Childfree Me
A gathering place for people who have chosen the road less traveled by. Listen in as I speak with friends, family and strangers about what it’s like to choose not to have children in a child-obsessed world.
Childfree Me
12. Nathalie Gaglione on experiencing unconditional love
Happy 2024! To kick the year off on a strong note, I sit down with the lovely Nathalie Gaglione, a sex, love and relationship coach based in Scotland. She and I discuss how procreation and motherthood can be defined in many different ways, as well as the profound impact that energetic healing has had on her life. Nathalie approaches her decision to be childfree with serene confidence, spirituality and most importantly, self love. Something we can all aspire to!
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My mom and I are very close. I'll tell her I love her all the time. She tells me she loves me and we have a very embodied loving relationship. But whenever I tell her I love you, she says you cannot know unconditional love unless you're a mother. And that really hurts because it almost puts me out of the club of you. Know, I cannot experience ever in my life unconditional love unless I have children. And being in a spiritual community and had almost spiritual path myself, and especially now as I stepped in the tantric path, I know that unconditional love is only possible in yourself.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of Child Free Me, a show where we examine the choice to be child free and what it's like to navigate that decision in today's world. I am your host, Laura Allen, and after a few weeks off for the holidays, I am back and it is officially 2024. I am so excited to introduce my very first guest of the year, Natalie. Natalie currently lives in the UK and is training to be a sex, love and relationship coach, which means our conversation really went all over the place. We talk about deconditioning from the patriarchy, we talk about sexual power, plant medicine, generational trauma. We talk about wombs, which is honestly a piece of my anatomy that I truly never, ever think about, and we talk about redefining procreation and what nurturing can look like when you take it outside of the traditional square box of motherhood that society seems to tell us is the only way to show up as a mother in our world. I feel like I gush about all of my guests during every single introduction, but Natalie was truly so amazing to speak with. You can probably hear her in my voice at the beginning of the interview I had just come off of a very long day of work, I am tired, I'm a little tense and by the end I am completely relaxed. I am super grounded and I'm just so grateful that she was willing to come on and be open and talk about the work that she does. Just a note that if hearing about things like chakras or energetic healing makes you wanna crawl out of your skin, this episode might not be the one for you. But I also encourage you to greet the new year with an open mind, because you might just learn something new or connect unexpectedly with something that we talk about. So with that, let's jump in.
Speaker 2:["the Story of the Child"]. Natalie, welcome to Child Free Me. Thank you so much for joining me. You're welcome. Thanks for having me, Laura. So to start, I would love for you to actually talk to the audience a little bit about where you are. You have this fabulous background behind you and I know you are in Scotland, but you're not originally from Scotland. So do you wanna give just a quick overview of where you are and how you got there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So. Yeah, you're right, I am based in Scotland and I've been living here for the past 13 years, but originally I'm from a very tiny island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and it's called Malta. Not many people know about Malta because it's so small, but it is quite significant in the European history and very rich in history as well. So I came to Scotland to pursue a career in veterinary medicine and I did my veterinary nurse degree and decided to stay because I fell in love with the landscape, the country, the open spaces, the culture, the history here as well, and I'm very drawn to druidry and shamanism and it really pulled me in. So that's the reason I stayed and I've been living here ever since.
Speaker 1:It has changed. I think it's been a very fluid. I was nursing for a few years and then I got into sales, and then I fell into a corporate job within the veterinary industry, which really sucked my soul away, to be honest, and it's why I desperately was looking for something that brought me joy. And the past two or three years have been very transformative for me, and this is where I explored what my passions are and now I have truly found my calling. So I am a sex-loving relationship coach. In training I'm very drawn to Tantra and Taoist philosophies and, yeah, my passion is to coach others in this realm and to also explore more about Tantra and coach couples to explore ways of being more intimate together. I have taken a massive career change, you could say.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, but it sounds like it's for the better. There's a lot I want to talk about in there, but sort of the backdrop to all of this is obviously your decision to be child-free and not have children. When did you know you definitively didn't want to have children and where did that play into this journey you just described?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think with absolute certainty I could say that I felt that probably five years ago. So I was in my mid-30s. I kind of really embodied it, because before it was more of a conceptual or maybe a cognitive concept where I'm like, yeah, I've written it off as I'm gonna be child-free, but it was five years ago and I truly embodied it and said, yes, this is my path. I will walk the rest of my living years on this planet without procreating. And I think the journey to get there it started early on.
Speaker 1:As a woman in this society we are very much given a lot of cultural expectations and one of those is procreation. It's instilled in you from a very young. I can remember even at five years old we're given babies to play with. That's your role, you play the mother, and then in school we're talking about playing roles again as the one that's gonna get married and how many children are you gonna have. And it's so instilled and I think, even programmed in us as very young women and girls, even to live up to that. What I felt at a very young age is that when all of my peers started getting excited about it, saying yes, I want two children, I want a girl and a boy. I want a whole tribe and I want this and I want that. I was like I just want a couple of cats.
Speaker 2:You knew him at five years old.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I wasn't feeling it and I never really played with toy babies either. It wasn't really my thing. I was in the mud, I was much of a tomboy and making mud pies and up the trees and actually dressing my cats, dressing up your cats so cute, yeah it. Just then I would get confirmation from the adults in my life that would tell me there will come a point where you'll want them. Just grow up and you'll want them. And there was again more expectation of there will come a day when you will change your mind. And now here I am at 40 and that has never happened.
Speaker 2:Did anything change when you moved from Malta to Scotland in terms of expectations or the narrative around having children? Did you notice a shift at all?
Speaker 1:I think I did so.
Speaker 1:Malta is a very traditional Catholic setting, so all of my friends and I mean all of them I cannot really think of anyone who hasn't had children and the only one I can think of is because she physically cannot, not because she doesn't want to.
Speaker 1:So that is kind of the cultural expectation and it's heightened by the religious culture and the family units. So there was more pressure really around me back home and then when I moved to Scotland I entered a I called them my soul tribe, but groups of people that were from different backgrounds than what I'm used to, than my background. They were more open-minded and I also joined the LGBTQ community and more with gay couples and perhaps, you know, queer community that were more open to accepting the fact that women can choose not to have children. That's a choice and you're equally celebrated and accepted for that choice. So to me it was more confirming that my choice isn't going against some really big, almost blasphemous. You know back in Malta it's like if you're not having children as a woman you're offending the gods almost. So it was nice to come here and confirm to me that you know this choice is a wholesome one, just as much as having children is a wholesome choice for some people.
Speaker 2:To your comment about offending the Catholic religion. What was your conversation like with your parents or your family when you definitively decided that you were not gonna have children, even though you may have known sounds like your whole life?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the penny dropped, at least for my mom in my mid-30s again. That's when you know I was definitively, as I said, embodied for a child-free life and my mom finally accepted it. She up until then she kept saying you'll change your mind. You'll change your mind, you'll find the right man. That's another comment I get. You know, you'll find the right man, you'll fall in love and you'll want to have children. It seems to be the formula.
Speaker 1:So I stood in my truth and I kept saying no, mom, except the fact that your grandchildren are gonna be four-legged and furry and that's it. So for her it was hard, because I'm my mom's only child and my mom loves kids. It was a big blow to her because she was looking forward to have you know little ones and be a grandma, and that was hard for me to see her be disappointed in that way. It was almost like it was something of taking away from her. So I felt a lot of guilt and sadness around it, but it didn't change my mind. I wasn't gonna have them just to make my mama grandma. But there are things she says to me that still really hurt, and the biggest one to me is when you know my mom and I are very close. I'll tell her I love her all the time. She tells me she loves me and we have a very embodied loving relationship.
Speaker 1:But whenever I tell her I love you she says you cannot know unconditional love unless you're a mother. And that really hurts because it almost puts me out of the club of you. Know, I cannot experience ever in my life unconditional love unless I have children. And being in a spiritual community and on my spiritual path myself, and especially now as I stepped in the tantric path, I know that unconditional love is only possible in yourself.
Speaker 1:And even mothers who have children can experience love that is conditional. And I've seen moms, you know, even ostracize their children because they've done something that is completely terrible. So they're not mutually exclusive. Being a mother and unconditional love is not mutually exclusive. And on this path myself I can experience unconditional love from the divine in me and I've experienced it in such, I'm gonna say, orgasmic bliss, because it is. And this practice of really bringing unconditional love to yourself, I think is the highest divine act you can do. And I find that hard to articulate to my mom and for her to understand that and she blindly says no, you cannot experience unconditional love unless you have children. So that's the hard bit, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. You said that it's almost this moment that is dangled in front of women like myself who don't have children of when you become a mother and you look into your child's eyes. There's no other love like that love and it's hard to question, especially if you're not on this spiritual journey like you are and have done that work and I don't think a lot of at least people in my community here in the Western world who do that. So it's this thing that's dangled and it's hard to question. It's a moment that you don't wanna miss out on, right? You're not in the club, like you said, but on the flip side, what if you don't have that feeling right? I don't fully trust, like you said, that it is truly unconditional love. We've all seen examples of when that love is not unconditional and there's a push-pull for me on that. I loved what you said about finding it within yourself. You've found the answer, but she's not able or willing at the moment to understand that.
Speaker 2:Hopefully she understands that you're happy.
Speaker 1:Yes, she does, she does, and she's now refrained from encouraging me to have children to experience that because she can see. I mean she can see me changing. I visit her every year. So Christmas time I go and see my mom and every time I see her, especially since starting my spiritual journey, she notices a shift of me.
Speaker 1:Every time she says wow there's something about you, there's something's different. You're so much in the flow, in a blissful state, it's such, so pleasant to be around you, and she can understand that what I'm doing is definitely nourishing me in that way. But she cannot understand it. To understand it you have to experience it, and she's not on that journey herself. So there is a respect and love is always there, but the understanding is not there.
Speaker 1:I guess we've learned to just accept that you know, we're like okay, this is where we are, this is where I am, this is where you are, and let's love each other anyway and there's no point in creating animosity around it. But it wasn't always this way. There were times when I questioned it because you asked me if I have questioned it and I have for a few years when she started saying that I'm glad that I found that access to unconditional love without needing to go against my belief of having a family.
Speaker 2:And when you said you had a period of time that you questioned it, what did that look like? Like were you questioning. What was your internal dialogue during that time?
Speaker 1:It was coming from a place of fear, laura. I think Definitely it was this thing of what if I'm missing out? And the biggest question and this is very selfish, and this is where I had the words with myself is like who's gonna take care of me when I'm old? I think that comes across a lot of women who decide not to have children. I see my grandma right now is 90 years old. She's in a nursing home. She needs constant care and my mom is there nearly every day making sure she has everything she needs and taking care of her.
Speaker 1:And I was thinking, oh my god, when I'm 90, what will happen? Who's gonna have that patience and love to take care of me? And that was the fear that hit me. It's that fear of not knowing what's going to happen. Again, it's not a guarantee. There are people in their 90s who have children who don't take care of them. So it's not a guarantee. However, not having them is almost more of a possibility that there might not be someone there to care for you. And I think that was the only time I wavered and I was thinking okay, what do I do now? And I was acting out of fear. So I was thinking do I freeze my eggs? Do I find the donor? Do I adopt, do I find the relative and promise them my inheritance?
Speaker 2:In return for endless love and care?
Speaker 1:Yes, so all of that happened. But then again, that's why I love this journey I'm on, because it's a matter of trust and surrender and I think if you come from a place of love and you always show love and compassion not only to yourself but to the people around you, it will come back to you in ways that you can never even imagine. So and that's been happening in my life, especially in the past year where I've been, you know, desiring something, and then it just appears, and the right people appear in my life. And, you know, money appears out of nowhere when I need it. And it's just so magical when you connect to this serendipitous way of the universe, when you are in all gratitude and love, and that's when you know the fear subsided and I was like just trust.
Speaker 2:You know, just trust, and it'll be, it'll be taken care of how did you find your way out of that place of fear into this place of gratitude, and sounds like energetic attraction manifestation.
Speaker 1:Hmm, I don't think of it as I stepped out of it and into this. You know it wasn't like a door I opened and shut behind me. I'm always playing with these dynamics. They always come, you know the right times, when I see an old woman in the street and think, oh my God, that's going to be me, who's going to help me.
Speaker 1:I think the major difference now or I guess the shift that happened is how I hold my fear, and that's the difference. Whereas before it used to consume me and I would want to get rid of it or I would want to hide it or suppress it or ignore it or become this inner, like an inner critic, where I have an internal war with myself, whereas now, when it comes, when that fear comes, I learn to hold it, I learn to welcome it. I say hello, here you are again, welcome. You know I love you. I can understand your fear. It's a primal fear of death. You know that is very primal, so I just have more love and compassion towards it and it seems to dissipate much quicker when it comes as opposed to when I'm trying to fight it.
Speaker 1:So, just being with it, showing it love, letting it pass. You know, feeling the emotions, letting them be there and trusting that the lesson will come or the medicine will come, and slowly, slowly, your heart starts to open and you're like oh okay, I understand it. You know, I'm living a human experience and fear is going to crop up, so I think it's the relationship to it that's changed mostly. I haven't got rid of it, but I've cultivated a different relationship to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, got it. I like that. So I think you're right. It's not just leaving fear behind, it's just understanding how to let it in and out of your life in a much less disruptive and debilitating way. So I would love to hear I know you're in a coaching program. Can you talk to the audience just about what the program is? And then I would love to hear how your perspective as a childfree woman plays into that.
Speaker 1:Well, that's an interesting question because I never really connected the two, but it's good to ponder about it. So the program I am on is a sex, love and relationship coaching training with Layla Martin, and it's a very rigorous and intense program. I don't think I've come across a program and I've done two degrees in my life and this is just. It's intense because we are deconditioning ourselves and that's where it starts. It all starts with the self, deconditioning our beliefs and programming, especially in a patriarchal, capitalist society, to really feel into the goddess nature. Because the elements of this program are based on Tantra and Tantra is all about worshipping the goddess as she is. Everything is conscious, so not only is the beauty in your life conscious, but also the shadow. So all the trauma, all the fear is also divine and that is, I think that's what really shifted me to accept everything that comes. And I guess, if we want to then include the childfree aspect, is that the shadow part that came up telling me you know that you should have children because what's going to happen to you when you're old or you're going to be lonely, and all this. I've learned to cultivate that relationship we spoke about earlier and I think it's thanks to this program that has helped me to see it in a different light. It is so transformational the way that we do these practices. We work on a desire, so it's all about really understanding what you want. And I think this is also perhaps nice to include the childfree decision, because is this what I really want? And we are again.
Speaker 1:This culture has been perhaps more of a problem sort of solving nature, where we're always trying to solve problems or look at what we don't want or what we don't like, get rid of pain. We're actually a culture based on getting rid of pain. From the medical field to the entertainment industry, to the food industry. It's just, you know, it's just removing pain and these practices in this program it's all about welcoming pain and treating it just as divine, as joy and bliss and beauty. And this is where, then, I was more empowered and embodied to say yes, this is what I desire. I desire to live my life this way. I desire to have you know these things in my life, where maybe it's writing a different story, basically to what my culture has already written for me before I was born. I'm saying no to that. I'm tearing up the pages, I'm writing my own story, and that's thanks to the program. Actually.
Speaker 2:I just wrote down some of the words that you said patriarchal deconditioning. It feels very connected to this whole concept of being childfree and going against the societal norms and expectations that are, I feel like, regardless of where we are in the world, that are passed down to us. What are some of the things or beliefs that bubble up most often in this deconditioning process? Are there specific ones that you're targeting, or is it on an individual basis?
Speaker 1:There is both. There's collective and individual. If I had to take the collective, it would be that it is almost the nurturing. So a woman who is childfree. The narrative is that she is therefore not nurturing. There is this quality of wanting to care and nurture and create. That is what being feminine is about, or is that's the narrative?
Speaker 1:Although I do subscribe to that narrative, however, what the resulting is is different in my eyes.
Speaker 1:So I do create, I am nurturing, I do procreate, but I procreate ideas, I procreate projects and I procreate my own destiny, and I think it's a different way of saying things. So I think the commenting I get from people, especially other women, actually, when I say I am childfree and I've decided to be first, I get this look of pity, like oh, oh, you know, it's either this thought that, oh, you haven't met anyone yet, so that's why you're childfree. I'm like, no, that's not why. Or else there's this okay, so what's your purpose here? You know, if you're not having children, then you almost failed as a woman and that's another, I guess, deconditioning construct. And this has lit me up so much, because I never knew I was starting to believe this narrative and I'm like, oh well, maybe I am not nurturing at all and I'm unable to care. And once I started coaching and once I started getting feedback from my clients, the unanimous feedback from all my clients has been you have this mother earth, nurturing energy.
Speaker 2:That's coming through.
Speaker 1:And it feels so lovely and safe and I feel I can open up and I'm like, oh my God, it's here, I do have it. So that was the proof. I needed, almost that. Yeah, I have the condition that I have now stepped into the role of mother and I am mother, just not to a physical child that has come out of my body, but I am embodying that nature and I am in that period of my life as well, for maiden, mother, crone. I am in the mother, a creatric stage of my life, and this is where I'm birthing my own business. I'm birthing, you know, my own way of guiding others to their own healing. So, yeah, I believe I am a mother, just not of little kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that so much. So you have redefined or are redefining the definition of procreation and nurturing, and I think that's so powerful. I've made a joke before that the irony of this podcast is it's taking up as much time and money. As a child would I spend all my days thinking about it, talking about it, and so I never really connected the dots on. Oh, this is my way of nurturing. That that was really powerful for me. You talked a little bit around. I don't know if I'm going to say this. Right, You're in this journey from made to matron. Is that what you said?
Speaker 1:It's made and so your maiden stage is, yeah, when you're young and blossoming. There's. There's many cycles in this. I'm going to talk about the physical cycle. So the maiden stage is when you're in puberty and you're, you know, growing into a woman, and then there's the mother stage, when you are in that nurturing phase, and then crone. So crone would be your, your older days. However, we go through these cycles daily, even so, even in our menstrual cycles. So when we're ovulating, we're in our maiden stage, you know. When we are then menstruating, we're more in our chrome stage.
Speaker 1:So these are aspects and concepts that can be used in any woman cycles and they're actually archetypes. So you can get a woman in her sixties who's embodying her maiden, for example. So there are things you can play around with, but I feel that I am definitely embodying the mother element or the mother archetype. Just now, I find it especially here, living in Scotland. There's lots of pagan, celtic, druid traditions and I've heard a lot of these archetypes spoken about in these traditions as well. So the maiden, mother, crone is more of a pagan or Celtic, even shamanist shamanism. Certain, certain branches of it will mention these archetypes in their, in their work. There's also the same for men. So men, it's king, warrior, lover, magician, no father stage, yeah, and the one I know.
Speaker 1:I can't there wasn't, no, but there might be others where the father is mentioned. This is just the one I'm familiar with. But yeah there are architects more to do, I guess, with the land that I have now called home more than anything.
Speaker 2:So you grew up Catholic. Everything you just described is beautiful and wonderful, these archetypes, but there still seems and I understand you've worked to redefine it, but it still seems as emphasis for women on motherhood. Do you feel that people within the shaman pagan community are more accepting of child free women, or have you found similar expectations?
Speaker 1:I think there is a difference. So the difference is in the redefinition. So my experience working with with shaman, specifically a druid shaman, was that we worked a lot with womb energy. So, looking at the womb space and because I decided to be child free and this womb has never reproduced any children, I almost I felt very disconnected to my womb and the work I've done with her made me realize how much creativity exists in that space anyway.
Speaker 1:So I think the difference between the expectations was a very institutionalized religion like Catholicism, to expect you as a woman to be producing children as part of the family with other cultures that are more secular and maybe more ancient as well, is that they would see other possibilities of motherhoods within the realm of, you know, a woman's life cycle.
Speaker 1:So, yes, having children is important life stage in a woman's life, but if she decides not to, there are other ways that she could procreate and be a respected and welcome, valued member of her tribe or culture. And many of these women end up being medicine women actually. So they end up nurturing in ways that are healing to others by doing ceremonies or plant medicine, and still being regarded as high priestesses with a lot of value in these in these cultures. So that is the biggest difference I have seen is that there's more of a wider spectrum of what motherhood means and to find value in each of those, whereas the culture that we're used to in the West is that it's in its one box and if you don't fit that box, then you can basically be exiled.
Speaker 2:Okay, that makes sense. So there's still an emphasis on motherhood, but just a redefinition and you have more. There's more fluidity in how you connect. Can you tell me more about connecting to your womb?
Speaker 1:So, yes, and this is, I think, where Taoist philosophy really helps to understand, it is a very it's a practice of energy and recognizing energy points in your body and moving energy through your body. So we would use Taoist techniques to move, at least in this program, sexual energy from your roots to your crown and to circulate it throughout your body.
Speaker 1:They use or they refer to energy points which in the West the familiar would be the chakras and I. They do mention chakras in Sanskrit as well. There seems to be a bit of a discrepancy through what they mean. But in general it's energy points in your body, starting from your root, which is either the end of your spine or for women it's the cervix, and then your sacral, which is kind of where your belly button is, and then solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye and crown. But when it comes to womb, you are really focusing on that energy space in the sacral and each energy point has a different quality to it. So your root is where you are, is your tribe, its stability and its safety, and your sacral, which is where the womb space is, that's your center of creativity.
Speaker 1:So to me, when I reconnected with the womb, I reconnected with my creative self, and that is something I lost along the years, especially working in corporate environments and being told what to do, when to do it, how to do it within these parameters and no room for creativity whatsoever.
Speaker 1:So it was really, really helpful to connect to that space again and actually find it as a fountain of life, because I thought it was a dead space. I'm not using my womb for procreation, so it might as well not be there, but it has so much energy and it has so much beauty and tapping into that is actually a creative fountain and it makes me even connect with my divine feminine. I've done work where I've materialized a divine feminine image and I invited her to live in my womb space. So now when I think of my womb space, I think of this goddess in my womb and it's bright orange and there is things happening and things growing and things materializing. So it's this creative whirlwind of beauty and to me, connecting with that has really helped me connect back to my creative self. So that's quite powerful work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's beautiful. What does that work like? What do you do to connect to your room for the first time?
Speaker 1:There are different ways to do it. I'm going to talk about my experience. I started with just a meditation, especially because I had a stretch of, let's say, eight to 10 years where I was repeating a cycle of bad relationships and that came from an unconscious part of myself which I've now integrated. Once I emerged from that pattern and I started to rebuild, I wanted to release the energy of my ex partners out of myself, and the way that I explored doing that is meditating and focusing on my womb space and really create. It's a visualization process where you, where you shed, and the womb sheds every month. So again, it's going through that shedding and that letting go and releasing the energies of the past lover, because when a lover enters you, they're bringing their energy in you and your body keeps that energy. So it was a process of releasing that energy through meditation and then creating a protection.
Speaker 1:So I worked with Shiva and Shakti, energy, which in Sanskrit the Shiva is consciousness and is associated with Yin or male, and Shakti is energy, and Shakti is Yin and Shiva is Yang.
Speaker 1:So I imagined Shakti in my womb, because she is the goddess, that is, the creatrix and the energy, and then Shiva was the protector in my cervix, the entrance to my womb, and he would be there holding that space to know who to let in or not to let in. So that was the first way I did that, and then discovering tantric practices of connecting to the womb space was more bringing pleasure into it. So the first one was really meditation, sitting down and visualizing. The second, where I bought, where I brought in tantric practices, is I actually bought, brought in physical touch and pleasure and then moving that energy through and letting it move throughout my body. And when you do that it alchemises and especially as it comes to the crown, you can almost like a. It's a huge manifestation way of bringing your desires in. So, yeah, it was a beautiful process that was had the privilege of being able to, to work through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you mentioned plant medicine and journeys. Can you talk a little bit around what that is? I think people are becoming more and more familiar, especially with mushrooms. Can you walk our listeners through plant medicine and how it plays into this type of healing?
Speaker 1:So it doesn't need to play into this type of healing. It's just that I found that it really helped me. So it's not. I don't want to make any listeners think that in order to to utilize these tools and healing that you need to partake in plant medicine. However, for me personally, it has definitely helped a lot. It kind of accelerated. It accelerated my journey.
Speaker 1:So plant medicine I mean it started thousands of years ago, back when there were more matriarchical societies, before the witch hunt. I mean that's why witches were persecuted. They were medicine women, they were healing others through the medicine that they were giving. So plant medicine in general can mean anything. Really Any herbs or healing from the earth is plant medicine. The way that maybe it's being seen in the culture today is more plant medicine. That has more of a psychedelic aspect to it. So it is, as you mentioned, mushrooms. The active ingredient would be psilocybin. In mushrooms there are bruise like ayahuasca, for example. The active ingredient will be DMT and that's a very highly psychoactive compound. And there are others as well POT there's. I think Campbell also has an element of psychedelic experience. So there's quite, it's quite the range, and to me what that did was help me see what's possible.
Speaker 1:So the difference that I find between plant medicine and a drug is how you approach it, and that means intention and respect and ritual. So you can take LSD and call it a drug If you take it recreationally and go to a festival, and just, you know I'm high for six hours. Or you can even take and I know LSD is a chemical, so it's not exact, but it's the same with mushrooms. You can take mushrooms, go to a festival, have a good time, or you can set the space, you can prepare yourself a few days before, you could journal, you can meditate, you could go in with an intention, you can then ritualize it. You know you can speak to the mushrooms, you can say a prayer, you can do offerings, you prepare an altar, and that is the journey to me.
Speaker 1:So when I go into that journey, especially going with an intention, so one of my favorite intentions when I do plant medicine is show me who I truly am, and I love that because it just gives me this insight of what an actual divine being we all are, not just me. We are all this gods and goddesses, and it's just we've been so blinded and we don't realize it. So, going in these plant medicine journeys to me reaffirms the work I'm doing. So when I am not in a journey and I'm doing my everyday work, I can go back to that lesson, that beauty that the plant medicine has given me, to tell me this is who you really are. You know, this is the journey you're on, and I think that even the calling for me to take this program came from a journey, a plant medicine journey.
Speaker 1:So I use it as a tool of lifting the veil and just peeking oh yes, it's all possible. And then you know, you go back and you're like all right, I know I have a North Star and I think it helps me with my North Star, but I try not to do it too often because there's also a danger of getting sucked into the lore of always being in that blissful state, and that also poses a danger because, at the end of the day, we are humans, we're having a human experience and we are in this 3D reality and we have to function here.
Speaker 2:Well, you've described this incredible journey and, as a childfree woman, I'm I don't want to say jealous, but intrigued by all of this, like the way that you are redefining procreation, nurturing, healing yourself, forgiving yourself. I think a lot of childfree women deal with guilt similar to what you described earlier around, for whatever reason, not giving our parents what they want or letting society down, being selfish. It sounds like a lot of work, but incredibly rewarding. So you're in this program with the I am assuming, the desire to be a full time coach at some point. What is your vision for your coaching practice and working with clients?
Speaker 1:I want to show much gratitude for that question. So I always keep a North Star with this work and everything needs to align with that North Star. And to me that North Star is the liberation of mankind. And when I say liberation I mean freeing ourselves from, from all the constructs, from all the dogma, from all the programming, from all the conditioning, from all the beliefs that we've made that are dimming our lights and have really separated us from our divine nature. And to me that is my North Star and why I love this work is because I get to guide others, come to their own wisdom and liberate themselves.
Speaker 1:I don't want and I want to kind of be clear on this in how I talk about my work is that I'm not a healer, I'm just well, it's not just I do a lot, but it's guiding others to become their own healer and by asking the right questions at the right time and giving the right guidance and practice, to watch someone transform, to really tap into their own desires, to find their blockages, but really honoring the body, because the work that I do is very somatic, so it's finding what the body is telling us and why we haven't got the desires yet, because there's something still holding and because, then, bringing the tantric philosophy in, everything is conscious, everything is divine and everything is love, even these pieces of constriction, tightness, sadness, heaviness.
Speaker 1:I love these things because this is where you can go in, explore, find out what they are, what they need, what their purpose is, cultivating an empowering truth and really finding ways to welcome, welcome them and then watching your clients like having these you know aha moments and like, oh yes, maybe my aggression has to do with my sexual intimacy and maybe this has to do with that, and oh yes, and just watching that, to me it really aligns with my North Star, because this is they're getting liberated in front of my eyes in ways that is actually I'm empowering them to do that by just guiding them in. And a phrase that I would end this with is the purpose of my work, I think, is to make people realize that they shouldn't be just worshiping at the gates, but they could enter the temple. And to me, the gates is just the realms of the mind and the temple is the body and the altar of that temple is the heart. And my work comes in is really guiding people from the gates and into their hearts. I love that.
Speaker 2:I feel like everything you've said is just keeps getting more and more beautiful. You did mention generational trauma. Is there anything regarding your choice to be child free that you want to discuss?
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean, generational trauma is not unique to me. Everyone has a degree of that. Even if they had the most perfect childhood, there's still something that has been passed on. So I don't want to say, oh well, I've had trauma, so that's why I'm not having kids, because I know a lot of women who have experienced quite a lot of trauma in their lives and are amazing parents despite that. But again, this is my personal journey.
Speaker 1:So for me, I am so in awe of mothers. I think they have the most hardest, most graceful, most important job in the world and this is maybe another misconception people get of child free women is that, oh, you must really don't like kids or don't like mothers. It's the contrary. I love and respect it so much that I don't feel actually I feel that I need. You know, there's a lot more integration and wholeness that I need to be in in order to step into such a role, and because I have not gotten there yet, or I feel that there are some parts of me that I would like to have integrated more before I step into that role, is where I decided okay, I think I would rather work on my healing and offer my nurturing ways in different elements than actually step into the proper motherhood role. So, yes, I've had, I've quite a challenging relationship with my father and there's still a lot of trauma that I experienced from that side and that I am still working with, and equally I've got the same from my mother's side.
Speaker 1:So my decision there was I don't want to pass this on, because if I am still in my trauma body, if I am still triggered by certain things, then that's what I'm going to pass on to my children.
Speaker 1:Again, this is during a mushroom journey where I said this ends with me, this stops here and I'm not going to pass this on. And that can take many forms. I could have said this stops here and if I do have children I'm not going to pass that one, but in my case this stops here and I'm not going to have children. It felt like a stepping into more of an empowerment role where I am focusing more on a different way I could nurture, where I'm also trying to heal parts of me that might have caused trauma to any children that I would have. My awakening came later in life, in my mid 30s, so I am still in that process of self healing and therefore there's going to reach a threshold where I'm no longer biologically able. So I made peace and, as I said in my mid 30s to say, this is what I'm going to focus on.
Speaker 2:So I think, respecting that and being a different kind of mother, I would say, in respecting that lineage- Do you think there's a possibility that, if and when you feel that you've processed the trauma enough in the future, however long it takes that, you would be open to motherhood, whether obviously it might not be your own biological child, but there are other ways? Have you considered that at all?
Speaker 1:I have never removed that possibility from my life. I have because I also have a passion for teaching and passing wisdom on. It seems to be something innate in me as well. I have a niece who I'm really close with and I really I pass her on some of the books that I'm reading and, you know, getting her into, empowering her to recognize her own truth instead of the truth that is given to us as women. So, yes, and you know there might be. You never, you never can tell what happens. But any younger people in my life, whether that's through, let's say, a partner who might have their own children, or whether it's through family or like I've got a friend with two young children who I'm again very close to his daughter, and I would love to have children in my life where I could pass wisdom on and I could show that nurturing and motherhood. So definitely, I'm definitely open to that, as long as I am not their biological parent, because that comes with lots of responsibility.
Speaker 2:I know, yep, that is certainly a consideration. Okay, so, before we end, I'm not sure where you are in your coaching program, but if and when you start taking on clients, do you want to talk about the best way? If anyone listening is interested in the types of coaching that you offer, what is the best way to reach out to you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm still in my training. However, I am taking on outside clients now, outside of the beta program. I am, however, already really booked, which is great. It's a good thing, and I have my first paying client. That's booked on as well. So, yes, I'm open to receiving new clients. It will be a bit of a waiting time, though. So I'm on Facebook as Nat's Alchemy, so that's Nat's Alchemy, so you can find me there. That's live just now and I'm working on my website, so it's not live yet, but the website would be Nat'sAlchemyCoachingcom. Or is it dot code, dot UK, sorry, basically okay, so Nat'sAlchemyCoachingcouk.
Speaker 2:Okay, great Congrats on having your first paying client. That must feel so good. Thank you so much, Natalie, for joining me. This was so incredible. I feel like I got 10 times more relaxed just in the past 30 minutes talking to you, so I really enjoyed our conversation and I am excited. Best of luck as you complete your program and start coaching and working your magic in the world.
Speaker 1:Thank you, laura, thanks for having me and thank you for just instigating this conversation. I think we should be having more speech around this, so thank you for voicing it and thank you for creating it in a way that is your baby as well.
Speaker 2:And that's it for today. Thank you for joining me. If you enjoyed today's episode, please don't forget to subscribe or consider leaving a review wherever you get your podcast, and I will see you next week. Thanks, bye.
