Podcast: The Revelation Project Podcast Episode Title: A View From The Clinic - Stories From The Other Side Host(s): Monica Guest(s): Patrice ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Monica (Host) | 00:00:03 to 00:00:35 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 a very special guest. Monica (Host) | 00:00:35 to 00:01:03 Patrice Dimato is here with us today, and I'm actually going to start with an excerpt of her writing before I even introduce what we're even talking about today. And this is from her book. And I won't tell you even the name of the book yet. When my kids were little, they hated it when I told them again and again that life's not fair, I usually strived to be cheerily. Matter of fact about this. Monica (Host) | 00:01:03 to 00:02:07 I generally reserved this comment for times when it could be a lesson absorbed from what I considered a minor injustice, something that could easily be brushed off with a snuggle or a trip to the corner bakery. Unfortunately for me, my kids are very sensitive people, and even though they now grudgingly admit that there's never been a truer statement, they were invariably infuriated at me for trying to rob them of their lust for moral outrage. At such a young age, moral outrage provides much necessary steam for getting a lot of jobs done, but as I grow older, I just don't have much of it left in me. Besides, I've been on too many different sides of any given fence to be fully convinced of the correctness of anything anymore. So this excerpt is from Patrice's incredible book called The View from the Clinic. Monica (Host) | 00:02:07 to 00:02:52 One Nurse's Journey in Abortion Care. She is a nurse with 39 years of experience working in a variety of specialties, such as critical care, women's health, and geriatrics. After 15 years, she left clinical practice to teach nursing. As an award winning educator at a top rank university, she found her passion for mentoring new nurses and continues to teach abroad. She recently returned to clinical work, and in addition to writing her recently released book, the View From the Clinic One Nurse's Journey in Abortion Care, she has returned to working in the abortion world, supporting post abortion patients via telemedicine. Monica (Host) | 00:02:52 to 00:03:28 So please join me in welcoming Patrice as we kind of venture into this emotionally charged world to talk about all things abortion and the very real stories of women who have all felt alone and helpless at times in this conversation. Welcome, Patrice. Thank you. What a book. I loved reading this book so much, and you do such a great job, really providing so many different lenses to look through. Monica (Host) | 00:03:29 to 00:04:01 It's just extraordinary. And, I mean, if you could not guess from just the fact that I read this book cover to cover, patrice, you also brought so much humor to a really difficult subject, and I found myself, like, laughing out loud on several. Occasions that was my know, people dread reading it. They think, oh, I can't read this, it's going to be so painful. But there's really a lot of life and fun and funny moments as well. Monica (Host) | 00:04:01 to 00:04:38 Yeah. And I mean, even starting with that particular excerpt about moral outrage, you even made that funny because and I love that you actually started the book with this whole climate, I guess, where so often, with so many subjects it's not just this one. But unfortunately for many of us women, we often see this subject get thrown around in all kinds of people except us getting to be heard around the matter. Exactly. There's much to say on this. Monica (Host) | 00:04:38 to 00:05:39 But before we dive into the moral outrage, tell us a little bit more about what led you to write this book. Well, it's perfect that you just said it that way because what led me to this, I walked away from abortion care because I couldn't explain to people. And I talk about that a little bit in the book, but it's complicated and it's juicy and it's loaded. But after, I guess just before the pandemic started, I was listening to, I don't know, a radio newscast or something and there was a politician on there and he was talking about how they are thinking, I forget what state they wanted to tax women's, sanitary products, tampons, menstrual pads, everything like that. And he said with such authority that these are luxury items, they are a luxury and why on earth would we not tax this? Patrice (Guest) | 00:05:39 to 00:06:05 Because don't, you know, women just go into the bathroom and they just like pee it out and then they go on their way. And I thought, oh my God, I can't sit here anymore. I can't this person is making decisions. First of all, he was a married man and doesn't know what goes on even in his own bathroom. And he's making these decisions with such authority about knowing what he knows. Patrice (Guest) | 00:06:05 to 00:06:21 And I said, that is it. Nurses have to start talking. We really do have to start talking and writing and writing. Well, and so what was my background? Yeah, my background was in abortion care. Patrice (Guest) | 00:06:21 to 00:06:47 And I thought, oh, I'll go there, then people will definitely be interested. Be a fly of the wall of an abortion clinic. How cool is that, that you don't have to actually go because I was there for eight years and in that again, so it was talk about moral outrage. I was just like, no, I'm done. Somebody has to tell these people how it is. Patrice (Guest) | 00:06:48 to 00:07:04 And I didn't know about the Roe v. Wade because it took me three years to write. So I had no inkling we, the Supreme Court would overturn Roe versus Wade. And that actually happened the week before my book launched last year. Oh my goodness. Patrice (Guest) | 00:07:04 to 00:07:34 And I thought, okay, well, that's confirmation that I needed to write this. It was very scary to do nurses. We don't write we don't write about these things in general, for a lot of reasons that you can imagine. I'm writing under a pen name, not only to protect myself and my family, but also my patients. We can't just speak openly about the stories that we know, that we see every day. Patrice (Guest) | 00:07:34 to 00:08:22 And we have to we have to figure out a way because we hold so much wisdom and insight. I have seen thousands now of women who have undergone