Birth Journeys: Lifting the veil on the birth experience
Did your childbirth experience go as planned? Then The Birth Journeys Podcast® is for you! We share powerful and transformative birth stories that illuminate the realities of childbirth. Hosted by a labor nurse and prenatal coach who specializes in transformational coaching techniques, this podcast goes beyond traditional birth narratives to foster healing, build trust, and create transparency between birthing individuals and healthcare providers.
In each episode, we dive into essential topics like birth preparation, debunking common misconceptions, understanding hospital procedures, and promoting autonomy in the birthing process. We also bring you the wisdom and insights of experienced birth workers and medical professionals.
This is a safe and inclusive space where every birth story is valued, honored, and deserves to be heard. Join us in exploring the diverse and unique experiences of birth givers, and discover how transformational coaching can empower your own birth journey.
Contact Kelly Hof at: birthjourneysRN@gmail.com
Birth Journeys: Lifting the veil on the birth experience
Elise Nicole Kirkpatrick: Embracing Feminine Power and Mindful Birth Practices
Join us as we uncover the journey of Elise Nicole Kirkpatrick, an internationally acclaimed feminine authenticity and embodiment mentor. Elise shares her powerful birth stories—one marked by trauma, the other by peace. From a challenging 16.5-hour labor at a birth center to the serene home birth of her second child, Elise emphasizes the importance of feeling safe and grounded during childbirth. Her background in yoga, meditation, and hypnobirthing prepared her for these profound experiences.
Explore Elise's transition from a yoga instructor to a doula, driven by her passion for supporting women's transformation during labor and birth. We highlight the significance of mindset and environment in creating blissful birth experiences, balancing masculine and feminine energies during pregnancy and motherhood. Elise shares practical strategies for creating a supportive environment and the importance of inner validation.
In this enlightening episode, we delve into the concept of "fives" and how surrounding yourself with the right people, information, and activities can support your identity as a woman and mother. Elise introduces the transformative "Worthy Woman Visualization Meditation," a tool for reconnecting with your inherent worthiness. Learn how focusing on choices and embodying desired qualities can transform childbirth and all life experiences into fulfilling journeys. Join us for an episode that promises to inspire and empower every listener, whether you're navigating motherhood or looking to reconnect with your feminine essence.
Connecxt with Elise here:
Website - https://www.elisenicolekirkpatrick.com
Gifted Worthy Woman Visualization Meditation - https://elise-nicole-kirkpatrick-aeba.mykajabi.com/Worthy-Woman-Meditation the 50% off code will be presented to you once you receive the meditation!
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/__elisenicole__
Join the Bump & Beyond Online Community for moms & moms-to-be!
Coaching offer
Kelly Hof: Labor Nurse + Birth Coach
Basically, I'm your birth bestie! With me as your coach, you will tell fear to take a hike!
Connect with Kelly Hof at kellyhof.com
Medical Disclaimer:
This podcast is intended as a safe space for women to share their birth experiences. It is not intended to provide medical advice. Each woman’s medical course of action is individual and may not appropriately transfer to another similar situation. Please speak to your medical provider before making any medical decisions. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that evidence based practice evolves as our knowledge of science improves. To the best of my ability I will attempt to present the most current ACOG and AWHONN recommendations at the time the podcast is recorded, but that may not necessarily reflect the best practices at the time the podcast is heard. Additionally, guests sharing their stories have the right to autonomy in their medical decisions, and may share their choice to go against current practice recommendations. I intend to hold space for people to share their decisions. I will attempt to share the current recommendations so that my audience is informed, but it is up to each individual to choose what is best for them.
Hello, today I have with me Elise Nicole Kirkpatrick. Elise is an internationally praised feminine authenticity and embodiment mentor who is wildly passionate about supporting women in reclaiming and restoring their relationship with their magnetism. She is a certified yoga instructor, sound healing practitioner, meditation and mindset coach. Sound healing practitioner, meditation and mindset coach, neuro-linguistic programming practitioner, birth worker, studying herbalist and so much more. She's devoted to illuminating the path so women can embody a radical renaissance of their true feminine essence and live their most alive, pleasure-filled, pleasurable and abundant life.
Speaker 1:Elise, welcome and thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here. I am excited to talk to you because not only are you going to share your birth stories, you are also going to share how you help women get into the emotional mindset of a healthy birth, and I love that because that's my goal in life as well and I really I just want to talk to people that are doing that and I want us to all get in alignment and have everybody have a happy and healthy and emotionally wonderful birth emotionally wonderful birth, so important Absolutely, and, yeah, I'll share shortly here, but I definitely felt in my own life the difference between not feeling safe in my system and not feeling emotionally grounded and having that sense of security in myself versus having that, and what a difference it made in my births.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so tell me, how old are your kids? Okay, so my daughter just turned 12 this past week and my son will be 10 in June. And then where were your births? So both of my children were born in San Diego, california. My daughter was born at a birth center and then we decided to do a home birth for my son.
Speaker 1:Amazing, all right. Well, I want to hear how that birth center birth went and then how the contrast was with the home birth, because I've done two hospital births that were drastically different, but I've never experienced a home birth or a birth center birth.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So oh gosh the story. Well, first of all, both of my children were surprises, and so when I found out that I was expecting my daughter, I had already been a yoga instructor, I had already been into meditation and mindset and I thought I had it all figured out. And at the time my partner was active duty military and when I was about three months pregnant he got orders to Cuba, to Cuba, and anything to know about Cuba is that the service out there at the time was really hard. So I actually only spoke to him about once a week during my pregnancy and I was by myself in San Diego and I had a great community in yoga and I surfed and was kind of a beach girl and an artist, and so I had a great community.
Speaker 2:But I was searching everywhere for the classes and how to learn what birth is going to be like, because I honestly had no idea and I had never even thought about it and I had never even thought about it. You know, it was like not even in my peripheral, to think, oh, one day I'm going to have, you know, labor and birth in my world. And so I looked up hypnobirthing. I started going to a hypnobirthing class by myself, which was really interesting because I was the only one that was there solo. Interesting because I was the only one that was there solo and I really grasped what needed to happen to just move through labor and birth, as it is Pre-labor, active labor, transition, actual birth, postpartum we talk about all of that and in my mind it was just so structural at the time. And so the closer I got to my estimated due date which I like to say is like your estimated due month as a birth worker now I really felt like I was ready In my mind. I was watching all of these beautiful births online, watching all the hypnobirths and listening to the recordings, and I felt ready and I wanted nobody in the room except for myself, my partner, my midwife and they have a CNA that's in the room there at the birth center Wonderful birth center and I absolutely loved everybody who worked there, except I did not connect with one of the midwives and I just prayed and prayed and prayed, like please don't let it be her on my day that I have to go in, and I ended up going into labor. We were renovating our house, as most moms decide to do right before you have a baby and I went into early labor and we had our playlist going and everything was good to go.
Speaker 2:And I don't know exactly when it happened, but I just remember it was probably like three in the morning and I hit a point where I was like whoa, this is really hard and this is not what I thought it would feel like. This is not what hypnobirthing told me it would feel like, and I was like I'm in transition, absolutely, we need to go. Well, they told me not to come in. They were like, nope, just stay at home. They kind of listened to me over the phone and were like no, you need to stay at home and just keep laboring at home. So that actually put me into, I believe, fight or flight in that moment, because in my mind, in my body, I did not feel safe because I felt like she was coming because of how close together my surges were, how intense they were, how long they were, how much I was feeling, how emotional I was, and it actually kind of stalled my labor and we kind of through through the day kept laboring. Sun was out now.
Speaker 2:I was not happy about it and we got into about 3.30 or 4. The midwife called again to check in on me and she's like okay, you can come now. Well, we lived in North County, san Diego, and the birth center is down in San Diego proper, which is about a 50 minute drive, and she told us to come in when it was peak afternoon traffic what we like to call the San Diego gridlock. So I, you know, not a happy camper Obviously, I was like already ready to be there a while ago. I was not connected to my baby, not connected to my body, I just wanted to feel safe in, you know, the presence of a midwife, the presence of the birth center, the people who work there.
Speaker 2:And so we pull up after a very long bumpy ride, and, you know, my partner at the time was like worried about our brand new car, and so he was like covering the back seat with trash bags, like it was very interesting. So we pull up and lo and behold, the midwife who walks out has just come on to shift, and it is wow, this is making me emotional, it is the one I do not want, right. And I just remember in that moment being like I'm not getting out of the car, I can't go in, I won't go in, I don't want her touching me. I don't want her. I want someone else because I didn't feel safe with her. Me, I don't want her, I want someone else because I didn't feel safe with her. And the interesting thing was it wasn't that I didn't feel safe with her because of who she was, it was because I didn't know her. And in hindsight, looking back and I'll share with you when I talk about my son's birth here in a moment but in hindsight looking back, it was just because I hadn't created safety in a relationship with her to feel like I could trust her with the biggest thing that's ever happened in my entire life.
Speaker 2:So we went in and I don't know everything happened so fast. I wanted a water birth. I got in the tub. Nothing was happening in the tub. My body stalled again because the combination of driving and it's pure daylight and traffic, and then finding out that it was this midwife I didn't really know and didn't feel safe with and then we got put in the room that I didn't want and my point here is that all of these external factors were deciding how I felt in my birth for me and my body just kind of closed up. I wasn't, nothing was happening in the tub. My water eventually did release in the tub, but I wasn't progressing and they were like you have to get out of the tub. I was like you're telling me everything I don't want.
Speaker 2:When I ended up getting out of the tub, getting on the bed, laboring on my back which was not how I wanted to labor either and I had hands inside of me pushing down on my cervix because I had a cervical lip and I'm someone who previously was in the United States Coast Guard and I had someone yelling at me which felt like I was in boot camp again. You know, to push, push, push. And even though they were trying to help me and I think they were trying to encourage me, I was like why is it so loud? It's daylight, it's bright, I'm on the bed, I'm on my back, like everything was not how I wanted it to be and eventually I gave birth and in that moment everything goes away. You just fall in love with your baby and all of the stuff that went wrong is all of a sudden right in the world. And it was very intense.
Speaker 2:But I will say that, as a birth worker, looking back now and working with the women that I work with. Now I can see all of the things that I did, that I put my own armor on and I tried to control everything and I tried to make anything wrong that wasn't previously right in my head. And so my postpartum was really hard with her. I definitely had postpartum depression, I had no connection to my partner and mastitis multiple times. I mean, it was difficult. My healing journey was really difficult with her, difficult with her and again it was just mindset. And so when I became pregnant with my son, I immediately, the moment I knew I was pregnant which was before I even took the test I was like I'm reclaiming my birth. I am reclaiming my connection to being a birthing woman and being a woman in general. I am reclaiming my femininity through this. I am taking back what birth means to me.
Speaker 2:So I ended up not going to any classes but rather just relaxing into what I know to be true about being a woman and primal and how women all over the planet give birth all the time, and I gathered four women who were my friends and who were mothers I had. Two of them were close friends of mine. One was actually one of the women that I met in that original hypnobirthing class who became a lifelong friend. Another was a close friend of mine my mom and my partner's niece and I had a photographer who was a birth photographer. I chose my midwife. We were like we're doing this at home and I was like I am making this like a women's circle sacred gathering where I feel so supported and so connected. I ended up kind of hosting and having my mom help co-host a blessing way for myself and just a blessing way for labor and birth and I turned everything into sacred effort. I was like everything is going to be intentional, everything is going to be sacred. I'm doing this in my own home and everything was different about how I felt.
Speaker 2:I really did a lot of work to reclaim and help create safety in my body and in my mind about what went wrong the first time and how I could switch that into okay. This is a learning place for me to make this into something that's powerful for this next time. And I just I did the work to shift my mindset and everything that I meditated on was self-guided, self-led. I wasn't listening to any affirmations. I was like I'm just going to fully trust my body and my baby this time. I'm going to just dichotomy here, but like close everybody out and only pull in the close people to me so that I can intuitively give birth, intuitively labor, intuitively feel into what my body and my baby need. And my midwife was excellent. She was like great, so we'll basically do unassisted, unless you want me to check you or be here and she's like I'm going to be at your home but no checks, I won't, there will be nothing internal and you tell me what you need in that moment, whatever it is. So I still went over, because I went over about 10 days with my first, which also added stress, because then they're like well, if you go over this many days, then you have to go to the hospital, and I was terrified of that. And so the closer I got to actually giving birth, I was just like it's okay, this is his timing, it's whatever.
Speaker 2:And the first start of pre-labor I was like, wow, this is really easy and things were good. 30 minutes. I was like, ok, it's going to be a long call. I prepared myself, I called my girlfriends over and it ended up just progressing really quickly and honestly, it's because I was having a dance party. We were laughing, making beautiful little mocktails and eating food and listening to good music and creating art and I just was kind of having a little party in my living room with my girlfriends and my partner was there too, just supporting it all.
Speaker 2:They blew up the birth pool in our living room and I remember it going from like I've been in labor for an hour to I am in active labor. These surges are on top of each other. I'm going to throw up, but I had, you know, my mom's a Reiki practitioner and I had all these women who were just one was a massage therapist, another one is a coach and they all had their hands on me, playing with my hair, massaging my body. I got into a rhythm. They helped me get into this rhythm of like anytime a surge came on, I kind of leaned over my bed and just walked side to side. I had more candles than you could imagine in our house playlists going. I had these like twinkle galaxy lights on the ceiling. It was beautiful and before I knew it, I was ready.
Speaker 2:I was like I can feel him, like his head was crowning and I was like, wait, this has only been like three hours and the first labor, by the way, was 16 and a half hours, four hours of pushing. I didn't share that and this time I was like wow, okay. So I was ready to get in the water and I went downstairs to go get in the birth pool and our birth pool had popped in our living room and our living room was flooded and I, honestly, my state of mind was so anchored and grounded and calm that I just turned around and was like it's cool, can you fill up the bathtub for me? Like so calm, and all my girlfriends just carried all of my candles upstairs to the bathroom and filled the bathroom with, you know, the music and the candles.
Speaker 2:And I just got in the bathtub and pushed two times and my son was born in call and my water never broke and when he came out he was, um, he had what's called a veil. So the the call basically separated on, separated on the way out, bringing him up to my chest. It was the most peaceful, calm, beautiful, sacred, intentional birth and I fully believe that I went from putting myself, because of a lack of safety in myself and a lack of that mindset the first time, from kind of a traumatic experience I would say it was traumatic into an absolutely blissful, beautiful, intentional, sacred birth. So I hope that I explained those well. Those are the differences between my two births.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can really relate and, like I said, I had two hospital births, but it was the same situation it was like. So I've been a nurse ever since my first was born and I worked in both hospitals where my kids were born, and the first time was traumatic. Same things happened. That happened the second time, but the second time wasn't traumatic and it's for the same reasons. I chose my nurse, I chose my doctor, I chose the day, I chose the time, I chose my plan and when things went off course, the same way that they did with my first, I trusted those that were with me to keep me and my baby safe. And I also trusted my intuition If I felt unsafe enough that I would be heard if I wanted to tap out and say let's try this a different way. And it really is creating that safety that makes the difference between a traumatic birth and a blissful birth essentially.
Speaker 1:Another point that I realized the other day was that the safety that I was able to create with my second birth was evidenced by the fact that with my first you can see pictures of me I was just in shock. So was my daughter. She was stunned when she was born and had to go over to the NICU team that was at the warmer With my second. My son was crying and I was also crying and it was that release of relief and the blissfulness of holding a crying child, holding this baby that is so alive, versus the other birth where I was like please make her alive. I just think that all of that now there are things you can't control necessarily, but you can still control your mindset, and I think that's what I want, that's the lesson that I want to impart to everyone that's giving birth that even when things kind of go out of alignment, you can get back into alignment and you coach that.
Speaker 2:Yes, how did you get?
Speaker 1:into that and how do you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So and to your point, I just want to reflect back on what you said, where with your first birth, your baby was whisked away and wasn't crying and needed support, and with your second baby, there was life there, with crying and tears and everything. So my experience was actually the opposite, where my daughter was like screaming, crying and I was also crying the first time and they did a lot of checks on her and stuff right then and there. But I feel in that moment, hearing her cry actually elevated my anxiousness because of how the birth had transpired, whereas with my son, he actually did not cry and it was so peaceful and so calm that in our birth video and I would be happy to share the link for your listeners to watch the birth of my son and you'll hear my midwife be like, okay, let's take a breath, come on. And she's trying to get him to breathe because he was born so peacefully. He actually didn't take his first breath for almost two minutes, which is a long time, but I actually I didn't even realize it, I was not worried, I was not stressed, I was just like, oh my gosh, I just did that. That was so beautiful and you're so small and like, whereas with my daughter it felt like I gave birth to like 10 bowling balls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, everybody has a different experience and to that point it's like where's your mindset and how are you trusting Right? And so, to answer your question about my work to your question about my work, I am, as you said, a feminine authenticity mentor and really an embodiment mentor as well, and what that means is helping women to tap back into their natural feminine essence and also to be in the embodiment piece, which is allowing all that you know, your intuitive wisdom that lives within you, to live in your soma, in your cells, deep in your body, so that it is not only a truth to exterior you, but a truth on a deep, womb level, where this is what you know as your identity, where this is what you know as your identity. And one of the things that I find with a lot of my clients in my work and also my clients in my birth work, because I do both is that we have been so programmed and so conditioned to be in our masculine all the time, and the masculine is productivity and assertiveness and get things done and provide and action-oriented all the time, and there's a lot of protection there and masculine essence. And when we look at the feminine, we're looking at softening and being adaptable and being empathic and intuitive and being in the flow and being receptive and being in surrender, and these are the feminine aspects. That's not to mean that a woman cannot be fierce being fierce is also feminine right. Cannot be fierce. Being fierce is also feminine right.
Speaker 2:And we do have to reclaim that fierceness in birth time and time again, in labor time and time again to encourage ourselves that we are such warrioresses in that moment.
Speaker 2:But what I find is that a lot of times when we move into labor and birth and even our pregnancies, our minds go to masculine versus going to the feminine, and the feminine is where we are served best. So my supporting in women really comes from this place of I really want women to know that they are safe to surrender, safe to relax, safe to create spaciousness and be adaptable and be in this space of flow really, whether that is in business or in life, in relationships or in pregnancy, labor, birth, postpartum and motherhood all of the chapters. And so previously I was a yoga instructor and I basically started to see myself coaching women outside of the class of yoga and I really started to fall in love with seeing transformation and seeing women really reclaim their essence and have a restoration of that truest identity that lives within them, and so my work moved from being a yoga instructor into the coaching world.
Speaker 2:And then I would say that when my son was about 16 months old, I had a friend who became pregnant and I wanted nothing more than to support her and I know that through you know, like I said, with his birth, my son's birth, I had kind of four or five doulas in the space with me, women that have already given birth or they're familiar with the birth space by being a photographer or a filmmaker or midwife, whatever and I realized the importance of understanding labor and birth and how that can be so supportive for women understanding labor and birth and how that can be so supportive for women and so I went and did my doula training and became a doula so that I could support her and other women, and I just found that, with my background of yoga and meditation, with my background of being a mentor and coach for women, specifically in feminine embodiment and authenticity, it just worked together so beautifully to be able to help women.
Speaker 2:And while I am a labor doula and I help women while they are actually in labor physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually one of the things that I think is so valuable with my clients is the fact that we work together before we even get close to labor and birth, to help her mindset, be her desires and an embodiment of what she wants and needs, instead of outsourcing what she thinks should happen or what her partner wants or what her family wants or what she should be doing to check things off the list of what's supposed to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And even coming from the space where I'm a labor nurse right, but even within a medical diagnosis, there's still that space for where does table? Where do you feel aligned in that process, rather than catastrophizing the whole scenario and suddenly thinking that we are completely out of control? Because that's not true, and when our mind tells us and we choose to believe that we're out of control, then we will be. But if we choose to believe that we still have aspects of control and that we're making the best empowered decision with the tools that we have, it's the same scenario, but a very, very different feeling scenario, and I just think it's so important for, like you said, women to reclaim their births, regardless of the circumstances, and remember that we do have that option, no matter what the circumstances are. Are you a doula specifically for home births and birth centers or do you do? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I'll support a woman wherever she wants to birth wherever she wants to. I've done home births. I have some wild stories living here in Colorado about getting to the top of a mountain in a blizzard for home births. And yeah, I actually live right behind the most coveted birth center inside of a hospital here in Colorado. I mean, I could probably throw a baseball and hit the hospital, it's that close and I've definitely been able to peek into my living room while I'm supporting a mama at the hospital. And I also live only about two miles away from our birth center here in Colorado Springs and so I'm really available for wherever. And I think the biggest piece is I'm not here to tell a woman how or where to give birth. I'm here to support her, to dig deep into, intuitively, what feels most safe for her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's so important because you know what feels best to you. It's just a matter of not denying that, and I think what you're saying about the masculine energy. I think that that is so spot on, where we are just taught to deny our feminine energy, deny our intuition, and push it aside and devalue it and pretend that it doesn't exist and just follow the masculine energy, no matter how incongruent it feels in that particular scenario, and getting back in touch with what feels good and right and safe for you is what is going to serve you well. I feel like you did such a great job of explaining. I don't know if I have any other questions for you. Was there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to touch on?
Speaker 2:I would love to share kind of some of the things that I mean I give to my doula clients, my mamas and also just clients who are women in general. Whether you are thinking about pregnancy, maybe you know, I have clients and friends really, who are preparing now for being a mom, even though they're not in partnership and they have no idea when they're going to become a mother. And then I have other clients who are well into their pregnancy, that we dig into some of the things which are in one of my signature bestselling offers, which is a workshop called Embody your Desires, and these are things that I like to encourage women to look at so that they can prepare themselves to create safety in their bodies, in their mind, in their heart and kind of in their community as well. And so, within Embody your Desires, the first thing we look at is your fives, and this is what I like to call your fives, and we're going to take kind of a mama, for example, let's just say a mom who's in early motherhood, right, maybe you have a new baby who is between zero and two years old, okay, which I think is still new, fresh, even though you might be in toddler stages. And so looking at your community, and when we talk about fives and I use the word community I mean everything that you bring together in unity, everything that comes together in unity to create community that you are cultivating around you.
Speaker 2:And so when we look at our fives, it's looking at who are the five people you're surrounding yourself with. What are the five pieces of information that you are taking in on the regular? What are the five things that you're nourishing yourself with? What are the five things that you are doing as a hobby, right? What are the five topics of conversation that typically come up for you and are those in alignment with who you desire to be as a woman and as a mother? Because when we look at, let's just say, our five people that we surround ourselves with, whether you're about to step into your pregnancy or birth or motherhood, if you look at the five people you're surrounding yourself with and you realize that those people are not supportive of what you desire, they are not holding the same vision with you. Maybe they have a lot of fear tactics in their conversation with you. Possibly they are people who gossip often, or they are flaky in their relationship with you, or whatever. It is something that is not supporting you and feeling the way you desire to feel. Well, that's in your control to change the people you surround yourself with and maybe seek out people who inspire you, people who love you unconditionally, people who are motivating and encouraging you to follow the path that you desire to follow in your mothering journey, in your relationship, in your pregnancy, in your birth. Another piece of the fives is the information that you're taking in. You know, I know that it's really easy for in this day and age, where everybody's on social media, to fill our minds with all sorts of things. And nowadays which is different than when I was pregnant or a new mom is looking at really the social media algorithm, which shows you what it thinks you want to see. You'll look at one video that maybe is not in alignment, but if it caught your attention and you watched it long enough, now the algorithm is going to give you more of that and so you get to control what you see and what you're taking in by.
Speaker 2:Okay, what TV shows am I watching? How are they portraying birth Like? I'll give you an example your girl loves me some Bridgerton. I love Bridgerton. Okay, I am a timepiece fanatic and when I watched. If you haven't seen it, I won't give any names, but when I watched specific characters give birth, it is your typical Hollywood birth they are screaming, they're yelling, they're in pain, they're being yelled at to push, push, push. Maybe baby's not healthy, maybe mama passes away. I mean it's like the worst thing that we could do to watch that when we're preparing ourselves for labor and birth.
Speaker 2:Or maybe if we're watching a show or listening to an audio book where there's a mother who's in a really tough motherhood journey or something and there's all sorts of trauma and whatever abuse and whatever, well, if you're listening to that, you're choosing to have that as one of your five top sources of information and that is, you know. It's the simple saying you are who you hang around, you are what you hang around, and so when you're looking at embodying the woman you desire to be in pregnancy, in labor, in birth, in motherhood you have to ask yourself how have I positioned myself? Who am I surrounding myself with? What am I surrounding myself with that is influencing how I view, how I receive information, how I embody whatever it is that I desire and, furthermore, inside of Embody your Desires Accelerator Workshop, we do a circle and this is really great for every aspect of life as a woman, but you can specifically use this in pregnancy, in labor, in birth, in motherhood, in friendships, in relationships in birth, in motherhood, in friendships, in relationships, in your intimate relationships, in your career, where you draw a circle and on the inside of the circle is everything that you desire to embody, all of the things that you're okay with, everything that's inside your realm of safety for yourself.
Speaker 2:So that might be nourishing relationships, that might be gentle mothering with firm boundaries. That might be. My friendships feel reciprocal and I feel like my cup is overflowing. I feel like I am poured into just as much as I pour out to others. And on the outside of that circle you can write everything that's not okay.
Speaker 2:You know, and if you are someone who is in your stage of pregnancy and you're getting closer to labor and birth, there are some things, like Kelly had said, that are out of your control. But there are things that are in your control, like you know. I can ask for this. You know this is not allowed. Loud voices will not be allowed in my labor room. Lights, really bright, will not be allowed in my labor room. Right, if I do have to do X, y, z, then this is what's not allowed.
Speaker 2:This is what I'm okay with and this is what I like to say is knowing thyself, know your identity, know who you desire to be, know what you want, because when you're sure of those things, then you are sure of what you don't want and you can feel safe within your own soma, in your own body or cells, to say yes to adaptation when something comes up to you, versus like I don't know what I want, so I actually am just going to shut down right now.
Speaker 2:So, oh my gosh, there's so much that I could say about this, but I think that if there was something that I could help the listeners walk away with and understand, kind of how to start to tune into what you desire and what you want, it's really shutting off all of that external, the seeking of external validity or the seeking of external worth or enoughness, or being right or not being wrong, and know yourself so fully that you're sourcing your worth, your enoughness, your ability, your capability to do whatever it is that you desire from within, so that you're creating safety from within, no matter what your journey is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had this vision when you were saying you can't change your circumstances, but you can choose your options within the circumstance. And I just had this vision of like a river. A river would never just shut down. If you're flowing right, if you're going with your flow, if you're going with your own natural vibration and frequency, you're not shutting down, you're just changing course. When there's an obstacle, a river won't shut down, it will just change course. It will go around the rock, it will create its own path given the circumstances. And that's what we are called to do as women in life, in birth, in all of those things. Our job is to continue our flow so that we can have that impact on the world, and I love how your program embodies that and I just think that that's such an amazing lesson.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love the river as symbolism and one of the things that I actually say inside of Embody your Desires, which is self-paced, by the way, so anybody can grab it. I'd be happy to give you a link so that your listeners can have 50% off.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that I say inside of the Embody your Desires immersion, which is an 11-week immersion that comes after the three-day workshop, is that when you create safety for yourself, you are resourcing from a place of safety, knowing that the banks of the river are something you created, or what canyons you create from your water, or what the water feels like or looks like or any of that, because the safety you create is something that you can see, you can grasp, you're aware of, you've created relationship with, you've cultivated, and nobody can change the banks of the river if you become the banks of your own river.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I love that. It's essentially boundaries, but just in a different image.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And the thing that's really beautiful is that when we create that safety, that's where our worth comes from, and a lot of times that what I see, at least, is that women, when they are approaching labor and birth, is that their sense of worth is sourced from what everyone else thinks that they should be doing, or what stories they've heard, or what they've seen, or what they think to be true. And when we are sourcing our worth from outside of us of oh, I have to do this class, or I have to appease my partner, or I have to do what the doctor says, or any of that we are looking for validity, looking for worth in them saying, yes, what you're doing means you're good enough, or you're going to do good, or yeah, you already know this. So I have this meditation. It's called the worthy woman visualization meditation. It's so beautiful.
Speaker 2:It takes you back from here and now, wherever you are in your life, all the way back to your infancy and you actually being in the womb and your moment of conception, and you get to remember how worthy you are and how perfectly you are made and how your body is so intelligent and how you actually know how to do whatever it is that you need to do and you get to source that worthiness from within. You need to do and you get to source that worthiness from within you and that is where your courage and the know-how, the wisdom that is innate and ancestral in your blood, in your bones, in your body comes from. It doesn't come from outside of you. And who told you what birth should look like, feel like, be like? It comes from your knowing of how worthy you are and how capable you are to believe in yourself and to trust yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's amazing, because I think we all need that, because I just feel like our culture takes us away from looking within.
Speaker 1:We're all seeking that external validation and, while to some extent, not necessarily the validation, but like the working with others, that's important, and also working with others in a way that aligns with yourself and continuing your flow as that river.
Speaker 1:Because I mean, I'm just thinking of like back to that scenario where your doctor says you know, you have this and this and this. So what I normally see is the perspective of taking options off the table and I think I didn't say this before but the taking options off the table, but we're not focused on the options that are still there and the control that we still have and the release of control that happens and the powerlessness that happens when we feel like someone's telling us that this is the only thing we can do. And what I want women to hear out there is to focus on what you still have, the power that you still have, the intuition that you still have and the choices that you still have, and find your flow within those parameters and keep moving forward. You'll get back on stream, even if your labor goes a little bit. Off course, you will get back on stream.
Speaker 2:I know that for me, working with mamas who are just unsure, I'm like let's just cover everything, let's create best case scenario and if this happens, case scenario and in all situations. So if there's a mama who's like I'm home birthing, I'm not leaving my home, I am not open to the hospital, there's no way. No, how. I'm like okay, beautiful, we're going to hold that vision for you. Now look at what it would look like if you did end up in a hospital, for whatever reason, to keep you and baby safe. Let's create what your desire, what your vision would look like for that and create a space of safety in that and almost like a sense of excitement. If that does happen, okay, how do we get to create a home birth in the hospital? Right, you wouldn't believe. I mean you probably would, because you see this.
Speaker 1:I'm sure.
Speaker 2:But you wouldn't believe how many mamas I have helped them turn their hospital room into an absolutely sacred, beautiful, intentional space so that they feel like they're no longer all of a sudden in the hospital. And it is my job as a doula to make best friends with my labor and delivery nurses. We are your team and that's what I like to tell women is that if we do end up, what's the best case scenario? Best case scenario is your doula, me, your birth team, whoever's there with you, and your labor and delivery nurses are all on board. So how do we make that happen? And let's say that you do decide to have cesarean, right. Let's say that you schedule, that You're not giving anything up if we create a vision for what your desires are.
Speaker 2:Because my girlfriend, my very close friend, she had twins and had a C-section for them and was listening to Jack Johnson and had the cutest thing on and battery-operated candles going and quiet voices and still had skin to skin. And it's like, if you have a mama who is so focused on I only will do it this way and I am not open to looking at these other options. Well, if you haven't created a vision for how that could be still a really beautiful experience for you, then of course you're not creating safety for yourself in that situation.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, it feels like control, but it's not. It feels like, if you say I'm not going to do that, you feel like you're in control, but truthfully, you're giving up your power in that scenario.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and all of this really transfers to life in all of our situations, no matter what you go through. I mean, I now have a partner in my life who is we call him bonus dad, and the kids love him, and I know that for a long time I went through life just being angry about not having my family unit anymore and always focusing on what wasn't working versus okay. When I shifted things, I was like okay, how can I be an energetic match and be the woman who is embodying her desire for bringing a partner in? Because what we focus on expands, right, and so it's like same thing with birth, same thing with mothering what you focus on expands. What you focus on grows in energy.
Speaker 2:So when I started focusing on being a woman who loves having a partner in her life, who is a bonus dad to my children and who shows up fully, just like any father would like they were his own, guess what I magnetized into my life, right, instead of focusing on what wasn't working. And so, yeah, it's just. You know, attention flows where intention goes. That's what I like to say.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, elise, the one question that I haven't asked you and I think you've kind of answered it, but I want to give you the opportunity to really dig deep, if you want to. If you could go back and I ask everybody this if you could go back and speak to yourself at any point in your journey, in your motherhood journey, what point would you go to and what would you say to yourself?
Speaker 2:That is a powerful question.
Speaker 2:Think, looking back, the hardest point in my motherhood journey was when I thought I was losing my family unit, going through separation and becoming a single mom, and that's actually where I started to source all of this worthiness, work, that's where it was born out of right.
Speaker 2:Because what I didn't share with you here is that I had a lot of anxiety and panic attacks and stuff when that was happening.
Speaker 2:And back then, if I could go back and tell her me something, I would say know yourself, get clear with who you are and what you desire, because that way you'll know where to focus and you'll be able to be super present with your children, super present with your family, no matter what the outside circumstances are.
Speaker 2:You know that you always have that love within you for yourself, for your vision of who you desire to be, the kind of mother you desire to be, and that's like the elixir for being a mama is knowing who you desire to be and then, from that place, you can act intentionally as if you are that mom now and then. That closes the gap. So I think I had a long time there where I lost myself and, looking back, I was absolutely an incredible mother. But I felt in that time that I had lost that sweet, gentle, playful mama that I had always been. But had I just had someone just whisper into my ear just recalibrate, know yourself, restore, have a renaissance of who you desire to be, I probably would have been able to pull myself out of that a lot sooner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's strange because I was listening to Abraham Hicks right before I came on with you and the part that I was listening to was saying on the other side of the problem is the solution. And when we're focusing on the problem, we're dwelling within the problem. And if we just recalibrate, like you said, and go on the other side of that peak in the valley, on the other side of that peak in the valley, on the other side of that peak is the solution. So if we recalibrate and we go on that journey, then there we are and it's not as far as we think. So I just think it's so aligned that that was exactly what I was listening to right before I came on with you. So that's, I think, the message that we have to send to our listeners today and that's why we're here it's to recalibrate and remember that the other side of the problem is a solution and that you have it within yourself, and that's the only place you have to look.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I do believe in really allowing ourselves to be held in the divine's love, in the love that surrounds us, in knowing that we are here for a reason. Each and every one of us and we have to remember, just like our babies are absolute miracles and it's a miracle that they have been chosen to be here at this time on this planet. So are we.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, Elise, thank you so much for such an insightful interview. That was a pure joy and I'm so glad that you reached out and were able we were able to find a time to connect yeah, thank you for having me so much.
Speaker 2:I absolutely love what you're doing in the world. It's so important and, yeah, I do hope that your listeners can take something away from this and it lands in their hearts for sure. Yeah, well, and I agree, you're doing some powerful work in the world as well.
Speaker 1:So thank you. I do hope that your listeners can take something away from this and it lands in their hearts for sure. Yeah Well, and I agree, you're doing some powerful work in the world as well, so thank you for joining me.
