Follow Your Gut Podcast

There is so Much More that Should be Offered to Help Women Prepare for Motherhood

September 19, 2023 Juniper Bennett Season 2 Episode 68
There is so Much More that Should be Offered to Help Women Prepare for Motherhood
Follow Your Gut Podcast
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Follow Your Gut Podcast
There is so Much More that Should be Offered to Help Women Prepare for Motherhood
Sep 19, 2023 Season 2 Episode 68
Juniper Bennett
There is a tremendous gap in our culture when it comes to preparing women for motherhood, particularly when it comes to their microbiome and nourishment.

“Every mother desires a healthy child, but in this world it is not enough to just hope and pray for that outcome. As Keepers of Birth and Life, we can help shepherd humanity through this turbulent time.”

The roles are reversed in this episode. Tune in for an exclusive interview with my friend Alison Ritchie. She interviewed me for a module in her course “Of Marrow and Mother”. There is so much more that should be offered to help women prepare for motherhood.

Click
HERE for the full show notes.
Links from this episode:

Thanks for listening! I would love to connect with you ♡

Click HERE to shop my gut balancing supplements.

Sending love and wellness from my mama heart to yours,
XO - Juniper Bennett
Founder of ōNLē ORGANICS

Show Notes Transcript
There is a tremendous gap in our culture when it comes to preparing women for motherhood, particularly when it comes to their microbiome and nourishment.

“Every mother desires a healthy child, but in this world it is not enough to just hope and pray for that outcome. As Keepers of Birth and Life, we can help shepherd humanity through this turbulent time.”

The roles are reversed in this episode. Tune in for an exclusive interview with my friend Alison Ritchie. She interviewed me for a module in her course “Of Marrow and Mother”. There is so much more that should be offered to help women prepare for motherhood.

Click
HERE for the full show notes.
Links from this episode:

Thanks for listening! I would love to connect with you ♡

Click HERE to shop my gut balancing supplements.

Sending love and wellness from my mama heart to yours,
XO - Juniper Bennett
Founder of ōNLē ORGANICS

Juniper Bennett (00:01.41)

Welcome to episode 52, True Nourishment with Alison Ritchie and Savannah Taylor. Today marks the beginning of what this podcast has evolved into. We get to have a beautiful conversation with these two powerhouse women who are moving mountains by taking their own birth experiences and introduction to motherhood, the ignited passions deep within them, and now they are sharing their life purpose with the world.

 

Juniper Bennett (00:27.874)

Today, we are talking all about true nourishment, living intuitively, coming back home to ourselves as women and mothers, and the importance of mothers knowing and having the support of deep nourishment during their mother-bearing years and beyond. I cannot wait for you to join the conversation. As you are listening, please honor your own motherhood. This conversation should not trigger guilt within you.

 

Juniper Bennett (00:52.862)

It is all about learning, expanding, and trusting that you are exactly where you are supposed to be in your motherhood journey. Without further ado, welcome to the podcast, Alison and Savannah.

 

Juniper Bennett (00:00.202)

I'm so excited to have this conversation with the two of you. Initially, Allison and I were going to have a one-on-one conversation, but when I was sharing about it with Savannah, who's the community manager here at my company, Only Organics, I just knew her passion would enrich this conversation so much. So there is really no other way to go, and it's such an honor to come together with both of you powerful women to make

 

Juniper Bennett (00:29.282)

big waves together. And I totally took that saying right from Allison's website because it was so beautiful. I briefly introduced both of you in the intro, but I would love for you to share a little more about yourselves, your passion in the birthing field, and your personal journey that led you to the work that you do. So, Allison, would you like to go first?

 

Alison (00:54.382)

Sure, yes, thank you for having me. So I am coming from the heart of North America in the Canadian prairies here in Manitoba, Canada. And I'm a mum of two, and I've had two very different birth experiences. I would consider myself kind of a crunchy mom from the very beginning. And even, you know...

 

Alison (01:19.414)

despite doing all of the things I thought necessary to have, like a really natural birth, I ended up in the hospital and I ended up with a really medicalized birth. And it was traumatic and horrendous to recover from. And little did I know at the time that this would be the catalyst to really ignite my fire around maternal healthcare. And...

 

Alison (01:48.622)

holistic woman care and just like the whole the whole shebang it just like lit off a firecracker in me so Six months after my son was born. I attended my first birth so that was 14 years ago, and I've been attending births ever since then and When my daughter was born three years later I had done so much work in between my son's birth and her birth and I really

 

Alison (02:15.822)

had this redemption, you know, just a dream birth. It was at home in a pool with my husband and loved ones and it was just really, really healing. And so I feel definitely not like a victim. I feel like I got to experience both sides of the birthing spectrum and what is available to us and how we can operate. It just informed a lot of.

 

Alison (02:44.042)

my practice moving forward and the places that women can find themselves in and how we can feel really disappointed with our birth outcomes and despite really trying to have this ideal birth. And so when I started attending births, I just really witnessed that there was a lot of cracks in the system. There was a lot of holes in the picture and especially around food.

 

Alison (03:13.434)

and around how we were just not doing all we could to help mothers and help women thrive. And I vividly remember this one time when I was attending hospital births. I remember after she had had her baby, the hospital bringing this like absolutely nutrient void joke of a meal to this.

 

Alison (03:41.314)

goddess mother who had just like gone through a marathon of birth and I was like, is this the best we can do? Really? Like this is, this is not healthcare. And so I just kind of took it upon myself to start building a practice around food as medicine and food therapy. And, and as a result, I just, you know, I was walking my, my talk because

 

Alison (04:08.678)

I was a mom who actually experienced a lot of depletion in my postpartum times, and I thought I was doing all the things. I thought I was eating healthy. I thought I was, you know, replenishing myself. But the truth is, like, it was only surface level. And it wasn't until I understood what deep nutrition meant when I had actually hit rock bottom and being like, nobody's coming to save me, you know, unless I want to.

 

Alison (04:36.942)

turn myself over to pharmaceuticals and just slap a bandaid on everything, which I absolutely was not willing to do. My path was laid out for me of like, how, how can I, um, get myself out of the ditch here? And so my, my whole birth practice, my whole business is an extension of my life. The, the more work that I did on myself, the more, um, strong and resilient my business.

 

Alison (05:06.51)

came and the more I shared on Instagram about the food I was cooking and how it was filling me up, the more I could feel my nails getting stronger and my hair, like I was just getting robust and strong and it was reflecting in all aspects of my life. And as a result as well, my children were very strong and we managed to like navigate through early childhood free of doctors visits because there was these key foundational pieces that

 

Alison (05:36.678)

I understood that this is the ticket to true health. And I've just never looked back and I've never stopped talking about it. And I just keep getting louder because I see so much energy that mothers are using towards trying to heal their children or worrying and researching, like how can I improve my child's health? How can I...

 

Alison (06:06.314)

replenish myself as a mother and serve from a place of abundance and overflow as opposed to martyrdom. And I was like, okay, all of these things that I have learned, now it's time to like, spread my wings and share what I know. And so now here we are together.

 

Juniper Bennett (06:24.862)

absolutely beautiful and the entire time you are sharing that all I can think of is you know every time a woman gives birth she births a new version of herself and your story really hits close to home you know I think this is something so beautiful that many women in our position experience we've we've experienced something traumatic early in motherhood

 

Juniper Bennett (06:53.038)

and we learned our way through it. And it's too powerful to hold within ourselves. And it's so clear, like this is your life purpose and your calling and it's such an honor to be here with you.

 

Alison (07:08.418)

Likewise, thank you.

 

Juniper Bennett (07:11.15)

to Vienna.

 

Savannah (07:12.108)

Yes, oh that was so beautiful, Allison. I almost cried because it gave me so much hope for the future just for myself and for other people. So I, yeah, I'm Savannah. I am a mom to three children. I have a five-year-old, a three and a half-year-old, and a 19, almost 20-month-old. My journey into birth work

 

Savannah (07:42.084)

and lactation support and gut health really started in the same way. It started with a traumatic experience like you just said Juniper, which is so unfortunate that so many people are in that same position. But I

 

Savannah (08:00.568)

Had my first baby at 20. I had gotten pregnant with her at 19. And up until that point in my life, I had been just a very typical person, mainstream medical practices. I grew up in all of routine pediatrician appointments and all of like my path was one way. And at the hospital, I didn't even question where I would have my baby.

 

Savannah (08:30.716)

but at the hospital with my daughter, I experienced multiple instances of what I consider to be obstetric sexual assault. And I was, of course, you know, traumatized myself, but became a birth doula because I had thought if I could be there with other people, then maybe this wouldn't happen. But the reality was that it continued to happen.

 

Savannah (09:01.072)

even if I was in the room, it happened just because of the nature of the institution. And I actually published a paper on this topic called My Birth 2, Obstetrics and the Modern Obstetrics and Sexual Assault. And so...

 

Savannah (09:22.696)

This was something that I was seeing more and more frequently with people that I was working with was that they were being regularly assaulted during their births and this was just incredibly got wrenching to experience and I really believed in a very different way of

 

Savannah (09:41.848)

birth and then I had my second and third baby and their experiences were very different from the first and very different from one another. I wouldn't say necessarily that just because I had out of hospital births either that they were perfect and blissful and that there was no harm or that there was no negative things that happened during these experiences, but they were very, very different.

 

Savannah (10:07.924)

And they were different because they allowed me to connect with my body. And that was the first time in my entire life that I was actually encouraged to connect with my body during pregnancy and labor and birth and postpartum. I had felt regularly disconnected from my body my entire life until these experiences. And in between.

 

Savannah (10:37.064)

My second and third child, I became a lactation counselor and saw so many things that I experienced myself with my children. Specifically, my oldest daughter really struggled with horrible baby rashes. She was covered head to toe in...

 

Savannah (11:01.4)

Baby acne I guess is what they told me that it was at the doctor. She also had really really frothy diapers like really green baby poop it was Wild like I had just had no idea what I was seeing I would get this is normal from people and then I would get okay now you have to eliminate Ten different things from your diet, but that's all and that's all you have to do

 

Savannah (11:28.184)

And there's nothing else we can do, but here's a cream if you wanna put it on her rash, I guess. And so I started putting the pieces together and I became involved in only organics in 2022, I think is right. So I've been here a little bit over a year now and this job is more than a job.

 

Savannah (11:54.848)

It's connected all of the pieces of things in my life together in a way that has provided me not only with a deep understanding of my body but a huge passion for supporting people who are who went through the same things I did especially birth, breastfeeding, and struggling with just early motherhood especially young mothers. I'm also deeply deeply passionate about

 

Savannah (12:24.9)

people through loss experiences and end of life experiences and nourishing bodies in these times. And so that's where I'm at in my journey and I'm so excited to get to talk with you both today.

 

Juniper Bennett (12:41.038)

Wow, I am emotional having this conversation with both of you because, I mean, Savannah, we've worked together for a long time now and I didn't know this about you. So this is new and heart wrenching and just so very disturbing because I know that the majority of listeners have also experienced shit care.

 

Savannah (12:52.964)

Thank you.

 

Juniper Bennett (13:11.138)

And that is what this conversation is about. That is why we are coming together. Because we are in the work of creating a new way for women and creating a new expectation of what real care and real healing is. And this is big. We are part of a really big movement and joining our passions and coming together like this.

 

Juniper Bennett (13:39.722)

we get to reach and make such a beautiful impact for so many women. And so Allison and I, we started connecting. I think we found each other on Instagram because she had done a post about Gut Health. And probably somebody that I follow shared it in their stories. And I was like, who is this woman? And we instantly connected. And someday, we are going to like

 

Juniper Bennett (14:09.666)

be in a kitchen together because all three of us. But anyways, we just started talking about how can we work together? How can we share our voice louder and make an even bigger impact for more people? And something that Alison is doing right now is you have recently launched your course of Maro and Mother. Maro and Mother. And.

 

Juniper Bennett (14:38.366)

I want to hear about it. I want to hear because this is like an all-encompassing, from my understanding, an all-encompassing package to hold a woman really at any stage of her life and nurture her from the very core of her being.

 

Juniper Bennett (14:58.574)

to radiate around her, to everybody around her. Do I have this right? And so I wanna hear about the magic that you have created because as a woman and mother myself, a course is like so inviting. I don't have the freedom to go to a conference or go to a retreat or, you know, I'm sure I could like twist some ties and bend backwards to pull this off. But of course I can do that right from my own home. So I wanna hear about.

 

Juniper Bennett (15:28.13)

this.

 

Alison (15:29.746)

Oh my gosh, where to begin, honestly. Yeah, it's really truly in a nutshell, it is the art of nourishment, of deep nourishment. And it is the intention of it truly is because, you know, when we are deeply nourished, we operate from a completely different place within ourselves. Like when...

 

Alison (15:56.806)

All of our gifts can come online and become available and become activated because we are getting our needs met. Like shit changes in a really big way. The way we mother, the way we can show up as partners to our husbands, to whoever, you know, like everything just shifts. And when we understand beyond.

 

Alison (16:22.994)

ideologies, like on a biological level, what our bodies need to thrive. And when we are consciously conceiving babies and I talk a lot about being on the front lines as a birth worker, like we're seeing this new generation coming in, but it's not enough to show up as a birth worker when mothers are in labor. Like we need to start showing up sooner so that we can like help.

 

Alison (16:52.302)

teach mothers what is going on in that very malleable first trimester where babies are literally laying down the hardware to their bodies and they are so susceptible to things like environmental toxins and processed foods and food dyes and you know it goes on and on and on. But like how can we break this cycle of disease? And

 

Alison (17:22.253)

poor health and just really step into this place of trust within ourselves, you know, operating and working from a place of intuition, mother's intuition. I talk a lot about, um, you know, being able, like, like what happens to us in our rite of passage? Like, of course, yes, we're growing a baby and there's lots of things happening physically, but, you know, we get new eyes to see the world when we become mothers.

 

Alison (17:52.298)

And we are constantly scanning and like dialing into our children's field once they're born. And we're like, we become, we have the blood of mama bears running through our veins. And so really, you know, I'm an herbalist as well. So it's a real song and prayer that as mothers can really,

 

Alison (18:21.27)

when we're in overflow and when we can like serve ourselves and help our sisters and our friends just like upgrade with real health and serving in a real meaningful way to our families. I don't know if I'm repeating myself here, but.

 

Juniper Bennett (18:39.998)

beautiful and everything you've just said too. Like when you are nurtured to the core of your being and your body is balanced, your intuition speaks to you so much louder and clearer and you are able to show up in life with a completely different sense of ground than when your body is depleted.

 

Juniper Bennett (19:05.754)

So I speak a lot about this in my work as well is mama's intuition and

 

Juniper Bennett (19:14.178)

living in a state of balance. Balance is a word that I use a lot. And this is really a state of existence that unfortunately, not many people get to experience. Because we live in a world of, it's a reactive world. It's a sick care system where we are treating sickness, we are not nurturing balance and, like true health and healing. And so

 

Juniper Bennett (19:42.454)

This is absolutely beautiful.

 

Alison (19:46.006)

Rude cause.

 

Savannah (19:46.177)

I love you.

 

Savannah (19:49.432)

I love what you said about things starting before, you know, like suddenly you'll find yourself pregnant and you think, okay, now it's time to start, you know, you'll go get a book or you'll go to a class or you'll make an appointment, you'll do all of that. But the truth is, unfortunately, like this perpetual disembodiment specifically of...

 

Savannah (20:18.968)

birthing bodies, I think bleeding bodies, female bodies, you know, young girls too, like, it starts from the very beginning. You know, we are so culturally sanitized. Nobody wants to talk about these things that come with our bodies and we're told to keep them very quiet. We're told to, you know, keep it in the bathroom. Nobody wants a girl to talk about poop. Nobody wants to talk about your period.

 

Savannah (20:47.8)

you know, and so young girls feel so much shame. And then they, you know, when their period begins, like that is a whole new era. And then you find yourself in motherhood and you've been disembodied your entire life. And it's too late. It's not, you know, it's not too late to have a beautiful experience, but what could have happened could be so much more. So I just thought that was so beautiful, Allison.

 

Alison (21:17.774)

Well, and I thank you. And I feel like a big piece of this is like, even for our daughters who are entering, you know, that first rite of passage, like instead of handing them the Midol, like you can just numb this out, cause this is where this like indoctrination begins, of like, you don't have to feel that pain. You can just numb it out. Like let's change the conversation to, hey, sweetheart, my girl, now this is a time where you get to like really nourish yourself with.

 

Savannah (21:37.284)

with.

 

Alison (21:45.658)

nettle infusions and herbal remedies and like things that are going to build and nurture and support your body because the truth is we aren't designed to actually be in pain. Like the menstrual cycle is actually supposed to be pretty damn symptom-free with the odd you know minor cramps and a little bit of discomfort but it's not supposed to be this horrendous experience and that's the truth and when we can nurture

 

Alison (22:12.51)

our girls, our daughters in those in that first rite of passage, her entry from maiden to mother is going to, the residue of that is going to be carried through into that rite of passage because these rites of passage feed each other. You know the way you show up in your pregnancy and you're feasting that rite of passage is going to inform how you enter

 

Savannah (22:29.904)

Absolutely.

 

Savannah (22:38.905)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alison (22:39.466)

And so, and also these mothers that are having these little babies, when you learn these foundational pieces of how to support not only yourself, but your family, that your new baby that is going to want to start eating food around six months, instead of feeding it or iron fortified rice cereal, you have this like completely different arsenal of tools in your toolkit that you're like,

 

Alison (23:05.218)

hey, how can I really nurture my baby to support their brain and their gut and their like exponentially growing body in a real meaningful way and not just on the surface because when we can do this kids are grounded They're cool. They're steady. I always think about like the lion the lioness. That's just lying They're super cool and super chill and her cubs are playing on her and she's not even like worried about it and everything is

 

Savannah (23:20.129)

Okay.

 

Alison (23:34.07)

just sweet and sassy, you know? And if the time comes, mom can get up and do what she needs to do, but it's just a different way of living your life, really.

 

Juniper Bennett (23:47.646)

It is, you are absolutely right. And it touches on every aspect of our life. When we as moms know how to nurture ourselves and we then nurture our children.

 

Savannah (23:47.757)

Yeah.

 

Juniper Bennett (24:03.842)

to be truly well and healthy. And like you said, not with fortified factory-made foods. No, when we are actually nurtured, parenting is so much easier. Sleep is so much easier. I was just talking about this with my daughter because my youngest, my four-year-old,

 

Juniper Bennett (24:29.962)

Yesterday he was like, mama, I'm going to do my pedal bike. And I was like, okay. And so I kind of like braced myself. I was prepared to like, okay, remember, support my core while I'm like hunched over all day. And then I literally held the back of his seat and he took off and he rode his bike all day long, completely on his own. And it just made me kind of reflect at different stages of motherhood. And...

 

Savannah (24:42.224)

I'm going to go to bed.

 

Juniper Bennett (24:59.726)

Potty training is one for me that always, like I always come back to this. There are a million, maybe more potty training books and methods and tools and all these things that you can do. But this is one that like everybody goes through. Everybody goes through this potty training phase. And I always think of how different it is when families are really nurtured and balanced. Like I have never.

 

Juniper Bennett (25:28.75)

potty trained any of my children. They come to the bathroom with me, they see me going to the bathroom, they see their siblings going to the bathroom, they're studying, they're in it, they're part of it. And all four of them decided when they are ready that they were ready to use the potty. Like it wasn't this event. And so this for me is just an example of, you know, life can just be easy and simple when we are grounded and calm in our bodies and we are in a place of listening.

 

Juniper Bennett (26:22.298)

and following our children and following our intuitions and not coming, I don't know, it's just, it's a completely different way of living and it really touches on everything from potty training to helping our daughters transform into young women and you know.

 

Savannah (26:29.274)

Yeah.

 

Savannah (26:46.432)

Even death, I think, it goes to the end of our life. And I think it's unfortunately, like you know this Juniper and Allison, like it's the systems are so deeply broken that they do not value this. It's not valued in our modern cultures, in our society to really nurture our bodies and to really tune in and listen because what we really want from people, especially what we want from

 

Juniper Bennett (26:51.218)

Absolutely.

 

Savannah (27:16.216)

bodies like ours is to stop all of that because it's an inconvenience. Do not bleed. Do not give birth. Do not make milk. Do not get old and go through menopause and embrace the changes that happen with that. But produce, produce, produce, create, create, create. You need to be a product and like make as much money as possible. You know, do things as fast as possible until you just

 

Savannah (27:43.428)

burn out and bite the dust. And that's what we want from people because that's what keeps, you know, greedy corporations and that's what keeps our systems afloat. And so it's so ingrained in all of that. And you're exactly right that it touches on everything. Slowing down and listening to our bodies and nourishing our bodies is not just about how we feel when we wake up in the morning, it's about

 

Savannah (28:12.032)

every decision we make. Like it's about really being in tune with our plan for ourselves and what the universe has in store for us and what we can, you know, fully show up in each and every moment. It is everything really and truly.

 

Juniper Bennett (28:31.534)

So, Allison, your course is structured. It's kind of like a living course from my understanding. So you, like together with the women enrolled, you kind of have like weekly, I'm not sure if you're calling them modules or chapters or sections that come out weekly. And so could you just kind of like, so this begins June 5th, is that correct? Okay.

 

Alison (28:58.763)

Yeah, June 5th.

 

Juniper Bennett (29:01.334)

And so the course begins June 5th, and it's on pre-sale right now. And so do people have to enroll by June 5th?

 

Alison (29:14.286)

June 5th is, yeah, yeah, the cart will call out.

 

Juniper Bennett (29:16.382)

Okay, so there's like a cutoff. Okay, perfect. And then can you just kind of like walk us through? And I'm really kind of blinding you with this, but just like the basic chapters that you have are like the basic weeks. And then I believe on week five, it's focused on gut health. So maybe when we get there, we can take a pause for a second.

 

Alison (29:40.814)

Totally, yes. So the first four weeks really focus on the foundational pieces of traditional foods and also filling our own cup first as birth keepers, as mothers, as women, whom I'm done with the martyrdom culture. I want us all to be living in the matriarch and claiming that for ourselves. Like we're serving from a full well.

 

Alison (30:10.274)

drawing from a full well.

 

Juniper Bennett (30:12.078)

Can I pause you for one second? One thing that I wanted to make really clear for our listeners is this course is really designed for two people, right? Like birth workers to support mothers and mothers themselves. So.

 

Alison (30:25.621)

Yeah.

 

Alison (30:30.774)

Yes, like initially it was just for birth workers and as I ran it the first time, there was so many mothers that were reaching out, like, can I take this? Because it seems like there's a lot of things that I would benefit from taking this. And so I'm actually going to be recording the modules, like, you know, a day or two before they actually go live. So there are some specific...

 

Alison (30:59.558)

not modules, but like parts within the modules that are birth worker through the lens of a birth worker. But really, truly like all of the stuff is like if you're pregnant or you're looking to conceive, like it's absolutely for you. Yeah.

 

Juniper Bennett (31:19.098)

And I love this. I picture myself as a new mom or even before motherhood. And how empowering to be able to, this is so different than anything that is ever talked about or shared in traditional medicine of let's prepare your body, let's prepare you. And actually, let's even equip you with terminology. And...

 

Juniper Bennett (31:49.31)

Like, how can you see this from the angle of a birth worker, from the angle of somebody who's going to be supporting you through this transformative time in your life? I think that that is so beautiful and so empowering to a new mom.

 

Alison (32:07.37)

Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, it's really meant to give women the tools, the foundational tools. So like week one is all about it's a real miss mishmash of traditional foods and herbal medicine. I didn't want to have it, you know, one section, just traditional foods, I wanted to like, weave it all in.

 

Juniper Bennett (32:30.806)

Well, it's all very cohesive. Like, they all go together, so that makes perfect sense.

 

Alison (32:34.06)

Yeah.

 

Alison (32:36.714)

Yeah, like week one we're really focusing on bone broth, meat stock, nourishing tonics. We're gonna talk, I can't remember totally off the top of my head, but we weave in some of the herbal medicine through that. Week two is about traditional fats and why we need to be having those fat soluble vitamins via animal products. And week three is talking about

 

Alison (33:05.63)

liver and organ meats and these traditional food pieces that are really truly the quickest way to mineralize your body and prepare your body and I also talk a lot about healing our relationship with death because as Savannah was saying like I really notice a lot of micro and macro like things that are mirrored in in the collective like

 

Alison (33:34.346)

You know, so many people, we live in this forever 21 culture where it's like, let's just stay in constant producing mode. And the problem with that is that it's very, very depleting. And you see that in modern agriculture. And so like things like regenerative agriculture where we're like nurturing and understanding and incorporating.

 

Alison (34:00.342)

the process of death and decomposition in order for new life to grow and flourish. Like that's a big piece of what I talk about. I'm a pretty big gardener. And I've just like noticed the parallels between Mother Earth and us as mothers. And to further that, like week four is gut health. And you know, I've been...

 

Alison (34:28.426)

marching against Monsanto since like 2010, I cannot even believe that like we are still spraying our crops with glyphosate everywhere and it's an antibiotic and it's just destroying the the gut health of our planet, the microbiome, and that is being reflected in us as mamas and as humans and as children and so a big piece of that is like

 

Alison (34:54.946)

How can we have boundaries with these things? How can we, I'm just, I'm all about personal authority and like, let's bring it back to our home gardens, our communities, resourcing things from places because I'm really done with the doom and gloom. I just, I really truly believe that what we focus on expands and I wanna focus on building this new way forward for us and like the preventative piece of like how as women.

 

Alison (35:23.978)

We can restore that inner ecology and leave our children with this like immaculate, amazing bacterial inheritance when they're cultured at birth. Like this is important stuff, you know?

 

Savannah (35:35.245)

Oh.

 

Juniper Bennett (35:37.902)

Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, this is amazing that you just touched on Monsanto and all of this, because I just recorded a podcast last night that will air. Well, OK, so this is going live on Thursday. So it just went up on Tuesday. And it's all about it. It's like I feel that we are very sheltered as a culture to.

 

Juniper Bennett (36:05.962)

Not many people really know what the term GMO really even means. And I mean, this podcast episode is all about the number one thing you can do to change your family's health. Because people don't know what GMO even means or why it is so important for something to say non-GMO. And how horrific it is.

 

Juniper Bennett (36:35.694)

for our bodies. If our gut bacteria is imbalanced, none of our body is working for us. None of our body is working optimally. Our gut and our brain, our gut is connected to every part of our body. And...

 

Juniper Bennett (36:54.938)

Roundup is being sprayed on all of our food and that Roundup not only kills the bad, the good bacteria, but it also feeds the bad bacteria. And when a mom is consuming these foods...

 

Juniper Bennett (37:12.626)

She needs to know. She needs to know and have that choice to say, I want to eat that GMO food or I'm gonna make a very intentional choice to not eat GMOs. And it makes me, it saddens me deeply that people just don't know.

 

Alison (37:34.626)

They just don't know. And like Cheerios is the number one spray, like it's one of the number one products that has, it's just saturated in glyphosate. And like these are the finger foods that a lot of moms are putting down for their kids to nibble on. And it's like, there has to be other options here that are like, you know.

 

Savannah (37:34.772)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Juniper Bennett (37:49.415)

Absolutely.

 

Savannah (37:50.229)

Yeah, we did it.

 

Juniper Bennett (37:55.662)

Absolutely, and there's an entire part of gut health that I would love to touch on for just a moment. And Allison and I are actually collaborating to incorporate a piece on this in her course, speaking about when a mom conceives, her gut health matters. When a mom gives birth, her gut health really, really matters because

 

Savannah (38:17.418)

Bye.

 

Juniper Bennett (38:22.026)

When a child is in utero, their gut is sterile. They don't have good bacteria. They don't have bad bacteria. And their first exposure is when they pass through the birth canal. And so this happened to me personally. I had a gut imbalance when I gave birth to my second child without knowing it. I'd never even had a conversation or a thought about my gut health. And take a prenatal vitamin. Take some kind of.

 

Juniper Bennett (38:50.846)

omega and you're good. Nobody ever mentioned anything about gut health and I passed an imbalance onto my child and it plagued him for two and a half years. I fought for his life for two and a half years and I know had I not figured it out how to heal his body, he was heading straight toward autoimmune disease or cancer. I was going to lose my child.

 

Juniper Bennett (39:20.966)

And I was losing my family, my family was falling apart. And at two and a half years old, I learned this. I learned that I, from a naturopath, that I unknowingly passed my imbalance onto my child. And I was pregnant at the time with my third. And our naturopath recommended that I also rebalance my gut along with our sons so that I didn't.

 

Juniper Bennett (39:48.286)

again unknowingly passing in balance onto our third baby. And to this day, he is the most rock solid child I have ever met. He does, like our whole family can get sick and he does not get sick. And like his mood is steady, his sleep is steady. He is like, he learns and retains information so readily. And it is, it is.

 

Juniper Bennett (40:15.35)

absolutely amazing. And this isn't to say that my other children are less than in any way, but you can really tell a difference in the way that I nurtured my gut during pregnancy with my third child versus my other three children. And I am on a mission to educate women on the significance of their gut health during pregnancy and birth and postpartum. Because

 

Juniper Bennett (40:44.002)

there is a gap. There is a gap of information available to women. And this isn't OK, because a child's gut flora right from, like, the mama's gut flora becomes the foundation of that child's gut bacteria for their entire life. And how can we do better? How can we set our children up? Nurturing my gut during birth, too?

 

Juniper Bennett (41:11.218)

also made my postpartum so significantly different. And of course, now looking back, of course, when you nurture the very core of your body and the very core of your wellbeing, of course your body is stronger. And so I'm just so happy that we have the opportunity to talk about this because we can't talk about it enough. We can't shout it loud enough. Women need to know this information.

 

Juniper Bennett (41:39.934)

and going back to GMOs and glyphosate.

 

Juniper Bennett (41:45.566)

Women are, you know, oh my gosh, it just goes so deep. It goes so deep. Savannah or Allison, I know you guys know the name for this. I never did it. But what is the drink that you have to drink in the hospital to test your blood sugar?

 

Savannah (41:56.374)

Oh, Glucolla. Glucolla.

 

Juniper Bennett (42:00.266)

It's like straight concentrations of glyphosate.

 

Savannah (42:03.969)

Yeah.

 

Alison (42:04.194)

Poison.

 

Savannah (42:07.656)

Yeah, there's no need for that. Oh my goodness. Yeah.

 

Alison (42:10.314)

It's got like polysorbate 80 in it and all this.

 

Juniper Bennett (42:13.638)

Oh my gosh, it is just I just Oh my gosh. And that could be a whole conversation of its own. But just like, but just being able to empower women with knowledge so that they can make intentional choices, I feel is the most powerful thing that we all need and that we can all do.

 

Savannah (42:17.14)

Yeah, I know, Allison. I know, I know.

 

Savannah (42:34.137)

Yeah.

 

Alison (42:34.222)

Well, paying attention to your gut health while you're pregnant and working to, like I say, restore that inner ecology, that's going to steer you away from the GBS, which then they're gonna wanna give you the antibiotics at birth, and it's just a slippery slope. So, preventative medicine all the way.

 

Juniper Bennett (42:53.634)

Absolutely.

 

Savannah (42:56.664)

Well, what you were saying, Allison, I was like, it connected all of these dots in my brain and like, with the regenerative agriculture and how your course is breaking down ideas about death is so beautiful to me because I am also an end of life doula. And a lot of the work I do is on the idea of like,

 

Juniper Bennett (42:57.026)

Absolutely.

 

Savannah (43:22.288)

like, you know, things breaking down, decomposing and becoming new life. And that like this, the food we eat is life that has been given to us. And like these GMOs, these chemicals, these environmental toxins, all of these, what they're really doing is disrupting ancestral knowledge.

 

Savannah (43:43.34)

that should be passed down from parent to child. And that should be an innate thing that exists in all of us. And like we said in the beginning, like it is about everything. It's not just about how our tummy feels, you know? It is a huge, huge gift to tap into this. And the corporations and everything that is like, you know, like you said Cheerios, you know, stuff like that, like,

 

Savannah (44:12.98)

It's okay, it's not I'm not here to shame anybody and I have made choices about food that you know I wouldn't say are always the most enlightened and and it's okay like there's resiliency and there's grace with all of it but empowering people To know that there is so much more available to them and that they are worthy of so much more and that Their journey does not have to be

 

Savannah (44:41.2)

broken that their bodies are not broken, you know, like your course, what I love about it is that it trusts the body, it trusts the pregnant body. And that is something that are, you know, again, this isn't to shame doctors or to shame people who choose doctors, but that's something that I don't think that modern obstetrics really believes, that the body is capable of just existing and healing and creating life without intervention. And I love

 

Savannah (45:11.137)

love that foundation of what you're teaching.

 

Alison (45:15.606)

Thank you. And this is the other piece is that as birth becomes more medicalized and as we see more AI and more genetically modified food and more synthetic meat and all of this stuff that's coming down the pipeline. The real truth is it is getting harder for women to birth their babies. And it's like when you align with a certain lifestyle. WAPIO

 

Alison (45:42.134)

who's an elder midwife says we give birth the way we live or something along those lines. But you know, if you are living, eating synthetic food and aligned with the paradigm that someone has to take care of you in your birth and outsourcing all of that stuff, then it's probably gonna happen. And I'm saying, hey, listen, there's a divine design, there's a template that we were gifted.

 

Savannah (45:46.849)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Savannah (46:03.053)

Mm-hmm.

 

Alison (46:11.502)

And all we have to do is give it the right information via food and herbal medicine, you know, herbs as food, nutritive herbs. And like it just unfolds the way it's supposed to. And the human skeleton is actually shrinking. And this is the piece of like creating a legacy of generational health because our bodies, we're sitting here, we've all already had our babies. But when

 

Savannah (46:30.69)

Thanks.

 

Alison (46:40.95)

women get pregnant and those babies are gestating. The information that we are feeding them when they are building their template, the babies are building their bodies, this work is not just for us, it is like an epigenetic thing. We're doing this for our daughters, for our sons and their children.

 

Alison (47:02.57)

Like we need to steer this boat in a completely different direction before birth gets completely hijacked and we're actually not even able to birth our children without medical help or surgical help. Like this is why this is a movement. It's not just like a fun thing that you can do in your home and cook and it's like this is the fight that we're all here. This is what I'm on earth to do right now.

 

Savannah (47:16.616)

Yeah, scary.

 

Alison (47:30.498)

And I feel like moms are the ones that are gonna like spearhead and there's sort of a war happening. And like the tools that we can use are not, or the weapons that we can use are our kitchen knives and our arsenal of like herbal medicines and foods and knowledge and community. And that's what it means I feel to be on the front lines of this movement of like.

 

Alison (48:00.362)

let's take it back. Let's take our kitchens back. Let's take our food back. Let's take birth back. Let's take it all back because it's just, it's one of those things where you don't even realize how far away from balance we've gotten until you actually stop and look. And it's like, how the hell did we get here? And...

 

Juniper Bennett (48:20.854)

Well, and it usually is a traumatic instance that wakes us up to it, that opens our eyes to see what's really happened.

 

Alison (48:32.266)

Yep. Yeah.

 

Savannah (48:32.481)

Yeah, definitely.

 

Juniper Bennett (48:33.666)

And oh my gosh, OK, I just had a thought and now it's blanked me. But so, oh yes, this is it. OK, so I want to know because I know that there are so many listeners who have children already, who have older children, who are deep into motherhood, and they're sitting there thinking, well, shit, like I'm too late to the game. Can you speak to these women?

 

Alison (49:01.066)

It's never too late. Every meal and every moment is a chance to turn it all around. Food is information and our genes are constantly listening to what we are giving it and the information that we are giving it. So it is not too late. You know, my children right now, my son just turned 15 and my daughter's almost 12 and they're going through their own rites of passage right now and I am feasting them in a way.

 

Alison (49:28.822)

that is undoing my 80s upbringing of like fruit loops and Saturday morning cartoons, those were great times, but you know what I'm saying? It was just like, okay, we need to like help repair some of the damage that has unknowingly being done. And it's not about being perfect. It's not about like never having pizza or things that you find...

 

Alison (49:55.91)

enjoyment from but it's just upgrading. You can have pizza that isn't going to hurt your gut. You can have these like foundational pieces that 90% of the time this is the way you're eating and then you know sometimes it's less stress to go out and enjoy a meal that isn't as healthy but you know what you had a chance to relax and spend some time with your family and that's health too.

 

Savannah (50:21.088)

Yeah, definitely. I know.

 

Juniper Bennett (50:21.846)

balance is absolutely health too. And so for these women, I'm just I'm visualizing myself sitting with them with so many women just kind of like scratching their heads of like, how do I even begin? How do I like make shifts in my family? Like we are so deep into the standard American diet. How can I ever get my children or my partner on board with me?

 

Juniper Bennett (50:50.066)

maybe both of you can kind of speak to this. I would like to say for me, my children from the very beginning, they have been very, very included. Like I don't sugar coat anything. I teach my children what food is, where it comes from, what it's doing inside of our bodies, and just really educating and empowering my children so that they are part of the decision. They are part of the process. That for me is like the most powerful thing.

 

Juniper Bennett (51:20.126)

Because then it's not even a debate. It's not a like it's it's not a fight in my family for my children to want to nurture Their bodies like they are already they're part of it And so but I want to hear from you guys like what you could share with these moms

 

Savannah (51:37.652)

I will just speak from my perspective right now because I feel that way all the time. My kids are so little. And since we're joining the Only Organics team and since I've kind of gone on my own healing journey, which is really like I always felt like I was a natural minded person.

 

Savannah (52:04.064)

I'm sorry. I always felt like I was a natural minded person, but Thought like like I thought Cheerios were healthy because they weren't lucky charms, you know Things like that. So like I thought things I thought my prenatal vitamin was making me healthy because it was a vitamin and I just didn't know what I didn't know and so now

 

Savannah (52:29.488)

Um, my daughter is almost six and we don't eat things anymore that we used to eat And there are conversations about this like why did we used to buy? I'm I wish I could remember what it was the other day. Um, because it's a really good example. Um, But something like let's just say like goldfish we we used to buy goldfish. Why do we not buy goldfish anymore and they say like

 

Savannah (52:57.92)

well because goldfish contains xyz things in it these things are not nourishing to our body you know sometimes we might eat goldfish if we have nothing else to eat and we have to have a snack right you know like there are like you said there are extenuating circumstances and i personally struggle really really hard with perfectionism i have a background in with an eating disorder i have a background with ocd

 

Savannah (53:24.964)

and this is a thing for me. If I feel like if I'm not eating perfectly 100% healthy, I might do something like just wreck it all with like a crazy binge or something. That's happened in my past. And so it's, and it's because of perfectionist mindsets. But what I've really have loved is like this healing journey has given me such an opportunity to live without shame.

 

Savannah (53:53.744)

and to teach my children things about food that I was never taught. You know, that food isn't inherently good or evil. Food gives us nourishment or food doesn't give us nourishment, you know. And there might be instances why you would eat something that was less nourishing, but, you know, most of the time this is how we want to live. And so now, now my daughter will come to me and ask me,

 

Savannah (54:23.288)

you know, does this have added sugar in it? Or I, you know, she was said something like, well, so I wanted this, but I think it has dye in it. So I'm not gonna eat, you know, and she's making her own choices about them. And it's so different than how I was raised about food, which is like, if you eat this, this is a bad food, or, you know, it's all very weight centered, things like that. And there's none of that in my house.

 

Savannah (54:53.364)

And it's so, so different. And so, and then when we do fall off of like our goals, because I do really wanna create this nourishing and healthy, fresh, organic lifestyle here in my house, if we do have an off week or we do have an off day, or our grocery budget is too thin, and we have to make sacrifices because we're humans. From what I've learned from

 

Savannah (55:23.22)

Juniper and all of this is the power of resiliency and the power of turning in work, you know, and that it's a journey and it's all about like just taking every new experience and like that it's a you can you can start tomorrow with breakfast and it's okay and it's gonna be okay. And so I feel that so strongly and want definitely want our customers specifically to know.

 

Savannah (55:52.344)

that when they come to reach out to us and when they're talking to me, that there is no shame in our conversations and there is no judgment. And that everybody comes to this journey with so much of their own personal stuff and baggage. And, you know, that like this is a new day. And so my baby just bit my nipple. So I cringed out. Yeah, that's it. I'll end on that.

 

Juniper Bennett (56:19.33)

Well, Savannah, you touched on so many amazing points that I really wanted to touch on, because the question does come up a lot. How do you reinforce or teach and support your children to live a very nurturing lifestyle while being really mindful to eating disorders? And this comes up a lot. And for me, I mean, you touched on it so beautifully that-

 

Juniper Bennett (56:47.806)

It is not about right or wrong or good or bad. It's about nourishment. It's about, I mean, in our family, we call them growing foods. And the majority of our life is filled with growing foods. And occasionally, there's some not growing foods. And it's beautiful. And it's wonderful to indulge. And the other part that you touched on was, I'm going to have to come back to it because it's so beautiful. I'm going to remember as.

 

Juniper Bennett (57:17.046)

while Allison shares her words.

 

Alison (57:20.314)

Yeah, I always like we did not, I did not start off knowing everything that I know. It's it was like learn one thing and incorporate it and kind of just keep moving and going and learn as you go. And one thing I've always done is I've involved my kids in the kitchen from the from the moment I started learning they were learning too. And you know, I would ask them or I would like

 

Alison (57:47.502)

point out to them or get them to acknowledge how they were feeling after they had certain food. So if they went to a birthday party and like part of feeling accepted as when you're little is like you want to have a slice of birthday cake. So I would let them have the birthday cake with all the things in it that I was like cringing like trying to keep that stuff out of their body. But you know as they got older they would be like I don't feel good after eating that. And like mom can we make

 

Alison (58:17.402)

whatever meal tonight because they know in their bodies how they feel best. And so you know as I say my kids are older now and it's one thing to be able to do these things for our families and now I'm at the stage where I'm trying to get my kids to take the reins and I want them to be able to do this for themselves and so part of that is you know helping them calibrate their palette.

 

Alison (58:45.974)

to what real food tastes like and understanding how it interacts with our body. Again, food is information. And yeah, there's no shame. Like, we're all just learning. Some of us, we all come to it in our own time, and we wake up to it as we need to and as we're meant to. And that's why it's just like, if you're ready, like, let's do this. Let's go. And that's even like the course.

 

Savannah (58:48.259)

Mm.

 

Alison (59:13.586)

is meant to be in easy digestible segments so that you, you know, it's not like a two hour lecture. There's like videos of me showing the hows and the whys to make bone broth. You know, so you can like watch that video over and over again if you need, if you need, you know, a little extra help or whatever.

 

Juniper Bennett (59:36.158)

And also like inviting your children, no matter how young they are, to be part of that process.

 

Alison (59:41.494)

Yes, and this is like the piece about death too. It's like, you know, when your kids see that there's bones, like this is where life is coming from. You know, we're putting bones in a pot and we're like using all of the things and we're honoring life and we're honoring death and we're not wasteful. And, you know, this stuff is, even in the course, I have like shopping lists and ways that you can...

 

Alison (01:00:08.174)

kind of upgrade your kitchen slowly and surely. It's not about throwing out everything in your cupboards. It's like when you go shopping next, just choose this instead of this, if that's available, and how to do it on a budget, and how to shop the perimeter of society, and even actually avoiding the grocery store. Reach out to local farmers, cut out the middleman, stock your cupboards with things that are local. And yeah.

 

Savannah (01:00:26.225)

Mm-hmm.

 

Savannah (01:00:37.376)

I love that.

 

Alison (01:00:37.941)

There's so much to it.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:00:39.566)

Well, that was a point that I just wanted to touch on actually was, I think that there is a very large misconception that eating a nourishing diet and living a nourishing lifestyle is very expensive and it's a luxury that only wealthy people get to do. And so I would love to hear your guys' thoughts on that.

 

Savannah (01:01:10.084)

Well, I mean, I will be completely transparent here. Um, I, my husband and I both work, we have three kids and we live in a big city, which I think it might be different. Um, like we live in Houston and so inflation is really expensive. We don't have, um, access. We do have some local farmers markets. Um, we drive like an hour and a half.

 

Savannah (01:01:39.952)

to get some stuff sometimes. It's not amazing. There's so many restaurants and there's so many grocery stores. We have amazing grocery stores and food. But we work really, really hard to prioritize our food budgets, specifically because of this. And it is something we have to be, like we just have to...

 

Savannah (01:02:08.868)

be really mindful of it. And there are certain things for us that are non-negotiables. And so like we will always stay true to those. And for me, if something isn't like, if we can't afford to do, like if we couldn't afford to buy,

 

Savannah (01:02:35.68)

something organically, then I would just wait to buy it, honestly. But I will say, like, we do a lot of really strategic shopping, and we do a lot of bulk cooking, too, like making really, really big things, like big stocks, and we use a lot of stock for things throughout the week, and so like make...

 

Savannah (01:03:01.58)

all the veggie scraps in a stock pot, you know, at the end of the week, that kind of thing. And like, I love gardening too. And so a big part of my healing journey has been connecting with the plants and the herbs and the fruit of the earth and like seeds are $5. You know, I, excuse me. And...

 

Savannah (01:03:28.22)

that can create food, like you can grow your own food. And that is a huge like, way to connect with the earth. So I wish I could say like, yes, I think it is a misconception because we are doing it. And we do not we are not rich people. By any means, we are very average middle class people. And

 

Savannah (01:03:57.632)

we still prioritize this, but we just have to, like it just is, it's like a religious practice almost, you know, like you just have certain things that you cannot deviate from. These are your boundaries about food. And so when you have that kind of mindset of like, this is just how I am, then money, it all kind of falls into place because you don't even think about anything being different. It's just the way it has to be.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:04:26.818)

Well, and very much in alignment with what Allison said earlier is it's really so true that like your life and your body and your mind, like you, your life follows where your mind is. And so if you are being a victim to this misconception that it's not available to you because of financial reasons.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:04:54.67)

there's the ability to see it through a different lens and it makes it available to you. And I hope that that doesn't feel harsh or cold, but it is available. It's available to everyone. And so I wanna hear your words for a second, Allison. So I wanna hear your words for a second, Allison.

 

Savannah (01:04:59.044)

You know.

 

Alison (01:05:13.254)

Yeah, a lot of what I teach is like demystifying what all of this is because truthfully like a grass-fed pasture liver is one of the cheapest cuts of meat. How this is even possible. But a grass-fed liver is one of the, it is ounce for ounce the most nutrient-dense food on the planet. And it's a cheap cut of meat. And so...

 

Alison (01:05:40.114)

Yeah, I mean, I just talk a lot about how even like inflation is crazy here in Canada right now. It is absolutely insane and for like a small jar of sauerkraut, it's like $14. When you could like grow a cabbage in your garden, if you had salt and a mason jar and some cabbage, like you could do it for literally a dollar, you know. So it's just like...

 

Savannah (01:05:55.705)

you

 

Juniper Bennett (01:06:05.567)

Absolutely.

 

Alison (01:06:07.394)

Learning these life hacks and once you have these tools and these skills these skills are just invaluable like you can't put a price tag on them because We have non-negotiables like I will not negotiate eating You know we have come I've come to a part of my life right now where it's like this is the way that we're gonna eat the majority of the time because

 

Alison (01:06:35.606)

When you eat this way, or I've noticed in my own life, when you eat a certain way, you think a certain way, the caliber of your life changes, the vibration and the frequency that you operate on changes and upgrades, and I'm not willing to compromise that. It's one thing to have a night out, you know, at a restaurant or something. It's a whole other thing to like, default back into the way that I was before I learned all these things.

 

Savannah (01:06:45.584)

Thank you. Have a good one.

 

Alison (01:07:05.374)

So, you know, I talk a lot about cooking in bulk, as Savannah was saying, like we cook large batches of things and we invest it in a deep freeze. So the days that I don't feel like cooking, we can pull something out of the freezer and we don't have to compromise eating fast food or whatever. You know, and like I say, it's a lifestyle. And it's like a muscle that you have to work to figure it out for yourself.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:07:26.079)

Amazing.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:07:29.25)

Oh, I think I lost.

 

Alison (01:07:33.058)

But once you kind of get dialed into the lifestyle, it becomes easy and it becomes natural. And you'll never look back because the way you feel is just, it's so much better, you know.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:07:47.862)

And every extra amount of money that you spend investing in nurturing your body pays you back a million times.

 

Savannah (01:07:54.233)

Yes.

 

Savannah (01:07:57.288)

Oh yes, oh yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's healthcare. This is a little off topic, but when I turned 26, I told my husband, I don't want to be on your health insurance. I don't want health insurance. I wanna spend the money on going to the naturopath.

 

Savannah (01:08:25.632)

I want to spend the money on our supplements from work. I want to spend some time really delving into preventative medicine and health care, actual health care. And like food is medicine. And so every extra bit that we invest in our bodies is.

 

Savannah (01:08:51.604)

investing in our futures and our children's futures. Like there's nothing I can think of that I would wanna spend my money on more than the food that nourishes my body and my kids' bodies because I see what it does. And I will say too, I don't think that our grocery bill is way crazy expensive, more expensive than it was when we were eating conventionally grown.

 

Savannah (01:09:17.156)

foods necessarily. I don't think we are spending all I mean, we have more children. But we, you know, we're eating out less, we don't, you know, Uber eats all the time. Like, we don't, we don't need it. We don't want it. My husband learned how to cook. And, you know, it took a while to get it's taken. He's still working progress. It's okay. I still love him. But you know, it's not really that different. It's really not.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:09:45.282)

Well, and I love what you said about sacrifice because every choice that we make, we are making a sacrifice. So whether we are making a sacrifice to better our health and our life, or making a sacrifice to, you know, the convenience of buying conventional foods, like we get to make the choice of sacrifice with every decision we make in life. And kind of going back to restaurants, and

 

Juniper Bennett (01:10:14.774)

I where life follows where your mind is when you are in the mindset and you just like both of you touched on of Having your values and living a gut nurse or guy always a gut nurturing but Nurturing lifestyle that becomes a value that is a family value that my whole family embodies And we don't budge on that value because

 

Juniper Bennett (01:10:42.91)

like you were saying, Alison, it changes our, it impacts our sleep, it impacts how we wake up, it impacts how we feel in our bodies, how we move, it impacts how I flow through the different phases of my menstrual cycle, it impacts every part of our existence, and so we do not budge on that family value of nourishment, and so if we choose to eat out,

 

Juniper Bennett (01:11:12.806)

I look for an organic cafe and we have spent the majority of the last almost eight and a half years living and traveling in our Airstream and what a gift it is to indulge when we go into a new town and there's an organic cafe. Like, it is such a special gift that we cherish so greatly because it isn't something we do all the time because we're not grabbing food out every single day.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:11:43.07)

No matter if you are in a northern part of the world where the seasons are shorter, or if you are in Texas where it's hot, or if you are living in a small space, nomadically, it is available when you are looking for it. And when you are committed to a lifestyle of nourishment, you will find it because there's no other option. And...

 

Juniper Bennett (01:12:09.83)

You know, I was actually just laughing last night with my husband because we, everybody around us here in our hometown of Bozeman, Montana, they've found all these problems for us. Like, I'm so worried about you guys going to Europe. How are you gonna find foods that you can eat? And like, I haven't even paused to think about that because it's gonna be better. And that's like just not even a problem because we just will. And...

 

Savannah (01:12:30.244)

It's gonna be better.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:12:39.594)

Um, so it's, it's really just about educating yourself to a point of it becoming a non-negotiable value. And when you are that committed and your mindset is dead set on nourishing your body for the betterment of every aspect of your life, you find it.

 

Alison (01:13:03.222)

I live in one of the shortest growing seasons on planet Earth. I'm in zone 3B and like we're just getting seeds in the ground now and it's mid May, mid to late May. And so I saved money to buy a greenhouse because it extends our growing season on both ends in both the spring and the fall. And in doing that and in that investment, I'm able to grow more of our own food for ourselves. And I think.

 

Alison (01:13:32.906)

everything you do in your life is reflected in some other way because the more I feel that we start to take control of our own food, we have chickens now and just like trying to, you know, not outsource as much as possible, those sorts of things get reflected in birth. And it's like, I trust myself that I can grow food to feed my family. I trust that my body knows what to do.

 

Savannah (01:14:02.585)

Okay.

 

Alison (01:14:03.795)

And so it's just like mirrored and it just gets woven through your whole life, trusting yourself and being a part of the cycle and participating in life.

 

Savannah (01:14:17.018)

Oh, it's so beautiful. I know it's so beautiful. Yes. I love it. Oh my goodness

 

Juniper Bennett (01:14:17.89)

I love this. I know.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:14:23.586)

This whole conversation has just been so rich. I could chat with both of you for many, many more hours. I feel right at home like I'm in my own kitchen right now with you guys. And I can almost feel like I can smell your garden, Allison, and your herbs. And I love this. And I know that it has been a very empowering conversation for our listeners. And I want to know how they can find you. How can they find your c**?

 

Juniper Bennett (01:14:52.398)

course, how can they find you on Instagram, how can they connect with you, and then after that don't let me forget I want to touch on the community, the Gutsy Woman community.

 

Alison (01:15:04.462)

Okay, yeah, my website is alisonrichie.com. And right when you enter that website, you'll see that there's a place you can check out the course under courses. And that'll take you to that page where you can learn more about the course. And on Instagram, I am thisgrandvoyage.

 

Alison (01:15:32.986)

Just you can search my name. That name was birthed from a dark night of the soul. And really at a time in my life where I was coming into myself and really finding the grit within me and what I was made of and just like really starting to step into who I came here to be. And also just that this is such an amazing, incredible.

 

Alison (01:16:01.838)

grand voyage of life that we're on and as a birthkeeper being privy to seeing and ushering and helping shepherd new life onto this planet in their own grand voyage through life it's just it kind of became it kind of became my business so but yeah that's where you can find me on Instagram and like I say everything my shop my online shop and everything is allisonrichie.com

 

Juniper Bennett (01:16:30.446)

Amazing. And I feel like you asked me to remind you to share like a pre-sale code or something with listeners. And if it's like a longer link, we can just attach that in the show notes if it's easier.

 

Alison (01:16:44.362)

It's actually all good to go. All the checkout and everything is, yep, it's good to go. So there's no code necessary, yeah. Yeah.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:16:47.854)

Perfect.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:16:50.975)

Okay, so they don't even have to do anything.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:16:55.374)

Perfect. And then, can I invite you to join, we have a free community called The Gutsy Woman. And this is where a lot of women, I wanna say I haven't been looking at the numbers, but I feel like maybe there are, do you know how many women are in the community, Savannah, right now? So, I'm gonna go ahead and start with you. So, I'm gonna start with you. So, I'm

 

Savannah (01:17:12.717)

I think last time I checked it's almost 400 right now. Almost.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:17:16.126)

And so these, it's 400 Women. We just opened this probably six weeks ago and 400 women have already come together. It is a place of inspiring and empowering each other to live intuitively and nurture our bodies from the core of our wellbeing. And so I would love to invite you to join the community and I will also go in there and I'll.

 

Juniper Bennett (01:17:43.202)

When this podcast goes up, we'll share this episode in the community and also I'll share like a link to your course and your Instagram so that anyone within the community or if any listeners want to join the community, they can easily find you there as well. This has been such an honor and I could really relish in this for so much longer.

 

Alison (01:18:01.611)

Yes. Yeah.

 

Savannah (01:18:06.68)

I know. So beautiful.

 

Alison (01:18:07.494)

Me too. I just wanted to say too, if you do wanna sign up for the course, make sure you mention Juniper so that there's reciprocity there. I love this whole community that we're just building to, of helping one another. So yeah, just mention that you found the course through you.

 

Savannah (01:18:40.34)

I still see recording on and you're back on. So, yeah. You cut out for a second, but you're good.

 

Alison (01:18:47.126)

That's what I see, yeah.

 

Savannah (01:19:25.733)

Mm-hmm.

 

Savannah (01:19:29.356)

Yeah, the clock is still going and...

 

Savannah (01:19:37.892)

Okay.

 

Alison (01:19:40.27)

Thank you. Thank you so much.

 

Savannah (01:19:41.164)

Thank you. Thank you.

 

Juniper Bennett

Well, wasn't that magic? From Allison's meditative voice and wildly amazing wisdom to Savannah's passion and genuine love for women, one of my favorite parts was me accidentally cutting out at the end because it highlights the beautiful imperfections in all of us. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I'll be back next week.