.png)
Redesigning Life with Sabrina Soto
Redesigning Life with Sabrina Soto is a podcast dedicated to inspiring intentional living, personal growth, and transformation. Hosted by design expert and lifestyle expert Sabrina Soto, each episode dives into conversations about wellness, mindset, home and self-improvement with leading experts and thought leaders. With a mix of practical advice, heartfelt storytelling and empowering insights, Redesigning Life is your go-to space for creating a life that feels as good as it looks... one thoughtful choice at a time.
Redesigning Life with Sabrina Soto
Redefining Motherhood: Wisdom from Dr. Gertrude Lyons
Dr. Gertrude Lyons turns motherhood on its head with a revolutionary concept: everyone mothers, whether they have biological children or not. Her groundbreaking book "Rewrite the Mother Code" examines how we all conceive, create, and nurture - from creative projects to relationships to our own selves. The profound truth at the heart of this work? The most important person we need to mother is ourselves.
The conversation speaks to women at every life stage - those considering motherhood, those in the thick of raising children, those facing empty nests, and those who've chosen different paths entirely. By expanding our definition of mothering beyond biology, Dr. Lyons invites all women to recognize their nurturing power and turn it inward first. When we mother ourselves with compassion and intention, we transform not just our own lives but everyone we touch.
Ready to rewrite your own mother code? Get Dr. Lyons' book and join a movement that's redefining what it means to mother from the inside out.
Dr. Gertrude Lyons book:
https://www.drgertrudelyons.com/book-rewrite-the-mother-code
Connect with Dr. Gertrude Lyons
https://www.drgertrudelyons.com/
Gertrude Lyons on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/drgertrudelyons?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=dXllYWpzMHEwa3h0
Connect with Sabrina:
https://www.instagram.com/Sabrina_Soto/
www.SabrinaSoto.com
Welcome to Redesigning Life. I'm your host, sabrina Soto, and this is the space where we have honest conversations about personal growth, mindset shifts and creating a life that feels truly aligned. In each episode, I'll talk to experts in their fields who share their insights to help you step into your higher self. Let's redesign your life from the inside out. Welcome to Redesigning Life. Today we have a special guest, dr Dr Gertrude Lyons, who just wrote this amazing book, rewrite the Mother Code. Gertrude, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I cannot wait to dive deep into this book and our conversation. So thank you for being here, sabrina it's a total blessing and honor.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:I was for those of you listening, I was invited to launch Gertrude's book, this beautiful, very intimate dinner party of amazing women, and it was such a sacred setting because it was all of these women and we were having these conversations, much of which surrounded about your book, which we'll get to in a second. But what I realized is that there is such strength in women and the core of who we are, and that's what your book is about. So I want to start off with questions, because I was reading this book and thanks so much for not only gifting it to me, but you sent it to me again. You say that everyone is a mother, whether or not they have kids, and I have a lot of friends who don't have children. So how can someone really I don't know like begin to own the truth of that, even though they may not have children themselves? Because I have a lot of friends who feel motherly but kind of abandon themselves because they're not a quote, unquote mother. Oh, gosh.
Speaker 2:Thanks for jumping right into that one because it's so core to what I believe in. One of the I don't know like revolutionary but at the same time universally true pieces that I want to highlight in the work that I did in writing that book and bringing it out there is that we all mother we conceive, create and give birth to if we choose children, create and give birth to if we choose children. But ideas and dreams and careers, relationships, pets, anything we're putting our caring, creative, nurturing, but also mama bear destructive you know the whole range of like mother energy into we are mothering, but that the most important person we need to mother is ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yes, so there's, those are kind of the two, two really key aspects of of the message, and I, I really want it's, it's I really want it to be a unifying message, because I think, as women, we've I don't know, it's just something we've done to ourselves. I'm not blaming patriarchy, I'm not, you know, blaming, but in this kind of over masculine, dominated value system that we're all a part of and adhering to, I think this is something that could really help break down some of those barriers if we really start owning this mother aspect of ourselves and then see that commonality amongst each other, instead of becoming compartmentalized or, you know, putting ourselves like, oh, you know, I'm this, I'm a mother of children, so now, for some reason, I'm going to judge women who don't make that choice, or I'm not, you know, or I think I don't relate as much, all the things that like start to happen under that structure. I really want us to upend.
