Click The Links Below To Listen Now 

 

 

 

Tahnee speaks with the phenomenal Yolande Norris Clarke. Yolande is a birth liberation activist, birth-witness, spell-breaker, way-shower, childbirth educator, midwifery teacher, and mother of 9 (soon to be 10) beautiful children.

In this juicy episode with Tahnee, Yolande shares her birth stories and the powerful insights she's gained both working and being in the free birth space. 

The women speak to the growing awareness and education surrounding free birth, sharing thought-provoking dialog around the impact of subconscious programming and the role manifestation plays in creating one's reality, inviting us to question beyond the “traditional” institutionalised approaches women are most often sold as gospel, and consider the power of choice in shaping an individual's birthing experience. 

Yolande shares her love of German New Medicine, celebrating its holistic mind-body approach and the positive implications it has had for her own healing and parenting. Passionately encouraging mothers to embrace and trust in their children's innate ability to heal, emphasising that love, support, and validation are the most essential elements on the parenting journey. 

This beautiful conversation serves as a catalyst for reflection, inviting individuals to consider their choices, to embrace the power of surrender, and recognise the profound impact the mind has on the birthing experience and beyond. 
We’re left with a rich tapestry of insight into the realms of birth, motherhood and self-healing, reminded that the human organism has the innate power to self organise, and is coded to reproduce as nature intended, in a wild, unfiltered and undomesticated way.

"As mothers, we are at the centre of this vortex of family. We are setting the tone, we're creating the environment that our children are living into. And we're also, we are establishing the lens of subconscious belief that our children are seeing themselves through as well. And I think that alone is very, very significant. Fear is one of the most potent ways that we end up hooking into what can become numerous intersecting compounding biological conflicts, which can then give rise to further symptoms. And I think a lot of the issues that children tend to have, a lot of the forms of what we understand as illness or dis-ease that children experience are, I don't even think necessarily a result of initial catalyst so much as this recurring fear loop vortex that we are, on so many levels, encouraged to fall into as parents. I mean, there is so much programming."

- Yolande Norris-Clarke.

Yolande & Tahnee discuss:

• Free birth, Yolande's birth stories and surrender as a discipline.
• The "perfect pregnancy" and the myths surrounding it.
• Birth as an initiation and spiritual experience.
• Reclaiming the joy of motherhood.
• Creation, manifestation and commitment.
• German New Medicine. 

Who is Yolande Norris-Clarke?

Yolande Norris-Clark was born in Vancouver, BC, in 1981, and is a leader in the freebirth, birth-freedom, self-healing, and health liberation movements. She is a spell-breaker, way-shower, whistle-blower, trailblazer, and beloved guide to women all over the world who are awakening to the possibility of giving birth in peace and power. A mother of nine, Yolande has given birth to all of her children at home. For over twenty years she has been immersed in the world of holistic, physiological birth, supporting thousands of mothers and families virtually as a birth consultant, and in-person as a homebirth witness, as well as through her online programs and writing. Her mission is to dispel the myth that birth is an ordeal from which women must be “delivered,” and to share the truth that birth is primarily a spiritual experience, designed to be transformational, transcendent, and ecstatic, and that this is possible for every mother and baby.

Resource guide

Guest Links
Yolande's Website
Yolande's Courses
Yolande's German New Medicine Salon
Yolande's Book
Yolande's Instagram
Yolande's Facebook
Yolande's TikTok

Mentioned In This Episode
Free Birth Society
Ina May Gaskin Books
Janine Parvati Baker Books
Jane Hardwicke Collings

Related Podcasts
Birth Is A Body Based Event with Clancy Allen (EP#79)
Birth Work, Ceremony, and Rites of Passage with Caitlin Priday (EP#148)

Connect With Us
SuperFeast Instagram
SuperFeast Facebook
SuperFeast TikTok

Check Out The Transcript Below:

 

Tahnee:

Hi, everyone. We're here for the SuperFeast podcast and I have the beautiful Yolande Norris-Clark with me today. Thank you for joining us.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Thank you so much for asking. I'm so honoured to be here.

Tahnee:

Oh, it's such a privilege. And yeah, many people listening will probably know you from your work with Free Birth Society and your social media, I guess content and your incredible blogging over the years. You've been quite a prolific content creator out there in the world. And Free Birth Society, for those that don't know, I feel like really started the wave of awareness and education around free birth probably. Are we going on 15, 10 years? I feel like it's been a while, maybe longer.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Well, Free Birth Society has been around for I think seven years, seven or eight years. But I've been talking about birth outside of the system and liberated birth and sovereign birth for 20 years. So Emily and I got together at just the right time and she's created an amazing business and I'm so happy to be a part of that in a lot of ways.

Tahnee:

Yeah, I feel like I remember that wave really. I guess it makes sense now that I'm remembering that because my daughter's seven, so I feel like I watched this real rise in awareness of alternative styles of birth. I feel like it was kind of like Ina May Gaskin and there wasn't really much else in the way of education in the middle there of you either had the midwifery or the obstetrics and there wasn't much around the sovereign birth. And I know you're aware of Jeannine Parvati Baker's work and these people that were doing this in the '70s. It's not like it's new so much. But I guess especially in the collective conscious, I think there's been a real shift I would guess in the last decade. Is that what you've seen in your?

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that there has been a massive shift in awareness and a real revolution in birth. It's taking place right now, and it's so exciting to see the idea of free birth and these terms that Emily and I use frequently that we've borrowed and built on from the work of women like Jeannine Parvati Baker really hit the mainstream. Free birth and unassisted birth and family birth had really become so much better known in just in the past decade, I would say primarily. And the wave is continuing to build. I think that we've really only seen the very beginning of what I think is a worldwide revolution.

Tahnee:

And I think your expertise is in having done it yourself so many times. So for those who don't know, Yolande is pregnant with her 10th child. I know you've had other pregnancies, so I want to be clear that I may not be getting that number completely right, but your 10th baby's on the way and you're quite deep into the pregnancy portal at the moment. You're maybe a month left. So I think that's something that I find so... Something I loved about Janine when I first read her prenatal yoga book was just her birth stories and how varied they all were.

 

And I think it really shakes that idea that you can have growing up as a woman of birth being a certain way. And I think sharing our birth stories is such a potent way of teaching one another about birth and what is... There's so many factors, I guess, and that's what I love about Portal is it offers these inquiries into why different experiences might be occurring based on our programming and stuff. But I'll come back to that in a minute. So you've had now nine labours leading to birth and you're maybe heading for a 10th hopefully. Do you feel like if you spoke to yourself as, was it your first baby at 19? Am I getting that right?

Yolande Norris-Clark:

I became pregnant when I was 19 and I was just 20 when he was born.

Tahnee:

So that's pretty young. And I think you're probably still informed by culture so much as what birth and motherhood and parenting are. If you could speak to that part of yourself now, is there anything, I mean, I'm sure you've learned 5 million things, is there anything that really stands out that you'd want to share or that you'd offer to that little part of yourself?

Yolande Norris-Clark:

She was so sweet. Oh, dear. Oh, what a question. Oh, I feel such tenderness and love for that young, young, young girl who didn't know anything, but I did know that I would birth in power and that I didn't need to have anything to do with systems of false authority as I see them and as I saw them now. And so, I don't know if I really would have anything to say to that younger version of myself, because I think we really do. We do birth as we live and we birth as we are. And I think that I did a great job actually at that time of knowing the most important things maybe. I think I knew myself at the time, and I've also changed a lot. And I had wonderful teachers at that time too, so I had the immense privilege of being connected with a very wise woman who was my birth keeper during my first two births, and she taught me so much.

 

I don't know if I can really think of anything that I would say or anything that, in retrospect, I would've done differently at the time. I am actually really proud of myself for having made what I think were very wise choices in integrity for the age and stage that I was at the time. But I would actually say now that I've been rambling, I would attempt anyway and it probably wouldn't work because it never really works. But I would attempt to impart to my younger self just how precious every single stage of our children's lives are, because I definitely felt overwhelmed as a young mother, and I had this sense of the breastfeeding baby years just extending before me like an endless highway. And actually, it's just such a brief, brief, brief moment. And so-

Tahnee:

Blink of an eye.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Blink of an eye. And I know I sound like such an old lady saying that, but I think that's one of the most important things that I would love for young mothers to know. And like I said, again, I think it's also something that we can't actually know except through experience so that's okay.

Tahnee:

I think if I can, I share the same sentiments and also remember being told with my first child and having that classic teenager like F you to the people that tried to tell me.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Like, "How dare you? You don't know my life."

Tahnee:

I remember someone writing it on my Instagram comments and I'm like, "Oh, the days are long, but the years are short," or something. And I was like, oh, I haven't slept and I'm running a business and I'm trying to wake up this guy that I decided to have a baby with and I don't know who I am anymore, and I'm crying on my driveway because I don't want to go to work. Then, I have to carry 5,000 things out the door. And I was like, "Oh, my God. Lunchboxes." Like shut up.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

The whole thing.

Tahnee:

I've come a long way too, would you believe? Well, I think those are some-

Yolande Norris-Clark:

We're so relaxed now, so mature, so relaxed.

Tahnee:

Well, it's been interesting having a second child and I wonder if you relate because I've had a five and a half year gap between my kids, so I feel like I've grown up a lot in that time. And also, the choices we made for the second pregnancy and birth, to use your term, wild pregnancy and then to use the term Jeannine coined, free birth. And I feel like there's a sort of a real flip in, and you speak about it in Portal I think to this sense of being a victim to circumstance, to being more in control of circumstance. And to me, that's been one of the biggest gifts of the choices we made was to actually come to motherhood from that place of, well, no one's going to bail me out of this. And I do have now a bit of a reference point in context for the timeline and how it works.

 

And it is a season, I guess, to use the kind of common lexicon. And I've found myself still reacting sometimes. There's nights when my baby will just suckle on my nipple for 12 hours and I'm like, "Ugh." But I can also feel myself softening around what would've been a tanty and then like a drama story. It's still in me, don't get me wrong, but I can feel myself softening around that and not reacting and trying to make changes and choices that would maybe impact the bond between my child and myself. Yeah, I've just watched that cycle play out a few times in this postpartum and this breastfeeding journey, and I'm like, "Oh, it's really funny."

 

And even people are like, "Oh, you're going to night wean soon because we're at 18 months." He's still breastfeeding at night. And I'm like, I can feel that my ego might want to do that to imply that I'm in control or that I am the mother that's got it all under. I think it's a control thing if I really sit with it, but I'm also like, no, because he is driving this relationship and this bond at the moment, and I feel like I'm rambling a bit now, but there's something in that. And I feel like when I read Portal, I meet that part of myself, if that makes sense. Please save me now. Does that make sense to you?

Yolande Norris-Clark:

It does.

Tahnee:

This is what you teach.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, choice is everything we have and it's so powerful, and I think there's always a continuous relationship between choice and surrender and softening and choosing just as you say.

Tahnee:

I feel like there's this interesting in terms of etymology and surrender, because I teach a type of yoga called yin and it was a really big learning how to surrender like in an integral way, I guess, if that makes sense. I'm trying to put words to a feeling, but I think it's easy to go floppy sometimes, and I would almost equate that with like a victim or passivity, but I don't see that in you, and I don't feel like that's what you speak to and surrender. It's more of a opening, I would say, than a closing off or dropping out, if that makes sense. Can you define that a little bit for me?

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Yes, actually, this was one of the big lessons of my most recent birth, which I write about in Portal. And this concept of surrender as I see it as a discipline as opposed to, I mean, I see the discipline of surrender as the antithesis to passivity and that floppiness that you just described, which yeah, I think we often can trick ourselves into thinking that giving up is the idea behind surrender, and it's not really so much giving up at all. In fact, I think that real integral surrender involves strong boundaries and a kind of discipline and a real buttressing of our energetic field, if you will. That's been a really important lesson for me. There's an ease that I think is available to us in conjunction with a fortification of our sense of self maybe, or a fortification of our knowing really. It's intertwined with honing our intuition, I think.

Tahnee:

Yeah, and I guess that's what I feel I noticed, I feel like you've mentioned this in Portal where you speak to, and again, I wonder if you relate to this. So I remember being quite young and really being political and wanting to save the world and being at university and doing all the things and the women's studies and maybe a matriarchal culture would be better to rule the world because dah, dah, dah, eye roll at self. And I guess this again, wouldn't change anything, but do laugh sometimes studying journalism and thinking that maybe if I wrote really powerful articles, they would change the world and people would understand and realising that was not going to happen because Murdoch owned everything.

 

And this kind of, I guess building up of one's sense of identity as antagonist or even, I don't know, maybe as someone who has all the solutions or could potentially be that person to coming to now being I'm nearly 40, and honestly, I don't pay much attention to any of the stuff that's going on in the world, and I feel so content and happy, and I'm driving here this morning and the sun's coming up and it's just beautiful, and I'm like, wow, I live in this place of, I guess constant grace, and it's through surrender, but I'm also not ignorant to things. And I find it hard to explain that to people because I think I get, people are like, "Oh, you're not paying attention." I'm like I am, "I know it's there, but I don't let it in." And that to me is that boundary of knowing where I can have impact and where I can't and what's actually playing into maybe an agenda that wants my energy and doesn't want me to feel how I feel at the moment. Is that kind what you tune into a little bit?

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Oh, absolutely. I think you described that so well, and there's a lot going on in the world right now, and I've had a few people reach out to me with a sense of outrage, "Why are you not speaking out about this, that, or the other injustice that's occurring in the world?" And I really have come to a point where it's not that I'm, as you said, ignorant or trying to pretend that these things aren't happening or bypassing. It's that I know now that the best way that I can contribute to the good and the solution to all of the hurt and hardship and violence that's going on in the world is to attend to my business. And my business is not international politics, and there are lots of people whose business it is to be involved in international politics, and that's not my realm.

 

And I think that there's a real, it can be a very challenging thing to do to stay in one's business. And I don't succeed all the time, let me be clear. But yes, I think that the riches of staying in one's business really can't be overstated. And I'm in the mothering season of my life and my focus is my children and my focus is on sharing what I know to be true about birth and for me to get involved in commenting on this, that or the other world situation would be a dilution of my energy that would really not serve anyone. And I'm very much on purpose in my mission to fulfil my role in this life, and that is in the realm of birth and mothering and self-healing. And other than that, I'm not interested in having my energy syphoned in various ways. And I think I have found enormous power in that and enormous effectiveness in that.

 

And I've experienced the after effects, the consequences of me remaining in my business have been overwhelmingly positive in terms of the kind of impact that I am able to have for the communities that I'm meant to serve, as well as in my own life in terms of my children, my relationship with my children, my personal relationships. It's been a win-win in all ways, so I'm happy with that choice. And I spent a lot of time off in this space of antagonism and resistance to all of the dark forces in the world and realised that I was actually just creating more of that. So it's a lot more fun actually to disavow all of the drama. There was definitely an excitement in constantly fighting with everyone, and all of the systems that I saw were flawed and faulty, but I've found that the alternative of staying on purpose is much more fruitful, actually, and much more interesting ultimately too.

Tahnee:

Yeah, it's such a tempting apple, I suppose. I feel like that's this real, I think especially I guess the world we live in, although I'm sure it's been like this in every generation in different ways, but I think there's always this pull to engage and as the media owners and things get more powerful as well and more aware of human psychology and things, I think we're being played in many ways. So to sort of wisen up to that a little bit is useful, I think. And I guess what we're talking about reminds me, there's this, I don't know if Buckminster Fuller's work, but he speaks about, I think it's called procession, and it's about how the bee just goes and does its thing with the flower, but doesn't realise it's creating all this beauty in just doing its work. And I think to me, that was a real core idea of learning to trust that tending my little corner of the world is enough. And I don't know the impact I'm having, but it's okay. I don't need to, and I think you can just trust what's happening is enough.

 

And I mean, I think you can see your impact because you're out there with so much feedback, I suppose from the world in many ways. You get to see that. But yeah, it's something I think for people listening that maybe don't have a profile or don't publicly speak much. It's like, yeah, you're still having an impact in your corner of the world. And I guess I wonder with Portal, because you've come through, I guess this what's so interesting to me having had only two births and thinking about what we've talked about. And when I reflect on my first birth, I was really acutely aware of everyone else as opposed to I knew what I wanted, but I also knew what everyone else wanted for me, I guess. And I found that navigating that, challenging, I didn't think I was quite skilled at that at the time. And then I noticed that for my second birth, I really pulled myself out of everything and almost had the opposite experience of nobody's hearing what I'm doing, I'm not sharing my plans, I'm just going to do it.

 

But I've noticed I've had very different births, but not that correlate to the experience. I feel like I had a really blissful pregnancy with my daughter and quite a blissful birth. I had quite an intense pregnancy with my son on account of things going on in our life, death and destruction and sorts of crazy things, and then quite an intense birth. But I would've thought that having spent so much time protecting my energetic space with my second child, I would've had a more blissful birth than I did the first time. And I found that really interesting in sitting with, even though I had the midwives there, and even though there were things that didn't feel in alignment with my daughter's birth, I felt way more psychedelic. And I remember, I don't know, having all these crazy downloads and being really in this altered state through the whole thing, I was definitely in that with my son, but it was like I was in my pain body the entire time.

 

And I'm curious because I know you've had very painful births and also a truly blissful birth, and you've had the experience of quite intense pregnancies. And also, I guess there's something I want to dispel in there a little bit for people because I read all this stuff that's like, "Oh, if you have the perfect pregnancy, you're going to have the perfect birth." And I'm just like, I just know that to not be true. Can you speak a little bit to that, and especially as a woman who guides women? I think it's such an important one to talk about.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Oh, gosh, yes. Ultimately, the experience that we have of birth is the consequence of all of the aggregate choices that we've made. But it's also, I mean, there are just so many endless variables, and in the end, it is an inside job. And I don't know if we can ever quite, there's so much that we don't have access to knowing. And then, also, I think that we create the experience that we end up experiencing through choice. And it's an endless paradox. It really is. I mean, I had quite a... I don't even know how to describe it. It wasn't a peaceful pregnancy that I had with my youngest child whose birth was complete bliss. But I also can't deny that there were elements in retrospect, there were parts of my experience with pregnancy that I can see now did open certain pathways and give me certain insights.

 

So I think it's just that life is continuously revelatory and mysterious and wonderful, and we do really only get to figure it out after we've been through these various experiences. So yeah, I mean, I don't know if I really have anything neat and tidy to really say, but I certainly don't think it's a question of just have a really wonderful peaceful pregnancy and then your birth is going to be a certain way. I think it's much more complex and wavery.

 

And birth, ultimately, I think, it is a spiritual experience. We can never separate the physiology of birth, even from our spiritual, psychic, soul level state of being leading up to it and at the time. And I also believe at this point that one of the greatest gifts that we have been endowed is free will and is the option to always choose our state of being in any given moment. And so, that also is a little bit of a variable in a way, because it can be tricky in the moment to allow ourselves to be fully aware of what that dynamic and what those array of choices are and how choice even works, which is what I've tried to, attempted to explore in the book Portal. So, oh my gosh, that's such a roundabout answer.

Tahnee:

No, I think it's perfect because it is a roundabout thing. And I have a teacher, do you know who Jane Hardwicke Collings is? She's an Australian teacher.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

I know of her, yes. And I've had some encounters with her work, which seems wonderful.

Tahnee:

Yeah, well, she was a student of Jeannine's, so I think there's probably a little bit of, I don't know, synergy there, but she talks about the shamanic dimensions of everything and I'm curious to your thoughts on this because she also teaches that your personal birth imprint and then the birth imprints of your children play a massive role in, A, how you mother them and yourself through life, and also how you mother the children. And it's been interesting reflecting on that in my experience in relationship to my own birth and my children. And I wonder if you have any thoughts on that particular concept.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Oh, I absolutely agree. And in my own case, I think that my very traumatic, very industrial, very sabotaged entry into the world as a baby has had a massive impact on who I am and my work in birth and the way that I mother in strangely, a very, very positive way. I'm so grateful for my terrible abusive birth experience, which sounds like a funny thing to say. But it's important to me to share that, because I know so many women feel a lot of guilt and shame about the kinds of births that they experience. And I actually do, at the same time that I'm a fairly vocal critic of the industrial obstetric system, I also, at the same time, don't really think that we can ever get birth wrong. I feel like we always have an opportunity to take the experiences that we have, dark and light, and make them into something beautiful.

 

And I feel like I've done that with my own birth. I'm really, truly, truly grateful for the kind of birth that I had. But in terms of the way that my children have come into the world, each of their births, all nine of my children have been born at home. So there are certain elements of the choices that I've made that have been very consistent, but in terms of the energetics of their birth, the relational dynamics, the specifics of the journey, they've all been wildly different. And I think that's on account of the very different choices that I've made, large and small, micro and macro choices. But it's also that birth is inevitably a co-creation between mother and child.

 

And I think that we, on some level, on a soul level, that we do choose our parents. We do choose the time and the place and the body and all of the variables of how we enter this plane. And I see in each of my children the imprint of their birth experiences and some aspect of their indelible soul that was absolutely present from the very first moment, I would say, even from the moment of conception. I know there's lots of different opinions about when a soul enters the body and all of that stuff. But for me as a mother, I would say even before conception, I had a sense of the presence of my children.

 

And apart from just the immensity of the birth process itself and how staggeringly mystical and transformative birth is, that moment of seeing your child's original face is just, it's so, so precious. And for me, there's always a sense during that initial encounter of recognition of knowing this child in some cosmic way, some forever way. And it's such a delight really, to see our children grow up and to witness the way that they change, the many ways they change physically and in all the other ways, but also to see that kind of core thread of self that I think is always there.

Tahnee:

I love that description of their original face, and I can see it immediately when you speak to it. And I want to follow it because the thread, I think, is what's really interesting. And when I read Portal, I got a sense of you pulling at something through your life, I guess, that had culminated in its Helio, in his birth. And I know your child previous to him would be like a Innana's descent kind of a birth. Am I right in the timelines? Yeah.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Yeah.

Tahnee:

So I haven't seen your birth video of that, but I know that you have a teaching around that birth. And I guess I am trying to remember timelines, but I feel like you might've had Helio just before I had Leo, and then I remembered I'd read about Ignatius's birth and my son's birth. I felt like it was a little bit like that. And also now that I'm in hindsight, I'm reflecting a lot on, oh yeah, again, things around trying to control certain aspects of it. I can unpick that till the cows come home, save the timeline a little bit here.

 

But I wonder, was Ignatius' birth the catalyst in a way for you? And then I know you endured a lot of pain through your pregnancy with Helio, not to mention moving countries and various things. So just a few small things that happened, and even I feel like the nature of the energy at that time, I can't quite remember, but I feel like it might've been sort of peak COVID madness, and there was a lot of stuff happening. We had a flood in our area as well, so people were displaced. It was a very funny time to be having babies, I remember.

 

I mean, all times are funny to be having babies, but yeah, I wonder if there's a little thread that you pull through all of your births that kind of, and I'm not trying to imply that other people need to have nine children to then have an orgasmic birth, but I'm just for yourself reflecting, is it this kind of thread that you pulled that landed you there, or was it... Can you reflect on that now that you do have some hindsight? Because I know that you don't need to have the descent necessarily to have the peak, but my experience over my life has been those very deep, dark times have been probably the richest ground for the growth of myself later, much later, usually.

Tahnee:

Sometimes much, much later.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Much, much, much.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Oh, dear. Yes. Oh, gosh, yes. I mean, similarly to what I shared about my own birth, the birth of Ignatius, who's now four years old, it was such a descent into the underworld, and it was almost a terrifying birth. I would describe it as terrifying. I was really afraid during that experience and not even afraid of literal death so much as I just felt like, I don't know, it was a very dark experience, a very challenging experience, and just as you said, so rich and fascinating. But I had actually decided, not decided, I shouldn't say that, but I had considered the possibility after Ignatius was born that I was just done. There's enough babies here. Clearly, this is a sign that I should maybe not be doing this anymore. That thought crossed my mind, and then-

Tahnee:

Thoughts are great aren't they.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

I mean, my husband and I are at the point now where it's like, "Well, what's one more really? We already have this."

Tahnee:

You're in double digits.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

This crew, this zoo out here. So oh, dear. No, I'm being a little bit flippant. It's actually more profound than that. I do at this stage in my life, feel like my fertility is such a gift and nature will decide, and it has become easier and more fun and more joyful with each child. And so, there's lots to say about that. But at the point that I was at after Ignatius was born and I had had such an intense experience birthing him, and he was also just such a sweet, sweet baby. And so, that's another interesting... Yes, his personality absolutely reflects his birth, but not necessarily in the way that one might expect, not in that this sort of one-to-one relationship.

 

He actually is just an incredibly sweet, caring, lovely, very cautious, very thoughtful little boy who occasionally asks me these deep questions about the nature of life and death. And it startles me sometimes because I feel like that's part of the thread of who he is in relation to the way that he arrived. But anyway, I had toyed with the idea of maybe not having any more children in part because I was afraid, and this birth that I experienced with Iggy was scary. So when I became pregnant again, it was a very confronting actually. And then, I did go through this epic experience of physical dis-ease and pain that was quite a long and drawn out drama during that time. But what I also experienced during my pregnancy with Helio was recurring panic attacks that were rooted in the fear of birth.

 

And so, I was given this amazing opportunity to really do some very deep work around fear and death and pain. And that itself was, I have no doubt the catalyst for accessing a different way of knowing, which is what came to fruition in Helio's birth. I do feel like, oh, this is a very trendy term that we hear a lot now, but it's apt. I do feel like I was able to crack a code in my being that I now realise is, it's really very basic stuff actually. Like everything, birth is very basic. Birth is very simple. It's all very simple and I think a lot of what we're talking about right here, a lot of what we're circling around is that I don't really think that life is meant to be a struggle in the way that we've created for ourselves. Mothering is not meant to be the struggle that it's been engineered, I think, socially engineered to be, really.

Tahnee:

I want to hold to that to a sec because I am hearing it, I'm hearing myself say it, I'm witnessing it. I feel like it's motherhood, yes. But it's in so many ways I think this hardship, all this kind of narrative around it's a really big time in the world, or it's really hard time to have children. I don't know what it's like in Nicaragua, but it's really expensive here, cost of living's really high. Yeah, I feel like there's this constant, I guess there's an invitation to always jump into that space of me, me, me, me, life is hard, and we can choose, like you speak to so eloquently in the book and in your teachings is like, we can choose to not engage with that. But I think the subconscious programmes are so strong, and because they are below the level of our conscious awareness, they're almost reactive.

 

And I guess in terms, we'll keep it to mothering just because of where we are at right now, didn't talk about house prices, but this is something I hear about all the time. But yeah, I feel like, I remember growing up with a mother who told us that having us ruined her life, and I want to give grace to my mum that it wasn't about us so much, but she was supposed to go to LA and work in the movie industry, and then we came along and she couldn't go. And there was this very deep story. And I think also witnessing friends who had babies quite young and who did seem to lose their capacity to navigate the goals that they had in life and things like that. I think I can reflect on how I came to motherhood with a bit of a story or a bit of a programme around the struggle and the lack of motherhood and that it was taking from me and that I was going to lose myself in it.

 

And I've worked really hard on that over the last few years, and I feel like I'm in a very different place with that. But I still see it a lot and I can find myself sometimes getting into the pity party a little bit if someone starts that conversation and I'm like, "I don't want to stand out." And I will say like, "Okay, let's go with how bad it is." And then, I'm like, I don't like myself when I leave that. But I guess I'm sitting in like as someone who now has 9 children, maybe 10, how have you learned to reclaim the kind of what is really the most enriching?

 

One thing that came to me is I'm like, I actually think the reason they've told us it's so bad is because if we recognise how good it is, we're going to become so empowered that we're just basically going to not engage with any of this bullshit that they've created for us, like the corporate ladder and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm so happy in my garden with my kids. I don't really want to do anything. And then I'm like, "Does that make me terribly lazy? I might just a blight on the world." But yeah, that's where I'm sitting at the moment. I'm wondering if you can enlighten me …in this.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Well, some of the harshest feedback that I tend to receive, the most outrage that I've received, let's say on social media tends to be when I talk about how we actually have a choice whether or not to hook into the story that motherhood is depleting and denigrating and boring and stressful and awful, because I think that there really is an enormous temptation to wallow in self-pity and to villainize our children and play the victim of this terrible thing that is motherhood.

 

And I can relate to, actually, I have this image when you were speaking of my best friend's kitchen when I was little, when I was a kid. And her mother had a big sign in the sort of centre, front and centre in the kitchen that read, "I wanted to change the world, but then I had kids." I'd forgotten about that for ages, but it just came to my head as you were talking and what a terrible thing. And I really have gone through myself a process of actively reclaiming the joy of motherhood and myself and motherhood. And I think for me, that has a lot to do with having been a really bad mother. I've been a really terrible mother.

 

I think we all do have our moments, and that's also something that I feel is very important to bring into this conversation. I get a lot of feedback too from women who say things like, "Well, it's easy for you to... You're rich and you have a husband who I'm sure makes a tonne of money." He totally doesn't. I support our entire family actually, but anyway, the stories that are made up about any woman who dares to step outside of that narrative of victimhood in the context of mothering is actually quite, it's very revealing of the kind of programming that you're talking about. But ultimately, it really is a choice.

 

And actually, I spent a lot of years, so I've been a bad mother and a good mother and a terrible mother and a wonderful mother. And overall, I'm just a mediocre normal mother. But I spent a lot of years feeling very victimised by, I guess in a way, by motherhood. But I did a lot of self-sabotage in that area for a long time. And it was really through recognising that my life is a feat of my own creation. That I have created this, I have chosen all of these children. I've chosen the husband that I have. I've built this life through every choice that I've made. And that itself, as simple as it sounds, was really an enormous wake-up call.

 

And I realised that actually if there was some aspect of my reality that I wasn't enjoying, then I could either change that or continue to feel like a victim, which I realised was very delicious. I think it's very delicious to play the victim. I think most of us actually on some level, really enjoy it a lot. It's the way out. It's the antithesis of taking responsibility for ourselves. And if we're actually willing to take responsibility for ourselves, then that means that we have to acknowledge that we've created the situation we find ourselves in, and that we have the option of making different choices that can change our reality.

 

And I did actually change my life in every way. We changed countries, I changed my financial situation, but that began, all of those adjacent benefits began with me realising that I was actually choosing to not enjoy all of these various aspects of motherhood that at that time, I felt like I had no options around. I felt like I was stuck and I wasn't stuck. And I don't think any of us are actually really stuck. And that again, is a very, I think we prove the truth of that in our insistence on denying it, if that makes sense.

Tahnee:

I know what you mean. It's a funny little-

Yolande Norris-Clark:

It's a loop.

Tahnee:

Yeah, it's a loop. I find this because I so hear you and I agree with you. And then, there's this part of me that is manifestation people and that I just made a yucky face if you can't see me. And I read that-

Yolande Norris-Clark:

I caught it.

Tahnee:

And I read your book, and I love... Because look, I've done psychedelics. I've, like yourself, had peak experiences. They've been literally rerouted me into a whole nother direction. I also haven't gone back since I was pregnant with my daughter because I just haven't felt the call, I suppose. I'm a yoga teacher, but I feel a bit allergic to the whole thing. And sometimes I guess there's this part of me that always, it's so easy to bypass the amount of inquiry and responsibility it takes to actually what you've done, what I hear you describe and what I've witnessed in having an eye on your work for a while and things like that is you have to dig deep into yourself to actually make the shifts in consciousness to align to the flow of the things that are happening for you. It's not like a, I'm just going to think it differently and it's going to change.

 

And I guess I wonder if you can speak a little bit to, I know you've done a lot of practises and things. I know psychedelics have played a role in that for you. I know your husband and your relationship and your lovemaking have played a role in that for you. And I'm similarly in a relationship where I feel like I'm being met. I was saying to my husband the other night, I think we're nine years in. And I'm like, I still feel like I'm discovering you, and I don't, I've had a relationship that went for 11 years and that was not the case. So I've got that basis of comparison where I know what can be possible.

 

And again, I recognise that was a choice I made and he made to have that kind of relationship and we're choosing a different thing. But yeah, I also see in myself like I've been working at this for a long time as well, and I wonder if, I know I can hear the story in that, that it's hard work. And I can also reflect that, yeah, I think there is a nuance here around, it doesn't just come, but it does just come, if that makes sense. Anyway, I feel like we're going to go in a loop again. We're going to be titled The Loop. Come on a journey in circles with Tahnee and Yolande.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Yeah, I that's exactly what we're doing, Tahnee. Yeah, but it's true. There's also a loop, right? So yes, the tricky thing I think, and, I have learned this the hard way, is that there is no manifestation, just the process of bringing into reality something that we have conceived of. I mean, I think it's as simple as that. The term manifestation has, it's got a lot of baggage. There's a lot of energy around that term, but it's just I see it as simply a word that indicates bringing something to fruition. And that cannot happen without action. But I think the action is always proceeded by the vibrational orientation, absolutely. So the two are inseparable. And what I have come to know through my own experiences in life is that what I have, what I have created, that that is the evidence of what I'm committed to. So I encounter people all the time who will say things like manifestation doesn't work because I tried to manifest this, that or the other, and I didn't get it, and you didn't get it because you didn't get it.

Tahnee:

But on every-

Yolande Norris-Clark:

That's really all there is to it. And everything that I have achieved in my life has in the end come to fruition in a way that on some level feels effortless, but also has involved immense action. And both of those things are actually the result of that initial shift in consciousness whereby we actually align with the thing. And the proof of actually aligning with the thing is that the thing manifests, like, sorry, that's how it works. This is a law of the universe. And this is where I actually went through... One of my big blocks for a long time was that I felt like I was sort of a manifestation snob. The secret is nonsense and all of those goofy books, and they don't know what they're talking, and it's all so simplistic and it's like victim blamey.

 

And actually at this point, now all of them are real. All of that stuff is actually real. And the people who have allowed themselves to create what it is that they want, they will all attest to that. Anyone who's achieved something will attest to the fact that it requires a shift on the level of spirit, mind consciousness, but also on the physical plane. There's no way to extricate all of those elements having to be involved in the creation of anything, I think. And it's a painful thing to square if you don't have the thing that you think you want. But yeah, I have this great line that I wrote in my book …

Tahnee:

Can I highlight it?

Yolande Norris-Clark:

I'm trying to quote myself, and I can't remember. Anyway, it's somewhere in that book I wrote. Actually, I'm experiencing something that is sort of in this realm right now. I said to my husband the other day, "I'm working on another couple of books simultaneously right now." And I started whining my husband the other day and I said, "I don't even know how I wrote that stupid book. I can't even imagine writing a book. It just seems so incredibly hard. How does anyone write a book? I have to write a whole book now." He's like, "What is wrong with you? You've actually already done this." "But what are you talking..." So actually, I think that it's great to whine and be a victim. It feels really good, and I really strongly encourage everyone to just own it. Own when you need to feel like a big, huge, whiny, whiny baby victim and have your little outburst and then set that aside and move on.

Tahnee:

You say, and I don't know if this is not the bit probably, but you say, this is why we are entrained to expect and therefore condure pain during birth, in part to encourage and maintain dependency in victimhood, but also because pain experienced as the end point instead of as a vehicle for further transformation can inhibit the full effervescence of our spiritual portals and can dull our capacity to connect with the divine. And I think there's this piece that I see in myself when I'm whiny, I suppose, is I'm almost afraid of what I can do and what it might mean if I do it, I guess, to the sense of the self that I currently am invested in. And so, I think acknowledging that stage of the process is almost a part of transcending it, I guess, if that makes sense. Did that make sense?

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Yes. That's huge. I actually think that, again, back to this term, manifesting or manifestation. To manifest anything also involves becoming a different version of ourselves, taking any kind of leap into this unknown place of creation. It's actually very scary because we do have to then evolve into a different version of who we are and it's very comfortable to keep repeating the same nonsense over and over and over again. I don't know. It at least feels familiar.

Tahnee:

Yeah, and I guess the sense of safety, which I think as humans, we do orient toward, which I know is, yeah, it's a tricky thing. I am conscious of time and I mean, I know we could loop all day because we're very good at this. I did want to quickly touch on your German medicine salon, which is kind of the same but different of what we've been talking about. The reason I'm curious is I've been studying it in a really roundabout way, I think how these things find me. I met a woman online who sent me all of her notes that she'd four or five different, several hundred page documents. And anyway, and then it again, the consciousness of the world shifted and something everyone's talking about Germany medicine, which I feel like it was nowhere a few years ago, and you had this really wonderful salon on it that you had sort of the first part, I feel like maybe a couple of weeks ago. And you've just recently done another part, I think several days ago.

 

So I guess for some context, I've had lots of things in my life and I've always, the shamanic aspect of them has always been really curious to me because I look back and I see what we've been discussing, the sense of what I was committed to and the story I was committed to telling myself was manifesting as the physical experience I was having in my body at the time and then having children. And my children have never been to doctors, and I was raised that way as well. My mum was very much like... My brother and I joke that any injury, put a bandaid on it and it'll heal itself tomorrow kind of thing. And I remember hearing you speak that your mum saying, "Have an orange and a lie down." My mum was literally, "If you have a headache, you need to do a poo or drink a glass of water." Those are the two solutions to any headache.

 

And I sometimes hear myself say it to my daughter. She's like, "I don't feel well." I'm like, "Have you've done a poo?" And then I'm like, "Oh my, God. Who have I become?" But I guess it works sometimes, more times than you would expect actually. But I think there's this kind of lens and this sense of, look, I think there's a few things in Germany medicine I find really empowering that it's almost like what we've been talking about. You can almost close a loop and recognise that you are in control of these things that are occurring. And if you can come to an awareness of that, it limits the range of what you're going to have to deal with in your life, great. That most of what we see as disease is actually healing. That to me, I think is such an incredible thing, because it's like trusting in the process that's unfolding as opposed to suddenly panicking when you're at the stage of healing and then creating more issues.

 

And then, I think as parents, recognising how, I know for me, my daughter, for example, when she first got eczema was when I weaned her. It was a couple of months after I weaned her and I weaned her in a fairly violent way. I went to America for three weeks and came back. And so, she was like, and would you believe had a separation conflict? And I was all like, "Oh, my God. It must be the mangoes she's eating and she's having a histamine response at the time." Anyway, I've now been like, "Oh, I see what was happening there." And it's been interesting having a second child and having this knowledge now and how little we've had to deal with consequentially with him because I'm more attuned to how these little babies' energy bodies work and their relationship to us.

 

So I wonder, I'm going to send the link to this in the show notes and anyone who wants to check this out because it's available for purchase forever or until the internet breaks. But I guess as a mom, I remember you spoke in Portal around sending energy to your children, and I see that as one of my roles in our family is really tending our children through their illnesses and growth and various booboos, I suppose. And I wonder how has parenting opened you up to that kind of self-healing capacity, or has it been something that has been there for a long time for you? And then as a mom, do you have any practical tips or anything you want to share just in the last few minutes here?

 

You do not have to go too deep, but yeah, I guess because I feel like one of the biggest panic points I hear from other moms is around illness and trusting it. They're like, "Oh, my God. My kids are sick all the time, and what do I do about it and what herbs can I give them?" And I mean, I sell herbs, but I'm also like, "You guys, it's not the herbs." The herbs represent to me like an energetic shift that occurs when you partake in a plant medicine and they imbue with a certain consciousness that is really helpful, but it's also about embodying that. Anyway, I won't talk about herbs too much, but I'm really interested in your thoughts as to mom's panicking about childhood illness and what we do with this.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

I mean, you just said so much and I agree with everything, especially what you just mentioned about herbs. I think plant medicine is so powerful, but not as a direct antidote or a direct remedy. I think it's much more about the energetic experience of what kind of properties that we are available to that the plant can provide in a number of ways. I mean, this is a huge topic in the circles that I engage with. And I think this is relevant on a number of levels. So first, one of the most incredibly powerful realisations that I've had through studying the work of Hamer, who is the originator of what's often called Germany medicine. I don't use that term myself because I am not an official practitioner of that specific form of interpreting his work.

 

But one of the most powerful realisations that I've had through studying his work is as you said, that the symptom itself is the evidence of the healing having already taken place or being in process. And so, that on its own has completely shifted my relationship to seeing my children experiencing a variety of symptoms. And then, the resultant shift in understanding that is that I'm no longer afraid. I'm not afraid of them experiencing a rash or a fever or an ear ache or what we call a cold. And the fact that I'm no longer afraid, that itself completely shifts and changes the relational atmosphere of our home.

 

And as mothers, we are at the centre of this vortex of family. We are setting the tone, we're creating the environment that our children are living into. And we're also, we are establishing the lens of subconscious belief that our children are seeing themselves through as well. And I think that alone is very, very significant. Fear is one of the most potent ways that we end up hooking into what can become numerous intersecting compounding biological conflicts, which can then give rise to further symptoms. And I think a lot of the issues that children tend to have, a lot of the forms of what we understand as illness or dis-ease that children experience are, I don't even think necessarily a result of initial catalyst so much as this recurring fear loop vortex that we are, on so many levels, encouraged to fall into as parents. I mean, there is so much programming.

 

So a lot of what it is to allow our bodies and our children's bodies to complete a healing cycle is recognising the ways that we have subconsciously hooked into these various dis-ease programmes and then attending to that. And there's lots of different ways that I think we can attend to that and that has to do with family culture and predisposition and our underlying constitution on a number of levels. And that's what I talk about in this salon in more specific ways. And it's difficult to talk about this without, I think, coming across as a little bit of a fruitcake.

 

And it can seem quite complicated as well. I think it can seem very convoluted and obscure. But the fundamental message that I want to introduce people to at the very least is that our bodies are always oriented towards healing. That's actually happening when we have a fever or when a scab starts to emit pus or when we have some kind of infection. This is actually the healing process. And so, most of these childhood ailments are actually not even anything to make a fuss about. You should just go have a nap and eat an orange and have a poo. It'll be just fine. And I don't want to make light of this because I know that it can really be very, very difficult to witness our children suffering. But I think there's a lot to be said for the experience of allowing our children to move through the process of the healing.

 

And for us as mothers, to entrain ourselves in a positive way, to be the wise witness and the source of grounding and the... We as mothers actually are the source of, we create the healing balm that can support our children through that process in a variety of specific ways, but also simply in our bearing, in the way that we carry ourselves, in the way that we apprehend what's going on, in the way that we communicate, in the way that we use our word medicine with our children when they're in a state of transition, which also is what a lot of so-called childhood illnesses are really about. It's that children are transitioning to new stages of being, and that can be a source of biological conflict too.

 

And none of it is wrong, none of it is bad. My children have undergone some pretty intense healing cycles, and in each of those cases specifically, the more intense the healing cycle, the more I can see that they have now graduated into a new way of being. And often, that's accompanied with a real elevation in their language capacity or their insight or their motor skills or what have you. And so, I think one of the core concepts behind this self-healing revolution that's happening in the world right now and that's very true, is that we actually don't have to be afraid of our biological processes. And it's really, this is where the concept of self-healing, spontaneous self-healing and spontaneous birth, I mean, it's one and in the same really. They're very much connected.

Tahnee:

Yeah, I've heard you speak and I loved how you phrased it of almost, I feel like I can't remember it now, but it was like an ambivalence toward your children when they're ill. No, but I know I knew exactly what you meant because it sounds really harsh when you try and explain it to someone, because almost the good mother worries. And I mean, again, this is all in air quotes, but there's this kind of thing that if you aren't fearful for your child, you don't care about them. And I've really sat in myself sometimes when I'm like, wow, I'm just so nonchalant about this purported dramatic illness my daughter has. And then, she said to me the other day, and I thought it was so poignant, she said, "Mom," because I said something to her, I'm like, "Darling, you know your body heals." And she goes, "Yeah, but I want you to do it for me, mom. I want you to fix me."

 

And I sat with that with her and it was so beautiful because she just articulated it in this way that I was like, "I so get it. I get it. I get you. I know, I hear you." And this is why we all do what we do because they want someone else to do it for us. And I was like mouth of babes. I was just such a profound teaching and I just kind of sat with her and held her. I didn't really say anything to her. But yeah, I felt like that was such a, I really recognised myself in her and that desire to have God, mommy, anyone come and save us from ourselves.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

This is actually amazing. What an incredible daughter, what an incredible insight, what self-awareness. That's so beautiful and so real. And I think you've actually touched on something that I've been trying to grasp, we're trying to articulate, and that is that I think that the way that we really facilitate the completion of the healing cycle for our children is by combining this idea of loving indifference, which is what you were mentioning before, which I actually think is very powerful. Along with a willingness to really to provide our children with the kind of validation and attention that they're actually looking for, which is not really for someone to come in and actually fix, but to feel like they're being held and loved through the process. And it's so simple.

 

And the ways that I do that for my children are that I set aside any temptation to hook into the drama of it. So I'm not going to do that, but I am going to be present with them and I'm going to bring them water and I'm going to lay my hands on them and use the healing power that I have in my hands, which literally every person has. And I'm going to transpose my energy and use the warmth of my body to ensure that they know that they are held and adored and safe in the world. And that's really at the root of all forms of healing cycles that we go through. This is the biological conflict distilled, and that's the sense that for whatever reason, we no longer feel safe in the world. We feel like we are at risk, we're in a state of threat and that there's some kind of threat to our identity or our personhood or our security or our territory or whatever it is. But ultimately, it comes down to do we belong? And that's really the role of the mother is to always-

Tahnee:

Yes you do.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Yes you do. Of course, you do. And you belong to me and I belong to you, and your body's doing exactly what it needs to do, and you're so safe that you can let go of this sometimes misplaced story of the payoff. And I think that's another big aspect of how we end up being really committed to this identity of being sick, is that there's always a sense of, I mean, I actually think there is always a payoff. Even when we're little, sometimes the payoff is that you get your mom's attention, and that's a very real thing. That's not something to dismiss and that's not part of the loving indifference. Loving indifference is it's not indifference to the child, it's indifference to the idea that there's actually anything wrong, because there's really nothing wrong. Our bodies are always revealing the truth to us.

Tahnee:

Well, and I think what I've really learned is it's an invitation to listening and to kind of maybe like you're talking about before with family culture or where are we. I guess I've reflected, especially on the earlier times with my daughter and how we were making choices that were affecting her and then what that would manifest as. And I'm like, okay, so to now insulate ourselves from unnecessary experiences, we can make a few tweaks to our family culture, and that has been in witnessing her and hearing her and making choices to align to supporting her needs so she doesn't have to be sick to get my attention.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Absolutely.

Tahnee:

That's been stuff that we've used to flesh out our family culture, which is always evolving too. I don't want to say we have anything worked out that would be a lie, but yes.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Yeah, definitely.

Tahnee:

Well, I want to thank you so much for your time. I hope you can go lie down because you're so pregnant. But I wanted to just for anyone who isn't familiar with your work, Yolande is active on Instagram under bauhauswife, which we'll put the link to that in our social media. She also has a great website and that has lots of awesome content on it, but also a membership area, courses you teach for the Free Birth Society, which also has courses. I feel like you have a lot of offerings. You have these salons, you have several workshops which are really great. I've bought them, but I haven't had a chance to get through them all. But I'm one of these people that buys a lot of courses and then.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Oh, God. Me too, actually.

Tahnee:

I'm glad. I have the best of intentions and I do watch them eventually, but sometimes I'm like, "Wow, I bought that three years ago."

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Yeah, better check it out.

Tahnee:

But yeah, I have a Kajabi full of your workshop.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Yeah, I've got lots of stuff going on, but I wanted to actually offer you, hopefully this can work with your audience, but I am launching a live experience of my online course Portal.

Tahnee:

Oh, my goodness.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Which is a companion to the book. So I would love to offer you to give or-

Tahnee:

Yeah, we can do that. Yeah, we could promote.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Contest or whatever, people promote whatever. So two spaces in the upcoming live experience of portal for your people, and you can share that however you'd like, I think. Yeah, I don't know how these things work, but thank you.

Tahnee:

Well, we usually run a competition so we can do something to that effect.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Yes. Perfect, perfect. Yeah, so that's actually, the live course is beginning in February, so I have to have a baby first, but that'll be great because then I'll be freshly postpartum and I'll be able to share my new birth story and yeah, I've had really very positive feedback for that programme and so it's happening in February, so two spaces for your audience.

Tahnee:

Thank you so much. That is incredibly generous. And I also want to just say the first of hopefully many books, Portal, it's really incredible. I feel like I read it, I was one of your people that bought the early version, I guess, to get the PDF, I think it was before you'd even maybe finished editing it. And so, I read it then and then I read it again just in preparation for talking to you, and I was like, "I feel like you could read this book every year for the rest of your life and you would get something out of it." I'm not blowing smoke up your ass. I feel like very, it's almost like if you could take out all the bullshit of spirituality and put the, what everything's pointing toward, I feel like there's this real, yeah, I can't quite... Sorry. I'll write a Google review when I get my, or an Amazon review when I get my words.

 

But yeah, it's like you're pointing to this thing that is I think at the core of every tradition, but all this stuff gets flopped around it that is completely unnecessary and it's one of the truest fingers pointing to God, I guess. It's the only way I can explain it that I've experienced and I feel like, yes, you've framed it up in the lens of birth, but I've actually sent my husband lots of photos of pages because being that annoying wife, you might just want to read this bit. It's really good.

 

But yeah, in terms of sovereignty, in terms of self-responsibility, in terms spirituality, in terms of... Yeah, anyway, it's very good. It's very, very good, so congratulations. I don't know how you wrote it either, but you did a great job. I get the sense that you channelled it. I've had the experience myself of writing something on a high that lasted for the birth of the thing and then disappeared completely and left me vacant and I suspect there was an aspect of that in this and it raised like spirit was with you, but yeah, it's really good.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Tahnee:

Thanks, Yolande.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

And do write that Amazon review.

Tahnee:

I will, yeah. I will try and write it…

Yolande Norris-Clark:

... down to 4.7 here.

Tahnee:

Yeah, I was thinking about the other night, I'm like, I got to write something, but I feel like a lot of things that are meaningful leave me like that, like wordless in a way. And I think that's why I'm impressed you've got so many words in here. I'm sure part of you was like, "How do you even talk about this stuff?" Maybe I'm assuming. But yeah, that was, anyway, that's been my experience. I'm going to wrap it up, but thank you so much. We'll link to all of your beautiful work in the show notes. If anyone wants to connect with Yolande, you can do that through the links we'll be sharing. And thank you again for your time and blessings for your next birth.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

Thank you so much.

Tahnee:

Thank you for everything you do.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

It's been so fun talking with you. Thanks.

Tahnee:

Yeah, you too.

Yolande Norris-Clark:

You take good care. Bye.