Podcasts about mothering

Victoria Beckham defends her Mothering, Justin Trudeau's friends think Katy Perry is a Mid-Life Crisis and The Bachelor Mansion is getting remodeled! Kendall recaps DWTS including the fact that a 98 year old, Mr. Feeny looks.... old. Adult-oween is almost here!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I sit down once again with Stephen Jenkinson to explore his latest work on matrimony, ritual, and the mothering of culture. We talk about how weddings have lost much of their meaning, what it means to return to vows with real weight, and how ritual can nourish not just a couple but an entire community. Stephen shares how he reconstructs ceremony from broken shards of tradition and why it matters now more than ever.SHOW HIGHLIGHTS00:00 - Introduction01:19 - Matrimony vs. Marriage06:10 - The Mothering of Culture13:32 - Rituals, Ceremony & Lost Meaning25:52 - Blessing and Vows45:55 - Creating Old Order Matrimony52:34 - Reimagining the Wedding Ritual01:04:38 - Remembering Ritual & Culture01:08:16 - Closing Thoughts***Tired of feeling like you're never enough? Build your self-worth with help from this free guide: https://training.mantalks.com/self-worthPick up my book, Men's Work: A Practical Guide To Face Your Darkness, End Self-Sabotage, And Find Freedom: https://mantalks.com/mens-work-book/Heard about attachment but don't know where to start? Try the FREE Ultimate Guide To AttachmentCheck out some other free resources: How To Quit Porn | Anger Meditation | How To Lead In Your RelationshipBuild brotherhood with a powerful group of like-minded men from around the world. Check out The Alliance. Enjoy the podcast? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Podchaser. It helps us get into the ears of new listeners, expand the ManTalks Community, and help others find the tools and training they're looking for. And don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | SpotifyFor more, visit us at ManTalks.com | Facebook | Instagram

Julie Green is a professional writer, a mother, and is a late diagnosed autistic women. She, Dave, and Barry discuss what led to her late diagnosis, and the insights she has as an autistic person in raising her now teenage autistic son. Julie has also published professionally on parenting issues and discusses the process of writing a memoir that focuses on motherhood and autism, while simultaneously deepening her understanding of her own autism.Learn more on our WebsiteSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Kimberly and Elena discuss and reflect on their life experiences through nearly two decades of knowing one another. They discuss radical forgiveness for our families of origin, the importance of stillness and meditation, children leaving the home, and menopause. They also discuss what led Elena to write her upcoming book “Hold Nothing,” which offers stories and prompts as an artful contemplative guide towards personal, daily practice for self-discovery and self-wisdom. Kimberly reads powerful excerpts aloud, and you can preorder the book in the link below.   Bio Elena Brower is a mother, mentor, poet, artist, volunteer, bestselling author, and podcast host. She is a celebrated international yoga and meditation teacher on Glo, guiding transformative practices since 1999. Her books include the “Art of Attention: A Yoga Practice Workbook for Movement as Meditation,” bestselling journal “Practice You and Being You” her collection of poetry entitled “Softening Time,” along with her courses, classes, and talks, explore stages of studentship, practice, life, and listening. Her latest book “Hold Nothing” investigates what it means to let go of narratives and return to the spacious emptiness within. She also has a column on Substack and podcast Practice You. She offers weekly classes and is a candidate in Upaya's Chaplaincy Training. She volunteers in hospice and penitentiary settings, bringing yoga, meditation, and compassionate presence to her local and broader communities.   What She Shares: –Forgiveness, repair and acceptance –Practice of daily stillness and stability –Powerful excerpts from new book –Excerpts read from new book “Hold Nothing”   What You'll Hear: –What sticks with Kimberly from Elena's teachings –Elena forgiving mother –Mercy and forgiveness for family of origen –Holding onto grudges instead of real repair –Impacting our actual spheres –Incentivizing holding grudges long-term in culture –Having direct contact with the present –In contact with body as medicine –Everyone doing their best at all times –Making our consciousness transparent to ourselves –Why Elena wanted to write a new book –Meditations and personal writings –Universal permission slip to be tender with ourselves –How stories, prompts, and artwork came about –Impact of writing in present tense –Getting reader in scene that unfolds as if happening presently –Reading excerpt from book on uncertainty –Daily sitting in stillness to allow thoughts to emerge –Importance of humility in work –Addressing accusations, controversies, and publicness –Importance of relationships, close inner-circle, close proximity –Bringing down women taking initiatives to serve –Evolving definition of family –Staying present and listening during hard conversations –Children leaving home for college –Mothering young adults –Conflicting emotions with children leaving home –Advice for mothers in new paradigm shifts –Kimberly's fresh experience taking Cece to college –Opening to stability –Stabilizing principle at center of every circumstance –Turning chaos to stability –Working in a vacuum to focus on own work –Addressing issues of AI as writers and teachers –Focus, devotion, returning to what matters –Menopausal transitions with weights, HRT, supplements, sleep, friends –Regulating nervous system through menopause –Elena's Matter of Menopause podcast for menopause education –Kimberly's underworld experience of menopause –Hormones are gods –Preorder upcoming book “Hold Nothing”   Resources Website: https://elenabrower.com/ and https://elenabrower.com/menopause/ IG:  @elenabrower Jaguar Sex Edition Sign Up Here  

Send us a textIn this episode, we explore how trauma reshapes belief, what the ancient story of Job reveals about suffering, and how to become trusted listeners who create safe spaces instead of offering quick fixes. Dr. Michelle K. Keener, author of Comfort in the Ashes: Explorations in the Book of Job to Support Trauma Survivors, gives practical tools for mothers, mentors, and faith communities. Other ideas shared in this conversation:• Trauma is defined as overwhelm beyond normal coping• Retribution theology vs compassionate presence• trusted listener traits and spiritual bypassing• liminal space as formative process, not failure• schema theory and the filing cabinet metaphor• missed encounters, memory gaps, and safety• mothering through shame spirals and repair• church as a safe base, partnering with counselingVisit Dr. Michelle's website: Michelle KeenerOrder Michelle's book: Comfort in the AshesSupport the showBegin Your Heartlifter's Journey: Visit and subscribe to Heartlift Central on Substack. This is our new online coaching center and meeting place for Heartlifters worldwide. Download the "Overcoming Hurtful Words" Study Guide PDF: BECOMING EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY Meet me on Instagram: @janellrardon Leave a review and rate the podcast: WRITE A REVIEW Learn more about my books and work: Janell Rardon Make a tax-deductible donation through Heartlift International

Explore how matrimony acts as a "mothering" force of culture in this conversation with Stephen Jenkinson that shines a light on the wedding ritual, marriage, and their deeper layers. Has our modern culture lost the original empowering nature of the wedding day and of marriage itself? In this episode of Insights at the Edge, host Tami Simon welcomes Stephen Jenkinson—culture activist, founder of the Orphan Wisdom School, and author of the forthcoming book Matrimony. Here, Jenkinson explores the difference between weddings, marriage, and matrimony, revealing how authentic ritual can heal cultural wounds and foster community. Drawing from his new book and years of experience, he shares why matrimony is not just a private act but a vital, communal force that shapes the heart of culture itself. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Listeners of Insights At The Edge get 10% off their first month at www.betterhelp.com/soundstrue. Note: This interview originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.  

Bonus Mama, your role as a stepmom matters deeply.God sees every unseen act of love, every whispered prayer, and every moment of surrender. You are not “just” a stepmom. You are a chosen instrument of His grace in your family.This message comes from a tender and personal place. Deb had three stepmoms growing up, and she shares this from the heart of a stepchild. She's seen the impact a stepmother can have—the pain, yes, but also the profound beauty. And she wants you to know you are making a difference, even if you don't always see it.Whether your journey is filled with joy or full of questions, you are not alone. Let's gather together and be reminded of the beautiful promise in Galatians 6:9:“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”Keep going, sweet bonus mom. God sees you, and He is with you every step of the way.

Send us a textThe quiet after the last suitcase leaves can feel like a freefall—or a doorway. We lean into that threshold with Kate Battistelli, author of The After Party of the Empty Nest: Mom Isn't Your Only Name, to reframe the empty nest as an after-party —a time to honor the first act of mothering and step into a purposeful, hope-filled second act. Kate shares the heart behind her directive, “Mom is not your only name,” and why your next chapter isn't smaller—it's just different, and often deeper.Together, we explore the three “bird” archetypes that map this transition—the quick-pivot swallow, the grieving mourning dove, and the balanced robin—so you can name where you are and choose what's next. Kate's story illustrates how courage grows when we respond to quiet nudges with small, faithful steps. We discuss dreaming with the Father without shrinking your desires, finding an “empty next” that builds the kingdom, and utilizing the margins of your day to prepare for new work, study, service, or creative callings.If this episode encourages you, please follow, share it with a friend who's nearing the transition, and leave a quick review so more moms can find the courage to start their after party.Download the Intro and First Chapter of The After Party of the Empty Nest: Text AFTERPARTY to 44144.Visit Kate's website: Kate BattistelliLearn more about Kate's book: The After Party of the Empty NestSupport the showBegin Your Heartlifter's Journey: Visit and subscribe to Heartlift Central on Substack. This is our new online coaching center and meeting place for Heartlifters worldwide. Download the "Overcoming Hurtful Words" Study Guide PDF: BECOMING EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY Meet me on Instagram: @janellrardon Leave a review and rate the podcast: WRITE A REVIEW Learn more about my books and work: Janell Rardon Make a tax-deductible donation through Heartlift International

The Rio Grande river has been immortalized in movies and in songs, but sadly, the river itself has shrunk and now regularly runs dry in certain areas. The World Wildlife Fund has prioritized restoring the river and to that end is funding programs to revitalize the Rio Grande. One such program called Rio Grande Return is building beaver dams and other wood structures in the river, in an effort to improve water retention and water quality, and they are beginning to see positive results.

Send us a textSupport the showBreakfast With Tiffany Show Official Facebook Page ~ https://www.facebook.com/breakfastwithtiffanyshow Tiffany's Instagram Account ~ https://www.instagram.com/tiffanyrossdaleofficial/ Breakfast With Tiffany Show Youtube Channel ~ https://bit.ly/3vIVzhE Breakfast With Tiffany Show Official Page ~ https://www.tiffanyrossdale.com/podcast For questions, requests, collaborations and comments, feel free to reach us via our e-mail ~ breakfastwithtiffanyshow@outlook.com SUBSCRIBE and SUPPORT us here ~ https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187534/supporters/new

This week, instead of our usual Mothering Monday video, we're sharing a special teaching from our September Mothering Kit inside the Radiant Mom Community. Join Deb Weakly, Laura Carlson, and Linda Steppenbacker as they remind us that motherhood isn't “just” something we do,  it's a holy, eternal calling that shapes generations.

Welcome to Episode 129 of The Perfectionist's Guide to Mothering!   Today I have the privilege of chatting with Cindy Manko. She is an author, podcast host of The Listen-Love-Launch Podcast and is a life coach for moms of high school seniors. She has raised three children and has great wisdom and resources. Even if you're momming little ones and senior year seems a long way off, listen in and tuck her wisdom into your mom toolbox for when you need it.   You can connect with Cindy via:Her website: cindymanko.comInstagram: @cindymankoFacebookGet The Journal Project: My Senior Year Through Mom's Eyes here*You can connect with me via:My website: andreafortenberry.comInstagram: @andreafortenberryGet a Mom's Guide for Back to School here⁠ ⁠Pre-order my book, Two-Minute Timeouts for New Moms: 100 Devotions for Weary and Wonderful Days.*⁠⁠ ⁠Join my book launch team.⁠ *Affiliate Link

Send us a textWe never outgrow the need for the love, support, and nurturing of a mother or a mother figure. This is true during life's special times and milestones. Entering motherhood is such a time. This episode features a conversation about mothering without a mother. Two of our volunteers, Sarah Lynn Wells and Natalie Lundstrom, discuss their experience of mothering as motherless daughters. The Motherless Daughters Ministry offers a variety of resources to support the mother loss journey.  Learn about our NEW Connections and Conversation Circles. For more information and access to our services, visit our website, https://www.motherlessdaughtersministry.com/.  You are welcome to join our community.Resources Interested in the Mothering Without a Mother CCC group     https://www.motherlessdaughtersministry.com/events/connection-conversation-circles-for-mothering-without-a-mother/ Want to learn more about our support groups and courses? Find out more here:   https://www.motherlessdaughtersministry.com/services/Ways to support MDM financially: https://www.motherlessdaughtersministry.com/giving/ Motherless Daughters Ministry is a 501(c) (3) non-profit that depends on the generous support of donations from listeners like you.  To donate or sign up for our newsletter and more resources, visit our website at www.motherlessdaughtesministry.com  Support the showThanks for listening! Find our podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon Music, and Audible. Also, find and follow the Motherless Daughters Ministry on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.

