Episode 11: Sex, Birth & Blood: Restoring Sacred to Slandered, Ft. Rachel Ruva, Birth Keeper, Portal Tender & Apprentice to the Plants
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Sureya: “We are in relationship with everything and I think it's easy to forget that, you know, a lot of times the relationship we have with money or with our bodies or with these other various things, if we have this negative self-talk with them, and then you look at: what would it be like if you were talking to a person or a friend in the way you're talking about your body or about money, would that person want to stick around and hang out with you?
Would they continue to show up to be in relationship with you or would they shut down and feel rejected? And so the way that we talk to our bodies consciously or unconsciously is huge. It makes such a huge difference and rewiring the language around how we acknowledge them, and/or how we don't acknowledge them, because even ignoring them is going to make them feel like they don't matter. And sometimes they will shut down. Sometimes they will get louder in the way they try to express, and listening is always going to help us tune into that deeper wisdom.”
Rachel: “Sovereignty begins at birth. And I really feel trauma prevention also does, like really, including our children in these conversations from infancy is so crucial. And, for me coming into like, what? My almost mid-twenties before I understood what cervical fluid was, and understood that I had a cycle and what all the different consistencies meant. And that I had my mind blown that, oh my God, all these years that I've been so ashamed and embarrassed of this like weird shit in my underwear that I've been too scared to ask any of my girlfriends if they also have it in their underwear and like, uh, wow, what the hell did they even teach us in sex ed? Because I don't even remember that basic essential, crucial component of being a woman mentioned.”
Sureya: “The term dirty, the fact that that even has a negative connotation is so interesting to me because I think good, fresh soil is a sexiest thing. I love how you just did that in your body! It's, oh, it's orgasmic. Just the way it feels, the way it smells. And to take that and equate it with this negative, icky, dirty thing…”
Rachel: “It's not shocking to me. I mean, for one, I tell my four year old all the time, you never have to wash your hands with mother earth dirt, like before you eat. Because like grandma will come over or whatever, and be like, this routine where we wash our hands before we eat. And I'm like, no, we don't do that in our house. Like if you're in the city, wash your hands because that's city dirt, for sure. But if you have mother dirt, mother earth dirt from our garden, please eat and lick it. We eat dirt.”
Rachel: “Women are descending consciousness. We bleed down, we work with the earth, all of our movements: we birth down, we bleed down, we squat down low to the earth to harvest and pick the plants and knead the bread. And, traditionally we've been in this descending consciousness and really working with that energy, and celebrating that we are here on this earth right now to be fully embodied and to understand that if we choose to go into the birth portal, this is ceremony. And we get to choose to meet ourselves. We get to choose to go through that initiation process and approach the ring of fire, literally and metaphorically. And we get to see what we're made of. And that's such a gift in this, like ultra-comfortable, westernized life that we have where everything's like a perfect temperature, and we're feeling fucking good all the time, and our pantry's loaded with organic food and we can do whatever we want whenever we want.
Life is so comfortable. But it's like when we actually choose to go in and face ourselves and meet the mystery, I love that you brought in that word. I love that word. It's so potent and so necessary for the expansion of our human experience and the expansion of our conscious awareness. And when we deprive ourselves of those moments, of those initiations, we really do ourselves a disservice. We think we're like playing it safe, but in actuality, we're really limiting our growth potential.”
Rachel: “Hormonal birth control is poison. All women should get off of it immediately. And like, I really invite and encourage all women to deeply explore avenues of getting off of it. There's so much help out there. There's so many free resources out there that women can hop on and understand how to get their bodies back in balance and to take power and take their power back and to understand like the window of our fertility is so, so short, we have so much control over whether we invite or do not invite life in. And there's also plants, like we have these magical plants that work in our favor and if a pregnancy happens and we really would like to release that pregnancy, there are plants for that too. And there's no shame in that. We really need to start embracing this aspect. Women have always held the power to release pregnancies.”