135_Sarah Durham Wilson === Monica: Welcome to the Revelation Project Podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the chance 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 one of my favorite, favorite, favorite, beautiful women. Sarah Durham, Wilson. And her dog, Sarah is a women's rights of passage leader and writer. Her offerings are rooted in arche, typical mother work and resurrecting the Rite of passage from maiden to mother. She has taught courses and led retreats. For thousands of women over the past decade. And she works with private clients. She previously worked as an arts and music writer in New York city writing for rolling stone VH, one GQ vanity fair and interview magazine in 2010. She began writing under the pen name. Do it girl, which provided inspiration for women interested in the path of the witch and the priestess. She lives in Martha's Vineyard with her daughter Avalon and two familiars, Odin, and Ridley, whom you just heard Maiden to Mother, her first book with sounds true. Publishing. Out on June 7th, 2022. Congratulations, Sarah. And welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Sarah: I'm so it's so nice to be with you, Monica. And you, you, uh, also are a recent graduate of the, the teachers training yes, Monica: I am. And wow. What an eight months? That was so for my listeners, yes, I just. Took the eight month teacher training with Sarah and just an incredible group of women who oh, yeah. Are, you know, committed to doing this work. And really it's about helping women come from what we call wounded maiden into the archetype of the mother. So we're of course gonna be talking a little bit more about that today and why that's so important right now. So, yeah, Sarah, where do you wanna start? Because you've really just completed that incredible journey with all of these women. First of all, how does that feel? Sarah: It doesn't, it's never complete is the problem with this work. Like we did. We only had an eight month journey scheduled and I was shying away from the word container because there's some problems people are having with that. It's like we're in such treacherous, brand new territory and spiritual, feminine landscape. So I'm half there with you and half the other place back to Maden to Mother teacher training. It just, you know, we barely got into the mother work because. The work is the underworld. Yeah. And so we spent three quarters of the training not to scare anybody away for next year or this year's training, but you rarely find an opportunity to spend time in the dark with a bunch of other women. Dissembling your patriarchy dissembling, your healing, your wounded maiden, putting her back to sleep and course correcting in your life. Because yesterday I was like, why is the mother making me go so slow? I'm on, you know, there's so much, I wanna say there's so much I wanna do. And she's like, because. Like, if you, I always come back to the analogy of a ship or a car going really fast. The only way to take a huge turn to change course is to go is to slow down because you, you literally can't PHY. I mean, you and I both failed physics, I'm assuming, but we both know that , if you're going 90 miles an hour or, you know, Wrote a beautiful essay to the teacher to help your grade or something. But you know, it figured survived somehow in physics, but you know, you're going 90 miles an hour. One way you, if you turn you'll you'll die, you you'll have to slow down. And so I am being course corrected towards, I'm not gonna use pleasure in the way it's like, um, That it's like such a buzzword right now, because we keep like ripping the sacred from these words with mm-hmm their oversaturation, but uh, more towards, uh, the work of Audrey, Lord Angela Davis, bell hooks, Adrian Murray brown of like, okay, if I'm in this forever, which means I'm fighting this war until I die. How am I gonna sustain that in a way where I don't burn out and die. Monica: Right. Sarah: I say, wouldn't, they just, just love it. If we just combusted it's like burn up and rage. Monica: Right. Sarah: And so as a white woman, new to the intersectional feminist fight, you know, I started off without. The wisdom of the women who have been fighting so much longer. Monica: Mm-hmm , mm-hmm Sarah: Rest pleasure, regeneration, you know, and radical self love. Yes. And so, as I find my self more and more in queer spaces, which does not about this, not about my sexuality, about that, I've never belonged and I'm an other. Now that there's this radical acceptance happening. I'm in a, a brand new space as a woman. And I owe that to my last made into mother teacher training. So the, the, the idea is, you know, you're always gonna come out new. Monica: Right. Sarah: Where it brought me last year was more of like where, where we last talked of, like using my work for all kinds of rights of passage, like grief and yes, yes. And I did. So I took the bones of that. For the, for the heartbreak passage mm-hmm and then I, and the men passage like to move through wounded maiden in love to healthy relationships romantically. And also nobody talks enough about friend breakups and how to do them in maturity. And we have both, we have so many ghosts of friendships that never got resolved, just ghosted left, whatever in us that there hasn't been a, a mature, healthy dialogue for moving through female breakups, everything. So focused patriarchy on romantic love, still this idea that, you know, romantic love will save you. And so women are so focused on that. They don't actually use that relationship work to navigate friendships, which right. As I know when women come to me, yes, they've been hurt by romantic partners, but female friendships. Have really wounded them. Monica: So Sarah for my listeners too. Oh, sorry. No, no, no. So forever it's okay. No, what I love about what you're saying, and this is where I wanna kind of correlate it so that my listeners kind of can reframe this what you're talking about. So I'm talk, I talk about it in the realm of like the unbecoming process and when we start to right. Do the work of deprogramming or, or deconditioning, what we find and what you're talking about is. what I call and what you call the dissent, where we go within. And we start to remember who we are, but while we're doing that, we are dismembering or really taking apart and looking at all of the ways that we were trained to be, or to be together as women, how we were trained to be together in friendship, how we were trained to look at relationships, how we. It's like, it's this dismantling of this horrible, what they fed us in a fairytale, which is actually a total frigging nightmare. and what we're, what we're experiencing as we kind of go into this underworld and what Sarah was talking about before is. Rarely do we get an opportunity to truly do that in sisterhood where we witness each other? Sarah: Yeah. Monica: Where we don't fix each other, where we. Create and hold space for each other to kind of come undone. Yeah. And this is what I call saying yes, to the mess as well. This is what Sarah's pointing to, and this is the work of going in and helping to heal the wounded maiden in order to bring her into the Archetype of the mother. And this is why I love this work so much. Is. Well now, you know, like, this is why I love this so much is because this is what I'm talking about all the time, even before I discovered Sarah. And when I did, and I discovered her work, I was like, oh my gosh, I have to do this. I have to do this because this is, Sarah: And you were right. I'm so grateful that you followed that call. Monica: Yeah. Well, I know my body tells me, you know, all the time. Yes, go this way. And so, yes, the work is never, it never ends, but here's what I've discovered is that what you're talking about is how to take care of ourselves in such a way that our work is sustainable. Yeah. That we can give back to the world and come back to the world and offer and be in service to the world. Not. In the way that we were taught to, you know, to do this, but in a way where, yeah, exactly where we're really coming to the world with a true understanding of the work that needs to be done in order to turn this ship around. Sarah: So the reason I just started off on all that is because you've always, since I met you been a proponent of. What I used to call or what was called, like the weirdness about me, the strangeness about me, you know, and then the diagnoses earlier this year, I finally had an answer for the question I get at least twice a week. What is your deal? But, and so that's been of relief and also, I just know I'm in a safe space to be my rainbow self. Yes. You know? Monica: Yes. All of it, bring it. Yeah, Sarah: I've really been through. Um, so my therapist sat with Marion Woodman for 20 years. Marion Woodman is a huge reason why Monica and I are talking because of her, her devotion to archetype that she gave me the clues. She told me in, in a few, I can't remember which books they were all scattered around me at the time, but she gave me the clue if there's an immature feminine and there's a mature feminine. And then I was like, well, I know I'm not mature in at 33. And so I'm this, but how the fuck do I get here? And that's where it all began. Monica: Yeah. Sarah: Oh, but so still my, my therapist, as I, as I unmask, right. My from normalcy or typicalness or whatever I did to survive and fit in, in my mother's house. I, and, and still calls these things, my super traits, you know, the stuff that I used to be so afraid of, just like when you're like, my body tells me, I always know, like it's just super traits as opposed to. you're so spooky. Don't say that you always say the wrong thing. Don't even . And so when Marion Woodman got, uh, uterine cancer, what saved her was now, you know, this was in the eighties. So she didn't talk about gyps the word, gypsy being a, a slur. You could call it the Bohemian archetype mm-hmm . And so that has come to me. And the more I look into like Bohemian instead of like the way like TJ max home goods or whatever, went crazy on like boho chic, it's like a very different thing. It's like a. Outlaw artist, outlaw kind of archetype mm-hmm, where you really don't live inside the culture. You've really. And so that's where, and so we pulled this forced card before the podcast and this Bohemian arche, uh, archetype is really with me of you kind of how you think of like a nice men or someone mm-hmm, just like. Fuck your nine to five. Monica: Yep. Sarah: Fuck your like normal way of dressing. Fuck your way of telling me how to live my life, you know? And so it's really been this beautiful discovery because that archetype led, um, and it's something that comes to women at midlife. And it's what there have you heard of Lagan? Look mm-hmm okay. So Lagan look is a kind of style that when you look it up, you'll say, oh, like, When you see like some badass crone in a photo shoot she's in Lagan look. So it's all like layers of like beautiful patterns and prints and silks. And you're just like Bohemian archetype. Monica: Okay. I love that. Sarah: So it's this like I'm out patriarchy. And so then there's this like, okay. I'm out. Like for me, there's like I'm out, but like then. You know, so I was like, I'm out. And now what, like, there's this dark moon phase of like, I just know that I'm out, but then there's this colorful, like Bohemian way of living that you see women who have been shoved out of the, the culture, right. The way we become. But the opposite of invisible is rainbow spectrum. Right? Like, so then they they're like, I see me. I don't care, you know, and their past, if no one's looking, I might as well. Do it up, you know? Right. Like, and so they. Monica: Yeah, like the full right. Just, just unapologetic the full range. Sarah: Yes, it's delicious. And so now that I'm in that it's like, okay, I had to get outta the, the black and white of patriarchy, the binary of patriarchy, even my gender script is completely ripped up. You know, none of it's. I never fit into any of it. Um, I ha you know, many men tell me, wait, you're more of a man than me. And I'm like, well, I thank you, peasant. You know? And that like, I, you know, they're like, you don't need me. And I'm like, no, I don't. Yeah. I'm looking for pleasure and companionship, but I certainly don't need it else. Monica: Yeah. I don't need you to complete me. I don't need you to fix me. I don't need you to save me. Like we're not doing that here. Yeah. No Sarah: Dance with me. Cook with me. Play with me. Play. Yeah. . Yeah. But like you got for a fucking walk. Monica: Yes. support me, honor me. You can do all of that. Yes. Sarah: Yeah. Partner with me. Monica: But, but, and I don't mean support financially. I mean just, oh no partner support, right? Like that. True. Yeah, energetic support. Absolutely. Sarah: So now it's like, I went from like, okay, what is after patriarchy? Because it's sort of how the, you know, the overlords and the upper culture tele like don't, if you leave the upper culture, you'll never come back. Like, no one's ever done it. Like this is all there is. And so leaving it and being like, well, maybe, maybe I'm gonna be all alone. And then finding that this archetype actually leads back to the archetype that came to Marion in her Bo in her cancer. And. Follow everything I do. Mm-hmm and it was the Bohemian and archetype that led her to FLA, to Flamengo and salsa dancing that led to her healing. Mm-hmm . And so I'm with that right now. So if you can tell from kind of what we first started talking about my biggest. Besides, um, the dismantling of white feminism. I'm so into the midlife crisis, work the midlife and it just thrills me. It, it, it really does. And it's the next step. And you can again use the bones of the maiden to mother work. To do the, the midlife Rite of passage. Absolutely. Monica: Absolutely. Well, and right, because I think that the bridge into the other is the mother right. So it's, it's like the archetype of the mother becomes that sustainable place from which we can do the rest of our life. Sarah: Yeah. But the life doesn't work in wounded maidens. Monica: Exactly. So for our listeners, just even though Sarah: I know what you're gonna say, I know what you're gonna do. Monica: What am I gonna say? you're like, please don't make me do it. Don't make me do it. So for our listeners, Sarah: I've been like never the movie weekend at Bernie's. Yes. The like last 10 podcasts before I took a break. It was like, when you prop up the dead guy, you know, oh God, I know. I know. And they're like, tell them what baby mother is. Like somebody had to talk for me, but they're like moving my mouth. Monica: I know because, well, and that's, that's what I love about you is because you're like, Please don't make me perform. I just wanna be real. And we, and that's the Sarah I. Love. And so, so be with me and tell, like, tell me from your fiercest most alive place today. Like what the hell is made into mother. Sarah: Oh Lord I'm mercy. Okay. So Mainden to Mother is the idea that in my ancestry, which is mostly Celtic and Nordic, is that we would, we lived in our seasonal realities along with earth, you know, aligned with the earth religions of the great mother. So that means we knew when we were. Spring, we knew we were in the beginning of our lives and it gave us orientation in our life. Like I am now in the becoming phase, like the waxing moon, like the spring, like the morning. So this is the time where I seek out my life, where I become I'm in my becoming of the woman. I will be okay. Now I am in my summer. I'm in the mother. I am in that, the great bloom, the glory. I am deeply rooted. I am open and offering my work to the world. I'm in my full moon. I am in my full bloom. I am in, you know, high summer, glorious time in life. Okay. And then if I, you know, when I do the edits of the book, now I am in Empress the fall because they skip that and I don't get that. So I'm in the, in between season, I'm in the waning, but I am not. Yet in my winter, I am in that season of like, my legacy is like shining bright, like the leaves in autumn, like brilliant reds golds. And it's, I have be, you know, it's past my summer. I've become the woman I am now like basking in the legacy of this woman I have become. And then crone is really when. Turn in winter, slowly returning to the earth. And I am in my leaving season. Mm-hmm . I am in my season where one foot is in the door, in the other world. And when I speak, I speak from the truth of that place as if I'm giving out deathbed wisdom. And so the idea of coming into mother is like, okay, now I'm on the front lines of my life. Now I'm in my maturity. Now my I'm my own mother. Now I am a guide, a leader. And we never get. And, and so when you take away the goddess, you take away seasonal realities and the patriarchy, you know, destroys the village. Colonizes. The village begins the capitalistic system where we no longer are in community and village or working with the land, we're extracting from it. And we are competing with each other. That of in one, you know, a, a family of a village, a community of a village. You, when you take away rights of passage, what you do is you take away evolution. Self-actualization maturity in, um, not hyper individuality, but individuality of like that each one of us in nature, although we are all, we all rely on each other. We each also let, just like in nature, have a purpose and are individually unique. And we bring that to the quilt of. Communal ecosystem. So what happens is you get women who stay in what I call the plastic spring, where they never grow up. They are patriarch to the, to the point where they think their only worth is their looks. Um, they believe the false script that they are fragile and needs saving. They compete amongst each other. They become vain because of the system telling them that they're only worth is their looks. They're very reactive. And they cannot take care of themselves, let alone a burning world. And so the idea of coming into maturity into your rights of passage is women who can take a stand, not only for themselves, for each other and the planet. Monica: Yes. Thank you. Okay. And I love. When you were talking about mother, I don't know if you know this, but you were, you were pointing to your throat. You were, you were going like this. Did you know that? Mm-hmm okay. I just was curious about that because there was something there for me that I was making up about. Like the mother is also when you're using your voice, like your true voice in the world. Mm-hmm . And that for me, the power behind that too, is that when we mean what we say, and we say what we mean. That we actually are fully in our authorship, our creative power and words create worlds. And in order to dismantle this one, in order to uncreate this one, we have to find our true voice mm-hmm um, and we have to speak our truth, right? That's right. That's right. Ridley. You, you go. You go girl, just not right now. You go girl. Just not right now. Sarah: um, so that's where I think, I think I gave you a pretty good Maiden to mother spiel. Monica: You did. You gave me the, okay. So yeah. So Sarah, thank you so much for spieling for me for a minute. Maybe I'll just call the podcast, the Maiden to Mother spiel. Okay. So, so wanna watch Sarah get activated or hear Sarah get activated. Okay. So what's the difference between wounded maiden with what's happening right now in the world with abortion laws and Mother what's the difference? Give me, Sarah: I don't even understand that question. What's the diff what? Monica: Well, okay, so let me put it this way. We've got this. I'm seeing what I'm seeing in the world right now is a whole lot of wounded maiden that are also mistreses of the patriarchy. So talk to me about that. Sarah: Are they, you made, oh, the ones that are supporting what's happening? Monica: Yes. Sarah: Oh, I mean, I haven't really been. I've been more listening to, to black intersectional feminists right now being like, where are the white women? When our children are getting shot in the street? Where are the white women? When the stats come up about how many women, how many black women die in birth? You know, mm-hmm, so out. I can even, because the whole thing about me is when you lose patriarchal consciousness and you come into mother. Earth consciousness. It doesn't make any fucking sense what's happening. Right. So I have lost any, I literally don't under fucking stand what's happening right now. As far as like white supremacy and colonization, still being something that we're dealing with that we're even having this conversation doesn't track for me. Like what I'm tracking is, oh, white women will show. When it comes to their bodies, but when it comes to black women's bodies and women of color's bodies and children, they're quiet. Monica: They're quiet. Sarah: So that's where I am with this. Yeah. Yeah. And so do I think wounded maidens are Karens. Is that what you're asking? No. What I'm trying what's the difference between a wounded made in and a care and nothing? Monica: Nothing. Okay. Good. Good. Yeah. All right. Well, that's a, that's an actually, that's an excellent perspective. Sarah: Well, I really wanna have Mackenzie Mac on, um, one of my favorite teachers of oppression. Anti-oppression teachers, social justice teachers. And they, they have always, I mean, two years ago, I said, I have to have you on so we can talk about white fragility and wounded maidens. And, and they were like, whenever you want me, although. Now they're hard. It's hard to get them for a speaking engagement because they're so needed in the world right now. But wounded, maidens and white fragility for me, Karism, it's all, it's all the patriarchal will save us. The fathers are good, so they haven't had their AANA moment. When she's down there on the meat hook and she's like, I'm sure they're coming to save me. Right. And they're like, no, you broke the rules. You went to the dark. Monica: Yeah. We don't go there. Sarah: Right. Well, you went, you went dark, you know, you rebelled, you dissented. Yeah. We don't protect dissenters. We don't protect people that don't submit to us. Yeah. Get outta my face, get outta my face. Monica: And part of what I love kind of. Unpacking. I mean, I don't love it while I'm unpacking it, but what I see is available for so many women as they do this work is looking at how we got here. And. The generational wounds that continue to come. Right? Because there's, most of us that are wounded maidens have had wounded maidens as mothers. Sarah: Sure. And something that you that's important part to stop on because we didn't bring that up before just for listeners. Like, you know, just because you are a biologically, a mother, a small, small M does not make you an archetypal mother, big M right. And many of our mothers. Were mad, wounded, mad doing the bidding of the patriarchy. And when they, and when a mother has the tone of the patriarchy and the, the rules of the patriarchy she's becomes what we call the death mother, the patriarchal feminine, upholding the, the values and the systems of patriarchy Monica: That's right. Upholding the values in the systems. And that can be. I mean when you talked Sarah about, you know, eight months not being enough, right? Like that alone, like that subject alone is such a big one to unpack, you know, the mother thing, the mother thing. Yeah. Sarah: Yeah. Oh, the word mother is probably the most triggering word that we had. like, it's like, Monica: It's so loaded. Sarah: So loaded. And that's why I say it's one thing to have had a mother. It's another thing to have been mothered as a verb. Most of our mothers didn't know what that was. No. And I also say when women come to me, you know, some of them are so afraid they're gonna be betraying their mothers and say, you're not betraying her. You're betraying the patriarchy in her. Right. Yeah. That actually stole her life. That stole her soul. In my opinion, that stole her, stole her self actualization and true expression. Monica: And your mother passed how many years ago? Sarah: Well, I was 17 and I just turned 17 and I'm 43 now. So the math on that is probably about 26 years. Monica: Yeah. Well, one of the things that you say that really got me, Sarah was when you talked about. Avenging our mothers Sarah: That triggers a lot of people, but I'm glad you . Monica: I know it didn't trigger me cuz I got it. Like I got it. But, but I would love to talk about that a little bit. Just add to it because, so I'm not asking you to do a spiel. I'm just asking you to talk about it from your heart. Sarah: I push the spiel button. Uh, you know, I got it in me if you need it, but talk about avenging my mother. So recognizing that my mother, first of all, that the, the problems between me and my mother were not my fault and they weren't actually her fault either. Um, they, they were the, the system that, you know, Othered anyone different, anyone not following the script. And so I didn't follow the script and my mother was taught to hate others. Mm-hmm, you know, fear, fear, others mm-hmm as a coddled white wounded made and, you know, privileged wounded made. And. And because I didn't fit the script I was punished and these, this was the programming. It wasn't her. And so the other thing is my mother got really sick and turned and just endlessly turned out for advice from all these doctors who actually gave her really bad advice that shortened her life. Mm-hmm . As far as like blasting her with radiation and chemo before it was too much for her little body, she was smaller than me. And so when my mother passed, I went into her attic years later and she had like box of tarrot cards, rhunes spell books, and they were hidden. And, um, some were unopened and all these things. It's like, she hid her witch too. And she hid private to protect me. She was doing the best she could. She was like, you're, you won't be safe the way you are out there. So she had a hidden witch and mine. Obviously is out mm-hmm Monica: obviously, Sarah: yeah, it's pretty obvious. Monica: I think so, Sarah, I think that's kinda hard, hard to hide at this point. Sarah: As soon as you, your tattoo your forehead. I think it's over Monica: Me too. Sarah: You'd be amazed how nobody even notices or says anything about it though. It's like, Monica: well, there's the trance. that's the trance, you know, it's just like, I'm just gonna pretend I don't see a thing. Sarah: Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna pretend nothing is happening here. Nothing. And so I always, you know, I realized the problem wasn't between me and my mother. It was the patriarchy and my mother mm-hmm , they kept us million miles apart while she was right there. And so. I have a vengeance for what if she had been allowed to be in her witch, her whole life, because I now know, I mean, she gave me my first bag of rhunes and it was more like, I don't use this, you can use it or something. And I started as seven or something. And I think ruins were for me. I, I believe that every witch has her own, you know, you pulled your tarrot I, every witch has her own. oracle. When I lost my witch to the patriarchy and my after my magic years. And, um, you know, you get gas lit and beaten down into normalcy, not to protect. I got gas lit and beat down into normalcy. Many of the women I got, you know, I remember I came in remembering past lives and all this stuff that was just like cut off, you know, cut off at the head. And, but the ruin. I kept a bag of ruins with me and, and I, from my mother, you know, and that brought me, kept those and they kept the witch with me. And then I always think about how powerful my mother could have been. Cuz she was incredibly intuitive. She was an ingenious writer, which means like, For someone who loves to write, like spells are so fun for me to write. And, you know, I just think she was just so patriarchy put into this little box of this fragile, helpless woman. And I don't know if you know this about me, but like when women come to me and they are act fragile and helpless, I wanna scream. Monica: Mm-hmm Sarah: Because they're not, it's a total fucking lie and they just need to know what they're capable of and they need to know the truth. How powerful they are. And so this is, my work is vengeance for my mother. Um, and I think that getting women to the point where they're not mad at, but for their mother makes them have to understand systems. And that's where we are, is like, when I wrote this book, I didn't understand systems yet. And that's okay. Like, You, you know, the book's never done, it's just due, you know? Right, right. And so, but now the systems that oppressed my mother, you know, what is patriarchy? You know, it, it also is a modified word, but bell hooks goes, identify the heads of it. And then where they live in you, like your inner ageism, your inner ableism, you're inner colonizer, you're inner capitalist, you know, and these they're inner misogynists. You're inner all this shit. Uh, my mom had all of those in her. Yeah. She had the inner capitalist. She had the inner white supremacist. She had it all. And which, you know, when you really become a radical feminist it's about liberation. Yeah. Monica: Sarah, I, you just said something that's so powerful. All of what you said is powerful, but the part that I love the most is kind of like. You froze, you said I said something so powerful and then you, you froze. Oh Yeah. So you, you said what you said was this point where the systems start to become revealed, right. And you see that they're all intersecting and this was, this was huge for me. And I wanna pause here for a minute for our listeners and talk about one of them. That's very, very familiar to me, which was my inner misogyny because Sarah: Yes, Monica: We all like being socialized in this world. We have all, we have internalized this system and these systems. Sarah: Yes. Monica: And there's no escape. Literally. Like if you think that you don't have. Racism or inner misogyny, like you're fooling yourself. Yeah. Capitalism, inner capitalism. You are so fooling yourself. And so what, how I would recognize, and this is what I, I really like to do is to kind of point to the symptoms. Nice. Because for me, One of the things that would come up that would show me my inner misogyny is when people would say the word sisterhood or goddess, I would literally like recoil and I would get this look on my face. Do you see this look? Sarah: Yeah. Monica: Yeah. That's like, Ew. You know, like what? I don't know what you're doing right now, but like, my body would literally. All the armor would come up. Like I would just, I would just really react versus, and when I, and I finally found my wise woman, right, cuz I had been praying for a wise woman. It was my wise woman that said, I think she used the word goddess and sisterhood within like a couple sentences of each other. And. She just kind of stopped. And she was like, whoa, I just wanna check in Monica. Like, what is happening right now with your body? Like, why are you re reacting to these words in this way? And I was like, I don't know. Like I just, and there was this suddenly there was kind of this inquiry that I was invited. To just sit with and to really get curious about, and I start because the other thing is we, the signals are there, like what would be a couple symptoms that you might point to that would make you realize that you had inner misogyny? I mean, jealousy is one of 'em. Sarah: Well, I kept, I mean, for me, cuz the I'm this book I'm working on now about men. Midlife and men, and it was realizing I kept attracting misogynists men that hated women and that if I was attracting them, I had an inner misogynist. Ooh. And so that's where I found, I found my inner ages and my inner misos through ages, misogynist, patriarchal men. You know, I kept attracting men who hated their mother. Who hated women who thought they were, who abused women? Mm-hmm . And I kept attracting men who just wanted women to be 20 and tight and served them. Monica: I attracted men who pretended to love their mothers. Oh. But what was really, there was like a lot of passive aggressiveness, a lot of control. A lot of the facade, that's like the shoulds from, from the Bible, right? Like you thou shall honor they father and mother, but what was really there was like this deep detest and hatred. Sarah: Misogyny. Yeah. Yeah. So I went celibate, uh, a year ago as I, uh, de patriarch man or masculine. And, you know, I'm getting there. I'm attracting like just in my field. Wonderful men, because I have one in me now. yeah. Beautiful goddess worshiper, strong, sweet, funny, man in me, I, I. I have that in me now, because you know, I talk about like most of us were latchkey kids in my generation, whatever of generation I am ex I don't know and, uh, they, we, you know, without a father, without a mother in the house, you know, my mother was in my house. She was my model. That's how we got to where I was for femininity. You know, she had her own inner misogyny and my father was absent. So what's gonna fill the hole is the culture, you know, you're gonna turn on the TV, you're gonna look at magazines. And here we have the culture telling me the bad boys, the Luke Perry, the, the broken ones you have to fix, they're abusive, but they didn't mean it. And you know, all these guys, you can heal the, you know, they just need the love of a good woman, you know? And Monica: I, oh my God. Right. I, Sarah: I was like, okay. And that became my inner masculine, this like misogynist tough guy that just wanted to fuck women and just wanted hot women and was a bad boy. And that's what I've consistently attracted. Mm-hmm except for my fiance, who was the closest to my inner masculine. Now, um, he, my minor masculine is now way closer to like the one true love I've ever had my five year fiance who was a lead singer and an artist and a writer and a poet. But, but now it it's evolving past that it's more this like Bohemian king kind of kind of vibe. Monica: I love that. Yeah. Uh, you actually just triggered for me another memory, which was. When I met Austin, who's the love of my life. I remember just really the way that he treated me was so foreign to me. And it also triggered my inner misogyny because I was like, what's wrong with you? Sarah: Why is he being so like, why is he being so nice? Monica: Right? Why is, and there was part of me that's like, cuz again, we're we're trained. I was like, don't be so nice to me. That's not attractive to me. Sarah: Exactly. Monica: And now I'm. Oh, my gosh, like I can receive, I can be celebrated. I can be, there's just this way. It all like transforms as you do the work and it's so I go back to what you said before. Like, I don't wanna scare anybody, right? Like, I don't wanna. Scare anybody to do this, work it, because it is work, but, but the parts that I really wanna highlight here that are so powerful is that when we start coming into the archetype of mother and we start doing this deconstructing of the patriarchy. Within ourselves, this internalized patriarchy, what we find are treasures beyond our wildest dreams, right. And the, what comes up is just what feels sometimes. And I'm sure you can relate to this, Sarah. Is like this me that is now unrecognizable. It's like, I almost can't even recognize myself and who I was right before I went through my dark night of the soul. Sarah: Right. Monica: And came out the other side. And of course, it's the journey that we did with you was eight months. And one of the things that I wanna talk about with you next is you hold. Marketing very differently. You hold business very differently. Sarah: Mm-hmm Monica: You hold and your offers your generosity and, and I call it generosity. But what I also wanna get curious here about is, is it generosity or is it. That that's actually, it's you market in such a human way. You give yourself permission and I, and I see you modeling it often where you give yourself permission to change the parameters of an offer and just be like, and make it ongoing or extend it, or like you offer scholarships to women. Like you make this work so available. And I guess the word I wanna say is there's a reciprocity that you infuse into your work. Sarah: Hmm. Well, thank you. I mean, all of that, I, I wanna tie up the last conversation with, you know, where you get to, when you eradicate your inner misogyny is I will be treated well, or you can go to hell. Monica: Mm-hmm Sarah: It's like I, and then it was like, I like nice guys. And then you're like getting wet for all these nice guys. And you're like, where have I fucking been? Yeah. And now I see an asshole and I'm. The moat is up. The you're gonna hear like the chains going, you know, the door chain. I don't know how I found that attractive. I know. And it's because it's not, you know, so yes, I, I hear all that so important. Yeah. So I have been in the belly of white feminism for a long time and I. While I was, you know, attempting anti-racism work. It was feeble at best. And when I had my midlife split my midlife crisis, I met like, I was very, very, very sick and sick from a fellow white feminist who had given me and my daughter COVID had never looked back or checked in or anything. So it was like this person who says that they offer comu, they're a community leader. Like. I truly learned that white feminism will leave you to die. I, I truly learned that. And it's what, um, black feminists have been saying over and over is that if you're in the room with the white feminists, you're in the room with all the heads of patriarchy and patriarchy's a killer. And so what happened during my 42nd split my 42nd year, my, my sickness. I was overcome by the love from the black Madonna mm-hmm . And she sat with me for three weeks. And this is a place where I'm gonna talk about something. And if there's a response where I didn't do it right, I am so here for that, if there's. So, um, when I first came into this world, I, while I had a lot of visions of Avalon, I also had a lot of memories of being a slave, um, and being brought over on a. And I always was talking about that ship ride. I was always talking about it and of course, that all disappeared and I lost it all. And then I would track like the threads of when was I last happy and I would be happy in my African American studies classes. I'd be happy in my African American, like our civil rights group. And then I just fell into white patriarchy completely and left, but I remember, um, feeling. This is where I belong. Mm-hmm . And when I did my, my ancestry, um, my first grandmother was from the Congo. She was Congolese and I fear her and she's who I wanna make proudest in my lineage and what the black Madonna did was show me that I was on the wrong path and my, and the wrong path was white M and that I had not seen it. There's nothing like a three week underworld holding a sick daughter, being a sick mother and a bed to say, you know, show me the way. Like I clearly this isn't working. Mm-hmm the way for me is intersectional feminism. And I got it in a way. That I've never groped it before. And I started reading books like white feminism by COA Beck. Nice white ladies by Jesse Daniels, who is a white lady who came into intersectional feminism and fell in love with Andre. Lord, I've always loved bell hooks, but I finally feel like, and bell hooks how she talks about queerness, which is her queer. I don't conform to any way. Patriarchal life after this, I'll probably go smoke a joint and read a book. I don't live the way other people live. And there's finally radical acceptance for myself because of black activists who have been talking about the revolution far long and mostly white women are just about the pay gap between and equality between men and women. Monica: Right? Sarah: That's not my fight, my fight. I don't wanna be like a patriarchal. I wanna be on the side of everyone. Oppressed under patriarchy, all bodies oppressed under patriarchy and as a climate activist, there's no climate justice without racial justice. Climate justice and racial justice are, are married, are wedded cuz they're the most disproportionately affected by climate. Look at what's happening in India right now. Like what's happening in Africa. Monica: Yes. Yes. Sarah, I lo I, I also wanna point to what you just said with respect to the pay gap, because there's this way that again, the patriarchy teaches us to live on the surface of life. It's very superficial. It's right. And to me, the pay gap is like the superficial kind of the white feminist would focus on that. And, and it's so much deeper. It's there's like there is some shit to excavate here. Sarah: Well then if they wanna look at the pay gap, look at the pay gap between white men and Latino women. Mm-hmm I mean, white, the, the payback between white, white, white men and white men is so much smaller. So again, when we're talking about white women lining the streets in pusy hus because of abortion rights. It's like, where are you? When anything else happens to brown and black women and indigenous women, where are you? Monica: Right. Sarah: And they're silent, which means, guess who side? They're choosing mm-hmm oppressor. Mm-hmm . Monica: Yep. But, but, you know, here's the other thing that I love, like I see you get your ass kicked regularly, and I see that you're here for it. And I love that about you. Like, I love that about you. And you know that I love that about you. Sarah: Yeah. Monica: And there's some things that I still don't get, but I love that. I, I mean, part of what I'm inviting my listeners to do is definitely follow Sarah. Like it's an, it's entertaining to say the least, but not only. And I'm being funny. Watch you get it. I'm like, not only will you get the best teachings, but what I love, how you model is, you know, like just being open to like the mass of it. You're like, I may not get it right. And I'm like, yes, like. Because that gives me permission, right? It's like, I'm learning, I'm learning and I'm deconstructing and I I'm unpacking. And this is the part that I think we're all in this and, and it's like to be in it. We have to say yes to the mess. Sarah: Mm-hmm . Well, because it's your whiteness that tells you, you have to do anything perfectly. There is no, this is a white concept of perfection of doing of success. These are all, it's all whiteness. So like just showing up exactly as you are, is the revolution, you know, and being like, if you're gonna come on here with, with hate you're out, but if you're gonna come here to teach me, take a moment. For free labor. I'm gonna be grateful because my, my white feeling so matter to me, I wanna burn through it and learn. I mean, you weren't in New Mexico, but I got roasted. I have a barbecue. Monica: I missed it. Sarah: Damn you missed the barbecue. The sense of my white patriarchy was wafting in the air was being smoked out of me by the black Madonna was amazing. Monica: My gosh. Sarah: I was like, I wanna go again, just gimme a month to recover. Monica: yes. Yeah. So, so what, what was the flavor of it just, you don't have to go into it, but what was Sarah: The, well, so every time you do a journey, you come out new and we just were UN made into other journey right now. And we just enter the underworld and I'm like, I mean, I go, you're like, Monica: here we go again. Here we go. Plug your nose. Sarah: Yeah, because I'm the showman that like, I'm drinking a little less ayawaka than you, but I'm still drinking it with you. And so here we go to the underworld again, you know? Yeah. I go with you, I have to guide you through it. Monica: Right. Sarah: So I gotta go there. Monica: Right. Sarah: But last time it was so. Bursting with intersectional feminism, that I can be a bull in a China shop and I can be too urgent and where there's urgency, there's trauma. And that's not a place I wanna come from, but, and you know where there's urgency, there's, there's more ma mass and there's more, um, harm. And so about. I'd say the room was about 30% women of color and 70% white women. And I made a hard, messy choice to have the conversations with everyone for two days straight about intersectional feminism. But what I learned from, and then I caused harm to the women of color in the room and they graciously taught me. First of all. Thankfully from my work, I, I can re I can repair, but the work was to sit back and listen to the women of color and learn the ways I caused harm. And next time to ask for consent before that. Conversation mm-hmm and then gracefully tell the, the women of color. This is gonna be a conversation about dismantling white feminism. You don't need to have it. You don't, you're not a white feminist, so there's tea outside that the sun shining go take care of yourself. Go get a massage, you know, Monica: Fascinating. Yeah. Sarah: And then the white women need to stay in that, that container, but the black, the women of color do not. And so then my work as a leader was okay, I've shattered our union for a moment here with all this talk of othering and otherness and all this talk that othered. And I need to bring us back to our common goal. And what that's gonna take is me sitting. The women of color, you know, leading this moment, not free labor, but like telling me how we, I can repair and then bringing us all back to our common goal. But it took, you know, we all it took everyone's mother. Everyone's leader and it was a true moment of the only way to cross the threshold into justice is if everyone crosses it into liberation mm-hmm And that's why Audrey Lord says that if one woman is not free, I I'm not, you know, no. If as long as there's one woman in shackles, I am not free and we all have different battles. Monica: Yeah. And, and what you just said about, we all had to come back into the mother, right. Was because what you're pointing to as, and I'm making up, cuz I wasn't there. That there was a lot of triggers that was, that were going off mm-hmm there was a lot of wo wounded maiden that was kind of coming up. Right. And it's not that, Sarah: And a lot of harm towards the women of color that did not need to be in those conversations with white women. Just learning about this and asking questions that can also cause harm. So as a space holder, I, there was harm cause in my space. And so my job. Is to repair that harm for everyone. \ Monica: mm-hmm mm-hmm Sarah: But the black, the black indigenous and women of color first. Yes. Centering them. Monica: Yes. Centering them. Yes. Yes. My gosh, endless lessons, right? Sarah endless, endless lessons. Sarah: The doom is to think they'll stop. Right. I was trying to say that the other day, that's your doom. That's why Marion named the book, dancing in the flames. Monica: Right? Because you think that you're done is the doom, like you to think that you're gonna arrive somewhere is the doom, right? Yeah. That's not gonna happen. Sarah: Yeah. Oh, like, it's just like with motherhood, you're like, I'm killing it motherhood today. That means tomorrow's gonna. Oh, Monica: Oh, it's so humbling. It's so humbling. Yes. Sarah: Here's your ass. I'm handing to you on flatter. Monica: Sorry. I have another, or thank you. Ma'am may I have another, oh my God. So good. Well, Sarah, I love this conversation as always. I am so enriched to talk to you to know you. I'm so blessed to know you. I'm so blessed to be part of this lineage and for our listeners, you know, I'll be sure to connect you with not only Sarah's work, but many of the black feminists and indigenous feminists that she mentioned today, I would love to be able to also just really. Celebrate her book and invite you all to grab it, get a copy. And it's a great introduction into what this work is all about. And this is the work of the unbecoming. I mean, Sarah's doing a flavor of this work that I think is so relevant and so important, and it's truly changed my life. So Sarah: I'm so honored to know you, Mon. I love you so much. Monica: I love you. Sarah: You're such a good mama and archetypal mother Monica: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I totally received that. Sarah: You're like, just so in it with me and us and this, and, you know, and I just watch you, your just desire and like appetite for, for unlearning is just so hot and I really appreciate it. Mm. And thank you for always loving all the spectrums of women and all, and just loving watching them. Unrobe this robe from, from these false roles. It's. I just love your love of women and I really appreciate it. Monica: Love you. Yeah. Love you. Okay. Yay. Sarah: Now the dog is throwing up, so maybe I Monica: So right on time. Okay. All right. And so for our listeners until next time more to be revealed, I love that ending, Sarah too. Good. I gotta deal with right. Love you. We did the, I think we did. We did the thing we did we're we did it. We're great. We're great. We're always great. We're we're amazing. Oh, we're amazing. I love you. I love you back. Okay. Monica: So, oh my gosh, what a great conversation with Sarah. So I rarely kind of come on to kind of have like, a summary, but what the hell I'm gonna do it today? , I wanna go back to a few things Sarah said and unpack them a little bit more. First of all, Sarah mentioned, Ayawaka and we don't actually just for our listeners, we dont. Actually take any iowaska doing this work, but you know, God love you. If you wanna do plant medicine, I'm all for that too. I'm here for it all. But I, what I really wanted to kind of also discuss are the symptoms of wounded maiden and really kind of help just clarify the fact that the wounded maiden is the. Inner child in us that never had our needs met. She was, she was the one that had to take it all. She had to take what she was being fed. As far as gender roles, she had to stuff it, she had to, you know, really mute herself expression. She had to deny her true voice. She had to become pretty pleasing and polite in order to survive. And so, as you might imagine, the archetype of the mother does not do that. She. Actually mothers, the inner child or children, the fractured parts of our woundedness that had to basically feel abandoned. Who had to abandon those parts in order to be loved. So, so many women are walking around this planet, a shell of who they actually are a ghost of who they actually are. And the haunted ones are the wounded maidens, the wounded parts of ourselves that are haunting us in order to be remembered. If that makes sense. So The wounded maiden will often seek validation either through social media. Right? It's a lot of attention seeking behavior. She's very reactionary. She is always wanting to hand her burdens, she will. You know, the way that she knows how to be with women are to kind of commiserate with women or to you know, go to war with women or to alienate women, other women. so she doesn't have. A capacity, a maturity to deal with life in a way that a mature, grounded, fully permissioned woman can. Right. So there's. Sometimes the only way we recognize the wounded maiden is by starting to see the symptoms and the symptoms of wounded maiden are really, I mean, there's tons of them and I'll, I'll definitely put some links in the show notes, so you can learn more about it. But what we want to do is to be able to learn how to give ourselves what we were never given. So, which is. Radical self approval. First of all, like we have to learn to give ourselves approval for all of the things that we were disapproved of. If, you know, for some of us that could be based on what we choose to wear for some of that. For some of us, it could be what we say. Who we really are, that we've been hiding. Right? It's we were, many of us were conditioned not to make mistakes. And guess what I mean, when you listen to what Sarah says, she talks about perfectionism being a, a white fragility concept, right? and so it's learning to embrace our failures and our mistakes as part of the process, it's saying yes to the mess, the messiness of self growth, the messiness of doing the work, the messiness of diving in and unpacking, all of the programming and looking at it, honestly, no matter how much, no matter how cringy it is to do it . The mother is the part of us that, okay. So , so I'll, you know, I'll raise my hand and say, When I talk about mama that's my inner mother. That's, that's the part of me. That's what I named her. That's the part of me that actually that I met that actually knows how to take care of myself. That knows that it's okay to make mistakes. That's the, that's the mother or the mama. I'm re where I'm reminded to put my hands in my heart and to just give myself the space and the grace to be imperfect. Okay. That's what the mother does. The mother is unconditionally loving toward herself and her children but also unconditionally loving towards other women, unconditionally loving you know, To the process, you know, of, of doing this work and who also, when you, when you come into your own sufficiency and your own sovereignty as the mother, what you, what starts to grow within you actually is an intolerance for what actually goes on in the world and what we step over. And this is, this is where. The mother starts to really become potent because her voice, like she is not to be trifled with the mother. She is not gonna take anybody harming her loved ones or. The earth. Right? And so we, we can start to understand why it's so important for women to come into the archetype of mother, because when she comes into the archetype of mother, not only does she know her own sufficiency, but she knows. Her, she knows when enough is enough and she's not afraid to say it, and she's not afraid to do what needs to get done in order to feed the children in order to make sure that people stop harming the earth, make sure that people stop taking her for granted. Right. So there's so much more here, but I loved that. I loved that episode with Sarah and I adore Sarah and Sarah's work. So you can follow her on Instagram at Sarah of Magdalene. Doing, you know, becoming part of the lineage of maiden to mother is powerful, powerful work. I wish it for everyone. So not to do a huge sales pitch, you know, that's not my gig, but if you were to really ever invest in yourself, there couldn't be a better program to do. That's it for now 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. You for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed.