Farrah S - Birth Story Medicine

In this episode, I’m connecting with Farrah Sheehan—nurse, childbirth educator, and advocate for maternal and child health. 

Farrah shares her experiences serving vulnerable families, the power of trauma-informed care, and how birth story medicine transforms the healing process.

 Together, we explore the impact of storytelling in processing birth experiences, the importance of support networks, and the cultural barriers that prevent individuals from seeking help. 

This heartfelt conversation highlights the need for compassion in maternal healthcare and the strength found in sharing our stories.

Learn more about Farrah, Birth Story Medicine, and VCHIP!

Takeaways

• Farrah's journey as a nurse and advocate for child health is deeply rooted in her desire to support families.
• Birth story medicine serves as a healing tool for both birthing individuals and healthcare professionals.
• Trauma-informed care is essential in improving birth outcomes and supporting families.
• Storytelling can facilitate personal growth and healing, making it a powerful tool in healthcare.
• Creating a supportive community is crucial for new parents to thrive during the postpartum period.
• Healthcare professionals need to process their own experiences to provide better care for families.
• Empathy and compassion are vital in the healthcare system, especially in maternal and child health.
• Every family deserves to have their birth story heard and validated in a loving manner.
• Building a village of support is essential for new parents to navigate the challenges of parenthood.
• The cultural stigma around seeking help needs to be addressed to improve mental health outcomes for parents.

Sound Bites

"I always knew I wanted to be a mother."
"There is magic in birth story medicine."
"You have to build your village now."

Transcript

Chelsea Myers (00:01)
Welcome to Quiet Connection, a podcast dedicated to ending the stigma around postpartum mental health. I'm Chelsea. This week, I'm connecting with Farah about her journey as a nurse, childbirth educator, and advocate for maternal and child health. Farah shares her experiences in the healthcare system, her passion for serving vulnerable families, and the transformative power of birth story medicine.

We discussed the importance of storytelling and healing, the role of trauma-informed care, and the need for advocacy in improving birth outcomes. Here's Farah.

Chelsea Myers (00:39)
Hello! Today I'm here with Farrah. Farrah, how are you?

Farrah Sheehan (00:45)
I'm doing really well and so excited to be here with you, Chelsea. This is fun.

Chelsea Myers (00:48)
I am so excited to have you.

and I have been working as part of a team, I in Vermont. It's called VCHIP and I always forget what the acronym stands for. But I'll figure that out.

Farrah Sheehan (01:07)
It's child health,

child health. I'm not gonna, yeah, program or something like that. Yeah.

Chelsea Myers (01:11)
Improvement, Child Health Improvement Program. Yeah.

But Farrah does so much more than that. And I could list all of the things that I have on my little bullet point thing. But rather than doing that, I would love it if you could sort of introduce yourself, what you do. And I'd also love to know about who you were before you were a parent.

Farrah Sheehan (01:35)
Hmm. That's such a good question. I love that. So yeah, my name's Farah. Some people say Farah or Farah. No, no, no. Most people in United States say Farah and I love all the pronunciation. So I just like to let people know like there's so many ways to say it. It's one of the things I love the most about my name. No, no.

Chelsea Myers (01:39)
You

my gosh, I'm so sorry! Is it Farrah?

Okay.

Okay.

Farrah Sheehan (02:01)
It means happiness

and joy. So the reason why I'm starting out by answering that way is because it's, I think it speaks to a lot about who I was before I was a parent, you know, just this person who really wanted, came into the world, I guess, wanting and feeling and experiencing joy in my name and my being. also like having that be part of my purpose and my mission, you not really knowing that obviously as a little person, but definitely.

Chelsea Myers (02:12)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (02:31)
you know, feeling into that, you know, as I got older, even before kids. So, but I'm a nurse, I'm a registered nurse. I have my master's in health systems leadership. And I've always worked in the perinatal and maternal child health realm in one way or another. So school nursing, know, mamas and babies, families, home visiting. I've worked in hospitals, community centers, a little bit of everything.

And I've also done lots of research and really the main populations that I have tended to be really committed to and focused on in my career are families that maybe in one way or another haven't been tended to as well as we would like them to be in the healthcare system. So whether that's family struggling with substance use, families that have had trauma, families whose children have been separated from them for one reason or another.

either medically or because of social services and crises in their home. Kind of all the most fragile people in our populations are the ones that I'm really called to serve. So that eventually led me to become a childbirth educator in addition to being a registered nurse through Birthing From Within, which is an international actually childbirth preparation program.

Chelsea Myers (03:47)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (03:51)
And that was about 15, 18 years ago, sometime after I had my kids. I'm starting to lose track of time at this point. And then that led into the work that you were gonna talk a little bit more about today, probably which is the birth story medicine work and really specifically helping families recover from difficult or traumatic birth experiences. And not just families, but professionals too, doulas, nurses, OBs, midwives, really anyone who's involved with birth.

Chelsea Myers (04:00)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (04:19)
It can be, as we both know, lots of things can come up that are really difficult or even traumatic. So, yeah, so my work has, I suppose, like many people in many different professions, we refine ourselves and the focus of our work over time, over decades. And so that's kind of the trajectory that it's taken for me. so that's that first question, who I was before I was a mom.

Chelsea Myers (04:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (04:48)
I, I, I kind of actually tell people most of time that I don't really remember a time when I wasn't a mom because even before I had my own kiddos, I was one of those kiddos that was very maternal, you know, and, and protective and nurturing others around me and taking care of little babies in my family, whether it was cousins or siblings or, know, whoever. had two car seats in my car.

Chelsea Myers (05:04)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (05:14)
when I was 16 years old because, you know, I was always tending to somebody's kid. yeah, so before I was a mom, I was a mom, I guess. And that's a big part of my identity. yeah, and I was, you know, always knew I was going to be a nurse, always knew I was going to take care of mommies and babies. So it's definitely pretty foundational to, you know, to my being, to my calling.

Chelsea Myers (05:16)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah!

I

lost so much of that like resonates with me, not in terms of career path, because I took a very different career path, but like the always sort of mothering someone. And I don't know, like I'm an oldest child, oldest grandchild, oldest, like every, so all of the littles were my responsibility, not my responsibility, but I felt like they were. I absolutely did. So.

Farrah Sheehan (05:52)
Mm-hmm.

Awesome.

Yeah, you tended to them.

Chelsea Myers (06:10)
I can 100 % understand that. Even with that said though, did, and this is just like a personal question, did you always want to be a mother to your own children? Yes, yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (06:24)
Yes, yeah,

I don't, definitely, I always knew I wanted to be a mother and a nurse and a writer. Those are the things. I mean, I don't remember a time when I didn't want to do those things. You know, I even have little books when I was like five, six years old where I wrote about wanting to be a writer and a nurse and a mother. So yeah, so I always knew that I was going to be a mom and it was definitely a deep, you know, deep calling, you know.

Chelsea Myers (06:32)
Mmm.

Yeah.

my gosh.

Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (06:53)
maybe even

a pre this life calling, you know, depending on, you know.

Chelsea Myers (06:56)
Yeah, I was gonna

say that like, like you, you understood from a very, very young age, like what you were put here to do.

