In this episode, we're doing something a little different. We're going looking for the spaces that used to hold us, the circles that used to gather us, the wisdom that used to guide us. Because something sacred has been lost in modern motherhood. Not the love, not the devotion, but the togetherness. You feel it, don't you? The ache for something older than the schedules and solo bedtime routines. The hunger for friendship that isn't just built around shared pickup times
or Instagram DMs. Motherhood today, for many, it feels like an endless to -do list performed in isolation. But it wasn't always this way. Before it was commodified, medicalized, monetized, and so deeply individualized, motherhood was communal. It was women gathering in tents. It was synchronized cycles and shared midwives. It was the grandmother who rocked your baby while your sister boiled water. It was long meals, long labors, long nights, long lives lived together.
And yes, it was messy, imperfect, sometimes painful, but it was together. And so on this episode, we're going back to the tent, to the circle, to the village that raised not just children, but mothers. And then we're asking the question, how do we rebuild it? Motherhood is history's greatest untold story. It's built empires, fueled revolutions, and pushed the boundaries of science. And yet, because it happens in quiet rooms, behind closed doors, it's been left out of the grand
narrative. But make no mistake, motherhood is not just tenderness. It's raw, unrelenting, a force that tears you apart and remakes you over and over again. It's blood, bone, love, and sheer will. This isn't a story about sacrifice. It's a story about power, about what it means to become a mother and what it means to never stop becoming.
This is Bloodline and Backbone. Before there were hospitals or strollers, before parenting books and Pinterest boards, There was a tent, a circle of women, bleeding, birthing, nursing, weeping, laughing too loud, telling the truth, doing life in proximity with each other. For thousands of years, motherhood wasn't a solo act. It was a shared one, a sisterhood. And maybe it still could be. I got my first period in sixth
grade, at school. in khaki pants. I remember the moment like it's seared into my bloodstream because, well, it kind of was. I remember the moment so clearly, standing in the bathroom stall, staring at the stain and realizing with panic, this is happening now, no warning, no tampon, no guidebook. So I did what girls do. I tied my sweatshirt around my waist, avoided eye contact and prayed for the earth to open up and swallow
me whole. 30 years later. And I still occasionally find myself having to tie a sweatshirt around my waist, like a few months ago when I bled through my jeans on an airplane. It was an early morning flight, and I didn't realize how heavy my flow was going to be that day. So I used a light tampon, knowing I could upgrade later if needed. We encountered unexpected turbulence on the flight, forcing the pilot to leave the seatbelt sign on for the entire trip. And this would normally be no big
deal. But about halfway through the flight, I could feel that the protection I chose that morning was vastly underperforming. And we've all experienced that moment when you know for a fact that you have to make a plan. Because you've got a situation on your hands. And here's what I knew for a fact while sitting in seat 8C. I have definitely bled through my pants and it's not just a little. I probably look like I have been free bleeding.
Do you know about this trend? It's wild. And I do not have a sweatshirt or anything else I could wrap around my waist. The plane lands and people begin to deboard and I am sitting in the aisle seat. And so I can't just sit there and wait for everyone to get off. And so I stand up and look down at the seat to assess the situation and there is blood. everywhere, not just on my pants, but literally soaking through the seat. There's no hiding it. We're talking worst case
scenario. And at this point, I'm trying to figure out whether to tell a flight attendant and offer to clean it up. I'm wondering what is the right thing to do in this situation? The passengers in seat AA and AB next to me are going to have to shuffle over my bloody seat to get off this plane. And people are now waiting for me to move. So I grab my bag, don't say anything, and practically run to the women's restroom in the airport. Thank
God I had an extra pair of pants in my bag. I was debriefing this event with my friend and coworker, Kelly, later that morning, and she said something that stuck with me. She said that when things like that happen to her, her first response is usually to shame herself and ask, why am I so flawed? Instead of asking, why are
the products I'm using flawed? So interesting that bleeding is a natural, normal thing that literally is part of the continuation of the human race, but it's still embarrassing when we aren't in control of it. We're supposed to operate like nothing's happening, even though a lot is actually happening behind the scenes
with our bodies. It's crazy really how we women bleed every month for most of our lives, but the nature of it is so wild and unpredictable that it still demands our respect and attention. I'd like to think I'm a fairly evolved woman, pretty responsible and in tune with my body. And then look how I was surprised on the plane that day. It makes sense though. The female endocrine system is literally responsible for continuing the human race. So it deserves to dictate our
day every now and then. See, our entire life happens in our body. And despite all the odd, embarrassing, ecstatic, messy, beautiful things, this body is exactly where we want to be. And yet we women are presented with endless opportunities to question our bodies. In fact, we're conditioned to do so. And it starts early on when we get surprised by how impactful our period is. And I know for a fact I'm not alone in any of these experiences. Ask any woman and she'll have a
similar story. The whispers in the hallway or mouthed across the classroom, do you have a tampon? Can you check my pants? Is it bad? We're taught early on to hide it, handle it, move on. But what if there was another way? What if that moment wasn't something to shrink from, but to be gathered into? Enter the red tent. In 1997, author Anita Diamond imagined just that in her novel, The
Red Tent. She took a verse from the book of Genesis, a verse that mentions women gathering together during their cycles and spun it into a powerful vision, a tent where women withdrew together during menstruation and birth, not to be shunned, but to be supported, to rest, to be fed, to tell stories, and to remember that it is blood that creates life. The red tent has become a symbol, a picture of what was and maybe what still could be. Across cultures and centuries, variations
of this idea have existed. Native American moon lodges, Hindu and Nepalese purification huts, confinement rituals in China. Some were oppressive, some were empowering, but all of them in some form acknowledged this truth. Women's bodies move in cycles and cycles need support. Here's Anita Diamond, the accidental creator of this national red tent movement. Why is this so powerful still? I think there are a few reasons, several of them. One of them is that it gives voice to
women in the Bible. The mother -daughter relationships are interesting to them, the dynamics between women as friends. One woman wrote to me, she said, after I read The Red Tent, I decided I was going to follow my passion and become an artisanal baker. Sounds funny, but I think that because the book honors the work of women's hands, which is bread and weaving and taking care of children, with real reverence for that work, I think that speaks to some people. So there's
that. I think the other reason it's had legs is because mothers and grandmothers and granddaughters have shared it. So it winds up being intergenerational,
which was a wonderful surprise. I certainly had never thought that that... would happen so but i know that it's handed down women's agency strength respect for women's work and the importance of women's relationships even extra familial relationships are things that keep women alive even in and sustain them even in really tough times today we chug coffee swallow ibuprofen and keep going but maybe the exhaustion we carry isn't just biological it's also cultural i think we've lost
the pause We've lost the rhythm. We've lost the room where it's okay to bleed literally or metaphorically. It's time to reimagine that space. A new kind of red tent in 2025 made not of fabric, but of friendship. I would like to propose a new way of addressing bleeding. See, to be a human is to bleed and to be a mom is to bleed even more. We bleed every month. We bleed to bring life into the world and we bleed when the life in our womb leaves this world. Our bodies bleed
and so do our hearts. Our hearts bleed for our babies and for every ounce of pain they experience in this life. They bleed for our friends' babies and babies across the globe too. So what if the red tent wasn't just being better at making plans, but actually a lifestyle, a posture we moved through the world with, nourishing ourselves and one another in ways that quietly rebel against hustle culture and maternal isolation. It could look like a standing Wednesday night porch hang
after bedtime. No RSVPs required, just beverages and folding chairs waiting. Or a woman in your life who says, you don't have to be fine with me and actually means it. Maybe it's splitting a Costco haul with two other moms so no one has to wrestle the 40 pack of granola bars alone. Maybe it's a shared Google calendar for babysitting trades or a text thread that doesn't die after the meal train ends. Or a fridge magnet that
reads, we mother here. Maybe it's quitting the PTA to start a monthly potluck that runs on belly laughs instead of burnout. These aren't just logistics, they're resistance. Tiny, sacred acts of defiance in a world that says, do it alone. Because bleeding is sacred, and sacred things deserve shared space. In my 20s, my friends used to lovingly call me a grandma. I went to bed early and drank tea and played Sudoku for fun instead of, I don't know, blacking out at music
festivals. I secretly liked that nickname. Being called grandma felt like a compliment, like I was being grouped with something sacred. Because grandmas are sacred. They're also objectively the coolest people alive. I don't think it's a coincidence that teenagers are dressing like grandparents and that grandma core is a trend where young people are embracing their inner grandma lifestyle. Now, I want you to try something with me. Put on the lab coat and slightly unhinged
brain of an evolutionary biologist. These are the people who study humans and apes over thousands of years to understand what makes us, us. And they've been stumped, utterly baffled for a while now by two weird facts about our species. Number one, humans have some of the longest lifespans in the animal kingdom. We live a really long time, and more notably, we live way longer than we used to, even just 200 years ago. And number two, women don't just live long lives. We live
long after we stop reproducing. And in case you're wondering, in evolutionary biology, this used to be considered a total glitch in the system. From a purely scientific perspective, grandmothers can be considered a failure of reproductive fitness. What good is an organism that cannot reproduce itself and cannot help perpetuate the species? Men can keep reproducing well into old age, but spoken just like Hollywood executives everywhere, what's the point of older women? Cue every woman
over 50 flipping the table. But plot twist, those same past their prime women, they might be the reason we live so long in the first place. Welcome to what scientists call the grandmother hypothesis. See, researchers started digging into historical records, things like church registries, census data, even death certificates, and noticed something remarkable. When a grandmother was at all present, especially a maternal grandmother, young children
were far more likely to survive. The more proximity to grandma, the effect was even stronger. And when grandma was active in that sweet spot between 50 and 75, survival rates absolutely soared. Why? Because grandma was showing up with a second pair of arms. She was stirring the stew, rocking the baby, tending the fire. She was passing down wisdom, picking up the slack, holding the line. She brought steadiness to the chaos and calm to the fear. And this didn't just help the children.
Most notably, it helped the mothers too. Because when grandmothers help raise the babies, those mothers could go on to have more children, more support, and less burnout. The grandmother hypothesis was first introduced in 1997 by anthropologist Kristin Hawkes after she worked with the Hazda, hunter -gatherers in Tanzania. While working with this group of foragers, she noticed that grandmothers played an integral part of feeding their grandchildren, allowing mothers to tend
to her other children. This assistance over time has allowed women to have more children in shorter intervals, increasing her fecundity. And a 2012 study by Hawkes has been able to further support the grandmother hypothesis through computer simulations that prove that a little grandmothering over time increase a species lifespan by years. But over the last century, multi -generational living has plummeted. At the start of the 1900s, only 7 % of older women lived alone. Today, that number
hovers around 32%. As families spread out across suburbs and coasts, grandma moved from the spare room to the retirement village. And just like that, the quiet infrastructure of generational support began to vanish. Not to mention that more grandmothers than ever are working later in life. So the grandmother effect didn't disappear, it just got farther away. And for many moms today, that distance has turned into a kind of loss,
invisible, but deeply felt. So the long life of a woman, menopause, it's not a biological oversight. It's not a bug. It's a feature. It's survival strategy wrapped in soft, wrinkly hands and hard -earned wisdom. It's legacy. Maybe you didn't grow up with a grandmother like that. Maybe you are the grandmother now holding more than you ever thought you would. Or maybe you're a mother raising children without a mother of your own and wondering where that strength is
supposed to come from. Wherever you are, I want to remind you, you're not alone. You're not the beginning. You're not the end. You are one link in a long line of women who carried what you carry. A line that stretches back to fire circles and foremothers through grief and grit and morning coffee. Community isn't just lateral. It's vertical. Mothers and daughters and grandmothers and great grandmothers. It's strength that echoes in your bones and speaks even through silence. You don't
mother alone. You mother among. And maybe now, more than ever, we need to grandmother one another, to show up with wisdom and warmth, to bring the snacks, the stories, the steady presence that says, you're not doing this alone, sweetheart. Because yes, grandma core might be trending, but real grandmothering, that's eternal. And if there's a soft peppermint in your purse right now, you're not just carrying candy, you're carrying a lineage, maybe even another mom's reason to
keep going. You can live in a 3 ,000 -square -foot home with granite countertops, a home office, and a fenced -in backyard and still feel profoundly alone. You can have four target locations within 10 minutes, but no one to call when you have mastitis. You can wave politely at your neighbor every morning for five years and never learn her last name. Let's talk about the architecture of loneliness. It's not just in your head, it's
actually by design. For most of human history, communities were built around shared spaces, markets, town squares, temples, courtyards, communal wells. Places where people bumped into each other on purpose or by accident and swapped stories, food, news, and help. Today, we've traded footpaths for cul -de -sacs. in town squares with parking lots. Our cities and towns have zoned out community. Here's an expert on urban planning and architecture.
This was called The Neighborhood and You, and it was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1945, and there was a set of panels that were distributed all over the world to talk about the neighborhood. how it needs to be the basis of social life. And it just gets kind of creepy. You know, it's very deterministic. If you live in a neighborhood, then you will be a responsible citizen. If you live in a planned neighborhood, you're going to get along with others. You're
going to have a good social life. It's all going to be wonderful. And so the planned neighborhood gets implicated in this social determinism, very top down. And also this kind of forced idea that you're going to be friends with people who live in your neighborhood. I call it social confusion. You know, having social connection in your neighborhood is not at all about being friends. It's about being socially connected on some level, maybe just a glance, some familiarity with somebody
on some level with a shopkeeper. That's a far cry from being friends. American zoning laws have prioritized privacy over proximity. And the crazy thing is this was kind of intentional. After World War II, the American dream became a house with a yard, a car, and a picket fence. We wanted space, independence, safety. But in chasing that dream, we accidentally zoned out the things that make us human, like connection and interdependence, two of the main things moms
thirst for in 2025. Ice vanilla sugar -free latte? Question. Where do you go that's not home, not work, and doesn't require that you spend a bunch of money to hang out for extended periods of time? These are what sociologists call third places. Those magical in -between spaces that aren't work and aren't home, but where life happens anyway. Coffee shops, libraries, parks, community centers, hair salons, the YMCA, the front stoop.
They're the places you show up without an invitation, where you bump into someone you know, where conversations start unplanned and kids run a little wild and you don't have to spend money. These places are vital. They're the social glue that keeps isolation from hardening into despair, but they're vanishing. And the results? Loneliness. Deep, widespread,
architecturally reinforced loneliness. One study found that over the last 50 years, the number of Americans who say they have zero close friends has quadrupled. That's not just a personal problem. That's a design problem. But that's the good news. If we design for isolation, we can redesign for connection. So many of us believe the lie that loneliness is a character gap. But the truth is, loneliness is an infrastructural gap, one that we can rebuild. We can rethink how we gather,
how we connect, how we mother. We can turn driveways into dinner tables. We can throw a folding table on the front lawn and call it sacred. We can meet at the park after bedtime for decaf tea and unfiltered conversation. We can advocate for zoning policies that prioritize community, not just commerce. We can look up from our fenced -in yards and say, hey, want to come over? Because moms... We've been holding up the scaffolding of community forever with carpool lines and group
texts and last minute babysitting. But what if we stopped patching the cracks and started building something better? What if we became the architects of belonging? Women are born with pain built in. It's our physical destiny. Period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives. We have pain on a cycle for years and years and years. And then, just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes.
The f***ing menopause comes. And it is the most wonderful f***ing thing in the world. You're free. longer a slave, no longer a machine with parts. You're just a person. I was told it was horrendous. It is horrendous, but then it's magnificent. When a person's identity shifts, it's a big deal. And motherhood is one of the biggest. There are a few predictable identity shifts in your life. Your first period, maybe your first heartbreak,
a career change, a spiritual awakening. But becoming a mother rewrites everything, your body, your time, your sleep, your story, even your blood. It's not lost on me that both womanhood and motherhood are marked by bleeding. First, you bleed to become a woman. Then you bleed to bring life into the world. Both times, the ground shifts. Both times, you need to circle around you. We weren't made to navigate identity shifts alone. I had a friend, a kid's basketball coach, ask me recently, how
do you even define identity? I want to explain it to my students, but it's actually kind of hard to put into words. And she's right, it is. Because identity isn't just me, it's us. It's formed in relation to who's around us. It's shaped by communion. And here's where it gets spiritual. Because the Christian story doesn't just say God has relationship. It says God is relationship. Father, Son, Spirit, three in one. So when we refuse to mother alone, We reflect the very nature
of God. We're meant to circulate care the way the body circulates blood. Blood is made to move, to flow from one part of the body to another, carrying oxygen, fighting off harm, bringing what's needed where it's needed. When it stops moving, we get sick. When it moves, we live.
community works the same way we weren't meant to be containers we were meant to be conduits mothers were never meant to hold everything alone we're meant to carry and be carried to give and receive to nourish and be nourished so maybe the real story is this you don't just share blood with your children you share it with the people who help you mother them with the ones who show up at your door in your messages in your memories
especially with the ones you bleed with. You are together the lifeblood of a world that desperately needs mending. And if you follow Jesus, you know his blood runs through this story too. Christ knew that power is not expressed in dominion, but in communion. So when you feel tired, like you have nothing left to give, Remember this. You're not just carrying your family. You are carrying each other. You are circulation. You are a life force. You, or rather we, are blood.
This has been Bloodline and Backbone, a production of MomCo Media, created by Mandy Arrioto. It was written by Emma Turnbull and Mandy Arrioto. Produced by Jeremiah Schumacher. Music composition and sound design by Sleepy Dog Creative. Our executive producer is Kelly Jo Smith. And our theme song is Glory by Zuri Alvarado. If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. And don't forget to follow the podcast so you never miss a new story. You
can reach us at media at themom .co. We'll see you next time on Bloodline and Backbone.