"Healing is possible. Our stories, even the darkest ones, can become the light that guides someone else forward." – Wendy B. Corea   In this episode of Turmeric & Tequila™, host Kristen Olson sits down with Wendy B. Corea—author, yogi, hiker, and healer—to explore her extraordinary life journey. From losing her father at age seven to growing up in a violent household, Wendy shares how trauma shaped her early years and how she found resilience through spirituality, psychology, and community. Her path took her from California colleges to the LA music industry, where sobriety and spiritual practices like Buddhism, yoga, and Native American ceremonies became lifelines. Today, Wendy channels her experiences into writing, massage therapy, and teaching, empowering others to heal and thrive. This heartfelt conversation covers: Childhood loss, trauma, and the silence surrounding grief. Coping mechanisms—both destructive and healing—and how she chose a better path. Sobriety stories, including crossing paths with Ringo Starr at AA. The power of meditation, yoga, and Native American ceremonies in recovery. How chosen family and late-life love brought healing and hope. Her new memoir (Nov 4 release) and why it's for anyone navigating trauma, resilience, and transformation. If you've ever wondered how to turn pain into purpose, Wendy's story is living proof that healing is possible—and that resilience can become a superpower. Time Stamps: 0:00 – 2:00 | Intro, sponsors, and welcoming Wendy B. Corea. 2:00 – 8:00 | Childhood memories, losing her father, and growing up in silence. 8:00 – 15:00 | Coping mechanisms, imagination as survival, and intuition as protection. 15:00 – 22:00 | Leaving home, pursuing college, psychology & theater arts. 22:00 – 30:00 | Addiction, sobriety journey, and unexpected encounters in AA (including Ringo Starr). 30:00 – 37:00 | Spiritual practices—yoga, Native American ceremonies, meditation, and healing. 37:00 – 42:00 | Chosen family, marriage, motherhood, and creating community. 42:00 – End (44:56) | Reflections, book launch info, and Wendy's closing words of wisdom. Wendy B. Corea: Wendy B. Correa is a writer, yogi, hiker, as well as a licensed massage therapist. She has worked in the film, television, multimedia, and music industries in Los Angeles and later as a radio DJ in Aspen, Colorado. She holds bachelor's degrees in psychology and theater arts and has contributed articles to Mothering magazine. A wife and mother, she resides in Denver, Colorado, and loves traveling to magical destinations with her family. My Pretty Baby is her debut book. For more information, visit www.wendybcorrea.com. Website: wendybcorrea.com   Instagram: @wendybcorrea   Connect with T&T: IG: @TurmericTequila Facebook: @TurmericAndTequila Website: www.TurmericAndTequila.com Host: Kristen Olson IG: @Madonnashero Tik Tok: @Madonnashero Website: www.KOAlliance.com WATCH HERE   MORE LIKE THIS: https://youtu.be/ZCFQSpFoAgI?si=Erg8_2eH8uyEgYZF   https://youtu.be/piCU9JboWuY?si=qLdhFKCGdBzuAeuI https://youtu.be/9Vs2JDzJJXk?si=dpjV31GDqTroUKWH

Research shows a child's worldview is largely formed by age 13, making these early years critical for shaping their hearts and minds. In this episode, Paige Clingenpeel sits down with Molly DeFrank—author, speaker, and mom of six—to talk about what today's boys need to thrive. Molly shares practical ways moms can model a biblical worldview, create meaningful moments with their sons, and equip them with the essentials for life—belonging, authority, bravery, tenderness, creativity, and emotional durability. Be encouraged as you discover how God intentionally paired you with your children and how, with His help, you have what it takes to raise confident, godly young men.Resources:Mothering Boys: 8 Things Your Son Needs from You before He Turns 10 by Molly DeFrank: https://mollydefrank.com/mothering-boys/ Molly DeFrank's website: https://mollydefrank.com/ Molly DeFrank's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mollydefrank Paige Clingenpeel: PaigeClingenpeel.comQuestions About the Podcast? Email: paigeclingenpeel@gmail.comFacebook: @Paige ClingenpeelInstagram: @paigeclingenpeelYouTube: Embracing Your Season sponsored by HomeWordPaige's Takeaways:Lead your kids to the ultimate source of Truth—God's Word.Show them that Scripture isn't just true—it's real and it works in everyday life.Use the Bible as the foundation for understanding masculinity, truth, and gender identity.Remember: the Bible alone is our unchanging source of Truth.Explore resources like HomeWord to support and encourage a biblical worldview in your family.Trust that God calls us to train our children in His ways and promises to guide us.Don't fear your children's tough questions—see them as opportunities for growth and discipleship.Rest in the assurance that the Holy Spirit is already at work, pursuing their hearts.Keywords/Hashtags#EmbracingYourSeason #PaigeClingenpeel #MollyDeFrank #BoyMom #Christian #Faith #BiblicalParenting #ChristianParent #Parenting #Parents #Podcast #PodcastCommunity #HomeWord #PFCAudioVideo Send us a text

