it's not a bad thing to realize that was a highly interventionist birth, and I came out of that feeling like I my body doesn't work and I can't do anything and I don't know anything, and rah-rah, rah. Step one is to recognize that. That is not what birth is supposed to teach you. So recognizing that and acknowledging it and finding out the pattern, and then doing the inner work to unravel it because how we give birth is like a readout of our mindset, our beliefs, attitudes, and fears. It's what that enables, and it's also the culmination of our life thus far. You know, it's not a surprise. Like how you give birth is not going to be disconnected to everything else that's already happened in your life. You know, it's like this is how we see menstrual shame impact birth. You know, menstrual shame impacts birth, and Sharon Maloney wrote about this too, in the way that like if women don't arrive to give birth aware of the power of their body, then that affects us, right? We don't have that knowing. We just have awareness of the inconvenience of our body. And the menstrual cycle is meant to prepare us for birth by showing us how our body talks to us so we know about that in labor. So, you know, basically we have the birth we need to have to teach us what we need to learn about ourselves to take us on our journey of healing and wholeness. So, you know, there's no bad birth. I know that there is people say that, there's no wrong birth, there's just the birth that happens so that you we can learn about ourselves and the way of things and choose different pathways next, or work with the pattern so that we can unravel, like for example, my first birth. So I was 27 and I was already a home birth midwife, and I was having a home birth, and I got to fully dilate it, and I was pushing for hours, and I couldn't budge the head, you know, and and so I went to hospital and I ended up having an in-labour second stage cesarean. And what I realized later was the head I couldn't budge was my own. I was trying to control the process, and I was in my head through the whole thing, and I didn't surrender. So I realized that that birth taught me that I didn't surrender. So that birth taught me about surrender because I didn't do it. And I mean, I know what surrender is, and I knew then, right? Because I was saying that to women surrender, surrender. But when it came to me surrendering, I didn't know how to surrender. And I didn't even know that I didn't even know how to surrender. But had I known what I knew later, I would have been able to recognize that there was a lot of surrendering in my life I wasn't doing. Like, for example, orgasm is connected to birth, and the surrender you need to do to orgasm is the same kind of surrender you need to do to give birth. So, had I known that at the time, I would have seen a red flag there because orgasming wasn't something that came easily to me because I was too in my head. And then in that whole, I was too in my head story. What I was able to do with the debriefing of my birth experience that ended up in this in-labour cesarean was to figure out why I didn't surrender. And and what it taught me was that the connection between my childhood trauma and the rest of my life because I learned from my childhood that the world was not a safe place and that I shouldn't surrender because that could be more, that could just mean more pain, for example. So birth taught me that when I asked it, why did this happen to me? And then I got to deal with and and learn from and put myself back together again and come out of my that birth experience without my wounded inner child running my life in terror. So if you can debrief your births and find out what the mindset was that enabled that to happen, then everything unravels and you start to be much more aware of why we do, what we do, the way we do it, and we can do the healing and choose the healed way rather than the same old, same old wounded way. I hope that answers the question.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:45

Yeah, no, that that that is that does answer it because I just, you know, I think birth talking about birth and the way that you birth can be very um triggering for people because they can feel like, oh, she did it this way, you know, and I did it this way, is am I wrong? You know, and I mean, well, that's just a the patriarchal way that women are pitted against each other that we think we should compare each other, you know. But you know, no, the way that you birthed is 100% not wrong. I I I don't want anyone to feel like that. And I I want them, like Jane just said, yeah, take this as an opportunity to reflect on how you experience your first period and how you experienced your births and really dive into how that sheds light onto how you live the rest of your life and and use it as an opportunity. It can really hurt to to look at those ways because you have to look at maybe, maybe you know, you're not fully engaging in life. Maybe you're holding yourself back and blunting your experience of emotions through, you know, for example, in you know, you're wanting to suppress the pain of a period through using panadol or neurofin or whatever. You know, maybe that's reflective of how you you don't want to fully experience pain in your life.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:02

Exactly, which is a cultural thing. So the other part with all this healing work we need to do is to not sort of take it personally in the way that I'm fucked and I did all this wrong shit. Like, that's what the culture has is that's the that's the channel that we're on that our culture is creating. Disempowered women, you know, like that's what keeps the world going.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:24

Yes, yes. The way that it is, that's right. Continuing continuing the status quo by by continuing to to have women in this box.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:33

