105_Bergen === Bergen: But what I found as time went on, as I tried to kind of dig into her more deeply and find what was there was that she was more like a cardboard cutout of the ideals of the patriarchy being kind of propped up next to the father to just kind of placate women and keep them in line and was really trotted out like the most convenient times when they needed to push a certain narrative about how women should show up in the. And their families and in their communities. And once I kind of came up again, like once I finally reached her, which took a lot of courage to even make the journey, to come to this image that had been set before me by the church. And then, like you said, a very hierarchal and patriarchal church. And once I got there, I was like, you you're just a cardboard cutout. === Monica: Welcome to the Revelation Project Podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women, to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project and what gets revealed gets healed. Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of the Revelation Project Podcast. Today. I'm with Bergen Hyde. Bergen lives in Provo, Utah, and she's lived there for the past 13 years with her husband and three children. Her favorite things are dancing, salty snacks. Oh yeah. Spending time in the mountains, preferably in a body of water. She's also the oldest of four and she grew up in Wisconsin. She is the co-founder. And creative director of Womb, which she founded with her two sisters, Gentry and Sarah. She holds women's circles, workshops and retreats, and one-on-one mentoring designed to support women in healing, internalized patriarchy, integrating the sacred, feminine, and reclaiming personal sovereignty. She's been devoted to the sacred feminine for the last four years. And she's currently training with me, under Sarah Durham Wilson as a wounded maiden to mature feminine practitioner. Join me in welcoming Bergen. Hey Bergen. Bergen: Hi Monica. I'm so happy to be with you. I'm Monica: So happy to be with you and for our listeners Bergen and I are both doing the Maiden to Mother teacher training, and maybe that's a great place to start. Bergen has just like what attracted you to that training? Bergen: I think at the beginning of my kind of awakening, I was still very active in my faith. I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or I'm a Mormon. And so I was looking for the divine feminine within my, you know, the context of my faith at the beginning. And then as time went on, I realized that I could only get so far within that context and was coming up against like this wall. And I knew there was more healing for me to do and more journeying for me to do in search of the divine mother and the sacred, feminine, and, and decided to start really. Searching for things outside of that context, which was really like a big leap of faith for me, my faith tradition was really, my whole identity was really wrapped up in that. And I began to read a lot of Marion Woodman and other Juning analysts like Clarissa Pinkola Estes and, and. As I started to kind of go down that path. I found somehow I don't, I don't really know, but the Instagram God's just put Sarah Durham into my feed somehow. And I began following her and her message just like, it was like lit me on fire from the inside really was like a bellows to that little fire that I was really carefully tending to, and really stoked that internal fire. And so her work with the archetypal. Maiden and, and mother just really, really resonated with me really deeply. And I was like, yeah, I'm a wounded maiden. I recognize this archetype that she described so beautifully on her page and through her work. And I want to be able to work with her and heal that part of myself. And so I took, she has a course. That's just for women who are moving through that healing process called maiden to mother, which is just leading women through, you know, healing, the wounded maiden, coming back into contact with that inner child that needs our deep love and connection and healing. And then coming into the mature feminine, or the mother energy to be able to really hold and heal these parts of ourselves, kind of like a re parenting. It's another, maybe another way to articulate it and was just every, just every class, every word out of her mouth, it was like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I kind of simultaneously was holding these spaces for other women and, and really, really appreciated the way that Sarah taught. She teaches with such. She's just so very grounded in the work and with so much integrity in the work and is also so transparent about her own humanness and which moving from a very hierarchal kind of framework because of my faith, where it's like the people at the top know everything they know better than you, you know, You just have to defer all of your kind of decision making to this person. I think Sarah's capacity to really hold the dignity and the divinity of all of the women that she holds space for and the transparency of her own humanness and the feeling of not being in this hierarchical relationship with her as a teacher, but in circle with her is, was just really, really important to me. And I, and I know that will be really important to the women that I hold space for, which is mostly women who are from a similar background to me. And so it felt just, yeah, so deeply resonant on many levels and actually right from the very beginning of starting her class, I was like, Hey, I know you also do a teacher training class. Do I have to take this class first to do the teacher training? And she said, yes. So I did in that order, I did. Just the regular class and then immediately, you know, signed up for the teacher training as soon as it was available, knowing that I wanted to really deepen my capacity to hold that space for myself. And then for the women that I work with. So, yeah, and Monica and I went to the opening retreat together for this particular training cohort and just had the best time and I connected really easily. And I'm really grateful for all those friendships that were building because of the work we're doing. Oh gosh, it's such a, it's such a gift. Monica: It's such a gift. It's such a nourishing medicine, you know, to be in circle with women as well as to. To reveal the archetypical work in our lives, which I never knew was such a rich repository was such a deep well as Sarah would say, right. Of, of medicine for women. Because again, these mythologies and archetypes, we kind of talk about the fact that they're hiding in plain sight. And when you're raised, I think in a very patriarchal, hierarchical religious environment there it's, it's almost like it's so siloed that you're not able to really know. It's so strange to me, how I never kind of knew about these. Stories and archetypes. And when you do finally, and I think again, and I don't know what it was like for you Bergen, but for me it was like the goddess was something that was talked about the same way people would talk about a unicorn or a princess. It was like a fable or a, a fairy tale versus actually there are, there are energies in stories and mythologies and archetypes that make our human journey so much more understandable. And that orient us in a way that just brings us so much healing and an integration. Bergen: Yeah, I, yeah, just yes. To everything that you said in my particular faith tradition, we do believe that God, the father has a companion, a heavenly mother, what is the title that we give her as a heavenly mother? And she. At least at the very least is the seed that there is something feminine, something sacred about the feminine. But what I found as time went on, as I tried to kind of dig into her more deeply and find what was there was that she was more like a cardboard cutout of the ideals of the patriarchy being kind of propped up next to the father to just kind of placate women and keep them in line and was really trotted out like the most convenient times when they needed to push a certain narrative about how women should show up in the. And their families and in their communities. And once I kind of came up again, like once I finally reached her, which took a lot of courage to even make the journey, to come to this image that had been set before me by the church. And then, like you said, a very hierarchal and patriarchal church. And once I got there, I was like, you you're just a cardboard cutout. Like there was no depth. There was no, no flesh, no beating heart, no voice. She was voiceless. She was, she was pretty and pleasing and polite as Sarah would put it as our teacher, Sarah would put it. She was just a mirage of sorts. And that's when I was just like, whoa. And yet at the same time, it did feel like at the very least she gave me. She cracked open the yearning for something I knew was there. And I had to finally come to that place where it's like, well, I'm not going to find her hair, right. She won't fit into this patriarchal structure. She won't fit into this old male centric paradigm into this very toxic system that is both outside of me. And also inside of me, she's not going to. And I'm going to have to crack things open. I'm going to have to break down the walls. I'm going to have to, I often think of Eve because Eve was a big part of the, the myths and stories. We told them about women, you know, you from the, from the Bible that you've had to transgress this old narrative of everything's paradise here, see everything so lovely and so great. And she does this create in my, from my estimation, does this very courageous thing and says, I'm not staying here. There's no substance, there's no flesh. There's no beating heart. This is all a Mirage of perfectionism and idealism and romanticism, and not actually inherent in the human experience. And I want to go out into the wilderness and I have felt very much moved along by the energy of that. Transgressed this moment. And it took a, it takes so much courage when you're programmed to believe that transgression in that sense of. Untrustworthy or, um, has bad motives or, um, makes you, you know, bad in some way. Uh, and then out into the wilderness, I went, I just, it was nice. It was either it was my survival or because I was dying inside the garden walls. It was either I will die here. My soul will just rot from the inside out because I'm not getting the nourishment I need. And the pressure of having to try to become this ideal. That's just a cardboard cutout is killing me and I can either go out and find sustenance or I can stay here and die. And I chose to go out, you know, chose to go out into the wilderness. And, and like you said, it's like, whoa, like wilderness is like just rife with the most delicious feast of the sacred feminine. And of course, like it took me a minute to get my bearings out in the wilderness and find those very, you know, faint little paths. And then eventually it became more and more verdant as time went on. And, and it just is like, there's a whole world of the sacred, feminine that lives outside of that box that I had been in for so long. And it's so delicious and like so juicy and rich and deep, Monica: you know, it's so interesting. Bergen is I'm having, having a revelation right now, you know, The radical path to the divine feminine is the path of faith. Because the, even if you look at kind of the, you know, like the world, we know when we're, we're raised in a very patriarchal society or a patriarchal religion is, is very concrete. It's very like, you know what you need to do, you know? And, and it's true. Like, we, I want to point out that the path is very disruptive in a way, like it, it disrupts the status quo, the conditioning, yes. It just disrupts the status quo. It disrupts the conditioning, it disrupts the people that expect you to continue conforming. And so it's a very disruptive thing. And it's a, it's a very, at times uncomfortable thing. And there's this. Simultaneous liberation and freedom and joy and wonder that also can accompany this journey. And so you and I were talking a little bit earlier about kind of having two feet or one foot firmly planted in each of these worlds and, and learning to navigate and integrate. And sometimes it has us reach a fork in the road where we really do have to make a decision and it may ask us to change our whole lives. Right. And it may not. But the thing is, I think is the willingness to, to, or, or if you're, if you're hearing that call in the way that you're describing it is so resonant for me, right. Is, is this it's like, I couldn't not follow. It was like, Many of the things that came across my path. I think once I acknowledged that I was seeking that something more, Sarah was one of those people for me, that was a piece of what I call like a massive piece of the puzzle, where once I had it in my sights or, and it resonated inside of my cellular body, it was like, my body was like, this way, you must go this way because there's a big piece here. And this is this archetypical work. That's helping me understand my experience from this wounded wounded maiden perspective. So I wonder if for our listeners, you could talk a little bit more about the symptoms of the wounded maiden and how you understand it. Bergen: Yeah. That's a great question. And I, before I do that, I just want to say like, yeah, I just thank you for articulating that from your perspective. And it feels so. I think one of the, the power in women's sharing and beginning to kind of bring up from inside of themselves through their actual voice, through articulation, their experiences is how validating it feels and how safe it feels to hear someone else speak to it. And I often come into communities where we're doing this kind of work in these conversations because of my upbringing as a, as a Mormon. We have this story about being outsiders and being exiles and being, uh, a peculiar people that have set apart. And, and I come often into women's spaces, holding that story of like, I'm not going to belong here. I'm an exile. I'm going to be weird because of my background, but instead what I find every like literally every single time is women who are learning to belong to themselves. Don't hold the story of exile in circle with each other. We hold belonging with each other when we hold it, you know, for ourselves. And yeah, it does feel like when you find other women who are speaking to their. Authentic experience that it is just like a piece of the puzzle that just clicks in and kind of a little mile marker on the way, a little hallway surface to rest and to be fed and nourished and gather some tools. And it's just such a, yeah, it's such a beautiful experience because there are those wilderness parts in between competitive really difficult and challenging and, and disrupting, like you said. And