Thanks for joining me on Born to Know, the podcast that brings you conversations with world renowned experts and thought leaders in every field to peel back the layers of this epic world we live in, and see where choice really resides for each of us every day. We are all born to know and to live as our most authentic and liberated selves. Hey, friends. My name is Ayla Cuenca. When I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to be a cultural anthropologist. Not only did I major in this field, I decided to spend most of my life thus far completely immersing myself in various communities, cultures, jobs, roles, and geographical locations. Through what I call participant observation, I used a film camera and various research tools to collect data and weave the web of how we collectively landed where we are today. I really love untangling this human experience and relishing in in all that it has to offer. And for the last ten years, I've been working as a birth educator, a doula, birth trauma specialist, and a mother in this work, motherhood being the most transformative. I've been guiding women and men all over the world on a journey of self discovery as they uncouple from disempowerment and rediscover the instinct and freedom that lies deep within each of them. Although this podcast really isn't about birth, I can guarantee epiphanous moments that will set you off on a path to have a more fulfilled, connected, and pleasurable human experience. So I've been asked over the last five years, multiple times, if I would like to start a podcast, because I do so many classes. I do master classes on everything from miscarriage to the lies about fertility and geriatric pregnancy to conscious child rearing, creating polarity between a man and a woman. I know that's a really hot topic online these days, but I really do cover a lot of ground because let's let's go back a little bit. Because I have seen that over time when women and men are educated on choice and they really step into the power of their choice, so many beautiful things can happen for them. And so although I have been speaking on this subject, these very subjects for so long and having conversations with solely practitioners and doctors and experts, I never really thought about speaking on what I believe to be the greater picture of how to access self sovereignty and choice. And so birth is definitely a vehicle through which I have done that and enjoyed doing that, and we were all born. Right? We were all born from someone, and many of us end up going on to give birth or become a father with someone. And so you know, mother or a father. And so or we know someone who's who's done this, right, personally. But we all come from this experience. And this experience is really a way in which we can learn so much about the way we perceive the world day to day, so much about our bodies, so much about how we relate in relationship, in, you know, friendship, relationship with our children, relationship to career, to the world at large. And so although I do have an anthropology background and I've always studied family systems, you know, the the conjugal dynamic, right, between a man and a woman, the relationship between child and mother, which is at the root. It's the primal foundation of every human being is the relationship they have with their mother, where they were conceived and gestated. And, of course, I get into the father's role that really that initial bond that's created has been treating the mother and the baby. And so studying this through the anthropological lens sent me off into many paths over the last two and a half decades, you know, everywhere from living in the mountains of Italy and working on a sheep farm and understanding husbandry with sheep and cooking for an entire community of people to living in New York City, working at Teen Vogue magazine, understanding what sells to humans, right, and the dreams that are being sold and the promise of connection, and the promise of so many different things. Right? And so all of this experience was giving me information on how to piece together what this current human experience is. I photographed in so many different types of settings. My dream really was to be a cultural anthropologist and use a camera as my tool to gather information and and bring it back to share with people so that we could have a deeper understanding, build a deeper compassion for one another. But in all of this work, which seems completely disparate, it was not, I started to see that at the end of the day, there was a limitation in the way we lived our lives because we felt we had no choice or because we felt we had been dealt a certain hand or because there was so much about our origin that was either muddy or confusing. Right? So, you know, our word the origin story of an adopted individual, you know, and the complications that surround that experience, you know, emotionally, biologically, and how it's not held, right, and how it can actually lead to so much of how we live our lives. And so I really wanted to look deeper into that, and that's how I ended up working in the foster care system when I moved to South Florida to Miami. I was a volunteer guardian at Lydam, and I was asked to step into different homes. I was assigned different foster children. So I had to do home visits and spend roughly ninety minutes at each home visit and just observe, right, as an anthropologist would do. And I was in homes. You know, I didn't know these people. Culturally very different. Religiously different. Right? There were so many aspects that were completely unfamiliar for me and how I grew up, but that is what I loved to do. And so I would sit and observe. And in anthropology, you have to remove your person, right, your personal perspective as much as you can from affecting the observation. But what I noticed is that I always felt a deep pit in the core of my being whenever I was in these homes. And there were a few instances where things and events unfolded between the children and perhaps the birth parent who wasn't supposed to be there but was and between the foster parent and the children. And so I, of course, had to report these things. And I remember having conversations with attorneys about, you know, what's the solution? How do we improve the foster care system, and how do we find better homes. You know, this is just sorely lacking in resources. And I started to feel over time pretty, like, unwell. Like, I psycho emotionally could not handle going to these homes anymore and started to really reflect on that. And so I said, okay. So what's the solution, and why do I feel so awful? Every time I leave these homes, I'm doing really good work. Right? I'm supporting a child and finding their home through this transitional period. You know? I should feel better right. I was, like, logically trying to talk myself out of what my body was saying, which was like, something's not right here. And so I realized that there is a primal wound that I had about my own origin story. You know? As I prayed and reflected on this experience, I realized, oh, there's something in me that is unhealed or something that this is accessing some kind of pain in me. And the solution for this, for this epidemic in our country, in the modern world, world in general, is not getting more funding for the system. It's not finding more parents to take in these children and adopt them. It's, you know, it's not rehab for the mother who's unfit. Right? And who are we to decide that this child cannot be with their mother because the mother is unfit? Right? We have a set of standards and guidelines, and there's people who don't know anything about the situation deciding that this child and mother should be separated. And so this is not about more funding. This is not about more bodies. This is not about more support in that arena. It's actually about getting to the core of why there is so much breakage in the lineage, in the nuclear family, why there is so much unhealed trauma in the woman who is cocreating children. You know? And where is she coming from? And what is our perspective of birth? And how have we evolved from how we were? Right? The tribes that I was studying cross culturally over centuries and centuries and centuries. Right? How have we evolved from these systems, which are actually quite perfect in our human nature, into this into what we are walking around in today. And there were a lot of things that came to my mind. Community. Right? The the size of the community, the size of the tribe, so to speak, maternity technology. There are so many things that we have walked toward as humans that have taken us so far away from what is in our natural state and our healthiest resting state as human beings that keep us connected to family and keep the mother and the child connected. And so I decided to leave the foster care at work because it was it was I was no good. I was not, what they needed because I could not I couldn't show up present and do the job anymore. And so in this time, I began going back into anthropology, going back into family systems. I got introduced to the work of Bert Hellinger, who coined the family constellation work and is an expert in family systems, was an expert in family systems. I started doing what I love to do, which is pulling information from all possible arenas to understand how we get to the beginning. And so I certified in becoming a childbirth educator. I started noticing that so many of the solutions when I was in the foster care system were about medicating the woman, medicating the child, prescribing a medical provider to them, you know, psychiatrist or some sort of program to put them in. That was quite conventional and hardly ever had any success. And so through this, I started realizing that birth was highly medicated, and birth was highly, perfunctory in the sense that women were kinda following this framework, and the outcomes were not good. And I knew from my anthropology background and understanding how mammal all mammals are born and the relationship that they hold with the mother that our system was unfortunately doing the opposite of what is natural and good for a woman and the initial moments of a baby's life at the birth. We can go deeper into the pregnancy and the conception, but, really, there was a system set up to separate the mother and the baby. Not knowingly. Right? I'm not gonna say that there's, like, some nefarious agenda or maybe I will say that, but not knowingly. And it was happening, and women were coming out of birth aromatized. Right? I'm looking at women cross culturally, historically through my studies in anthropology, and they were completely connected for the most part, right, from the accounts that I studied. And people lived on in this way. Birth was a part of life. Death was a part of life. Postpartum depression was not recorded or discussed hardly ever when we look at the way that these tribes lived cross culturally. However, it is an epidemic now in the modern world. Right? And so there were so many things coming at me at this time as soon as I opened that door to say, I wanna understand and I wanna know what's the real solution. Right? And why do we feel like we have no choice? Where has all the choice gone? And so postpartum depression and understanding that was really what tied me into the research of all of the medical interventions, all of the choice that seems to be stripped of a woman and a man when they go through their conception, pregnancy, and birth process. So as a childbirth educator, I started illuminating choices to men and women, simply saying, there's another way. What would you like to do? What would feel good to you? What feels right to you? Right? And starting and then through that, I started to see that there was so much of a buildup of fears and projections about being a father, being a mother, the pain of childbirth, the complications, the dangers. Right? All the things that we are conditioned to believe, either from Hollywood, from family and friends stories. Right? We were conditioned to believe that this is a really scary, awful process, and we had no other initiations to go off of. Right? For many women, this is her first initiation. You know, I would argue that there's other ones like menstruation and things like that, but men really don't have many initiations now in modern in modern times. And so for men, this is the first time they're really stepping up in a lot of ways, and they don't even understand how they fit in to the birth process because we've become so far removed from the man's rule in this process. And so educating these couples over the years, they started to have better outcomes by simply being aware of their choices and confronting fears that they had that were pretty easy to dispel with, like, simple evidence, anthropological, scientific, clinical, and also anecdotal. And so with this evidence, they were able to see that birth is actually quite uncomplicated and that they were meant to do this. And so as I saw these women and men have more empowered experiences, I saw them have more connected experiences with their children. I also saw them parent in a way that they never thought they could parent. Right? And this is every type of couple. I'm in South Florida. I have been for a very long time, and it's very diverse economically, socially, culturally, religiously. And so I worked with all kinds of people and the outcome is always the same. When they see their choice every day, they are able to make different decisions that are more aligned with their instinct, and therefore, they step into life more. They feel more pleasure. They feel more connected, and they feel more well equipped to parent their children. And unfortunately, so much of what happens to us growing up really does impact the way that we believe we're going to be as parents, as members of society, as partners, spouses. Right? And so this is where I started to really unbraid a lot, just locally, right, in my own petri dish, which is quite small, to unbraid a lot of what is entangled and keeping us from having connected, healthy nuclear families. And then it went deeper, attending births as a doula, being there for that actual transition where a woman goes through her own death and rebirth. Seeing how a man can go through his own death and rebirth. Right? He's leaving behind the boy and he's entering into the man. And it's funny because they'll say, well, I'm in my thirties. I'm in my forties. I'm already a man. But there is something that's so alchemical about birth that really does initiate the man if he chooses to take the task, you know, to to walk that way. And so I started to see in the birth space the empowerment that people were feeling, the connection people were feeling, whether it was in a hospital or a home birth or a birth center, and then being participatory in those initial months after the birth where women would say, well, I'm supposed to go back to work, but after this pregnancy and this empowered birth experience, like, I I can't leave this child. Right? And so I started to notice in real time that women who had non traumatic, or I'd say, maybe uneventful birth experiences wanted to mother, wanted to stay connected, wanted to heal whatever it was in them that wanted to be disconnected, and they wanted to connect. They wanted to find a way to stay home and raise their child. So this is how I was seeing birth and different choices impact the nuclear family. This is how I started to say, well, if women are probed, prodded, injected, medicated, drugged throughout their pregnancy and their birth, they're slowly being severed from this embodied experience. This is experience that should be embodied. And when they have a birth that's disconnected, right, they end up not bonding and forming that initial connection, that that deep desire and that instinct to stay with their baby is sometimes lost. And and many times, it's not that every birth ended up being non traumatic, but every time I was at a birth where a woman experienced trauma, she did not wanna step into role of motherhood. There were so many confusing feelings because she had been violated. Not only violated by the system, but she self betrayed. She made certain choices that put her in that situation. She felt betrayed by her husband who didn't protect her in that situation, felt betrayed by family for maybe pressuring her to do certain things. And so the whole event, which should be incredibly empowering, euphoric, connected, was not. It was actually a trauma, something that really started to reshape the way that they wanted to approach life. And what did it often lead to was partum depression. And so as I got more information, attending birth for so many years and spending time with women in their homes, as they adjusted to having their new baby, I started to see that a lot would emerge about her experience, about her partner's experience. And there were opportunities to process, deeper, let's say, past events that were impacting the way that they could step into this experience. And this is really what led me into doing, trauma work around fertility and around conception. As I was processing women's traumatic birth experiences, I started to meet a lot of women who are having issues conceiving because of previously traumatic births or violations, assaults, miscarriages, abortions, and things like that. So the world really began to open for me in seeing that so many people are unaware of the amount of choice they have in every moment. And when the world seems so small this way, so limited, so much self created prison, not a lot is possible. And when women can step outside of that, even just a little bit, so much more becomes possible. And so this is how I really began to weave the web of understanding how we've arrived at this place today, where we feel like, you know, we're being told that we have so much choice, so much is possible, so much technology at our fingertips, yet we feel constricted, bombarded, burdened, unwell, I mean sick, let's just say sick, depressed, empty, and searching for more. Right? Deeply unfulfilled. So why is it that with so much we feel this? So much of this has to do with self regulating or auto regulating, where we are on autopilot, and we just wanna feel good for a little while, and we'll do whatever we can to get that. Right? We don't wanna do the actual work of getting to the core of why we need to auto regulate. We just want to feel better for a little bit. We just want that temporary relief. Right? And this is why we can see that addictions are at an all time high in all respects. Right? Everything from drug and substances, pornography, devices, technology, all of it. Right? We are in a state of constant auto regulation and disconnection. And so why, if we have so much available to us, do we feel this way? And so as I started to do this work of addressing the nervous system, looking at trauma, looking at possibilities, offering choices, getting to the core of how to ask for it is, what we want, of course, I had to then self examine. There's no way that I could be holding any of the space for anyone. Was I not examining my own origin story, my own primal wound, my own disconnection, my own inability to experience pleasure? Right? And that's in itself a deeply charged word, which there is another episode available that I did with Whitney Lowry that you can check out on this podcast, where we break tone the word pleasure. Right? It is so taboo. We talk about what it really means and how you can live a more deeply fulfilled life by understanding pleasure. And so as I went on this journey of rediscovering myself, which I would say really started about five years ago when my life took a big turn. Of course, I was peeling back the layers in small ways, but five years ago, a lot changed in my life. The world changed. Right? This thing called COVID, I put that in air quotes for those of you not watching, hit the entire world, let's say. And it was an opportunity for everybody to reexamine. Right? Loyalties. Loyalties to belief systems, loyalties to relationships and groups, and loyalties to illness. Right? That's crazy that we can be loyal to an illness. We can be loyal to anything that gives us a sense of identity. Let's just put it that way. We can be loyal to our own parents' illness because that's a way that we can connect with them. Right? The only way mommy really gives me attention is when I can talk to her about how we're both ill. You know? If you haven't noticed, there might be someone in your life or someone you've known at some point that really loves to talk about their illness as their identity. You know? And it's tough. Right? Some of us grew up with narcissists who it's all about them. It's all about the thing. And so the only way we can really connect is by getting all also getting involved in the thing that they're talking about. And sometimes that means becoming sick just like them. And so this was a time where everybody was reconciling. A lot of relationships, I guess, disintegrated. New ones formed. New belief systems formed. New ways of doing things formed, and people really started to come into awareness about choice. And so in this time was when I created a program to train other women, doulas, to have the same type of awareness, to have this anthropological perspective on birth and family systems, and to look at their own family systems, to look at their own birth traumas, to look at how they were showing up, and how to be accountable, right, day to day, how to understand contracts, boundaries, agreements, how to master their own nervous systems and not be on autopilot, not be disconnected. I said the more of us there are out there regulated, Right? Because there's so many dysregulated adults walking around. More and less that there are out there regulated and able to hold space and support, the more women are going to have this bigger permission field, what I call the permission field, to be, to choose, to embody, to feel pleasure, to connect, the more they're going to want to step into the role of mother or creator. Right? If you don't have children, you wanna create, you wanna be embodied, you wanna feel the things in your mind and heart come to fruition through your hands. Right? You wanna alchemize. So the more that there are women able to hold the space, the more women around us have the permission field to do so. And I speak about women because I don't have many programs for men, although I do work with a lot of men. Men have their own work to do. And so this is really where I arrived at a place of of stepping out of the birth space and more into the space of understanding how we arrived at where we are today. And I trained with this incredible facilitator who teaches family systems, the work of Bert Hellinger. And this was pivotal for me because this is really where I started to see how the victim story is captivating all of us in various degrees. I mean, it's a it's a whole spectrum, and I'd worked with so many women who blamed the system. This is why my birth was this way because of the system, because of that doctor, because of that midwife, because because none of them were accepting responsibility that they actually chose to participate in that system. Right? I had to take a deep inventory of all the ways in which I was choosing to participate in the various systems that I thought were imprisoning me and decide to walk out, decide to take that little key, turn it, and walk out the door. Right? So I had to do that in order to hold the space to cultivate more of a permission field for women. And so as I did that, I started to then kind of hold up that mirror and say, this isn't about the system. Right? Everyone during the pandemic was saying, well, it's because of this politician, and it's because of this, and then it's the pharma, and then it's them. And it's like, okay. So now we're just polarizing right into this other extreme. Where are you taking accountability for your participation in this story? And so there's that bigger question, you know, in the world, and there's also that's that question in our everyday life. How am I participating in the story that I say I don't wanna be a part of? Right? Why am I doing the thing that I say that I don't want? And am I asking for things that I actually don't really want? And so then it became an opportunity for the women that I was training to start that self inquiry. As I was doing my own self inquiry, they started their self inquiry. And they started to see a lot of them came to my doula training because they had traumatic births. And it was kind of a salty, huge pill to swallow to say my birth was actually traumatic because I made decisions that put me in this certain situation. It was so much easier to be the victim and to blame. Right? It's so juicy and delicious to be a victim because you can kind of swim in a a little lagoon of no responsibility. Right? You can avoid being avoidant is is nice sometimes. You don't have to feel anything. It's that auto regulation. It's that escape. It's the tapping into the substance. It's watching the porn. It's that little escape that we get when we're a victim that we don't have to accept responsibility for the way that things are turning out in our life. And so these women had to take accountability for their births, and they had to alchemize all of those things. Right? An example. One of my amazing students who's now an incredible doula and has been a doula now for three years, she started to see where she had been self portraying for so long in her life. She was a people pleaser. She wanted everyone around her to like her and to be happy, and she wanted to serve. But at what cost? She was constantly bitter and resentful. She felt like she was doing so much, and no one was doing anything for her. Right? If her mom needed something, she would do it, but she really had so much aggression and rage towards her mom. Because she said it's always about my mom, always about her. And so, of course, living you know, we could go deeper into the story, but living this life of living for others and always self betraying what your inner what your needs are. Right? Because it's so selfish to do the things that feel good to you. Right? That's what we've been told because she's self betraying, didn't do the things that felt good to her. She was always in service to others. She was also super resentful, super angry. And then, of course, want still wanted the approval of her mother. Right? She still wanted mommy to say, you're doing a good job, but at the same time, she was really mad at mommy. And what is the medical system? I need to hold a module course on this, but what is the medical system if not a parentified figure who we are looking to give us the approval? Right? Oh, very good. He came in for your ultrasound. Good job. You're being very responsible. Good mommy. Good woman. You know? Oh, you did the blood test. Very good. Oh, you're taking the prenatals. Great. Oh, you got the DTaP vaccine. Very good. You're so responsible. You're doing such a good job. Right? That's what every little girl wants to hear. Good girl. Here's the cookie. And so she did this. She participated in the system, and all the while, it didn't feel right to her. And there really wasn't any fulfillment of that wound. There is no way to fulfill that wound until you start to take responsibility, and you as the adult start to give it to yourself. You give yourself the approval. You give yourself the fulfillment. You're never gonna get it from mommy medicine, from mommy, you know, thirty years ago. You can't go back in time. However, a lot of women start to look for it in the system through the vehicle of birth. And this is where they say, oh, well, the doctor said I need an induction because x y z. You know? Baby's looking really large in the ultrasound, and so I have to get an induction, and they said it's safer. And so, okay. Good. You got the little pat on the back because you didn't, you know, what the doctor said. And then turns out the induction, because it is laid in with so many risks that no one ever talks about, ends up being incredibly traumatic and leads to a c section and leads to separation between mother and baby and leads to a whole host of other issues. And so, of course, she wants to blame the doctor, wants to blame the medical system, but really, she was just dancing with the devil she knows. Right? She was still looking for that approval, still looking for the connection. So when women start to take responsibility for not exercising choice, for choosing the familiar, although toxic, they can start to see how much more fulfillment and connection they have when they choose the other thing. When they say, I can improve of myself. I can make my own choices. I don't actually wanna work with that doctor. I don't actually wanna get an induction. I'm actually gonna do the research. I'm actually gonna talk to a provider who's gonna give me more choices. I don't need the approval of my family, the system, the doctor, whoever. I know that I'm good. I'm good for simply being. I don't need to perform in order to be told that I'm good. And this is the song of many women. Right? The good girl song. And so through this doula training, a lot of women stepped into more accountability, and it's super empowering. This is one of the tools for self sovereignty is seeing the role that you play. And as my wonderful friend, Kelly Brogan, likes to say, we start to look at where we are trying to buy eggs at the hardware store. Right? They don't sell them there. Why are you looking for them there? Right? So if you're looking for choice, autonomy, connection, why would you go to a place, an institution filled with people who don't see life the way that you do and try to have this enlightened connected experience? It's not possible. And so the doulas that I've trained and I've worked with, they are out there talking about this. They're practicing it in their own life and then able to support women and giving them the permission field to explore, to be more connected, to take charge, right, to develop healthier relationships with their men, with their husbands. I mean, this is another component of it. As I healed my relationship to the feminine and to the masculine, I was able to see how birth is so greatly impacted by women's hyper independence. So women haven't yet detoxed from the grips of feminism. And so they don't have the polarity in their relationship to really be in a surrendered birth experience. Right? They're most likely exercising what I call the dark mom, you know, directing her partner, telling him how to do, how to be, nagging him, emasculating him, not allowing him to initiate into choice what he thinks is best for his best judgment. And so as I was healing this in my life, I was also able to support women in creating proper polarity in their experience. They say, I really wanna surrender at my birth. I really wanna have this ecstatic experience. Well, we have to learn how to respect men. Right? And that's deeply triggering for so many women because I've been told to do the opposite. And we all have a story that men are dangerous. Men wanna use us for these different things. Men have these motives, x, y, and z. Right? These are all the different stories we've heard in our lineage. And so women had to reprogram that. So when people say, what's the work I do in my pregnancy? Exercises and prenatal vitamins. I say, no. We're gonna do a little bit of deeper work. We're gonna examine your relationship to the feminine, to the masculine. We're gonna examine your relationship to pharma, to your perception of pain and childbirth. We're gonna look at your relationship with with your own mother. We're gonna look at it through a family constellations perspective. Right? How is your family system still entangled, and how can we untangle it so that you can walk forward in life, create your own branch of the family tree, and stop holding loyalties to those that came before you. Right? There's honoring those that came before us, and then there's loyalties that keep us stuck and suspended in time. And so this is the real work. And I've arrived at a place now where I want women and men to see that they have choice at every moment, every day. Because these people who come out of these processes of healing and reflecting, stepping into their bodies, connecting with their bodies, they're more fulfilled. They're self sovereign. They want to do in life. They want they feel motivated. They feel loved. They feel open. Right? And they feel healthier. So often, I've seen people work through illness and disease simply by addressing the psycho emotional entanglements that they've been holding for so long. And it's a journey. It didn't happen overnight, but it's totally possible. And so, in short, I would really love for everyone to start examining where they are entangled. Right? What are the stories that you're telling yourself that keep you suspended in a victim story? Are you really doing the things that you say you want? Are you asking for things that you actually don't want? Where are you expressing your needs? Right? And are you expressing them from your adult self or from your child self? And if it's your child self, you can absolutely give that to your child. You don't have to get it outside from anyone, from a substance, from a partner, from a system. You can provide that. You just have to identify what it is. So as much as I love calling out and exposing various systems, protocols, industries, and talking about how they are disempowering us, right, on a massive scale, an individual scale, I really do, at the end of the day, pull off that villain mask and show you that you are the one holding these stories. You are the one who can decide to stop participating in these systems. You are the one that can decide to acknowledge and honor these systems as existing as a force in the world that needs to be there without the dark. We don't have the light. Right? So it needs to be there. How you participate and engage is completely up to you. Right? So if we wanna drop the struggle and we wanna walk towards life, what choices are we going to make differently today? What choice are we gonna exercise today? So we are all born to know, and we are all exercising our human right to live as our most authentic selves and to experience freedom, joy, and pleasure. And so I am so happy to have you here with me, and I hope that you will continue listening and go on this podcast journey with me. 

Keywords: 

self-responsibility self-fulfillment medical system critique childbirth trauma self-sovereignty autonomy doula training gender roles hyper-independence feminist relationships masculine and feminine dynamics family systems cultural programming psycho-emotional work personal empowerment illness emotional healing victim mentality self-discovery disconnection personal accountability foster care system modern birthing practices postpartum depression cross-cultural insights men's role in childbirth traumatic births fertility issues societal conditioning childbirth birthmidwifery