Your Generational Pain Didn’t Start With You (It Started at Birth)

Knocking women out, dragging babies out, like, this is not it. That experience has nowhere to offload. It has nowhere to process. Everything that that parent didn't process is now the child's to bear. This is what becomes birth trauma.

Ayla Cuenca is a holistic birth guide, doula, and birth trauma alchemist.

Say a woman has, you know, her mother experienced a deeply traumatic, highly medicalized birth, and so did the aunt or the older sister, right? It's become a family story. She might create this idea or this vision of her perfect birth, but in order to stay in that belonging with the women of her family, she has to repeat what they've lived because the need to be connected to your mother is so much more important than the ideal birth experience. It's totally unconscious.

What do you believe alchemy truly is when it relates to birth trauma healing? Well, so what exactly is birth trauma? The medical industry describes it as something which I don't really resonate with. What's, what's your understanding of birth trauma as it actually is?

My understanding is that it is stuck grief. So when there is an experience that happens in birth, right, it could be having an unmet need, it could be a sudden change of plans, right? We planned for this type of birth and this other thing happened and I felt unheard, unseen, I felt violated, let's say. And that sensation, that experience has nowhere to offload, it has nowhere to process. It's not moved through the body, it's actually internalized. This is what becomes birth trauma. So if the woman were to have holding after an experience, right? 'Cause these experiences can happen. If she were to have some sort of holding where this is reflected back, the process is allowed to move through her body, the words are allowed to be spoken without trying to course correct her, reframe it, or change it, you know, for her, then she's allowed to process it and it doesn't stay, you know. I love what Gabor Maté said. He used an example. He was being interviewed by Mel Robbins, actually. And I remember he said, you know, it's not the actual event that occurred. It was that you had nobody to talk to about it. After it happened. And that really stuck with me because I had been doing so much birth process, birth trauma processing work. And in 90 minutes, the woman being able to move all that grief through her body allowed her to see new possibilities for her experience, actually allowed her to see the experience differently and to see the wisdom and the gift that was actually wrapped up in that process. You know, because if a woman doesn't have that opportunity, she'll take it to, you know, to the end. I've worked with women in their 60s and 50s who are still processing, uh, what happened, you know, back in the '70s and the early '80s during their birth.

It reminds me of this, um, second law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transmuted. And I feel like we are all collectively— especially, I'm interested what you feel about birth as a whole. We're in this, uh, big swimming pool called consciousness, and we're all either holding down an air-filled beach ball and feeling the stress and strain of holding it down, or we're choosing to let it go. But when we let go of the beach ball, especially when it comes to birth, we can feel— the Native Americans say— 7 generations worth of grief and pain and struggle. Do you resonate with that way of thinking?

I do, and I, I look at it through the, the lens that Bert Hellinger has presented to me through family systems and family constellation work.

Yeah.

Um, which is that we have loyalties to those that we are entangled with, right? Whether it's an ancestor, a grandparent, an aunt, someone generations back that we've never even met, we might not know their name, but we're in this, uh, you know, morphogenic field that we share, right? It's like the Wi-Fi that we don't see, right? It's like this grid, but it goes back and back and back. It's ourselves. And so, you know, a family member that might have experienced some sort of exclusion from the family system, right? Let's just use that as an example. Uh, someone one generation, two generations down might be reliving that experience because it needs to be resolved within the family system. It's like a snag in the web that needs to be resolved, so the generation will recreate it in order to include that excluded. Family member.

It's fascinating to me that the whole understanding that I got from Mark Wollin— I've interviewed him twice, and he goes so deep into the way in which we're woven that you're describing. And I felt it for my whole life. Like, when I was a little boy, I'm like, what are y'all adults so angry about? Like, what, what is taxes? What is rules? What is school? What is dogma? What is religion? I think as children, we're so pure We have been unadulterated. And the challenge is that I see from my children is that the greatest gift I could ever give them is a life free of my projections. But if I'm not willing to feel the beach ball, then that's going to potentially come out in birth. And it definitely— I'll share later on in our conversation, it happened. How does the imprint of generational baggage, you said gifts, how does that inform the way in which a mother will unconsciously birth or consciously birth?

So many ways that it can manifest, that it'll take shape. Let's say there's been trauma, like say a woman has, you know, her mother experienced a deeply traumatic, maybe highly medicalized birth, and so did the aunt, or, you know, so did the older sister, right? It's become a family story. And so unconsciously, in order to belong, because one of the things that we want, right, this is a survival, this is a survival need that we have, is to belong. And then it's compounded by childhood experiences. I would say it kind of like heightens that survival instinct. So, you know, we can talk about attachment theory and things like that. So depending on the childhood, that need to belong is like, you know, it can shoot up, right? And so when a woman has experienced that in her family system, she might do everything. She might take the birth classes, she might make the birth plan, she might create this idea or this vision of her perfect birth. But in order to stay in that belonging with the women of her family, she has to repeat what they've lived. It's totally unconscious. And so, okay, like I planned this, but then there was this, you know, an induction was presented and rather than not doing it, I chose to do it. I chose to entangle. With, you know, that suggestion, then took me down the path of XYZ into an emergency C-section. And here I am traumatized in the story with the women of my family. But now I continue my belonging because to choose differently and to give myself something different would mean that I'm not part of that belonging. So, you know, I know that that's sometimes hard for my clients to to process, to digest, because they're like, why would I want that? Why would I have chosen that pain and that suffering? He said, because the need to be connected to your mother is so much more important than the ideal birth experience. And so that's where we explore the relationship with the mother. And so when we would do birth trauma processing sessions, you know, oh, and this happened, and the doctor said this, and the nurse said that, and then they took the baby, and then they did the thing. And I said, okay, 'Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up with your mom?' 'What does that have to do with it?' But then it's revealed.

Is it always revealed every time?

I can't think of, like, in the last 11 years, I can't think of a time where it was something wasn't revealed about formative experience with a parent, either parent, either caregiver.

What traditionally, I know I'm being myopic and reductionizing, but what are the common things that typically get revealed once they're actually shown to you from the story?

Challenges with attachment, healthy attachment, secure attachment. Usually, um, one of the caregivers is an addict, the other one is a codependent of some kind. Um, one of the parents has like those projections that you're talking about, right? They are carrying those, the generations, the weight of those generations, and everything that that parent didn't process is now the child's to bear. And so, you know, they'll say, no, my mom was great, my dad was great, they had "Wonderful relationship, married 35 years, that, you know, there's nothing wrong there." So, "Oh, well, how did you feel? You know, what was it like with your siblings?" "Well, I was responsible because, you know, turns out my mother had a disability, she couldn't walk, and my father, you know, was often drinking when he got home from work, and so, 'cause he was so stressed out that I actually ended up taking care of everyone." "Okay." So then we go a little bit deeper into that. You know, just a lot of parentification, wasn't able to experience childhood as she should have as a 7-year-old. Although parents were married, never divorced, and they loved each other, her experience as a young girl was basically taken from her in order to become the mother and the caregiver for the family. So this shows up in birth simply because there's certain patterns, there's a hyper-independence, let's say, in this certain scenario that led her to not be able to receive help, support, and guidance in birth. And you know, chose a path that was a little bit more of a lone wolf path, let's say.

Yeah.

In her process and ended up disappointed and unsupported. Wow.

And there's so many— it's almost like there's so many systems in modernity that have clutches and they're waiting to continue on these covert agreements that you describe. The challenge here that I'd love for you to unpack is if it's so unconscious that there's an agreement to belong, how and why would that exactly show up besides just attachment in the way a child is brought into the world?

