Growing into Village: Birth, with Mary Jackson
In this conversation with renowned midwife and pre- and perinatal somatic psychology guide, Mary Jackson, we explore our earliest imprints and the impact they have on us as we grow.
About Mary Jackson:
Mary Jackson has been married since 1987, is the mother of 2 children who were born at home, and has been featured in 11 books and 5 movies. Mary has been a home birth Midwife since 1975. She has attended over 2,500 births in the Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Ojai, California areas and is now attending the home births of her second generation of babies. She is a certified Castellino Process Workshop Leader and co-teaches the Castellino Pre and Perinatal Training. In the first year after incorporating these pre and perinatal approaches in her midwifery practice her home to hospital transfer rate went from 20% to 6%. Mary is participating in cutting edge research about imprints that occur around the time of conception, pregnancy and birth and how they affect us throughout the rest of our lives and what it takes to heal from challenges in these experiences. She is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and leads trainings throughout the world.
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Megan Leatherman:
Welcome to A Wild New Work, a podcast about how to divest from capitalism and the norms of modern work and step into the soulful calling of these times we live in, which includes the call to rekindle our relationship with the earth. I'm Megan Leatherman, a mother to two small kids, writer, amateur ecologist, and vocational guide. I live in the Pacific Northwest and I'm your host today.
Well, hi friend and welcome. Thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited to share today's episode with you. This is our second episode of the spring season, which is on growing into village. And we're going to start at the very beginning at the beginning of life and how human beings are conceived and born and what happens after birth. And I'll be talking to someone really interesting who knows a lot about this from a, I think, different perspective. And I'm really excited to share this conversation with Mary Jackson with you. This conversation is about something very tender.
It's like a little, you know, spring shoot that's coming up that is worthy of a lot of care and carefulness. We're gonna be talking about birth and gestation and what it was like to have been born and what it's like, you know, for babies that perhaps we have given birth to. And, you know, we've all been born and the Western Medical Industrial Complex has really done a number on what that journey has been like. And there's a lot of repair needed. And if we're going to grow into village, which I hope one day we do, we're going to need to learn how to mend some of this hurt and patterning that begins at the very, very beginning of our journey as a human. And, you know, for those of you who perhaps, you know, wanted to give birth or have given birth or have experienced stillbirth or, you know, have chosen abortion, this conversation might bring up a lot.
And I encourage you to just go slow and be as sweet to yourself as you can. And I do want to say at the outset that Mary and I will talk about repair in the conversation. It gets a little further down, but she sprinkles it all throughout that there are always opportunities for repair and healing and they're very simple. And so in this moment, you you can bring that to yourself. And so I hope this conversation is nothing but affirming and generative and as eye-opening and awe-inspiring as it was for me.
So let me tell you a little bit about my guest today, Mary Jackson. Mary Jackson has been married since 1987, is the mother of two children who were born at home and has been featured in 11 books and 5 movies. Mary has been a home birth midwife since 1975. She has attended over 2,500 births in the Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Ojai California areas and is now attending the home births of her second generation of babies.
She is a certified Castelino process workshop leader and co-teaches the Castelino pre and perinatal training. In the first year after incorporating these pre and perinatal approaches in her midwifery practice, her home to hospital transfer rate went from 20 % to 6%. Mary is participating in cutting edge research about imprints that occur around the time of conception, pregnancy and birth and how they affect us throughout the rest of our lives and what it takes to heal from challenges in these experiences. She is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and leads trainings throughout the world.
So I was so honored to get the chance to speak with Mary and share this conversation with you. And we were actually introduced by a listener and friend of the show, Megan Schoneberger, who has tuned into this podcast for a while now, and we have since become friends. And Megan is an incredible person herself, a singer, songwriter, energy worker, and she's actually training with Mary directly in this really important work. So Megan, I'm so grateful that you introduced us and so grateful for the work that you and Mary are doing. I will share Megan's website in the show notes as well. It's CosmicHarmonyHealing.com. I encourage you to check out Megan's work and Mary's work and I'll put all of the links you need in the show notes.
I just have a couple of really quick announcements today. First is that there are a lot of events and classes coming up on my calendar that you are totally invited to. I hope you'll come. There's a fair amount of in-person events here in the Portland, Oregon area, and two seasonal classes that I'll be teaching in May and June online. And there are some other ways that you can go deeper into this work on the website, like signing up for the weekly newsletter.
There's some free resources and other ways that we can connect. So you can check all of that out at awildnewwork.com. And I'm starting to dream up some other ways to support you this summer too. And so there will be some more info coming out about that soon too. If you listen to the show, appreciate the show, enjoy the show, I hope you will also support the show. One thing I'm learning right now as things get...maybe more volatile or intense is how much I need the village around this work. You I want to make this work as available to all who need it, you know, as I possibly can without pay walls and transactions. And I also need to support myself and contribute to my family's needs. And part of that is absolutely money. And those two things can be really hard to reconcile without some external support. And that's where your financial contributions can come in. So when you pitch in to support the show, whether it's once or monthly, it really is making it possible for me to live and be okay, and also to keep making the classes and podcast and newsletter as available as I possibly can.
Almost all of my work now is available on sliding scale. And a lot of people are utilizing that, which is wonderful and that's my intention. And for it to work, we're gonna need some outside help. So if you have the means to pitch in again once or monthly is great. I encourage you to do so and it's possible that you'll contribute and maybe in the future you'll need a sliding scale class spot or a coaching spot that's sliding scale or trade and I welcome that. I think the more of us that can be involved in this work making it possible, the better and I'm so grateful for your support. So you can go to buymeacoffee.com slash meganleatherman to contribute what you can if that feels aligned for you and I want to say thank you for considering it.
And I want to say a shout out to recent supporters, Steph and Madeline. Thank you so much for pitching in and helping make this possible. If you can't pitch in financially right now, that's also totally okay. One thing that's super supportive and that I'd like to make a clear, explicit ask for today is that you rate and review the show either on Spotify or Apple podcasts. This is helpful for potential listeners, but also for potential guests.
When I go and invite someone to the show, they will go look at the link I send them, which is often Apple, and they can see if the show has recent reviews or ratings. And that gives people a sense of the scope of the podcast and if people are engaged and like it. So that would be super helpful if a few new reviews could come in. So I wanted to make that ask as well and say thank you in advance.
All right, so with that, I'm gonna take us through our opening invocation and then share this amazing conversation with you all. So wherever you are, I encourage you to just take a second to notice your body.
This incredible body that was born. literally grew in water, in a womb, inside a human being, and you did the work of growing and being born and whatever that experience was like for you. I am so glad that you were born. You are meant to be here because you're here and I hope you can hold your heart today and feel gladness in yourself that you were born and welcome yourself to this earth. It's incredible and I'm really glad that you're here.
May each of us be blessed and emboldened to do the work we're meant to do on this planet. May our work honor our ancestors known and unknown, and may it be in harmony with all creatures that we share this earth with. I express gratitude for all of the technologies and gifts that have made this possible, and I'm grateful to the Multnomah, Cowlitz, Bands of Chinook, and Clackamas tribes, among many others, who are the original stewards of the land that I'm on.
Well, Mary, thank you so much for being here today. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
Mary Jackson:
Thank you, Megan. Thank you for inviting me and thank you to all the listeners out there who joined us. Thank you for spending this time with us today.
Megan Leatherman:
Maybe a good place to start would be hearing a little bit about your pathway into becoming a midwife. What was that like? And you've been doing it a long time. And what has that path been like for you?
Mary Jackson:
Yeah, it's been a long one. This is my 51st year of being a midwife. I can't believe I can say I've been doing something for 51 years because I'm only 35. I feel 35, but that is not the truth. Yeah, so it was an interesting journey because at the time I became a midwife there in California, there was no law about midwifery.
And there were no schools nearby that you could go to to be trained. We had to go to like Kentucky or England or India somewhere afar. And I did not have the means to do that. And there was a lay midwife, Louise Scott, who came to California from New Mexico. And a friend of mine, Ephraim, introduced me to her. Ephraim French.
I became her student and apprentice. So she taught classes and I went to births and prenatals and postpartums with her. And I learned through hands-on experience. And when she left town, the women started asking me if I would attend their births because it was a time when it was back in the seventies when birth was in the hospital. Women were being put to sleep and the babies were being pulled out with forceps pretty routinely. And it was very challenging for them to get a different experience than that if they were birthing in the hospital. So people started asking me, I come to, would I be their midwife? And I said, well, first of all, I am not a midwife. And they said, well, you know more than us and we're gonna give birth to our babies at home anyway, so will you come? And I said, well, I know how to listen to heart tones. I know how to you know, tie and cut the cord.
I've never handled a hemorrhage or a resuscitation, but yes, I could be there and help you decide if you need to transfer. And so that's how I began. I don't recommend it. But at that time, there were like 300 women in California who were doing that very same thing because the women were really fed up with the routine care in the hospital.
And glad to say, you know, things have changed quite a bit in the hospital and evolution is always good. Yeah. So I apprenticed with her and when she left, I started attending women just with what I knew. And these amazing people would show up in town, new doctors who would start to work at the hospital. And then they heard there were midwives in town and they would get in touch with me and my partner, Debbie Lowry. And ask if there was anything we wanted to learn. And so they taught us how to give injections and start IVs and, you know, how to use oxygen on newborns and how to suction their nose and throat and many things, many, many things.
And so we put together our own training experience, created workshops and invited doctors and midwives to come and share whatever their expertise was with us. And many midwives would gather and we would you know, learn and learn from each other and from the experts. So some time in some years into my practicing, the law changed in California and they made it illegal to practice midwifery without a license. They considered it practicing medicine without a license. And I had a whole bunch of women that I was following prenatally and I kept providing their care and going to births.
And at one of the births, I called 911 because the baby came out and wasn't breathing right away. So whenever that happened, I always called 911 to have them come just in case. And so I did call 911 and I told the person calling, know, tell them we don't need the police or the firemen or we get 10 men coming into the room of this freshly born baby and vulnerable mother and partner.
She told them, you know, send the paramedics but don't tell the police or the firemen. And there's a baby in trouble, but she didn't say it was a newborn and that was a birth. And the dispatcher thought it was a child abuse situation. So we got the police and the firemen and everyone, the paramedics. And you know, when the paramedics came, the baby had been breathing fine and that was not a problem. But they wondered who I was and was asking me.
if I provided prenatal care, if I was the midwife. And I was very hesitant to answer because it was now illegal to do that. And so because I wasn't answering their questions, they said they would have to take me to jail. And so they handcuffed me and put me in the back of their car. And before we left the house, I said, don't I get one call? So I called my midwifing partner, who was at another birth who I had been with all night before coming to this other one. And I said, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna make it to your house for teaching today. And she was like, what do you mean, Aaron's pushing, you need to come. And I said, because I'm going to jail. so, I went there and had that experience, which was very unpleasant. And then after about five hours, they came and unlocked the door and said I could go.
And so I got to leave and they kept all my tools. But one of my dads who was coming up to, he bought me all new tools. So I got everything replaced. And after that experience, the state hired me to help write a challenge test so that nurses who had had a lot of birth experience could take the challenge test and get licensed to be a midwife.
But they wouldn't let me take the test until I became an RN. So I spent about four years becoming an RN and then requested to take the test, but every time I applied, they were adding on new requirements. And eventually another challenge test came available and I sat that one the first time it was offered. my license number is 24. I was in that first core group of midwives and that was 51 years ago, yeah, 50 years ago or so.
Megan Leatherman:
Wow, what a like, origin story. And of course, the irony of the state using your wisdom about birth and then not allowing you to sit the test and go through these hoops. That makes sense and is unfortunate, but I'm glad you stuck with it and did what you had to to keep serving in this way. One of the things that sounds like you've been really involved in the last, I don't know how many years, but is this - I want to make sure I get it right. Is it pre and perinatal psychology?
Mary Jackson:
Yeah, and somatic
Megan Letaherman:
Okay, and the Castellino Foundation training. And it sounds like that's a really beautiful evolution of your midwifery practice. And I'm wondering if you could tell us what it is and the impact that it's having and yeah, whatever you want to say to help get us oriented.
Mary Jackson:
Yeah, so how we see it in this world of pre- and perinatal somatic psychology is that not only are we impacted by the early experiences we have as young children, but even way before that. So we're looking at preconception, at conception, gestation, birth, and the early years of life as the place that's hugely formative for who we become as human beings. And the latest research in psychology and neurobiology indicate that our experiences during these stages leave imprints that affect our long-term physical, emotional, and mental health. And they affect our perceptions, how we view the world. Do we see it as safe or unsafe? How we view ourselves?
Are we lovable, or unlovable? Are we wanted? Are we not wanted? Do we belong? It impacts how we go into relationship with ourself and with others. But it affects so many things, those early, early experiences, how we perceive everything in our lives. So in the Casolino training, we are supporting people to really integrate their earliest experiences so that they don't have to be so much in reaction to certain situations, but they can choose a response from their adult self rather than pulling up a survival strategy that they learned at a very young age. And so in the training, we have nine modules and we just start from the beginning of life. First, we teach centering skills.
And then we go into looking at our conception and there's a whole module on conception. And from there we go to bonding and attachment and then birth. And then we look at chemical imprints and surgical imprints that may have happened. Double binds and then the very last module is integration. And so in the training, everybody learned to build new skills and whatever the work is they do and the training usually consists of therapists, health practitioners, parents, people who are wanting to add this work to whatever it is they're doing in their lives. So we start with the students working one-on-one and then we build it to be instead of dyads, go to triads and small group skills so that the graduates can sit with families and support families.
to integrate their birth experience, their conception experiences with themselves and with their children. And when we're able to do that, it gives us more freedom of choice. Yeah, so skills that we include, often include in the work is paying attention to the energetic field that we're sitting in with individuals or families or groups.
Most of us are skilled in craniosacral therapy. A lot of us have taken somatic experiencing training, the work of Peter Levine. We teach group processing and other empathy skills. And I learned this work from Ray Castellino. And he was originally a chiropractor and a polarity therapist and a craniosacrotherapist.
He studied with Dr. Stone, who was an osteopath and a really important teacher to Ray, and studied with William Emerson. He was a student of his first, and then they became peers and worked together. And he worked with Franklin Seals and Stan Graf and lots of people. And he passed in 2020 in December and left the business to his wife, Sandra Castellino and Tara Blasco and myself. So we've carried on the trainings and other workshops. have a lot of graduate programs and small group workshops called Womb Surrounds where we take four to six people for about a five day period. And they each get a turn, like a three hour turn to work deeply on whatever topic they are trying to change in their lives.
Megan Leatherman:
I would love to hear like an example of how either like your own experience with this or someone's story, how their conception experience informed their lives and their birth. Like, yeah, could you give us an example of how this could play out? You know, I feel like people are probably on board with understanding how our birth experiences impact us, but it's like preconception, we're not even in a body yet or in conception. It's so little, it's, for those of us who are new to this, could you give us, yeah, maybe an example of like how someone's preconception or conception experience and then birth changes them or makes them who they are.
Mary Jackson:
Yeah. So for preconception, you so how does a baby record something before they even have a brain? Like that sort of blows my mind that that's even possible. But I sat with people who, you know, have remembered things that were going on in their family and checked it with their parents. And it was just spot on about what was going on that there was a lot of, you know, chaos and upheaval and you know, somebody had an affair or, know, whatever it was. And this adult now looking back realizes that there's information that he had that he had never been told. And like there was a woman I worked with in a session with her as an adult and she came and her father had been an alcoholic and..
She swore that she would never marry an alcoholic. And he was actually under the influence of alcohol when she was conceived. And so the history of alcohol was there. And then she came in with a sperm that had been influenced by alcohol and then the egg. And the mother wasn't drinking at that time, but there was a layer of alcohol. And so in her very earliest experience, there's a sensation of that alcohol being there. And when she grew up, she married two men who were both alcoholics that she found out only after she had married them that it was hidden. And she came to have a session with me and we just traced that line of alcoholism back to her father and that it was there before her.
But when she was conceived, there was love between her mother and her father, but also there was that the energetic presence of the alcohol. And so they were sort of coupled together. And so when she would meet a man who was a secret drinker, she would recognize something in them where she so knew how to do the dance of how to be with an alcoholic.
Walk on eggshells at certain points and to, you know, have a strong boundary at certain places and, you know, different things that she learned growing up. And when she discovered where that was coming from and what her earliest experience was around that, it made her a lot more conscious with the next relationship that she went in to. And so she decided she wanted to bring this person to me to meet.
And this time she did not marry an alcoholic and 10 years later she was still married to that person. But the influence actually began before conception that that was already present in there. And it was not something she caused or created, but it was there in the family history and also the ancestral history. That's just one example.
Megan Leatherman:
Yeah, thank you. Last time we talked, you told me about those kind of layers of imprinting that a soul or consciousness goes through before they're actually in the womb. Could you walk us through kind of the imprints that happen on this journey?
Mary Jackson:
Yeah, so first of all, you know, as I talk, I just want to say to anyone listening that it's never too late to heal. That we can still integrate our earliest experiences at any age in our lives. The closer to the incident that we work on it, the easier the resolve is, but it can really be done at any time. as I'm talking, if anything touches you in a way that makes you feel guilt or shame, just know it's not ever too late to work on what happened in the past. And when we do that, it impacts both what came before us, our ancestral line, as well as the children that will come in the future. So some women or men come in and they're very determined to stop a pattern that's been coming down through the ancestral line.
And they work on themselves and they find there's ripples that went to their parents, their grandparents, their children and forward. So it's pretty amazing how that works. starting with the beginning of life, I think a lot of therapies will begin working with people from birth on and their young childhood years. And we do really start way before conception. And the way that our world looks at this is that there is consciousness that exists before our form exists. And so there's, we see it as there's a place where we hang out before our conception, wherever that may be. And as we're coming into physical form, it's like we're coming from the ethers out there somewhere.
And the first thing we connect to is this field of our ancestral lines. There's an energetic field that we come into contact with that gives us a lot of information from whatever it was they lived through. And there's both the ancestors of the body who carried the sperm and the body who carried the eggs. So both sides have those ancestral lines.
We have contact with that as we're coming in. And then there's the genetics of what those people learn, what they needed to do to survive. And we get a lot of information downloaded from the genes as well. And then as we keep coming toward conception, the next field we run into is the energetic field of the parents. And so, you know, it might be a couple who is female and female or female and male, whatever the arrangement is, but somewhere there has to be a sperm that that part of our biology comes from. And so the field of what mom and the father hold has another impact on us already, even before we're conceived. And then we come into the conception where the egg and the sperm unite and
It's such a powerful experience and can happen in so many different ways these days. It can happen naturally, just natural conception. It can happen with assistance, like assisted insemination. It could happen in vitro, where the sperm and egg meet in a petri dish. Each of those ways of coming in has a different impact on how we perceive things and what it felt like somatically to be conceived in one way or another. And emotionally, we may have been planned and wanted. We may have been a big surprise. We may have the experience of one of our parents, you know, having abortion ideation about, you know, if they should keep us or not. That has a huge impact.
The feeling if we're welcomed, not welcomed, all of that leaves us with a certain perception about ourselves. Are we lovable or not? Are we worth it or not? That happens, you know, in conception. And then another very impactful place is when our parents discover that we're there. So there can be a lot of different responses, again, are we wanted or not wanted. When we implant into our mother's womb,
Like is there health there? Is there reception there? Can we lean into the lining of her uterine wall and be received with ease and love? Or is there a shock even from the body, not even the mom consciously knowing we're there yet, but just the sensation? Like what did it feel like when we implanted into that soft place? And was there toxicity of, you know, was she drinking or using drugs or smoking? Did she have a healthy diet or not? All of that has an impact. And then the discovery is huge. And anything that happens through gestation as well, you know, so if there's great love for the mother and a lot of support and, you know, abundance of, you know, healthy eating and enough financial support, the mother can sort of have an easier time through the pregnancy.
Compared to if she is really struggling with those things and having to work hard, the baby is already learning in the womb. So they're learning, say, if the mother is high-stressed and working a lot and maybe has a few other children. And when she gets tired, there's not really the choice to stop what she's doing and lie down or have a nap. She has to keep going. And so when she pushes through that first wave of tired, it releases the stress hormones, which goes into the amniotic fluid and the baby marinates in that. And if she's supported and, you know, able to rest and take care of herself, then the baby learns a whole other way to respond to fatigue in that body because that mother can lie down and the baby feels okay when we feel that stress release of the hormones, we go horizontal, we rest for a bit, we get rejuvenated, then we get up and we move through the rest of our day. And so it's a very visceral experience for the prenatal, the baby in the womb. So when the baby is born, the one who was in the mother who was resourced,
They have a pretty easy time of going to sleep and even, you know, they'll lie down on the rug and just take a nap when they're tired or, you know, go to bed easily in the night. And they know how to resource themselves. The baby who was grown in a lot of stress may repeat that pattern of going, going, going, going with no pause.
And when that first wave comes, you push through and the second wave comes, you push through. And then if the mother at her third wave and exhausted is able to let herself rest, then the child knows, when we're that tired, then we can give ourselves permission to stop what we're doing and lie down.
So they're learning the pacing of how to pace themselves through lives. They're learning so much. You know, it used to be thought that babies were not sensitive. They weren't aware. They couldn't feel and they couldn't remember. And I don't know how anyone could hold a newborn and not realize how sensitive they are. So what we're knowing now is that
Babies are very sensitive beings. They are quite aware. They are fully conscious beings and they remember. There's a way that they record all their experiences. So before we knew this, birth was more mechanical and technical and they didn't really consider the emotional or spiritual experience of babies being born, but just sort of the physicality and the mechanical aspect of it. So it's good that now that's changing and a lot of people are much more aware of what babies know and how their presence is so fully here. And it can be confusing because when we look at a newborn, it's like their bodies look immature and they look so helpless and like we need to protect them, which we do, but their consciousness is fully, fully developed.
Megan Leatherman:
I have a million questions and I want to try to see where, what would be the best direction to go next. Maybe we could stay with this thread because in our last conversation, you told me a really incredible story that I've kept thinking about of this one year old who was reenacting her birth. And I wondered if you might tell that to listeners now to just kind of anchor in the reality that we do, we are aware of what happens in our birth and we will reenact aspects of it as we grow. Do you mind telling the story of that little one?
Mary Jackson:
I love that story. consciousness of the incoming solar, the being precedes cellular development. And so when the baby's being born, they've already made it through so much of that journey of what it is to come into human form, you know, the pre-conception, the conception and the gestation. And now they have to figure out how to navigate their way through the mother's pelvis. And isn't it amazing that a sperm and egg can come together and then a human being comes through the vessel of a woman's body to get here on the planet? Is that just like miraculous to me? I love that. And so in that journey from preconception to birth, there's a whole sequence. There's a before the event, the beginning, middle, end of labor, and then the birth, and then the after event, which is the integration part.
And so in that sequence of the five parts of the sequence, wherever there is a big event of like extreme love or in connection, or maybe it's a trauma where you know, maybe a labor needed to be induced with pitocin or forceps needed to be used, or maybe a cesarean needed to be done. And so wherever in the sequence that happened, it can set up a memory of that in all the sequences that we go through in our lives every day. So for example, if somebody is induced, at the before labor begins. What we know scientifically is that the baby is the one that starts the labor, they release a hormone and the hormone triggers the mother's body to begin and continue having contractions. And if the pitocin is given to the baby before the baby gets to that point of starting the labor, because maybe the mother's overdue or…
Maybe the baby's growing too slowly and is small for dates, or maybe the doctor has to leave on vacation, or whatever the reason. Someone on the outside thinks it's a good idea to induce. So they induce the baby to start coming, and the baby misses the experience of feeling what it is to come to the place where they know it's time to go and they know to put their body in the position they're gonna be born in, head down, butt down, whatever they're choosing, getting ready. So how that might show up later in life is right in the beginning of any event, journey, writing a paper, project, right in the beginning, they have a hard time getting going. And so maybe that child, you have to go into their room four times in the morning to tell them you have to get up and get out of bed to start the day. And they don't really get it until the time pressure is on, which, you know, if the mother was overdue and the time pressure was on, they know what that feels like. And then when that pressure is on, then they get going because they don't want to have that strong push on them.
From the pitocin, like what the pitocin did. And they don't wanna be hurried at a pace that's faster than what their natural rhythm would have been. And so you can work with that in many ways, which I'll talk later. I'll get back to the story of the little one-year-old. I went on the little side track there. But with this little girl, I mean, was unmistakably that she was telling me her birth, still telling her birth story. And...
She was one and a half years old and her mother had come to a four day workshop that I was giving all about how children tell their show us their early stories like conception gestation and birth and on. And the little girl did not have English words yet. And her mother came to me during the workshop and said that she had concerned about her fourth child because none of her other kids had done this.
And what the little girl was doing was putting her toys in her potty chair and then pulling them out. And so I said to the mother, said, well, tell me what was her birth like? What happened at her birth? And because her mother had been listening to all these stories I'd been telling her, sort of dropped. And she said, my goodness, I had an hour later labor and my midwife got there.
She lived 45 minutes away. She got there just before the birth and I had gone to sit on the toilet and my husband went out to help her bring her bags in. And while he was out, the baby was born and I caught her on the toilet. And I said, OK, so when you go home, just hold curiosity and watch what your daughter is showing you. And so the little girl went to her potty chair and had put her doll in it and she sat down on the toilet. And she's one and a half, like she has not been told this story. But she lived it. And so she holds, she brings the head so the head is out between her legs and she's sitting on the little plastic potty and she's rubbing the top of the baby's head. And there's something about that place and the doll. And her mother had told me that she
Frequently when she fell she would always hit her head, bump her head too. And when she was pulling the doll out of the potty chair, the shoulders were sort of stuck and she had to pull harder and she went backwards and bumped her head on the wall in the potty chair. And when there's been an injury at birth, the child will often replay that experience in trying to get someone to see what happened.
And once they see it, get it, understand and reflect to the child, often it stops happening. And the mother said that eventually, you know, there was two more times where the child fell and bumped her head. And then eventually that just stopped happening and she didn't bump her head anymore. And then she pulled the doll out and the first thing she did was lower her head below her bottom and her lungs had been wet at birth. And so the mother had lowered her head and to get the fluid to drain. And then she picked her up and upright and the mother felt a contraction coming next. And the little girl put the doll on this little padded bench beside the toilet and stood up and looked into the toilet. You know, this is nonverbal. This is just her what she's doing.
And her mother had done that to catch the placenta. And then she got the baby, brought the doll back. And moved her underwear of the doll to the side to like the mother remembered, oh yeah, I didn't look to see if she was a girl or a boy. And the little girl moved the underwear to the side to see. And then she held the doll's arm up and pointed to a spot under her arm and went, oh, ow. And what happened was when the mother was lifting her all the way out of the toilet. Underneath her arm got scraped on the inside edge of the toilet seat and had made a red mark. So there was just so much that she showed. In the sequence of how those things happened, she repeated it. So it was just mind blowing to me to see it so exactly done.
And children of different ages will show their stories in different ways. And newborns will do it by, you know, crawling up the mother's body and showing how they maneuvered through her pelvis when they being born. say if the cord was around the neck at birth, tight, you know, and gave a sensation of maybe a scary feeling to the baby.
When the baby's crawling up the mother's body to nurse right before their next destination, which is the breast, they can have a memory of what happened just before they got to that first destination of being born, that there was lack of oxygen, tight cord, and it was scary. And so they come out and the next journey, they get almost to the next place they're headed and they have, it touches a memory of what that feeling was like. And so that baby might have a cry to tell us about how scary it was. And if we just sit with them and give them the space rather than trying to get them to be quiet, and we just have a wonder like, what is it that you're telling us right now? What was that sensation? And I'm remembering a place that was scary for me and I bet that was scary for you too.
And sometimes the baby will just let out this, yeah, I mean, a brand new baby. Like I've seen them do that. Yeah, like you got it. Or they just sort of sniff up their cry and they sort of settle down and they feel that sensation that they're being seen and heard and understood. And then now they can go on, find the nipple and latch on and suck and swallow and just supports their integration, which when it's done that soon afterward, the resolve is so quick and easy. They don't have to spend, you know, $3,000 on therapy later in their life. Yeah.
Megan Leatherman:
Yeah, I do want to talk about the repair because I'm sure, you know, I know for myself and I'm sure everyone listening, I'm thinking of, you know, my birth and the birth of my two children and the places where there are, I'm sure, you know, pain and things that need to be resolved. And it sounds like I've heard you mention a couple of times that babies and we all need to feel seen and heard and understood around these things. Is that the primary mode of repair that you suggest for people? I guess what I'm trying to say is for anyone listening who knows that something difficult happened, where is an entry point for that repair and healing?
Mary Jackson:
Yeah, that's a really good question. I like that one. So many different ways, but mostly what it is a newborn needs is to be seen, heard, have their needs met in an appropriate amount of time, and to be loved. And if we can meet their needs at least 30 % of the time, we can still have a secure healthy attachment with our child. And we can all do that. 30 % of the time, it's not like 100 % of needing to be the perfect parent. And in fact, studies show that that is not the healthiest thing for the child because if the parents are trying to be perfectionist, the child tries to do that too. And then when they make a mistake, it's much harder.
So if a parent is meeting the child 30 % of the time, making their mistakes, as we all do. Then it gives the child permission to make mistakes too. And if the parent knows how to repair, it models for the child how they can do the repair. And so they're learning it as they're growing up and it's not something they have to be taught. So.
What we do in this work is we look at what is it that the child missed out on in the very early experiences. So to give an example, if there was a toddler, say a two year old that we're working with and the mother says, you know, whenever we're leaving the house, there's always a meltdown and the baby or the child throws themselves on the floor and cries and, you know, really resist the leaving.
And I'm thinking of this one child. And when I asked, you know, what was the birth like? She said, well, right at the end of labor, everything stalled. And I had to go to the hospital and get pitocin to help strengthen the contractions, bring them closer together and get the baby out. And I said, so is leaving the house the most challenging part of the day. And she goes, oh yeah, by far. And I said, okay, so let's look at what might've been missed when the child was going through that experience with you of having the pitocin. So when the baby's being born, it's like they're leaving their first house, right? They're leaving the first womb that they're, you know, school womb to be born. And so the pitocin is given and it's actually a medication that comes from outside of the mother's body, into her blood system impacts the uterus by having stronger contractions that surround the baby's body and push them. And it speeds up the pace of the birth and how the baby comes through. And so what is missed is often when the mother's giving pitocin, it might be really strong, contraction stronger than the natural ones. And then she needs to have a pain medication that helps her cope with the pitocin contractions. And so the baby first feels that like strong push and then a speed up in the pacing. And when the mother has pitocin and pain meds, she can often go out of her body and disconnect from the baby. And then the baby loses the sensation of connection and often will go out to find the mother to reconnect.
And so in the experience of with the two-year-old of leaving the house, what we would add there is the connection. So we let the little child know, and preparation was also missed for the baby. Like usually the practitioners will talk to the parents and say, okay, we think this needs to be done and this is what's gonna happen. But most of the time, nobody's including the baby with the preparation phase. So we let the little two-year-old in the house leaving experience, let them know, you know, in just five minutes, I need to leave to get to work on time. And so I'm going to have you put your toys away and get ready to go. So preparation of what's coming. And then the next part is when the baby felt a disconnection from mom, the next thing we're going to add, because it was missed back then was the connection. So now it's time to go.
I'm going to take your hand and we're just going to slowly walk out the door. So there's preparation, there's connection, and they're slowing the pace down.
And then we're going out the door now and we're going to get in the car and we're going to take you to grandma's or you know, whatever is happening. And it can be so reparative for the child to repattern their nervous system in how their sequence of going through birth was. So right at the end, there was that stuck. They couldn't find their way on their own. So they had assistance and went through it. But to try and speed the child up without all the pieces that were missed can just put them into a meltdown or a tantrum. So that's one way to support the repatterny. And another way is, I'll just pause, let that settle in. It's a lot of information. So.
You know, another way is to just like a newborn, you know, talk to the baby. say, that wasn't the perfect time for parents to have the baby. The baby was a surprise. And maybe one of the parents thought of, you know, do we have the choice to not have the baby or, you know, they didn't, they weren't, they didn't feel ready. And so that is a sensation that the baby can register.
And it can put like a wedge in between that parent's relationship to the baby. And we've had sessions where we worked with people with this. And one session, the father really didn't want the baby and the mother did. And the baby had such a hard time with the father in their relationship as the child was growing up.
What we can do is if that was the case and then we decided to keep the child. It's not always the right time in people's lives to have a baby. And so to just clarify with the baby and differentiate, let the baby know that, you know, in the beginning when we first discovered you, I just felt so unprepared to be a parent and it wasn't against you, but it was just that I wasn't ready. I didn't know how to support us and
You know, I starting a new career and I just felt not ready. And I'm really sorry, you know, to apologize. I'm really sorry that I had those thoughts. And I want you to know that I'm so glad you came and you're the best thing that ever happened to me. know, so just to have a simple conversation doesn't need a lot of details, but you just apologize to the baby and let them feel th empathy that you're having toward them. And it can just change things in such a big way.
Megan Leatherman:
Thank you so much, Mary. I feel like I could ask you questions for three hours and I probably just need to go to a training and learn more. is so rich and I'm so grateful. Where can people find out more about you and this work and if there's anything else you'd like to leave us with, you're welcome to share that too.
Mary Jackson:
So there is a website, the Castellino Foundation Training. And on that website, there's a lot of information about all the graduate trainings and workshops, Womb Surrounds for, there is small groups of, you know, four to six people where each person comes and everybody gets like a three hour turn to work on whatever it is they want to integrate.
And anyway, there's a lot of information on the Castellino website. And there are trainings happening in the US and Spain right now. And one's about to start on the East coast and then in Japan and maybe Chile and maybe Australia. So it's in this big expansion explosion right now. So growing and I'm very excited about that.
And another one is my website, which I need to update, it's birthinconnection.com. And you can go there too. I'm trying to get all my new stuff in there. So eventually in a couple of weeks, it will get there, but it's not there yet.
Megan Leatherman:
Okay, great. Thank you so much, Mary. I really enjoyed this conversation. I so appreciate you coming on and talking with us.
Mary Jackson:
It's been a real pleasure. So easy to talk to you and, for the listeners, just want you to know that like we all made it through that journey. We survived and that's a miracle. Like we're all here to know our own stories. And even if there's nobody here who knows the story of our early experiences, our body records it and there's a way to listen to what our body knows. And so just to honor yourselves and appreciate what it is you did to come here and remember that it's never too late to heal. It can happen at any age and that it takes a village, you know? And I often thought as a new mom, where is that village? And does anyone have the number or the email? But we need the village when we have our children, even when we don't, we need a village.
People thrive when they have connection.
Megan Leatherman:
Well said, thank you so much.
Mary Jackson:
Thank you.
Megan Leatherman:
Okay, friend, I hope you really loved that conversation and that you find windows of repair and healing because of it. And I hope that you'll go further into Mary's work if it interests you or calls to you. In the village of my dreams, we all go slow enough that we can really welcome all who come in all of that complexity and depth and beauty.
And even though we're not in the village now, we're in something and we can start that repair and healing right now, right today where we are in this context. And I hope you'll do that in the ways that feel available to you. I welcome your support of this show and this work and you can do that at buymeacoffee.com slash Megan Leatherman.
I will see you in two weeks with another interview on villaging and we're going to be talking to someone, one of my beloved guides and mentors. We're talking about rites of passage and what that has to do with growing into the village. So I'll see you then between now and then. I hope you take such good care and enjoy the spring season, whatever that means for you on the lands where you live. And I'll see you on the other side.