Speaker 1:You've been doing this work a long time, so can, for those of you like, for the listeners that maybe aren't so familiar with your work, can you talk about the book why you started it, but really how this all came about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well it's. I always kind of laugh when I get that question because, well, it's my life's journey, right, like it's. How did it come about? Was you know, hitting certain inflection points where I had done, had some life experience that I could then reflect on? Then I could look and see and say, oh, I started to really, you know, look kind of straight in the eye like where, where did I mother myself, where did I kind of stay connected to myself, whether that was through personal development, you know, transformation, all of that, and where didn't I? And noticing that in my motherhood journey because we did decide to have children, we had two daughters that there were places in there, I felt pretty good about that. I led the family in consciousness, raising, awareness, self-development, until I didn't.
Speaker 1:Wait, what do you mean until you didn't? What did that look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it was something that I was aware that I was doing, but I really not. I didn't want to confront the fact that once I had these two little children this rocking the boat. Because you know, when you go on a personal growth journey you confront things. You know pain comes up you, you know it feels risky, like oh, if I keep going on this I might really disrupt something in my relationship. And I had been willing to do that and take whatever you know chances. I was. But suddenly I had these two little ones and that felt too scary to keep doing. And it wasn't until I reflected on it later that I realized just how much I let go of myself.
Speaker 2:In the sense of people pleasing, yeah, people pleasing, putting my kids first, putting my relationship first, starting to put myself last, losing myself and my children, doing some of the things that they say you're supposed to and how to do motherhood right, like getting my kids in the right things, and kind of appeasing myself. We were doing it more consciously, I guess, like doing this and kind of appeasing myself. We were doing it more consciously, I guess, but I was. I had really lost myself in at this, like juncture right, and so when I looked back on it I was like wow, if, if, it was this hard for me to stay focused on my development, my, you know whether it was growing myself personally, spiritually, in relationship with my husband, whatever realm that was happening. I was a coach. I was coaching other couples, families. I was in an environment where this should have felt safe.
Speaker 1:Right, you're like, if I'm allowing this BS to happen, what are people who aren't in this space?
Speaker 2:Of course. So it gave me so much empathy for just what a challenging job you know, or what I, what I'm asking people to do is is not easy, because it wasn't easy for me. Now, some women that I was coaching were able to like, stay in it and I got to see how you know ways that they flourished because of it and it. And, yeah, there there were some risky times and it looked it was painful at times for them.
Speaker 1:So I get it and I think I, the night that we had met each other, I was. I got emotional because I was telling the story of how, you know, I was raised. I'm both. My parents are from Cuba. Let's especially Latin women, are raised really to put ourselves last and it wasn't until I sort of flipped the script. But I have gotten a lot of judgment from other mothers of doing that.
Speaker 1:I judge myself first and foremost, when you just said, like putting them in things they're supposed to be those, the sports, the extracurricular, the arts, the, this, the that, the right camp and if I'm not doing it, I feel like I am abandoning her. And then I feel like I'm abandoning my inner child because she didn't get all those nice things. So it is a very complicated relationship, which is why everybody needs this book. It's so, it's not easy, it's complicated.
Speaker 2:It is, and I'm hoping the book, you know, lends enough like compassion for what we're, what we're, what I'm proposing, you know, as a possibility, that you know when we can raise our awareness, when we do follow our intuition, follow, as I, you know, outline in the book. You know there's these codes that just what we're talking about are what are the mother codes? You know this, do it right, put yourself last. You know, have children, because that's the most important thing you could do. Like, all of those are just wired in beliefs.
Speaker 2:You know that we've, that we're complying with when we tune into ourselves and can really look and explore, like, well, what are my values, what are my desires? You know how do I want to do this motherhood thing and claim that, no, it's not easy, right, but I can look to that and say, all right, I'm willing to, because this matters to me in a way that I've been thoughtful about, a way that has meaning to me. It gives me strength to face the negativity, the judgment, the what do you think you're doing? You're not doing it right. You're not doing it right. And we don't have to sit there and say like, well, my and this isn't about saying, well, my way is the right way or the better way.
Speaker 1:No, it's just my way that feels good based on.
Speaker 2:You know, this is discernment. I'm not talking about like well, I'm just doing it my way because I don't want to do it the way my parents did it. Right, like there's. I think we all understand this is taking some work and a little thoughtfulness, but we can all go on that journey and armor ourselves with something that is really just ours. Then we're just measuring ourselves against and we're not even really measuring ourselves. We're reflecting with ourselves and if we're not meeting our desires, that's on us, but it isn't something we need to be ashamed of. It's just. Well, I might need more skills, wow, I said I wanted to live this way, but gosh, I might need to practice this or get coaching or support in it to actually live it. But I, you know, I'm going to try. You know I'm going to like. I may not be able to do it now, but I love the growth mindset.
Speaker 2:Carol Dweck, you know her this three letter word, yet right, oh, I see you, sabrina, doing that. So instead of judging you for for following your intuitive sense and doing it differently, instead of judging you and like criticizing you, maybe I could be curious. Maybe I could say, like well, I'd kind of like to do that, I don't know how, yet right. But we add that, yet I don't know how to do that, or that looks really hard, yet right. So we throw that in there and that opens up so many more possibilities than we just we're just, you know. All that judgment is just self-protection, right? In a culture that's trying to tell us that there's these impossible standards to try and meet.
Speaker 1:And yes, exactly, it's impossible. And just something as small as yesterday. I woke up and you know it was the weekend and I spent a good 20 minutes in my bed. I got coffee, brought it back up, I journaled, I did my gratitude journal and Olivia was awake and she was downstairs making herself a little breakfast and a part of me felt guilty I should be down there making her breakfast. And I stopped and I allowed it to feel. And then I realized for the rest of the day, because I'd given myself that time to recalibrate my nervous system, I was more patient with her, I was more present with her, and it's those little wins that you just have to go.
Speaker 2:It's a huge win. Yeah, yes, and I'm fine to call it a little win, but I still want to like massively celebrate it, because just the fact that you hit that juncture and didn't just reflexively say like I got to go be with her because we'll do that, and then we're abandoning ourselves, right we're, we might be uncomfortable with ourselves, just giving ourselves that time. So it's like I'm going to feel needed, I'm going to give myself you know and like go, you know, help her. Like as if you know and like go, you know, help her.
Speaker 1:By the way, she was fine by herself. But so take me back to that point when you said that you saw that you were people pleasing and abandoning yourself, and you coach people in order to do this. So if someone's listening to this and they feel like they're losing themselves and their children, how can they begin the process of reclaiming themselves in this fog?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's such a great question, Sabrina.
Speaker 2:How did that happen for you too, I'll say.
Speaker 2:First, I'll say, like the ideal you know, and and I'm saying ideal because this is I wish somebody had noticed it in a caring sort of way, not judgmental like you've stopped growing, you know, I think I may have someone may even have said that to me I wasn't, in some ways, also in some respects, the healthiest growth environment for certain reasons.
Speaker 2:Right, it was a little harsh and, like you know, like you got to be doing the hard stuff like all the time. So, with compassion, saying like you know what you used to like really, and I think maybe some people, now that I think of it, a couple of people may have even said it that way, yeah, but I'm still going to say, you know, listen to that. And if I could have at any moment, just like you did with that urge to go be with your daughter, had some curiosity about it for myself and found someone that I could really trust to talk about it with, you know, like I'm I don't want to admit this because one you know I'm supposed to be the expert in doing it you know, poor myself, I'm supposed to be walking the talk. I'm not to the level I know I'm somehow making it look like I am, but I'm not right.
Speaker 2:Thank you for acknowledging and being honest and transparent about that 100%, because there are times, the times I followed, that intuitive sense like, oh, this is off, or I need to question this more, or you know, there's something probably deeper going on here. And you know, self-reflect, find somebody safe to talk to about. Like these, this awareness I don't know what to do with it. You know, is this like help me get a reality check here of what's going on, because I think there would have been? I just know there would have been some really good stuff and I'm still uncovering, you know, some of the fear that I actually think. You know that I've worked on later in life. So that's what I want to say have compassion.
