162 Samantha Zipporah

[Music]
Welcome to the Revelation Project Podcast.
I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trans-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.

Monica: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Revelation Project podcast. Today I'm with a very special guest, Samantha Zipporah. Samantha is devoted to breaking the spells of oppression in reproductive and sexual health through education, healing and liberation. She has over 20 years of experience, honing her craft as an educator, guide, and caregiver, tending to fertility,sex, and cycles, spanning the full womb continuum.
Sam's work rises from an ancient lineage of midwives, witches, and wise women.
A fierce champion of critical thinking skills, her knowledge is integrative and inclusive
of modern medicine and science as well as traditional and ancient healing practices.
Sam provides vital education for everyone from professionals to preteens in her books,
courses, and live classes. Her online community, The Fruit of Knowledge, features monthly live workshops and an abundance of resources and dialogue for womb wisdom keepers and seekers. Join me in welcoming Samantha.
Hey, Samantha.

Samantha: - Hello.
Thank you so much for having me.

Monica: So glad to be having this conversation with you today.
It's such a big conversation. Such a big conversation. And of course, my immediate curiosity goes to that word, "Womb Continuum."

Samantha: Beautiful.

Monica: Yeah, I'd love to start there. Like, tell me more.

Samantha: Yeah, well, the continuum, right, is a circle, is a cycle, is something that has no definitive beginning or end. And every point on the continuum informs
and affects every point on the continuum. There's no point that is less sacred or profound
in the way that we relate and care for ourselves on the womb continuum, which includes our orgasms and our abortions and our yeast infections and everything, everything that touches the womb and its life force. And so yeah, I use that word continuum where it's become vogue in my professional field to use the term spectrum.

Folks are calling themselves full spectrum workers, full spectrum doulas, et cetera.
And I feel like the definitive image of a spectrum that has a beginning and an ending is not accurate. And so I prefer the term continuum. And that's been my path, though I do really specialize and have thrown my weight into supporting people who
are avoiding and ending pregnancies,that I have always been a student of and in service
to the full continuum. And in fact, I was a birth worker for over a decade and we can't compartmentalize the ways that the flow of the womb continuum informs every single experience that we have on it.

Monica:It sure does.
And it even makes me think of the continuum of women's spiritual journey, you know, well,
well after and on the way and just all of the ways that our secular remembering is really what I want to call it is just a golden thread throughout our whole life
and beyond, right? So it is, it's such a beautiful word and it speaks of cycles and rhythms and seasons and endings and beginnings.
So what a beautiful word, I love that, thank you.

Samantha: Yeah.

Monica: How did you start this? Like how did you really just know
that this was your work in the world? 

Samantha: Well, my mother had a hysterectomy when I was eight years old.And I had been praying before bed and having a dialogue with the divine who I called God. Before bed as a child,it was not something that my parents, I don't think really taught me to do.
But somehow when my mother had her hysterectomy, I stopped talking to God and started writing in a journal and my future self became my divine in a really profound way.
And I feel like that self-awareness is really a potent seed for my journey.
And that by the time I was 11, I was noting my breast tenderness and my vaginal fluids
and my mood in how it moved with the lunar cycle. And I saw the suffering of my mother and my sister and my aunties and my grandmothers and the women in my culture around their bleeding and around their sexuality. And I was just always very tuned into that.
as a child and I had some beautiful spark of inner knowing that This part of my body ought to be a source of pleasure and power rather than suffering
So I started to study as a child and I know this like I've known this forever, but I'm even more intimately aware of this right now because I am in this
very intense process of reading all of my journals and

Monica: Oh my goodness.

Samntha: I've put them in chronological order and I started journaling when I was six.
And so I have the narrative of this 11 year old who's reading Christian Northrop's Women's
Bodies, Women's Wisdom and reading Rosemary Gladstarr's Herbal Healing for Women and making specialhepatonic tea, like a blood cleansing and nourishing herbal tea and bringing it in a thermos to school with me.

Monica:  Oh my goodness, Samantha, I love this.

