Finding Joy in Motherhood is a Reclamation
In a culture that often does a good job of minimizing a woman's magic, Danielle Wojcicki helps her clients reframe their experiences.
Here at Yes, Misstrix, I often have the pleasure of speaking with amazing people doing fascinating work in the realm of sex, sensuality, sexuality and desire. This week, I’m sharing a two-part conversation with Danielle Wojcicki of Mother Nurtured Life. In this second interview, Danielle talks about relinquishing control, releasing shame, working through old wounds and reclaiming the wonder of the womb. If you missed it, read part one of our conversation here.
Yes, Misstrix: In our last discussion, we talked about navigating motherhood in a number of ways. You mentioned checking in with your heart, non-negotiable self-care and surrendering to the notion that you have any control whatsoever. Now, let’s talk about the power you found in becoming a mother and how pregnancy and postpartum can be a spiritual experience.
Danielle Wojcicki: I would say one of the most powerful and profound things that I have found was—and this is cheesy to say, but—it was myself. It was a catalyst to set aside people-pleasing, to set aside the expectations that I myself had placed upon me or that outside forces had. It really led me to a place of introspection about my own life and allowed me to begin unwrapping the layers of my own childhood.
I mean, you've probably found a lot of people talk about inner child work, and then you become a mother, and your wounding from your childhood plays out in your interactions with your children. And it is a mirror for yourself. That makes it twice as hard. You're caring for your little one in front of you, and you're caring for the little one inside of you at the same time.
YM: I’ve heard that nothing quite brings your own childhood and experiences of being parented to the forefront quite like giving birth and parenting your own child.
DW: Yeah, absolutely. I find it interesting to see what comes up.
YM: Definitely because I think when we go into parenthood or we get to this point where we're close, we think about all the things that we didn't like and that we're going to do differently. Then, you start to realize that there’s some, to use your word, wounding around some of those things. We learn that when they come up for us again, not as children but as the parents of children ourselves.
DW: Absolutely. There is a whole other layer when you're living it versus intellectualizing it. That's one of the reasons why I love bringing that spiritual aspect into the work I do before someone gives birth. I love going into that because a lot of that can be cleared out, whether energetically, somatically or just with the intention to bring that into the forefront, and we can start to move that energy out of you before you ever have to live it again with your child.
YM: That's fascinating. It also brings me to a question about how you work with someone who's come to you to help release these patterns or wants to connect a little bit deeper to themselves before moving into their role as a mother. What steps do you take?
DW: I like to approach this work through the lens of mind, body and spirit, and I honestly meet people wherever they're at in that process. We can just work on the body; we can do somatic work. That is one way, and the other way could be really diving into some generational stuff, some actual energetic blockages within the body. I like using something like Reiki for healing in those instances.
What I love about one-on-one work is that it provides an opportunity to not only feel and receive healing, but also learn how to be your own healer. And that is really my intention with all of this. It is to meet you where you are, whether you are focusing on just physical healing or whether you're looking for emotional or spiritual healing, and then give you the tools that you can take in this moment and apply them whenever and wherever you need them.
These are the tools that I wish I had as a foundation so that I could apply them in my parenting and beyond. They are really the missing pieces that I wish I had to regulate my own nervous system. That includes the ability to find out how I like to process and move energy through my body because that's where a lot of us are stuck these days. We're trying to solve everything with the mind, and we need to come back into the body.
I act as the witness. I find that being a witness to people feels so much more powerful than each of us trying to do it by ourselves on our own. We're really meant to be in community. We're meant to be held by our sisters through these really big rites of passage, through these huge life changes and transformations. I just feel that they are so much more powerful when you have someone there to witness the whole space for your transformation.
YM: That brings up something I want to revisit from our first discussion, which is the way society has created a disconnect between motherhood and birth. What are you seeing in your work? Where do we have opportunities to bridge the gaps?
DW: I love that question. So, one of the things that I find really interesting in the world in general, but even in the world of births, is that you have this really big swing from ‘Medicalized birth is the worst thing you could possibly do’ and, on this end of the spectrum, ‘Free birthing or not having a birth attendant is the only way for you to ever have a truly physiological birth experience.’ And I personally just want to see everyone come back in just a little bit, instead of swinging to either extreme. There's no nuance in there, and it's still coming from a place of control.
I want to speak about this a bit because we know with medicalized birth, you can look up the outcomes, and they're not great. These interventions have risks, and those need to be acknowledged. Importantly, those risks are created from having a feeling of control. It’s very much, ‘If we do this intervention, we can somehow control what's going to happen,’ and we have found that those are actually risky. Then, you come over to the other end of the spectrum, and you take your free birth person, and they're like, ‘I won't have any intervention whatsoever. That's the only way that I can be in power in this birth.’ But that feels fear-based and control-focused as well.
So, I think the root of a lot of this is there is this undercurrent of fear, and you’re just going to pick one of those routes. You're going to pick this one or that one, and you're going to say that if I do X, Y and Z, this will happen. I really think that the root cause of a lot of this disconnection in our motherhood is fear. Fear that we're not going to parent the right way. Fear that we're going to make the same mistakes as our parents. Fear that we’re not going to feed our kids well enough, not give them the right amount of attention. You can make a long laundry list of these things, and I really think the disconnect is fear. We're all just operating from this place of fear, and everything we grasp at is an attempt to control an outcome we do not have control over.
YM: That's so beautifully stated. This fear really does infiltrate everything. It goes for pregnancy nutrition and how much you should work out—and if that’s too much or too little. It’s like…can we all just calm down a bit?
DW: Yeah, you can't get it right. There's no right answer. And that's why the work that I want to offer people is based on the idea that everything outside of you does not matter. You have to come back inside, and you will know what's right for you. And can you do that? Can you be so certain in yourself that you don't have to grasp for control in all of these areas? Can you flow and live in joy knowing that you are making the right decision for you and your family? And it requires so much self-trust. I think that fear really kind of picks away at it over time.
YM: Sometimes, I read things and think, ‘Oh, I wasn’t worried about this, but now that I’ve seen all these other things…should I be worried about it?’ Blocking all of that out can be exhausting.
DW: I think that's a really good point. We have this overconsumption problem. We have a major overconsumption problem, and I’ve fallen into that trap time and time again. And what really brings me back is checking my heart. Is this mine or is this somebody else's? That takes a lot of practice. It is repetition over and over and over again.
YM: I'm actually glad that you brought up free birthing as an example because I just recently started seeing information on that. I don’t want to judge. People have to make decisions for themselves about what they’re comfortable with, but for me, that seems very risky. On the other hand, I also feel like medicalized birth can be that way, too. And yet, it’s great that we have modern medicine as an option. To your point, however, the pendulum has definitely swung.
DW: And it always does, doesn’t it? But the place I have really come to as a mother and a parent and a person that has given birth twice with two very different birth experiences is that I don’t have room in my life for dogmatic ideals anymore. I think if you just look at our culture in general, you can find people on either side of any issue that have felt so certain that those were the right choices for them. And there's a lot of gray.
I have used gray over and over and over. I am always weary of something that claims that this is the only way. That's a lot of pressure. It might even create a little bit of shame when we decide, ‘I chose this path,’ but then you had to make a different choice at some point. You had to make a different choice, even when you were so set on something else. That can cause a little bit of guilt and shame, and it doesn't give you flexibility. The one thing I think we need more than ever is a little bit of flexibility.
YM: I'm also glad you brought up shame because, when fear takes over, we see a lot of judgment and shaming of other people's choices and methods. This happens in motherhood especially. Everyone has an opinion, and we have our own expectations. Do you see that a lot in your work? And if so, how do you help women who are caught up in the shame cycle or are feeling judged and want to release that?
DW: Almost every woman I work with has some shame that they don't want to express. There's a lot of it. And a lot of what I see in these women has to do with their relationships with their own mothers and how they were brought up versus how they are choosing to live life and to parent their children now. There’s a lot of repair that needs to happen for their own inner child and their relationship with their mother. I see a lot of that.
YM: How do you see this wounding with someone’s mother play out in your clients’ parenting journeys?
DW: I think for the majority of women that I worked with and the women I have known, it has gone one of two ways. It's either we have a rupture and we work towards repair, or we have a rupture and there's really no resolution. That’s how I've seen the majority of these situations work out. Oftentimes, there's this underlying people-pleasing that is going on with the mother. They please the mother, and then the rupture happens, and it's either not going to be addressed ever and the relationship is kind of at a standstill or non-existent, or there's just this continued people-pleasing.
There have been very few times where I’ve witnessed women who really feel ready to repair the relationship with their mother. I think those wounds are generationally deep at this point, and it's not just you and your mom. It’s much further back that those relationships and those traumas are being played out in this lifetime.
YM: So, someone doesn't have to repair their relationship with their mother to be able to be healed, correct?
DW: No. There's a lot of work that I have done on my own to facilitate healing between my mother and I, and she has no idea that I have done that, but I feel like our relationship has changed for the better because of it. So, you don't need the other person to be on board. You do need to be willing to feel and move those old wounds and stories through you. You have to show up for these things in order to heal them.
One of the reasons why I love this work being offered before a person becomes a mother is because it's really hard to find the time to also heal yourself when you are in the thick of the early parenting years. I just don't know many people who have been able to do that. Not a lot of people have that kind of time or space to heal then. That's the other thing that's working against us in this culture: being really intentional with your time. This is super valuable. Time is one of the most valuable things you can have.
YM: That’s the truth. So, if someone is ready to begin working with you, regardless of where they are in their journey, tell me all the ways they can do that.
DW: Let’s start with birth doula services. That’s your standard birth doula relationship that includes two or three prenatal visits, your birth and a little bit of postpartum support.
I also have an Embodied Birth Mentorship that is a three-month container. This is for women that are ready to start taking aligned action and feel the call that something really big is going to happen and they want to be here for it all. They want to feel it all. They want to heal through it all and then they want to come out the other side. They want to be ready for whatever's going to happen next. This is a container where we meet multiple times throughout the month and we could focus on not only physical healing, but we work on nervous system regulation, somatic healing, shamanic healing and whatever else you feel called to do is where we go. I let you lead the journey, and I just witness and provide tools along the way.
I'm also a licensed massage therapist that specializes in prenatal massage. I share that as well as the Body Ready Method, which is where I help you with your alignment and movement patterns in order to set you up for your ideal optimized birth. I offer those assessments in my prenatal doula appointments, as well as in the Embodied Birth Mentorship for people that feel like they want a little extra support around that aspect of birth. I teach partners on positioning and a couple of really nice things that they can do in early and active labor to support the birthing partner. I also include birth partner prep in a Birth Blessing Ceremony.
This is something that is really individualized to the couple and whatever spirituality they align with. I also offer any sort of meditations that they would like as well, but then it's also preparing you physically, in terms of releasing soft tissue and acupressure points for birth preparation as part of the ceremony. It’s about really just prepping your mind-body-spirit for that work and helping the partners feel really confident about how they're going to be supporting the birthing partner over the next few weeks…because it's going to get real very soon.
Those are some of the things I have going on right now. I also have a couple other little things, such as alignment and bodywork sessions for those that feel really confident in their birthing choices but just want to make some adjustments for better physical support. Maybe they're having some common prenatal discomfort, for example, and those can certainly be helped by making some small shifts in your alignment or movement patterns. So, I offer that as well.
YM: A lot of good stuff! It’s nice that people can pick and choose what they need and what will work for them. On that note, I want to talk about finding and fostering joy in pregnancy and motherhood. I’ve heard you speak to those things really beautifully, so if you could share more about the ways society seems to try to steal this joy and how we can work to reclaim it.
DW: I will say that our culture has really done a good job of taking away and minimizing the power and the magic of women. Finding joy in pregnancy is counter to that cause. And look, equality is really great. It’s wonderful. But not everything is equal.
I say the following with sensitivity for everyone. I feel as though dampening and minimizing the beautiful wonders of what a female body can do is an effort to steal the joy and the wonder and the magic that happens inside of a womb. Finding joy in motherhood is really a reclamation of the wonder and the magic.
I think there has been a minimization and sometimes a direct assault on certain things that are joyful about being a woman. And I think making pregnancy and the changes that happen to our bodies an inconvenience is part of that. I know that sounds kind of sinister, but the way we find joy is by reframing that experience. It’s about not overconsuming information and really just accepting what is. I think that's a lot about what parenting and what motherhood is about—it’s accepting the phase of life you're in.
Instead, we're told to bounce back, whether that's bounce back your body or bounce back to work, whatever the case may be. It’s like, ‘Okay, you did the thing. Now, get back on with your life.’ But your life isn’t meant to be bounced back. It’s forever changed. So, finding the joy is partly accepting what it is.
For example, life is really hard with young children. It's also really fun and really beautiful, but it's also really hard. I think a lot of joy could be had in just surrendering. This is a season. Your pregnancy is a season. Your birth period is a season. Postpartum is a season. And the seasons keep changing. Rather than wishing them away and wanting it to be easier or for that next season to come along, we can choose to accept where we are and find joy in that place. It comes back to checking your heart again.
YM: That's so beautiful, and I love what you said about trying to make pregnancy an inconvenience, like it’s this burden we have to bear. It’s as if the message is because pregnancy symptoms exist, the male experience or the male body is somehow better or more convenient. At the same time, that mentality turns something completely magical—growing a human—into something medical or scientific. All of which can and does feel like an attempt to discount the wonder women often feel throughout the experience.
DW: I think that's absolutely true. The countermeasure to that is allowing your experience to be your experience and to connect with it in your own being, rather than letting people tell you how you are going to feel physically and emotionally. Even in baby books, they literally describe how you will feel emotionally. It’s like, ‘You don't know that! You can’t know what I'm going to feel emotionally.’
And that turns into, ‘Is something wrong with me that I don't feel that way?’ It would be better to say that there’s a possibility that these might be the emotions you’re feeling. It's all very well-meaning but the spectrum is completely different for every person. You want to leave room for your own experiences. In my experience, I felt a lot of shame for being the happiest pregnant person ever.
YM: I sometimes feel that way as well. It’s like, ‘Oh, should I hide how easily this is going for me?’ It’s a terrible thought to have, but you meet so many people who have hard experiences. There’s this temptation not to throw your positive one in their face as if yours is somehow better. Because it’s not better, it’s just different. I’ve done a lot of work to feel joyful, even when things aren’t going perfectly or I’m having symptoms or whatever.
DW: Absolutely, and we should be able to celebrate that 100%. I found when I was pregnant with my first child that everyone expected me to say something was going wrong or something was feeling uncomfortable, and I found myself almost not wanting to celebrate how excited I was and how much I loved it.
YM: That's so interesting, especially because this is the kind of pressure that women often put on one another.
DW: I have encountered people who straight-up said they didn't want to hear about how I loved it because they were feeling so uncomfortable. There were a lot of women who were pregnant at the same time as me and felt that way.
That’s a whole other discussion about how women are treating other women and how they're showing up for other people's experiences. But can’t both things be true at the same time? Are we able to hold space for each other's experiences, even though they're different? That’s the way that I think we can deal with this. We can try to hold space for all these experiences simultaneously.
I recently saw somebody who said, ‘Sharing experiences is not mom shaming.’ We have entered a time where if your experiences are not that of somebody else's, you are somehow implying something about that person. We have to get away from that. We have to be able to hold space for a variety of experiences without feeling like it's personal.
And again, it comes back to being certain within yourself. It means being so certain within yourself that you are able to hear another's experience and know that that's their experience, and mine was different, and I'm okay with my experience. If you can't hold space for another person whose experiences are different than yours, you have work to do.
YM: I think you touched on this before when you were talking about fear. Those reactions often come from a place of fear that you did something wrong and that was why your experience wasn’t the same kind of magical as someone else’s.
DW: And it's so much shame. So much shame. I think shame and mom guilt are two of the hardest things for our generation to really begin to unravel. It’s hard letting go of the shame surrounding those feelings of guilt.
YM: This has been a wonderful conversation, Danielle. I don't want to take up too much more of your time, so the last question I have for you is if you have any final words for now?
DW: I think I said all I needed to say and probably more, but I guess my wish for all women really is to be so certain in yourself. That is what my work is really for. It's for you to find certainty in yourself, so you don't feel the need to swing from one end of the spectrum to the other. It’s so that you can find nuance in your life, nuance in your motherhood, nuance in your parenting, nuance within yourself and your relationships with other women. That’s my hope for everyone, and it’s the container I wish to create for people on their healing journey.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix