In the first half of today’s show I am joined by Margaret Bensfield Sullivan, an author, illustrator, and family photo curator, whose work combines her personal passion for archiving with visual storytelling skills she honed over nearly two decades in brand marketing. Margaret was a partner at WPP’s marketing and branded content agency Group SJR, where she designed storytelling campaigns on behalf of clients like TED, Target, Disney, and USAID. She left corporate life to spend a year with her husband and two young children crisscrossing the globe, visiting 29 countries and six continents. She wrote about their adventures in Following the Sun: Tales (and Fails) From a Year Around the World With Our Kids (December 5, 2023).
Our conversation just skims the surface of the richness of her book where she details: what to consider when planning a trip like this, the pitfalls and pluses of traveling with kids, how to keep marital and family peace during a year of togetherness, and the transformative and lasting effects of time away from life’s daily routine. I love that Margaret concluded our conversation with the notion that you don’t actually have to travel the world to get the benefits from ditching the treadmill of the daily routine.
If you are interested in this type of experience for yourself and your family, in addition to getting Margaret’s book, she suggests finding a Worldschooler group on Facebook.
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In the second half of the show, I am joined by the one and only Tami Lynn Kent, a women’s health physical therapist and the founder of Holistic Pelvic CareTM where she utilizes her ability to read energetic patterns of the body to help women reconnect to their bodies and feminine. Tami maintains a private practice and an international training program in Portland, Oregon. She has authored three previous books. Her latest, Wild Mothering: Finding Power, Spirit, and Joy in Birth and a Creative Motherhood (Atria Books, May 7, 2024), is a newly updated edition of her classic, Mothering from Your Center.
I first learned of Tami’s work back in 2016 when my dear friend Neslihan lent me her book, Wild Feminine. It was a life changing read that helped me to understand some of my own conditioning and subconscious biases as well as take me down a road of deep healing and a reconnecting with my own feminine energy. Today, Tami shares about the importance of reconnecting both physically and energetically with the pelvic bowl. Beyond the healing that is possible for an individual, it’s an important collective act for reclaiming the energy of the feminine and re-establishing its value in an imbalanced patriarchal society. Tami’s idea of Wild Mothering is offering permission and possibility to do mothering and life differently, from a place not solely lead by the head, but supported and embraced by both an inner compassion as well as a greater connection to the creative resources that exist beyond ourselves. She believes that every woman at her center has a wealth of creative resources for mothering. These abundant resources can provide guidance, bring energy when it’s needed, and restore the mother-child connection. To tap into them, it’s essential for women to connect with the energy medicine in their female centers. Wild Mothering — allows women to move beyond stereotypes and create the type of mothering that both sustains their families and also feeds their mothering souls.
As a part of our conversation, she touches on the energetics of birth and the birth field, what the feminine means to her, what Wild Mothering means and how to embody it, and how all bodies have access to the healing medicine of the feminine.
“What Tami has created here is nothing short of a bible for us. Wild Mothering elevates mothering to its rightful place as the axis of culture, requiring proper due and respect and refusing to accept the invisibility and the unrecognized labor of mothers that is all too common.” Kimberly Ann Johnson
Today’s show was engineered by Ian Seda from Radiokingston.org.
Our show music is from Shana Falana!
Feel free to email me, say hello: she@iwantwhatshehas.org
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