Sex Birth Trauma with Kimberly Ann Johnson

Kimberly wanted to speak with someone who was neither hormones-or-nothing nor going to offer complicated longevity protocol. Karen Newby is a UK nutritionist with a BSc in Nutritional Medicine and fifteen years of clinical practice, and she speaks with clear-eyed candor about how to support women's nutrition through midlife and beyond.
What follows is a genuinely practical conversation. Karen explains why menopause is now classified as an inflammatory transitional event, what that has to do with joint pain, foggy head, eczema, and autoimmune flares, and how the shift in estrogen changes insulin sensitivity and where the body stores weight. Underneath the nutrition is a broader argument about what got lost for women in the hormone gold rush. There is useful myth-busting on creatine, on electrolytes as a marketing category newly aimed at midlife women, on the protein wars, and on why the ultra-processed conversation should be about refined carbohydrates and breakfast cereal rather than about whether protein powder counts. Karen's bottom line: the body wants to be well, consistency beats perfection, and confusion is the thing most likely to stop a woman from starting at all.
Bio
Karen Newby / Nutritionist
BSc Nutritional Med, mBANT, CNHC
Karen is a nutritionist, speaker, food activist, author and regular media contributor. She holds a BSc in Nutritional Medicine and has over 15 years of clinical experience. She works extensively with women navigating menopause and post-menopause, translating complex nutritional science into practical, sustainable strategies that support long-term vitality. She is author of three books focused on the menopause and post menopause: The Natural Menopause Method — a nutritional guide to perimenopause and beyond, The Natural Menopause Method Cookbook, and The Post Menopause Method — a nutritional guide to ageing well (out October 2026). Through her writing, she combines clinical expertise with practical recipes, lifestyle guidance and an emphasis on preventative health. Having lived for many years in China and Vietnam, she has witnessed first-hand how traditional food cultures place nourishment front and centre of everyday life versus the UK's ultra processed food culture. Karen is on a mission to help women reclaim agency over their health at menopause, through what they eat and how they live, and how we can learn from ancient food wisdom from wise women across the world. Living without a fear of ageing so our post menopausal lives can be vibrant, purposeful and fulfilling.
What Karen Shares
Why she isn't interested in telling anyone what to do and why the real obstacle is that women carry so much they can't get themselves onto their own to-do list

Menopause as an inflammatory transitional event, and the through-line to aches, foggy head, eczema, psoriasis, and autoimmune conditions

How changing estrogen affects insulin sensitivity, why weight moves to the middle, and the difference between metabolic change and cortisol-driven "worry waist"

The protein-rich, fiber-rich breakfast as the single highest-leverage change and why caffeine belongs with breakfast rather than before it

Her 1% / 2% / 3% framework: fifteen minutes for breakfast, half an hour for lunch, forty-five minutes for the evening meal

A 14-hour overnight fast as the realistic version of intermittent fasting during perimenopause, and why long fasts during hormonal flux tend to backfire

What she actually means by ultra-processed: refined carbohydrates, white bread, breakfast cereal versus the protein powders and jarred goods most people worry about

Creatine: well researched, safe, cheap as monohydrate, not on her essential list, and the brain-health claims not yet supported by robust studies

Why she's skeptical of electrolyte supplements for midlife women, and the Vietnamese soda chanh she drank through monsoon season instead

The protein wars: why Blue Zones populations eat less protein than the West, and why she still thinks it matters at menopause

Fat phobia inherited from a generation of calorie-counting mothers, and what nuts, seeds, and omega-3s do for cognition, cardiovascular health, dry eyes, dry skin, and morning stiffness

Ground linseed and phytoestrogens, including for teenage daughters moving through their own hormonal flux

How to read an ingredients list and why the brands making the biggest health claims are usually spending on marketing rather than product

Good housekeeping as a lost skill: bone stock from rib bones, veggie stock from peelings, leftovers for lunch, and why real food is cheaper than processed

Giving birth in Beijing, being shouted at by elders for taking her newborn outside, and what traditional confinement cultures understood that the West forgot

Why the suffragettes were early proponents of vegetarian cookery and why she isn't vegan or vegetarian but thinks most of us could eat more like it

 
What You'll Hear
Why "hormones or no hormones" is the wrong first question, and what gets left out when it's the only one being asked

Kimberly on being floored by menopause despite writing a book on postpartum nourishment and on dismantling her business, cutting sugar entirely, and spending a stretch in ketosis

The generational break: what happens when your grandmothers had hysterectomies and there is no menopause to inherit

Irritability and rage in perimenopause partly blood glucose, partly finding your voice, and Karen's caveat that some people genuinely are annoying

The cortisol awakening response, that fluttery-hearted start to the day, and what to drink before coffee

Why confusion is the real enemy the listeners writing in with "a PhD in menopause" who still feel worse, not better

Kimberly on being a redhead with less margin for error, and when a more extreme approach is warranted

Acupuncture, going twice, and why some interventions need a real course rather than a trial

Learning to cook in midlife assembling versus cooking, the power of ribs as a great attractor, and what a full fridge does for the nervous system

Food as community: daughters who cook, parents who start showing up for dinner, and the traveling tinned fish situation

