Episode 28: Metabolic Health & the Embodiment of Femininity with Parris Hodges & Niecia Nelson
A discussion of hormones is central to any metabolic healing journey, and hormones also play a foundational role in how women express their femininity. We are so glad to have Parris and Niecia joining us for this conversation on the connection between our state of nourishment and how we show up in the world as women. May you be encouraged to fully embody your feminine nature through a deeper understanding of nourishment and hormones on your healing journey.
Join us as we discuss the following:
Parris’s & Niecia’s individual journeys of transitioning from maiden to mother
How your state of nourishment impacts how you show up in the world
The roles of minerals in the body and how they connect to emotions and virtues
Gaining insight about your state of nourishment and healing based on how you speak
The impact of progesterone on a woman’s feminine expression
The importance of learning the phases of your menstrual cycle and their individual expressions
Instilling in the coming generation a knowledge of and appreciation for the cyclical nature of women
The unintended result of teaching children to override their nervous systems
About Parris
Parris is a Cyclical Living Guide assisting those who seek to reclaim their sovereignty through deep alignment of the menstrual cycle. Her passion is to merge the worlds of science and spirit through the understanding of minerals and the hormones which impact how we exist in the world.
About Niecia
Niecia Nelson is a mother, teacher + steward of the feminine frequency that rests in the female physiology. She chaperones women back to their true nature using nutrition, somatic healing, and the wisdom of their own bodies. Niecia believes that robust fertility, abundant energy, and embracing of motherhood are all birth rights for every woman. That belief shepherded her through her own dance with burnout, diet culture, and complex PTSD, and landed her in her body for the first time in her adult life. Since then, she has dedicated her time to understanding how our relationship with nature + food influences and directs our psychology and perception of the world around us. Niecia’s offerings are a rare pairing of psychotherapy and bioenergetics, drawing on both her diverse professional background and her eternal studies at the feet of the universe.
Resources mentioned
Poem by Alison Luterman: I Confess
Instagram Live with Parris & Niecia: Progesterone
Freely Rooted Episode 24: Misunderstandings of the “Pro-Metabolic” Approach
Adrenaline Dominance: A Revolutionary Approach to Wellness by Michael Platt
Follow along with Niecia to find out when her course “Eat to go Deep” launches | Use the code FREELYROOTED for $50 off your purchase of the course
Connect
Parris Hodges | Instagram | Podcast | Apply to work with Parris
Niecia Nelson | Instagram | Contact form to work with Niecia
“This version of feminism that has us pushing harder and faster to obtain certain things is consumptive and outdated. And real feminism, for me, is giving the next generation of women the permission to inhabit that feminine space fully.”
Transcript
Kori Meloy Ladies, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you guys on and talk about this conversation. I was telling both Parris and Niecia before—whenever we were just discussing what we would be talking about today—that I just feel really almost buzzy of this is such a rich conversation to have, and it's so important for us as women to discuss, but also just in preparation for this next generation that's coming behind us. And I feel like you ladies are literally just handpicked the perfect people to discuss these topics with. So I'm so excited to have you on, and I would love for you guys to start by just introducing yourselves to our audience and letting us know how you got connected.
Niecia Nelson My name is Niecia Nelson. I am a mother, first and foremost, and also I steward women through various parts of their lives, including the aspects of nutrition and psychology and other intertwined topics. Parris and I got connected through an online course which we both were a part of. And there was such a synergy between us during that time that we naturally picked up the relationship after that ended and transitioned into our own friendship slash teaching each other slash encouraging each other slash welcoming and stewarding each other into new phases of our own development. So I'm really happy to be here with her and with both of you. Parris?
Parris Hodges Thank you for that. And thank you, Kori and Fallon, for having us. This conversation feels very alive, like you said. And in similar fashion, I too am a mother. I like to refer to myself as a humble student of this life. The work and service in which I exist in is an amalgamation of many facets. Like we were talking before we started recording, I'm a student of Morley Robbins as well. And I like to refer to myself as a cyclical living guide, and so through that all comes the interweavings of minerals and nutrition and really supporting women in their really great unfolding. And I wanted to share a poem before we get started that always reminds me of Niecia and how we met and I think is a really good— is a really beautiful reflection of this entire conversation that we're having about what it looks like in a mineral and metabolically well-functioning body in the female system. "I stalked her in the grocery store, her crown of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip, her erect bearing radiating tenderness, the way she placed yogurt and avocados in her basket"—which we could totally change to raw milk—"beaming peace like the North Star. I wanted to ask, 'What aisle did you find your serenity in? Do you know how to be married for 50 years? Or how to live alone? Excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to possess some knowledge that makes the earth burn and turn on its axis.' But we don't request such things from strangers nowadays. And I said, 'I love your hair.'" And that's by Alison Luterman. And that's how I experienced Niecia when we ever first connected. And there is a tangible, tangible texture to women who exist in a metabolically sound and mineral sound body. Like Niecia said, we've blossomed into this friendship, and I'm incredibly grateful.
Fallon Lee That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with us. And I love the just the layers in that poem of just something that we're longing for in other women, and sometimes it comes out as a very surface level comment. But you're so right that there is a radiance and vibrancy that exists in women who are truly nourished and truly healing— not necessarily healed, because I think we would all agree that it's a journey that we're on throughout the course of our our lives is that we're pursuing healing and release and nourishment for all of our days. So I so appreciate you sharing that beautiful poem with us. And I would love to hear what led the two of you into your passion for women's health and how did you become so passionate about the mind, body, spirit connection? Niecia, if you want to kick us off, I'd love that. And then Parris, we'd love to hear from you as well. Just how did you guys get into this realm of doing what you love so much?
Niecia Nelson It's such a great question. For me, I was ushered into the world of health and wellness when a woman—a beautiful woman—in Perth, Australia gave me my first thermometer at 17, and she said, "You know, women don't have to use birth control that comes in the pill form or has damaging effects on your body. You could just use this." And she taught me for free how to chart my cycles. And I always say that even though I grew up very spiritual and there's a lot of spiritual threads that were interwoven into my childhood and nature as well, which I feel like is the most spiritual thing of all. But I really feel like that's when I "met God" was in my own body. And so I started to track my cycles. And then at 20, I decided I would like to have a child and become a mother. And so that birth ushered me into a career journey of my adulthood, into the many facets of maternal health, what it means to be a radiant, fully nourished mother, and how that impacts your wellbeing and the wellbeing of your children. And so that journey has been going on for me for over 15 years now.
Parris Hodges And for me, my path into this all began pretty quickly after birth. I actually experienced meningitis, and it was pretty obvious, like throughout my life, just how minerally depleted I was. And in a different fashion than how Niecia came into the world, I didn't grow up in a religious or spiritual household, but there was something about the human body that always just captivated me from a really young age. And that, to me, was like nothing else in the world existed that further proved that there was a divine creator then the human body. And so that was like—in a similar expression to Niecia—the first place that I really met God was through the body and the studying of the body. And I was one of those kids that would— it was right around the time that the Internet first really started, and I would spend a lot of time researching and studying the spine and veins, and it was probably used as a way to control at that point in time. But realistically, I was just— I wanted to understand what was happening inside of me probably as a way to understand how I was existing in the world. And through my own labelings and diagnoses that I've experienced, I was a young athlete. Kori, I loved watching all of the videos you were sharing on Instagram last night—or photos—from your young athletic career also. And I was diagnosed with endometriosis when I was roughly about 24 years old, and that was when I was offered a hysterectomy for the first time and told that I would likely never be able to conceive. And this was after I experienced my first miscarriage at 22 years old. And that really opened a whole floodgate. And those who are familiar with my story— I also danced with bulimia for 16 years. And as a way to both control even more, but deeply understand why. Like I've never been satisfied with surface level answers and wanted to really get to the nitty gritty of why I was experiencing certain things and why I developed any of this. And it was after I was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2019, I went through what some might refer to as my dark night of the soul. Then I walked through the portal of sobriety. It really shifted my entire landscape and world. And I was always really fascinated by supplements and how to not feel terrible because I did 90% of the time. I did not feel well at all. And so that really just opened an entire floodgate for me. And then, like we were sharing, Niecia and I connected and it further deepened any of that understanding and exploration on that path. And it's of utmost importance to me to show up for my child and to be a mom. And there's like no greater honor that I have than that role that I've been chosen to hold. And so being able to support other women also in their great expansion and thriving in their bodies and living the lives of their wildest dreams is really important to me because that's how I want to actually function in the world.
Kori Meloy That is beautiful. I did not know your story about cervical cancer. I was familiar with endometriosis because we had a similarity there. And also just interesting with the connections of athletics, adrenaline, control, endometriosis and how much I relate to that. And the fact that both of you guys have entered into this rite of passage which is motherhood, I would love to hear what that journey was like for you guys at the time. Niecia, you said that you've been a mother for 15 years now, and then Parris, how old is your son?
Parris Hodges Today is his half birthday, so he's nine and a half officially today.
Kori Meloy Is it really? That's adorable. Yeah. I would love to hear you guys discuss specifically what your relationship was like with your body and that body, mind, spirit connection as you went through that transition of maiden to mother. So Niecia, let's start with you. And that's really unique and rare that someone introduced you to temping, natural fertility awareness at such a young age as a teenager. So I would imagine that connected you to your body in an immense way before stepping into motherhood.
Niecia Nelson Absolutely. And Parris expanded quite a bit on her journey that let her into the health realm. And I was sort of summarizing that there's been this lifelong adult lifelong journey that has gone on for me, but really it's had some distinct chapters, and that was the beginning of the first one. So when I was a teenager, I had very painful periods. I had a lot of difficulties with my health. I had a lot of kidney infections and was in the hospital and had various other challenges that really kept me from living fully. But I didn't know that there was any other way. I just knew that my mom—I really feel grateful for this guidance—sort of pushed me a little bit along the lines of there must be a natural way to deal with this. And I was working at a health food store at the time and really into supplements. I was studying nutrition. And so the thermometer story was kind of like the icing on the cake. It was like the final piece that somebody said, "Okay, yes, there is a way and here's the way." And so I started to chart my cycles and notice how different things in my life influenced the health of my body. My friend Celina Lyons, who's a wonderful acupuncturist—I just have to name her for this beautiful quote—but she calls it "charting the inner cosmos". And I just think that is the most poignant and beautiful way to describe what charting was for me then and still is for me now. And it always seems to bloom more and more open as time goes on in terms of the gifts that it gives me and the feedback that I can ascertain. It's like the deeper you go as a person, the more information that chart will give you. It's never ending. So I feel really lucky to be introduced to that before I had a child. So when I wanted to conceive, it was quite obvious to me how that might happen. And I feel like I was really equipped. I wasn't dealing with coming off birth control or any other facets of adjusting my body. But I was really young. And so I actually went through the portal of a lifetime, it feels like. And the initiation of a lifetime when I had my daughter. So just to summarize really quickly, because I feel like her birth is a whole other podcast story, but I became very aware during pregnancy that I wanted something different for my birth. And I was actually a cesarean baby. My mom was in a car accident at 37 weeks and I flipped breech, and so I ended up having to come out via C-section due to just the lack of knowledge or the lack of competency at the local hospital. And I wanted something really different for my daughter. I can't really tell you why. I don't know where it came from, but something about the charting led me to that feeling that it just had to be different for her. And so I started researching. And I don't know if anybody goes on mothering.com these days. Mothering.com was an incredible resource for me. I just started connecting with other women who had had home births and I started reading Spiritual Midwifery. And I was 20 and nobody else was having babies. And I feel like I downloaded from the ethers like this template for birth that I wanted. And it was so clear. And so that process of saying yes to every single door that was opened— which a lot of women approach and they say no, because there's too much fear or miseducation, misinformation, or pressure— societal pressure. But I think if you go through those doors—which I courageously but also with a bit of nervousness went through—you land in this place where the birth is the portal into the mother from the maiden. Right? You become a gift through birth. And so that was what I really wanted. And I ended up having to go over quite a few hurdles to get there. I actually let go my care providers at 40 weeks and ended up giving birth on a small island that doesn't have any surgery capability in a little cabin with a creek in the back that's called Lily Creek. And that was already her name, so she chose her place of birth. And we still go back and sit in the bathtub that she was born in. And I had the birth of my dreams. And I just remember thinking, wow, every single part of me that was hanging on to the maiden has burned away. And what's emerged is this woman who is ready to give something to a child. For me, there's something about birth that's the basis of a woman's health. There's such an intertwined aspect between the two that I could never ignore it during my twenties, and I—even more so now in my thirties—feel passionate about it. So that's what sort of ushered me forward into the place where I was acknowledging those two things. So becoming a mother at a young age really catapulted me into a new version of myself. And I think that was really the beginning of this seeking that happened. And there's been—every year that goes by—a layer that's come off. And I see more and more how meeting our child in the fullness of their development peels that layer off. And each time they grow and they become a bigger version of themselves, we are asked as women to step into more of the mother. And that's especially true for mothering a teenage daughter, let me tell you. So every single time that she has gone through a transition of development, I have stepped into a greater threshold of mother and let go of more maiden, more that doesn't serve or more that can't come along for that journey. And in that way, I always say that we sort of have grown up together in some ways. And these days, I feel like I've really landed in a version of mother that's the truest and deepest that I've ever known, and that's more stable and solid for sure. And that I credit to the change to an ancestral diet, which has been the past five years of my life or so.
Parris Hodges That was beautiful. I don't think that I knew that you were a cesarean baby, Niecia. My journey into motherhood was very different in a lot of capacities. Greyson's birth and pregnancy wasn't planned. Like I had shared, that diagnosis that I had received from the doctors was realistically about three months prior to Greyson entering into-- deciding that he wanted to come into the world. Though if I'm being quite honest, for those that are of the belief system in spirit babies, when I look back, there were plenty of signs for his floating around and wanting to come into this life. But I was so disconnected from my body, and it wasn't until--let's see--I was 33 years old that I ever started connecting with any of the phases of my menstrual cycle. And I was a kinesiology major. Like this wasn't taught to us at all. And especially in coming from an athletic background, the only thing that I was really told was to essentially pretend that I didn't have a female body that ran in any sort of cyclical sense. And so when I went through pregnancy-- it's something that I really look forward to being able to receive again as a gift from the universe, but it definitely shifted a lot of my world. But I kicked and screamed to release the maiden, and I'm still very much doing that even now. But I began to really open up to my own instinct and intuition through that entire process. I do think that there's something very natural that starts to happen where a woman begins to wake up to herself. And I was introduced to The Business of Being Born, the Ricki Lake movie-- is that the one? And then I also-- to back the story up a little bit further, I came into the world-- my birthday is March 8th, which is International Women's Day. And so there's deep, feminine like power that exists in all of my cellular makeup. And Ina May Gaskin also shares the same birthday, which I hold very dearly. And it really started to shift my entire world. I knew that my mom had birthed all of us unmedicated, so I kind of went in and the very competitive individual that I was during that time wanting to prove myself and I chose to birth inside of the medical system. And so as soon as I walked into any of that-- I mean, we are consistently told to not trust ourselves. And so I woke up in active labor. And by the time that I arrived to the hospital, you're under all of these lights. And it was the most unnatural thing in the entire world. And I opted to receive an epidural, and none of that process went like I really thought that it was going to. And I suddenly realized, hold on. We need to slow this down. I have a tendency to definitely do that. And that birth process was incredibly reflective to how I existed in life, and so I was able to allow for the epidural to slow down and figure out how to work with my body. And that was really impactful for even my approach to motherhood. And there was just this really distinct thing that I felt inside of me from the get go. I wasn't around a lot of individuals who had really nursed or breastfed. And I was so like, no, this is exactly what I'm going to do, and don't ask any questions of it. And so that's what Greyson and I did. And then I chose to walk into single motherhood which has been an entirely different portal also to really coming in to understand more of that pull of mother and to really release a lot of that maiden that just wanted to compete with the masculine and defied everything and all the ways that the maiden exists. But to be honest, I was so disconnected from my body, from a life-- like, despite the fact that, as a runner, your body is your machine. I was so in tune with every single step that I took on a track. But outside of that, I couldn't tell you what was happening with the most sacred gift that I was given in choosing a female body. And so luckily--and I'm so grateful for it--that when that course that Niecia and I were in together actually taught the framework of the energetics of the cycle and really coming into that tangible understanding the real felt instinctual process of existing in a female body. And that's when all of the lights really started to turn on and everything started to make sense. And I started to go like, oh, my goodness, wait a second. Like, okay, let's figure this out. And that's definitely shifted my entire life.
Fallon Lee I love both of your answers so much. And I love this idea of the transition from maiden to mother. And I feel like this is one of the first spaces that I'm really thinking through this. But one thing that I do know is that I've always been very much agitated with the comment or some people would even call it a compliment--I see it much differently--of someone telling a mother, "You don't even look like you've had kids." That phrase has always rubbed me just completely the wrong way. I mean, there's so many layers to why that is a horrid thing to say to a woman, but it's like our culture just refuses to acknowledge that a woman really does change so much when we step into motherhood and there are so many things that we have to sacrifice and lay down. And Parris, you mentioned kind of giving up some of those sort of masculine and--in some sense--selfish pursuits. You have to lay that down when you step from maiden to motherhood. And I just really appreciate that both of you touched so beautifully on that because it is such a different way that femininity plays out once you become a mother and once you're caring for somebody else besides just yourself. So I just wanted to affirm that both of you just put that really, really well said and very beautifully. I would love for us to talk about how the current state of a woman's metabolism is reflected in the way that she perceives life, the way that she reacts to life. How does it impact her connection to her body? I know that you guys both love this conversation, so I don't know, Parris, if maybe you want to kick us off because I feel like we've kind of given Niecia the first word here for the last couple questions. And both of you, please jump in with your answers. But I would love to hear how our current state of well-being does play out in the way that we kind of handle the things around us and the way that we connect to our body.
Parris Hodges I'm actually going to let Niecia take this one first because it's her quote--
Fallon Lee That's perfect.
Parris Hodges From that conversation about progesterone that really lays the foundation that offers us the lens to begin to really understand this framework. So, Niecia, if you want to start that.
Fallon Lee That is perfect.
Niecia Nelson Thank you, Parris. I think there's a small story that should precede this. This is a theme with me. You'll get to know it. So I came to the altar of ancestral eating as somebody who was very functional and very responsible and had accomplished a lot of things in my life, but was not able to really be in my body. And there's a series of events in my life that led up to me having to just stop and slow down, which I will be eternally grateful for. And I'll never forget one moment that I had at maybe I'd say like a year into my journey eating in what you might want to call a pro-metabolic way, but I just call natural eating, eating to live. And I was sitting on the beach. I live near the ocean. And I was sitting on the beach. And I noticed that every single thing in the natural environment felt like it was penetrating my being, just the way that the wind moved a tree or the sound of waves crashing in. And I don't know if I had fully comprehended what had happened to my system in terms of the lowering of stress hormones and the openness to life. But I started to think about it. It was around the time that I started to discover that Morley Robbins existed, but I wasn't fully in. And so I'd been doing some reading about minerals, and I remember putting it together that your food intake and how nourished you are and how much space you can take up because of that and the presence that you're able to offer to the world affects what you receive back and how the lens in which you look to the world and how you see things. And it was a light bulb moment for me. I thought to myself, oh I feel impacted deeply in a beautiful way by everything I'm looking at right now. My perception has shifted of the world around me, but nothing in that beach scene has changed from a year ago when I used to sit there and not feel that way. And I used to work in psychotherapy, specifically marriage and family therapy. So I've done a lot of work with children and a lot of work with parents. And what was missing for me in talk therapy was the somatic piece. And so after I transitioned from that line of work, I really started to embrace things like holotropic breathwork and other somatic practices, thinking that if you went from a bottom up approach and you started with the body, that that would be the ticket to integrating those two things. And what I found that led me to ancestral eating is that if you can't be in your body, then you can't start that process. And I was working with a lot of women who were having a really hard time dropping into their body and finding that state in their nervous system of safety. And everything, even the healing practices that they were doing, were perceived as threatening and would cause a type of dysregulation in the nervous system because there wasn't a flexibility happening like a nice smooth wave. And so I really, really clicked in that moment as to how deeply we are influenced by the food that we take in. We're literally taking in life. If we just really think about that. We're taking in life. It's very important. It's one of the most important things that we do for ourselves is what we eat and how we eat. And I couldn't believe how much my perception of life changed. And when I work with women now-- you know, there's a moment when you see a toddler or a young child and they'll run towards their parents. And there's a moment where there's eye contact and the mother will put her arms out. To see a woman be able to just drop into that moment and receive the joy of that magic moment of a child running to you in full trust, to be there in that moment without anything coming in-- these are the things I have to do, I don't feel comfortable in my body, what about this fear thing? You know, to be able to really satiate yourself in that moment is the goal that I-- or maybe not the goal, but just the outcome that I would pray for every woman. And that for me starts with how you perceive the world. If you perceive spaciousness and safety and presence and trust, then every moment will be rich like that for you. And the ancestral eating and the focus on minerals and how the minerals affect the chain downwards first to the enzymes, then to the hormones, and you see it reflected in somebody's psychology has been the missing piece for me that when it clicked for me, I just thought, oh, this is the magic of life. This is it. You know, this is what 15 years of study in my adult life has led me to. I believe that a woman sees the world through the eyes of how safe and nourished she feels. And so therefore, the first thing that should be addressed is just creating that spaciousness and safety in the body through food. And Parris probably has some things to add and expand on that, but that's the nucleus of it for me.
Kori Meloy I do want to add a follow up to what Niecia just said before we go over to Parris, because I do specifically remember in my college years-- so the most like under nourished, under slept, high stress, really operating out of a lot of masculine energy-- my classmates, my friends, it seemed like every woman I was interacting with had like a ten step process of if she ever walked outside by herself, and she carried this and she carried this, and she didn't wear her hair in a ponytail because all of it was perceiving danger of like, well, someone could grab me by the ponytail and put me in their car. And this was like a really safe college town. But there were so many steps of creating protection externally, because-- now I'm looking back and I wonder how many of those women didn't have that safety inside their body. And therefore, every time they stepped outside into nature, nature itself, the outdoors itself was a dangerous place for her to exist. And I never really even put that together until you're talking about it right now, because I think many of our listeners can relate to maybe the college, early 20s years as being just one of those low points as far as how we nourished our bodies. So anyways. Go ahead. Go ahead, Parris.
Parris Hodges That's a really beautiful segue into the further expansion of this, Kori. Thank you for touching on that because one of the really important pieces-- Morley always says that minerals are the spark plugs of the body. Right? Like are they doing? They're creating energy, and we are energetic beings that exist in an energetic world. And depending on what your belief system is, we can exist at different levels of energy. And so what are you presenting out to the world is impacted by what it is that you're even putting into your body to produce energy and if you are producing energy. And this is something that I really started to notice a lot in my life because it was easier to point out all of the flaws in everyone else around me rather than myself. But I was dating a man who was having a really challenging time with his son, who was around 10 or 11, and he would feed his son incredibly processed, very over-processed food every morning. And without fail, every afternoon there was some kind of blow up. And I didn't present it well at that point in time, but it was incredibly obvious to me what was impacting this child's reactions and the way that they were even able--the two of them--to communicate had so much to do with the lack of nutrients that either one of them was receiving. And the reason I attracted in such a relationship as that was a reflection of the lack of nutrients that even I was ingesting at that point in time, because this was still the tail end of my distorted eating specifically. But I mean, I was still incredibly restrictive and incredibly abusive with my body and attracted in a relationship just like that. And the more that we're able to actually pause and begin to take radical responsibility for what's occurring in our life, reflective of the way that we are nourishing ourselves, it really expands our awareness. Like you were reflecting on Kori, like how much those individuals-- I would be so curious to see their blood panels and their hair tissue mineral analysis. Not that we would really even need those to see what was happening on a metabolic level just because of the reflection of their life. And I'm a big believer in that all. Like I really stand firmly in that radical responsibility of anything that I'm attracting into my world is a reflection of how I am moving through the world, which is a reflection of how I am actually nourishing myself. When we think about-- going back to that energy concept, energy is a resource. Like we look at this in the world, all of our resources-- time, money, energy. And that really comes down to our reverence for how we exist in the world.
Niecia Nelson I just have something I want to add to that. And Parris shared this with me yesterday. She said--in a voice note to me--something so beautiful. She said, "All the labs and all the studies and things in the world don't matter unless a woman can be really present as a mother with her children or in the life that she's chosen for herself." And I'm summarizing that. She said it a lot more eloquently. I should play back. But I think that it's really, really important to acknowledge that outside of all of these markers that we might look for-- which is still a very external thing to be chasing-- the measure that I think is the most important thing is how is this woman meeting her life? And that's a reflection of energy. Our ability to handle stress-- stress isn't so much what happens, but it's whether we have the energetic output to meet the demand. And thus asking a woman, just talking to her and saying, "How does life feel for you? How do you see life? When you look around you, what is your perception of what you're seeing?" And that's the first thing that I ask anyone that I work for is, "How do you see your environment?" And I know that we live in a day and age where we really, really trust people's individual opinions and journeys. So the Western mind is very focused on individualism. And how can we support people as individuals-- their own likes and wants and desires? But for me, as a practitioner and a mother and just somebody who is part of the fabric of life, looking at whether I can see myself as part of a deeper process, whether I see myself as integrated into the world so that I understand that the breath that I take and what I take into my body is as important and impactful on the tree that I'm standing next to, that that perspective is actually what allows us to harmonize with life and live in rhythm with the people around us. And women—when they start to eat and nourish themselves—will start to talk to you in this way where they understand that their importance in the world is so much more beyond just what they like today or what they want today. I can't tell you how many women I've had in my practice who tell me they don't want children, and then they start eating, and then suddenly they want to give life because they're becoming life. And so, yes, the individual journey is so important and we can bio-market based on all sorts of parameters, but understanding that the way that we perceive the world is a moving, breathing thing and can be changed and influenced based on how connected we are to the earth and to what we're taking into our bodies is, for me, it's a really important part of the conversation.
Parris Hodges To further add to that, one of the important things in weaving that through is—that we see in the world—is hormonal birth control. It's well known that it will shift your ability to choose a partner. And that to me—like in weaving in what Niecia so poignantly you said on that live that we did together about how minerals impact enzymes, enzymes impact hormones, and hormones can impact how we think and perceive and interact with the world around us—we see that when we are taking something that is quite literally turning off our entire hormone function, that we decrease in our ability to make life choices, important life choices. And so how would that not be the same then with how we are nourishing ourself and what that foundation looks like inside of our body? And the more that we become aware of that to how present we are in our life and in our body, and whether or not we are nourishing ourselves— like we have these really great things that do support that understanding. It's not just voodoo magic that's occurring. This is real and tangible.
Kori Meloy I just keep going back to the picture that Niecia painted of the mother with her arms open and the child running towards her and that eye contact and you just calling it magic. That was the best description I've ever heard of that. And I love that that is such an interwoven and foundational piece in your work with women is like this right here is what I want every woman to feel. I want every woman to feel what it feels like to sit on the grass with her child and just be and not have to be listening to a podcast or—unless it's our podcast, that's fine—but being able to sit there without escaping because it's so overwhelming to the system to even just sit and be and allow—like what Niecia was saying—allowing everything around her to penetrate her and be impacted by that. I would love to go into more detail about— so there's this live that Parris and Niecia did together, and we'll link it in the show notes so you guys can watch that as well. But there's a couple of things that just completely blow my mind as far as how certain minerals impact the way that we perceive life. Even Parris, you shared on your stories about potassium and potassium's ability in our bodies as a resource for us to be able to perceive the sweetness in life. Is that how you said it?
Parris Hodges Yeah.
Kori Meloy I would love to hear you expand on that.
Parris Hodges This is something— so where this enters into the conversation originates in one of the first conversations that I had heard that Morley discussed about iron and how iron holds the frequency of fear. And I love the personification of things and he also expanded into this idea that minerals are sentient beings. They hold consciousness. And this is something that Niecia and I both talk quite a bit about. And I really love this idea to being able to really tune in with intentionality behind what it is that we're consuming. It's not just like eat the food, but actually how are you even meeting what it is that you are consuming? Is it mindless or is there more intentionality behind it? And so that discussion got further expanded on through a dear friend, Lauren Bradley, who had shared with me that magnesium shares the frequency of gratitude and joy. And when we look at the body, like what is used up— you know, Morley's coined the term of the mag burn rate. That has to do with how stress impacts the entire system and how we make energy. And when we are in a state of resistance to life, we are going to perceive stress and thus burn through magnesium at a much higher rate. Rather than if you are meeting things in a state of gratitude and trust, you're not going to be in that fight or flight state that is heavily cortisol and adrenaline driven. And then when we furthered this discussion and trying to understand, well, if these hold consciousness— because iron, though it can become hyper fixated in the world, is just like it holds fear, right? The FE on the periodic table. It also holds the frequency of strength. And that is that divine masculine inside of our body. And copper, to me, has a very distinct role of power and unconditional love. It holds that pole of the divine feminine and then further expanding out on to what these things tangibly feel like, how you can really be able to see how an individual who has high calcium levels in their body or an individual that is experiencing or is impacted by blood sugar levels. Right? We need potassium to help chaperone insulin into the cell. And this, to me, has this relationship with the sweetness of life. How sweet are you able to actually allow life to be or are you in resistance all the time on this roller coaster ride of life? And so I just really enjoy playing around with and expanding off of other amazing individuals who hold this understanding, too. There's like a tangibility to what it is that we're consuming. And calcium— Niecia and I have talked about this as well, that calcium is really calming on a system. I grew up with brothers and sisters who were swimmers. And I know, Kori, you swam. And so I don't know if you ever experienced this, but if you got swimmer's eye, you would put milk in the eye. Did you ever do that?
Kori Meloy I've shockingly never had swimmer's eye. I've only had swimmer's ear, but this makes so much sense to me.
Parris Hodges Yeah. And so you have these really red inflamed eyes and they would like wash their eye out with milk. And so it has this real calming essence. When the body uses calcification, it's like cement to cover up the inflammation. It is, in part, trying to calm a reactive system down. And so when we actually begin to understand not just the pathology of things, but the virtue, like how is the body actually trying to support itself? How is it adapting? Then we can begin to really like weave in some of that beautiful magic of what these minerals or enzymes hold as consciousness.
Kori Meloy Well, and to follow up on that, I don't know how much you guys resonate with German New Medicine or theories that are similar, but even, if you look at German New Medicine and they look at the pancreas and look and they look at insulin resistance, the question they always ask is, "What are you resisting in life?" It's like the follow up. And so this actually ties that conversation together with an actual nutritional therapy piece. Because I don't hear a lot of nutritional therapies talk within the German New Medicine realm, but you guys kind of bring together this whole other layer that makes it make sense for someone that likes to take things from like a food mindset. And I also just want to touch on one more thing that you said earlier about what are we actually consuming and actually connecting to our food because we talked about this on our season premiere of this season. So if you guys listening haven't listened to that, go back and listen to that. But we were talking about this idea of when someone is presented with new information— I learned this from Louise Hay. She talked about this in her—I think—You Can Heal Your Life book, but when someone's presented with new information, our brains kind of go into this black and white state because the new information is not safe in the moment, depending on our own state of regulation, for us to be able to integrate it in a more nuanced way. And so we go really, really black and white. And then we view nutritional therapy as a set of rules and a set of checklists. And so you can see how—even if that's how someone starts—how over time, as they become more regulated through the implementation of those food strategies, you can see how, yeah, over time they would be naturally more connected to their food only because they're getting slowly out of that black and white state of thinking. And so I think this is why this is such an appropriate conversation later in our season because so many of you guys listening are able to see like, wow. Because you're in a state now that you really are connecting to your food. And so anyways, I just love that perspective. And as far as minerals go— so that's kind of like the mineral side, and then that really ties in then to the hormonal side. And I would love to talk about stress hormones as well because, Parris, going back to your journey when you were in a state of kind of this stress hormone addiction, how long did it take for you to kind of come off that ride?
Parris Hodges I think it's going to take a while. If we listened back to my voice at the beginning of this, I still— like it's coming off of a 35—I'm 35 now—35 year like detox process. And you know, Niecia reminds me all the time we're on a journey that has no destination. So I have a feeling that there's still a bit of a road. But one way you can really tell the health of an individual— like when I'm dating men and opening up to that, I love to send audio messages back and forth because you can tell the health of an individual by their voice. And there's podcast interviews that I recorded back in 2019. And if you listen to that version of me, it is fascinating and really cool to begin to hear—like within myself—the way that I'm able to actually have conversation now or calm my system down and not be nearly as reactive, like take pause. Because the feminine system really desires things to be slow. Like that is what she craves in the world. And so are we reacting or are we responding like with ability with life? And so I'm still trying to presence this always. It's probably an orientation that I will always be checking in with. But I have come quite a ways, like from the individual— like Greyson and I love to watch back some of his baby videos and little kid videos that I have on my phone, and hearing my voice or just even the word choices that I made, you can really see what my metabolic and mineral state was at that point in time. And just going back to this entire conversation, my lens of the world. There's interviews that I did— let's see, there was one right before I really came into Morley's work, and I said the word 'fight' so many times in this one interview and like, oh, wow. You can really see how I was meeting the world. And if you pay attention to the word choice an individual makes, you can tell a lot about what is happening inside of their body.
Fallon Lee Okay. This is incredibly interesting and actually is a perfect segue way into some things that we'd like to talk about next. But it is such a unique and strange gift to be able to have video or audio footage of yourself from an unhealthy state and look back at that, and I've actually been doing that quite a bit in regards to my own journey. I use Marco Polo quite a bit or I'll have story series that I've saved on Instagram, and I'll go back and listen to and watch some of those from years ago. And a couple of things come up. A lot of really unhealthy things come up. One is, you know, Parris, you mentioned the sound of your voice and the way that you speak can really say so much about your health. And I had this like flatness of tone and this just general kind of lack of vibrance and energy in what I was saying. And then Kori and I have talked about this so much looking back at our own journeys— I carry just like a masculinity. My face is very almost hollow and chiseled kind of and not in a good way. It just looks very masculine. And it's so interesting to see over the course of being nourished and getting just more knowledgeable about focusing on minerals and nutrients, just how womanly I have become. When I was stick skinny and not eating enough and not nourished enough, I mean, I genuinely did look very masculine. Kori and I have a running joke that I have this past version of myself whose name was Drake because it very much looks like— I had this just like very masculine persona and was a distance runner like you, Parris. And it was just, you know, everything that I did embodied just this, like, I don't know, masculine state and like, undernourished state. And so it's just so interesting to look back and to look at myself now. A friend and I were kind of laughing the other day because in some of my more feminine changes, my body has shifted. I'm not this twig anymore. My weight has changed and my curves have changed. And we have several other conversations in different places where I talk about that a little bit more. But it's still sometimes a struggle to look at where I am now, and the unhealthy part of me sometimes wants to look back and be like, oh look at what my body used to look like. And I'm past that point. Now I can look back and I'm just like, I didn't look healthy. I didn't look nourished. I don't want to go back to that. I just looked very masculine. I mean, it's really the best way to describe it. And you kind of transitioned, Parris, into femininity, and we would love to hone in on that part of the conversation. You know, I really would love for the two of you to break down like what does femininity mean to you? And Parris, I'm so glad you mentioned slowness because I know that's something that, Niecia, you and Parris both are just such big proponents of pursuing slowness in your pursuit of femininity and how our culture is just so go, go, go. It's so nonstop, and we always have to be doing something, and how our feminine nature would call us to slow down. And so I would love to hear you expound on that, other elements of femininity that you feel like are very important to hit on. And then I would love to hear how your state of health changed the more that you connected to kind of your feminine roots and feel free whoever would like to kick off. Would love to hear from both of you what does femininity mean to you now? And maybe how is that definition changed over your health journey?
Niecia Nelson Before I get into expanding on that, I just want to mention something really quickly about progesterone. And because you referenced that live— like we're talking about past versions of ourself. I'm used to speaking in front of large groups of people in person, but I'm not as used to doing it online unless it's one on one. And so it's interesting to see how even that shift from doing something that you're used to to something that you're not used to, for my body two years ago or whenever it was that we did that, it was a lot different of an experience than it is now for me, and it will continue to be the same type of unfolding. But in reference to that live, just expanding on it for anybody who hasn't listened to that or might not get to listen to that, I think it's really important to presence this idea about recognizing not only the minerals, the sort of allegorical stories that accompany— or archetypal stories that accompany minerals that we relate to so much, but also hormones and just recognizing those imprints in our lives and understanding for your listeners that those are things that we can shift. So I don't know if you've ever seen a woman at the end of her pregnancy when she has the highest levels of hormones—or near the end—and I always call it the great sorting hormone. So a woman at the end of pregnancy will go, "Not that. This. Not that." You know, it's very clear to her and definitive what's a no in terms of her time, energy, and resources and what's a yes if she's experiencing hormonal health and some semblance of cohesiveness in her system. And I think that's a really, really good marker that we can use to look at how does progesterone relate to femininity? Because we historically think of estrogen as a feminine hormone. And I'm sure you've had a number of guests who have touched on this. But progesterone—if we take that and apply a story to it—is the hormone that allows us to feel how much we can hold things. Like it very much feels like it takes the creative, overflowing things that happen—you can feel this as you approach ovulation—and it just contains them with like the most supportive and sort of flexible and beautiful ornate exterior so that we can feel like that sturdy dynamic tension that we all need to be able to bring something into the world and feel like it's going to be in service to us and it's going to be stable. So I like to look at hormones through that same lens that Parris was sort of applying to minerals. And I think for people who are going through a journey right now in their health where they're feeling a lot of the highs and lows of hormones, I just want them to know that you can change and shift those things, and the first part of that is to start noticing them in your body. So notice how capable you feel to hold the things in your life and how wide your lens is. Progesterone, to me, really influences a woman's ability to look at things from all angles, to keep a neutral perspective, to say, "It's okay. We'll be able to do it this way." I actually think it has a lot of the relationship to problem solving that makes mothers so good at what they're good at in holding a multitude at once. And estrogen is proliferative in nature, and we can apply some sort of psychological lens to that. And then an archetypal story that might help us— stories help people so much, and I think that's why the comparisons that Parris was using are so impactful as a lens for women, because we love story. And so if we're able to look at hormones and minerals that way, it helps. And estrogen is proliferative and it makes things grow. But for that to feel good for a woman, it has to have some sort of structure in place. So it's good to notice these things in your system. And it's the first part of a metabolic journey, to me, is just like through the psychological lens to be able to just notice those energies in your own system. That crosses into the conversation about femininity because in my work with women and my history in counseling psychology, one thing that I really notice is that women don't feel safe to embody and inhabit the feminine pole in their relationships. And so I know we're talking a bit about kids and we're talking about other facets of motherhood, but something that sometimes gets overlooked is also how big of an impact hormones have on your marriage or your chosen relationship. And that's the structure of your family. So for anybody who maybe is childless and listening to this as well, that's a nugget here for you that's important. And a huge part of the reason that I approached ancestral eating the way that I did was because I wanted to show up differently in my marriage. And it's completely transformed the way I inhabit the feminine pole in my marriage. Part of that, I really do have to say I give credit to the hormone balancing between estrogen and progesterone. But of course, minerals are really the underlying foundation behind that that drive the expression of those two hormones and others as well. So I think when we're talking about feeding ourselves, we're also talking about feeding the people around us emotionally, that there's these emotional nutrients that get transmitted. I have been thinking a lot lately about the emotional nutrients of pregnancy and how adrenaline or the lack thereof—which is more preferable—is a nutrient that would be emotionally downloaded to the baby. Or progesterone is an emotional nutrient for the baby. And we know that babies that have adequate levels of progesterone given to them during the pregnancy are calmer and happier and have less colic. And Michael Platt talks about that in his book Adrenaline Dominance, where he talks about treating babies with colic with progesterone. So I think that conversation between progesterone and femininity is so important because it's really the hormonal imprint on you and onto your children that allows you to show up in your family in a feminine way, to have the spaciousness to show up in a feminine way, to view family and motherhood from a lens of just a space that you can inhabit without being forced and pushed into a role that is too fast, too hard, too linear, versus something that honors your natural state. For me as a mother, that looks a lot like having much more space to parent my child. The reality is that, in my family, nurturing a child emotionally is a very important job. Nobody pays you for it, but it's invaluable. And so I think if you're inhabiting that feminine pole in your relationship—which starts with inhabiting it in your body in a hormonal sense—you will be able to value those parts of yourself which society doesn't necessarily value for you. And that's a bit of a rebellious thing to do. You know, when I tell somebody— I was in a circle a while ago and everybody went around and said what kind of career they would like to have if they could do anything. And I was the only woman that said I would just continue to be a mother and be a mother to as many children as I possibly could be blessed with. And there was like a palpable silence in the room because society still tells us that that part of inhabiting feminine space where our job is to, let's say, knit community together. That's something that in my marriage is recognized by my husband as a very important job, the nurturing of relationships that benefit our family. These are feminine things that we are not recognized for in society, but that hold a deep importance in keeping families together and keeping people connected. So I think when you're talking about femininity in terms of metabolic health, it bleeds into every single area of our lives and it's just so intertwined that there's no way to ever take it apart. And I'm sure Parris has a little bit more to say. I could talk about femininity for a really long time. So I'm going to turn the mic over to her. But yeah, it's one of the most influential things in my work is giving women the space to fully sink into their feminine space, which most women will take with gladness and joy if you offer it to them.
Parris Hodges That was really beautiful. And one of the things that I've seen a lot in my own personal journey, too, is the impact— not only was I quite sick at the beginning of Greyson's life, but Greyson was also. I mean, he was covered in eczema like all over his body just about every single winter. He was in the hospital for some extended amount of time. And on this, my own health journey, his health has radically improved also just simply from the way that I'm nourishing myself. And to me, that's quite a reflection of that all. Not to somehow take credit for his health in general, but the way that he is impacted just by my own energetic makeup because of that interwebbed nature of us all is really beautiful. Just wanted to add that part, because I think it weaves into the relationship of the femininity and the way that we set the tone in the world. Right? This isn't my thought. This comes from many different female spiritual teachers. Gillian Pothier— am I saying that right, Niecia? She talks a lot about this. And so this is something that I think a lot about too, from that hormone aspect. And one thing to presence in this conversation, if any of the listeners aren't yet familiar with it, we have four—though distinct—phases that are woven together in a menstrual cycle, in a body that is bleeding, that has a menstrual cycle, and through that lens there are different gifts that we are offered in each phase of the menstrual cycle. So this is how we can begin to also see some of the virtues of the hormones in the body as well as when things are skewed, how our body is adapting and then how we are— Niecia says one of the ways to tell, one of the metabolic markers is how creatively engaged with life you are. And I think that that's a really beautiful reflection, too, to see each phase. So we have the follicular phase when estrogen begins to slowly rise, like Niecia was talking about, estrogen has that frequency of— well, it's a proliferative hormone. And so she loves growth. And that's that maiden point in time in the menstrual cycle. So when we talk about that bridge from maiden to mother, we can see how we even meet that point in our menstrual cycle every single month. Like this is a point in time when you may—if you have a business or something—like you have a lot of creative ideas, and that can be taken to an extreme. I feel like the world has really hyper fixated on estrogen as the female hormone. But realistically, it's progesterone. And I think that in a distorted state, estrogen can begin to take on a lot of masculine qualities. Right? Like, if we're never able to allow progesterone to come into balance in relationship to progesterone, then we will hyper fixate on growth. And we see this a lot, too, in the Instagram world of how women are showing up in the hyper fixation in search for information and consumption of things. It's this need to build, to know, to understand. And then when everything is at its peak in ovulation and the cervix opens and we become these really beautiful channels to the other side, we allow ourselves to magnetize in life. And then we walk through the threshold into the luteal phase, which happens to be the most pathologized point of the menstrual cycle. And so we have this hyper fixation of the mad woman, the woman that is incredibly rage filled. And this is actually a sign that something is off, too, that the body is asking for further support, that we are overextending ourselves. To add to this conversation, when I was recording with my friend Libby DiFranco about boundaries and the relationship, the reflection of the hormones, she had mentioned that estrogen has this frequency of the addiction to fantasy. And so going back to what Niecia says also is the metabolic marker of how creatively engaged with life we are, it's how are we— how is estrogen shaping the possibilities that exist for us? How do we see solutions? Like Niecia was sharing, too, about like we are able to be creatively engaged in that sense, to be able to be provided with many answers to solve a problem. And then going further, deeper into the— you know, in a well balanced body, progesterone holds that frequency of trust like Niecia had shared in that live. And there's deep trust in life. And we also recently recorded some content for Instagram in which she had shared it also has this tangibility of protection. The two weeks that your body thinks that it's pregnant. And so you build this protective bubble over yourself, and you're able to then really stand so firmly in that truth of who you are. And we look at how progesterone is created in the body. It's created on the ovary. Like when the follicle releases, the corpus luteum—which literally means yellow body—excretes progesterone. And what the body needs in order to do that is magnesium, retinol, and copper. That's why it's yellow. And so, again, when we can really start to weave all of this deep understanding and then really understand how am I meeting each part of those cycles? The follicular phase always feels like the art of containment to me in a feminine system. Not just this desire to grow outside of yourself. And then how do we walk through to ovulation and then to the luteal phase? And then how do we meet that internal death of the menstruation also?
Kori Meloy You know what I love that you guys are both bringing to the table is this idea that you can tell a lot from an HTMA, you can tell a lot from maybe a Full Monty iron panel. You can tell a lot from paper and data and numbers and values, and yet you can also just objectively tune in and ask yourself those important questions. And it really does put so much inward power and responsibility back into the woman of wow, we can help ourselves so much, first of all. And secondly, if we can tune in with ourselves, we really can measure just, yeah, our ability to hold life and what that tells us about our mineral status and hormone status and all of this. And when you talk about the cycle, that brings in the conversation, especially with, Niecia, you having a teenage daughter now, for those of us who have children, who are daughters or even sons—I think that this is an incredible conversation for boys to be aware of because they might get married one day or interact with women and know what the standard is as far as like this is how we nourish our bodies, this is how we get in tune with our bodies. And yeah, for men to have that awareness is really cool to know how connected a woman would be with her body that he would be choosing. But anyways, this conversation of daughters and raising this next generation of women underneath us and even people that are not our children, but people that we're impacting in our community— that's a whole other conversation by itself. How can we start these conversations now with the younger generation that is coming in? Because something that's brought up a lot— I'll get questions in my Facebook community or my emails or my DMs of the topic of athletics and what that looks like, or how can we honor ourselves as cyclical beings within the conversation of athletics, too? And that's a really interesting topic in and of itself. Parris, I don't know if you were a year-round athlete with running, but I just think about my sports that were year-round that had no break, I think about what this teaches to children at a young age because the reason that we did not take breaks—everyone already knows the answer—is because people say that you regress, right? So we think about like when I did swimming and that was year-round, there were two weeks on Christmas break where we would be off, but our coach would tell us like, "But you can't actually be off because your times are going to drop"—well, not drop because I guess would be a good thing—"but your times are going to get worse and you're going to regress. You're going to regress." And so it's this constant, never ending addiction to that goal. And what that teaches a young girl when she comes into adulthood and not being able to actually understand rest or step into rest because she's like, "Well, I'm being lazy," or "This isn't going to be done." And yeah, I would just love to open up the conversation of what that looks like to start having these conversations with younger women.
Parris Hodges I'll start off just to touch on a little bit, Kori, because I'm sure Niecia has a lot more to add to this in being the mother of a daughter. But what I hear even in what you're sharing that I think is important about the understanding of the menstrual cycle is there's a fear of death that comes across. Like we don't say yet, but there's a fear of death. Like if you stop, like you will die, you will regress, and you will be destroyed essentially. But that is the offering that we are given every single month to go through that process of really walking through the bleed portion of being in a cyclical body and beginning to understand when I revere that the most, I am actually able to expand so much further in my life than anything else. And Niecia, I don't know if you want to go ahead and expand even deeper into how we weave in that conversation with daughters.
Niecia Nelson I think that it's really amazing to see how far or how full circle things come between a toddler and a 16-year-old. So for anybody out there that has a very young child and they're thinking like, "You know, this doesn't really apply to me, this raising daughters. My daughter is only two or one or I have time." I just want them to know that what you're doing really matters. It matters right now. And when your child is a teenager, you're going to see why it mattered and it'll become really apparent to you. And all those little moments that you had with that child as a young person where you took the time and space to teach them about what it means to be in the world, those are going to blow up like fireworks and become the whole show of how you connect with your child. My psychology mentor says—she's brilliant—she says, "When your kids hit teenagers, you get fired as the general manager, and if you're lucky, you get hired back on as a consultant." And I've always laughed about that because I've found that in the realm of emotional attachment, that's absolutely true. But I think it's true, too, for how much you influence and are able to open up conversations with them—boy or girl—about intimate things like their menstrual cycle. And what a gift to be able to give your daughter that she might connect with herself. I was never involved in a lot of sports. They just never felt— I just never could push myself that far. It just felt like it would be an overriding. I pushed myself far in other ways in my twenties and got quite into yoga and treated that with some of the same vigor that you're describing. But ultimately, I've had a lot of people come to me and say, "Well, don't you want to encourage your daughter to play sports and get into extracurriculars?" And it's so interesting, Kori, that you have people talking to you about this because it's a conversation that I just meet in the moment and then I don't really think a lot about it after that because I don't have a history as an athlete or feel a lot of pressure. My response is usually just, "Why would I make her do that? She doesn't like it. It doesn't feel good to her." But it is a really important conversation. And I think that at the heart of it for me is what is feminism if it's not the honoring of the fact that the female physiology was built to birth babies? And whether you choose to have children or not, for your body to work properly, you have to honor that aspect of your biology. And so what does it look like to be a feminist in this day and age? For me, this version of feminism that has us pushing harder and faster to obtain certain things is consumptive and outdated. And real feminism, for me, is giving the next generation of women the permission to inhabit that feminine space fully, which includes a deep honoring and prioritizing of their menstrual cycle. And for their partner to be able to do that as well, of course, is really important. But the example that you set for your daughters is going to impact them way more than anything else that you do. I really never knew how much my daughter was watching me until she came full circle into the past year or so of her life. And then suddenly it's like, oh, she has been really listening to— or she watches. You know, there's a rule in our household that nobody who's bleeding has to do chores. And so my husband will ask her to unload the dishwasher and she'll say, "I get the pass today." And that's just accepted by everybody. It might seem like a really small thing, but when we honor the feminine in our households, it extends out into the entire world, and it's like a ripple effect. And we can't do that outwardly unless we're doing it at home with each other. So I think that starting in that place, even with your young daughters, treating them differently than you might treat a son. Boys and girls need really different things from their parents, and girls need a lot of spaciousness and rest. They need to understand that there's a pulsing action that exists within their body and that sometimes it'll be on the way out and sometimes it's on the way in, and neither of them have an impact on their inherent value. The world is going to tell them that it does. And so my goal as a mother has been to impart on her that her worth and value doesn't have anything to do with her performance. That's a tough task in this generation. I don't know if either of you had to have a comment on how you feel that that's showing up with your children already, like at a younger age or just that there's maybe some reflections on how you could do that with younger children that feels accessible to you. But that's my reflection as the mother of a teenager, that the most impactful thing is how I choose to hold myself in the home. And that extends to how she has begun to value herself and now has taken on the metabolic perspective on her health and starting to notice how what she puts in her body really impacts things and grind against the narrative of— like I use that word very purposefully. Grind against the narrative of— she had a gym teacher tell her that she should show up to class even when she has her period, because periods are no excuse not to do fitness and it'll make her feel better. And my hope is just to raise daughters that are able to say, "That's not true for me. That's not true for me." Because I know where that leads up to somebody at 35 or 40 who has completely disconnected from herself. And that's not the path I want to go on. Like I want the different side of the fork in the road that. You know, all of us sitting here today have in some way or another, turned the ship and taken the fork. But it took longer. So my prayer for these younger girls is that this part of feminism that we're bringing to them is that in which allows the fork to come sooner, and they can take that path.
Kori Meloy That was beautiful. And when you asked about what that looks like practically for us as well, I immediately— really the first thing I think of is the concept of not pouring out of an empty watering can or tank, putting gas in the car before it goes. That is one of the most simple things that we can teach our children from the smallest that they are is leading by example of I'm going to nourish myself, eat a snack, eat a meal before doing, before going, before hopping in the car and going to the beach, making sure that nourishment and pouring in and consistently flowing my body with energy is something that— I really think it is one of the most simple things that our children pick up on right away. And yeah, we just— there is a saying whenever we go do a homeschool activity or before we go play with friends, that the food has to come first and coconut water and adrenal cocktails. And we just make that more of a priority as opposed to just going right into something that is an energy output. And so even that very small step is something that I teach my kids now, and now it's a part of their daily rhythm. And so that's one way that I can think of that could be practical as far as you guys listening. Fallon, I don't know if you have anything you want to add.
Fallon Lee Niecia, I just was so blown away by the wisdom that you shared in that little snippet of time. I mean, I was covered in goose bumps, first of all, when you were talking about the true definition of feminism and honoring a woman's ability to give life. And I mean, gosh, everything you said was so just lovely and wonderful. So I want to say that first before I share thoughts. I just was really moved by everything that you said because I'm a mom of three boys, and we will probably not have any more biological children. And so this is just a really interesting conversation to me because in some sense, I think that I can convince myself, well this conversation isn't going to be as relevant, but I don't think that's true. I think that there's so much beauty in equipping the next generation of men as well. I think, Kori, you kind of touched on this that we are imparting wisdom to the next generation that probably most of us did not have. I know that as a young woman, I had no understanding of my cycle. I had no understanding of my body, of my hormones, of my needs, of the way that my rhythm should change based on where my cycle was at. And you touched on the athletics conversation. Never was that a conversation that I was having that there may be seasons of rest and seasons of commitment. And I know that my husband was raised in that way as well. Most men are raised with a complete lack of understanding about a woman's body and her cycle, and it's just become such a taboo thing in our culture. Like how strange for a man to have general knowledge of the female menstrual cycle. And that's just not true. Like it would be such a beautiful gift for the next generation of men as well to be knowledgeable about how to care for sisters or a wife or however that relationship pans out, just being aware of a woman's needs, her rhythms, her flow, the way that her body works. I mean, it's like this conversation does not even exist. And so I just wanted to tell you, Niecia, that that was just encouraging to me to hear as an exclusively boy mom, that these conversations are still important for me to have with my sons as they learn about their own bodies. You know, I want to partner that with education on how we can really honor the women in their lives. And so I just want to thank you for sharing that. And I don't know, Parris, if you had anything to add to this or if you got to kind of fill in your thoughts. But before we wrap up, I'd love to give both of you space to just add any sort of parting thoughts or words that you'd like to share with our audience on anything that we've talked about.
Parris Hodges Yeah. Fallon I empathize with you in a similar situation that I'm raising a son also currently. And one thing that comes to mind in that relationship as I show up differently in my female body, like with him, is that it's giving him a greater understanding to one day know how to lead appropriately. Right? That's what the masculine is really intended to do. So they hold the structure and the frame of everything so that they can lead more appropriately, which I understand can be a bit of an inflammatory statement to make these days in the world. But going back to the conversation to touch on about the athletics—Kori, you had asked—I started running prior to kindergarten. I was racing road races, 10ks, like pre-K. And I was a year-round athlete: track, cross-country, soccer, and then did golf my senior year of high school also. And there is a very vivid moment that stands out in my mind. I was in elementary school, I was probably third or fourth grade. And I made this decision that I no longer wanted to play soccer or run, and it was not met well at home. And it was in that moment that I chose to abandon myself. And I really think that if we paused and asked a lot of girls—young girls, young women—you know, not to discredit anything about sports or athletics and moving your body, but how is it actually being met with joy? And are these young women actually abandoning themselves? And is that what we're teaching them to do already at such a young age? So I don't know if either of you reflect from your athletic backgrounds, too, if there was ever this distinct choice point of self abandonment that came in where you're like, no, this is actually isn't what I want to be doing. And yet you like overrode that system.
Kori Meloy Mm. I mean it's funny that you even say that because as I was reflecting on those high school sports pictures from yesterday that I was posting, I have a very— it almost feels a little visceral as I think about it, to be honest. And Mom and Dad, if you're listening, I love you guys. But in high school, as a freshman— at that point, my granddad was actually my golf coach and we lived not on a golf course, but it was around us. And so this was just like, "Hey, it's here, it's accessible. So this is the sport that you're doing your whole life and you're going to get a college scholarship because it's very rare"—I'm a lefty—"it's very rare to have a female left-handed golfer." And so I think in their minds, it was like, here's her road and here's her path, and this is success, this is financial security. And as a freshman, I specifically remember saying, "I hate this. I hate this, and I don't want to play anymore." Because of doing other multi sports that I actually did love, golf still had to be fit in. And so typically that would look like going to school. I can't even believe the schedule sometimes of a high school athlete of maybe waking up at 4:40, 4:30, go swim or practice before school, go to school, have weight training classes in school, go to practice after school, and then no matter what, I came home and I still played golf at the end of the day. And my granddad and I had a really close relationship and I adore him to this day. But I specifically remember as a freshman when I spoke that— even though golf is not necessarily the most strenuous sport on the body, tournaments are walking with your bag for 8 hours in the hot sun midday. So practice might not be that bad, but tournaments are insane. They're actually insane. And the idea of like a girl—and I was tiny—just like carrying this heavy golf bag. Anyways not to play my violin, but I just specifically remember speaking to my parents and saying like, "Enough is enough. And I'm done with this. I feel a hatred about this now." And my dad made the decision of you will keep doing this and you can stop when you graduate high school and you leave the house. But as long as you're in the house, you're playing golf. And I remember that did create sort of a blueprint to how I went about my college years as well, just doing workouts in our 24 hour open gym at 10 p.m. at night and just having no connection to my body at all because I believed that success or getting somewhere in life meant you abandon what you in intuitively feel is not right for your body. That's not a relevant conversation. That's what I learned is that it's not a relevant conversation, how you feel in your body whenever you do something, because other things are more important than that. Other things are a priority over that. And so that was something I learned as a 14-year-old girl. And it took a very long time until my endometriosis diagnosis for me to unlearn that because I was functioning in a very, very high masculine— I had chosen my entire life career to be in a masculine male dominant, ignore the menstrual cycle state in endometriosis was my gift in changing my entire lifestyle and finding healing. And that a huge part of it was connecting into my body for the first time and being like my menstrual cycle is a gift. Are you kidding me? That just was mind blowing to me. So even the most simple things of tuning into what is too much for your child can go all the way into— and I feel very passionate about this as a mother of young children, because it can be very easy to override a young child's system when we have technology, we have all these tools at our system to numb a child if we're asking too much of their body. Right? And right there is something that you're teaching your child at a young age. And so I do feel a very strong sensitivity because of my background and just what I had to unlearn of what is too much for my children. And I love to adventure and I love having freedom and I love going surfing. But we've really worked around and I've had to relearn a lot of my structure as a mother in really prioritizing that. And like even from— my daughter's 14 months but being in tune with her spirit of just like what's too much for your body? Because if I just added distraction, distraction, distraction to override her system and her nervous system, yeah, you'd see how it would teach her that as a woman at a young age. And I'm so glad that I went through that in my childhood to learn what that means to make the disconnection happen and then what that means to reverse that and how that was one of the most important parts of my entire wellness journey.
Parris Hodges Yeah, I think that's— the thing that comes to mind and going back—and Kori, thank you for for sharing all of that and that reflection of your experience your freshman year of high school—to kind of like round things out that the gift that we can give our children is our own embodiment, no matter if you have a male or a female child, that what Greyson is learning from the way that I treat my body and choosing the path of a single mother currently, I hold both of those poles in our relationship right now. And if we have plans and I end up starting bleeding, am I actually taking steps back and resting or am I showing him that no, a female body can just push through? And I'm quite aware of that all the time. It's quite a North Star guiding me always in my motherhood journey to like, how are you showing up with integrity for yourself? Like, how are you actually showing up with reverence for your own body and really trusting your path? And so I think no matter if you were gifted daughters or sons, you have that opportunity to really impact the next generation and how the next generation meets and leads or is guided through life. And that's something that I really anchor into often.
Kori Meloy That was so good. And to wrap this up, I would love for our listeners to get connected with you guys and what you do. So, Niecia, can you just talk about what you currently offer? Do you offer one-on-one work with women right now? And how can people find you?
Niecia Nelson So I have a course. It's a self-paced course coming out called Eat to Go Deep. It's a hybrid of nutrition and psychology. So bringing all the wisdom from that background in my life and blending it with everything that I've learned in this sphere for the past five years. And so I'd love to give your listeners their own code for that, and I'll provide that to you when I have it.
Kori Meloy Oh my gosh, thank you.
Niecia Nelson So they can get a discount off of the course. And then I'm always accepting applications for one-on-one work. I don't take very many people at once, so one or two. And usually it's a longer program. We define the length together. And that's focused on really dropping into the space of motherhood. So it's appropriate for somebody who wants focused support over a long period of time to enter into the space of motherhood or perhaps go to the next deep level of motherhood. Maybe you already have children or you're having your first child, and you can find me on Instagram and fill out the contact form that's on my linktree, and I'll get back to you that way.
Kori Meloy Amazing. And Parris?
Parris Hodges I hang out most of the time on Instagram, and people can find— I do six month containers of one-on-one work currently, and I have an application in my bio where people can fill that out and we can see if this is an aligned fit and move forward from there.
Kori Meloy Perfect.
Fallon Lee Ladies, I just want to thank you both so much for taking the time to come spend some time with us today. This conversation was just full of wisdom, and I truly can't thank you enough for coming and holding space for all of these thoughts today. We'll be sure to put your Instagram pages and you the lives and posts that we referenced during our conversation in the show notes so that people can go connect with you and continue to support you. But again, thank you both so much for honoring us with your time and your wisdom and knowledge today. This was such a life-giving conversation to me. This was just enlightening and beautiful and both of you are just doing such wonderful work, and thank you so much for sharing your gifts with the world and with us today. So thank you guys for listening and joining us and we will see you on the next episode.