So I gave the example of unconsciously replicating or reliving a difficult birth experience. It might also show up in replicating or reliving a difficult marriage experience, right? It can also show up— we see this in family constellations— as a disease. So in order to maintain connection, I may take on that disease that my mother still lives with or lived with in order to remain in connection and belonging. And so, yeah, on a biological, a deep biological level, we need that in order to feel safe, secure, and like we are not out in the cold and going to be hunted by lions or a predator. Yeah. So there's that. And apart from the attachment, I think that it also gives us something to relate to people with. You know, I know that in these new mom groups or the breastfeeding groups that I'd go to personally after I gave birth, it was so much commiserating, like, oh, I did this, and yeah, this is hard. And there was a lot of kind of like wallowing in the challenge of the experience.

Yeah.

So again, it's belonging, not even to the family system, now to other women, right? And so it might speak to a deeper isolation that we are living and experiencing in modernity. Right? Because there's this loss of the village, loss of the community.

Yeah.

And so in an attempt to reclaim that, we might just be, like, for lack of a better term, trauma bonding with those around us.

Wow. Because we go to what's familiar. I mean, I've had many guests on the show that have talked about this in intimate relationships, but it seems like the same contracts exist when it comes to birth. So I think so. Am I hearing you correctly that a mother would, with beautiful intentions, with like you know, I'm gonna have this mystical birth, it's gonna be an empowered birth. She has all her plans and she has her heart in the right place, but yet it seems like there's these unconscious scrolls that have been written long before this baby is ever going to come into the world. These scrolls that have been written can essentially just be looked at and said, okay, well, I cut cords and I release all contracts. Can't that just be a thing that a mother can learn how to do?

Yeah, but there's so much spiritual bypass that happens with a lot of I mean, the women that I've worked with, and I have a very small petri dish of women, I'm just one person, but there's a lot of spiritual bypass that happens. It's like, well, I've forgiven, or I've accepted, or, you know, that was her story, this is mine. You know, like when I work with infertility cases, let's say, you know, and it's, I'm doing this, and we get into all the biohacking, and my husband's done these things, and we've adjusted this, and then I'll ask her, you know, um, what are you afraid of? Like, what's, what's on the, what's on the other side that you feel afraid of? No, we really want a baby. But tell me what it, what it means to be a mother. Like when you think about motherhood, what does that mean to you? And then again, we talk about her experience in childhood, you know, and I can think of a specific case where this woman said, you know, my mother was such a giver. She was, you know, she was always volunteering at the church. We would take in children, you know, foster care families. So she was a foster parent. So she'd take in children, you know, they were circulating through the home. She's like, I just, my mom was always there for everyone. So was she there for you? Well, I mean, I was there. I always had someone around. I, you know, there's always food on the table. There's always food in the fridge. And you know, I went to a good school. I said, but what was your relationship like? What was the quality of the relationship? Was she presencing with you? Did you feel that she really saw you? No. Okay, so when you imagine being a mother, Do you feel like you don't have a blueprint for that? Are you scared it's going to be the same way? Right? So that's when the grief comes in, grieving the childhood, grieving the disappointment, grieving the bond that really wasn't there. And it's almost like the gaslight of like, she was there, she was a good person, she was there for the community, we had everything we needed, and yet I felt deeply isolated and alone. So sometimes that deep grief of not having that blueprint of a connected mother is what can stop a woman from saying, I'm ready to conceive and give birth and do that, you know. So, um, sometimes it is— there's that bypass of, we've done everything and now we're doing IVF, but have we addressed the real grief of what wasn't? And are we ready to create a new blueprint?

The challenge with this is there's so much of it that can't really be described with words. It's fairly ineffable, the grieving process. So I could imagine that— I guess it's a great opportunity for me to just share a quick story as well, because I love stories. And this is how we learn, y'all, through stories. Our first, our first birth, I essentially came to my wife's pregnancy with the eyes and ears of what I'd been conditioned with.

Sure.

Which was a very Western, traditional, babies are born in hospital type thing. Thank God my wife is into what she's into, which is empowering people to birth. That's what her and her mentor sister Morningstar do. And so I think about the way in which I showed up and I'm like, man, I wish I could go back and just be different. But the second time around, the birth of our daughter, uh, unfortunately we transferred to a hospital in Nova was born cesarean and it was just so devastating. I mean, we were not sleeping, we were in the ICU. I had to sign a medical form and like stand up to the doctor and say, we're taking our son home. You will not put your hooks in him. You will not do the spinal tap. I had to sign a form. The next day, this huge tatted African American guy comes on our door. Doo doo doo, Child Protective Services.

Mm-hmm.

I've been in the belly of the beast, so I know exactly what it breathes like. And then to go for our, for our second birth with Naya, I just asked myself a question of like, do I trust my wife? Do I trust her to actually do this? And the answer was yes. It's this trust factor that I want to ask you about. How much of the conditioning from men enter the space of a woman or their wife birthing? And how does that really change the outcome of the birth itself?

Oh yeah, a whole lot. That's a really great question, and thanks for sharing that story.

So as it was the mini version, by the way, it was a lot more traumatic.

I'm sure. No, we could have spent an hour talking about the knock on the door. So I've been in the birth space quite a bit, both in, in the hospital setting and in birth centers and home births. And because I was a childbirth educator for so long, I used to teach classes in my living room, you know, like on Saturday mornings. And I, I I got into contact with a lot of men, you know, as far as I'm here for the full spectrum. I'm here because I want to like be the doula, I want to like get my, you know, just get in the trenches with her, to I'm here because she asked me to come and that's why I'm in the class. But you know, I—

let's, you know, they're just like checking a box.

Yeah, like I'm here but don't push me.

Yeah.

Um, so the full spectrum of, of let's say the husband are the male counterpart. And the class that I designed, you know, is really speaks to the male a lot, like partnered child birthing. And so I would often ask them about their own experience, you know, what was your mother's experience like? I always want to know that it's like a holistic approach to the, to the human, you know. And I would ask them what their mother's experience was like and what they grew up seeing. And often it comes down to a few things like the sexualization of childbirth. And, you know, are they on some level, you know, perceiving this as sexualization of, of the woman? You know, is it, is it interfering or the hairs crossing about, you know, this is my wife and something pure, and then this is something that's, you know, gonna shift the way that I perceive her? Okay. Or believe, you know, you mean like the man is in fear of having less sex, or fear of having less sex, or seeing her in a way that takes her off of a certain pedestal or perception of how he'd like I don't want to see her. So there's— that's come up actually quite often. Um, also, you know, my mother had a difficult experience. Birth is dangerous. Or, you know, every movie I see, women are suffering and screaming. I don't want to see her suffering and screaming, right? So there's also a deprogramming that happens in the classes. Like, Hollywood is like one dimension of this matrix that is not an accurate representation of what's really going on here. So there's unpacking of that. Um, and then I also find that— I don't know what it is, and maybe you could tell me a little bit about this. I'm always curious. Like, there's this desire for technology and convenience, right? And so it's like when men would say, well, like, it, you know, it's not convenient, or like, we have the technology, why would we do it like this, you know? And they want to see facts, they want to see numbers, they want to know. And so that, when we would cross that bridge, that would often shift things, right? Say, well, let's actually look at what's going on. Let's look at the number of C-sections that are happening compared to what true emergencies are actually happening. So when I'd get down into numbers and percentages, that would often shift it enough that they'd say, okay, I'm open to trusting why we're here and trusting her and, and her decision-making, trusting that she knows her body better than what they've perceived in media and film. So there's many dimensions to how they come to these understandings of birth. And once they make that shift into trusting her and actually educating themselves and saying, wow, I have a really amazing role here as the masculine counterpart Like, I'm the gatekeeper. I can protect her in this experience. I can create the container and those kind of, like, this kind of embankment around her experience so that she feels really safe and surrendered. And in coming into that power, and that doesn't mean you have to catch the baby, it doesn't mean you have to do things like that. That's not what creates that container. It's letting her know, I trust you, I see you, you're held, what resources you need, I'm here to provide, you know? And I'll do everything in my power to protect you, but I also trust you. So when that balance comes in, the woman can really follow her body. I've had men contact me and say, I really want to take your class, she's just really scared of childbirth. Like, how can we— you know, men have come and said that. How can we shift this? Because I don't want my baby born in the hospital. I don't want her, you know, touched by strangers and, you know, have things done to her that we don't agree to. I don't feel confident legally, you know, advocating for myself in this setting. So we— I just want to do at home or in a birth center, like, help us, right? But she needs the buy-in. So then sometimes it's about working with her to again shift and see where she really wants to be.