Speaker 2:Like the fact that I got to it 10 years later, 15 years later, I'm still like, yay, I would have liked to have been, you know, happened in real time at the time and I let myself have the feelings of regret and remorse, like, oh, my gosh, what could have happened for me, our family, if I had done it? And just like, okay, but I didn't. And I can have compassion for that, but it also fueled me to do this work and I'm like this isn't going to go to waste and, you know, maybe that was the journey I was supposed to have, but the fact that I got there at some point, you know to acknowledge and not like keep it buried, right, I could have just been like ooh, oops, you know, like we'll just kind of keep going here and pretend that didn't happen to happen Because we are also celebrated for it right?
Speaker 1:So on the outside we are celebrated for abandoning ourselves for our children and family, and I see some of the moms at school that are there all the time volunteering and everybody's like, go, you're amazing. And then I look at her and go, gosh, are you okay? Because we can't do it all. It's actually impossible. So it is a tough again subject because we're celebrated for the same thing. That's drowning us.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly, and that's the catch. This like unrelenting standards, you know that are put on us that I will say are again more masculine based, they're outcome based, they're performance based. You know like we're supposed to measure, you know ourselves, by our children's success or like you know this like narrow model of like what, the what fits the bill, of like doing it right, and so we'll never feel like accomplished or we'll always feel guilty because it's not the standards. That would come from a more balanced, feminine, masculine standpoint. Right, cause I'm all for the like. You know masculine standpoint right, because I'm all for the like. You know have expectations, you know for our kids and you know kind of push them and you know challenge them and let them but also to have space for process, space to just not fill the whole summer or, you know, every waking moment of their days with activities because we have to build their resume right, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yesterday, olivia was a whole day nonstop. We were going to bed and I was talking to her and she felt overwhelmed and I said you were just overstimulated. Today it was a lot and I feel like everyone's nervous system, you know, has a time for rest but we are taught like what you just said you know soccer, volleyball, girl Scouts, boy Scouts. It's like, oh my goodness. So thank you for sharing that. I also like what does rewriting the mother code look like for someone who may have a very complicated relationship with their mother?
Speaker 2:Hmm, yeah, no, that's such a beautiful question, sabrina, because you know what I really want to kind of gentle people into it and how I introduce like exploring this in the book is, you know, in a way, asking people first to like make agreements, that this isn't about blaming our parents, this isn't about you know, but it is about being honest and truthful about what our upbringings look like, you know, or what we experienced.
Speaker 2:But rather than make it good or bad or you know, kind of just go to the judging of it to start off with, if we can reflect and look back what did I like and what did I not like, right.
Speaker 2:So there's something about declaring or, you know, assessing through like and dislike that takes away some of the good, bad, you know, and judgment, and it doesn't mean you might not still have emotional stuff come up, you know, and I invite to go beyond that like-dislike into you know, all-out healing from our relationships. But if we can start I don't want people to feel like they have to, you know, delve into every nook and cranny of the difficult relationship with their mother in order to create their own. But some level of exploration, some level of truth telling about it and you can keep it as surface as you want, just to start having this experience of claiming because that's something that has been written for so long that we're not allowed to have our desires. You know that we're either just supposed to recreate what our families did or do the opposite, versus tune into like. What do I like? Why do I? You know? What do I value? What am I? Having women explore what their deeper desires are almost feels like it's a radical act.
Speaker 2:right, I just do what I'm supposed to do, sort of thing you know, with it at first and know that you don't have to go super deep into it right away, unless you, you know, unless you choose to, and still come up with and something that's really beautiful for yourself, like your mother code, right, and it's what I'm steering navigating people to creating a statement for themselves that has some of what they've declared or decided are the things that matter to them, that they value, and those aren't going to be. I'm keeping, you know, concrete things out of it, like it isn't. You know my mother code isn't to. You know, lose 10 pounds. Or, you know, have a perfect body as I mother.
Speaker 2:It's, you know, some assessment that's so concrete. It's more things like oh, you know I'm a woman who allows and encourages emotional expression. You know I'm a woman who tells the truth. You know I'm a woman who values connection and engagement. You know lives to her full potential, has conscious present in the moment, experiences. You know things like that that then you can orient to in the choices that you make. And when you're looking, when you have those moments where, like I'm a terrible mother, you know like it's something if I look and it's like, okay, well, how am I doing with this set of values that I declare matter to me?
Speaker 1:To reframe it all.
Speaker 2:To reframe it for yourself, yeah, and be guided by that.
Speaker 1:I think I mentioned in the beginning of our conversation that I have a lot of friends who don't have children really chose not to have children. How do you recommend if someone's listening, how do they explore and embody that mothering energy in their lives if they've chosen that motherhood is not for them?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I like that question because it allows us to both look at in some of what we were talking about, right, there's mother can be a very charged word. Right from our own upbringings you know from what we think that means. Or we hear the word mother and you know I'll have so many. You know women say like well, I'm not a mother. You know women say like well, I'm not a mother.
Speaker 2:And so when I start introducing this and I just have them share about you know their lives and where they're using their energy, it's always super easy to make the parallels. Now you might want to, you know, talk to a woman who has had children to like, really tune into the parallels. But I think that's actually intuitive wisdom that we know, right, that when we any, if we have an idea, and then we start putting that I like writing a book for me is for me if I hadn't had children and I wrote this book, it to me followed exactly the same path as as having right, I conceived of this idea, I'd been working on it, thought about it, but then you actually declare that you're going to start writing it and conceive, and then there's different overlaps.
Speaker 2:But I literally swear and it probably took just as long, about the same amount of time exactly from start to finish, for my first daughter probably, but I, even like, during the writing of it, gained like baby weight. You know it was. I just called it. I'm feeding for two. You know I'm feeding for two during this, but it's just some of the emotions that come along with it.
Speaker 2:And then the vulnerability of, like, when I launched the book of giving birth to it, like, oh my gosh, like people are going to see this, they're going to judge me, they're going to have, you know, just like we feel with our children. You know, like, oh, I have to, it has to be, but to put it in the world and let it go Right and let it go have its own life, like I can still nurture it and care for it. So when, you know, I talk to women, they've either started businesses, you know, led teams, you know are in a relationship with somebody that it might not be as condensed in a nine month period that you know, or you know, created something artistically. Anytime we've put something out in the world. We've cared for a pet, you know, if you look at the whole trajectory of that journey, it's a parallel yes, I actually never thought of that before that there is.
Speaker 1:If you are working on a very personal project, it is the same sort of feelings and the same steps, and there is a mothering in that as well. So, and I think that's why this book is so powerful, it's not just about it's way beyond being a mother of children it has. There's so many interwoven relationships and parallels in our life that also mimic those things you also talked about earlier. Like in a culture that glorifies productivity, they're very masculine. How do you learn the value of nurturing, the value of nesting, the value of resting, the value of retreating, when we are very much living in a masculine culture right now of go, go, go, being an A-type personality?
Speaker 2:It's kind of like deciding to go on an adventurous quest, right, like you know, going into new, like uncharted territory. You know kind of prepare for it, you know read about it. And I mean that, like you know read about women who are doing this, like look, you know, to someone like you like see if there's role models that are doing anything like this, but then understand like, yeah, like this is this, it is going into the unknown in some way. But then if you're doing it intentionally, then when you have like that first experience the first time I did a like a solo trip vacation, it was after my children were grown, you know I kept saying I wanted to do it. I never did it. I ventured out on my own for a couple of days, with no agenda, nothing like just to be, you know, with myself, and it was uncomfortable but also wonderful, right. So we, we have to start like and that was a big practice Like we can start smaller than you know.
Speaker 1:I think I went on a solo trip. To this day Some of my friends think I'm crazy that I went on vacation by myself. To me I came up with some of my best ideas on that vacation. I made friends that I was out there, I was with them yesterday, that I met them in Hawaii, and I do believe and Olivia was born and I was a mother at the time and I do believe it's those moments of putting yourself first that make you a much better mother, friend, sister, daughter, everything.