abortion. It's really incumbent on me to tell you what I know in a way that's safe. I have to just underscore for my listener that again, I always say, Patrice, when women have had enough, when we just say just it's like through this outrage, I just want to point to, like, I can't listen to this nonsense anymore. And as we sit here, just this morning, there was another shooting in Lewiston, Maine, where my family is from. Monica (Host) | 00:08:23 to 00:09:00 And there's just so much of this in the world. And of course, we're seeing what's going on in Israel right now and it's like, when is this going to stop? And there's so much conflict and so much of this is actually driven by the propaganda and the media that wants us to be embroiled and embattled while things are going on in the background. Let's keep the peasants busy. Yes. Monica (Host) | 00:09:01 to 00:09:41 Fighting amongst themselves so that they can't see what's really going on. And it's so maddening. And I keep saying that the more women who write their stories and the more women who dare to speak out about the unspeakable and the taboo and tell the truth about their lives, the more we're going to shift and change and transform because our stories can't help but touch and move and transform people. And that is what is needed now. The feminine is the medicine for this upside down world and it's our stories, her stories that need to come to light. Patrice (Guest) | 00:09:41 to 00:09:56 Now. I'll get off my soapbox for a minute. No, absolutely. So what do you mean when you call this a holy war of the womb? Speaking of moral outrage, right, so I did. Patrice (Guest) | 00:09:56 to 00:10:25 I think I coined this. I call it the holy war of the womb. So it's a polarized quagmire. We are stuck. And so the way I think of this and as I started to do the research for the book and the history and how we got to where we are, it dawned on me that the people that are really riding their white stallion into Save the Unborn are really hearkening back to a holy war. Patrice (Guest) | 00:10:25 to 00:10:44 A war for the unborn. I think I call it what have I been calling it? The exaltation of the unborn. And so we see what people it's something you can sink your teeth into. I don't know what else I can do in the world, but I can save the Unborn that cannot speak for themselves. Patrice (Guest) | 00:10:46 to 00:11:06 It's just so juicy and you can really feel the energy of trying to fight for an innocent life. And we don't get that opportunity anymore in modern society to go in on a white horse, to save too many people anymore. World is too complicated for that. Patrice (Guest) | 00:11:08 to 00:11:38 And what we do know is we saw the January 6 rioters. They went right from January 6 right to fighting pro life riot, like starting riots and protests and things like that. I think there's a real need for a lot of people to fight the war and on the other side so I call it a holy war turned political. I mean, I guess they always were, weren't they? Probably when you look back through history. Patrice (Guest) | 00:11:38 to 00:12:11 And so a lot of what you're talking about that I love is that the media is trying to keep the peasants in line by fighting these same fights. And so both sides are really entrenched in their outrage and upset. And so while you have the pro lifers who are a lot of this is like, I've got to fight for the unborn. But a lot of it is about fear, fear that what if somebody had aborted me and I didn't get my chance? Fear of yourself as a fetus. Patrice (Guest) | 00:12:11 to 00:12:42 I could have been annihilated. That's just so scary. The fear that's based in misogyny, right, which most people are pretty aware of. And then on the other side is the pro choice fear. So when you talk about somebody who's pro choice and who's really fighting for reproductive justice and equality, you're looking at somebody who has really fears a personal and not fears it is experiencing a personal attack on their selfhood, on their ability for self determination. Patrice (Guest) | 00:12:42 to 00:13:16 And so that gets people equally like crazy. So I think we're just in that place where we're just stuck in this it's a quagmire. There are ways out, but I don't think either side is really going to be thrilled with what I think are ways out, which is through ourselves. It's through ourselves and owning the parts of ourselves that might actually be seen as from the other side. Does that make sense? Monica (Host) | 00:13:17 to 00:13:54 Yeah. Well, what I feel like you're kind of surfacing are the parts of us that have been exiled because we've decided that they're unlovable, unworthy, unbecoming. And it's actually through the unbecoming process, which is what I always talk about, that we remember literally those fractured parts and we remember our wholeness. Which brings us to our card, doesn't it? Right. Monica (Host) | 00:13:54 to 00:14:44 We chose the card today, the one. And what's really interesting about again, I look at cards, like lenses, like just a lens from which to view a certain subject. And I think it's interesting that we pull this card, the one in this conversation of abortion, because to me it says a lot about just the personal journey of revelation and the personal journey of coming back to wholeness from a very kind of fractured place. Just the very birth itself is the trauma of being separated from the one, right? And kind of coming into this bright light, loud, upside down world. Monica (Host) | 00:14:45 to 00:15:09 And there was a time that I didn't look at my life as a gift, that I really was like, who the hell wants I'm not afraid of death. Like, I'm afraid to live. That's what I used to say, because I was very much in that upside down. I had not done the unbecoming work. I had not done the remembering work yet, right? Monica (Host) | 00:15:09 to 00:16:05 And so as you reclaim these unbecoming part, these parts of ourselves, that for me, it was my erotic parts, my sexual parts, my mistakes, the things that I had done that made me unlovable, those were the things I had kicked out of the garden, and I had suppressed them. And so what was driving me was often the fear that you're speaking of, the fear of if somebody ever knows these things that I've done, I won't belong anymore. But what I came to understand is that I needed to forgive myself for those things, and I needed to belong to myself before I could ever hope to belong to anybody else. Yeah. So it's like this wild paradoxical ride. Monica (Host) | 00:16:06 to 00:16:49 And I think of abortion within this lens because for me, it's an invitation. It's always an invitation, but it's to do my own revelation project. And this is where I know you and I had a really feisty conversation when we were deciding whether or not we were going to record this episode. And our feist was all in this realm of do your own revelation project. Like, let's stop having everybody else we're so busy being out here doing everybody else's revelation project for them, especially when it comes to women, right? Monica (Host) | 00:16:49 to 00:17:11 It's like, can you get your boot the hell off my neck and let me do my own? And you do your own. It's maddening. But it's also the politics of this particular world that keep us enmeshed in these unwinnable wars. Let's just call them that. Patrice (Guest) | 00:17:11 to 00:17:36 Yeah, that's exactly it. And I do think that unity, consciousness is somewhere where we need to go, and it's not that easy. It sounds so nice. It just sounds so nice, you know, one la la la. But you have to own those parts of yourself that you don't like and that society has told you are really not okay. Patrice (Guest) | 00:17:36 to 00:17:57 And so people, when I was first working with publishers, they were like, why are you writing this? What is your purpose? And I said, this is my dream. My dream is that you can go to the playground or pick your kids up from soccer practice and somebody can say to you, how are you feeling? I heard you went through a tough time. Patrice (Guest) | 00:17:57 to 00:18:21 We can't even talk about ovarian cysts in a polite conversation, let alone or a miscarriage. It's so shameful. It's so secret. And there's nothing wrong with being private, but the shame and the unworthiness that go around having to make a God awful decision has got to stop. It's got to end. Patrice (Guest) | 00:18:21 to 00:18:46 We have to be able to heal this. It's time. Yes. My listener right now might be saying, well, what does abortion have to do with unity consciousness? Or what does abortion have to do with this card, the one so I guess I would ask you, what do you see when we look through the lens of this? Monica (Host) | 00:18:46 to 00:19:27 What do you see? Yeah, so I spent a lot of time at the end of the book talking about this, and it's a little spiritual for there are some readers who say, I didn't even understand what she was saying, but I encourage you to read it, because if you do understand it, you'll really understand it. And so for me, I think that we have so many opportunities to enter human bodies, and we do it many times. I am a big believer in that and in reincarnation. And the opportunity to come here know, it's kind of like winning a Disney cruise in the spiritual realm. Patrice (Guest) | 00:19:27 to 00:20:07 You get to come here, you get to, like you said, be born into this with no memory of who we really are as we're spirits, living, occupying human bodies, which we've done many times. And so when I think of it that way and then when I started to really go into some of the stories of the women that I know and I know they're speaking their truth when they say, I am so honored that you little potential person life force chose me, but I can't do this right now. Do you understand? And they do. And these stories have stayed with me. Patrice (Guest) | 00:20:07 to 00:20:23 It's an invitation. It's a life force that's asking, oh, would you like to do this with me? And you may or you may not. And it's really very forgivable a choice. Yeah. Patrice (Guest) | 00:20:23 to 00:20:56 And it's totally forgivable if this isn't a good time, I'll come back later, kind of thing. Right, right. You even write about that in one of the stories. Yeah, for my again, like, what I loved about this was, Patrice, you do such a great job of your viewpoint as a nurse and kind of all of the things you encounter joe, the pro life guy, out on the sidewalk every day, you enter the clinic and even right. Your friends in a weird way, we were friends. Monica (Host) | 00:20:57 to 00:21:13 Yeah. And then all of the ways that the woman at the front desk is it Marilyn or whatever you call her in the book right. Is just so solid in her conviction. She's been doing this for years. She's heard it all, she's seen it all. Monica (Host) | 00:21:13 to 00:22:17 And then you talk about the various fellow nurses that come in and out like the revolving door. What makes them come in, what makes them leave. And then the next section of the book is you literally get in the shoes of your patients and you tell their story through their life lens as if they're the ones, as if you're suddenly in their bodies doing their life. And what I loved about it was you give so many different perspectives and each and every story I was able to say, like, perfectly valid story, perfectly imperfect life, perfectly impossible situation. Even in the best of circumstances and the worst of circumstances, you see people make choices based on wherever they're at at that moment in their life. Monica (Host) | 00:22:17 to 00:22:58 And it really does, I think, this beautiful job of humanizing, this of humanizing everybody's experience as they make a choice about whether they're going to, just as you said, invite this life to flourish or not. Tell me more about what comes up for you when I mirror this back to you. Well, it's so affirming. Thank you. Because we talk about people who are empaths or highly sensitive people and I'm one of them. Patrice (Guest) | 00:22:58 to 00:23:31 And so it's not hard for me as a nurse to stop. And a couple of times I just say I just stop pen and getting ready to chart and my pen goes up in the air and I look up and then I just get a flash of who this person might be fully in their perfect imperfectness. And the joy and the privilege of my work is that I see everyone. Everyone. And I said, and I still say that you cannot find a more diverse group of patients anywhere. Patrice (Guest) | 00:23:31 to 00:23:51 Everybody from the banker to the soccer mom to who I always thought of was the teenage girls or fallen women like the mistresses. I've seen them, but not as many as you might think. Mostly what I would see are moms. Everyday moms. Moms who just can't, they can't do it. Patrice (Guest) | 00:23:52 to 00:24:23 They have to take care of the children that they have. And we do know that research does bear out that most of the women having abortions already have children for whatever reason. But that is the case. But the beauty of being a nurse is you see everyone and anyone and you get a glimpse at somebody's most tender or private moment. I mean, we take care of people from birth to death and everything in between. Patrice (Guest) | 00:24:23 to 00:24:52 We are there as witnesses, as, yes, a support person. But like you said, in the end it's everybody else. It's their own story and we get to be there for that. And what an honor and privilege for me to be able to tell you about all the myriad of humanity of people that I have seen and the stories and just the things that you might have thought you knew about people but you don't. And that they always surprise you. Monica (Host) | 00:24:52 to 00:25:16 Yeah, it's fascinating. You brought so many stories in that were really provocative. You had incest stories. You had stories of female prisoners who were brought in from jail who had gotten pregnant. You had stories of teenage girls. Monica (Host) | 00:25:17 to 00:25:39 You had stories of suburban housewives you had stories of, like you said, high powered professional women. You had stories of homeless women. You had stories of rape victims. There was every spectrum of women who couldn't speak the language. Grandmas, grandmothers. Monica (Host) | 00:25:39 to 00:26:29 It's so fascinating because, again, I think we can tend to think or not to think. Maybe that's just it is we're so busy, we have forgotten how to be thoughtful about another person's journey and respectful of another person's journey. And it's interesting because it makes me think about some of the misconceptions about coaching, as if you're coming to a coach, a life coach or a transformational coach or a leadership coach for them to tell you how to do your life. But if we're really good at what we do, we're here to ask you the questions to help you get quiet about what you need to do for your life, because I don't have your answers for you. No. Patrice (Guest) | 00:26:30 to 00:26:41 And it's never what you think. I mean, you might think, you know, for them, but you're not them. No. And that's more interesting. We talk about playing God. Monica (Host) | 00:26:43 to 00:27:26 Women playing God and making this no, you're playing God if you are going to make a determinant choice. It's really interesting to me. And who said that's what God does anyway? So it brings up all these questions for me about just our ability to truly kind of get relational with people and their stories and allow them to have it, allow them to have their own journey, their own story. It does feel like God, though, and I talked about that in Weeding my garden, and I don't know if that would really offend somebody, but to me, I'm making that choice. Patrice (Guest) | 00:27:26 to 00:27:43 I see. Oh, I'm going to keep this one. That one goes, these two stay. That one goes. And that also was a very big driving force in how I was going to shape the book as well, because we do is that playing God, like, I'm deciding every day what I'm going to let live and what goes, what stays, what goes. Patrice (Guest) | 00:27:43 to 00:28:12 And as women, we have an additional ability to do that with what comes into our bodies and what goes out. And so it's a huge responsibility. But as you said, it doesn't have to be so weighty. It doesn't you can come at it from a different angle, which I love that you just said. Well, and let's kind of go a little bit further here because this is an ancient practice. Patrice (Guest) | 00:28:12 to 00:28:36 Oh, yeah. I mean, that was probably my favorite part of the book, was how you're like, let me just take you back to school, people, because this has been happening since the beginning of time, and even I think you had some illustrations of ads in the paper in the. Right turn of century. Yeah, 20s. Okay. Monica (Host) | 00:28:36 to 00:29:00 20S, even. Tell our listeners a little bit more about the history of this and how natural and normal it is in other cultures. And why we're so intense about this in this culture. We're so righteously friggin driven. It's so bizarre. Patrice (Guest) | 00:29:01 to 00:29:20 Yeah, it's not a thing everywhere. It's just not a thing. And I did talk about because it was so shocking to me when I had my Chinese couple come in who were like, why are you making this such a big to? This was back when there was the one child limit in China. And they're like, we don't even understand. Patrice (Guest) | 00:29:20 to 00:29:43 Why do you keep asking us? What are you right, because you were asking them, are you sure? To do certain things right? There's a protocol. Like, you're very oh, yeah, very by the rules in the clinic and really all about the well being of the patient, making sure that they're sound and mind, body, spirit when they're going through this decision making process. Monica (Host) | 00:29:44 to 00:29:58 And this Chinese couple was like, okay, chill out, right? And plus they said, we don't get this choice. Like where we come from, this is not a choice. You will do this. And so yet again, yeah, like the. Monica (Host) | 00:29:58 to 00:30:11 Government says, go here, take this pill. Let's be done with this. You're not having another kid. Exactly. So it just broadens your worldview and again, living it every day. Patrice (Guest) | 00:30:11 to 00:30:52 Because I just saw people and my own jaw would drop because our worldviews are so personal to us, and we think they're so valid, and they're not really that valid. So the history was my favorite part, too, because I didn't really know. I mean, I had worked in It nurse working her job. And then when I went back and took the time to research abortion, the history of abortion in, I would say, the Western Christian world, judeo Christian world, my jaw dropped again, and I had to have my fact checkers look at this five times. I was like, I'm not crazy, right? Patrice (Guest) | 00:30:52 to 00:31:13 And I'm not. And so I'm going to take it from the backwards. So just as of the 1980s, mid eighty s, the Southern Baptist Church was totally for abortion. 80s, okay? So they were like, yeah, that's a Catholic problem, that's not our problem. Patrice (Guest) | 00:31:14 to 00:31:40 And they were really rather happy with it because there was a racist component to it. I'm just going to say that that these are poor people and in that they are often right. About 80, 85% of our population that has abortions are in a lower socioeconomic status. So they didn't care up until like, the mid eighty s, and they were all for abortion. They were like, yeah, that's cool. Patrice (Guest) | 00:31:40 to 00:32:15 Catholic problem, not ours. And so it wasn't until we really started getting into the fundamentalist politics that we've developed through the know, we went through the Tea Party and now know where we are with crazy politics. So it became a bandwagon only really recently for them. And when you look at the what shocked me was I thought the Catholic Church was behind all this in the United States, but it was not. It was was and there are great PBS documentaries on this and very short and fun articles about this. Patrice (Guest) | 00:32:15 to 00:32:53 And there's even a musical that it was coming out with Madame Rostell because she was like a wild woman anyway, who did abortions. She was an abortionist, very famous abortionist in, like, the turn of the century, the teens, I guess, 19 hundreds. Anyway, so what really the instigator on this and I don't want to say this wrong, but it was physicians, and I love my physician colleagues. And like, all of us, we all have a history that probably we had good and bad. So what happened was the American Medical Association had just been formed. Patrice (Guest) | 00:32:53 to 00:33:20 It was like the 19 the teens, the 19 hundreds, early 19 hundreds. And one of the first things they did was they medicalized pregnancy, childbirth, abortion, because there were ads for abortionists all over the newspapers. It was perfectly fine. The Catholic Church wasn't thrilled, but they didn't really sanction it. Their own history on this was fascinating. Patrice (Guest) | 00:33:20 to 00:33:40 They really said since the 15 hundreds. No, well, it was off and on. Started around 800 with Aristotle that conception isn't a thing. There's no insolment until 40 days gestation for a male fetus and 80 for a female. Okay. Monica (Host) | 00:33:40 to 00:34:19 And this cracked me up, okay? Because let's just pause for a minute, because as you so brilliantly do in your book, you're like, first of all, how does some male take the initiative in his hubris to decide when insolvent happens? Right. Has divine revelation from God, tells him that males are insold at 40 days. So way sooner than females. Monica (Host) | 00:34:19 to 00:34:40 By the way, I also want to say in the same breath, we know scientifically the irony that the female that we are all female. Yeah. All of us are female until we aren't. Yes. Right. Patrice (Guest) | 00:34:40 to 00:34:45 We all have that X chromosome, and it expresses exclusively for a while. Yeah. Monica (Host) | 00:34:48 to 00:35:07 And it's completely bullshit anyway, because again, nobody can know that. Wow. What's interesting is I drove by the abortion clinic the other day. I had to drop some stuff off, and there were protesters out there, some women, and they had their signs that said 40 days. 40 days. Patrice (Guest) | 00:35:07 to 00:35:16 And I was like, oh, are you saying male or female? They don't even know. They don't even know. It's like, why do we not eat fish on Friday? Most people can't tell you. Patrice (Guest) | 00:35:16 to 00:35:49 But so they are still touting that whole business, which also doesn't make sense because most of these pro life people say that life begins at conception. So there's no logic behind any of this. And it really was the medicalization the fledgling physician groups that wanted to and they were very worried because middle class women were getting a little too cheeky about deciding about their family size. Oh, too cheeky. Exactly. Patrice (Guest) | 00:35:49 to 00:36:12 Yeah. They were like upstarts. They were and they were very worried because they saw that the upper and. Middle class white community wasn't going to grow as fast as other communities. So this definitely was a way to prevent women from deciding what and how. Monica (Host) | 00:36:12 to 00:36:46 Their families should be self determining? Yes, because it was not an issue. You could get abortion pills. There were ads in the paper in the United States all the way up through the early twenty s and thirty s. And then, as I said, when the American Medical Association came in, they got some help from this crazy, puritanical, misogynist postal service general who was banning sending information to women about contraception or family planning. Patrice (Guest) | 00:36:46 to 00:36:49 It's a fascinating story. It's fascinating. Ad (Advertisement) | 00:36:55 to 00:37:29 Hey friends, it's Monica's co conspirator Libby here again and I've got some hot news for you. You've been hearing a lot about our six month unbecoming sisterhood coaching circle and registration is officially open, my queens. The journey kicks off November 7. So I thought I'd hop on here to just say hello and give you this personal invitation into the unique and special space that only the magic of women gathering together bravely can create. We've been divided and convinced that we cannot trust each other for far too long, and we are collectively saying enough. Ad (Advertisement) | 00:37:30 to 00:38:04 Now is the time for us to stop stuffing our opinions and to start speaking up. The world needs our voices. Now is the time for us to stop obsessing over what we have been convinced is wrong with us and to start being in deep self approval. We deserve to love ourselves just as we are. Now is the time to stop depriving ourselves of rest, of nourishment connection, play and pleasure, and to learn how to return to our senses and feel it all. Ad (Advertisement) | 00:38:04 to 00:38:38 Feeling good right now is possible and so necessary for us to make our biggest impact. Now is our time, sisters. And if you're getting chills as you listen to this, now is the time for you to head over to Jointtherevelation.com Slash Unbecoming to get all the juicy deets and to sign up for a chat with me and Monica. It'll be like the best blind date you've ever gone on and it actually gets to be all about you. So pop on over to Jointtherevelation.com slash Unbecoming to get on our calendar. Ad (Advertisement) | 00:38:38 to 00:38:41 My loves, we've been expecting. Monica (Host) | 00:38:47 to 00:39:16 You. Also illustrated the ancients and all of the herbalists and the hermal remedies, of which there is a multitude. Oh, yeah. You know, in terms of having spontaneous abortion, you know, what we don't consider oftentimes is the desperation of when we do somebody else's revelation project for them. Right? Monica (Host) | 00:39:16 to 00:40:27 Like, when we sanction and rule and outlaw a woman's freedom around her own body and her own choice, it creates a situation often of desperation which that is far more likely to end badly. So you kind of take us through how natural and available and always this has always been a woman's choice and a woman's wisdom and a woman's discernment and a woman's process. And a woman's cycle and a woman all of the ways that our ancient generations past have had this handled, let's say, and now we kind of come into the modern age and we are medieval about it. Do you know what I mean? It is so bizarre. Patrice (Guest) | 00:40:27 to 00:40:57 It is and it has been and it always will be. We know this. Women are having abortions regardless of whether somebody's saying it's okay or not. Now, how well they do it, how safely they do know. I was at a conference last week and I was so disappointed because the guy next to me didn't come from Uganda, I think it was Uganda, and his nursing presentation was about fisher women in some fishing village in Uganda and the rate of abortion there. Patrice (Guest) | 00:40:57 to 00:41:19 And I was dying to ask him, like, what are they doing? How are they managing? And so it doesn't matter where you are or what people are doing. So this whole medieval thing is and the young people today, by and large are saying, you have got to be kidding me. They don't even have any tolerance for it. Patrice (Guest) | 00:41:19 to 00:41:56 No. So it's kind of an interesting thing that I'm liking seeing young women sort of being like, are you effing kidding? Because I think that it does re up young women's awareness of the tenuousness of their abilities because we have had several generations of women who are like, that's not going to happen, nobody's going to roll back anything on us. Well, it can and it is depending on whether you have money, basically. It's very true. Monica (Host) | 00:41:56 to 00:42:35 It very much becomes a significant problem for those that don't have the means when it's politicized in the way that it has been and used as a tool of oppression, as it is and it always has been used as a tool of oppression. Yes. And we will be dealing with the effects of this come 1020 years from now. It's going to be really interesting because we will see higher rates of crime, poverty, lack of education, those things. There was a great, great study that was done and there's several books written by I can't think of her, Diana. Patrice (Guest) | 00:42:35 to 00:43:13 Anyway, it's the Turnaway study that was done out of UCSF and she's done a phenomenal job of looking at women who went to an abortion clinic and some were turned away for a variety of reasons and others were able to abort. The outcomes are just as you said, Monica, just as you said. The outcomes are just so poor in situations where women don't have the means or the choice. What do you think is important for us to talk about next? Because there's so many places we could take this conversation. Monica (Host) | 00:43:14 to 00:43:38 And I love that we've already traveled across these various points of view because I do feel I'm thinking from the listener's perspective, what do you think is most helpful for them to know and through what lens? Patrice (Guest) | 00:43:41 to 00:44:17 This is my thought my most important thing, and not just because this is the Revelation podcast. It is about self revelation. It is about the assumptions that you hold, why you hold them, and really being able to step outside of yourself or go deeper within yourself. So I had a talk with some young nurses, a podcast, a while back, and I really wanted to talk to them about frequent flyers. So in the medical community, we talk about our patients that are the revolving door. Patrice (Guest) | 00:44:17 to 00:44:49 They just keep coming back. And when you meet the burnt out, nasty healthcare worker that you've probably encountered, all of you have probably encountered at some point or another, that bitchy nurse. So you're like, what the hell is police, right? Like, police, police. Why are you so we talked about frequent flyers and this young nurse, he was so great, and he said, well, do you see repeat people getting abortions? Patrice (Guest) | 00:44:49 to 00:45:04 Because we all think, oh, I'll never do that again. I would never have an abortion again. Okay, get real. I see people who have had 15 abortions, okay? I see that. Patrice (Guest) | 00:45:04 to 00:45:41 I just had a patient the other day, it was her 17th pregnancy at 42 or something. So people live in their own assumption bubbles. And the one big assumption that almost everybody has is that it's a terrible thing that you don't want to keep doing. And I'm just going to ask you why. Now, there are some medical reasons for it and emotional reasons if you're concerned, but I will tell you that the vast majority of women who have had an abortion, their number one reaction over time is relief. Patrice (Guest) | 00:45:41 to 00:45:56 So not everybody is agonizing and shame over this. I just want people to be clear. And in certain communities, it's absolutely okay. This is your fourth, your fifth abortion. It's just like what happened to me. Patrice (Guest) | 00:45:56 to 00:46:29 And so you think about self determination. So look at your own biases around self determination, around somebody who's had 1012 abortions and just keeps getting pregnant. My favorite story of the book is about the Latino grandma who keeps getting pregnant and the judgment around her. And she's that lady. She's that lady you see at Walmart with a bunch of little kids running around, and she's wearing the house coat and she's shuffling around and her ankles are a little swollen and she's wearing her socks and sandals. Patrice (Guest) | 00:46:29 to 00:47:00 And you're thinking, you wouldn't think that she would be the one that keeps getting pregnant, right? And really examine where you're coming from on all of this and the assumptions that you make that, oh, it's a terrible thing, but at least it's know for that moment in time. And there's something to be said for that frame of reference. But I just invite you to go deeper. Go deeper into the people that you hold judgment about. Patrice (Guest) | 00:47:01 to 00:47:23 Go deeper into Joe the protester. Why is he there? What motivates him? What about the lady that's like, standing there screaming at people on the sidewalk. What about the bitchy nurse who says the most cruel and insensitive things, go to those difficult places and find them in yourself? Patrice (Guest) | 00:47:23 to 00:47:33 Because that's the way through. That's the way through. Right? Like, where's my inner Joe? The protester? Patrice (Guest) | 00:47:33 to 00:47:48 Yes. That has to stand on the sidewalk. We all have an inner Joe. I love that perspective, and it's so exhausting to judge other people. It's so exhausting. Monica (Host) | 00:47:49 to 00:48:19 And I also really love that in the book, you confront your own parts of you come across your own judgy parts because you notice that you're judging her for the fact that she's been here before many times. Right. You meet those parts of yourself that you can no longer avoid because you're right in the thick of it. Right. With the truth of the human experience from a woman's perspective. Monica (Host) | 00:48:20 to 00:49:33 And the truth of a woman's experience is that we have many, many years of our lives are spent making sure every single month that we haven't missed our period and that we're not in our fertile window and that we're not how many hours and minutes and days and months and years have women agonized and had to really just manage this anxiety alone? First of all, and we've been so isolated from each other in our homes with our families, in these shrouds of shame and loneliness that keep us from really having this conversation out in the open and also realizing it and recognizing this as part of women's health care. Right? And it's the same as and I talk about my infertility patient. I will say that that was a composite partly of myself. Patrice (Guest) | 00:49:34 to 00:50:02 And so how do I who can't conceive, no matter how hard we're trying, then you just see people who are getting pregnant 17 times. Like you said, it's all part of the same spectrum. And yes, there's pain. It is painful either way. I used to say all the time, I find it equally painful to not be able to get pregnant when you want to or to get pregnant all the time when you don't want to. Patrice (Guest) | 00:50:03 to 00:50:46 It's painful. And the other thing that I always want to invite people to say, especially somebody who's super, super political about this, is that there is a loss, no matter what, if you chose an abortion. There is often grief, sometimes there's not, but a lot of times there is. And there is a loss that you have to mourn, you have to honor as part of your experience and as part of losing a potential even if you didn't want to get pregnant. Many women are thinking and they have dreams about the baby that they might have had, and so you really have to go into those, like you had said, the dark corners. Patrice (Guest) | 00:50:46 to 00:51:09 And it's okay once we do that, and we can do it with each other, just with transparency and no shame. It's so liberating, isn't it? Yeah, well and what else is coming up for me is back to that initial paragraph that I read. It's life is unfair. It's also constantly in motion. Monica (Host) | 00:51:10 to 00:51:40 It's like we forget that we are part of the cycle, that there is life and death and rebirth and it's happening around us all the time. It's happening to animals and plants and seasons and women are kind of the embodiment of nature. This is what we do. And a woman gets to say what she wants in her world. She is the great creatrix. Monica (Host) | 00:51:40 to 00:52:42 And she decides what gets to come into her garden at what time, just like you said before. And so we think about it really is abortion, I think, is this really interesting conduit for us to really take a really strong look at ourselves as if there's no one out there to judge. Turn that finger right back at yourself and get real curious about where you have moral outrage and where you have unfinished business with some part that needs to continue to stay away from the deeper truth. That just needs to keeps pretending not to know that it's causing a big problem for yourself and everybody else? In a lot of ways. Patrice (Guest) | 00:52:42 to 00:52:53 Yeah. It's just kind of the mischief. It's so shameful. It just feels so shameful. It always feels like your fault. Patrice (Guest) | 00:52:54 to 00:53:11 And if you got pregnant from a rape or something, you still feel like it's your fault. I don't know. I do. Being touched or advances on my body that I didn't ask for. I feel ashamed and dirty. Monica (Host) | 00:53:11 to 00:53:47 Right. And it's such a other again, this is what we're all unbecoming from. We're unbecoming from all of these ways that we've been programmed to be at fault. To look through the lens of sin instead of through the lens of the one or to look through the lens of shame versus through the lens of choice or to look through the lens of it's easier for me to manage her life than it is for me to manage my own. So there's a lot of opportunity here. Monica (Host) | 00:53:47 to 00:54:09 There's a lot of grit. But I do think that it's time that we see our way out of this polarized quagmire, as you call it, by getting right with our own judgments. Yeah, it is hard. It's really hard work. It's not comfortable. Monica (Host) | 00:54:09 to 00:54:38 None of this is I don't think it's supposed to be. Otherwise it would be. Well said. So we've kind of been working to demystify this experience. So is there a particular story or I don't know any other part of this that you think we should talk about today? Patrice (Guest) | 00:54:39 to 00:55:23 I always tell people that this book was written as a love letter to nurses, really and truly. And it's really interesting because I don't think that any to my knowledge, no other clinicians who work in abortion care talk or have written or speak out. We just don't. We're told that we have to keep everything super, super private. The way I got back into working in abortion care was I wrote the rough draft, and then I contacted my old colleagues from 20 years before and said, I wrote this book about everything about the abortion clinic. Patrice (Guest) | 00:55:23 to 00:55:37 And, boy, I was given patrice, I don't think you should do this. I think that you're endangering yourself. Do you really want to be out there? Do you want people protesting at your house? Because they do. Patrice (Guest) | 00:55:37 to 00:56:19 And we know that some of the clinic workers, what they do to try to keep clinic workers safe is beyond my scope. And they said, we don't even want to tell you, but we do work with the FBI pretty regularly, quite regularly, and we know things that you can't possibly know, nor do we want you to, because we want you to be able to do your job. And so I think that there is a whole other experience of fear that comes from the clinicians that are providing care. It's a lonely specialty, I can tell you that. You don't go to professional conferences or even a cocktail party. Patrice (Guest) | 00:56:19 to 00:56:29 It's like, oh, you're a cardiologist. That's fantastic. Oh, you take care of the newborns in the newborn ICU. Fabulous. Oh, you're a hospice nurse. Patrice (Guest) | 00:56:29 to 00:56:59 And so it's a lonely road if you choose to go into abortion care. And there's a lot of fear from us about being able to talk truthfully and with a lot of transparency about who we are and what we do. And so I really felt like this was angle that just hasn't been explored. We do hear from women. There's a great group called We Testify, and they are phenomenal. Patrice (Guest) | 00:56:59 to 00:57:24 They are out in a minibus telling their stories. They coach women on how to tell their stories safely without getting attacked or followed. But we haven't done that for the professionals who are risking it and being out there and doing a job. My mom was horrified. She's like not that she was pro life. Patrice (Guest) | 00:57:24 to 00:58:03 She just couldn't be proud, though, of the work that I had chosen to do, and she certainly couldn't tell her girlfriends about it. So I think that's another thing. We hold the sanctity of our patients privacy as paramount, and that is a great thing. But it's also we can't tell what we know with that. And we're all so scared to tell the stories because liability and the whole malpractice, and it's just such a mess that I think that as soon as patients can release their stories and talk, then we can as well. Patrice (Guest) | 00:58:03 to 00:58:37 And I think that's another healing aspect that I haven't really thought about talking about much with people outside the profession. But we need that. This is a love letter to nurses and to anybody who has the courage to walk in and voluntarily work every day in the clinic. Yes. Well, I know, too, Patrice, that there are so many incredible women out there who are remembering their sovereign rights, as we were talking about earlier, some of the young women. Monica (Host) | 00:58:37 to 00:59:21 But there are so many women who are really harking back to wise women wisdom about cycles and fertility and just some of these ancient practices that have always been known. And with that kind of reeducation, I think that so much new potential and possibility can begin to grow and then flourish. Because I think that we had gone through this forgetting the more kind of patriarchy, this dominator culture came in to control and manage. Monica (Host) | 00:59:24 to 01:00:01 Women and children have always been the ones who have been on the suffering end of that spectrum. And I think that these renegades, these rebels, these unbecoming women will transform the world. The ones that are not ashamed, the ones that are done apologizing, the ones that want to put the shame right back where it belongs, and the judgment, it's like, that's not welcome here. And just like, wow. I mean, I wish I had half of what I see in some of these younger women. Monica (Host) | 01:00:01 to 01:00:24 It's just really astonishing and deeply inspiring because you're right, they're not having it, and they don't even have time for it. It's like water off a duck's back, almost. And I think some of us from these more entrenched generations are just hanging there with our mouths open, catching flies. Like, what? Monica (Host) | 01:00:26 to 01:01:17 So I do believe that there is a tremendous amount of hope. And I love what you said, too, about this just being a love letter to women like you who have been such a stand, such a stand for women's rights, such a stand for women's humanity. I'm getting a little choked up because it's so true. Like, there's not one woman who's listening to this that doesn't know somebody who has gone through this or who's gone through it many, many times. And so it's really like a revelation to me in this moment that this has been so secret for all of you that you've had to really because I know what that feels like, that isolation, that silencing that having. Monica (Host) | 01:01:17 to 01:01:44 To swallow the truth and be invisible in order to preserve or help the ones around you to not suffer simply because of their association to you. So thank you. Thank you for just everything that you've been doing and for what you've dared to do with this book, because it really is a treasure, and it is god, it's just been a pleasure to have you on. Thank you. Thank you. Patrice (Guest) | 01:01:45 to 01:02:21 It's so good to be able to talk and to go deep. Everybody wants to make this so surface level, and it's just not. And this has just been a delight. It has. So until next time, for our listeners, we'll be sure to add some of the resources, and I'll even go one step further and let you know that you can find out more about this book and where to get it at WW theviewfromtheclinic.com. Monica (Host) | 01:02:21 to 01:02:54 Patrice, I want to make sure you remain safe but after the show, you can give me any additional links and I'll add those to the show notes that you want people to know about. And for my listener, until next time, more To Be Revealed thanks, Patrice. Thank you. 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. Monica (Host) | 01:02:55 to 01:03:00 We thank you for your generous listening and as always, more To Be Revealed.