Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Motherhood in Crisis: Honoring Women & Babies with Robin Lim of Bumi Sehat

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Robin Lim is the founder of Bumi Sehat, a groundbreaking healthcare community in Bali. In this episode,  she explores a transformative approach to women's healthcare, blending modern science, ancient wisdom, and community healing. This inspiring conversation highlights the "Give Like a Girl" campaign, celebrating nonprofits making a profound impact on women's lives. Discover how Bumi Sehat is revolutionizing care through prenatal and postpartum support, youth education, and disaster relief, and learn how this model can inspire change worldwide. Open your heart and be moved by this powerful vision for true women's healthcare. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep263 Robin Lim is a midwife (North American Registry of Midwives & Ikatan Bidan Indonesia). Her work with MothersBabies&Families globally earned her the CNN "Hero of the Year" award in 2011 and many other honors, including "BirthKeeper of the Year" by the Association for Pre-and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH) in 2012 and the Alexander Langer Peace Award in 2006 for her humanitarian work in disaster zones. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

On this episode of the Resetter podcast, you are in for a very unique experience. I have never brought you a guest like this. And the reason I'm bringing you Robin Lim is because we have launched something called a Give Like a Girl campaign where we want to lift up nonprofits that are serving women in incredible ways. And her organization, her health care community, Bumi Sahat, is one of those. And what you're about to listen to is. is really the way healthcare should be done for women. You are about to hear an incredible intersection between science and she even talks about data and all the beautiful parts of a healthcare system

that we have here in the Western world mixed with ancient wisdom, mixed with appreciation for the earth, mixed with the healing power of community. I was moved to tears multiple times in this conversation. This is one of those that I want you to have a bigger vision, not only for yourself, but a bigger vision for women. And Robin has an incredible way of describing the power of the female body and what it needs when it comes to health care. And I do not want you to miss it because there is so much incredible ancient wisdom

in this so that if we could take even pieces of what Robin is sharing back to our own health care lives and how we approach health, we wouldn't have the suffering that so many women have in the Western way we approach health. So this is one where I want to say, grab some popcorn or go for a walk with a bestie and listen to this together because this is true women's health care like I've never seen. And a little bit about the Bumi Sahat Foundation. It is an international, it's an international mission to reduce maternal and child more and mortality and to support the health and wise development of communities. And so they do this by providing general health care services, emergency service, prenatal,

postpartum, birth and breastfeeding support. And they do a ton of health care education, youth care, education, environmental and disaster relief. Like, this is health care the way it should be. And I want you just to take a step back and listen from you. your heart and grab pieces that you know you can bring into your own health care journey and then think about how could we take a foundation like this and replicate it throughout the world to change the way that women are treated in a health care system. We live in a health care system that has

left women behind and Bumisa Hott has brought women, children, and men all into the conversation of women's health. It is so incredibly beautiful. And if you feel moved to donate to Bumi Sahat, we are raising money for Robin and her extraordinary health center at Dr. Mindy Pels.com slash geology with the hopes that not only will it support the local people of Bali, but that this model will be used and heard by more people and that we can bring this level of health care to the world. So sit back, enjoy, open your heart. This is true women's health care. It's so beautiful.

It's so beautiful. I can't wait for you to just receive this. Enjoy. Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast. podcast for you. Thank you for getting up so early from Bali and joining me in uniting our hearts around helping women. I just appreciate you being here, Robin, and having this discussion.

So let me just start with welcome. So I'm up Puggy. Thank you. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Yeah. I heard a quote that has really stuck in my heart. And it's when one woman heals, the whole world he heals. And, and And I think that in a world where we have, at least here in the Western world, this sort of I mentality, I got to get my stuff, all the things I need for my life to be right. I feel like that eye lens, the looking at life through what do I need is a path to unhappiness. and when you start to look through the lens of what do we need, how do I give back to the culture? How do I support people with my resources, whether it's financial or your brain?

Not only can we make a bigger impact in the world, but we also create more happiness for ourselves. When I first heard what you were up to in Thailand, it really hit me. Oh, in Indonesia, sorry. Bali, right? Like in Bali, yeah. Bali is in Indonesia. Okay. Thank you.

So what I'd love to do is start, like, how did you get there? How did you land in this incredible place of helping women and girls? It's a beautiful question. Thank you, Mindy. So I never intended to be a midwife. I wasn't one of those people that grew up pining for the experience of working in medicine. I wanted to be a writer. And to be honest, I wanted to save the world.

as a little child. I would look at this guy and I lived between the Philippines and the United States. So I feel like because I was moved around a bit as a child, I was the oldest of five, I had this sort of bigger vision of how can I help? I could sense that hard times were coming. Thank you. I, oh my gosh, I say this all the time. I'm like, if you knew the personalities of our hormones, you would understand the emotional spectrum in which you have been blessed with. And one of the things about estrogen is that she stimulates serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin. And so we are hardwired literally on a neurochemical level for connection and love. I've just been saying that through a neuroscience lens, but you just said it in an even more brilliant way.

So absolutely agree. Thank you. Thank you. So we ended up in Bali and we didn't speak a word of the language and we were quickly in the deep end. And so we do. We really, and my husband and I managed to lose his wallet. Oh, no. So there were no cash machines here 30 some years ago.

There were none. And so we had a little bit of. of money, not much in the bank in Hawaii, and he was from New Jersey, so he had a little bit of money in the bank there. But we had no cash. So the people in this village, particularly our Balinese family right here where we live, they were feeding us. And that happened when I was pregnant. And so there was a good three weeks where we ate sweet potatoes from the wood fire of our friends. I mean, we continue to do that and we continue to feed each other. But I remember. I really got to understand what a village was. And it was such a big blessing losing that wall.