Hunger from the chest versus hunger from the gut, and how to tell a stress response from actual appetite

The 3pm slump, the sad sandwich, and the reactive eating that follows both

 
Resources
Website — https://www.karennewby.com

Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/karen.newby.nutritionist

Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/karennewbynutritionist

Pre-order The Post Menopause Method: A Nutritional Guide to Ageing Well (out October 2026) — https://www.amazon.com/Post-Menopause-Method-nutritional-guide-ageing-ebook/dp/B0GXFWS5XJ

Pre-order Erotic Seasons: Tuning into the Rhythms of Women's Sexuality and Spirituality (out November 2026) — https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781649633743/eroticseasons/

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Ian MacKenzie, filmmaker, writer, mythosomatic guide, and host of The Mythic Masculine, about what men's work looks like in 2026. A fellow Orphan Wisdom scholar, Ian traces the mythopoetic lineage back through Robert Bly's Iron John, Carl Jung, and Marie-Louise von Franz, and describes how discovering Bly's book in his late grandfather's study set him on this path alongside his film work on feminine archetypes (Amplify Her). They talk candidly about the cultural moment — the "Rape Academy," the Pelicot case, the question of where the men are, and why the issues that feel omnipresent in some circles remain invisible in others curated by algorithm. Ian unpacks the medicine of mythopoetic men's spaces: how men can "put down the masculine pole" when others hold the container, why porn functions as a "toxic mimic" of intimacy, and how the shadow we exile grows hostile and acts out. They explore the lover archetype and erotic rites of passage rooted in his time at the Tamera community in Portugal, the "road of ashes" and why real men's spaces are composed of "failed heroes," and how to tend rites of passage for our own children by building real relationships with other men long before adolescence. The conversation closes on accountability and repair in a "villageless" culture, erotic leadership, and the inaugural Cascadia Men's Conference.
 
Bio
Ian MacKenzie is a filmmaker, mythosomatic guide, and the founder of The Mythic Masculine - a platform devoted to stewarding the soul work of men. For two decades, Ian has tracked the emergence of imaginal culture - from the fires of Burning Man to the streets of Occupy Wall St - amplifying the voices of visionaries, artists, and wisdom keepers working toward a more regenerative world. A 15-year scholar of the Orphan Wisdom School, and a four-time pilgrim to the Tamera peace research community in Portugal, he has dedicated himself to expanding the terrain of what men's inner work can be: weaving ritual, ancestral story, and somatic reclamation into a living path toward sovereign purpose. He is the co-founder of The Deep Masculine Journey, a 12-week initiatory program for men, and the host of The Mythic Masculine podcast. His films include Sacred Economics, Occupy Love, Amplify Her, and The Village of Lovers. He lives on Vancouver Island with his partner and son.
 
What He Shares
The mythopoetic lineage of Bly's Iron John, Jung, von Franz and finding the book in his grandfather's study in his mid-30s

How exploring feminine archetypes through Amplify Her opened the question of masculinity for him

Why the "where are the men" moment is so confusing for men who want to speak but fear getting it wrong

The "hungry ghost" pattern: what happens when men locate all their Eros and vitality in women

Porn as a "toxic mimic" (Caroline Casey's phrase) of real intimacy and reciprocity

"Putting down the masculine pole" how men can finally fall apart when others hold the container

"Eating the shadow" creating space for men to reveal trespass and explore real repair

Erotic rites of passage and the lover archetype, drawn from his time at Tamera

The "road of ashes," failed heroes, and the difference between olders and elders

Tending rites of passage for our kids and why a parent is "disqualified" from leading their own child's

Accountability and repair in a villageless culture, and the vision behind the Cascadia Men's Conference

 
What You'll Hear
What "the mythic masculine" means and where the mythopoetic tradition comes from

Whether the erotic is "feminine"  anima, animus, and locating aliveness inside vs. outside

How algorithmic bubbles make the same cultural crisis omnipresent for some and invisible for others

The critique of men's work as apolitical self-improvement  and the Mankind Project's stance

Dyads, Forum, and psychodrama as practices for meeting the shadow

The "dogs in the basement" story. Shadow, ancestors, and what we exile

What an erotic rite of passage weekend actually looks like, and the core wound it surfaces

A hard, honest exchange about campus assault and what real accountability could look like

Erotic leadership, deep attunement, and meeting a partner stepping into her own fullness

Details on the Cascadia Men's Conference "Courting the Divine Spark"

Resources:
Main Website: http://themythicmasculine.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ianalexanderm/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ian.mackenz/

In this episode, Kimberly is re-joined by Stephen Jenkinson, author of Trembling Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse, about the moment we find ourselves in with artificial intelligence and what it asks of us. They unpack the claim that AI is merely a tool; a real tool elaborates the capacities of the human hand just enough to reveal its God-given limits. Jenkinson suggests renaming AI "arbitrary intelligence," and traces how the rollout was designed to anticipate and absorb resistance before it could even form. Kimberly shares her own encounters with AI's creep into branding, self-driving cars, dream interpretation, therapy, dating, and her daughter's experience competing against Adderall and AI-assisted classmates. Together they explore whether willful underachievement might be the truest form of resistance and why the loss of kinship with the world is the precondition for welcoming a machine as your therapist. Jenkinson describes an MIT technologist's pitch to make him immortal through AI, and his fully human reply. The conversation closes with Jenkinson's own physical limitation, that unlike any Zoom AI companion, he can't sit any longer; a poetic, human ending to the kind of overflowing conversations that we've come to expect from these two.
Bio
Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW, is a teacher, author, culture worker, farmer, and founder of the Orphan Wisdom School. He is the author of Die Wise, Come of Age, A Generations Worth, Reckoning (with Kimberly Ann Johnson) and most recently Trembling Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse. His work explores grief, elderhood, dying, and the deep obligations of being alive in a time of unprecedented consequence. He has a master's degree in theology from Harvard and a master's in social work from the University of Toronto, and spent years as a program director in a major Canadian hospital, where his work focused on the care of the dying. He lives on a farm in the Ottawa Valley with his wife Nathalie Roy.
What He Shares:
– Why AI should be called "arbitrary intelligence" and why the words artificial and intelligence don't belong together
– The MIT technologist's pitch to make him immortal through AI and why he said no
– The shift from Lascaux to Turkey: how humans went from small stick figures to the biggest thing that ever happened
– Willful underachievement as the truest form of resistance
– Why he's glad he won't see the future and the two-generation rule for language loss
– The rollout: how AI anticipated resistance and folded it into the code before anyone could articulate their concern
– His own physical limitation as the conversation's closing teaching
What You'll Hear:
– Kimberly's encounters with AI creep: branding, self-driving cars, Zoom companions, Microsoft Word prompts
– Is AI a tool? Why a tool elaborates the hand and complies with God-given limits
– Arbitrary intelligence: renaming the thing for what it is
– The rollout: how resistance was anticipated, folded into the code, and served back as good soup
– The allegation that this has happened before and why he doesn't buy it
– The microwave precedent: how fast something goes from luxury to you're-a-buffoon-without-it
– Slow food, fast food, and what you can't recover from losing
– Kimberly's daughter competing unassisted against Adderall and AI and reinforcing the slower pace
– Willful underachievement and failing to qualify as resistance
– Leonard Cohen: none of us deserving the cruelty or the grace
– The MIT pitch: wouldn't your grandchildren want access to you after you die?
– Love must obey the limits of time and the human frame
– The want machine: why wanting something for someone doesn't make it good for them
– Lascaux to Turkey: from humans as tiny stick figures to humans as the biggest thing
– The loss of kinship with the made world as the precondition for AI
– AI as therapy, dream interpreter, dating coach, prescription writer and the abject loneliness underneath
– Being hurt aloud about what we're willing to submit to
– AI as you riffing on you being true to yourself as the thing that's being sold
– Kimberly on the inescapable attack in nervous system language and whether talking about it helps or feeds it
– SJ's body calling time: people learning from the part of you that you wish wasn't happening
Resources
Website: orphanwisdom.com
Upcoming Book: Trembling Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse

In this episode, Kimberly speaks with Alison Armstrong, author of The Queen's Code, about her complex work around understanding men and women. Alison has been studying the dynamics between men and women since 1991, when she discovered she was what's called a "frog farmer:"a woman who unknowingly turns princes into frogs through culturally inherited patterns of emasculation, criticism, and control. They explore how what was once a subterranean pattern of diminishing men has become amplified in our current moment, and why nobody is fundamentally broken. Alison explains how testosterone creates single focus, why men dodge ownership of anything that will be used against them, and why the words that most motivate men to act are the same words women most avoid using. They discuss the difference between being furious and being curious, why anger is "static on the radio" that prevents the song from being heard, and how to provide actionable information without condemnation, including in sexuality. The conversation moves into breadwinning (or breadlosing) dynamics, the concept of 8,000 days, planning for finitude, and the regret of missing what matters most in the sprint of a mission-driven life.
Bio
Alison Armstrong is the author of The Queen's Code and the creator of widely acclaimed transformational online programs, including LUX: Liberation. Understanding. Xtraordinary Relationships, and Understanding Men, Understanding Women, Understanding Sex & Intimacy, Understanding Love & Commitment, plus Being Extraordinary as a Man/Woman. Alison asks the question: "What if no one is misbehaving—including you?" She explores the good reasons behind the behavior of men and women, such as fundamental differences in the ways we think, act, and communicate. She offers simple, partnership-based solutions to improve communication and intimacy by honoring ourselves then others. Alison is known for her insight, sense of humor, and ability to articulate the human experience and predicament of gender. She seeks practical, energy- and emotion-efficient approaches to conflict, healing, and building skills and capacities applicable to human interactions in all contexts. One of Alison's great pleasures is supporting the men and women who choose to be her students. She spends up to 30 hours per month clarifying and helping others to implement her teachings.
 
What She Shares:
– How she discovered she was a frog farmer in 1991 and what that set in motion
– The shift from subterranean emasculation to loud, amplified pain on both sides
– Why men dodge ownership of anything that could be used against them
– The words that most motivate men are the words women most avoid using
– