MUM

In this MUM episode, joy witch Justine Anweiler reflects on her close and emotional relationship with her late grandmother, who was the person that always saw her for who she truly was. She shares the witnessing of her grandmother’s double rebirth.

About Justine Anweiler:

Justine is a joy witch, originally from Mohkinstsis, commonly referred to as Calgary, AB Canada – and the founder of The Witchen. Her purpose lies in softening human connection by deepening our relationship with Mother Earth. Most recently, she does this by sharing cultural stories about traditional food and its unique mythology.

Link with Justine:

• The Witchen: The Witchen specializes in oral, visual, written, and digital storytelling. Justine works with expansive entrepreneurs who hold the vision to build a better future.


• Instagram

MUM is produced by ⁠Ellen Wong⁠ and edited by ⁠Stepfanie Aguilar.⁠ Your support allows us to continue creating this podcast. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review. Keep this conversation alive by bringing it to your communities.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠⁠@mumthepod⁠⁠.

If you are interested in working privately with Ellen, visit ⁠tripwithellen.com⁠ to learn more about her Death/Birth program and her spirit medicine solo retreats.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

In this MUM episode, life coach Yvonne Chung shares about her experience with major decision-making alongside uncertainty and fear, the impact of living beyond complacency, and waking up through the death portal.

About Yvonne Chung:

Yvonne is a Korean-American child of immigrants whose work lies at the intersection of ancient wisdom and modern science--the research and the woo. She is a certified coach, self-love mentor, Human Design guide, and dream architect, here to help as many people as she can live fearlessly so they can die without regrets.

Her life has been a series of deaths and rebirths that ultimately led her deeper and deeper into her life's purpose.

In 2017, she quit her corporate job and abandoned the identity and life she was told to have in order to travel the world and discover her own path of purpose and meaning.In 2019, she answered the call of her Soul's Work and began her journey as a coach and guide. In 2021, at 32 years old, she came face to face with her own mortality, catapulting her deeper into her life's purpose.

And in 2023, she left a 7-year relationship and engagement, uprooted her life, and set out on a new life path in Mexico. Over the course of her life, she has had to make choices to leave one life in order to step into another. Life has taught her how to trust the death process and has shown her how deaths (in their many forms) can be initiations and portals toward a more expanded life. Now, her mission is to help as many people discover what it means to really live so they can get to their deathbeds with as few regrets as possible.

Link with Yvonne:

• Free Human Design Masterclass: A deep dive into your Human Design type to learn what it means to live an Aligned, Empowered, & Embodied way.


• More Offerings


• Instagram

MUM is produced by ⁠Ellen Wong⁠ and edited by ⁠Stepfanie Aguilar.⁠ Your support allows us to continue creating this podcast. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review. Keep this conversation alive by bringing it to your communities.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠⁠@mumthepod⁠⁠.

If you are interested in working privately with Ellen, visit ⁠tripwithellen.com⁠ to learn more about her Death/Birth program and her spirit medicine solo retreats.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

In this MUM episode, death doula Marta Macbeth shares her experiences with loss and grief, emphasizing the importance of living joyfully after grieving. Marta introduces her new offering Exit Plan, which intends to make end-of-life planning easy and fun, addressing practical aspects such as writing letters, creating videos, and considering important details they may not have thought about.

About Marta Macbeth:

Marta Macbeth’s journey began with her father's sudden death when she was ten, a moment that deeply impacted her. Throughout life, she's faced more losses, including a best friend in her 30s and her mother at forty. In 2022, she grappled with profound grief, bidding farewell to two close friends within a month, followed by the sudden loss of her partner of twenty years.

Now 69 years old, as she enters 2024, she's in a phase of reinvention after a year of navigating grief and joy. Marta is a student of Tibetan Buddhism, as well as a mother, grandmother, and death doula, reflecting the diverse aspects of her life journey.

Link with Marta:

• ⁠Exit Plan (free) on March 23
  Get ready to tackle the serious stuff in a lighthearted way with Exit Plan - the online event that makes end of life planning a breeze.

MUM is produced by ⁠Ellen Wong⁠ and edited by ⁠Stepfanie Aguilar.⁠ Your support allows us to continue creating this podcast. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review. Keep this conversation alive by bringing it to your communities.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠⁠@mumthepod⁠⁠.

If you are interested in working privately with Ellen, visit ⁠tripwithellen.com⁠ to learn more about her Death/Birth program and her spirit medicine solo retreats.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

In this MUM episode, medicine person Ekua Adisa shares about the conscious practice of skilled grieving and the 7 steps in creating a solo grief ritual (get ready to jot down notes!) that allows time and space for the body beyond verbal expression. Both Ellen and Ekua also discuss the non-linear, spontaneous experiences of grief in the day-to-day.

More on Ekua Adisa:

Ekua Adisa is a gender fluid medicine person at the intersection of Black Southern traditions and indigenous African practices that center ancestor veneration, conjure, earth magic, channeling, plant medicine, ritual, and community care. Ekua is also deeply influenced and inspired by the teachings of Native people indigenous to so-called North America, as well as various Buddhist lineages. As an intuitive medium, an energy worker, and a ritualist, Ekua’s pleasure-purpose work is inviting and supporting collective and individual grief work with ritual somatic practices, supporting people to connect with their ancestors for guidance, making and sharing plant medicine, and supporting the dead to transition with grace, elevation, and dignity. As a death care worker, they are excited to deepen into the work of supporting people to confront impermanence and prepare for their own eventual end spiritually and logistically. Ekua has twenty years of experience hosting and facilitating groups primarily in liberation movement spaces, and fifteen years experience as a healing practitioner practicing with various modalities.

Link with Ekua:

• Ekua’s 7 Step Guide


• Website


• Instagram @ekuaadisa

MUM is produced by Ellen Wong and edited by Stepfanie Aguilar. Your support allows us to continue creating this podcast. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review. Keep this conversation alive by bringing it to your communities.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

If you are interested in working privately with Ellen, visit tripwithellen.com to learn more about her Death/Birth program and her spirit medicine solo retreats.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

“The presence of grief means that we need space, and our need for space means we need to honor our rest. We need to honor these natural cycles. And that is a key piece of our personal liberation effort.”

Welcome back to Season Two of MUM. We ended Season One early in response to the genocide occurring in Gaza.

As we return for this second season, MUM creator and host Ellen Wong reflects on the relationship between personal and collective liberation.

If liberation is being in right relationship with all that is and honoring the natural cycles that govern our bodies and world, then celebrating death and embracing grief must be part of our liberation efforts.

How are you focusing your energy and gifts in service of our collective liberation?

Ellen’s note – the documentary she mentions in the episode is called “Trees and Other Entanglements” and the story she tells is of Carolyn Finney, Ph.D., author and environmentalist.

Your support allows us to continue creating this podcast. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review. Keep this conversation alive by bringing it to your communities.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

If you are interested in working privately with Ellen, visit tripwithellen.com to learn more about her Death/Birth program and her spirit medicine solo retreats.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

“Suddenly I just didn't know who I was without that anymore. It was a real unmooring. But I think that I felt completely untethered to this world. I had nothing holding me here anymore, and that was really weird. I did not expect that. I think I expected to be sad about my dad being gone, but I don't think I expected—I literally do not know who I am anymore, and I don't know what my attachment is to life because I've lost so much of my context that I didn't even know was that big of my context.”

Karen Shih is a fellow first-generation Taiwanese American death doula (in the making), a triple Gemini, and a deeply devoted dog auntie.

In this episode, Karen shares about the death of her father, which led to her stepping out of her career to honor her grief.

Karen shares, “After my dad died unexpectedly in October of 2015, I completely hit pause on my life (which is a huge privilege on a variety on levels that I think most people can't do or maybe wouldn't even choose to do if they could). I quit my job, watched a lot of Grey's Anatomy, traveled to Taiwan, and eventually left New York and my life there behind. It felt like I stripped my life and identity down to nothing and had to start from scratch. The next 7+ years felt like a slow incubation as I navigated my inner jungle and surfaced a path and myself choice by choice.”


Learn more about Karen Shih at https://www.life-changing-magic.com/

Follow her on IG @shihster

This episode was edited by Nina Maria Iniestra De La Riva and comes to you with the support of Erika Mai T. Apuli from Earth Rooted Assistants.


Your support means so much!

If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

Visit TripwithEllen.com to learn more about Ellen's Death/Rebirth private mentorship and medicine journey programs. Listeners receive a 10% discount if they mention Mum during their discovery call. Scholarships are awarded on a first-come-first-served basis. Payment plans available.

Join the Medicine Membership to join our monthly virtual medicine ceremony and integration circle. Access a growing library of journeys and meditations facilitated by Ellen.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

“What I've learned through this work is that I can allow the emotion, the energy, to be in motion. And when I make space for that, it goes away. Even grief. Grief can take longer. There's no time frame here, but it is what it is. But if I can soften and allow that wave to come over me and I give space for it to show up, to reach the peak of the experience and to discharge, I can function much better in the world because I'm not spending so much energy trying not to feel the emotion or not to feel the feeling.”

Kimberly is the visionary Founder and CEO behind Somagetics, a trailblazing company dedicated to enlightening individuals about the profound impact of trauma and providing accessible tools for healing.

With an illustrious career spanning over three decades, Kimberly has worn many hats, including that of a functional nutrition practitioner, a skilled bodyworker, and a compassionate home birth midwife. Through her extensive experience with thousands of clients, she made a pivotal revelation: unaddressed trauma, held within the body, often lies at the core of various health challenges. This epiphany led to a transformation in her approach.

Kimberly is passionate about sacred transformation. In this conversation, she shares her work with terminally ill cancer patients in their dying process and birth midwifery early in her career. These experiences led her to co-create Somagetics, “a trauma-informed, body-based energetic technique that transforms defensive patterns and enables physical and emotional healing.”

In this episode, Kimberly shares, “What excites me now is the possibility of sacred transformations that can happen between birth and death. Currently, my focus is supporting people to transform old, limiting defensive trauma patterns so they can access their true divine essence. We can learn to identify the trauma patterns but identify with our eternal essential self. And that is the place where we create the life of our dreams.”

Learn more about Kimberly Ward at www.somagetics.net

Follow her on IG @somagetics_

Watch and Stay tuned in on YouTube at Somagetics

This episode was edited by Nina Maria Iniestra De La Riva and comes to you with the support of Erika Mai T. Apuli from Earth Rooted Assistants.

Your support means so much!

If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

Visit TripwithEllen.com to learn more about Ellen's Death/Rebirth private mentorship and medicine journey programs. Listeners receive a 10% discount if they mention Mum during their discovery call. Scholarships are awarded on a first-come-first-served basis. Payment plans available.

Join the Medicine Membership to join our monthly virtual medicine ceremony and integration circle. Access a growing library of journeys and meditations facilitated by Ellen.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

“I think part of just the way we're raised or our society is like, oh, well, at least we tried everything we could. I think it's that old adage of, well, we tried everything. Well, sometimes it's not about that. It's not about trying all the medications till you've basically just worn your body out. It's about maybe giving yourself the last few months to just kind of enjoy your life. Where you can enjoy your food, your friends, go to the beach, go see a show. Isn't that how you'd want to remember living?”

Judy Dubko is a Physician Assistant in Hematology/Oncology.

In this podcast episode, Judy shares about her experience working in hematology/oncology and facing death from a medical perspective. She raises the important point that sometimes letting go is a more graceful and compassionate choice than exhausting every treatment option to extend life, particularly when it comes to the cost of quality of life.

Follow Judy on IG @shengrila18

This episode was edited by Nina Maria Iniestra De La Riva and comes to you with the support of Erika Mai T. Apuli from Earth Rooted Assistants.

Your support means so much!

If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

Visit TripwithEllen.com to learn more about Ellen's Death/Rebirth private mentorship and medicine journey programs. Listeners receive a 10% discount if they mention Mum during their discovery call. Scholarships are awarded on a first-come-first-served basis. Payment plans available.

Join the Medicine Membership to join our monthly virtual medicine ceremony and integration circle. Access a growing library of journeys and meditations facilitated by Ellen.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

“I feel so clearly called to death and birth work in this primal way of, like, this is what I'm here for now. All of the logistics of capitalism have not been mastered and would love to put the onus of mastery to someone else to just make it possible for me to do this. Because this feels so like even the gentle way that I'm sometimes feeling guided to death work in this place. I love old people and I love talking to people about their reproductive organs and how all of these things go together. And it just seems like only in weird deathy spaces or weird birthworky spaces do I feel at home.”

A student of life, Avé is a writer, full-spectrum doula, public scholar, and wellness guide. Inspired by traditional healing and aerial perspective, the goal is guiding life with abundance towards death in solace. Oriented towards justice, Avé Lanett chooses transformation. With over three decades of multidisciplinary yoga practice, they have committed their life to sharing wellness. Most commonly known for their political, environmental, and social justice work in the LGBTQ community, their methods are rooted in health through Black Liberation. From birthwork to end-of-life support, Avé enjoys serving as a witness of becoming.

In this podcast episode, Avé shares insights on how they experienced their mother's death, their journey with grief, and the truth that experiencing grief requires the privilege of space and safety.

Learn more about Avé Lanett at Blkdreamcamp.co

Follow Avé on IG @themblkyogi, @blkdreamcamp

This episode was edited by Nina Maria Iniestra De La Riva and comes to you with the support of Erika Mai T. Apuli from Earth Rooted Assistants.

Your support means so much!

If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

Visit TripwithEllen.com to learn more about Ellen's Death/Rebirth private mentorship and medicine journey programs. Listeners receive a 10% discount if they mention Mum during their discovery call. Scholarships are awarded on a first-come-first-served basis. Payment plans available.

Join the Medicine Membership to join our monthly virtual medicine ceremony and integration circle. Access a growing library of journeys and meditations facilitated by Ellen.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe

“This particular residency was a thematic one, and the theme was titled Meeting for Teas. So it drew artists curators and thinkers from all over. We all had this time and space to sit with Tea independently, sit with Tea communally, and talk about tea in all the different ways, including decolonizing as an aspect of tea and tea culture. And I couldn't stop crying the first two weeks when I was there, and I didn't even really know what I was crying about. To a certain degree, I kind of did, because the day that I received news that I've been accepted was the same day my Nai Nai passed away.”

Mimi Young, née Lin, is a Taiwanese Canadian animist spirit medium, Tea devotée, writer, and the founder of Ceremonie. Mimi’s work lies at the intersection of animacy and re-animation, intuition and creativity, using symbolic interpretation and ancient Chinese wisdom practices to commune with the Unseen and invite new possibilities during times of uncertainty and change.

In this podcast episode, Mimi shares excerpts from her limited edition artist's book, A Tea Stronger Than Death: Poems of Hurt and Healing While On Sacred Buffalo Guardian Mountain.

“Created during the 5-week thematic residency, Meeting For Teas, held at the Banff Centre for Arts + Creativity, located on the side of Sacred Buffalo Guardian Mountain, this collection of poems and illustrations of grey-scaled cyanotypes (sun prints) is both prayer and journey through light, shadow, and verse, giving honour to the painful and healing moments of locating oneself over and over again, with Tea, the departed, and the more-than-human.”

She also has an upcoming sliding scale 6-week transformational writing series titled UGLY WORDS.

Learn more about Mimi Young at https://shopceremonie.com/

Follow her on IG @shopceremonie

This episode was edited by Nina Maria Iniestra De La Riva and comes to you with the support of Erika Mai T. Apuli from Earth Rooted Assistants.

Your support means so much!

If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review.

Follow Mum on Instagram ⁠@mumthepod⁠.

Visit TripwithEllen.com to learn more about Ellen's Death/Rebirth private mentorship and medicine journey programs. Listeners receive a 10% discount if they mention Mum during their discovery call. Scholarships are awarded on a first-come-first-served basis. Payment plans available.

Join the Medicine Membership to join our monthly virtual medicine ceremony and integration circle. Access a growing library of journeys and meditations facilitated by Ellen.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tripwithellen.substack.com/subscribe