Ancestral wisdom and a knowledge transfer that came through the ancestral plane in the birth. So I felt accompanied, I felt covered, you know, So for me, that's like what was the origin? Right, And within twenty minutes of my son's birth, I said to everybody in the room, I have to I have to help other women through this. I have to help because nobody said it would be this. I have to help preserve this moment for people, like whatever is supposed to be for them, but I have
to help protect it. And I knew that, and I was able to say that lucidly while I was high after my son's birth right, which is a total high, which we'll talk about more. But I felt this overwhelming sense of euphoria when he was born, right, But I was able to be lucid enough to say that, Yeah.
Welcome back to Good Mom's Bad Choices.
I'm Erica and I'm Mila, and it's Wednesday.
Happy Wednesday, you guys.
This episode is sponsored by Honeypot, our famorite, famous, famous, favorite, our famous and favorite wellness brand, Intimacy wellness brand.
We love Honeypot.
You've heard us talk about it, You've heard us share on social and honestly, it's still hot as fuck out here. I don't go anywhere without honeypot. I actually just came back from Europe. I had honey pot in the bag. I put it on every single toilet. I don't know for me, like I literally have to travel with wipes and I put them on every single toilet.
It's essential.
And I just love their wipes because they smell like sandalwood. They have the sandalwood essence. They also have like a lavender one.
They have a nice cucumber lo and it's like like it makes me feel nostalgic. Remember like like que remember melon from back in the day that everyone.
Had, is that from Math and Body Works?
Yeah, I was like smelling it. I was like like on the toilet, this reminds me of my child. And it's black owned. I love that.
I love, like I love when I'm in my house and I'm using my products, I'm like, that's that's made by assistant. That's made by assistant, Like it makes me feel like I'm well.
I also I love that, But I also like that it's female founded and owned, because what other person would know how to make products for our bodies?
Like why weren't readvocating for this sooner because I still don't know who the fuck Johnson and Johnson is.
So make sure you check out their their line. They have a bunch of different products. They have their ritual line, which I love. They have lubricants and serums.
Stimulating serums that I really enjoy.
They also have boric acid to help regulate your pH pH balance. So make sure you go to the honeypot dot com and use our code GMBC twenty three for twenty five percent off.
That's a big ass discount.
The whole site.
And they got all the things that you need, everything your Yoni needs, they got it.
Amen.
Hallelujah, halleen. Two women known to feminine products.
How are you, my love?
I am good. I'm very good.
I'm you know, just chilling. School started. I'm a school mom again. What do you guys know? Is my least favorite part about being a mom is that I have to wake up and take a child's school. Like I'm in school and I thought i'd have more time, but the summers just keep coming and going.
So I'm good.
She's in third grade now, which seems like a very big age. Like the homework is more intense. So she's like a little bit more like independent and like going in her room and on her iPad to like talk to her friends, like I'm just I'm on the phone.
I'm like, I don't care.
I had like her iPad went off like a text and I was like who.
It was like multiple texts? Who are you talking to?
She's like, oh, I'm in a group tech. I'm in a group chat with my friends. And I was like which ones? And she's like why And I was like why, hold up, give me this, give me that cud Do you mean why? She's like, Mom, it's just Noah and Carter and me and Luna. I'm like, all right, well, what are you all talking about. I'm gonna look when you're sleeping.
I know you know what.
Because Luna's been like sending me tiktoks like you and Orlando should do this, And she's like, oh she sent me a TikTok.
Oh my god, I'm like a little girl.
And she's like looking on she's like acting all nice and it's like how I act at my dad with my with my dad's family. And then she's like going like going crazy. She's like how I acting out with my mom. I was like, so you know you've been showing your ass around me.
Well, there's another TikTok where they say, you know what, the abbreviation for m O mom stands for made of money, and so she like won't let that go at all, And honestly, it's true, because you know, I just got back from Europe and I spent every fucking dollar that I have.
You eat top Ramen for the night.
I was gonna say two weeks because the euro is not the US dollar is fucking trash over there, and they charged for every fucking thing, every part I had to because I didn't check in early. Because I didn't check in before I arrived at the airport, they charged me one hundred and fifty dollars. That was more expensive than my plane ticket.
So if you were to just checked in, they said.
They have a policy you have to check in before. And I was like, how would I supposed to know that? They said, we sent an email and I was like, what, Yeah, So did.
You enjoy your trip?
I did?
