Welcome and Opening Ritual
Britta: Hello folks, and welcome to the first episode of 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 a goofball. I'm so glad you're here.
Today is our first episode, and I'm thrilled to introduce you to what I've got in store for you here in this podcast series. So grab your comfy beverage of choice or take us along for a walk as we cross the threshold on this podcast journey together before we get into the heart of the episode, and before each episode, we're going to start by lighting a candle. If you want to join me, please do or just take a breath as I light mine. Today's candle is in honor of new beginning.
On New Beginnings and Thresholds
Here we are. On the threshold of new beginnings. I'm feeling all the awkward, real, raw, angsty feels that come with starting new maybe you're feeling that too on your precipice. Are you pregnant or trying to conceive, or maybe you're a new parent already, or maybe you're on a different type of threshold in your life right now. If so, you likely know that fear, excitement combo that can get all mixed up together moments like in these moments, kind of a desire to get it right, to do well, succeed, impress, maybe you name it right.
I hear these same things coming from families during this time of life, of pregnancy, birth and new parenthood all the time, while their toes are perched on the very tippy top edge of the cliff of birth, all those feelings of new beginnings come screaming into the curse of perfectionism also comes roaring in, roaring in from outward, from around us, and also from our own inner programming and inner thoughts and feelings, from the way we've been raised, or what we're navigating in our lives, that feeling of perfectionism this time of life can feel really extra loaded, and that makes sense. I mean, it feels extra loaded because it's so important. Of course, we want to do well and learn more and grow and get better we're birthing and raising our children. What could be more important than that. Like nothing, it feels so important.
And for me, at this moment, I'm feeling excited, excited to share the conversations I've recorded with you. That's the excitement part, right? And the flip side of the coin is also the butterflies in my belly, this kind of anticipation sandwich that lets me know this matters to me, just like your confluence of emotions right now helps point you to what's important in your life. And for me, feeling this at the beginning of launching this podcast also helps connect me to what you might be feeling right now. And I always want to stay connected to what it is that you are experiencing or what you might be experiencing, because I can't know, but I want to try and feel into it, because I'm I'm someone who always wants to help you know that your experience, whatever it is, matters. It matters whether it's aligned exactly with mine or with somebody else, or how I would do it. I want to help you find what's right for you.
Embracing the "And" vs. "Or" Mentality
It's common during this rite of passage time in life to feel lots of feelings and wonder if they're right, if this is okay, is this what I'm supposed to be feeling? And you might be feeling them all muddled up together inside you, and at the same time, voices from outside might be flashing at you. Be happy. Isn't this amazing? Aren't you so excited, as if that's the only possible emotion you can feel. I personally don't really buy into that. I'm a huge and girl, yeah, like the ampersand. I'm all about it. I prefer that to or we can feel so many things at the same time, many things can be true together.
Understanding the "Over Culture"
Okay, so I want to explain to you a term that I use a lot, and it comes up in future episodes as well. So I'm going to I'm going to get this out of the way and help us all understand this term that I'm going to use, which is the over culture. This is a term I learned from one of my former teachers, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, which to me refers to the energy that presses down on us in the form of like a collective should from the systems and collective narratives those messages that are often the product of isms, like paternalism, capitalism, white supremacy, misogyny, you get it and can likely add a lot more. And while there are 1000s of different micro cultures and larger cultures with unique messaging even just within the US, which is where I live, the messages of the over culture press down on everyone, but not always equally.
So Okay, now that we've got the over culture kind of understood. I want to go back to what I was saying about and so and versus or so this over culture prefers delineated, clear, defined binaries. This, that good, bad, up, down, either or etc, rather than and it's this and that I really like, I like this and that happy and sad and confused and maybe a little anxious and Maybe excited, nervous and and and and we're creatures who embody multitudes and often all at the same time, being human is an and experience, especially while traversing a rite of passage.
Defining Rites of Passage
Okay, so we need to define another term, because I've been using the term rite of passage, and I use it a lot, and it's really a key part of what this podcast is about. So let's, let's unpack the concept of the rite of passage together a little bit as well.
So rites of passage are meaningful, transformational experiences that alter a person's knowing of who they are, okay. They usually take an initiate out of their familiar daily life identity and thrust them into something new, sometimes stressful, and possibly even a little bit threatening, and definitely threatening to the ego or to the identity, self initiation rights given to young people coming into adulthood. Now this is, this is how I love to think about this with regard to birth and new parenthood as well. So initiate, initiation, rights coming given to people coming into adulthood. Test the individual, physically, emotionally and spiritually. These ordeals test courage, commitment and endurance, and even though success is typical, rites of passage contain risk and often great struggle, it is by coming through the fire of initiation that The child self dies and the adult self is born.
So can you see the ways that this mirrors the process of labor into birth? For many parents, it's like we go into the fire of change, where we're tested physically, emotionally and spiritually. We are tested in our courage, our commitment, our endurance, those things are tested through the journey of this rite of passage into parenthood, not just in birth, but also in New parenthood.
The Three Phases of Rites of Passage
And while success is usual, right? But it doesn't mean that you're going to make it through exactly how you were when you went in to begin with. It's actually not the point to make it through exactly as you were before. And rites of passage are often thought of like scholarly ways, as coming in three stages, although the names of of those stages vary depending on the theorist and who's talking about them. Probably the the most widely known is that of Arnold van Gennep, who coined the phrase rites of passage back many years ago. Can't remember exactly when and his three phases are separation liminal or liminality and reincorporation.
But I also love Bruce Lincoln's version that he devised, looking at initiations given to young women coming into adulthood. So just initiations given to young women. And he styled his phases after that of the caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly transformation cycle. And so his first one is enclosure, and then metamorphosis, and finally, emergence.
But we may get too heady, and I'm going to come back to some of these, but it might get just a little too heady to think about all of these from these theorists way. And so it might be easiest to just understand the three phases as beginning with an ending. So the first phase is a kind of end, then there's that middle phase, and then it ends with a new beginning.
Phase One: Beginning with an Ending
And it might seem strange to imagine that that this phase of transformation starts with an ending, but this is key to a rite of passage, leaving the life and version of yourself you had before is kind of an important part of it. This phase often involves some grief, and that's not talked about enough. It's common for new parents to have grief about losing parts of their lives they loved before they had kids. That's normal grief as we go through big changes, is to be expected and given a place to be felt and respected. So beginning with an end, an end of a phase of our lives, makes sense.
Phase Two: The Messy Middle
Then that middle, that middle phase, is often characterized by being pretty messy. Okay, that's typical of it being messy, but also beautiful mess can be a kind of cacophonous beauty, right? The middle phase I like to think of as the cocoon phase of that butterfly's journey. That's the spot where the caterpillar is dying to its Caterpillar self. It's, it's dissolving, really. It's not really dying. It's, dissolving, and it's becoming goo. The former Caterpillar form becomes goo, all except the nervous system, interestingly. And then from there, from there, it starts rebuilding. And the rebuilding, all of this is happening inside the chrysalis, right? So from the outside, we can't even see what's going on, but inside, transfiguration is occurring, and because there's this dissolving as well as a rebuilding the time in the chrysalis of Rites of Passage, of transformation, can take a while.
This place can sometimes feel like the no man's land, or the betwixt between place that's not fully here, but not fully there, like, I'm a parent, but I'm not really fully apparent, like I'm still my former self, but I'm not fully integrated as this new identity. All of that is super common. It's this liminal space. Now, the word liminal comes from the Latin word lemon or Lehman, I'm not actually sure how it's pronounced, which means threshold, okay, and think about that. That's that sill, or slightly raised part of the floor where a door and the floor come together, that's, that's that, you know, entry. An entryway place that's not outside and yet, also not yet inside the house or inside the building. It's the place between them, so it's somewhat outdoors and somewhat indoors, and this phase of a rite of passage can feel like that, less just less defined. So it's not here, not there, and that's often why it can feel kind of messy, alright? So that's, that's the second part.
Phase Three: New Beginning
And lastly, the third phase, the ending phase, kind of, interestingly, is a new beginning. So it's like, remember Phase One was about an ending, even though it was the beginning of the rite of passage. Well, similarly, or conversely, the ending phase of the rite of passage begins with a beginning. It's it's this new identity where all that has transpired during the profound period of change is ready to be shared. The new beginning is the blossoming, or in the case of the caterpillar to butterfly journey, it's the butterfly spreading its wings and launching into flight.
When Fear Seeks Information
So here we are. Here we are standing on the edge of this rite of passage, and you are feeling the ground shifting changing, which is what transition brings. And when we are on that shifting ground where things feel like like, they're changing all around us and within us, what do we do? Well, one of the things we do when we feel our ourselves, changing systems crumbling in our in our psyche and in our lives, is we seek information. Seek ways to control. We want to know what to do, how to prepare, what we need to buy, what we should avoid, all of that.
And there's this quote I love, also from that teacher that I mentioned earlier, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who said Fear is hungry for information. So when we are afraid or anxious about what's coming, or maybe even just kind of feeling, you know, a little bit of trepidation, we can become really ravenous for data and facts, studies, advice, to do, lists, all of that, like we go hunting for that. And this makes sense, because that fear, that anxiety, or that that feeling, that the rite of passion passage brings up for us, can elicit that feeling of, ooh, I'm hungry for information.
The Information Buffet Problem
But here's what can be really tricky, because we now live constantly at a smorgasbord of information. We've got 24/7 access to more information at our fingertips, through our phones and computers than at any time in history. And what happens when you go to an all you can eat buffet when you're really hungry? I don't know about you, but I tend to overeat, right? Because it can be really challenging to listen to our bodies telling us what we need when we have so much food in front of us and available. The same is true at the buffet of information. When we're on the precipice of change and feeling anxiety, fear or a dash of trepidation, we are hungry for that information, and the internet is there for us, right? It's the smorgasbord of information. And if we're hungry, we can overeat. We can dive down deep rabbit rabbit holes and get a little lost, even though some of that information is really valid and important to get right. I get it.
And when you're pregnant or trying to conceive or navigating new parenthood, it can feel like there is endless amounts of information you need to consume. What foods are safe? What products do you need? What's the right way to give birth? How do you get your baby to sleep? The questions feel infinite, right? I mean, can you feel it? I can feel it even as I'm saying it. And yet, sometimes we can overeat, and that information actually stops feeding us, it starts stuffing us and creating a feeling where we're not we don't feel good. Sometimes we're consuming advice and data and expert opinions, but we're still feeling anxious, under prepared and just as uncertain about trusting ourselves.
Information vs. Wisdom
That's because information and wisdom are different things. Right? Information can be facts and figures and statistics and wisdom comes from within and feels integrated into our system, it might be that our our intuition can can be like the part that sorts information and wisdom. What is it that what information is helpful to us? Let me put that through my my intuition, convert it into wisdom for myself and then help me move forward. Wisdom as processed through our intuition helps us know who we are and helps us navigate the unfamiliar in a way that information sometimes can and sometimes can't, because it's often specific to a particular thing.
The Mythology of Artemis and Apollo
So this, this kind of leads me to, I'm a storyteller. It's one of the things that I do, I tell stories about my own life. I tell stories that are fairy tales. I tell stories that are about mythology. And one of the metaphors that I love using in my work is about the Greek twins Artemis and Apollo.
Okay, so let me just give you a little background. When their mother, Lito, was in labor with them, she was having a really hard time finding a place to give birth. There's a whole backstory to that. Why? Why she couldn't find a safe place to give birth. Hera was involved because the twins, father is Zeus and Hera, you know, it's a whole thing. So Leto couldn't find a place to give birth. And finally, she's offered sanctuary, and Artemis is born. Artemis is born first, and then she helps midwife her mother through the birth of her brother, Apollo. So you could say Artemis one of the very first things she did was to be a midwife, to to be associated with childbirth. And so often Artemis is associated with childbirth.
Understanding Apollo's Energy
But we need to talk. I want to talk about, actually Apollo first, because this kind of comes on what I was talking about, about information. So, so Apollo. Apollo represents everything that resides within civilized society. Okay, so he's, it's like he's inside the city walls, and Artemis is outside the city walls. So Apollo is understood as, uh, well, he's, he's a music God and a God of poetry. And is associated with those things that are like elevated culture and being what those things that separate us from animals. Let's think about it like that, right? So elevated humanity being civilized. He's also a God associated with reason and prophecy, these things, oh and and his son is the god of medicine, and so he's also associated with medicine, okay? And he's like, he's a sun god. So he likes things to be clear and bright and exposed and known. Like certainty. Yeah, he likes certainty.
And our over culture is highly Apollonian. He is about knowledge, skill, getting things right. Is he's about clock time you get it right, and that Apollonian energy is what compels us to research every baby product, read all the books, go down every Google rabbit hole and write a multi page birth plan. It's really common. There is nothing wrong with Apollonian energy. Actually, it's very functional and really helpful. Our society is steeped in Apollonian energy. It's the vibe of the over culture. We're so familiar with it that it's actually usually super comfortable and comforting, even because of its familiarity, the order, the sense of control that we get from it can be calming to many of us, activating for others, but we'll get to that later.
Understanding Artemis's Energy
Okay, but now I want to, I want to go back to Artemis because, remember, I said that Artemis is associated with childbirth in part because she helped her mother give birth to Apollo. At least in the version of the story. There's lots of versions of of these stories, but the version that I like best is, is this one where she's she's born first. So Artemis is associated with childbirth because of that, but she's also associated with childbirth for a lot of other reasons. She's associated with childbirth and new parenthood, in part because she is the goddess of the wilderness. She's the goddess who is close to the animals and can can communicate with them. And think how animals communicate. They they howl and moan and whinny and cry and grunt, and that's that's a language that she's comfortable with, whereas Apollo is about poetry, right? Like finely tuned language. So Artemis is, is that more animalistic nature? She's in the wilderness. She's close to the Earth.
She's a moon goddess, and as such as a moon goddess, she's cyclical in nature, rather than like clock time, where it's more set and solid. Artemis shifts and changes and moves through the cycles of nature and day and night and the cycles of the moon. Changeability is a part of Artemis, as is mystery, because as a moon goddess, she's really comfortable in the dark. She's also highly protective of her privacy, which is also true of folks going through the rite of passage of pregnancy, birth and new parenthood often really like their privacy, right? She is also the goddess of the hunt, so she she goes after what she wants. And probably the word that I like best that's associated with her is untamed.
You know that feeling in the wilderness that things are not ordered like in a city with straight streets but but paths meander and things grow where they feel like they want to grow, rather than in straight lines or attended, you know, city garden Artemis represents that more primal animalistic kind of connection to that animal side of our bodies, and of this rite of passage.
Bridging Apollonian and Artemisian Ways of Knowing
So when we're in this space of the over culture that has this Apollonian energy, and we're trying to gain information to sort of tame the parts of us that are arising, that are are artemision, that feel kind of scary and and unfamiliar. We we often go to the tools of Apollo's realm to to help us, and that makes a lot of sense. Sense, and yet this rite of passage asks us to step into, confront, get to know, and maybe even befriend that artemisian, wild, instinctual self, and it involves knowing that is harder to find. Maybe it isn't even accessible on Google, right? And so we're, we're really, we're overfed the information from the place of Apollo's realm, and in some ways undernourished on wisdom, undernourished on depth, especially in social media culture, in sound bites, right? We're we're trying to make things work really fast, so that when we scroll through, we we catch people's attention. Well, what this rite of passage often begs for is that depth and slowness that is that more artemisian, instinctual, animalistic knowing.
The Extended Rite of Passage
So pregnancy, birth and early parenthood, they're along the continuum of this extended rite of passage. You're separating from who you were moving through transformative, liminal, liminal space where everything can feel uncertain and new and eventually emerging somebody, somebody different, this, this entity called a parent, even your name gets changed, right? Which is a key part of a rite of passage in many cultures, is that the Initiate goes in with one name and comes out with another name. Well, I know for me, in the first years after my children started speaking, I was way more likely to hear myself called mom than Britta. Like I didn't hear Britta very often, but Mom, I heard it all the time, constantly.
The Mission of This Podcast
And so this this giant rite of passage. Here we are. We're changing. We're shifting. And I want to support folks through that. I've been doing this for years, over 25 years now, in working with people during this rite of passage, and this podcast is an opportunity to continue to do that, to keep deepening the conversation, Moving from sound bite to depth, right? Because we've really kind of over medicalized, over commercialized parenting, birth, all of it, and in that process, we've lost touch with some of the wisdom that truly helps people navigate the emotional, spiritual, psychological aspects of becoming a parent. So that's what this podcast is about, remembering and reconnecting with some of that wisdom. It's about having the deeper conversations and honoring the magnitude of what you're going through.
What to Expect from This Podcast
So let me tell you a little bit about what you can expect in these conversations and solo episodes. So you will hear from professionals sharing wisdom, not just information about pregnancy, birth and new parenthood. These people are not going to come on and just give you another checklist or tell you the right way to do it. These are conversations, conversations with folks who understand that becoming a parent is a whole person transformation. You will also get deep conversations that inspire open and maybe even push your edges a little bit. We're not here for a superficial, surface level chat. We're going to dive into the real stuff, the identity shifts, the relationship changes, personal awakenings and yes, the struggles too, and because it's who I am, we'll also have some laughter and joy along the way, because honestly, life is already heavy enough this journey of becoming a parent, it's profound and meaningful, but it can also be delightful. And funny and surprising in the most wonderful ways.
So I want this to be a place where you experience all of that, and where you can find wisdom that helps you trust yourself more deeply, where you can feel less alone in this incredible, challenging, beautiful passage you're moving through. Thank you for being on this journey with me.
Final Question and Answer
So as we begin to bring each episode to a close, I end each episode with a final question. So today, I thought, Well, why not? I'll answer it myself. So what's the question here it is, what's one thing you feel passionately about that you want new or expectant parents to see, hear, feel or know during this profound period of their lives?
And what do I have to say for that? My answer to that is, I want folks to know that it is a process, not a moment. It is a changing, evolving journey, and you will meet yourself anew throughout that journey, each day, parts of yourself you may love or like, and parts that you may be confronted by and be like, Oh, who's that definitely had those moments and continue to have those moments in my life now. And so that is what I want folks to know. I want folks to know that this, this is any an evolution, a personal evolution, a personal rite of passage.
Closing
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 podcast myself, and your support makes it possible to show a little love for this 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, each time, we will also end by blowing out our candle. I've lit mine. I invite you just to imagine you've got yours with you, or if you lit it and listened and turned this into a ritual, fantastic. I welcome that as well. But as we take an inhale breath, I want you to pull in like the parts of this episode that you want to remember. What do you want to take away? Take that in on an inhale, and as you exhale, I blow out the candle until next time bye friends.