Oh, isn't that interesting? Yeah. And here I was pregnant. And, you know, we never went hungry. We never did. We ended up sort of growing with this Balinese family organically. There's, you know, many generations of people here. Now we have my mother here for the last seven. and a half years. She's 92 now. And so here in my family constellation, I have my mother, my husband and I, I have my adult children. We have all together. We have eight because at some point, some friends from Sumba with nine children, they dropped their baby off because she was starving. And we still have Eliana. She's 18. My daughter that's 48, my first baby, she lives here half of the year and the other half the year in Iowa.

And so, yeah, we have, and then we have seven grandchildren. Six of them are here. My first granddaughter is 27 years old, and she's in a nursing program in, in Austin, Texas. So she's definitely, she definitely wants to be like her Lola. In the Philippines, grandparents are called Lola and Lolo. So we're Lola and Lolo. And it's so amazing to live with so many generations. I don't know how anyone.

And I understand, you know, in your half of the world, there's so many things that, you know, there's work. There's so many of my friends in the United States are one paycheck away from losing their home. Right. Yeah. And there is, you know, my husband always says this about love. like, why are we so quick for our kids to leave the home? And it's such a blessing to have everybody together. And what you just explained is just a beautiful example of that. So I couldn't agree more. I just can't get them all to stay together in one home with me. So, you know, it's a complete manipulation.

We just built thousands of all of them. I'm happy to admit it. My daughter's over there. You know, why not? Because our grandchildren do. need to know they have access to us. To be at Bumi Sejad at the clinic in Bali, like I did tell you earlier that Bumi Sehat has four locations in Indonesia and two in the Philippines. And to be here at the clinic and to see the staff with their children there helping each other. And, you know, one of the midwives, well, or sometimes more than one, will have her mother or her mother in love there to help with the baby. And everyone gets a six-month paid maternity leave, by the way, because I feel like our contributors and supporters are really happy to make sure that that

happens. Yeah. Amazing. It's something that I know you're struggling with in the United States. Yeah. And one of the, one of the quests that I have right now is really to redefine aging for women. And, you know, in our culture, women get tossed aside at this time when if you actually understood the female brain, you would understand that the postmenopausal brain has got one of the best structures to it, because the part of the brain that tells you fight or flight actually calms down. And the neurons in your brain that kept you in this sort of individual mindset of me, me, me, that gets pruned away and new neurons actually start to grow that helps you see society from a more collective place. So when I hear what you're saying, there's a part of me that feels envious of

the community of multi-generations because we need the elder women to be there to hold space of wisdom and love and empathy. And if we, you know, in the Western culture, we toss that aside, but what you're saying is you gather it all together. And there's something magic in that that I really wish our culture will do more and actually will be the number one driving force

of my next book, which is to redefine how we look at aging for women. So I find that part of your story incredibly beautiful. I love being a Lola. I love being 67 and having grandchildren around me and knowing that every single day they interact with me. If I'm at Bumi Sehan, I'm at the clinic, it's a short walk from our houses. And so the grandchildren find their way there. You know, they have lunch.

Amazing. They have lunch to there. They bring their friends. I see my grandson, Tashi, who's 11 now, and he's marching toward the kitchen with three of his buddies. and, you know, one of them is Balinese, one of them's Javanese, and one of them's Japanese, and Tashi's a mixed child. And as they're marching toward the kitchen, I just shout out, someone get all those kids to wash their hands. And there's mothers in labor and their children are going to the kitchen.

And there's just that feeling of grandmothers with grandchildren and great-grandmothers. And I feel like it's so refreshing to live in it. to just know that when I'm in my 90s, no one's going to bunt kick me to an old folks home. And I'm not critical of anyone who needs to do that to take care of their elders without any judgment. Because it's not easy. It's not.

It's easy most of the time because my mom is so amazing. But, you know, she's had four strokes. Wow. And that's a lot. She's completely going swimming, walking around the village, picking flowers and taking them to the new mothers every morning. Who had their baby last night? I want to see the babies. But we were able to heal her with a lot of love, acupuncture, massage, cranial sacral therapy.

All of that's available because we have a clinic that we don't just throw Western medicine at them. Dr. Dyer, our head of medicine totally embraces acupuncture. She totally embraces homeopathy and all the whole. holistic therapies. I don't call them alternative therapies. What we say at Bumi Saha'at is modern medicine is the alternative. That's the last straw. Yes. Yes. It absolutely is. So talk a little bit about Bumi Sahat because when my team reached out to understand this more, they were giddy. When they're like, you have to meet this woman. You have to hear what she's doing for women. And so just tell us a little bit about the clinic, how it came about.

what you're doing there. While I was settling in Bali, we really didn't intend to stay, but it happened. I felt pregnant with my youngest son immediately upon arriving here. And then during that pregnancy, I started reaching out to the midwives. I had had all of my babies in Santa Barbara with the Santa Barbara midwives. Hi, Mary Jackson. Debbie Lowry is now living on the East Coast, but Mary Jackson is still a dear, dear, dear friend. And then the Hawaii midwives, two of which have joined the ancestors now, but the living Hawaii midwives are Jan Francisco and Katie Morning Star. They're still practicing. They're still beautifully in Maui. So suddenly I was in need of a midwife. And I started meeting the midwives, the village midwives. And they told me their challenges. And they told me that women were dying in childbirth.

And then Dr. Ines Sussante, who's, she's also with the ancestors now. She was an earth angel now. She's an angel angel, angel. She came to me with the study that she worked on for UNICEF, where for the mid-80s, they looked at every single death in Bali. And if you looked at her pie chart, the shocking thing was that the majority of the deaths were not elder people or sick people. they were women in the prime of their lives having a baby. Wow. Wow.

Yeah. And then I started to look at this. And here I was. In the beginning, I wasn't a midwife yet. We ended up staying here because I got offered a job teaching. So I was teaching children who were half Indonesian and half non-Indonesian and because they didn't have a place in the education system here. So I was offered this job. And I was pregnant.

We had our children. They were happy. I was in awe of village life. And I jumped in and took this job for a year. And during that time, my pregnancy grew, and I was looking for midwives. And they were really, it was a shocking thing that the leading cause of death in Bali became hemorrhage after childbirth, women in the prime of their lives, having a baby. And then I started to look at the world.

