Series 3 Episode 5: Janelle Da Silva on the right to be born into love

Transcript

INTRO — You’re listening to Birthing and Justice. My name is Doctor Ruth De Souza. For today’s episode my guest is the fabulous Janelle Da Silva. Janelle’s a marathon runner, birth worker and artist, and I was really keen to talk to them, ‘cause they’re someone who’s deeply committed to decolonization, reflexivity and engagement with transforming injustice in the birth space and broader world.

 

RUTH DE SOUZA (host) — So Janelle: why do you care about birthing?

 

JANELLE DA SILVA (guest) — Well, Ruth, I feel like it’s… well, it is a birthright of every person and woman to have informed choices and empowered birth, whatever unfolds.

 

Yes.

 

[music fades]

 

And that I feel is not even very accessible even in the Western world, which is crazy, in so many ways. Yeah, so I’m very passionate about… well, I’m an advocate, but also being a resource for people who are wanting to reach their anatomical potential in birthing. And these are based on information and wisdom and cultural practices that I’ve had to sort out through… in my own personal experience of becoming a mother, through an independent birthing network—which I just didn’t… I had no idea existed before I was pregnant. And yeah, and that was a long time ago. That was almost twenty years ago now.

 

Wow. Where are you and what do you do?

 

I’m living on unceded Wadawurrung Country, down on the Surf Coast of Victoria—it’s an incredibly majestical part of the world, rugged ocean. And, what do I do—that’s a great question—I do lots of things.

 

Yes. [Both laugh] You do!
 

I do indeed. And I like to get paid for them, so, you know, that’s even better. So, the things that I get paid for: I’m a multi-hyphenated artist, so there’s… essentially I’m an independent artist, so AKA do everything. But yeah, I started doing that in my teens. So, for almost, yeah, twenty-five, thirty years I’ve been an independent artist. I’m also a speaker and educator and a birth worker. So, they’re the big hats that I wear, out in the world. But there’s lots of different ways in which that happens, because I like to… I used to say I like to be my own boss, which in a way is true, but I also love collaborating. But I really appreciate my time. I find that my time since, particularly since becoming a parent—and then I was also a single mother for quite a long time—I found that I really needed to work my work around my children, to which, now I have five. I had… I’ve got three biological, and so my three biological kids, I was single parenting for quite some time. So, I wanted to work my work around them. And I’ve just continued on, repartnered and have two more beautiful kids that are non-biologic, but they’re my… I call them my white babies.

 

[Both laugh]

 

‘Cause they are [both laugh] as in melanation, or their lack of. But yes, deeply embedded a lot of my cultural roots through them as well—I had the honour and pleasure of doing that. And you know, step parenting is an incredible privilege and has its own rewards and challenges, so.

 

Yes.

 

Yeah.

 

Yes.

 

Still like working my work around my family, they’re very, very important. They’re my priority, really. Yeah.

 

There’s so many questions I want to ask you. I was really interested in you talking about your cultural practices, and I’m wondering if you could tell us a bit about that?

 

Mmm, yeah. It’s taken me a long time, Ruth, to understand how I walk through the world, how I experience the world. And I think a lot of that has to do with the beauty of the millennials and all of this new languaging that’s coming about in the past twenty years, about identity and identity politics. And, you know, growing up in the 80s and the 90s you know, I just, I had no idea of who I was or where I belonged, and that’s because I identify as a multi-generational, mixed-race person of colour, and my intersections inform everything that I do, and I’m very proud of how I embody them now in my life. But yeah, I come from a long line of displaced people, but my parents had the privilege of immigrating here in the late 60s during the White Australia Policy.

 

Mmm. 

 

Yeah, but they both came from Pakistan, neither of them were born in Pakistan or Pakistani—as in bloodlines—but they were both born in Pakistan. So, there’s a lot of mixed cultural ways that I experience the world. And then, [laughs] and then growing up as a first generation, non-Indigenous Australian is another layer of how I experience deep assimilation on a day-to-day basis, and also how I am working hard to decolonise the internalised racism and intergenerational trauma of assimilation.

 

One of the reasons why I really wanted to interview you, was because you’ve been a childbirth educator and a birth worker slash doula for seventeen years.

  

Mmm.

 

And you recently gave a speech, an invited speech at the Australian Doula Conference on decolonising birth.

 

Mmm.

 

Can you tell us what that means to you?

 

Mmm, yeah. Decolonising is, I’m afraid to… you know, is kind of falling into those catchphrase words.

 

Mmm.

 

And so that’s a bit of a trap when… particularly when it’s centered under that white gaze. However, and I knew that that was my audience, was you know, a lot of independent workers, or the majority of independent birth workers are white, upper middle class cis [gendered] het[erosexual] women, beautiful people with good intentions and hearts of gold. And yet we are all socialised under this colonial culture in—while we could say it’s post-colonial, but let’s just call it what it is—this colonial culture in this country. And it deeply informs our practices without us even understanding its impacts and the way in which we may be inhibiting a woman from… or, and a birthing person from tapping into their deeper resources. And so, it was tricky to offer a introductory workshop into this framework—which is essentially decentering whiteness in birth.

 

Mmm.

 

It’s deeply triggering because, you know, the word white isn’t a very common place word that we use in our dialoguing when we talk about race relations in Australia, so immediately it can trigger a lot of misunderstanding. And I also find—I’m just gonna say it—I also find there’s a lot of spiritual bypassing and cultural appropriation that happens within this industry, and it’s a very difficult conversation. Because we really need that foundational, critical race theory understanding, and basic anti-racism standpoints in our mind, but also in the way in which we can speak to each other and have inclusive and robust conversations around this. Being able to, you know, sit with our social locations and our positions and access to power and privilege and how that actually informs and affects a space. When all of these things aren’t something that are able to be transparently, inclusively, robustly, and compassionately, and empathetically put on the table in the birth world, you know, there’s a lot of misplaced pain…

 

Mmm.

 

and a lot of transferred pain. Then there’s a lot of opportunities to transform those, but it really, it like all anti-racist work, it really takes that choice to be self-reflective. So essentially my workshop, I think I upset everybody. [Both laugh] One person just—you know, out of about, I don’t know, a hundred and fifty, two hundred people who were present—sent me an email saying ‘That was amazing, thank you.’ Which was lovely. And that doesn’t mean that other people didn’t think that, but I know that lots of people… yeah, it just, there was a… probably too much too soon in the way that I was delivering it. And to be honest with you, I think it’s incredibly triggering to hear it from a person of colour, for people in this country.

 

Mmm, mmm.

 

If I had a white ally with me, I think that it could have been received or… yeah, I think it could have been received a bit more openly. Because, you know, so much of the work of white people is to be done by them. So, I’m still sort of working out how to traverse through these spaces, in all honesty Ruth—it’s like a minefield. [Laughs] And I have had to grapple and understand and be comfortable with being that person that gets positioned as being the antagonist or, you know, that one that’s provoking a space—which is essentially a white space—and speaking against the over-culture. And that can easily be directed as a personal thing that, you know, ‘This is, this is Janelle on her trajectory.’ Whereas I feel like now, as I heal my own intergenerational trauma and become more aware of my intergenerational strength and wisdom, I know that I’m breaking silences for many, many, not just not people and women here on the planet now, but all of those that have gone before us, so that we can speak without sacrificing our safety and our Liberty and our freedom that I so brazenly walk with today as a non-Indigenous Australian woman, so. These are the things I’m really mindful of when I’m working in birth spaces. And it’s very difficult because it’s so complex and layered. And then at the same time, it’s very clear to me, you know, I’m very clear on my work and the way I can provide service. I’m also clear on what my boundaries are, and how little I do know still, and how much work I’m still to do with my access to privilege and my access to power.

 

Mmm.

 

Yep, so working out—again, another word, catchphrase word that’s been completely bastardised— allyship. Yeah, learning how to traverse with my positionality, my social location to power and privilege as a birth worker, and finding ways in which I can be best of service to our First Nations women, daughters and children, and families and communities and birthing people first.

 

Awesome. Awesome. And when you were talking, I was also thinking about how you’ve critiqued a very normative cis, het kind of, birthing workforce. And I’m just wondering, you know, how you develop that kind of nuance and literacy around queer and trans people, and how you’ve brought that into your work as well?

  

[music plays]

 

I am a person who now identifies as queer…

 

Mm-hmm.

 

and gender nonconforming, and that’s taken the best part of forty years. And, you know, sort of only really came out five or so years ago. And that was a weird experience, because it was like, I don’t know, I’m just telling people about my sexual preferences, [laughs] which is really weird, ‘cause that’s sort of private, but now it’s something that I can own and allow it to inform the way that I can operate in professional settings and public spaces. And so, it’s interesting because… well in absolute truth, Ruth, I’ve operated like I was a white cis, het woman for ages. [Laughs] Like, you know, I thought I was white for so long. And when I talk to women of colour and Blak and Black women—when I say that I mean b-l-a-k and b-l-a-c-k, from the African diaspora and from the continent we call Australia—when I’m talking to those fems of colour, they… it’s really refreshing for them to reflect back to me how I have a particular lived experience—as a multi-generational, mixed-race person of colour, queer person of colour that’s fem—being raised in white Australia and by, you know, by these immigrants, by my parents who have completely assimilated. And so out of their sacrifice and their love for my freedom, I have no cultural ties, you know? I’ve had to work so hard over the four decades of my life to start to reclaim my cultural ties, and that… how sexuality informs me in that way means that it’s taken a lot of work for me to be able to feel like having an embodied experience as a queer-identifying person, particularly in the birth world, has had to heal a lot of my own internalised misogyny, my own internalised trans- or homo-phobia, all of my internalised whiteness, so internalised racism. It’s been a lot of unpacking, and it’s been very quiet, difficult work over decades and decades. Because I have moved through white, female, independent and international birth worlds—the whole scene—for… yeah for the best part of two decades. So, I’ve been immersed in that culture. And to be honest, I’ve been hyper-visible in that space, I’ve been tokenised in that space. I actually thought that that was a space where I was most at home because I thought…

 

[music fades]

 

I was definitely, you know, that’s not taking away the credence and the incredible teachings that I received from so many amazing international birth workers, as well as local birth workers. However, there was always something amiss for me, because I… everything… like when I truly came down to the core of it, all of my awareness came from what I knew in my bones, like deep in my, you know, beyond the spaces in between my cells. You know, that was something that I knew came from my grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmothers. And they are from, you know, they’re from countries all around this world. So now, when it comes to queer families, and trans families and rainbow families, I can understand how difficult it is for them to access ways in which they feel supported and seen and safe and held and honoured as having their unique lived-experience that everyone has the right to.

 

[music plays]

 

And that’s not at the sake of women, you know, birth not being women-centered, or not honouring the female body in birth. It’s just that this world that we have the opportunity to be in now, and that I’ve got the opportunity to work in now, it’s imperative that we start to have these conversations and shake up these spaces that have essentially, to me, have been… well again, it just, it feels like it’s another aspect of white supremacy, patriarchy, and, you know, capitalism and colonialisation. But, all of this pain is stored in the bodies of gender-queer people, and trans people. And, you know, this has been operating since colonisation has been ruling the Western world, and also many parts of what is the global majority, as well. And what, I suppose, I’m really passionate about—and to be honest with you, I am having a conversation with the doula conference about presenting something about intersectionality and inclusivity.

 

[music fades]

 

However, I don’t… again, I just, I don’t think it’s going to… it’s a really important conversation, but I don’t think they’re able to really provide this space necessary this time ‘round to hold, you know, my colleagues in a clear and a contained-enough space that’s, like educational space for them to learn about the importance of this. And the more I tap back into, you know, my cultural roots, the more I feel like, you know, anything that’s beyond the binary is incredibly normal and revered—its sacred, it’s actually closer to God—these are things that have been lost in Western white cultures, and the colonial culture, and it’s incredibly violent. And that is something that I think is… it’s really important to advocate for… use my voice, use the positionality that I’ve had my whole life and seemingly, you know, pretty… I could say I’m pretty het-presenting, but—you know, I guess if people looked at me they wouldn’t say that [laughs]—but I’m married to a white man. And so, I enjoy the privileges of passing as het in a very upper middle class, white suburb. And so, yeah, I’ve got access to things—and again, that brings me back to allyship of those that aren’t able to have the visibility, have the access, which I believe everyone has a right to.

 

Mmm. 

 

I mean, having a baby is a fundamental, beautiful right that everyone should be able to experience, as an empowering experience. Every baby deserves to be born in love, I mean that’s a bottom line, isn’t it?

 

Yeah.

 

You know, if we can provide a safe space for people who choose to give birth, then, you know, like let’s just have these difficult conversations and let’s clunk through it and let’s feel uncomfortable and let’s up against our own blocks, you know? Or the places where we might have left our evolution behind because we got comfortable.

 

Mmm.

 

Let’s examine that in a way that keeps you in the conversation. Because, yeah, that… the like, canceling people out, like TERFS [trans-exclusionary radical feminsists], you know, TERFS are, you know, TERFS are difficult. Like TERFS in the birth world are really difficult. [Laughs] And I have had a lot of, yeah… I’m connected to a lot of international birthing groups via social media. And I’ve had to leave a lot of them over the years because of my own safety. But, and it’s sad. I find it so sad when… and, you know, I feel like this is crossing over into white feminism?

 

Mmm.

 

How white women can fail to see the importance of bringing along their BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of colour] sisters and cistas—so cis-stas, as in c-i-s, and sistas as in s-i-s-t-a—[laughs] along with their legacies and their advocacy for freedom. You know, there’s so many big gaps. And I know that, yeah, to have conversations with my teachers as well—a lot of my teachers in Australia, who I know are struggling with feeling like women-centered, you know, empowering birth is being left behind in inclusion. But, you know, that is, again, about racial literacy education, in my mind.

 

[music plays]

 

And it’s about some deep introspective work that we all have to do. Or that we all could do—it’s a choice! But I think, you know, if we’re going to serve humanity, if we’re gonna be birth workers serving humanity, then it’s an important part of our PD [position description] to, you know, maintain an open mind in understanding [laughs] who the people are in this world right now that wanna give birth, [laughs] regardless of your own, you know, your own preferences.

 

Can you tell me a little bit about your art therapy work that you’ve just started, and how your placement’s going, working in a women’s prison?

 

Mmm, yeah. So art therapy has been a long journey. I started a grad dip [graduate diploma] about twenty-five years ago and then had… fell pregnant with my first. And, so I didn’t actually, I didn’t get my piece of paper at that time. But I was able to integrate the values and the principles and the practices and the procedures into my work as an artist, and as a speaker and educator, and a facilitator. And, so it was really lovely to have the space about four years ago to come back, to finish the grad dip and to go on to the masters, which is what I’m about to complete this year. It’s been a dream. It’s been a goal to work in a women’s prison. That’s a weird, like… well it’s not weird, but I think that that is a dream because I’ve always, I wanna just give credit to my ancestors because it’s not… the power of storytelling is something that I’m passionate about because it’s an ancestral desire. So it’s not necessarily about me loving storytelling. There’s something deeply powerful in multimodal narrative spaces, creative spaces, where you can use the arts to dialogue with what is your experience. And so, to me, women incarcerated, or people, fem-identifying people who have been incarcerated and are in the belly of institutional… yeah, of being institutionalised, is where I guess I’ve always felt called to sit with. And, so it’s a real privilege to begin that this year, finally. Having said that, I haven’t [been] able to actually be on site yet, because of Omicron. And so I’m doing everything at the moment online. And so, it’s… I’ve only just begun, it’s just been a couple of weeks. And meanwhile, the… my… bless my supervisor, my workplace supervisor, she was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll just set up a Zoom and we’ll just keep go… We’ll just, I’ll get some women in and, you know, we’ll get going.’ And I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,’ you know. ‘Step back, step back, step back. I have never taken a step into a prison before, I’m so green.’ I was like, I just would really like to do a lot more research. And I’m fortunate enough that there is already an art therapist there who did her placement two years, three years ago. And so she’s sort of been supporting me with a lot of resources. So sorry, the long and short of it is essentially that I’m yet to work with the women and their children—there’s children up to five years old with their mums.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

However, I am really keen to integrate, possibly, postnatal and early parenting skills and aspects that I have into art therapy. And I think, you know, art therapy is something very specific, but it’s also, I think it’s inherent in all Indigenous cultures. I mean, I guess I can, I’m saying that because I come from literally, you know, a good handful, like six cultures. Let alone, you know, I did my DNA test and sixteen countries came up—and look, I know that they’re funny those DNA tests, but I actually do have lots and lots of bloodlines in my body, and that has informed me through everything I’ve done. And I think that because I had the privilege of growing up in Franger [Frankston] [laughs] in the 80s, that being in a low socioeconomic area and dealing with people who have fallen through the cracks of the system, and had to deal with issues like mental health, poverty, intergenerational trauma, and addiction, as well as abuse and, you know, or all those other things that come with classism and, yeah, and all of those other things that people in low socioeconomic areas experience, I… they’re my people, in honesty. They… I… yeah, I really do appreciate the fact that my parents did settle in Frankston. ‘Cause I feel like I have been raised around people who are the salt of the earth. And although it was difficult as a child of colour, a queer child of color at that, it has given me a deep humility, like this kind of… yeah, I guess I’m for the people in that way. And I feel like, yeah, I… you know, I’ll pick this conversation up with you at the end of the year after I’ve been able to actually sit with the women and bring the arts into a dialoguing space with the intention for… the opportunity for a self-reflection and healing within a self-guided practice, you know, a self-informed practice. I’m not gonna fix or heal or do anything, you know, I’m just gonna hold a space for them to find ways in which the arts could possibly inform and empower themselves. And that’s something that I believe, like I said, culturally I feel like that’s deep in my bones.

 

I wanna return to something that you talked about earlier, about allyship, and you said being of service to First Nations sistas. And I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your running, and the contribution you’ve made—which is huge—to the Cathy Freeman Foundation.

 

Yeah, yeah. [Laughs] Yeah, look, that’s an ongoing personal project that, as long as I can keep running, I’ll keep doing. I think I’ve found my own personal groove of how to pay the rent.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

And what I mean by that is that I love to run, it helps, it is a moving meditation for me, it is a way in which I can release all of my existential and deeply, you know, daily anger and frustration… [laughs]

 

Yeah. [Laughs]

 

and my health. Like, so running is just so important for me. It helps, just helps me stay in my body, on the planet. And so, I’m deeply aware that I’m running on Country, I’m running on a stolen land. I’m running on places where there’s been, you know, unfathomable genocide and violence and stolen wealth. And yet, at the same time, there is a well springing of beauty and like deep generosity from Country and, you know, Country being the people, as in, our First Nations people and their ways, and the way in which the landscape can inform you if you’re willing to sit with it and listen. You know, dadirri is something that I take into my practice on a daily… whether I’m running or not, from Doctor Miriam Rose [Ungunmerr-Baumann]. I’m not gonna say her name right, in this moment, her last name right, but who was the elder of the year two years ago, and brought dadirri from her mob up north to everyone, about deep listening and that well of awareness inside us, if we’re willing to sit and be present and let the deep call to the deep.

 

[music plays]

 

So, that’s what running is for me, and I essentially will just run. I run marathons and I use that as a fundraising platform for the Cathy Freeman Foundation, which supports for remote Indigenous communities, and the kids in those communities to have educational opportunities, and their families. That’s something that Catherine is passionate about. And I, having children myself, I do believe that education is, again a birthright for all children in this country, or everywhere, but particularly the inequities that happen between non-Indigenous and Indigenous children are things that I believe is our responsibility. It’s not First Nations people’s responsibility. It’s our responsibility to dismantle the ways in which the power structures have been created, what we call, so colloquially, a gap—closing the gap. I believe the gap is our problem, non-Indigenous Australians’ issue. And that’s about us getting informed about truth telling and then sitting deeply with our own intergenerational history—and her-story and their-story—and also learning how to pay it forward. The fact that we all have benefited from colonisation—all those that are non-First Nations Australians—have benefited from this system that’s deeply oppressive and laterally violent, and physically violent as well, still. So, my running is a very small contribution, but it’s a way in which I can find a way that’s accessible, that’s something I can do on a daily basis or, you know, it’s something I can do annually in certain races that the Cathy Freeman Foundation support. But it’s ways in which I can reach the public and say, ‘Hey, why don’t you move on Country with me, and be aware of what that is, and let’s share information about how there’s kids that are deeply embedded and rooted in their cultures, in these communities, in our country, and they’re connected to our… you know, the oldest surviving peoples on the planet! You know, this is something we can celebrate, and it’s something that we can support, it’s very easy. So, it’s been about seven years now, and I’ve run eleven marathons, but there’s been lots of… the campaign’s called Run Bitch Run. [Both laugh] And that’s based on a poem that I wrote in my first race, based on, yeah an experience of racism that I had, which helped me to understand how Catherine Freeman has been integral in my connection to… or… and my questioning of what it means to be Australian, what it means to be proud of being Australian, and how as a non-Indigenous Australian, I can actually pay it forward. So, [laughs] that’s what I do for fun really! That’s something that… I guess it feeds me deeply to know that I can support her foundation and just be another vehicle for conversation, for non-Indigenous Australians to find out more about what the experience is for our First Nations kids in remote communities.

 

Janelle, thank you for this very deep and beautiful and wide and generous conversation on a Monday morning, after you’ve had a very busy weekend.

 

[Laughs] Yeah, there was a beautiful baby born. And, I actually came from the Foo Fighters. [Both laugh] I went to the Foo Fighters and then went straight to a birth. So, it’s been a big weekend, and an incredible weekend. And, you know, so yeah, I am in that expansive place of no sleep, but being at that doorway of a newborn family, and you know, so the work is an absolute privilege. And yeah, so thank you so much for just having this chat, and I hope I’ve been coherent. But the things that I’m talking about is clunky, and my languaging is clunky. And I’m the first person to say that, you know, I’m gonna keep on working on improving the way that I can broach very…

 

Mmm.

 

triggering and difficult conversations, but they’re to be had, they’re part of the ways in which we are going to be able to break down these false narratives that keep people out of their physical, like, anatomical power, which I just find is unconscionable in these days. When there was so much craziness going on the world, the least we can do is just come back to our humanity and give every baby, every child, the birthright to be born in love in an empowering, safe birthing space.

 

Beautiful, beautiful. And thank you for the reminder also about language as a practice, about running as a practice, about thinking as a practice, about making as a practice, you know?

  

[music plays]

 

All these things get better, the more we do them, and the more we do them in a way that’s deeply contemplative and reflective. So thank you for that beautiful prompt as well.

 

My pleasure. Yeah, yep. I’m the first to put my hand up and say that I will get it wrong. [Laughs]

 

Yeah.

 

And I will continue to get it wrong, and I will say, I will be accountable for that, and I will say sorry, and I will do better next time.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, and as you said before, you will stay in the conversation and that’s what we want, right? We wanna keep…

 

Yeah!

 

keep at it, because it’s a work in progress.

 

Absolutely. And, you know, I know that I’ve been sort of speaking a lot to my colleagues who identify as, you know, white cis, het, upper middle-class women who might consider themselves to be esoteric or you know, have a strong spiritual practice. And I don’t want to be disrespectful in, you know, in them possibly feeling like they’re being categorised. This is my lived experience from my intersectional perspective, and I know that we have the capacity as birth workers to be able to call each other deeper into the space because, you know, we, we’re all called by the same thing.

 

Visit ruthdesouza.com/podcast for more episodes and links, including where you can find out more about Janelle and their work. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe to the show, tell all your friends, leave a rating or a review, or follow us on Twitter or Instagram.

 

OUTRO — Next time on Birthing and Justice:

 

RITODHI CHAKRABORTY (guest) — We are not providing proper role models, we are not providing trajectories or pathways for men to embody, to understand.

 

ALINE CARRARA (guest) — I hear that a lot, like ‘Oh you’re so lucky. You know, that he helps a lot.’ This word ‘helps,’ it’s really, you know, problematic.

 

I’ll be speaking with Aline Carrara, Ritodhi Chakraborty and their newborn baby. Aline is a geographer and activist, and Ritodhi is a feminist parent, itinerant farmer and critical scholar. Birthing and Justice with Doctor Ruth De Souza is written and hosted by me, and recorded at my home on the traditional lands of the Boonwurrung people of the Eastern Kulin Nations. Our sound design and mix is by the amazing Jon Tjhia , who’s also the producer and editor. Artwork for the show comes from Atong Atem, with design by Ethan Tsang, and Raquel Solier composed our theme music. This podcast is supported by funding from the RMIT University Vice-Chancellor’s Fellowship Program. Thanks so much for listening, and look forward to catching up again soon.

  

[music fades]

 

END NOTES — Audio transcript edited and designed by Abbra Kotlarczyk, 2022. Note: t­­­­he purpose of this audio transcript is to provide a record and pathway towards accessing all Birthing and Justice conversations. Editorial decisions around the omission of certain words and non-verbal utterances have been made purely for stylistic purposes towards greater legibility, and do not infer a desired ethics of speech.