I like your approach. Your approach is very different than what I see. Unfortunately, there's like two camps. There's the one that's hardcore, like Free Birth Society. It's like, this is how you do it, and if you don't do it, there feels to be this undercurrent of shame. If you don't do it the way in which we should tell women to do it. And then there's more like, like Marian, Indie Birth, and people like yourself that are really understanding this is a holistic lens. This is about both, you know, mother and father and baby being in harmony and in union. And then whatever grief gets to be healed in that process, it involves deeper conversations and deeper work. Yeah, I love that approach so much more than the dogmatic approach. I had an experience with that, and I'm not going to name the person's name because I don't want to give them airtime, but there was an energy of anger and dogmatism that came from this person, and it definitely impacted the birth. It definitely, um, soured the space, in my opinion. It was quite traumatic. And so with the second birth, my wife chose these— we went to 9,000 feet in Colorado. We had Naya outside of Golden, Colorado. We had no idea it was going to be 9,000 feet. I had to get an oxygen machine like it was just so like what birth is, which is like you do your best and then you just leave space for mystery.

And then you respond.

And then you respond. So, so my question for you is, it seems like, what is your opinion of the entire birth space when it comes to the dogmatism on one side about this is how it should be, and then the actual holistic approach that, that I'm feeling from you that you stand for, which is understanding that birth is this amalgamation of everything that's led them to this moment of this child coming into the world. Both man and woman. Not that the man's more important by any means, but a man's role in the whole process.

The man's role is so unique and essential, right? And people say, well, you know, like, we didn't have men in the birth space— gosh, again— until like the late '60s, early '70s. So there was a period of a few decades where they were removed from the birth space because we started birthing in hospitals primarily. Like, at the end of, you know, 1890s was when women really began birthing in hospitals. By the 1940s, about 50% of women were birthing in hospitals, and women were not allowed in the space. So it's like the classic image of the, the man in the waiting room with the cigar, you know, that kind of thing. Like, that was very real.

Yeah.

And, um, and then Dr. Bradley, you know, who's actually from Colorado, who's an obstetrician, that said, like, I grew up on a farm in Kansas, and this is not how we're supposed to be birthing. Like, knocking women out, dragging babies out, like, this is not it. And he left his post in the hospital and started birth center, an independent birth center that maintained his medical, you know, his licensure. And he's the one that brought men back into the birth space. And he said, your presence is essential and valuable in this space, even if you didn't touch anything, even if you don't say anything. She needs to know she's held and supported, you know. And so that energetically was huge. But anyway, what I would say is the dogma that comes up a lot, and I've, you know, I've experienced moments of it myself simply because you know, we all have our arc.

Yeah.

And when I started the school to train doulas and birth educators and to mentor them, a lot of them were coming from these other programs or communities that were super black and white, super dogmatic. They were even removed from those communities because they were asking questions that challenged that philosophy, you know. And I'd say, well, like one example, she said, you know, this, this— I was told that this was the right way to do it. You know, and that there is no other way. And if we do the other way, we're like sheep or we're plebs or whatever it is, right? And I said, well, you know, women weren't historically birthing alone on purpose. Like, they, they weren't. They were always supported by other women, whether it was an elder in the community or in the village, or it was women in the family who'd already birthed. Like, they're in every culture historically, there were women birthing together. Like, it an isolated event was typically accidental and/or necessity, simply because maybe she and her husband lived farther away and there was no one to be there. But it's not like birthing alone without support is like the way.

Yeah, you know, um, it's almost like they're trained like, unless you do it on a lily pad next to a river by yourself and pull the baby out, then somehow you're not an empowered woman. It's just such dogma bullshit.

No, it's total BS. And, you know, I— yeah, and so it's like the sigh of relief that would come over these women and say, yeah, it doesn't feel and I said, trust that, trust that. Yeah, it didn't feel right to hear that. You knew that there was something deeper, and that's why you're here. And so there is a necessity, like this system, right, this, this polarity, this— let's call it this pendulum, you know, between the free birth and then the highly medicalized birth. Like, those things are necessary for women to find themselves. Like, the polarity gives us a structure.

That's a good point.

In order to have that journey. And so when I get women who say, I want a doula, I'm having a C-section, I want one, I'm too scared of birth, I'm like, okay, our journey is going to be maybe trying to find space for a vaginal birth, but we'll stay in the hospital because that's— she can maybe titrate into that. And let's see what her goals are. And she might say, my goals are breastfeeding and I want to do co-sleeping and I want to do— like, she's showing me that she wants this type of mothering experience. So I might say, How do we shift out of the fear and the desire for a C-section? And if we can shift out of that and at least have a, a vaginal birth where the recovery is easier and there are more opportunities for more successful breastfeeding and more connection, mm-hmm. How do we do that? And that for me is like a huge win because she got closer to healing, integrating, restoring. I don't need her to go from an elective C-section to now birthing in the woods. For me, that type of jump, that leap is not a sign of progress or expansion or healing at all.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, when we get into this, this dogma, it's like, I don't know, I just, I can't even like give it attention or energy anymore. It's just like, it feels like a joke.

Yeah, I purposely don't go into it. I just gave it as a frame for what not to do because I experienced it myself. Now the solution on this is alchemy, and I know that you use the word alchemy a lot in your work. I think about the alchemization process. Even right now I'm wearing the Philosopher's Stone. So I love this understanding from a Jungian perspective of it's not about disowning the past, it's not about disowning the lower self. It's about being in peace and learning from the fears, the pitfalls, and the roadblocks that the lower self is bringing forth to the current self so that it can be informed by the higher self. Like, can they all three be in union is what I'm saying. When it comes to birth, what do you believe alchemy truly is when it relates to birth and birth trauma healing?

So one of the things that comes up in this process is, I wish it would have been different, right? That's like the— that's why they came. It's like, I can't move forward in this area of my life. I wish it would have been different. I wish it hadn't have happened that way, or why did it happen to me? And so when we can go a little bit deeper and say, take it as it was, I take it as it was. Like, that phrase is really, really healing, especially when it comes to things we wanted to be different about our childhood. I take it as it was. Perfectly imperfect. The nervous system, like, I even see women go, like, I see this exhale happen. I see like a disarming happen. Oftentimes tears come when we can simply say, I take it as it was, because the only thing stopping the woman is not taking it as it was and continuing to relive the loop. Could have been like this, but what if he had done that? If my husband would've arrived 20 minutes earlier, if the midwife would've done this, if the doula, right? I take it as it was. And then what became available to me in that process? And so that's just a type of, it's just guided self-inquiry. And sometimes I wish we could arrive there alone, but sometimes it is a matter of having someone hold the space for that guided inquiry so that alchemy can happen. I often find that women end up being amazing birth workers after they've had really challenging experiences. Many of the women that come to my mentorship have had challenging, like, fertility journeys or loss, or, um, you know, let's call it just birth trauma. And they say, I want it to be different, not just for myself and my own family, but for the women around me. And so that's where the alchemy comes, where they can say, take it as it was, what's available to me now, what gifts and talents do I have, and how do I share them with the community? And that's where so much of the purpose comes in, and that original trauma or that thing, that thorn, uh, that's been in the side for quite a long time, it starts to dissolve. Or you leave it there and say, it's part of who I am, you know. It's like a deep acceptance, and that's the alchemy. You're holding two things at the same time. They can both be true at once, but how do they dictate the way that you live and you behave? You know, that's the real question.

I love your analogy of the two worlds. I use that a lot Yeah, I know you're talking about the birth space, but like, I just feel like on the human journey, the, the realization that there could be love or hate, fear or anything else at the current moment is just such a paradox. At times it seems like such a paradox to be able to even hold two worlds, let alone try to even understand the two worlds. So then when it gets to a place in, let's just call it expansion of consciousness for a woman, how would she transform trauma into peace and power and wisdom? What does that look like to go from trauma to peace and power and wisdom?

It can be a long process. I mean, for everyone's definition of long is a little different, but I had a student, a woman come to me once, it was about 7 years ago, and she said, I birthed out of the country. She birthed in an Eastern European country. Her husband was from Eastern Europe. She said, I was mistreated in the hospital. You know, the nurse abandoned me, the midwife, you know, I was birthing with a midwife and she abandoned me and I just felt like no one heard me, no one understood me. I said, okay, you know, and she said, I wanna give birth again. I just don't want, I just feel like I'm too scared to do it. I just don't wanna relive that experience. And I said, I totally understand. And so I said, what would it mean if that experience happened and everybody was actually there to serve you? They were there to bring you to this moment where you were deciding that you wanted things to be different, right? Like, what if all of that was orchestrated so that you could connect with me and I could ask you this question? What would it mean if all that were true and now you're making a different choice? And she said, that would mean I'd have to stop being so angry. And I said, yeah, yeah. And then what would happen if you weren't so angry? And she started crying and just started, some things started coming up about her experience. You know, what would it mean if they didn't hear you and now you can hear yourself and you can see yourself and where else have you not felt seen or heard? You know, so we talked a little bit about her experience with her mom, of course. And she said, you know, I just get so triggered when I hear women talking about birthing in the hospital. And Brit and I said, what would it mean if they birthed in the hospital and you were still you, right? And it didn't affect you. And that was their experience. And so we started to really explore the kind of enmeshment that happens where it's like, I need it to look that way in order for me to feel safe, you know, which is huge for us when we're seeking safety. We need similarity. We feel that we need similarity in order to maintain that safety and that security. And so she started to see all the areas in her life where everything, including her husband, could be different from her. He could think differently than her. He could have different preferences and she would still feel safe and secure and she could still, you know, thrive and flourish. So it was about a maybe 4-year process of, you know, she'd text me and say, you know, I was at this mom group and they were all talking about how they did this induction and they got the epidural and they were laughing about this and how could women? And I said, can they do this and can you still feel? Like you're on your own path, and can you still connect with them about other things? So it's again holding those two opposites. And now she's at a point— she's done all the mentorships with me, all three of them. Now she's working with our company and she's part of our community, and I hear her asking women these same questions in our— she's a community moderator, and she asks women these same questions who are coming into our program. And she's had multiple children now, abundance is flowing into her life, her husband and her, their relationship thriving, you know, they have this small homestead in Vermont and it's like, we can't imagine, she couldn't imagine maybe that this would've been possible, but that alchemy, that process of alchemy happened over the course of years where she said, wow, I see that that entire team at that hospital birth served me so well so that I could now have this vision, my wish fulfillment, you know? But if they continue to be like the enemy or the villain, right, then we stay in the victim and we just simply can't expand into anything different. And I just feel that birth is really the substrate where we can make that wish fulfillment possible, saying, what can I, what can I do differently now?

When you were describing that beautiful process, I was thinking, okay, alchemy, if you think about it, the original description with like the mystics, it would be they would turn base metals into gold. There is a purification, a negrito process. There's a lot there that gets to be shed and burned off, essentially. So is it— I guess the laser question is, is it on some level, unconsciously, a woman knows that alchemy is being called forth and she's feeling fear or resistance to the alchemization process itself because of the COVID contract attached to belonging?

Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, what, what one of the things that she came into contact with in particular was that there was this covert need for belonging with her mother, you know, and now that relationship has also transformed. I'd say the only, like, there was something in her that knew this conversation with me had to happen, and maybe it could have been with someone else, but I just happened to be there at that moment in time. We had our own contract, right, somewhere along the line to have that conversation. That summer day, right? And so there was something in her that was ready, although she knew it was going to be uncomfortable, although her, you know, higher self knew there is a purification process. I don't know how long it's going to take, but I'm ready to do it, right? And I think when women just don't even want to— which is fine, it's not like hierarchical, it's not a meritocracy— but some women just don't want to have the conversation. It doesn't cross their minds. They go about their day, they do the thing, there's that— the desire for that alchemy is not there. Maybe not at this juncture in their life, maybe not in this lifetime, who knows. It's just, it's not what they're up to. Yeah. But the question, I want it to be different, or I'm mad that it happened this way, I wish it were different, right? That's where I know they're ready. They wouldn't be asking this if they weren't ready to start the journey.

There's, there's multiple layers, as there always is with any human process. It's so interesting, me, a man, asking you, a woman, about birth, because men can never birth. Knock on wood. I don't care what society and wokeness says. There's no such thing as a man that can give birth to a child. It doesn't exist. Anything else is just demonic distortion, in my opinion. In this distortion field that we currently are in, how do you maintain taking in people's affect of them being distorted, whether it's through dogma from different groups, whether it's through societal conditioning, whether it's through the Western medical model. By the time that a woman and a man get to your training or get to your work, there's a lot that gets to be unwrapped and uncoiled, per se. So how do you, how do you gently be able to identify where someone is in their conditioning and how do you start welcoming them, welcoming them into this alchemization process?

Yeah, it Again, if they found me, if they wanted to connect, there was something on some level in them that was ready to ask a new question or to take a super deep dive. I mean, there's a full spectrum of what they're available for, and I do that by asking questions and building safety, you know, just cultivating safety between us, right, without judgment. And people, I think, know where I stand. I'm pretty clear about the, you know, like, the only You know, like, I'm one of the only people who publicly advertises that I don't buy into like that type of language we were just talking about. That's not a narrative that I follow. And so I think people are pretty clear that they're not gonna find that with me. And so I kind of peel back the layers by asking simple questions, usually about their goals. Like, if we get down to it, it's just about needs. So people might say, I have this theory or this belief and, you know, this armor and this, this trigger, you know, and I'm like, well, what's the need underneath that? What are the needs? You know, I have this emotion, I'm really angry. What, what do you need? So it is highly personal work. That's why these kind of like, you know, prerecorded things where I never come into contact with people is challenging simply because we can't really access that deeper level of needs. So it's like, I'm always in my work, I'm always like, how do I reach a lot of people? But these questions have to be asked, right?

Right.

And so, yeah, it's about accessing the deeper needs. Every man has needs, unmet needs. Every woman has unmet needs. And when they come into this, let's say, this alchemical cauldron, so to speak, in preparing for birth or preparing for conception, this is where we can ask about those unmet needs. And it might have to do with the relationship, the marriage. It might have to do with things outside of the marriage. It might have to do with the birth itself. It might have to do with, I needed my dad to be there and he wasn't. And now I actually, like, feel really scared of this process because I don't know what to do as a dad. Like, am I going to do— am I going to hurt this child the same way that I was hurt? Right? Like, that's a need. I needed him to do that, and now I need help and guidance.

It seems to me— I love that you mentioned two worlds earlier because I just so grok with that metaphor. There's this world that is informed by circumcision and medicalized birth and somehow giving it a pseudo-safety blanket guarantee that it'll work out in the way that it's described, that shall work out. Then there's the other world where you go through this alchemical process and the grief that gets to be let go of is let go of, and there's harmony and union between this beautiful child that's growing inside of a mother, and the mother and father are aligned. There's an alignment, almost like a click. I'm sure you felt this in your work where there all of a sudden there's a bunch of work and then there's a click.

Yeah.

Where alignment is felt.

Yeah.

What does that alignment feel like between mother, father, and baby? If you could even put words to it?

It feels like I see the man just more integrated in his presence. I don't— I see him. I see him very present. Right. And I spend, you know, let's say 2-hour sessions at a time with couples over the course of weeks. So I get to just read, read their energy, read what they're bringing, you know, behaviors, mannerisms, and things like that. But I see the man feeling really receptive to what's being shared. Like, that, that's a big alignment click. Like, he's receptive to what's being shared, and then he says, what can I do, or how can I execute, right?

You know, it's a very man thing to say. Yeah.

And I'm like, but then some are like, you know, on their phone and I've seen them on their phones or they're distracted, they're disconnected, or, you know, they're not— there isn't a presence there.

Yeah.

You know, so I'm receiving it. What can I do? What action can I take? And the woman is excited and she feels safe and I see her really kind of blossoming. And so I see that some sort of balance is restored in their dynamic.

Sure.

And sometimes that happens like after the interventions class that we do, if they're doing like the entire birth course with me, when we go over interventions, medical, you know, medical interventions, emergency situations and how to handle them, that's usually when a lot can click because men say, wait, this could happen to us. Wait, like, I know I'm not— this is not going to happen to us. I say, yeah, I need you. I need you to be here. I need you to buy in. And then something happens where they have hard conversations about circumcision or certain medical procedures for the newborn or certain— and then he might even say, we're actually not going to the hospital. 'Like, I thought we were, right? And now we're not.' My eyes were opened.

Thank God my wife opened my eyes to this. I saw that documentary American Circumcision, and then I interviewed, um, Eric, who's a lawyer. He's a Jewish man that is being accosted by the Jewish community because of his beliefs on circumcision. Uh, what people don't know, and I'm curious your thoughts on this, is the, the act of circumcision I think that it's extremely misunderstood. And I think that my personal opinion is if Creator wanted us to be different when we came out of a womb, then we would be different. What happens inside of the neural system of a child, of a young boy, like brings up emotion. I mean, just think about it. I can't even imagine what that feels like. Like, I'm circumcised. I went deep into my process. I've talked with Luke about this. I've talked with Eric. We did a 3-hour podcast on it. The amount of fear and terror that a young boy goes through when his sex organs are defiled, are clipped.

Yeah.

And how that impacts his experience of life. Elliott Hulse said, of course men are angry. They're walking around with their swords unsheathed. Mm. Like, it bring— it brought up rage in me in the past. I've worked through that, the rage. Now it just— it's like a felt palpable sadness that circumcision even exists. Yeah. What are your thoughts on this and what's really happening in the neural system of a young boy?

Well, I can tell you that, man, it's— we were talking about this in our membership last week with all the doulas because they come into contact with this a lot.

I just can't believe we even have to talk about it.

I know. And they come, you know, because I, I mean, I've worked with all types of clients from religious backgrounds. And so, you know, right, um, I brought this up on the call because she said, you know, I feel like my blood boils. My client asked, you know, how long should we wait before circumcision? And she said, I had to, I had to expand, you know, my capacity to hold that without reacting, right? We do a lot of nervous system work in my, in my doula membership. I just had sit there. And I, I took a pause and I said, oh, I'm going to use the restroom, I'll be back. So, you know, it's good because she was able to excuse herself in order to separate herself from the question. It's really important because, you know, she wants to maintain that trust with her client. And so when she returned, she said, look, you know, um, gave her a response, I'm not the best person to give you feedback on this right now. All I can say is here's some evidence-based information and here's a book written on circumcision trauma. And, you know, I would say look at that, because what I would do as a woman is different than what I would say as a doula. As a doula, I'll remain neutral. As a woman, as a mother, I would tell you absolutely don't even consider it, right? So that's typically how I end up approaching it personally and how I've, I've showed them to approach it, because I've worked with, you know, in Judaism, right? It's, yes, God created us in his image, but he needed to remind us that we were not him. That's why this piece is taken away so that it's clear we're not like him. We don't associate with him. We don't partner with him. It has to be made clear we're not like him, even though we were created in his image.

But don't you think that's just an imagination of a man's mind?

Sure.

But yeah, it doesn't seem like that's the true word of God.

Yeah. And that's, that's the response I've been given when I've asked questions to get more, to get them to think a little bit more about the possibilities and the long-term effects that it has. This. So I typically don't end up going any further when I'm working with religious clients. It's like, what am I, you know, gonna try to reprogram 40 years of belief? It's not my role.

Sure.

So what I will say is, um, what I do talk about clients with when they are open is betrayal. We talk about betrayal that the child, the newborn experiences between him and the mother, right? I say the mother because the mother was the source of safety and connection to this physical earth for the last 10 months. So at the birth, when the child is taken away, which shouldn't be taken away, they need to— they're symbiotic, their nervous systems are symbiotic, they need to remain connected. And we can talk more about how long that should last, but when the baby is separated and then taken, you know, into another room or whatever it is, and they go into either fight flight or freeze because they're experiencing severe pain and trauma to a part of the body that has so many nerves. And they say, I've been abandoned. Where is she? What happened? Can I trust anyone? Right? And some people say, the baby was so good, he didn't even cry. I said, yeah, he was frozen. He was like, you know, a lizard freezes because they think they're about to lose their life. And so, no, the baby wasn't good. And a baby is not bad when it cries. The baby is responding to a violation. And so often when I don't do this intentionally, but sometimes when I've worked with men and we talk about their experience and their own birth through guided breathing and questions that I ask, they'll remember. They'll say, you know, I remember seeing my dad through the glass. I remember seeing his face watching me. Like, they'll have flashes.

Wow.

They'll have flashes of certain you know, just pictures. And then I'll say, ask your dad if you can, ask him what was up when you did that. And sure enough, one time this, this man that I worked with said, I asked my dad and sure enough he was watching me through the glass and he was spooked. How did you remember that? Did I ever— did I tell you that story? Is that why you're asking me? He said, no, I just, I just finally sat with the pain of it and I finally sat with feeling it in my body and, and I saw you there standing He said, oh, it was so hard for me. It was so hard for me. But the doctor convinced us that it was an STD prevention, you know, measure that we needed to take.

An STD prevention measure. Isn't that convenient?

And do it now. It's on the same tab, right? Do it now. They won't remember. That's what a lot of people say. Yeah, we did it because we didn't want them to remember. And so people, you know, I was at a birth, gosh, 2 years ago, and I remember the husband really wanted to do it. And she was like, you know, I don't— we didn't talk about this enough. I don't want to do it. And there was a lot of tension happening after the birth because of it. And he said, I don't want this baby to, to look different than me. Like, you— he said, you don't understand, his wife, you don't understand what— he'll get made fun of. He won't be accepted by his friends. He'll be in the locker room. And the— and she was like, well, then let him do it when he's 18 if he wants to, you know.

Yeah.

