Advertise on podcast: Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Luke Storey, host of The Life Stylist podcast, about his first book, A Horse Named Lonesome: Tales and Teachings to Reclaim Connection, Transcend Separation, and Discover the Divine Within, which comes out the same day as Kimberly's Erotic Seasons: Tuning into the Rhythms of Women's Sexuality and Spirituality. Luke traces how the book became an act of service, and how a vision of his own birth led him further back than decades of recovery and therapy ever had: an incubator, no breastfeeding, and circumcision, which he now calls male genital mutilation. Kimberly widens the frame to the culture's reflex to cut and intervene from the first days of life. At the heart of the conversation is something Kimberly has waited a long time to hear a man talk about openly: childhood sexual abuse, how grooming builds secrecy, how drugs and sex became anesthesia, and why Luke now sees those adaptations as intelligence rather than failure. In this rich conversation, they talk about his years as an honest but unavailable lover, the two years of celibacy and solitude that rebuilt his foundation, biohacking as a form of control, whether women can lead men into this kind of work, and the moment he finally saw his wife Alyson and recognized himself. Bio Luke Storey is a transformational speaker, spiritual teacher, and the creator and host of The Life Stylist, the podcast he launched in 2016 to explore spirituality, biohacking, and personal development. A former celebrity fashion stylist, he has spent nearly three decades in spiritual inquiry and addiction recovery, work he draws on in conversations about conscious relating and holistic living. His first book, A Horse Named Lonesome: Tales and Teachings to Reclaim Connection, Transcend Separation, and Discover the Divine Within (Balance, November 2026), traces his path through birth trauma, childhood abuse, addiction, and spiritual awakening to show how early disconnection shapes loneliness, and offers practices for coming home to oneself. He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles magazine, and Men's Fitness. Luke lives in the Texas Hill Country with his wife, Alyson Charles Storey. What Luke Shares Why his first attempt at a book stalled, and the mushroom ceremony that changed his motive The ayahuasca vision of his own birth, and what his mother confirmed the next morning How an incubator, no breastfeeding, and circumcision shaped a lifelong abandonment wound Why preverbal trauma can carry as much weight as what we remember The loss of "inner sense": what childhood sexual abuse did to his identity How grooming builds secrecy, and why a child can't tell Seeing drugs and sex as intelligent adaptations rather than character defects Being an honest but unavailable lover, and what that still cost others Two years of celibacy, solitude, and taking himself out on dates Biohacking as a control mechanism Why no one could have talked him into this work, and what finally did Recognizing himself in his wife, Alyson What You'll Hear Two books out on the same day, with similar frames and different approaches Kimberly on her publisher asking her to keep "foreign countries" out of her first book Kimberly's 10-pound baby picture Why most people never think about their own birth Luke's fertility journey and the miscarriage that didn't make it into the book Kimberly on birth as a nervous system overhaul, not an inherent trauma Falling circumcision rates and the rise of tongue and lip tie diagnoses The Russian dolls: linear time and the inner child Why male survivors of sexual abuse rarely speak publicly, and the men who opened the door Flinging the doors open or slamming them shut after a boundary rupture The scorpion and the frog "Warm sex," and why it was foreign to him Pendulating from helplessness to absolute freedom Whether women can lead men into deeper work Conscious love as a circuit of reciprocity Kimberly on men's work and the missing piece of sexual literacy Luke as a self-described kindergartner in sexuality, and still a student Resources Luke's Book:  A Horse Named Lonesome: Tales and Teachings to Reclaim Connection, Transcend Separation, and Discover the Divine Within  Podcast, The Life Stylist (Apple Podcasts): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1121467751 Website: https://lukestorey.com Instagram (@lukestorey): https://www.instagram.com/lukestorey/ Kim's Book: Erotic Seasons: Tuning into the Rhythms of Women's Sexuality and Spirituality (Sounds True, November 17, 2026).

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Jamie Glowacki, author of the bestselling Oh Crap! Potty Training, about why her work has moved from potty training toward what she calls mom authority. Speaking from a stone cabin in the Rhode Island woods, Jamie traces a line from the misreading of gentle parenting and child-led philosophies to pandemic isolation, short-form content, and a motherhood built for the camera: a house made of cardboard, made of reels. They talk about the lost village and the shared consensus that once made it possible, the 1950s nuclear family, the comfort crisis, and technoference, the research on what parents' phones do to young children. Kimberly and Jamie compare notes on birth, breastfeeding, and choice as it is sold to new mothers, and how the "wait till they're ready" doctrine grew alongside the diaper industry. In the second half, the conversation turns to menopause, which Jamie found just as profound as motherhood: a descent and a fire, rather than a set of symptoms to manage. Together they ask what it means to medicate ourselves out of initiation, and how to bring back the commitment and juiciness that real transitions require. Bio Jamie Glowacki is an internationally recognized potty training and parenting expert and the author of Oh Crap! Potty Training and Oh Crap! I Have a Toddler. Her roots are in social work, where she worked with dual-diagnosis mothers and their children in residential facilities and became a doula to advocate for them in birth. She began teaching potty training classes out of the secondhand children's store she owned in Providence, Rhode Island, and her self-published guide grew into an international bestseller, revised and updated in 2024. With more than 25 years of work with families, Jamie now focuses on what she calls mom authority, helping mothers reclaim confidence, boundaries, and leadership through courses including Unscripted Authority and The Boundary Clinic, a consultant certification program, the Oh Crap! Potty Training Podcast, and her Substack. A bow hunter and mother to her son Pascal, she lives in the woods of northern Rhode Island. What Jamie Shares Why she shifted from potty training to what she calls mom authority How gentle parenting and child-led philosophies were misread as permissive parenting Motherhood as a house made of cardboard, built out of reels Why kids these days is really parents these days The 1950s nuclear family and how we lost the village Technoference and why "put your phone down" is her email signature How her potty training method began in a secondhand kids' store in Providence The marketing history behind "wait till they're ready" A menopause without symptoms that still burned everything down Why she thinks perimenopause is a report card on your life Living in the woods as a bow hunter and what it taught her about nature What You'll Hear Raising a son in a stone cabin with 30 chickens and a feral dog Authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive parenting, and the trap of oppositional parenting Why five- and six-year-olds are going to school in diapers The '90s mom: available but not inserted into childhood Neighborhood play, Kool-Aid at the beach, and the end of parenting consensus Adults who have never held a baby, or been to a birth Air conditioning, stoop culture, and losing our neighbors A mother at 38 weeks who didn't know what transition was "Everybody has the birth that makes them a mother" The still face experiment and what phones do to call and response Shafia Monroe and the joy of a birth team The comfort crisis and the pressure toward epidurals and formula Kimberly Seals Allers on choice feminism and The Big Letdown Why Kimberly stopped working as a doula Potty training as a rite of passage for parent and child Unhinged versus cringe, and the quiet unlayering of menopause Medicating ourselves out of initiation Asking older women in the grocery store about their menopause Whether awe survives the urge to post Resources Website: https://www.jamieglowacki.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamie.glowacki/ (@jamie.glowacki) YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ohcrapwithjamie The Oh Crap! Potty Training Podcast (Apple): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oh-crap-potty-training-podcast/id1627503268 The Oh Crap! Potty Training Podcast (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/1rqHsRldmsoVDOitTtd7A8 Substack: https://substack.com/@jamieglowacki  Books: Oh Crap! Potty Training (revised and updated edition, Gallery Books, 2024); Oh Crap! I Have a Toddler Kimberly's New Book: Erotic Seasons Tuning into the Rhythms of Women's Sexuality and Spirituality