On this episode, my guest is Stephen Jenkinson, culture activist and ceremonialist advocating a handmade life and eloquence. He is an author, a storyteller, a musician, sculptor and off-grid organic farmer. Stephen is the founder/ principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School in Canada, co-founded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010. Also a sought-after workshop leader, articulating matters of the heart, human suffering, confusions through ceremony.He is the author of several influential books, including Money and the Soul's Desires, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), A Generation's Worth: Spirit Work While the Crisis Reigns (2021), and Reckoning (2022), co-written with Kimberly Ann Johnson. His most recent book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work, was released in August 2025. He is also involved in the musical project Nights of Grief & Mystery with singer-songwriter Gregory Hoskins, which has toured across North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.Show Notes:* The Bone House of the Orphan Wisdom Enterprise* Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart's Work* The Wedding Industry* Romantic Sameness and Psychic Withering* The Two Tribes* The Roots of Hospitality* The Pompous Ending of Hospitality* Debt, And the Estrangement of the Stranger* More Than Human Hospitality* The Alchemy of the Orphan Wisdom SchoolHomework:Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work | PurchaseOrphan WisdomThe Scriptorium: Echoes of an Orphan WisdomTranscription:Chris: This is an interview that I've been wondering about for a long time in part, because Stephen was the first person I ever interviewed for the End of Tourism Podcast. In Oaxaca, Mexico, where I live Stephen and Natalie were visiting and were incredibly, incredibly generous. Stephen, in offering his voice as a way to raise up my questions to a level that deserve to be contended with.We spoke for about two and a half hours, if I remember correctly. And there was a lot in what you spoke to towards the second half of the interview that I think we're the first kind of iterations of the Matrimony book.We spoke a little bit about the stranger and trade, and it was kind of startling as someone trying to offer their first interview and suddenly hearing something [00:01:00] that I'd never heard before from Stephen. Right. And so it was quite impressive. And I'm grateful to be here now with y'all and to get to wonder about this a little more deeply with you Stephen.Stephen: Mm-hmm. Hmm.Chris: This is also a special occasion for the fact that for the first time in the history of the podcast, we have a live audience among us today. Strange doings. Some scholars and some stewards and caretakers of the Orphan Wisdom enterprise. So, thank you all as well for coming tonight and being willing to listen and put your ears to this.And so to begin, Stephen, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to let those who will be listening to this recording later on know where we're gathered in tonight?Stephen: Well, we're in... what's the name of this township?Nathalie: North Algona.Stephen: North Algona township on the borders, an eastern gate [00:02:00] of Algonquin Park. Strangely named place, given the fact that they were the first casualties of the park being established. And we're in a place that never should have been cleared - my farm. It should never have been cleared of the talls, the white pines that were here, but the admiralty was in need back in the day. And that's what happened there. And we're in a place that the Irish immigrants who came here after the famine called "Tramore," which more or less means "good-frigging luck farming."It doesn't technically mean that, but it absolutely means that. It actually means "sandy shore," which about covers the joint, and it's the only thing that covers the joint - would be sand. You have to import clay. Now, that's a joke in many farming places in the world, but if we wanted any clay, we'd have to bring it in and pay for the privilege.And the farm has been in [00:03:00] my, my responsibility for about 25 years now, pretty close to that. And the sheep, or those of them left because the coyotes have been around for the first time in their casualty-making way... They're just out here, I'm facing the field where they're milling around.And it's the very, very beginnings of the long cooling into cold, into frigid, which is our lot in this northern part of the hemisphere, even though it's still August, but it's clear that things have changed. And then, we're on a top of a little hill, which was the first place that I think that we may have convened a School here.It was a tipi, which is really worked very well considering we didn't live here, so we could put it up and put it down in the same weekend. [00:04:00] And right on this very hill, we were, in the early days, and we've replaced that tipi with another kind of wooden structure. A lot more wood in this one.This has been known as "The Teaching Hall" or "The Great Hall," or "The Hall" or "The Money Pit, as it was known for a little while, but it actually worked out pretty well. And it was I mean, people who've come from Scandinavia are knocked out by the kind of old-style, old-world visitation that the place seems to be to them.And I'd never really been before I had the idea what this should look like, but I just went from a kind of ancestral memory that was knocking about, which is a little different than your preferences, you know. You have different kinds of preferences you pass through stylistically through your life, but the ones that lay claim to you are the ones that are not interested in your [00:05:00] preferences. They're interested in your kind of inheritance and your lineage.So I'm more or less from the northern climes of Northern Europe, and so the place looks that way and I was lucky enough to still have my carving tools from the old days. And I've carved most of the beams and most of the posts that keep the place upright with a sort of sequence of beasts and dragons and ne'er-do-wells and very, very few humans, I think two, maybe, in the whole joint. Something like that. And then, mostly what festoons a deeply running human life is depicted here. And there's all kinds of stories, which I've never really sat down and spoken to at great length with anybody, but they're here.And I do deeply favour the idea that one day [00:06:00] somebody will stumble into this field, and I suppose, upon the remains of where we sit right now, and wonder "What the hell got into somebody?" That they made this mountain of timber moldering away, and that for a while what must have been, and when they finally find the footprint of, you know, its original dimensions and sort of do the wild math and what must have been going on in this sandy field, a million miles in away from its home.And wherever I am at that time, I'll be wondering the same thing.Audience: Hmm.Stephen: "What went on there?" Even though I was here for almost all of it. So, this was the home of the Orphan Wisdom School for more than a decade and still is the home of the Orphan Wisdom School, even if it's in advance, or in retreat [00:07:00] or in its doldrums. We'll see.And many things besides, we've had weddings in here, which is wherein I discovered "old-order matrimony," as I've come to call it, was having its way with me in the same way that the design of the place did. And it's also a grainery for our storage of corn. Keep it up off the ground and out of the hands of the varmints, you know, for a while.Well that's the beginning.Chris: Hmm. Hmm. Thank you Stephen.Stephen: Mm-hmm.Chris: You were mentioning the tipi where the school began. I remember sleeping in there the first time I came here. Never would I have thought for a million years that I'd be sitting here with you.Stephen: It's wild, isn't it?Chris: 12 years later.?: Yeah.Chris: And so next, I'd like to do my best in part over the course of the next perhaps hour or two to congratulate you on the release of [00:08:00] your new book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work.Stephen: Thank you.Chris: Mm-hmm. I'm grateful to say like many others that I've received a copy and have lent my eyes to your good words, and what is really an incredible achievement.For those who haven't had a chance to lay their eyes on it just yet, I'm wondering if you could let us in on why you wrote a book about matrimony in our time and where it stands a week out from its publication.Stephen: Well, maybe the answer begins with the question, "why did you write a book, having done so before?" And you would imagine that the stuff that goes into writing a book, you'd think that the author has hopes for some kind of redemptive, redeeming outcome, some kind of superlative that drops out the back end of the enterprise.And you know, this is [00:09:00] the seventh I've written. And I would have to say that's not really how it goes, and you don't really know what becomes of what you've written, even with the kind people who do respond, and the odd non-monetary prize that comes your way, which Die Wise gamed that.But I suppose, I wrote, at all partly to see what was there. You know, I had done these weddings and I was a little bit loathe to let go, to let the weddings turn entirely into something historical, something that was past, even though I probably sensed pretty clearly that I was at the end of my willingness to subject myself to the slings and arrows that came along with the enterprise, but it's a sweet sorrow, or there's a [00:10:00] wonder that goes along with the tangle of it all. And so, I wrote to find out what happened, as strange as that might sound to you. You can say, "well, you were there, you kind of knew what happened." But yes, I was witness to the thing, but there's the act of writing a book gives you the opportunity to sort of wonder in three-dimensions and well, the other thing I should say is I was naive and figured that the outfit who had published the, more or less prior two books to this one, would kind of inevitably be drawn to the fact that same guy. Basically, same voice, new articulation. And I was dumbfounded to find out that they weren't. And so, it's sort of smarted, you know?And I think what I did was I just set the whole [00:11:00] enterprise aside, partly to contend with the the depths of the disappointment in that regard, and also not wanting to get into the terrible fray of having to parse or paraphrase the book in some kind of elevator pitch-style to see if anybody else wanted to look at it. You know, such as my touchy sense of nobility sometimes, you know, that I just rather not be involved in the snarl of the marketplace any longer.So, I withdrew and I just set it aside but it wasn't that content to be set, set aside. And you know, to the book's credit, it bothered me every once in a while. It wasn't a book at the point where I was actually trying to engineer it, you know, and, and give it some kind of structure. I had piles of paper on the floor representing the allegation of chapters, trying to figure out what the relationship was [00:12:00] between any of these things.What conceivably should come before what. What the names of any of these things might be. Did they have an identity? Was I just imposing it? And all of that stuff I was going through at the same time as I was contending with a kind of reversal in fortune, personally. And so in part, it was a bit of a life raft to give me something to work on that I wouldn't have to research or dig around in the backyard for it and give me some sort of self-administered occupation for a while.Finally, I think there's a parallel with the Die Wise book, in that when it came to Die Wise, I came up with what I came up with largely because, in their absolute darkest, most unpromising hours, an awful lot of dying people, all of whom are dead now, [00:13:00] let me in on some sort of breach in the, the house of their lives.And I did feel that I had some obligation to them long-term, and that part of that obligation turned into writing Die Wise and touring and talking about that stuff for years and years, and making a real fuss as if I'd met them all, as if what happened is really true. Not just factually accurate, but deeply, abidingly, mandatorily true.So, although it may be the situation doesn't sound as extreme, but the truth is, when a number of younger - than me - people came to me and asked me to do their weddings, I, over the kind of medium-term thereafter, felt a not dissimilar obligation that the events that ensued from all of that not [00:14:00] be entrusted entirely to those relatively few people who attended. You know, you can call them "an audience," although I hope I changed that. Or you could call them "witnesses," which I hope I made them that.And see to it that there could be, not the authorized or official version of what happened, but to the view from here, so to speak, which is, as I sit where I am in the hall right now, I can look at the spot where I conducted much of this when I wasn't sacheting up and down the middle aisle where the trestle tables now are.And I wanted to give a kind of concerted voice to that enterprise. And I say "concerted voice" to give you a feel for the fact that I don't think this is a really an artifact. It's not a record. It's a exhortation that employs the things that happened to suggest that even though it is the way it is [00:15:00] ritually, impoverished as it is in our time and place, it has been otherwise within recoverable time and history. It has.And if that's true, and it is, then it seems to me at least is true that it could be otherwise again. And so, I made a fuss and I made a case based on that conviction.There's probably other reasons I can't think of right now. Oh, being not 25 anymore, and not having that many more books in me, the kind of wear and tear on your psyche of imposing order on the ramble, which is your recollection, which has only so many visitations available in it. Right? You can only do that so many times, I think. And I'm not a born writing person, you know, I come to it maniacally when I [00:16:00] do, and then when it's done, I don't linger over it so much.So then, when it's time to talk about it, I actually have to have a look, because the act of writing it is not the act of reading it. The act of writing is a huge delivery and deliverance at the same time. It's a huge gestation. And you can't do that to yourself, you know, over and over again, but you can take some chances, and look the thing in the eye. So, and I think some people who are there, they're kind of well-intended amongst them, will recognize themselves in the details of the book, beyond "this is what happened and so on." You know, they'll recognize themselves in the advocacy that's there, and the exhortations that are there, and the [00:17:00] case-making that I made and, and probably the praying because there's a good degree of prayerfulness in there, too.That's why.Chris: Thank you. bless this new one in the world. And what's the sense for you?Stephen: Oh, yes.Chris: It being a one-week old newborn. How's that landing in your days?Stephen: Well, it's still damp, you know. It's still squeaky, squeaky and damp. It's walking around like a newborn primate, you know, kind of swaying in the breeze and listening to port or to starboard according to whatever's going on.I don't know that it's so very self-conscious in the best sense of that term, yet. Even though I recorded the audio version, I don't think [00:18:00] it's my voice is found every nook and cranny at this point, yet. So, it's kind of new. It's not "news," but it is new to me, you know, and it's very early in terms of anybody responding to it.I mean, nobody around me has really taken me aside and say, "look, now I want to tell you about this book you wrote." It hasn't happened, and we'll see if it does, but I've done a few events on the other side of the ocean and hear so far, very few, maybe handful of interviews. And those are wonderful opportunities to hear something of what you came up with mismanaged by others, you know, misapprehend, you could say by others.No problem. I mean, it's absolutely no problem. And if you don't want that to happen, don't talk, don't write anything down. So, I don't mind a bit, you know, and the chances are very good that it'll turn into things I didn't have in mind [00:19:00] as people take it up, and regard their own weddings and marriages and plans and schemes and fears and, you know, family mishigas and all the rest of it through this particular lens, you know. They may pick up a pen or a computer (it's an odd expression, "pick up a computer"), and be in touch with me and let me know. "Yeah, that was, we tried it" or whatever they're going to do, because, I mean, maybe Die Wise provided a bit of an inkling of how one might be able to proceed otherwise in their dying time or in their families or their loved ones dying time.This is the book that most readily lends itself to people translating into something they could actually do, without a huge kind of psychic revolution or revolt stirring in them, at least not initially. This is as close as I come, probably, to writing a sequence of things [00:20:00] that could be considered "add-ons" to what people are already thinking about, that I don't force everybody else outta the house in order to make room for the ideas that are in the book. That may happen, anyway, but it wasn't really the intent. The intent was to say, you know, we are in those days when we're insanely preoccupied with the notion of a special event. We are on the receiving end of a considerable number of shards showing up without any notion really about what these shards remember or are memories of. And that's the principle contention I think that runs down the spine of the book, is that when we undertake matrimony, however indelicately, however by rote, you know, however mindlessly we may do it, [00:21:00] inadvertently, we call upon those shards nonetheless.And they're pretty unspectacular if you don't think about them very deeply, like the rice or confetti, like the aisle, like the procession up the aisle, like the giving away of someone, like the seating arrangement, like the spectacle seating arrangement rather than the ritual seating arrangement.And I mean, there's a fistful of them. And they're around and scholars aside maybe, nobody knows why they do them. Everybody just knows, "this is what a wedding is," but nobody knows why. And because nobody knows why, nobody really seems to know what a wedding is for, although they do proceed like they would know a wedding if they saw one. So, I make this a question to be really wondered about, and the shards are a way in. They're the kind of [00:22:00] breadcrumb trail through the forest. They're the little bits of broken something, which if you begin to handle just three or four of them, and kind of fit them together, and find something of the original shape and inflection of the original vessel, kind of enunciates, begins to murmur in your hands, and from it you can begin to infer some three-dimensionality to the original shape. And from the sense of the shape, you get a set sense of contour, and from the sense of contour, you get a sense of scale or size. And from that you get a sense of purpose, or function, or design. And from that you get a sense of some kind of serious magisterial insight into some of the fundament of human being that was manifest in the "old-order matrimony," [00:23:00] as I came to call it.So, who wouldn't wanna read that book?Chris: Mm-hmm.Thank you. Mm-hmm. Thank you, Stephen. Yeah. It reminds me, just before coming up here, maybe two weeks ago, I was in attending a wedding. And there was a host or mc, and initially just given what I was hearing over the microphone, it was hard to tell if he was hired or family or friends. And it turned out he was, in fact, a friend of the groom. And throughout the night he proceeded to take up that role as a kind of comedian.Audience: Mm-hmm.Chris: This was the idea, I guess. Mm-hmm. And he was buzzing and mumbling and swearing into the microphone, [00:24:00] and then finally minimizing the only remnant of traditional culture that showed up in the wedding. And his thing was, okay, so when can we get to the part where it's boom, boom, boom, right. And shot, shot, shot, whatever.Stephen: Right.Chris: There was so much that came up in my memories in part because I worked about a decade in Toronto in the wedding industry.Mm-hmm. Hospitality industry. Maybe a contradiction in terms, there. And there was one moment that really kind of summed it up. I kept coming back to this reading the book because it was everything that you wrote seemed to not only antithetical to this moment, but also an antidote.Anyways, it was in North Toronto and the [00:25:00] owner of the venue - it was a kind of movie theatre turned event venue - and there was a couple who was eventually going to get married there. They came in to do their tasting menu to see what they wanted to put on the menu for the dinner, for their wedding.And the owner was kind of this mafioso type. And he comes in and he sees them and he walks over and he says, "so, you're gonna get married at my wedding factory."Audience: Mm-hmm.Chris: In all sincerity.Stephen: Mm-hmm.Chris: Right.Without skipping a beat. Could you imagine?Stephen: Yeah.I could. I sure could.Chris: Yeah. Yeah.Stephen: I mean, don't forget, if these people weren't doing what the people wanted, they'd be outta business.Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: No, that's the thing. This is aiding and abetting. This is sleeping with the enemy, stylistically-speaking. [00:26:00] The fact that people "settle" (that's the term I would use for it), settle for this, the idea being that this somehow constitutes the most honest and authentic through line available to us is just jaw dropping. When you consider what allegedly this thing is supposed to be for. I mean, maybe we'll get into this, but I'll just leave this as a question for now. What is that moment allegedly doing?Not, what are the people in it allegedly doing? The moment itself, what is it? How is it different from us sitting here now talking about it? And how is it different from the gory frigging jet-fuelled aftermath of excess. And how's it different from the cursing alleged master of ceremonies? How can you [00:27:00] tell none of those things belong to this thing?And why do you have such a hard time imagining what doesAudience: Hmm mmChris: Well that leads me to my next question.Stephen: Ah, you're welcome.Chris: So, I've pulled a number of quotes from the book to read from over the course of the interview. And this one for anyone who's listening is on page 150. And you write Stephen,"Spiritually-speaking, most of the weddings in our corner of the world are endogamous affairs, inward-looking. What is, to me, most unnerving is that they can be spiritually-incestuous. The withering of psychic difference between people is the program of globalization. It is in the architecture of most things partaking of the internet, and it is in the homogeneity of our matrimony. [00:28:00] It is this very incestuous that matrimony was once crafted and entered into to avoid and subvert. Now, it grinds upon our differences until they are details.And so, this paragraph reminded me of a time in my youth when I seemed to be meeting couples who very eerily looked like each other. No blood or extended kin relation whatsoever, and yet they had very similar faces. And so as I get older, this kind of face fidelity aside, I continue to notice that people looking for companionship tend to base their search on similitude, on shared interests, customs, experiences, shared anything and everything. This, specifically, in opposition to those on the other side of the aisle or spectrum, to difference or divergence. And so, opposites don't attract anymore. I'm curious what you think this psychic [00:29:00] withering does to an achieve understanding of matrimony.Stephen: Well, I mean, let's wonder what it does to us, generally, first before we get to matrimony, let's say. It demonizes. Maybe that's too strong, but it certainly reconstitutes difference as some kind of affliction, some kind of not quite good enough, some kind of something that has to be overcome or overwhelmed on the road to, to what? On the road to sameness? So, if that's the goal, then are all of the differences between us, aberrations of some kind, if that's the goal? If that's the goal, are all the [00:30:00] differences between us, not God-given, but humanly misconstrued or worse? Humanly wrought? Do the differences between us conceivably then belong at all? Or is the principle object of the entire endeavor to marry yourself, trying to put up with the vague differences that the other person represents to you?I mean, I not very jokingly said years ago, that I coined a phrase that went something like "the compromise of infinity, which is other people." What does that mean? "The compromise of infinity, which is other people." Not to mention it's a pretty nice T-shirt. But what I meant by the [00:31:00] phrase is this: when you demonize difference in this fashion or when you go the other direction and lionize sameness, then one of the things that happens is that compromise becomes demonized, too. Compromise, by definition, is something you never should have done, right? Compromise is how much you surrender of yourself in order to get by. That's what all these things become. And before you know it, you're just beaten about the head and shoulders about "codependence" and you know, not being "true to yourself" as if being true to yourself is some kind of magic.I mean, the notion that "yourself is the best part of you" is just hilarious. I mean, when you think about it, like who's running amuck if yourself is what you're supposed to be? I ask you. Like, who's [00:32:00] doing the harm? Who's going mental if the self is such a good idea? So, of course, I'm maintaining here that I'm not persuaded that there is such a thing.I think it's a momentary lapse in judgment to have a self and to stick to it. That's the point I'm really making to kind of reify it until it turns ossified and dusty and bizarrely adamant like that estranged relative that lives in the basement of your house. Bizarrely, foreignly adamant, right? Like the house guest who just won't f**k off kind of thing.Okay, so "to thine own self be true," is it? Well, try being true to somebody else's self for ten minutes. Try that. [00:33:00] That's good at exercise for matrimony - being true to somebody else's self. You'll discover that their selves are not made in heaven, either. Either. I underscore it - either. I've completely lost track of the question you asked me.Chris: What are the consequences of the sameness on this anti-cultural sameness, and the program of it for an achieved understanding of matrimony.Stephen: Thank you. Well, I will fess up right now. I do so in the book. That's a terrible phrase. I swear I'd never say such a thing. "In my book... I say the following," but in this case, it's true. I did say this. I realized during the writing of it that I had made a tremendous tactical error in the convening of the event as I did it over the years, [00:34:00] and this is what it came to.I was very persuaded at the time of the story that appears in the chapter called "Salt and Indigo" in the book. I was very, very persuaded. I mean, listen, I made up the story (for what it's worth), okay, but I didn't make it up out of nothing. I made it up out of a kind of tribal memory that wouldn't quite let go.And in it, I was basically saying, here's these two tribes known principally for what they trade in and what they love most emphatically. They turn out to be the same thing. And I describe a circumstance in which they exchange things in a trade scenario, not a commerce scenario. And I'm using the chapter basically to make the case that matrimony's architecture derives in large measure from the sacraments of trade as manifest in that story. [00:35:00] Okay. And this is gonna sound obvious, but the fundamental requirement of the whole conceit that I came up with is that there are two tribes. Well, I thought to myself, "of course, there's always two tribes" at the time. And the two tribe-ness is reflected in when you come to the wedding site, you're typically asked (I hope you're still asked) " Are you family or friend of the groom or friend of the bride?" And you're seated "accordingly," right? That's the nominal, vestigial shard of this old tribal affiliation, that people came from over the rise, basically unknown to each other, to arrive at the kind of no man's land of matrimony, and proceeded accordingly. So, I put these things into motion in this very room and I sat people accordingly facing each other, not facing the alleged front of the room. [00:36:00] And of course, man, nobody knew where to look, because you raised your eyes and s**t. There's just humans across from you, just scads of them who you don't freaking know. And there's something about doing that to North Americas that just throws them. So, they're just looking at each other and then looking away, and looking at each other and looking away, and wondering what they're doing here and what it's for. And I'm going back and forth for three hours, orienting them as to what is is coming.Okay, so what's the miscalculation that I make? The miscalculation I made was assuming that by virtue of the seating arrangement, by virtue of me reminding them of the salt and indigo times, by virtue of the fact that they had a kind of allegiance of some sort or another to the people who are, for the moment, betrothed, that those distinctions and those affiliations together would congeal them, and constitute a [00:37:00] kind of tribal affiliation that they would intuitively be drawn towards as you would be drawn to heat on a cold winter's night.Only to discover, as I put the thing into motion that I was completely wrong about everything I just told you about. The nature of my error was this, virtually all of those people on one side of the room were fundamentally of the same tribe as the people on the other side of the room, apropos of your question, you see. They were card carrying members of the gray dominant culture of North America. Wow. The bleached, kind of amorphous, kind of rootless, ancestor-free... even regardless of whether their people came over in the last generation from the alleged old country. It doesn't really claim them.[00:38:00]There were two tribes, but I was wrong about who they were. That was one tribe. Virtually everybody sitting in the room was one tribe.So, who's the other tribe? Answer is: me and the four or five people who were in on the structural delivery of this endeavour with me. We were the other tribe.We didn't stand a chance, you see?And I didn't pick up on that, and I didn't cast it accordingly and employ that, instead. I employed the conceit that I insisted was manifest and mobilized in the thing, instead of the manifest dilemma, which is that everybody who came knew what a wedding was, and me and four or five other people were yet to know if this could be one. That was the tribal difference, if you [00:39:00] will.So, it was kind of invisible, wasn't it? Even to me at the time. Or, I say, maybe especially to me at the time. And so, things often went the way they went, which was for however much fascination and willingness to consider that there might have been in the room, there was quite a bit more either flat affect and kind of lack of real fascination, or curiosity, or sometimes downright hostility and pushback. Yeah.So, all of that comes from the fact that I didn't credit as thoroughly as I should have done, the persistence in Anglo-North America of a kind of generic sameness that turned out to be what most people came here ancestrally to become. "Starting again" is recipe for culture [00:40:00] loss of a catastrophic order. The fantasy of starting again. Right?And we've talked about that in your podcast, and you and I have talked about it privately, apropos of your own family and everybody's sitting in this room knows what I'm talking about. And when does this show up? Does it show up, oh, when you're walking down the street? Does it show up when you're on the mountaintop? Does it show up in your peak experiences? And the answer is "maybe." It probably shows up most emphatically in those times when you have a feeling that something special is supposed to be so, and all you can get from the "supposed to" is the allegation of specialness.Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: And then, you look around in the context of matrimony and you see a kind of febral, kind of strained, the famous bridezilla stuff, all of that stuff. [00:41:00] You saw it in the hospitality industry, no doubt. You know, the kind of mania for perfection, as if perfection constitutes culture. Right? With every detail checked off in the checkbox, that's culture. You know, as if everything goes off without a hitch and there's no guffaws. And in fact, anybody could reasonably make the case, "Where do you think culture appears when the script finally goes f*****g sideways?" That's when. And when you find out what you're capable of, ceremonially.And generally speaking, I think most people discovered that their ceremonial illiteracy bordered on the bottomless.That's when you find out. Hmm.Chris: Wow.Stephen: Yeah. And that's why people, you know, in speech time, they reach in there and get that piece of paper, and just look at it. Mm-hmm. They don't even look up, terrified that they're gonna go off script for a minute as [00:42:00] if the Gods of Matrimony are a scripted proposition.Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with us, that degree of deep reflection and humility that I'm sure comes with it.Stephen: Mea Culpa, baby. Yeah, I was, I got that one totally wrong. Mm-hmm. And I didn't know it at the time. Meanwhile, like, how much can you transgress and have the consequences of doing so like spill out across the floor like a broken thermometer's mercury and not wise up.But of course, I was as driven as anybody. I was as driven to see if I could come through with what I promised to do the year before. And keeping your promise can make you into a maniac.Audience: Hmm hmm.Chris: But I imagine that, you [00:43:00] know, you wouldn't have been able to see that even years later if you didn't say yes in the first place.Stephen: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I wouldn't have been able to make the errors.Chris: Right.Stephen: Right. Yeah. I mean, as errors go, this is not a mortal sin. Right, right. And you could chalk it up to being a legitimate miscalculation. Well, so? All I'm saying is, it turns out I was there too, and it turns out, even though I was allegedly the circus master of the enterprise, I wasn't free and clear of the things we were all contending with, the kind of mortality and sort of cultural ricketiness that were all heirs to. That's how I translated it, as it turns out.So, PS there was a moment, [00:44:00] which I don't remember which setting it was now, but there was a moment when the "maybe we'll see if she becomes a bride" bride's mother slid up to me during the course of the proceedings, and in a kind of stage whisper more or less hissed me as follows."Is this a real wedding?"I mean, that's not a question. Not in that setting, obviously not. That is an accusation. Right. And a withering one at that. And there was a tremendous amount of throw-down involved.So, was it? I mean, what we do know is that she did not go to any of the weddings [00:45:00] that she was thinking of at the time, and go to the front of the room where the celebrant is austerely standing there with the book, or the script, or the well-intentioned, or the self-penned vows and never hissed at him or her, "is this a real wedding?"Never once did she do that. We know that.Right.And I think we know why. But she was fairly persuaded she knew what a real wedding was. And all she was really persuaded by was the poverty of the weddings that she'd attended before that one. Well, I was as informed in that respect as she was, wasn't I? I just probably hadn't gone to as many reprobate weddings as she had, so she had more to deal with than I did, even though I was in the position of the line of fire.And I didn't respond too well to the question, I have to say. At the moment, I was rather combative. But I mean, you try to do [00:46:00] what I tried to do and not have a degree of fierceness to go along with your discernment, you know, just to see if you can drag this carcass across the threshold. Anyway, that happened too.Chris: Wow. Yeah. Dominant culture of North America.Stephen: Heard of it.Chris: Yeah. Well, in Matrimony, there's quite a bit in which you write about hospitality and radical hospitality. And I wanted to move in that direction a little bit, because in terms of these kind of marketplace rituals or ceremonies that you were mentioning you know, it's something that we might wonder, I think, as you have, how did it come to be this [00:47:00] way?And so I'd like to, if I can once again, quote from matrimony in which you speak to the etymology of hospitality. And so for those interested on page 88,"the word hospitality comes from hospitaller, meaning 'one who cares for the afflicted, the infirm, the needy.' There's that thread of our misgivings about being on the receiving end of hospitality. Pull on it. For the written history of the word, at least, it has meant, 'being on the receiving end of a kind of care you'd rather not need.'"End quote.Stephen: That's so great. I mean, before you go on with the quote. It's so great to know that the word, unexamined, just kind of leaks upside, doesn't it? Hospitality, I mean, nobody goes "Hospitality, ew." [00:48:00] And then, if you just quietly do the obvious math to yourself, there's so much awkwardness around hospitality.This awkwardness must have an origin, have a home. There must be some misgiving that goes along with the giving of hospitality, mustn't there be? How else to understand where that kind of ickiness is to be found. Right? And it turns out that the etymology is giving you the beginnings of a way of figuring it out what it is that you're on the receiving end of - a kind of succor that you wish you didn't need, which is why it's the root word for "hospital."Chris: Hmm hmm. Wow.Audience: Hmm.Chris: May I repeat that sentence please? Once more."For the written history of the word, at least, it has meant, [00:49:00] 'being on the receiving end of a kind of care you'd rather not need.'"And so this last part hits home for me as I imagine it does for many.And it feels like the orthodoxy of hospitality in our time is one based not only in transaction, but in debt. And if you offer hospitality to me, then I owe you hospitality.Stephen: Right.Chris: I'm indebted to you. And we are taught, in our time, that the worst thing to be in is in debt.Stephen: Right?Chris: And so people refuse both the desire to give as well as the learning skill of receiving. And this is continuing on page 88 now."But there's mystery afoot with this word. In its old Latin form, hospice meant both 'host' and 'guest.'"Stephen: Amazing. One. Either one, This is absolutely amazing. We're fairly sure that there's a [00:50:00] acres of difference between the giver of hospitality and the receiver that the repertoire is entirely different, that the skew between them is almost insurmountable, that they're not interchangeable in any way. But the history of the word immediately says, "really?" The history of the word, without question, says that "host" and "guest" are virtually the same, sitting in different places, being different people, more or less joined at the hip. I'll say more, but you go ahead with what you were gonna do. Sure.Chris: "In it's proto Indo-European origins, hospitality and hospice is a compound word: gosh + pot. And it meant something like [00:51:00] 'stranger/guest/host + powerful Lord.'It is amazing to me that ancestrally, the old word for guest, host, and stranger were all the same word. Potent ceremonial business, this is. In those days, the server and the serve were partners in something mysterious. This could be confusing, but only if you think of guest, host, and stranger as fixed identities.If you think of them as functions, as verbs, the confusion softens and begins to clear. The word hospice in its ancient root is telling us that each of the people gathered together in hospitality is bound to the others by formal etiquette, yes, but the bond is transacted through a subtle scheme of graces.Hospitality, it tells us, is a web of longing and belonging that binds people for a time, some hithereto unknown to each other is a clutch of mutually-binding elegances, you could say. In its ancient practice, [00:52:00] hospitality was a covenant. According to that accord, however we were with each other. That was how the Gods would be with us. We learn our hospitality by being on the receiving end of Godly administration. That's what giving thanks for members. We proceed with our kin in imitation of that example and in gratitude for it."Mm-hmm.And so today, among "secular" people, with the Gods ignored, this old-time hospitality seems endangered, if not fugitive. I'm curious how you imagine that this rupture arose, the ones that separated and commercialized the radical relationships between hosts and guests, that turned them from verbs to nouns and something like strangers to marketplace functions.[00:53:00]Stephen: Well, of course this is a huge question you've asked, and I'll see if I can unhuge it a bit.Chris: Uhhuh.Stephen: Let's go right to the heart of what happened. Just no preliminaries, just right to it.So, to underscore again, the beauty of the etymology. I've told you over and over again, the words will not fail you. And this is just a shining example, isn't it? That the fraternization is a matter of ceremonial alacrity that the affiliation between host and guest, which makes them partners in something, that something is the [00:54:00] evocation of a third thing that's neither one of them. It's the thing they've lent themselves to by virtue of submitting to being either a host or a guest. One.Two. You could say that in circumstances of high culture or highly-functioning culture, one of the principle attributes of that culture is that the fundament of its understanding, is that only with the advent of the stranger in their midst that the best of them comes forward.Okay, follow that. Yeah.So, this is a little counterintuitive for those of us who don't come from such places. We imagine that the advent of strangers in the midst of the people I'm describing would be an occasion where people hide their [00:55:00] best stuff away until the stranger disappears, and upon the disappearance of the stranger, the good stuff comes out again.You know?So, I'm just remembering just now, there's a moment in the New Testament where Jesus says something about the best wine and he's coming from exactly this page that we're talking about - not the page in the book, but this understanding. He said, you know, "serve your best wine first," unlike the standard, that prevails, right?So again, what a stranger does in real culture is call upon the cultural treasure of the host's culture, and provides the opportunity for that to come forward, right? By which you can understand... Let's say for simplicity's sake, there's two kinds of hospitality. There's probably all kinds of gradations, [00:56:00] but for the purposes of responding to what you've asked, there's two.One of them is based on kinship. Okay? So, family meal. So, everybody knows whose place is whose around the table, or it doesn't matter - you sit wherever you want. Or, when we're together, we speak shorthand. That's the shorthand of familiarity and affinity, right?Everybody knows what everybody's talking about. A lot of things get half-said or less, isn't it? And there's a certain fineness, isn't it? That comes with that kind of affinity. Of course, there is, and I'm not diminishing it at all. I'm just characterizing it as being of a certain frequency or calibre or charge. And the charge is that it trades on familiarity. It requires that. There's that kind of hospitality."Oh, sit wherever you want."Remember this one?[00:57:00]"We don't stand on ceremony here.""Oh, you're one of the family now." I just got here. What, what?But, of course, you can hear in the protestations the understanding, in that circumstance, that formality is an enemy to feeling good in this moment, isn't it? It feels stiff and starched and uncalled for or worse.It feels imported from elsewhere. It doesn't feel friendly. So, I'm giving you now beginnings of a differentiation between how cultures who really function as cultures understand what it means to be hospitable and what often prevails today, trading is a kind of low-grade warfare conducted against the strangeness of the stranger.The whole purpose of treating somebody like their family is to mitigate, and finally neutralize their [00:58:00] strangeness, so that for the purposes of the few hours in front of us all, there are no strangers here. Right? Okay.Then there's another kind, and intuitively you can feel what I'm saying. You've been there, you know exactly what I mean.There's another kind of circumstance where the etiquette that prevails is almost more emphatic, more tangible to you than the familiar one. That's the one where your mother or your weird aunt or whoever she might be, brings out certain kind of stuff that doesn't come out every day. And maybe you sit in a room that you don't often sit in. And maybe what gets cooked is stuff you haven't seen in a long time. And some part of you might be thinking, "What the hell is all this about?" And the answer is: it's about that guy in the [00:59:00] corner that you don't know.And your own ancestral culture told acres of stories whose central purpose was to convey to outsiders their understanding of what hospitality was. That is fundamentally what The Iliad and The Odyssey are often returning to and returning to and returning to.They even had a word for the ending of the formal hospitality that accrued, that arose around the care and treatment of strangers. It was called pomp or pompe, from which we get the word "pompous." And you think about what the word "pompous" means today.It means "nose in the air," doesn't it? Mm-hmm. It means "thinks really highly of oneself," isn't it? And it means "useless, encumbering, kind of [01:00:00] artificial kind of going through the motions stuff with a kind of aggrandizement for fun." That's what "pompous" means. Well, the people who gave us the word didn't mean that at all. This word was the word they used to describe the particular moment of hospitality when it was time for the stranger to leave.And when it was mutually acknowledged that the time for hospitality has come to an end, and the final act of hospitality is to accompany the stranger out of the house, out of the compound, out into the street, and provision them accordingly, and wish them well, and as is oftentimes practiced around here, standing in the street and waving them long after they disappear from view.This is pompous. This is what it actually means. Pretty frigging cool when you get corrected once in a while, isn't it? [01:01:00] Yeah.So, as I said, to be simplistic about it, there's at least a couple of kinds, and one of them treasures the advent of the stranger, understanding it to be the detonation point for the most elegant part of us to come forward.Now, those of us who don't come from such a place, we're just bamboozled and Shanghai'ed by the notion of formality, which we kind of eschew. You don't like formality when it comes to celebration, as if these two things are hostile, one to the other. But I'd like you to consider the real possibility that formality is grace under pressure, and that formality is there to give you a repertoire of response that rescues you from the gross limitations of your autobiography.[01:02:00]Next question. I mean, that's the beginning.Chris: Absolutely. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Thank you once again, Stephen. So alongside the term or concept of "pompe," in which the the guest or stranger was led out of the house or to the entrance of the village, there was also the consideration around the enforcement of hospitality, which you write about in the book. And you write that"the enforcement of hospitality runs the palpable risk of violating or undoing the cultural value it is there to advocate for. Forcing people to share their good fortune with the less fortunate stretches, to the point of undoing the generosity of spirit that the culture holds dear. Enforcement of hospitality is a sign of the eclipse of hospitality, typically spawned by insecurity, contracted self-definition, and the darkening of the [01:03:00] stranger at the door.Instead, such places and times are more likely to encourage the practice of hospitality in subtle generous ways, often by generously treating the ungenerous."And so there seems to be a need for limits placed on hospitality, in terms of the "pompe," the maximum three days in which a stranger can be given hospitality, and concurrently a need to resist enforcing hospitality. This seems like a kind of high-wire act that hospitable cultures have to balance in order to recognize and realize an honorable way of being with a stranger. And so I'm wondering if you could speak to the possibility of how these limits might be practiced without being enforced. What might that look like in a culture that engages with, with such limits, but without prohibitions?Stephen: Mm-hmm. That's a very good question. [01:04:00] Well, I think your previous question was what happened? I think, in a nutshell, and I didn't really answer that, so maybe see how I can use this question to answer the one that you asked before: what happened? So, there's no doubt in my mind that something happened that it's kind of demonstrable, if only with the benefit of hindsight.Audience: Right.Stephen: Or we can feel our way around the edges of the absence of the goneness of that thing that gives us some feel for the original shape of that thing.So you could say I'm trafficking in "ideals," here, and after a fashion, maybe, yeah. But the notion of "ideals," when it's used in this slanderous way suggests that "it was never like that."Chris: Mm-hmm.Stephen: And I suggest to you it's been like that in a lot of places, and there's a lot of places where it's still like that, although globalization [01:05:00] may be the coup de grâce performed upon this capacity. Okay. But anyway.Okay. So what happened? Well, you see in the circumstance that I described, apropos of the stranger, the stranger is in on it. The stranger's principle responsibility is to be the vector for this sort of grandiose generosity coming forward, and to experience that in a burdensome and unreciprocated fashion, until you realize that their willingness to do that is their reciprocity. Everybody doesn't get to do everything at once. You can't give and receive at the same time. You know what that's called? "Secret Santa at school," isn't it?That's where nobody owes nobody nothing at the end. That's what we're all after. I mean, one of your questions, you know, pointed to that, that there's a kind of, [01:06:00] what do you call that, teeter-totter balance between what people did for each other and what they received for each other. Right. And nobody feels slighted in any way, perfect balance, et cetera.Well, the circumstance here has nothing of the kind going with it. The circumstance we're describing now is one in which the hospitality is clearly unequal in terms of who's eating whose food, for example, in terms of the absolutely frustrated notion of reciprocity, that in fact you undo your end of the hospitality by trying to pay back, or give back, or pay at all, or break even, or not feel the burden of "God, you've been on the take for fricking hours here now." And if you really look in the face of the host, I mean, they're just getting started and you can't, you can't take it anymore.[01:07:00]So, one of the ways that we contend with this is through habits of speech. So, if somebody comes around with seconds. They say, "would you like a little more?"And you say, "I'm good. I'm good. I'm good." You see, "I'm good" is code for what? "F**k off." That's what it's code for. It's a little strong. It's a little strong. What I mean is, when "I'm good" comes to town, it means I don't need you and what you have. Good God, you're not there because you need it you knucklehead. You're there because they need it, because their culture needs an opportunity to remember itself. Right?Okay. So what happened? Because you're making it sound like a pretty good thing, really. Like who would say, "I think we've had enough of this hospitality thing, don't you? Let's try, oh, [01:08:00] keeping our s**t to ourselves. That sounds like a good alternative. Let's give it a week or two, see how it rolls." Never happened. Nobody decided to do this - this change, I don't think. I think the change happened, and sometime long after people realized that the change had had taken place. And it's very simple. The change, I think, went something like this.As long as the guest is in on it, there's a shared and mutually-held understanding that doesn't make them the same. It makes them to use the quote from the book "partners," okay, with different tasks to bring this thing to light, to make it so. What does that require? A mutually-held understanding in vivo as it's happening, what it is.Okay. [01:09:00] So, that the stranger who's not part of the host culture... sorry, let me say this differently.The culture of the stranger has made the culture of the host available to the stranger no matter how personally adept he or she may be at receiving. Did you follow that?Audience: A little.Stephen: Okay. Say it again?Audience: Yes, please.Stephen: Okay. The acculturation, the cultured sophistication of the stranger is at work in his or her strangerhood. Okay. He or she's not at home, but their cultural training helps them understand what their obligations are in terms of this arrangement we've been describing here.Okay, so I think the rupture takes place [01:10:00] when the culturation of one side or the other fails to make the other discernible to the one.One more time?When something happens whereby the acculturation of one of the partners makes the identity, the presence, and the valence of the other one untranslatable. Untranslatable.I could give you an example from what I call " the etiquette of trade," or the... what was the word? Not etiquette. What's the other word?Chris: The covenant?Stephen: Okay, " covenant of trade" we'll call it. So, imagine that people are sitting across from each other, two partners in a trade. Okay? [01:11:00] Imagine that they have one thing to sell or move or exchange and somebody has something else.How does this work? Not "what are the mechanics?" That can be another discussion, but, if this works, how does it work? Not "how does it happen?" How does it actually achieve what they're after? Maybe it's something like this.I have this pottery, and even though you're not a potter, but somebody in your extended family back home was, and you watched what they went through to make a fricking pot, okay?You watched how their hands seized up, because the clay leached all the moisture out of the hands. You distinctly remember that - how the old lady's hands looked cracked and worn, and so from the work of making vessels of hospitality, okay? [01:12:00] It doesn't matter that you didn't make it yourself. The point is you recognize in the item something we could call "cultural patrimony."You recognize the deep-runningness of the culture opposite you as manifest and embodied in this item for trade. Okay? So, the person doesn't have to "sell you" because your cultural sophistication makes this pot on the other side available to you for the deeply venerable thing that it is. Follow what I'm saying?Okay. So, you know what I'm gonna say next? When something happens, the items across from you cease to speak, cease to have their stories come along with them, cease to be available. There's something about your cultural atrophy that you project onto the [01:13:00] item that you don't recognize.You don't recognize it's valence, it's proprieties, it's value, it's deep-running worth and so on. Something happened, okay? And because you're not making your own stuff back home or any part of it. And so now, when you're in a circumstance like this and you're just trying to get this pot, but you know nothing about it, then the enterprise becomes, "Okay, so what do you have to part with to obtain the pot?"And the next thing is, you pretend you're not interested in obtaining the pot to obtain the pot. That becomes part of the deal. And then, the person on the making end feels the deep running slight of your disinterest, or your vague involvement in the proceedings, or maybe the worst: when it's not things you're going back and forth with, but there's a third thing called money, which nobody makes, [01:14:00] which you're not reminded of your grandma or anyone else's with the money. And then, money becomes the ghost of the original understanding of the cultural patrimony that sat between you. That's what happened, I'm fairly sure: the advent, the estrangement that comes with the stranger, instead of the opportunity to be your cultural best when the stranger comes.And then of course, it bleeds through all kinds of transactions beyond the "obvious material ones." So, it's a rupture in translatability, isn't it?Chris: You understand this to happen or have happened historically, culturally, et cetera, with matrimony as well?Stephen: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.Yeah. This is why, for example, things like the fetishization of virginity.Audience: Mm-hmm. [01:15:00]Stephen: I think it's traceable directly to what we're talking about. How so? Oh, this is a whole other long thing, but the very short version would be this.Do you really believe that through all of human history until the recent liberation, that people have forever fetishized the virginity of a young woman and jealously defended it, the "men" in particular, and that it became a commodity to trade back and forth in, and that it had to be prodded and poked at to determine its intactness? And this was deemed to be, you know, honourable behavior?Do you really think that's the people you come from, that they would've do that to the most cherished of their [01:16:00] own, barely pubescent girls? Come on now. I'm not saying it didn't happen and doesn't still happen. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, God almighty, something happened for that to be so.And I'm trying to allude to you now what I think took place. Then all of a sudden, the hymen takes the place of the pottery, doesn't it? And it becomes universally translatable. Doesn't it? It becomes a kind of a ghosted artifact of a culturally-intact time. It's as close as you can get.Hence, this allegation of its purity, or the association with purity, and so on. [01:17:00] I mean, there's lots to say, but that gives you a feel for what might have happened there.Chris: Thank you, Stephen. Thank you for being so generous with your considerations here.Stephen: You see why I had to write a book, eh?Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: There was too much bouncing around. Like I had to just keep track of my own thoughts on the matter.But can you imagine all of this at play in the year, oh, I don't know, 2022, trying to put into motion a redemptive passion play called "matrimony," with all of this at play? Not with all of this in my mind, but with all of this actually disfiguring the anticipation of the proceedings for the people who came.Can you imagine? Can you imagine trying to pull it off, and [01:18:00] contending overtly with all these things and trying to make room for them in a moment that's supposed to be allegedly - get ready for it - happy.I should have raised my rates on the first day, trying to pull that off.But anyway.Okay, you go now,Chris: Maybe now you'll have the opportunity.Stephen: No, man. No. I'm out of the running for that. "Pompe" has come and come and gone. Mm.Chris: So, in matrimony, Stephen, you write that"the brevity, the brevity of modern ceremonies is really there to make sure that nothing happens, nothing of substance, nothing of consequence, no alchemy, no mystery, no crazy other world stuff. That overreach there in its scripted heart tells me that deep in the rayon-wrapped bosom of that special day, the modern wedding is scared [01:19:00] silly of something happening. That's because it has an ages-old abandoned memory of a time when a wedding was a place where the Gods came around, where human testing and trying and making was at hand, when the dead lingered in the wings awaiting their turn to testify and inveigh."Gorgeous. Gorgeous.Audience: Mm-hmm.Chris: And so I'm curious ifStephen: "Rayon-wrapped bosom." That's not, that's not shabby.Chris: "Rayon-wrapped bosom of that special day." Yeah.So, I'm curious do you think the more-than-human world practices matrimony, and if so, what, if anything, might you have learned about matrimony from the more-than-human world?Stephen: I would say the reverse. I would say, we practice the more-than-human world in matrimony, not that the more-than-human world practices matrimony. We practice them, [01:20:00] matrimonially.Next. Okay. Or no? I just gonna say that, that's pretty good.Well, where do we get our best stuff from? Let's just wonder that. Do we get our best stuff from being our best? Well, where does that come from? And this is a bit of a barbershop mirrors situation here, isn't it? To, to back, back, back, back.If you're thinking of time, you can kind of get lost in that generation before, or before, before, before. And it starts to sound like one of them biblical genealogies. But if you think of it as sort of the flash point of multiple presences, if you think of it that way, then you come to [01:21:00] credit the real possibility that your best stuff comes from you being remembered by those who came before you.Audience: Hmm.Stephen: Now just let that sit for a second, because what I just said is logically-incompatible.Okay? You're being remembered by people who came before you. That's not supposed to work. It doesn't work that way. Right?"Anticipated," maybe, but "remembered?" How? Well, if you credit the possibility of multiple beginnings, that's how. Okay. I'm saying that your best stuff, your best thoughts, not the most noble necessarily. I would mean the most timely, [01:22:00] the ones that seem most needed, suddenly.You could take credit and sure. Why, why not? Because ostensibly, it arrives here through you, but if you're frank with yourself, you know that you didn't do that on command, right? I mean, you could say, I just thought of it, but you know in your heart that it was thought of and came to you.I don't think there's any difference between saying that and saying you were thought of.Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: So, that's what I think the rudiments of old-order matrimony are. They are old people and their benefactors in the food chain and spiritually speaking. Old people and their benefactors, the best part of them [01:23:00] willed to us, entrusted and willed to us. So, when you are willing to enter into the notion that old-order matrimony is older than you, older than your feelings for the other person, older than your love, and your commitment, and your willingness to make the vows and all that stuff, then you're crediting the possibility that your love is not the beginning of anything.You see. Your love is the advent of something, and I use that word deliberately in its Christian notion, right? It's the oncomingness, the eruption into the present day of something, which turns out to be hugely needed and deeply unsuspected at the same time.I used to ask in the school, "can you [01:24:00] have a memory of something you have no lived experience of?" I think that's what the best part of you is. I'm not saying the rest of you is shite. I'm not saying that. You could say that, but I am saying that when I say "the best part of you," that needs a lot of translating, doesn't it?But the gist of it is that the best part of you is entrusted to you. It's not your creation, it's your burden, your obligation, your best chance to get it right. And that's who we are to those who came before us. We are their chance to get it right, and matrimony is one of the places where you practice the gentle art of getting it right.[01:25:00] Another decent reason to write a book.Chris: So, gorgeous. Wow. Thank you Stephen. I might have one more question.Stephen: Okay. I might have one more answer. Let's see.Chris: Alright. Would I be able to ask if dear Nathalie Roy could join us up here alongside your good man.So, returning to Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart's Work. On page 94, [01:26:00] Stephen, you write that"hospitality of the radical kind is

Mamas, today's world can feel overwhelming—but you were born for such a time as this (Esther 4:14)!

In this episode Cath and Dr. Herman talked about trauma and recovery, justice for survivors, complex trauma, stages of recovery/healing, what helps in the postpartum period according to research and Dr Herman's incredible work in the field of trauma, justice, repair, healing and recovery.Judith Lewis Herman M.D. is Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry (part time) at Harvard Medical School. For thirty years, until she retired, she was Director of Training at the Victims of Violence Program at The Cambridge Hospital, Cambridge, MA. She is the author of the award-winning books Father-Daughter Incest (Harvard University Press, 1981), and Trauma and Recovery (Basic Books, 1992). She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship in 1984 and the 1996 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. In 2007 she was named a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.Her new book, Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice, was published in March, 2023.If you're enjoying this podcast. Please leave a review and rate the podcast, this really helps others to find it.To sign up for the journal prompts and Nurture.Heal.Grow (on Substack) please head to www.cathcounihan.com or @cathcounihan on Instagram. Follow Cath on social media here:Instagram: @cathcounihanSubstack: Nurture.Heal.GrowFacebook: Cath Counihan Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Author and scholar, Dr. Sagashus T. Levingston, tells host Ali Muldrow about economic shame and the power of homeownership for her “little disheveled band of humans.” The post Mothering Doesn't Equal Martyrdom appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

