EP 189: Nurtured Parenting, Co-Regulation, and Infant Sleep with Greer Kirshenbaum
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
Release Date: 06/19/2023
EP 218: Thriving Postpartum - Embracing the Indigenous Wisdom of La Cuarentena with Pānquetzani
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly and Pānquetzani discuss her new book Thriving Postpartum: Embracing the Indigenous Wisdom of La Cuarentena and the thirteen year process of navigating that creative act. Pānquetzani reflects on the ways her relationships with partners and her four children have impacted the journey of making a business and writing a book. Pānquetzani’s writing is inextricably linked directly to the work she has done in and for her community around postpartum care, as well as the lessons she learned around mental health and partner agreements along the way. A deep meditation on...
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EP 217: Ordinary Mysticism - Everyday Beauty, Grief, Sexuality and Mystical Awareness with Mirabai Starr
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
Kimberly and Mirabai Starr engage in a rich and intimate exploration of mysticism, personal loss, spirituality, and the intersection of sexuality and the sacred. They consider how they have each found spirituality in their everyday lives while being mindful of their journeys, cultures, ancestry, and the complexities involved. They discuss Mirabai's new book, "Ordinary Mysticism," which delves into the nature of mysticism and its accessibility to everyone every day. Mirabai emphasizes that mysticism doesn't require institutionalized religion and can be found in ordinary moments. They discuss...
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EP 216: Cultural Identity, Ancestry and White Privileges & Poverties with Tad Hargrave
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
Fellow Orphan Wisdom Scholar, and founder of Marketing for Hippies, Tad Hargrave dives deep with Kimberly into his ever-evolving relationship to whiteness and ancestry. They discuss Tad’s journey into exploring his ancestral roots, language and cultural identity, as well as Kimberly and Tad’s shared rites of passage experiences doing anti-racism work. Tad shares how he initially felt disconnected from indigenous cultures, but found deep resonance exploring his own heritage, particularly his Scottish Gaelic ancestry. The two discuss the polarities of self-loathing and self-glorification...
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EP 215: Never Land / Sever Land - Dirt, Place, Ancestry, & The Making of Culture From the New World with Stephen Jenkinson
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, podcast producer Jackson Kroopf interviews Kimberly Ann Johnson and Stephen Jenkinson about their upcoming live audio series Never Land / Sever Land - Dirt, Place, Ancestry, and The Making of Culture From The New World. They discuss the impact of their recent trip to Ireland on their ongoing collaboration around culture making in the wake of a global pandemic. They reveal details about Stephen's work-in-progress manuscript and how it relates to orphan wisdom. They consider the implications of the “New World” in contemporary circumstances, the sticky territory of...
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EP 214: Finding Language, Sharing our Stories, and Creating New Worlds around Mothering with April Tierney
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly and April discuss her most recent book of poetry titled Matter / Mother which shares about April’s experience of traveling through the underworld of grief, hardship, and heartbreak while mothering her young child. Together, they share their desires for a culture that makes space for the depth of mothering experiences and stories through all of the different seasons of life. They also discuss how to bear the pain and responsibility of both creating a world we want our children to live in while simultaneously inhabiting the one that currently exists....
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EP 213: Navigating Single Motherhood, Finding Sisterhood, and Forming Kinship with Marysia Miernowska
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly and Marysia discuss how they’ve navigated the challenges and benefits of single motherhood. In many ways, their lives and stories run parallel: surprising pregnancies, marrying into another culture, becoming single mothers with babies, and living out single motherhood while being entrepreneurs. This honest, raw, and tender conversation offers vulnerable testimonies and nuggets of wisdom for other single mothers. They emphasize the difficulties but importance of building kinship and community, undoing internalized shame, and tending to community. Marysia’s School...
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EP 212: Hormones to an Evolutionary Biologist - Menopause, Endometriosis, and Grandmothering with Natalie Dinsdale
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Natalie and Kimberly dive deep into the choose your own hormone phenomenon. They discuss an evolutionary biologist's perspective of individual vs. group think when it comes to women’s health, the connections between hormones and reproductive health issues like endometriosis and PCOS, as well as the evolutionary case for grandmothering. Bio Natalie Dinsdale, PhD is an evolutionary biologist, a researcher, an astrologer, a dancer, and a mother. She investigates how evolutionary dynamics shape features of sexuality, reproduction, and health & disease in humans. What...
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Episode 211: Travel, Tourism, and Home in a “Post-Pandemic” World with Chris Christou
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly and Chris dive deep into the impact of travel on their lives and the consequences of tourism in places they call home. As two world travelers, who have each spent a decade living abroad, Kimberly and Chris consider what they have learned about home, hospitality, and culture from places far from the lands they were raised. They discuss how the pandemic impacted travel to where Chris resides in Mexico, one of two countries that kept its borders open? How Air BnB’s, second homes, and passive income have changed the real estate landscape for future generations? They...
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Episode 210: Restore Your Core, Healing Journeys, and Mothering Teens with Lauren Ohayon
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly and Lauren discuss her teaching journey, which led to the restorative exercise techniques Lauren offers in the women’s health field. As a lifelong mover, Lauren went through several different yoga trainings and anatomical frameworks to arrive at a simple truth: there isn’t a right or wrong, good or bad when it comes to understanding your body’s needs. They discuss re-writing injury stories, and consider what leads women to medically intervene at different phases of life. In addition, Kimberly and Lauren talk about raising teenage girls. In this open hearted...
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Episode 209: The Journey to Becoming a Village Auntie and Girls Group Facilitator with Johannah Reimer
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
With fellow educator and Orphan Wisdom Scholar Johannah Reimer, Kimberly discusses Johannah’s long cultivated journey with Girl Groups that work on collective rites of passage. They explore the difference between weekend and longer form rites of passage processes for girls crossing the threshold to adolescence and womanhood, as well as ways to de-emphasize soul work that doesn't center "the self." Johannah emphasizes the impact she has seen guiding Girls Groups and their families into relationships that reflect boundaries, values, and connection. Johannah talks through her passionate...
info_outlineIn this episode, Kimberly and Greer discuss her upcoming book “The Nurture Revolution: Grow Your Baby’s Brain and Transform Their Mental Health Through the Art of Nurtured Parenting.” Greer discusses combining her work as a doula, neuroscientist, and sleep specialist after completing research on infant sleep. She proposes “nurtured parenting” as a revolution that tends to the complex emotions and stressors of both parents and infants. With tending to these needs and co-regulation, parents can help babies develop better stress responses in their brains.
Bio
Greer Kirshenbaum PhD is an Author, Neuroscientist, Doula, Infant and Family Sleep Specialist and Mother. She trained at the University of Toronto, Columbia University, New York University and Yale University. Greer has combined her academic training with her experience as a doula and mother to lead The Nurture Revolution. A movement to nurture our babies’ brains to revolutionize mental health and impact larger systems in our world. Greer wants families and perinatal practitioners to understand how early caregiving experience can boost mental wellness and diminish depression, anxiety, and addiction in adulthood by shaping babies’ brains through simple intuitive enriching experiences in pregnancy, birth and infancy. Her book is called The Nurture Revolution: Grow Your Baby’s Brain and Transform Their Mental Health Through the Art of Nurtured Parenting. See the link to her website below.
What She Shares:
–Connecting doula work, parenting, and neuroscience
–Nurtured parenting tending to infant and parental emotions
–Developing brain growth in babies
–Demystifying infant sleep and high needs’ babies
–Emotional co-regulation during infancy
What You’ll Hear:
–How infanthood led her to doula and neuroscience
–Fascinated by early life experience and neuroscience
–Wanting to take research into the public
–Attachment parenting as good foundation for nurtured parenting
–Nurtured parenting tuning to both parent and infant emotional needs
–Nurtured presence and empathy for parent and baby
–Emotional co-regulation at center of parenting practices
–Uniqueness of infant brain
–Baby borrows parent’s brain in places their brain hasn’t developed
–Stress responses and systems in parent brain
–Baby detects parent responses through their senses
–Increasing oxytocin and lowering stress response in baby’s brain
–Co-regulation in first 3 years builds areas of brain to handle stress
–Major life moments and stress responses
–Becoming parent changes brain chemistry similar to infancy
–Brain areas become tuned to be more aware and empathetic of babies
–Brain shifts during perimenopause
–Being near babies also changes brain areas
–Cultural changes causing less experience with babies pre-parenting
–Issues with attachment parenting
–Demystifying infant sleep
–Understanding what is biologically normal for babies
–Cultural expectations are off for infant sleep needs
–Babies develop sleep on their own and can be supported
–Infant sleep like a river and physiological process
–Night-waking, sleeping nearby, closeness
–Circadian rhythm, sleep pressure, stress, daily movement
–Babies don’t need sleep training or sleeping alone
–Sleep in same bed or room for 6 mo to 1 year
–Babies need to sense safety of parents
–Optimal circadian input
–Opportunities for light, movement, and sensory input
–Time in nature and green space helpful for sleep
–Normal features of infant sleep
–Stress reactivity and sensitivity is genetic and experiential
–”High needs” infant sleep
–Intergenerational experiences and epigenetics
–Experiences in ancestry, pregnancy, and birth contribute to temperament
–Identifying needs for intense crying
–Emotional contagion and mirroring
–Addressing parental burnout
–Infant emotions and physiological responses
–Anticipating infant stressors and verbalization
–Parenting with empathy and compassion to grow brain
Resources
Website: www.nurture-neuroscience.com
IG: @nurture_neuroscience_parenting