And I I was watching them go back and forth. And I knew that her and I had talked and she'd worked up the courage to even say that to him. And I think at that moment, she was like, this is a vanity issue for you. And I was like, wow, you know, I wish it didn't come to this for them. And he said, okay, he's like, you know what, I'm stepping off. You know, we'll figure this out later. And so that was a few years ago. To this day, they haven't circumcised. And I don't know where the situation is now, but Yeah, sometimes it gets to that point.

Earlier, um, I think before we hit record, we were talking about the Hawkins scale, and we were also talking about what we stand for versus what we fight against. And I've already gone through my process of like anger and rage around the fact that circumcision even exists. So we'll link the podcast with Eric Klopper so y'all can watch that. The part that takes my breath away is that we even have to have the conversation. That's the part where I'm just like, how is this even reality? Where we need to describe to people that traumatizing a boy sexually in the first day of his life or week of his life is something that we even must describe. Is there anything else that you see happening that is so heinous in the birth space, in the birth world, besides the mutilation of a boy's sex organs? What other things like that are surprisingly that we have to even cover, but that are still existing in the birth space.

Yeah, absolutely. And I will say this last piece about circumcision is when I've talked to men, you know, we talk about this intersection. It's like the first intersection where violence comes into contact with pleasure and how deeply confusing that is, right? Because this part of the body that should only experience pleasure, right? And safety is being intersected with this extremely violent act. And what kind of groundwork is being laid, you know, moving forward? And I can't speak to all of the ways in which the brain are impacted. I don't have that type of expertise, but a belief that pain should even be involved when it comes to this part of the body, right? It's just, it's seated there. So yeah, it's, yeah, you're not the only one. There's many, many men who show up years later saying, uh, this is not— this was not right, and I wish it would have been different. So yeah, it needs to be a space for processing.

It's challenging for me to not keep going on this issue, but I'm going to breathe and pause.

So, but so other, other, um, things that we don't think about that are incredibly assaulting— let's start with, with the fetus, um, are ultrasounds. So ultrasound wave technology is incredibly violent when it comes to the child. We can't say exactly what they're experiencing. We can only make deductions based on studies that have been done on humans, which has only happened in China. It's not happened in the United States. Um, if people want to check it out, they could look at Jim West's studies. It's a compilation of human studies done in the '90s, but they see that babies actually respond pretty aggressively when they're hit with ultrasound wave technology, and that Ultrasound wave technology really, it was taken up, I don't know how many notches in the late '80s when the technology changed and said, now we can do ultrasounds for a shorter amount of time because we've increased the, you know, USWs.

What is the USW?

Ultrasound waves.

Ultrasound waves.

So we've increased the intensity of them so that we can do these ultrasounds for shorter and get the imaging that we need. Whereas before you'd have to sit there for a while, the imaging was pretty low quality. And so now we're doing it in shorter time. It's more targeted. And they'd see, you know, examples of babies just turning, literally trying to in the womb get away from the focal point of that wave wherever it was going. And so you see babies turning, you see babies trying to move, you see babies, you know. So there was one instance that he talks about where there was one study done in a group of 30 women. More than half of the babies would put their hands up trying to cover their ears when they were receiving the ultrasound waves. And so I would say this is the first— one of the first assaults that women unknowingly will do that's completely normalized and believed to be benign. Um, and it's hard because we've placed a lot of value on ultrasounds. They prevent things from happening. They help us, you know, stay in control of the pregnancy and the birth.

What do they actually prevent? What's the claim of prevention?

Um, if there's, you know, genetic disorders that we want to get ahead of, um, if there's issues with the heart that we want to be aware of so that when the baby's born we know how to act accordingly.

But when you know how to act accordingly when the baby's born?

Well, yeah, it'll be made clear when the baby's born. So now they're living with 10 months of worry and stress for something that might actually resolve itself by the end of the pregnancy, by the way. Uh, they want to know the fluid levels, the amniotic fluid levels? Is the baby gonna lose all the amniotic fluid it needs? And by the way, that level fluctuates all the time. So you might go in one day in your second trimester, fluid's low, and they'll say, we need to monitor you now every week because your fluid's low. And then she goes back the next week, it's fine. But because she originally had that low reading, they want her to keep coming back even though everything looks okay. So now the baby's getting exposed not only to this on a weekly basis, but all of the EMFs and the grid that we're living in, which is like already bombarding the woman and the baby.

There needs to be like an EMF, like, uh, onesie that women wear.

I know, right?

Or like an EMF belly cover.

Totally. No, it's like, it's like a wetsuit. You just like wear it for the rest of your pregnancy. Um, yeah, so they want to keep track of those things. The growth— is the baby— is there restricted growth because maybe there's an issue with the placenta? Is the baby getting too big? Because if the baby's getting too big, we're going to schedule a C-section. Or an induction to get the baby out sooner than later, right? So they're looking for a variety of things, and most of the time they do find a reason to then do another intervention. So I'd say it's very insidious. Um, and then of course, you know, women get IVs in labor thinking that it's benign, and that's kind of like— I call it the gateway drug. It's like what creates opportunity for a host of so many other things. To be done. Induction is incredibly dangerous. No one is talking— I mean, some people are talking about it now, but medical providers are not really talking about all of the impacts that it's having on the baby and the mother and the outcomes that happen, you know, the likelihood of it leading to C-section.

You've been at hundreds of births, you've attended hundreds of births. Uh, what is a pattern that you see showing up more often than not?

Oh, a pattern I see pretty common is, you know, I went to— I'm— I suspected I was pregnant. I went to the doctor to confirm the pregnancy. They scheduled me for my first ultrasound. I'm 36 years old, about to turn 37. I've been deemed as a geriatric pregnancy or a pregnancy of advanced age. And so they want to monitor me you know, weekly. Okay, things seem fine. Doctor said he's okay with the natural birth, that we can try for it, but because of my age, you know, we— it might not be successful, but he'll see what he can do.

So there's already an unconscious seed of fear that's been planted.

It starts from the moment a woman needs confirmation that she's pregnant. She needs the medical system to confirm something that she could figure out on her own, right? She could confirm it on her own, say, one day it's been a few months and I haven't had my cycle. You know, that's kind of how, you know.

Yeah.

But I know that there's so much about I need to do this and I need to do that, right? So then she gets to 38 weeks and they say, you know, your fluid's a little low in this ultrasound. And because of your age and the fluid being low, let's just schedule an induction. Okay. My dream of this, you know, unmedicated birth is out the window. But, you know, there's all these things wrong with me. So then she goes in for the induction. Inductions are really intense, like unnatural. You go from 0 to 60 in a few hours. The body can't handle that amount of synthetic oxytocin. It's very painful. So she gets the epidural. Baby might not respond well to what's in the epidural. And then, you know, they call an emergency C-section. And unfortunately, what ends up being so true for her and her consciousness, or, you know, Her reality is that birth is dangerous. See, I'm an— this is an example of birth being a dangerous thing requiring intervention. And I'm so glad I was here at the hospital because otherwise the baby could have perished. Something could have gone really wrong. But we often don't realize if we reverse engineer it that like the first misstep was going to the system to confirm something that she could have figured out on her own. With education and support. But again, let's take it back. We don't educate young girls on this at all. So how can they initiate into motherhood with confidence when birth has been hidden from them their whole lives?

What is the most powerful thing that you learned from birthing your daughter?

Oh, um, I think how to receive, how to receive support it was big for me. You know, her father was so supportive in the pregnancy, so supportive during the birth. Like, he was just the best birth coach ever. And to be able to be held and trust who was with me, which was the midwife, her assistant, and him. And then also to trust that if it didn't go in the way that I had imagined, that was also my path. And that was also the baby's path, right? Like, I knew I wasn't gonna go to the hospital. You couldn't have paid me to go to the hospital. Like, there was no amount of what, let's call it money or argument that would've. And I said to everyone, I am prepared to accept the consequence of whatever happens, but it's more important to me to accept that consequence than to go there. And so I learned that a depth of surrender that I didn't know was possible in me.

And was that you unraveling the contract of belonging?

Yes, it was me unraveling, um, oh man, a very layered contract of belonging to my caregivers, for sure.

What was that contract?

Um, there was, um, there was a deep contract of abandonment, um, I would say, that I experienced in my childhood from multiple caregivers. And so for me to truly be alone with God in my birth was just proof that I didn't need to live in that story anymore, right? Like, if they would only just be there for me, everything would be okay. And in birth, I realized I don't need them to be there for me anymore. They are who they are. I take it as it was, and I'm here with God alone. And that's really what happens at the end of the day, you know. So that for me kind of laid the groundwork to go deeper into my work of birth and changed my relationships, not only friendships but also, you know, romantic relationship, let's say a relationship with my family. So I, I let go of the need for it to be different in that time. It was so such a focus my whole life on wanting them to see me, you know, wanting them to say I'm not going anywhere.

Yeah.

And I realized in birth I don't know, like this, like I'm kind of at the door with, with death, right? I'm straddling two worlds. There's death and there's life, and the only person or the only energy field really holding me is God. So I, I don't need that story anymore. That's a 3D story.

Women have this such intense portal of maturation through childbirth. Men don't have anything really close, honestly. I could think about ways in which my life has been— I've had these maturation points. I did a vision quest a couple of times. I've done psychedelics and breathwork, and entrepreneurship is its own portal, really. I'm sure you know that. Yeah, but I cannot think of anything from a male perspective that would be such a powerful portal as birthing a human being through your body. I just can't. It's just nothing that can compare to it. And so I think this is what really, for me as a man, I talked about my, my lower level of maturity and the first birth with, with my son. The second birth, I was watching my daughter exit my wife. And I all of a sudden had this transcendental moment where I was floating above the pool in the Airbnb. And I was watching myself watch her. And it was such a surreal experience that I just wish it for every man to go through that. Yeah, I respect the fact that some people don't want to have children, but I also know that probably behind their resistance to having children is that it may not be their dharma in this lifetime because they're just not ready to face the grief or the contracts. I think we're here to repeat life, otherwise we wouldn't be designed the way we're designed. It's not a disrespect to people that don't want to have children, but I'm curious in the stories that you've shared with your community and even your own story, let's, let's go to the father of your daughter. How did he mature and what was his portal in the process with you and your daughter? What did that look like?

Yeah, it's, it's interesting because you're speaking about a very specific portal for women. That, let's say, yes, it's, it's, you know, there's layers to it, but really that birth experience, which can last a few days. But I look at the equivalent for a man and for her father as the actual, like, long-game journey of caring for the family. Like, the ins and outs on a daily basis of, like, do I have what it takes to hold this together? Which is like a— it's like a daily death and rebirth to feel that pressure.

Yeah.

And to keep going, right?

I feel that.

You feel that?

Yeah.

And I know mothers have their own ex— you know, I'm caring for this child, I'm nurturing it. But really, the man, if we're looking at a model that works, is that he's holding it together so that the family can thrive energetically, financially, physically, you know. And if not physically, at least energetically and financially if there's circumstances that don't, you know, make it, you know, allow it to be possible. But I saw that, you know, like I knew he was Gosh, born in '72. Was he 45 at the time? 44. He was 44. She was born. And it was like something like just I saw snap into place for him where it's like his business took off, you know, super talented designer, builder. His company took off like his life organized in such a way that was like, there is no other option. This is what it is. Like, the ego death that happened was so significant. And I think that that's really the, like, the walkabout, let's say, that happens for the man is that ego death. And that happens every day over the course of years, potentially for the rest of a man's life if he stays present with fatherhood.

I can resonate with what you're putting down. It's this, it's this resistance I think as men we have to being self-focused instead of family-focused. And there is a real genuine death of the previous version of all men when a child comes into the world. I remember when I went to go see my son. I know you say that accept what is, but I really, I do still wish at times it was different. I still struggle with that at times. I went to him and he was on this bed and there was a light shining on him. And when I, when I went up to him, I was like, I put my little pinky out for him.

Yeah.

And I was like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that it had to be this way. And I think he still— I think he understood in that moment. And I think that as men, we want the best for our family, we want the best for our children. And God brings us these unique experiences so we can learn about ourselves. And the reason it brings up emotion to me is because I just, I hate seeing any child suffer, any child, but especially my child. There's something very heart-wrenching and gut-wrenching when a father witnesses his son or daughter going through pain. And so what it brought forth in me was an immediate resolve where there— I burned all boats in that moment. It was like there was a light switch that was flicked, and I would never be the same ever again because I realized that my stuff and our stuff and the collective stuff had made it happen in the way it happened. And so I just made a promise to myself to be fundamentally different from that moment forward. And my business did flourish. And now we are having conversations about a third child coming into the world, and I'm starting to see that my current trajectory and evolution gets to be shifted yet again. So I resonate with what you're sharing, that it's this long, continuous process for the man. For a woman, it essentially can be a portal in which a child comes into the world. She's forever changed. She's forever matured. I mean, a woman can never relate to her life again the same after this baby comes through her body. Yeah, but for men, it's a longer, like you described, trajectory of constantly recapitulating and reorienting to what is needed in the space. And that, I think, for men is so challenging because we have certain desires sexually that we want and we want these things from our wife and our woman. And there's just no fucking book. No, there's no, like, guide. There's these, you know, top 10 tips on how to be a dad. It's all bullshit. I believe— I'm curious what you believe when it comes to, to the man supporting the woman in this process. Is there a guiding light of advice you may give to a man who wants to support his woman, support his wife? What does he need to know that he doesn't even know he needs to know?

Oh my God. Um, we were talking about needs earlier, and I would say that if he has the capacity to hold whatever she brings to him, that's all she really needs.

Whatever she brings to him.

Whatever she brings to him. If you can hold that without collapsing, without reacting, right? Because we want to respond. That's how a woman feels safe, is you're responding rather than reacting, right? If he can expand his capacity to hold whatever she brings, she'll be able to multiply whatever he wants in life. Whatever he wants in life, his wish fulfillment, she'll be able to multiply that. But if she feels that there's a rejection in whatever she expresses, she's not able to support him in multiplying the things that he would want in life.

So that's so true. It's just like—

it's just like the formula. It's so true. And it's a daily practice.

Yeah, I hate that you're right. I hate that you're right. Um, well, I mean, I don't really hate that you're right. I just— there's a part of me that's like, I wish it was easier. I wish my woman was easier. I think all men go through this, but I'm, I'm now in a better place and I'm now in a more mature place where I know what you're saying is true. It's just that the embodiment curve for us as men with responsibilities, it becomes more layers and more layers, and we essentially strip away all these layers of our conditioning, our fears, our projections, what happened, our generational pain, all this stuff. Comes to this almost like a confluence, you know, we're here for this Confluence event. So it's like there's brown, murky water that was the past and there's this clear, beautiful water that is the potential of what things could be.

Yeah.

What, what unlocks inside of the heart of a union? I've heard many people describe that when there's a true union between a man and a woman, that it creates a third entity, which is the relationship itself. And, and that's the design that I think God brought man and woman here to be in is that this child is brought into that loving third entity where it's not just the I, it's the we. What is the unlock that happens in the we of the union that brings forth a beautiful birth process and the healing that the world actually gets to have?

