EP 200: "Birth Control" - Maternal Agency, Education, and Systems of Perinatal Care with Allison Yarrow

In this episode, Kimberly and Joelle discuss the joys, challenges, and complexities of writing a book and publishing. They met when Kimberly was pitching “The Fourth Trimester” and have connected ever since. Kimberly discusses her journey as an author in relation to her other work previous three books. They also discuss self-publishing, traditional publishing, how the publishing industry has changed because of social media, and the importance of book proposals. Joelle is currently enrolling for the Book Proposal Academy, a six month, robust course and mentorship program that supports new authors through the book proposal process. Register through the link below!   Bio Joelle Hann is an award-winning writer whose essays and poems explore the nature of our deepest relationships, and whose articles have covered the highs and lows of yoga culture, as well as food, film, books and travel. She’s worked in-house as a Senior Development Editor at Bedford/St. Martin’s. A decade later she jumped ship to freelance as a book doctor and collaborator. Since then, she’s developed and written many acclaimed books for authors in the realm of self-transformation, activism, spirituality, health, finance and business. Joelle is also a seasoned yoga teacher and practitioner. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, TimeOut New York, Poets & Writers, Yoga Journal, Yoga International, and other publications. Her essays have appeared on NPR, YourTango, Geist, and others. Joelle is also an award-winning poet with an MFA (poetry) and an MA (English Literature) from New York University’s top-ranked program, and many publications in journals and anthologies including McSweeney’s, Matrix, Painted Bride Quarterly, Drunken Boat, Breathing Fire: Canada’s New Poets, Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn and more.   What She Shares: –Traditional versus self-publishing –Pitching your book idea –Tending to the voice within –Book Proposal Academy with Joelle begins April 17th! What You’ll Hear: –Kimberly’s process of book writing –Experiences with various kinds of publishers –Self-publishing process –Kimberly’s upcoming book deal –Five main publishing houses and politics –Differences between first-time proposing versus fourth –Lack of confidence in initial stage of process –Small advances versus large advances –The Fourth Trimester best selling back-listed book –Publicity and marketing during proposals –Making the case for your book –Author versus writer –BookTok as powerful engine for making authors –Power of readers to make best-sellers from BookTok –Hybrid publishing on the rise –Challenges of self-publishing –University publishing –Trauma angles need hope, tools, and resilience –Shorter and easy to digest are book preferences –Literary agent burnout –Soul calling towards writing –Tending to the voice within –Following and engagement from audience –Quality and marketability –Proposal is key in not getting lost in process –Proposal is a map for book –Artistry and practical vision –Joelle’s Book Proposal Academy begins April 17th! –Runs for six months through 5 phases –Early bird sign-up begins April 3rd   Resources Website: https://brooklynbookdoctor.com/bpa/ IG: @@brooklynbookdoctor Book Proposal Academy Application: https://brooklynbookdoctor.com/bpa  

Summary In this episode, friends Kimberly and Kendra share their experiences and insights around mothering and the complex webs of care in non-traditional family structures. They discuss the beauty and challenges of single parenting, parenting young children while dating, forming new care structures, and navigating professional roles while mothering children of all ages. They also discuss their co-led upcoming retreat Apprenticing the Web taking place in Booneville, California this September 2024!   Bio Kendra Cunov has been studying, facilitating, and practicing Authentic Relating, Embodiment Practices & Deep Intimacy Work for over fifteen years. Kendra has worked with thousands of men, women & couples in the areas of embodiment, intimacy, communication & full self-expression. She co-founded “Authentic World & Fierce Grace,” as well as “The Embodied Relationship Training Salon” (with John Wineland), and pioneered some of the most cutting edge relation work on the planet. Kendra has consulted for companies such as Genentech & been on staff for 4PC, an elite mastermind for the top 4% of coaches in the world. She works with organizations & leaders, as well as men, women & couples, who know that embodied presence, truth, connection & integrity are our truest access points to success – in business & in love.   What She Shares: –Non-traditional family structures –Co-parenting with young children –Love as a guiding compass –Mothering and professions –Upcoming retreat with Kimberly and Kendra in September   What You’ll Hear: –Apprenticing the Web Retreat September 2024 –Blended families, partnership, and parenting non-traditionally –Mothering and marriage traditionally and non-traditionally –Ease as a compass in hard situations –Kimberly’s pregnant in Brazil –Making partnerships for co-parenting –Feeling alone in single parenting –Mothering alone in marriage –Centering the child/children –Facilitating opportunities for children to connect with fathers –Inquiring in co-parenting –Love as an invitation to the co-parent –Dating while single parenting young children –Work changes through mothering –Love as a compass –Managing finances while single parenting –Wanting to be in the world sooner while parenting young children –Older children needing more mothering than younger –Traveling and working while mothering young children –Creating community as single parents and living abroad –Benefits of single parenting –Not wanting to be a buffer while co-parenting –Unpacking child at the center –Mothering the culture –Maiden-Mother-Crone transitions –Something to “keep up” with while mothering –Mothering through menopause –Accepting missing out in mothering –Responding to life in the moment –Cultivating capacity for discomfort and the unknown –Trusting self to respond in the moment –Being willing to fail relationally –Curiosity over shaming –Upcoming retreat in September, California! –Kendra buying land near Mt. Shasta –Stewarding the land before building   Resources Website: https://kendracunov.com/ IG: @kendra_cunov Retreat Details: https://kendracunov.com/apprenticing-the-web/  

With special guest host Stephen Jenkinson, Kimberly and Stephen consult with three engaged couples and an unmarried woman to wonder aloud about the institution of marriage.  Stephen describes his experience, when he was asked to marry several couples, how he did his homework.  What does it mean to approach matrimony as something other than a predictable, foreseen conclusion?  Are weddings overly performative? Is it possible for a wedding to feel authentic?  Kimberly describes what she learned from having a wedding in the working terreiros culture of Bahia, Brazil.  Stephen describes why a ceremony has no audience - it only has witnesses and participants. Stephen and Kimberly contend with how contemporary couples, longing for ceremony in their matrimony, strive for integrity in their union. This episode is just the tip of iceberg.    Starting February 25th, Stephen and Kimberly will start their 5-part Online Series "Forgotten Pillars: Patrimony, Matrimony, Kinship, Ancestors & Ceremony."   They will dive much deeper into the lessons gleaned from working cultures of the past to inform meaningful ways for couples, families, and communities to come together for experiences that linger long past the "big day."    Find out more or join us: https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/forgotten-pillars/

In this episode, you hear reflections on Kimberly’s wedding, just weeks out from the event in Salvador, Brazil. With guest host/podcast producer/cousin, Jackson Kroopf, you will hear Kimberly sit with all of the proceedings: from spiritual preparation to rehearsal to ceremony to celebration. What does it mean to be married in the traditions of a spouse’s culture? Who is a wedding for? What role do children play in their parent’s ceremony? How do we understand the relationship between matrimony and contemporary weddings? In this open hearted conversation, you will hear family reckon, reflect, and bask, in real time, on their expanding family.

In this episode, Kimberly and Bodhi discuss his work as a death doula at Doorway Into Light, Hawaii’s only nonprofit green funeral home and educational resource center, The Death Store. They discuss what green burials and ocean burials are and how they are more generous and sustainable to the planet than modern burial practices. They also discuss how dominant culture fears death, responds to death, and death traditions across cultures. In light of all of the ways that people, and even babies, die, Bodhi asks us to deeply reflect on the question, “What is a full life?” P.S. His nonprofit is still taking donations for those displaced by the Maui fires; find the link below to donate!   Bio Bodhi is an ordained interfaith minister and teacher in the Sufi lineage of Sufi Sam and Hazrat Inayat Khan. He is the founder and executive director of Doorway Into Light, a nonprofit organization on Maui, which provides conscious and compassionate care for the dying, their families and the grieving, and has been offering community presentations and trainings since 2006 in the fields of awakened living and dying and the care of the dying. Bodhi is a bereavement counselor and educator; a hospice volunteer; a home funeral guide; a teacher and trainer of death doulas; a speaker and workshop leader and a ceremonial guide. He hosts a weekly streaming radio show, ‘Death Tracks’, on a Maui station. Bodhi guides memorials and funerals and leads grief rituals. He facilitates grief support groups for teenagers. He has trained hundreds of doctors, nurses, hospice staff, social workers, ministers, chaplains, therapists, artists and lay people in the spiritual, psychological, emotional and logistical care of the dying and the care of the dead, and for 4 years has taken dozens through a certification program to be death doulas. Bodhi has written a column called “Ask the Death Professor” for a local Maui magazine. He is a notary public, a coffin maker and a Reiki practitioner. Bodhi and his wife Leilah lead spiritual retreats in Hawaii and around the world.For many years Bodhi collaborated with Ram Dass, a neighbor and friend, who served on Doorway Into Light’s Board of Directors. Bodhi is continuing the work Ram Dass helped birth, in the fields of conscious dying in America.   What He Shares: –Death doula work –Green burials and ocean burials –Running a nonprofit funeral home and resource center –What you do (literally) when someone dies –Legalities of keeping a body with you –Generational stories of death What You’ll Hear: –How he was led to death work and spiritual counseling –Working with Ram Das –Starting the death doula movement and a ministry of death –Running a non-profit funeral home –Culture pushing away death –Green burials –Hazards of embalming –Biodegradable graves –Death and burial as another practice removed from traditions –Cultural differences around death and burial –Ocean body burial –Being with bodies after death –Generational stories after death –Lingering with the body to witness death –Healthy life includes its death –Mothers of stillborns fighting for baby body –Giving families time and space with death beyond laws –Outlaw moves –Medical rules around bodies and placentas –Navigating baby and child death –What is a full life? –Entitlement around death –Death doula trainings –Facing Death, Nourishing Life course –Showing up for life and death   Resources Website: https://www.doorwayintolight.org/ IG: @thedeathstoremaui  