Farrah Sheehan (07:06)
Yeah, I think that I did. That's a really accurate statement, Chelsea. And not to say that I don't struggle like some other people might with trying to figure that out as I go. I still have some questions, especially at this stage. I'll be 50 this year. So there's a lot of deep curiosity and sort of exploration now about my purpose, even though

It's not necessarily gonna change globally, but again, refining it and really where the energy needs to be. And the writer in me is starting to knock at that door and be like, come on, your turn, come on out. You can be a nurse and a writer and a mother. So she's been exploring and sort of pushing the edges on stuff a bit over the last five years or so. But those were definitely seated in me.

Chelsea Myers (07:40)
Mm-hmm.

It's time!

Yeah. Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (08:03)
Probably from birth, all those callings

that we have, know. Yep.

Chelsea Myers (08:09)
It's

interesting to yeah, it's super interesting. Like the first time I met you was during a birth story medicine session. And instantly, like just upon meeting you, like my demeanor softened and I kind of went into it prepping for like, and we'll talk, we'll talk so much about like what this is and what this means. But like I went into our time together with my walls up.

in self preservation mode, like, okay, we're going to talk about trauma and we're going to talk about things that are uncomfortable and I need to prepare for that. literally within like minutes, I was like, okay, this is safe. This is okay. so you definitely have that you exude, you exude that caretaker, that safe space, that what we view as maternal.

Farrah Sheehan (09:06)
Mmm.

Chelsea Myers (09:06)
I guess.

So yeah, just to throw that out. Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (09:10)
Well, thank you. I don't often get to talk with

people after, you know, and get the reflection on a session like that. So it's cool to hear.

Chelsea Myers (09:19)
Yeah, well, I'm excited to

talk about it. I'm sort of excited to lift the veil, especially on my session. Obviously, this isn't like with confidentiality and whatnot, we can't talk about other people's sessions and things like that, unless it's in a broad sense. But I'm 100 % comfortable talking about what we did. But before we even do that, we should talk about what birth story medicine is and how you found

Farrah Sheehan (09:35)
Yeah,

Chelsea Myers (09:49)
that as something that you were called to.

Farrah Sheehan (09:53)
Great, great question. Yeah. So birth story medicine is a map actually of a way of telling and listening to a story. The medicine part is the person who's listening to the story. They're called the birth story listener. So they're really listening to somebody's story in a really specific way with a map that helps to

Ideally facilitate healing, right? And facilitate self-awareness, personal growth sometimes, you know, can come from that. it's a very intentional way of listening to a story.

Chelsea Myers (10:32)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (10:40)
It was developed over, I would say decades really by Pam England, who was the original developer of birth story, excuse me, birthing from within the childbirth education model. And she is a, she was a certified nurse midwife in New Mexico doing home births for many years, eventually really pivoted to doing more of this, the childbirth education piece and developing this model. And then eventually went on to really

Chelsea Myers (10:51)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (11:09)
work with the families that were coming back to her with difficult births and traumatic birth experiences and working with them and developing this over years. It's a nice blend of what she calls the ancient, like an ancient map for modern birth and actually in one of her books where she's really taking some already existing, I would say like foundational elements of psychology.

understanding trauma, understanding adult learning, but also really narrative medicine, which is the idea that telling our story can be and is actually probably the most healing human experience we can have, right? Because even when we can't heal physically from things, if you've ever worked with people at the end of life, a lot of times people say, even if they can't heal, even if they can't be cured,

Chelsea Myers (11:53)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (12:06)
telling their story and really having someone validate them and love them and listen to them can be the most healing thing that someone can experience on that more like deeper spiritual love, you know, feeling connected kind of level. And so that's really where this comes from is that place. And there are some assumptions, you know, to the work, which is that people have what they need in them actually to have awareness and to heal.

Chelsea Myers (12:19)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (12:34)
that the birth story listener is really the one who's kind of being curious and who's asking questions. When I do trainings with healthcare professionals, I often say it's kind of like going on a geocaching adventure. Have you ever gone on a geocaching where you like, yeah, it's like you're finding little clues and then eventually you come to some kind of prize or whatever. But you're the one sort of on the hunt.

Chelsea Myers (12:39)
Mm.

I haven't done it, but I know what it is. Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (13:02)
Like as the listener, like you're curious and seeking and wondering and you just kind of keep weaving, you know, those threads back and forth until a new tapestry is made really of the story. And so it's a more complete story. Maybe it's a story that has more nuances in it than what originally came or maybe something that had been forgotten, you know, or something that had been remembered, literally like remembered, meaning put back together, right?

Chelsea Myers (13:31)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (13:33)
so it's very different than the medical birth story, right? Which is like at six o'clock, my water broke and at noon I went to the hospital and at three, I got my epidural and it's very different than that story. It's very different than the social story, which can be the story that we tell when we're in groups of other parents, because we're either comparing with each other or we are trying to not make people feel bad or

We want somebody to be really ready, so we tell them all the worst things. There's all kinds of different social stories, we have different reasons for telling them. But this is a really, I hate to use the word like therapeutic or healing, because sometimes those words can be like overused and lose their meaning. But it's intentional. I like that word. It's intentional.

Chelsea Myers (14:00)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (14:23)
that describes it. It's hard when you're the one in it all the time to really describe it to people that have never experienced it.

Chelsea Myers (14:31)
Well,

yeah, and I think that is a great explanation. hearing you say that, like, I am obviously, I am not a trained mental health professional, I'm not a nurse, I am not trained in birth story medicine or anything like that. But what the mission of this podcast is, is to give space to people for them to share that story with

Farrah Sheehan (14:50)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Chelsea Myers (14:58)
completely on like that you will not get an opinion from me, you will not get any sort of solution from me, it is simply space for you to tell your story. And we'll get into this more later. But like after my session with you, there were things that I noticed I was already doing. And then there were things that I noticed that I started to shift in the way that I was doing my sessions with people.

again, like speaking to the things that you said, like there's a map and you're like geocaching and you're finding these things. The things that I remember most specifically from our session together was one, it did not go in the direction that I thought it was going to go in.

Farrah Sheehan (15:38)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (15:47)
I anticipated it being one thing and it was absolutely not that thing. When you say like, like putting, putting things together, there were feelings and emotions and circumstances that I hadn't attributed to my birth story that then made perfect sense. And then also.

Farrah Sheehan (16:11)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (16:15)
you had and I still do this like when I was really struggling to find we were trying to get me on my path. And when you talk about the math, we were trying to not math map. We were trying to get me on my path and stick to sort of one route. And you told me like, okay, you've got this necklace, and it's full of beads. And all of those beads are a piece of your story. What's the biggest

Farrah Sheehan (16:22)
Mm-hmm.

I'm sorry.

Hmm.

Chelsea Myers (16:41)
dickiest, chunkiest bead that's like digging into your skin. And I picked it and it wasn't what I thought it would be. And then we explored that. like those are...

Farrah Sheehan (16:53)
I just love that. I just love

that. I just want to pause and just tell you, it's such a, I mean, I love that so much. You know, just everything that you described about it is, it is what it like, it is, it's surprising. People are never, everyone is always like, wow, I didn't know that that was what was going to come. And that's the magic of it. I do like to say that there is magic in birth story medicine.

Chelsea Myers (16:57)
Yeah!

Farrah Sheehan (17:20)
and the more both participants, cause the story listener is, although leading in some ways, you know, is still very much a participant, right? the more both participants believe in the magic and can be in the magic together, like the more magic that can happen, you know, so that you allowed that to happen was a big piece of your aha moments, you know, that you

Chelsea Myers (17:46)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (17:47)
right, is like trusting that you're that you actually have stuff in you that that had messages for you that had information for you that helped things to make sense and click for you. You know, but it requires that other person to be in that not knowing to be that curious one, right, and to be and to not try to fix it, to not try to solve it, like you said, to not shame it, of course, you know, or like

Chelsea Myers (17:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

huh.

Farrah Sheehan (18:16)
all those other things that we tend to do. I just love that. I love your description of this, the bead, you I know, I mean, that's one of the metaphors, to be fair, like I didn't, you know, that's one, it's a common metaphor that many of us who are using for story medicine, there's quite a few that we can use to draw on from that first, you know, moment, but I love that one.

Chelsea Myers (18:25)
Well, that was your description. was you.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (18:41)
you know, to just like imagine our story, any story, doesn't have to be a birth story. It could be the story of our child's, you know, our whole child's life could be a necklace even, right? And all those little moments of their life are, and like, which are the ones that stand out, you know, and which are the ones that are, do we really want to tell the story about? I mean, you can use that metaphor for so many things, you know. So, yeah.

Chelsea Myers (18:52)
Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Yeah. I think it's important to note when I, again, so like I said, like we connected through V chip and I, I didn't fully understand initially what they didn't really say like, Hey, this is what we're doing and this is why we're doing it. They were just like, we're going to set you up with this. So schedule. And I was like, okay, cool.

Farrah Sheehan (19:18)
Yeah.

You're like...

Chelsea Myers (19:30)
Yeah, so again, like I was like, okay, this is something. And now I kind of have a better understanding, I think of like we needed, so we being the, those of us who are coming to this with lived experience and coming. So what VCHIP is trying to do is educate people in the medical field and people who are dealing with birthing people and postpartum people.

for more trauma-informed care and better birth outcomes and postpartum outcomes. so us, the birthing people, we're coming at it with our lived experience. so I viewed our time together as sort of like, okay, we need to kind of tap into that first and explore it a little more first before we can get into any of the advocacy work and the...

policy change and this that and the other thing. So yeah. Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (20:26)
Exactly. At least that's my belief. know, that's, I

feel pretty strongly about that. So just to give a little bit of a more global kind of perspective on what's happening in perinatal quality improvement, sort of nationally, I guess, you know, there, every state has something called a PQC, a perinatal quality collaborative, or some type of a perinatal quality organization. And in New England, we had

Chelsea Myers (20:41)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (20:54)
the Northern New England Perinatal Quality Improvement Network, which was all three states for a while because we were so tiny up here compared to other states. So over the past however many years, three, four, five years, each of the states now are developing their own, which is important because every state also has its own unique issues that need to be addressed. And ultimately,

Chelsea Myers (21:00)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (21:17)
Quality improvement does happen on the big scale, but it's also very community-based. We know that when communities are really tending to their birthing families uniquely based on what's going on in that community, that that's when you're going to have better outcomes. So we do have to have trainings and education and make sure that obstetricians and midwives are following certain protocols about postpartum hemorrhage and all that kind of stuff. But ultimately also in those communities, we have to support.

Chelsea Myers (21:23)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (21:47)
families in the way that they need. And so in New Hampshire, the quality collaborators are also sort of doing this like hub and spoke model where the communities are having coalitions. In Vermont, what they've been focusing on initially is through VCHIP is this, the parent advisory group that you're a part of and there's about a dozen parents on to really get those voices.

into the mix, you know, because for decades we haven't been doing that very well in healthcare in general, especially when it comes to families and pregnant people and pregnant people. So that's been a focus in Vermont. And so I've been doing some work, you know, around New England for lots of years. And like you said, trauma-informed care and just, you know, quality work in general. so Vermont VCHIP had reached out and said, Hey, you know, we know that you're doing this, this birth story medicine work. We want our

Chelsea Myers (22:20)
No!

Farrah Sheehan (22:44)
families to be really well prepared to do this advocacy work. And a couple of the folks at VCHIP and myself had been at conferences together where we had seen it not go so well, you know, with parents telling their stories and it just not landing in the best way possible. you know, and that's a, that's not a, like a dig. It was just more like, okay, that's we, this is all new. This is all new. Like having parents and families be a part of this process.

Chelsea Myers (22:53)
Mm.

Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (23:15)
is so new, we're like at the fledgling stage. And so it's really exciting actually to be kind of, know, to be a person who's asking like, how can we do this in the best way possible, both for families and for healthcare professionals so that they can get the information they need and also make the behavior changes, which is actually what we want, right? So,

Chelsea Myers (23:35)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (23:37)
that's how this program was birthed was basically like, how are we gonna make sure that families are ready, like you said, to do that advocacy work? And exactly what you said is my belief, my dream, my vision is that each individual person first has their own process of telling their story, of having their story heard, whether that's birth story medicine or some other way. Obviously I'm pretty committed to the birth story medicine process, because I've seen it work.

Chelsea Myers (24:01)
Mm-hmm.

Ha ha

ha ha!

Farrah Sheehan (24:05)
hundreds

of times over the past 10 years. just, yeah, assuring that people at least have that connection and that foundation before they jump into the QI project or the advocacy work or telling their story or speaking at a conference or something like that. So yeah, I'm so glad that that's something that Vermont was like, yeah, let's do it. I'm saying Vermont, the people at VCHIP

Chelsea Myers (24:23)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. yeah, no, I was thankful. I was thankful for it. And I remember leaving the session. First of all, like I cried and I hadn't cried in months. I cried and I remember being like, I need more of this. Like, I talked to my personal therapist afterwards and I explained what we did and I was and

Farrah Sheehan (24:32)
know who wanted to do that.

Chelsea Myers (24:59)
I'll get into it a little bit more. But essentially like the things that we talked about and the things that we uncovered, I talked to my personal therapist and I was like, Hey, we've got some things that we need to work on. yeah, because I was like, because a lot of these things came up that I did not realize were impacting my experience of what has happened to me in the last two years. So

Farrah Sheehan (25:12)
Yeah, dive into.

Can I ask you question about that? So was it ultimately impacting your experience and your belief about yourself as a parent?

Chelsea Myers (25:30)
Yeah, please.

what we talked about.

Farrah Sheehan (25:41)
the thread of what happened in your birth and kind of the stuff that you were uncovering. Do you feel like the impact was on around your parenting or what was it impacting that you hadn't been aware of?

Chelsea Myers (25:52)
It

was impacting my view of myself, maybe not necessarily as a parent, but my view of myself and how, without being cryptic, I still, I will say I still am, much less now, but when we talk about the stages of grief, I'm definitely still in anger and I'm two and a half years.

Farrah Sheehan (26:17)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (26:21)
postpartum from my from my youngest. And yeah, so I talked to I, there's a lot of anger there. There's a lot less now. But there's a lot of anger there and I and I didn't know where to direct it and I didn't know where it was coming from. And and when we spoke when we talked, we uncovered two things that

Farrah Sheehan (26:23)
I remember that now,

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Chelsea Myers (26:49)
had never occurred to me before. And they weren't necessarily directed towards my parenting. They were very, very personal to me. One of them was my fear of becoming my grandparent. So I have addiction in my family, like deep rooted addiction and alcoholism in my family. And because of my PMADS and because of my experience,

I was put on medications that made me very, very nervous. And I had a lot of anger around that, but I didn't know why. I didn't, right. And so we, I realized that I was, I was like, I don't want to be an addict. I don't want to, and I'm not, I, and I'm like, nothing points in that direction, but we kept picking at that thread. And even beyond that,

Farrah Sheehan (27:28)
nervous that you were going to go on that trajectory. Yeah.

Chelsea Myers (27:47)
beyond saying like, don't want to become your grandmother or your whoever, your grandparent. It was disappointing my younger self. And we started talking about my inner child. I had never done inner child work at all, but it clicked instantly that there was this little me inside of me being like, no, no, no, no, no.

Farrah Sheehan (27:57)
Hmm

Chelsea Myers (28:16)
you fought so hard and you put up these walls and you protected yourself because you did not want that for yourself. Right? And

Farrah Sheehan (28:24)
Yeah,

I have like the jitters, know, like my body's like, yeah, that's just so resonating.

Chelsea Myers (28:31)
Yeah, but that

had never occurred to me. Never occurred to me. And as soon as we got there, I think is when I started crying because I was like, this makes so much sense. And it seems so far removed from my birth story, but it's not. And we don't, yeah, yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (28:35)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Isn't that beautiful? Amazing. It's amazing.

Chelsea Myers (28:58)
It's so complex and there's so much more to it. But in terms of the trauma that I went through and kind of continue to go through just with my current circumstances, because I also grew up experiencing constant chaos and trauma, there's a little version of me inside myself that's just trying to protect me. And it's coming out as anger.

Farrah Sheehan (29:00)
It is.

Chelsea Myers (29:27)
at me. So yeah, so like I left our session and I was crying and I immediately texted my therapist and I was like, okay, we need to do some inner child work. And we need to work on guilt and shame. but that's too. Yes.

Farrah Sheehan (29:27)
Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

So you touched something so deep, you touched

something that had been banished or, you know, locked away so long ago. And, know, that little part of you, that little girl in you, right, that just really was so determined to protect yourself and not become the thing that had probably been scary to you or that had hurt you or that you didn't want.

Chelsea Myers (30:02)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (30:09)
to be that to other people, right? And so we all, and this is where sometimes like, and so I'm not a licensed clinical mental health counselor. And I always share that upfront. Like I'm a registered nurse, my expert is in birth, my expert is in perinatal. I also do have a lot of education in perinatal mental health. I'm gonna sit for my PMHC exam in another month or so here finally, a dozen years overdue, but I do...

Chelsea Myers (30:12)
huh.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (30:36)
I've done lots of learning in that field. And as nurses, there's always so much overlap. But I do like to say, okay, I don't actually do psych, technically. But sometimes our psych work is important, our counseling is important, but it's really different than this. It's really different than birth story medicine. And so I often say to people, it's not one or the other. You're not choosing this or that, it's so complimentary. So for people that are already like you were,

Chelsea Myers (30:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yep.

Farrah Sheehan (31:06)
experiencing counseling and had a relationship with a mental health professional, sometimes having one or two or three birth story medicine sessions can be so impactful to that work because you can keep going and like you said, uncovering those threads. And for some people, it's actually what sets them off on that journey. They come for a birth story medicine session and they're like, wow, I didn't realize that I was carrying this thing.

Chelsea Myers (31:27)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (31:34)
for the last 20, 30 years that actually showed up in my birth and that's showing up in my parenting or that's showing up in my self-efficacy, just what I think about myself. So it can be so complimentary. Because some people come to me and they'll say, well, should I do counseling or should I do birth story medicine? I'm like, well, they're really different. They're really different. They're looking at different things in a way. Yeah.

Chelsea Myers (31:44)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I kind of, yeah, I think well, so I always say like, don't promote, we don't pitch, we don't convert, none, this isn't a space for anything like that. The only thing that I will always, always, always say is one, if you're struggling, either reach out to your PCP or find a mental health professional.

Farrah Sheehan (32:00)
I'm so glad you had that Chelsea to keep going.

Chelsea Myers (32:27)
because those are tried and true and, and yeah. And if counseling is not for you, counseling is not for you. yes.

Farrah Sheehan (32:34)
Exactly. And sometimes people just need a really good doula who's listening to them. Or sometimes their IBCLC

lactation consultant, is the one who hears their birth story and they get some clarity. So yeah, to your point, it's more about what's working for each person and having that person be really deeply held in their story. And oftentimes we need more than one thing or one person. Just like with mental health, we sometimes need more than one medicine.

Chelsea Myers (32:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (33:04)
so, you know, having, think that speaks to like the state of the state and perinatal health in general is we need all of these supports and safety nets and what helps people heal and feel better and be the best parents they can be is when all those nets are like, you know, interwoven and, you know, sort of catching them and helping them, you know, move along. So, it sounds like you had a really, you know,

good support when you were covering your story in a different way. it gives me the shivers knowing it's just like, wow, like, you know, like when you get the chills when something is just like, so you connecting with your, yeah, little girl, Chelsea, you know.

Chelsea Myers (33:34)
Yeah.

And I continue to have that support network.

Yeah, and we talked about that too, which we barely got to talk about because I identify as non-binary, but I see little me as she, as this little girl. Well, you you acknowledged that as well. because I remember, like I remember I told you my pronouns, but then anytime I was referring to little me, called her her. And yeah, that's its own...

Farrah Sheehan (34:03)
Okay, okay. I don't think we talked about that

Okay.

Chelsea Myers (34:19)
that's its own thing, but like, yeah, it was this little girl. Yeah, well, no, she was a little girl. I mean, I was me, but I think it's just because that's, I was never raised to understand anything else or to know that there were any other options. So when I visualize little me, it's a little girl. But yeah, and that's...

Farrah Sheehan (34:23)
little person.

Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (34:44)
It ties around again to another thing that we talk about is support networks. And I love that you brought up doulas. We've been talking so much about doulas We have talked to doulas and we have one of the recurring themes as people talking about like

get a doula. And so many people don't even realize that that's an option. And there are barriers to that. are financial barriers to getting a doula. are socioeconomic barriers to getting a doula. There are cultural stigmas. But I think at least exploring that outlet, like a doula really is there.

Farrah Sheehan (35:02)
Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Chelsea Myers (35:23)
to empower you and to listen to you and to advocate for you when you may not be able to advocate for yourself. So I love that you brought up the doula.

Farrah Sheehan (35:34)
Yeah.

And, and, and, and support people in general, you know, and making, and yeah, just assuring that they're, they're the ones that align for you and letting your intuition, you know, be your guide to, and like, does this feel like it's a right relationship for me? Does this resonate with me? And thankfully, as far as the, the affordability of Doula's go, I'm not sure if you're aware of it's been talked about on your podcast yet, Chelsea, but, New Hampshire passed, omnibus legislation recently.

Chelsea Myers (35:51)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (36:03)
that does pay for, it's legislation that mandates that Medicaid pay for doula services and Medicaid also pay for in-home lactation services so that lactation professionals who are working independently can care for families in their homes among other things, the bill did. So states are starting to do that and

Chelsea Myers (36:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (36:30)
generally what happens is private insurers will follow suit. This is taking some time, of course. mean, many of us in this field have been working on these initiatives for decades and now we're finally seeing the fruits of our labor. So I guess that's just to say like hang in there and also kind of check and see what the funding situation is in your state, in your community, and always check with your own insurer to see even if

Chelsea Myers (36:43)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (36:58)
it's not an a known benefit, sometimes reimbursement can happen. So just put a plug in for people to get their needs met there as much as possible.

Chelsea Myers (37:04)
Yeah.

Well,

and like, so speaking to we're speaking to the future right now, which they say don't do that on a podcast, but I don't know how you can avoid it. Speaking to the future right now, and without getting political, I don't know where we're going to be when this episode airs. I don't know what the state of our medical system is going to look like. I don't know what the state of our women's rights are going to look like. But so with that said,

Farrah Sheehan (37:13)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (37:36)
Again, I say I don't give advice, but this isn't so much advice. It's reiterating, start building your village now. If you have children, if you're thinking about having children, build your village now. And it's again, finding the people that resonate with you and that support you and you know will support you if you can't advocate for yourself. So.

Farrah Sheehan (37:58)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. And

if I could add something to that with, you know, kind of weaving in the perinatal mental health piece is if you are a young parent or you're, you know, getting ready to birth or thinking about having children or I don't mean young parent, I mean a parent of young children. Because we can be all kinds of ages when we have young children. But

Chelsea Myers (38:18)
Yeah, yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (38:24)
or even grandparents with young children for that matter. Be also like try to attend to that place in you that is in the season of receiving. And this again weaves into counseling and birth story medicine and having a doula and all that. also like I just, I've been working with quite a few families lately who the birthing person has been.

severely struggling with mental health. Seems like there's just been an uptick with psychosis and other like you're really severe lately. And one of the things that they all, all the families are struggling with that I'm working with is receiving the help, right? Like being able to ask for it and then receive it, accept it. And I like to say that when you're in this stage of life, you're in a season of receiving, you know, you are

Chelsea Myers (38:55)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (39:18)
think of yourself as a newborn mother or a newborn parent or a newborn father, you know, and newborn babies need tending to and so do newborn parents. They need a lot of tending. They need a lot of rest, actually. They need a lot of nurturing. They need a lot of good nutrition. You know, they need all these things to sustain themselves. And the rest of the world wants to give to new families. I know that

Chelsea Myers (39:24)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yes!

Farrah Sheehan (39:48)
from a societal political perspective, we don't do a good job with that. But if we go down to the individual level, there are so many people who want to bring meals to families, who want to help take care of children, who want to be a listening ear. And our culture hasn't done a good job at connecting those people to the families that need it. But they're there. They're there. They're definitely there.

Chelsea Myers (40:11)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (40:17)
Yeah. So be in a place of receiving and kind of reach out. you know, if you have a church, if you have a group that you're involved in, like you said, build your village, build your village and be okay with, you know, having meals brought to your doorstep for the first couple of weeks, your baby's born, like starting, you know, have your sister or your mother-in-law or, know, your friend do a little meal train or, you know, I forget all the names of those, calendar, you know, organizational things online, but like you can, yeah. So.

Chelsea Myers (40:31)
Yeah.

my gosh, there's so many different things you can do.

Farrah Sheehan (40:47)
be in that place. I think that can help the mental health side of things. People can feel better and heal when they're tended to and nurtured.

Chelsea Myers (40:49)
Yeah.

And I think, I think for a lot of people, it's difficult because you get, again, like you said, like culturally for us, like we're supposed to not ask for help. We're supposed to, there's this whole bounce back culture. Yeah. And be independent and get on with things and this, that, and the other thing, but being able to receive and to seek the support. and that's when I, why, why I say like build your village. Like you have to, some people have it and that's great, but sometimes you have to actively seek it out.

Farrah Sheehan (41:06)
Be independent.

Yep. Yep. You do. There is. For most of human history, this was all stuff that was just embedded into our world, you know, and it's just not now. So like it sucks actually that we have to work so hard as mothers and parents to, to make it happen. But, but yeah, if you invest a little bit those first few years, then it's, you know, it really does help.

Chelsea Myers (41:28)
but yeah, there's a rabbit hole.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, this is another rabbit hole and then I promise we'll get back on track. But something that sparked curiosity in me is, and I agree with you, we're seeing and hearing more about perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and we're seeing more about postpartum psychosis. And I'm not seeking an answer necessarily, but I'm curious if that is a result of

Farrah Sheehan (41:54)
Yeah, I

Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (42:19)
us talking about it more and it being more visible. And so more people are feeling safe and coming forward. Because we say one in five, we like that's the we all know the statistic one in five, but we also know that I think like 80 % of birthing people go undiagnosed for so many reasons. And I'm

Farrah Sheehan (42:21)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (42:47)
It's just a curiosity in my head. Like maybe the fact that we're talking about this more is allowing people to feel safe coming forward and asking for help. And so that may be why we're seeing an uptick. It also is the pandemic and it's also the state of the world and it's also like everything.

Farrah Sheehan (43:05)
Yeah, I think you're right.

I think it's a combination, Chelsea. think that like with any diagnosis, the more awareness we have about it, the more we're going to see people being diagnosed with it because, you know, it happened actually it happened with celiac disease, you know, something that's very physical, right? Like, when there started to be more awareness about it, about two decades ago, there was more diagnosis, and then there was a little bit of an uptake uptick in the United States of diagnosis, it's not because those people

Chelsea Myers (43:22)
yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (43:34)
didn't have celiac before, it's because more doctors were actually looking for it when people had symptoms. So this actually happens with all diagnoses, like whether it's physical, the more we have awareness about it and research, the more we see it. But I think there also is a rise. I think both is happening. Like you said, the state of the state, the complexity of people who are birthing today,

Chelsea Myers (43:35)
Didn't have it.

Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (44:01)
We're older, we tend to have more other health conditions when we're birthing in the United States. We have a rise in people not giving birth in their initial and their family of origin space. So people are moving, they're not in, like you said, they don't have that village automatically with extended family. And so over the last few decades, we've seen a shift with that.

Chelsea Myers (44:02)
Yep.

Farrah Sheehan (44:28)
There's a combination of reasons why. And I also think one of the one thing that's happening with mental health is that so much of birth and we talked about this a little bit even in your experience, right, is shocking. Becoming a parent is there's grief involved. You're losing a sense of who you were. You actually are losing yourself. You're not ever

Chelsea Myers (44:46)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (44:56)
going to be the Chelsea that you were before you had children.

Chelsea Myers (44:59)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (45:00)
And there is grief that comes with that. There is a sense of loss. There is even some anxiety because you're trying to identify who you are now as a person. You like you said, who was I before I was a mother? I mean, yeah, I was a mother, but there were other things about me that, you know, I, that were lost that I couldn't be anymore. And sometimes those are things like just having personal freedom to go to the store without children. You know, it can be like,

Chelsea Myers (45:14)
Yeah.

Yes.

Farrah Sheehan (45:28)
intimacy with your partner. can be relationships with our mothers change, with our sisters change, with our friends change. Our relationship with our body changes. mean, so many women go through such physical trauma, right? So you have lost of your body image. have... So I think what's not happening around, and I don't know if you've talked about this in any of your podcasts. I haven't listened to all of them. I listened to a few. So maybe you have. But I think...

Chelsea Myers (45:43)
Mm-hmm.

That's okay.

Farrah Sheehan (45:58)
What's part of what's happening is that there is a normal appropriate like, you know, experience of grief and loss and anxiety that comes with this change in identity we don't, we haven't really figured out and we're not doing a good job at naming, at helping people to anticipate and at helping people to navigate.

And so I'm not saying that we don't have postpartum depression and anxiety. Of course we do. But, but I think that part of that is actually the, the normal occurrence of, a stage of transformation in someone's life that isn't fully understood, that isn't fully named. that, that we don't have a place to like, go like, okay, this is what's happening. I'm having an identity crisis in part because I'm becoming a mother and

Chelsea Myers (46:37)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (46:48)
You know, I need somebody to help me with a map for that. I need a map. I need a map for this. You know, I need to know that this is actually part of the trajectory of becoming a parent or a mother or a father. So, so I think that the not having that leads to then a longer term depression or anxiety and, know, yeah, some, for some people. Obviously there's other elements of it, but.

Chelsea Myers (46:52)
Yes.

Yeah, it's

Farrah Sheehan (47:15)
I think if we were doing a better job at that, we could mitigate some of what's going on.

Chelsea Myers (47:21)
It's so interesting that you say that. I literally was just talking to a guest yesterday who is a mental health professional and who did, she did, flipped that script for me. And we talked about how sometimes PMADS are not the cause, but the result. Right. And sometimes they are the cause.

Farrah Sheehan (47:29)
Mm.

Right, perfect.

Chelsea Myers (47:48)
but for a lot of people and for her, was talking about how like it was a result for her because no one told her it was going to be this way. It's like the front, song from Friends. No one told you life was going to be this way. But and so she was like, I like postpartum depression. I just kept being like, no, this is just really hard and I'm depressed and I'm hopeless because this is hard and no one is saying like, yeah, you're right. This is really hard.

Farrah Sheehan (47:59)
Alright.

Right.

Chelsea Myers (48:16)
or this is really difficult. So it's so interesting. And I had never thought about it that way before.

Farrah Sheehan (48:19)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We're being curious

and saying, which part of you actually is grieving? Which part of you is lost? Which part of you is begging to be seen and heard and tended to? And oftentimes it goes back to right, that little person who was so surprised or who was so determined that they would be this kind of mother.

Chelsea Myers (48:26)
Yes.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (48:47)
or that kind of mother or that they would have a natural birth. I mean, most of the time, people who are giving birth have determined what their, you know, their beliefs and what they want for birth in their psyche long before they're pregnant. I mean, I'm talking decades, you know, those kinds of choices are made when we are six, seven, eight, nine years old, because we see somebody give birth or we hear about a story.

Chelsea Myers (49:03)
Yeah. Yup.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (49:17)
or we're told something and we determine at that time based on that little person just with that limited amount of information, because that's what little people do. We don't have any other choice of how to make sense of the world is just to take in. But then we solidify that and that's who we bring into birth. And if we don't do some of that work prenatally, which in our culture, we're not really offering that type of childbirth education, right?

Chelsea Myers (49:28)
Yeah?

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (49:46)
it's that little person who's showing up in birth and that little person who's traumatized and that little person who's shocked and grieving and not able to access their big person resources in birth. And then they're the one also trying to recover. so no wonder why we end up with postpartum depression and stuff. I don't know if that makes any sense, but we can use the word archetypes. Like some of your listeners might be familiar with

Chelsea Myers (49:59)
Yeah.

Yeah. yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (50:15)
with that concept, it's you know, it's a Jungian concept essentially of like that there's different parts in us. There's also people like Dick Schwartz who does parts work. Some of your listeners might be familiar with family systems therapy, so it's called. And it's essentially it's that idea that we all have these parts in us, you these ones, like the one that you identified, you know? And when we go into birth,

Chelsea Myers (50:28)
Okay.

Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (50:42)
There's lots of those ones that are showing up, that are at play. And when we're parenting, they're all over the place. All those ones in us who have had different experiences in our life. Our adolescent can be in there, our wounded child, some people will call them. But there's these different ones in us or these different archetypes. And I think that one of the ways that we can really help

Chelsea Myers (50:45)
Hahaha

Farrah Sheehan (51:11)
people to heal from PMADS and birth stories is by helping people to identify, you know, all those different archetypes within them or those parts, depending on, you know, the approach you take, kind of understanding that conceptually, you know. And birth story medicine, definitely that's a key element for us is really, or for that model is the archetype model, like really, you know, seeing archetypes, seeing the child.

Chelsea Myers (51:25)
Yeah. Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (51:40)
hearing, actually listening to the child come through in a session, listening to the mother come through, know, listening to maybe even the wild woman, the one who wanted to say like, F off, you know, to somebody in the middle of birth, but then didn't, they held their voice back because they were afraid of how people were gonna treat them. And then after the fact, they're like, I wish I had just said F off, you know. So,

Chelsea Myers (51:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (52:08)
that wild one who was like tamed in birth and then who's been tamed their whole life and then finally postpartum they're like, I'm not taming her anymore. That can happen, right? So it's important to when we're listening to someone's story, no matter who we are, whether we're a doula, mental health, to really be listening for all those different parts of that person who's showing up.

Chelsea Myers (52:18)
Hahaha!

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And that was, that was definitely made clear to me in my session honoring the different parts of myself. So

Farrah Sheehan (52:46)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (52:51)
I love how beautifully, even though we like jumped down some rabbit holes, we were able to tie all of it back to birth story medicine because the work that you're doing, I mean, all the work that you're doing is very important, but I'm particularly invested in the work that you're doing with birth story medicine because of, I mean, obviously how much it affected me and how much I know that

Farrah Sheehan (52:57)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (53:20)
it can be of benefit to others. And so like, we alluded a little bit in the beginning to like how it shifted how I do quiet connection. yeah. And so, and I know you were a little bit curious about that. And I don't think that it's anything like revolutionary, but it, but it is a conscious shift. So, things that I noticed that I was already doing,

Farrah Sheehan (53:22)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm, love that.

Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (53:50)
was it's again, like coming into the space, not as a part, like I'm not a participant in your story necessarily. I'm not a character in your story and I'm not here to, I'm not here with an agenda. I'm here as a conduit and I,

Farrah Sheehan (54:07)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (54:13)
When people come onto my show and they share their stories, like I say, I don't like to learn a lot about their background. I don't like to learn a lot about them because I want to come at it fresh. And I also like, I have everybody fill out a little Google doc. It's a super short, it's like really, really minimal. And what that allows me to do is to make sure that I use our time together a way that they feel as if they have been heard.

Farrah Sheehan (54:40)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (54:41)
and that they have gotten out, they have shared everything that they want to share. So that was something I was already doing. But now I have also started shifting every guest is different. Some guests talk a lot and some guests take a little more prompting.

Farrah Sheehan (54:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (55:04)
But rather than trying to steer a conversation, you can sort of like correct me if this, because this is what I took away from it.

I listen, I let each person talk as much or as little as they want, but I'm listening intentionally. And then when I respond, I am telling them what I heard. I'm not responding in a way that's like, yeah. Cause like when I felt that or like, yeah, when blah, blah, it's not a comparison thing. It's like, I heard you say.

Farrah Sheehan (55:28)
Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Chelsea Myers (55:44)
this, this and this. And then I'm sort of asking them to look into it a little bit deeper. So I am walking the path beside them. I'm definitely not guiding. I'm not leading. But that was a shift that I started making in that it's just listen to listen. I'm not here to...

Farrah Sheehan (55:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Chelsea Myers (56:14)
get a certain type of story. I'm not here to push a certain type of narrative. I am here for my guests to share as much or as little as they want or need to and to make sure that at the end of our time together, they feel seen. So yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (56:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yep. And that is pretty much the map. You know, it is listening,

reflecting, and curiosity. Repeat. You know? And we call that in birth story medicine, we also call it this in psychology and counseling, know, validation, empathetic awareness, empathetic listening. We don't use in...

Chelsea Myers (56:40)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (56:58)
birth story medicine, like the phrase I heard you, but we will say, wow, you know, that was so shocking to her. That must've been so shocking or like naming, like you said, naming the thing that you're hearing them.

Chelsea Myers (57:11)
Yes. I definitely, I

definitely don't go like, so you said, but it right, but it's the acknowledging of like, yes, yes. Yep.

Farrah Sheehan (57:17)
Ay, ay, ay.

It's like you're naming, you're kind of summarizing, Like,

validating and acknowledging kind of in your own words. But sometimes what happens is when you do that, like somebody will say, wow, that, yes, exactly. That's how I felt. Because as they're describing it to you, you can kind of hear what they're feeling, even though if they're not saying it. And then sometimes you're the one that actually names it. And they're like, yes, or the tears start.

Chelsea Myers (57:46)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (57:48)
Right? because that

Chelsea Myers (57:48)
Yeah, and I've been there and I'm like, my gosh. okay.

Farrah Sheehan (57:52)
means you hit the, we call it, I call it the bullseye, you know, because you can see something shift in their body. You can see their face change. You can actually see them take a breath and expand and relax and oftentimes cry. And that's how you know that you have heard them and you have named for them what they are experiencing.

Chelsea Myers (57:55)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (58:16)
And

exactly, that's what it is. And then being curious for them to go further. And so it can be, me more or.

Chelsea Myers (58:23)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (58:26)
So exactly, that's, and I'm so, it's so beautiful that you, you know, that I guess it's just, it's so cool that like, that is applicable to a podcast, right? Like if we, if we ask someone like, would this be applicable to a podcast? People would be like, no, how's that? But it is, you know, like this type of listening is applicable to any type of storytelling and story sharing and story listening that we're doing. So.

Chelsea Myers (58:36)
Yeah.

Hahaha

Mm-hmm.

I think that's

just what humans, we crave as humans is to just be heard and validated. I was just having this conversation with my husband and I'm like, well, I don't do anything. He's listening to my episodes, like he's getting caught up. And I was like, I'm not doing anything like revolutionary here. I'm just listening. Because people just want to be heard. like, again,

Farrah Sheehan (58:55)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. But in a way it

is. And I think that you should acknowledge that and like, and own it, you know, really for serious policy, because it is also revolutionary, you know, in our culture and our society at this time to listen to people's stories in this way, you know, is, is not the norm at least, you know? And so, yeah, me too. What's, what has

Chelsea Myers (59:18)
I know, I have a hard time internalizing.

I hope it will be. I hope it can be. I hope it can be.

Farrah Sheehan (59:43)
Like, yeah, tell me more about what's changed for you, like what you're noticing in both your, I'm so curious in both your, the people that you're interviewing and also, you know, yourself and your flow and all that, like what's.

Chelsea Myers (59:56)
so this has been a very reflective, like, time for me in general. And I, like, I went back and I was listening to episodes from season one, and now I'm like editing and putting out episodes from season four. Season one, I was, I mean, again, I'd never done anything like this before. So like, I was very rushed. I was very,

Farrah Sheehan (1:00:18)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (1:00:24)
It was much more like interview based and I, as the seasons progress, like this is just one aspect, but like my cadence changes, my tone of voice has softened, and I'm more me. I'm much more reflective and I've slowed down. I also, the guests that I,

Farrah Sheehan (1:00:26)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (1:00:52)
I'm having are very different. And I'm able to do sessions with people from every sort of background or cultural upbringing or I have done sessions with people who I and this has absolutely nothing to do with like, I have no judgment or view on people other than from when we meet each other.

Farrah Sheehan (1:00:53)
Mm-hmm.

you

Chelsea Myers (1:01:21)
I would imagine if we sat down at a booth in a diner, we'd have nothing to talk about. right? Like on almost every other aspect, we would be very much opposed. But in our time together, that's not there. It's about them and it's about their story and it's about their journey. And my...

Farrah Sheehan (1:01:32)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (1:01:48)
thoughts or beliefs don't play into it and I'm able to connect with them, quiet connection, where they're at and I can empathize and I can validate. So yeah, in the beginning, it was very much like, I've got to get this off the ground and I don't know what I'm doing and I have to be this certain way. And then as it's progressed, I am much more like,

Farrah Sheehan (1:01:53)
Mm-hmm.

you

Chelsea Myers (1:02:16)
I'm here to listen to you. And whatever you want to tell me or whatever you don't want to tell me, I'm here for it. And thank you for like to my to all of my guests, like, thank you for sharing what you're sharing, because it's gonna hit with someone. It's gonna hit and even if it doesn't, if you feel better at the end, then it hit with you. And that's great.

Farrah Sheehan (1:02:18)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (1:02:46)
So I don't know if that answers the question, but like...

Farrah Sheehan (1:02:49)
Yeah,

yeah, and you've been gradually moving to a place of, couple things, couple things I'm noticing is you get some like non-attachment, know, it's it's kind of like unconditional love, right? It's like, it doesn't have to actually come with a return. It's just, you have some trust and some faith that it's going to be exactly what it needs to be. And we would...

Chelsea Myers (1:03:02)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (1:03:15)
call this, I would say from an archetypal perspective, like you're you've been moving into maybe like your medicine woman. You know, you're wearing you're wearing your cloak, you know, and when you step into the space and you sit at your desk and you, you know, have your you put on your headphones and you it's like you're literally activating this medicine woman in you. And this is your medicine. You know, your medicine is, you know, asking questions and hearing people's stories and

Chelsea Myers (1:03:21)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (1:03:42)
you know, creating something that goes out into the world that's going to land with someone in some particular way. And like you said at the beginning that you're the conduit for, know, you're not, you don't necessarily have an agenda of like, this is how it has to land and it has to land with this many people or it has to land in this way. And that's exactly what's happening in birth story medicine, you know, is ideally, you know, those of us who are practicing are stepping into that space in that moment.

Chelsea Myers (1:03:59)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (1:04:11)
And that's not to say it's not constant work because it is, it's a lot. My mother archetype is, as you mentioned, you know, as we talked about, is very powerful. And you felt that in my session, right? Like right from the get go. And she's important and she belongs there, but she can be overactive. My mother caretaker archetype, I have to check her, you know, because she can try to take over because she's so over.

Chelsea Myers (1:04:15)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

You

Farrah Sheehan (1:04:37)
like well-developed, I'm not gonna judge her, she's not overdeveloped, but she's so well-developed in my life that she can sometimes get in the way actually of like my medicine woman, know, really being the one who, because the mother does have somewhat of an agenda, you know, she wants people to feel better.

Chelsea Myers (1:04:41)
You

Yeah.

Right, you wanna fix it.

Farrah Sheehan (1:04:55)
Yes. And so I have to walk that line between helping, you know, my mother archetype showing up and creating that space and that safety, but also allowing her to step back so that if somebody's really hurting, she doesn't have to rush in and take care of it. She can just be curious and be in her medicine, you know, really activate the medicine on me. And that's actually my, I would say that's a pretty constant dynamic that I'm working with in my own development is the interplay between those because

Chelsea Myers (1:05:01)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (1:05:25)
Um, yeah, because my mother archetypes archetypes, she's so autonomic, you know, have to be like, you girl, you sit down and like, you're fine. This one does not need a mother right now. She needs a mother's woman. Put your mother's woman cloak on, you know? So that's what I'm hearing you describe is that what's shifted for you is this like, it's almost an energetic feeling of, know, you were probably a little bit in your adolescent when you first started even, right? Wanting to get it right. You know, the maiden one in you, right? Who's like trying to like, yeah.

Chelsea Myers (1:05:30)
Take a break. Yeah.

yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (1:05:53)
get things right a little bit. But that's such a normal trajectory though, Chelsea, too. Whenever we're doing anything new, professionally especially. So that's so cool, just to hear how that has developed for you over these few years you've been doing this. Two years. Yeah. So that is beautiful. And then to keep being curious about, wow, what else is going to come?

Chelsea Myers (1:05:59)
Yeah.

Yeah. It's two years, two years next month. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (1:06:23)
So I love that.

Chelsea Myers (1:06:25)
Yeah, it's very cool. I am being very clear. I am not a birth story medicine worker. I am not trained in that whatsoever, but I just, ugh, the impact that it made on me and that I would just love to see, well, I would love to see more of it, obviously.

because you're so good at these maps and, and

walking and getting us to our final destination. I have my typical questions that I ask at the end of the episode, but I'm not going to use those for this episode. and this may be challenging, or maybe it won't be. I'd love to, I think, know if you had to do a top three. I know I hate doing like the top five, top ten, but if you had to do a top three things,

Farrah Sheehan (1:06:56)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (1:07:18)
that you would like to see change in the birthing realm so that we're able to honor and serve our birthing people? There are so many things, but if you had to choose three things, what would they be? What would you like to see change?

Farrah Sheehan (1:07:24)
Mmm.

Hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Well, it's funny because I was just talking with a state legislator in New Hampshire yesterday about this. Like what are my dreams for our world? It kind of makes me actually feel a little, yeah, wow, it touches like a soft spot, you know, of just like, what's our dream? You know, what's our collective dream? And like, what do we wish for families so that things could be better? And so I'm going to answer, I think,

Chelsea Myers (1:07:48)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (1:08:08)
for maybe in ways that people wouldn't expect, because it's not so much about actually quality improvement as it is about just being kind humans. And so I think the first is, if every family in every community could be welcomed into their parenting experience with, like we talked about, with that,

Chelsea Myers (1:08:17)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (1:08:32)
really supportive net and network. And I'm talking like they have people coming to their home to tend to them and take care of them and make meals and bring meals and someone to listen to them for their, you know, their story and help them with lactation and, and that people don't have to work so hard to do to get that. It's just what our culture and our society does, you know.

Chelsea Myers (1:08:59)
Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (1:09:00)
So I just, wish that for every family that they already have what they need, you know, upon, you know, birth and the initiation of parenting that they have those needs at the ready. And I would say the second thing is for actually for every single birth professional to have the opportunity to share a difficult

birth experience that they've actually participated in professionally. We haven't talked about that today, but I think that when birth professionals have their own of support, but especially like healing experiences, they will then in turn take better care of the people that they're caring for. And so much of what we're dealing with right now, even though, yes, again, like we need to understand

Chelsea Myers (1:09:46)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (1:09:53)
you know, health equity and systemic racism and, you know, postpartum hemorrhage and, all these things, like a hundred percent. But when it gets down to it, it's about each individual relationship, you know, human to human. And when someone is aware of their own wounds and their own stuff that's preventing them from being curious, from being kind, from being compassionate, from being self-aware.

Chelsea Myers (1:10:09)
Mm-hmm.

Farrah Sheehan (1:10:24)
you know, that's causing them to be judgmental. And, the things that really mess healthcare up, honestly, you know, when people get that, then they can deliver better quality healthcare, like in general, like they're gonna do better for families, for individuals. So I think that everyone needs to have, you know, that every hospital, every whatever, like we all need to have somebody to listen to hear our stories. And,

Chelsea Myers (1:10:30)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (1:10:51)
So, and then I guess the third is, that just like what you said, one way or another that everyone has an opportunity to have their birth story heard in a way that is loving and curious and tender and really held deeply. Because it's a sacred story. It's a rite of passage and it deserves its own listening ceremony, you know?

Chelsea Myers (1:11:13)
Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Farrah Sheehan (1:11:22)
I mean, the miracle like that a human being comes into the world, like that should be so revered, like that should be such a treasured ceremonial experience, you know, someone's story is so sacred, you know, and our culture has just like, we've forgotten that completely. So those are my three things, you know, mostly it's about love, I guess.

Chelsea Myers (1:11:40)
Yes. Yeah, the over, I was gonna say like the overarching

theme I feel like is empathy and compassion for everyone, for the birther, for the birth worker, for everyone. Like this is just such, yeah, just empathy and compassion in general. We need that. But.

Farrah Sheehan (1:11:49)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we do. And this is

one way to do that, you know, listening to your podcast.

Chelsea Myers (1:12:04)
Yeah, yeah, just listen.

well, I hope so. I hope that this can help. That's the whole goal, is to have someone hear it and not feel alone or to have someone tell their story and feel loved and feel seen. So I just, I one want to thank you for the experience of

Farrah Sheehan (1:12:10)
Yeah.

Yep. Beautiful.

Chelsea Myers (1:12:33)
our time together with Birth Story Medicine. I hope I thanked you then, but if not, I'm doing it now because it did shift a lot of things for me. And I'm thanking you sort of on a bigger scale for the work that you're doing with individuals and with organizations like VCHIP and at the state and local level just to help create a more compassionate

environment for our birthing people and our children. And thank you for taking the time to chat with me today on a Saturday. On a snowy Saturday. But yes, thank you so much.

Farrah Sheehan (1:13:10)
snowy Saturday that we're having.

You're so welcome, Chelsea. This

was really valuable and it's always so nice as well, you know, just to reflect on, the work. Sometimes we, we're so in it. It's like, at least for me, I sometimes forget like, okay. Yeah, that's, that's good work. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. It's just like a mama. Keep going. One day at a time.

Chelsea Myers (1:13:29)
Yes! Yes. Yes. Keep going.

Yes.

Chelsea Myers (1:13:39)
Farrah, thank you so much for connecting with me, for our time together through Birth Story Medicine, and for the work that you're doing to create a safe and compassionate world for birthing people. I'm excited to see where your journey takes you. Listeners, please check the show notes to learn more about Farrah, Birth Story Medicine, and the work that VCHIP is doing in Vermont.

You can keep up with us on Quiet Connection by following us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and threads at Quiet Connection Podcast. You can help our community grow by leaving us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, and consider sharing our episodes on social media. To share your personal journey, you can contact us through our website at www.quietconnectionpodcast.com or by email at

QuietConnection ppmh at gmail.com. Join us next time when another story is told and you realize you are not alone. I see you.