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Andrea Terrones, founder and lead teacher of Ma School and of Ma, her women's health and bodywork practice in Valle de Bravo, Mexico. Andrea traces her path from doula work, where she saw a gap in postpartum care, through a decade of seeking out traditional Mexican midwives and sobadoras, internal pelvic work, and scar tissue training, to building the long-form school she wishes had existed when she started. They talk about sobadas as lifelong community care, her teachers who saw every girl monthly from her first bleed to her deathbed, and what it means to learn a tradition's practices with respect rather than extraction. Kimberly lays out the professional landscape for anyone who wants to work with the pelvis, birth, and women's health, and why two years of hands-on training builds what a weekend cannot. They discuss the normalization of prolapse and incontinence, postpartum depression as incomplete physiological recovery, the shame that keeps women from looking at their own bodies, and why the field needs collaboration rather than competition. They close on a shared vision: a practitioner in every town, and women's care back in women's hands. Bio Andrea Terrones is the founder and lead teacher of Ma School and of Ma, her women's health and bodywork practice based in Valle de Bravo, Mexico, working with women worldwide. She left medical school in search of a medicine that could hold the whole body, and spent more than a decade apprenticing with traditional midwives, sobadoras, and curanderas across Mexico, a path that led her back to the matriarchal lineage of Juchitán, Oaxaca, that she comes from through her grandmothers. She began her career as a doula and specialized for many years in postpartum care, pairing traditional Mexican medicine with formal training in pelvic bodywork, body-mind psychotherapy, and functional medicine and nutrition. Her work brings together hands-on work in the pelvis, womb, and abdomen, functional nutrition, somatic practice, and ceremony. Founded in 2023, Ma School offers a two-year certification for Womb Continuum Practitioners and has trained more than 70 women from over 15 countries. She is a mother of two. What She Shares The postpartum gap that set her searching for teachers for nearly a decade Grieving the support she knew was possible but could not receive in her own postpartum Sobadas, the traditional Mexican bodywork that realigns the organs and the womb How internal pelvic work, fascia, and scar tissue work joined her practice Why weekend trainings left her and other women unsure of their hands Her teachers as community holders, tending girls monthly from first bleed to deathbed What her teachers said when she asked permission to teach their work Why being trained in a circle of women heals the sister wound How the two-year program is structured, and why it is built for in-person practice Why the field needs more teachers and more practitioners, not fewer What You'll Hear Kimberly on the professional paths open to people who want to work with birth and the pelvis Sexological bodywork, STREAM, and Holistic Pelvic Care: what each offers and what is missing Why a two-year training is not too long for someone with no touch background Kimberly's 35-minute session that resolved a new mother's tailbone pain Advanced doula training without the on-call life Prolapse and diastasis as diagnoses no one actually looked for Cultural appropriation, cultural continuity, and the problem with learning rebozo in a weekend Womb work traditions in Thailand, India, and the Philippines Kimberly's 800 sessions in three years and the waiting lists that followed Competition, proprietary attitudes, and the case for standing shoulder to shoulder How hands-on work changes the practitioner's own anxiety, depression, and isolation The myth of inevitable prolapse, and studies that normalize decline Postpartum depression as incomplete physiological recovery The siloed care that sends a crying postpartum woman from PT to psychotherapy and back Why so many women have never looked at their own vulva What Kimberly will teach in the training: intakes, session framing, and the nervous system in the tissues Dates, retreats, and how to apply Resources Website (Ma School): https://maschool.co Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mawomenshealth/ Apply: https://form.typeform.com/to/PBmpdC4P Practitioner Directory: https://maschool.co/directory Next cohort: Begins March 2027. Applications open.

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Dr. Ellen Vora, holistic psychiatrist, acupuncturist, yoga teacher, and author of The Anatomy of Anxiety, on the eve of her new book, Season of the Witch: A Psychiatrist's Case for Magic. They begin with perception: how Ellen's credentials serve as a platform from which to question conventional medicine, and how loss, not training, is what gave her any authority of her own. Ellen explains why the title came to her in prayer, and why she expects criticism from both ends of the witchy spectrum. Speaking in the wake of the Lindsay Clancy trial, they look at how female life thresholds have been psychiatrized, what an unsupported postpartum mother actually needs, and why a prescription is often the only tool left in the room. Kimberly names the pattern of exceptions becoming rules across birth, fertility, and mental health. They turn to rites of passage and the communities that can sit with big emotions. They then turn to menopause, where Ellen offers her theory that menopausal symptoms borrow the body's postpartum software, and Kimberly describes her own transition as a portal of learning to see in the dark. They close on information overload, wearables and the atrophy of listening, Ellen's choice to join a national conversation on psychiatric medication, and what it means to stay purple. Bio Ellen Vora, MD, is a holistic psychiatrist, acupuncturist, and yoga teacher. She received her B.A. in English from Yale University and her M.D. from Columbia University, and she is board-certified in psychiatry and integrative holistic medicine. She takes a functional medicine approach to mental health, considering the whole person and addressing imbalance at the root, with a focus on depression, anxiety, insomnia, women's mental health, and medication withdrawal support. She is the author of The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response, and of Season of the Witch: A Psychiatrist's Case for Magic (Random House, October 2026), which offers five practices for reclaiming the full spectrum of our intelligence: embodiment, presence, valuing the yin, being open to mystery, and serving the collective. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter. What She Shares Why her medical credentials exist so she can say "that's not the whole story" How loss, including losing her parents and pregnancy losses, gave her more authority than any training How the title Season of the Witch arrived through prayer, and why it wasn't up for negotiation What an unsupported postpartum mother needs, and why a prescription is so often what she gets The hidden costs of psychiatric medication: dependence, interdose withdrawal, depersonalization, and akathisia Rites of passage as the ground where inner authority and discernment are built Her theory of menopause as a medical anomaly, and why symptoms may borrow from the postpartum blueprint Learning to see in the dark as the value older women hold for the culture Why constant listening to the body outperforms any formula, macro, or wearable Taking work decisions to spirit, and being socially blind enough to accept the mission What You'll Hear Kimberly and Ellen as Harper Wave bookmates, and two books with "season" in the title Flossing the edge between being responsible to authority and handing people their own "Look at me, I'm a witch" versus "look at you, you're a witch" Expecting criticism from both the Christian and Wiccan ends of the spectrum What people actually mean when they say "mental health" The Lindsay Clancy trial and the push for more postpartum screening Pain versus suffering, and the unnecessary suffering in how mental health care is applied Kimberly on intervention, exceptions becoming rules, and IVF without eroticism "Are you in therapy?" as a box to check Why we apologize for crying, and what it would mean to pull up a chair instead Kimberly's menopause: hot flashes, night waking, and a portal of life review The orca grandmother effect and why elders need the maiden and mother energy Is there a flaw in the female design, or in the male one? Trading algorithms for a "dolphin phone" Skipping heavy weights for an Epsom salt bath on the heaviest day of her period The RFK Jr. interview, the SSRI roundtable, and Laura Delano's Unshrunk Being purple, and why new voices at the policy table give Ellen hope Resources Website: https://ellenvora.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenvoramd/ (@ellenvoramd) Season of the Witch: A Psychiatrist's Case for Magic (Random House, October 13, 2026): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/776546/season-of-the-witch-by-ellen-vora-md/ The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-anatomy-of-anxiety-ellen-vora Book tour and events: https://ellenvora.com/book-tour/

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Dr. Vanessa Calderón, an emergency physician, master executive coach, and healer from a lineage of ancestral healers in Mexico and El Salvador. Introduced by an ER doctor Kimberly met on a flight, Vanessa traces her path from the five-year-old who dreamed of being a missionary doctor, through healthcare access activism and UCLA medical school, to the emergency room, where diagnoses like "abdominal pain, not otherwise specified" showed her the limits of Western medicine. She describes the voice that told her, mid-run on a Northern California beach, that it was time to come home, and the decade of apprenticeship with Latin American healers that followed. They talk about what med school does to the nervous system, the new language of well-being entering medical training, and the pain that told her to step away from the ER for a season. At the heart of the conversation is a practical question for anyone who listens to their body and still needs a doctor: how to advocate for yourself from regulation rather than fear. They close on rewilding, motherhood, Vanessa's vision of medicine built on power with rather than power over, and how the current framing of menopause reflects a broader shift in consciousness. Bio Dr. Vanessa Calderón is a Harvard graduate and board-certified emergency physician, a Master Executive Coach, and a Neuroplasticity Trainer with more than 20 years of leadership experience and a decade of business development expertise. A first-generation Latina from a long line of ancestral healers, she apprenticed directly with Indigenous healers of Mexico and Central America. Through Calderón Co., she coaches physicians, executives, and mission-driven leaders, weaving leadership and business strategy with nervous system work, identity work, and ancestral wisdom so they can create meaningful impact without sacrificing their health, relationships, or sense of self. She also leads Resourced Wealth, a six-week, healing-centered program on money, power, and capacity. She is the host of The Authentic Path podcast, which explores the intersection of leadership, performance science, and ancient wisdom. She continues to practice emergency medicine and lives in Atlanta with her family. What She Shares How a lineage of Mexican and Salvadoran healers, and a teenage rejection of them, led her into Western medicine Why "abdominal pain, not otherwise specified" became the crack in her faith in the system The voice on a beach run that told her it was time to come home Building a meditation practice in residency, one minute at a time What medical training does to the nervous system, and how the language of well-being is changing it The attending who taught her that a patient knows their body better than the doctor does The left wrist pain that told her to step away from the ER, and how she listened Why the patient-physician relationship should be a partnership, and when to walk away from one How to advocate for yourself from regulation instead of fear Rewilding as coming home to yourself and to everything around you Her vision of medicine built on power with rather than power over What You'll Hear How a chance first-class seat brought Kimberly and Vanessa together The five-year-old who wanted to be a missionary doctor Christianity, shame, and women's bodies, and what she kept from her upbringing Whether anything in the core medical curriculum could make room for trauma and energetics Kimberly on Brazil's cesarean culture and doctors who were never taught vaginal birth Do doctors have to quit medicine to practice in line with their values? Kimberly's doula years and how defensive boundaries escalate a birth room Recognizing your own signs of dysregulation before you walk into an appointment Small, human requests in the exam room: eye contact, warm hands, a pause Setting an intention for the outcome you want before you see the doctor How motherhood changed the way she treats children and parents in the ER The "menopause mafia," the hormone debate, and a shift in collective consciousness Resources Website (Calderón Co.): https://www.calderonco.org Podcast, The Authentic Path: https://www.theauthenticpathpodcast.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1807391306 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0t14N6wKrEvh3MsfklhGMn Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vanessacalderonmd/ (@vanessacalderonmd) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vanessacalderonmd/ Resourced Wealth (six-week program): https://www.calderonco.org/resourced-wealth

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer about the spiritual power of menopause. Pope and Wurlitzer are co-founders of Red School and authors of Wild Power and Wise Power. Each woman traces the turning point that led them to this work: for Alexandra, sudden and relentless menstrual pain at 31 and the decision to listen to her body; for Sjanie, seven years on hormonal contraception and the return of her cycle, which brought her inner life back online. Kimberly, two and a half years postmenopause, asks what women orbit once the menstrual cycle no longer guides them. They explore menopause as a great void and an initiation, the two "superpowers" of no and sight, the menstruality life arc as a turning of seasons, ego death and the dismantling of the psyche, and brain fog as the "decommissioning" of the mind. The conversation turns to what's missing culturally: elders and "secret teachers" who can dignify the passage, allies and listening partners, and a framing that doesn't pathologize. They close on choice, including the choice of medical support, as its own act of inner authority, and on Red School's October programming for Menopause Awareness Month. Bio Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer are the co-founders of Red School and pioneers of the emerging field of menstruality. They are the co-authors of Wild Power: Discover the Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power (Hay House, 2017) and Wise Power: Discover the Liberating Power of Menopause to Awaken Authority, Purpose and Belonging (Hay House, 2022), and the creators of the Menstruality Medicine Circle™. Drawing on backgrounds in psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, coaching, embodied movement, teaching, and facilitation, they teach a psycho-spiritual approach to health, creativity, leadership, and spiritual life rooted in menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. Alexandra, a psychotherapist, began this work in her early 30s, first sharing her discoveries in workshops at Sydney's Royal Hospital for Women. Together they have spent decades listening to thousands of women's experiences of the journey from menarche to menopause, and they teach worldwide through Red School's courses, trainings, and online events. What They Share How severe menstrual pain at 31 led Alexandra to listen to her body and begin the work that became Red School Sjanie's seven years on hormonal contraception and the "technicolor" return of her inner life when her cycle came back Why menstrual cycle awareness is a training ground for inner authority Menopause as a great void and an initiation, not a medical event to manage The two superpowers of menopause: the power of no and the power of sight The menstruality life arc as seasons, with menopause as winter and a fertile void Ego death, the dismantling of the psyche, and brain fog as the "decommissioning" of the mind Why we need elders and "secret teachers" who can dignify the passage Listening partnerships, allies, and Wise Power as a companion through the transition Choosing medical support as its own act of inner authority What You'll Hear Kimberly's postpartum realization: "it's all a lie" What we orbit when we're no longer cycling with the moon Why charting with the moon may not speak to people in the thick of menopause, and when it might "I don't recognize myself": the falling away of habits, roles, and performance Facing the shadow and dearmoring on the approach to menopause Kimberly's reframe of symptoms as "indicators" and the 47 changes she tracked The cultural absence of a dignified framing, and what it costs women Birth, dying, and menopause as the great initiations no one sails through The edge between martyrdom and relief: HRT, epidurals, and whether the rite still happens What to do if you don't have a secret teacher The moment you want to burn the house down, and what actually needs burning Red School's October programming for Menopause Awareness Month Resources Website: https://www.redschool.net/ Instagram: @red.school Menopause Event (free, three days, starting Oct 12)

Kimberly speaks with Carolina Mama: Argentine composer, singer-songwriter, filmmaker and photographer, calling in from Barcelona. They met in Santa Fe and worked together on the photographs for the Erotic Seasons era of Kimberly's work, and this conversation sits at the intersection of artistry, spirituality, liberation and social justice. Carolina traces her ear through the folkloric rhythms that lived in her body before she had names for them, to a full scholarship at the New School in New York and the research through Morocco that led to her debut album, Amina. They talk about making peace with being loved and hated at once, why the audience is a co-author rather than a jury, and the night at Lincoln Center when she understood that a version of herself had just died on stage. The second half provides a peek into the contemporary music industry: where artists are asked to arrive tour ready, audience ready, content ready and team ready with no infrastructure behind them. She speaks about arriving in the U.S. and discovering she was not white here, about gratitude alongside the loss of safety on a working visa, and about the Latina archetype the market keeps handing her, which she refuses. They close on synesthesia and the weave between film and music, on psychology as curiosity rather than analysis, on the trauma frame and what it costs art, on the surname she chose in order to honor her grandfather, and a long exchange about collaboration, elders, and what it means to be in service.   BIO Carolina Mama is an Argentine singer, composer, musician and filmmaker. Her debut solo album, Amina, was released in September 2025, co-produced and recorded in Los Angeles with Lau Noah and Emily Elbert, rooting the folkloric traditions of Latin America and North Africa in the improvisational spirit of jazz and a cinematic sense of narrative. The record takes its name from Amina El Filali, a sixteen year old girl in Larache, Morocco, whose story Carolina encountered while researching folkloric music composed and performed by women; that story, together with her involvement in the Ni Una Menos movement in Argentina, shaped the album into a testimony for silenced lives and a call for gender based violence prevention. She studied film at the Universidad Nacional del Arte in Buenos Aires and was working in the industry by seventeen, before a full scholarship brought her to the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York, where she chose the Argentine pianist and composer Guillermo Klein as her mentor. A former member of the collective projects Nacarola and Levana, she has sung alongside Juan Carlos Baglietto, Lito Vitale, Julia Zenko and León Gieco, and has performed at Lincoln Center, the Joyce Theater, Pregones Theater and Zinc Bar. She has toured and traveled through Mexico, Europe, South America and Morocco, and splits her time between Brooklyn and Santa Fe. She spoke for this episode from Barcelona. WHAT SHE SHARES How a teenage bedroom in Argentina, one CD at a time, built the ear she still writes with The move to New York, the full scholarship, and the feeling of having touched the ceiling at home Making peace with being loved and hated, and the person who always finds you after the show The audience as co-author: how a room changes the music while it is being played The night at Lincoln Center when the fear did not come, and what she understood from that What intimacy means to her, and why desire and life force come before any song Silence as the condition for the muse, outside the body and inside the head The state of the music industry: smaller rooms, rarer live music, artists asked to arrive fully built Why she stopped subscribing to constant output, and what her body had to do to make that decision What actually supports an artist, and why she will not consume AI music Arriving in the U.S. and discovering she was not white here Gratitude for what the country gave her, alongside the loss of safety on a working visa The Latina archetype the market expects, and her refusal to be digestible Synesthesia, and why she does not separate the filmmaker from the musician Psychology as curiosity rather than analysis, and why analyzing her own art would kill it Refusing to romanticize trauma, and learning what it is to create from joy How she became Carolina Mama, and the grandfather she chose to honor Her filters for a collaborator, and why she needs trust built slowly before she opens WHAT YOU'LL HEAR  Totó la Momposina, Susana Baca, Mercedes Sosa and Caetano Veloso alongside Radiohead, Portishead and No Doubt How Gnawa music and the women's folkloric traditions of Morocco reopened her ear Cooking, nature, and the moments of no time that bring her back into creating Her advice to anyone beginning: do it until you fall in love with the process, then ask what is making you hurt Writers who write every day and writers who do not, and where she lands Tour ready, audience ready, content ready, team ready: six jobs at once with no infrastructure The friends sending her tracks she can hear were not made by a person Kimberly on sedation, human biodiversity, and no longer being able to tell what is generated Samba, chacarera, gato, vidala, baguala and carnavalito living in the body before they have names A careful, difficult exchange about what it costs to manage your own speech in public Book covers, Canva thumbnails, and what we are starving for without knowing it What music taught her about repetition and what film taught her about pacing and tension The trauma frame, and whether it is squashing art Maga Mama, Carolina Mama, and the men who told her not to use that name Collision instead of collaboration: Stephen Jenkinson, the word elder, and the tidal river in Maine What it means to be in service of an elder and to carry that until it is your turn RESOURCES Website: https://www.carolina-mama.com/ Instagram: @carolinamama__ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1Mr5h9VDW05W672PzEUYmP YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCkd_WwWChVCYQTWqD_lkJA Album: Amina (2025), ten tracks, co-produced with Lau Noah and Emily Elbert. Full track list in section 4. Kimberly's book referenced in the intro: Erotic Seasons: Tuning into the Rhythms of Women's Sexuality and Spirituality (Sounds True, 2026)

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Shafia Monroe, the renowned midwife, doula trainer, cultural historian, and author of Mothering the Mother: African American Postpartum Traditions, Recipes, and Healing, with a foreword by Erykah Badu. Shafia begins with the inheritance she was raised on: a second-generation Boston Catholic mother who told her to burn the bra and not to stay anywhere she was unhappy, and a rural foot-washing Alabama father who turned an empty Boston lot into collard greens and turnips before anyone called it a community garden. From there the conversation follows the diasporic threads she has spent four decades tracing, from her father eating with his right hand to the Senegalese village where she watched women shape a newborn's head exactly as her mother had shaped her niece's. They talk about what enslavement broke in African-American postpartum culture and what was rebuilt after it: the lying-in, the warm soup, the darkened room, and a community that knew what to do without needing a book. Shafia lays out the history of the granny midwives, including the origin of the word granny itself. She and Kimberly work through the real difference between a doula and a midwife, why she trains in full circle rather than full spectrum, and why women are flock people whom Western birth deliberately separated. Shafia describes raising seven children inside the work rather than around it, and why the family that hired you has to come first. The conversation closes on money, policy, and fear: what makes birth work financially viable, what this country refuses to fund, and why she tells every woman and man she meets to stop fearing birth, to refuse the label of patient, and to trust a body that has been doing this since the beginning. Bio Shafia Monroe, MPH, is a renowned midwife, master doula trainer, cultural historian, author, and motivational speaker whose work has shaped birth and postpartum care for more than four decades. A leading subject matter expert on African American birth and postpartum traditions, she has researched the lives of twentieth century Black midwives and traveled to interview and observe them, learning traditional practices firsthand. In 1991 she founded the International Center for Traditional Childbearing, the first national nonprofit dedicated to increasing the number of midwives and doulas of color and to promoting home birth in Black communities. In 2002 she created the SMC Full Circle Doula Birth Companion Training, a dual certification program built on the legacy of the twentieth century African American midwife, which has since trained thousands of birth workers worldwide. She is president of Shafia Monroe Consulting and Birthing CHANGE, which helps health care providers deliver culturally competent care. Her work has been recognized with numerous honors, including four lifetime achievement awards, and she was named by Scientific American in 2022 among those working to make health care more fair. Her book, Mothering the Mother: African American Postpartum Traditions, Recipes, and Healing, with a foreword by Erykah Badu, was published by Hachette Go. She draws on her Southern roots in rural Alabama, where her grandmother taught her that food is medicine. She is a mother of seven, a grandmother of nine, and a great-grandmother of two, and she lives in Portland, Oregon. What She Shares -  The two worlds she was raised between: a Boston Catholic mother and a rural foot-washing Alabama father -  Her father turning an empty Boston lot into a garden in the 1970s, before there was a name for it -  Her mother on burning the bra, on equality at home, and on never staying where you are unhappy -  Why her mother told her that what people do not want you to know is kept in a book -  Diasporic recognitions: eating with the right hand, banku and cornbread, rainwater, and infant massage -  Watching women in a Senegalese village do exactly what she had watched her mother do fifty years earlier -  Belly wrapping as something her community always practiced without a name for it -  What enslavement broke in African American postpartum care, and what was rebuilt after emancipation -  The lying-in, the warm soup, the quilts, and why the elders kept the room dark -  African Americans as the country's dominant providers of postpartum care, and the credit never given -  The granny midwives, where the word granny came from, and what it was meant to do -  Why wisdom mattered more than whether a midwife had borne children of her own -  The real difference between a doula and a midwife, and why she wants both -  Full circle rather than full spectrum, and why the circle is the right shape -  Herbs for period pain instead of putting a thirteen year old on the pill -  Raising seven children inside the calling, and why the family that hired you comes first -  What makes birth work financially viable, and what this country refuses to pay for -  Why she tells everyone to stop fearing birth, and to stop calling themselves a patient What You'll Hear -  Why she is claiming the title of doctor, at her son's instruction -  That midwives once held higher standing in a community than the pastor -  Seven children, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren -  Kimberly on her husband's Candomble practice and the recognitions it triggers in African American visitors -  How a birth world that borrows freely from Mexico, Sweden, Japan, and Bali has erased Black postpartum culture -  Why the elders kept the room dark, and the physiology that proved them right -  Date night ten days postpartum, and what the old culture expected instead -  A twelfth pregnancy answered with a blessing rather than an interrogation -  Who was actually captured and brought here: rice growers, healers, readers of Arabic, dyers, midwives -  Being twenty years old at a forty year old woman's birth, with the skill but not yet the life -  The granny midwives walking through the dark past the Klan, and serving Black and white families alike -  Kimberly on the inversion that files the most human skills under unskilled labor -  Flock people, and what Western birth broke by separating women from each other -  The song her trainings close with every day -  A nine year old carrying the oxygen tank to the car -  Byllye Avery on the midwife having a star in her crown -  Kimberly on why the self-care framing in doula training only makes sense without spiritual care -  Why nobody left a home birth exhausted, and what a hospital does differently -  Eight hundred dollars a birth, and the second and third incomes that made it work -  Paid leave, daycare, the Momnibus, and the comparison to Norway and Denmark -  Why fear of birth keeps people from questioning their care -  Refusing the labels: high risk, geriatric, obese -  Her objection to the genocidal framing of Black maternal mortality -  Why a doula cannot save your life, and what she can actually do Resources Shafia Monroe Main website  https://shafiamonroe.com/ SMC Full Circle Doula Birth Companion Training  https://smcdoulas.com/ Instagram  https://www.instagram.com/shafiamonroe/ Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/shafiamonroeconsulting/ Mothering the Mother, publisher page  https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/shafia-monroe/mothering-the-mother/9780306835438/

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Dr. Gertrude Lyons, a master coach, podcast host, and the author of Rewrite the Mother Code: From Sacrifice to Stardust, about what it takes to notice you have gone missing from your own life. Dr. Gertrude describes the moment on a pilgrimage in Nepal, with her children in high school and college, when she burst into tears in front of a shaman and understood that despite years of coaching, study, and conscious parenting, she had lost herself somewhere inside motherhood. That recognition sent her back to school for a doctorate in education and eventually produced the framework the book is built on. Kimberly and Dr. Gertrude trace how the messages get in: the primal, unconscious conviction that rocking the boat will make everything fall apart, the ordering of children and spouse and career ahead of self, and the false pretense that there is a right way to do any of it. The conversation turns to the hero myth and what it has done to mother culture, the pressure to be exceptional rather than to be on a journey, and whether twenty years of increased awareness has actually shifted anything underneath. She then tells the story of her 2025 TEDx talk, which TED would not post until she removed the birth data: the maternal mortality figures, the history of midwives being pushed out by active marketing campaigns, and the observation that not all hospital birth practice is evidence based. Kimberly picks this up and runs with it, on how the people the system appears to serve are the least likely to see it clearly, on birth as an irreducibly bodily experience that has been siloed off from the rest of a woman's life, and on what it costs to be defanged from your own animal instinct.  Bio Dr. Gertrude Lyons is a master coach, podcast host, and thought leader helping women rewrite outdated narratives around motherhood, identity, and self-worth. She is the author of Rewrite the Mother Code: From Sacrifice to Stardust, A Cosmic Approach to Motherhood (Rise Books, 2025), which grew out of her doctoral research into the transformational opportunity inside motherhood and has since become the foundation of a broader body of work with women at every stage of that question. She holds an Ed.D. and an M.A. in Transformational Leadership and Coaching from Wright Graduate University, an M.A. in Psychology from Antioch University McGregor, and a BBA in Finance and Accounting from Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. She is a Whole Brain Living certified coach and holds a Level 3 breathwork certification through the Global Professional Breathwork Alliance. She hosts the Rewrite the Mother Code podcast, delivered a 2025 TEDx talk titled Redefining Self-Mothering: The Courage to Mother Ourselves First, and has spoken at the Glastonbury Goddess Conference. Over more than twenty years she has worked with individuals, couples, parents, and families, and she now leads retreats in Mexico and Ireland, with a first retreat in Malta planned. Her home base is Chicago. She has two daughters. What Dr. Gertrude Shares The pilgrimage in Nepal, the shaman, and the moment she understood she had lost herself inside motherhood Why two master's degrees were not enough, and what sent her back for a doctorate The difference between her first daughter and her second, and the fear she could only see in retrospect What rocking the boat looked like, and how couples coaching quietly became parenting coaching Leaving the dogma of a Roman Catholic upbringing while keeping the mystery, and finding the divine feminine The letter she wrote in 1989 asking her fiancé for premarital counseling, and why she could not say it out loud The hero myth as exceptionalism, and the journey as the whole point rather than the prize at the end What has and has not changed for mothers in thirty years, and why more information has meant more overwhelm Her home birth, being called selfish by her family, and the boss whose two suggestions changed her life The 2025 TEDx talk, the birth data she was asked to remove, and the reason she was never given Why she believes all women mother, and the one downside she has found to saying so What You'll Hear Whether the people around you can see that you have gone missing, or whether only you can The primal, unconscious calculation that if I rock the boat, everything will fall apart Joseph Campbell taught to eighth graders, and whether we want children to be heroes of their own lives Emergence rather than a declared end game, and myth held without making it all about you Mom rage arriving in the culture, and what it took to put the word on a book cover ten years ago Maternal mortality, midwives pushed out by marketing campaigns, and what counts as evidence based Why the people a system appears to serve are often the least able to see it clearly The infamous request for a home birth in a hospital, and what a good hospital birth actually requires Birth as an irreducibly bodily experience, and the cost of siloing it off from the rest of a life The oppositional gaze, being defanged from animal instinct, and belonging conditional on conformity A frank exchange about what gets lost when mothering becomes a metaphor Maiden to mother, mother to virgin, virgin to crone, and how that maturation happens without a birth Resources Dr. Gertrude Lyons Website https://www.drgertrudelyons.com/ Book, Rewrite the Mother Code: From Sacrifice to Stardust, A Cosmic Approach to Motherhood (Rise Books, 2025) https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Rewrite-the-Mother-Code/Gertrude-Lyons/9781959524120 Rewrite the Mother Code podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rewrite-the-mother-code-with-dr-gertrude-lyons/id1534581166 TEDx talk, Redefining Self-Mothering: The Courage to Mother Ourselves First https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ9ZF8JKIDY Substack https://gertrudelyons.substack.com/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drgertrudelyons/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gertrudelyons/ Retreats, 2027 https://www.drgertrudelyons.com/retreats2027

In this episode, Kimberly is rejoined by Jaye Marolla, somatic educator, martial artist, and bodyworker, founder of The Body Innate, YINDOJO, and YinWarriorship in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Nine months and several co-taught weekends after their first conversation, and ahead of Jaye joining Jaguar Fight Club in September, they dive deep into their work with the word fight. Jaye explains why she has never used the frame of self-defense, reflecting on how it seats a woman inside a preconceived victim's stance and quietly assigns the whole burden of a culture's violence to the people most likely to be harmed by it. From there they make the distinction between readiness and hypervigilance, between the body that knows where the exits are and the body running a fear script it has mistaken for awareness. They look at what happens when a boundary comes from contraction rather than wholeness, at Kimberly's work restoring reflexive gestures in bodies that were anesthetized or held still, and at the longing for real physical contact that both of them keep meeting in rooms, and that many somatic training treats as inappropriate. The second half turns to the trauma frame itself, and what it costs in agency, artistry, and appetite when a culture organizes everything it knows about the body around what went wrong. They talk about animist inquiry and bone knowing, about somatic transmission versus the somatic exercise, about the long arc from trying out a practice to living one, and about the blueprint each person carries and what it takes to fight for it in a culture built to bury it. The conversation closes on the great work that may look like nothing you could post and on the power of a deeply quiet life. Bio Jaye Marolla is a somatic educator, martial artist, and bodyworker based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the founder of The Body Innate, YINDOJO, and YinWarriorship. A former Division I basketball player at American University, she has spent decades training across martial and healing traditions, shaped by years of living and studying in Ghana, China, Thailand, Central Asia, and England, where she became fascinated by lineage-based practice and the knowledge that travels tacitly, through transmission and embodied nuance. In China and Thailand she studied martial arts and healing practices alongside one another, and came to understand the two branches as growing from a single root. In Santa Fe she spent three years studying with her former teacher Zhenevere Sophia Dao in the practices of Post-Daoism and Mythopoetic Qigong. She weaves applied Daoism and conscious Eros through vitality-based teaching within a framework of experiential collaborative leadership and somatic activism, offering classes and intensives in Santa Fe, across the United States, and internationally, and working privately with individuals, groups, and organizations. She is a member of Soma Collective in Santa Fe, and has collaborated with practitioners including Stephen Jenkinson on retreats exploring death, embodiment, and communal practice. She joins Kimberly for Jaguar Fight Club in September.   What Jaye Shares Why she has never gone near self-defense training, and why she considers the frame harmful rather than merely imprecise The difference between self-defense and self-awareness, and what changes when every body is trained rather than only the ones expected to be harmed Hypervigilance as a fear script running outside present time, and readiness as its opposite How a martial artist uses the imaginal capacity: not forecasting harm, but rehearsing the move she is going to make Boundary from the knitted sense of self versus boundary from contraction, and why the second one invites more antagonism The longing for real contact, why bodies are still recovering from the distance of the COVID years, and what animals know about grappling Ma-ai, the spatial and temporal distance between two bodies, and how we track it constantly without naming it The animist frame and bone knowing as a starting point rather than an advanced technique Why the trauma orientation functions as a distraction from self-agency, social activism, and collective inquiry Her objection to the phrase somatic exercise, and what somatic transmission is instead The long arc from visiting a practice to being inhabited by one, and why that arc cannot be shortcut Fight as grit, teeth, and animal, and why the people who grapple regularly argue less The blueprint, the seed, and full commitment without attachment as an antidote to despair What You'll Hear The nine months between this conversation and the last one, and what changes when two teachers become training partners Kimberly's own six-week self-defense course, what it kicked up, and why she is not sure she was ready for it Why so many women in the Maine workshop reacted viscerally to being told to notice the exits Presence and readiness mistaken for paranoia, and where the shame around that comes from The record scratch, and why the same thing keeps happening at the same time of year, in the same place, with the same kind of person Why setting a boundary feels exhausting rather than energizing, and what frame that comes from Restoring reflexive gestures: pushing, grabbing, squeezing, and what happens to them under anesthesia or in stirrups The polarity trap of being protected, and what birth and postpartum actually ask of women now The "on top" practice, and why it beats a weighted blanket What becomes possible in an artistic frame that a therapeutic frame will not allow Whether we can trust the body, and what happens when comportment comes from the outside in Not demonizing the mind, and where the soul actually lives Kendra Cunov, Tassajara, and whether a twenty-three year old can carry this The machete zone, the muse knocking, and choosing the thing that is yours to do The great work, which might be a book, or your children, or ease in your bones Resources The Body Innate: https://www.thebodyinnate.com/ Second site (classes, about): https://www.jayemarolla.com/ Instagram: @thebodyinnate  https://www.instagram.com/thebodyinnate/ Soma Collective, Santa Fe: https://www.somacollectivesf.com/   Sign up for Jaguar Fight Club here: https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/jaguar-fight-club-fb/   https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/ Instagram: @kimberly.ann.johnson Erotic Seasons (2026) pre-order here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1649633742?tag=macmillan-20 Previous appearance: EP 238, The Body Innate. Yin Warriorship, Communal Eros, and Leading Atmospheres with Jaye Marolla

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Casia Sobolewski, somatic sex educator, sexological bodyworker, and co-founder of the Himeros Project. Casia opens with the grief of a recent realization: that patriarchal structures had shaped even her most tender and private erotic world, and that some of the desires moving through her may never have been hers to begin with. From there she traces twenty years of exploring dominance and submission, the pull of the daddy dom dynamic in her twenties, and the question she is only asking now about why she had to imagine herself young to feel turned on. They talk about the "taking quadrant" of the wheel of consent and why so many exhausted women reach for passivity when what their systems actually want is mobilization. She describes the men's retreats she runs with her husband Cosmo Meens: what men bring to a room where their erotic lives are finally speakable, why starting with sexuality is both the hardest and the most important entry point in men's work, and what happens in a man's system when a woman says no. She unpacks matriarchy as mothers at the beginning rather than rule by women, drawing on Heide Göttner-Abendroth and the Mosuo, and names how the nuclear family loads one man with labor that once belonged to grandmothers, aunties, uncles and brothers. The conversation moves through early motherhood and the erotic tether Casia kept through it, the axial age and the cost of men teaching women how to care, aging and the erasure of the grandmother, and closes on the work she and Cosmo are renaming the art and responsibility of touching women. Bio Casia Sobolewski is a somatic sex educator, sexological bodyworker, and erotic practitioner who has been teaching sexuality since 2009. She is a certified Somatic Sex Educator and Sexological Bodyworker, a certified Holistic Sex Educator, and a trained intern surrogate partner with the International Professional Surrogates Association. She completed Dr. Betty Martin's Like A Pro Wheel of Consent training and has served on the boards of the Association of Certified Sexological Bodyworkers and the Somatic Sex Educators Association. In Toronto she founded Spit.Exposed, a queer and feminist porn project she ran from 2014 to 2019. From 2018 to 2025 she was a practitioner and teacher with Back to the Body: Sensual Retreats for Women. She is co-founder and ongoing practitioner of the Himeros Project, immersive retreats for men, which she leads alongside her husband Cosmo Meens, and together they teach The Art and Responsibility of Touching Women. She works in immersion experiences only, supporting people who are out of touch with their pleasure, who have experienced sexual trauma, or who want a space to meet the erotic aspect of themselves with integrity. She identifies as queer, non-disabled, introverted, non-monogamous, kink positive, married, cis, femme, a mother to one, a stepmother to three, and a devoted sister, daughter, friend and partner. She lives in British Columbia and her personal site is Honey and Water. What Casia Shares The grief opening three or four months ago when she realized patriarchal structures had reached into her most private erotic world Twenty years of exploring dominance and submission, and the question she is only now asking about why she had to imagine herself young to feel turned on Why so many women arrive wanting to be dominated, and why exhaustion and choice fatigue are part of the picture The taking quadrant of the wheel of consent, and the night she first took, tired, at 11pm What her men's retreats actually look like, including the numbers: nine to twelve men, three male staff, four female practitioners, ages twenty-eight to seventy-five Why she and Cosmo added mutual touch to the container, and how negotiation of desire is taught in micro steps What happens in a man's system when she says no, and why receiving a no is the skill that transfers to the rest of his life Matriarchy as mothers at the beginning, drawn from Heide Göttner-Abendroth, and the Mosuo clan structure where there are no words for husband or father How the nuclear family hands one stepfather the labor of grandmothers, aunties, uncles and brothers, and why he feels like he is failing Early motherhood, the erotic structures that stopped computing, the nerve issues, and pleasure as the tether back to herself The axial age, care labor, and what it costs when the people already doing the caring are taught by men to care more Erotic self sourcing, and asking her charismatic partner to decenter himself from women's lives Circumcision of infant boys as a first initiation, and men in their seventies finally being held Aging, the elephant metaphor, and the erasure of the grandmother The renaming of their offering to the art and responsibility of touching women, and why the responsibility matters What You'll Hear What rematriation means when it is applied to a marriage, a household, a business and a body all at once Whether a desire can be genuinely yours if it was placed there, and whether that even matters The difference between rest and mobilization for an exhausted nervous system, and why more passivity is often the wrong prescription Kim on the bodyworker who discovered she needed to take, not receive, after a full day of giving Why starting with sexuality is the hardest and most important entry point in men's work What men sound like singing together at the end of a retreat, without drugs or alcohol Whether men and women have the same obstacles to pleasure, and where patriarchy shows up on both sides of the same coin Matriarchy versus matrifocal, and why Casia uses the word that starts an argument The community that holds her and Cosmo accountable, and what personal power looks like when it is checked Renegotiating the parenting load as a seven year old claims her independence Kim on Perdita Finn, Stephen Jenkinson, lineage, and why elderhood makes gender matter less A long, honest passage from Kim on double binds, young men, her daughter's friends in Scotland, and raising a son you would not want to date The coming of age ceremony for a thirteen year old girl, and what is missing for boys Affiliate groups versus mixed groups, and whether single gender work is a stepping stone or a destination Mothers as the creators of culture, and the mother son bond in matriarchal anthropology Kim's friend in Palau, and what it feels like to leave a living matriarchy and land in an airport The hysteria clinic, and why the modern orgasm imperative is the same move in a different costume Why men mostly cannot see the work, and what "you look good for your age" actually costs Porn as training in extraction, and what men need instead Resources Casia Sobolewski Personal website, Honey and Water https://www.honeyandwater.ca/ The Himeros Project https://www.himerosproject.com/ The Art of Touching Women https://www.himerosproject.com/the-art-of-touching-women Instagram https://www.instagram.com/casia.sobolewski/ Linktree https://linktr.ee/casia.xx   Kimberly Ann Johnson Pre-Order Erotic Seasons: Tuning into the Rhythms of Women's Sexuality and Spirituality (Sounds True, 2026): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1649633742 Support This episode includes discussion of sexual assault and sexual trauma. RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline (US): 1-800-656-4673, rainn.org. Confirm current before publication.

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Anne-Marie Keppel, death doula educator, founder of the nonprofit Village Deathcare, and author of Death Nesting: The Heart-Centered Practices of a Death Doula, about what has and has not shifted in the culture since she wrote the book. Anne-Marie traces the origin of Death Nesting back to her years as a licensed nurse assistant in residential care, a hospice volunteer, a Meals on Wheels director, and to the elderly homeless man she looked after through Vermont winters; work she did because she wanted to. They look at the 1920s as the demarcation point when care left the home, when antibiotics became a god and the hospital became the authority realm, and at what has been lost in the handoff from family to funeral home. Anne-Marie makes the case that death curiosity is healthy, that it is okay to want to see and touch a dead body, and that fewer than half of the 500 students she has taught ever have. She describes the vortex that opens when someone is leaving their body, why timing matters more than ceremony, and why she considers the celebration of life a travesty when it replaces mourning rather than following it. The conversation goes into difficult territory: what care workers have reported feeling after a medically assisted death, the sense of severing and whiplash, and Kimberly's parallel that you can die and death does not happen. They talk honestly about suicide, about normalizing the thought rather than exiling it, about the scammers now working the death doula platforms, and about why people who long for death often do not know what dead actually is. The episode closes on professionalization: why she calls the business plan death doula training a lost opportunity, why she teaches citizens rather than experts, why the hairdresser who talks about dying with people in her chair is doing death doula work, and why the point is to give all the knowledge and wisdom, everything you've got, away. If any of this landed close to home, you don't have to sit with it alone. In the US, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text, day or night.   BIO Anne-Marie Keppel is an international speaker, award-winning author of Death Nesting: The Heart-Centered Practices of a Death Doula, and founder of Village Deathcare 501c3, whose inspiration and purpose is incorporating deathcare into community. Of Irish Celtic and Finnish Sámi (indigenous Finno-Ugric) roots, she draws from her work as a death doula, nurse assistant, life-long meditator, Reiki Master Teacher and mother of three. She leads retreats and talks in Vermont, across the US, in Ireland, England, Costa Rica and Mexico on death, dying, healing and intuition. She lives in Vermont where she practices meditation, magic, community deathcare, trains her Siberian Husky (nonstop) and delights in her family's love.   WHAT ANNE-MARIE SHARES Why she wrote Death Nesting from a place of genuine care and not a business plan, and how she only later realized she had accidentally built a business model The basic physical skills nobody is taught anymore: how to transfer someone from bed to chair, how to protect your own back, how to hold a body that cannot hold itself Her years as a licensed nurse assistant in residential care, a hospice volunteer, and director of Meals on Wheels in Montpelier, Vermont Caring for an 89 year old homeless veteran through Vermont winters, and what it taught her about doing the work when nobody is filming The 1920s as the demarcation point: hospitalization, antibiotics as the new god, and the hospital as a god realm where we send our loved ones away Why death curiosity is healthy, and why it is okay to want to see, touch, and smell a dead body That fewer than half of the 500 plus students she has taught have ever seen a dead body, at every age including into their sixties The vortex that opens when a person is leaving their body, why others feel it whether or not they know it, and why it stays open afterward Why the celebration of life is a travesty when it replaces the funeral, and why timing is the thing that matters What people have told her after being present at a medically assisted death: the severing, the whiplash, and the gap between what their eyes saw and what their body felt The scammers currently working death doula platforms with fake terminal diagnoses, and the empathy they exploit Why she normalizes suicidal thoughts immediately, and what happens in a room when she asks how many people have thought about ending their life Why people who long for death often do not know what dead is, and her prescription: volunteer for hospice, work in a funeral home, dig a grave Why coupling a death doula training with a business plan destroys the training, and why she teaches citizens instead of experts The hairdresser and the barista as models of community deathcare, and how to be a death doula without quitting your job Why she teaches her students to empower the family, stay in the background, and then walk away The student who finished her training and realized he actually is afraid to die, and why she called that a hallelujah WHAT YOU'LL HEAR What has and has not shifted in the culture since Death Nesting was first written The parallels and the gap between birth doula care and death doula care, and what weekend trainings do to a threshold Why 88 is very old, and what the denial of that reveals about the culture Embodied knowing versus instruction: holding a baby, holding a fractured heel, holding a leg someone cannot feel Why proximity beats curriculum, and why no training substitutes for a long embodiment practice How the handoff from family to hospital to funeral home created a generation with nowhere to put its grief The vortex, the gateway, and why people need to step outside for coffee during a death A candid, careful exchange about medical aid in dying, individualism, sovereignty, and what Canada has shown since legalization Stephen Jenkinson's line that you can die and death does not happen, and its birth equivalent Suicide, ideation, and the difference between exiling the subject and washing away the taboo Disconnection from the physical earth, zero vulnerability tolerance, and why medical professionals arrive at death doula training carrying decades of unprocessed exposure Kimberly on mothering the bones as a lay practice, and on what teaching does to your ability to receive The professionalization problem, the learning rate, and permission to be new at something Why awkwardness is the skill worth practicing before the business card Details on Anne-Marie's upcoming autumn death doula training RESOURCES Main Website: https://stardustmeadow.com Anne-Marie Keppel: https://www.annemariekeppel.com Death Doula Training (Village Deathcare Citizen Course): https://stardustmeadow.com/death-doula-training Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/villagedeathcare/ Medium: https://annemariekeppel.medium.com Death Nesting: The Heart-Centered Practices of a Death Doula: https://www.innertraditions.com/books/death-nesting   Referenced in conversation: Stephen Jenkinson, Orphan Wisdom: https://orphanwisdom.com Tom Myers, Anatomy Trains: https://www.anatomytrains.com Tami Lynn Kent, Wild Feminine: https://www.wildfeminine.com/   If you or a loved one are dealing with suicide or suicidal thoughts you can call or text 988 in anywhere in the US to find someone to talk to.

Kimberly wanted to speak with someone who was neither hormones-or-nothing nor going to offer complicated longevity protocol. Karen Newby is a UK nutritionist with a BSc in Nutritional Medicine and fifteen years of clinical practice, and she speaks with clear-eyed candor about how to support women's nutrition through midlife and beyond. What follows is a genuinely practical conversation. Karen explains why menopause is now classified as an inflammatory transitional event, what that has to do with joint pain, foggy head, eczema, and autoimmune flares, and how the shift in estrogen changes insulin sensitivity and where the body stores weight. Underneath the nutrition is a broader argument about what got lost for women in the hormone gold rush. There is useful myth-busting on creatine, on electrolytes as a marketing category newly aimed at midlife women, on the protein wars, and on why the ultra-processed conversation should be about refined carbohydrates and breakfast cereal rather than about whether protein powder counts. Karen's bottom line: the body wants to be well, consistency beats perfection, and confusion is the thing most likely to stop a woman from starting at all. Bio Karen Newby / Nutritionist BSc Nutritional Med, mBANT, CNHC Karen is a nutritionist, speaker, food activist, author and regular media contributor. She holds a BSc in Nutritional Medicine and has over 15 years of clinical experience. She works extensively with women navigating menopause and post-menopause, translating complex nutritional science into practical, sustainable strategies that support long-term vitality. She is author of three books focused on the menopause and post menopause: The Natural Menopause Method — a nutritional guide to perimenopause and beyond, The Natural Menopause Method Cookbook, and The Post Menopause Method — a nutritional guide to ageing well (out October 2026). Through her writing, she combines clinical expertise with practical recipes, lifestyle guidance and an emphasis on preventative health. Having lived for many years in China and Vietnam, she has witnessed first-hand how traditional food cultures place nourishment front and centre of everyday life versus the UK's ultra processed food culture. Karen is on a mission to help women reclaim agency over their health at menopause, through what they eat and how they live, and how we can learn from ancient food wisdom from wise women across the world. Living without a fear of ageing so our post menopausal lives can be vibrant, purposeful and fulfilling. What Karen Shares Why she isn't interested in telling anyone what to do and why the real obstacle is that women carry so much they can't get themselves onto their own to-do list Menopause as an inflammatory transitional event, and the through-line to aches, foggy head, eczema, psoriasis, and autoimmune conditions How changing estrogen affects insulin sensitivity, why weight moves to the middle, and the difference between metabolic change and cortisol-driven "worry waist" The protein-rich, fiber-rich breakfast as the single highest-leverage change and why caffeine belongs with breakfast rather than before it Her 1% / 2% / 3% framework: fifteen minutes for breakfast, half an hour for lunch, forty-five minutes for the evening meal A 14-hour overnight fast as the realistic version of intermittent fasting during perimenopause, and why long fasts during hormonal flux tend to backfire What she actually means by ultra-processed: refined carbohydrates, white bread, breakfast cereal versus the protein powders and jarred goods most people worry about Creatine: well researched, safe, cheap as monohydrate, not on her essential list, and the brain-health claims not yet supported by robust studies Why she's skeptical of electrolyte supplements for midlife women, and the Vietnamese soda chanh she drank through monsoon season instead The protein wars: why Blue Zones populations eat less protein than the West, and why she still thinks it matters at menopause Fat phobia inherited from a generation of calorie-counting mothers, and what nuts, seeds, and omega-3s do for cognition, cardiovascular health, dry eyes, dry skin, and morning stiffness Ground linseed and phytoestrogens, including for teenage daughters moving through their own hormonal flux How to read an ingredients list and why the brands making the biggest health claims are usually spending on marketing rather than product Good housekeeping as a lost skill: bone stock from rib bones, veggie stock from peelings, leftovers for lunch, and why real food is cheaper than processed Giving birth in Beijing, being shouted at by elders for taking her newborn outside, and what traditional confinement cultures understood that the West forgot Why the suffragettes were early proponents of vegetarian cookery and why she isn't vegan or vegetarian but thinks most of us could eat more like it   What You'll Hear Why "hormones or no hormones" is the wrong first question, and what gets left out when it's the only one being asked Kimberly on being floored by menopause despite writing a book on postpartum nourishment and on dismantling her business, cutting sugar entirely, and spending a stretch in ketosis The generational break: what happens when your grandmothers had hysterectomies and there is no menopause to inherit Irritability and rage in perimenopause partly blood glucose, partly finding your voice, and Karen's caveat that some people genuinely are annoying The cortisol awakening response, that fluttery-hearted start to the day, and what to drink before coffee Why confusion is the real enemy the listeners writing in with "a PhD in menopause" who still feel worse, not better Kimberly on being a redhead with less margin for error, and when a more extreme approach is warranted Acupuncture, going twice, and why some interventions need a real course rather than a trial Learning to cook in midlife assembling versus cooking, the power of ribs as a great attractor, and what a full fridge does for the nervous system Food as community: daughters who cook, parents who start showing up for dinner, and the traveling tinned fish situation Hunger from the chest versus hunger from the gut, and how to tell a stress response from actual appetite The 3pm slump, the sad sandwich, and the reactive eating that follows both   Resources Website — https://www.karennewby.com Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/karen.newby.nutritionist Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/karennewbynutritionist Pre-order The Post Menopause Method: A Nutritional Guide to Ageing Well (out October 2026) — https://www.amazon.com/Post-Menopause-Method-nutritional-guide-ageing-ebook/dp/B0GXFWS5XJ Pre-order Erotic Seasons: Tuning into the Rhythms of Women's Sexuality and Spirituality (out November 2026) — https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781649633743/eroticseasons/

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Ian MacKenzie, filmmaker, writer, mythosomatic guide, and host of The Mythic Masculine, about what men's work looks like in 2026. A fellow Orphan Wisdom scholar, Ian traces the mythopoetic lineage back through Robert Bly's Iron John, Carl Jung, and Marie-Louise von Franz, and describes how discovering Bly's book in his late grandfather's study set him on this path alongside his film work on feminine archetypes (Amplify Her). They talk candidly about the cultural moment — the "Rape Academy," the Pelicot case, the question of where the men are, and why the issues that feel omnipresent in some circles remain invisible in others curated by algorithm. Ian unpacks the medicine of mythopoetic men's spaces: how men can "put down the masculine pole" when others hold the container, why porn functions as a "toxic mimic" of intimacy, and how the shadow we exile grows hostile and acts out. They explore the lover archetype and erotic rites of passage rooted in his time at the Tamera community in Portugal, the "road of ashes" and why real men's spaces are composed of "failed heroes," and how to tend rites of passage for our own children by building real relationships with other men long before adolescence. The conversation closes on accountability and repair in a "villageless" culture, erotic leadership, and the inaugural Cascadia Men's Conference.   Bio Ian MacKenzie is a filmmaker, mythosomatic guide, and the founder of The Mythic Masculine - a platform devoted to stewarding the soul work of men. For two decades, Ian has tracked the emergence of imaginal culture - from the fires of Burning Man to the streets of Occupy Wall St - amplifying the voices of visionaries, artists, and wisdom keepers working toward a more regenerative world. A 15-year scholar of the Orphan Wisdom School, and a four-time pilgrim to the Tamera peace research community in Portugal, he has dedicated himself to expanding the terrain of what men's inner work can be: weaving ritual, ancestral story, and somatic reclamation into a living path toward sovereign purpose. He is the co-founder of The Deep Masculine Journey, a 12-week initiatory program for men, and the host of The Mythic Masculine podcast. His films include Sacred Economics, Occupy Love, Amplify Her, and The Village of Lovers. He lives on Vancouver Island with his partner and son.   What He Shares The mythopoetic lineage of Bly's Iron John, Jung, von Franz and finding the book in his grandfather's study in his mid-30s How exploring feminine archetypes through Amplify Her opened the question of masculinity for him Why the "where are the men" moment is so confusing for men who want to speak but fear getting it wrong The "hungry ghost" pattern: what happens when men locate all their Eros and vitality in women Porn as a "toxic mimic" (Caroline Casey's phrase) of real intimacy and reciprocity "Putting down the masculine pole" how men can finally fall apart when others hold the container "Eating the shadow" creating space for men to reveal trespass and explore real repair Erotic rites of passage and the lover archetype, drawn from his time at Tamera The "road of ashes," failed heroes, and the difference between olders and elders Tending rites of passage for our kids and why a parent is "disqualified" from leading their own child's Accountability and repair in a villageless culture, and the vision behind the Cascadia Men's Conference   What You'll Hear What "the mythic masculine" means and where the mythopoetic tradition comes from Whether the erotic is "feminine"  anima, animus, and locating aliveness inside vs. outside How algorithmic bubbles make the same cultural crisis omnipresent for some and invisible for others The critique of men's work as apolitical self-improvement  and the Mankind Project's stance Dyads, Forum, and psychodrama as practices for meeting the shadow The "dogs in the basement" story. Shadow, ancestors, and what we exile What an erotic rite of passage weekend actually looks like, and the core wound it surfaces A hard, honest exchange about campus assault and what real accountability could look like Erotic leadership, deep attunement, and meeting a partner stepping into her own fullness Details on the Cascadia Men's Conference "Courting the Divine Spark" Resources: Main Website: http://themythicmasculine.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ianalexanderm/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ian.mackenz/

In this episode, Kimberly is re-joined by Stephen Jenkinson, author of Trembling Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse, about the moment we find ourselves in with artificial intelligence and what it asks of us. They unpack the claim that AI is merely a tool; a real tool elaborates the capacities of the human hand just enough to reveal its God-given limits. Jenkinson suggests renaming AI "arbitrary intelligence," and traces how the rollout was designed to anticipate and absorb resistance before it could even form. Kimberly shares her own encounters with AI's creep into branding, self-driving cars, dream interpretation, therapy, dating, and her daughter's experience competing against Adderall and AI-assisted classmates. Together they explore whether willful underachievement might be the truest form of resistance and why the loss of kinship with the world is the precondition for welcoming a machine as your therapist. Jenkinson describes an MIT technologist's pitch to make him immortal through AI, and his fully human reply. The conversation closes with Jenkinson's own physical limitation, that unlike any Zoom AI companion, he can't sit any longer; a poetic, human ending to the kind of overflowing conversations that we've come to expect from these two. Bio Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW, is a teacher, author, culture worker, farmer, and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School. He is the author of Die Wise, Come of Age, A Generations Worth, Reckoning (with Kimberly Ann Johnson) and most recently Trembling Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse. His work explores grief, elderhood, dying, and the deep obligations of being alive in a time of unprecedented consequence. He has a master's degree in theology from Harvard and a master's in social work from the University of Toronto, and spent years as a program director in a major Canadian hospital, where his work focused on the care of the dying. He lives on a farm in the Ottawa Valley with his wife Nathalie Roy. What He Shares: – Why AI should be called "arbitrary intelligence" and why the words artificial and intelligence don't belong together – The MIT technologist's pitch to make him immortal through AI and why he said no – The shift from Lascaux to Turkey: how humans went from small stick figures to the biggest thing that ever happened – Willful underachievement as the truest form of resistance – Why he's glad he won't see the future and the two-generation rule for language loss – The rollout: how AI anticipated resistance and folded it into the code before anyone could articulate their concern – His own physical limitation as the conversation's closing teaching What You'll Hear: – Kimberly's encounters with AI creep: branding, self-driving cars, Zoom companions, Microsoft Word prompts – Is AI a tool? Why a tool elaborates the hand and complies with God-given limits – Arbitrary intelligence: renaming the thing for what it is – The rollout: how resistance was anticipated, folded into the code, and served back as good soup – The allegation that this has happened before and why he doesn't buy it – The microwave precedent: how fast something goes from luxury to you're-a-buffoon-without-it – Slow food, fast food, and what you can't recover from losing – Kimberly's daughter competing unassisted against Adderall and AI and reinforcing the slower pace – Willful underachievement and failing to qualify as resistance – Leonard Cohen: none of us deserving the cruelty or the grace – The MIT pitch: wouldn't your grandchildren want access to you after you die? – Love must obey the limits of time and the human frame – The want machine: why wanting something for someone doesn't make it good for them – Lascaux to Turkey: from humans as tiny stick figures to humans as the biggest thing – The loss of kinship with the made world as the precondition for AI – AI as therapy, dream interpreter, dating coach, prescription writer and the abject loneliness underneath – Being hurt aloud about what we're willing to submit to – AI as you riffing on you being true to yourself as the thing that's being sold – Kimberly on the inescapable attack in nervous system language and whether talking about it helps or feeds it – SJ's body calling time: people learning from the part of you that you wish wasn't happening Resources Website: orphanwisdom.com Upcoming Book: Trembling Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse