Podcast: The Revelation Project Podcast Episode Title: Bergen Hyde - Losing My Religion: Finding Salvation In The Sacred, Messy, Truth, Of My One Precious Life Host(s): Monica Guest(s): Bergen ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Monica (Intro) | 00:00:03 to 00:00:30 Welcome to the Revelation Project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a Revelation project, and what gets revealed gets healed. Hey, everyone. I'm back with another episode of the Revelation Project podcast. Monica (Host) | 00:00:30 to 00:01:29 Before I begin this episode, I have an exciting announcement about something new I'm doing in the Spirit of Reciprocity, which is a monthly giveaway for those of you who are already on my emailing list. You will just have to reenter for a chance to win curated books and gifts that honor the feminine and celebrate the journey of self discovery, inner wildness, and the beauty way. So if you are someone who is just listening for the first time and are not already on my email list, please jump on for a chance to win, as well as to receive monthly newsletters on recent revelations. I'm having special offers and more, and those of you that are already on my email list, just go to the link in the Show Notes and get yourself enrolled in the monthly giveaway. This is going to be so much fun. Monica (Host) | 00:01:30 to 00:02:29 And not only will you have a chance to win books from authors who are on the show, but you'll also have an opportunity to win additional gifts from local artisans and actually personal guests who are also contributing and doing all kinds of other great things. So, more to be revealed on that, but definitely want to make sure we have your permission to enter you in the giveaway. So just go to the Show Notes, click the link, and enter yourself. Now, for this amazing episode, I'm joined by one of my beloved sisters and a returning guest, Bergen Hyde. This is a more extended episode than usual because of the sensitive nature of our conversation and because sometimes these important personal stories need more time and space to unfurl and breathe. Monica (Host) | 00:02:30 to 00:03:53 Before we begin, I want to take a moment and frame this conversation a bit, because I believe that religion is a big linchpin that holds complex portions of patriarchy in place, and it also holds a complicated place in many people's lives. Part of my reason for starting this podcast was because it offered me an opportunity to unpack and understand some of the common threads that bind so many of us to belief systems that Oppress, Exclude and other, including my own faith tradition in the Catholic Church growing up. As I've discussed in other episodes, you don't have to have been raised in a religion to have been impacted by it. Just as my last episode with Elise Lowen demonstrated, these patriarchal narratives are part of the daily fabric of our lives, and many of us are unconsciously programmed into a biology of belief that impacts each of us on multiple levels. My deep commitment on this podcast is to surface and amplify the stories of women and men who are divesting from patriarchy, from all faith traditions and walks of life. Monica (Host) | 00:03:54 to 00:05:05 Because when we seek to understand by stepping into another person's shoes, we're able to heal divisions and fractures that keep us in isolation and feelings of hopelessness and despair. So in this particular episode, bergen generously and courageously dares to tell the truth about her own life and untangling from her Mormon faith tradition and all that transpires as she kind of unpacks, really, all of the ways she has been bound to her own repression, oppression, and even her complicity in it. Sometimes our personal journey back home to ourselves requires us to first lose ourselves. And so in this particular episode, you'll hear about Bergen's just beautiful journey of self discovery and also some heart wrenching hard truths that she has to share about revelations on privilege, power, and protection. A little bit of more background on Bergen. Monica (Host) | 00:05:05 to 00:05:30 As I've mentioned, she's a dear friend. She lives in Provo, Utah, and has for the past 13 years. She is the co founder and creative director of Womb, which she founded with her two sisters. They hold women's circles, workshops, retreat, and one on one mentoring. And she's just an incredible human being. Monica (Host) | 00:05:30 to 00:05:45 So please join me in welcoming Bergen Hyde. Hey, Bergen. Bergen (Guest) | I'm really happy to be thank you, Monica. Monica (Host) | Yes, yes. We're here to just talk about so many things, but what comes up for me. Monica (Host) | 00:05:45 to 00:06:31 And I told Bergen this is one of my favorite songs. And actually, Bergen, I was preparing for our interview yesterday and I was cleaning the house and I was Siri play Losing My Religion by REM. And I just kept doing it over and over again and listening to that song. And I was thinking about a time in my life when I felt spiritually homeless and I felt like I didn't belong anywhere. And I had recently gone through this incredible dark night of the soul. Monica (Host) | 00:06:31 to 00:07:33 And while I had left in spirit, I had left my Catholic faith when I was about 16 years old. I had this deep longing to know a deeper spirituality within myself. But it took me a long time to kind of resolve all of the fractured parts of myself. And part of that was really coming to terms with or what I like to call reckoning with all of the things in my life that weren't aligned with the truth of who I really was. And so when I think about that song, that's me in the spotlight, losing My religion, it became like this anthem for all of the ways that I felt the spotlight was the truth and would I dare to stand in the truth and let anything that was not true fall away? Monica (Host) | 00:07:34 to 00:08:11 And that became this journey for me of finding the words to tell the truth about my life. And I feel like that's what you've really been in the process of doing these last few years. Is. I mean, you've been such an incredible truth teller from the moment I met you, but I've also really recognized as you and I were in the Maiden to mother work. And for our listeners, you can listen to Bergen and I's last episode that you were in a grieving process and you were kind of still in a lot of what I call the unbecoming. Monica (Host) | 00:08:11 to 00:09:45 And I think to some level we're always in it, but that's what we're really here to talk about today, is more about this process of finding our truth and what that story looks like for you. Because more and more, I'm finding, as women are unbecoming, that our personal stories and telling our personal stories, like telling the truth about our lives, is what is allowing each of us out there to recognize and see the parts of us that are reflected in other women that have us gain the courage to tell the truth as well about our own lives. And that's what I feel is true, sisterhood, is really being able to witness each other in our truth, to allow the truth to be here, to hold each other as we navigate the truth about our lives. Bergen (Guest) | Yeah, I do feel like the last few years of my life have been a great tale of undoing, an epic adventure of undoing, unraveling, unbecoming. And it has been a very how do I say it? Bergen (Guest) | 00:09:45 to 00:10:39 It was a terrifying prospect. At the beginning. There were moments of great fear around really confronting the truth of my experience, the truth of what was going on in my inner world and the reality of what was really happening for me within my faith tradition, within my relationships, both to myself and to other people and relationship to my life, my relationship to my life. And each step into the unknown, each step into the dark, each step down into the underworld to meet myself, to meet my truth. It took great love and a kind of surrender as well as a trust. Bergen (Guest) | 00:10:39 to 00:11:41 And it's a work of devotion for a lifetime. Think in ways I will always be cycling through the undoing of my life. And also I feel like I'm coming to a place where I can begin rebuilding some things, where some reconstruction is happening, where the things I've learned within myself are asking to be integrated in real time in this reality. Because I had to put a lot of pauses on my day to day reality, just like, okay, we're going to keep the day to day reality in a holding pattern while I go inward and do this other work. And I've come up in some aspects so that I can begin really integrating and applying what I've learned to my actual life, to this present moment with my children, with my partner, with my work. Bergen (Guest) | 00:11:41 to 00:12:12 And what is it that I want my life to actually look like and how do I want to show up in the world. No more pausing on my lived reality. And that is a whole new challenge of its own that also takes such devotion and courage. And because of the process of the inner undoing, you really meet your strength in those dark places. You meet your love, you meet your strength. Bergen (Guest) | 00:12:12 to 00:13:01 You meet the power that you have within yourself that you're definitely going to need to hold on to when you come out and have to apply what you've learned to your actual life, to your relationships and your work and the way you walk through the world and the life you want to build for yourself. And so it's always a returning to that place that I have found. I have a little incantation bowl that I've written in the middle of it. I will return to love. And that's become a great spell of love in my life, that I will continue to come back to that place of deep, devoted love to myself, to my authenticity and to the truth. Monica (Host) | 00:13:02 to 00:13:36 Was there a time, Bergen, that you didn't think that you would survive the truth? Bergen (Guest) | Yes, of course. And I think I'm feeling into even the language that you use to ask the question. There were many times that in my head I thought, there's no way out of this thing. And yet the more I deepened and rooted down into my deeper knowing, it was that I was born to do this. Bergen (Guest) | 00:13:36 to 00:14:32 I was born to do this. And this is coming up a lot for me right now, is that there's this part of me that feels like our survival depends on us continuing in these old patterns. And if we don't stay in these old relationships and these old ways of being, we won't be able to survive out in the world. And there's a lot of fear there for this part of myself, who really, as a young adult especially, decided to really lay some parts of herself on the altar in order to survive, in order to make it, and in some ways kind of bypass the hard work of her own self actualization in order to be safe and provided for and protected. And that part of me is like, well, what are you doing? Bergen (Guest) | 00:14:33 to 00:15:07 As I'm challenging the ways that I'm relating to the world, she's like, what are you doing? We can't survive unless we continue this game, right? Unless we continue this story, unless we continue this way of being like, we're not going to make it, we're not going to make enough money, we're not going to have health insurance, we're not going to have a home or be loved or be able to pay the mortgage. All of these very real, very practical aspects of my basic needs being met feel like they are in limbo. Yeah. Bergen (Guest) | 00:15:07 to 00:15:55 When I'm saying I need a different kind of partnership, way of work, I need a different way of relating to my community and to my children. And I'm having to really stretch my capacity to imagine a different way, a whole different story than the one I was handed by my faith, by my culture, by my family. And so I have to really hold tight to her. We talked about this earlier when we were discussing the direction we wanted this conversation to go. And that is like, I feel like I have to court this young woman again and say, I know you want the only path you were shown was to marry yourself to the patriarchy. Bergen (Guest) | 00:15:55 to 00:16:33 Essentially marry yourself to capitalism and the patriarchy and all these privileges that will be available to you if you comply, if you just water down your authenticity, if you just hide these parts of yourself, if you will just comply. Be pretty, be pleasing polite, as our teacher Sarah would say, if you will just play the part of good wife and mommy, you will be safe and protected and have all your needs met. And she married herself to that. She made covenant to that. Bergen (Guest) | 00:16:33 to 00:17:32 Deal with the devil, essentially. Monica (Host) | I want to pause for a minute here and just really throughout the world, throughout what we know is history, something called God has been used to kind of support the denial, the condemnation of female sexuality. Let me start there. There have been repressions of the body, mind and soul that have happened through patriarchy. But to make that even more potent, I will say that a lot of faith traditions in the world, if not the majority, most of them right, if not most of them, have kind of operated under five assumptions that I would say are commonplace in a lot of faith traditions. Monica (Host) | 00:17:32 to 00:18:41 One being that the world was created by a male God. The second being that existing world orders and cultures were made for men and sanctioned by God to be made for men. The third, that females are really more of like a companion, an auxiliary to men that we're here to serve and populate those male world orders that autonomous female sexuality is somehow a threat to this world order. And the fifth, that God's existence as male sanctions the repression, basically of female sexuality because it threatens the world order as it is. And those are paraphrased from The Great Cosmic Mother, the book by Monica Sue and Barbara Moore. Monica (Host) | 00:18:41 to 00:19:51 And I thought that that was so appropriate to bring into this conversation. Because as I really started to look at all of the ways that those five assumptions are at the root of kind of like all of this, repression for us women, the more I started recognizing all of the personal stories I have around it. Where I kind of want to take this conversation is back to what we were just talking about and how in order for us to. If we're kind of conditioned under these five assumptions without ever really surfacing them and looking at them, we end up in order to be what our culture has conditioned us to be in whatever faith tradition that we're in. And even if we're not in a faith tradition, we're not spared, really, because this is the air we breathe. Monica (Host) | 00:19:51 to 00:21:02 We are forced women are forced to betray ourselves over and over and over again. And so many of us get to this junction in the road where we have to make a choice. And I think that this choice is what we're talking about, whether or not we can survive the choice to either tell the truth about our lives and what's not in alignment for us and face at that point losing literally for many of us, our it's like we're breaking the covenant, the tribal code families. It is such a devastating, disruptive proposition to tell the truth because, again, those of us that have dared to read and look outside the margins of our faith and start questioning and that's exactly like the questioning is exactly what they don't want us to do because that's like, oh, have faith. You don't have faith. Monica (Host) | 00:21:02 to 00:21:59 It's the gaslighting that we kind of put up with for a while. But as we kind of come up against this edge, I'm just kind of creating right now this and surfacing all of the tension that kind of comes up as we hit the ceiling. And the other day, bergen, you made this really great parallel between the ceiling and the ceiling that happens in the Mormon Church. And while what we're going to talk a little bit here is Bergen's own personal experience, I really want all of us as listeners to really try on and listen for what is our experience, our personal experience, as Bergen is telling her experience of this. So, again, while this is specific to Bergen's story, I am quite positive that we all have a similar story. Bergen (Guest) | 00:21:59 to 00:22:54 Yeah, I'm really excited to talk about that little moment, that little epiphany with the word ceiling as in the top of a room or the ceiling as in bringing two things together. That is a word that's used a lot in the Mormon faith tradition. And before I go into that, I do want to give a caveat that feels really important to me, which is that I'm a white woman. And a lot of these more general experiences that we're describing, I think, are more specifically the experiences of white women than they are experiences of women of color or even queer women, queer femmes or the LGBTQ community. I'm a white hetero woman. Monica (Host) | 00:22:54 to 00:23:11 Exactly. Yes. Thank you. Bergen (Guest) | And also, I want to say and I recently read a book called White Tears, Brown Scars. And I can't remember off the top of my head the name of the author, so we'll have to put that in the show notes. Bergen (Guest) | 00:23:12 to 00:23:49 But she essentially says there's this archetype of the damsel in distress that really I experienced being sold. The archetype of the damsel in distress. Right. You are this gentle, nurturing, soft, lovely, modest, chaste woman who needs to be kept, needs to be taken care of so that you can then raise children. And essentially, the author of this book says only white women are allowed to be the damsel in distress. Bergen (Guest) | 00:23:50 to 00:24:38 Women of color have never been allowed to be the damsel in distress. Women of color have never been offered safety in the patriarchy. That's a privilege of white women. So I just really want to say that there may be many white women who find parallel in my story, and it might not be as applicable to someone who is a woman of color or a person of color or in the LGBTQ community. These privileges that I was offered in selling my soul to patriarchy or marrying patriarchy, sealing myself to patriarchy, were not offered to women or other people who didn't fit the standard of whiteness right. Bergen (Guest) | 00:24:38 to 00:26:04 And it's very much an undoing of both patriarchy and also my own internalized racism and my own internalized, like, fat phobia and homophobia and transphobia. And it's all so deeply entangled. And telling the truth of my story is also telling myself the truth of how I've been complicit in these other systems of oppression. That by martyring these authentic parts of myself, I am participating in the harm of marginalized people and communities, people who have been pushed to the margins by the ideologies of oppressive systems and cultures white supremacy, colonization, capitalism, misogyny, patriarchy and all the things. So I just really want to speak to that because my blindness to my own suffering, my dishonesty with myself about what I was actually experiencing, not only did it harm me, but it kept me in this hierarchical dynamic of also ignoring those who didn't have the offering of the same privileges. Bergen (Guest) | 00:26:04 to 00:26:47 It kept me complicit and a cog in this great machine that does such great harm. And that was something that was really difficult to confront as well. Of course, in some ways it was easier for me to look at the ways I had been victimized. While that was really hard to admit and hard to look at the pain of and really difficult to process, it was also very confronting and in some ways even more difficult to see how I was also turning around and becoming a perpetrator of the same kinds of harms that I was experiencing. And that is also a great work of a lifetime. Bergen (Guest) | 00:26:47 to 00:27:44 And the closer I get to the truth of my own experience, the more honest I have to be with myself. The more honest I choose to be with myself about how every time I try to tuck myself back up under the wing of the protection, the supposed protection of the patriarchy, every time I choose to center white men and patriarchal values for my own benefit, I am simultaneously turning my back on harm that is happening. I am perpetuating harm that is happening. And that's a place where I see has been out of alignment with who I really am and what my values are for a really long time. And it will take a lot of humility to continue on that path. Bergen (Guest) | 00:27:45 to 00:28:14 So I won't speak much more to that because it's not really my expertise. That's where I have much learning to do from indigenous women, from women of color, from black women, from queer women, from queer femmes and the LGBTQ community. I have much learning to do. So that's not my place to speak to that. But I did want to address that crossroads as well. Monica (Host) | 00:28:14 to 00:28:53 Thank you. Bergen (Guest) | And honestly, I think that's a place where it's easy to get stuck again, where we come to another crossroads where we have maybe reclaimed a lot of parts of ourselves. We've seen our own pain, we've railed at the patriarchy and the misogyny we've experienced, and then we come up out of that part of the underworld and come to this crossroads of will I also see these other harms and what path will that take me on? Honestly, I see that happening with men too. Men can be like, oh, this system is hurting me too. Bergen (Guest) | 00:28:53 to 00:29:16 But will they stop and see the way they have perpetuated the harm? Yes, it's a place that we all want the men in our lives to show up to. We want them to show up to that. And so if I'm asking men to show up to that, take accountability for that, even though being in the system wasn't their fault, being in the system does harm them. They were groomed for it too. Bergen (Guest) | 00:29:16 to 00:29:59 I want them to wake up to how them being complicit in it is harming me. I would be a hypocrite to only talk about the way I've been victimized and not talk about the way and not be held accountable for the way I've been a perpetrator. So to come back to the concept of the ceiling, it's a very common, or at least like a well known term that women have a glass ceiling, right? We're not paid as much, we don't get the promotions. And all of those things like the glass ceiling we experience out in the world and the places we feel blocked from being our authentic selves or from bringing our authenticity and our power and our wisdom to and you. Bergen (Guest) | 00:30:00 to 00:31:04 Mentioned, suppressing women's sexuality is also a suppression of our bodily wisdom, of our intellect, of our capacity for problem solving and relational, communal living and world building, of the creativity and the life force that women, I think all people have access to those things. But women in this context are specifically repressed or oppressed in and the way that actually really harms our communities and our societies and the world in general. And the way that I can bring it back to what is really personal to me is that I got married at 25. I was actually 24. And then I turned 25 the next day and I'm turning 40 next year, so I'm rounding the 15 year mark of my marriage. Bergen (Guest) | 00:31:05 to 00:31:40 And my marriage at 25 years old was something that I had built up to my whole life. I use the term groomed very deliberately. I was groomed by a predatory ideology. And I'm not saying that to blame any specific person, but the system itself. It's like the ideology and the system of patriarchy that specifically shows up in Mormonism becomes very predatory because it wants to keep itself intact. Bergen (Guest) | 00:31:42 to 00:32:12 It is an entity of its own with its own will that we're all being sucked into. Monica (Host) | And Bergen, I don't want to interrupt. I really want to talk a little bit more about what makes it predatory and what makes it grooming. Okay. Because this is where I think we can think we know what you mean, but where I think actually there's a lot of unrevealed practices here that we don't realize happens to many of us. Bergen (Guest) | 00:32:12 to 00:32:43 Right. In all kinds of ways. Right. Thank you. I think from the very beginning, within the religious and family system context of my upbringing, there was a lot of messages about how my obedience to the authority figures in my life, including church leaders and my parents, et cetera, was more important than was really they call it the first law of heaven. Bergen (Guest) | 00:32:43 to 00:33:38 Right. It was the most important foundational piece was my obedience, which meant that I was groomed from, as a young child all the way through my teenage years and young adult years to believe that obedience to what someone outside of me said was right or true or good took precedent over my own instinct, my own desires. My desires were not to be trusted, my desires were dangerous and that the authority figures outside of myself would always know better than what my own inner voice, my own authenticity. And I think it really is a distortion of very normal childhood developmental state. All these stages we go through as children. Bergen (Guest) | 00:33:38 to 00:34:22 At first, yeah, it's important that we listen to the people who are taking care of us and that's, like part of our survival is learning these lessons and being protected by them. And so it really played to that. But it did it in a way that subverted the development of me over time learning how to trust myself, learning how to listen to myself, know myself and have this natural self actualization that should have happened where this slowly differentiation was a safe process, was an honored process, was a process that was given room. Instead it was do not develop that part of yourself. Only rely on this. Bergen (Guest) | 00:34:22 to 00:35:41 And the messages around that continued in various ways in all these small and big ways. I received a lot of messaging around the role of a woman is to be supportive, is to be an auxiliary, is to quietly sit in the back of life and do what they're asked that to be righteous is to be quiet, to only support established male authority figures, opinions and thoughts and feelings and decisions. I saw that in literal words that were taught me in church lessons and speeches that were given as well as modeled to me over and over and over and over and over again in my home and in church. Settings and in the name of God and in the nature of God himself, which in the Mormon faith we believe that God is married to a woman, to a female god, but she's silent and invisible and we are not allowed to pray to her or talk to her. She's there as like a placeholder for heteronormativity, and Monica (Host) | 00:35:41 to 00:36:17 Women are not allowed to talk to God. Bergen (Guest) | Correct. Monica (Host) | In the Mormon faith. Bergen (Guest) | So you can pray and have your own personal kind of relationship with God to help you make decisions or to repent and things like that. And you can receive answers to prayers or revelation from God for personal choices, but you get the message very strongly that any answer you get to prayer should be matched up with what the authority figures, the leaders or your husband or your father receive. And if it doesn't match, then it wasn't from God. Bergen (Guest) | 00:36:18 to 00:36:53 So they often are speaking out of both sides of their mouth. You can receive revelation for yourself, and God will guide you and he loves you and all this stuff, but if. It doesn't match up with what he exactly. If I ever got an answer that didn't match up with what the male authority figures in my life were saying, then I was being deceived and I must have misunderstood, or I must have asked the wrong question, or I must have had bad intent, or I must have needed to repent of something first. Notice the gaslighting? Bergen (Guest) | 00:36:53 to 00:37:30 Yeah, so much gaslighting there. And undermining of my experience to the point where, well, yeah, I'm going to pray, but I already know what they want me to do. They make it very clear what they want you to do, all the steps that need to be taken, and the way they want you to behave. Another way predatory behavior shows up is that men are always the measures of worthiness within the community. So leaders of local congregations do interviews with you to ask you questions about if you're being honest, if you have integrity, if you're paying your tithing. Bergen (Guest) | 00:37:30 to 00:38:17 We are required to pay 10% of our income to the church whether or not we're being quote unquote, chaste, which means whether we're having any kinds of sexual activity outside of marriage, masturbation. Like, they ask questions about those things. First of all, very predatory grooming questions. And there are many, many cases of abuse that come up from these situations that young children as young as eight are being put into these situations where leaders are asking them questions about their sexual experiences, measuring their worthiness in order to participate. In certain aspects of the faith, you have to be able to answer all those questions and be signed off by a male leader. Bergen (Guest) | 00:38:17 to 00:38:59 So that's always hanging over you that I'm going to have this worthiness interview. And if I am not able to answer these questions and then if you do need to be forgiven of something or repent of something, you go to that male leader to confess to them and follow whatever processes they recommend to become worthy again. So your worthiness is always being measured. We have so much kind of to do lists and tick boxes for what a good Mormon is and what a good Mormon does. A good Mormon doesn't drink, doesn't drink coffee, doesn't smoke, doesn't do drugs, doesn't have sex out of wedlock, doesn't swear, all these things, all these rules. Bergen (Guest) | 00:38:59 to 00:39:21 And so we have ways of both measuring by this male authority figure, but also as a community, there's so much surveillance, so much surveillance. Are you coming to church every Sunday? Are you doing your assignment in the congregation? Are you performing the good Mormon wife? Are you performing the good Mormon girl? Bergen (Guest) | 00:39:21 to 00:40:01 Are you wearing modest clothing? There's all these clothing requirements that our shoulders have to be covered, our cleavage can't show, and we wore knee length shorts and no midriffs. And even as a teenager, I'm wearing boy I would buy boy shorts at the store. And I see so many parallels just in our culture in general, about all of the ways we place these expectations and requirements on young girls, on women. So many of us grow up with, like, to be a good girl, I have to do these things to be accepted, to be worthy of love and belonging. Bergen (Guest) | 00:40:01 to 00:41:05 I have to perform I have to perform these functions of my gender. And in Mormonism, the gender roles and the expectations are very clearly defined and very specific and monitored, deliberately, systematically monitored, informal and informal ways. And lastly, I'll say that there was a lot of body shaming and sex shaming, body shaming and body policing. A lot of talk about how my body as I came into my teenage years, about how my body could cause men to sin or to lust. That it was my responsibility to not be a quote, unquote pornographic, a walking pornography if I was dressing in a certain way or there's a lot of shaming of masturbation and pornography and sexuality, even just sexual feelings. Bergen (Guest) | 00:41:06 to 00:41:52 You begin to not just have this external monitoring and policing, but you begin to internalize the monitoring and policing. So then I'm constantly like, oh gosh, I thought about kissing a boy and I'm being bad, or like, oh, a boy held my hand and I had these feelings come up in my body. I was feeling desire and I'm bad and I need to confess, or I said a swear word or I didn't do what my leader told me or whatever. And you're constantly monitoring internally as well. And that becomes this inner voice that's just always there, this inner critic voice that's like, you're not doing this. Bergen (Guest) | 00:41:52 to 00:42:16 You're not good enough. You really mess that up. You're a sinner. You're dirty, you're unworthy, and you internalize all of these rules. And then as a defense mechanism, you also are very self righteous about the rules because the better you are at performing that you're good, the more disdain you have for people who can't perform that they're good. Bergen (Guest) | 00:42:16 to 00:42:40 Interesting, right? So it causes this great schism between ourselves and our own humanity and then between us and other people. Anyone who drinks alcohol is like, wicked and being deceived by Satan. And all these narratives about how we're the chosen people, and if we do all these things, we'll be protected. Here comes the narrative. Bergen (Guest) | 00:42:40 to 00:43:17 If you can perform the good Mormon woman, a man will choose you. If you're modest and chaste and beautiful and soft and nurturing and quiet and supportive and compliant and obedient and righteous, a righteous young man will choose you. You will save yourselves for each other and live this fantasy life of being a princess in the castle. And it's literally sold that way. Like, one of the sacred buildings that Mormons build are called temples. Bergen (Guest) | 00:43:17 to 00:43:48 You have to pass these worthiness interviews and get signed off. You actually get like a little card with a signature from your leader saying that you're worthy to go into a temple where ceremonies happen and you make promises and covenants both to God. And then eventually, if you get married to a person, and when you get married in a temple, it's called a sealing. So S-E-A-L-I-N-G that you're being sealed to this other human. For me, it was a man. Bergen (Guest) | 00:43:49 to 00:44:20 And only heterosexual marriages can be sailed in the temple. So there's also a lot of this obsession with gender roles, a lot of gender essentialism and homophobia that gets ingrained in there. So, like any queerness I felt any desire to explore my sexuality outside of heterosexuality was absolutely evil. Yeah, it was literally evil. It was thwarting God's plan, which was that men and women are meant to be together. Bergen (Guest) | 00:44:21 to 00:45:03 Families are the central. The nuclear family. This very 1950s idea of the nuclear family was very much an idol of worship. So that was this building up, all this grooming, all this kind of predatory conditioning that got me to this place where as a 25 year old woman, young woman, was absolutely desperate, 24 desperate, begging God every day, crying, begging God fasting and praying. And that I could get married, that somebody would Monica (Host) | 00:45:03 to 00:45:57 Mm I good enough?Am I pure enough? Bergen (Guest) | Yes. That he would send me somebody to choose me and fulfill this part of my destiny, which was my destiny was to be a wife and a mother. Monica (Host) | My destiny as a woman, because that's really and again, I want to point out too, because it's so important that we understand if we were to look at this through the lens of storytelling, because I always talk about the importance of storytelling and what story are we telling ourselves or what story have we been groomed to believe in so deeply? And this is where the insidious nature of grooming and also not being able to kind of recognize something as predatory happens because it happens in these microdoses. Monica (Host) | 00:45:57 to 00:46:20 Or as I wrote in my essay for Breaking Down Patriarchy, a thousand tiny paper cuts. When was the first cut made for me? And I would say for me, it was the story of Adam and Eve. Bergen (Guest) | Absolutely. Monica (Host) | 00:46:21 to 00:47:15 And it was the story about how God was a man. He made Adam in his image and then he made Eve as a helpmate for Adam. And then Eve ruined everything because of her nature and how that kind of permeated in the background and percolated and permeated kind of everything. And how as a young girl sitting in a pew in church, just pointing out here how often you heard he him, his. he him, his. And every so often you heard hers. Monica (Host) | 00:47:16 to 00:48:12 Her, hers. Yes, she every so often. I have a dear friend, Monet Chilson, who wrote Sophia Rising and she actually counted how many times and the discrepancy between and it's just in itself, you start recognizing again those micro doses he, him, his. And as a young girl, you are slowly kind of consuming and metabolizing and internalizing these messages of your own unworthiness, your own impurity, your own. And again, as Bergen said, this is not necessarily everyone's experience, and certainly perhaps not the experience of women of color or indigenous people. Monica (Host) | 00:48:12 to 00:49:40 But for white heterosexual women who grew up in a faith tradition, this is where I find so much common, what I call the trance of unworthiness. That the trance of unworthiness. The foundation of it is built in this way, and it's similarly built in different faith traditions in order to have females fill a role that serves and is subservient to white men and that centers white men and everything that goes with it. And again, I interject to sprinkle this in because I think that as we're listening to Bergen kind of tell her story, it's like, where does this show up in other ways? And to kind of come back to this story, there's this simmering story that we're never supposed to question, we're never supposed to get curious about, we're never supposed to explore outside the realm of because then that would then mean that we are these things that we've been taught to fear. Bergen (Guest) | 00:49:41 to 00:50:53 No, that's so perfect. I mean, I won't go much more into the scriptural or doctrinal or theological narratives that backed all of this whole ideology or system up, that propped it up. But certainly, in my experience, the story of Adam and Eve, many other scriptural stories that are often referenced and the interpretation of them being used as to deepen the authority of these other beliefs and all this monitoring and policing and all of those things. And there are some aspects that are really unique to Mormonism, but so much of it is deeply embedded in our religious culture in the United States, in the Western world, and also because that was the frame of reference by which colonization and all these other things were happening across Europe. And does all this colonizing there where these more communal nature based ways of being and spiritual practices and communal practices are know, decimated across Europe. Bergen (Guest) | 00:50:53 to 00:52:28 These are my ancestors who then learned the language of colonization and learned the language of patriarchy and learn the culture of this new domination ideology and then bring that domination ideology to the, you know, the whole system of the Government of the United States of America and many other parts of the Americas built on these ideologies that then sweep across the country. In God we trust, in a male God we trust. And the way that Christianity is weaponized and used to build empire and to colonize is very alive in the Mormon faith, but also very alive in the broader ethos of our and, you know, the Mormons were pioneers. They came across the plains and colonized all over the west and really participated in genocide of indigenous people under the claim that God was sanctioning, that they could take this land and perpetuated great violence, decimating populations of indigenous tribes. And my direct ancestors, I have eight generations, my ancestors on both sides of my family joined the church at the very beginning in the mid 18 hundreds. Bergen (Guest) | 00:52:28 to 00:53:08 And so they brought that same, all that wounding and internalized trauma from their own severance. They then perpetuated as they came with blood across the plains. And these are my literal direct ancestors. Like, I have their faces and their pictures and their journal entries and their stories that they participated in these things. And I live in Utah, just a little bit away from Salt Lake City where they really planted their roots and colonized all across the west from here. Bergen (Guest) | 00:53:08 to 00:54:00 And I feel a great and deep responsibility to participate in the repair and reparation that needs to happen here for my own family and for this place I'm in that doesn't belong to me, but here I am and the heritage. So for me also to come back to my personal experience, this wasn't just grooming for my life, my one individual life. This is generations and generations, like our literal DNA has been altered by this ideology over time. By this biology of belief. Yes, the biology of the belief that is literally rooted in my bones and blood. Bergen (Guest) | 00:54:00 to 00:54:41 So the exorcism that is required to pull this out of my blood and say this, I will not continue this story. I will not continue to live in this story of martyrdom and violence. I cannot live here anymore. I do not live in this place, I like to extract it from my bones. And I feel I think there are some of my ancestors that are probably terrified, right, that are probably like, we gave everything for this thing. Bergen (Guest) | 00:54:42 to 00:55:02 I don't know, for their own survival. And also with so much privilege, they did horrific things that they justified in the name of God. And polygamy is a big part of the Mormon story as well, where women were seen as essentially as breeders. Yeah. As property of men. Bergen (Guest) | 00:55:02 to 00:55:46 And the more status a man had in the community, the more women he could marry. And having many women being married to you and sealed to you for eternity, because the ceiling is not just for this life, but the ceiling is meant to signify that I will be with this person forever. And they really hold that over your head. You're like, if you want to be with the people that you love forever, with your children, with your spouse, you have to comply by these rules in order for your ceiling to stay valid, you have to keep up all of these standards of quote, unquote worthiness. So also, they use a lot of fear around you'll be alone, you won't belong, you won't be loved. Bergen (Guest) | 00:55:46 to 00:56:18 You will be in all this pain and suffering and be separated from the people you love. It's this great story of separation. If you don't continue to comply. And then the whole community is built on that fear that if I don't perform these functions and expectations and do the pretty pleasing and polite dance, I will lose my community, I'll lose my partner, I'll lose my children, I lose God's love. I mean, you lose your soul. Monica (Host) | 00:56:18 to 00:56:27 Let's face it, right? You lose your soul. Yes, you lose your soul. I mean, imagine that. You lose your soul. Monica (Host) | 00:56:27 to 00:56:43 And this is the same with the Catholic faith. Burn in the eternal hellfires for not complying. And pointing out, by the way, as well, I know it's the oracle of the obvious, but I'm going to do it anyway. Please do. Pointing out that each and every religion is right. Monica (Host) | 00:56:44 to 00:57:01 Yeah, they're right. And they're right that they're right that the other is going to burn in hell, but that they won't because they've got it somehow they've got it all handled. Yes. They've figured it all out. Even though nobody can figure out the mystery. Bergen (Guest) | 00:57:01 to 00:57:22 There's like, no possible way for all of them to be right. Monica (Host) | 00:57:22 to 00:57:40 No possible way that every book that's ever been written trying to figure out the mystery that is life, which no one has the answer to. They have their theories, but nobody knows. But they do. They do. Just saying they do. So, again, it's a story that gets microdosed over time. And that becomes people's reality. We see how this happens. Monica (Host) | 00:57:40 to 00:58:05 And one of the things that we're pointing to, Bergen, is what we call benevolent patriarchy, because at one time, this was very violent work. This was very harmful. This was very violent. I want to say it still is. It's just happening through what we call benevolent patriarchy. Monica (Host) | 00:58:05 to 00:58:30 And so I want to kind of give you a definition of that. And then Bergen can talk more about kind of what that looks like in the Mormon Church. But benevolent patriarchy is when men exercise their power without using force. So you can see how this power is exercised without violence. We're just telling you a story, but it's true. Monica (Host) | 00:58:30 to 00:59:08 The idea that it's true is what has this power over you. And it's also systematic oppression that tells us we must maintain access and good favor with white men in order to survive, that we must follow white men's rules in order to be safe, and that if we do that, we'll be chosen, protected, valued, rescued, acknowledged, and saved. Bergen (Guest) | 00:59:08 to 00:59:52 Yeah. End of story. At least for my family tree. It's a tale as old as time. And what starts to become apparent when you are telling yourself the truth of your life is that the question is, what is it that I need protection from? Because what's actually hurting me is you. What actually is killing my soul, sucking my soul from me, leeching Siphoning, my life force, my soul, my love, my truth, my belonging to myself is you. It's you who I need protection from. Bergen (Guest) | 00:59:52 to 01:00:16 And they create often this imaginary mirage of danger that out there and also in here. Monica (Host) | You need to be saved from yourself. Bergen (Guest) | Your own needs, your own desires, your own power is dangerous. Your body is dangerous. Your thoughts are dangerous. Bergen (Guest) | 01:00:17 to 01:00:45 You are always being deceived by something, and you can't trust yourself because you're a damsel. Again, the story of Eve, of you're weak, you're deceivable, you fuck things up. Cunning. Yeah. If you listen to your desire, if you get curious about things, you will just fuck everything up and hurt everybody. Bergen (Guest) | 01:00:45 to 01:01:17 And that belief that following my desire, following the call of my soul, is going to hurt people, has probably been the one belief that has kept me trapped the most. Because now, Monica (Host) | By design yes. Bergen (Guest) | So now here I am as a 25 year old woman having a baby a year into my marriage, and then having a second baby and then a third baby, because that's my job. That's my whole destiny. This is the pinnacle of my life. Bergen (Guest) | 01:01:18 to 01:01:50 And now I have these children, and I'm waking up to how unhappy I am, how much in pain I am. I'm having these spirals of depression coming up for air. Monica (Host) | Can you share what were some of those early kind of things that started to kind of just things are not right here, like something is off. You're starting to come out of the trance. The trance is being disrupted a bit. At 25, you've had one baby, two babies, three babies. What's happening? Bergen (Guest) | Yeah. Immediately after I got married and let me just say this. We have this temple ceiling, and within some of the preliminary ceremonies that happen, and then the ceiling itself, you make promises like, I will hearken to my husband, and he gets to listen to God, or I give myself to my partner or my husband, because we would never say partner. Bergen (Guest) | 01:02:23 to 01:02:58 I give myself to my husband, and he receives me. He receives me instead of we give ourselves to each other and we both receive each other. It's very like it's very one sided, the ceiling, they've changed some of it, and now it talks about men will preside in the home, they'll be in charge in the home, and they will provide in the home, and women will nurture and take care of children. That's the role of women. It's almost like a time warp as far as the broader story of feminism goes. Bergen (Guest) | 01:02:59 to 01:03:35 You would hear that stuff and be like, what the hell? Why would any woman ever do that? But the story that I wanted, this love and protection from my partner was very real for me. And I think we internalize those beliefs so much more deeply than we understand, because when we're saying it appear in this logical way from a feminist framework, that's the most bonkers thing you've ever heard. But when you've been groomed for this fairy tale your whole life, I honestly didn't believe I was capable of standing on my own 2 feet. Bergen (Guest) | 01:03:35 to 01:04:19 I didn't believe that. And even now, 15 years after, with all the work I've done, that part of me is still I'm sitting here. We are now in the process of unraveling the nature of our partnership, and that part of me is still saying, I am terrified to be on my own. And to look at that from the broader perspective of how we unintentionally unconsciously marry ourselves to whiteness and patriarchy and all these other things, we feel like if I divest from these systems, I will have nothing. I'll be destitute. Bergen (Guest) | 01:04:19 to 01:04:35 I don't play the game of capitalism. If I don't play the game of whiteness and patriarchy, then I won't have my needs met. I won't have a home. I won't have all these things. Monica (Host) | If I don't play the game of good wife and mother . Bergen (Guest) | 01:04:35 to 01:05:13 Yeah or just good woman, good worker, good employee to these broader systems. If I don't show up as a cog in this machine, I will be. Left if I don't obey, out in. The cold, if I don't obey so it's actually not that foreign, even though it feels very like it's very hard to swallow in hindsight to look at those things. But it's not that foreign, because as I am also deconstructing my marriage to these systems, I'm going it's everywhere. Bergen (Guest) | 01:05:13 to 01:05:38 These promises I made to this system is everywhere. Because even as I'm looking at my partnership and how it's changing, we might not stay together. We might stay together. There's so much unknown. I'm like, well, I'll just have to go back to school and get a degree and go work some corporate job and it's, dude, I'm just going to marry myself to another patriarchal, capitalistic thing. Monica (Host) | 01:05:39 to 01:05:49 Version of it, just with a different disguise. Bergen (Guest) | 01:05:49 to 01:06:27 Yes. And I'm like, oh, crap. That's actually really scary. To be like, whoa. I have to imagine a completely different possibility that could be relational and communal and centered in my soul's work and centered in my values and these other relationships, and that there's a part of me that 25, 24 year old part of me that's still terrified. She's like, what? Not only are you going to shift this dynamic with your partner, but you're also going to say no to patriarchy's offer over here that will then go this route, be the warrior princess for capitalism and whiteness and be a CEO. Monica (Host) | 01:06:34 to 01:07:23 Women know on a cellular level that the time is now for us to raise our voices, share our stories, contribute our wisdom, and to take a stand. But so often in the moment of truth, whether we want to lead a workshop, launch a podcast, write a book, or start a movement, we wonder if we really have what it takes. So we put it off for another week, month, year. But here's the thing. Voicing our ideas, being visible, marketing a business, having an opinion, and generally taking up space as women is actually freaking terrifying until you have an embodied experience that completely flips the switch on what you think you're capable of. Monica (AD) | 01:07:23 to 01:08:07 If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that I'm a graduate of Megan Jo Wilson's Rock Star Camp and that it changed everything for me. I had absolutely no training as a professional musician, but something in my body knew that the experience of singing on stage with a live band would liberate my voice like none other. That's why I'm so thrilled to spread the news that Rockstar Camp is back. And now it's your turn to step into the spotlight. This is not a school of rock, it's not karaoke, and it's not meant to launch your singing career. Monica (AD) | 01:08:07 to 01:08:35 Rockstar Camp is a feminist leadership development program based in somatic, healing, coaching, performance art, and the life changing experience of saying yes to your fullest expression. On the other side of the journey, you will find your options. Expanding. Your boldness will be fueled. Your willingness to take risks in the name of your deepest desires will become second nature. Monica (AD) | 01:08:35 to 01:09:17 Hiding will no longer be an option. Believe me, Meghan Jo will make sure of it. If you've been looking for a tribe of women who are done with playing small and a training that is so much more than a certificate of completion, then I hope you'll go to Rockstarcamp Live right now to get all of the details of the full experience and apply for this next cohort. If something in your body is telling you to go for it, don't think twice, go to Rockstarcamp Live right now and apply for this next cohort happening soon. Monica (Host) | 01:09:23 to 01:10:11 Bergen, one other thing I wanted to say, and just to also kind of create some more context for our listeners, is I may not have the numbers right, but my understanding is that there's currently about 16.8 million Mormon members in the world. Is that correct? Bergen (Guest) | 01:10:11 to 01:11:16 Yeah. Most of the stats are probably statistics that the church is putting out because they're not transparent about what's really going on with membership numbers. But if those are stats given out by the church, they're most likely counting any baby born to parents who are members of the church, because as a baby, you would get like it's like a christening, but they call it a baby blessing where your name is put on the record of the church as a young baby. So, yeah, that's counting. Like anyone who's ever had a baby blessing is on that list, whether they're active in the church or not. Okay. Monica (Host) | And again, the reason I kind of put that number out there is for those of us that maybe come from another faith tradition or no faith tradition, it's just important to recognize that if 16, let's call it million of those are adult members, then it's safe to say that half of that 16 are women. What comes up for me as I'm sitting here with all of this and all of the ways that so many of these various faith traditions microdose this trance of unworthiness into these gender roles that continue to keep us separated from ourselves and separated from each other, is that these are the white women who are upholding patriarchy. Bergen (Guest) | 01:11:16 to 01:11:51 Yes. And they're deeply kind of again, these are generalizing I'm generalizing here. I get that are deeply in this trance of unworthiness. And so I'm listening to Bergen with these ears of what is it going to take for us to get to a tipping point in the world where more women awaken to the truth of who we are? Which is why, Bergen, I really want to go back to what this process looked like for you. Monica (Host) | 01:11:51 to 01:12:17 Now you're 25, and I want to get a deeper understanding of the antidote. It's like if you've been dosed your whole life, what started to be the disruptor and how did that build over time? And then what did that look like in terms of how lonely were you? Where were you? Were you homeless? Tell us more. Bergen (Host) | 01:12:18 to 01:12:53 Yeah, I mean, to answer the question, what does it take? What it took for me was that I just was increasingly in more and more pain to a point, like emotional, mental, spiritual pain, to a point where I could no longer ignore the pain and push it down and perform my way out of it. I just couldn't hold the facade any longer. And it began really quickly. Bergen (Guest) | 01:12:53 to 01:13:32 My husband at the time as well, he really, within a week or two of our marriage, we lived with my grandmother. My grandfather just passed away and my husband was still in school. I was pregnant three months after. So really in those first short weeks, he would have these weird mental health episodes and I had no experience with I had no context for what was going on, no experience with depression or anxiety or other things like that. I had been depressed, but I didn't know it. Bergen (Guest) | 01:13:32 to 01:14:06 I'd been depressed as a teenager, I'd had spirals of suicidal ideation and depression as a teenager, but I would always pull back out of it and perform and get by and I just thought it was my unworthiness. I thought I'm just a bad person, I just messed up, I sinned, I am not righteous enough, I just need to be more faithful. And that those same patterns showed up in our marriage. He would have these shutdowns where he would lay on his face in a dark room for hours and not speak to me. And I didn't know what was going on. Bergen (Guest) | 01:14:06 to 01:14:33 So immediately I had this huge shock of, whoa, this isn't what how is he supposed to provide and protect me? He can't even speak. And he has his own traumas, his own grooming, his own conditioning that's insidious in its own right and also experienced a lot of childhood abuse. I'm also like a sexual abuse survivor of childhood sexual abuse. So we both have a history of that. Bergen (Guest) | 01:14:33 to 01:15:19 And the Mormon culture and our culture at large is rife with sexual abuse because of all of the reasons we've already outlined. The power dynamics, the repression of sexuality, the protection of predators, happens all the time within the Mormon church and our broader culture. So we showed up to our marriage with so much unconscious wounding that almost immediately the foundations were cracking. We literally banked everything on this thing and the pressure of it we had no inner strength to pull from because none of that had been developed. Everything had been this externalization of living up to these roles and expectations and these promises. Bergen (Guest) | 01:15:19 to 01:15:44 Right? So, yeah, immediately that was terrifying and very triggering and dysregulating for me to not have this strong priesthood holding man that was going to support me and provide for me so that I could just stay home and have babies. And here I was within months pregnant. And it's easy in hindsight to paint it as if it was all bad. Of course we had lovely moments. Bergen (Guest) | 01:15:44 to 01:16:22 We went on a honeymoon, we had date nights and we were just young kids trying to survive. I was taking care of my grandmother, I was moving towards having a baby and I planned to have this natural birth, whatever that means. I planned to have an unmedicated birth with a doula and some midwives and I ended up in the hospital having this very traumatic experience, was abused by the doctor who was called in and that was another. Huge crack in the foundation, right? And walls are falling down now. Bergen (Guest) | 01:16:22 to 01:16:54 And I was so hurt and angry by the experience of giving birth to my first daughter, not being anything. What I thought is going to be this spiritual moment, I'm going to be so fulfilled. And instead I was harmed and felt so isolated and lonely. And of course, the only solution to that is to perform more, right? It's always coming back into this like, I'll just be more faithful, I'll read more. Monica (Host) | 01:16:54 to 01:17:53 It must be my fault. Bergen (Guest) | Yeah, I'll read Scripture more, I'll pray more, I'll go to the temple more, I will do more in my church service, and I will just kind of dig my heels in deeper. Because it must be me, it must be my unworthiness that is keeping me from finding the joy and fulfillment I was promised in being this good wife and mom. And there was just no place, I had no capacity, no tools, no context for expressing or what's the right word or feeling all these other dark things that were happening for contextualizing the depression I was feeling, to contextualizing the grief and the rage and the loneliness and the sadness that was present. And it was just festering, always under the surface. Bergen (Guest) | 01:17:53 to 01:18:50 And I'd have these moments where I'd crash into it and get triggered by my baby or triggered by my partner, by my husband, and then I would try to crawl back out of it and put slap on a face and go. And that just came in cycles, in ways where times were okay for a while, and then I would get pulled back under. And eventually I had a third baby, so we had three kids. And I started to really I don't know, honestly, maybe there was a little bit more maturity on my part and I finally had a little more inner strength that I had to kind of I had something. There was just something that started to call me towards at first it called me towards this figure which we called Heavenly Mother in our faith tradition. Bergen (Guest) | 01:18:50 to 01:19:29 This woman that God was married to. And I kept thinking, like, I feel like I have no models for how to do this and this isn't working for me, so I'm going to look to her because that was sanctioned that she existed. So I started digging into that, although it wasn't really sanctioned for me to dig into it. I began to transgress in that sense. I started looking at these more unconventional figures in the, you know, like Mary Magdalene and other people who seem to have something else going on, like, more than just being compliant. Bergen (Guest) | 01:19:29 to 01:20:07 Even Eve to me became like she was a rebel. And I loved this transgression and leaving the garden, going out into the wild, and something about that actually really called to me. And even the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus, was like she was a virgin and a mother. And the way that we idolized her was you could be completely sexually neutered. No inner authority, no bodily authority, no flesh and blood, divinity or power at all. Bergen (Guest) | 01:20:07 to 01:20:28 Like, she just was this vessel, and it just really irked me. I feel differently about Mary now, but at the time, it was just, what a stupid fucking conundrum to put women in, to be like, guess what? You can be a mother and a virgin. The two things we prize most. Yeah, it's so twisted. Bergen (Guest) | 01:20:28 to 01:21:11 That's an absolute impossible oxymoron for any woman to live. I can't be a virgin and a mother at the same time. The broader archetypal ideology of that was starting to really grate on me, and I was like, I just couldn't find a place to put all these other parts of myself that were asking to be seen and wanting to be developed. And at church, we would get all these benevolent messages of, you're so important, and you're so powerful, and everything you do is just so holy and sacred. And it didn't feel holy and sacred, and I didn't feel powerful. Bergen (Guest) | 01:21:11 to 01:22:02 And I kept asking, like, what is it that actually makes me powerful? Where is this power you're talking about? So I was digging further in in more sanctioned ways, in scripture, and slowly that led me to make more and more transgressions, right where I was like, okay, obviously I came against these blocks time and time again where it was like this heavenly mother figure. This woman that God is married to is silent and subservient and invisible, and as close as I can get to her, I realize she's just like a cardboard cutout holding this place, holding this image that there's no substance behind, and then began from there looking for the goddess and went on that trajectory with great gusto. Right. Monica (Host) | 01:22:02 to 01:22:04 Okay, so I love this because.I don't know if you can relate to this, but again, coming from a faith tradition, there was never any mention of the goddess. In fact, I've often said on the podcast that the goddess for me was in the same realm as, like, unicorns yes. And mermaids. And so it had never occurred to me, actually, that goddess was the other half of God, that if we're all made in the image of Source, I had only ever I even some level, subconsciously believed, even though in my mind it was, wait a minute, so he was a man, but he created everything. Monica (Host) | 01:22:52 to 01:23:38 We know creation. We know how that happens. So everything was so upside down and backwards. So I'll never forget the first time somebody brought the goddess to my attention and how many times I dismissed or even felt like, just really uncomfortable in my body. I remember one of my business partners early on talking about the goddess in the same sentence as sisterhood, and the concepts were so foreign to me that I literally felt like I needed to take a shower, which was all my internalized misogyny and internalized patriarchy right. Monica (Host) | 01:23:38 to 01:24:27 That I didn't even realize that these were symptoms, that these were so internalized that I would feel like I needed to take a shower because it somehow violated. I'm sure every woman out there who has started the unbecoming work will resonate with this at some level. Like there's some version of it. And yes, once I gave myself permission. And it was actually for me seeing stumbling upon girl God books where I thought girl God that just sent me down a rabbit hole of finally giving myself permission to consciously dig in to places that I had always been forbidden to go, but that as an adult woman, nobody was stopping me. Bergen (Guest) | 01:24:27 to 01:24:57 Yeah, it's really fascinating because Mormonism is so messed up. It's such a crazy thing. But also, I did feel like it was really lucky that there was at least a placeholder for her. At least there was that. And it felt like, in some ways, it gave me a little bit of safety to move towards her. Bergen (Guest) | 01:24:59 to 01:25:54 And it was wholesome. It was wholesome enough. She was wholesome enough. And here's where, as a side note, I see that coming up, even in New Age spirituality, in a lot of these spaces where we do that same propping up of the beautiful, thin, young white woman who is sexual and a priestess and she's a boss babe making all this sacred money. And it's very insidious because it allows us to hold on to the image of being this beautiful, pleasing white woman while trying to dress up the goddess in those clothes and being like, See? Bergen (Guest) | 01:25:54 to 01:26:03 You can be powerful and pleasing to men. Like, look at this. It's like, you can be pleasing. I know. It's like, oh, my God. Bergen (Guest) | 01:26:03 to 01:26:33 And sell six figure courses to people. And it's like it's so enticing because it doesn't require us to really confront what's underneath it all, which is this very violent belief and this very oppressive to everyone else and violent thing. Because who can fit that? Who can actually fit that? There are very few people who can fit that image. Bergen (Guest) | 01:26:33 to 01:27:17 And it still requires self betrayal because I'm also angry and I'm also wild and I'm also all of these other dark things. And there's all these other truths that that image just cannot hold that the archetype of the sexy white priestess can't hold. And that's really what this heavenly mother figure was like. She's perpetually young, perpetually pregnant, so soft and quiet and subservient and submissive to her man. When I see that showing up in these other spiritual spaces outside of Mormonism, I'm like, no, I've been there, done that. Bergen (Guest) | 01:27:18 to 01:28:04 It feels very like, Monica (Host) | Oh, hell, no. Bergen (Guest) | And not to say that there isn't something there about if you can have a really healthy, equal relationship that there's moments of surrender and moments of power in those dynamics. I don't think it's totally to be thrown away. But the way that it's marketed in this very money centric, white man centric, white woman centric way is a huge red flag to me. And I saw that very viscerally in the church where it was like this white male god had this pretty white quiet goddess woman that he wifed. Bergen (Guest) | 01:28:04 to 01:29:08 And I got as far as the church would let me go to her and saw what was really there and said, well, there's still all these other parts that aren't represented that are coming up out organically out of my body. I need Kali Ma, I need Arishkagel, I need these earthy, bloody wild things that were literally clawing their way out of my flesh and there's no way the image of this white woman would ever hold that right. So on one hand there was a wholesomeness to the initial pursuit of finding her and digging into the scriptures. But then I finally got to a place where I was like, okay, there's a wall here that they will not let me pass. I have to transgress, I have to really leave if I'm going to find the wild thing that I'm looking for and this instinctive dark medicine that I needed. Bergen (Guest) | 01:29:09 to 01:29:40 And luckily for me, those moments were happening around the time of COVID and two or three years before that, I was like slowly unraveling and finding my way. But right around the time the quarantine started was when I was like, I don't think I can go to church anymore. This just is too painful. I can't pretend. I'm so tired of all the he hims and clashes I was having with local leaders and just feeling so unseen. Bergen (Guest) | 01:29:40 to 01:30:51 And that COVID and the quarantine really gave me a soft place to slowly divest from that and move out of that relationship. And I found that it opened up this space inside of me to really let all of the dark things that had been hiding come to the surface. The sacred dark things that were there, the parts of myself that had been left behind. And Sarah's work really, and other mentors I had at the time, really helped me learn how to begin loving those parts of me beginning to navigate these dark corners of my soul. And I found such strength and courage like I shared at the beginning and just slowly began to fall in love with myself, just tending to all these inner child parts of me that were so beautiful and strange and unacceptable to the world that I had lived in and the world that I'd built for myself. Bergen (Guest) | 01:30:52 to 01:31:41 And the absolute devastating, earth shattering love I felt for these parts of myself. The compassion and the beauty that just exploded out of those relationships just shattered what was left of this house of cards that I was trying to live inside of and build a life on. And every time, every time I meet these parts of myself that have been waiting to be loved by me. It's like, oh, my God, why would I have ever looked anywhere else? You are so magnificent to me. Bergen (Guest) | 01:31:41 to 01:32:16 And then it broke open. This capacity to do that for my children, to see all these things that had triggered me about them and been so challenging and painful about being able to show up for them as a mother, because I was trying to put them in the same boxes that my soul was dying to break free from, that suddenly it was like, oh, it's you. It's you're. The wild thing. And if I can love this thing inside of me, then I can be here for you in your rage. Bergen (Guest) | 01:32:17 to 01:32:29 And all the things that my children are, which are magical. Monica (Host) | Right. And everything unbecoming about you, right? Bergen (Guest) | 01:32:29 to 01:33:12 Yes. Everything unbecoming. Everything that was, quote unquote, unacceptable was the thing that was so actually was so powerful and was so alive and was so real. And it began to just like the dam broke and the festering pool of pain I was feeling had to be processed, which was very hard, so hard. And I had to show up to that again and again. But as it started to clear out through that dry riverbed, it was like life started to come back into my body and into my blood and my bones, and I can breathe. You can breathe? Bergen (Guest) | 01:33:12 to 01:33:52 Yes. Just like cracking open this hard shell. And my heart could, you know, Sarah's work and again, other mentors and books and all the things started to just really give me tools and language and story to orient myself to my own inner landscape and giving me practices to help me reclaim what had been pushed into this dark underworld that was waiting to be loved. Monica (Host) | 01:33:52 to 01:34:11 And this dark underworld, we got the card. The Underworld. And of course, sometimes I wonder if my listeners are like, you must be making this up. But just so you know, I let them choose. Like, I don't choose the cards. My guest does. My guest is when I choose the card, we got the this there's so much here. Monica (Host) | 01:34:11 to 01:35:16 First of all, I just want to say thank you for just all of what you bring to this conversation. Bergen, I'm always so moved by your authenticity and courage and know you always bring with you your truth, no matter where you go. Now, I recognize that that was not always the case, but I just see you so loyal showing up, so loyally for yourself. And I love this place that we're in right now, because until we get to this place where we are willing to allow these unbecoming parts of us to sit at our table and dine with us, we will never see how lovable these parts of us are if we don't. And this is what you're pointing to, which is so beautiful, is that they call it our shadow side. Monica (Host) | 01:35:16 to 01:36:00 That's in the underworld, these shadows, this dark place that we have to descend into. And again, metaphorically, there's where we go instead of going outside in this light filled reality. I mean, I'm also making faces as I say this because it's all made up. We go inside into this dark underworld, and yet within every shadow that I've ever come across has been the biggest gift. The biggest gift that just is where this remembering these parts. Monica (Host) | 01:36:00 to 01:36:43 Because it's true. We talk about being haunted, but these are the true ghosts that haunt us is the parts of ourselves that we've abandoned, that we have kicked out of the garden that don't belong. Bergen (Guest) | In the. Pretty pleasing and polite box, Monica (Host) | In the. Pretty pleasing and polite world that we've built in order to stay, quote, unquote, safe. And I want to point out that the second we realize that that's not true, that we're not going to die, that we're not going to burn in hell, that actually this is the heaven. Monica (Host) | 01:36:45 to 01:37:33 The true heaven on Earth is when we embrace these dark parts of ourselves, is the minute we become sovereign in ourselves and also the moment that this system no longer has power. Yes. So this is what the narrative is really all about, is about women not discovering their true sovereignty. Because when women know their true sovereignty, we know our true sufficiency. And our true sufficiency doesn't ever need more than what it is. Monica (Host) | 01:37:35 to 01:38:01 It's just sufficient just the way it is, words and all. And when all of it gets to belong, no one has power over you anymore. And when no one has power over you anymore, you get to create a new story and you get to create a new reality. Yes. And that is what you're doing right now, right? Monica (Host) | 01:38:01 to 01:38:29 It's just like, oh, my God, it's so beautiful. Yeah. Bergen (Guest) | I love the word sufficiency. And we can thank Lynn Twist for that because abundance to me has felt so co opted by capitalism and not that abundance in and of itself isn't a good word, I feel, you know, this planet gives us so abundantly. It truly does, and there's so much abundance to partake of. Bergen (Guest) | 01:38:29 to 01:39:16 But how do we discern between abundance and privilege is a question for another day. So sufficiency feels very deeply rooted for me in my body. I feel that where I am right now in my personal journey is that coming up out of the underworld of all of this deep work and then saying, how do I begin to apply this newfound sovereignty, this newfound love that's bursting out inside of me, how does it show up? How does it integrate into my relationships, into the way I show up in the world and how I want to do my work and how I want to live out the next 50 years of my life? I'm going to be 40 next year, like I mentioned. Bergen (Guest) | 01:39:16 to 01:40:08 And it feels very timely that at this midish life point that I'm reevaluating how I want to relate to the world and to the people I love most and what gifts I want to offer the world. What is it that I want to contribute to this place and when it's no longer a fear of needing to survive, because that sufficiency feels so alive in me. And I know that my survival will be communal and relational because those are my values and that's the direction I'm going in. It will no longer be this hyper individualistic. Either a man has to take care of me or I'm going to be a boss babe and take care of myself. Bergen (Guest) | 01:40:08 to 01:40:36 That neither one of those things. Stories are true. And patriarchy is really good at shapeshifting capitalism, all these systems, they're really good at shapeshifting and being like, oh, it's so liberating to be a boss babe. Or then you just become a slave to money, you just become a slave to this other system and how far can you go before the self portrayal is asked of you again to perform that? You're this expert and I don't know, it just feels so tricky. Bergen (Host) | 01:40:36 to 01:40:57 and these systems just keep. Offering us new possibilities for how you could stay stuck. It all has to burn in my perspective. And it's going to be a work of a lifetime. I'm sure I will fall prey again and have new things revealed to me. Bergen (Guest) | 01:40:57 to 01:42:02 And I trust enough in my own sufficiency and the love that I have for myself that all those lessons will come around when they are meant to come and I will return to the love I have for myself and the relationships I am building in that love will be there. And I just really hold to that as I look into my present, the present work that needs to be done and then also the potential futures that I'm learning to reimagine and remember because my body's always known. And as I listen to that, as I listen to the earth, as I listen in more immuno aligned, relational ways, generative ways, the solutions come more and more clear. There are many communities who've been doing it already and it's not white women. That's what I was just going to say too, because a lot of my listeners might be like, well, what's the alternative? Monica (Host) | 01:42:02 to 01:43:09 Because we keep talking about all of these ways that the system just takes a different disguise, really. And those of us again who've done different stages of this unbecoming work, no matter where you're listening from right now, whether you've not begun or you've just begun or you're been deeply invested in this work for a couple years or your whole life. I think what we're up to in the Sophia century is this work of stepping up and into our rightful role in co equal partnership. And this is where the co creative process with each other and this is where gender roles are falling away and this is where it's bringing these feminine values in are about the fluidity. It's about the co creative process. Monica (Host) | 01:43:10 to 01:43:45 It's about the joining of the head and the heart. We can use all of these various ways to kind of surface all of these feminine values that have been really absent from the world. But really what we're up to right now is kind of this discernment process of no, not that. It's like sometimes we have to figure out what it isn't before we figure out what it is. And I feel like you're kind of pointing to many communities who are already deeply invested and rooted in this work. Monica (Host) | 01:43:46 to 01:44:46 And that is where those of us that are choosing to be outcast from these places that we no longer fit, that our bigness no longer kind of fits into these confined obedient know that we're not alone is my point. That we've got community. And this is also why I know that this is leading us kind of into the work that you're doing now. Bergen and what you're holding as you move forward, as am I. I feel like we're building these bridges to this new world, to this new way of being, to other ways of seeing and looking at what's available to us when we are not allowing people to be true to who they are. Monica (Host) | 01:44:46 to 01:45:37 So if we're all willing to show up and tell the truth about our lives without needing your life to look like my life in order for it to be okay, then what's possible? Bergen (Guest) | Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, this is the part where the requirement is that I move very humbly and as consciously and with as much radical honesty and accountability as I can move into learning from these other communities who have been doing it. And it's one reason why I think white women really struggle to fully divest from these systems is because we hold so much privilege. Bergen (Guest) | 01:45:37 to 01:46:06 It's really difficult to even be conscious of how much we've benefited from being compliant. And while these other communities have never had that, they've never had the protection and the privileges that we enjoy. Monica (Host) | And what would just some of those privileges be? Bergen (Guest) | 01:46:06 to 01:46:34 Well, I think there's so many. We get paid more. We can get jobs more easily. We get chosen by white men. Just so many. Like, we're safer in all the ways, safer giving birth and we're safer driving cars and we're safer in grocery stores and we're safer at our places of work and our children are safer. We aren't having to have these conversations with our kids about what to do when a cop comes and talks to you. Bergen (Guest) | 01:46:34 to 01:46:50 We're protected by the system to a degree. As long as we will betray and comply and obey obey. We get this kind of pseudo protection. It's a mirage. It's a story. Bergen (Guest) | 01:46:50 to 01:48:00 But there are realities to it that aren't just a story. There is systematic, financial, physical, all the ways safety in staying in and it's real. And so when it comes to, I know very little, very little about what it actually looks like to be in right relationship with community, to be in right relationship with the planet, to be in right relationship with other beings other than humans, more than human beings that we share our ecosystems with. And that's where we censor indigenous voices, black voices, queer voices, because they have cultivated those things out of the necessity that we created. So to come back to the personal, what that's looking like for me, particularly in my marriage, we're sitting in this place where I feel like a transformed person. Bergen (Guest) | 01:48:01 to 01:48:32 I feel like I've come home to myself. The work never ends, but I've come home to myself. I've turned enough of that corner to feel really guided by that inner voice, by that inner knowing, and by my own authenticity. And that means that I can no longer relate to my marriage and to my partner in the same way. And he was raised in the same, very similar environment, but raised as a man in the environment. Bergen (Guest) | 01:48:32 to 01:49:24 And so this means that we are reevaluating, we're separated at the moment and reevaluating what our family is going to look like. And for me, what has become the most helpful tools is to stay with myself through that. Returning to love, returning to my practice, setting the boundaries that are required according to the values that I hold and the safety that I need. And then that opens up this space for me to let love guide the way we're going to move through this transition and this threshold. The result or the end is still an unknown to me. Bergen (Guest) | 01:49:24 to 01:50:08 I don't have a preconceived idea of what's going to happen except that I know I'm going to be guided by these values in this direction. Monica (Host) | Well, here's what I'm also hearing, is that there's still a lot of love. But what is possible now is like a redesign in which two equal, fully sovereign, capable beings who have children together are redesigning what it looks like to be in partnership from a different place. Not from a place of subservience, not from a place of repression, not from a place of oppression, not from a place of obedience. From a place of honesty. Bergen (Guest) | Yes Monica (Host) | 01:50:08 to 01:50:30 From a place of honesty. And that is, I think, where. It. Gets to continue now. It gets truly can happen when two people come together to create something, something more beautiful is possible Bergen (Guest) | 01:50:30 to 01:51:04 From our own authenticity yes. Instead of from these external expectations and roles that we've been really trapped in the dynamic of for a long time. And we've slowly been differentiating and unenmeshing ourselves from those things and slowly from each other. And the separation has given us even more firm definition of like, this is where you begin and where I end. These are the places where it's safe for me to let you in and love you and create with you. Bergen (Guest) | 01:51:04 to 01:52:04 And these are the places where it's not yet there. What it feels like is not a divorce, which I think has a lot of stigma around it, but I see even the concept of divorce as being this is an evolution of our relationship according to what's going on, what is actually going on, exactly. Like, now that I am here in this reality and no longer lying to myself about how I feel and what I want and who I am, I can show up to this present moment and deal with reality instead of being entangled in a story. I'm no longer entangled in the old story. Yes, those covenants or promises I made at 25 in a Mormon temple no longer reflect who I am and what I want. Bergen (Guest) | 01:52:05 to 01:52:36 And in order for any kind of relationship to be rebuilt, this whole thing has to go. If there were to be a marriage beyond this, it would be a completely new relationship. So he has his own journey to take. He has his own work to do to figure out who he is and what he wants. And he needs a little more time to do that. Bergen (Guest) | 01:52:36 to 01:53:30 I've been doing that for several years, and I'm really clear on the direction I'm going. And we're giving it as much grace and as much firm boundaries and compassion and honesty to it as possible. And I'm so grateful that he is doing that as well to his capacity. And we're just going to keep moving in that direction and very devoted to our children and the gentleness and ease with which we're going to move through this with them as well, which this whole situation five years ago would have felt absolutely horrifically, terrifying for me. And I think it would have been very messy and very harmful and challenging. Bergen (Guest) | 01:53:31 to 01:53:50 And also, I want to acknowledge divorces are hard. They're hard for everyone. Separations are hard. The evolution or disillusionment of these very intimate relationships is hard. And there's no shame to anyone for how they move through those things. Bergen (Guest) | 01:53:51 to 01:54:19 I'm very lucky in my partnership. I know so many women who have to leave abusive situations, and certainly there were abusive dynamics that showed up in our marriage that have had to be confronted. But everyone's situation is different, and some people need to just cut it and get out. And so I don't want to say that you're not doing it right if you're not going slow and being easeful and blah, blah, blah. I'm not trying to romanticize it. Bergen (Guest) | 01:54:19 to 01:54:44 That's just my situation. And some people it just needs to be get out, get yourself safe and fight for your life, fight for your children. And other times maybe it's a slower process or a more gentle thing or you do stay with your partner. Everyone has to find their own way and then make the appropriate choices in alignment with that. And it's varied for different people. Monica (Host) | 01:54:44 to 01:55:14 And what I'm hearing. Too, Bergen, is you're trusting. You know, I feel like over and over again in many of the coaching circles and so many women who are listening and men too, the answer is always just trust yourself. You'll know, when you'll know the right move and you'll know the right step. But it's doing the work of telling the truth closest to you right now. Monica (Guest) | 01:55:14 to 01:55:35 Yes. That's really the work is just right now, what is the truth closest to you? And then you just go from that truth to the next truth to the next truth. It's one truth away, one truth away, one truth away. And as you kind of walk, the path appears, and every person is different. Monica (Host) | 01:55:35 to 01:56:44 And I love what you're saying. You have your story and you're saying everybody has to trust their own process, Bergen (Guest) | Right Monica (Host) | But where I see so much potential and possibility is this work is so important to me because with each revelation that you've been able to share with us, you are revealing the story as it kind of happened. For you to be able to come to this place where you are now ready, able, and willing to renegotiate and redesign life on your terms and in true co equal partnership, whether that be with the universe or another human being. But you're doing it from a place of sovereignty, and you're doing it from a place of self love where all parts of you are welcome at the table. Monica (Host) | 01:56:44 to 01:57:17 And all parts of you get a voice that you're no longer denying or pretending not to know that there's a burgon that doesn't want this or that, that you're actually able to access those parts and speak the truth on behalf of all of those parts. And it's just such a beautiful thing. And I just have loved this conversation. Thank you so much. . Bergen (Guest) | 01:57:18 to 01:57:54 Thank you Yeah. I think that it feels like a clear reflection of where I am. And I'm so grateful, deeply honored to have such people in my life as you and many others who are able to see me and reflect those truths back to me. A few years ago, I shaved my head. It was part of this process. Bergen (Guest) | 01:57:54 to 01:58:18 I baptized myself in a river and shaved my head and burned my hair. And it was this really beautiful ceremony of reclamation for me. And women aren't allowed to baptize in my faith. And it felt really important to baptize myself in my own name. And it was really beautiful. Bergen (Guest) | 01:58:19 to 01:58:49 And I had this moment where I looked at myself in the mirror after my head was shaved for the first time, and I saw her. And my whole soul just said, there you are. It was you. It was you all along that I was looking for. And I still see that when I look at myself in the mirror. Bergen (Guest) | 01:58:49 to 01:59:36 Sometimes I lose sight of it. Sometimes it gets a little veiled or foggy, and I come back to the practice and tend to what needs to be tended to. But that's I don't know what you would call it, like a touchstone for me is can I look at myself in the mirror and recognize what I see? And can I love this untamed, can this untamed wild love be present? And the more I come back to that, just the more clear and the stronger I feel and the more compassion and clarity I can bring to all these really complex things that are going on in my life. Bergen (Guest) | 01:59:36 to 02:00:09 And it's such a relief. It's such a relief. I feel relieved to be home and relieved to be moving through the world in my own skin and in my own reality. And present, not always present, but so much more often really present with what's here for me. And it's heartrending. Bergen (Guest) | 02:00:09 to 02:01:02 And it's so simultaneously heartbreaking and heart burstingly painful and beautiful and deliciously, bitter and sweet. And I'm so grateful. I'm just so grateful to be alive. And I have spent a lot of time not wanting to be here, not wanting to be alive, not wanting to be in my life, so uncomfortable in my body, in the dissonance and the betrayal and so much lying that was just so painful. It really hurt me that this feels just like heaven. Bergen (Guest) | 02:01:02 to 02:01:27 It does. It does feel like heaven on earth. Like you said, it feels so beautiful and delicious and so hard and challenging and yet worth every moment. Monica (Host) | 02:01:27 to 02:02:10 Every moment. I love that you use the word alive because you feel so alive, so alive and here for all of it, present to all of it. And that is just such a beautiful, beautiful thing. And it's so ironic that you go from kind of this covenant and this redesign of this new covenant which is now with yourself and that that gets to be blessed, that that gets to be just such a blessing and that you're the one doing the blessing. Bergen (Guest) | Yes, Monica (Host) | I'm going to bless this and all of us. It's like, bless this mass that is the human experience. Because to be true to ourselves is to be willing to baptize ourselves in the all of it. Monica (Host) | 02:02:11 to 02:03:30 And I feel like it's really what I wish for everyone, which feels funny to say because it is hard, it is gritty. There are passages that, while I wouldn't wish them on anybody, there's also this part of me that's, like, completely rooting for everybody to do those hard passages of their life so that they can come out the other side. And not only will you be waiting for yourself on the other side, but there's a whole community of us waiting here for you as well. Bergen (Guest) | It's a great I mean, back to this feeling of I love the concept of the great cosmic womb of the mother, which is the underworld, which is the sacred dark night of the soul. Like returning back to the womb and letting it all unravel and being reborn into a life that is real and shedding all the old story and coming back into this reality with my soul intact. Bergen (Guest) | 02:03:30 to 02:04:22 And there are many parts that are still in the contracting kind of labor of the rebirth, especially with my family, my partner and my children at this time. But I've been through the rebirthing process so many times. I've walked through that dark night and found my own strength in the contractions that I just deeply trust the process and deeply trust what will find me on the other side. And I'm holding so tightly to that because still those same parts of me are like, you're going to hurt everybody. This is going to hurt everyone for you to claim your life in this way. Bergen (Guest) | 02:04:22 to 02:05:05 And I just say, I know you're so scared. You're so afraid. And the story of how your own soul call is going to harm other people is not true and it's not real. And the more of my soulfulness, the more of my humanness, the more of my truth and presence I can bring to the people and the causes that I love, the more my life blossoms and the more the people I love blossom and the more the world I'm in blossoms. And I trust that. Bergen (Guest) | 02:05:05 to 02:05:26 Even in those dark moments where I'm being squeezed by the birth canal of transformation and liberation, I trust that the living water will flow from that place and nourish everything in its path.I'm going to live there as much as possible and return to it over and over. Monica (Host) | 02:05:28 to 02:05:55 And so shall it ah, Bergen, such a beautiful conversation. I am just like, so moved and so inspired and I know my listeners are too. There have been so many moments here where I've had just full body chills. Monica (Host) | 02:05:55 to 02:06:50 I'm so excited for this episode to air. And I know my listeners are not used to me going over the two hour mark or even up to 2 hours, but I knew that this conversation had a much kind of deeper and wider need for a little bit of foundation and then just the way you and I kind of like labyrinth into a conversation and just pull from all of these places. It's just such a beautiful process and I have loved every minute of it and I know my listeners have too. Is there any place that you want to lead my listeners to your work to learn more about you? And then of course, I'll be sure to put the links in the show notes. Bergen (Guest) | 02:06:50 to 02:07:07 Yeah. First off, thank you for walking into the labyrinth with me and holding this space. It's such an honor to always co create with you and I'm so grateful. I do have an Instagram account. I'm not super active on that. Bergen (Guest) | 02:07:07 to 02:07:44 I think my relationship with Instagram is also in a rebirthing process, so we'll see where that lands. But my Instagram is at Womb Circle, and you can put that there. The great cosmic womb is the space I'm holding there the cosmic womb of rebirth. And I also am working a lot with Sarah Durham Wilson, our friend and teacher, doing helping with her made into mother work and her teacher training work. And that's another place where I'm actively teaching. Bergen (Guest) | 02:07:44 to 02:08:13 I do one on one mentoring with women, which you can schedule with me on my Instagram account. There's a link in my bio for that, and I'll be doing a lot more of that next year. Just a lot more one on one mentoring, as women just feel called to do this work of undoing and unraveling and coming home to themselves. So I'm really honored to offer that mentorship to anyone who feels called to it. Monica (Host) | 02:08:14 to 02:08:23 Great. Thanks, Bergen. Love you so much. Bergen (Guest) | Love you too. Thank you. Monica (Host) And for our listeners, I'll be sure to put all of Bergen's links in the show notes. And until next time, more to be revealed. Monica (Outro) | 02:08:30 to 02:08:47 We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list, or leave us a review on itunes. We thank you for your generous listening, and as always, more to be revealed.