In this beautiful conversation with Toyah Hicks, we talk about Toyah’s abortion experiences, which happened 15 years ago. Toyah tells her story from a place of deep processing, healing and understanding.
You’ll hear us discuss:
- Toyah’s personal experience with her abortions
- How Toyah held both grief back then and relief and joy for what is now
- How Toyah views her abortions as a Rite of Passage
- How Toyah’s healing started once she was witnessed in community
- Rituals Toyah bought in to integrate her abortions
- Toyah advice on how to support someone who’s processing their abortion
- Traditional postpartum care and yoni steaming
With a Rite of Passage, there's the preparation, then there's the experience. The final piece is the witnessing by the community. And I really don't feel that I started to heal from my experience until the witnessing really began, and had my own kind of ritual and ceremony around it many, many years later.
MEET TOYAH HICKS
Toyah Hicks is Vaginal Steaming Practitioner, Healing Birth Practitioner, Postpartum Care provider and Māmā to her 3 year old Son. She is deeply committed to the path of the Feminine and the Reclamation of our sacred Rites of Passage, specifically those woven through the pregnancy, birth and postpartum continuum.
I did a lot of journaling in the early days and then I began meditating. I did some plant medicine ceremonies. Really beautiful ceremonies where I experienced a lot of, just profound relief. I began meditating and connecting with the spirits of the babies that I had had.