In this episode, we welcome Stephen Jenkinson—writer, teacher, storyteller, and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School. Stephen is known for breaking open the marrow of language and returning it in all its poetic weight. His work on elderhood, grief, dying wise, and the making (and unmaking) of culture has touched people all over the world.His newest book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work, takes on what he calls the “mother of a culture”—the wedding. In a time when so many weddings risk becoming performances, spectacles, or non-events, Stephen asks: what would it mean to make a wedding real?In this conversation we explore:Why vows are not the same as promisesHow families, friends, and communities become witnesses rather than spectatorsWhy weddings matter in a culture of high divorce rates and discredited ritualsWhat it means for the union of two people to implicate everyone presentThe difference between a ceremony that entertains and a ceremony that truly happensThis is not just a conversation about marriage. It's about consequence, culture, and what it might take to make our ceremonies—and our lives—real.Links You'll LoveOrphan WisdomMatrimony the BookArc + Craft: An Exploration of Creativity and Culture Making EventLoved this ep? Try this one:160 Manda Scott - Pondering how we became accidental gods of this land & seeking connection to it with humility not controlPod Partners Rock: Australian Medicinal Herbs    Code: Future5Support the ShowCasual Support - Buy Me A CoffeeRegular Support - PatreonBuy the Book - Futuresteading - live like tomorrow matters, Huddle - creating a tomorrow of togethernessSupport the show

Episode Overview In this grounded and heartfelt conversation, Amy Wheeler speaks with yoga therapist and licensed mental health professional Julia Romano about her new book, Yoga Therapy for the Whole Mother. While the book addresses the postpartum journey, Amy and Julia reveal that its deeper message is about learning to mother—not just children, but ourselves, one another, and the world.Julia shares how her life on a farm in West Virginia, her personal healing, and her spiritual path have shaped her therapeutic work. She speaks about the power of awareness, the centrality of presence, and the practical and sacred ways that yoga therapy can help people return to their innate wholeness.Topics ExploredThe archetype of the mother as a model for therapeutic presence and attunementThe link between awareness and agency in nervous system regulationYoga therapy as a re-mothering experience for clients with early attachment woundsHealing disordered body awareness through movement and breathRupture and repair in relationships as essential to human growthMeaning and purpose as antidotes to modern fragmentationWhy the teachings of yoga must be embodied, not just understood intellectuallyKey Quotes “Awareness begets choice—and choice is where healing begins.” — Julia Romano “Yoga therapy is not just about asana or breath; it's about creating a sacred space where another human being feels truly seen.” — Amy Wheeler “It's not about the rupture—it's about the repair.” — Julia Romano “This book is not just about postpartum healing. It's a masterclass in how to be a great yoga therapist.” — Amy WheelerAbout the Book Yoga Therapy for the Whole Mother is a deeply researched and spiritually grounded guide to the postpartum journey, but its insights go far beyond the early months of motherhood. Drawing from classical yoga, neuroscience, clinical experience, and lived wisdom, Julia offers practical tools and philosophical depth for anyone seeking healing, connection, and purpose.The book covers topics such as disordered body image, stress and fatigue, breath regulation, trauma-informed care, the pañcamaya model, and how the therapeutic relationship itself can be a path to wholeness.All research citations and expanded literature reviews are available on Julia's website under the resources section.Connect with Julia RomanoWebsite: www.developingawarenesstherapy.comOffers individual yoga therapy sessions (telehealth and in-person)Available for mentoring newer yoga therapistsWrites regularly on two Substack newsletters:The Yoga Therapy LensParenting While Walking a Spiritual PathClosing Reflections This conversation is a reflection on what it means to live the teachings of yoga—whether in clinical sessions, parenting moments, or quiet daily rituals. Julia reminds us that the act of mothering is not confined to gender or stage of life. It is a practice of witnessing, tending, and trusting the healing that comes through relationship.For anyone who works in healing, caregiving, or simply wants to live with more integrity and compassion, this episode offers deep insight and practical inspiration.Please add normal links for Amy and MUIH- thank you!

Sibling rivalry can feel overwhelming; but there's hope!

Mothering yourself isn't about your relationship with your mother, it's about your relationship with yourself. It's tapping into feminine wisdom- both the soft and tender AND the fierce protector.  Learn More About: A Taoist view on source as the great mother How many of us are reclaiming the ways of our ancient wise and well ancestors The simplicity of dropping elaborate protocols and tuning into nourishing food and sleep Recognizing disempowering stories Attuning to your needs moment to moment   This episode was based on a listener question. Send your questions and thoughts to angela@simpleayurveda.com for future podcast discussions. Resources: 
The Simple Ayurveda health certification program walks you step-by-step through a year-long process of integrating Ayurveda into every aspect of your life so that you are confident in your authentic abilities to share Ayurveda with your community- whether that's your family or clients. Apply here. It is a small group with personalized instruction and individual mentorship led directly by Angela. 
Next cohort starts September 2025. Ayurveda Encompassed: Take your understanding of Ayurveda to a new level and step into a more expansive version of yourself. Join Angela in a high-level small group mentorship with personalized support and resources. For wellness practitioners and Ayurveda enthusiasts. Next cohort Spring 2026.  Free 3-Part Series on Ancient Wisdom + Modern Nuance: German New Medicine, Trauma-Informed Ayurveda and Navigating the Liminal Space Join the Simple Ayurveda newsletter   Resources mentioned in the episode: The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents Tara Brading (Irish and British ancestry)

Many people spend hours on their lawns, running the sprinklers, pouring on the “weed and feed”, driving large riding mowers back and forth and using another noisy machine to makes the edges perfect. Why do we have an obsession with lawns? Have we thought about how lawns and manicured yards do great harm to biodiversity and to the natural ecology of the Earth, and contribute to climate change? In this program, conservation educator, photographer and author Danae Wolfe challenges us to instead value wilder natural landscapes that support all forms of life. Wolfe's book is Grass Isn't Greener, The Everyday Conservationist's Guide to Bringing Nature to Your Yard.

Send us a textI didn't plan to end up emotionally fried by the end of summer... but there I was. I hit my limit. So, I did something radical (for a special needs mom, at least): I took myself to the beach. Alone. No kids. No caregiving. Just me, the ocean, and a much-needed van therapy session overlooking the waves.And wouldn't you know it—while body surfing, I ran into a fellow special needs mom friend, totally by surprise. The odds were wild. We both chose the same beach, at the same time, from different corners of San Diego. It felt divinely orchestrated.This experience reminded me just how extreme the job of a special needs mom really is. Like, Olympic-level extreme. So what if we treated ourselves accordingly? What if we supported ourselves like Serena Williams supports her game—with specialists, intentional recovery, and next-level planning?In this episode, I talk about what it means to be an “extreme mom,” why our current support systems aren't cutting it, and what baby steps you can take to start acknowledging and supporting yourself like the elite performer you are.If nothing else, I double dog dare you to use the text link at the top of the show notes to say it with me: “I am an extreme mom.” Or just say hi—I'll never know it's you, but it makes my day when I get those messages.Get The Special Needs Mom Survival Pack HEREConnect with Kara, host of The Special Needs Mom Podcast:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespecialneedsmompodcast/Website: https://www.kararyska.com/

Nick Pitts of the Institute for Global Engagement offers insights around the battle over congressional maps in Texas and California, as well as responds to the idea of bringing maternal instinct into AI's programming.  Luke Moon of the Philos Project and Generation Zion talks about his excitement for the current college generation in may areas, but also his concern about the high levels of antisemitism among them.  He also updates us on matters in the Middle East.  Faith Radio podcasts are made possible by your support. Give now: Click here

Alaina faced obstacle after obstacle during her first pregnancy, which happened to be a di-di, identical twin girl pregnancy, and her initiation into motherhood resulted in the first twin being born vaginally and the second via cesarean.Recovering from a c-section plus physical separation for days from her babies due to a NICU stay didn't deter Alaina from physiologic mothering and tuning into her high nurture intuition.Alaina walks us through about her mindset, values, and support system which motivated her to break free from the mainstream narrative- especially the one perpetuated in social media- that moms of multiples must pump and rely on formula from day 1, contain their babies in containers, and separate them into their own sleeping spaces despite having spent every day together in the womb.Follow Alaina on Instagram @nurturingtwinsIf you're expecting or recently birthed multiples, you must check out her course, Embracing Infancy! Support the showJOIN OUR NEW, PRIVATE COMMUNITY! DONATE (Thank you!!

Welcome to Episode 127 of The Perfectionist's Guide to Mothering! In this episode, I'm sharing another best of replay episode. Today I'm talking with Becky Kopitzke. She is a wife, mom of two, author, speaker, and writing coach. She's the author of three books including ⁠The Cranky MomFix: How to Get a Happier, More Peaceful Home by Slaying the "Momster" in All of Us.⁠* Becky and her family are living the dream in northeast Wisconsin, where they share precious space with two lazy dogs, and tables stacked with homework and craft supplies.I loved this conversation with Becky, we are kindred spirits! We talked about crankiness triggers, how to handle blunders that happen despite our best intentions, Becky's three family rules, and more. Some of the resources we mention include:Get a Mom's Guide for Back to School here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Pre-order my book, Two-Minute Timeouts for New Moms: 100 Devotions for Weary and Wonderful Days.*⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join my book launch team.⁠⁠Becky's Book, The Cranky Mom Fix⁠*⁠All Creatures Great and Small on PBS⁠⁠A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell⁠*You can connect with Becky via her:⁠Website: beckykopitzke.com⁠⁠Instagram @beckykopitzke⁠Just a reminder that you can connect with me via: ⁠⁠⁠⁠• ⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠@andreafortenberry⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠ My website⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠: ⁠⁠andreafortenberry.com⁠⁠• ⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to my free magazine, Restore.⁠⁠⁠⁠ *Affiliate Link

Today my new friend Emily joins the podcast to talk her journey to getting a borderline diagnosis, mothering, and marriage. Thank you Emily for sharing your heart and wisdom with me - it came at a time when I really needed it. Send us a text message to be anonymously read and responded to! Support the showYou can find Sara on Instagram @borderlinefromhell. You can also find the podcast on IG @boldbeautifulborderline Corey Evans is the artist for the music featured. He can be found HERE Talon Abbott created the cover art. He. can be found HERE Leave us a voicemail about your thoughts or questions on the show at boldbeautifulborderline.comIf you like the show we would love if you could rate, subscribe and support us on Patreon. Patreon info here: https://www.patreon.com/boldbeautifulborderline?fan_landing=true Purchase Sara's Exploring Your Borderline Strengths Journal at https://www.amazon.com/Exploring-Your-Borderline-Strengths-Amundson/dp/B0C522Y7QT/ref=sr_1_1?crid=IGQBWJRE3CFX&keywords=exploring+your+borderline+strengths&qid=1685383771&sprefix=exploring+your+bor%2Caps%2C164&sr=8-1 For mental health supports: National Suicide Pr...

What if the care you needed wasn't one more task, but a radical act of self-trust? In Episode 150, I'm joined by Amy C. Willis, sober coach, speaker, and founder of Hol + Well. Amy works with women and queer folks to explore what's possible in a life free from alcohol—one rooted in rest, boundaries, and real self-care. We explore the concept of mothering yourself—a tender and transformative practice that helped Amy through early sobriety when she didn't yet feel worthy of care. This idea ties beautifully into our Summer of Real Rest series, especially for those who are exhausted from being everything to everyone. In this conversation, Amy and I discuss: Why “mommy wine culture” is predatory, not empowering How sobriety and burnout recovery share similar emotional truths The stigma around choosing to be alcohol-free—even if you don't identify as “in recovery” Why we need to dismantle the binary between problem drinking and “normal” drinking What truly restorative self-care looks like in recovery (hint: it's not what Instagram tells you) One of the most powerful things Amy says in this episode is: “Whatever you're looking for in alcohol, you'll actually find in sobriety.” Whether you're sober, sober-curious, or simply burned out and craving more care—you'll find so much resonance and reflection here. Amy's Resources & Recommendations

In this episode, Kimberly and Sarah Wildeman dive into the importance of community and relational support and the experiences that led each of them to prioritize community building so centrally in each of their lives. Sarah shares her journey from a communal Christian upbringing to building her own “space of welcome” as an adult. Both Kimberly and Sarah emphasize the need for practical community-building practices, balancing personal needs with community support, and the challenges of maintaining a village in today's world. Sarah's "Our Common Life" program offers a four-month course to help individuals build meaningful community experiences, addressing topics like belonging, conflict resolution, and relational practices as mothers.    About Sarah My ‘work' in the world is to be a guide and companion, a seer and seeker of beauty, a soul reviver, activator, and community builder. At my core I am driven by deep and meaningful relationships and find my greatest joy in building intentional relational containers to facilitate learning and growth. I am known for my ability to get beyond what presents on the surface to the underlying beliefs or patterns that keep you stuck. I speak honestly and directly with gentleness and clarity. Whether in a group, or one-on-one, my ability to truly see people allows me to call them to their highest potential.My experience working and coaching in complex organizational dynamics has equipped me to work with people to navigate nuanced relationships with authenticity and courage, empowering individuals and teams to get creative and create lasting change. I have a unique inclination to both emotional intuition and strategic thinking, which allows me to create spaciousness while still helping you to ‘get stuff done'.    With nearly a decade's worth of intentional community living, I am particularly drawn to building rich gathering spaces. I have been a long-time space holder for leaders and community builders as they carry the responsibility of serving others. I have not pursued a status-quo approach to life, and feel uniquely suited to support visionaries in living into their callings.I am also 'Mom' to two strong, beautiful, passionate, creative daughters. Mothering them has been the greatest course there ever was in leadership and personal growth. Family is one of the ways I deeply experience and tend community in my life. My business operates out of Coldstream, BC, which we humbly acknowledge is in the unceded territory of the Syilx tmix , Secwepemcúl'ecw, and Okanagan First Nations. What they discuss: Sarah's upbringing and relationship to ceremony/rites of passage as a child in a non-demonitional Christian church What's an open door policy for a family home? How to find community if it's not through a formal religion? How to find a space of belonging that aligns with us as as adults How do we navigate the loss of community and loss of village? Living in an intentional community Christian community with a focus on environmental stewardship   What role do faith and community play in our sense of belonging? How to navigate differences with a spouse in what you are seeking when it comes to communal living? How do you balance family and communal needs? The power of a web of support for families? How communities are insurance policies for care and support. How mothering and child care bring community practices to the fore. Challenges of building community, including the exhaustion and overwhelm that can come from new practices and habits. The importance of compassion and self-awareness in the process of building community, recognizing that it may start small and gradually grow. Strategies for building community, such as starting with small, manageable actions and gradually expanding to larger projects. Introduces her re-villaging program, “Our Common Life” a four-month journey that provides resources and support for building community. Resources Website: http://sarahwildemancoaching.com/ IG: @sarahwildeman  

Maia Friedman is a solo singer/songwriter, as well as a member of The Dirty Projectors and Coco. We talk with Maia about the ingrained narrative of climbing the endless ladder, mothering while on the road, balancing the needs and the desires of parenthood and career, the economics of touring, navigating schedules in a dual artist-parent household, and a whole lot more.Get more access and support this show by subscribing to our Patreon, right here.Links:Maia FriedmanCocoDirty ProjectorsMountain Stage“Song of the Earth”Felicia DouglassPhil WeinrobeThe Legend of OchiClick here to watch this conversation on YouTube.Social Media:The Other 22 Hours InstagramThe Other 22 Hours TikTokMichaela Anne InstagramAaron Shafer-Haiss InstagramAll music written, performed, and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss. Become a subscribing member on our Patreon to gain more inside access including exclusive content, workshops, the chance to have your questions answered by our upcoming guests, and more.

 Mama, it's Back-to-School Time! New seasons bring new opportunities to refresh the rhythms in our homes. Join me for a special Mothering with Deb mentoring session where we'll talk about how to create life-giving routines that bring peace to your mornings, connection to your evenings, and joy to your days—even in the middle of homework, carpool lines, and after-school activities.We'll cover: Setting a joyful tone in the mornings After-school connection moments Sweet and intentional dinner & bedtime routines Guarding your calendar so there's time for rest and play

This first season is a deep dive into the emotional, spiritual, and somatic terrain of mothering. The identity shifts, nervous system regulation (and all that disrupts it), the healing, grief, joy, rage, and bliss of this beautiful, wild journey that each mother must navigate in her own way.This is for the mothers who are called to do the deep work - raising their children consciously while coming home to themselves.The first episode releases August 23rd - mark your calendar and subscribe to be among the first to listen.Send me a text! You can share thoughts on the episode, ask a question, or just say Hi!In between episodes you can find me on Instagram and Tik Tok.

