60. [WISE WOMAN] WITH LEA OF @TRUSTING_LIFE_ AND WISE WOMEN DIARIES - OPENNESS IS THE NATURAL STATE OF THE FEMININE

Lea is a passionate soul…. Passionate about many topics but especially the duality of human life: We are a human and a soul trying to traverse this life amongst our darkness and light. 

Wanting to become a mother for 11 years to no avail thus far, has ushered her to be in the darkness of the waiting, the void, the unknown, and becoming reborn a million times in the waiting of the unknown.

The waiting, the void, is our invitation into soul evolution. What will we create? Who will we become? What values will we align with? 

Lea is also passionate about relationships and how her marriage of 18 years has been the journey of dark and light, hurt and compassion…. Learning our ego triggers and wounds through our partner is a deep karmic bond…. A soulmate of sorts. We see our darkness and our light through our partner. And with honesty and transparency we get to grow into our authentic selves alongside another soul. Marriage is a true gift.

Lea’s gift is seeing patterns amongst humans and speaking them out loud as an invitation for others to critically think and create a conscious life in accordance to our authentic self, our soul, rather than the life expected and programmed into us. 

She posts about a wide variety of topics on her instagram page @⁠trusting_life_⁠ and podcast ⁠Wise Women Diaries⁠. 

Find me on instagram @⁠⁠⁠birth.advocate⁠⁠⁠ and all of my offerings on my website⁠⁠ ⁠www.birthadvocate.me⁠⁠⁠

You can support this podcast by donating ⁠HERE

Check out my course 'So You Want a Home Birth?' ⁠HERE⁠

Join my monthly Virtual Village Circle ⁠HERE⁠

Your FREE resources ⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠.

To book a FREE discovery call for my Beyond a Doula services, to interview on the show, or to join my Women’s Circle click⁠⁠ ⁠here⁠⁠⁠.

You can email me connect@birthadvocate.me

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Music The Ancients (feat. Loga Ramin Torkian) by Azam Ali

Disclaimer:

The information and resources provided by me are not intended to constitute or replace medical or midwifery advice or a Mother’s intuition. Instead, all information provided is intended for education purposes only. My advice is not to be seen as medical diagnosis or to treat any medical illness or condition of Mother or baby/fetus.

THE FOLLOWING IS AI GENERATED AND WILL HAVE ERRORS

LEA: We are a human mind with a soul. And so we're toggling human mind, soul, human mind, soul. And what are those qualities? Right? The human mind wants to keep us safe at all costs.

The human mind is fearful.

The human mind wants control to feel safe. The human mind wants to blame everyone else and everything else for your life.

We all have this part of us.

And once we become adults and we can learn what our ego mind is and that yes, it's great because it tries to keep us safe, but it's out of line almost all of the time.

And it's our responsibility to align with our deepest truth, the truth of our soul, which to me, our soul is our authentic self.

And if we don't take responsibility of creating a relationship with our soul or with God and learning those deep, deep, deep truths, then we will be living our whole life from our ego mind.

And all it's consumed with is fear and control and expectations and getting what it wants.

It's not concerned with growth, it's not concerned with that. The tragedies or the challenges in life are for us. It's like, no,

that's against us.

EMILY: And it seems like comfort zone only.

LEA: Comfort zone only. Yeah, yeah. So I. Oof. My greatest passion is talking about the human mind because we all have it. We all know what it's like and it has its place.

But if it's our master,

we will be the most fearful, rigid, not trusting, not safe, human.

And eventually on this maturation journey, you know, going from immature feminine to mature feminine, that journey is, what do I believe? What do I believe in? What are my values?

And to me, the feminine is this openness to God.

And so if you don't have this openness and trust and safety with God,

then your safety is just in your mind. Like I don't know where you're driving. True safety. And that just leaves you on a chase your whole life because you need more information to feel safe.

More ultrasounds to feel safe. Right. More evidence to feel safe.

EMILY: The illusion of safety.

LEA: The illusion. And then when we take responsibility for our emotional state or our beingness in the world, we learn, oh, we have to tap into spirit.

And so the question is, how do you tap into spirit? How can you get to that openness state?

EMILY: Welcome to Soul Evolution. My name is Emily, also known as the Birth Advocate. I walk alongside women choosing a deeply spiritual, instinctual, physiological mother led conception, pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum experience.

I am a retired nurse, a health coach, a women's circle and ceremony facilitator and the host of this podcast.

Here we dive deep to reclaim our rites of passage with a big dose of birth story medicine, intentionally curious conversations with embodied wisdom keepers, and a sprinkle of polarity as we will hold space for our men from time to time too.

I hope you find nourishment through your soul here I alone schedule, record, edit and produce this beautiful labor of love. If you're enjoying the content, please let me know by rating and reviewing or consider a donation to help cover the cost of production.

Better yet, you can purchase my amazing comprehensive course, so youo Want a Home Birth. Your complete guide to an empowering physiological birth. You will walk away feeling ready, body, mind and soul, knowing that everything you need to birth your baby already exists within you.

Your questions will be answered, guaranteed. I walk you through, step by step, exactly how to prepare yourself, your partner and your home for for the most incredible experience you get to have in this lifetime.

Birth is a sacred rite of passage worthy of honoring. Do not leave it up to chance.

EMILY: And stay tuned after the show to.

EMILY: Learn all about my Beyond Adola offerings, both in person and virtually worldwide. You can find me on Instagram, Earth Advocate and my website, BirthAdvocate me.

Everything will be linked in the show notes. Now let's drop in to today's episode.

EMILY: Welcome, Leah, to the podcast.

I'll just say we did meet March 11th in the middle of the eclipse portal days from the full moon. I had just emerged from a GI Port purge portal within my family the weekend before.

I like showed up and was like, I guess we can do this. And we were just both really in the middle of it like, like the rest of the universe.

And after all of the. After everything's settled and of course we are still in it because it's still very raw, still very new, still very.

Yeah, just we're just like in that integration phase after the eclipse portal, but we decided to come on and have another conversation with some of the things that have revealed since we spoke last.

So I'm really grateful that you wanted to come back on.

LEA: You are.

EMILY: You're just an amazing woman. I'm really glad that you're out there sharing your message in the way that you do and I really appreciate you. So thank you for coming on and please introduce yourself for anyone who might not know you.

LEA: Thank you for inviting me. I love talking to women because we can share like depths of our heart together that move me. And so my name is Leah. I have a podcast, Wise Women Diaries, where I am committed to the same mission you are sharing wise women stories,

embodied wisdom,

sovereign birth stories and sovereign death stories or divorce stories or grief stories.

Any story that molds and shapes a woman into who she is meant to be.

And my latest endeavor is a Patreon sharing very personal stories of my husband and I because we have been together for 18 years.

We met when I was like 18 and now I'm 36. And so we've had this entire 20s, 30s journey together. He's 40.

And I'm realizing that I have so much to say about maturing alongside someone else,

how messy that is, how beautiful that is, and how walking alongside someone for that long,

it's the shadow and the light of life.

And when, when we have two people very committed,

wow, anything can really bloom.

Anything can bloom.

So my latest Patreon adventure is sharing really, really deep personal relationship stories and my insights about relationship patterns and conscious sexuality patterns and intimacy patterns. Because my, my gift, who I am in this world is I see things, I see patterns of humans and I vocalize them so that other people can look at their lives,

they can look at their own patterns and have the conscious choice to change them if they want.

Because we are living these like, autopilot, robotic lives until we kind of wake up from our slumber. And then when we wake up it's like, oh, shit.

I have choices in every aspect and avenue of life. I have a conscious choice of how to show up in marriage. I have a conscious choice of how to birth.

I have a conscious choice of how to communicate in relationships. I have a conscious choice of how to. To show up at the local coffee shop. These are all conscious choices we have.

And when we wake up and become a conscious human,

we overhaul our whole life.

And some people move on from relationships,

right? And some people like myself, I have stayed in the same relationship for 18 years amongst being asleep, amongst waking up and waking up at a different rate than my husband and the,

the hardship and suffering that that can feel like. And so we could maybe touch on that later. And then the last part about myself is I created the Trusting Birth, Trusting Life account many years ago just to talk about the birth patterns in our modern society.

Because I just want to speak about these unconscious patterns, these unconscious, these autopilot patterns. I just want to speak about em, because once I speak about them, then people can reflect for themselves and they get to make the conscious choice of do I want to continue making this choice or do I want to change it?

And the level of choices we have can feel intense.

It's like you're living with all the lights off and then boom, the lights turn on and you see everything. And it can feel so intense.

But it can also be fun because you are the conscious creator of your life. You get to create every aspect of your life once you wake up. And if we don't wake up, we are living on autopilot in the way our parents or our culture or our society showed us what to do.

Go to college, get married, have one boy, one girl, you know, birth in a hospital. This is the expected way to live. And when we wake up, we get to be in touch with our authentic self.

Like, who am I? How do I want to live?

And to me, that is what lights me up, that is what keeps me going,

is I get to create my entire life. I get to create my marriage with my husband. We get to create the sex life of our dreams.

And alongside or in accordance to our 18 year journey together, we have been trying to conceive a child for 11 years.

And then that's a whole other story in itself. Because what I've seen is every woman has their own unique journey to carve her into the woman she's supposed to be.

And some women have multiple miscarriages and some women have traumatic births and some women have a pleasurable birth and some women get divorced and some of us lose people through loss.

And we have grief that shire us open. And we all have very unique journeys to carve us into these higher versions of ourselves.

And so my 11 year journey of wanting a baby has made me die and be reborn a million times in the waiting. And I would not change a thing.

I would not change a thing because it is an invitation into my maturity as a woman.

EMILY: We need just a moment to let that land.

And I also just want to say too, Leah, like, thank you for claiming this gift of yours to recognize patterns and to use your voice and to speak, because that is one of the biggest influences from our hearse story, from our culture, from our society, women.

We are not to claim these gifts. We are not to use our voice. That's not allowed. You're a witch.

Don't do it. So thank you for that and thank you for being this example, this model of taking these life circumstances and allowing them to carve you into your greatest and highest self.

You know, and for just being a humble observer of your life and also like a conscious participant. Right, this empowering choice.

Oh, yeah. So 11 years of not conceiving, Tell me a little bit more about how that has shaped you into the woman that you are today.

LEA: I feel like my desire to have a baby in my mid-20s was to, was the desire to want more love.

Because as a female, we want more love, we never want less. And obviously we can argue that every human wants more love, but the feminine heart has the capacity to know deeper and deeper and deeper love.

I think this is why most women say, oh, I think there's one more baby waiting to be born. Like, I have one more spirit baby.

Women hardly feel like they're ever done done because there's, they can always expand more in love.

And so I think this is our primal nature to want a baby and then a second baby and a third baby to expand more in love. And so it's so primal and it's so natural.

But there's shadow and light in everything, right? And so the shadow part of wanting a baby was I truly wanted a baby to save me,

to make me happy, to fulfill me in all the ways I was not fulfilled.

And I wanted to put all of those burdens on my child.

And a lot of people, a lot of people do that, right? And a child can sign up and consent to come in through that agreement. But my children are like, fuck, no, we're not putting, we're not going to be holding your burdens.

You are going to be doing this for 11 years,

finding all the ways you're not fulfilled and you're not happy.

And that has been the journey. And the main part is how control is the biggest illusion.

And so not getting pregnant truly taught me that. I've always used control to try to feel safe in this world.

And I think that's a very common female pattern is we have so many walls up, we do not feel safe in our body, in our sexuality, in our relationships in the world that we use control to try to feel safe.

And it works until it doesn't.

It works until there's a pressure cooker blow up situation where you're like, I've been controlling for years and years and years and I don't feel better. Nothing has actually been solved through my control.

And so not getting pregnant for this long showed me where I do not have control. And the ego needs to be humbled like that.

Because when the ego is humbled,

we open ourselves to God, we open ourselves to our creator. We, we open ourselves to a plan greater than our ego can even conceive.

Because we limit ourselves.

We limit ourselves. If I had a baby 11 years ago,

I didn't, I didn't, like, I can't even fathom that journey.

And all I can say is, thank you, God, for not giving me what I thought was I was ready for or needed or wanted.

Because the journey has been maturing and growing into a woman that can really hold and create my true vision and dream. And my true vision and dream has always been to have a marriage that is so rock solid that when a baby comes in, it gets better.

That a baby makes your marriage better.

And how many women can really say that? Because a baby illuminates all of the cracks. A baby usually illuminates the patterns that are very unbalanced and not working.

And that's, that's the most common pattern is a baby comes in and illuminates all the darkness, all the shit.

And that's why babies are gifts from God, because they are literally servants to show what's not working.

EMILY: Precious little soul teachers.

Precious little soul teachers.

I'm just, I'm truly in awe of your ability to work through this process with yourself, with your husband.

So I was telling you before I hit record,

there's a recent episode on the Midwitch podcast where she does a three part series about the rite of passage. And she kind of is in her way debunking that birth is not the rite of passage, that the pregnancy is, that prior to the pregnancy is.

And in that time the woman is to be doing all of the work going through and like creating the mother within her so that the mother is what is birthing the baby.

And then in the postpartum, it's so important for her to have that reflected back to her for the return, you know, to complete the process. And I agree with so much of what she's saying.

As I was saying to you, I don't agree with all of it. There was some weird dogma in there as well. But you,

you get it. Like, you 100% get it. And you are a living, breathing example of what it's like to do this work prior to bringing your baby in. And I love that your spirit babies are like these credibly wise souls and they're like, nah, nah, you're gonna figure this out first before we're ready.

LEA: Yeah, it's so clear that my babies want as clean as a template as possible, which, you know, perfection is never going to be there, but they're very clear that they want the least amount of projection onto them so that they can be exactly who God created them to be to fulfill their life on this earth.

And so it's layer after layer, and there's still Going to be so many things that come up. Of course, that is what relationships are. Mother, child, husband, wife. Right. There's layers and layers, but I don't know.

For some reason, my babies have this very high standard. Actually, it's probably because I say I will never settle.

And my ego wanted to settle years and years ago because it wanted a baby to solve all of these issues that couldn't be solved by a baby. But my ego just wanted this easy choice of baby.

Baby, give me happiness, give me love. And now after 11 years, it's like, oh, my God, if a baby came in, I would have been the most controlling mother because those are the patterns that I had to really unchain from.

And do, you know, this deep safety work and then the deep safety work with my. With my husband. And so, yeah, what you were just saying is preconception, conception, pregnancy, it's all an invitation.

It's all an invitation. And it's so perfect because it's the feminine invitation to maturity.

And we live in a society where it's like, if you don't get pregnant for a year, you go to the medical system to make yourself pregnant, override the intelligence and wisdom of your body and your soul to make force.

And that's not inherently bad because no matter what choice you make, you can grow and learn from it. You can force yourself to be pregnant, and you will still have your invitations to grow and mature.

It's just we get to create our life the way we want it. So I do not desire to go to the medical system and force my body to become pregnant.

That is a zero percent desire of my heart to experience in this life.

Instead, I want to just keep opening myself bigger and bigger and bigger to God, what is here for me. Lean in. Lean into the discomfort, lean into the fear, Lean into your life looking different than you thought.

And what is here for me, because it's all perfect. Our ego does not think so. Our ego wants to blame and control everything to get what it wants.

It just wants to get what it wants. But our higher self, our soul is like, there is so much here for us. And so I love talking about my journey because I want more women to understand that the preconception phase is an invitation into the mystery that pregnancy is.

When you get pregnant, you're still. That's the biggest mystery of all. And so women can't handle the mystery of preconception, like not getting pregnant, not getting pregnant. Will it ever happen?

It's the big unknown. It's the big mystery.

And so I had to do a lot of self reflection throughout these 11 years and I realized, oh, the mystery doesn't go away once I'm pregnant. It actually gets bigger.

The fear gets bigger because once you get pregnant, you have the fear of losing the baby.

And once you're pregnant, you have zero control over the growth, over the baby, over anything that happens.

So the preconception phase can be the greatest invitation into the mystery and letting go of control. And so that is what I have been leaning into and learning, is that I don't know if I'll ever get pregnant.

And I have to sit in that mystery, because if I get pregnant, I have to sit in the mystery. And I don't know if my baby wants to be born six weeks after they're conceived or 30 weeks after they're conceived or be born.

Still,

I don't know anything. And that level of the unknown and the mystery terrifies most women because they don't feel safe in this life and in their body.

EMILY: Mm.

LEA: And so there's so much work to do. And so my greatest download from a few days ago is that preconception, pregnancy, birth, postpartum breastfeeding are the initiations, the invitations for women to get into their body.

Because it is an experience of the body.

Conception, pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding. You are literally being invited into this expansive experience of your own body.

So if you don't feel safe in your body, how are you going to navigate these initiations?

And so the massive piece of my journey is learning how to shed control and feel safe within myself and within my body and then within my marriage in sexuality. And so the.

A few days ago,

I just had this massive aha moment of the female experience is through the body. And the man can't even relate.

He doesn't know what it's like growing a human. He doesn't know the mystery of waiting to see if you're pregnant or not. He will never know birth. He will never know breastfeeding.

And so it's so interesting that a woman, when she conceives and has the experience of pregnancy, you know, it should bring her in a deeper relationship with her body. That is the purpose, in my opinion,

that all through this journey,

she's being reborn and she's dying and being reborn a million times over. Throughout pregnancy, birth, postpartum, breastfeeding. That whole first year, her experience is wildly different than the man.

And this wording that I love to say is,

this is why a woman's job, her role is her body and her baby and the Man's role is his woman,

because a man cannot know the baby like the woman does.

And so the woman's job is to know her body and her baby more than anyone else. And she does. She can't help it. It's effortless.

But the man's job is to support her.

And what better person than him because he should know her better than any human on earth.

So the.

The mother feeds the baby,

the father should be feeding the mother, the mother supports the baby, the father should be supporting the mother.

It's the most perfect design.

But we have such a fracture between men and women because women don't truly trust their men,

because a lot of men are living these shallow,

low integrity lives where they're not truly in touch with themselves. And we know it, we feel it. And if you're not in touch with your own self, we can't trust you.

EMILY: Yeah,

segue into the work you've done with your husband, with the last two years being the most profound, as you said. You know, anyone who listens to my podcast knows that I have been in it as well,

currently co parenting and roommating with my son's father.

There's so much, I mean, there's so much to say about all of that, but I think you hit the nail on the head there with the trust piece.

You know, it's so clear and easy for me to see that he has not fully stepped in, like, with. With integrity, with discipline, with showing up with that peace that I need to feel safe.

He. He's on his journey, you know, like, God bless him, he's. He's a wonderful soul. And I have, you know, a lot of love for him,

but he's just not there yet. He did not rise to the call.

And that put me in a state of almost fight or flight, you know, like I'm the one holding it all. And.

And that doesn't feel good. So, you know, with you and your husband doing this work prior to your baby arriving so that your relationship is better once the baby comes.

Please enlighten us, Leah.

LEA: Oh, my gosh. I have so much to say. I have so much to say. I want to say that nine years ago, we did separate for a few months and there was this big heartbreak trauma that happened.

And I say the full story on my Patreon, which is a very vulnerable,

personal story.

But I love being honest.

And so this honesty piece, to me is the foundation of a relationship. So the main things I want to say are our separation nine years ago created this clarity of,

oh, no, he is my person. Because in our separation, I dated this other guy and he was all these spiritual things I thought I really needed. But then he had all these other traumas and I was like, oh, shit, he's not a perfect human.

And then there was other things. And so our separation gave us true clarity how we are perfect for each other, yet so different.

And so then through the next nine years,

I thought it would have been all better right away. Right when we got back together, I thought everything would be solved. We were going to marriage therapy. We learned so much in marriage therapy.

We learned at. We learned what our patterns were that were created from childhood. Right? Like I poke, I nag, I criticize. He retreats, he numbs out, he zones out, he runs away.

That is the most classic pattern.

EMILY: That's our pattern too.

LEA: Yeah.

So Dr. Sue Johnson's work, she's a marriage therapist. She's passed on now. Her work changed my life. This was nine, eight years ago where I was deep in her work, where she has a book called Hold Me Tight.

I highly, highly recommend this book because she talks about marriage patterns in the most honest, true way where a woman typically,

this is,

it's not. This is a woman's pattern. This is a man's pattern. It could be flip flopped, but a common pattern is the woman is the one poking, poking, nagging, criticizing, poking to get a reaction, poking to get emotion,

to poke, to say, are you here with me? Hello. We are poking for connection. We are nagging for connection.

We are nagging for love,

presence. Are you here?

And a man that's immature, where he hasn't fully crossed his threshold of maturity,

is terrified of a woman, of a woman's heart, of a woman's emotions, of a woman's capacity for love. He's terrified, so he runs away, he retreats, he numbs out. He uses porn, drugs, cannabis, whatever it is.

He worked too much. That was my husband. My husband worked and worked and worked and worked.

And so Dr. Sue Johnson really lays out these patterns that spoke to us. And we learned so much through therapy and these surface patterns. But what I learned after nine years and what really changed two years ago was the level of honesty required to actually ask yourself if you fully respect your partner.

Because the truth of why these patterns happen between me and him is that we slowly lost respect for each other through time, through micro situations, through big traumas.

And I believe you're only as honest as you are safe.

You can't be fully honest with yourself if you don't have safety with yourself.

You can't be fully honest with your partner if there's not that level of safety.

And so through these nine years after a separation, we got back together. It was nine years of learning how to create safety. And everything is so much slower than I ever imagined.

I thought things would be. Oof, back to normal for my dream life within six months. No, it's been nine years since then and it's just now.

I am just now living the marriage of my dreams through the deepest level of honesty we have had the conversations of how we have lost respect for each other. And we have been able to hold ourselves in those conversations because of the level of safety we could hold with ourselves amongst the most uncomfortable conversations.

So in the patterns of criticizing and nagging and he numbs out and runs away,

it's all this yearning for connection, right? But in my opinion,

there's a loss of respect.

And it happens through those patterns. Because a man doesn't respect a woman that constantly criticizes him, he loses respect for her. Right? Because we are rigid, shut down, controlling,

fearful. We are so afraid to open. And he doesn't respect a woman that is afraid to open. He doesn't respect a woman. And we don't respect a man that runs away.

We don't respect a man that can't hold us.

We don't respect a man that is afraid of us, afraid of our emotions.

And so our nine year journey to get to this spot was having these very hard conversations of how did I lose respect for my husband? I used to say, he's Jesus, he walks on water.

And then slowly, over time, little things started happening and more toxic patterns started happening and the loss of respect happened. And I truly believe that a woman that is very nagy, criticizing and resentful, deep, deep, deep resentment,

she doesn't respect her man.

And so it's like what happened. And you have to learn how to be honest with yourself. And you can really only hold that honesty if you're safe with yourself. So, you know, give it time, have patience.

But where did the lack of respect start? When did it start chiseling down like that is the truth that needs to be talked about.

EMILY: Yeah. I'd also love if you want to talk a little bit about more tangible, like how you built that trust within yourself. Because it all, it really does all start obviously within.

Do you mind touching on that a little bit?

LEA: Yeah, I do want to touch on that. In those nine years,

I unconsciously was waiting for him to wake up. So I have been on the spiritual growth path for 15 years maybe. And he just woke up maybe two and a half years ago, really, really, really woke up and has crossed the threshold into manhood.

And so there was many years where I unconsciously was waiting for him to wake up. I didn't know that. And I couldn't be honest with myself about that, and I couldn't admit that to myself.

But because we had that separation nine years ago, I knew the grass wasn't greener elsewhere. So I wasn't dreaming and fantasizing that the grass was greener elsewhere because we had that separation.

And that separation was clarity.

And so that is a big piece of why I was so comfortable in that waiting,

waiting for him to wake up, but in that space of waiting, because I actually feel like a lot of women are in that space right now where they're the feminine.

The feminine is in tune with intuition, right? We see the navigation, the path, the way. And men are supposed to be the physical direction, where the spiritual direction. They're the physical.

How do we get there? And women are trying to, like, pull on the man's hand.

I'd be like, come on, come on, let's. Let's go. We have to go this direction. We have to live our life this way. And these values, and it's just like nails on a chalkboard where they just don't see it.

And so that's what it was like for many years as I was waiting. And in that waiting, I just kept working on myself. All I could do was myself. Because, yeah, everything's a mirror and everything's a match.

So my ego would say, oh, he's not vulnerable. And then I would be humbled and be like, oh, my God, I'm terrified of being vulnerable. And so I just kept getting humbled and humbled and humbled of, like, my ego wanting to blame him for everything and being like, oh,

nope. Because I'm actually operating at that frequency, and he matches me.

And that takes a radical self honesty with yourself.

And so the ego loves to be honest with other people or your partner. Like, you're not doing this or this or that. And it's like, just zip your lips, zip your lips and be honest with yourself.

And so I had years and years of this self work with myself, being honest with myself. My control issues, how I love to control him because I didn't trust him.

We control what we don't trust.

And so I had to learn. Zip your lips, Zip your lips. Zip your lips and just be quiet. Stop criticizing. Stop trying to get him to change Stop nagging him about these things.

And so it's just like, zip your lips. That's in my control.

I could have discipline. It's hard. It's really hard. I still do it sometimes.

And so this self work is so big, it's so layered.

But if we want to trust our man, we have to trust ourselves. And so if I'm committing to not criticizing and I keep breaking my own boundary, I don't trust myself.

Like all of this, yes, has to be done within us and the whole safety piece too. We want him to hold our emotions. Can we even hold our emotions?

If we feel anxiety, do we go pop a pill, do we go take some cannabis? What do we do? Because we actually can't sit in it and be with our own selves.

Our anxiety is ours and we want to run away from our own selves.

That's why that type of dynamic can show up in birth. You want to run away from your own pain, you want to run away from the sensations in your body because you're not safe in your own body.

And so the safety with my body was through body symptoms.

You know, anytime I had a yeast infection or a UTI or the stomach flu,

can I be safe in my uncomfortable body symptoms or do I want to take a homeopathic or herb to get rid of it and silence it? Because we demand perfectionism from our body, because we can't be in the discomfort.

And so this safety with ourselves, safety with our bodies is so big.

There's so many invitations.

Like getting 10 zits on your face, that's an invitation. Can you be with that?

Yeah. How does it feel? What, what triggers when you get 10 zits on your face?

But like, you know, we just want our man to love us through it, but we can't even do it ourselves.

And that's why ultimately the man is a reflection of us.

EMILY: Yeah, I have a question.

I'm curious your thoughts on this because a revelation that I have come to and it, I'm sure it is generalized for many the way. But I'm curious about your experience.

I have come to the realization that I actually do have to go first.

I have to go first.

I have to go first.

Damn. Does my ego not like that.

It really does not like that. I want to be respected. I want to be seen. I want to be revered for all of the magic that I am.

I want him to reflect that to me before I give it to him. I want him to soften.

I want him to lead with compassion, to lead with love. Before I do, it's all in my ego. It's all my ego talking. But I have come to the realization that was, that's my portal experience,

that I have to go first and that I'm never going to get it unless I give it. And a lot has softened in our home. There's a lot more harmony happening right now and I'm very grateful for that.

But yeah, I'd be curious your thoughts on that.

LEA: Thank you for bringing that up because to me, that is the realest experience of being a woman. Sometimes, you know, there's the rare man that has certain astrology, in my opinion, that, you know, he's more emotional or sensitive and so he might, you know, do the vulnerable choice first.

But I feel like that's more rare. And so, yeah, that was my experience too, is why do I always have to bring up this disconnection pattern that keeps happening? Why do I have to keep saying, hey, we're disconnected, we need to connect.

That took so many years to not be angry about that.

But now when I look back, it's because we are so attuned,

that is to me, the feminine. We are so attuned naturally to connection and disconnection. We are so attuned to energy, we are so attuned to shallowness and surface level. Like, we want to feel deeply, we want to feel your heart.

And so to me, that is our natural gift.

And so I had to really accept that this is what being a woman is. He is not a woman.

And so my ego was the same. It was like, fuck this, like, why am I the one always initiating these important conversations?

But for us, we started doing a cannabis gummy night once a week as our therapy. This started like two and a half years ago and those were the sacred evenings that we created to together.

So this is a co creation together to take a gummy. I believe cannabis is a feminine energy and if it's used intentionally with prayers as a ceremony,

to sit in ceremony with cannabis with a partner, I feel like he then can access parts of his feminine energy that he is so afraid of. He could feel parts of himself that he's so afraid of because they're in much fear as we are.

They're terrified to feel, we're terrified to feel. But for females, we're more so terrified to fully open, to fully surrender.

And so I wanted to really talk about the openness of females because my husband and I have been walking the conscious sexuality path for two years and through these cannabis nights together, they were our therapy nights.

We were able to have these honest, honest, transparent conversations that, that just radicalized our marriage.

Honesty and transparency as the foundation. Then, then anything can change. If you're being honest, then anything can change.

So then with that level of honesty, I started to trust him because he wasn't running away from the truth.

With that level of honesty, I was learning how to trust and respect him again.

And we equally were being honest, right? And having these deep conversations. And then we started walking the conscious sexuality path at the same time.

And all of these patterns are all the same. It's. Do I truly trust him in the bedroom?

No. When I'm really in tune with my body, it clenches when something happens, when, when something's going too fast, my body clenches. And my old self would override my body's.

No. And it would, people, please.

Because I just needed that validation from him that I'm desired.

And so through gaining trust with him, I learned how to open my body so fully, fully to him.

And I now have learned what true feminine openness is.

And David Data talks about this in his book Dear Lover. And I am just now reading this book, Dear Lover. I heard about it for like eight years and I didn't order it until this year.

And it is a very intense book because I don't know how this man writes about the female experience the way he does. He has this quote that says,

your heart yearns to be taken open by a man whose depth and integrity guide your heart open better than you can guide yourself.

And he talks about the female experience of our deepest heart's desires.

When you read this book and you read about the feminine's deepest desire to trust your man, to guide you, to open more than you trust yourself, you're like, oh, shit.

No, no, no. That's so scary. That's so scary because he can't even hold my fear. He can't even hold my anger, right? How could he, how could I trust him to give my body and to be obliterated, open to God if he can't even hold some of my anger?

And so the conscious sexuality patterning and that work is so illuminating with all of these same patterns of trust and the females fear of fully opening.

But I wanted to say, I want to spell out the feminine openness that I think that is what birth and postpartum is designed to do to a woman. Blast her open, obliterate her heart.

So open she is nothing but soft and surrendered and so sensitive,

but so loving. She has never been more loving because she is so open.

And I've had some big moments of grief in my life. I lost my dad when I was 13, tragically. And then my separation with my husband. Like, these were deep, dark grief moments of my life.

And when I look back to that time period, I am realizing that grief blasts our heart open.

So open that we have nothing to do but look to God. We have nothing to do but surrender to the divine. And we want to because we can't help it.

That is the feminine receptivity state.

To be so fully open that we receive God, that we receive a baby,

that we receive a man,

but we have all these walls of fear we can't open.

And so I believe that grief shatters our heart open to the greatest surrender of openness, to love. Grief is love. Grief is the experience of love. That is why it hurts so bad.

But in grief, most people are the most tender they've ever been in grief, even maiden to mother, the transition, the level of grief women can feel.

They can be the most tender they have ever been because their heart is shattered open.

And I believe that is the purpose. That's the purpose. We need to be shattered open to know what that feels like. That full surrender and that tenderness, that softness.

And so when I look back to my grief moments of my life,

I'm like, I love that version of me because my ego is not leading.

I am so compassionate, so empathetic, so tender,

so lovey dovey, touchy,

sensitive. I could cry so easily. I love that version of me. I love who I am in grief. That feels like my truest self.

And to me, that is the purpose.

It shatters you open where you only have surrender, you only have God.

And to live like a normal daily life is hard just to like, oh, scroll social media in grief.

No, no,

in loss. The last thing you can do is scroll social media or even go to the grocery store because you are so tender.

And so what I've realized is the shattering open of our heart is done in grief,

in birth, in postpartum, and in pleasure, in sexuality. That is its purpose.

But I also think people touch this openness in women's circles,

at a women's circle, when it's a truly safe space and women are sharing their hearts.

We are opened so deeply and we become this safe, soft, tender human.

I love who I am at a woman's circle.

And my. My other thought lately is this is also why people are drawn to church or worship music. Because if you're in a church, this is some people's life experience, is they're in a church, they're listening to this amazing music.

They are broken open,

and they literally are so humbled by this surrender. And they have this true experience of oneness with the Creator. It's true. It's real,

because we know our. Our true state is that oneness with God. And some people do ayahuasca to feel that oneness.

We all have these different avenues.

You know, some people literally get it from church. Some people get it from plant medicine. And women should be getting it in birth, in postpartum, or in the preconception phase or in sexuality.

To me, this is the experience of being a female.

Is, can I be obliterated? Open to being so surrendered that all I want to do is sit in this presence with God.

And you, when you know this feeling, you don't want to reach for your phone. You don't want to go make a meal. You just want to sit in the pure presence of unconditional love.

And that is the most delicious place to be.

EMILY: Yes.

Yes.

I love how you broke that down.

You know, I'm running a private women's circle right now called the Oracle Chronicles,

but it is all about going through her story,

the wounding, your red thread lineage, like, all of the things that lay between a woman and her ability to, like, be an open, clear channel, to be that receptivity.

So we're going through all of that right now. But, you know, you're right. Many different things in our lives can facilitate that when the permission field is open, like in a church or in a women's circle, or when you are in a place where.

Where you feel deeply held and safe and surrendered, or when, like, all other options have been exhausted and you were just in that, like, I have to surrender moment. Like, that is when our feminine channel is completely open and we are fully in that.

So beautiful. And I love this download that you had about that being birth and postpartum. And even though, I mean, Isaiah really did show up for me in a beautiful way in the postpartum and in the birth, he really did hold some beautiful space,

and he did nurture me so that I was able to be fully present with my child and, you know, be nurtured.

So, I mean, I did have that experience,

and it was life changing, life altering.

Yeah.

LEA: I think I want to share a profound,

open moment that I had in November.

It's such an interesting story because my husband and I were driving, and it's like I got hit by a lightning bolt of, like, erotic energy. This has never happened to me.

Before, we were driving, and I got hit by this lightning bolt of erotic energy. And it forced me to sit up straight with, like, my spine straight. And in that moment, I sat up.

He put his hand on my inner thigh because he felt the lightning bolt. And we're like, what was that? And we don't know. We still don't know what that was.

But that was the beginning of us creating this sexual ceremony together where we had the most amazing lovemaking session ever. And every session is a journey. Every session is playfulness and messy and hard and beautiful.

It's a journey. Birth is supposed to be a journey. Sex is supposed to be a journey. It's not about the end. It is about the journey. The. The entire way.

And so through the journey of lovemaking, at the end, I'm literally just in the most open state I've ever, you know, been in. It feels like I just meditated for two hours.

And I'm so present, I have no thoughts. I'm in absolute bliss with God laying there.

And I start crying and crying and crying with this knowing that when you are truly in the hands of God, in this present moment, fully open,

nothing really matters like how you birth doesn't matter.

The outcome of birth doesn't matter because you're in truth. And the truth of love is, is that you're always safe in. In unconditional love, you are always safe no matter what your life actually looks like.

And that's crazy to the ego. That's crazy to the ego. It doesn't even know how to compute that. But when you are in the space of unconditional love, you know the truth of God,

that you are held, no matter what happens, no matter what life events happen,

you are so held.

And so I got this specific knowing, because if I birth in the future, you know, I would love it to look a certain way. I'd love birth to go according to my ego's plans.

But God told me it doesn't matter what happens in your birth. It doesn't matter where you birth.

It doesn't. And it matters so much. It matters so much.

And the truth of the soul is that both of those can be true. And that's, like,

asinine to the ego. The ego's like, no, no, no. Birth is everything. Birth matters so much,

right? Birth is how we can create peace in the world.

But when you're in your soul, when you're actually one with God, you know that whatever happens in life,

you are in the hands of your creator. And you are always held. And you are always cared for and the details don't matter to your soul,

to your ego, yes.

But to me that's when you know you are in actual capital T. Truth is when you're like, oh, it doesn't matter because I am in the hands of God. I am held by unconditional love no matter what happens.

And that's how unconditional love is radical.

Because the ego wants to rebuke that so deeply and so loudly.

But these moments with God, these moments with our creator, these moments with our soul are a felt experience through our body.

That is the experience of unconditional love. It's all through our body. And so I just said that story and people are gonna think that story is crazy. Like no birth matters so much.

And for me it was the biggest release that it doesn't matter if I have a C section, it doesn't matter if I free birth. God is everywhere. God is everywhere.

God created the world. God created every aspect of this life. God is everywhere. It doesn't matter the details, it matters to the ego, but to the soul. The felt sensation of truth,

knowing you are held in your entire life, no matter what happens,

is the deepest sensation of unconditional love and truth that no one can convince you out of.

And that is the felt experience of divinity through our body.

And I believe it's our responsibility to create those moments for ourselves. If we want peace in our life,

if we just want to relax and not be so controlling or in fear, we create our life in co creation with God. It's our responsibility to create these moments with our creator.

Like sometimes they can befall on us. Like the lightning bolt in the car, I was just receiving and receiving an energy and we both responded and we were both open.

But we then put the, the energy of hours of lovemaking for me to actually receive the deepest truth from God I've ever received that it doesn't matter what happens in your birth because God is everywhere.

And no matter what happens in birth, you can grow, you can learn.

And that's how I've really let go of any like birth dogma I have. And it will always keep coming up, you know, because I desire the highest birth, I desire the, the most peace, the most loving birth.

But my truth now, because I've known it in my body to be true, I know it's true,

is it doesn't matter because you can grow from whatever happens.

EMILY: Yeah, thank you for that ego humbling moment of reminding us all about what it's really all about, you know, like we can have a whole conversation about what we think, what we believe, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But like truly this is a co creation with God and truly we are safe all of the time. Our soul is safe all of the time.

That is the truth.

And the beginning of our conversation, you know, talking about cultivating safety in our bodies and this and that and this and that, it's, it's all in the head, it's really all in the mind, the soul truth is that we are always safe and it is about that relationship that we have with our creator,

with God, to really get to that place of safety within our lives, you know, safety within our body, safety within our relationship.

LEA: Yeah. To me that is the foundation of our safety is, you know, where are we deriving our deep, deep, deep, deep safety? And for me it's with my soul, it's with my creator.

EMILY: Right.

LEA: Because.

EMILY: Well, I also want to say I, I have been bringing this more into my education, my birth, my experience. Like if a woman, they're probably not my aligned, client. If someone doesn't believe in a higher power, if they're not of that mindset, that there will come a moment where I absolutely must surrender it all over.

You know, just like weaving this in in a way that is palatable to, you know, the greater masses. But if a woman does not have an openness to a relationship that, that is greater than her, then we probably shouldn't be working together.

LEA: Yeah. One of my biggest passions is how this human life is duality. We are a human mind with a soul. And so we're toggling human mind, soul, human mind, soul. And what are those qualities?

Right. The human mind wants to keep us safe at all costs. The human mind is fearful.

The human mind wants control to feel safe.

The human mind wants to blame everyone else and everything else for your life.

We all have this part of us and once we become adults and we can learn what our ego mind is and that yes, it's great because it tries to keep us safe, but it's out of line almost all of the time.

And it's our responsibility to align with our deepest truth, the truth of our soul, which to me our soul is our authentic self.

And if we don't take responsibility of creating a relationship with our soul or with God and learning those deep, deep, deep truths, then we will be living our whole life from our ego mind.

And all it's consumed with is fear and control and expectations and getting what it wants.

It's not concerned with growth, it's not concerned with that. The tragedies or the challenges in life are for us. It's like, no,

that's against us.

EMILY: And it seems like comfort zone only.

LEA: Comfort zone only.

EMILY: Yeah.

LEA: Yeah. So I. Oof. My greatest passion is talking about the human mind, because we all have it. We all know what it's like, and it has its place. But if it's our master,

we will be the most fearful, rigid, not trusting, not safe, human.

And eventually, on this maturation journey, you know, going from immature feminine to mature feminine, that journey is, what do I believe? What do I believe in? What are my values?

And to me, the feminine is this openness to God.

EMILY: Yeah.

LEA: And so if you don't have this openness and trust and safety with God,

then your safety is just in your mind. Like, I don't know where you're driving. True safety. And that just leaves you on a chase your whole life. Because you need more information to feel safe.

More ultrasounds to feel safe. Right. More evidence to feel safe.

EMILY: The illusion of safety.

LEA: The illusion. And then when we take responsibility for our emotional state or our beingness in the world,

we learn, oh, we have to tap into spirit.

And so the question is, how do you tap into spirit? How can you get to that openness state?

How can you get so open? So open that you don't want to scroll your phone? To me, it's a very rare. Like, this happens, like, once a week to me,

because sometimes I could try to get really open,

but I just can't reach that state. And so for me, it's kind of once a week where I could really, really get down into the deepest state of surrender through sometimes, like, primal dancing,

singing, to worship music. I love worship music or spiritual music.

Through conscious sexuality,

through women's circles.

Some people might want to go to church because they can be open that way. It's really like humbling the ego.

And the. The ego gets humbled the most in pain. It gets humbled the most in grief, which is why those are the biggest pivot points for most people. But when we start living this very conscious life, every day we can choose to open to God every day we can humble our own ego,

and we don't have to be perfect in it.

EMILY: That.

LEA: That's the Virgo eclipse. I learned that my ego loves to be this perfect little spiritual person. If I'm not doing all these things, then I'm not worthy,

because the ego uses all of that information against yourself. You know, it weaponizes everything against you to make everything. You're less than you're less than. You're not spiritual enough, you're not surrendering enough, you're not claiming your power enough.

The ego takes on any rhetoric and sells you how not worthy you are. That's, like, what it does. And so to me, self worth comes from the soul. It comes from God.

It cannot come from the ego. That's my newest opinion from the Virgo Eclipse is like, if you keep chasing self worth through your ego mind, you won't get anywhere because it keeps telling you new lies and new lies of how you're not good enough, you're not worthy enough, you're not lovable,

you're too much, you're too emotional.

But our worthiness truly comes from the divine because we are a part of the divine. So if we want to really feel that worthiness,

we have to create space to commune with the divine.

That is our responsibility.

EMILY: Amen. I'm actually feeling rather complete. I feel like we. I feel like we did it.

LEA: That felt so good.

EMILY: It did. Do you just want to share one more time where everybody can find you?

LEA: Yeah. On Instagram, I'm trusting life.

I love to post about human patterns on that account.

I used to only post about birth, but now I want to talk about, quote, unquote, infertility. I want to talk about conscious sexuality. I want to talk about marriage,

all of the things. And so it's trusting life. On Instagram, my podcast is Wise Women Diaries. I have some solo podcasts there, just, like, blurting out my heart that day.

And then I also interview women. And then my latest venture is my Patreon, where I'm, like, very personal there and very myself. Because my year, I'm an Aquarius Rising. My year of astrology this year is fully showing up as myself, owning every part of me, and even doing it messy and doing it imperfectly.

But me just showing up as me, maybe someone will gain something from it. Who am I to judge that?

EMILY: Love it. What do you mean, your year? Because I'm also an Aquarius Rising. Is that something happening for Aquarius Risings this year?

LEA: Yeah. Yeah.

EMILY: Okay. Makes sense. It makes sense.

LEA: Yeah, it's. It's. It's really learning who you are and showing up as that. But I'm seeing it even with my clothing.

What clothes truly are me.

I'm getting rid of any trendy,

boring. Oh, just trend.

This is what an adult human female in America dresses like. I'm an Aquarius Rising.

And we should be the weird alien dressers.

So I got some cowboy hats that feel like Me like straw cowboy hats with frilly dresses. Straw cowboy hats with mix matched patterns and polka dots and stripes.

It's like being a child, but I want to express my soul through my clothes, and so that's what I'm going through. But it's through all ways. You know who you are in.

In all ways this year. I'm excited for you.

EMILY: I love that this is. This is an early release announcement, but I'm going to be kind of rebranding embodied womenswisdom.com was open, and so was the Instagram handle. And so, like, I'm rebranding.

Like, I will have my branch for my birth support, but also embodied women's wisdom. Like, I'm. I'm really feeling the call to, like, dive deeper down that other side.

LEA: You're branching out. You're just like me. I changed my. My Instagram handle from trusting birth to trusting life.

EMILY: Yeah.

LEA: Because birth was like our segue. It was like the doorway.

EMILY: Yeah.

LEA: And now we have so much to talk about because in the last time.

EMILY: The last time we recorded, you know, trusting life is trusting God. And so, of course you're going, it. It. It expands. You can't just.

It's everything. And that we talked about that last time, and I just. It's beautiful. I love that you changed the name. Makes so much sense. You're right, though. Birth is the gateway.

It split me wide open, just like we were talking about in this whole episode of, like, being burst wide open. I mean, that is what happened to me in my pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experience.

Burst wide open. Completely altered the trajectory of my life in not, like, a completely unexpected way. I mean, we do birth the way we live, and it was.

It's not a surprise that I went down this road.

Yeah.

LEA: That's amazing.

EMILY: Yeah.

EMILY: Fun stuff in store.

EMILY: But I am. I'm being challenged to, like, take massive, imperfect action every day. To, like, show up and be weird. Be me. Like, step into it. And so, yeah, cool.

LEA: Do it scared. That's my latest tagline from this eclipse season, is like, we all know the direction we want to go. We know our desires. We are in tune with our desires.

It's like, now actually go for it. Do it Scared. Like, one baby step at a time.

EMILY: Yeah. Yeah. This was such a beautiful conversation. You know, I was writing down, like, my. My values and the mission for this rebrand, and one of the biggest pieces is, like, we are a soul and we are a body, and, like, honoring both.

And what does that mean again? We do. We have very similar podcasts, Soul Evolution, Embodied Wise Women Birth Stories, and more Wise Women Stories. Yeah, it's so nice to, you know, to know you in this life.

I'm really grateful for you coming here and chatting with me and I'm sure we'll chat more. We'll stay in touch.

LEA: Thank you for doing your piece. In this world. We all, you know, have this role in the whole orchestra and everyone's role is different. You know, not everyone needs to use their voice on a podcast, but we feel it's our call and so thank you for showing up.

EMILY: Yeah. All right, Leah, thanks so much.

EMILY: Thank you for listening through to the end. I do hope you found good medicine in today's episode and that it encouraged encourages your own Soul Evolution. I have a few new offers, both in person and virtual that I'd like to tell you about.

Beginning in January, I will host a free in person perinatal Women's Circle for anyone trying to conceive, pregnant or postpartum. Seeking community and support. There will be a focus on preparing for natural birth and healing healing from birth trauma.

Children are welcome. You can sign up via my website.

I also now offer a monthly online virtual village circle for families seeking an empowering physiological conception, pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum. It's just $10 a month or free when you purchase my online course.

So you want a home birth? You can gain access by signing up via my website.

As always, I host Women's Circles once a month at my home in Southern Maine. All women are welcome. For details, go to my website.

I have 20 years of experience in the medicalized system. I let my nursing license expire in 2023 and now I walk with women See. Seeking a physiological, instinctual and deeply spiritual conception, pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum journey.

I help prepare and repair for the most expansive rite of passage that women get to experience in this lifetime. It is my greatest honor and sole mission to hold sacred space and witness women as they claim their our own inner authority and power.

I am a fierce advocate and guardian of natural birth. Using the culmination of my life's experiences including my own embodied wisdom when it comes to being a home birthing mother.

Nearly two decades of experience in our healthcare system and a year long sacred birth worker mentorship with Anna the Spiritual Midwich.

I support births with or without a licensed provider present at home birth centers and the hospital.

I offer birth debriefing and integration sessions for women, their families and birth workers.

I offer therapeutic one to one sessions, individually tailored mother blessings, closing of the bones and feed and trauma release ceremonies.

If any or all of this resonates, I offer a free 30 minute discovery call.

If you have a birth story to share or if you're a embodied wise woman, witch healer, medicine woman. I am also interested in sharing your contribution to our soul evolution.

You can book in via the link in the show note.

Thank you so much for your love and support everyone. Until next time, take really good care.