48. Matriarchy in Action & Ancestor Assisted Birth - Emilee Saldaya

Birth has been systemically taken from us by the powers that be, but each birthing body holds deep knowledge of how to bring forth life. This conversation is part of a much larger cultural remembering of what our ancestors instinctively knew about giving birth and nurturing our babies.

IN THE INTRO:

If we're not changing our minds, we're not growing
Mammalian birth [mama & mammal & mammary are etymologically related, and there's a reason for that]
How the Taoist medicine perspective of how energy moves through the female body explains why everyone wants to be around women

IN THE INTERVIEW:

How Emilee’s radical teenage years led to her work now.
Supporting mother’s instincts so that the mother-baby conversation can happen.
Birth story: Dolphins(!), their potent medicine, and telepathic connection to birth (I cry).
The spectrum of birth experience from beautiful and respectful, to dark and scary.
How Emilee’s first hospital birth helped align her with her dharma.
Our special likeness to all mammals through hormonal sequencing and our need to birth in a safe, familiar space (the choice of birth location changes the hormones flowing through the body during birth).
Ultrasound technology safety and what affects our choices to use it.
We are culturally trained to fear birth, and be terrified of death.
How Patriarchy & Christianity disempowered birthing women.
Fear- allying ourselves with it, rather than struggling to “overcome” it.
Holding space for all individual birth experiences while still rejecting The System.
Surrogacy, the primal wound, the commodification of bodies, and our bodily sovereignty as women.
Staying open and nuanced in complex conversations.
Meeting your divinity through birth, and the sacred spirituality of pregnancy.
We birth the way we live.
We are all descendants of women who birthed at home (like 99.999999999% of our female ancestors). Birth is in our bones.
Creating a matriarchal household/family.
A freebirth is a birth unhindered, undisturbed, in the support of loved ones, and outside the system that oppresses women and especially women of color.
When we align with truth, in our power, we are unshakable.