This episode is a tender one.

Walk with me in a deeply personal conversation about the wounds we may carry from our mothers — and how those wounds can quietly enter our adult relationships, especially marriage.

Through the lens of my own separation, motherhood, therapy, and long arc of repair with my mother, I explore how conditional love, abandonment, rejection, and emotional neglect shaped the way I received love, tested love, pushed love away, and ached to be chosen.

It's an episode about what happens when an old wound enters the room of a present relationship — and becomes mature enough to finally be named.

To the woman who has done “the healing work” and is shocked to find another layer rising in love, partnership, or marriage — this episode is for you.

Not healed.  Healing.

RESOURCES

The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health

RELATED EPISODES

8: Trapped in labels

16: Mom's Health Care Compass - be the medicine woman of your family

COMPANION READING FROM THE BLOG

Why you need to understand limbic imprinting

HERstory timeline

BONUS

Below is an affirmation/dedication I created (which may serve as inspiration) for myself as a loving reminder of my devotion to heal these wounds with grace... and speediness 🤞😅 

I release the intense feelings of rejection, abandonment, and conditional love. I see them. And I remember they are not the whole truth. They are separate from me, the person, or situation they may be rising in right now. I will pause and take time to tend to myself. To return to stability and truth. I will confide in the people I trust and care about, and let them know the wounds I'm actively healing. Co-regulation is supportive. I deserve loving support while I heal. I can hold myself with devotion as I return to what's real.

Support the show

CONNECT WITH ELISE

🌐 website: BirthHumanity.com  

📲 Instagram: @BirthHumanity  

💬 You're invited to ask Elise what you'd like clarification on or learn more about. She'll do her best to address it in an upcoming episode.

If one thing rings true, follow that sound. Return the rest to the wind.

💗 Please follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you feel will resonate with it. 

This podcast is not medical advice. It’s education, story, discernment, and conversation. You are the authority of your life, your body, and your children. 

You do not need an MD, a PhD, or a list of certifications to be the medicine woman of your family.

In this episode, I share a tender personal story that shaped my belief in maternal discernment, patient advocacy, and the importance of building a clear, intentional model of care inside your home.

EXPLORE

• why many holistic-minded women still feel disconnected from the medicine piece of holistic living 
• the difference between emergency medicine and long-term healing 
• how difficult it can be to step out of the allopathic cycle once you are in it 
• why being the medicine woman is not only intuition, but also organization, structure, and responsibility 
• how fear can disconnect a mother from her own knowing 
• the importance of household clarity around who leads, what is used first, and how your family responds in a health event 
• how to begin building your own internal compass with more confidence and less panic 

If this episode speaks to you, Mom’s Health Care Compass 📖 was made for you.

It is a guide to help you ask better questions, get more organized, strengthen your discernment, and feel more supported in the care of your children and yourself.

👉  CLICK HERE to get your guide now

When you purchase the Compass, you’ll also receive access to my private support space for women walking this path.

Support the show

CONNECT WITH ELISE

🌐 website: BirthHumanity.com  

📲 Instagram: @BirthHumanity  

💬 You're invited to ask Elise what you'd like clarification on or learn more about. She'll do her best to address it in an upcoming episode.

If one thing rings true, follow that sound. Return the rest to the wind.

💗 Please follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you feel will resonate with it. 

This podcast is not medical advice. It’s education, story, discernment, and conversation. You are the authority of your life, your body, and your children. 

In this follow-up to episode 14: Being Seen Is Not the Same as Being Known, we will explore friendship, attachment, and discernment in healing spaces and growth containers. 

Here, is reflection on receiving what is helpful, without losing sight of real life, real relationships, and real rhythms waiting for you beyond the circle.

Support the show

CONNECT WITH ELISE

🌐 website: BirthHumanity.com  

📲 Instagram: @BirthHumanity  

💬 You're invited to ask Elise what you'd like clarification on or learn more about. She'll do her best to address it in an upcoming episode.

If one thing rings true, follow that sound. Return the rest to the wind.

💗 Please follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you feel will resonate with it. 

This podcast is not medical advice. It’s education, story, discernment, and conversation. You are the authority of your life, your body, and your children. 

What happens when a healing space starts to feel more intimate than your real life?

The potential risks of coed healing spaces (if you're heterosexual), emotional attachment, transference, and the blurred boundaries that can form when vulnerability is held without enough discernment or ethics. 

I also unpack:

• the difference between true healing and emotional dependency, 
• the seduction of being deeply seen, 
• and why being witnessed in a room is not the same as being deeply known in a life.

This is a conversation on facilitator integrity, relationships, self-trust, and the kind of healing that can help you return to your real life more honest, more awake, and more embodied.

RELATED EPISODES FROM THE PODCAST

3: Feet on the ground - that is "the work"

8: Trapped in labels

11: The journey is not the integration

NATIONWIDE RESOURCES

For men: The Unbreakable Man Project

For women: The Living Temple, Priestess Presence, and The Relaxed Woman System

For marriages: Modern Marriage

Support the show

CONNECT WITH ELISE

🌐 website: BirthHumanity.com  

📲 Instagram: @BirthHumanity  

💬 You're invited to ask Elise what you'd like clarification on or learn more about. She'll do her best to address it in an upcoming episode.

If one thing rings true, follow that sound. Return the rest to the wind.

💗 Please follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you feel will resonate with it. 

This podcast is not medical advice. It’s education, story, discernment, and conversation. You are the authority of your life, your body, and your children. 

There’s a popular narrative that motherhood naturally brings women deeper into their feminine: softness, intuition, flow, devotion.

And while motherhood can absolutely deepen those qualities, it also asks women to hold an extraordinary amount of masculine energy.

In this episode, I name what so many mothers feel but struggle to articulate: that mothering often requires structure, containment, leadership, anticipation, protection, decision-making, and emotional steadiness. In other words, it requires a tremendous amount of masculine capacity.

EXPLORE

• what masculine and feminine energy look like in real life
• why motherhood is not only nurturing, but leadership
• the invisible mental and emotional load mothers often carry
• how disconnection from the body often begins before motherhood
• how marriage can suffer when one person holds the tone and weight of the home alone
• why softness is not something a woman performs, but something that emerges when she feels safe enough to put some of the weight down

Motherhood is sacred work.  But sacred does not mean weightless.

RESOURCE

🖨️ Download + print your FREE sacred masculine & feminine guide here ☯️

COMPANION READING FROM THE BLOG

Gifts of motherhood every husband deserves to understand

Motherhood requires more masculine energy than you realize

There is no finish line

Support the show

CONNECT WITH ELISE

🌐 website: BirthHumanity.com  

📲 Instagram: @BirthHumanity  

💬 You're invited to ask Elise what you'd like clarification on or learn more about. She'll do her best to address it in an upcoming episode.

If one thing rings true, follow that sound. Return the rest to the wind.

💗 Please follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you feel will resonate with it. 

This podcast is not medical advice. It’s education, story, discernment, and conversation. You are the authority of your life, your body, and your children. 

This is Part II of episodes 9 (for HER) and 10 (for HIM), Inner Rhythms | Moon Cycle Mapping. So you may want to listen to one of those first.

Here, I will uncover the sacred season of inner winter — menstruation — and how it prepares women for the Wise Woman years.

EXPLORE

• The natural initiations of a woman’s life — menarche, maiden, motherhood, menopause
• What happens hormonally (in simple, clear language) during each phase
• Why postpartum rest is physiological — not indulgent
• The evolutionary power of the grandmother years
• Why culture’s obsession with youth harms women and our humanity
• How monthly menstruation prepares us for aging
• Small, embodied ways to begin honoring your inner winter today

This is a conversation about reclaiming aging as privilege.

About training your nervous system for longevity.

About modeling reverence — not resistance — to your daughters (and sons!).

You are not declining. You are ripening.

RESOURCES

Banyan Botanicals

COMPANION READING FROM THE BLOG

Why rest is radical

Support the show

CONNECT WITH ELISE

🌐 website: BirthHumanity.com  

📲 Instagram: @BirthHumanity  

💬 You're invited to ask Elise what you'd like clarification on or learn more about. She'll do her best to address it in an upcoming episode.

If one thing rings true, follow that sound. Return the rest to the wind.

💗 Please follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you feel will resonate with it. 

This podcast is not medical advice. It’s education, story, discernment, and conversation. You are the authority of your life, your body, and your children. 

Psychedelic journeys are increasingly spoken about as awakening experiences — portals into truth, clarity, and purpose.

And sometimes, they are.

But what we rarely talk about is what happens after.

EXPLORE

• What actually happens in the brain during altered states
• Why feelings of relief can sometimes be mistaken for revelation
• How unintegrated insight can lead to impulsive life changes
• The difference between expansion and detachment
• Why nature offers a parallel pathway to interconnectedness
• And what it truly means to return: to relationship, to responsibility, to belonging

Because wisdom is not proven by what we see in transcendent moments.

It’s proven by how we live afterward.

This episode is a grounded, compassionate exploration of both the promise and the caution of deep inner journeys — and how to bridge spiritual insight with real earthly life.

Support the show

CONNECT WITH ELISE

🌐 website: BirthHumanity.com  

📲 Instagram: @BirthHumanity  

💬 You're invited to ask Elise what you'd like clarification on or learn more about. She'll do her best to address it in an upcoming episode.

If one thing rings true, follow that sound. Return the rest to the wind.

💗 Please follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you feel will resonate with it. 

This podcast is not medical advice. It’s education, story, discernment, and conversation. You are the authority of your life, your body, and your children. 

This episode is for HIM.

🙋‍♂️ For the man who loves a woman and wants to understand her instead of taking her moods personally.

🙋‍♂️ For the father raising a daughter and wanting to guide her without shaming her body.

🙋‍♂️ For the partner who senses there is intelligence in her rhythm — but was never taught the language.

This is not about walking on eggshells.  This is about biological literacy.

EXPLORE:

• Circadian vs. infradian rhythms
• Her Four Inner Seasons (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall)
• How to support her during menstruation, ovulation, luteal phase, and menopause
• Why PMS is endocrine feedback — not a character flaw
• How fathers shape their daughters’ body stories

Female bodies shift daily.  She is not inconsistent.  She is cyclical.

When you understand her rhythm, you stop reacting and start partnering.

🖨️ Download your FREE printer-friendly cycle map, so you can both speak the same biological language.

📖 My FREE blog article about fathers navigating their daughter's period.

Her body was never chaotic.  It has always been rhythmic.

Support the show

CONNECT WITH ELISE

🌐 website: BirthHumanity.com  

📲 Instagram: @BirthHumanity  

💬 You're invited to ask Elise what you'd like clarification on or learn more about. She'll do her best to address it in an upcoming episode.

If one thing rings true, follow that sound. Return the rest to the wind.

💗 Please follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you feel will resonate with it. 

This podcast is not medical advice. It’s education, story, discernment, and conversation. You are the authority of your life, your body, and your children. 

This episode is for HER.

✨ For the woman who senses there is more intelligence in her body than she has been taught.

✨ For the woman who was conditioned to dread her cycle.

✨ For the woman in perimenopause or menopause who was never given language for her power.

In this foundational teaching, you will walk through Cycle Mapping, a physiological and emotional framework for understanding your monthly infradian rhythm.

EXPLORE:

• The difference between circadian and infradian rhythms
• The Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Ovarian Axis explained simply
• Where estrogen and progesterone originate — and what they actually do
• Why ovulation matters for long-term mood, sleep, and vitality
• What shifts at menopause (and why it is redistribution, not decline)
• Your Four Inner Seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall
• How to read your bleed as sacred biofeedback

When you understand where hormones originate and what they are communicating, self-blame dissolves and biological literacy begins.

Cycle Mapping is not about control.  It is about sovereignty.

Your body was never chaotic.  It has always been rhythmic.

This episode is your invitation to remember.

RESOURCES

🖨️ Print your FREE Cycle Map here

Womben Wellness with Usha Anandi (for more about womb health)

The Living Temple with Sarah Jenks (for more about seasonal living)

Support the show

CONNECT WITH ELISE

🌐 website: BirthHumanity.com  

📲 Instagram: @BirthHumanity  

💬 You're invited to ask Elise what you'd like clarification on or learn more about. She'll do her best to address it in an upcoming episode.

If one thing rings true, follow that sound. Return the rest to the wind.

💗 Please follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you feel will resonate with it. 

This podcast is not medical advice. It’s education, story, discernment, and conversation. You are the authority of your life, your body, and your children. 

Labels help us make sense of the world, but they can quietly confine us when we forget they may be temporary.

In this deeply personal episode, I share stories from my own life: childhood eczema and allergies, to healing trichotillomania, to navigating motherhood, perfectionism, career evolution, and frequency work.

EXPLORE

• Why diagnoses are not destinies
• How the intensity of identity shifts over time
• The evolving meaning of “daughter”
• Perfectionism and withholding truth
• Career labels and reinvention
• Healing outside conventional frameworks
• The difference between title and frequency

COMPANION READING FROM THE BLOG

What it really means to be a matriarch

Why women circles matter (now more than ever)

Support the show

CONNECT WITH ELISE

🌐 website: BirthHumanity.com  

📲 Instagram: @BirthHumanity  

💬 You're invited to ask Elise what you'd like clarification on or learn more about. She'll do her best to address it in an upcoming episode.

If one thing rings true, follow that sound. Return the rest to the wind.

💗 Please follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone you feel will resonate with it. 

This podcast is not medical advice. It’s education, story, discernment, and conversation. You are the authority of your life, your body, and your children.