Samantha: Months before I started to bleed,in anticipation of my blood arriving,
like I could feel it coming,and I knew that it was something that I was needing to put effort and energy into to find balance and health,because everything being reflected around mewas chaos and disconnect and dis-ease. So that was, yeah, my start was very personal in wanting to heal my own body. And then I just naturally became a resource for my peers and my community,starting with, I would say, my first doula job was helping someone put in a tampon. Yeah. Also when I was 11.
And yeah, I, from there, I started volunteering at Planned Parenthood as a junior high school student in Idaho. And my first dear friend had an abortion when I was 16, and I supported her. And then I had another dear friend when I was 19, who was my first of my friends to have a pregnancy that she wanted to keep and have a child. So I started studying midwifery and attending births. And it's just, it's flowed and moved through my life all these years and really just profound and expansive ways.I was devoted way before I had any concept of it being involved in capitalism or my public identity.
It's just been a pillar of my aliveness for a really long time.

Monica: I'm finding myself just having all of these visuals.

Samantha: Mm.

Monica: You know, this eight year old and then this 11 year old and the thermos and just like the, my first doula job, right? You know, and what comes up for me, so a couple of things. First of all, I love that you have access to all of those journals, and I acknowledge you for keeping every single one of them
because I can't tell you how many women I know who have thrown them away.

Samantha: Yeah.

Monica: You know, or I think of that book when women were birds, which is the story
of the woman who found all of her mother's journals.

Samantha: Wow.

Monica: And on her deathbed, her mother gave her all of her journals, and when she went and opened them,there was nothing in them.

Samatha: What?

Monica: Mm-hmm. Anyway, like just it's it's and so she writes this whole book about how women don't give themselves permission to write about their lives. And if they do write about their lives,you know, so ashamed by what they write about that they end up burning their journals or destroying their journals or beginning again because it's, you know, it's too much, right? So there's such a, there's such a draw for me, you know, when I think about you keeping all of your your writings and as you so beautifully pointed to, you've got your finger on the narrative the whole way through. So it's just like, wow, how cool is that? And then I want to go back to what you said about my first doula job because what comes up for me is of the stories that we've been sharing in my writing group, which is all women, are these incredibly exquisite and tender stories as they make their way back to their bodies. And some of our stories are about the absence of a doula and a midwife in all of these areas of our lives. Someone there at the first bleed, someone there at the first understanding of your vagina, somebody there to help you, to guide you with the first tampon experience. It's been an agonizingly lonely and isolating journey for so many women who are trying to resolve their deep, deep wounding and pain around their most precious selves.

Samantha: Yes, that's right.

Monica: And then just I was thinking, what a nightmare you would have been for my parents.
I love you. This is so good. I'm like, you know, they had like the, the anti-abortion picket signs in the house, you know, and we had like dead babies in buckets, like visuals, like when I was little.

Samantha: I feel like my third or fourth friend who's shared that with me just in the last few weeks that they grew up with that and that their parents made them go to protests and things. So yeah, I was in debate in eighth grade, 12 years old.
And there was a youth lobby organization event where teenagers, and I went with the advanced group, advanced debate group and the high school kids to this youth lobby organization meeting day of like getting kids involved, young people involved with various non-profits and politics and lobbying with legislature in Boise, Idaho where I grew up. And so that's where I ended up signing up to volunteer with Planned Parenthood at the age of 12. And their first, the first project, the first training day for volunteers I went to, was training us to lobby with legislature on the parental consent bill in a state where we were in the top five for incest and in a top 10 for teen pregnancy use.
And yeah, so I went to the Capitol building, get my little button down shirt, flag down.
There's like crusty old Republican middle-aged dudes and was like, you know, I can menstruate so I can have an abortion.

Monica: My God, 12 years old.

Samantha:  12 years old. Yeah, you know, that was me.

Monica: Okay, okay. So who were your parents?

Samatha: Oh dear, who are my parents?

Monica:  Who are your parents?

Samantha: I mean, what a portal to inquire. My parents were first generation in diasporic Jews that were fleeing the Holocaust. And they're from Los Angeles. And my father moved us to Idaho for good air and water, with my mom really kind of kicking and screaming about it. And my parents are both highly gifted creatives,
very well read, so much beautiful music and literature art that they exposed me to as a young person. And they're also both deeply, mentally ill and haunted.
So that's a whole other story. Yeah. But yeah, I grew up, you know, I became an adult very young. My parents divorced when I was three. And my mother was a school teacher. And I was asked to be her adult companion and to help cook and clean and have intellectual conversations from a very young age and just rose to the task.

Monica: Yeah, I really hear that you did that. You really rose to the task because there's, you know, there's, right, these like very, I guess the word is like precocious images, right? When I'm thinking of you at that age being so,
and then, but I think that that word can be such a misnomer because it belies
the sophistication of the issues that those precocious children were dealing with.
And then like, what does that really mean?
It's more of like an indicator, you know, that yes, you were grappling with and wrestling with and dancing with some really gritty and raw subjects from a super young age and just really kind of like, I sometimes think of soul contracts, you know, and it's just like, here I am, you know.

Samatha: I was obsessed with the Holocaust in second grade.

Monica: Yeah. Me too.

Samatha: Yeah. And there's something about, you know, my mother's first really major breakdown came after her hysterectomy. And there's something about that organ being disposed of as medical waste that brought me into that level of self-awareness and agency and the way that my mother began to behave in the home was such that I realized I had to mother myself and the narrative and the journals was very much, you know, sanity keeping.

Monica: Yeah.

Samantha: But otherwise I would have been completely gaslit in the abusive tumultuous home that I was in, it was very much just like this is my truth, this is my experience, this is what I know to be true, and I had to write to pull myself through and to speak to my adult self again, like I was speaking to my inner mother at that age. I stopped talking to God, I started talking to my adult self, so it's also so profound to have been to be going back and really listening to that little person. 

Monica: Yeah, that little person who, yeah, who really became, because it was your training ground, you know, and so it really became like your training and development for what your work was to be in the world. And certainly, yeah. And the deep questioning and distrust of any external authority, you know, of any cultural normative external authority figure, I never had safety within that. And I always knew that I needed to be self-sufficient, which is a deep wound in many ways, right? And the wound and the blessing and all these things. But yeah, it absolutely translates into the level of agency and sovereignty that I have taken and desired to share with others around reproductive and sexual health. For sure. It's like we don't we don't rely on external authority. No one's going to provide this for you. It's your responsibility to understand how your vital life force moves. What is your truth and how do you embody it? we can't look to the environments or external authority to provide that for us.

Monica: Yeah, well, and that brings us to this next path in our conversation, which is what, well, let me say it this way, where would you like to meet women in this conversation? And where do you typically meet them in this conversation?
And where would you prefer to meet them in this conversation?

Samantha: Oh, dear. That was actually one of the other things that came up when you pulled the Oracle card before we started this podcast.
You pulled the dead end. And I can't tell you how many phone calls and direct messages,
text messages I've had. but phone calls, particularly with my birth clients,
that they're just like, they're at the end of where they can cope, and that's when they call Sam.
(laughs)

Monica: Yeah.

Samantha: They're like, I cannot cope at all. None of my coping mechanisms,
none of my previous patterns and habits are taking care of the situation anymore.
Like, how do I move forward, Sam? Will you support me?And that has definitely been the majority. Yeah, has been this energy of fear and crisis and panic.
Has absolutely been the alchemy and the door for most people into their sovereignty.
And where I would love to meet women is actually not women, it's children.

Monica: Oh, yes.

Samantha: And that's been something I'm actively dreaming into
and imagining pivoting. I have taught several circles for young ones, ages eight through 12, but that for sure is the dream for me is to be able to resource people before they start ovulating and before they start cycling and help them understand the connection
with the rhythms of the earth to teach a seed and soil cycle class
that includes womb and ovary cycles for all genders, not just women, but for all genders of children so that they understand their origin.

Monica: Yeah, and then the fact that you wanna reach children is so intuitive, right? but yet it's the last place, right, that I thought you were gonna go.

Samantha: Interesting, yeah.

Monica: Because again, I think that there's a way that we can often dismiss that as not being the time in this culture, almost that that information, right?
And this is, I think, why it just kind of occurred to me as a revelation when you said that, I was like, of course, you know? like it's actually just from, because that's where the silence starts. That's where the isolation starts that I was referring to. About our bodies and our body's wisdom and the cycle and the way that we've really disassociated from all of those things that I would call feminine. And then I wanted to really ask you, you know, about the indoctrination into this kind of one way of seeing our reproductive healthcare and just anywhere you wanna take that conversation.

Samantha: Wow, well, I mean, to stay with this thread of, you know, of my childhood and my young adulthood, what the first thing that comes to mind is, I did have very painful and challenging cycles for the time that I was in my mother's house.
And our nurse practitioner, our family healthcare provider offered me
synthetic hormonal ovulation prevention pills, which is what I like to call birth control
instead of birth control because controlling birth is sadistic. We need to be wild birth, we don't need to control it. And just for people, you know, I'm a big fan in my educational offerings and my books. And when I teach of just like, let's use descriptive language and let's use specific language. So I think birth control is not what it is.
It's ovulation suppression medication. It's an endocrine disruptor in the medication.
Anyways, I refused to take it and part of it was like this awareness
of the corporate pharmaceutical world. I didn't know specifics,
but I just knew that I didn't want them in my body, influencing my skin and my digestion and my moods,and you know, my cognition and I knew that hormones would affect all of those things. And I just learned from Vandana Shiva in an interview she was giving with
democracy now just two years ago that Bayer contracted with the Nazis and made
all of the gas for the Holocaust. And they never disincorporated.
They never disincorporated. They gave some cash to the, you know, the military state project that is the state of Israel,and never disincorporated. And nobody ever went to jail for it or anything. They just gave a bunch of money to the state of Israel.
And then Bayer and Monsanto have just now merged. So just as an example that this company that Bayer Monsanto that controls so like that is devising plans to manipulate and control and patent the seeds on the planet are also manipulating and controlling the seeds in our bodies, in our ovaries. That this is the company that is making the chemicals that exterminated my family, that this is the company that is making the chemicals,
that is disrupting the conversation between the pituitary gland and the ovaries
for the majority of my generation, and that this is seen as liberation to be able to control and suppress the conversation between your brain and your ovaries, which is, you know, So it helps in so many things besides fertility of making a human child.
And then to learn that as people who have ovaries, we create almost 70% of our bone
masks between the ages of 12 and 18. And that process requires ovulation. Ovulation creates the hormone progesterone, which is necessary for being able to metabolize minerals and integrate them into our bodies. So you can be eating the most perfect diet, but if you are suppressing your ovulation with medication, you cannot actually integrate and metabolize the nutrition. So when we put young people on these ovulation suppression medications, we are setting them up for osteoporosis, among other things, among many, many other things. So that's just, I guess, yeah, the dominant paradigm being one of control,
being one of rape, rape culture, being noted most intensely by the power over,
the difference between power with and power over, and the reality that our bodies are the earth. They are not a metaphor for the earth. They are the earth and the cycles of our wombs and our ovaries are part of nature and to inflict this power over dynamic
by consuming goods and services from the medical industrial complex,
which is an industry, not a healing modality. We are in fact participating in rape culture
in the way that that is not actually a path to liberation. That is subjugation.
And I'm not completely anti-synthetic hormonal contraception or completely anti the medical industrial complex. I just want to be very, very clear that the medical industrial complex is an industry that offers goods and services for profit.
and that it is our job to be conscious consumers and make choices as to what goods and services would actually benefit our bodies and our healing and not to assume that that industry is going to be selling us something that is going to help us be whole, which is the etymology of healing is wholeness and that our wholeness absolutely involves
our participation in the cycle and that we can absolutely find power with rather than power over the cycle and the force of nature that is our fertility and is our sexuality.
That that's the answer is dynamic balance and power with rather than power over.
And that was a lot. So I'll take a pause and see where you're at and what threads you wanna follow or reflect.

Monica: First and foremost, I can't wait to buy your book.

Samantha: Oh, thank you, there's four of them.

Monica: Good. Second of all, I love that the operative word there, while there were two things that I really gravitate towards, one is the operative word being conscious.

Samantha: Yes.

Monica: Because there's a way that we are so unconscious
about this chain this like mechanistic sick care industry that churns and burns us over and over and over again from cradle to grave. And it's a very upsetting topic for a lot of people. They don't want to hear it because what you said and this is the second part is the both and you know, you're like, it's understanding that you're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater here, that there are some wonderful tools, tools, goods, services, yeah, goods and services, we can consume them. Right. And as the daughter of a vascular surgeon, right, like he was, you know, the first person, you know, strangely
enough, to really have me start questioning the medical industry.

Samantha: Wow.

Monica: Yeah. Because while he was a pioneer in vascular surgery, that was vastly different. Like his work, you know, was repairing things that were broken, you know, like gunshot wounds and veins and arteries. And I think the other part of the equation was
troubling for him. You know, and he didn't live long enough for me to really get curious, because when he passed, I was 20years old, but he would say things, you know, that would, you know, kind of have me cock my head because it sounded like so paradoxical to what I thought he stood for. But I think that he was really seeing, you know, some really interesting developments in the healthcare world. And I think this This is what he was pointing to was that it, you know, to go back to what you said about
the wholeness, right? And our health and our well-being, you know, being our wholeness and that being our birthright to that wholeness and healing and wellness.
that there's so much that goes on in our lives from very, very young age that we don't know we have agency over, we don't know we have a right to know. And then when we do know,
it's so upsetting to us because usually by the time we find out, it's usually we've
we've usually already been harmed in multiple ways by this system. And again, you know, like this is not to demonize the system. There is, but I think what we're doing,
part of what we're doing here is having conversation that expose things you,
things we may not know, which is why I bring guests like yourself on because I think it's our right to know these things and it's our right to informed consent.And certainly as more and more women are growing their intolerance,
which I say yay to.

Samantha: Yes.

Monica: Around how our bodies are treated and controlled,
I think the more we're leaning in and listening from places we've never been able to before.

Samatha: Yes.

Monica: So I love that you're coming in with your fierce stand, you know, for what could be possible if more women and men were informed? 

Samantha: Yes, and that informed consent piece can't be overstated in terms of
where my values and ethics lie, in terms of not demonizing or rejecting the offerings of the medical industry, which can be very useful, but we need to actually be able to have true informed consent and that etymology of that word consent, con, together, sentier, feeling, I think is what we need to be striving to embody, which is feeling together. There's not a passive permission given, it's not something you can sign away on a piece of paper. It's not something that you can just give to another person actually, it's something you have to share together, this feeling,togetherness, that anytime that we're ingesting a medication or having a procedure or making love, anytime that we are taking things into our bodies, that there ought to be true consent where both parties feel that it is a yes and that it is for the highest good of all here. And I hear that I hear you talking about your your father like starting to see things in the medical industry and I want to just really highly encourage people to two resources, the book
"Caliban and the Witch" by Sylvia Federici, which there's an amazing podcast synthesizing
called "Book on Fire." Yeah, the book is like very dense and academic. The podcast is
delightful and put on by some wonderful radical herbalists. And that book really speaks to the rise of capitalism and the subjugation of the female body and women's wisdom and specifically care work and reproductive sovereignty. And that has been incredibly supportive for me in these last handful of months. And just in my life in general, I love learning history. I love seeing the context. So understanding that like the bubonic plague is one of the first times that there was widespread persecution of fertility management and that it has a direct correlation with labor, right? The persecution of fertility management is a term that I use to describe contraception and abortion and care for birth and miscarriage, all of it. And then, Witches, midwives and Nurses by Deidre English and Barbara Aaron-Rick, which is really more just the last like 150 years and understanding like the forming of the American Medical Association and the specific political and economic agenda of a very small population of wealthy white men appropriating and monopolizing what has been for time immemorial women's wisdom. And the correlation between the industrial revolution and the medicalization of fertility is very profound to follow again with this non-metaphor, this actual reality, that our bodies are the Earth, and that the mechanization and the commodification and the monopolization of how we tend to both the fertility of the Earth and the fertility of our bodies is not a mysterious phenomena. There is a paper trail. There are people's names. This has been a very well planned and executed project that is still continuing today. And certainly the witch hunts, which are discussed at length in the book, "Calaban and the Witch," are a huge part of what we are collectively hung over from and still experiencing in many ways. But that remembrance, right, that we are not recreating the wheel. We are remembering the wheel and the reality that contraception and abortion and miscarriage and birth and orgasms, all of it, the whole womb continuum, has been something that belonged in our bodies, in our homes, in our intimate relationships and did not belong within in the systems of economics, bureaucracy, institutions, government or class, that these are intimate,
profound realities that have been social and spiritual realities way before they were ever medicalized. And that folks have been effectively managing their fertility with plants
for the vast majority of human history. and that it is in fact possible.

Monica: It is in fact possible.

Samantha: And so, yeah, my main contraception skill share is called the conscious contraception skill share. And it involves, like, yes, the nuts and bolts
and the facts and the data from the science world, which to share with your audience,
if they don't know already, Most of us are only fertile and can only conceive if we're exposed to sperm for three to six days out of a healthy cycle. And that 90% of women can identify their fertile fluids accurately after one class with a skilled educator. And that's literally all we need to avoid pregnancy is to be able to identify our fertile window and then of course end rape culture so that we don't have sperm exposure when we don't desire it. And there's oopsies and I have a book that's specifically for that.
But like what about bringing the erotic awareness to our creative power?

Monica: Thank you.

Samatha: Rather than fearing it or suppressing it. I know people that are taking the pill, people that are on IUDs that tell me, "I don't want to think about it." It's great because I don't have to think about it. And I'm here on the other end of the spectrum, warmer.
I'm like, "It is so juicy and delicious and profound to think about it."

Monica: Yeah, say more about that.

Samantha:To think about my creative power. So that brings in the sacred yes.

Monica: Yes.

Samantha:  Right? Yes. Which is that vital force that is our sexual power, that is our fertile power is a force of nature, even when we're not making babies that are orgasmic fertile sexual energy, even when we're not in the technical fertile window, that it still has this creative power and that we are divine creators that can use our consciousness to
make choices about what we want to conceive and gestate and birth into being in this world. And that is something that I encourage everyone at all times, but specifically people who might be able to conceive or gestate when we are engaging with our sexual energy, especially when we're engaging with a partner who makes sperm, who might get us pregnant, that we actually name and claim what is the sacred yes of why we are making love, and that pleasure and orgasms are a perfectly wonderful reason to have sex.
That can be it. But that we can also manifest and invoke and conceive of so many other phenomenal things by focusing our sexual and fertile energy.
And that ties into why I call my online learning community the fruit of knowledge.
Because in the actual ancient Hebrew scripture, the word 'D'at' is the word for knowledge
that is also used for sexual intercourse. So it's the fruit of sex, of sexual knowledge, and our awareness of our bodies and consciousness as creators, which is there's some beautiful musings around that fruit of knowledge actually having specifically to do with the development of the estrus cycle, our ovulatory and menstrual cycles, which are very different than most of the animal world, and allow for immense There's three quarters of the entire cycle we cannot conceive, no matter how much sperm we're exposed to.
No conception can take place so that potentially that awareness of our fertile creative power and the reality that we can have a lot of beautiful ecstatic sexual experiences without making humans and that we have the ability with our consciousness and embodiment to be aware of when that might be, being something that maybe distinguishes us pretty intensely from the animal kingdom.

Monica: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Samantha: So that was a lot. I forget where that thread began, but in that story, I like to be Lilith's offering the the fruits of knowledge as an original win instead of an original sin. The original win.

Monica: Oh my God, I love it. And for those who are listening and don't know the story of Lilith, I've got a couple of podcasts on her as well.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.

Monica: My goodness, the original win, not the original sin. I think we've got our title.
where we became aware of our power as creators.

Samantha: Where we became aware, yes, yes, yes.

Monica: Yeah, because, you know, and here's where more to be revealed comes in because what you're pointing to deserves a deep dive. You know, a lot of contemplation, a lot of revelation.

Samantha: Yeah.

Monica: You know, it's a territory that invites all of us as women to gnosis and that is our birth, right? And we've been living in the upside down that has kept us from it.
And so in just, you know, even the amount that you've shared, Samantha, I invite, you know, my listeners to dive in more deeply and to take the clues and cues.
And of course, you know, the titles, not only of the books she's shared with us,
but the books, you know, that she's written to really dive in and learn more.
Because there's also, you know, truth in censorship. There's also truth in how women
have been professionally persecuted, hung and burned for the knowledge that they share with other women. And we need to know this as part of sisterhood,
true sisterhood, not the patriarchalized version so that we can stand, not only in our own sovereignty,but stand in solidarity with other women who are brave enough to share this work, do this work and bring women back into their own remembering.

Samantha: Yeah.

Monica: So much here. I've loved this conversation so very much. What haven't we, I mean, I know that we've really been weaving in and out of many, many conversations here. But what I'm loving about this is that I feel like we've built a really solid foundation for getting, for getting more curious, right? And my, my intention is always to create a conversation with my guests that create an opening for more revelation, right?
it's like we're not gonna solve, you know, and there's nothing to solve, but we're not, you know, we're not going to kind of accomplish it all in one or in maybe even in 100 conversations, because this is so rich. But what I would love to do is to talk more generally and to leave our listeners with a few things that they can do based on this conversation. And I think that where maybe we can be helpful is by talking a little bit more about true consent because I know some very, very strong, wise sovereign women who tend to get in the presence of a medical professional and that is where they leave their curiosity and their instinct. distinct at the door and don't like there's there's a tendency I think for us to treat medical professionals as gods that we, you know, shouldn't question them. And I think that way too many women learn the hard way
by just shaking their heads and being in shock and trauma from an experience after the fact.
Samantha: Yeah.

Monica: Not knowing that they actually didn't have what is called informed consent.

Samantha: True, yeah. Where to begin? I mean, you can't practice consent with others
if you cannot feel what it feels like for yourself
with yourself. So really self-consent is where it starts. And that, you know, we are in a culture that is, as a whole, we're very dissociated, especially from our wombs and our yonis. And so really, I feel like it just starts with being able to cultivate the presence of your own consciousness and sensual presence, your breath, your nerves, your tissues, your fluids. It really starts with being able to be there in your body with yourself.
And sometimes that brings up resistance and fear. And if that, then that's your work.
It's just like, how do you bring more gentleness and warmth and presence to yourself?
And that's something that, you know, I've brought up in the realm of teaching fertility
awareness. And that's like step one. A lot of teachers will be like,
here's the primary fertility signals and go out and collect your data, collect your fluids and temperature and cervical position. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, unless you can feel a full body, yes. If you're collecting that data without a full yes,
then you're part of the problem that's objectifying your body to extract data from it
and doing something that your mind is telling you that you should do before or in spite of your body not being a full yes. So I think it really starts with meditation.
It starts with pleasure practices. It starts with learning what it feels like to actually feel presence and feel yes in your body by yourself before it moves into relationship.
and that you can't offer someone else consent if you don't know what it feels like by yourself and for yourself. And I also would never ever, like I would never go to any sort of medical appointment by yourself either. I would always bring a dear friend and a dear ally with a list of questions and comments, things that you wanna share with your provider, things that you wanna know from your care provider
and bringing a witness to support you. I don't think anybody should be in those dynamics by themselves. Yeah.

Monica: Yeah, I mean, I love what you're saying and the imagery that I had is how many times I laid on a gynecological table, right? And my whole body was screaming, no.

Samatha: No.

Monica: Mm-hmm. 

Samantha: Yeah, yeah.

Monica: And yet, didn't matter how uncomfortable I was, didn't matter, right?
Like there was, and yet it did matter. It does matter.

Samatha: Getting a speculum and learning how to place your own speculum is also spectacular. It's very simple. There are a few dollars order went off of Amazon.
And there's a lot of great offerings out there, including my own that can help teach you
how to place a speculum in a healing way. And I think that's also specifically for gynecological exams, an amazing space of reclamation to be able to actually insert and
place your own speculum. So you are doing rather than being done too. And that even that information again, like information is still an offering and that unless you genuinely,
authentically desire the information, then no one should be extracting it from you.

Monica: Yeah. Like give me an example 

Samantha: in terms of exams, in terms of like going to get a pap smear. If you don't fully understand what the purpose of that is, right? Like why are we doing this fully? Yeah.
If you don't fully understand a desire, like, I personally desire this information about my body. So I'm going to go receive this service so that I can obtain this information.

Monica: In other words, okay, what I'm making up about this is that there are just these wellness exams and we're supposed to go and we're like, why? I'm fine, right? Like why do I need to go to get this done? Like, why do I need to have my breasts radiated every year?
And learn. - Right? Learn, why?

Samantha: Until you feel a desire. Wait until you feel desire.

Monica:Yeah.
Samantha:  And that that should be the bare minimum for anything penetrating your vagina
should be because you deeply desire it. You can be uncomfortable, it can still be challenging, but there should be that innate, authentic feeling of desire. - Yeah, I want to know. of like, I want this. It's, I feel, yeah, gynecological exams, routine gyne exams are like some of the worst perpetuation of rape culture in terms of people spreading their legs and being penetrated out of a feeling of obligation rather than a feeling of desire.

Monica: Right, and we wonder why, right? Like we wonder why we have such.

Samantha: Like what's wrong with me? So in the Fruit of Knowledge, there is a whole section called the Living Library. I have four books that I have self-published and I have two full-length self-study courses. And then the Living Library is all of my works in progress curriculums and things like that. And there is one called How to Have the Best Pap of Your Life.

Monica: Oh my God.

Samantha: And then there's another one that's called Spelunking with Speculums.

Monica: Oh my goodness.

Samantha: So those are just two out of, I think there's about 12 or 13 works in progress there for folks that are specifically wanting to learn how to work with speculums in a more healing, respectful way, or learn more specifically about PAPS.
I mean, there's a lot of information there. It really spans the full womb continuum from vaginal ecology and infections to contraception and birth and abortion and all of these things. But yeah, there's an abundance there. But yeah, informed consent I think isn't possible without that sentier part, right, the feeling part. If you can't feel what yes feels like, you can't give anybody else your guess.

Monica: Yeah, that's such an important distinction. I mean...Yeah. Well, there's been no lack of revelation here today. Yeah.

Samantha: Yeah. Very nice.

Monica: Yeah, and I just, there's, I mean, you have really just given me, there's like so many metaphors and images and questions, right? like, it's, it's been for me just a really powerful conversation. And also, you know, this is where the metaphors come in fertile, you know, like all of the seeds of potential that will come from this conversation. And also, all of the seeds of potential that will come from my listeners hearing this conversation, like, I really feel a deep appreciation for for having the opportunity to be with you today and just your enthusiastic yes, you know, to come on to the podcast
and share with us in such a powerful, fierce and vulnerable way. Thank you so much.

Samantha: Yeah, thank you. I wasn't, the childhood conversation,
it is really, it's potent, right? The origin.

Monica: Yes.

Samantha: Story.

Monica: Well, and the Oracle story.

Samantha: The Oracle. 

Monica:  Because the child is the Oracle.
It never ceases to amaze me.

Samantha:I love that.

Monica: Yeah, I wanna thank you so much and for your curiosity and sense of wonder.

Samantha: That's one of the things that I often encourage folks to when they're in these states of like, I'm investigating this health issue. I'm trying to make a choice about my care with a pregnancy. Can we flip from worry to wonder and from concern to curiosity and take that expansive that expansive view and just yeah that being able to extend that to your listeners not not wanting to preach any sort of dogma or ideology, but sharing these ideas with great humility as like some of the best ideas that I've been able to come across. And I hope that they do inspire people to expand and explore. And I would be honored to be more of a guide if they want to connect with me or my work. But there's plenty of points of access in the world. I'm just one One conduit. So thank you so much. Yeah.

Monica: Oh, thank you, Sam. Thank you. And for our listeners, I have many,
many resources from this conversation and everything Sam has shared and also
the links to her website. And all of that will be included as well as, you know, the URL to the living library, I can get that from you, Sam. Great. And anything that you have coming up that you want to invite them to that you have kind of waiting in the wings or any program that you're opening or anything like that. 

Samantha: Everything is held in the fruit of knowledge, learning community,
all my books, all my courses, and then once a month there's a live event of some sort. And then on the third tier, folks have access to meet in office hours where they can just drop in and share an exchange discourse. So that is where it is at, is the fruit of knowledge
learning community. Everything I do is under that umbrella now. And that is always where it's at, I just want to say. Fruit of knowledge. Yeah.

Monica: So good.

Samantha: It's so good. The metaphor just keeps growing.

Monica: It just keeps growing.

Samantha: In juiciness. Yes.

Monica: It's so ripe.
It really, yeah, quite pleased with it in terms of-

Monica? Yay.

Samantha: Yeah, flipping that whole script that we're all, like, that-

Monica: Yeah, we're all doing it. You know, we're all flipping the script and it's just so good, the whole of it, right? It just gets better and better.
know, first it gets really gritty because you've got to get really pissed off, I think,
before you. 

Samantha: The grief and the rage are so important.

Monica: Yeah.

Samantha: Lilith's helpful for moving that.

Monica: Yeah, she sure is. Back to Lilith. 
Yeah, so good. And so until next time, I just want to say to our listeners, you know, that more to be revealed.

CLOSING: We hope you enjoyed this episode.
For more information, please visit us at JoinTheRevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list, or leave us a review on iTunes.
We thank you for your generous listening and, as always, more to be revealed.
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