Today I’m chatting with Kimberly Ann Johnson, a Sexological Bodyworker, Somatic Experiencing trauma resolution practitioner, birth doula, and single mother from Solana Beach, California.
She specializes in helping women prepare for birth, recover from birth injuries and birth trauma, and heal from sexual trauma.
I’m so thrilled to share this conversation – and you really should check her work out – she has such a unique and deeply needed skillset that she puts into service in such a beautiful way.
Kimberly is also the founder of Magamama.com, an international holistic women’s health care resource for expectant and new mothers and the co-founder of the STREAM School for Postpartum Care, where she trains birth professionals, yoga teachers, somatic therapists, and bodyworkers to help women prepare for birth and recover from birth.
She is the author of The Fourth Trimester: A Postpartum Guide to Healing Your Body, Balancing Your Emotions and Restoring Your Vitality which was published by Shambhala Press in December 2017.
Enjoy our ramble through the myth of Inanna’s descent as well as Kimberly’s relationship with her body and creativity.
Resources from this episode:
- The Fourth Trimester by Kimberly Ann Johnson
- The Syilx People of the Okanagan Nation
- The Kumeyaay People of Southern California/Mexico
- Yemanjá
- Waldorf School
- Cheryl Strayed on binge writing
Connecting with Kimberly:
Connecting with Janelle:
Reciprocity & Appreciation
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Things we chatted about in this episode:
- the myth of Inanna and her descent into the underworld
- how it’s been such a huge resource in her motherhood journey
- it’s the most ancient Sumerian myth
- how Inanna’s act of collecting of talismans has to do with the chakra system of India
- how her descent into the underworld and to her sister Ereshkegal strips her of all her possessions and protections
- she’s stripped down and famished and suffering in the underworld
- how the entities sitting and listening to Ereshkegal teaches Inanna
- Inanna’s rebirth in the underworld changes how she lives in the upperworld
- How Inanna seeing her own shadow and being able to bear witness to pain and suffering allows her to rise back up into wholeness
- how becoming a mother catalyzed a descent into the underworld
- on being stripped of identity by living in a different country as a new mother
- the wonderful thing about getting older and going through more than one descent being that you know you’ll survive
- how the descent is like leaving one riverbank and not yet arriving at the other riverbank
- on single motherhood, relationships, and choosing how to relate to the child’s father
- on how her ancestors expressed their disapproval about her divorce
- how choosing divorce felt like betraying her ancestors, but she did it anyways
- on coming from a family line of women who sacrificed themselves to keep the family together
- one of the gifts of womanhood are monthly descents via our bodies
- relationship with body
- On how her body told her her relationship with her husband was over well before her mind agreed
- growing up in southern California with a lot of materialistic superficial focuses
- how her mother started getting plastic surgery at 38
- having a mother and grandmother who are deeply critical of their bodies
- how witnessing her mother and grandmother caused her, at the age of 14, to decide to not be critical of her body
- having a great relationship with her body and loving it for what it is
- on being a redhead, getting teased and bullied and screamed at
- how much she loves getting older, gets more and more comfortable and at peace in her own skin
- noticing how her skin relates to her muscles differently
- having an inherent belief that her maturity and physical ripening is super sexy
- how her body has been the most reliable truth teller
- on having so much devotion for her body
- how her identity has been so much in opposition to her mother because of seeing the pain her mother was in – in her self-judgment and concern for what others thought of her
- how she has so much more appreciation for her mother as she gets older
- how mothering is so much about not giving up and pushing through the resistance from your kids
- how different the act of respecting parents is between Brazil and the USA
- how she feels her job is to appreciate and honour her parents now
- how important it is to have ‘todos mas madres’ – many mothers – mothers and aunties and grammas – because no mother can be all things
- on our daughter’s desires for their mothers to be “normal” and how that ship has very much sailed
- how the body is the fractal for everything
- how a lot of our soul messages are stored and available to us in our pelvises
- how her body will tell her about what’s happening with her clients as well – in her spine, through sensation
- on being a devotee of the body as the real interface
- on how seeing and touching so many vulvas and vaginas (through her work) led to understanding how much information is available to us as women through these areas
- relationship with creativity
- how Cheryl Strayed’s theory of binge writing freed Kimberly from ideas of ‘disciplined consistent creativity’
- on entering into deep creative space
- on writing a book while being a single mother and having a full practice with clients
- on not being someone who always knew she’d write a book
- how the process of writing a book was nothing like what she thought it would be
- writing her book was 4 years of life force
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