then, and then when you come into circle with other women, it's like a little tent out in the desert, you know, where we all feast and rest and hold each other. And it's really beautiful. So wounded maiden traits, if we're going to continue to use the threat of the feeling of being in the garden with Eve, maybe that's a good story to use being in the walled gardens. It feels almost like there's two different, like you're living two different experiences. Like on the outside, everything is exactly as it should be. You know, like I've got, I have a house and children and a husband and maybe a career, or I have all the kind of material, things that were promised to me by the patriarchy and, and externally, it looks like everything's great. But underneath the surface, if I am brave enough to listen, I'm hungry, I'm starving. Like the fruit here is plastic. Like, I don't know, or it's all one flavor. And, and I just, I, it's not working for me anymore and it doesn't taste good anymore. And I'm, and I, I feel this deep urinating and then I begin to kind of become insatiable. I feel this kind of insatiable desire that, that kind of awakens a lot of like maladaptive behaviors. For me, it's like shopping, spending lots of money on stuff or eating constantly, or like eating things that don't really feel good to eat, but it makes me feel alive for a few minutes. So I should just keep eating things. Or maybe the flip side happens where, you know, you have more of the like, well, I've got to be skinny, so I've got to deprive myself of food and I'm going to overexercise and like, everything starts to go to these extremes where it's like perfectionism. I've got to keep my house clean all the time. I've got to have all the right clothes. I've got to have all the right stuff. I've got to get the injections and the fillers and the, and the constant chase or the next promotion and the next raise and the biggest, bigger house and the nicer car. Right. For me, I, instead of overfunctioning into perfectionism, I would get a little perfectionistic and then I would shut down. And then I would do a lot of like, instead of over performing, I would underperform because I would get so overwhelmed by the pressure of this hamster wheel chasing achievement. And I would, instead I would numb out and spend hours on my phone or watching Netflix or spending money and eating and doing these other things, just trying to like stay alive and to not feel what was kind of starting to call that hunger that was starting to call. And I was trying to fill the abyss with something. So I think women maybe experienced a little bit of both of those things, or maybe they lean more into one or the other. And for me it was like just, I would start to spiral into like shame and depression and a lot of over consumption. And then I think maybe on the other end, there's like a lot of anxiety, a lot of perfectionism and trying to control everything. Uh, and I think those are kind of two sides of the same beast, right? This hunger is calling us and we're either trying to run away from it or we're trying to feed it, uh, to try to, you know, but, but it's like in the garden there, isn't actually the thing that, the thing that you need to feed the thing doesn't exist inside the patriarchy, like we were saying about the mother, the great mother doesn't fit. Inside of the structures and the paradigms and the ideologies of a patriarchal world. And so you can search everywhere in the garden. You can hustle, you can hustle as much as you want. You can eat as much as you want. And it never really feeds the hunger. Like the thing that you need doesn't actually exist inside the garden wall. Monica: Yeah. And I want to add Bergen for our listeners that we can think of the wounded maiden, the same way we might think of. So in the upright or the normal kind of transition of the healthy, feminine archetype it's actually made in, okay. Not wounded maiden. It goes from maiden to mother to crone. Okay. And so in a natural, like if, if the world outside the patriarchy, there are these rites of passage between the. Phases. Right. And so if we were to look for a moment and turn our attention at the indigenous world, we would see that they actually celebrate these rites of passage, where children go from adolescence into adulthood. There's a Rite of passage, right. We don't have that inside of the patriarchy. And so. Maiden is like the youthful unbridled, radiant beauty. Like the bud is, is how Sarah describes it. It's like the bud of, of like a potential. Yes. We're both like potential, like there's so much potential. She has so much potential, so much vitality, so much energy, so much like she's, she's in her romance and she's like, everything is possible. That's the maiden. Okay. What happens when we don't have the Rite of passage into the next stage, which is mother and you do not have to be a physical biological mother to cross over into this stage. It's simply a natural stage of feminine embodiment immaturity. And so when you do not cross over what happens Sarah said is, is the same thing that happens to a flower. If the flower is tight in a bud and is never allowed to bloom it rots, this rotting is the wounded maiden and the wounded maiden. What happens is she becomes like arrested in her development. She doesn't ever, she may look like she's matured on the outside. Like she's a fully adult woman, but inside, she's kind of in this arrested development where she's still chasing after youth, it's become almost like preeminent to her. Like she needs now. She needs to, to seek it at, at, at, at every cost. And this is where she's trying to stay youthful and beautiful because maiden is all she's ever known. She doesn't know there's anything else. So go ahead, Bergen. I just wanted to create kind of some more context. Bergen: Yeah. I mean, if I was, if I nodded my head anymore. Yeah. And I just maybe to meld these two, like images together, it almost feels like the patriarchy instead of the garden being just this natural, beautiful place that children grow up and where everything's provided for them, because they have loving parents who are mature and able to do that. And, and like, they're just loved and nurtured through that maiden stage, but there's no wall. Maybe there's, maybe there's a gate and there's women who stands there at the gate and they help you move through that out into the wilderness where you eventually will make your own garden somewhere for your own, for whoever will be in your circle that you're going to serve, whether it's your own children or others, right. To bring your offerings to the world. But instead it's like the patriarchy builds this very high wall all around the garden and says, no, one's leaving. Yep. We're all staying here where everything's perfect all the time. We're not going to grow up. We're not going to face the wilderness. We're not going to mature. And especially for women, the patriarchy has a vested interest in women, not maternity. Not growing up because they can't control a full, mature, fully matured woman. Right. They can't keep her contained and her wildness and her fierceness and her wisdom and her deep, deep love and her capacity to see the truth for what it is. Again, it disrupts. The, the values of the patriarchy, right? I just want to say really, really quickly when I say patriarchy, that I'm not talking about men and I'm not talking about groups of men, I'm talking about an ideology, that's infiltrated our culture that does value men and the masculine over women and the feminine. So this isn't men are men have internalized this toxic message too, and it harms them as well. And it keeps them from returning as well, which is why it feels so threatening often to men. When we talk about the patriarchy, because they've been meshed themselves with it and kept themselves immature. So they don't have to see the way this system is really harming them and harming others and harming our planet. And they don't want it. They don't have to wake up to it. And their privilege kind of keeps them insulated from the pain that other people are experiencing because it works for them on some level. And they get a lot of positive feedback from the system if they're able to function well within it. You know? So this isn't really about hating on men. This is about a system and an ideology that traps us in this immaturity. It wants us to stay wounded because we won't wake up to how it's hurting things and how the earth is is suffering and how people with other intersections of oppression are hurting. And, and for us to be mature enough, to stand up for it, to stand up for what's right, and to stand up against the things that are, that are happening. Monica: And I was going to say the other thing that's really, really important to know about this maiden stage is that she's actually disassociated. So when this shit. It's suspended here. She actually disassociate, she disembodies and kind of lives her life in her head. She's no longer like actually fully embodied. And so what happens to women when they're suspended in maiden is that they basically like cut off their inner GPS. They can no longer, they're no longer guided by their intuition. They're no longer deeply feeling their feelings. And those are the things that direct us. Those are the things that alert us, that something is not right. Those are the things that actually tell us when to vocalize and when a woman is fully embodied, she is fully rooted in her own sufficiency, her own power. And when I think of the word sufficiency, what I think of is. She's she's full of herself. She's she knows her own enoughness. Okay. And so the reason that we're suspended in this maiden stage is that if women knew their own enoughness, they would not tolerate this system. They would no longer tolerate what is happening to our children. They would no longer tolerate what is happening to the planet. Bergen: Yes. Oh my gosh. I just like having this little like light bulb moment go on about the disembodied moment that happens and that, and what you brought up earlier, which is that women's bodies will mature, but their insights don't right. And that's exactly why it's happening is because we don't have this Rite of passage that says your body is moving into a new stage. Your brain is becoming more fully developed. Your body is shifting you. You pass through puberty. You know, like all of these things are happening. Perhaps you are having children or whatever, but your body is moving along in maturity. And the patriarchy says, oh no, we don't want women to mature to come into their wisdom, to come into their gifts, to listen to that inner voice and bring it out into the world for the good of humanity, because we want to continue to profit off of her feelings. Off of her feeling like she's not enough when the enoughness is actually living within our, our physical bodies. Right. And so that this association, because we start to fear, like experience so much pain. I'm not being allowed to come into my own. I'm not being allowed even on a it's often. So unconscious. Right. It's subconscious, but like, oh wait, I'm not allowed to grow. I'm not allowed to become mature. It's required of me to stay young and pretty and pleasing and polite. It's required of me to continue to invest in this system. And so I've got to disassociate from what's happening with my body because my body is telling me it's time to grow up and move on. But the patriarchy is telling me, Monica: But my culture is saying something different. Yes, Bergen: My culture and everything around me tells me in order to survive, I have to play by these other rules and the opposite thing. My body is saying the opposite. And so that this association becomes necessary for us to survive. Monica: It's a survival. Bergen: Yes. And honestly, it's not like it happens in the just this one moment. At this juncture, we've received those messages, our whole lives as children over and over and over. And we've finally come to the place where it's time to grow up. And it's like, that's way too painful. I'll be rejected by everyone. I won't be able to provide for my family. I Monica: I'll be exiled. No one will love me. Bergen: I'll be exactly. Yup. I'll be exiled from, from everything. If I don't continue to comply. And if I wake up. To myself, I won't make it. So we do that split Monica: That's right. And the other thing I want to point out is that we feel so isolated from each other. That's another tactic that we're conditioned to be women, to be in competition with each other. And we're so isolated from each other. And we don't have the relational skills with women inside of this garden to go back to that place where that's the pretend garden, where we pretend that everything is handled, that we pretend under these masks of perfection. That we're the perfect mother. That we're the perfect daughter. That we're the perfect wife that we're right. Like it's, it's like Pleasantville. Remember that movie right? Where everything is homogenous. Right. Exactly. And so. But we're so isolated from each other that it's not like we have the hand signal. Right. That's like, you know, that whole big thing is going on in Tick-tock right now about the hand signal, I feel like women everywhere, right. Could be learning that signal to be like signaling to each other. Like I see you. Yep. And we don't know that other women feel this. We feel so alone in it and we don't have language for it. And so, so anyway, I feel like we've, we've painted a really solid picture of what is happening. And then, and so now what Sarah's work is all about is creating the bridge. To remember these missing rites of passage that bring us into the archetype of the mother. And the reason we want to come into the archetype of the mother is this is where women start to, to understand that there is this whole world that is outside of these garden gates that she didn't know about. And it's so amazing. And so Bergen, I wanted you to start talking a little bit about the mother. Bergen: Yeah. So maybe if I know that a lot of times when we use the word mother, it can be really triggering. So I want to acknowledge this, that we, most likely we have all, anyone listening to this podcast was raised by a wounded. maiden. You were most likely raised by parents and especially mothers who never had these right of passages who were wounded themselves and made this split in order to survive. And that is deeply, deeply painful for a child to be raised by a mother who was never allowed to, self-actualize never allowed to come into her own, never allowed to bring her authenticity to the world. And it's very difficult to grow in a place where all the models around us are these wounded mains, like you said, I even become, just noticed so much in the stories we tell about women, even some of the, the more venerated stories that are like really modern. I just watched Big Little Lies. I just like binge watched the whole season in one of my like spiral maintenance specials. At least I have the wherewithal to watch it and say, every single one of these characters in this story are, are wounded maidens, every single one of them. And so even the stories that are still being, but maybe finally, we're being more honest about. Maybe finally, we're looking at it more and I really respect the actors and people that are writing these stories and that we're having these women's centric stories. And beginning to unearth the pain of growing up with just surrounded by wounded maintenance, this, the gossiping and the comparing and, and all the projection of our wounds on each other, because we haven't learned to be in our own experience because of this disassociation and. It's so painful to look around your life and be like, there's nobody here. Monica: Like there's no adult in the room. That's what it feels like. There's no grownups, Bergen: There's no grownups. There's nobody. Who's actually wizened. As they've gotten older, who've really come into their authenticity and into their selfhood around me to show me the way, what do I do? You know, it's very disorienting. And so when you find the Oasis of someone like Sarah Durham Wilson, or Marion Woodman, or Clarissa Pinkola Estas, or these other archetypes, like the great mother, it's just so regulatory and. That place in that lives inside of our bodies that knows that this is our destiny wakes up. It's this awakening, it's an unveiling. It like pulls back the veil. This is who you've been all along. This is who you were meant to come into. And so UN. Word for this mother archetype that I use sometimes if, if the word mother feels a little bit rough, I don't want to be a mother. I don't have kids. Or my mom was a mess and I don't, I don't want to associate with that feeling of the mother. I just, I like to call it the mature feminine. Monica: Yes. I love that. Bergen: But when, so when we say the great mother, or when we say the sacred feminine, or when we say the goddess, we're talking about the mature feminine, we're talking about this, this Rite of Passage of moving from the maiden, dealing with the wounds that are there and coming into this maturity, coming into our own, the self-actualization, um, coming into our own sovereignty, speaking the truth about what we really feel. And what we see happening in the world and what our gifts are and how we can bring those to the world in a way that can not only transform us from the wound, doesn't pay them into the mature, feminine, but can transform the world who lives in this story of woundedness. Monica: Um, and I, I want to add an immaturity yeah. And immaturity. And I want to add that Bergen. I don't know about you, but I had the triple wound and I know that Sarah talks about the quadruple wound. And so you'll have to remind me what the quadruple one is. I have all of them. I think I probably do too, but every level, but for our listeners, the, I was disconnected from myself. That's wound one. I was disconnected from my own mother who was a patriarchal mother. We call it, you know, she was also wounded maiden and. In our world of the teacher training, we call it a patriarchal sized mother, because in some cases when your own mother is also a wounded maiden in a lot of ways, she continues to do the bidding of the patriarchy. She tries to, in some cases, keep her daughter from harm by enforcing the rules of the patriarchy. So that can get really interesting. And, but I want to point out that wound and kind of give you a little taste of what that looks like. And then the third wound is being disconnected from the great mother, mother earth, the actual nature, our nature, our wild nature. And then what is the fourth Bergen? Bergen: I don't, I actually don't know. Monica: Okay. Cause Sarah, Sarah has a fourth one. Okay. Bergen: So I know we had disconnection from ourselves and our bodies from our own mothers, from the spiritual, the archetypal great mother, the energy of the great mother and then the earth itself. But like you said, It's a way for us to kind of compartmentalize it so we can work with it. But it's really all the same thing. Yes. That when you reconnect with your body, when you reconnect with your lineage of mothers and when you reconnect with the earth and when you reconnect with this great mother energy, a divine energy, it's you realize that it's all interconnected, but it's not actually your body isn't separate from the earth and the mothers that came before you aren't separate from the goddess and like, and that it's all really this one. Think right. Which I think Marion Woodman talks about, you know, the, the sacred, feminine is really an embodiment of the imminence of the divine. And immanence means within the divine, that lives within all things in the cells of your body, in the Leafs, on the trees and the soil beneath your feet in the DNA of your ancestors, in that sacred love, that connects like a web of life. And that that's the imminence of the divine and that the sacred masculine symbolizes the transcendence of the divine. And I think we've got a real imbalance there that we think, you know, that the best we can do is transcend the human experience and be above it and rise above it and make everything perfect and be immortal. And to me, that's like the garden when it becomes toxic, when it's not in alignment with also. Of the human experience being divine. Right. And that's what we need is to really infuse our lives with the imminence of the divine that lives in everything. So anyway, I went on a tangent about that, but the wounds we've got all these wounds with the planet, with our bodies, with our own mothers, with our lineage and with the spiritual kind of essence of the sacred feminine. Yeah. And I've definitely, I've experienced all of those wounds and marriage ways Monica: Me too. And that the, we could say the same, you know, again, like for men, even though that that's not the conversation that we're having right now, And also point out that we all have the masculine and the feminine within us. And so part of this journey is integrating all of that. And as Bergen had pointed out, it's all interconnected. And so there's this way that when we start doing the work of the mature feminine, that we are now revealing and healing and feeling and embodying and darting to connect back with that knowing or gnosis. And that is when the true wisdom of this, you know, one, you know, this, this more unified and holistic way of looking at the world starts to kind of come into view. And when we start to realize. The potential, you know, of all of us kind of doing this inter work, then what happens when we do the inner work, what could happen then and how that then gets mirrored in the outside world. And that I think is really what we're up to. When we talk about doing this work of the teacher training, it's like, what would be possible if we were to help women transition and cross this bridge over into the mature feminine, because when women are fully embodied in this way, everything changes. Bergen: Yeah. I mean, to bring it full circle back to that moment, it's not really a one moment thing. It's a process that happens when you're growing up in patriarchy in this hierarchal system is. That we slowly, slowly just disembody. We slowly disassociate from the, from the divinity of all the things around us, because we're experiencing these, you know, painful things that tell us like, oh, don't, don't love like that don't speak like that don't move like that. And what we're really doing right is now reversing that we're saying, come back into your body, that you've, we're taught to disassociate from come back into a relationship with the earth, with all the living, things that are around you. Come back into the embrace of. The love of the great mother and come back into relationship with your lineage, with your ancestors and begin to break those chains and come back into right relationship with all of these different aspects that the sacred feminine represents. And this is where the pain comes in. When we come back into our bodies, we realize that we're in pain. When we come back into a relationship with the earth, we realize that she is in pain. And when we come back into right relationship with our ancestors are realized we have a legacy of pain and, and same thing with the goddess. You know, it's like, And which, which again, I think this is why we sometimes hesitate to come back into relationship with these parts of ourselves that we've just associated from is that I think we know somewhere deep down that it will mean we will also have to feel the rage that's there, the grief that's there, the pain of this disconnection in order, it's part of the passage. It's not the whole journey, but it's, it's part of the passage is to come through. It's like, yeah, it's like a gate that we have to pass through in order to come back into union with these parts of ourselves. And on the other side, there is of course joy and pleasure and peace and wholeness and. Presence. There is something really, really deeply nourishing on the other side. And there's something really deeply nourishing about validating our pain and our grief and sitting with those things too. It really, really it's like doing the ugly work of composting, the nasty stuff. That's clogged up our soul life and really sitting in the muck of it, sitting in the dirt of it and in the sacred fire of rage. And then the kind of the muddy grief and, and being in the Ash and letting that start to sink down and nourish the good things that we want to grow. But we've got to go through that process for, for a lot of us. There's a backlog, you know, for me, there was 35 years of a backlog of pain and grief and loneliness that I, that I hadn't processed and integrated and embodied, and it takes it's. It's takes so much courage. It takes so much courage to be with that. Yeah, Monica: It takes so much courage. And I was going to say, even, you know, one of the reasons too, I, and I don't want to speak for you Bergen, but that I'm doing this work is so that more women can do this work and know that they're not alone. Right. Because when. My own kind of, I didn't know that what I had experienced however long ago it was, was a Rite of passage. I didn't know that I was kind of doing the architect, typical work. I didn't have the language for it, but like that is exactly what happened. And I wouldn't have wished that, you know, on my worst enemy, you know, like to have done that alone again. And one of the reasons I really have been called to do this work is so that is for women to know, like they don't have to do this alone and to make it more available to women because there is something really tender and beautiful that happens. And it's like, the grief is there, but there's also this grace and the grief is there, but there's also this relief. And so these things start to really co-exist together when we have other people to help guide us through it or walk, walk alongside us in it. Bergen: Yeah. I agree. Especially. I definitely had, as I went in, started moving into the process, I had just good women who had been through it, a few steps ahead of me, you know, that showed up and, and now have cultivated and stepped into spaces where I know there's women who understand. And I think that's why, like we were saying earlier, having, you know, these archetypal stories, you know, like Clarissa Pinkola Estes has gives us an, um, women who run with the wolves and to have these stories, like you use this word orient, and that feels really resonant for me, for women to orient themselves in the process so that when they are processing some grief and pain and are in those dark nights of the soul are down in the underworld of, of their wounds. Someone can say you are doing exactly the right thing. You are in the right place. You have done nothing wrong because one of the messages of, of the patriarchy is if you are in pain or something's not working for you, it's you, right? There's something wrong with you. It's your fault. There's something wrong with you. If you're depressed or you're sad or you're lonely, or you're grieving, take a pill, get rid of it, mask it, zip it back up. You've messed up. If it's, if this system's not working for you, you've messed up. Monica: There must be something wrong with you that this doesn't work. Bergen: You can't be this facade that we're expecting you to be of. Everything's great all the time and I'm happy and pretty and skinny and young and rich. And everything's fine. You know, if we, if you can't live up to that, there must be something wrong with you. But the mother says, if you are falling apart, If something inside you needs to die. If you are enraged and grieving and just unraveling, you are doing exactly the right thing Monica: And you are welcome here. Bergen: You are welcome here. I see you. I w I am not afraid of your rage. I am not shamed by your shame. I am not going to turn away from you. I will sit with you in the dark, in the muck, in the fire and Ash, and you will then rise in your strength. You will retrieve what was lost to you, your, your sovereignty live. Underneath all the crap that's got to move through. That's right. It lives in the pile of stuff. That's got a burn and it's fireproof, but you've got to burn it all before. You know what it is. Right. I love that. Yeah. It's got a rage. It's got a burn, it's got a compost and move or you won't come back to the treasure. Right. That's down, down there. And the thing that happens is that each step of the process, each time you pass through one of the veils of grief or anger or sadness, you know, your own strength each time, each time more of your strength is unveiled to you because you realize like I I'm capable of. I'm capable of holding this hard thing. I'm capable of confronting this thing inside of me. And then I'm also capable then of confronting the things I see happening in the world and doing something about it. When people are hurting, when the planet is hurting, when other women like me are hurting, I can show up for their pain too, and speak the truth to it and say, this is the solution. Yes. And that's what we need so desperately is for women to wake up to how strong they are. And I don't know that there's any other way except to flex those muscles and be with our own grief. Monica: That's right. And I call that process, the remembering process, like remember, right, because when we've been kind of going along the way in the patriarchy, there are so many places that we abandoned ourselves or parts of ourselves. And so when we kind of go back for these parts of ourselves, we get stronger and stronger and stronger because we're remembering, you know, these pieces of ourselves. And then we come back into this wholeness. And so it really is this kind of like amazing visual as well. I always get these visuals with it because it's, it's really this, this mythical journey back home to ourselves and it's such, and it it's such a beautiful process and, and yes, it's, it takes courage and there's so many incredible women holding space for this work. Now, Bergen, I know too that like you have your own. Womb, right. Like I was going to say like, of course you have your own Womb, but you also have created a womb for women. And I would love for you to talk a little bit about that. Bergen: Oh, great. I would love to talk about it. So just to give some background on the name of our community, it's called womb because I want to evoke that feeling of like, if you're in a dark night of the soul, if you're unraveling, then you're actually being held in the womb of the great mother and getting ready for a rebirth. And that there's this unseen, nourishing energy that's actually coming through and holding you in this space. And if you will surrender to it, kind of like a baby, like suspended in that amniotic fluid, just kind of floating and being held. If you can surrender to the transformation that's happening and just be with the just witnesses, just allow it to happen, to pass through, allow those sacred fires to burn, allow, you know, whatever pool of grief has been clogged up and festering to start to pass through that. Eventually the waters will flow and you will find your way back out into the light and be a new being, you know, like a Chrysalis. So my calling. Has been to be a midwife of the dark night of the soul, uh, particularly for Mormon women, but for really anyone who feels resonant with the work, I do that as you come into this sacred dark night, that I will be there to, to just, to witness, to be a doula, to be a midwife, to give you maybe a sense of orientation, even though I feel like no matter what happens when you're in that space, when you're in the dark night, when you're facing your pain and your grief, it doesn't feel orienting at all. And that's just the nature of it. It doesn't feel like you can orient yourself. It just feels like you're, you know, suspended in this no man's land. At least cognitively, I can tell you like, Hey, you're okay, you're safe. And so that's really the feeling I hope people have when they come into our space is that they're being held in deeply nourished, even though things are coming on done and being reorganized them to something else. And, and that, that's a beautiful thing. And, and, and that it's also a temporary space. No one stays in the wound forever. It's not the end. And we will emerge into a new life and be reborn and come back to ourselves if we choose. And then eventually we'll come back around to that life, death life cycle again. And we'll come back into that womb space into the dark night and we'll be rebirthed again. And that's the process that's sacred and just exactly right. And again, when we're so disconnected, From the natural cycles that are happening around us all the time. It feels like something's wrong with us when we die. And yet the earth is, I mean, we're sitting here in fall in our hemisphere, right? Watching the leaves die in first with great flair and glory, and then fall to the ground and become, you know, the, the compost that grows the tree. The next season, it actually protects like all of those leaves protect the ground. As winter comes around, it insulates the earth and keeps the topsoil from like being eroded. And it creates this, you know, safe place for the roots to root down and eventually composts into nutrients for the tree, for the fruit and leaves of the next season. And that like, again, if you are in that season where things are dying and you feel naked and stripped bare and. You know, in this dark night knows that. It's exactly right. The dark night is exactly right. Monica: And the, and the normalizing of those cycles. And I think, again, as, as women, like that was a revelation, right. To me is like, oh, we're supposed to die. Like over and over and over again, like it's part of the, it's part of the soul's journey. It's part of our evolution as a human being. And again, when we're suspended and maiden, we don't know that because we've been, we've been, Bergen: It's like trying to stay in perpetual spring Monica: Right. Like we've been sold this bill of goods around, like, this is life. And it's like, oh, it is the . And by the way, this does not mean that the. That right. Like, I've got a maiden here at home. Like what, what I want to do is to have her feel fully celebrated in the fullness of who she is in that maiden, and then know, and, and help her understand our, all of our daughters understand that we need these rites of passage in order to then pass into adulthood, where there comes with it, a deeper understanding of these cycles, because of course, in order to even come into mother, you have to experience like a death and a rebirth. And so. There's so many opportunities. And I always look, I don't know about you Bergen, but I've, I've tend now to relate to the world like, oh my gosh, winter is coming. Right. Like, and knowing that, that is the time to go inward, that there's like a, there's like a hibernating or, or a soul diving that happens during that season of my life, where I kind of start to dream or imagine where I'm headed next and imagining what I envisioned for my life. In the next year or the next five years. And knowing that like, I'm on my way there, but in order to get there, I have to release something here now. And so there's this beautiful way that I think as we surrender into these natural ways of evolving, we start to trust more and more. And that's where this deepening happens. This deep relationship with the sacred, feminine, and with our faith and with the integrative process of the masculine and the feminine within us starts to really, I think become more and more kind of harmonized. Bergen: Yeah. That I'm just thinking that trying to stay in perpetual spraying or perpetual maidenhood or in the garden is the death that we fear and that the natural cycle. Of change of seasonal death and rebirth is what we're really yearning for. And it, you do come back into the maiden energy when you come into the spring, after you've allowed those things to be let go of after you've sifted through the harvest and rested and come through, you know, the darkness of the winter of that season, you do rise back up again into the maiden energy, with your wisdom, with your sovereignty and tact, sorry. Instead of sacrificing your sovereignty on the alter of the patriarchy to keep up the facade that you're in maiden. You come into right relationship with the sacred cycle and are able to integrate the gifts of the maiden in wholeness with all the gifts of the cycle. That's right. And women experienced that, you know, through, if, if they have a menstrual cycle, we experienced that in our bodies with our menstrual cycle. And I really think it's such a beautiful divine design that if women can learn to be in right relationship as their bodies move through that cycle, that we can't. I understand the wisdom of it and not be afraid of it, not be afraid of the deaths that come because death is always a rebirth. It does something more beautiful and it's not really a death at all. It's just a letting go of the old and coming into something new. And if we're in right relationship with the seasons and the phases of the moon, maybe you don't have a menstrual cycle, but those cycles are still happening around you all the time. And as we just recognize that that is defined to the cycles are defined to the going down and coming back up and the dying and the rebirthing is all beautiful and important and vital to the life of the other parts of the cycle. Like you can't do one thing. Well, without also being with the other side of the coin, you know, without the health of the planet, doesn't do well. And we don't ever let things come back around and that's the same thing with our bodies. So it's really about. Just being in alignment with that sacred cycle that the sacred feminine, at least for me represents. And just to go back to what we do with Womb is I really want to, we have courses, we have micro courses, we have longer courses and we have circles and workshops and retreats to help women, particularly in my community. Like I said, who have a very peculiar brand of patriarchy that they've survived. And I want to use my experience to hold that space for them. But the principles of it are really universal and the deeper you go into it, the more universal it becomes. And so I want to help women like me to feel safe, to move through this process with witnessing and support. And yeah, that's what we really. Strive to do. And I know that's what, you know, you do with all of your projects, as well as just to sit with people and say like, there's nothing wrong with. You're doing it exactly right. Just surrender to it. It's it's when we're resisting, when we try to disassociate from the process, when we're resisting it, that it just piles the pain on and on and on, on, and, you know, yes, there'll be some hard things you have to pass through, but it's the holding onto them that creates the perpetual pain and the harm. And then we continue to harm each other because we're stuck in this cycle of not enoughness and woundedness that we just perpetuate and wound our children wound our friends and like can't be in right relationship with other women or with our spouses or. You know, with our work, because we're just projecting our, because that's, if you're not actually being with your wounds, you just project them. Those are the two options. We either project to them and harm other people, or we confront them and heal them and integrate and love. Monica: Well, yeah. And, and I love how you just described that, you know, and also in a hyper masculinized world, the revelation project is really about revealing the missing feminine, you know, and that's where we come back to the body. That's where we learn how to receive. That's where we learn how to lean in. That's how we learn to be with our feelings and our. Woundings and that's where we allow and that's where we start to be aligned. And that's where we meet the divine. That's where we flow. Right? It's like, it's like all of the ways that we have been suppressing are now being revealed and healed as we go. And so it really is kind of this layering process. And what I want to say to our listeners is like, you can trust your body to actually show you your way home to yourself. This is like, it can be really heady, right? When we get up in our heads about it. But all you need to kind of leave with today. Is this understanding that if you, if you want this in your life, your body will will know and show you the way, like if your cells have been resonating at all during this conversation, your body knows it holds the wisdom and it will, it will bring you home to yourself and it will show you step by step, how to get, how to get home. And that will happen in all three realms, you know, in all realms. So it's, it's really a beautiful process and Bergen. There's not many people that I could have created this conversation with because it is it's complicated, you know, it's really complex and it has all these layers and all of these ways that it intersects and intertwines and, and I just have loved. We've had an opportunity to express and to co-create this conversation together, because it's, I feel like we've kind of painted a foundational picture that we can revisit again and again, and build from. And so I just, I'm just so grateful for you. And as I said to you, the minute I met you, I was just drawn to know you more deeply, because the way that you show up in the world and the way that you express yourself is just so beautiful because you don't hold back. Like there's a way that you're so transparent, even as you're discovering, even when you don't know, even when you don't have the words you just, I see you kind of always trusting yourself to go just that much further, you know, outside of your comfort zone. And it's such a beautiful, beautiful thing. And, and, and I've just really enjoyed witnessing you in your process. Bergen: Thank you. For reflecting back to me, what you see being with me. I think that's such a, an important thing that women can do for each other. And I feel really loved and really seen, I don't know, it just, I spend so much time in the underworld, in my own underworld and in the underworld with other women that coming up and being able to articulate and kind of alchemize the things that I'm learning and integrate them in a conversation like this is really, really important to me and a really vital piece of me being well. Cause it's easy when I spend so much time in that dark night with other women in my own to just get lost in it, you can get lost down there, you know? That song the, in frozen to like go into the waters, but not too far, you'll be drowned, you know, like I'm like, yeah, I get to that place a lot. And coming back up, it's also really important and saying like, life is happening here and something beautiful and valuable can be brought up from down in the depths and brought up to the surface. And that's just as an important part of the processes, you know, going down like we've been saying, and this conversation is coming at a really critical time for me personally, because I am working through some really hard things. And I'm just present with that right now. And to come up for air and articulate and see the sea orient myself again. And. Share what I'm learning and just being with you, is this really a beautiful, beautiful gift. And I'm so grateful to have you as a sister in the work and to be seen by you. So thank you so much Monica: Bergen for our listeners. I will be sure to put Bergen's links in the show notes and the many, you know, texts that we mentioned today, like Marion Woodman. Now, I'm not thinking of, um, esta being called and, um, you know, The Woman that Runs with The Wolves and everything else that we mentioned, I know that like Austin always listens and he'll like, add these extra links and, you know, and also. Sarah Durham Wilson's work. Right. We'll be sure to put a link into follow her on Instagram and a link to her foundational programs. So if our listeners want to learn more about that program, they certainly can do so and Bergen you. And I will have to do a part two because I feel like there's like, we've just scratched the surface. Right. It's always more, there's always more and more layers. Right. Which is why somebody said out there, like more to be revealed, right? So till next time more to be revealed, We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed.