Introduction and Welcome
Britta: Hello folks, and welcome to transformed by birth, a podcast about the rite of passage of pregnancy, birth and new parenthood. I'm your host, Britta Bushnell, author, mythologist, childbirth educator and all around deep diver with a side of goofball. I'm so glad you're here. Today's episode is an end of year solo episode with just me. So grab your comfy beverage of choice. I've got a homemade Chai in my mug today, brewed with care and special herbs and spices, or just take us along for a walk and connect with me as we dance in this special liminal space at the end of the year. Before we begin, we start the way we always do by lighting a candle. If you'd like to join me, light yours, or just take a special breath as I light mine. Today's candle is in honor of all we've been, all we've seen, and all that we have done this year that has made the world just a tiny bit better.
Reflecting on 2025: A Year of Tests and Triumphs
Britta: So folks, we've made it. It's the end of the calendar year, and I don't know about you, but what a doozy 2025 has been and I'm guessing it has for you too. So many of my friends have been tested this year, and then there are those who are having like the year they will always remember like they welcomed a new child. They got pregnant after a long journey, they birthed the book or shout out to my friend Jen, finally made it to the TEDx stage. Wink, wink. And there's, there's, there have been a little bit of everything. It's, it's been a range of experience this year, 2025, and it has been wide and I don't know about you, but I get pretty reflective around this time of year. It might be due to the fact that I was born smack between Christmas and New Year's. So not only do I change the calendar on the wall, along with everybody else, I also add a year to my age and mark the personal turning of a year, all in the same couple of days. Or maybe, maybe I get reflective around this time, just because of the end of year programming that many of us have built in after a lifetime of December's turning into January's, my reflective mood shows up this week as if built into my DNA. My family call my reflective mood melancholy, and to be fair to them, it often smacks of that flavor. There's just something about this week that puts me in my feels in a huge way, in a really big way. There's often tears this week. What about you? Does this does this week do that to you, too?
Understanding Liminal Space: The Threshold Between
Britta: And this week, this time of year, also has me thinking a lot about liminal the liminal space, because the quality of this time between Christmas and New Year's is super liminal. And you might know that I'm a super fan of liminal space. Transformation is intertwined. It's interwoven into all rites of passage. So that's Pregnancy is a liminal time. New parenthood is a liminal time. Trying to conceive is a liminal time. Menopause can be liminal. Becoming an empty nester is liminal. You might even say menstruating each month has a liminal quality to it. Basically, transformation is inherently liminal. So what do I mean by the word liminal? Let's unpack it a little bit. So the word liminal means a place between the Latin root of liminal is lemon, meaning threshold. So liminal describes places or periods that are transitional. They're often uncertain, and they're ready for change, like this week of the year, like price. Fancy, all of those. And I just, I just learned today. So, okay, give me a second. Let me just geek out with you for a little bit. That in scientific circles, lemon is a formal turn for a sensory threshold, a space that represents the border between a stimulus being too faint to be noticed, okay, so too faint, like you have a stimulus, but it's too faint to be noticed, and the point where it starts to be felt. Okay, mind blown on that one. So a stimulus being too faint to be noticed and the point where it starts to be felt. So when I think about this time of year being a liminal time and this scientific definition of lemon, maybe I become melancholic this week of the year, because I start to really feel all that has been weathered, all that has been experienced all that has been lived in the past year. The stimulus is stronger now, and it all comes flooding in to be felt now.
Pregnancy and the Threshold of the Unknown
Britta: When working with pregnant clients, they too often feel this like threshold quality that's alive this time of year, because they're moving from the reality of what was and transitioning into a time of what they can't yet know. So on the threshold of the new year, we are standing looking into the future this year. It's 2026 we're looking into with a general sense of the year. You know we've got we know January, we know February. And maybe there are big known events, like I have a big family wedding planned in 2026 and some travel, but like with birth and new parenthood, even these broad strokes of what I think 2026 will be I actually know nothing of what will truly occur in this next year. So navigating the unknown and the unknowable is part of the journey, a big part of the journey.
Finding Guidance in Story: Introducing La Loba
Britta: So what do I do when I want to help make sense of what's going on inside my tangle of thoughts and inside my tangle of emotions? Well, one of my go tos is to find a guiding metaphor or story this year, that story is a longtime favorite of mine, la Loba. I was first introduced to La Loba in Clarissa Pinkola Estes life changing book, women who runs with the wolves. If you do not know this book, you need this book. And La Loba is the first story in this epic combination of unpackable stories, and in many ways, it sets the tone for the whole book, because it's it's all about the wild woman archetype, which the whole book is about. Now, when I used to teach and facilitate postpartum circles for new parents, la Loba was the story I'd share in the very first session. And there's a bunch of reasons for this. Yes, it's short, it's powerful, it's easily unpackable, and it's wildly relatable.
The Call of the Bones
Britta: But the reason it's calling to me at the end of the year. This year isn't because of the wild woman aspects, but more because of the bones. So I'll explain what I mean by that. I'm going to tell you this story, but before I do, I want to tell you a little bit more about how and how I'm working with it, and I'm we're going to do all of that, but I want to make sure to give you a bit of background about the story's origins. So according to Dr Estes, Dr E, as many of us refer to her as La Loba, goes by several names, including the bone woman, the Bone Collector, and most of the names in Spanish as the stories, the versions of this flow into the US, especially into the southwestern states From our southern neighbors in Mexico, I went looking for other versions of this tale outside of Dr Estes version, but didn't have much success. Now, the theme of bones in fairy tales is prolific and can be found in lots of different stories, but I didn't find any with the ARC of this story that I love so much in this version.
The Living Tradition of Storytelling
Britta: So I'm going to tell la Loba, and I want you to remember that live storytelling is exactly that. It is a living experience. I'm not reading the story. It's coming from within me, from what I've learned and how I've engaged with the story over the last several decades. Gosh, 33 decades, so 30 years, yeah, and how it has kind of lived inside me in that time since I first read it. And I love how a really engaged live storytelling kind of comes out all on its own. It It isn't going to come out exactly in the way that a written version may come out, because it's going to just happen in the moment according to what, what's alive in me, and what, what wants to come forth. So let's, let's see what happens here. So I love to take a breath before I tell a story.
The Story of La Loba: The Bone Woman
Britta: So la Loba, so it said that if you are perusing a distant land down, down close to the border, down across the prairies and in the deserts and the roads and the arroyos that you may see an old woman walking on a path. She's often crooked and bent, sometimes hunched and crooked, and usually quite large of body. And you might think that she is worthy of no attention at all, and yet this woman is doing something very important for she is out gathering bones. She is gathering bones in the desert, in the dried up river beds or arroyos out underneath the plants, under the dirt, under the stones of the desert she's out gathering the bones. She gathers the bones of the rattlesnake. She gathers the bones of all the creatures of the desert, but her favorite, her favorite are the bones of the wolf, and she gathers these bones. And maybe she gathers them by by her toes, getting caught on a on a bit of a bone sticking out from the sand of the desert, catching her attention. Or maybe she catches a glint of the white, bright sunshine glittering off a Bleached Bone that draws her attention to it. Or perhaps, perhaps she knows where one is and goes digging. But over time, she gathers and gathers these bones and brings them back to her cave, like dwelling. And She arranges these bones, arranges them, putting the skeletons back together, one after the other. She puts together a leg bone and a hip bone and a spine, and she gathers the bones day after day, not knowing how long it will take to complete a skeleton, but at some point, she places the last bone into the skeleton, and then when the skeleton is complete, she waits.
Waiting for the Song
Britta: She waits because she needs a song to come into her heart, to sing over the bones to bring a song into her heart. That is the song that will bring the wolf energy back to its bones. And so she sits and she waits and she waits, and when the song that needs to be sung comes into her heart. She begins to sing. She begins to sing, and she sings and she sings, and as she sings, the bones start to knit together. And as she sings, the muscle comes back onto the bones. And as she sings, the tendons knit together, and as she sings, continuing to sing the song that has been brought into her heart to be sung over this wolf, as she continues to sing, the skin comes back on the wolf, and as she continues to sing, the fur comes back to the Animal, and she continues to sing, and there's a twitch of the tail and a move of the nose of the snout, and she keeps singing. She keeps singing, and she keeps singing. And the life force is coming back into the wolf with each breath of the song being sung, the wolf is coming back to life.
Transformation at the Horizon
Britta: And when the wolf has completely reanimated, it turns and it runs out, jumping across the desert, on and on, around bushes and through riverbeds, moving and moving and moving all the way running running. And the old woman, la Loba, watches the wolf as it runs and runs and runs towards the horizon, and whether it is a trick of the eye or the way the sunlight hits a stream or perhaps a little touch of magic, just as the wolf reaches the horizon, it turns into a wild woman. And so be mindful on those distant roads in the middle of nowhere, for maybe you will see her collecting bones, gathering the Parts of the beasts, the creatures of the Wild. Perhaps, you will see her doing this important work, and that is where we will leave the story of La Loba for now, and take a breath.
Unpacking the Story: Finding Your Juicy Bit
Britta: What I like to do when I'm sharing a story and unpacking a story is to take a breath after I've told the story or heard the story or read the story, to think about what some of the things are that are catching my attention, that are enlivening me way, in some powerful way. And there are so many powerful motifs in this story, from the haggish Old woman bent and snarled to the bones scattered and buried throughout the desert to the song to the pause, and, of course, to the transformation of the wild wolf Into the Wild Woman. At the horizon. There's, there's so many different parts, but as you think about this story is there a particular juicy bit that captivates you, that you want to chew on and engage with in some particular way. Because often those that are a really juicy and fun for us, hold depth and meaning for us. Have hold medicine for us. And so it can be important to pay attention to what those are.
The Bones We Gather: Structure and Experience
Britta: Now, when I am thinking about this story at the end of the year, like I am right now and around my birthday. And it may not be around your birthday, but thinking about it, at this time of transition, the part the motif that keeps getting my attention is the bones, because we are coming to the end of a year, or perhaps you are in another kind of transformation as well, like pregnancy or new parenthood, and we may be in a phase where we are collecting the bones, even though we may want to be in the part of the story that is transforming and changing and running off to the horizon to trans, transmute ourselves into the wild, wild, full creature of self. But that night might not be the season that you or I are in right now. So the end of the year, I am often thinking about the bones. I'm thinking about the bones that I've collected in the year. And there were some that like LA Loba, I went digging for where it's like, Oh, I gotta go figure that out and check in with that and see what that is. And I go, and I dig it up. But then there are the bones that I trip on that I didn't expect to see, and didn't expect to come in contact with, but that caught my attention nonetheless. Maybe it was the exact bone that I was looking for, and it just happened into my sphere. But maybe it was a bone that I had no idea was coming, nor do I really want it, because I had some of those this year. A lot of my Angelino friends definitely had had bones that they didn't anticipate very early in 2025 but these bones play a part in building the skeleton, the full skeleton of the wild creature of the wolf. I mean, or maybe, maybe you're building just, I don't know, a desert hare, the skeleton of a desert hair. Maybe it's not a full wolf for you this year. But the bones, what bones have you been gathering? And those bones match together in a skeleton of sorts.
The Pause That Matters: Waiting in the Center
Britta: And then, then there is that really important part, which is the pause. So that part of the story is also one that I love where, where you have she has to pause and wait for the song to come into her heart. So often we don't like the pause. We don't want to wait. I think about this with the labyrinth metaphor that I often use with with folks around pregnancy, birth and new parenthood, that the the labyrinthian journey on the way in, there's twists, there's turns, you make it to the center, and then people are like, all right, and now I want to get out. Well, getting out. You can't just turn right around. You're actually in. It's intended for for there to be a pause, a wait, a Hangout, a rest in the middle before we rush to change, rush to transition, rush to transformation, rush out to a former version of ourselves, even though bounce back culture kind of communicates that we're we're like, quote, unquote, supposed to the rest in the middle, the pause at the center matters, and in this story, that pause, that place of of waiting for the song that needs to be sung to come in to our hearts.
The Song That Animates: Breath, Spirit, and Vitality
Britta: So what does that what does that mean? You know that with with the gathering of the bones, it's like gathering the parts of your life that create the structure bones are, are often like the indestructible parts of ourselves, right? And so when we build a skeleton, it's like the structure, the things that that help to hold us and reflecting on a year and or a journey of change, maybe, maybe this has been your postpartum period, and so you're thinking about, about the bones, the structure, what has made you into who you are. And then there is the pause, waiting for the song, and thinking, I think of the song as like the because in the story, it's the animating force. And when I think of what's the song you need to sing like Song has an energy, like breath, that connects us to the vitality, like like breath and spirit have have a similar rat Latin root, I believe I'm trying to remember, but I think that's true, and it's like the breath, the song and the soul are all interconnected. So what is it that is the song that must be sung over the bones, the the constant the parts that make the structure of our lives, but without the song, it is not animated, it is not breathing, and it's like Oof.
Discovering the Song in Postpartum
Britta: So I've been, I've been chewing on this story over the last couple of weeks and thinking a lot about the bones, because I'm like pulling the things and actually thinking about the the energy of the the bones of my year. And now, as I'm sharing it with you and talking about it with you, I'm really thinking about the song and what it means to wait for the song to come into our heart. And when I think about this in regard to postpartum, it feels really poignant, because so often we we build the structure. We build the focus of our lives. We build the the structure of the animal of us. We go looking for the bones that that give us life. We trip on the bones that we didn't expect to be there, but that are actually a part of the structure of our skeleton. We put all that energy together and sometimes even when we've done that, when we've done the building, we've done the the reconstructing, the song hasn't yet come into our heart to animate it. And that might be that we don't yet feel fully vibrant in this new incarnation of ourselves. And how important that pause and that that waiting for the right song for the the song that is, is the song to come into. To into our heart to be sung, that that is really in many ways, the task of the liminal space is the waiting. The task of the liminal is waiting, what what is to come, waiting for that transition of whatever it is that is next.
Multiple Phases of Transformation
Britta: And so this, in many ways, we can break this particular story up into those rite of passage, different parts of a triphasic model of a rite of passage. So we've got the the that the beginning phase, or which can often in Bruce Lincoln's model, is the enclosure in van Gennep s it's separation. That's that part of going and gathering. And then there is the transmutation, the metamorphosis, or the liminal, which is the singing, which is the waiting for the song to come into the heart, and the the beginning of the singing. So there's the gathering. And then, I mean, in many ways, this story has multiple phases, so it's kind of it's got the gathering, it's got the assembling, it's got the waiting for the song. Then it's got the singing, and then it's got the running. And how often, when we are in a great transformation, does it feel like there's actually multiple stages, not just three? So maybe this story and the stages that this story offers feels more aligned for you in your place of transformation, in your place of great change. What part is catching your attention today? Today is for me, the song Yesterday, it was the bones. When I was planning what I was going to share with you today. Yesterday, it was the bones. But right now, after telling it to you and sharing it with you, and I'm starting to unpack it a little more for myself. It's the song and the waiting. What is that song that comes into the heart to animate your Wildish nature God? Such a juicy question.
Reflection in the Midst of Parenthood
Britta: And this time of year, especially for us parents, especially parents of young children and those in pregnancy, it can feel like these changes are are both monumental and go unnoticed at the same time, which is kind of a weird combo and and the benefit of having calendar and seasonal markers is an opportunity, a reminder, shall I say, to pause, to reflect, to look within. And so I invite you at this time of transition, at this time of of transformation, to reflect, reflect. What's What have been your bones? What have you gathered and collected? And Are you pausing? Are you waiting for a song to come into your heart, or do you already know what it is? Perhaps you are already singing your song. Perhaps you are already the wild nature running, running across the desert toward the horizon. Check in. Where does this story land in your heart? What part of the story are you living right now in this season of your life? Let yourself sit with it. Think about it.
The Threshold: Closing and Opening
Britta: And may Your New Year start and Dawn. What are all the words we can think of to think about? You know, newness, dawning of the new year, the turning of the new year, the beginning the opening. All of those have this, this energy of expansion, but before we can open, something has to close, and that is part of what happens with liminal space. Thresholds. Thresholds are the time between as we leave one place and enter someplace new. So in this threshold, it's not just about looking forward, about the new beginning, but about the goodbye, the ending, the taking stock, inventory, gratitude, letting go, and the pause Between that's happening right now, and I hope that it's enjoyable for you, and that you're taking this opportunity to reflect before jumping into the energy of A new year, you're giving yourself space, reflection, contemplation, meditation on the year that is coming to a close, the phase in your life that is ending, whatever that might be. That's part of what I'm doing as well this week. Yeah, in part because it was my birthday, and it's also the New Year, which means the end of the old year.
Gratitude for the Podcast Journey
Britta: And just on a side note of gratitude, one of the bones that I've collected in 2025 is this new podcast, and getting an opportunity to talk with all of you, share with you, conversations with respected colleagues and share a story every now and then, in a solo, excuse me, A solo episode and just be in this conversation about transformation around birth and new parenthood that isn't being talked about as much as I wish it were. And so I'm really grateful that you have embarked on this with me, that I've got somebody on the other side, like you to talk to as I speak into this microphone. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, and wishing you a reflective end of your year and a new awakening on the other side and into the new year, and I will see you there.
Closing and Candle Blessing
Britta: Thank you, listeners for sharing this time with me. If something shared today impacted supported or moved you, please share this episode with a friend. I produce this I produce this podcast myself, and your support makes it possible to show a little love for the podcast and these conversations. Please follow rate and review. If you'd like to continue the conversation, please join me on Instagram at transformed by birth. I look forward to being with you again on the next episode of transformed by birth. Now for the last time this year, let's gather what we want to take away from this unique episode, and breathe it in with an inhale, and when you're ready, blowing it out with the exhale, and I'll blow out the candle, as I do until next time bye. Friends.
