EP 214: Finding Language, Sharing our Stories, and Creating New Worlds around Mothering with April Tierney

Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson

In this episode, Kimberly and April discuss her most recent book of poetry titled Matter / Mother which shares about April’s experience of traveling through the underworld of grief, hardship, and heartbreak while mothering her young child. Together, they share their desires for a culture that makes space for the depth of mothering experiences and stories through all of the different seasons of life. They also discuss how to bear the pain and responsibility of both creating a world we want our children to live in while simultaneously inhabiting the one that currently exists. Overall, their vulnerability and honest reflections from their differing seasons of mothering offers language to those deep experiences and possibility for all mothers.

Bio

April Tierney is a poet, activist, craftswoman, mother, and lover of stories. Her work follows threads of ecopoetics, myth, culture, and lineage. She has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and featured in Orion Magazine, Deep Times: A Journal of the Work that Reconnects, Clarion Poetry Magazine, and Real Ground Journal, among others.

What She Shares:

–”Matter / Mother” poetry and mothering

–Mothering in the upper world while traversing the underworld

–Creative process while mothering

–Motherhood hardship and joys of different seasons

–Creating the world we want our children to inhabit

What You’ll Hear:

–Latest book “Matter Mother” of poetry

–Reading of “Birth Story” poem

–Birth as animalistic and mythic

–Decision behind black cover on book

–Longing for more mothering stories from underworld journey

–Writing a book during early mothering

–Listening to experiences not from our own

–Finding language for mothering experiences

–Finding the right voices on mothering experiences

–Birth culturally accepted as traumatic

–Mothering in the underworld while raising children in the upperworld

–Mothering as existential

–Heartbreak of mothering in these times

–Unable to talk about lived, ongoing way while holding children

–Fantasy of modern motherhood

–Modern living as kind of trauma we learn to cope with

–Four forest fires in three days

–Evacuating from home from forest fires

–Pausing from writing and trusting the quiet places

–Writing as torture until its tended to

–Bringing forth for the world what is asking to come through

–Books as living, breathing things

–Creative portion of mothering in tension with energy and needs

–Kimberly’s surprise of mothering young adulthood

–Grieving and loving during mothering in all phases

–Importance of sharing from different stages of mothering

–Physical versus psychological demands of mothering

–Noticing the glory spots of mothering

–Sending children out into the world

–Creating the world we want our children to live in

Resources

Website: https://www.apriltierney.com/

IG: @apriltierney11