Leaning Back Into Support: Why You Don’t Have To Do It Alone

What if the reason you feel so exhausted isn’t because you’re “not strong enough,” but because you’ve been conditioned to believe you should do it all by yourself?

In this raw solo episode, Gervase dismantles the myth of hyper-independence and shares why leaning back—literally and metaphorically—is the medicine women need to restore balance. From nervous system regulation to generational imprints, she shows how centuries of cultural conditioning have pressured women to “do it all,” and why the real path to vitality is found in community, co-regulation, and circle.

Listen to this episode to discover:

• The simple embodiment practice that shifts your nervous system from overdrive to balance

• Why “DIY-ing” your healing is a lie, and how we’re biologically wired for co-regulation

• How patriarchy, capitalism, and colonizer mindsets created the myth of going it alone

• Why being “everything to everyone” is not strength—it’s burnout

• The power of circles, retreats, and sisterhood as ancient technologies for modern women

• Why leaning back, receiving, and being supported is the new model of success

This episode is for you if:

• You feel depleted, overextended, or like everything will collapse if you stop for a second

• You’ve been taught that asking for help is weakness

• You’re craving sisterhood, support, and spaces where you can be your full self

• You want practical tools to regulate your nervous system and soften back into balance

Join us:

• Join G in Charleston to tune into your womanly wisdom, inner knowing, and soulful sisterhood: https://www.gervasekolmos.com/chs-retreat 

• Mamas- it’s time to reset, resource and rise together: Mothers Rising 6 week circle begins October 15th: https://www.gervasekolmos.com/mothers-rising

Work with Gervase:

• Book a Soul Shift Intensive: gervasekolmos.com/the-soul-shift-intensive

• Free gift: Trust Yo’self hypnosis track

---

Follow Gervase

• 📲 Let’s hang out on IG: http://www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos

• ✨ Want to go deeper (and get juicy discounts)? Sign up to Gervase’s newsletter: https://www.gervasekolmos.com

Leaning Back Into Support: Why You Don’t Have To Do It Alone

Episode Full Transcript

Hi friends, welcome back to The Modern Phoenix Podcast. I am your Inner Transformation Coach, Gervase Kolmos, and I’m here to talk about community, receiving, and how our culture and internalized systems teach us that going it alone—pulling yourself up by your bootstraps—is the noble signature of success. That little story seeps into our systems, into the ways we woman, into our relationships… and the reality is a lot of our nervous systems are absolutely fried.

I have a lot I want to dig into with you today. First, let’s begin with a subtle embodiment exercise. If you’re driving, just listen and do this later. If you can, sit back in your chair, or on your bed or the floor. Pause what you’re doing for 90 seconds and close your eyes.

Bring in a curious observer. For 90 seconds, simply notice what it’s like to be you right now. Is your energy leaning forward—pushing out, giving, doing, “I’m ready to show up”? If so, that’s totally normal. Most people I work with live there. Now experiment with leaning back—literally. Let your chair support you. Allow yourself to receive the sound of my voice. Notice what shifts.

How do you know it’s different? What do you feel in your body? When we unconsciously lean forward to meet life, many of us get tense—hips coiled, neck tight. When someone cues you to lean back, you realize you can still participate and relax a little. That creates more support whether you’re listening to a podcast, showing up for work, or folding laundry.

That intelligence running through you matters. The simple act of leaning back can be the difference between fried, burnt out, depleted—or nourished and resourced, honoring the body’s “go this way” cues. I’m always curious how my body signals “I like this,” and what’s created in my system when I honor that—more balance and sustainability.

Why this today? I had a session with a client who gives a lot in her life—mom of three, always doing. There’s likely a generational imprint of energy-out: perform, push, produce. We explored her relationship with leaning back—receiving, resourcing. Simply noticing those differences and honoring her body’s cues created a huge somatic release. She was shocked by how much her body had been holding from always leaning forward—and how quickly things shifted, not just in thoughts, but in the heaviness, overwhelm, and burnout in her body.

Here’s what I want to share: the pattern of always leaning forward and never giving ourselves permission to lean back isn’t just about trauma or “the modern woman.” It also tells a story about American history and the imprints we carry—colonizer and conquistador mindsets, capitalism—whispering: “Lean forward. Achieve. Doing it alone is noble and heroic.” But that’s not how anything actually happens.

We’re part of ecosystems that support what we create. It’s like a seed insisting it made the flower happen. The flower might say, “Well, the sun warmed me, there was water, a gardener planted me, the soil was rich, and the bed was the right temperature.” That’s the human reality. Yet we’ve internalized systems—a dash of internalized white supremacy, a dash of colonizer mindset, a dash of capitalism—that have us believing the lie that one-person output equals success. The truth is a dance between doing and receiving, leaning forward and leaning back, inside an ecosystem of support and community.

Many women join coaching calls and say, “Why couldn’t I get there on my own?” or “I feel dumb that I needed help regulating.” It’s wild that we’ve bought into the lie that nervous-system regulation should be a DIY project. We are biologically wired for community, connection, and co-regulation.

So imagine a lasagna of layers: the ecosystem we’re part of, plus the inner balance of forward/leaning back. Many women have both the brainwashing that says, “DIY it. Be strong in silence. Don’t ask for help,” and the cultural demand to be everything: stay-at-home mom, homeschooling mom, chef, sex kitten, working mom… to be it ALL. I’ve felt that pressure, too. The cost is vitality and aliveness. When one woman is supposed to be the breadwinner, the nervous-system regulator, the homemaker, the relationship builder, the designer, the chef—she’s forced to lean forward 100% of the time.

What we’re building—trauma-informed and historically honest—requires leaning back into circle: other women, networks and systems of support. We have to practice the truth that our value and purpose include receiving. It’s not just normal—it’s required—to have support: a mentor or therapist, a women’s group or circle, retreats, church, girlfriends. We need sacred spaces where your weary soul can settle and answer, “How are you, really?” Not chit-chat—though fun has a place. If you don’t have a space for sisterhood and co-regulation, you’re going to burn out. Gaslighting yourself with “Why can’t I do this alone?” is just another layer of the internalized overculture: the brainwashing that pretends the ladder was climbed without anyone holding it.

This isn’t a full anti-racism deep dive—that’s a different conversation with different experts—but we have to notice the conditioning. Like with internalized capitalism, we listen for the little voice insisting this is “just how it works.” It’s bypassing the truth of what lets a flower bloom—or a woman come into full ripeness, vibrancy, aliveness. She needs a web of support—like a woman in childbirth needs midwives to lean back on. There’s nothing noble in doing it alone. If you live like that, you probably feel exhausted and terrified that if you slow down for a second, everything will collapse. You might be right—and that’s information. It wasn’t meant to be held together like this.

Patriarchy’s perfect woman does everything for everyone. Bullshit. It’s not serving us.

That client who leaned back—maybe for the first time in weeks—released a lot. A new imprint emerged in her body: “Thank you for letting that fall apart. That didn’t feel good. We weren’t our best selves. We couldn’t keep going forever. We need support. We get support.” Thank you for finding people who hold space, for learning places that give you permission and tools—even if it means prying control from your white-knuckled grip.

Women are wise. We find safe circles that teach our bodies to relax back. It’s okay to feel afraid. On the other side of even one hour of dismantling? It’s like a snake shedding its skin. A woman relaxing into her feminine, realizing she doesn’t have to be both sun and moon. She gets to be the ever-changing moon—the tides, the phases of a 28-day cycle—and the sun gets to be the sun. Both matter. They work together. That’s masculine and feminine.

(If you’re watching on Spotify or YouTube—my tattoo: a sun, a moon, and three stars for our family. When we’re optimal, my husband anchors the masculine, I anchor the feminine, and our three kids get to be the stars.)

The sun rises and sets predictably every 24 hours—just like the male hormonal cycle. The feminine changes daily—our cycles can literally sync with the moon. Masculine/feminine here isn’t about gender essentialism. The metaphor is rhythm: the moon expands and contracts; full bloom and dark rest; leaning forward and leaning back.

A modern woman needs to remember not only her magic, but the balance of her inner masculine and feminine. None of this says “masculine is bad” or that you can’t be a single parent or trans or anything else. Take what works and leave the rest. I’m speaking to the woman who’s been doing “a man and a woman’s” job for years and is exhausted. Some seasons demand more. No shame. And also: as the wise woman, you get to find the safe circles that let you be “just a woman” for a season—so your nervous system can rebalance, your patterns can unwind, and your energy can restore.

We could link to many past episodes on trauma patterns and overdoing. And this is the work I do. If you’re thinking, “I feel this and don’t know where to start,” and it’s not the time for 1:1, Mothers Rising is a six-week mother circle for $399—a space to drop in, lean back, answer “How am I really?”, and rise together. So much healing happens when women gather, mirror, and compost each other’s pain and beauty.

I also have The Phoenix Retreat in Charleston, November 6–9—an intimate, in-person space to lean back, receive, reset, and connect with women. Different price point than a six-week circle, same intention: community as medicine. We need the village.

We built suburban palaces where red tents once stood. That image hits me. Our task is to weave that predicament with progress—be real about now, and ask: where can I explore in my own body and life? How do I relate to my brainwashing and my body’s patterns, my resistance to or desire for support? How do I create “red tent” energy in my life in a way that works for me? Maybe you don’t want a literal red-tent gathering—great. There are many ways: join a circle, come to retreat, reach out. I create experiences in different flavors so women can co-regulate, collaborate, and rise together.

Practice: “What is it like to lean back and receive?” The more normal you make that in your body, the easier it becomes to ask your kids for help, ask friends for what you need, ask your partner to show up—and the more quickly life responds, because you’ve grown the garden you wish to belong to.

Another garden metaphor (they just work): you are a flower in the garden; you are the moon; you are the feminine; you are medicine. Every circle you think you’re “imposing on,” you are also part of circles that need you. It’s give and take. It’s the harmonizing of masculine/feminine, yin/yang, light/dark that creates the garden, the universe. That’s the magical world I belong to—and want for every woman.

If you feel hyper-individualism coursing through your veins, that’s okay. It’s water we drank. Now that we know better, we can do better.

I love you. Please share this episode with a woman who needs to remember her wholeness—what it’s like to lean back, receive, relax, and be her full feminine self. I’d love to hear from you on Instagram @gervasekolmos—tell me what resonated or what you want more of. See you back here in two weeks. Ciao. Bye.

Renovations, Motherhood & Meeting My Upper Limits on The Phoenix Spiral

What if the chaos in your life wasn’t the problem—but the pressure you pile on top of it?

In this raw and personal episode, Gervase shares the story of her unexpected home renovation, how it pushed her to the edge of her money stories and nervous system’s capacity, and the surprising lessons it taught her about money, motherhood, and meeting upper limits.

Instead of grinding harder, she discovered the power of release, metaphor, and permission—the feminine way of moving through life. Drawing from her own experiences and her work with clients, Gervase reveals how embracing the Phoenix spiral of death and rebirth can turn breakdowns into breakthroughs.

If you’ve ever felt stretched too thin, guilty for dropping the ball, or at your breaking point, this episode is your reminder that you don’t have to force your way through. There’s another way—and it begins with letting go.

Listen now to discover:

• Why chaos isn’t the problem—it’s the pressure we attach to it

• How nervous system capacity sets the ceiling for love, money, and abundance

• The Instant Pot “pressure valve” metaphor to release tension and reclaim peace

• Why dropping some of the balls you juggle is not only safe but necessary

• The Phoenix spiral: why life is death & rebirth, not a straight line

• How to reconnect to metaphor, archetype, and your inner world when life feels overwhelming

• Permission to embrace all of you—Netflix binges, divine downloads, and everything in between

This episode is for you if:

• You’re navigating a season of overwhelm and want a fresh perspective

• You find yourself self-sabotaging when life or money expands

• You feel like you’re always at your limit and need practical ways to soften

• You crave a reminder that being human—messy, chaotic, and cyclical—is not a failure but part of the path

Work with Gervase:

•  Book a 90-min Soul Shift Intensive for clarity and transformation

• Join Mothers Rising—a sacred circle for mothers to reset, resource and rise together

---

Follow Gervase

• 📲 Let’s hang out on IG: http://www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos

• ✨ Want to go deeper (and get juicy discounts)? Sign up to Gervase’s newsletter: https://www.gervasekolmos.com

Renovations, Motherhood & Meeting My Upper Limits on The Phoenix Spiral

Episode Full Transcript

Hello, my fellow Phoenixes. I am coming to you post-client session, where the word that was used at the end was this feeling of weightlessness. And something you may not know—well, obviously, if you've never had a session with me—is that I kind of tune into a client's field when I'm doing this work. And so I feel like I just left the spa because I was just in the vortex with this woman, feeling so deeply grounded and weightless at the same time. And it feels so good.

And it's also really interesting because I knew I wanted to record something for this episode you're about to listen to for a couple of reasons. One is to make sure that you know that a new program has launched today, the day that you are listening to this, which is Monday, September 8th. And I wanted to also, though, speak to—before I talk about this new program for mothers called Mothers Rising—I want to talk about how wild it is having a podcast, because this podcast episode was recorded in a very different energy than the energy I have right now. And I think that's what's so cool about podcasting. It's something I want to keep in my podcast as much as possible. Like, not always this “here's the template and here's the professional version with the rules of podcasting.” I really do want it to feel like me so that we just feel like we're together.

So I'm just naming that because the podcast that you're about to listen to today is fiery and fun and really powerful. And my podcast producer—hi, Laura—she actually reached out to me to be like, “Hey, I just want you to know that episode, this episode, is like super fire. I love the energy you created it with.” And I'm always like, are you sure? Like, I will record something in a different energy than this grounded, weightless energy and be like, I don't know, maybe that was too much. Maybe I should delete it. You know, it's like when people do a post on Instagram and it's like “felt cute, might delete.” And it's just wild.

So anyway, I'm coming to you now to record this to make sure you know about Mothers Rising. And the energy that you're about to, you know, dive into the vortex with me on this podcast was like: you're sitting with me, we're having a cup of coffee—probably more like a glass of wine—and we're talking about real life. We're talking about the mess. We're talking about the way through. We're talking about archetypes and metaphors. I'm bringing all the different ways that I relate to inner work in the real world into this podcast episode. I recorded it a couple of weeks ago when I was deep in the transition of back to school and starting home renovations. And so you're going to kind of get a peek into my real life in that energy.

And I think that's important, right? Because if I would just record podcasts all the time where I was like, “I am this enlightened Buddha coach on the hill”—first of all, that's not helpful. We don't need more people aspiring to that. We need people that can hold the complexity and the multidimensionality of being human, which is sometimes spicy and chaotic and real and, you know, that fire energy. And sometimes it's like this deep grounded, weightless, wise energy. And we get to have it all. We get to have both. And isn't that so fun? Isn't that the point? I want you to feel that here on the podcast.

So I guess that's as good a segue as any to make sure that you check out the Mothers Rising program. Because this is actually—as I'm thinking about it—part of the Mothers Rising program, because it is about bringing all of us to our lives and our motherhood and our womanhood. And I mean, if you just go to the show notes and just check out the details page for this program, I just feel like I wrote it from this place, just so tapped in and connected to why it matters and what is the point and why I am the woman to walk alongside you on the endless spirals of initiations and evolutions.

So go read the sales page. But in a nutshell, Mothers Rising is a six-week—what I call—a mother circle. I actually got that specific phrasing from Kimberly Johnson, who is one of my teachers, and I really love her work. She does a lot of circle work too. And as some of you know, I started coaching mothers like 10, 11 years ago, when I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. I set up shop as a coach. I was a mom coach. Everything was about the journey and the transition and the initiation and the becoming a mother. And then my work expanded and evolved. Now I work with people who have not had children as well—can you even believe it?

But I was really feeling right before the summer like, I really want to run something for mothers. I want to gather the mothers because a lot of the women that I work with are mothers. What I find on some of my group coaching calls—or my Phoenix Revolution, my circle, my group coaching call for alumni—is that a lot of the mother stuff will come up, and we get into it there. But I also think there's something really nice about going to the same place every week for six weeks where there's both a circle of mothers who are going to talk about what it's like to be them—the real, honest range of their experience—whether it's hot, spicy chaos, or it's “oh my God, I feel so grounded and at home in myself and my mothering,” because that is medicine. To me, that’s the medicine that's actually missing a lot in this world—that ancient technology of women's circles that is not about fixing, not about being the smartest person in the room with the most information or the wisest things to say. It's about being you. It's about saying what is true, not what is “wise.” The alchemy and transformation that happens, the medicine that infuses a group of women when what is true is shared, is so much more powerful than “let me get my toolkit out and fix this thing about me, let me fix my experience, let me make myself some other way so that I can fit the group.” No—we have so much of that in our culture; some of it is unavoidable. And so that is why I created Mothers Rising.

You may remember that I initially thought this program was going to be something totally different. It was supposed to be called Whole Mother Rising. And for a lot of reasons, I postponed it because it was right after my Dallas crash. I was like, I cannot hold this space right now. This summer, I just was like, business needs to be on autopilot. But when I went back to it, it kept calling me back—don’t give up on this idea, don’t give up on this group of women—like I could feel their energy pulling at the corners of my consciousness. I realized it wasn't quite right. And when I think about mother work and who the women are that I call in—my soulmate clients, the ones I am here to support and help and guide and walk alongside—they are the ones who are looking for an initiated mother.

There’s something I bring to my work as a coach, mentor, and facilitator that is different than, say, a 30-year-old new mom. And when I was the 30-year-old new mom, I still helped a lot of women—there was a lot we wanted to talk about and go through. I think there’s room for everybody, but it's very important that as space holders we know: where is our space, actually? What's the thing we are uniquely qualified and gifted at doing? I was like, oh, of course—I am a gifted seer and space holder for the full range of life and motherhood initiations.

So I know, in my season of life, when I'm looking for mentors and space holders for me, I am looking for initiated women who are not younger and hotter. And there are also women who are like “don't lose yourself,” and, you know, there’s that Champagne Society version of me from five years ago—that was so enlivening. I was different then, not better or worse—just a different stage of my journey. The women I call in now are deep, deep-hearted, big feelers, really soulful, looking for initiated mothers to share space with and to facilitate the conversations they need to have so that they can continue on their Phoenix path and rise, rise, rise, rise, rise. You rise not once, not twice—like a million times. I mean, that’s literally what this podcast you’re about to listen to is about.

So if that is you, and you are looking for a circle of women—not to fix you, not to give you hacks—but to help you drop into your mother wisdom, help you see yourself clearly, connect, and find the “where are the women like me” feeling—the mothers who feel deeply, who want to reset and resource and rise in a mindful, true way—Mothers Rising is your place.

We start October 15th. All the links are in the show notes. It’s gervasekolmos.com/mothers-rising. I would love to have you with us. It’s $3.99, which is by far the most affordable way to work with me at the moment if you want to be live with me on a call where I'm holding space and facilitating. It's not going to be so much coaching as it is circle work. But if you know me, I’m going to show up and be there, so there will be a little coaching. Circle work just feels a little bit different. If you're feeling a little resonance, follow it, because you're going to love how it feels.

Some of the women in my world have been here for years and years. I really believe the reason they come back or stay is because of the group work, the sisterhood, the circle work—how powerful it is and how good it feels to actually move through, spiral up in your mother and life initiations in a metaphorical, supportive, not “fix me” way—using the connections and reflections like a mirror in a circle of women interested in the same journey, doing it alongside you, showing you there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re normal, and also here’s what’s possible. We always talk about one-plus-one-equals-three results in my world, in the Phoenix world. So yeah, if you're feeling that resonance, everything is in the show notes. I would love to have you join us. It will be magical. It will be a little bit of this and a little bit of what you're about to listen to next.

I think that's enough for that—for now. Okay, without further ado, here's a peek under the hood of what I was going through a few weeks back in motherhood, back-to-school season, life, relationships, summer, childcare—did I say renovations? I can't remember. If you resonate, if you like this episode, please let me know on Instagram at @gervasekolmos. Reach out. It's so nice to hear from you, to know that you're listening and things are landing or helping. I’m so grateful for your time and to have you in this circle. All right.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Modern Phoenix podcast. I am your hostess, Gervase Kolmos. I’ve been thinking a lot about content creation lately, in the wake of so many changes in the coaching industry and in the world. I was listening to somebody's podcast this morning, and he was talking about having a podcast and how if our podcasts are just viral clickbait—if we're running them through a predictable assembly line like mainstream news outlets run their content—you kind of get tired of the morning news shows because you want to know what's actually happening out there. If we treat our podcast that way, which is kind of what's happening, we're losing the plot.

The whole idea of a podcast wasn't to be a huge Good Morning America platform or a talk show. It was to be one person's take—a small, grassroots movement of talking to your community about what’s real for you, what you care about; interviewing guests who aren't necessarily famous with a million followers, but who have a unique take, a point of view, a lesson—and having really interesting conversations. It's sitting with me, and I'm going to kick us off by sharing that I want today's episode to be a little more off the cuff, a little more me-to-you. Not because every episode needs to be that way, but that’s where I am today.

Whenever I sit down to record and have these conversations, I’m always thinking: what do I have to share that could enhance and offer value to somebody's day? I think about time being so precious. And I just think when you feel like you're talking to a real person, it’s nourishing. That’s what I want more of in my life. I listen to tons of content, do tons of courses—all the things, audiobooks—and I hope there are moments on the Modern Phoenix where you can come and feel like you're having a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and just having a conversation with me about what it's like to actually be a woman in modern times: wearing the hats, juggling the things, caring about what you care about, and being devoted to soul living, mindfulness, being your authentic self in a world that tells you to be any other way.

So I'm coming to you today a little raw, a little less prepared, to share what's going on in this season of my life—some lessons and what's helping me. Hopefully you can take what resonates.

I'm sitting here in my dining room, which is where I’ll be recording as long as there's not construction for the next couple months. We tried to plan this huge house renovation for June and then July; it ended up starting one week before school in August. Not earth-shattering—this is caviar problems over here—but it’s been an interesting theme in my life for multiple reasons.

A) It's been very disruptive to the natural order and routine of my life as a mom and entrepreneur, and I've realized how much I value and come back to life when I have my own space—literally time alone. That's something I didn’t have any of this summer. I’m okay with that—we’ll get into my summer in a minute—but I’m setting the stage for where I am today, sitting in my dining room. Outside, I can hear them doing construction on a shed in the backyard that we are refurbishing into a “she shed,” an office for me. Meanwhile, they're not doing construction in my house today for some reason—they’re waiting for a permit or something. The bottom half of my house and half of the top half are closed off for construction. Normally the house is filled with construction workers during the day, so I can’t work or record here.

The whole renovation has been interesting because I noticed I had a lot of stories about renovations. One: “this is something rich people do.” I'm just going to put that out there—I didn’t realize I felt that way. Investing money in a renovation felt like a huge up-level, like I was at my edge financially. Also, our nervous system can only hold so much. There’s a lot of correlation between money, romance, work, family—all the things. Your baseline determines how much you can grow or bring in—how much love, abundance, or vision you can manifest—because if your nervous system freaks out and gets dysregulated and overwhelmed when you bring in more, you will self-sabotage and shut it down. It’s unconscious. And I—ding, ding, ding—have been meeting this front and center.

Backtracking: this renovation happened because a few months ago, I was working downstairs. My husband got out of the shower at 10 p.m., and I started hearing dripping in the downstairs closet. We found a leak from the upstairs bathroom into the downstairs bedroom, opened the walls, and found mold. We couldn’t use the upstairs bathroom until we fixed it. We haven't had that bathroom for a long time. But it didn't make sense to fix the upstairs without fixing the downstairs; and it didn’t make sense to fix the downstairs without redoing the whole thing because it was done in the 1960s. So it turned into this whole thing. This whole f—ing thing.

And it’s also something I really wanted—something I dreamed of. I always said, “We’ll upgrade this and that when there’s more time and money and resources.” It sped everything up—which is interesting about being human. We make plans for how long we think things will take, like we’re little robots with calculators. Meanwhile, I know people who planned a single retirement and within ten months were married with a baby. Life works in quantum-leapy, mysterious, fast-forwarding ways.

That's what happened with my house. As soon as we figured out the downstairs renovation, we realized my office wouldn't fit down there, so I’d need an office. Oh—this vision I’ve had forever of a backyard office suddenly became “we’ve got to do it—it’s now or never.” Amidst all this came my financial ceiling of what’s possible and my nervous system feeling so dysregulated, unsafe—“How do we do this?”—freaking the f out.

It would have been fantastic for everything to line up in July, but we still couldn't figure out how to have the money to do this. What’s beautiful is that when I noticed my husband and I were spiraling—we’d already started, got the plans, the architect; we knew we needed to fix the bathrooms and the shed; there was forward momentum; I could feel the timeline collapsing—and yet, in the logical, linear, practical 3D world, the money wasn’t there. So what do you do?

This is relevant for many women I work with. They feel a version of themselves they want to become—present, calm, self-accepting, relating differently to triggers or marriage—but can’t figure out how to get there, how to regulate their nervous system. We always say: the best way out is through.

In my own dysregulation and financial freakout, I had this aha: all the creative answers to my problems lie within. Put down the calculator. Stop trying to solve it in the 3D world. Go inward. That might sound cheesy, but I’m sharing how I blend inner work and real life—and it works. It f—ing works.

Around that time—early July, right after a solo trip taking my three kids to California, then a layover in Dallas to see my sister—after that whole big, awesome trip, I was done. And I was putting pressure on myself to keep up with business, post on Instagram, do all the things entrepreneurs do to make money, be visible, make sure ideal clients can find me.

When I put two and two together—there’s so much pressure in my system: pushing, forcing, stressing, controlling, fear—I realized I’m not going to miraculously come up with $100,000 from this place. I’m not going to have the summer-of-pleasure of my mommy dreams from this place. But I believe it’s possible to have the life of my dreams, and I’m willing to do the work—in the real world and inner work.

So I did inner work and focused. I noticed all the places I was holding pressure, tension, shoulds, doubt, and unrealistic expectations. Summer is when my husband travels for work—he’s a marine biologist—out to sea for 5–10 days at a time. He was gone all summer. Normally his trips get canceled—none were canceled. He was gone back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. I felt the accumulation on my nervous system and the conditioned mind that says nothing gets to give; nothing is flexible; there are no solutions; you just have to work harder, faster, smarter. If you just did more doing and controlling and planning and prepping, you wouldn't feel so dysregulated.

Anytime I'm in this, I'm like: this is bullsh—. This is my conditioned mind telling me my journey is linear, not a spiral; that forcing, pushing, being perfect, and overdoing it will get me where I want to go—when I’m here for math that doesn’t make sense. We say in my world, in my inner-circle coaching circle: one plus one equals three. When we're out there pushing, striving, performing, playing by the rules, doing everything “right” to make money or be successful or have the summer of our dreams, we're doing one-plus-one-equals-two math. It’s hollow. It never ends up feeling as good as it looks; it isn’t as satisfying; it never ends. It’s the hamster wheel—“I just have to keep it going.”

I don’t want to live that way. I did not quit my job, have three kids, and create a business out of nothing to follow the rules. I want it to feel good, be mine, be magical and flowy. And I also want to reach my potential, take steps, do actions—be responsible to my visions, dreams, creative expression.

So I did what any well-intentioned woman would do: I noticed all the places I was holding pressure and let them go—like walking around a table of Instant Pots, hitting the release valve. Release, release, release. I gave myself full permission to release all the valves. I leaned back. I stopped clutching so tight.

I use this analogy from the book The One Thing—you’re juggling balls. Some are crystal; some are rubber. The rubber balls bounce; the crystal shatter if you drop them. I asked: what are my rubber balls? Obviously Instagram—that is such a rubber ball. My work—where can I put it on maintenance mode? Of course, I’m going to show up to client sessions and obligations. But there’s a lot I do in my work that is not that. I wish it were all just showing up for calls—it is far from that. So I dropped those balls and watched them bounce. I watched my nervous system relax. I gave myself permission to have a summer of true play and pleasure—permission to just be, to enjoy my time with my kids, to do it my way. And to trust we’d find the money for this renovation, it would work out—but I’d come up with the solution from this state of mind, this nervous system state.

What do you know—two days later I’m on the beach with my husband. I finally feel relaxed. We’re talking about the finances. Waves are splashing, kids are running. I feel grateful—we’re staying on Sullivan’s Island at my cousin’s house; it’s magical. And suddenly I saw it—I saw the whole thing in my mind of how it would work. I’m not going into the details, but I did the next steps. I made the calls. I talked to my husband. It was like we had the one-plus-one-equals-three plan. We could figure out how to make the money work.

Fast-forward: here we are. I’m pretty sure we figured out the financial piece. We’re back in the swing of school and work. Work is not in maintenance mode. Here I am recording a podcast in my house mid-renovation. The kids are at school. I have to leave in 16 minutes to pick them up—like, we back out here. And I’ve been noticing my background programming—“rich people only have renovations”—and meeting that edge with softness and curiosity.

I had a client today working on something similar. She was feeling a lot of pressure. We did some somatic work. She started smiling really big. I said, “Oh, interesting—tell me about the smiling. It feels like you brought a little lightness to your intention, a little lightness to the story we came in with.” She said, “Oh yeah—I don’t need to take it quite so seriously. It’s not life and death. It’s not such a big deal that I forgot; it’s not such a big deal that I don’t know how to do this and that you’re here reminding me. It’s just holding it all a little more lightly with a smile.” Like—whew—life is a lot sometimes. Whew—I feel this program running in the background; I am at my upper limit.

Like in The Big Leap, the book by Gay Hendricks (husband of Katie Hendricks, who was on the podcast a couple of weeks ago—you have to listen to that episode if you haven’t). That’s where I first learned, 12 years ago, the concept of upper-limiting. Noticing: this renovation, this shed, this level up in my business is me meeting my upper limits. I’m sharing this to show how—whether financially or logistically, whatever sphere of life—when you meet that upper limit, when you notice you’re at your nervous system’s capacity, the top of your tolerance zone—how do we release some pressure valves and hold it more lightly? It’s not the biggest deal if you make some mistakes or it’s a little sloppy. It’s supposed to be; it gets to be. That is what it is to be human.

Every single coaching conversation I’ve ever had is a process of holding space for all of that and reminding women: A) you have magical, intuitive wisdom within you. When you relax into your inner knowing, when you regulate, soothe, resource—there is so much wisdom inside you and so much creative flow. B) It’s supposed to look like a spiral of death and rebirth. It’s not linear.

Remembering this is the next piece I want to share. Something I’m doing so much in this season, particularly this past week, is anchoring in the metaphor and archetype of my life. As most of you know, I have three kids. My youngest went to kindergarten last week. My oldest started seventh grade and is having some big-girl initiations. Wow—the threshold of this as a mother; wow—the threshold as an entrepreneur. I started my business for freedom in motherhood 12 years ago. Here I am—they’re all out of the house; I’m building my dream office in the backyard; I’m in my dream home—it’s all happening. How do I hold this lightly? How do I remember not to put so much pressure on myself, to resource as I go?

I remember that my life is metaphor. I lean into the feminine path of the Phoenix—the spiral. I breathe into my soul expression of my life and don’t limit myself to “I am a suburban mom of three; I have to juggle dance class and karate and school drop-off, and do this and that for my business.” Because, circling back to what I started with, then I’m just like an AI bot—what is the point? I’m missing the plot. This is about inspiring your creative expression. Unlocking something in me that unlocks something in you. The woman-way, the Phoenix-spiraling way of juggling it all is unlocking full permission to be in the archetype of the Phoenix as you move through what can feel like overwhelming responsibility—life, work, motherhood, friendships, relationships, self, your body. You’ve gotta work out, eat right, sleep eight hours—the whole thing. It can feel like it’s lacking magic. Like, who f—ing cares; let me Netflix and get drunk and—f it. And if that’s where you are, that’s f—ing fine. I’ve been there recently, okay?

Also—what tends to open my heart back up, quiet the noise in my head, get me from my head back to my heart and soul’s expression—is remembering the spiraling journey of the feminine, the Phoenix. Remembering I didn’t create this life to force, push, prove, and pressure myself. I created this life to f up and live and experience and be and have the full all-of-it. Numb out on the couch with Netflix and feel like I’m channeling from the divine. I want it all—depth, connection, authenticity, vulnerability. I’m not going to get it 24/7, but I’m also not going to settle or pretend this is as good as it gets.

What helps me drop out of the noisy logical mom/entrepreneur brain and into my heart and soul is metaphor—the seasons and cycles of death and rebirth. I teach this in Inner Knowing (we created a self-guided Inner Knowing course; I took the live course content and all the value-packed trainings; you can buy it digital—I don’t know if that’s available yet, but it’s going to be soon). In there you learn how to align your life with metaphor and archetype and the spiraling Phoenix journey, so it changes the way you relate to yourself and your life—so it’s not just drudgery: wake up, make breakfast, get in the car line, go to work, punch a clock, go to the gym. Ugh—is that really what I came here for?

No. I want to feel alive, vibrant, creative, unlimited. I want to feel I’m at my edge—working it, massaging it, expanding above it. That’s what I came here to do. My guess is, if you’re listening, that’s you too—the women I call in are wildly curious, creative, wise, intuitive beings; sensitive feelers, healers; women who are done with doing and proving from the conditioned mind and want to drop into inner knowing, into soul, into a deeper, more satisfying meaning.

For me, I have to remember that constantly. I feel the older I get—I'm 41 now—the older my kids get, the longer I’m in business, the more pressure and responsibility I feel. The logistical planning alone to juggle motherhood and work sometimes will kill me. When it does, that’s okay. I give myself permission to feel my feelings fully because I know that’s part of the Phoenix spiral. Letting old limits, patterns, trauma responses—freezing, fleeing, fighting—shed is me rising into a newer, truer, freer version of myself.

Even now, with renovation outside and downstairs, and not being able to find any of my equipment for this freaking podcast—except this mic my husband put on the table—I’m doing it. It makes it exciting. It makes me feel ownership and creative power over my life. We can do it no matter what our life looks like. It doesn’t matter if I’m a stay-at-home mom or a CEO—the magic, the feminine wisdom, is inside all of us. Aligning with archetypes, seasons, our heart and soul expression—instead of the noisy mind trying to solve all the problems and attach all the trauma stories—feels good. It gets to be available to all of us.

I wanted you to hear what’s real for me right now. Every time I go through another cycle of death and rebirth and have another Phoenix moment, I want to share it. I was talking to a client today who said, “I feel so silly that you need to remind me,” even though our session was potent and powerful—release, tears, aha, remembering. I said, “Yeah—modern women got the bill that they’re supposed to be both a man and a woman—hold both feminine and masculine; be one perfect, arrived thing—and that is too much pressure for anyone.” I want my clients and community to know: I am doing this alongside you.

Another friend in my Voxer said, “I feel like I’ve been Phoenixing a really long time. I’m waiting for this to be over—this initiation.” Sometimes it be like that. Sometimes there are micro-initiations in between, inviting us into something fresher, truer, deeper—right there for us—if we mine the lessons from the hard things, feel our feelings, and know the best way out is through.

Another example: my kindergartner (my son) is doing great with kindergarten, but it’s, like, day five. Yesterday at dinner, he started getting upset, worked up and emotional, and said, “I feel like I’m not allowed to cry.” I said, “Get it out. Everybody can cry in this house.” He had a big cry, sat on my lap—the whole thing took not even five minutes. He went back to the other side of the table, gleefully laughing at his sisters. The whole vibe changed because I was like, it’s not a big deal. Your feelings don’t scare us. Your feelings are not a problem. Let’s just get through them—let them come out. It seemed like they wanted to come out. My husband said, “Man, he really did a 180. He was depressed, and now he’s sky-high.” I said, that’s what it’s like when we give ourselves permission to go through it—to feel fully without judging it or attaching our trauma story. We let the body release the story, release the trauma, release the pressure valve.

On the other side is this blissful “oh my gosh—oops, I forgot—life is amazing; I feel clear, energetically aligned; I feel love and connection.” When I was sharing that, I was like: it happens for a kindergartner, and it happens for you. It’s not so complicated—but we make it complicated because we’ve created patterns of self-sabotage and hiding from ourselves when things get rough, or protecting ourselves from vulnerability, flaws, imperfection—instead of mining the lessons. Saying yes to the next whirl around the spiral—up we go—knowing there is wisdom here. On the other side, I’ll have one-plus-one-equals-three results and solutions and ideas and connections and life—and it gets to be so much better.

This season is reminding me: chaos itself is not a problem. Living in a renovation—yeah, it’s not the best; I’ll be excited for it to be over—but that’s not the problem. It’s the pressure we put on ourselves amidst the chaos that creates explosions.

I remember leaving a crying message to a good friend last week: “I have nothing to land or anchor into. There’s no sanctuary in my house, no safe space; I’m surrounded by people; I have to go to this office all day.” I was spiraling. Thinking about it today—“I have nothing to land in, nothing to anchor into”—I’m reminded: oops—oh yeah. Yes, I do. Myself. My inner world is always where I can land, find myself, remember. It’s fertile ground for everything I want to create, even if it feels like I’m at a limit, it’s not possible, or I’m up against a wall. Every time I go through the inner-world tunnel—drop into the underworld—and allow my life to be a beautiful living metaphor, a sacred spiraling journey into the unknown, I always find solutions. I can land, get centered, get grounded.

There are so many ways I do that. This is the work I do with clients—group programs, masterminds, alumni containers, one-on-one. So many doors we can open to remember who we truly are and what’s available to us; how how-we-feel doesn’t need to be the limit if we’re dysregulated, overwhelmed, under pressure, “too much,” “too much responsibility.”

My invitation: allow it to be what it is. You don’t necessarily need to force or fix it. Give yourself permission to find the valves you need to release, to feel a bit better today—and know that sometimes it takes time. I know you think you have no time. I often think I have no time—and always, time is on my side. The capitalistic, patriarchal lie that there’s no time—it’s not true. Time expands to fill the space available (Parkinson’s law). And the more I allow my soul to lead me through time, the more I get one-plus-one-equals-three results with my time too. I fill the time I have with more potent activities instead of hamster-wheel doing/proving/overachieving to avoid uncomfortable feelings, upper limits, dysregulation, nervous-system patterns.

I hope you hear that and feel hope. I know a lot of you are going to be thinking, “How? How?” Okay—book a Soul Shift Intensive or come into any of the programs we have coming up (linked in the show notes). Mothers Rising is next up—a mother circle. We’re going very deep. It’s a beautiful container for mothers to drop into their inner worlds and rise into the Phoenix archetype.

Also, there are so many resources I offer—free resources, podcast episodes, meditations, visualizations, facilitators, community, friends, rest, play, pleasure, nature. I could go on and on. People ask me about resource all the time. I could make you an exhaustive list—and yet I could get you on a call and notice that the one resource that’s right there and you haven’t tried isn’t on the list. Not to make it seem extra hard—just to remind you there are infinite options. Your solution—to release pressure valves, show up in your modern life, get in the car line on time, submit all the things, download all the f—ing apps for extracurriculars and your kids and your teammates and your Slack channels and your speaking engagements and all the things—it’s all possible. It’s available to you.

I invite you to set the intention to land, anchor, and ground in yourself, in your inner world. Know that every hard thing brings you earth lessons, soul wisdom. Once you integrate that wisdom—once you feel that shift, clarity, spark, rising—you’re never the same. You are changing your life. You are breaking your limits. You are breaking generational cycles. This is how we go up and up and up, whirling around the Phoenix spiral. I’m so grateful to have you along for the ride.

I’ve got to go pick up my kids from school, or else I’d probably talk for another hour. So I’m going to leave it there. I love you so much. If you want to book a 90-minute one-on-one with me, the link is in the show notes. If you’re interested in Mothers Rising, the link is in the show notes. If you want to connect with me on Instagram, I would love to hear what’s real for you. If you want more content like this, find me on Instagram at @gervasekolmos and let me know. I love you so much. Thank you for spending your precious time with me. And let us phoenix together through this back-to-school time. Thank you.

Permission to Be Who You Are: Human Design for Mothers, Makers & Dreamers with Erin Claire Jones

What if the reason you constantly feel drained isn’t because you’re doing too much, but because you’re doing things in a way that goes against your natural design? Most of us are running on empty, trying to force ourselves into systems and rhythms that work for other people—but not for us.

This week, I sat down with human design expert and best-selling author Erin Claire Jones to explore how understanding your unique energetic blueprint can transform how you work, love, and live.

Erin breaks down the practical magic of human design and shows us how to stop forcing and start flowing. She reveals why most of us have been conditioned to work against our natural energy patterns, how this creates burnout and disconnection, and the simple shifts that can help you honor your design. She shares practical insights for all 5 human design types and explains why this system is less mystical theory and more practical life manual.

Listen to this episode to discover:

• What human design is and why it’s the most practical system for understanding your energy and intuition

• The 5 human design types (Generators, Manifesting Generators, Projectors, Manifestors, and Reflectors) and how each is designed to move through the world

• Why Generators and Manifesting Generators need to ask “Do I really feel excited about this?” before saying yes to everything

• How Projectors can build successful businesses and raise families without burning out (spoiler: it’s about working with your energy, not against it)

• Why Manifestors need freedom to do things their own way

• Why energy management is more important than time management

• How to use human design to understand your partner and kids on a deeper level

About Erin Claire Jones:

Erin Claire Jones is one of the world's leading experts in Human Design. Through her coaching, content, and digital products, she has empowered hundreds of thousands of people to overcome their biggest obstacles and find their flow at work, in love, and in life. Her personalized guides have been purchased by customers in over 160 countries. She has spoken on stages across the world, and her work has been featured in Forbes, Elle, The Sunday Times, Vogue, Allure, Nylon and more.

---

Follow Gervase

• 📲 Let’s hang out on IG: http://www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos

• ✨ Want to go deeper (and get juicy discounts)? Sign up to Gervase’s newsletter: https://www.gervasekolmos.com

Connect with Erin Claire Jones:

• Instagram | @erinclairejones & @humandesignblueprint

• 📖 Book: How Do You Choose: A Human Design Guide to What's Best for You at Work, In Love and In Life

• 🌎 Website | https://humandesignblueprint.com/

  • Get a personalized Blueprint Guide: https://humandesignblueprint.com/guide/ (use the code PHOENIX for a discount on the guide)

  • Human Design Certification Course: https://humandesignblueprint.com/product/course/ (use the code PHOENIX for a discount on the course)

Permission to Be Who You Are: Human Design for Mothers, Makers & Dreamers with Erin Claire Jones

Episode Full Transcript

Gervase: All right, my loves, welcome back to the Modern Phoenix podcast. I have Erin Claire Jones here for you. I finally brought you a human design expert—so many people have so many questions. I literally have a list. Everybody on this podcast has heard me talk about human design till the cows come home. I never shut up about it—on my podcast, in my coaching containers, to my friends, my children, my husband. I am a super fan. I’m so honored to have you on. Thank you for your time and for this beautiful book, How Do You Choose, and for your work in the world. Welcome, Erin.

Erin: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here.

Gervase: Erin Claire Jones is one of the world’s leading experts in human design. Through her coaching, content, and digital products, she has empowered hundreds of thousands of people to overcome their biggest obstacles and find their flow at work, in love, and in life. We’re both landing here. I’m always happy to connect projector to projector. You said you’re arriving from school drop-offs and the thick of motherhood. You have an eight-and-a-half-month-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old. My community knows I have three kids—my youngest is five—and I never feel like I left the thick of it. Projector to projector, how are you, really?

Erin: I feel good. Having a young baby and launching a book at the same time was a lot. I’m not sure I’d do that again, but honestly that’s how my life happens—everything all at once. I feel happy to be on the other side of the book. I’ve been going really hard for quite a while, putting myself out there a lot with the launch. I live in the Hudson Valley; the weather is beautiful. My toddler is about to stop Montessori for the summer, and it feels like more space is opening up. I feel hopeful and excited, but I’m still landing from all I’ve been through. It’s been a wild year.

Gervase: That is a wild year. I always tell mothers: give it two years before you feel like yourself again, like really yourself. You get some of your energy and life back, and things are a little more stable. To have a baby and a book that’s only—what did you say, three weeks? Oh my gosh—three weeks old. You’re in it.

Erin: Yeah. And it’s funny—I stopped breastfeeding when I got pregnant because my toddler just stopped one morning. She was like, “I’m done.” I haven’t been not pregnant or not breastfeeding since February of 2022. There’s this question of, who am I outside of nourishing children in this way? People go much longer than that, but it’s been the most tender time of my life. I also wonder, is there vitality available someday on the other side of this?

Gervase: There is. As a projector mom, you get more and more vitality back—and the energy, you know? That’s what I wanted to start with: energy. Human design found me maybe six years ago. I’d heard whispers of it, but what hooked me was the idea of working with your energy—that you have a unique blueprint for how you’re designed to operate. I always felt I had less vitality than others, even though I was conditioned to be extroverted and go-go-go. I had a lot of burnout and confusion about whether vitality was even available to me. Having my chart read and learning I was a 5/1 splenic projector changed everything. It gave me a permission slip and a map. That’s what your work does too—a map and a toolbox. It told me: no one’s expecting you to stop building your business or raising your babies—those clearly light you up—but you have to find a way to work in rhythm with your energy. Do you hear that a lot? And can you introduce people to what human design is and the five types?

Erin: You described it beautifully. Human design helps us know how our energy moves. We often look at how others do things and think we should have the same energy, build businesses like them, parent like them. Human design reminds us we’re all wired differently. It’s not meant to tell us what we can or can’t do—like “you can’t be a mom or run a business because you’re a projector.” It tells us how to do it best: how to structure our days sustainably, how to find opportunities in flow rather than force, how to know what’s right for us when it comes. It helps us move with who we are, not against it.

Whatever our design, many people come to me living the opposite of it. A projector trying to be a constant doer, or a manifesting generator trying to have just one passion—we often don’t feel permission to be who we are. Human design is a massive permission slip to show up to every part of life more authentically. Not only will it feel better, it will probably be more successful.

For those new to it: human design is a system based on your time, date, and place of birth. It reveals your energetic blueprint—how you’re wired to move through the world: decision-making, structuring days, finding opportunities, leveraging strengths, moving through challenges, and more. It’s as mystical as it is practical. “Birth information” might sound whoa, but the information itself is often mechanical—how you’re meant to make decisions, how you do well being asked questions, what works for you socially. I love the practicality.

If it doesn’t resonate, I never try to convince people. What matters most is not whether it’s true, but whether it’s useful. Listen through that lens. If it feels useful, try it. If not, let it go. You might come back later and see it differently.

If you want to look up your design, go to humandesignblueprint.com. You’ll need your birth time, date, and place. An approximate time is okay. Or just listen along. The five types are manifesting generators, generators, projectors, reflectors, and manifestors. Type is the entry point. You might share a type with someone close and still be totally different in your details. Before I dive in, do you know your kids’ designs?

Gervase: Yes. My husband is a generator. My oldest is a splenic manifester. My second is an emotional projector. And my third is an emotional manifester.

Erin: Wow—two manifester kiddos.

Gervase: Right? And my husband is the only generator—bless him.

Erin: Thank goodness for generator partners. Let’s dive in. Manifesting generators and generators make up the majority of the population. That doesn’t mean they’re not unique; it’s just the first category before we get more specific. These two are the doers—so much boundless energy to make things happen when they feel genuinely excited. When they’re lit up, their energy is through the roof and they can make things happen powerfully.

A big lesson for both is boundaries. Because they have so much capacity, they might find they carry a lot—at home and at work—because they’re so capable. Just because they can do something doesn’t mean they should.

Gervase: That’s what I underlined in the book and starred. I see that in my husband. And even for me—I know if I give him something, he’ll go and go and go. I literally said to a client yesterday—she’s a reflector—that just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean you should exploit it constantly.

Erin: One hundred percent. It’s about becoming discerning with their energy and checking in with their gut to see what they genuinely feel available for. As partners, ask: do you really feel excited to do this? Do you have the energy for it?

Between the two, manifesting generators tend to be very multi-passionate—moving among many passions at once. They’re fast and often make things happen quickly. Generators are really here for mastery. They can do many things, but it might look like: today I dive deep into this, tomorrow into that. The example I use in the book of a generator is LeBron James—steady mastery, infectious passion. Nothing beats being around a lit-up generator; they light up the room. Their energy is consistent and reliable. Ideally, they wake up with energy, expend it in satisfying ways, and drop into bed delightfully spent—like “I left it all on the field.” Rest before expending their energy well often doesn’t feel great. Expending it well is the pathway to satisfying rest.

Gervase: That hits the nail on the head for my husband. Isn’t there also something about how you ask questions of a generator—yes/no?

Erin: Yes. Generators and manifesting generators are gut-driven. They often have a visceral response that signals whether they’re available for something. The best way to access that is to ask specific yes/no questions. As small as “Do you want to go out or cook at home? Pasta or salmon?”—like talking to a toddler sometimes. Or bigger: “Does this job feel right? Do you have energy for it? Is the timing right?” It’s not that you can never ask open-ended questions—they often love to talk about their passions. It’s more when they’re deciding whether they have energy for something; posing specific questions speaks to what they really feel.

Gervase: Everything you’ve shared is so applicable. As a coach and projector I lean toward open-ended questions and deep curiosity. But with my husband—especially when he’s winding down, “delightfully spent”—I used to say, “Now let’s have a deep conversation about our hopes and dreams.” He’s like, I don’t have it in the tank. He’s capable of open-ended questions, but based on his energy level and overwhelm, too many options can be overwhelming. It’s cool to think about being more specific.

Erin: Exactly. Depending on other parts of the design, open-ended questions can get them into the realm of endless possibility. You’re asking a thing they actually know, but the way you ask doesn’t pull it out. Many generators and manifesting generators have felt indecisive—it’s not that they don’t have an answer; the way they’re being asked isn’t bringing it forth.

Gervase: The noise versus the knowing.

Erin: Yes. Specific yes/no questions are the path for these types. I’ll often sit with a generator who talks around a decision for ten minutes and feels unclear. Then I ask, “Do you want to do it?” and they’re like, “No.” They already knew; the direct question revealed it.

Gervase: Okay—projectors. You, me, my middle—and Taylor Swift, right?

Erin: And Taylor Swift. Projectors are natural leaders, teachers, guides, coaches. We’re good at making others feel recognized and seen, good at asking the right questions. We love systems like human design—anything that helps us understand people better—because we already understand people deeply. A big lesson for projectors is disentangling worth from how hard we work or how much we do. Our gift is not in constant doing; it’s in our perspective and how we see. Ideally, we’re valued for that—in coaching, human design, parenting—rather than output. We do well with space, rest, and pause. It will look different in different seasons, but it’s vital. Part of being a projector is paying attention to who deeply sees and recognizes you without you trying. Where we’re genuinely recognized and invited is where we’re meant to put our energy. Let that invitation guide us—who’s ready for us and when.

Gervase: Every time I hear it, I feel so seen. It reminds me who I was before human design—seeking in all the wrong places: validation, belonging, proving, forcing myself to be something I could be, but at a cost to how I felt. Can I tell you about my last 24 hours? My husband is a marine biologist; he travels at sea for five to ten days at a time for six months of the year, and he’s gone now for a couple of months. This is when I really test: can I align with my energy and human design and still be the mom I want to be and show up for my business?

Yesterday I woke at 4:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep. I got my kids up at 6:30, to camp by 7:40, came home at 8 with my five-year-old still home, and felt like my brain needed to be washed. I had a whole plan, my sister was coming with her little kids, the works. And I was like, nope—I have to sleep. I put my son in front of the TV and slept from 8 to 10 because nothing I could create or any family time would benefit from me not sleeping. I woke at 10; my sister walked in. The plan flipped and I pivoted—baked muffins, made coffee, enjoyed the family chaos. Dishes, cooking, meals, crying—five kids in the house. I actively showed up for that without worrying about work or feeling bad that I’d slept. Around noon I shifted into work mode and prepped for this interview. It wasn’t about doing less or more; it was about trust and permission threaded through my day—always pivoting to follow the energy when it’s available because I trust how much good comes from that: juicier moments, better work, better mothering, better family time. Am I doing it right?

Erin: Only you know, but yes—it sounds like you’re honoring where you are and what you have energy for. We can’t always do that as projectors—you might have a big talk you must show up for—but you do what you can. The energy is not always on. The wisdom I hear is: you had things you wanted to create, but trying to create from an unwashed brain—exhausted—won’t generate your best work. You don’t need to force it. Projectors often push to keep going, thinking more doing leads to success, but creating from a place of low resources doesn’t yield our best and makes it harder to access our gifts. Waiting until the energy is there means you’ll make it happen quickly and at far better quality. It’s worth waiting for. Ideally, we create enough spaciousness to listen to where we are. We ignore nudges and “muscle through,” but do we have to?

Gervase: Some projectors say, “I can’t—my job, the season of parenting.” I tell friends and clients: if you even consider designing your life around your energy, there will be icky parts where you reverse engineer and undo things that aren’t working, then plant seeds and wait for them to grow. In my current season, I planted so many seeds when my kids were babies. I held the dream and vision, showed up, structured my days, and learned from so many mess-ups. Like, “I won’t put them in camp; I’ll be with them every day and casually work from home”—then realizing after a summer that doesn’t work. For anyone discouraged, unlearning is part of realigning. It counts. It’s worth it. You may need to wait longer, but it’s better than pushing misaligned.

Erin: Sometimes we can get away with ignoring our design, and then we reach a point where we can’t. Becoming a mother brought me face to face with my projector-ness more than anything. My energy is for sure not unlimited. I desperately need help. Alone time is essential—even five minutes on the bathroom floor. Discover what works for you. I hear you moving from authenticity, not shoulds. “I should be doing all this stuff,” but that’s not where you are right now. It’s not always feasible, but be as connected to your truth as you can.

Gervais: And I trust I’m building toward something meaningful and aligned—for the world, my kids. The trust and potency matter.

[Mid-episode note from Gervais:] Just popping into this awesome interview with the amazing Erin Claire Jones to let you know: if you’re listening to her talk about human design and want to go deeper into your own design and apply it to your life, patterns, and relationships—know that as part of my one-on-one private coaching packages, I include two one-on-one custom human design readings with my local expert, Erin Matthews. She’s been in my community for years and is a former client. This is part of how I guide you once you’re working with me. As soon as I’m working with someone, I need to know your human design, your authority, and everyone in your family—I coach people that way. I tend to call in a lot of projectors and coach them very specifically (I have two manifestors in my family and a generator, as you’ve heard). I’m not an expert—Erin is—so go to her site for all the amazing resources, tools, and her book. But if you want to dabble and apply it to your personal growth and transformation, know it’s included in my private mentorship packages and woven into how we work toward your intentions, transformations, goals, and relationships. I’m obsessed with it. Okay, back to the show.

Gervase: Someone asked about “discerning rest periods.” It makes me think about our culture’s obsession with energy—indoctrination and internalized capitalism. We don’t see how we’ve been brainwashed to believe we’re more machines than nature. Energy is glorified. I remember five to seven years ago—exactly where you are—feeling grief that I’d never get my energy back, that I wouldn’t belong, matter, be relevant, or successful, as if the main thing you need for those is energy. Now I trust it’s about authenticity and alignment—discerning rest periods and then intentional sprint periods, like your launch. I know when it’s a sprint I can do it, but I’ve been training for this, planting seeds, tilling the soil. The end result isn’t just raw energy; it’s authenticity—the potency of the energy, not constant 24/7 doing. Can you speak to that?

Erin: Totally. More is not better—for projectors and, honestly, for all of us. The quality of my energy and work when I’m overdoing—filling every moment—is not great. It’s hard to tap into my gifts when I’m not rested. When I honor my energy and take rest and alone time when needed, I feel more connected to my gifts and more effective, inspired, and insightful in the moments I’m working and sharing. On discernment: for projectors, stay connected to what you have energy for. Create checkpoints throughout the day to step back and ask, “Do I have the energy to keep going?” Sometimes it’s a full yes; other times it’s time to step back. For generators, discernment is less about rest and more about commitments: do I genuinely have the energy for this task? When the energy is there, they’re the most powerful, but they may say yes out of obligation or a desire to please. Trust that a wholehearted, gut-led yes is worth waiting for. Across types, human design helps us become more discerning about where and when to put our energy.

Gervase: Sometimes we think, “I’ve got the energy now,” and then realize later we overdid it. I’m a sloppy learner—I do it wrong a lot to get the message. I have to look back and see the moment—like answering 20 texts for 30 minutes when I could’ve gone for a walk—that was the moment not to do it, even if I had a coffee high. Let the period of trying be part of aligning with your energy: try doing more, notice how it feels; try doing less, notice how it feels. In the last six months I’ve been more discerning in work and personal life. If I have texts and Voxers from clients, I can check in: I have energy now, but it’s just enough to get me through bedtime. If I spend it at 3 p.m., I’ll leave it all on the floor and still have a long way to go. It’s been a beautiful arc—try, notice the energetic arc, refine, repeat.

Erin: I often remind people of the value of experimentation. Build breaks into your day. Don’t book back-to-back. Say yes to fewer commitments. See what happens. As a projector, I’m still tempted to overwork, and yet my experience is: the more I allow rest, the better everything is and the more opportunities come my way. It’s worth experimenting to find the rhythm that works for you.

Gervase: So good. Okay—manifestors.

Erin: Manifestors—like your youngest and oldest—are innovative and disruptive (in the best way). They’re here to tread their own path and do things their way. They’re not here to be guided or told what to do, which isn’t always easy with kids. They feel comfortable setting the terms of how and when they do things. As a mother—I have an eight-month-old manifester—it’s about setting boundaries that make them feel as free as possible while still being safe. Manifestors love freedom—what they want, when they want, how they want. They’re great at kickstarting new ideas but not always at sustaining them. Their energy—like projectors, but different—is bursty: on fire followed by a pullback to rest. They shouldn’t expect consistent momentum. As a parent, check in on what they have energy for and model boundaries yourself: “I’m not always available; I need moments to myself.” Manifestors are actually the only type meant to make the first move—following urges. Do you observe that?

Gervase: Oh, so much. My oldest’s inconsistent energy is wild. I’m helping her notice and honor it without shame, while also teaching her to work within family boundaries—like, “You’ve been reading in the downstairs room for 12 hours, and I love that for you, but now we’re having dinner with Grandpa.” I notice her urge for freedom could go far, and I’m into it—ride your bike, disappear for the day, never have a phone till you’re 25. But I also want her to be part of a family and friend group authentically.

She recently switched from elementary to middle school—big deal. There’s a selective arts school (middle and high school) that’s audition-only. I was raised by a stage mom; I’m very artsy but had no connection to the joy of the arts until I was 38—I’ve been reclaiming it as an adult. I don’t push it on my kids; I try to let my manifesters lead me. My oldest had no arts training and said, “I want to go to School of the Arts.” I felt like it might be her first splenic moment. She led; I followed.

We opened the application. She was going to do writing, but I looked at the essays and thought, maybe not the vibe—people work on those for years. I said, how about theater? I think you have raw talent. Long story short, we prepared a monologue, but her rehearsals kept getting worse. One day she said, “Mom, can I just do it my way?” I said yes. She did it—I laughed, I cried—and remembered she’s here to lead herself. She went in, got in, and it’s been beautiful for our whole family. Sixth grade is when I really started parenting her with her manifester design. She started dance mid-year—most start at five. I told her, “You’re supposed to skip steps; you’ll be fine.” I’m watching her thrive—become obsessed and just do the thing. It’s so cool.

Erin: Amazing. Knowing our kids’ designs is useful not to control them but as a lens to observe and support. Like: she said she wants to go to that school—very intuitive, clear knowing. Honor it. Or, “I’m over-guiding her through this audition; she’ll probably do better her way.” There are so many small ways it helps us look at people. With my eight-month-old: at two months she started rolling over, breaking out of her swaddle, only sleeping on her belly. The internet says no belly sleeping that early. I tried flipping her, called my pediatrician: “What do I do? She keeps flipping back; she’s really early to be rolling.” The pediatrician said, “You let her be.” I was like, what an awesome pediatrician. She said, “You can’t do anything. She knows what she wants. Make it safe by taking the swaddle off.” It reminded me: she’s a manifester—ready to move, strong, powerful. Let her do her thing. Human design is a helpful lens to see why something might be happening and how to support them through it.

Gervase: How can I support them through this. Yes—so beautiful. Okay, reflectors.

Erin: Reflectors are our mirrors, our evaluators. They see, sense, and feel things many people miss. They mirror back the quality of a space or community and let us know how it’s going. Their perspective is invaluable. It’s so important for them to be ruthless about where they spend time and with whom because they feel it deeply: cities and towns they enjoy, schools that feel good, offices, bedrooms—environment matters. Reflectors are fluid; they may express their purpose in many ways over life, and their look might change in many ways across, say, high school. They’re not here to box themselves into one expression. Allow their natural fluidity and vastness.

Gervase: I was working with a reflector yesterday and told her to buy your book. I started underlining so much because it’s the one type I know the least about—I don’t have any reflectors in my life. What’s so helpful about your book is how it’s broken down: type; how to make decisions; how to be you at work and in relationships; how to support someone of each type in relationship. It’s so tangible. To me, that’s the difference between human design and astrology. If someone doesn’t resonate with their design, it can feel like astrology—overwhelming and hard to apply. I’m into astrology too, but I find human design more straightforward. Your book makes it so applicable and practical. That was your intention, right?

Erin: Yes—to make it very usable. Most people don’t want to learn human design; they want to know what they need to know about their design to transform their life. I have many students and teach all the details if you want them, but that’s not what most people want. Until now there hasn’t been a book focused on practical application; it’s been textbooks. I love textbooks—but human design can impact more people beyond that. I wanted a resource manual you return to: “I’m struggling with a decision—remind me what to do,” or “I feel out of alignment in my career—open projectors and career,” or “I’m struggling with my partner or kid—read about them.” It’s been cool to see people read it who’ve never been exposed to human design—they’re open to a new way of doing things and want to understand decision-making. It’s accessible.

Gervase: Could you wrap by sharing about intuition? That was the second most important piece for me—understanding my authority. For someone curious about making decisions aligned with their intuition, how does human design help?

Erin: I titled the book How Do You Choose because so often we don’t know how. We feel paralysis because we don’t know how to tap into our intuition or inner knowing. Human design—through a piece called “authority”—helps us know how to tap into our intuition, what it looks like for each of us, and how to know what’s right and when. Some people, like you, are meant to act on spontaneous, fast, quiet insights—because you’re splenic authority. Your intuition comes quietly and quickly, without reason—it might be a voice, tingles, a knowing. You’re meant to become quiet enough to hear it and courageous enough to act on it. Others, like me (emotional authority), find truth over time. I’m excitable; I have immediate instincts and feel differently the next day. I assess what’s true by feeling a decision over a couple of days—what stays true, where excitement grows. Some people find truth by talking things out; some need a full month. We all access knowing differently; human design gives us a reliable method. As someone who’s meant to decide quickly based on intuition—has that been true?

Gervase: Life-changing. Rest and decision-making were life-changing. I suspected this was how my intuition spoke to me, but I was confused whether everyone felt it that way. I needed the language. When I heard splenic authority described, nothing felt more true about my experience, but no one had explained it. I was midway through my journey of coming home to myself and knew intuition was a piece I’d been playing with for years. I’d felt this quick knowing—my friend calls it “know and go”—and wondered if that’s how everyone experiences it. Hearing it named gave me a deeper yes. Now I live my life this way. For my daughter I say, you’ll know right away—how does it feel, what do you hear—and then you’ll go. That’s not how everyone hears it, but it is how you’re meant to hear it. For my emotional daughter, I’m learning: ride the wave and come back. Take your time; we’ll revisit. Having it named is huge for someone trying to align her life—and her kids’ and clients’ lives—with inner knowing. Between energy and intuition I’m like: there you have it—go out and conquer your life. You’ll be fine.

Erin: One of the hardest parts of writing the book was choosing what to include. I wrote 150 pages that didn’t make it in—heartbreaking, but necessary. I asked: what pieces, if you know just these, can transform your life? Everything else is helpful additions. To your point: when you know how to honor your energy rhythms, create opportunities in the most aligned way, and tap into intuition to know what’s right—you have the full package. Everything else deepens and eases the path. With those three locked in, you’re flowing authentically, finding your way to the right things, saying yes at the right time, and working sustainably. Those pieces alone can totally change your life.

Gervase: It’s enough—more than enough. For anyone discouraged—feeling like they don’t resonate—know you have enough. You have everything you need in this book. Make small, simple changes. Start with energy or intuition. Erin gives the frameworks. It’s enough to radically transform your life so it feels good—not just looks good, which is what I’m after.

Erin: One hundred percent.

Gervase: Erin, I want to acknowledge you. As an entrepreneur, I really see you. I’m moved by how much you’re doing that’s aligned with your purpose. I know it feels like a lot right now, and also the work is potent. It’s transformed my life, and I hope your book and work transform the lives of many more women coming home to their inner knowing, energy, intuition, and vitality. Thank you for your time. How can people keep in touch, work with you, and explore their design?

Erin: Thank you so much for having me. If you want the book, you can get it anywhere books are sold. It’s called How Do You Choose: A Human Design Guide to What’s Best for You at Work, in Love, and in Life. My website is humandesignblueprint.com. We also sell custom guides personalized to your design and chart there, and you can use the discount code Phoenix. On Instagram, I’m @erinclairejones and @humandesignblueprint. The discount code also applies to our course if you want to learn it all—it’s a great place for that.

Gervase: Amazing. We’ll put it all in the show notes. Do it, guys. Thank you again for your time. It’s been lovely, and I will see you soon.

Erin: Thank you.

I AM a Multidimensional Woman

Let’s be real: the world doesn’t need another “put-together” woman who’s mastered pretending. It needs you—whole, honest, luminous, messy, intuitive, powerful-as-hell you.

That's why we're bringing back this special episode -- straight from the Vault!

G goes all in—sharing raw personal stories and client transformations to show you the sacred evidence of what’s possible when you stop hiding parts of yourself. Light and dark. Joy and rage. Fire and softness. All of it belongs.

This episode is your reminder (or wake-up call) that being fully expressed isn’t a luxury—it’s your lifeline. Especially if you’re navigating mental health shifts, heavy relational dynamics, or the never-ending mental load of modern womanhood.

Here’s what you’ll walk away with:

• What it actually means to lead with your heart

• How to feel more grounded in your truth—even when life feels like a lot

• Why emotional range = personal power

• A new definition of “strength” that lets you breathe easier

• A soul check-in: Are you living the Woman Way… or still shape-shifting?

Hit play now. Let it land. Let it stir you. Then share it with the women who need it. And if it moves you? Come join the Phoenix Revolution. We’re not here to play small anymore.

Get more support to create your masterpiece of a life

CREATRIX: a 4-day on-demand for the woman who wants to reconnect to and amplify the feminine magic and empowered mindset that allows you to easily create everything you want in your life.

You are not the same every single day. And while you can become outwardly successful with values like perfectionism, discipline and hustle—I can show you a better way. An easier way

Inside this four-day on-demand course, you'll learn:

• What keeps us stuck in cycles of shame, self-doubt, over-doing and feeling disconnected from our whole Woman and how to connect back to Her.

• The role conditioning plays and how to undo it.

• How to use your Creatrix magic to let go of your death grip on control and invite in more joy, pleasure, connection, presence.

• A process for breaking cycles of toxic narratives and life patterns.

• An empowered mindset that allows you to trust yourself more.

• And so much more…

https://www.gervasekolmos.com/creatrix

---

More Free Resources

• Download Gervase’s free gift, the Trust Yo’self hypnosis track: https://bit.ly/3xKuaPv

• Connect with Gervase on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos

I AM a Multidimensional Woman

Episode Full Transcript

Hi friends, Gervase Kolmos here, the host of the Modern Phoenix podcast, and you are going to love today's solo episode. We're bringing it back from the vault. It's from a couple years ago, and it's called I Am a Multidimensional Woman, and I'm pretty picky about podcasts that I repub. Like, I'm not just trying to take any old thing and put it in here. I'm always checking in with the frequency and the energy and the inspiration and the intention that something was created with. This one is straight fire, so I think you're really going to like it. If there's any references that seem out of date, this was, I think I did it three years ago.

And because as I was listening to this, it inspired me to go back in to products I've created and kind of give a facelift, give a little glow up to one of my products called the Creatrix. Now the Creatrix, it's something I talk about in this podcast a lot, and it is now for sale. $97 gets you this four-day on-demand course. It is such a cool course. I remember that when I was creating this course, the idea was like dropping women out of their logic-bound brains and their limited mindsets of like who they are and what they're capable of and the right way to woman and dropping them like deep into their feminine magic and their souls. Like this is a very spiritual, energetic transmission from me. There's a lot of feminine energy. There's a lot about doing things the woman way. I give a lot of personal examples from my life. Like I really believe in the value of this mini course. So I really think if you didn't grab it when it was available three years ago, go ahead and grab it at the link in the show notes now.

There's four modules in the Creatrix. The first one is called I Am a Mind, Body, and Soul. The second one is I'm Here to Break Cycles. The third one is I Am Light and Dark. And the fourth one is I Am the One I've Been Waiting For. And I think those kind of speak for themselves. So I hope you enjoy I Am a Multidimensional Woman. I hope you remember that you are a multidimensional woman. I hope that you give the Creatrix four-day on-demand course a try even just to get you back connected to your truth, your power, your soul, your feminine energy, your magic.

It is exactly what it sounds like. Creatrix, the word itself to me, carries an energy that feels really activating to me. And I hope that that's what it can be for those of you listening. I think a lot of content for me that I purchase or listen to, it's almost like a transmission for me. It's like when I have forgotten something. It's like a Gervais in your pocket. It's like, you know, a sermon. It's whatever you need to reattune, realign to your magic. And the part of you you've forgotten. The part of you that's playing small, limited, like, you know, thinking within the realms of logic and forgets that you get to be a Creatrix. You get to be multidimensional, light and dark, mind, body and soul, breaking cycles, recreating yourself, evolving, phoenixing, and also the one you've been waiting for. The one with the power to change your life and make it what you hope it will be. Over and over and over. Up and around the spiral we go. If those of you who have been in my containers, you know I always teach about the spiral of evolution. And so, yeah. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this episode. And check out the Creatrix mini course.

I'm really excited to talk to you about today's topic. I'm going to have a solo episode for you coming in hot. And I really hope that I convey everything that is, like, bursting out of my heart and soul right now. Because this always happens when, you know, I know you guys know I'm a human design projector. So my energetic pattern is always sprint, rest, sprint, rest. And this is something that I took the time. It was very intentional that I really wanted to learn this about myself. Because when I got energy, when inspiration and creativity is flowing, it is like a well that will not dry up. And then when I feel complete, I really need to kind of go into a cave and hibernate.

And so some of you guys had messaged me on Instagram and been like, where have you been? And I just have been really kind of hibernating and focusing on my work and behind the scenes stuff that I've been preparing for the moment that we are at right now. And now I'm in a sprint. And in a sprint is when everything that I engage with, every piece of content I watch or read on social media, every client conversation leaves me bursting with something I want to say in response. It leaves me bursting with like a teachable moment and like a message, like a really important truth that I am pulling out from these conversations that I want to make sure that I share with you in a way that you can really hear it, that it can really land for you.

So anyway, as I am recording the videos and like mapping out all the content right now for the Creatrix, that starts May 9th and runs through May 12th. And the link to join us to register for this free mini courses live and people have started joining. And so I'm feeling the energy of this and I have so much I want to say about it because I'm in this Creatrix energy. And so I want to share with you some examples from a couple of client conversations I've had in the last 24 hours. And it's funny because these have shaped day one of the Creatrix of what you're going to learn inside this free training and the free video series that comes out for days one through three. It's like videos of me teaching you on these concepts. But I wanted to give you a snippet here on the podcast. You can kind of understand what this is about.

So if you're here, you likely consider yourself a modern woman. I know I do. I know all of my clients. There are some of them who come to me and they're like, I don't even know why I feel drawn to you, why I'm in your world. But like, I just feel like there's something that you are reflecting to me about myself that I get to have, or maybe a piece of myself that I've lost connection to that I want to learn from you. And I want to tell you, yes, you as a modern woman are so much more than you have been taught to believe. You as a modern woman are here to be a Creatrix. You are here to not only make babies, be productive, do, partner, create, but also to dream, make magic, to see things that other people don't understand, to see solutions to problems, to feel intuitively from your inner guidance system, your intuition, or your soul, or your heart, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. Answers to things in this modern world that you can't get from your logic brain.

So I want to talk to you about the truth that you are a multidimensional woman. I am a multidimensional woman. And it is really easy, particularly in this day and age, to look around, particularly with the internet, and see a woman and decide she's that kind of woman. You might look at me and say, oh, she's whatever. She's woo-woo, or she's, you know, wears lipstick, or she's the married type, or she's the suburbs type, or she's the jungle type, whatever. You might make a quick assumption based on just a tiny bit of data that you know about me and say, I'm this kind of woman. And it's totally fine. Like, we're all doing this. We're all making assumptions. But I want you to notice how much this limits your own ability as a modern woman to create the life that you want, to create the results that you want, to be all that you are.

Because when you decide, let's say, I'll use myself as an example, when I started this journey, so I've been a coach for eight years. So at the beginning of my journey, my business, sorry if this is recap for some of you, was called Shiny Happy Human. And there was periods in between each word because I was grappling with this reality that I was shiny and I was happy. But I also had this very human side to me that didn't quite fit in this identity that I had made for myself. And the problem with this was anytime I started experiencing very normal, natural feelings that were, quote unquote, dark, my depression, overwhelm, you know, the wounding, like my mother wound, any like mom guilt I started to feel or cognitive dissonance between the mother I was and the life I had and the one I wanted to be in a life I wanted to have. Any cognitive dissonance between shiny and happy Gervais started to mean something. I started to make it mean something about me.

And so what happened here is I forgot that as a multidimensional woman, I am darkness and light. We are all darkness and light, just like the earth, just like the moon, just like the seasons of nature. There is winter and there is spring and you need both. There is medicine for you in both. There is productivity and worth in both of those. And so what happened for me at the beginning of my coaching journey is I was starting to play with, oh, I am shiny, happy and human and talk more about the human stuff and the human side. But what was really happening is I was experiencing depression on and off, which I had carried on from early in my life. And I had a lot of shame about it. And I was hiding it. And I wasn't really talking about the depression. I was talking about, you know, the human anxiety. That's so popular. It's so mainstream to be anxious, right? I was talking about, you know, fights with my mom and whatever mom guilt and, you know, the kind of surface layer stuff. But I wasn't talking about the true source of my shame. The thing that I had really hidden from myself and from the world was my depression because I had a lot of feelings about it and I had a lot of stories about what that depression meant about me.

And the problem with this is that I wasn't bringing my full self to my life. I was allowing the shiny, happy version of me to sit at this table, to have a voice in my brand, to be present as a mother in my marriage, in my closest friendships. But the depression, like that was like, ooh, let's just tuck that away. Let's just like, you know, we'll get help for that, but we won't talk about it because how embarrassing, how weird that I have this darkness.

And I did this group hypnosis training for a friend of mine for her community. And one of the women on this call at the end of the training was sharing how hypnosis had been so powerful to help her drop out of her anxious, depressed mind into her body and how she had struggled with anxiety and depression for a really long time. And her question to me during the hot seat coaching part of this training was, how do I control my depression? How do I control my anxiety? And I was struck by her choice of words, by her need as a multidimensional, multifaceted, like magical woman to say, yeah, but this I need to control.

I want you to feel the energy of the word control. I want you to feel the intention of the word control. And maybe just for yourself, start to play with this idea that what's a word that feels better? Why does allow and accept and work with my depression, my anxiety feel so much better than I need to control it? This is the difference between my interpretation of the feminine and the masculine. It is not because we don't desire and crave as humans stability and structure and management of ourselves and our lives. But control serves a very different purpose than how do I work with this? How do I blend this into my life? Okay. So that's just something for you to notice. That's a different conversation about why as women, we have been brainwashed to believe we need to control the parts of ourselves that are not cookie cutter, that don't fit in this perfect little identity box that we have been handed. As modern women, this is what you get to be. This is what a good mother looks like. This is what a devoted wife, this is what a successful woman looks like. Just something to notice, something to bring your awareness to start being an active participant in the words that you use and consume and decide if that works for you or not. Okay. And we're going to kind of get into that in the creatrix.

But going back to the story, when this woman said this to me, I reflected back to her. I said, you know, I want to point out the use of the word control and for you to question that. And I want to share my experience with depression and share with you that my depression didn't lose its grip and control on my experience of my life until I stopped trying to hide it, shame it, or control it. And I just allowed it to be part of me. It's all me. The depression and the shiny, happy Gervais. It's all me. And that's okay. And I started to really challenge this notion that this depression didn't have something to teach me. That this depression didn't have something to bring to the dynamic, dimensional experience of me.

Because I know personally, when I am connecting with another person who is one-dimensional, who is only allowing the shiny and happy part of her to be present, I'm a little bored. I'm a little bored. That like GPS system inside of me as a magical, multidimensional woman that knows every human has depth and layers is kind of like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Where's your dark? Where's the stuff that makes you interesting? Where have you been? What have you been through? What do you come from? What are you working for? What's hard for you? What are you learning? And for me, my depression had so much of that to teach me.

And from there, I'll share. I was with a VIP client on the phone yesterday. And she was having a similar experience with her darkness. And saying like, yeah, I just want to understand why I have these two versions of me. This version of me that I feel is like at her worst, like just crazy. She's just, you know, I hide her. I'm so embarrassed by her. I just feel like she just assumes she's bad. You know, she's the cause of everybody's problems. Like if there's a fight, it's my fault. And I should just, you know, remove myself from this situation. And I'm bad and it's all bad. And it's always going to be bad and it's bad. And then this other version of me that's like so normal, it's so calm, collected, grounded, healthy, thriving, vibrant.

And we started to bring in the same conversation. This like, what does it look like for you to, instead of controlling or hiding your darkness, to welcome her and allow her to be part of you? Instead of trying to figure out why do I have this? What trauma is this from? What wound? What happened to me? What if this is just a piece of you? What does it look like instead of hiding it for you to welcome this piece of you and say, okay, you get to be here. Okay. You're feeling a lot of feelings right now. Okay. What do you have to teach me? Let's talk about it. Let's bring this into my conversation with my partner, but not from a place of wobbly insecurity, from a place of, I know this is a part of me and she gets to be here. And how are we going to work through this? What is she trying to tell me?

You know, often the women who have like the women, especially the women that I work with are very much like me. It's like canaries in the coal mine. It's not that there's something wrong with you. It's that you are just breathing in the poison of a situation and you're not as tolerant. You know, your ability to withstand constant being controlled and put into a tiny little box is less. And that's good. That is like you are gifts to the world because we need people to call out the bullshit. That is modern women being told you are one dimensional and this is how you get to be. Right. And so I reflected back to this client. I was like, I just want you to know why I love you is not because of that other polarity of you that is, you know, happy and calm and grounded and composed. That is not what I love about you. I love that you are hungry to heal and explore and know more about yourself and to have deeper, more real and true relationships with your partner and your parents and your friends. I love that you are vulnerable and honest and wanting to go to the root of your life's experiences and hold yourself to this high standard of putting yourself at the center of your life. Putting yourself as I am responsible for creating what I desire in my life. I love your shadow and how it works and complements and dances with your light. I think that's what makes you you.

And I feel like the more that you can just bring all of you to every conversation, relationship, challenge, the less suffering you will have. The more you stop trying to control your depression and anxiety and just allow her to be here. Like stop making it such a big deal. Stop trying to figure out where she came from or why she's here and just say like, oh, this is who I am. Okay. What if that was just okay? What if what gets to be the standard for a woman is who you actually truly are? What if you bring her, all of her to your life from this place of total worthiness and trust and belief that like only then will you feel the most powerful version of yourself. Only then will you be able to solve the problems that have felt unsolvable.

As women, we have so many magical superpowers that we can't see that sometimes tell us so much more about what we need and how to quote unquote balance it all as a modern woman than our logic brain or a book or a blueprint ever could. Right. Right. We don't just get shit done. We don't just do and create and do the fucking dishes and the things that we put on our to-do list, the mental load. We are so much more than that. What about what we feel? What about what we sense? What about what we intuit? What about when we kind of just know in our bodies like, oh, it's time for me to change the kids clothes from winter to spring. This is like a really mundane example, but it's like, what about when we just kind of know it's time for a change for my kids school? Oh, it's just, it's time for me to start pouring into myself more. I'm out of the season of hard. I'm out of the trenches. Oh, it's time for me to whatever. The things that we know, not because somebody told us, not because we read it in a book, not because Gervais said so, because we feel it from the wisdom of our soul, from our beings, because we are creatrixes.

And these layers of light and dark, these multidimensional layers that we're going to get into in this training, but like for today, just let's talk about the shadow and the light. That is part of like the composting process of our life, which as cycling women mirrors nature. And how does nature just know when it's time to bloom or when it's time to compost, when it's time to lose the leaves and when it's time to grow new leaves? How does nature know when it's time to rain? Like it just fucking knows. Of course, there's like the science behind it, but it's like, how do the animals into it when it's time to fly? Like there's so much magic in nature and in the world and our bodies and our beings as women mimic, mirror these cycles and knowings of nature.

But we aren't even allowing ourselves to tap into that, to be aware of it, to see it, to make it count just as much as so-and-so's, what she said makes a happy household. What so-and-so says makes you a good mom. What this parenting technique and this organizational blah, blah, blah. And I'll end with this example, like another conversation I had with a client this morning. She was talking about this book that I'm sure lots of you have read and heard about, Eve Rodsky's book about the mental load. Fair play, fair play. And if you haven't read this book, I haven't read it because I kind of talked to enough people about it, heard about it, and I kind of ascertained like what it was about. And I feel like I got this.

And this client was sharing how in this book, there's all of these cards. I don't know. I'm just going to, I'm going to do this disservice, but I'm going to try. Basically, everything that a woman carries in her mind, you put it on a card so you can see the task. And then you can bring that card to your relationship and lay it on the table and talk about it with your partner and even out the load. And one of these cards is like the unicorn card that gets to be like, what is the thing you're doing for you? Where's your joy? Where's your whatever? How are you like having time for fun? How are you making time for your marriage? And I understand that most modern women resonate with this system. I understand that modern women are carrying such a mental load that feels like they just don't know how to do it all without burning the fuck out and being resentful, anxious, divorced, like really not having time for themselves, not feeling space. I understand that. And I love that they exist.

And I also want to point out. And I said this to this client. So I think that's a lot of people that I'm going to be taking all of the anxiety of women, validating it, making it manifest in the physical form and using that as the way that you communicate your needs to your partner, which to me takes all of the magic, all of the intuition, all of the opportunity for true heart-to-heart connection. And not, here's what's on my to-do list. Between partnerships, between partners, and vice versa. And when women are taking on so much of this mental load, we need to talk less about, well, what's on your to-do list? And let's put it on cards and let's balance it out. And more about, what's on your to-do list? What's on your to-do list? Oh, I feel like I'm in a season that requires this of me.

What about strengthening not your ability to manifest your anxiety into a to-do list that you then share with your partner, but more about strengthening that other muscle that we're not strengthening, that other layers, the other dimensions of us, the things that we feel and know that we desire. And talking about your desires and talk about that with your partner. Because there's going to be seasons where you do the dishes every day and there's going to be seasons where he does or she does. And that's not what this is about. The mental load is a symptom of our disconnection to ourselves. The mental load is a symptom of our inability to accept that we are more than our productivity, that we are more than our clean house, and we are more than our perfectly behaved and dressed children. The mental load is a byproduct of our inability to accept and allow ourselves as multidimensional women who are both light and dark, who both get shit done and feel and sense in our hearts and intuitions other things that need our attention.

And if we can't feel and sense and intuit from our souls, like where we desire to be and what we need to compost out of our life. And if we're only over here in the logic brain, in the light, look, I am grounded and composed and I've got it all together. We're missing the opportunity for deeper connection, deeper transformation, deeper understanding of self, better conversations, truer to-do lists, truer partnerships that aren't about like, are we doing things equally, but are we tending to each other as partners? Not are we making time for a date night? Like what's in your heart right now, in this season of your life, what's true for you?

Because I promise you the times when I've been carrying my partner on my back, but then we sit down and he takes the time to be with, be present and hear me and see me and hold space for my full multidimensional woman. I don't fucking care about the mental load. I feel held. I feel held emotionally. And that matters so much more. And if we're not creating a conversation and a narrative and an awareness that we are so much more than this one dimensional, oh, well, it's all got to get done. Somebody's got to do it. Who's got to do the kids? And if we're not creating an awareness and a culture that leaves space for the depth and the winter seasons and the hardness and the darkness and the things we can't see and the things about a woman that make her herself, like all of us, if we're not bringing our full embodied womanhood to every area of our life, the world is missing out. Our partnership is never going to be what it could be. Our life, our careers, our dreams, our mothering, our experience of our life is never going to be what it could be because we're missing the darkness, the compost stage.

And what I'm relating here is like your darkness gets like when it's like soil that's tilled, right? It's like it's turned into compost. And then something new and beautiful grows from that, that you couldn't have even imagined. Like again, Disney reference, if you've seen Encanto, which like I fucking hope you have. It's like when the girl who does the planting, she's like, I want to plant something new. It's like, we know you can make roses. We get it. Roses are pretty. Everybody likes the roses. They're perfect and symmetrical and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, what if you could take all that anger and resentment that you're feeling and like work through it and like channel it into something? And then what would grow? And then she starts to grow these like jungle plants and these cacti. And she feels so alive. It's like that aliveness.

And when we bring our full selves to our womanhood, when we accept and allow, instead of control and constrict and balance out and, you know, do our checkbook of, okay, is everybody, is it all even? Is it all fair? And have I done everything that other people told me I should do? That's when we get to feel the most alive, the most us, the most fully, like I go through my life now with being a person who resonated so much with depression. And I'm like, oh, that shame and judgment has been composted into power, into the me you see here who can talk about it and just be like, feel nothing but power. Feel nothing but trust that that was medicine for me. And there was lessons for me. And I grew from that. A new version of me grew from that composting. And it all belonged. It didn't come from controlling it and hiding it, from being perfect or being one way. It came from making space for all of me, all of my womanhood.

And I hope that this gives you permission, maybe even just awareness of where you might not be doing this in your life to do the same, to bring this aliveness, this intention for aliveness for versions of you you don't even know exist into every area of your life. And trust that like, that is something that only you know how to do. And it only happens when you tap into not just like your organization, time management bullshit. That's fine. We don't have a problem with that. Like we don't have a problem with that. Look around. When you tap into this other part of your feminine being, the part that mimics nature, that mimics mother earth, that mimics the moon, you work in cycles, sprint, rest, sprint, rest, and you don't panic about the rest period. You just shore up your energy. You just know you drink your fucking water. You take your vitamins. You know, you're going to sprint again soon. And when you do, if you're like me, it's going to be like, boom. Create tricks time.

If you haven't signed up for the create tricks, I am inviting you to join us. It's four days. It's totally free. The link is gervasekolmos.com/creatrix. C-R-E-A-T-R-I-X. It's going to be, I've never done a free training this way before, and I'm so fucking excited about it. It's going to be so powerful, so potent, and it's totally free. I can't wait to see you inside there. The last day, day four is this live group call training, which starts with a guided hypnosis and a rapid fire coaching. It's going to be so good.

And the core of this training, the core of being a creatrix is accepting and seeing and acknowledging that you are a multidimensional woman. You came here to be all of it, to be more, so much more than you think. You've been brainwashed to think you only get to be this small, this tiny version of you that society would allow. You are so much more. There is so much depth and layers and power and ideas and creativity and problem solving and magic in you. I can't wait to help you unlock it.

Okay, that was it. What did you think? Did you enjoy it? I would love to hear from you. Message me on Instagram. That's the place I like to play at @gervasekolmos. And let me know what you thought. Where do you stand on this whole like being multidimensional nonsense? Are you like, yes, I feel you. I want this, but I don't know how. Or are you like, yes, I am already in the fire, Khaleesi-ing with you. You know, I find myself at all stages of this journey at every turn around the spiral.

So I hope that you enjoyed that older episode. And again, check out the Creatrix four-day on-demand course. It's $97, which is like seriously a steal. And it is such powerful, empowering content that you can listen to whenever you want, like this podcast and have forever. I love you so much. Please share this podcast episode with somebody that you think could use the Gervais church, the sermon, the return to their multidimensionality and their magic. And thank you so, so much for being here and spending your precious time with me. I will see you back here in two weeks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Matrescence: Does becoming a mother change… everything? with Jessie Harrold

The transition into motherhood reshapes not just our roles, but our very beings. In this episode, Gervase Kolmos sits down with Jessie Harrold, author of Mothershift, to explore the transformative journey known as matrescence. Jessie shares her insights on how becoming a mother can be both a radical shift and a rite of passage filled with growth, challenges, and deep self-discovery. Together, they discuss the complexities of identity shifts, societal expectations, and the importance of holding space for both the beauty and the struggle of parenting.

Keep listening as Gervase and Jessie cover the balance between rejecting and emulating our own upbringing, explore how motherhood pushes us to hold paradoxes and embrace nuance, and discuss how it transforms not only how we parent but also how we grow as individuals.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The meaning and transformative power of matrescense

• The importance of holding complexity and paradox in motherhood

• The need for and challenges of finding community and support in modern motherhood

• How your upbringing can leave you swinging between breaking cycles and repeating them

• Why self-compassion is a must in the matrescence journey

• The value of finding balance and what's right for you in motherhood versus societal norms

Connect with Jessie Harrold

• Instagram | @jessie.es.harrold:

• Website | https://www.jessieharrold.com/

---

New! Special Rate: drop into your own unique body wisdom with a Somatic Soul Session:

• For the first time ever, current, past and new clients can enjoy a 60-minute session with Gervase to set intentions for the New Year, get clear and focused when you feel stuck and overwhelmed, or address any persistent problems that keep recurring.

• Get unstuck and tap into your body wisdom. On sale through January. Buy it now, use it any time this year: https://gervasekolmos.podia.com/f1c7c21a-5772-4222-bf65-7bac78672c33/buy 

Follow Gervase

• Connect with Gervase on Instagram: www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos

• Visit her website: www.gervasekolmos.com

Resources:

Mothershift Book - Jessie Harrold

Matrescence: Does becoming a mother change… everything? with Jessie Harrold

Episode Full Transcript

Gervase: All right, loves, welcome back to the Modern Phoenix podcast. I am so excited to introduce you to Jessie Harreld. Thank you so much for your time, launching her new book, Mother Shift. Go buy it. It looks beautiful. I’m so excited to have a conversation about your work in the world with matrescence and mothers and your book. Motherhood is just a topic I’m infinitely hungry to learn about, to talk about, to explore from every angle. I heard you on Becca P. Estrelli’s podcast, who is one of my teachers, and I just thought: yes, that is a voice more people need to hear. So thank you so much for your time.

Jessie: Oh, thank you. That’s such a sweet introduction.

Gervase: You’re welcome. Let me just read your bio. Jessie Harreld is a coach and doula who has been supporting women through radical life transformations and other rites of passage for over 15 years. She works one-on-one with women and mothers, facilitates mentorship programs, women’s circles and rituals, and hosts retreats and nature-based experiences. Jessie is the author of Mother Shift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage and Project Body Love: My Quest to Love My Body and the Surprising Truth I Found Instead. She is also the host of the Becoming podcast. Jessie lives on the east coast of Canada where she mothers her two children, writes, and stewards the land. Beautiful.

So I feel really called today to ask you—I’ve been following your book launch and know you’ve been speaking to so many people about the book. I’d love to open up by asking you: how are you really?

Jessie: Thank you for asking. Well, let’s see. I feel like the book launch process has been a really both-and experience for me. People following along know that I’ve been writing this book, slash trying to get a deal for this book, for five years. It was a really long process. Really, my whole book-writing journey has been ten-plus years of wanting to put a book out into the world. My first book was self-published, and I realized after that that I wanted to experience what it was like to get a traditional publishing deal.

So I’m sitting with this question right now: what happens when a dream comes true? How does it feel? And how do I grapple with the times that it doesn’t feel like a dream come true? Because the reality is when you’re launching a book, it feels like a different kind of work. Day-to-day is still me making Kraft Dinner for my kids and doing more social media than I’m comfortable with. It’s interesting because we have this idea of what happens when a long-held dream comes to fruition, but the truth is: it looks a lot like every other day, especially in a complex life and a complex world. So how I really am is just sitting with all of that—enjoying the highs when they happen, when it really does feel like a cliché dream come true, and being compassionate with myself when it just feels like another rainy November day.

Gervase: Thank you so much for sharing that and being honest. I think it’s profoundly relatable to anybody listening, even if they haven’t launched a book. It reminds me of so many moments in my life and conversations with clients where you have the expectation of the thing and then the thing itself. What I hear in your navigating this is staying curious, which I’ve found so helpful in not attaching to: “I know what will happen when the dream comes true. All my problems will go away, life will be a fairy tale, and nothing will ever be challenging again.”

It’s relatable in every area of life. And weaving that into motherhood, I think about when I first became a mom. I’ve talked about this exhaustively, so I don’t want to be too redundant, but my transition into motherhood the first time was jolting. It was a dream come true, everything I ever wanted, beyond what I expected, and also more shattering and challenging than I had been prepared for. My kids are 11, 8, and 4 now, so I’m in a different season. The dream looks different. I look at my children often and want to be more attuned to the truth that this, too, is another dream come true.

The challenge of motherhood is seeing that everything you wished for is here, if you’re one of the fortunate ones like me—and I don’t want to bypass that for women whose dreams didn’t come true. But when it does, it’s still: how do you stay with it? How do you hold the paradox that so much of it is not a dream? Recently I joked with a friend, I left the doctor’s office and said: “Do you mean to tell me we have walking pneumonia, pinworms, and rhinovirus at the same time?” As the words left my mouth I thought, you couldn’t make this shit up. Nobody would believe it. That’s what my motherhood is like lately.

So I don’t really know where I want to go with that, but I’m curious for you: how has this woven into your motherhood experience and your work with mothers?

Jessie: Yeah. I think what you’re speaking to is complexity—the idea that we can hold two truths at once. Motherhood can be incredibly rewarding, beautiful, dream-come-true-ish, and it can be incredibly challenging and depleting. We live and mother in a culture that is oppressive to mothers in many ways. The meta thing is that motherhood actually allows us, even nudges us, to hold complexity in ways most of our culture can’t. Our culture forces experiences into dichotomies. I catch myself doing it all the time.

But one of the powerful things that can happen in matrescence, our transition into motherhood, is this ability to hold complexity. In adult development psychology, that ability is a hallmark of maturity. We think of our kids’ milestones, but adults have milestones too. We now know we continue to grow and evolve into elder years. One hallmark of maturity is holding paradox. Research—even though it’s biased toward white American male business owners—shows about 70% of people hold a dichotomous worldview. They outsource their knowing, poll the world, and do what’s most socially acceptable.

The evolved stage is the ability to hold paradox, be interconnected, in-source knowing instead of outsourcing. That’s maturity. And I think matrescence, particularly when supported, catapults us into that maturity and evolution. That excites me—it poises us to be change agents in the world.

Gervase: Seventy percent. That fascinates me. I’ve been endlessly curious about what allows a person to hold complexity and nuance and feel safe doing it—to in-source their knowing instead of outside-in. I never thought of it as developmentally appropriate. That’s interesting, because I know older figures in my life who don’t have that and never will.

So—matrescence. Could you define it for us? And then talk about the ways motherhood grows us up and the reasons it might not? Because I feel deeply: wow, something has literally changed in me, I’m holding complexity, but I feel like an alien. Nobody else does. I want to go back to being like everybody else because it’s hard to explain. After defining matrescence, what are the paths—what grows a person up, or holds them back?

Jessie: Matrescence is a term coined in 1975 by social anthropologist Dr. Dana Raphael. She also coined the term doula. She described matrescence as the time of mother-becoming, a massive transformation biologically, psychologically, culturally, spiritually, economically. It impacts the whole ecosystem of our lives. Even that is countercultural, because we’re told motherhood shouldn’t change you—you should bounce back. Saying everything changes is radical.

I posit in my book and work that matrescence takes two to three years to traverse, very different than the six-week postpartum checkup or even the fourth trimester. It’s a change that changes everything.

Everyone who transitions into motherhood—even if not through carrying a baby biologically—goes through matrescence. I’m especially interested in the identity shift: Who am I now that I’m a mother? My mentor used to say: some people become moms (lowercase m). They have a baby. Others are undone and remade into Mothers (capital M).

We have agency, autonomy, and natural propensity. As a naturally introspective seeker, I was here for motherhood to undo me. Others hold strong values around not changing, around bouncing back, and maybe mother is not an identity they want to lead with. There’s nuance and spectrum there. I’m curious about those of us who want to see it as personal and spiritual growth.

Do we always choose growth? Not always. Some of us are dragged by our hair. That was me. Totally. Even though I had a doula talking about matrescence before anyone else, it wasn’t easy. In fact, research shows we can’t fully experience matrescence unless we face challenges. Those moments—like the doctor’s office story—make us.

So what makes the difference? Honestly, that’s the question at the heart of my work. If I had it fully answered, I wouldn’t have a job. Right now, the cultural awareness is growing—matrescence has a hashtag, people are talking about it. But my work is supporting mothers in understanding how it unfolds, not just that it happens. Giving them a map. That’s a big deal in whether or not we hear the call of transformation.

I use rites of passage theory to create that map. It allows us to talk about letting go of our former selves, grieving that self. You can’t do the growth without the grief. It’s necessary to contend with who we are no longer, what we’re stepping away from. There’s ambiguity—maybe your jeans don’t fit, and you don’t know if they’ll ever fit again. Are you grieving something gone or hoping it returns? That’s initiation into complexity.

Rites of passage theory also gives us a way to talk about liminal space—the in-between, the goo. No longer caterpillar, not yet butterfly. No longer not a mother, not yet fully embodied as a mother. It’s discomforting, especially in a culture of capitalism and patriarchy that tells us to be someone, to have goals, to be certain. Grief and liminality are countercultural. We don’t have the skills or the privilege, often, to be there. But it’s important for transformation.

So is matrescence automatic? No. But it’s low-hanging fruit. There’s so much potential if we take the call to be remade.

Gervais: I related to so much of that. My journey into motherhood—I’ve always been countercultural, curious. My goal was to fit in and be a mom (lowercase m). There’s so much fear when you have to give that up—your body, your job, your paycheck, your belonging, your beliefs. The fear drives so much unwillingness to let go. But the fear can be calmed with permission and naming the thing.

I often tell clients: that’s your internalized capitalism. White supremacy tells us this. Second-wave feminism tells us this. Notice the indoctrination. I don’t even mean “smash the patriarchy,” but naming the things that make you afraid to be who you are is settling. It gives safety to step into the goo. It requires trust in the process, trust in yourself, a support system. And yes, privilege.

Without support, how is a new mother supposed to meet her fear? How do you step into initiation without a village, without examples, without embodiment? I tell my clients: nobody’s doing this. Look around, find lighthouses. I hope I can be one for some women—not as a ta-da but as a fellow Phoenix, constantly evolving, constantly back in the goo.

Notice who we look to for strength and resilience. If it’s women performing, keeping it together, being patriarchy’s darlings—check, check, check—what does that do to our psyches and nervous systems? It tells us we don’t have permission. We don’t even have one example. Naming that it’s countercultural helps. Finding a woman who holds complexity—that alone is rare. Those are the voices I seek online.

And why was I so devoted to taking steps into the fire, into the goo? I told my partner: I don’t know what will happen, with career, child care, daily life. I just know I need to be here. I need to be with this. I’ve always been difficult that way. But for women without examples, how do you give them permission and safety to step into the goo?

Jessie: What you’re speaking to is belonging. Any time we ask “Who am I now?” we’re also asking “Where do I belong?” When we change, so does our ecosystem, so do our people. We need community, peers, elders—but it’s also a time of disrupted belonging. That paradox is tough.

In traditional rites of passage, the journey wasn’t complete until you were witnessed—“I see you. You’re different now. Welcome.” Without witnessing, we can traverse matrescence but still feel incomplete. Social media has become a place to be witnessed. It can be a lifeline, but it’s curated. Even raw posts are curated. So where do we get real complexity if we’re mostly in isolation?

You’re right: people crave normal. Normal says you belong. That’s primal. Our ancestors’ lives depended on belonging. So it feels scary to transform and risk stepping outside belonging.

And the fear is compounded by how we talk about postpartum challenges—through the lens of postpartum mood disorders. They’re common and underdiagnosed, but also sometimes overdiagnosed because we don’t have nuance. About 40% of mothers fall into the “worried well”—mothering is hard, and what they’re experiencing is normative. But now when we dance at the edge of grief, anger, ambivalence, we fear falling off the edge into pathology. We avoid grief and liminality. It’s protective, because if culture doesn’t have skills for grief, best avoid it.

This is nuanced. But our idea of normal has become distorted. Without social referencing, without peers to talk with, it’s hard to know if our experience is normal.

Gervase: So many good points. And yes, just a loving reminder to listeners: this is nuanced, not finite. Take what resonates, leave the rest. Be curious about how you experience yourself through matrescence.

I was thinking, with over- and under-diagnosed postpartum disorders, and the fear of being the “depressed mother” or “angry mother”—what I’m seeing is mothers living in fear not just of being depressed but of being like their mothers. The mantra is: I can’t be like my mother. I can’t be angry, depressed, let myself go, not fit into jeans, go back to work, be absent, whatever her mistake was. That narrow focus is dehumanizing. It denies younger mothers their own lived experience. I’m curious if you’ve seen this and how you meet it.

Jessie: Yes. There’s a whole section in my book on this. It’s one of those things nobody tells you will happen: the complexity around your relationship with how you were mothered. Our mothers’ generation mothered under different cultural oppressions. They did their best to survive in a world even less aware of patriarchy, capitalism, etc. That shaped us.

Then in our matrescence, we grapple: what gifts will I pass on, what needs healing? There’s never a time we compare ourselves more to our mothers. Never a time when expectations of our mothers—or of being mothered as we mother—are higher. It’s a lot to contend with.

You’re right: the finger-pointing and pathologizing adds pressure. A new cultural paradigm is “cycle breaking.” Search the hashtag—everyone’s a cycle breaker. And yes, I’m doing it too. But white wellness culture has taken it to an extreme. If you holler at your kid in Walmart, you’re “doing it wrong.” It’s become another tight, narrow, complexity-free zone.

We need compassion for ourselves when we’re not breaking cycles—when we’re perpetuating things, just being human. The hidden work of matrescence is learning to mother ourselves. When we can do that, we can release our mothers, let them be human. They did the best they could. Most weren’t trying to harm anyone. Culture shaped them. Healing the mother wound is freeing them to be human—and freeing ourselves to be human.

Gervase: Yes. And it’s liberating. Second-wave feminism told us we could be it all, do it all. Thank you, feminism. But now I just see women asking: can I just be human, even for a moment? Otherwise it’s pushing, performing, and when you inevitably yell at your kid, it’s shame and blame. Hyper-fixation on fixing, finger-pointing, being perfect. Exhausting, dehumanizing.

I don’t think that’s the assignment. The more conversations I have, the more I wonder: what if just being human is enough? Who made the rules that we have to be perfect? And we’re not even inheriting them from lived experience or elders in circle—it’s from social media, therapists on YouTube. Helpful, but incomplete. We need to bring it into our bodies, our lived experience, and give ourselves grace. Maybe not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe wear jeans sometimes, but selectively. Not all or nothing. Something in the middle.

Jessie: Yes. One of the things I talk about in the book with cycle breaking is that we tend to swing the pendulum: “Not like that,” so we do the exact opposite. That’s also distorted. The real work is finding the middle. Now, 13 years into parenting, I see lots my parents did that was awesome, worth keeping. I also see ways I judged my mother early on—things I swore I’d never do—that I have done, because life. Because human.

There’s beauty in the middle. And ultimately the middle is what’s right for you.

Gervase: A hundred percent. And knowing yourself is how you know you’re there.

Jessie: Totally.

Gervase: Thank you so much for sharing your brilliance and wisdom with us today. I deeply enjoyed this conversation. Before I invite you to share how people can keep in touch and buy your book, I want to acknowledge you. There are not many mothers who feel like elders—not to age you, but who carry lived wisdom. Online or in person, it’s rare. After one hour with you and listening to you elsewhere, that’s how it feels to be in your presence. Thank you for bringing that wisdom, humanity, and complexity.

Jessie: Thank you. That’s so lovely to hear.

Gervase: Everybody, go buy Mother Shift. Tell us where we can get it and how else to support your work.

Jessie: Sure. Mother Shift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage is available anywhere. It’s also an audiobook, because you can’t keep books when you’re parenting kids. That’s my number one way of consuming content.

Gervase: Ditto.

Jessie: Other ways to find me: my website is jessieherald.com. I write a monthly newsletter that people love—it’s called Imaginalia. It’s like a little zine, kind of harkens back to 1990s feminism. And I’m on Instagram at jessie.es.herald.

Gervase: Amazing. We’ll put all that in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time, Jessie, and I can’t wait to check out the book.

Jessie: Thank you so much.

Breaking the Cycle of Fear-Based Parenting with Wendy Snyder

From threats and punishments to connection - this one goes out to the parents of strong-willed children. In today’s episode, Gervase welcomes Wendy Snyder, certified parenting educator and family life coach, to discuss the power of positive, connection-based parenting. Together, they explore the challenges, myths, and opportunities of this parenting style, particularly with strong-willed children. They discuss the impact of healing generational trauma cycles, the role of self-awareness in parenting, and the importance of letting go of shame and perfectionism.

Packed with personal stories and valuable insights, this episode is a must-listen for any parent seeking to nurture meaningful relationships with their kids.

---

Connect with Wendy: 

• Fresh Start Wendy | Instagram

• Power Struggles FREE Online Workshop - Fresh Start Family

Ready to work with Gervase? Start your rebirth with a Soul Shift:

• Check it out here: https://www.gervasekolmos.com/the-soul-shift-intensive

Follow Gervase

• Connect with Gervase on Instagram: www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos

• Visit her website: www.gervasekolmos.com

Breaking the Cycle of Fear-Based Parenting with Wendy Snyder

Episode Full Transcript

Gervase: Welcome back, everybody. I have somebody special for you today. Wendy Snyder. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for being here. You ready?

Wendy: I'm ready. I'm excited to be here.

Gervase: This is going to be a parenting focused podcast. So if you're not interested or you do not have children, this might not be for you, but probably all of you are going to be like, yes. Okay.

Wendy Snyder is a mom of two, certified parenting educator, and family life coach who inspires parents to learn and grow through connection-based positive parenting strategies. As the host of the Fresh Start Family Show and founder of freshstartfamilyonline.com, she helps parents ditch the threats, yelling, and harsh punishments so they can live life as a joyful and confident parent with kids that listen and cooperate great. Families who take part in her learning and coaching programs experience radical shifts in their hearts, minds, and souls that help them to create rock-solid relationships with their kids, while at the same time teaching important life lessons and helping to raise the next generation of leaders, changemakers, and important human souls.

No pressure.

Just raising the next generation of leaders and changemakers.

It's a pretty rad responsibility, right?

Wendy: But it's a good one. Yeah.

Gervase: Yeah. So how old are your kids now?

Wendy: My kids are old now. They're 13 and 16, almost 14 and 17. It is so much fun having teenagers. I know people usually dread it, but when you do this kind of parenting, it's lovely. It's crazy and intense, but it's so fun. So yeah, I got a driver in the house now. It's wild.

Gervase: I love hearing that. And I kind of want to dive in with my curiosity, which kind of guides this show with two things. One, you were like with this kind of parenting for teenagers, and I'm kind of like, what does that mean? What does that look like? And also, what's fun about it?

Wendy: So this kind of parenting, what is it? What does it look like? Okay. So when people hear the word positive parenting, and over the years, I've started to play around with the term powerful parenting. When people ask me what I do, I'll say, I'm a powerful parenting coach. And then, of course, they're like, what is that, right?

I think, unfortunately, positive, gentle, even conscious, a lot of times people are just really, they just really misunderstand what that means. And they think it means permissive. They think it means you never say no to your kid. They think it means you go get training on how to ask your kids really, really nicely to put on their shoes and clean up their room. And it really couldn't be farther from the truth.

So the work that I teach is firm and kind connection-based parenting. And really, the power that you have as an influential soul in your children's lives, it comes from relationship, and it actually mostly comes from what you model.

And so there just comes a lot of healing and personal development and growth work within this style of parenting because hypocrisy is something that we're just trying to eliminate in our homes, like truly eliminate. Of course, we're not perfect. We make a lot of mistakes and we learn how to handle those mistakes with grace and dignity and self-compassion. Because even when we're handling mistakes, we're teaching our children how to do the same.

But we are looking to eliminate hypocrisy in our homes. So if we are trying to teach our children something, we do want to look to ourselves first and just say, how am I doing with this life skill? Whether it's self-regulation, self-control, emotional literacy, getting what you want without overpowering someone as simple as like, hey, you're trying to teach your kids how to keep their hands to themselves. You're looking at your own patterns first of like what happens when they won't get in the car or sit down at the table, especially when they're toddlers. That's when I found this work and I thought I was going to lose my mind.

My little girl is my beautiful, strong-willed soul. And it has served her so well in life to the point now where she is actively pursuing a D1 beach volleyball scholarship. And I can't even imagine the world that she plays in and the tenacity and the perseverance, but she's got it. And she, you know, you can see how that personality just helps her and will help her secure a spot wherever she ends up going to college.

But it's really, it's just all about connection. It's all about relationship and it is very firm and kind. So a lot of people, like I said, they think, you know, you get into a positive parenting class and you're going to be trained on like just how to ask your kids nicely to do what you want them to do. And really a lot of times we're teaching parents how to stick to strong boundaries. We're helping parents say no more, especially with a lot of like big ticket things that are happening in the world today, like technology and cell phones and safety and all the things.

But we're actually a lot of times spending more time helping parents be more firm in their boundaries and roles. And we teach them how to follow through with consistency and connection versus the threats. So many of us just get handed a hand-me-down parenting toolkit, right? It's like the classic for fear, force, bribery, and rewards.

Wendy: Yeah. And it's all external controls, right? So it's like we inherit this belief system that in order to make a child behave or do what you want, you either need to make them feel worse or you need to dangle a carrot in front of their face.

Gervase: When you say it like that, Wendy, it just sounds real bad.

Wendy: I know, right? Well, the thing is people who just, you know, unfortunately, I think the people who real, who use the classic model and just kind of think that it, whatever, even though it creates stress and disconnection in the home, they're like, whatever. The second decade is where you really pay the price, right? Like when you have children in the second decade of their life that have not developed the intrinsic control muscles, who have not developed the emotional literacy, who have not developed the peaceful conflict resolution skills, but instead just been in a team environment where overpowering is how you get your way, then the teenage years often go really in a different direction for a lot of parents.

And that's why we have a common belief system or like a common myth in our world, so to speak, that the teenage years are going to suck. They'll quite literally suck the life out of you. And many parents are miserable in the teenage years because the connection and the relationship was never quite formed the way it should because there was fear and force present. There was punishment. There's all these things that really slowly but surely over time tick away at their relationship and you just end up losing power in that second decade of life.

Gervase: Hmm. So interesting and compelling.

Gervase: You asked me why it was fun.

Wendy: Right? That's the second question you had. So it's fun because it does turn into a bit of an adventure when you open the grip a little bit and you realize that at any given moment, there could be a life lesson for you. Right? And like, once you start to see how mistakes and challenges and hiccups are not the end of the world, like again, a lot of us were conditioned to believe that mistakes are dangerous, that there is like something really bad that's going to happen on the other side of that, whether it's being judged, condemned, hit, harmed, you know, someone's going to be disappointed with you.

So like, but nowadays it's like with this style of parenting, we get to realize that mistakes are just opportunities to learn. And all the time when you have a, like a compassionate discipline model versus a punishment model, peaceful conflict resolution, like true power type of dynamic in your home as a parent, the challenges and the mistakes, they always bring you closer to your child because you have the ability to work through it and really truly become the teacher instead of the correctional officer.

And so it's just really fun. Like your kids end up talking to you. They don't hide stuff, which can feel crazy at times because you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're telling me this. But it's just fun because you like get to, you know, you get to hear about what's actually happening in the teenage world right now. Right? Of course, I'm speaking to teenagers now because my kids are older, but this all started when my daughter was three, right? Like the relationship I formed stacked over the years. And then now you can just see how there's full transparency, there's full honesty, there's full emotional literacy. And so, you know, the conflict stuff is like, it's still a lot, but it's actually, I mean, I'm not going to say enjoyable, but it's like, it's actually really beautiful. It's really beautiful to be able to work out real things with your kids and work through things and just always feel like you are like the tightest unit with your family.

Gervase: Yeah. No, I can absolutely see how it would be fun because I personally have not been a person that was like, oh, the baby years are like the best and I want to like hold my baby all the time. I just was like, got to slog through this part because this sucks. And the older my kids get, the more I find it to be very rewarding because of exactly what you're saying, which is interesting. I never thought about it from the connection and relational standpoint, because of course it's fun. And of course it's rewarding. If the older your kids get, you have more and more years in this really gratifying relationship, right? And relationships are not perfect and they're not without conflict and, you know, rupture and repair. However, if they are thought of as relationships that get to have that like same, I don't know, that gratification that like a friendship has, or, you know, even like with my partner, it's like, you just really enjoy each other. I feel like that for me has felt like the secret sauce. Like when I'm like enjoying being with one of my kids as the person that they are, which is honestly tricky and confusing because the information overload, I think for, I don't know, like mothers, our generation, there's just so much information, right? And I'm not here to say that like your information is bad or wrong or that any information is bad or wrong, but what you're saying makes perfect sense. And I love this idea of like encouraging parents to see their kids as these long-term relationships that they get to enjoy forever. I said that to my husband this summer, I was like, I just keep thinking about the fact that when our kids leave the house, they're only going to come back and hang out with us if we are people they like hanging out with, right? Like I don't want them to come and hang out with us because they feel obligated, because they respect us, because it's the right thing to do, which are all things that I have both done or heard tons of people my age say about spending time with their parents. It's like, how do we raise these kids in a way that they actually want to hang out with us? And I guess that leads to my question for you is like, what do you think is the biggest obstacle to parenting this way?

Wendy: Well, the first thing that comes to my mind, it might be outside the box, but it is what it is. So the biggest obstacle to parenting that way where you're really learning to love your child for who they are, not who you wish they could be or were, is to like go to that place where you learn to love yourself like so deeply and so compassionately. Cause we know in this work that the harder you are in yourself, the harder you are in your children. So ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, right? So it's like, if you're really good at beating yourself up, which most of us who were raised in an autocratic setting, so autocratic just means it was like that kind of my way or the highway, like do what you're told or else, like, you know, children, they need to respect thy authority. And, and we grow up and we're like, you know, we just are really good at having the inner critic. And it is our knee jerk reaction when we're imperfect, when we make a mistake, when we don't get everything done in a day, when our children are misbehaving in the grocery store aisle. Like really often what's driving it is usually like a pretty deep, like scared. We're not enough scared. We're failing. And so it's just so much harder to have the compassion on them and the empathy when they're all out of sorts or they show up in a way when they're like three, four or five, that is like aggressive. And you're really worried that like, are they ever going to have any friends?

Like Stella, I was like, is she going to get kicked out of kindergarten? I don't know. Do we need to go to a private school? Like what is going to happen? Right. And this work like saved our lives, right? Like none of that happened. She, she ended up being great in school and it was fine. But during those, that season where you're just like really trying, because we, we all know parenting is like tough for everyone, right? It's like wild, it's intense journey.

And when you get a strong wheeled kid or you get a really intense feeler, right? Like we know that the degree of difficulty is much harder. We also know that the apple usually doesn't fall far from the tree. And so most of the parents I work with who have a strong willed child, either them or partner were strong willed, right? Or strong willed. I am. I like through raising Stella, it has shown me, oh my gosh, I have the most badass, beautiful, strong will. And it took me many, many years to learn to love that about myself. And I still have moments when I'm like, am I too much? Am I too aggressive? Am I too this? Or am I not enough? And so the journey to have compassion and fully love myself for exactly who I am, that has translated to the children more easily. And so that's where we really do a lot of our teaching work is. And then that opens up the ability to really seek to understand, assume integrity in your children, have compassion and empathy, be able to get in their shoes to understand what's probably going on for them when it comes to what need are they trying to get filled or what are they trying to communicate? So it's kind of like the same thing, but a lot of people don't connect to that.

Gervase: No, I'm so grateful that you brought that in. You know, you can only love and accept another as deeply as you loved and met yourself. And what I'm wondering is, what do you do when you know all the peaceful parenting or the connection-based strategies, right, for your kid? And you feel emotionally attuned to a kid. And also you're still really not doing so great at loving and accepting yourself. Because that is something that I see a lot. And I almost wonder if it's like a plague sweeping the nation. Because there's so much education about how to parent, quote unquote, better, like the right way to parent. And not as much of an emphasis on like, hey, it starts with you being in right relationship with yourself, like being self-aware of what's, how this is a mirror and accepting your mistakes and, you know, all of that, that inner stuff. And so then what, what do you do? Because I'm sure you see this all the time when you have these parents that are like learning all the information, learning all the strategies, doing all the right things to give their kid the best, most compassionate scripts, right? When they do this, I'll say this and da, da, da. But they actually can't do the other half of the job, which I find is so important, which is to deeply love and accept who they are, period. Even without the scripts, before, during, and after the scripts, when they mess up, you know, you're talking about mistakes. And I was like, whose mistakes are we talking about? The kids' mistakes or the parents' mistakes? Because I think there's a lot of parents that it's like, oh, the kid makes a mistake. They're like, mistakes are fine. You know, there's so much understanding and so much compassion for their kids' mistakes, right? But then when they make a mistake, when we make a mistake, we're like, how could I do that? That was so stupid. So what, what do you say to that?

Wendy: Well, I'm going to answer that in one second, but I will say this, just, I love to be like real transparent. And like, I mean, I look at the business that I've created over the last seven years, the, the, the, the educational worldwide program, the community, all the things that I'm like, it's so interesting to see what you create, right?

Cause you're like, as an entrepreneur, you know, you're like, yeah, you go, you just, you naturally create things that are like very you. And so for me, vulnerability and humility are like top traits for me that I know get parents massive results, like massive results. So I will say that when it comes to mistakes and, you know, being an imperfect parent and, and you're going to be so freaking imperfect, especially if you have a strong-willed kid, cause you will be pushed to your edge. Right. But like, I just try to be as transparent as possible as a teacher.

And so I've written some pretty intense articles. I I've written an article once called, I left bruises.

Gervase: You what? Oh, I left bruises. Ooh.

Wendy: Yeah. Yeah. Still to this day, when I say that without explaining, you know, there's this little pocket of like, Ooh, do we want to go to shame? And it's like, no, thanks. Like that. Yeah. There was a season where I just, I didn't know what to do. And I would grab extra hard on purpose, right? Like little arms. There was an article that I wrote called the night I threw a book at my kid. It was a soft cover. Thank God. But like, I just tried it. Like the first 10 years I was teaching, I always just try it.

Cause the kids were littler now. It's just like a totally different, but like, I just made so many mistakes. It took me seven years to stop yelling. And I would just always like, after a while I would, you know, I would have a big blow up or something. And then I'd be like, Oh, well now I get to go tell the community because it just was like a flushing of like, Hey, just so you know, there is no perfection here. And we are all on our path to live authentically.

And as I've seen you speak about show up on the outside as we are on the inside, like what we want intuitively is wise. It's wise. And it might take us a while to get there, but you just got to trust that like, if you want to be someone who compassionately addresses misbehavior with firm kindness and connection, you will get there. You just got to be willing to be humble. Like you got to be willing to be real about what's actually happening behind closed doors. And then we can get somewhere.

So back to your question about if you're like, you've got all the tools, but the self, what I call self-acceptance piece. So we really teach like, there's got to be two things, self-awareness and then self-acceptance. And I'm going to say it very frankly, if you don't have the self-acceptance piece, you will keep falling flat on the tools and you will go insane thinking that, or you'll just quit because you're like this BS parenting stuff doesn't work.

And really what I find, and at this point we've helped tens of thousands of parents, but what I find is that people usually aren't quite doing the tools that they think they are, right? They might read a book or do a podcast and they're like, oh, I know how to do this. And then it's just a whole different ball game when you actually go to execute a strategy.

And then the other side of that is when there's like so much that comes with it, when you don't have the self-acceptance piece yet, which again, takes us many of us many years with mentorship and coaching and, um, and helpers to help us shed the layers of shame and habits and protection behaviors. But when you don't have that, the harshness will come out on your child. And as long as that, like judgment tones, harshness, or it's the other side, right? Like we have a lot of, um, students who they withdraw, they go within, right?

Like I'd say the majority of my students are like replicate my path a little bit where the harshness will come out, like the big puff up, the overpowering comes into play at some point or another. But for some, it's definitely the withdrawal or becoming permissive, so to speak. But as long as there's that beat up and, and really all it is is shame as if there's shame present, which is like the lack of self-acceptance, we see parents stay stuck in the same behaviors. And so that means they, they end up repeating the same generational cycles.

They just continue to pass it down. So the self-acceptance piece is massive and it is equally as important as the strategies. So like in our programs, we have like a hundred lessons or something. And I think probably 70 are strategy based. Like what do you do when your kid has revenge misbehavior? Like kid threw a Lego brick at your head or just told you, I hate you and this family sucks, right? Or bit you, pulled your hair. It's like, here's like seven strategy steps.

And we know with revenge misbehavior that there's like also probably like 30% of our lessons and our coursework is the self-acceptance piece because there's just so much more under the rug, so to speak, when you have a child that has revenge misbehavior. So you can't just do the strategies. You got to be willing and able to go there, which I really tell my students, it becomes an adventure and it becomes beautiful because it gives you power.

Every time that you unlock something new about yourself that comes from within, that is like, oh, like as soon as I can heal from this or change this, like you gain power as an influential parent with your children. So it does become a bit of a fun adventure to heal. I know a lot of people avoid healing because they're like, oh my gosh, I don't want to cry.

Gervase: Not my people, Wendy.

Wendy: Good. Not these people. Good. So yeah, that's my two cents about that.

Gervase: I love it. It makes so much sense to me. And when you were talking about like the puff up response, you know, the whatever you want to call it, I'm going to call it the puff up response versus the withdrawn response. I'm just thinking, oh, here we go. Here's like the fight response, the fawn response, the freeze response. And so it makes me think about traumatized nervous systems, right? And so how many of us are parenting with traumatized nervous systems, which is not to say it's bad or wrong, which is not a judgment, but is also to say like all of the tools in the world is not going to be able to change a pattern if your system is activated, right? And if your system is activated, that is its own thing. That is likely has very little to do with your kid. And I say that, I mean, as somebody who has both deep feeling and strong-willed children, of course, it's both and like it has something to do with your kid, of course. And also so much of it, like you're saying is like under the rug. And so it makes so much sense to me that without that component, all the strategies in the world are going to feel like they don't work.

Wendy: Well, and I can riff on why they don't work too. Like, especially with strong-willed kids, because strong-willed kids are like hypocrisy sniffer outers. They catch things.

Gervase: Yes.

Wendy: Like they're often the deep feelers. So they catch things. And so if you've got shame present, they catch it. They might present like, hell no, like they get bigger. They're like these confident beings, but really they catch shame too. They start to believe things about themselves that come out in our worst moments. Like the things we say stick, right?

Like I know I've said some pretty shameful things to Sella when she was little and we've been actively like repairing that. I'm so thankful to be in a world where I have tools to repair relationships and help her understand that the things I say aren't, you know, are more about me than her, always more about me. But any human will stay stuck in their misbehavior when they've got shame present versus the ability just to see the behavior, be in a learning state, which a child is when their parent is teaching versus punishing them.

And then tomorrow that child can make a different decision on how to behave differently in the classroom or with their sibling or the way they clean up the house or not. But there has to be an absence of shame or else they stay stuck in the behavior. So it's kind of interesting how in parenting, like we think logically that children learn from us teaching them, but you know, 99% of what children learn is caught, not taught, which is just another reason why we want to, we want to do the work to eliminate the shame.

Gervase: Yeah. Do you find that shame is often coupled with anger?

Wendy: Yeah. I mean, let me think about that. So it's like, I think for me, I go to a little bit more scared. So scared, I mean, I just finished teaching a pretty deep healing weekend workshop over two weekends. And I'd say the majority of people in my world who carry shame, which is like all of us, it's scared.

Many of us have anger. And I think behind anger is scared quite often. So it might present as anger, especially with children, you know, whether it's like, you know, holding kids down, yelling at them, threatening, like lots of threats, right? In my world that parents are like, I want to change this. And quite often when we get to the bottom of that, it's scared I'm failing, scared I'm not enough.

Sometimes it's scared this kid is going to grow up and have no friends or be an entitled maniac. But a lot of times it has to do with them, like scared I'm not enough, scared I'm failing, scared I'm going to get judged, especially if it's in a public place. But even like when you think of kids fighting, and someone coming in so angry, right? Like maybe you were a younger sibling and like your older brother was like a total jerk to you growing up. And like, there's a lot of triggers underneath that, that that will cause you to like real get real puffed up with a sibling fight.

But then once we slow it down and break it down a little bit, a lot of times it comes down to why have I failed at this? Why have I failed at teaching these kids how to not put their hands on each other? Like what is wrong with me? A good parent would not have kids that fight. And so a lot of times it comes down to like just scared, scared of not being enough or scared of being too much, like scared. But I think they're interconnected.

Gervase: For sure. And I love hearing what you're seeing. Obviously you see more than I do. I also wonder about this, like fear that you're not doing it right. And I say this with a lot of nuance because of course you hold the keys to the kingdom in this conversation where it's like, oh, you have all these strategies that are quote unquote, right. And I'm curious for you if you found that also sometimes right is a little messy. Like sometimes we sloppily stumble into what's best for all and there's not necessarily right or wrong, especially as a parent, because you as a parent are part of like a larger system. You're part of you and the child have your own little system happening. You and the siblings, you as a family, you and your larger family, the culture you're living in. There's so many dynamics at play here that factor in. And so I just wonder how many parents feel afraid to do it wrong. You know, like I'm not doing this moment right, or I didn't do that moment right. And how you bring in a tolerance for the journey of imperfection and sloppiness and how everybody's going to be different on any given day. Right. And so it's like even age appropriateness, it's like, well, she's different this month than she was last month. And so, you know, the way that we had that conversation is different and deserves to be different. And so sometimes you kind of, I know for me, I find myself like stumbling into these moments where I'm like, oh, this is interesting. And I feel really grateful that fear, it's always present for me as a parent, but it's definitely not driving the car. I'll say like, if I'm being really honest, I'm just thinking about it on the spot here. I for sure carry fear in my parenting about like wanting to do it right. But then I remind myself that right is just a construct that's, it's like trying to catch the air. It's like, it's like constantly shifting and evolving. So what if I don't have to be afraid of like getting this right, but I can just be present and meet the moment with as much compassion and love and self-awareness as possible and be willing to meet the child where they're at, which is going to be different every day and kind of finding that gentle, I don't know, like evolving nature of the work. What would you say to that?

Wendy: So a few things, I love all that. It's so beautiful. And I totally am with you on all that. Two things I think of is, so when we look at the emotion of scared or afraid, it's actually a beautiful emotion. And on the other side of it, I always call it like the rainbow is when you allow yourself to feel scared, you will, something you will find bravery and courage about, right?

And so in this work that I teach, the parents who allow themselves instead of suppressing or putting it under a rug of like, I'm scared, I'm failing, I'm scared, I'm going to get it wrong, I'm scared, like, they will find the courage to be quite different. But you cannot be brave and courageous in this world unless you feel scared first. Like, it's just impossible. You will never, you will never get there.

So scared is really in my world, not a bad thing. I think the journey for many of us is to learn how to feel scared and not hit the panic button, right? Like, but just more have it give us information. And, and then again, when you live a life of connected, firm and kind parenting, you will be the black sheep, you will be or the rainbow unicorn, however you want to say it, like, nine out of 10 of your friends will continue on with the fear and force and external control model.

And so it'll take courage, right? It'll take courage to be this the parent who says no to the iPhone till high school, because nine out of 10 of your children's friends will have an iPhone in their hands by the age of 10. Right? Like, so you're just gonna feel scared, you're gonna feel scared, that kid's gonna get judged, you're all the all the all the places, you're gonna feel it. And it's okay. It's like a beautiful emotion that I think empowers us to live a life that we actually want to live, but you got to feel it.

Second, right or wrong. Yeah. In our world, I quite often my coaches and I, we will have people re say that. So we actually have them practice. When they say right or wrong, or even better, will quite often say, we want to just to write because we do a lot of written coaching in our programs is, we really like to look at it as effective or ineffective in line with my moral compass or out of line.

So it's like, is this effectively changing the behavior in my strong willed kid? And the fear and force stuff, like yelling might get them to put on their shoes or stop hitting their brother today. And is it effective three weeks from now? Right? Like, if you've been asking the same question, or, or stumbling on the same misbehavior for quite some time, you're going to realize that what you're doing is ineffective.

And so you you want to, you don't have to, you don't need to, you can continue, it's legal to hit kids in this country, you can continue to use fear and force your whole life if you want, like literally, you don't got to do anything. But most of the students, we work with all of them, I will say, they want to find a different way, they want to learn how to influence and teach without hurting and harming and forcing their kids into submission, or like moving into that permissive model that so many do move into when they're like healing from an autocratic upbringing.

So like we kind of say the same thing with better, we take away the better and just say different, right? Like if someone will say, how do I do this better? It's like, well, there's no better here. Because we just want you to ask us, like, how do I do this different? Because what I did? And I'm not sure if it felt quite right. And in line with like, what I believe, and we are all growing every year, like, I've loved watching your journey as you've really stepped into things that are very important to you in the world. I share very similar things like me today versus me four years ago, like, I've now found the courage to become outspoken and advocate for things that wasn't on my radar years ago.

But better, you know, is just everyone loves the Maya Angelou quote, right? Like when we know better, we do better. But and at the same time, we just want to see it as different or more effective. And so I think that that helps parents kind of free up some energy and some brain space to just remember that there's no judgment of the past. It makes sense why we all do this stuff.

Like it makes sense from a nervous system perspective, right? Like we all know the imprints on our nervous system are usually set by the age of seven. So the feelings in our home or the temperature, so to speak, in our homes around mistakes, that's what we end up parenting with, like the same exact until we heal our nervous systems until we learn a new way until we figure out how to signal safety to the nervous system and realize that it's actually not a four alarm fire. There's not a bear chasing you when your kids are fighting and hitting each other. It sure feels like it, but there's not.

Gervase: And I mean, when I think about the difference between the verbiage, the language around like different or effective, I also am like passionate about being effective. Like when I have conversations, whether it's with clients or like my partner about parenting, I'm like, listen, I'm just like, this is ineffective. It's not working. So we don't need to like decide who's the bad guy and who's the good guy and blah, blah, blah. Let's just try something new. But the idea with different kind of reminds me of, there is going to be, I have found this to be true. I don't know. You might disagree, but there have been situations where more heavy handed parenting has come into play that I've been like, oh, I wasn't expecting that. Right. And I don't, I mean, I'm not talking about like physical hitting or anything like that, but I think I was talking to my teacher, Joanna Miller on the podcast. And I think she gave this example where it's like, for example, yelling at your kid, ideally on an average day, there's no reason to yell. Like that's not the quote unquote right way. But when your kid runs into the street, it's actually appropriate to yell for their safety.

Wendy: Right. Amen.

And so I think that's why it's so important that we unhook from this like right, wrong, good, bad, better language. And because it's like an ingrained mindset that we have as a culture, when really I have no idea who I'm going to be tomorrow, who they're going to be tomorrow, what situation I'm going to stumble upon. But I know every time I decide, like I've figured out the right anything, anything, it always changes.

And I'm very humbled to find that, you know, something I was judging or perceiving as wrong turns out to be something that's valuable in this season or in the nuance of the cosmos. So I love that. Yeah. The other thing that I just want to respond to is back to this idea of the nervous system, which is so interesting to me. It's so interesting. I do a lot of nervous system work. So I'm like, oh, yes, of course, this makes perfect sense. Right. Yeah. So many women and I work exclusively with women. So, so many mothers that I know are parenting from this traumatized nervous system, right?

So we are perpetually either afraid, like you were saying, we're scared. We have shame. We have anger. We have all these things, which are not bad or wrong. And it sounds like the path we can take that is a little bit more gentle and nourishing and sustainable isn't to say like, I'm never allowed to feel afraid or like, I will never be angry or feel ashamed or whatever. Because again, my lived experience is like I'm all over the place with that stuff.

And it's just, can you increase your body, your system's capacity to hold mistakes? Can you be like a compassionate witness to your own fear so that it isn't creating this emergency? Like we have an emergency. There's a tiger. I need to scream. I need to control. Because I, I do believe that a lot of the times when we're in like this deep controlling way externally as parents, it is because we're like in that fight or flight. We need to instead tend to our systems.

And then we're like, oh, okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Right. And then suddenly you're like, I don't need to control, like wear whatever you want or don't put your socks on or whatever. And then of course you hold the boundary firm when it's like, well, actually, no, you can't have that iPhone, but holding their disappointment, holding their anger that they send back has been an interesting part of my experience as well to notice like, oh, they're very mad at me or, oh, they're very disappointed because I did make a mistake.

And I feel okay about this because I'm holding space for my humanity, which is pretty deep, important work that every parent could do that takes time and takes so many reps to really get your nervous system acclimated to there is no right or wrong. I'm an imperfect human. I'm just going to try to be an authentic version of myself and be okay with the fact that I will mess up. They will mess up. There will be rupture. You know, I can think of times in my life where I was just, I felt so physically unsafe when there was rupture in any relationship in my life. And of course, the nervous system holds that the body holds that. So then suddenly when your kid can't be controlled, you freak out when your kid doesn't want to, I don't know, whatever. I guess it's so funny. I'm like in a different season than you. I'm like, when the kid doesn't want to take a bath, you're like, we're not having those fights anymore. Right. But you, it becomes bigger. It becomes like this huge fire when really it's just like, you just need a little time out for a little resource for yourself.

Wendy: And that's where the education and the mentorship is just so important. Cause with like nervous system, healing stuff, a lot of times like community, whether it's just you and a coach or you in a group, we do our stuff in group work, but it does take a lot of reps. And when you, from the age of zero to seven, if you grew up in a home where mistakes were treated with punishment, shame, you know, even like the, the more mild homes that just had the disappointed, right?

Like that used to be like taught to parents. Like that's how, that's how you get your kid to become someone who wants to please you. Compliant. Compliant is you make sure that you know how disappointed you are when they make a mistake. And even that like leaves a mark on our souls and our nervous systems. And because it does create disconnection. And as children, you want to feel connected to your parents. You want to feel attached.

And like when you are left alone to like, and a lot of times the classic model was like, go to your room, timeout, you go think about what you've done. It just leaves a mark. So that compassion of like, oh, no wonder this feels like such a big deal to me. Like I'm just unlearning and I'm like unraveling the first seven years on the nervous system quite often is what many of us are doing.

And like, it might've formed in the first seven years, like the neural imprint, so to speak, but then we've been playing them out for decades. You know, like I went to traffic court a few months ago and cop didn't show up. So I got off hooray for that. But I had a case presented. I was like, ready to like, kindly tell why this had happened and drop my daughter off at high school one day in the wrong spot, $350 ticket.

But I realized as the judge was like, okay, cop didn't show up, you're off, have a great day. And I just pushed end on the zoom call and my whole body was shaking because my nervous system was prepared to be ridiculed. It was prepared to be condemned and judged. And like, you know, there's quite often a tone in that world of like, you should know better. What were you thinking? And I've had this happen many times with police officers.

There's so many wonderful police officers who are doing it different nowadays, but quite often you will find that response, right? Of like, what are you thinking? I would never do this. But I found it so interesting that my body was responding to the fear of getting in trouble, the fear of being wrong, the fear of making a mistake. And so it does stick. And so it just takes time. It takes mentorship. It takes reps.

As you said, I love that, that way of putting it to realize that it's actually safe to feel. It is safe to make a mistake. It is safe to get it wrong. And a lot of times those, all the times, the storms pass. One thing I did want to add is just, as we were talking earlier about right versus wrong, and then bringing up the like, sometimes you're going to want to yell at your kids, especially if they're there.

I know this can become a little bit of a slippery slope for parents because we get a lot of questions around like, well, yeah, but you know, let's just say for spanking, right? Like we have a lot of people are healing from religious trauma, being raised in like kind of twisted, toxic, fundamental evangelical upbringings. And they'll be like, yeah, but when your kid's going to touch the hot stove, like that's when like you got to teach them that you don't do that, right?

And so we lovingly encourage people to step back from the right or wrong. And I will tell you that there are core tenants to parenting that most of us that are like-minded, we are down with. And that is that like one of them is we just don't hurt and harm our kids.

Wendy: And it takes a lot of support for parents to understand that actually you can teach a child to not touch a hot stove without hurting and harming them. But for a lot of parents, that takes a lot of unlearning, right? Like the mindset is very fixed again, because they were raised like that. But there are core tenants that I think when you're going through your whole life of parenting, if you can just like be clear about what you believe in as a human being and like influencing people through relationship versus guilt.

But there's going to be times when you're like, oh, my daughter's nine now. And I used to talk to her like when she was like this at six, and now I'm talking to her when she, but still like using guilt to manipulate a child into action, or if you just do it, I'll give you money, right? Like whatever bribery is not the end of the world, right? Like I trust me, like we joke that save it for the big things.

But for the consistency, we have core tenants that we want children to be intrinsically motivated to do whatever in school or keep their hands to themselves or use kind words or whatever, right? So right versus wrong, we don't play that game. And for many, it helps to have core core tenants that you are consistently asking yourself, does this align with that core tenant?

And when it doesn't, that's when we get to move to, okay, it makes sense why that's my knee jerk reaction to punish or manipulate through guilt, or pressure, right? And I'm going to choose to do it a different way. Because A, it's ineffective. B, it doesn't feel right with my nervous system. And C, I see that it caused disconnection. And so now let's get back to what do we really want? We want to be able to X, Y, Z with our kids.

Gervase: Yeah. No, I think that's a great distinction. I was thinking about, I was giving this example yesterday of like the bowling bumpers, you know, it's like just some boundaries around it. Like, okay, what are the limits within the parenting? My values, my yeses and nos. It is, I do think that's like always under the surface for me. I don't really think about it much. Cause yeah, like, I think ultimately what we're circling around is this idea of not shaming or blaming when it happens, because the reality is like, sometimes the bumpers don't hold and the bowling ball goes off into the next bowling lane, unless you're actually good at bowling, unlike me. And so just leaving a little bit of space and grace for our humanity as parents, I think it's like the ultimate place I want to land because it's kind of like, yeah, catch me on like a great day and I'm bowling great. And then catch me at my worst when I've just, when I've endured something really intense and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I can't guarantee that I'm going to bowl the same. And I'm not saying that's justified, but I am saying like, can I be a compassionate witness to my humanity in that moment while also acknowledging like, these are my bumpers. And I kind of like went out of the bumper and okay, I don't need to shame or blame myself. I can work on that first and then focus on the repair with the kid. Because I think what I see so often is like so much emphasis on the kid, so much emphasis on like the strategies and everything without acknowledging like, if you're not dealing with your own, like you said, the shame and the blame and the wrongness and the humanity, which is like, you are not different every day. I mean, you are not the same every day. You're going to have seasons that are more intense and less intense. Then all that work might kind of just be at the surface. It's like outer performatory work versus creating that internal connection relationship that I think all of us really are aspiring to, you know, that would be sweet. It's like the day we were getting Boba and I think my daughter was 12, my son was nine. And there's some bickering about Boba, the car ride, who knows, like, it was like minor, let's just say. And that day I said, I looked at my daughter and I was so pissed. And I said to her, can you just stop being you?

Wendy: Let me tell you, real fast, it came over me that is not in my core tenant. Yeah, I do not believe in speaking to my child like that. And it's so, like, against my internal moral compass. And so that's an example of like, the bumpers went off, right?

And so for me growing up, shame on you was like the statement of the house. My beautiful 75-year-old Irish mama that was raised in Irish Catholic school and was professionally shamed.

Gervase: Yes, same.

Wendy: Like, that was just the way, right? So then I got to go on and tell my daughter, like, let me tell you, this is a generational cycle. And it stops here because that was not about you. That was about me. That was about feeling scared. Like all the things, like we got to have a conversation and I just got to do whatever I could to repair that relationship and like heal the mark, so to speak.

Because trust me, I know that left a mark and it's not what I wanted. And it's one of the most, I've done a lot of stuff in my parenting. But that one was one that I'm like, dang it, I just wish I wouldn't have said that. And so much compassion for myself. And I believe that the imperfect moments, they also teach your children a lot. And so for her to hear from me, you didn't deserve to have that said to you. And it's just not true. Here's the truth about you.

You are a beautiful, strong-willed child. And I never want that to change about you. Right? Like here's the facts. Boom, boom, boom. And sometimes when you're a parent, you feel scared that you can't control a strong-willed person. Thank God I can't control you. I don't, you know, and here we are all these years later where she's like, I could never do what she's doing right now with this D1 beach volleyball scholarship pursuit.

But yeah. So anyway, it's just the bumpers come off sometimes and you get to realign yourself and you're not going to always get it right. But the core tenants, you can feel when they're off. Because a lot of people, they will just keep going down that route. They'll say it. Let's just say in that situation, right? Like the goal was to use shame to influence her to stop whatever, like being unkind to her brother or something in that moment, or be more easygoing or not be so air quotes difficult.

Like many people will just keep going down that path. They'll justify it. Even though it feels off, like they'll just, they'll dig their heels in and they'll be like, well, I wouldn't have to say that to you if you weren't such a stick in the mud. Right. But like, for those of us who really are passionate about being in line with who we truly are and we can just feel when it's off. We didn't like it when it was done to us. It's not the way we believe humans should be influencing humans.

And so then we get the help that we need to heal and then we choose a different path tomorrow.

Gervase: Beautifully, beautifully said. Thank you for sharing that, that really vulnerable story. Cause I know that so many people listening are going to relate. And it's just a reminder that if you're willing to look your stuff in the mirror, you know, and just be like, okay, I did that thing and I still am a good person and I know what I know and how are we going to move forward? You know, how many relationships I think about parent child relationships, but I just feel this is kind of like a, an epidemic of relationships period right now. They don't have the bravery to hold all that, like that example that you just gave, which in the end, I know for me, whether it's like with my partner or with friends that I've had where you say things and you're just like, Oh gosh, I, we can't never, let's just never talk again. Forget it. Yeah. No, that's just, it's like too embarrassing or there's too much shame or I just, I wish I hadn't handled that or like, you don't get me or whatever. And then it's like, can I be willing to own my mistake with compassion and also integrity and come back to this relationship and keep trying and make it this like imperfect, beautiful co-creation that I believe it can be. And it's just, I think that's what authentic relating is. And we kind of got a different memo and we're just trying to like build a new garden now. And so that's, to me, that's what it sounds like when you share, you know, an honest parenting moment like that. So.

Wendy: It's true. And since parenting strong willed kids in this episode, I will say that that's why I love strong willed kids is because they are these like beacons of change. Like they're like born with red flags. They will just put right in front of you this invitation to heal and change because a lot of us get so triggered by them.

Especially if we're similar, right? Like we often are most triggered by the kids that are most similar to us. Like my little guy that's almost 14. He's just like daddy. Daddy and I have been happily, like we're just young love, passionately loved together 30 years, married for 22 or something. And so Taryn, when he does stuff, I'm just not triggered. I'm just like, it's so easy for me to love Terry and Taryn.

But when Stella, when Stella does, it's very similar to how I behave again, you know, we're hardest on ourselves, but she was the one, she was the one that I was losing my mind over. Like, why am I so triggered? Why am I so reactive? Why am I now a door slammer and a wrist grabber and a shamer? Like that wasn't, I've never, the air quotes been like that. Right. And so she called me in and like the times I tried to spank her because 10,000 books and neighbors told me that was the way and that was the Christian way.

And she like puffed up and came at me hard. And I look back at that and I'm like, dang, this girl is a force to be reckoned with. And they are the red flag razors of the world. They are the system disruptors. And so when we get to see them like that and accept the invitation, like a misbehave, Stella had a misbehavior of like experimenting with drinking when she was 15.

And Terry and I looked at ourselves and we were like, we've been drinking for 30 years. And like, we cannot go to a wedding. And like the thought of not going to a wedding or a vacation. And so we were like, let's quit drinking. A year and a half later, we've never been happier. We sleep like babies and we're modeling to our kid, the behavior that we were trying to teach her like, hey, it's possible. You can go to a party and not be, you know, but like she's, she's just consistently always.

And then her, she's taught us how to do that. And now that's how we see parenting in general. Like if there's a behavior that we're not modeling and we feel really sticky, we'll just kind of analyze it and see what we can do to play around with learning the life skill or whatever. But yeah, the strong-willed kids, really good at giving us the invitation and it's up to us whether we accept it or not.

But if you do, I promise you, it's a beautiful adventure that will change your entire family legacy.

Gervase: So beautiful. Like the treasure hunters. They're like, hey, right here, there's some shit buried that you might want to dig up. It's a little sloppy. There's a little bit of like lack of integrity here. And I'm going to stand right here until you dig in this spot. You know, that's true. I love that. I love that. So relatable girl. I feel you. I feel you. Thank you so much for sharing your lived experience and your expertise. I'm sure it will just, you know, inspire and support so many parents listening. How can people keep in touch with you? Check out what you offer in the world.

Wendy: Yeah, please come find me. I do quite a lot of quick little tips and teaching over on Instagram. I'm at Fresh Start Wendy. And then we have a podcast, the Fresh Start Family Show that my husband co-hosts with me. I'd love to get you on the show sometime because I do think you are brilliant with the work that you're doing in the world. So let's chat about that.

And then I'd say when it comes to strong-willed kids, just get yourself into the classroom. We have a free learning bundle, we call it. It comes with a free one-hour workshop and parents can find that at freshstartfamilyonline.com forward slash power struggles.

Gervase: Amazing. And we'll put all of that in the show notes. I just want to close by acknowledging you, Wendy. Thank you so much for entering my orbit and sharing your, it's like you're an elder to me. And I really appreciate how wise and grounded and balanced your approach sounds to me and it really resonates. And so, yeah, thank you for who you are in the world. And until next time, thanks everyone for listening and see you soon.

Wendy: Thank you.