Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:13 Hi, I'm your host Justine Aksoy, and this is The Pleasure Hood Podcast. A podcast where we explore what it means to be a mother, a leader, and an all around badass from a place of pleasure, empowerment, and turn on. I am here to revolutionize how humans experience sex, pleasure, and motherhood by normalizing self-care, normalizing mothers having desires and normalizing mothers e, sensual and sexual beings. Quick side note, you don't have to be a mother. In order to listen to this podcast, though I create my work with mothers in mind. This conversation is truly for everyone. I believe that pleasure is one of many paths of healing, and I'm here to highlight how to walk that path no matter who you are. It is my deepest desire that wherever you find yourself on this amazing journey we call life, you can experience your power, your turn on and of course, orgasmic pleasure.
Speaker 1 00:02:05 Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of the Pleasurehood podcast. I have really been enjoying the solo casts that I've shared with you thus far. They have been a collection of musings that have poured through me. These have been topics that mean so much to me. And today I wanted to share something that has been on my mind for some time, and that thing is grief and motherhood. I know <laugh> saying that out loud feels unorthodox, abnormal, even. Cause you usually don't put those two words together. When one becomes a mother, it can be an initiation into a very unfamiliar world. Feelings like loss of self and grief for one's former life may go unrecognized. Motherhood can often be a challenging transition, and it's important to recognize the grief that can accompany it. Feeling grief when becoming a mother is not uncommon or unusual. It is normal to feel overwhelmed by this shift in identity and lifestyle that can come with this type of like huge change.
Speaker 1 00:03:43 That is why it is important to take time to sit with those uneasy feelings, ground yourself in the present moment, and also seek out resources that can provide validating support. In this episode, I will share with you a grief ritual that has allowed me to navigate these feelings of overwhelm, uncertainty, frustration, and turn them into a powerful elixir for change and the creation of new possibilities When you become a mother, change is inevitable, but this change doesn't have to break you. It can be a path to a new identity, a new way of being, and a journey deep into the truth of who you are. I hope this episode leaves you feeling seen because becoming a mother does not have to be an isolating journey. And I know for a lot of us it can feel that way, especially coming out of such a time of isolating like physical isolate, isolation and being alone constantly and not really knowing how to build community around you.
Speaker 1 00:05:09 Um, yeah, it can kind of feel a little wobbly when it comes to creating community now, but it is possible and the communities that we create with one another, with other parents, with other mothers who also understand these emotions can provide meaningful connection that will go a long way. So I hope you enjoy this episode, and as usual, I would love to hear from you and the comments below. Uh, if you're listening to this on YouTube, if you are listening to this on Spotify, I invite you to go to Instagram and um, at Justine Aksoy. Send me a dm. I wanna know how this particular episode lands for you. All right, enjoy. When we think of all the emotions that motherhood can elicit, grief is never one of them,
Speaker 1 00:06:29 But I feel like grief and motherhood is something that does not get spoken about. Often enough, the journey of becoming a mother can stir up a concoction of feelings and emotions that often fly under the radar because from the moment of announcing your pregnancy, everything is centered around the baby, society's views of what motherhood should and shouldn't be, unsolicited advice and wanting to meet other people's expectations. It's hard to navigate the myriad of feelings one may or may not feel. I know after I became a mother, I encountered multiple levels of grief. There is the grief that happens when you realize you've lost parts of your core identity. And this realization you begin the process of allowing parts of your old self to die and the new self to come forward. You are no longer a sovereign being. All of your choices revolve around another person and all of a sudden your decisions really matter because they no longer affect just you.
Speaker 1 00:07:50 It also has an impact on another being who depends on you for its survival. This can feel like a total mind fuck, especially in a world that feels like it's slowly falling apart. It can be scary to think that your actions and inactions can have a long lasting impact on your child, but all you can do is try your best and hope that all is working for yours and the baby's highest good. Then there's grief around not knowing what the fuck you're doing as a mother, the fear that you're going to fuck it all up. I mean no one teaches you how to be a mother. Of course, we all have examples from our life, but for the most part, motherhood is something you do by the seat of your pants. But the exciting part about this is you get to decide for yourself what motherhood is and isn't, which to me, I feel like that's incredibly empowering. You may also grieve if your birth didn't go as planned. We all have these high expectations, ideas, hopes, desires for our birth. Sometimes they go to plan and sometimes they go horribly wrong. And when they go horribly wrong, you often find yourself in survival mode having to advocate not just for yourself, but also your baby.
Speaker 1 00:09:31 And when it's all over, we may find ourselves left picking up the pieces. The body remembers the trauma of birth, and it may take time and compassion to heal the parts of ourselves that were physically, emotionally, and energetically wounded. When you become a mother, you find yourself in a death rebirth cycle that forces you to release and let go of things that no longer are meant for you. Hopes, dreams, desires seem to change overnight, and they are replaced with the realization of a new future and a new existence. We often don't have time to face the reality that things have changed forever. And although we consciously know that our lives will never be the same, deep in our subconscious minds, deep in the tissue of our bodies, this reality hasn't fully set in. I was not expecting to have a child at all. It was a huge surprise, a super exciting surprise, but a surprise nonetheless. It totally caught me off guard, and yet I was excited about the future, the future of myself, the future of my baby, and the future of my husband. But as I dreamt of the future and like envisioned this future of the three of us and creating a family,
Speaker 1 00:11:19 I wasn't fully present to what was happening inside of my body. It wasn't until months after I gave birth that I began to feel this profound sorrow is sorrow. I didn't really understand or fully comprehend. I often found myself searching for why I was feeling the way I was feeling because honestly, I love being a mother more than I ever thought I would. Even in moments of difficulty, I always seemed to find the silver lining. At the same time. I couldn't ignore what my body was trying to tell me. I would often find myself experiencing a heaviness in my chest, a tightness in my shoulders, spasms in my stomach. I felt listless, agitated and language. This was not me. I knew there was a deeper meaning to these sensations that I was experiencing, but I wasn't really sure what it could possibly be. It wasn't until my son turned about two years old that I began to realize the sensations I was experiencing in my body were connected to my unresolved grief. Grief because I had my baby during a global pandemic grief because I didn't get to have a baby shower to celebrate my pregnancy, my baby, and honestly, my initiation into becoming a mother
Speaker 1 00:13:12 Grief because I had my baby three weeks early and even though he was a healthy baby, I wasn't expecting him so soon. I wasn't quite prepared for him to be earth side. And honestly, I wasn't quite prepared to not be pregnant. Grief because my birth turned into a medical emergency that ended it with me being diagnosed with postpartum preeclampsia, which left me in the hospital for four days without my newborn son grief because I was left to navigate high blood pressure until this day, putting my long-term health at risk grief because I didn't have the community I wanted and needed when I brought my son home from the hospital grief because I was terrified that I, my husband or my baby would get covid leaving me fearful of leaving my house or accepting help from friends and loved ones without feeling stressed and filled with anxiety, grief from experiencing the loss of self, my sovereignty and identity, not knowing this grief are fully understanding. This grief often put me in a very dark place, not knowing what to do with all the sadness I was experiencing in my body. One thing that did help me through this period of time was my gratitude practice.
Speaker 1 00:14:52 I was so grateful for all the things that were going right, grateful for all the support we were receiving, grateful for my health, and surviving a medical emergency that could have gone terribly wrong. I was so grateful for all the good. I had no time to fixate on the bad, but I also didn't give myself time to grieve. If I've learned anything in the past two years, almost three. Grief is a process. It doesn't happen in a straight line, although we would love it to, but grief wants to be acknowledged. It wants to be witnessed, it wants to be expressed. It wants to know that it's okay to feel the way you're feeling. What are the ways I've been able to acknowledge these feelings of grief around motherhood was doing a grief ritual. When we take the time to really grieve something, we get to release the power our grief holds over us, the resentment, the resignation, the wish that things were different are hoping that things will change. Instead, we get to accept things as they are, and from that space begin to create something new for ourselves. A grief ritual is an opportunity to hold space for you and all the emotions that have waited to be fully expressed.
Speaker 1 00:16:40 It allows you to face all of your grievances and move them through your body with the intention of transforming that energy into life-giving and life-affirming fuel for your life. As you go through the grief ritual practice, you may find layers upon layers of emotions and feelings that have not been expressed in years. It's all connected. So once you begin to unravel the string of grief, you'll find that all of your grief is connected also. The more you do this grief ritual, you'll begin to uncover new grief, especially as your child ages and new challenges begin to arise. You may find that you do this grief ritual a few times a year as you enter, introduce stages and phases of life. The ritual I will share with you is one that I have done several times myself, but I invite you to make this ritual your own add steps, move them around or even leave out the parts that don't resonate with you. I've created a PDF for you with all the steps of this ritual, so it's easy to follow. I've also included a link to the music list I created for you in Spotify.
Speaker 1 00:18:13 So to begin this ritual, the first step is creating clarity. And when you become clear around what it is you're ready to grieve and let go of, it makes the grief ritual that much more powerful To begin, you will sit with yourself and even if this portion, this first step takes a few days or even a few weeks, I invite you to explore these questions as deeply as possible. The first question is, what am I willing to release? What am I willing to let go of? What wants to be grieved? And lastly, what emotions want to be expressed through my body? After you answer these questions, write what you want to release on individual pieces of paper. And if you can burn them in a fireplace, a fire pit or a fire safe pole. And then if you can, I encourage you to either bury the ashes and if you don't have access to burying the the pieces of paper that you've just burned, then you can also flush the ashes down the toilet. If you don't have a place to burn in the paper, then rip them up. Throw them away. The point of this process of burning is to symbolically let go of your grievances.
Speaker 1 00:20:07 Fire is a cleansing element, and when we burn things, whether physically or symbolically, it means that we are ready to create something new from the ashes, like the phoenix, like think of the um, of the archetype of the phoenix coming out of the ashes. Step two, you'll release this energy through movement. And when you do this release process, I invite you to focus on what emotion do you desire to release from your body? Are you releasing anger, sadness, despair, frustration, what? Whatever it is that you are currently holding inside of your body, I invite you to move it through your body through movement. Dancing to music in my humble opinion, is one of the best medicines. I've created a very special playlist for this release process, and I hope it supports you as much as it has supported me. Step three, you will sit down and write a new empowering story when you have released the charge energy from your body, from a more relaxed and eased state of mind. Sit down and write a new empowering story around your pregnancy, your birth postpartum, or even just motherhood in general. Sometimes it can be hard to know what new story you want to create. And if you're not sure where to begin, I have some questions for you to get the process started.
Speaker 1 00:22:18 The first question is, what new identity are you stepping into as a mother, as a woman, as a human? Who do you desire to be moving forward? What are your new dreams and desires? What are you creating in the present moment and the future? And those three steps are basically my simple grief ritual. Grieving through, well, more like creating clarity around what I'm grieving, getting really clear about what I'm releasing and letting go of and symbolically doing so by ripping up the pieces of paper if I don't have access to burning them and releasing them energetically and symbolically. Next, releasing any energy that is pinned up in my body around my grief, such as sadness or despair, irritation, and moving it through my body, creating energy that is more vibrant, alive energy that feels life-giving and life-affirming. And from that new energy, creating a new empowering story that can be a basically a north star as a continued to vision and reimagine the life I want to create and the life that I am creating and stepping into as much as possible each and every day. So as I said before, feel free to modify this ritual, adding and leaving out what doesn't resonate. This is more of a blueprint, so please do what feels good for you in the moment. It's always going to look different depending on what phase and stage you are in your life.
Speaker 1 00:24:43 And before I end this podcast episode, there's something I wish I had mentioned at the beginning, and that is, grieving is not a bad thing. People from the west have a weird relationship to death letting go and moving forward. In my opinion, grieving is a beautiful process. It's a necessary process, especially when there are parts of our lives that come to an end. It allows us to cry, scream, whale, and cleanse ourselves in the process. Grieving is beautiful because when we mourn, we get to create space for the new. And lastly, motherhood is a powerful initiation, and sometimes that initiation can feel like it will break you, but through the cracks, something beautiful emerges the core of your truth, the core of who you are, and the beginnings of a new life.
Speaker 1 00:26:15 Thank you for joining me for another episode of The Pleasure Hood podcast. Catch new episodes every other week on Spotify, YouTube, and of course, apple Podcast. If you're an Apple Podcast user and love the stories, practices, musings and nuggets of wisdom I share, you can show your support by leaving a review For more of my musings on pleasure, motherhood, and sex, head over to Instagram and follow me at Justine oxy, our pleasure hood. And if you're ready to take your pleasure hood gain to the next level, sign up for my newsletter where you'll receive words of love, encouragement, and support as you take your pleasure, practice a little deeper. That's all for now. Radiant ones. I can't wait to go deep with you on this path. We call pleasure. Until next time, stay wild, sexy, and free.