Speaker 2:That's, I think, what you start to see, right, but you have to, you know, kind of build a repertoire like you know. Do it notice that, like hey, that worked, everybody didn't die.
Speaker 1:Right, like just go on a walk by yourself.
Speaker 2:We want to think we're so needed, right? No, they can't possibly survive without me because, right, like just going to walk by yourself, you've, right initially, might feel is selfish or self-mothering, like journal. What are your beliefs about it? What do you, what are the worst things that you think are going to happen if you do this? You know, and what are the judgments you think people are going to throw your way? Because they're actually judgments you have of yourself and you know kind of foretell what, what it is and and notice what those barriers are, and then then you know, take baby steps into it. Maybe it's a cup of tea for yourself, like out right. Maybe it's deciding to you know, to do something creative or do some coaching for yourself or, you know, do a sound healing. I don't know, I'm making up a bunch of different things. No, it's true.
Speaker 1:It could be as small as like having a cup of tea by yourself in the backyard to taking a walk by yourself, but I think a lot of women and tell me if this is right, like with your clients. Have you seen that sometimes, when the empty nesting happens, there is this breakdown because you've been needed, you've been needed, you've been needed and there's a house full of people and then all of a sudden it stops and you're like what the F? Like who am I now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's real and it's really big, sabrina, and I'm so glad you brought that one up because I've had friends, you know, I've noticed even my own transition with it. I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so glad I have the kind of career I have. That can continue beyond. But, that being said, there's, I think, a way that we need to. It doesn't mean, you know, for women, while you're, if you are raising children, that you have to have a job outside the home or that, so that when they leave you have something else, but that that you have created some of your, something for yourself, right, some space for yourself, some awareness, or noticing even, as if someone is doing, you know, full-time mothering. What are what? What is the meaning of this for you? How are you learning and growing? Like, what is this? When we go into it, kind of just like, oh, this is what I'm doing, and and then we end up suddenly at that end with, oh my gosh, like what do I do now? You know, and if you haven't been working on your relationship, if you're in a relationship and you look at this guy and you're like, oh, it's just you now. Huh, who are you stranger? Right, you know you face some stuff I, you know, did and didn't, you know, bring the growth aspect.
Speaker 2:So I knew that was something missing that I wanted to bring back in. You know, it was okay to do a fearless inventory and people were like, oh, you shouldn't look back, it's just all water under the bridge. It's like, I think, a healthy reflection to then spur on. So how do I want it to be going forward? I'm putting myself way back in the equation and I'm really going to go full out for what I need.
Speaker 2:And it ruffled my husband's feathers, you know. I think my daughters were far enough along where it wasn't like you know what's going on with you, mom, and they were very supportive. I don't know, you know I was in school while my daughter was still in high school. So I, I, she may have some feelings about that, but anyway, yeah, exactly, we got to have some some truth telling here, which we, which we have, you know. So there's going to be some reckoning and I think that at any stage where things change right, we get to see like, oh, I saw where I didn't develop myself, we're going to. Nobody will have done that perfectly either.
Speaker 1:That's right, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:What am I going to need? And because if you don't do that, then you're just hanging around waiting for grandchildren, you know.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then you lose yourself again you know you're right and I, and then you lose yourself again, again. Exactly, you know, and and that can be a beautiful thing to be a part of you know one of your, your children's children and in their life. But we want to do that more mindfully and kind of rewrite codes of what we think grandmother is supposed to be and and be in relationship with our now adult son or daughter, right?
Speaker 1:right.
Speaker 2:About what the dynamic is, instead of making assumptions.
Speaker 1:Also very complicated. But how can partners sort of show up in this new paradigm of mothering that honors both strength and softness in the mothers that we'd love to be?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I'm hoping that it gets in the hands of men as well, right To just kind of understand the complexity, and they can't have our experience, but they can and we can show up in a way that invites them into the conversation. If we're just nagging or judging them or kind of telling them how they're not there for us or that, that's not really much of an invitation. But if we can be clear on our needs and our wants with them, that can start educating them when we can step into it fully. I have found I mean now that I'm more kind of back in tune with myself and following. You know my bliss, so to speak. I don't know if I'd put it quite that way, but you know, with writing this book and getting out there in the world, I don't think my husband's ever adored me more.