Yeah, and to terrify them, you know. Women are terrified of giving birth. It's seen as something to just endure, you know, and and the fact that that it couldn't be anything more different than that, just hearing your story of giving birth in 2020, you know, like that's what we want. And and and and just to say, you don't have to have a home birth to have an empowering birth. You can have an empowering cesarean. It's really about how the people treat you, and they have to pull themselves together. That the the maternity care services are in a bloody mess, and they know they are, they absolutely know they are, and everything needs to change. And you know, like it's actually cheaper, which is a major consideration for governments around delivering health care. It's cheaper to use, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way, midwives instead of obstetricians for women's maternity care, and to have midwifery programs and birth centres and home births as one of the like favored options for the women who for whom that suits is a cheaper option and has heaps better outcomes and continuity of care, like the known midwife through your pregnancy, birth, and be and postnatal period, like that happens in hospitals now too. You've just got to choose, choose the service that works for you, not get slotted into the service that works for them.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:01

Yeah, absolutely. Um, it's just there's so much to dive into in this way. I mean, we've focused a bit on birth here, but I have heard you speaking about um menopause and the importance of truly valuing post-menopausal women because, you know, you can see the same pattern through through how we approach menopause as a rite of passage. You know, it's there's a lot of shame attached to menopause, you know, and jokes around hot flushes, and you know, it's it's a really intense period for women to go through, but we're really taught through society to just hide it. And and that's seen through how post-menopausal women are viewed in society as you know, they we talk about they just disappear and and we're trying to be eternally youthful through having all these plastic surgery. And I just was interested to hear you maybe um explain to the listeners a bit about um how we could reclaim menopause as a rite of passage and and the importance of um post-menopausal women in society and moving towards this like beautiful new earth that we want to go to.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:08

Great. Well, menopause will be the next rite of passage in a woman's life. So if it's if it's pending, say, or for those who are in it and those who are over it. So one rite of passage leads to the next. So preparation for an individual woman's journey into and through menopause needs to include a forensic archaeological dig of all her previous rites of passage, because when you do that, you can see this trajectory you're on, the pathway you're on, and therefore what the setup is. So when we come to a rite of passage, we come to a fork in the road. And one way is the usual way the same old, same old way, the way it always happens in our family. Or in our community or in my life. And that's usually the wounded way. And then there's the other fork, which is the healed way. But to even know that there is a healed way, you have to recognize you're on the same old, same old wounded way. And then you need to do the inner work required to take you on the healed path. So in preparation for menopause, which is not called the change of life for nothing, because everything changes, and it's not a bad thing. It's the end of a phase of life, which is based on our fertility, which goes for 40 years in the healthy natural model, into the second half of our lives, right? It's not just the end, it's the second half. And it's the wise woman years, and the and the menopause journey, the perimenopausal, peri means around, is the is a labor and birth, actually, you know, and the baby, so to speak, is the wise woman version of us. And so the thing that is the biggest change is the hormones, obviously, and their effect on the physical, but I think it's really important to understand that the hormone that the hormones these are this is about are estrogen and progesterone mainly. And estrogen, which is the you know big one, is known as the hormone of accommodation. And accommodation and sacrifice. And so when our fertility wanes, the veil of estrogen, which equals sacrificial and um accommodating ways of being, change. And so around perimenopause and and after, it's like women's uh perspective is different, they don't want to pick up after everybody anymore. They're like, do it yourself. I've been doing it for so long, you know. That's just a silly example, but not a not a minor one. But um, so menopause is is um feared by our culture. And look, that's a that's a big clue, Sophie. Anything to do with women or the feminine that is put down, made a joke of, disappeared, or feared is a clue that it holds power. So, you know, birth, menstrual cycle, menopause, like these are the empowering transformational rights of passage of women. And so it's no wonder that of course they hold power. So of course they're the they're the they're the places of control and power over in a patriarchy. Because the last thing a patriarchy in its truest sense wants is empowered women. It's its aim is to keep them disempowered. So at menopause, what happens is this veil of accommodation and sacrifice lifts, and the woman goes through a process where she has to review and evaluate her life and and transform and move into the next phase. And um our culture is is fixated on kind of getting through it and then getting on with it, a bit like period. But in the education that I received, and many of us have from some um Aboriginal elders, particularly Min Maya from the Warajari family group, um, clan, she says that menopause is not something to negotiate your way through and resume business as usual after. She said, she says the role of the post-menopausal woman is not business as usual, it's a whole new role, and the role is to weave the dreams for the grandchildren. Not look young again, like weave the dreams for the grandchildren.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:12

So, like a real kind of visionary type role.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:15

Exactly, because that's two, two, many things change post-menopausally, but two things that really ramp up are intuition and visionary capacity. So the other thing that I really like to look at always in my questions of what what to under how to make sense of things is to look to nature, right? Because nature is our greatest teacher, and we are nature, right? We don't visit nature, we are nature. We are the human pattern of nature on the earth. And um there's there are five creatures on the planet that go through menopause. Only five, five mammals, and humans are one, and the other four all live in the ocean, and they're the they're the toothed whales, they're the orcas or killer whales, the pilot whales, the um ballugia whales, and the narwhales, you know, the unicorns of the sea. So those are the only other four creatures that go through menopause, humans and toothed whales. And so, you know, evolutionary biologists have looked at human women and pondered the question: why would they live beyond their fertility? What could possibly be their use? Like just pause for a vomit, come back. And so they they learned about whales, they discovered that whales um live on beyond their menopause, and so they think wanted to figure out why. And what they saw, which is the biggest teaching for us, is that post-menopausal re post-reproductive menopausal whales were the leaders or are the leaders of their pods.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:06

Yeah, they're the bosses, they're they're the ones that know where all the food is under all the different situations and circumstances, and they are the leaders of their pods. And the fact of that, how that works or what that results in is that their their sons live longer, their daughters live longer and have more babies, and the grandchildren of the leaders of the pods, these these um postmenopausal whales, the their grandchildren thrive and live longer. So, you know, like so, therefore, what the fuck are we doing, right? We don't want our menopausal women to disappear, we want them to be leaders, and we need to value postmenopausal women, and and we need postmenopausal women in leadership roles, just like our whale sisters. And so it's a wonderful healing process to go through menopause in menopause, but it's countercultural because our culture would just have us take more drugs to just ease our way through it, so we're not going to make too many complaints and whinge and have horrible this and that and blah blah blah. Like it's the same mentality around labor and childbirth. So menopause is um so significant, and that's why it's so feared and so hidden. It's definitely that another one of the front lines, so to speak, where we're seeing women go in you know two directions, like either deeper into disempowerment and the cultural perspective of only valuing youth and youthful beauty, or into uh wise women aging, valuing aging, you know, like the patriarchy is ageist as well, right? And the other thing about menopause, it's a is it's a cultural experience. So in cultures that value aging and wise women, the experience that the women go through in their menopause is very different. They don't have such severe symptoms, yeah. Physical symptoms. And and I don't even want to use the word symptom because that implies it's a disease, which it's not.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:15

That's right, it's just a natural phenomenon that needs to be treated.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:20

Exactly. It's like we're going into the yin phase of our lives, it's the autumn. So when we go through menopause, it's the end of the yang, the summer, the spring and summer, you know, it's then into the descent of the autumn and winter. And now, you know, like autumn is a very important time in your in the seasons of the earth. It's the harvest time, it's where we get all the food. And and so, you know, it's the same thing as a metaphor in a woman's life. When she comes into her autumn years, she has to share her harvest. And you know, that might be a rediscovery of herself as opposed to something that she's already that she's built up as well. So so important.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:07

Yeah, I I just think that role of the um, so I guess there's two words that are often used. So it's mag, is it? Maga and crow. Having those women come into their power and to provide their um like visioning um and intuitive capacity is so important right now because we know just based off the data that we're getting on in terms of the earth, you know, things absolutely need to change. We're at a fork in the road at hum um in terms of humanity right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:42

And where we go in society is completely up to us. So what's very important in moving towards a better place is that we really reclaim that power, and especially, you know, those older women who are who are in this phase of their life, because they have the power to envision how we could do things differently. And you know, they need to reclaim that that um confidence in themselves to voice what they want to see in the world. Because I think that a lot of people just feel like, oh, my opinion doesn't matter. No, one person's opinion can make so much difference, it can create the ripples that we need. You know, women are huge numbers around the world. If we all banded together and stepped into our power, you know, we could really change things. Exactly. Yeah, we need to really collaborate and organise ourselves. And, you know, I think that the the sort of um magas and crones of the world could be so instrumental in that and you could be like so powerful. So I think that um yeah, we just need to to really become more conscious of these these rites of passage and and yeah, like you say, to to do that work so that we can see what needs to be done and just get to work because we can just running out of freaking time, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:09

And I've got a few campaigns on one is about helping women to um recover from birth trauma and help them give feedback to the system so it can change. Cool, and another one which is I've called it the grandma army, and you know, I don't want it to be seen as a militaristic thing, but this is just me, a grandma warrioress, saying, grandma army. So, like you said, like if all the grandmas got together, like watch out, yeah, yeah. It's actually our responsibility. We know we don't need to wait for someone to give us permission. That's that's that's part of the programming of the patriarchy.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:51

That's right, yeah. We just gotta just reclaim it for ourselves, yeah. Um, and it's so empowering, I think, to do that. So I guess just to to wind up our interview, this is probably a good place to to finish up. Um, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the kind of world you'd like to see us living in in 2050.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:10

Well, I'd be 93. I hope I'm alive. Me too. And um, you know, so that's like 30 years or so into the future. Maybe I'll even be a great-grandmother, maybe not. But what I want to see then is I want to see a world where the great-great-grandchildren are thriving. You know, I want to see a positive mental menstrual culture as opposed to the negative one we're in now. I want to see gentle, kind births, no matter what kind of birth. I think we need menopause support because, you know, like, and value. So there'd be this uh this this uh cohort of grandmas, whether they've had their own children or grandchildren or not, you know, post-menopause grandma is an it's grandmother, you know, next level. Them all sorted and organized and doing magical work and workplace policies so that everybody's honored in whatever life stage they are in, and females in leadership and villages. We need the villages, and we need to be living sustainable lifestyles in community, and you know, uh sharing gardens and traveling and work in line with whatever health impact or environmental impact that's having. So everybody valued for who they are and wherever they're at, and yeah, hopefully thriving, thriving, that's what I want. That's the magic word, thriving.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:40

Well, there you have it. That was the discussion, and I I really loved it. I had such a good time talking to Jane, she's so smart, and I have so many more questions for her that I could just continue to ask her. Even as I was listening to this interview, I was coming up with more questions, and her work's just so interesting, and I just love it. I really love reclaiming the word witch. I think it holds a lot of power for us, and we definitely should do it because it's fucking awesome. So, next week I have two interviews. I was meant to have two this week, but one got rescheduled, which was the universe like doing a wondrous favor for me because I actually got mastitis on the day I was meant to have this interview, and it would have been terrible to have to push through mastitis, and yeah, anyway. Thanks, universe. So next week I have one interview with Lauren Carter, Lauren of the uh store Spiral Garden, which you might have heard of. They she and her husband Lauren and Oberon Carter wrote a book Low Low Waste Living, which is based on their low-waist living lifestyle that they um they live with their family. Um they've got three girls, they live near Hobart in Tasmania, and they're both permaculture um designers and teachers, I believe. So they're really interesting, family, and oh, they're just so like vibrant and um there's so much depth to the way that they live. It it just really intrigues me, and I can't wait to ask Lauren some questions, especially you know, relating about to how she's like raised her kids in with that environment. So that's exciting. And the other um interview that I'm doing is with Ariel Gamble, who she is a director of the organization along with two other girls, but she's one of the directors of the organization Groundswell Giving, which is a big leader in the climate space. And that interview, um, yeah, we're gonna touch on a little bit about the organization because it's just a really interesting organization, I f I think. And um also a bit about like what's going on in the climate space right now that they're working on, and then we're gonna just, yeah, um, chat a bit about you know, Ariel in and who she is, because she's an artist and she's very interesting in her own right and probably deserves her own other separate podcast aside from ground cell giving. So yeah, I can't wait to to ask her some questions about her art. So thank you for joining along today. And if it resonated with you and you think that it might help somebody else, I would love for you to share it. Um, and it would be helpful to subscribe and and give a a review, hopefully a nice review, on iTunes. Um, because that just I don't know, some I think that does something with the logarithms and makes it reach more people, and yeah, I don't know, it helps to get the word out there, which is what I want to do. So please share and like and subscribe. So thank you guys. I hope you're having a wonderful week, and I will talk to you next time.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:56

Bye.