EP 198: Take Back the Magic with Perdita Finn
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
Release Date: 10/08/2023
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 Perdita discuss Perdita’s latest book “Take Back the Magic,” which was inspired by the death of her father, their ambivalent relationship, and ongoing relationship to him now that he's passed. Perdita shares her experience of communicating with the dead for over thirty years and guides us in how we can do the same. They also discuss the history behind why we fear the dead and the suppression of communicating with the dead by organized religion. She shares how the dead are connected and long for the erotic and how we can return to the inner wisdom and rituals of ancestors that pre-date religion and political systems. She describes the crucial role of the this communication with dead to her key relationships with the living: as a mother, wife, and community member.
Bio
Perdita Finn is the co-founder, with her husband Clark Strand, of the non-denominational international fellowship The Way of the Rose, which inspired their book "The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary." For many years she supported her family writing books for children and educators like the "Time Flyers" series for Scholastic Books, "My Little Pony," and many others. She has been a ghostwriter, a book doctor, a copy editor and a writing teacher, but these days she is happy to be working primarily on her own books. She has a lively substack, "Take Back the Magic," where readers can get sneak peeks into what she's working on right now. Finn now teaches popular workshops on Collaborating with the Other Side, in which participants are empowered to activate the magic in their own lives with the help of their ancestors. She is the author of "Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World" and lives with her family in the moss-filled shadows of the Catskill Mountains.
What She Shares:
–Writing “Take Back the Magic”
–Why we fear the dead
–Cycles of life, death, and rebirth
–How to commune with the dead
–Eros and the dead
What You’ll Hear:
–Darkness and dark matter as origin of life
–Circles of entanglement and belonging
–Use of letters in “Take Back the Magic”
–Relationship with father and his death
–Cultural fears of the dead
–Long history of suppression of speaking with dead
–Understanding how dead communicate
–Alchemizing experiences with past monsters
–Finding safety of ancestors
–Starting small with communication
–Assigning worries to those on the other side
–Honoring the dead
–Perdita and husband’s spiritual backgrounds
–Spiritual experiences through birth
–Spiritual community outside of empire
–History of rosary
–Erotic nature of the dead
–Experiencing eternal return of dead and living
–Trusting the long story of your soul
–Everything dies and everything is reborn
–Not every prayer is answered in every lifetime
–What is the prayer we would carry with us beyond this lifetime?
–We are all each others’ mothers
Resources
Website:
wayoftherose.org
takebackthemagic.com
IG: @perditafinn