Joya: 0:03

On today's episode of we Woke Up Like this, I am speaking with Nicole Longmire. Her work is deeply personal and she believes that mothering is medicine. She believes that mothering is not a concept limited to parenting. It's a universal healing energy available to us all. It's the act of nurturing yourself, others and the world around you with compassion, love and intention. She believes that through the practices of mothering ourselves, we can rediscover our wholeness, and when we mother ourselves and others, we create a ripple effect of healing, strength and resilience. Her mission is to help you tap into this transformative power, embracing it as a source of comfort, clarity and courage. Enjoy the show, nicole. Thank you so much for joining me on we Woke Up Like this today, and I'm so, so excited to talk to you about your wealth of wisdom on the topic of mothering as medicine.

Nicole: 1:08

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited as well. What?

Joya: 1:12

is mothering as medicine. What does that mean to you?

Nicole: 1:16

Yeah, so it is sort of just a concept. I think that really kind of came to me organically. Concept, I think that, you know, really kind of came to me organically. And when I zoom out and sort of think about how to answer that question, I feel like it's really important to sort of acknowledge, like this healing and wellness space that we're in right now. Wellness is, you know, a buzzword. Everybody's talking about how to be well, how to be healed, and it sort of feels, to me at least, like things are getting a little bit fragmented and wellness is supposed to be this like holistic thing and wellness is supposed to be this like holistic thing, right, but now we have, like your healer for the chakras and your Reiki and your aromatherapy and your talk therapy, your somatic coaches, your womb healers. I mean, you know, I could go on.

Nicole: 2:17

And so for me, my background being in public health and the bulk of my work currently being with women in postpartum, specifically dealing with that transition to motherhood, feeding their babies and all of the issues that sort of can come with that I really started to notice that when women were coming to me with a challenge right, let's take breastfeeding their baby they're trying to do this big thing. They're trying to feed their baby from their body and they're they're really feeling broken. They're really feeling, you know, kind of hopeless sometimes. And when we can get to the other side of that which is much of the time, you know I don't want to say all of the times you know, sometimes things you know take different turns and we have to pivot. But what I started seeing was these women sort of coming out the, and I realized it wasn't just their breastfeeding experience that we had fixed or that we had saved. There was like this whole new, like life that was coming back into this person in front of me, and it was like her entire lens honestly, her entire lens that she began to see herself through as a mother really changed.

Nicole: 3:50

And so what that told me is that there must be a deeper thing here. There must be like a deeper issue or a deeper wound. And it got me thinking. My background is in public health. It got me thinking about being a grad student and learning about early childhood trauma and the ACEs study, which I'm sure you're familiar, and the work around obesity and trauma, and I was like, okay, hold on, there's something else here with these women. You know they're. They're not broken, they're just alone. And it was like if I could write a prescription, the script would say like mothering, you need mothering. And that's just kind of where it started for me and and opened up you know a whole lot of other things, but that's really sort of the origination point was again this realization. You know that there was something so much deeper going on, and then so much deeper that's repaired when we can get a woman to the other side of those struggles.

Joya: 4:59

And when you're saying struggles, are you talking about, like new baby struggles, being a new mom struggles, breastfeeding struggles all of those things that come along with being a new mother when you're like, literally one day you're this person and literally the next day here's your baby. You are now another person with this permanent job.

Nicole: 5:19

Yeah, absolutely so. Most of the women that I work with, I work with women exclusively, absolutely so. Most of the women that I work with, I work with women exclusively. And most of my role is with exactly those new mothers, those postpartum women. They're super vulnerable, you know, maybe they've, they've had you know this really unexpected. You know, birth, sometimes birth trauma I do a lot of work in that, in that area as well, and most of these women are coming with these with these breastfeeding issues and this insecurity and, yeah, just really struggling with this brand new identity and this big job that they feel like they thought they were prepared for. But there's like nothing on the registry. That's like actually, you know solving the problems that they are finding. Where's the instruction book? It didn't come with right. Who didn't get me that? Who didn't register for that? You?