In this episode, Kimberly and Dr. Elliot Berlin discuss his informed pregnancy focused chiropractic work. He explains noticing a rise in out of hospital births post-pandemic as well as an increase in hospital restrictions and inductions in hospital births. He discusses various causes of breech positions, his chiropractic approaches to breech babies before birth, as well as the long history of cesareans and how VBACs became stigmatized in recent decades. The common thread through this whole conversation is providing education and information for pregnant people to make the best informed decisions for themselves and their birth.   Bio Dr. Elliot Berlin is an award-winning pregnancy-focused chiropractor, childbirth educator, and labor doula. His innovative techniques for prenatal wellness care address tight and painful muscles and tendons utilizing specific massage techniques based on soft tissue releases. He combines this with traditional chiropractic adjustments to restore motion to restricted joints. Dr. Berlin notably works with several hundred breech babies each year, most of whom turn into the ideal pre-birth position once normal function is restored to the mother's low back and pelvis. He is also the host of Informed Pregnancy Podcast, an award winning pregnancy focused chiropractor.   What He Shares: –Differences in births post-pandemic –Chiropractic approaches to breech babies –History of cesareans –Informed VBACs –Mind-Body health for fertility   What You’ll Hear: –Pregnancies post-pandemic –Rise in out of hospital births –Increase in restrictions and interventions in hospitals –Guiding clients in making best choices for birth –Training for breech births –Using Webster technique to reposition breech babies –Structural reasons for breech positionings –Functional issues of mother posture –Minimizing ultrasounds –Looking at baby position at 32 weeks –Chiropractic care outside of pregnancy –Approaches to releases and maintenance –History of cesareans –Myths around VBACs –How VBAC information is portrayed  –Uterine ruptures –Insurance policies and cesareans –Induction drugs causing uterine ruptures in 1980s –VBAC Facts website –Using modern technology to improve childbirth –Downsides to how interventions are applied –What led Dr. Berlin to his work –Mind-body practices leading to natural fertility after years of treatments –Informed Pregnancy podcast –Informedpregnancy.tv streaming app   Resources Website: informedpregnancy.com/informedpregnancy.tv IG: @doctorberlin  

In this conversation, journalist Allison Yarrow and Kimberly discuss Allison's new book “Birth Control: The Insidious Power of Men Over Motherhood.” They go in depth about the culture and systems of perinatal birth care. They explore Allison’s extensive research around the differences between home birth care and hospital birth care, and go into depth about their personal experiences with each scenario. They wonder how future generations will approach their birth, as well as the deep impact of race on varying birth experience. With all of the information out there, they ask how do you prepare for birth?   Bio Allisoni Yarrow is a journalist for nearly two decades (in newsrooms like NBC News, Newsweek and The Daily Beast, and Vice), a national magazine finalist, the author of 90s Bitch (finalist for the Los Angeles Press Club Book Award), and she has written about the shortcomings of the perinatal experience in America for the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, Vox, Harper's Bazaar, and Insider. Her new book Birth Control: The Insidious Power of Men Over Motherhood, which is out July 18 and arose out of my TED Talk. With the recent news that maternal mortality has risen 40 percent to the highest level in our lifetime, this subject couldn't be more important. The book draws on extensive reporting, interviews, an original survey of 1300 birthing people and mothers, and my own personal experiences, to document how women are controlled, traumatized, injured, and even killed, because of traditionalist practices of medical professionals and hospitals during pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and after.    What You’ll Hear How birth procedures and techniques were not developed by science by traditions? The overriding of midwives knowledge by doctors. How has birth become such a profitable medical field? Why C-sections are so prominent despite their limited need? How does home birth care differ from hospital care? What kind of mother culture do we need around birth trauma? The pressure to educate onesellf in the perinatal experience. What role does agency play in the birth experience? What needs to change about the system of birth? How will future generations experience birth care? Our bodies perceive surgery as interruption. The importance of sex education to the birth experience. The racial dimensions of birth culture.   Links www.allisonyarrow.com Instagram: @aliyarrow  

In this episode, podcast producer Jackson Kroopf interviews Kimberly about her upcoming course "Activate Your Inner Jaguar - Feminine Sexuality and Spirituality" that begins October 17th. Kimberly describes the nine year evolution of the course, tracing its foundations and considering the ways her ongoing somatic and spiritual work continues to serve different generations of women from maiden to crone. She opens up about her own experiences that have informed her evolving relationship to the intersection of sexuality and spirituality. She also describes what the experience of taking the class entails, particularly around issues of privacy, shame, and the concrete practices she offers class participants. You will hear about some of the class' guest lecturers including pelvic priestess and author of "Women's Anatomy of Arousal," Sheri Winston, and sex educator and writer of "Taking Back the Speculum" Pamela Samuelson. As the carrier of many womens' stories, Kimberly describes the way combining personal stories and somatic tools can address many things women are most curious about related to sex and self-actualizing an erotic practice for each participant.   You can learn more or sign up for the nine-week intensive course here: https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/alive/

In this episode, Kimberly and Perdita discuss Perdita’s latest book “Take Back the Magic,” which was inspired by the death of her father, their ambivalent relationship, and ongoing relationship to him now that he's passed. Perdita shares her experience of communicating with the dead for over thirty years and guides us in how we can do the same. They also discuss the history behind why we fear the dead and the suppression of communicating with the dead by organized religion. She shares how the dead are connected and long for the erotic and how we can return to the inner wisdom and rituals of ancestors that pre-date religion and political systems. She describes the crucial role of the this communication with dead to her key relationships with the living: as a mother, wife, and community member.   Bio Perdita Finn is the co-founder, with her husband Clark Strand, of the non-denominational international fellowship The Way of the Rose, which inspired their book "The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary." For many years she supported her family writing books for children and educators like the "Time Flyers" series for Scholastic Books, "My Little Pony," and many others. She has been a ghostwriter, a book doctor, a copy editor and a writing teacher, but these days she is happy to be working primarily on her own books. She has a lively substack, "Take Back the Magic," where readers can get sneak peeks into what she's working on right now. Finn now teaches popular workshops on Collaborating with the Other Side, in which participants are empowered to activate the magic in their own lives with the help of their ancestors. She is the author of "Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World" and lives with her family in the moss-filled shadows of the Catskill Mountains.   What She Shares: –Writing “Take Back the Magic” –Why we fear the dead  –Cycles of life, death, and rebirth –How to commune with the dead  –Eros and the dead   What You’ll Hear: –Darkness and dark matter as origin of life –Circles of entanglement and belonging –Use of letters in “Take Back the Magic” –Relationship with father and his death –Cultural fears of the dead –Long history of suppression of speaking with dead –Understanding how dead communicate –Alchemizing experiences with past monsters –Finding safety of ancestors –Starting small with communication –Assigning worries to those on the other side –Honoring the dead –Perdita and husband’s spiritual backgrounds –Spiritual experiences through birth –Spiritual community outside of empire –History of rosary –Erotic nature of the dead –Experiencing eternal return of dead and living –Trusting the long story of your soul –Everything dies and everything is reborn –Not every prayer is answered in every lifetime –What is the prayer we would carry with us beyond this lifetime? –We are all each others’ mothers   Resources Website: wayoftherose.org takebackthemagic.com IG: @perditafinn   

In this episode, podcast producer Jackson Kroopf interviews Kimberly about her upcoming free class "Erotic Seasons: Connect to Your Sensual Flow Through the Stages of Womanhood," which begins October 10th at 9:00am PST. We discuss Kimberly's inspiration for the class, and her evolving thoughts on the archetypes of the mother, maiden, virgin, crone. The class explores what it means to develop a mature sensual identity. Go on a journey through the seasons of womanhood and how those might impact your erotic energy (hint: it’s not all downhill). Shine a warm salt lamp light, not strobe lights, on some tender places that could use attention and give you clues about your unique erotic path. Discover your next proximal step to bridging the gap between your sensuality and spirituality. You can sign up for the free class at: https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/erotic-seasons/