Welcome to Episode 126 of The Perfectionist's Guide to Mothering! In this episode, I'm sharing another replay episode. This one is with Caris Snider all about how to help tweens with anxiety. She is the best-selling author of ⁠Anxiety Elephants: A 31 Day Devotional and Anxiety Elephants for Tween Girls⁠ ⁠and Boys⁠*.Some of the resources in this episode include: ⁠⁠Get a Mom's Guide for Back to School here⁠⁠⁠⁠Pre-order my book, Two-Minute Timeouts for New Moms: 100 Devotions for Weary and Wonderful Days.*⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join my book launch team.⁠⁠Psalm 94:191 Peter 5:7Philippians 4:8Psalm 91:11Philippians 4:4-6Matthew 6:25-34⁠Follow Me by David Platt*⁠⁠Rewire Your Anxious Brain by Catherine Pittman*⁠⁠The Tattooist of Auschwitz⁠ and ⁠Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris*⁠⁠Batiste Dry Shampoo*⁠GroupMe AppYou can connect with Caris via:⁠Her website: carissnider.com⁠⁠Instagram @carissnider⁠Her books: ⁠Anxiety Elephants: A 30 Day Devotional to Help Stomp Out Your Anxiety⁠*, ⁠Anxiety Elephants for Tween Girls⁠* and ⁠Anxiety Elephants for Tween Boys*⁠*Affiliate Link

In this 7-minute solo episode, I unpack why stepping into the mothering role in romantic relationships can quietly erode intimacy, sexual polarity, and connection. Drawing from relationship research, client sessions, and personal reflections, I explore how over-functioning leaves the role of “girlfriend” or “wife” unoccupied ,and what to do instead.You'll walk away with practical tools to shift this dynamic, and a gentle reminder: love doesn't require you to parent your partner.♾ In a fast-paced world like the one we live in, time is one of our most important assets. For a few minutes every episode, I, Tannaz Hosseinpour, will be discussing topics that aim to enhance the quality of your life, by helping you feel empowered to take inspired action on your personal growth journey.Connect with me for daily insights on InstagramFacebookTikTokMore resources available on www.minutesongrowth.comThis podcast is for educational purposes only. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein.

Many of us feel uncomfortable going out into nature once the sun goes down. The natural world after dark is something of an unknown, mysterious and perhaps dangerous. In this program, we meet naturalist and author Charles Hood, who wants us to awaken to what he says is a strange but surprisingly beautiful nighttime world.

As mothers, one of the most sacred callings we have is to guide our children in their walk with the Lord.

Rachelle Bergstein a lifestyle writer, bestselling author and editor, focused on style, pop culture and families. Today we learn more about her journey as a published author that includes a battle with cancer, the birth of her child and prioritizing motherhood along the way. Tune in to hear more about her recent book, "The Genius of Judy." www.rachellebergstein.com Substack: Banner Year ________________________________ Need The Nipple Diaper now? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shop on Amazon today!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠INFORMED PREGNANCY TV + Discount: GK30⁠ ___________________________________________________ Follow us: TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@kozekozemama⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ IG: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@kozekozemama ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@garretnwood⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ SHOP with 20% off, use THANKYOU20 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.kozekoze.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email Garrett: garrettkusmierz@kozekoze.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Maria Morera Johnson and contributor Kristina Talbot discuss the joys and challenges of mothering our children through milestones. Kristina Talbot is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and native Floridian who loves that her engineer husband enjoys Karaoke, and her four children enjoy carpool line with the music up. Kristina is the owner and founder of ARISE Mental Health Consulting Services and has a ridiculous amount of knowledge about football. You can follow Kristina on Facebook and Instagram @arisemhc.   Links for this Episode:  Read all articles by Kristina Talbot

Welcome to Episode 125 of The Perfectionist's Guide to Mothering! For this episode of the podcast, I'm sharing another episode from the friendship summer series my friend Stacey Morgan and I recorded a few years ago. This episode is aboutHow to Make Friends as an Adult Woman. Something that seems like it would be easy, but it can actually be quite a challenge! I love this conversation I have with Stacey and I think you will too! Get a Mom's Guide for Back to School herePre-order my book, Two-Minute Timeouts for New Moms: 100 Devotions for Weary and Wonderful Days.*⁠Join my book launch team.*Affiliate Link

Join Lisa and Laura for Unshakable Identity. During these four weeks we look at four different aspects of our identity as women and the corresponding characteristics of our feminine genius. As daughter, it's sensitivity. As sister, it's generosity. As bride, it's receptivity. As mother, it's maternity. Our goal is that as we explore each of these, we will gain a better understanding of our true identity. In this final episode, Lisa and Laura dive into the fourth aspect of our identity: motherhood. You do not have to have biological children to be a mother, because mother is the very essence of femininity. We are all mothers and our maternity is a gift we are called to offer widely and generously. This is an episode for every woman longing to mother or be mothered.  Open your Heart to our key Scripture. John 19:7: Behold, your Mother. Open your Bible to other Scriptures referenced in this episode. Ephesians 4:15: Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. Luke 11:27: Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked! Luke 11:28: Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Invite Him in with this episode's questions for reflection. What does "spiritual motherhood" mean to you? Have you had the experience of being a spiritual mother or have you been spiritually mothered? How might the Lord be calling you to cultivate a spiritual mothering presence in your community, whether it's within your church, workplace, or neighborhood? Ask the Lord for the name of a person you are called to mother. Show mentions. Join us for Youth Program Webinar: A Learn about Leading Event. During this relaxed yet insightful 30-minute session, we'll explore the beauty of leading tween and teen girls through the Walking with Purpose BLAZE and Sisters of Strength programs. Alice von Hildebrand, blog Jeff Minick, The Epoch Times, “Celebrating Motherhood: If family is the foundation of culture, motherhood is its cornerstone” Carrie Gress, The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us Elise Loehnen, Substack, “Mothering the World: The Power of Love in a World Hijacked by Fear” Confraternity of Christian Mothers Sarah Kaczmarek, Encounter School of Ministry Catholic 365, blog Let's stay connected. Don't miss an episode. Subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform.  Want to keep the conversation going? Join our private Facebook community. Stay in the know. Connect with us today.  We are committed to creating content that is free and easily accessible to every woman—especially the one looking for answers but unsure of where to go. If you've enjoyed this podcast, prayerfully consider making a donation to support it and other WWP outreach programs that bring women closer to Christ. Learn more about WWP on our website. Our shop. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube.

COME WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE!Rejoicing in Motherhood is on YouTube! I would love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel and tell me in the comments how long you've been listening to Rejoicing in Motherhood. Don't worry--audio podcasts aren't going anywhere!No matter the question or situation, my best advice for moms is the same: get to know God, hear His voice, and act on what He says! We are going to explore this together today! The Rhema NOW app is designed to help YOU have personal, two-way conversations with God. Ask Him questions and listen for His reply. Learn with helpful courses. Do yourself a favor and download it today! Join the conversation or ask a question here!⁠Connect with me on my email list.⁠Let's be friends on Instagram!

COME WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE!⁠Rejoicing in Motherhood is on YouTube! I would love for you to subscribe to my YouTube channel and tell me in the comments how long you've been listening to Rejoicing in Motherhood. Don't worry--audio podcasts aren't going anywhere!No matter the question or situation, my best advice for moms is the same: get to know God, hear His voice, and act on what He says! We are going to explore this together today! The Rhema NOW app is designed to help YOU have personal, two-way conversations with God. Ask Him questions and listen for His reply. Learn with helpful courses. ⁠Do yourself a favor and download it today! ⁠⁠Join the conversation or ask a question here!⁠⁠⁠Connect with me on my email list.⁠⁠⁠Let's be friends on Instagram!

In this episode, Kimberly and Bethany discuss their reflections and experiences of attachment and mothering their adult children. Bethany describes changes in how she viewed herself and parenting while her daughter became an adult herself while Kimberly shares her experiences mothering her daughter who is about to move out of their home for the first time. They share challenges, frustrations, and confusing moments around their attachment and parenting, particularly as they age themselves. As most parenting content focuses on the early years, this conversation reveals the nuances of what attachment parenting actually is and how they are navigating its challenges while parenting their grown daughters.   Bio Bethany Saltman is a literary agent, mother, wife, zen practitioner, and author of “Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey Into the Science of Attachment.” She has an extensive background in writing, teaching, publishing, and devotes her time as a literary agent helping people put their stories into the world. She is a long-time friend of Kimberly's and a repeat podcast guest.   What She Shares: –Different kinds of attachment and the adult  attachment test –Mothering through seasons –Generational differences of parenting –Navigating challenges of mothering adult children   What You'll Hear: –Different types of attachment –Securely attached is independent –Develop through creativity and exploration with secure base –Flexibility and response with parenting –Behavior versus attachment –Parameters for boundaries when discussing children publicly –Posting children on social media –Attachment research with adults –Generational leaps around attachment and development –Mothering through perimenopause –Hormonal changes through mothering and phases –Similarities between toddler and teenage years –Experiencing the second half of life while mothering –Values shifting through mothering phases –Cultural differences around parenting young adults –Leaving versus staying the nest  –Generational differences of survival wiring –Frustrations of parenting adults –Self-actualization leaving parents' house –Adult attachment interview protocol –Mixed feelings shows secure attachment in adulthood –Importance of rupture and repair instead of only positive –Spirituality, religion, and parenting   Resources Website: https://www.bethanysaltman.com/ IG: @bethany_saltman   Class Sign up for Jagamama Summer School here: https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/jagamama/  

Today, we sit down with Lila Rose, founder of Live Action, to discuss her perspectives on family, faith, and doctrine. We explore her insights on discerning when to have more children, navigating the emotional and spiritual challenges of motherhood, and the Catholic teachings on fertility and IVF. Lila shares her views as a Catholic on the pope, baptism, and the role of Mary, and Allie gives her thoughts from a protestant perspective. Share the Arrows 2025 is on October 11 in Dallas, Texas! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sharethearrows.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for tickets now! Sponsored by: ⁠Carly Jean Los Angeles⁠: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.carlyjeanlosangeles.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Good Ranchers⁠: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.goodranchers.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠EveryLife⁠: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.everylife.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Allie's new book, "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://a.co/d/4COtBxy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Timecodes: (00:30) Kids update (02:30) Mothering boys vs. girls (08:30) How many kids to have (22:10) IVF (28:00) Can the Pope be wrong? (33:30) Is the church disunified on social topics? (39:12) Baptism (43:30) The first pope (55:30) Mary --- Today's Sponsors: We Heart Nutrition — Get 20% off women's vitamins with We Heart Nutrition, and get your first bottle of their new supplement, Wholesome Balance; use code ALLIE at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.WeHeartNutrition.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. EveryLife — The only premium baby brand that is unapologetically pro-life. Visit ⁠everylife.com⁠ and use promo code ALLIE10 to get 10% off your first order. Patriot Mobile — go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠PatriotMobile.com/ALLIE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or call 972-PATRIOT and use promo code 'ALLIE' for a free month of service! Field of Greens — Use code ALLIE at FieldofGreens.com for 20% off your first order of superfood supplement for better health and energy! --- Episodes you might like: Ep 997 | Why Do Catholics Pray to Mary? | Guest: Trent Horn https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-997-why-do-catholics-pray-to-mary-guest-trent-horn/id1359249098?i=1000654720287 Ep 1100 | Secret Senate Votes, Sophia Bush & Our Pro-Life Future | Guest: Lila Rose https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1100-secret-senate-votes-sophia-bush-our-pro-life/id1359249098?i=1000676858812 Ep 594 | The Pro-Choice Movement Takes Its Dying Breath | Guest: Lila Rose https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-594-the-pro-choice-movement-takes-its-dying-breath/id1359249098?i=1000556339615 --- Links: Pew: "Few Americans Blame God or Say Faith Has Been Shaken Amid Pandemic, Other Tragedies" https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/11/23/few-americans-blame-god-or-say-faith-has-been-shaken-amid-pandemic-other-tragedies/ Pew: "Public Opinion on Abortion" https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/#:~:text=Views%20on%20abortion%20by%20religious%20affiliation%2C%202024,Illegal%20in%20all/most%20cases --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://alliebethstuckey.com/book⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Susan grew up in an abusive home and wonders if therapy can help her get more comfortable with showing affection to her own children. Call 1-800-DR-LAURA / 1-800-375-2872 or make an appointment at DrLaura.comFollow me on social media:Facebook.com/DrLauraInstagram.com/DrLauraProgramYouTube.com/DrLauraJoin My Family!!Receive my Weekly Newsletter + 20% off my Marriage 101 course & 25% off Merch! Sign up now, it's FREE!Each week you'll get new articles, featured emails from listeners, special event invitations, early access to my Dr. Laura Designs Store benefiting Children of Fallen Patriots, and MORE! Sign up at DrLaura.com