It seems lovely.
It's like photos, your professional photos, and it looks like you're cooking classes.
I know, I was jealous.
I was I was keeping our tribe at Patreon on Patreon updated. I haven't really shared much on social so if you're on Patreon, make sure you go check out all of the pictures, all of my little journal diary entries about my trip in Europe. I went to Berlin, I went to Venice. I went to Chink with Da, which is like this, it's like the Italian Riviera. I went to Florence and then I ended in Paris, and.
It was a lot.
I overpacked, so I was lugging like a big ass suitcase up train stairs that had no elevators. Well, it was me and her, and she doesn't carry shit, so it was just me. So we had one big luggage with all of our stuff and I had two little carry ons. And I did overpack, yes I did, but I didn't consider like taking the train and then like not being an old country and not having elevators, and also people are rude, like they see me with my kid and no one's helping me, Like I'm just like struggling.
Up these stairs.
It's also like ninety five degrees.
So basically you're telling me Chilvy is also dead in the UK.
I threw on my shoulder I've been in pain for like a week and a half. But other than that, other than that, it.
Was really good. I feel like me and I re reconnected.
I feel like, I don't know, like are just we just I really tried to be as present as I could. I really tried to stay off my phone as much as I could, and and it was we just like went to the park a lot, which I don't really do that here a lot, Like she asks me to go and I'm like, but for some reason there I was.
I was all about it.
So I was like, you know, I really need to adopt these practices here and just we talk about this all the time. Just being present obviously, and you know, when you're a business owner and just doing a thousand things that it could feel really impossible. But it was really really special, and I am dedicated to doing it every year if I can maybe maybe not, maybe I'll go to like a cheaper country. I was really like
stepping into my bougie era this year. And I was really adamant about going to Europe because I hadn't been in a few years. And we just worked so hard and I was like, fuck that I'm going.
And I did and I'm happy that I did good.
I know you've inspired me, and I want to go on a little mommy daughter trip. I think that would be nice.
Yeah.
I think it's important to connect with your kids, especially as they get older. It's happening quickly and I realized was like, as she's like becoming cooler and like having friends, I'm like, oh, we don't want to hang out with me. So I think to stay connected to your kid, you have to kind of And it's it's hard for us too because it's like, I don't want to do kids.
Shit, I'm a grown ask woman.
But we didn't.
I mean, we took cooking classes and like I'm you know, it wasn't four kids. I mean there were some kids in our last one, but it was it was just fun to like learn something with her too, And like we didn't really go to a lot of museums because she was not she's not that age yet. Like I tried and she was like I took her to the door a museum in Paris.
I was like, it's fashion, It's gonna be so amazing, Christian. I was like reading all the things and she was.
Like, where do you go to the park?
Yeah, pretty much.
But yes, well I'm glad.
I'm glad you got to take that time for yourself and regulate your nervous system and rest and spend time with Iri before the school year starts, because you will chry as soon as she closes the door when third grade starts. Because that's what happened. I was totally fine. I was like, oh yeah, okay, bute. It's like a button was pushed. I was like tears. I was like, what the fuck just happened?
I was fine, Oh, I know she starts next week, so I'm scared.
She has three binders.
Apparently she's been telling me for weeks I have three binders. I'm like, okay, what does that mean. It means a lot of homework that I'm gonna be happy to do.
Mister Tyler, shout out to the tutors of the world, Amen, because this new Singapore math is some bullshit. And I know, I know the moms know that Singapore math. That's what it's called. This a new school math, and it's it's an atrocity to humanity, particularly moms.
Agreed.
Anyway, you want to get into it.
Yeah, let's get into it.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is the final week of bad Ass Birthing August. We've brought a lot of amazing guests. But today and this week is a very special week because it's also Black Maternal.
Black breastfeed lass.
I always fucked this.
Up Black Breastfeeding Week. And we have a very special guest. We have a birth and doula advocate. We have a birth and doula expert. We have saying it wrong.
We have a found the founder of Mama Glow, Laithan Thomas.
Hi, Hi, welcome to the living room.
Yes, I can come sit closer.
I don't know how should I move it.
I think it's stop.
It just looks far from her mouth.
I'm here, Yeah, I'm here.
Late man.
Thanks for coming on our.
Thank you for coming on our show having me. We've been all month. We've been interviewing different women in the space. And I was telling you earlier that my friend Daphne, who's also a friend of the show, and I've known her for years. Check out Daphne's episode. It's called Return of the Soft Woman. She when I got pregnant, she told me you.
Need to talk to her, Lam, you need to talk to.
Her, and I didn't fucking listen, and I should have because I ended up giving birth to a hospital aka Cedar Sinai Hospital, which I recently saw has like a class actually civil rights saw suit for their you know, their poor treatment of black women in birth, and I had not. I don't want to say it wasn't like the worst experience, but it was not a great experience there. So I'm so glad to me I know you now, I've met you now. But unfortunately I didn't listen to Daphne. I'm sorry, Daphne.
We're here now, We're here now, We're here now. Yeah.
So I'm just so intrigued with all all the work that you do.
You have such a powerful business and powerful message and you're really changing lives. So how did you get into the work that you do? Like, what is the what is the conception story?
Well, I'm from Oakland, California, and when I was about four years old, my mother was pregnant with my sister, My aunt was pregnant, and then my great aunt all at the same time, do within a month of each other in March April May, right, and you know at that age, and you all know because you're closer to that.
Age than I am.
My son's twenty now.
But at that age you remember the height of a four year old. It's kind of like around the belly height, right. So I'm looking around and everything I see from the advantage tooice is just these beautiful bellies, like you know, expanding in front of me. And my mother was like really into me being educated. So I had coloring books, like Gray's Anatomy coloring book I had. There was a show on PBS called My Mom's Having a Baby.
I was watching that.
I still remember the jingle for that show. I was watching just like all educational programming around like becoming.
A sibling and.
So yeah.
So I was just like really.
Dialed in and so much so that like the body literacy piece, I was very serious felled because I was like doing coloring books, right, so I could tell you all the anatomy of the pelvis by like age four and a half. Wow, and so and so when we would be in the grocery store, my mom was like so proud of this.
She was like, Yeah, we're in the store.
One time and someone's like, oh, your mother has a baby in her Tell me. I was like, oh no, no, no, my mother has a baby in her universe is going to come out of her vagina. So right, so that was like the the you know, the the type of education she was providing.
And so fast forward to the birth.
You know, she had the baby. I was fascinated with this process and were you at the did she have a home birth? She had the baby in a hospital, but the whole like lead up, like I understood everything that was going to happen because my mom like explained everything, and and then she explained when she came home like how it was. And so my cousin and I we had like cabbage patch dolls at the time, which like
total relic for those who weren't borne patch. Cabbage Patch dolls were everything, okay, so we would like stuff them under our shirts and pretend to deliver each other's babies, Me, my cousin. Right, so we had like a whole idea of what we thought birth was. And so fast forward.
Those were like the seeds planted for me, you know about like you know, what birth could be, how fascinating and incredible the body is and the magic and wisdom and mystical experience that happens inside of our bodies that see was planted then. And so then fast forward to when my son I'm pregnant with my son, who's now
twenty twenty years ago. Think about what really twenty one during the pregnancy, Think about the type of technology we had, Like now we're really used to apps and social and like none of this existed, by the way, people didn't even text twenty.
Years like your baby is the size of a RAS right.
All this we had websites like this right, which were like very ugly and flexible, hard to navigate, and there weren't like there weren't the tools and resources that we have today. So I was like navigating this this experience literally talking to people like hey, like with the best practitioner for this and who's best practitioner for that thing? And so I was like writing this down by hand, okay, which would all become like my first book, Mama Glow.
All of these like kind of findings around my pregnancy became that book. But in this time, there was not the same you could navigate it in the same that we do now, And so I had a you know, like a sort of like signal go off, like hey, like we could make this easier for people.
Being from California.
I wanted to do like a very natural I wanted to do like a home like environment.
I didn't want to do a home.
Birth because where I lived with my son's father, if you know anything about New York City, the house was way too small. It was not happening, and I didn't feel comfortable there. So there was a birth center. He was living at too to Too West twenty third Street, and there was a birth center on to to Too West fourteenth. So the numerology for me was like all the way lining up and where he was going to be born. It was right next door to a club that we used to go to called Nell's that became
Two Eyes, that became the Darby. So my son thinks he was born in a nightclub and he became a DJ. So like, all this is money, way he might be right. So yeah, so that was like.
The whole thing, right.
So I so I get to deliver in this birth center and I had you know, and I don't want to get too deep into extented, we'll talk more, but like I had this really transformative event and I had, you know, an out of body experience with a birth, and it was transcendent and at the time, I was like,
wait a minute, Like people don't talk about this. They talk about like the pain, and they talk about like just birth being something that like incapacitates them or makes them feel like less less powerful, And for me, I felt more empowered. I felt like I stepped into this
other realm of myself. I felt my ego shed and on the other side, this new woman emerges and I felt like, you know, this new sense of power, you know, And so I was like, oh yeah, Like nobody said my ancestors were going to show up to the birth right. And so my experience was one where it was so transformative in a positive way that I felt compelled right to move in the direction I was already doing women's health, but really move in direction of service in birth work,
more specifically around doulah care. And I did not have a doula present, but I did have my best friend at the time who became my son's godmother, who's now a really big obg I n in DC.
She was there, my son's.
Father was there.
I had like my midwife family members. It was like a party, and my son's birth it was like too many people. So I did not need a doula, but I had to. And then I also had, like, you know, this this transmission of ancestral wisdom and a knowledge transfer that came through the ancestral plane in the birth. So I felt accompanied, I felt covered, you know, So for me,
that's like what was the origin? Right, And within twenty minutes of my son's birth, I said to everybody in the room, I have to I have to help other women through this. I have to help because nobody said it would be this.
I help.
I have to help preserve this, this this moment for people like whatever it is supposed to be for them, but I have to help protect it.
And I knew that, and I.
Was able to say that lucidly while I was high after my son's birth, right, which is.
A total high, which we'll talk about more.
But I felt this overwhelming sense of euphoria when he was born, right, But I was able to be lucid enough to say that, yeah.
Wow, that's amazing.
You know, I never always referred to birth as a rite of passage. It is, and granted my you know, I was in a hospital. I didn't want to be able to do it at home. It didn't work out that way. But I've never heard anyone say, like my no one told me my ancestors are going to be present, and like that makes so much sense, right, Like we're literally opening up the portal. Yeah, so of course we
would have easier contact with the other side. Yes, but we don't even think that way because you know, there's always there's all this fear about the pain that we're going to So there's all we were just like thinking about, Fuck, this is gonna hurt.
I I be able to get through this? Am I gonna make it?
But it's like you don't really realize like this is an opportunity to kind of have those clear downloads and have that that that plane of conversation with your ancestors and to really be like, YO, help me out, you know. But like that's so beautiful even then? Is it because you were in like in the health space that it even dawned on you to have a birth at a birthing center, Because twenty one years ago, I could imagine that's not very popular.
Yeah, you know, I knew I wanted to have and out of hospital experience because I'm not a person who likes hospitals and so and when I was going for my care Prenatalie. I was seeing I went to Columbia Presbyterian because I was like, oh, I get I went to Columbia. I guess I should go there, you know. And it was I was like this care is backwards, like they're not. And I had an amazing Muslim midwife we called her Umi. She was awesome, but I was like, so and she was telling me how stuff was going
to go down. I was like, this is not my this is not my place. And so my son's father we were walking across fourteenth. He's like, we should pop into this place. And I was like, you think they would take our insurance? Like you think He's like, let's just go in. And so we went inside and they were like, come do a like a basically kind of like an orientation kind of and like open house kind of thing. So we went to the open house and then they just basically share with you how they run
the birth center. And it's like you have full autonomy, you know, and sovereignty.
So you walk in.
When you do yours, you take your own weight, you do your own you test your urine so you'd like pee over a strip and then you basically check to see like if there's protein present and things like that, you report it on your notes by yourself, and then and you take your own weight and record that and then you I'm trying to think that for something else you would do, but those are the main two things you would do. And then the midwife would come into the room and see you, and you would be looking
at your chart. You had access to your chart anytime. I could like be in the world and be like, oh, I want to see what's in my chart, and I could walk in there, go behind the console, grab my.
Chart, read it.
They gave you a full copy of all your medical records as soon as you had your baby as well, so it was like it wasn't no, like it's like, it's my information. Why is it taking me three weeks to get like medical records?
Right?
So it was just like full openness and transparency. They make you do twenty one hours of education before you deliver there so that you actually are not in a space of being afraid, right, So, because if you don't have the education or you don't have the support, then you don't realize that, Yeah, birth is an opportunity to hold hands with God, to dance, right, and to be in a cosmic dance, to be in the space of where your body actually creates all of the medicine that
you need right to get you through. And as you said, birthing rights really allow us the opportunity to separate from our normal station in life, right, to pull away, right to prepare to actually undergo transformation. Right, So move from the preliminal space to the liminal and then postliminal when we come on.
The other side.
So you literally do go through an arc that is about progression and growth and also transformation. It is like how we see any life cycle. Like butterflies too, right.
You see how they start as caterpillars, right, and then one day they begin to meditate on what it would be to become and they stop eating and they spin a chrysalis and they stay there and they literally dissolve right symbolically but also also physically right, physically and symbolically resolve a dissolve, and then something else is spun inside right, and something else is created, and then something else emerges. Right, And so they move from that from one plane to
the next. And if you see where they were when they started, it's nothing like they were on the other side. It's like they have something else, It's not just wings. When they emerge, they have something else too, And so same for us when we emerge from this person who is moving through their regular station in life and then feels now the calling to birth. It's time, right, And it's really the mother and the baby's spirit that decides when it's time to be born, right, And so then
you feel this overcoming you. You feel that it's time, so you start to move out. So people do things like take maternity leave, or they start cleaning. We see things like like the nest thing, right, you start cleaning everything like crazy and right right, that is the body
preparing to separate, right, preparing to separate. And then because you can't relax if things, if you don't feel like everything's in place right, So then you can separate and you can actually go into this spiritual plane where all of that work is happening, where you dissolve an ego and this new version of yourself is ready to emerge
and carry you to the other side. But while you're here, right in the liminal space, you have an opportunity to access healing, to access wisdom, to touch and reach back and grab things that you need to carry to the other side, right, which we call sankofa reaching back right. And so we so we grab those things we need and we carry them to the other side.
And and with the us.
We're like we're like covered, right, we have actual like caretakers, we have like our ancestors who carry us to the other side. And what is happening that disrupts this process is our current medical model, our current birthing practices and birthing culture in the West and particularly in the United States, disrupts all of the systems that actually support us taking
having birthing rights right. And so so for many people, instead of feeling safety and dignity and belonging and transcendence and self discovery and opening and pleasure and all that's available to us that's actually supposed to be available to us, we feel afraid. We feel you know, indignity, we suffer, we feel unheard, we feel like you know, we feel pain.
Right.
And so what I t and help people to connect to is that living memory, right, like that this is actually in ourselves. And this is also we know how to birth, but also we know how to caretake right as a community, we know how to take care of each other. If you're birthing, I know how to show up, just like you know how. We all know how to show up. And it's our right, it's our birthright to have that support and to feel that safety net. And what is being denied us it's not. You know, we're
in a maternal health crisis in this country. But what I hate that we focus on so much is like we want people like we want black women to survive. I want black women to fucking thrive through birthing, not I want them to feel like when they come out like stomping their feet and shouting and laughing and feeling whole and not feeling like something was taken away, which so many of us feel. And we can't get that. That is, you only have one birthday. The rest are anniversaries.
So we have to get birth right. And we deserve to birth in sanctity and to feel safety and dignity and to be seen in our power as we become mothers. We deserve that we are owed that. And so what is happening right now is not just horrifying because it means that many of us don't make it out alive, but also those of us who survive, look at what it does because how you birth also you carry that
experience into how you live. And so until we can unpack the pain, you know of what we carry from the morning of an experience that was denied us or that we didn't have, is that many of us don't have the opportunity to cry.
I know, I.
Feel really emotional because I'm like, wow, I really did fuck up.
I should have called you.
I didn't have that experience, and I had everything opposite of that, and I did feel robbed, and I still feel obviously hurt by my experience, and that is not I did not have that transformational experience. I wanted that like my Intuitively I knew that that's what I was capable of, but I was denied that. I was told I was wrong over and over again. And then like,
you know, it's the same story. Like people listening right now, you've been through this exact story, maybe even worse than me, and hearing like the power and the beauty of what birth is like. I don't know if I'll ever experience that again. I don't know if I'm going to have another child again.
And you know I.
Am.
I love my baby and I love. I'm happy that she's healthy. But that's really what they say, is like, as long as they're healthy, that's all that matters. It's just gaslighting, by the way, and that's and that's literally what I was fed over and over again when ever I shared what my wants were and my needs were, and that I was selfish and.
That all you want is a healthy baby. All we want out of this is a healthy baby.
That's gaslighting because if I say to you, well, you know at least this, it's like, but what about what I feel? What about how it was made to feel? It's okay, obviously we're happy a baby is safe, but how you were made to feel in the process matters, because why tears are coming now is because how you were made to feel in the process, that you were not seen right, that you were not held in your vulnerability. And so if someone had honored you, imagine if you had the outcome that you had.
But along the.
Way, people checked in and looked in your eyes and laid on hands and asked if you were okay, and what could we do to make it more comfortable? And are you okay now? And is everything better? And how are you feeling and is this enough? And like just little things is a temperature?
Okay? Would you like a blanket? Can I just wipe your tears?
Right?
Can I give you some water? Do you want tea?
Like if they were just kind, even if the outcome right, if you weren't going to change the outcome, if the things that happened along the way, if the way you were treated along the way right, because how what you're recalling is treatment right. And so we internalize how we're made to feel, which is why so many of us, if we think about like our childhoods and things that we're resolving as adults or trying to resolve as adults,
it was how somebody made us feel. Somebody says something and it sat inside and now we're working it out as adults.
Right, So it's like.
That the feeling and what I seek to protect is actually your memory, like the memory of the birth experience. To me is what a doula's job is is to protect the memory so that when you tell the story, I am concerned with how you would tell the story, Like that's actually my job, not just obviously to make sure everything goes well. And you know, and doula for those who want to know, because I know a lot of you have been listening all month about birth, badass birthing,
so I'm sure you're aware. But doulah's are non clinical care providers providing emotional support and physical support and education and advocacy and partner support if you're a partner present. But also how I see it is that we are also keepers of your birth memory, and so we need to be thinking about how to design a space and a safety net and a container for you to have a transcendent experience.
But also.
And also we are there to think through how you will come on to the other side and talk about this experience, how you will share your birth story. I'm concerned with that, and so for me, I would be thinking, you know, in working with you all, like okay, talking through your desires and wishes and also your fears and all these things, and designing a space right and tools that you could be using to help carry you through a process. And then even if we have an experience,
it is not go as planned. Also, processing the birth experience is very important, right Coming on the other side and actually having adequate space to emotionally process is so key and that's also denied us because like you said, it's well, at least baby is healthy. So let's move on, pump up the breast milk and right, like it's just like's keep on moving, get out, Yeah, let's keep it moving instead of wait a minute, a mother was just born. Right, And so if we think about how we treat babies,
we don't leave them alone. We pick them up, we're feeding them every to hour, changing diapers. Like somebody's always with an infant. They are never left alone. Somebody should always be with you in idiot after care. You should be not just observed by a physician. You need to be with community, and you need to be in a safe space where you can process and eat and rest and reflect and right and move through the postpartum rights. Right,
that's also being denied. So because we have one in four women going back to work ten days after having a baby in this country, we not get in that space, right, And then we have people who had babies in a pandemic isolated, right, we didn't get that space. So it's very important what you're surfacing now because maybe you weren't able to do it then, right, And it's important that you're making space for these conversations because it's healing community.
It's healing people who are listening, but it's also like a gift for you, right to like surface up the emotions and the.
Yeah and the and.
The uh, the raw you know feelings right that maybe the right people weren't there to tend to, but we're in community now and so we can hold you.
Thank you, yeah, thank you.
I'm so grateful for your your perspective, like just you sharing in that way, because with like, while you were sharing, I'm just like, duh, you know, Like birth is a spiritual experience, absolutely, and we've obviously medicalized it so much that I think unfortunately it's like the gas lighting is so severe, especially in the United States, is that it begins. It's the disempowerment from pregnancy to birth is really designed
to make women shut the fuck up. It's really designed for you not to even think that it's supposed to be that. It's designed so that you don't understand your power when you leave, because it's easier to control a woman who's not empowered. And like I didn't even think about that, Like when you're discussing how you can go into your birthing center and grab your chart and see
what the fuck they're writing about you. I'm thinking, what the fuck did they write on that goddamn folder that I've never seen?
Why are you holding? Can you turn that bitch around? What is on that paper?
Yeah?
But it's like we are so accustomed to a certain type of treatment.
We're so accustomed to line trust well yeah, and we're.
So accustomed to just saying okay, oh well, oh, only my baby's supposed to be healthy. Like it's like the beginning of as soon as you give birth, like, oh where's your baby at? Like, fuck, you don't mind the fact that I ushered the baby through. But it's like the the the grooming of your disconnection with yourself. Yes, and it begins so early, and they're like, we know better, you don't. It's like a training and forgetting your intuition.