Joya: 6:09

know, yeah, wow, you've hit on something I'm so curious about now and because this, so I'm like, oh, I wish I knew you 23 years ago when I had my first child the wound, the mothering wound of mothers who mothers, who need mothering, that is, I mean just when you said that she, the mother, needs mothering. Can you say a little bit more about your experience around that? What does that mean?

Nicole: 6:34

Yeah, absolutely Well. First I'll say I wish I had also had me um 14 years ago, when I had my first um. I knew none of this and so, again, this is a very you know, we kind of learn through our own trial by fire and then, yeah, sort of culminating in like the work that I do. But, yeah, so I think there's two parts to that. One is just sort of culturally we have lost, have lost, you know, this communal living, we've lost the village, we've lost the wisdom of women and our own bodies.

Nicole: 7:14

And so often I have to remind young mothers of that when they say I don't understand, like I should know how to do this. This is natural. You know what is wrong with me and you know I asked them like did you grow up? You know what is wrong with me and you know I asked them like, did did you grow up? You know seeing women feeding their babies all the time and and did you, have you seen birth? And you know, and they're look at me like no, of course not, like that's why you don't know what you're doing, because you know we've lost that piece. And so it's and it's not just this generation of of you know young mothers, mothers now that are having babies, their mothers and then even really their mothers. So we kind of have three generations now where we've put so much faith and trust and sort of relinquished some power, you know, I think to the medicalization of you know everything from pregnancy to birth to feeding, that we've lost some of that you know human factor and that human wisdom.

Nicole: 8:11

And then there's sort of this other piece which is really the mother wound. And when all of this sort of was starting to bubble up for me and I was making all these connections, it really kind of led me down this path of learning about the. For me and I was, I was making all these connections, it it really kind of led me down this path of learning about the mother wound. And there's some really great researchers out there and some some good books that have been written on the topic, but it's it's really about the level of kind of disconnect that women have from their femininity, their bodies, the earth, and we can trace this back generations, and so it's not so much about you know, I have a good relationship with my mom or I have a bad relationship with my mom.

Nicole: 8:59

It's her relationship with her mom and hers with her mom. There's sort of this like ancestral thread that is just so fascinating. And then of course, lots of people don't have a great relationship with their mom, or it's it's maybe superficial, or there's there's some level of like just getting along, or, you know, masking or trying to please, and so you know how well our mothers kind of received mothering is going to dictate how well they mother us. And then when we have our babies, you know the blueprints either there or it's not.

Joya: 9:39

Yeah, oh, my gosh.

Joya: 9:40

I mean, everybody who knows me or has been listening to me for a while knows that I'm a nine on the aces.

Joya: 9:45

So the trauma that I grew up with was really extreme, really massive, big, and the mothering wound was huge. Like I grew up with a mother who constantly told me she hated me, she wished she would have aborted me. I ruined her life, like I tried to do, like this super mom, like trying to figure it out because I didn't have that role modeling right, and so what that led me to, of course, was burnout, number one, extreme burnout, not taking care of myself at all. And then that realization that my parenting, instead of being ruled by love which it was ruled by love, of course, but it was also ruled by fear, and that kind of energy is not sustainable. And so I love that you're out here talking about this and doing this work. So if I were a woman who came to you and I'm feeling like this and I'm overwhelmed, I'm buried, I'm drowning myself in my, in trying to be perfect, what do you say to this person? How do you start to help and work with this woman?

Nicole: 10:51

That's a really big question, right? I think that one of the things that I've learned is Asking questions is oftentimes more profound than giving answers. And so asking you you know, if you're in front of me what you think about this, like where do you feel this in your body? Like, where is this overwhelm coming from? You know let's drill down into this a little bit Now I'm not a mental health licensed therapist.

Nicole: 11:27

I am certified in perinatal mental health but I'm not a licensed therapist, so I have to be very careful, you know, with my scope of practice. But I'm also trained in birth trauma processing, and so there's a lot of things that actually tie back to the birth and then even tie back to like kind of your I don't want to say like your own birth. There are some people you know who do, who study that and but, but really tied back to like how you were nurtured and mothered, right, and so, like you said, those fears that we bring in whether we're bringing them into our birth or bringing them into our birth, we're bringing them into our transition into motherhood lead us to do these kind of maladaptive things that we think are really healing. We think I'm going to go into this with this new baby and do the opposite. Because number one, that will be better for my baby because I know what I had was awful, but number two, maybe it will sort of soothe my wound a little bit.

Nicole: 12:29

Whether we realize it or not, it'll soothe my wound a little bit, and it does until it doesn't, because it's not the whole picture. There's still kind of your own work outside of your mother, you being a mother and you doing the work of mothering. That really needs to be looked at there. So yeah, it's, if I have somebody who's really struggling in this bigger way and we're not getting anywhere, let's say with the breastfeeding issue, or you know she's really having trouble implementing you know a care plan or something like that really having trouble implementing. You know a care plan or something like that, I kind of pause everything and I start asking some questions and even if they're rhetorical or things that she doesn't necessarily even need to share with me, the goal is to have her start to question these things and bring some awareness to what might be going on. You know, under the surface a little bit.

Joya: 13:23

So powerful and I love that you ask questions because you're exactly right that that that brings up their own answers from within. And even as you were saying that, I mean I think you hit something so powerful on the head that it's like this. The question that I did ask myself when I found out I was pregnant was like how would I have wanted to be mothered? And I think I mistook mothered with smothered and I really overcompensated.

Nicole: 13:47

You know, and I think you just said something really, really important too which is this mothered and smothered thing. I think that when we talk about mothering and I'll ask this of you know pregnant women, you know what is what is mothering look like to you. Like when I say becoming a mother, like what does that entail? What is that? You know what does that look like. Or when I'll say you have these plans you know to to feed your baby with your body, tell me why. And 9.9 times out of 10, the answer is bonding, nurturing, connection. You know that's what we talk about, right, and so we equate mothering with that, with nurturing and caregiving, and that is a huge piece of it. In no way am I dismissing it. But that's not the mother's only role.

Nicole: 14:35

The mother also has a really important role, which is to kind of be like the initiator, to kind of like help the baby bird out of the nest, to kind of like help the baby bird out of the nest. And so we forget about that part and we forget that we have to have that foundation of nurturing and all that baby wearing and all that co-sleeping and all that contact and all that body feeding and those contact naps and all those things really do set up a beautiful foundation. But the other part of your job is coming, which is sort of this you know, I'm in that, my son's 14. And so I'm I'm realizing like, oh, my instinct is to hold on because that soothes me, but that's not what my child needs, and so, yeah, it's kind of a push pull, but both parts are really, really important.

Joya: 15:25

I really appreciate that and I mean how you're talking about these. Oh gosh, there's. My brain is just wrapping around this concept of mothering because it's just so big. It's such a big topic and you know that our roles as mothers changes over time. And I remember reading a book. When you know, being the voracious reader and studier that I am, I read a book, I remember it. I cannot remember what it was, but I do remember a sentence in there, and it said a good parent is working themselves out of a job.

Nicole: 15:56

Yeah, no, there really isn't. And there is not an end to your own need to be mothered.

Joya: 16:03

So let's talk about that. I want to talk about your need to be mothered. Yeah, let's talk about that. I want to talk about your need to be mothered and how your mothering can be your own medicine. I think you really hit on something important there.

Nicole: 16:13

Yeah, yeah. So it's tough, right, we live in a culture that loves to divide mothers. We live in a culture that still very much values productivity and bouncing back and getting back and going back to work, all these things, you know returning instead of really appreciating and understanding what this evolution or metamorphosis of a woman becoming a mother really is about. And you know, historically, if you look at like hunter-gatherer, like hunter-gatherer, you know primitive ways of living. The mother and baby, for example, this dyad, this mother-baby, are absolutely put in sort of the center of, you know, the operation, right Center of the village. And we tend to romanticize that. We tend to say like, oh look, we used to celebrate mothers and we used to, you know, just really worship these new mothers when they had their babies.

Nicole: 17:24

No, no, no, no, no, it wasn't that. It was that we understood that if we don't mother her, she can't mother that baby, and if that baby doesn't get mothered, then that baby doesn't survive, and then our tribe doesn't survive, doesn't survive, and then our tribe doesn't survive. So it's kind of a survival strategy, you know, to really center mothers and be, you know, mother centric. But now we're so far from that that even the mothers are uncomfortable centering themselves. So I see mothers that are like I don't want to burden people, I don't want to ask for help, and it's like if we can't center ourselves, we can't expect our culture to center us.

Nicole: 18:10

And so just understanding that it is survival right, and we now I mean it's 2025. We want to thrive in motherhood. We want it to be this wonderful, joyful thing and we deserve to have a joyful experience. Not that it's going to be that way all the time. We're not just talking about surviving, but we really won't survive. If we don't start centering mothers, we will continue to see high maternal mortality, especially when it comes to, you know, suicide. We have a very high maternal suicide rate and that is just absolutely unacceptable.

Joya: 18:56

Just from lack of support.

Nicole: 18:57

So just from lack of support. Yeah, lack of support and really understanding you know what support is. And so community, you know we love to shout self-care.

Joya: 19:10

Yeah.

Nicole: 19:10

Screaming at these moms self-care, self-care, self-care but really what they need is community care and really what they need is the medicine of community and that's kind of this other piece. As I was coming up with this concept of like mothering is medicine, and doing my research and digging in because I just wanted to get my teeth on everything you know that was related to this, I came across this community is medicine model. That's part of something called social prescriptions.

Joya: 19:43

Yes, and that's what I wanted to get in. Next, tell me, all of this is amazing.

Nicole: 19:47

It's fascinating. It's really, really fascinating. So social prescriptions are and if you look it up, so if you Google it, everything that you see is like I think the oldest article on it was like 2023. Like this is new stuff that we're talking about, but essentially they're different types of initiatives to create interventions that are not medical, or interventions that are not not medical or pharmacological. So, essentially, like if we thought like big pharma is all the, you know all the drugs, this is like big hug. Oh, I love big hug. This is big hug. This is only to get together and like fixing along.

Nicole: 20:35

You know it's, it's and doctors actually can prescribe these different interventions, as these little programs are popping up to really address like social needs. And we know we have this, you know loneliness epidemic, this isolation epidemic, and so it's really exciting to see that it's happening and we just need it to happen faster. Where are these groups? Where are these social prescriptions that doctors or people are? Again, this is new, so there's not a lot, yeah, but I also was able to find some research. There are a few articles on PubMed, world Health Organization, national Institute of Health. I was able to find a few different articles and things kind of about this, this movement, but yeah, social Prescribing USA is a great place to start for people to kind of learn more.

Joya: 22:07

Well, I've never heard of this and I absolutely love it and I can't wait to dive in and educate myself around it. And I see it not only being helpful I mean not even helpful, necessary for moms and new moms, but also for elderly people, people who are shut in. I mean, there is a loneliness epidemic going on in this country and having this as an answer, I just my heart is just like oh, yes, yes, yes, these are the kind of initiatives that we need, right? It's like how about hugs before drugs? Try that and see if the oxytocin and human connection that you're receiving helps you to feel better.

Joya: 22:50

Because I know when I had my first child and you mentioned maternal suicide rates and being a suicide attempt survivor when I was in my early 20s and then I had my daughter, I went through terrible postpartum depression terrible, and it was suicidal thoughts. And those thoughts were ruled by that fearful mothering voice that were that was saying your child deserves a better mother than you. I remember that voice just kept saying that over and over and over. And of course, my doctor's answer was take these drugs, which I did not do. I read the. I'm one of those people who reads the pamphlet all the way through and I prescribed myself, without even knowing what I was doing, a social prescription that I went and joined.

Joya: 23:37

I immediately joined a Gymboree. I remember there was a Gymboree down the street from me and they had a newborn baby Gymboree thing. So I went there and I just remember meeting other moms of newborns and that, those connections, and I'm actually still friends with a couple of those women from when that yeah, that time, and that was such medicine for me. It really was. It helped my postpartum just to talk about it with these other women. I'm feeling this way. Are you feeling this way? Are these feelings normal? Is there something wrong with me?

Nicole: 24:10

Like all these questions, Right, right, and you know there's a couple of things. One thing you said was sort of this fear voice and kind of tying back to like the role of a mother. You know, whether we want to or not, our voice as mothers becomes our child's inner voice, right? What we fill them with kind of becomes their narrative, and so what your mother put into you has become your inner voice, and so there's only so much healing that's going to come from just doing the opposite, because you still have that voice. And so learning to sort of cultivate your own like inner mother voice is like a separate thing.

Nicole: 25:01

And it's really important to acknowledge that for anyone who is coming into motherhood with a trauma like that, there's a big gap in between what you got and what you needed. And addressing that gap, whether that's through trauma work or inner child or parts work or, you know, even just learning about like boundaries and how to embrace, rest and bear witness and self-care and all of these things, these are all the things our mother should have helped us learn how to do, you know, and been that safe place for us, and so we can learn to sort of become that for ourselves and and that's a separate thing from just doing the opposite with with our own, with our own babies. So yeah, I wanted to wanted to just mention that. And then what you said about joining the, the Gymboree. You know I don't know if you're familiar, I'm sure you've seen it the documentary about the blue zones. Yes, yes I have.

Joya: 26:04

So, okay, we've got people who are listening, who don't know what that is. Go ahead and tell about a little bit about that.

Nicole: 26:11

So blue zones are really interesting there. It's just these pockets of populations um around the world and there's only a handful of them, I want to say like six or seven. There's not very many um, and they're areas where the lifespan is like way longer than the average around the area. So we've got people living like into like late 90s, over a hundred um, and so the documentary really explores like what's the secret? What are these people doing? And it's been a while since I've seen it, but my very favorite village that they spotlighted, I believe, was in Italy and these women live to be like 100 years old and what do they do all day? They like make pasta and laugh. Like that's literally what they're doing and that's the secret and that's that was like. Their answer was like we spend time together doing things that bring us joy.

Joya: 27:14

I mean okay, right there, so key yeah. And I mean I know we touched on a little bit about the mother wound and I'm sure people listening know what that is. I want to know what is good mothering? Do you know what good mothering looks like?

Nicole: 27:32

Good mothering. I'm pausing because I think that I want to be very careful in how I answer the question. Just a little context, because I work in this mothering space. There's a lot of judgment about that question and about the variety of answers that question and about the variety of answers, and so I do not endorse things like just support whatever a mom wants to do, and I think we've decided that that's the best way to make things better is just say, whatever it is you're doing, we support you.

Nicole: 28:20

But that's not really true, because we don't support trauma and we don't support abuse. I mean, like everyone has a line. So then people go, ok, well, we support everything except that. And so then it becomes like, well, where's the line? Right, so it's not about support all mothers. Everyone's doing their best, because the truth is everyone isn't doing their best and I'm sorry, you know, they're just not Now. Maybe there's limitations and they're doing the best with what they have. I mean, that's sort of a it's a nuanced conversation, but you know, we do know what harms children and so obviously you know that's pretty black and white. You know like we don't.

Nicole: 29:06

Good mothering is not abandonment and trauma and telling them you wish they were never born and things like that. But it's also not just winging it, doing your best. So I think there's components of good mothering that I can confidently say. One is being willing to sort of face your shadows and face the unhealed parts of you that are going to come up when you become a mother. So if you're not willing to look at it, you are going to be denying yourself healing and really your child the opportunity to have you know you doing your best from the most healed place. So it doesn't mean you have to like resolve all your trauma before you become a parent, but understanding that these wounds do come up, they do resurface, they do recycle, things are passed down intergenerationally and so being willing to look at it. The other thing is and it very much goes with that concept of being willing to sort of look at the shadows.

Nicole: 30:29

We hear a lot about people breaking cycles right, like be a cycle breaker. Be a cycle breaker, yeah, and maybe it's semantics. For me, language really matters and words really matter. For me, language really matters and words really matter. So I'm going to pick it apart just a little bit briefly.

Nicole: 30:51

I think that sometimes there can be a lot of shame and a lot of fear when it comes to breaking cycles, especially if you still have your mother, for example, in your life, because now you're making a judgment about what she did and maybe she doesn't know. You feel that way, right, maybe she does, maybe she doesn't, and maybe for your safety and for your just quality of life, we kind of want to not bring that up. You know, I'm not saying you have to like go tell your mother all the things that she did, but thinking about breaking cycles like you did this thing to me and I'm going to break this cycle, right, that can be met with some resistance. I've met women that are like that feels a little uncomfortable and so reframing it as we're going to be cycle starters, we're going to be starters of something new, beautiful, that's so much more empowering. To be starters of something new, that's so much more empowering, it's so much more empowering and I think it's also kind of freeing, like okay.

Joya: 31:55

When you said that, I even felt myself just go, oh, I could start. I don't have to destroy anything, I could just start from where I'm at.

Nicole: 32:03

Right, yeah, right. It doesn't ask of us to go dig up all the trauma or go confront the person, which you know might sound like the opposite of what I just said, like be willing to face the shadows, but it's really not. It's. It's about, you know, not spending energy. You know your energy is your currency and so, especially when you're in the throes of mothering and you're like how do I figure this all out and how do I deal with my, my stuff that's coming up, you know I don't have time in the day to even take a shower, much less break cycles, like, what are we talking about? You know, it really can be an empowering and more motivating and kind of liberating reframe to say let's just be a cycle starter.

Joya: 32:49

I really love that. I'm still not close to my mom and I did a lot of forgiveness work, of which I haven't told her because I'm like it doesn't involve her, it's my stuff, that's my stuff, and so it's for me to do that for myself, not for her. This is not for her, this is for me, so that I can start a cycle of inner freedom, releasing the judgment, releasing those comparisons and really knowing that from that place, I truly am doing the best that I can because I'm not consciously trying to keep myself attached to what I think I should be doing or what it should look like, and I just love that. And I really appreciated your answer too and thank you for that.

Joya: 33:32

And, as you were saying, and I said, you know, I should have asked what is a healthy mother mothering look like as opposed to good mothering, which is a completely different question, and I'm big on words too and it's I mean, it's the same question but different. So I appreciate that you actually answered it from the point of view of healthy mothering. What does healthy mothering look like? Because you know, we tend to look at our parents as objects rather than as human beings. These are objects, this is what they're supposed, this situation, and you know, and I think it's really difficult to have these conversations about mothering and motherhood as well, because it is so individuated- yeah, well, it's.

Nicole: 34:18

Also we can't put this entirely on one person you know we've you've got your mother and then her mother, and then you know we've got kind of like the line epigenetics, yes yeah, and and how these women, you know, in our, in our lineage, were affected by, you know, demographically, economically, you know, this kind of patriarchal, you know system that we're in, all of those things are factors, and so we kind of just inherit this like ball of like I call it a, like a blood clot, like it's just like this big, like clot, and so when it finally gets to someone, somebody eventually has to sort of take a look at it and start sort of like dissecting it and pulling it apart a little bit. And so it's a messy process and it doesn't really it doesn't happen in one generation. And that's why I also really like cycle starters is that we're just starting it. My job is to start it Right and then your, your child's job is to keep it going, or even start their own.

Joya: 35:26

Yeah, sure, yeah, and I do. I really love that Because I feel, you know, when I had my children, I didn't, I mean and this was before the I mean the internet was there, but not like it is today, right, so with people having these kinds of conversations everywhere, and so it was really kind of just figuring it out and even though I didn't have that languaging of I'm going to start a new cycle, that's exactly what I did, because I didn't. I'm like I know I don't want to take what I know with me into this. I knew what I didn't want, and so I was kind of just trying to figure out what I did want, and I don't know if that's a great place to start or not, but that's. That was really kind of all I, all I could do.

Nicole: 36:06

Yeah, of course, I think you know the great. The right place to start is where you are, and my husband shared a quote with me recently and I can't remember who said it, but it feels fitting the best decision is to do the right thing, the second best decision is to do the wrong thing, and the worst decision is to do nothing. Oh, there it is. So, yeah, it would be great if you just got it right, but the second best thing is to just try, and maybe it turned out to not be the right thing. But to do nothing, to change nothing, is the worst thing that you can do.

Nicole: 36:49

And so when we show up that way for our kids, especially as they get older, you know which is, of course, a whole nother conversation about how do you mother these like teenagers and young adults, and really showing up for them and being honest and and sharing things you know about, like, hey, I tried that and it didn't work, you know, and I've hurt your feelings or I've broken your trust, or, you know, showing up in these vulnerable ways so that they can sort of see the model you know also helps with that cycle starting as well 100% and you know, I have conversations with my own children that I still can't have with my mom, because they're that deep and that honest and that vulnerable and and so I, you know, I really just want to say to all the moms out there who are doing the best that they can and know that they're doing the best that they can, that you're doing a great job and your kids love you that you're doing a great job and your kids love you, they do.

Nicole: 37:51

And if you're finding it harder than it should be, and sometimes moms will say, well, I don't know, was it supposed to be this hard? But your intuition is actually pretty strong. I meet moms and they're like I knew it would be hard, but I don't think it's supposed to feel like this. You know, if it's feeling harder than it should be, that that could be. You know something that needs attention. You know there's, there's a wound there and you know the first place to look is probably your birth.

Nicole: 38:23

You know, again, I run into a lot of women who are having issues postpartum and I say, tell me about that birth. You know, and I run into a lot of women who are having issues postpartum and I say, tell me about that birth, you know. And then the floodgates open and and then usually it goes into something before the birth and then her feelings about her self-worth and before you know it we're talking about, you know, seven-year-old Susie and you know her, her mother wound. So if it's feeling harder than it should be, if your mental health is, you know, really suffering you know I'm not saying that taking medication, you know, hey, I take medication and I've had different times in my life where it's my plan of care, you know, to take care of myself, to take care of myself, but it's not going to be a substitute for doing healing work, especially if there's trauma there or, you know, an unhealed mother wound. Even if you have a good relationship with your mother, there's still sort of a collective wound Also it really is yeah.

Nicole: 39:21

We've got mother earth. Oh my gosh, she's so wounded. You know we don't, we don't live in, in, in reciprocity with the earth, and that's a wound that we're not very in touch with, but it's there, yeah, and it all is so much about this energy that we're in right now.

Joya: 39:42

That's shifting very slowly, but coming much more back into unity, consciousness of the, honoring the feminine as much as we've honored the masculine, and also honoring the healthy masculine, and doing away with this toxic masculinity, this patriarchal masculinity that does expect a mom to have a baby. Bounce back in six weeks, go back to your job, put your baby in daycare and be perfectly okay with that, and you need to be exactly how you were before you went on maternity leave. Like that is just so unrealistic.

Nicole: 40:13

Yep, and it's not. You know, just to clarify too for anyone listening, it's not pointing the finger at men, you know. No, no, no, it's not about the men. I mean we perpetuate it too. You know it's absolutely, it's the men. I mean we, we perpetuate it too. You know it's, it's the systems. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's. Yeah, we need there's, there's a real medicine, you know, in just women gathering, um, I uh discovered, uh, about three years ago, that, um, women's retreats are like better therapy than therapy for me. It's so true.

Nicole: 40:49

Now I host retreats because I'm like these are amazing and I want women to come together and go on retreat. But yeah, it's a real medicine just to be with other women, whether we're, you know, engaging in some sort of ritual or ceremony or grieving or sharing. You know, is this normal? What did you deal with? You know? Make pasta together.

Joya: 41:13

Laugh sign me up. Oh my gosh, Nicole, you work with women in such beautiful ways, and not only from the. You know the tangible takeaways, strategies and tools and things that they can actually do, but also I hear your true heart of compassion and your and things that they can actually do. But also I hear your true heart of compassion and your wisdom in how you can help coach them to through so much of what they're experiencing.

Nicole: 41:36

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's, it's. I would I feel very confident in saying that this mothering is medicine, is it's kind of the through line now for me. You know, with all of my work, whether I'm, you know, helping a new mom figure out how to work her breast pump, you know I'm nurturing her, I'm mothering her, I'm encouraging her in sort of like the straightforward way you know that a mother would, or everything from. You know I also do life coaching and I host retreats and I do birth trauma work and you know all this other stuff. And with women of all ages because, again, mothering never ends and really the need for that mothering and sisterhood, you know which is, you know it's all the same, you know it's all this, this women, energy, and it's it's really important. So, yeah, it's woven in everything that I do.

Joya: 42:31

So beautiful? Where can people find you who are feeling like I need to know who this woman is and go find her and work with her? Where can women find you or anybody find you who wants to know more about you and your beautiful work?

Nicole: 42:43

Yeah, I would love that. So I have a small private practice in Melbourne, florida, and I work with women all over. I have had clients all over the world because telehealth technology is so great now. But my company is called Mother Nurture Consulting and Wellness and mothernurtureconsultingcom is my website and it has lots of ways to contact me on the website. You know email. I've got a phone number If you want to call me, send me a text. You can also find me on Instagram at motheringismedicine.

Joya: 43:19

So, Nicole, in addition, do you have anything upcoming that people can work with you on? Anything you have coming up soon?

Nicole: 43:27

Yes, I have something really exciting coming March 5th through 9th, I have a full all inclusive retreat for women, specifically for women over 40. So this is a little deviation from my work with brand new mamas. This is any woman over 40 going through, you know, any sort of shift midlife career change, divorce, empty nest, you name it. We're going to be gathering for four nights and four full days in St Augustine, Florida.

Joya: 43:59

Beautiful.

Nicole: 44:01

We still have three or four spots left, so this retreat is going to be a pretty small group. It's going to be about 10 of us is the hope, but we would love to fill those last few spots.

Joya: 44:12

Perfect. Well, I'll definitely have a link to that below as well, so if anybody feels called, they can definitely go there. So fabulous, and I'm just so grateful that you are in the world doing this work for the mothers, the young women who are becoming mothers now. Me, who, my children, are now still at home, but I'll be an empty nester when they're finished with school and they're gone and it just it doesn't end. And so I just really appreciate what you're doing and this, the community, this community aspect that you are so passionate about, and the social aspect of it. I just am so grateful that you're out there doing the work that you do. Thank you.

Joya: 44:54

Thank you so much Thank you for listening to we Woke Up Like this. Your likes, comments, shares and subscribes help this content reach new listeners, and I so appreciate you. And remember, luminous One, that your radiant and magnetic presence changes the world.