Today I speak with one of my best friends, Amy Nowlin. Amy is a married mother of 5, a writer and musician. Amy asks what reproductive sovereignty looks like on the procreative end (rather than the abortion side) particularly for women in longterm heterosexual relationships and shares her journey from birthing in the hospital, to birthing at home with licensed midwives to then with her 5th baby, birthing freely, unassisted. Amy decided to protect her postpartum bubble after 4 bouts of postpartum rage and depression and recalls questioning the rage she felt as her newborn baby was passed around to 12 different family members. She now acknowledges this as a healthy mammalian instinct but at the time remembers thinking she was just being "too hormonal" or "too sensitive."

Amy describes the societal pressure to bounce back and do it all as a metaphorical anorexia, one of restriction, the practice of internalizing "receiving as a shortcoming," and the "I can do anything you can do, bleeding" mindset, where you might invisiblize yourself and needs as a woman. This she notes is the challenge that comes along with starting to receive from a place of biological vulnerability. The transformation she went through after prioritizing her mental and spiritual health in her 5th postpartum certainly paid off and Amy believes receiving and resting while bleeding during menstruation is a training ground for recovery after birth. We also discuss the pitfalls of constantly looking outside ourselves, for rules, diets and protocols, how Amy parents teenage boys and the bizarre phenomena of men teaching women how to be "more in the feminine."

75. A New Look at Reproductive Sovereignty, Raising Boys & Recovering Our Instincts │ Amy Nowlin