You know, with the nudging of Dr. Susante, saying, you have to look at this really, you know, and I quietly said to her, you know, I'm a student midwife. I haven't sat for my exams yet, but I need to do that when I get back to the U.S. And she said, you can't leave. She said, you need to help the people here establish a solution for this really big problem that so many mothers are dying. And then I started to ask the families.

And almost every extended family, when you say family here, you're talking about three or four generations of people all living together. And I started to ask the families, they had their little homes inside, this beautiful kind of outdoor organized with a family bed in the middle where the old people take their naps with their children's children's children and their children's children's children. And they all had lost women. They all had lost women. And they talked about how it wasn't an ancient problem.

It was a newer modern problem. And then I got to meet the traditional birth attendance, the Duken Baye. In the next village, there was a Dukin Baye, Manculear. And he was reading the Lantar Bali, which were the books of Bali written on dried palm fron in Sanskrit with Chris Nives. And then you put ash across them so you can read them. So he had nine generations of Balinese books that predated paper. and he showed me the cures for convulsing if you are having a baby and you're convulsing. He showed me the cures for things that, you know, modern medicine, of course, has struggled to make sure that they can handle.

And he said, but complications in childbirth were super rare until the 1970s. What happened in the 70s? What happened in the 80s? and then it became the leading cause of death. And what it was was, yeah. So, and it's a long, drawn-out story, I'll try to get it all in. So in 1963, our volcano erupted.

It erupted again in 2017, 2018 to 2019, but there was a major cataclysmic eruption of Gunnawagun, which is right behind me a few kilometers away. So when it erupted, the people of Bobbi, because the rice failed. The ash covered everything. There was no food. So a thousand people or so died up on the mountain from the eruption. But the shocking thing was, was that somewhere between, and historians argue about this, somewhere between 50 to over 100,000 people died of starvation. When the, you know, coconuts were still there, but the coconuts ran out. Coconets were being grated and mixed with ash, and the children were told that was right. rice. The fishing boats, because the fishing boats had been destroyed in the cataclysmic event, you know, with the ocean surges from the earthquakes. And so the NGOs came in, the nonprofit

organizations from around the world. And they introduced the new rice. They called it Green Revolution Rice. They developed it in the Philippines. It was American scientists. And hallelujah, you're going to end hunger with three crops a year. So the real rice of Bali, the red rice, the red rice, was, it became a government mandate to try to stop starvation to grow the new rice, three crops a year, which we live in a society where we have a special calendar, which is a moon calendar. And the water shared from the top of the mountains all the way to the shore through all the rice fields, it's part of the religion. It's part of the Bali Hindu Dharma religion. It's the

Subaq system. And it's how everyone shares water because the growing of rice two seasons of the year, all corresponds with when it rains and when the water flows and how it flows. So before the rice was changed to three crops a year, people didn't have water issues. They didn't have water wars. So even the Balinese calendar, the Hindu calendar, was to disrupted. It's still functioning. It's still functioning. We still live by it. You know, we have a three-day week. You only go to Pasar market on certain days of the week. We have a seven-day week. We don't make love when there's an eclipse. There's so many things that the Hindu calendar. Yeah, we are guided by that. And really, we took a deep dive from the beginning as a family. But we just had Pornama,

the full moon, which everyone's still, this is kind of neat that we are doing this on the, on the super full blue moon. That it's a very special day in Bali. Oh. Yeah. I've been really interested in the moon because what I, a big part of what I teach is how women can eat and fast according to their menstrual cycle. And here in the Western world, we have so many women without a menstrual cycle because

of manipulation of, you know, birth control, of stress. I mean, there's so many reasons why, but it is not, they're not good reasons. But so I have looked at the cycle of the moon and can we actually help a woman cycle food and fasting according to the moon that would represent a some kind of rhythm to follow that would be similar to her hormones. And when I dove into the research, what I found is that if we didn't have blue light, if we didn't have synthetic blue light, changing our rhythms, most women would start their cycle on the new moon and ovulate somewhere at the full moon.

And, you know, it, right? And so you're saying it through like an ancestral lens. But here in the Western culture, when I bring that up, people are like, you're crazy. I'm like, no, that there is, there is, it is not a coincidence that the lunar cycle is averages 28, 29 days and the menstrual cycle averages about the same. When you start to unpack the female body, you start to really see how connected to Earth we are. And one of the challenges we have in the Western culture is we've disconnected us from the Earth. And then you listen to what you all are respecting and doing. And you see it's a true honoring of how nature cycles actually support our female cycles. Yeah. I mean, definitely. Think about it. The full moon is when you go out as a young maiden and you meet someone special, you know, in the full light of the moon. And the new moon is when you rest. And my daughters always were taught to call there.

their cycles, when they were having their moon, they always called it, they were resting when they talked about it, and they rested. And we also, here in Bali, no one says, I'm on my menstruation or my period. They say, oh, say, the tatang boulan. The tatang boulan means the moon is here. Oh, beautiful. Isn't that amazing? Is that amazing? It's beautiful. It's so amazing. And then people say, well, you know, the Balinese, they don't like women because you can't go to temple when you're on your Datang Bulan, when your moon is here. And it's quite the opposite. When your moon is here, you don't go to temple because you're resting. You're resting.

And everyone's honoring that rest. It's so special. And I feel like it's been such a gift to be able to share that with my daughters over these decades. I wrote a book called The Natural Family Planning Workbook, A Lifestyle of Nonviolence. which I wrote it with Marie Elena Zinnick. She is an amazing Mexican wise woman who is one of my dearest friends and she co-authored it with me. So yeah, I'm not sure where I was in this story, but. Yeah, no, you was talking about your Bumi Sahat and like how you founded it. And we got sidetracked on the moon. So yeah, please continue. Okay, so we were here. I was pregnant.

Dr. Susante explained to me what the challenges of pregnant women were. The midwives explained it to me and the traditional birth attendant. It's interesting here because sometimes, not always, the traditional birth attendants in the village that predated the tradition of midwifery, there were men. Sometimes the same brave guy that would go down and get someone who fell into a well. You had to have bald. You know, I mean, I say to all midwives.

crawl into a well. And I know it's sort of a weird saying, but we always say as midwives, we got the balls in the village. We really do. We've got the courage to live between worlds. That world, you know, when people arrive and when people die, it's one doorway.

It opens both ways. And, you know, our totem animal is the owl because she hunts at night. And we're walking to the village at night. You know, if I get a phone call at three, in the morning. My phone is always on, and it's behind a teak thing, so I'm hoping it's not irradiating me, but it's right there so I can hear it. And the midways will sometimes call and say, even Robin, you've got to get here because can you run? And sometimes I'm running before

they tell me, you know, there's a, there's a mom arrived and a baby's foot is sticking out, and we want you here for a breach birth. Breach birth is, it's a variation of normal. But even here, everyone who goes to the hospital gets a cesarean birth. And I want to say to all the women out there who've had belly bursts or cesarean births, thank you. Because somehow in all of this beautiful movement toward reowning our bodies and believing in ourselves and going for nature's way, we forgot that sometimes, sometimes we need better living through science.

and sometimes that means that you, yeah, that you might have your baby not naturally. But it's a miracle. You went the distance for your child, whatever was needed. And whether you actually, at the end of it all, feel like you had a necessary cesarean or an unnecessary cesarean, it was a birth. And you're going through this miracle that you were the vessel for this miracle. People forget to thank you. and I want to thank you all out there. Please hear me say thank you for having that belly birth.

And thank you to all the moms who had a baby. With my first child who you've met, I really wanted a home birth. And I was very adamant to have a natural homebirth. And three days in, it was, you know, my cervix wasn't dilating. And I was, you know, the option my midwife and Dula gave me was, you know, it's time to think about going to the hospital. And it's interesting because then we went to the hospital. the hospital, I got pain meds, and was able to deliver her. And I spent several years feeling like a failure. Like, oh my gosh, I didn't deliver her the way that I wanted to deliver her.

And to your point, I really, you know, one of the principles that I am trying to impart upon all women is that we all have unique paths. Our body is miraculous. We often need to bring in other resources to help us. And when you look at things through the lens of birth, there is no such thing as failure. It is, it is, however that baby came out, yeah, however that baby came out, it came out, and you were a part of that process. So it took me several years to really come to that healing. So I love the way you said it about the C-section, because I think that the actual growing of a baby and birthing of a baby from a female lens needs that's power that is that is incredible of that whole process and and deserves the respect no matter how whatever path you took.

Yeah. And the recovery after a cesarean, I stopped calling it a C-section because I realized we need to remember that a baby got born. It was a birth. Yes. And empower those women and say, thank you, thank you, thank you. And also believing in those women so that they have an opportunity to plan for their next birth as best they feel motivated. However that is, and we just had a beautiful experience seven months ago. Our head of medicine at Bumi Sehad in Bali, Dr. Diyu, had her vaginal birth after cesarean, surrounded by her best friends, the team of midwives there. And the last day of her pregnancy, she was following me around. First of all, I showed up at Bumi Sehat, and I said, why are you still here?

You know, you're 41 weeks and five days pregnant. Maybe it's time for you to take a day off. And she said, have you met my mother in love? I always say mother in love. I don't say mother-in-law. I love. I love. That's so good.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we have, we have to start honoring our crones with, you know, for the love that they are. And, and so Dr. Diyu says to me, she says, I, you know, my mother in love is part of the reason that I went to the hospital to have my first baby and got induced. My baby went into deep, as you know, because, you know, I was there. Her baby went into deep depression and distress. And suddenly, while her husband was buying a bottle of water, she was rushed into the delivery room. And she was, you know, the baby was born by a cesarean birth.

It was not her plan. And nobody prepares for that. It's very difficult if, you know, like your birth panel is suddenly hijacked. And her husband couldn't find her when he came back minutes later. She was gone. And he wasn't allowed to see her for six hours. And he's a doctor as well, you know, and she's a doctor. And she was separated from their baby for 13 hours.

And she knows that during that 13 hours, their little boy was so traumatized. Because where's my whole universe? You know, babies don't understand the concept of time yet. They haven't got that lens. And so after a while, there's no, by and by, I'll see my mom. There's like, oh, I'm all alone in a plastic box. And they call it an isolate for a reason because it isolates them. And so this little boy had, you know, when you would see him at Bumi Sehat, he was very inward.

He wasn't running to people and hugging like the other children. He was very traumatized. And he was so showered with love and so wanted. And with this second baby, five years later or so. Dr. Diyah was just like, I'm going to be in Bumi Say Had at work because that's my happy safe place. And then I noticed her husband was hanging out there, you know, whenever he had time away from, he's a professor of medicine, he would be there. And her little boy. And then she followed me around for that last day and she said, tell me what to do. Tell me what to do.

That was shocking for me. I looked at her and I said, why would I tell one of the 10 most intelligent humans that I know on this planet what to do? Because you have an inner knowing that's strong and full of courage and so full of love that I don't care if you want to have your baby down at the river or at the hospital or here at Bumi say hi. I'm going to be there with you.

I'll follow you there because I believe in you. Your inner knowing is so alive. I believe in you. Yes. And she started crying. And she just leaned against me. And she kept saying, you believe in me? I would just say, I believe in you.

I believe in you. And a few hours later that night, she went into labor, naturally, without being induced. And we had looked at her cycles really carefully during this pregnancy. And I pointed out, you have long cycles. So you're not going to have your baby right at 40 weeks. and she and her husband came in. She was like, check me. I want to know how dilated I am.

She was four centimeters. They were calling me. And as I was running to Bumi Sehat, her water released and her baby was coming. So she had a beautiful, glorious vaginal birth after Cisarian. And I was so proud of her. I'm still so proud of her. And I love to see her talking to every single woman who comes in who's had a Ciceroon. in birth and say, look, you can do this. And there are things that she encourages them to do. And one of

them we really notice is the oxytocin receptors. And as you know, in your field, oxytocin is monogamous with her receptors. She only goes to her receptors. And how do you get more oxytocin receptors? You better be hugging your daughters. If you want them to give birth gloriously, hug those girls. You know, they're walking around from before they're born. They've got the eggs, the osites, the not yet fully developed eggs of their children inside of them. So when you hug your daughter, you're hugging your grandchildren. When you're being good to your partner, when she's pregnant, you're being good to your grandchildren. You know, this is the miracle, the miracle of being a woman.

The egg is really incredible when you go to break it down. It is that lineage of the women. It's your connection to your grand, so it goes both ways. I've never thought of it as a connection down to, you know, my grandchildren and my great grandchildren. I actually think of, have thought a lot about it as a connection to my grandmother and my great grandmother. It is that, that lineage that continues all the way down.

And I don't think again, especially with infertility. Yeah, we don't look at it as this marker of connection of all women within your lineage. But if you understand the concept of the eggs are developing within the mother and then the mother's eggs developed within the grandmother. And you start to see how crazy, powerful we are. And you were inside your mother and your grandmother. Because when your mother was inside your grandmother, you were already there. You were already there inside of her. And the same.

Your daughter, Bodie, had your grandchildren inside of her when she was still developing inside your beautiful, amazing womb. It's staggering how each woman is the fulcrum of her family. It's wonderful. Wow. And that's why I really celebrate the cycle. I celebrate the cycle because I feel like when my daughters started to show signs, I was so excited. You know, we sat together.

We made moon pads together with their names embroidered on them. We talked about it. We talked about the symptoms. And when it happened, it was so exciting. And then we had a family celebration. The boys and the men were cooking. We were in circle with the women. And we really honored them and said, look, now you have become the fulcrum, one of the fulcrums of our family.

How beautiful are we? It's amazing. beautiful and amazing. And that has been my message to women is like if you truly understand, understood the power within you. And you can start with the egg, the power of the egg and how it connects you through this lineage, you would never doubt yourself. The other thing about the egg that's so interesting is that the egg determines which

sperm enters it, sends a chemical message out. That is incredible. The egg chooses. The egg chooses. Yes. The egg chooses. I mean, really, like if in a healthcare system, least here in the Western world, where they have truly, you know, taken our power away through a variety of things, I think, you know, your work and my work has this intersection of just really helping women, support women in being, stepping into their full femininity and really understanding what a gift it is to birth a baby, to carry a baby, to be a woman. Like, there's so much of that experience that is just packed with power.

Yes. And I feel like this is the time where we are saying, yes, I can remember in high school starting a women's coalition with my friends where we would meet at lunchtime and eat together and talk about how we love. being born as women and how we were special. We were so valuable and so important on, you know, that was during the Vietnam War. And my father came home from Vietnam very damaged. And he came home and looked at his lineup of five half Asian children,

and he couldn't hug us. Because they told the soldiers when they went to that war that Asians had no souls. Wow. So, yeah. And there were no services to help him integrate what, you know, what was to come. You know, my mother was so brave because she would wake up and he would be choking her. Because if she moved in bed and it woke him up, he thought the enemy was there to get him.

Instinct. Because she was a little tiny Asian woman. So, yeah, his gut reaction, having been in Vietnam, mom. Yeah. So we really, we undermine our men. And when we hurt women in the most vulnerable time is when they're going through pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum, when we harm women, we harm men. I mean, Dr. Dayu's husband came to me a few weeks after his daughter was born by vaginal birth after the traumatic cesarean birth of their son, which, by the way, because the, you know, The labor was induced and the baby went into distress, the cesarean then became necessary

to help him be born safely into the world. Hallelujah. Yeah. Hallelujah. Better living through science. And remind me to talk about that balance. And he came to me and he said, when my wife was taken from me and I was not part of that decision, it was an emergency, she was taken to surgery.

I didn't see her. I couldn't protect her. I couldn't hold her and love her through that experience. And then when I finally got her back six hours later, we couldn't protect our baby. We couldn't, you know, I mean, they were too shy to call me because I've gone to the hospital and just gone in and taken the baby and reunited the mother and father because the hospital expects me to do those things. I just do it, you know. Right. So he talked about being so emasculated by that experience.

So emasculated. It's an interesting. It's an interesting side of the coin. I think you bring up, and I've had a lot of questions come our way from amazing men that want to support women in their health journey. And I think you, I'm so happy you brought that up because I don't think we give these really big-hearted men enough credit in wanting to support women just in whatever process they can.

But in the birth process, that's really interesting because there's such, you know, it's not, just because they created the seed doesn't mean that they don't get to be a part of all of that. So I'm really happy. You brought that up. They really need to be able to express that. That when, again, I'll say it one more time because it's so important. When we do not respect women through their process of childbirth, pregnancy, childbirth, you know, conception, being an incredible need for respect. conception, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, breastfeeding, when we forget to respect women

or when we society somehow makes a space for disrespect, we dishonor men and we emasculate men because we take away their innate need to protect us. And I always say, I say to women who are, I say to powerful women who are traveling and they're pregnant and they're lifting that suitcase into the overhead. And I'm like, look, look at this guy. He's got big muscles. And he wants to do that. He wants to do that. You know, you should not be lifting anything more than a three-kilo baby.

Stop it. You know, stop emasculating him. And so we have this thing in Bali. We call it Chi Hiratakarana. And that is the three pillars of life. Because Balinese people, just culturally, all of us here, we don't strive for success or, you know, all of these things. I mean, definitely there's a modern overlay now that's doing all kinds of things to this island and the people here.

But at the foundation, we believe that there are three pillars to live a happy, fulfilled life. And one is humans' relationship with humans. How do I relate to my neighbor? And that you have to include science because the divine creator did not make modern medicine and science. That was made by humans. So our interaction with medicine has to be and with knowledge and what we learn in university and what we teach our kids. That is humans' relationship with humans.

And then there's humans' relationship with nature. Of course, that has to be supported and loved. You know, Balinese people don't spit on the Earth mother. You never spit on your mother. Why would you do that? That's just like not done. So when a Balinese child touches the mother earth for the first time, the whole village is celebrating.

They're there. They make the offerings. It's a beautiful party, and it's so important when you touch the Mother Earth for the first time because she's your mother. And your relationship with your Mother and your Earth Mother reflect back and forth. So if you don't honor your own mother, you're not honoring the Earth. And look at all the people in the so-called modern world that are making industries that are throwing pollution, plastic in the oceans and all. That dishonoring of the mother has to do with dishonoring of your mother. that carried you in her womb. So human's relationship with nature's, human's relationship with humans, and humans' relationship with the divine, with spirit. And so all of that, we put into each and every pregnancy,

birth, and postpartum care at Bumi Seahat. We live by the three pillars of life, of happiness, and that's how we measure success in our culture here. So humans' relationship with, humans, which means better living through science when you need it, you know?

Yes. Science can save your life, you know? Yes, he can. You went to the hospital and you had some help when your daughter was born that was better living through science. And then, you know, honoring Mother Nature and Father time, honoring them. And then going from there, from there with the support that you need, then you breastfeed. And during breastfeeding, those oxytocin receptors.

You make so many of them. So every mother that we've helped who's had a cesarian birth the first time, we have asked her just breastfeed that baby, breastfeed that baby, because that's what gives you the capacity to have a natural birth the next time, a vaginal birth after cesarean. We did one time have a mother who did not breastfeed because her baby was taken away from her and she got pregnant right away because her ovulation was not suppressed by breastfeeding. And she had a successful vaginal birth after breastfeeding with, we loved her so much.

We loved her up so much. And then she breastfed that second baby. And it was really redemptive and healing for her. One of the thing about those three pillars is just how, what a guiding light for everyone to think about your relationship to other humans, your relationship to Earth and your relationship to the divine. and I love how you use this as the measurement of success. And one of the things here in the Western culture that I have really found is harming women the most is this, I call it the patriarchal hex, that there seems to be sort of a belief system that success comes from all these outside sources. It comes from money. It comes from promotions.

It comes from, you know, the accolades. and we forget that we actually are destroying the feminine body in the quest for patriarchal success. So I think what you just said is a beautiful lens in which to not just look at childbirth, but a beautiful lens in which to respect the human body and specifically, you know, the female body. So I just, I love how you phrase that because I'm really sad right now with the way that the Western world is approaching our health. And it has to have a more holistic point of view. And you just gave a beautiful one that was great for delivering babies, but also great lens in which to think about your life. So thank you for that.

That was just really beautiful. One thing I want to do before we end is talk a little bit about. about Gumi Sahat and what the needs are. Because what people will learn when they come to this podcast is that we chose five to six nonprofits that really moved our heart and were really supporting women and wanted to be able to use our social influence instead of using it always for patriarchal production,

how do we use it to give back? And we started a campaign called Give Like a Girl. And yours was one was picked. So if you could give a shameless plug and what you need and how we can support you, and that would be incredible because I know that you all could use some help. Thank you so much. I'm so excited about Give Like a Girl. Just the brilliance of that, what you call it, give like a girl. Oh my gosh. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I almost fell over with joy. Yeah, my daughter came up with the name and everything because fast like a girl was the original book but then you once you

see the concept of doing everything like a girl everything with feminine power and back to your comment about giving we estrogen oxytocin our hormones sets us up for for this desire to give and i actually believe that when we don't give it's like we're not fully using our feminine body Like I was talking, we had Martha Beck on this podcast and she's an incredible author. And she was saying that the brain is built. One side of the brain is built for linear thinking and the other side of the brain is built for creativity. And if we don't use both sides of the brain, then we move into these anxious states and

depression and we suffer mentally. And I want to extrapolate that and say, I think the same with. with the female body when we're not leaning in to this nature, this nurture side of us to give. We are actually disconnecting ourselves from ourselves. So I love that you love give like a girl because really it's because as women we are meant to give, whether it's resources or whatever we can when we do, we now make ourselves congruent with our own physiology. So beautifully said.

I just, I love everything about you. Thank you so much. And thank you for, you know, there are a lot of beautiful initiatives and causes out there. And of course, I'm fully immersed. I mean, I live every single breath for this for the last almost 30 years that, you know, since my son was born and he was born here with my husband. And we had one of the village midwives come and help us right at the end. And, you know, You know, I got to know all the problems here. And then I looked at the world problem that today, today, 830 women or so, give or take, will die in Chalbert in the prime of their lives, having a baby. Today on earth. Today on earth. While we have been talking, women have died. Some of them from access, if they don't have access to the health care they need, then how will they get it? you know, malnutrition, access to food. Our food has been colonized. You know, the wisdom of our

grandmothers on how to grow and feed, and our grandfathers, how to grow and feed our generations has been usurped by big business, by those, the hex, as you call it. Yeah, yeah. The hex is, the hex is powerful. Yeah. And when you talk about it, I was holding back tears. Bumi Zahat was, you know, I didn't do it alone. I was the founder, but there are so many people that worked with me right from the get-go. And because we are giving, we are always giving, that is the happiest team of people on the earth. Oh, yeah. Not only here, but I just came back from visiting our team in the Philippines. Talk about happy. You know, we have guys raking up. We have all of these cashew trees. The indigenous mothers gave us the land. And dear Christina,

Federeros made it happen. She, you know, she's retired. She's put all her money behind it. She's helped so much. But we have cashew trees. We have mango trees like crazy and cashew trees like crazy and other fruits too on this beautiful piece of land that comes down like a piece of pie and the main highway goes by there. We have the highest rate in our area of the Philippines of teen pregnancy in the world outside of Tanzania. Second highest in the world. Wow. So yeah. And so we're dealing with all of that. And I'll talk about our teen initiatives. But the road goes right by there and the mothers come by. And when they come for prenatal visits, they leave not only with some vitamins, which by the way, thank you, Direct Relief International. Thank you, every mother counts. Thank you, Christine and Lee

for helping us. Oh, my gosh, Chris and Lee, and for introducing us to you. But the gardeners, the men are raking up with the women, but the men do the lion's share of the raking up, the cashews. And then there are peel, you know, the cashew, it lives outside of the fruit, the nut. And then they're dried and they're cracked and they're open and then they're put in bags. And the mothers leave with prenatal vitamins. Oh, thank you, vitamin angels too. And they leave with a bag of cashews from the farm. We're a certified organic farm now from the farm where they're going to come back and have their babies.

So think about that. We're growing our protein source for our mom. moms. Anyway, so we do so much. And I just, I can't tell you how incredible it is, how happy every single one of our teams is. You know, our Papuan team. Rechelle from Papua, she sent me a note yesterday. Every day, I get messages on this phone with pictures of the new moms who've just given birth. And my Papuan, my Papuan team leader, she's an incredible woman. She had a forced cesarian when she had her first baby. Because, you know, sometimes the surgeons need to practice on someone. Right. Popwins are black. And because they're black, they don't matter as much, even in

Indonesia. And so the popwin women said, we need a Bumi Sehat. And a family and a church, they donated the land. And then we built there. We had a beautiful widower who gave his wife's money to us to build there. And so our Pupwin team leader is coming here because she needs a reset. She needs a hug from me and from our team here. But all of our teams, they're so happy. There's nothing like being with a team of human beings who are giving. They're so happy. And so we have, well, I just want to say there was one of the lessons I really tried to impart on my children is that if you move through life trying to get things for yourself, you will find misery. If you move through life and you try to figure out what you can give,

whether it's your spirit, your love, whatever, you will always, when you're in service, you will be happy. And so I really resonate with that. And that service heart is really where we start to see all the problems of the Western world start to go away. So, but continue on. And what like what else can, because are you, and here's one of my, questions, is Bumi Sahat a complete female health clinic? Like, is it just, or is it just primarily for childbirth and pregnancy care? Well, here in Indonesia, our clinics are not only just, not only for reproductive health, but, but we do community health because health care is a human right. In the Philippines, we do less community health and more reproductive health

and care. But of course, when your baby's sick, you're going to run to your mid-weigh. wife. So it kind of evolved that we really needed to have, you know, doctors, nurses on board, collaborative care. Oh my gosh, it's so important, you know? Yeah. Make sure, make sure you think about that. Like a woman to woman care to have a midwife and a doula, thank you, doulas. Thank you, midwives for doing that woman to woman care. And, you know, whoever your OB is, look for the OB that has the heart of a mother. I don't care if that OB is walking around in a male or female, body. You know, our obstetrician, gynecologists, who we collaborate with are the ones that have the giant hearts of the mother. One of our obese children was born into my hands. So this is the

kind of collaborative care we want. Community, absolutely. And people who will not give you prenatal scare. The last thing you need as a pregnant woman is prenatal scare. You got to find prenatal care. And it's not, the access is the problem. There are, what, we call maternal health deserts in the United States, where, by the way, in the United States, since 1986, the maternal mortality rate has been climbing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's disconnection. It's one of those statistics. Yeah. It's, it's a lack of reverence for this incredible experience of birthing life. Well, exactly. And access can mean, access can mean that maybe, do you live across the street from a hospital?

Yeah. But if you're afraid to go there because you don't have the money. But if you have great insurance and you have access to it financially, maybe you don't go there because your sister was abused there. Right. Or your cousin. Or you're ashamed. A lot of doctor's offices shame women.

And so then you don't want to go because you're like, well, I'm going to get shame. That's going to be really fun. So I think that looking at the health care system through the lens. of how to support women is really important. Yeah, and how to support them wherever they are in their lives. You know, like our midwives, we never assume, and our duelists as well, we never assume that that woman is getting enough love at home. So we're hugging her.

The pandemic was so hard because we weren't hugging, but we were loving. We'd say, look, we're standing here in a hazmat suit with a mascot and we love you. You know, we can still massage you during labor. We can still pour love into you. So, yeah, and never assuming that a mother has enough to eat. You know, here during the pandemic, 200 families every two weeks or more were given basic foods. You know, kilos of rice, sweet potatoes, kilos and kilos of sweet potatoes, eggs, things because people, we had over 80% unemployment here. And when the schools closed, it was rough for the teenagers because you can only play with your handphones for so long.

We had so many teen pregnancies, and we had a high rate of teen suicide. So we decided as a team to do something about it. We did this book. It's called My Planet Myself in English. It's a called me book. Oh, I love it. It's beautiful. Oh, my gosh.

I'm actually looking for a publisher in English so we can monetize this to help support us. Oh, I've got one. I've got one for you. Because this is beautiful. And the thing is, is that people talk about the teen problem. You know, I was just, the biggest midwifery conference in the world is International Confederation and Midwives. And it's every three years. It was every six years this last time because we had COVID.

So we were canceled for three years. And then it met in Bali. Oh my goodness. Hallelujah. It's never going to happen in our lifetimes again that the International Confederation and Midwives comes to us. And so we were there with many of our midwives. And there was a special breakout session on the teen problem. And there were four men sitting there, two from African countries, one from a French country, one from a Scandinavian country.

And they talked about the data, the data. They had this study and that study on teenagers and teenagers. And finally, one of our midwives' Navy stood up. And she had our book with her in Indonesian. In Indonesian, we call it choices and challenges. Pilihan and tantangana. But she said, look, I want to ask you one question. did any of you ask the teenagers?

And they went, what? No, but the data. And she's like, stop talking about the data. Let's talk about human beings. Let's talk about actually walking, talking, loving, needing, giving, receiving teenagers. And she was really bold. And this is really an incredible development in her own self-actualization as a human being, as a mother and a midwife.

And she said, we taught reproductive health. education in the schools as midwives before the pandemic for years. And the first thing we did when we entered every classroom was we put a basket in the middle of the room. And we passed out beautiful purple and turquoise gel pens to the teenagers who were like, oh my gosh, this is a beautiful pen. And we threw scratch paper because we're really environmental down. And we said, you get to keep the gel pen if you put a question in the basket. I don't care what the question is. put a question in the basket because this is your time and we need to know what you need and what you want and what questions you have because you know what? Dr. Google is not answering honestly.

But we as a team of midwives and doulas, we're going to answer you. And of course, 60% or more of those questions were what is an erection. You know? Because they're trying to. And that's a helpful, that's helpful for these teenagers to know. But we also knew that the boys put the where is an erection question and knew what an erection was. But you know what? We were like it was the best icebreaker because we were, well, some of the girls too,

and we were drawing erections and inviting them up to the chalkboard to draw erections on the chalkboard. Come on, let's see, what do you think an erection is? It was the best icebreaker. But we had a lot of questions like, my friend is talking about suicide. What do I say to her?

Can you get pregnant without the penis going inside of your your vagina. Wow. Can you? All of these, these were profound questions. And my feet stink.

I started having stinky feet and my armpit stink and this didn't happen to me before. And my head itches and what's going on in my body? And I don't have the money to buy minstrel pads. So I'm going to stop coming to school. The dropout rate all over the world for girls is hideous. But guess what? We have this thing called minstrel underwear now. And if you get them in black,

nobody has to know that you're minstering because not all women that are young girls turning to women. Not all of us are safe. And in some places, when I was in Guatemala working with midwives there, and we were doing a beautiful moon, first moon celebration for a young woman who was 13 and started to have her beautiful monthlies.

heard of Tang Boulan, her mother was crying. And she said, stupid Americans, you know what? Once a girl is bleeding, men will rape her. Because they don't, that's their little bit of ethics, is that we won't rape a girl before she's actually a woman. You have to think about that. And so we had to be able to give girls all over the world privacy. Wow.

So if you give them black minstrel underwear, nobody sees stains. You know, we had to know that they might not have a way to wash them. So the minstrel underwear kits, we gave them five pairs each, were in buckets, their own purple bucket with a beautiful sticker that said the Datang Boulan Revolution, the Moon is Here Revolution with a small R and a big E and a big drop of blood, and making them proud. And when we asked the teenagers, we said, we're making a book for you.

Should we make a book for the girls and a book for the boys? And they said, no, no, no, no, no, no. We want to all be under one cover because I want to know as a girl what the boys are thinking. And as a boy, I want to know what the girls are thinking. And these men sitting on this panel, they were supposed to be teaching midwives how to deal with the teen problem. We're blown away by our midwives standing up and saying, no, you need to go back and throw your data away and ask the teenagers. and we made them a book, a comic book illustrated by a young woman while she was struggling with COVID. She had long COVID bad.

How do we deal with this? How do we help them empower themselves? And we do all kinds of health autonomy books for the, for the, this one is a one on postpartum. New Mother I Love You, I Love You, I Love You. So we have all of these health autonomy books that we publish and we give them away for free. They can download them or they can come. get a hard copy or will, if they send us an address from anywhere in Indonesia, we'll mail them the hard copies.

Amazing. So, yeah. I'm so excited about this, but assuming that a girl has the money to buy her minstrel pads or a way to dispose of them even, you know, I found girls in Eastern Indonesia that were putting leaves and cardboard in their underwear so that they could go to school. And it wasn't working. Wow. So we really need to think about this beautiful.

We are feet of heart. It's just a complete approach to health care that is so interesting to me that it's blooming there in Bali. And when I hear you talk about this approach from so many different angles, it makes me so sad for the health care system that we're living in. But we have elder yoga at our quitting, you know? The elders love to come there. And they check in with the.

new moms on their way to their yoga class. Yeah, amazing. What a beautiful yoga system. But we realized the elders needed it. If there's an elder that for some reason is sick, we're there. Do you know that restaurants here in Bali that didn't have any business during the pandemic, they made meals. And through Bumi Sehat, we delivered them to elders.

Because guess what? When the elders, when there was no more salary, there's no more. Gaji, so there was no more money to buy what was needed for the kitchen, the elders would not eat. They would give whatever little food there was to their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. Wow. But if we brought beautiful big meals with red rice and some protein and some vegetables and some fruit, if we brought this to the oldest person in the family, they would share it. So we would, and we put them in recyclable, beautiful containers. And then when we would come back, that container was washed. And that would happen.

every day, every day. Well, I'm going to say that the best thing we can do is help support you financially. And so I'm going to put links to this in this podcast for people who want to donate to this incredible healthcare community is what I heard is this is a health care community that you have created. And my, my prayer is that someday. what the Western world sees what you're doing and starts to learn from it and that we create these healthcare communities throughout the world. I think you're an incredible example of it coming,

looking at health care and especially female health care through such a unique and necessary lens. So Robin, I just- We want to be copied. We want to be copied. You should be. We'll help you copy us. Yeah, amazing. Amazing. So, It is so much fun to do this. It really is fun. And there's a lot of stress in like, okay, are we going to have enough to keep, you know, we have over 60 people working in Bali. You know, we have a guy because traditionally a man in Bali when his wife is pregnant will not cut his hair. Because if you cut your hair and you make yourself all wappy and beautiful, you might make your wife wonder if you're like flirting with other women.

And if she gets jealous, it hurts the baby. So a man will never cut his hair when his wife's pregnant. But we have a gardener who cuts hair. You got a free haircut after your wife had her baby. It's amazing. You guys haven't missed a beat. It's amazing. Well, thank you so much.

My team was like, you're going to love Robin. And they were definitely right. And this model of health care. Well, thank you, Robin. I can talk to you for hours. I love you too. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode, I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you.

If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.