And the craziest part is is like there's nothing, there's no role needing of your intuition and your power more than being a mother. So when you begin the journey that way, it makes you feel insecure in becoming a mother, and it makes you be like, maybe stay in a relationship that doesn't serve you anymore.
Because you're like, okay, because you've already.
Just laid down and let it, let it happen to you, you know. And it's just like, even I'm thinking about you, and you're like, Adula is a shaman. You are spiritually ushering me through a spiritual experience. And it's like, just like people travel to Peru to go get go do ayahuasca.
Or whatever they're doing over there. You know.
You You're like, I want to be with someone who knows what they're doing, because this is a spiritual experience that I'm you know, investing in because I'm trying to get a certain result. But birth is that spiritual experience, you know what I mean. The Dula is that shaman, and like your birthplace is the altar.
But I want to add to that, you are the shaman. You are the shamans. You are the shaman. Let that sit in there for a second. You are the shaman. Thank you Latham. You guys, there is so much more to this episode. If you want to hear the rest of this episode, it's about forty five minutes longer.
Head over to Patreon.
Now, you do not want to miss all the gems, all of the knowledge drop by Latham and just more sharing, more honesty and if you feel like this episode resonates with you now, I want to encourage you to please please go to Patreon right now and listen to the rest of this episode. Patreon dot com backslash Good Moms, Bad Choices. The link is in this episode description. Thank you, Thank you Latham for this true, true reminder of our power. So let's wrap up this episode from here.
Urgency and efficiency.
Urgency Inefficiency, Yeah, yeah, yes, well Latham, can you thank you so much for coming on our show and taking the time.
To chat with us. Can you tell our tribe where they can find you?
Yes, y'all just come to if you're in the social land, I'm on Instagram at Glo Maven It's g l O W M A V E N. And then at Mama Glow is on Instagram. You can go to Momaglow dot com. If you're interested in doula, like if you want to become a doula, if you want to find a doula, if you want to advance your careers doula, you can come there. And we also, I do want to say
this which is important for people nationwide. We provide dual services, but also for people who cannot afford We do have many programs, especially for women of color, black birthing people specifically, we have programs that have no income requirement. Just if you would like a doula and you just want somebody to help you through this process, if you're wherever you're located. But we we have like bigger programs in like cities like New York, LA, Miami, ME, Atlanta, and New Orleans
in d C. But we service everywhere. So reach out to us if you are looking for a doula and you need that support and that handholding, because we want to make sure that everybody has that access. And then if you are in school, okay, if you want to do dula school and you've like moved on in life and you're like in your next iteration of your I don't know next career path that you want to potentially
be a doula. We have public based programs and if you're in the university, you can take my course at Brown.
In the spring.
I just taught it last spring, but you could you could join me there at around University where I'm you're professor of the practice is Gender and sexuality studies.
Yeah, Professor Thomas here to serve you.
So love to see y'all if you're if you're up at if you're up at Brown, I'll see you in the springtime. But otherwise catch me on these inn streets.
And want to make sure to link all of Latham's information in this episode description. Make sure you come check us out October twenty First, we have our live show in La y'all, Confessions of a Good Mom. So come hang out with your girls, come turn up, you need that night off, Drop them babies off, drop babies, come with your girls, come with your man, come with your wife, whatever.
And we're going to be at the Teagram Ballroom. And uh, we have a few spots left for our retreat next year, next summer in Costa Rica, July twenty twenty twoenty twenty four. So you have plenty plenty of time to invest in this retreat.
It's invest in your rest.
Invest in your rest right you invest in your disconnection and reconnection to yourself.
It is a.
Beautiful, beautiful experience that Meila and I have curated for you guys. You can click the link check out our reviews. We five stars. Baby, make sure you go, h subscribe to our YouTube channel. I'm wearing our friends line. It's called Vintage Souls, female founded line based here in La. If you like my outfit, check her out at Vintage souls dot com. Yep, yeah, just look at Vintage Souls And what's the discount code.
We got good Moms for thirty percent.
Of Good Moms and this is a luxury brand, so you're gonna want to use that thirty off.
Girl.
Shout out to Valley Girl Vintage who supplied these vintage pants that I'm wearing.
Hard rip and uh, we'll catch you guys next week.
Bye, La Suspo, Ellen J.
Solo, BAA Recorder, Lalos and Elas pashm