It's important for both to leave their mother. So it's important for the man to leave his mother. It's important for the woman to leave her father, right? The loyalty to whatever that story was. And very often, um, we don't, we don't think about doing that. Like, I see, you know, instances perhaps where the man still feels responsible for the mother. There's still things, you know, I have to take care of her, maybe financially, maybe there's, I have to show her away, she's alone, right? So there's still, it's, and it's different from respecting the parent and saying, I'll do what can, if I'm able, you know. But that doesn't create a space for him to have that true union with, with the woman, and vice versa, you know. And so I'd say leaving the parent, um, leaving that parent of the opposite sex is really important to create that third body so that they can create their own family and that new branch of the family tree, right? If we look at that tree and there's some kind of maybe more sickly branches, or that murky water you were talking about where there's these things of the past if we want to create that new branch together, we have to allow that to be, and we have to, you know, basically disentangle from those stories. Um, and so, so much can unlock, you know. I, I think that we, we have these unmet needs that again are coming from things that were not received in childhood, and when we stop expecting that from the partner, that third body can be formed in a really pure and beautiful way. Yeah, but if I'm still needing things from mom, still needing things from dad, and I'm expecting the partner to bring that, it's really hard to create that third body. And it's really hard for that child to not then feel the burden, right? The child feels the burden. Yeah. Guilt is a big one. Guilt, you know, of what was. Children feel that guilt. So I was going to actually loop back to what you'd said earlier when you mentioned the story about your son. Is it possible for you to say, "I trust your choice to be born this way. I trust your choice to be born this way. I trust that you have an intelligence that I can't quite fathom yet, and that it needed to be this way for you." Because we often believe that, yes, I mean, in the 3D, we are responsible for them, and they depend on us from birth, the only mammal that depends on us from birth. And yet there is an intelligent being that lives within this body that, you know, many people might follow this philosophy or not, that chose this path in order for their soul's evolution. So can I trust your intelligence in this choice? That guilt is felt as a burden by the child. Can we release that guilt? So I think a lot can unlock when we come into this union. A third body is created and and, you know, a lot becomes possible for the family, but there's just entanglements that we have to release.

Well, I'm glad we solved all the world's problems today. I mean, it's actually— we laugh at that, but you, you've said many times, you said that a conscious birth builds a conscious world. What does that really mean to you?

Consciousness? Yeah, it's everything we've spoken about today. The consciousness that we can have about our own journey regardless of what it looks like. Because I'm not saying a conscious birth is a formula that looks a certain way and the baby's there and the mother did it in the woods and all this. That's not what I'm saying, right? It's not what we've been talking about today. It's just the consciousness that alchemy is possible. It's the consciousness that however this happens, what can I glean from this experience and how does it transform me as a person, as a parent, as a partner? And what do I take and what do I keep doing with this, right? This gold, this metal that's in front of me, and how do I keep moving forward? So I'd say that consciousness is what's transforming the world. So many women who've alchemized their birth trauma go on to create impact in their family system, then to their community. Yeah, you know, immediately around them, and then to the larger community. So I'm very much— it's a very much bottom-up approach. I, you know, that's why I don't focus on like whatever's happening out there and wishing that that bigger thing was different. It's just, it's an inside job.

Yeah, literally, literally, literally. So for, for men and women that are inspired, um, head over to joshtrent.com/uncoveringbirth. You can get 10% off of this beautiful gift. Uh, share with us this program here. This is the Uncovering Birth Foundations course. It's an 8-module online experience. So definitely I'm going to be inspired to do this with my wife. It's on the screen right now for y'all. So thanks for the hookup on that. This is a really beautiful path for people to take this conversation and digest it and amplify it at scale for them. But I'd love to know more what's in there, what's, what's inside of it.

So it's a lot of practical steps on like what's happening with the body physiologically, the type of movement that you want to do throughout the pregnancy and how the man can support that movement for the woman. An upgrade on nutrition, of course, you know, I know there's so much evidence and info out there and people are probably on a path that feels good for them, but this is what's gonna give you the best outcome for a low intervention or intervention-free experience. And then we talk about, you know, the limiting beliefs and the more, let's say, psycho-spiritual dimensions of this process. You know, kind of what we've been talking about today, just kind of scratching the surface and then moving into postpartum. Like how, okay, so we've gone through the birth, but then there's this entire journey afterwards. And so how do we tie it all together and create a blueprint? For the type of experience you want to have as parents.

Yes. And how can we give ourselves grace to go through that blueprint as well? Yeah, there's a lot of grace that's needed.

A lot of grace that's needed.

Yeah, there's no— well, I mean, you've created a birth— I was going to say there's no Birth 101, but you've created one.

Yeah.

Out of everything we've explored today, which there's so much more, I feel like when it comes to this topic, we hit the tip of the iceberg. But I think about the way in which I I'm either exuding my authentic self, I'm either being in joy, or I'm faced with a limitation that's self-created or inherited. And I'm curious for you at this stage of your life and the work that you're doing in the world, how do you end the cycles for yourself and how do you step into authentic joy?

I, I, my, my daughter's kind of the facilitator for me to know if I'm living in alignment or authentically. So it's like, I ask myself when I'm present with her, what's coming up for me? It's a really good barometer to know what's happening in my nervous system, where is my mind? And so in the quality time with her, I really see where I'm at with things. And she's helped me, not consciously. I mean, she's just there. I don't ever talk to her about any of this, but I ask myself, am I doing the things that bring me joy? Right? I see her in her expression. Am I, am I in a resonance with that? And if I'm not, I need to shift something. So she's really become my greatest teacher, and that's my barometer for am I living authentically? Am I living in alignment? Am I experiencing as much joy as I want? And when I'm feeling that grief, I give myself so much compassion, whereas before I didn't want to feel it. I didn't want to accept that someone at this stage in her life is feeling these things, right? And so I'm if I'm holding space for her through her processes, why wouldn't I be able to do that for myself? And if I don't believe that age is like this chronological thing and time doesn't exist in the way that we perceive, why am I putting pressure on myself to not feel at this point in my life? Why do I feel that it's not acceptable at this juncture? So she's teaching me so much compassion just by existing, um, you know, compassion for my inner girl.

So the— what I heard from you is that children can be our most powerful barometer when it comes to how we're living authentically and being in authentic joy.

Yeah. And so good, they're, they're extensions of us. So if there's discord, disease, um, symptoms, it's, it's coming from the parent.

Yeah. Such a good conversation. Thank you for being here.

Yeah.

For coming to the podcast studio. Really value the work that you do in the world. It's such a blind spot for so many men and women and women as well, because we're just fed a certain thing that we feel like we can't digest, but we don't know why. As far as like a main narrative of this. So y'all make sure you go over to the show notes today. Make sure that you get followed. What's your Instagram?

@ayla.cuenca.birth.

@ayla.cuenca. It's on the screen right now. If you're inspired to go deeper into your process, and if anything resonated today from this conversation, I'm sure it did, then head over to the link that's on the screen right now, joshtrent.com/uncoveringbirth, and you can use the code JOSH to get 10% off. You know, it's funny, I, I heard of somebody a long time ago. His name was Jack Lane. He's like, if you're, if you're loving something, then you're not a salesperson, you just love it. So selling is about loving. So I don't get an energy from you, nor do I feel in myself that that selling this program or standing for this program is actually a sale. It's an opportunity for like a true value exchange where we all make money, we all earn these like imaginary dollar bills.

Yeah.

But when it comes to birthing a child, do not waste your money on the books on Amazon and actually do a program and a course where you can get life experience. So thank you for being my guest today on the podcast.

It's been such a pleasure. Thank you.

Y'all share this podcast with somebody who who is in the decision-making process of bringing a life into the world. Uh, until we see you again, I'm wishing you love, wellness, but most importantly, peace and power. You cannot have peace unless it comes from power. We'll see you next week.