Motherhood is a rite of passage that changes everything, yet our culture often treats it like an afterthought. Molly Mitchell Hardt, psychotherapist and co-founder of the Sacred Journey of Motherhood, is working to change that. Her mission is to bring reverence, awareness, and deep support back to one of life’s most profound transitions. We talk about the layers of consciousness that shape our experience, the influence of family history, and how archetypes can guide us through birth and beyond. Molly blends professional expertise with real-life insight to offer a vision of motherhood that’s empowered, honored, and healing. This is a conversation for anyone who believes mothers, and the journey to becoming one, deserve more.
“That’s why I love doing this work. Not only is there an unbelievable potential that we have to tap into, there’s also an unbelievable capacity for destruction.”
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Private Psychotherapy Practice
Sacred Journey of Motherhood - Cofounder
Becky Whitmore - Cofounder
Depth Psychotherapy & Trauma Resolution
Psychotherapeutic Yoga - Yoga Zama
Study of Birds in the UK learning to open milk bottles
Handmaid’s Tale - book
Handmaid’s Tale - movie
The Four Layers of Consciousness:
The Collective - our inheritance as a human species
Family Origin - your family’s & your origin story
Epigenetics - goes three generations back
Past Lives - Not genetic, but soul level
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
00:00 Rethinking motherhood in modern society
01:25 Molly’s path to psychotherapy and birth work
03:15 The four layers of consciousness
05:40 How family origin impacts our adult lives
07:20 Archetypes and the motherhood journey
09:10 Why birth experiences shape our culture
11:30 Somatic practices for emotional healing
13:05 The role of epigenetics in motherhood
15:00 Building the Sacred Journey of Motherhood
17:20 How to better prepare for birth
19:40 Supporting mothers after birth
21:15 Lessons from global motherhood traditions
23:10 Breaking cultural myths about motherhood
25:00 Creating systemic change for families
27:15 Molly’s advice for expecting and new mothers
When I get to that place, I'm like, you know what? What's here and now in your body in this moment? Because the body doesn't differentiate between real or imagined, nor does it di differentiate around time. So if something happened to you and you were. Two years old. That's always ever present.
That's Molly Mitchell Hardt, and this is The Powerful Ladies Podcast.
Hey guys, I am Kara Duffy, a business coach and entrepreneur on a mission to help you live your most extraordinary life and make the impact you want by showing you anything is possible. People who have mastered freedom, ease, and success, who are living their best and most ridiculous lives, and who are changing the world are often people you've never heard of until now.
As we look deeper into our modern society and our modern habits, don't serve us or align with what we're committed to. A huge, massive void is how we view approach, appreciate, prepare, support, and honestly all the things regarding motherhood. Today's guest, Molly Mitchell Hardt. Has stepped in to repair the journey of motherhood, how it's approached, and most importantly, to support women in their motherhood experience.
Whether you are a mother or not, this episode will highlight how much of our life, society policies and simply our way of being needs to be looked at again, because motherhood literally touches everything and Molly knows being a mother herself and a therapist, she has daily exposure to the impact the mother character has on all of us.
I look forward to hearing your aha moments. I had so many from this episode, but in the meantime, enjoy our conversation.
Welcome to the Powerful Ladies podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's an honor. I'm very excited to talk to you today. You were referred by. Anna, who's on our team, and she has like the coolest people in her circle. So every time she's oh, can I recommend someone? I'm like, yes, please.
Because whomever they are, they're awesome. How do you know Anna?
Oh wow. We go back a ways probably a decade now, which is crazy. We met through a mutual friend and then lived together for a short time, and in that time we were both in such a like coming of age moment early twenties figuring out like who we are and what we wanted, and we just really bonded in that space and created this sort of foundation for a deep friendship that has evolved so much over time.
And she's one of those people who I. I can connect with, whenever, and we just go really deep
yeah. Yeah. She's awesome. Let's tell everyone your name, where you are in the world and what you're up to. Yeah.
So my name's Molly Mitchell Hardt. I'm in Venice, California.
And I am, I've always been one who's doing lots of things at once. So my main two areas, I guess three are my private psychotherapy practice and the sacred journey of motherhood, which is, a company that I co-founded with a friend and fellow mama Becky Whitmore. And it's really about bringing motherhood back into the sacred container in many different forms. And I can, talk more about that later. And then, my third big box is family and and motherhood. Yeah. How many kids do you have? One? Yep. He is how old are they? He is turning three in April. Yeah. And I've like just now started to sleep for longer stretches than two hours.
So it's very exciting.
Yes. There is a comedian that a friend quoted recently to just say over and over again, my son is two and he's cried every day. He's cried every day for two years. I didn't know it was possible for someone to cry every day.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of everything.
Oh, yes. And you're probably getting into that really fun place of like, all the questions, which I think are Oh, yeah.
To me, I wish they had more shows about kids just saying what kids say.
I think part of what I, why I want to be a mother is just to overhear their conversations and to field their questions because they're enlightening, they're hilarious. And my favorite jokes are about loss in translation, which kids excel at in their young ages.
It's like constant. Hilarity, that's for sure. And his new thing is just asking why to everything. And so I'm like, wow. I'm like, really? I gotta be on it. I'm like, why is the sky blue? Okay, good question. Let me
dig deep for that. We're gonna have to ask Uncle Google. Hold on.
Yeah, exactly. I'd love to start at the beginning of your kind of three part path of, being a therapist or a psychotherapist, correct? So how did you decide that was a fit for you, and what has that journey been like so far?
When I really look back, I realize it was a golden thread woven through, the fabric of my whole life.
Because I was always so curious about, my own behavior, the behavior of those around me, like the why question, and I remember I had a class in high school on psychology and I was like, huh, okay. There's something. So it sparked something for me. And that kind of coincided with the first, my first musings in the kind of eastern philosophy realm.
And so I ended up going, my own kind of journey of self-discovery and awakening started in the path of yoga. I did get my undergrad in psychology, but that was actually like a really deadening experience. And I was like, if this is what it is, I don't like it. But it wasn't until I found the the institute that I got my master's at that I was like, okay, this is home.
Like I have arrived, this is it. And yeah. When, when I found Pacifica, it's called Pacifica Graduate Institute. It did feel like a homecoming, like it was like a Hogwarts of sorts. After about 10 years of teaching yoga, I had the sense that I really wanted to deepen with people, to really have a experience of like greater depth, one-on-one and, in groups. But really focusing in on the deeper layers that like, you could feel in the room in a yoga class, but maybe not necessarily it's not so explicit. It felt like finishing what I had started as far as where my interests were. Yeah. And the second part of the question was like, how is it going? Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. It's definitely a calling. It has been a calling. Yeah. And so was teaching yoga. But I, the difference is that I think being a therapist for me is a much better fit for my typology and personality.
And I just love what I do. I am so grateful every day for what I do. It fills me up and gives me energy and so much purpose and meaning. So I'd say it's going pretty well.
Yeah. Overall, do you have a specialty that you focus in?
Yeah I two main realms. One is the container of depth psychotherapy, which encompasses jian psychology and the importance of myth and story, the importance of ritual and the realm of the unconscious and shadow.
And then the other big box is the somatic realm. So really focusing in on trauma resolution and the relationship with the body. And I found without both sort of the narrative and the cognitive and the somatic in my own experience of healing, it was just there was a disconnect and it just wasn't quite complete.
So those two elements have really become really powerful for me. Oh, what I was gonna say about the depth is also the realm of archetypes. I've always been after like searching for what's underneath everything, like what I've always been seeking, what's the deepest truth I can find?
And so for me where I've landed is in the realm of the physiology and in the realms of depth psychology because it just feels like it's a root system underneath everything.
I think it's so fascinating how much crossover there is between psychotherapy and yoga. And I first started seeing this alignment when I had a coach who was a therapist left being left practicing so she could be just a coach.
So she could bring in other modalities, whether it was reiki or yoga or essential oils or food or something else. Help people have breakthroughs that she couldn't in the license space. Then I had another client who created what's called the first ever psychotherapeutic yoga teachers training, which I got to take, which was amazing.
And it brings together yoga psychology and neurobiology. ' cause she was a therapist who started partnering with yoga teachers to have breakthroughs with her clients. And she's hold on. There's a clear connection here. How do we put all this together?
So it's, it, I think it's so interesting to, to then meet you who went from yoga into therapy and like being able to see those two spaces.
Do you ever feel in conflict that you can't like that you're in the license box, like helping people as a therapist? Totally.
It's definitely. It's we're in such an interesting space. I know from my astrologist friends that we've been in this big transformation around Capricorn and you can feel it. All the structures are starting to crumble and just feel so freaking archaic, I feel that way about the license. The flip side of that is that it's also very containing and it has this nice like trodden road that, okay, I take these steps forward, and that's like comforting.
And then there's like the cred, credibility part, but there, there's also the sense of, I think, people coming up like millennials and younger that are just like, get me out of these boxes, that don't wanna have to like, do this kind of thing. So I do, I feel that, and what I'd say is we joke, especially my friends who, you know, my colleagues who went to Pacifica as well. 'cause we're all, more in the realm of the spiritual and connect with the archetypes of the wounded healer and the witch and the shaman and these kind of archetypes that we embody and that move through us.
And what's nice about being in that psychotherapist box is that I think it's accessible for people. It's oh, okay, I think I know what I'm doing and getting, and then like we joke, we're like, in there and we're like, little do they know? There's this really deep process going on that that they're welcome into.
And if they're not quite ready to feel the full depth and breadth of it. That's okay too. Like we can we can operate in that like psychotherapist and client space and that's enough too.
I make the same joke about when new coaching business clients come to me because they'll come and, oh, everyone call, the people call you and they call me 'cause they have a problem.
The problem is always the symptom, not the issue. So I always find it so entertaining, the same thing of whatever they show up with, I'm like, that's cute. Yep. I'll put it, I'll put it down. We'll fix that. But I know that there's 15 layers below that we really gotta fix otherwise the rest isn't gonna work.
Totally. And so I find that amusing. It's a game I get to play with myself almost like here's what I bet the problem is. We'll go figure it out. And I give myself extra credit when I get it
it's fun to be
able to predict it. Totally. I'd love to take a moment and pause and explain a bit more about those archetypes.
Because I don't think everyone listening has heard of archetypes in that capacity. They might have heard in it heard about it from like a brand archetype or more of a marketing space of who are you? But the ones that you mentioned, I don't think everyone's quite as familiar with.
Would you mind explaining some of those and how they how they allow you to go deeper and learn?
Yeah. Okay. So we're in the realm of thinking about consciousness, and so there's consciousness, the part of us that's aware, and that's more often than not the part.
That we identify as like me. So that's like ego. And then underneath that there's the unconscious. And the kind of classic illustration of that is the iceberg. And you just, the consciousness is like the tip of the iceberg and the whole unconscious is what's underneath the water. All that math that you don't see.
And then which 90% yes, definitely. And then underneath that, there's the realm of the collective unconscious. And so the collective unconscious is the psychological and human inheritance from time immemorial, so I really like the idea that originated with young, which is within us within us, all the two, 2 million year old man or woman or person or.
And just this idea that we have this that idea that we come in as blank slates gets slashed and burned when we really think about, this collective unconscious aspect that we all have the capacity to tap into.
How does that align with like genetic consciousness or, some of the things that we're starting to see research done on, like family traumas and traumas that you've inherited. Is that separate? Yeah. Or is that aligned with that subconscious element?
Yeah, that's a really good question. I see, I see these like layers, where I think our the bag that we're really dealing with in our own personal psyche is influenced by so many different things.
And one is the collective, right? So like our inheritance as a human species, so that's that 2 million year old person. And then there's, our family of origin and our own, origin story and then there's the epigenetics, which goes at least three generations back they found.
And three generations back of if you've experienced trauma, then, that's still being lived out three generations. And I would argue it's so much more. 'cause the ripple effect is. Massive. Does that go into the unconscious? Of course. Because it's anything that we're not consciously relating to. And more often than not that trauma is, we're born into a family system that might have trauma, embedded in it. And often that lives in the family's unconscious, and gets enacted in certain, in different ways.
But I think we're also impacted, so that's like the lineage, and then we're also impacted by past lives, and that's more like of a soul contract, so that's less on the like genetic level and more on the soul level. And so I in a way, it's like interesting, but then I'm like, you know what, in a way, none of it really matters.
Yeah. In a way I'm, when I get to that place, I'm like, you know what? What's here and now in your body in this moment? Because the body doesn't differentiate between real or imagined, nor does it di differentiate around time. So if something happened to you and you were two years old, and especially if it was like an actual traumatic event that your body's holding onto, like that's always ever present, especially if it's in the field of relationship.
If you sit down with a therapist that's, does somatic work, it's like when you consulate that in the room, that's gonna be up in the relationship, in whatever form. So it's okay, so what's here?
So to summarize it, right? We've got the.
Human experience that's millions of years old. We have our family lineage, which generationally tied, we have past lives and then whatever we've dealt with in our own life.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a lot, and I think it's interesting. I, we like, whenever there's a, you get a client that you're like, wow, we're really meant to work together.
We always call it like a cosmic referral. And I often get clients who are wired really sensitively and I think in the world that we live in and, there's so much more awareness around that now. There's a highly sensitive person tests that you can take and like, all this stuff's to like really honor the different types of nervous systems that are out there.
But our world is not wired for the highly sensitive. And there are such gifts of the highly sensitive, but I think more often than not highly sensitive people grow up feeling very misunderstood, very ostracized, very other. I get a lot of people like that in, in my practice.
And I think that's partially because people who are highly sensitive and maybe don't know that, or don't, aren't met with that type of understanding in their world suffer quite a bit.
Yeah. So then circling back to the original question of archetypes. Yeah. What are the archetypes and which layer do they, excuse me, fit into?
So they live in the collective unconscious, like that's their realm. And they're in their dimension. And so archetypes are like patterns and energies that constellate together that become identifiable and if you look cross-culturally throughout time, you have these gods and goddesses and these cultures that have, a pantheon of gods and goddesses that kind of typologically are very similar, right?
But they're in these different, they have different cultural roots. And so that kind of just points to that we're all swimming in the same matrix. And, this is obviously way before the internet and, any sort of cross continental global communication on the level that it is today.
So the idea is that like these energies are already within us, and so when you feel under the reality of the archetypes, you can see them everywhere. So let's see if I can give some examples. What, okay, so it's complex because it's it's gods and goddesses, but it's also you like, even like a narcissist or like the, a narcissistic personality, that's an archetype, and oftentimes that archetype, you can then find the lineage and storyline and myth that, precedes it, but or holds it.
Would it make sense to like, think about, there's the Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey.
And in storytelling, there's always. Like the villains and the heroes.
And does it, for people listening who are hearing this all for the first time is it safe to say that these archetypes are like the recurring characters that keep showing up? Yeah, you mentioned the gods and goddesses, like Mars and Apollo, there's like a warrior person, and then there's like the guide person, and there's the healer, like would that, is that a kind? Yes. Super simplification. Thank you. Thank you
for landing me there. That's exactly right. It is. It's like these characters that show up everywhere. And I think Joseph Campbell was a really great torch bearer of this idea that brought it really to the masses in a time where we probably really needed it.
Yes, it is the characters that keep showing up. And so the important piece to remember is that within all these stories. All the characters are both within us and outside of us. So it's like that idea of as above, so below as within, so without, so the healer and the warrior and the witch and the, all these characters are inside of us and it depends on, we might not have a very conscious relationship with our inner warrior and, that might be a place to breathe some life into if you find yourself like, unable to say no, or unable to speak up for yourself, or unable to like, get a project off the ground or, those types of things. But, and then obviously we see it going on outside of us, like the, you can see the storyline living, even a, the plague, that's its own archetype, it's in stories throughout time.
So my, if I go back to school to get a PhD, it's probably gonna be either in two places, one would be in archeology. I, anthropology, like I love all of that. The, exactly what you said of the recurring themes and patterns and connections between cultures and the why I find fascinating.
And the other one would be about why certain people succeed and others don't, which I actually think is the same question. Just one's about people and the other's about cultures. And there's so many examples and you highlighted it briefly when you're sharing before about, there's so many moments in time when the exact same thing happened at the same time, and.
That's where the entire ancient aliens show and history. Channel has some persuasive arguments. 'cause it's how else did it happen? People weren't talking, there wasn't internet, there wasn't phones. They didn't have boats as far as we know. So it must have been an outside force that caused all of us to make the same piece of art or the same cultural jump.
But then we have all this other proof of the shared consciousness of things like birds. Like my favorite example is the birds that were sitting in the UK who all learned how to open the milk bottle tops at the same time. And it happened so quickly. It couldn't have been like one watching the other, there was something else going on.
How, we talk often about how much of our brain we don't use
And how much of our DNA we don't understand. This whole space of what's left over, like all this power that we have and this knowledge that we have that like we literally do nothing with. It's like having a Ferrari that we just drive five miles an hour and we only drive from like our house to one block away.
Like how exciting is it for you to like tap into that with people and get people to realize that there's so much more
Than
they're aware of?
Man, that's why I love doing this work. Because when you talk about that, it's not only is there this unbelievable potential that we have to tap into, but there's also an unbelievable capacity for destruction.
Yeah. And that's when these sort of destructive shadow qualities are. Deeply repressed and suppressed, and then they come out the back door and the side doors, through these sort of shadowy behaviors. That if we had conscious relationship with those things, and really those things do want they really just wanna be loved and understood and be told it's actually okay.
It's actually normal that you feel that way, or Yeah. There's nothing wrong with you, I think there's the part of potential and then there's this part of deep self-acceptance that's also really exciting to me. But yes in that shadow realm, we also put back there, any really positive quality that, we were told implicitly or explicitly wasn't okay. I know growing up like I used to get I used to get it about being bossy. Most girls did. Yes. Yes. Exactly. And so then if that goes into the shadow, if I say, okay, that's a part of me that like cannot come out, what goes with it, my voice, my power, my, my ability to lead. So yeah, when we really talk about uncovering those things, they come up with a lot of energy too. It's oh my God, this energy that I didn't know I even had, I have conscious access to again. And and that's really exciting.
'cause ultimately, i'm really interested in yes, there's if you're having an acute mental illness, getting to a baseline level of like functionality. And then from there's that level of like fully, full expansion into, what I would say is really like following your soul's path.
Yeah. There's so much junk to move out of the way before we can have that freedom. It's, whenever people are like, oh, I'm so tired and so drained, and I'm like, yeah, I can only imagine what powerful force inside of you. You're trying to like keep contained. Yeah. That's exhausting. It's it'd be like you trying to keep your three-year-old still and quiet.
That's exhausting. Just thinking about probably. Yeah. So you have this, fascinating work you're doing in as in therapy and getting to work with, I love these soul referrals. I think I'm gonna just borrow that from my own business too, because there are people that you just meet and you're like, of course we're supposed to work together.
And then you make this transition into this sacred motherhood space.
Were you did you see that transition coming before you were a mother or was it really something that like, got pushed through because of your own motherhood journey?
Yes. I think it was like this confluence of things where I was in grad school at the time when I got pregnant.
Our pregnancy was, it was like. We're gonna, we're not gonna not try, but we're not really trying. And then it just happened and we're like, whoa, okay. So now we're orienting to this reality. And so I, I was really like walking through each moment and each shift along the way with such sort of curiosity and I was just like studying it, like a case study and learning a lot, like researching a lot.
And so it really was the experience of, becoming pregnant and becoming a mother that really opened me to this world of, the archetype of the mother. One of the biggest, most important archetypes out there. That was constellating and moving through me that brought with it so many gifts and so much energy and a lot of that energy went toward my own awakening around a lot, around motherhood and it's I think one of the biggest initiatory events you can have. And also looking around and feeling like I wanted to share it so deeply and like shouting it from the rooftops. Because I could see, I feel I've got this like Libra in my cHardt and it's like this part of me that's always looking for justice.
And looking at what's out of whack in the world. And, going into that field of motherhood and birth culture got me in touch with an immense amount of grief that around, I know for my lineage, I don't know how far back I'd have to go to find like a land-based unbroken kind of motherhood wisdom that comes down the line.
All I know is that definitely got broken in my lineage and I so it leaves you having to reinvent the wheel. And so I felt like that's what I was doing. I was like, okay, so I guess I am figuring out what everything means now, and yeah. You know what all this is to me.
'Cause I don't have the models,
and there's so many components to that of Yeah, it's so big. Yeah. It's so big. It's a primary archetype for a reason, right? Because it's, you, it's, there's so many layers to motherhood.
And do you feel like how our current society relates to and positions motherhood in our common culture?
That it hurts the sacred space of what motherhood is?
Absolutely. I would say that sacred journey, the sacred journey of motherhood is a response to that. Because, because I was orienting as it was happening, like I wasn't ready, like I didn't know a lot. I didn't have a lot of information.
I wasn't steeping in like a community and culture of oh yeah, we know what mamas need and, I just, I didn't have that. And I really had to scramble a little bit. So I, it's almost like I went right into the conveyor belt model of what you're supposed to do. And as soon as I did, I was like, R like this feels so off and wrong.
Like it feels like I'm in this sterile well-lit, scary place when I feel like I should be in a red tent with other mamas who are like, there's oils and, you know what I mean? Like wisdom's being shared and birth stories and all of this stuff that I was like okay, now I feel like my feet are on the ground.
And I was just like hunting, i'm like, I am gonna hunt down the, the wise ones that I am needing, and I found that through lots of books and people who have laid so much beautiful groundwork. I feel, I have chills. It's like I'm just thinking about all the women who came before me who are trying to piece back that lineage that got broken, with basically, the industrial age and modernization. And, it's a realm I think, where you can see how damaged the relationship with the feminine has become more, more starkly than anything else. And these practices that are so outmoded and outdated that are really slowly starting to change.
But I just started to feel like an urgency, a deep urgency and a divine rage around what I was experiencing and seeing and hearing where. Most of us relate to birth through the lens of Hollywood and the media, which is that birth is an emergency and that somebody else delivers your baby, and that, you, as soon as start having contractions, you need to rush yourself to the hospital and, hand yourself over to somebody else to take care of you.
Yeah.
You're incapable of figuring this out.
Yes. And so it brings me back to the 2 million year old person. It's like there is a 2 million year old woman inside of you that has been birthing for 2 million years by herself. By herself. And and really in, deep community support of women of other women who have done it, who have done it multiple times, who have probably, birthed their, helped their daughters and their granddaughters and, so it's so steeped. And I think, for me, I experienced a lot of grief around that that disconnect. And then, it's so isolating
today.
It's so isolating. It's, when you think about maybe since the post World War II to today, like what motherhood looks like. It's this space where once you're in that space, like you can't do all these other things anymore. And then not only can you not do, career or contribution based things, you also can't lift anything.
You can't eat certain foods, you have to stay over here. You have to be sterile. Like it's almost very similar to the, period shaming that exists in other places. And it's so crazy to, not only does then tie into the lack of maternity care and support of all that at a social society level.
But as we, we talked about earlier there's so many layers to how once you're a mother, how your life shifts and you're not in control anymore and it's not because of the baby.
Yeah. So you Yeah. Oh, go ahead.
It, there's so many layers to that too. 'cause part of the, broken lineage is that we don't live in community and in, a village type of formation anymore.
And that is so deeply isolating, especially in the early, postpartum time, but also throughout, that our physiology is wired to live in a village. That's like the 2 million year old piece. And so now we're in this modern time and our physiology's like, how do I be a whole village?
I'm one person. And that's what we're trying to do as mothers is we're trying to be a whole village for our family and our children. And we are all, I think I can say that, that we are all stretched really thin and probably a lot of us are thinking like. I'm not cut out for this. I'm doing something wrong.
Like I, I'm not enough. I'm not a good enough mother. Because we are we're charged with being a whole village. There would be multiple women breastfeeding your child. And now it's no, you are the only one and you are the one who's up with this. Baby every night, until they figure out how to sleep and, and then we have to make these sacrifices where it's okay, this is what modern day motherhood is.
It's instead of adapting to the physiology of being human, we're trying to like smush human physiology into this modern day container of, the clock and productivity and efficiency and all of this stuff that doesn't like, that our physiology doesn't give a fuck about.
Yeah. A separate and independent and. The lone wolf approach. Yeah.
Yeah. You just gave me an aha moment for that. I'm gonna take back to my client sessions because I spend so much time telling people it's okay to stay in their zone of genius. And now I know why.
'cause they're trying to be a village. You just gave me that nugget. And then I go back and we have to build their team, which is their village. Make it all makes sense. And yes, because we think we have to be the village. And then opens up into the whole space of if somebody else is doing it, then why should I do it?
It's already being done and it's whatever you wanna do, the world is broken, we need you to do it. Yes.
And just like having a business, there's so many parallels between having a business or a creative project. And being a mother, which, you know. I think we do have this mentality that like, we're supposed to do it all, and if we're not doing it all, then we're failing in some way.
And the reality is, especially women. Yes. Yes. And we've gotten that passed down. I have no countless people who tell me, my mom never had help or my mom was working and, and so there's this guilt factor of like, how could I, I should be like a completely 100% self-sacrificing being, and just let myself shrivel up in, in the face of life.
And I think in a way we're charged with reclaiming our, our space here, as mothers, because I think the voice of mothers is more often not than not pretty invisible. And not often heard or seen or centered. Yeah.
It makes me think, we all panicked.
Those of us who watched it, anyone who wa read or watched the ha Handmaiden's tale, all women were petrified. 'cause it seems so, so close to being a possibility. To your point of what you just listed, how often are we already putting ourselves in that situation without somebody else forcing us to?
Yeah. So since, so you have this calling because you had your own experience where the conveyor belt was not gonna cut it.
What encouraged you to go from doing your own research to I have to share this and guide other people back into this sacral connected stronger female space.
Yeah. Motherhood
space.
Yeah. Like with really anything that I've done, it comes from this really for myself first, it's like I have some big awakening around something and then I see what's going on in the world, and I'm like if I, if a, have an awakening around it, but then feel so much more powerful and like I have more choice and agency and yeah, like just a sense of empowerment I get to make these choices then I want that for other people.
I want other people to feel that way, yeah. And and I hear, you just hear so many horror stories of things that happen and these normalized abuses really, I know that's a really big word, but. These normalized abuses that happen in, in these contexts. Whether it's it doesn't really matter whether it's in a hospital or not, but I have heard a lot of really horrible stories of, things that happen in the hospital to women.
But really it's it's not even just that. It's the whole kind of I was gonna say, like it's like the paternalistic care model that like you need to hand yourself over to somebody else and that somebody else needs to deliver your baby when in reality and in truth, you are the only one who is delivering your baby. Maybe save if you're, have an emergency and you need to have a C-section.
But, that is your birthright, is to have your own kind of experience and agency in that. Realm of birth. So yeah, it started with me and just all these ahas and learning and digging and then really deeply wanting to be an agent of change in the the motherhood and birthing world. And I thought, if I am so deeply needing this and craving it, then surely other people are too, surely other people will resonate with wanting to connect back to like our roots, really as women and our birthright as human beings, that in our modern day it's just it's like we just can't see through it.
It's so hard to see through the conditioning and the hypnosis, and I just wanna take that sword and, slash through the trance and get to the deep wisdom and trust in our bodies and not only trust in our bodies, but like reverence and honor of these bodies, and get out of this ridiculous mentality of like how quickly you can bounce back and basically how quickly you can appear as though in every way, not just physically, but also in your life, that you did not just go through like the most massive transformation ever, yeah. Physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally fi financially, career wise.
It's let's pretend that didn't happen. Okay. Moving on. I'm doing so well,
this is my new accessory. It's called a baby. Exactly. Exactly. That's I, I. Had the pleasure of living in Europe and working, living in Europe for a while, and they are light years ahead of the US in just giving what I would consider basic, fundamental functionality to mothers.
They are also working Europe as a whole is also working on coming back to sacred motherhood spaces.
But I just don't understand why in the US we think that when we are a human cow that we have the capacity or should need to have the capacity to do anything else.
Like
it, some people I, every journey is so different, right?
So like I, I'll work with clients about what their maternity plans look like, and I'm like we know we can plan it, but we can come up with a, B, and C options and we'll keep throwing them out as they work or don't work.
Because you don't know I've had friends who have had kids and they are the people who are like, I'm so bored, gimme something to do.
Please. And I have others who are like stuck in a cocoon and need that space for a year or more.
So it's so hard to predict and everyone I think should have access and Right to their path with that.
Yeah.
But I just don't get like, how six weeks is ridiculous. It's just
I don't even, I.
It's just really sad.
Yeah. E especially when, as a therapist, how many foundational things happen? Zero to one, zero to three, zero to five, and you're like, yeah, if we can fix this part, if we can let moms be moms
Let alone dads like, I'm not even worry about throwing them into the picture yet, but like just moms, if just moms can be focused on that for one year, three years, five years, what don't we have to deal with and clean up again later?
Yeah. I
mean there's some crazy statistic that something like
I can't remember exactly what it is, but basically it's like this exorbitant amount of suicide, happens in the first year for women postpartum. And I'm like, yes, that makes perfect sense. Based off of the conditions that we're expected to, like certain, we're not thriving, we're just, we're surviving.
That's what we're doing. Barely, yeah. Yeah. And then throw a pandemic on top of it and, we're really cooking, yeah. Yeah. It, it, the thing is too though, it's it brings me back to that, our whole system. Like I feel like it wouldn't even be a big enough change to give women the maternity leave that they so desperately need, which I think is at least a year. But it's like reorienting the whole way that we think. Recognize that our future is dependent on the beings that these mothers are bringing through and their relationship with their mothers and their families.
And that if we're not giving them the best chance, then we're not giving the whole collective the best chance of a future. And I think that's probably more important now than ever. And it just feels like our, yeah. Our system to me just feels so archaic, and what would it be like to live in a culture that was actually mother centered and would, and recognize the invisible psychological load and the unpaid work of mothers that adds up to at least three full-time jobs, then on top of having a job. Yeah. Because there for many of us,
The, in any financial class you take, like when you're talking about family, finances and literacy, any smart person will tell you that you need to have life insurance as a mother.
And it's because of how expensive you are to a place because you're, that's so great. You're doing daycare for who knows how many kids based and how many you have. So times that by, by your kids number of kids, you're doing all the errands, you're cooking and so all food goes through you. All cleaning is most likely going through you. You're being this, the chief family officer organizing schedules in carpool and homework assignments and volunteering and like all the things. Yeah. So to replace a mother is actually something crazy, like 10 times the income capacity than to replace.
A father who has a corporate job.
That's really interesting.
That's such a great illustration of Yes. The unpaid work of of mothering. That's, that is so taken for granted. It's like we don't even, it's yeah. And that's what's so interesting about this sort of post feminism space is I feel like we're in this really interesting place where culturally we almost look down on being a stay at home mom, because we're supposed to be blah, blah, blah.
And I hope we can move into this space. What you said of we all have different archetypes that live through us, and some of us are more like using all the agency we have in the world really deeply. Feel fulfilled by the job of mother. And some are a little bit more oriented towards that, outer expression that more like Athena and Artemis expression of the feminine.
And neither are wrong, and both are so valid. But we just don't value these things the same in our culture, no and it's sometimes it's like women on women is the worst. It's like the judgment.
And it's because people who aren't women have told us that one is useless and weak and the other isn't.
Yeah. And it's really it's, I think I have so many friends of mine who. When they became moms, had to go through an entire, like breastfeeding, is it one more people and often have guilt. And one of my best friends in college was like, this sucks. I hate it. I know that, I'm having to say no to all these benefits for my kid, but if I keep doing it, I will literally lose my mind.
Yeah.
And to your point, that's why they had wet nurses and other people who could have provided that service historically. Aunties, and,
Yeah. Yeah. So I, there's, I think it's such an interesting time of looking at what, where the power for the feminine exists and how we can allow anyone to access whatever part of it they need.
And how we can, to your point of just how do we acknowledge the fact that this is a huge part of society that we make look really like cute and hallmarky. Yeah. And it's so much more, it's so much more powerful and harder and critical than we, we classify it as. Yeah. Yeah.
I think we make everything look pretty cute and hallmarky and, I feel like that's why I love the lens of depth psychology is because I can see right through it into the like root system and into the soil where things have been composting for generations, and Yeah.
Re you know, giving nutrients to the, root systems. But yes, motherhood is definitely one of these things and it gets lifted up on all the social medias that, this, everything has to be perfect. And it's just this sort of crushing. Sense of I can never be enough.
Y Yeah. And I'm happy to see shifts moving away from the perfectionist kind of play in some spaces, especially in social media. Not enough yet, but it's like, when can we just talk about what it is?
And even when we go look at the lens in motherhood, more expanded pre, feminist movement.
Like we, we forgot that if women are going to not be at home, who's gonna do all that work? Who's gonna be daycare? Who's gonna be transportation? Who's gonna be elderly care? And we look at, if this is a personal perspective, but when I'm evaluating the success we're doing and taking care of each other.
As a country.
All the areas where we are blowing it right now are the ones that we did good at before because
There is a mom or a wife, or there was a feminine person
Taking care of it, and we forgot about that todo list as a culture when we're like, yeah, sure. Go to work.
Doesn't do the other stuff. I don't know, it just it
exemplifies our values as a culture, but yeah, you can see it so clearly, like yes. Our culture does not care about mothers. A little bit about children, but not really, and definitely not El elders.
No. And, and the best, there's two things that trigger me a lot when it comes time for any political process in this country. One is when people say that they're for fam family values and they don't talk about. Motherhood, maternity leave, daycare education, like none of the things that a family actually needs to function, even like time off, vacation, time, healthcare. And the other is when they people use the term that we're pro-life
And I'm like,
no, you're not. Like you are, you gonna commit the millions of dollars it takes to bring a healthy human into the world for the next 18 years.
And most of the time they aren't. And I just wish we would use be that being the phrase pro-life taken out of the abortion con conversation. Everyone should be pro-life. Be pro-life is great. Like we want people to live and be vibrant and we, we're, it's right.
What does that actually
mean? Yeah. Yeah. And it's, and our culture actually isn't it's, its not, no. At least it's not pro, it's not pro. It's not pro thriving, it's yeah. It's pro. Prove it. Yeah. Yeah. That's really well put.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. You want it, work for it, you want it.
Prove it. And it's yeah. To your point, when we were in a village system, if I had extra food, I'm not gonna watch you starve living in the hut next to me. I'm just going to share it. Yeah. This is, and it's
really, 'cause I've thought a lot about this idea of aging and it feels like there's a lot of layers to weed through there.
And one is the sort of fierce individualism that I know in my culture is very much, lifted up and put on a pedestal. And, then there's decolonizing our psyches and our beings. But. Our system is set up that it's like there's no more bandwidth for us to help our neighbor, yeah. It's like I've exhausted all of my resources just trying to survive. And now I'm like supposed to show up for something or like somebody else right now, like I don't even have the money, the time, the energy, to do that. Whereas, I know there's been all these really beautiful like you said, Europe is just so far ahead of us in so many ways.
But, in, in sort of the Northern European realm they're always doing something that's inspiring. But,
these communal living kind of spaces. Like the daycare at the elderly center. So they can interact together.
Yeah. I remember I saw this documentary where it's like she, this woman was a single mom and it was like a communal living.
They have their own space, but then there's like a kind of, everybody cooks in a similar same place that you can also have anyway, and it's like the level of wellbeing is just so much more than what you get when you're trying to be a fierce individual. It's yes, it is. It is just, it's just it always brings me back to the physiology, like we are wired to operate optimally in a certain way. And if we're not living our lives that way, we are not going to be operating optimally, period.
We have the, we always know that it's not in alignment.
Like we, you, even if we bury it, you're feeling like, ugh. Yeah. Like why there's no flow in this process.
Yeah. Even looking at it from a com, like a community development, like community planning perspective the wellbeing of people who have walkability versus people who are in suburbs, that you have to have a car.
Like just that shift that anytime that we're not able to easily interact with people and do what we need to do, and every time that we make life a little bit harder for ourselves we feel it in ways that we don't measure often.
And
I think the only one of the few positives of being in lockdown with the pandemic was that everyone stopped commuting.
And you're, the length of your commute is one of the biggest indicators of. How happy you are. And satisfied you are in life. Yeah. Shorter commuters the better. And yeah, it, I'm sure that you've been watching all the stats of how many mothers had to choose to give up their career to, because of the ripple effect of the pandemic.
Because all those jobs that they've been outsourcing couldn't get outsourced anymore.
Yeah.
It's pretty incredible. And I'm so aware of, at least to the degree that I can be aware of my privilege and for me, the pandemic allowed me to not commute and work from home, which was an incredible blessing. Because before, pre pandemic and this is just my experience, but I think a lot of women can relate, which. I'm very lucky that I've had a, I've been self-employed for a really long time, so I, my whole goal was like never to be part of the Matrix.
I'm like, I just, it's can't, like we talk about not in alignment, like I, I tried and I was like, I just can't. And, but I would even go, to see a client or whatever it was, and I'd be gone for, it would be like two, this was like, postpartum. I was probably like under, under eight months postpartum.
But I would a start, my breast would start to swell so much, and I would start to be painful and I would, it's like I couldn't stop thinking about my son. I would just, and I would start feeling really sad and I'm like, I need to get home. And it was after like three hours was pushing it, so I had really like a three hour window to be away and survive, emotionally and beyond that, I'm like, I have to be with my son. And it's I know that was biological, and so how much of our biology and physiology are we having to override in order to live in a modern world?
And I feel really, it, it's interesting. Like I was like, if I make it breastfeeding past six months, like I'm gonna be so stoked. It has been three years, almost three years, and we're still nursing. And I say that both in a a, oh my God. But also, it's amazing. And I wouldn't, I honestly, it would not have, it would not be this way had the pandemic not happened.
And I'm really grateful for the nursing piece and, for so many different reasons, but definitely one for his health and wellbeing and, immunity and all of that stuff.
Yeah so what is the structure of how you ha help people? Are you off, do you have a membership?
Do you have courses? How can women who are like, I need you, I need this s motherhood space. Like how, what does it look like to be a part of that with you?
Yeah. So we we have different sort of levels of commitment, but what we, Becky and I both love the most is our one-on-one offering.
We call it one-on-one mama support. And, we have focused traditionally more on like the pregnancy and birth space, but what I love about the one-on-one offering is that it can span the whole lifespan of motherhood. And it can be from pre preconception all the way through, to the parenting journey.
And, with both of our kind of sensibilities, we're able to support from these realms of the psychospiritual to the actual, like physiologic, birth and, wellness and care. And really just be guides and support systems and space holders. And then we have three online course, three kind of tiers of our online course.
One is just like the postpartum journey and, it's like the health and wellness. There's healing your abdomen and abdominal wall through different yogic exercises. There's the education component, there's the ritual component, and then we have that's like a prerecorded, journey. Journey. And then we have two tiers of the prenatal and postnatal. And that's, one that includes some one-on-one support and then one that's just completely self-paced. And those, ritual yoga, we talk about mythology like actually birthing, we educate on, finding a provider on, different ways what actually happening of birthing.
Yes, exactly. The, it's the physiologic side. Yeah. And then the psychospiritual, aspect and, that includes journaling and, dream tending and all of this stuff. What is dream tending? So some, so in general, dreams are really an important access point to the unconscious in general, in the.
It's so funny 'cause people are like, oh, it's just hormones. Why I'm dreaming so much. I'm like, it's because you're going through the most intense initiation of your life. So write your dreams down. Write those things down. And tending to the images. That could be bringing those in.
That could be actually speaking to out loud or writing to, a character in a dream that could be just simply holding the images and noticing what comes up and what you feel. I find that it's really powerful to like, take it into the relational space and not just have it in your head.
'cause I know for myself, I'm like, ha until I am able to amplify the dream and live into it a little bit. Because, yes, it's a pathway into the unconscious, and in that way it's a real kind of window and pathway into the soul. And that can be just really helpful as you process the big change and changes that are going on in that journey.
And what we're really wanting to create with Sacred Journey is more community. It's like we have this big kind of goal of this aging idea and, really coming together and circling with women and having a ritual container for women. And whether that happens in person, which we wanna have a component like that where we actually meet in a space and then, or in that sort of online community space. To really walk through the work together. So that's an offering that's, in the gestational period right now.
Yeah. Yeah. I think we may know some ideas already, but what does being what is the words powerful and ladies mean to you separately? And do they change, does their definition change when they're put together?
Yeah. Powerful feels this unleashing of your greatest life force and. It's funny the ladies is an interesting one separately because it's, it feels almost like the dainty version of talking about being a woman. And so it feels proper and I'm thinking of ladies having tea or something, but putting them together, it feels getting more into the meeting of minds, and the unleashing of our potential as women together. Yeah. So that sort of that combination has a lot of potency to it.
I love how you just described it, and I may be borrowing that to update what it means because it's it is to me, that's what it is, right? It's, I know that together we can solve so many big.
Challenges
That we face and things that need to be course corrected. We just need to know each other. Exist often. Yes. And totally. Once you know someone exists who shares a passion that you have or, can clue you into something else, that can start to be the different characters so that you don't have to be all of them.
Yeah.
There's so much overwhelm right now about, we, hate what's happening in regarding, racism we hate hate what's happening about the environment. We hate what's happening about our food system. There's all these things that women are distressed about.
And it's fuck, how do we fix any of these things?
Because they're all so big and they all require a lot of different shifts. I really believe in this idea of if we're all taking one step each, but we're holding hands, it's a completely different experience. And yeah, I imagine that's what you feel with your community, because now all these women and mothers, the instant, you're not alone.
That's the first Aha. Yeah. Yes. And then to have guys like you guys, it's oh, thank goodness.
Yeah. Yeah. It is. It's when you're isolated, alone and your, source of wisdom is Google, it can really feel it's so easy to go down the road of what am I doing? I must be awful at this.
I, sew in over my head, so overwhelmed. And to have someone sit across from you and just say you are not alone. All of us are up there, three o'clock in the morning with tears in our eyes, nursing our babies, or, feeding our babies. And we're all alone together doing that.
Like it's like the
universalness
of the journey.
Sounds like a good excuse to have a 3:00 AM zoom check-in, right? Everybody good? I Okay.
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
We ask everybody on the podcast where they put themselves in the powerful Lady scale. If zero is average everyday human and 10 is the most powerful lady possible, where would you put yourself today?
And where do you think you would put yourself on average?
Ooh. Okay. So one through 10. Let's see, I'm gonna maybe give myself a six or seven. It's funny 'cause I was literally talking about this today because there's this I can feel this powerful matriarch within me that I have not fully grown into yet because it's, she's, I'm, I am growing, I'm growing into her, but she feels like closer to the 10.
My average, I don't know, average. My average is probably more like a three or four. I don't know. It's a hard thing, but, maybe that's not fair because I would say even when I'm feeling like more like inward and less vibrant and maybe even like really holding a lot of grief, I feel like there's still a lot of trust in that process and that's actually like really important and vital. I would say maybe that's my three or four, that might be still pretty powerful.
I agree. So for everyone who is so interested in getting the support and being part of this community that you've created, where can they find you, sign up, like what's next? Like where are all the way, ways and places they can become a part of this?
Yeah. So definitely sign up for our newsletter. The, our website is the sacred journey of motherhood.com.
We have a monthly newsletter that goes out with just little, dollop of wisdom and love and support geared towards mamas. My personal website is called Your Soul rising.love, and that has, my psychotherapy and that whole kind of world of things. And then we're on Instagram at the Sacred Journey of Motherhood.
That's probably our most, accessible way of connecting with us. And then my personal Instagram is at Molly Mitchell heart. And that's, an amalgamation of all the things. It's a, it's probably an access point for everything, I would say. Yeah. Yeah.
I know that the Powerful Ladies community is powerful and often what we need is one request away.
So I've been asking everyone this year, what is something that you are manifesting or wanting to create or need that we can ask the group and see who has it? Wow. That is a really
good question. I, I'm like, I have so many I feel like I'm seeing all these like way pathways that I could go with this answer.
I'll tell you that if you think of it more, you're welcome to email me and we'll get them out too. Okay. Okay. The manifestation doesn't stop in the podcast. Okay. Oh,
okay. Good. Okay. So not as much pressure.
It's like when you're blowing out your candles what's that one thing you wish for? I'm like, oh, just one thing. I always also like world peace. Yeah. What's the biggest thing? Ah yeah, I would say, I am a lot more comfortable in the world of like interpersonal work and so the work of creating a business that functions like I had somebody once say ska. She's dear mama in my heart say that a business that a mother runs needs to be like a washer machine. You need to be able to turn it on, and have it do its thing. So creating the washer machine the functionality and the sort of automation and and really ultimately it's about finding the people who want and need what we are offering.
So yeah, I would say that's a big part of it.
The good news is that might be me to help you. I feel that. I feel that.
That's
my whole existence, is to help people ha have businesses that help them thrive. Not ones that we can double your business without doubling your work.
So how do we make the systems that you can just go and kill it only when you want to.
Yes. That's, okay. I'll be
calling you.
Yeah. And everyone else is in that space too. Because I hear also in that request, opportunities to connect with more people who are in this space, who are, who might offer something else but not offer what you do, but still are in the space of mothers.
Yeah. 'cause there's so many compatible projects and businesses and organizations that there's so many collaboration opportunities I think also. Yeah. That's a great I man, I would love to collaborate
With folks for sure.
I don't know what archetype that is, but I do see a theme in powerful women that we just want it to be easier and we know that collaboration allows that to happen because we both want the village and the creative brain transferring and to share in the product that comes out at the end.
So you have to let me know if there is that collaborator archetype or maybe that's just called woman,
I'm
not
sure.
But it's there. And so I think that's one of my favorite things about this community is like, people wanting to share, people wanting to collaborate, people wanting to help.
Yeah. 'Cause if this is, this can be a small digital village, then awesome. Yes. We need all the villages we can tap into
right now.
Yeah.
That's what it is in our, in this modern day. It's like we, we create our villages this way,
yeah. Yeah. I could talk to you for days.
Probably. I'm so glad that Anna recommended you and connected us. I'm so thankful that you were a Yes to me and to everyone listening in this podcast truly has been a pleasure to, hear your wisdom and learn so much from you today. And thank you for the work that you do. It's. In all three of your buckets, it's all equally important.
So thank you.
Thank you so much. It's been such an honor.
All the links to connect with Molly and the Sacred Journey of Motherhood are in her show notes@thepowerfulladies.com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and leave us a rating and review. They're critical for podcast visibility. You can also leave any comments you have about the episode on Instagram at Powerful Ladies or@thepowerfulladies.com in the podcast episode, and we'll get back to you.
If you're looking to connect directly with me, please visit kara duffy.com or Kara Duffy on Instagram. But I'll be back next week with a brand new episode and an amazing new guest. Until then, I hope we're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up something you love.
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Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
