EP 224: The Case of Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, and the Responsibility of Women to Other Women with fellow Jaguar Kristin Butler
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
Release Date: 04/28/2025
EP 245: The Contrast Is the Gold - Death Nesting, the Vortex, and Why Deathcare Belongs to the Village with Anne-Marie Keppel
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Anne-Marie Keppel, death doula educator, founder of the nonprofit Village Deathcare, and author of Death Nesting: The Heart-Centered Practices of a Death Doula, about what has and has not shifted in the culture since she wrote the book. Anne-Marie traces the origin of Death Nesting back to her years as a licensed nurse assistant in residential care, a hospice volunteer, a Meals on Wheels director, and to the elderly homeless man she looked after through Vermont winters; work she did because she wanted to. They look at the 1920s as the demarcation point...
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EP 244: Consistency, Not Perfection - Nutrition for Menopause and Beyond with Karen Newby
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
Kimberly wanted to speak with someone who was neither hormones-or-nothing nor going to offer complicated longevity protocol. Karen Newby is a UK nutritionist with a BSc in Nutritional Medicine and fifteen years of clinical practice, and she speaks with clear-eyed candor about how to support women’s nutrition through midlife and beyond. What follows is a genuinely practical conversation. Karen explains why menopause is now classified as an inflammatory transitional event, what that has to do with joint pain, foggy head, eczema, and autoimmune flares, and how the shift in estrogen changes...
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EP 243: Eating the Shadow – Mythopoetic Men’s Work, the Lover Archetype, and Repair in a Villageless World with Ian MacKenzie
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Ian MacKenzie, filmmaker, writer, mythosomatic guide, and host of The Mythic Masculine, about what men’s work looks like in 2026. A fellow Orphan Wisdom scholar, Ian traces the mythopoetic lineage back through Robert Bly’s Iron John, Carl Jung, and Marie-Louise von Franz, and describes how discovering Bly’s book in his late grandfather’s study set him on this path alongside his film work on feminine archetypes (Amplify Her). They talk candidly about the cultural moment — the “Rape Academy,” the Pelicot case, the question of where the men are,...
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EP 242: Arbitrary Intelligence - Tools, Limits, and the Willies of What’s Coming with Stephen Jenkinson
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly is re-joined by Stephen Jenkinson, author of Trembling Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse, about the moment we find ourselves in with artificial intelligence and what it asks of us. They unpack the claim that AI is merely a tool; a real tool elaborates the capacities of the human hand just enough to reveal its God-given limits. Jenkinson suggests renaming AI “arbitrary intelligence,” and traces how the rollout was designed to anticipate and absorb resistance before it could even form. Kimberly shares her own encounters with AI’s creep into branding,...
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EP 241: Furious or Curious - Safety and Security, Frog Farmers, and What Men Actually Need to Hear with Alison Armstrong
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Alison Armstrong, author of The Queen’s Code, about her complex work around understanding men and women. Alison has been studying the dynamics between men and women since 1991, when she discovered she was what’s called a “frog farmer:”a woman who unknowingly turns princes into frogs through culturally inherited patterns of emasculation, criticism, and control. They explore how what was once a subterranean pattern of diminishing men has become amplified in our current moment, and why nobody is fundamentally broken. Alison explains how testosterone...
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EP 240: Hunting and Making God – Motherhood, Creativity, and Building a Church of Her Own with Ranier Amiel
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, the third in the Santa Fe trilogy, Kimberly speaks with Ranier Amiel, an artist, bodyworker, and single mother who is restoring a century-old church in Truchas, New Mexico, and turning it into a home, studio, and eventually a space of community and sacred inquiry. Recorded inside the church itself, their conversation moves between the balance of motherhood and creativity, the grounding power of physical labor, and what it means to hunt for and make God after losing faith in the spiritual community you were raised in. Ranier shares her vulva portraiture work, including its...
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EP 239: The Image of the Wound – Emergent Teaching, Art as Alchemy, and Living Between Languages with Dr. Chanti Tacoronte-Perez
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Dr. Chanti Tacoronte-Perez, an artist, educator, and depth psychologist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the designer of the cover of Kimberly’s upcoming book Erotic Seasons. Part of Kimberly's Santa Fe trilogy, this conversation explores what it means to teach and live emergently: responding to what’s present rather than what’s planned. Chanti shares her doctoral work on the wound of homelandlessness as a Cuban American, and how she developed a practice of creating and living with the image of one’s wound as a daily, evolving relationship rather...
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EP 238: The Body Innate – Yin Warriorship, Communal Eros, and Leading Atmospheres with Jaye Marolla
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Jaye Marolla, a bodyworker, martial artist, Qigong teacher, and founder of The Body Innate and the Yin Dojo in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They explore the integration of martial arts, bodywork, and Qigong as a path of healing and sovereignty, and what Jaye calls “yin warriorship:” a reclamation of the warrior archetype rooted in surrender, Eros, and facing one’s own mortality rather than competition or heroism. They discuss how Jaye came to open her home as a dojo, the ancient tradition of merging practice space with living space, and the energetic...
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EP 237: “Sage-escence” – The Natural Menopause Movement, Shamanic Midwifery, and Birthing the Wise Woman with Jane Hardwicke Collings
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Jane Hardwicke Collings, a post-menopausal grandmother, former midwife, and founder of the School of Shamanic Womancraft. They explore how the lessons learned from the natural childbirth movement must now be applied to menopause, discussing what Jane calls “sage-escence,” the becoming of the wise woman. Jane shares her journey from hospital nurse to home birth midwife, how her midwifery awakened her to the patriarchy’s medicalization of women’s bodies, and why she sees a natural menopause movement emerging. They dive deep into the connections...
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EP 236: The Art of Receiving and Giving - The Wheel of Consent with Dr. Betty Martin
Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson
Kimberly is joined by luminary thinker Dr. Betty Martin as they discuss the evolution and impact of the Wheel of Consent, a vanguard model for enthusiastic consent, asking for what you want, and living out embodied intimacy. Dr. Martin, who developed the model, shares her journey from creating the wheel through her hands-on workshops to writing a book so the wheel may reach an even larger audience, with Kimberly noting just how deep of an impact Betty’s work has had on Kimberly’s teaching and offerings. They explore the challenges of enthusiastic consent, the importance of feeling with...
info_outlineIn this episode, Kimberly Ann Johnson is joined by journalist, and fellow Jaguar, Kristin Butler to discuss the case of Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman: a celebrity couple who are currently both facing charges around Gaiman’s ongoing sexual misconduct. Kimberly and Kristin share their own personal reactions to the case, as well as the way the reporting on the story reveals common challenges for women dealing with fallout from sexual boundary rupture, particularly fawning. They explore the complexities of boundary violations, the impact of the #BelieveSurvivors movement on men, and the psychological responses for women searching for agency and empowerment post boundary rupture. The conversation touches on the broader implications of sexual abuse, the role of social media, and the importance of Activate Your Inner Jaguar work in empowering individuals to recognize and assert their boundaries. They discuss the power of embodied consent and the challenges of navigating gray areas in sexual interactions, as well as circumstances where structural power and interpersonal power fluctuate in relationships between men and women.
What They Discuss?
- Trigger warnings and disclaimers in journalism
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Fawning between young women and older men who abuse their power
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What is the journalistic responsibilities of storytelling and reporting around sexual boundaries
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An in depth consideration of Tortoise Media’s podcast series Master: the allegations against Neil Gaiman
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Fawning when the threat is not front of you
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What happens when your flight response doesn’t activate?
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How does our nervous system respond to a boundary rupture?
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Tendencies to blame oneself after a sexual boundary rupture
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Self-Gaslighting
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What’s a trauma loop?
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What is compelling me to enter certain sexual situations?
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How does activate your inner jaguar empower women?
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What is the responsibility women have to their own nervous systems and for their behavior?
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The complexity of #BelieveSurvivors
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What is too overprotective for a parent?
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Is it safe to be a sex positive parent?
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How do highly publicized extremes impact sexual norms?
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How does virtual socialization impact our in person interactions?
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How does emotional support from AI impact our relationships
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It’s become normalized to for men and women to degrade/insult men
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The quieter forms of anti-male bias
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How does structural power and relative power play out between men and women?
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How does power play out in everyday relationships?
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The power of embodied boundaries
Links
Sign up for Activate Your Inner Jaguar: Movement, Meditation, and The Female Nervous System here - Early Bird price ends May 2nd