Speaker 1:Well, I got to tell you that night that I saw you at dinner. You were glowing. It wasn't even like you were walking around, you were floating and I'm like who is this woman? She's such a badass.
Speaker 2:So, yes, you have found your new level.
Speaker 1:You've unlocked a new level, I'm sure, in your life.
Speaker 2:Again, I just want to say I'm going to have ups and downs and there's been challenges, and I think that's just one other thing I want to say about all this is you don't do all this, so then everything is easy and perfect. It never is, it never is.
Speaker 1:Well, I feel the same way. I've done so much self-development work. I went to Hoffman, I've gone to therapy, I've gotten hit in the head with basil from some shaman in a garage in San Bernardino. I mean, I've tried it all and I woke up today so happy, super grateful. But I'm sure next week I'm going to be like F this, f you, f me, and that's okay. You know, it's about using those tools over and over again to get yourself back into the floating.
Speaker 2:Exactly Like the other day, but you made those big investments in yourself and mothered yourself in that way that now you have a toolkit right that you can draw upon.
Speaker 1:Oh, I have a toolkit. I have a garage full of tools. I know I have a toolkit.
Speaker 2:I have a garage full of tools. I know I just have to remember to use them.
Speaker 1:You know it's funny and that's another story, but it's funny when you're really in the depth of like either anxiety or depression, that even though you know the tools, you don't want to use them. You know that is actually the key to success is, even when you don't want to, it's still using them regardless, because they always work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hear, hear.
Speaker 1:But for is, even when you don't want to, it's still using them regardless because they always work. But for someone who has listened to this, like who is this book for who?
Speaker 2:did you write this book for? I would always run into this challenge, you know, when a publisher or like when I was starting to write this book, who's this book for? Because it was so hard for me to ever say it's for this woman, right? Because I would say, overall, I wrote it for all. I did write it for all women. You know, I wanted aspects of us to be able to, like, see ourselves and see ourselves in this mother energy space, collectively. Right, I feel like I wrote it for the collective and for us to have collective healing, for us to, you know, to really have an opening to true sisterhood and, you know, break out of the paradigms that have kept us judging and separate from each other and bring together this powerful force to help heal the world.
Speaker 2:Yes, you know like I did write it for that and then at the same time it does tend to, but you know it's like okay and my experience was around raising children, you know, and my story does revolve around, you know, conception and my whole journey and raising children, so it's very easy. Like probably the easiest person you know you could give it to is a potential new mom, a pregnant woman, you know, someone thinking about having a child, because that's like so clear and obvious. But every time I'm out and about with this book like I have so many people and you know so many women that have made a myriad of choices in mothering that the book has spoken to and that's that's really making my heart sing right.
Speaker 1:Because, well, I just even how I met you and bringing those women together, it's, it's exactly what you said. There's such power in the connection for women and and recreating this connection, because I feel like for the last you know few decades, we've been torn apart. Before you, you described a moment in Nepal where you, you received a shamik blessing, obviously, that it catalyzed the next chapter. That mystic experience shifted you completely as and identity, not only as a woman but as a mother. Can you because I'm very woo-woo in a sense like, can you tell people like what happened that day and how that changed you?
Speaker 2:yeah, no, yeah then. So the Nepal experience, um, happened like I had gotten two master's degrees, you know, and I was done with school. I wasn't, I was just starting to have these realizations of reflecting and kind of looking you know where my mothering journey had taken me. So I was really like on that precipice of facing that, you know that truth, really like on that precipice of facing that, you know that truth, that truth hadn't fully come out yet, but something was brewing, you know, for me, and we met with this just beautiful Nepalese woman, shaman, and I sadly don't remember her name. Those things like just kind of happened and I'd like to like name her, but I don't remember her name. And you know she spoke and we met with her and then, you know, we had the opportunity to kind of sit with her and I was near her and I was able to like I can't remember even exactly how it happened, if we all got a chance to hug her and she hugged everybody, or you know, all I know is suddenly I'm in this woman's arms right and I felt like I had just been enfolded by, like the divine feminine, like the mother. You know, she carried that energy so strongly and I didn't have words for it in the moment, all I know is, like the wellspring of pain and emotion and feelings that just came pouring out. I just sat in that woman's arms and sobbed, which felt like hours. It was probably a minute, you know, or two, but it was.
Speaker 2:All of these things just started to to come, to begin to come to focus, and I think there was something about that that it, it gave me this realization that a shift needed to happen, there was a next level, I needed to go, and that everything would be okay. I would, I would be held. You know, this was going to be scary, it might be hard, but I could do it, you know, and in that kind of like powerful holding, you know, all of that came to be, and it was the weird thing is like, out of that, the concrete thing that came was I needed to do my doctorate, I needed to study this, but in that process of studying it, I was going to immerse myself in, you know, the experience that I had had and that I was. That was going to turn me inside out.
Speaker 2:I didn't know it at the time. I thought it was like I need to improve my critical thinking and, you know, study this so other women could do it. And I still kind of thought I had done it, in a way that I, you know, hadn't come to realize yet. But it's like she gave me the empowerment, you know, that loving strength that I could hold on to, and then when you have an experience like that, at those dark or challenging times, or I wanted to quit or I was so afraid at various junctures, through that, I could just go back there and it was like it was, you know, still it was as real as I was sitting in her arms.
Speaker 1:I wanted you to share that story because, in what you had said earlier about creating these small communities and bringing women together, you don't have to have a shamanic blessing, you don't have to be in Nepal. You can create that mother that being held in your own community and in your own friendships, if you allow it and by allowing it I've noticed it's become you have to be vulnerable and share and create that space for the people in your life.
Speaker 2:Oh, you hit the nail on the head, sabrina, it is, it was. It's in that people always say like oh, I broke down, you know I had a breakdown. It's like, no, you broke open. Right, you took the risk to show your vulnerability.
Speaker 1:I know, but we are agreeing to not. Do you remember at dinner when I started crying and I apologized?
Speaker 2:immediately, I know, and you're like, don't do that. No, we got to start giving ourselves permission and celebrating when someone feels safe enough to allow those tears and allow our pain to be visible and, to, you know, cheer each other on when we do that, hold each other and, you know, be there. But also, you know, encourage the flow. Right, we really want to encourage that flow with each other Because, don't you like, I think that was what was so magical about that night, like we didn't have to spend a lot of time together and a lot of the women didn't know each other they only knew one other person. But I feel close to every one of those women, I mean.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh, I want to like you know when can we all be together again?
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's do a part two. For everyone listening, I will put the book in the notes, as well as Gertrude's Instagram how to get a hold of her. She does retreats. She's fabulous and the book is beautiful. I love it. I mean, I love the book.
Speaker 2:Thank you, but the cover is so beautiful too, you know that really mattered and that's, you know, one of those feminine values that I was really, you know, was going to. It wasn't ever a fight, because Kristen, my publisher, was right with me and she, you know, I think, found we the right person, came to us and it came because I said I, I, I want this, I want people to read the book. I think there's, you know, I tried to put together words that were going to have meaning, as, like, it's a transmission, it's going to have energy. I want it to be something that people feel like if it's just sitting out, it gives them pleasure, right? I?
Speaker 1:mean look at it everybody. Did you see the inside? Yeah, I mean, it's so pretty.
Speaker 2:No, but the jacket. So if you take away the jacket cover, did you see what's? Yeah, yeah, she did that for me.
Speaker 1:But I mean, it's so beautiful and it's pretty on the outside and it's pretty on the inside too, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Gertrude.
Speaker 2:A lot of people to judge the book by the cover right.
Speaker 1:This one's going to be a good one. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, sabrina, thank you for having me Such a pleasure.
Speaker 1:What a great, great conversation. Everyone get the book, I promise you you won't regret it.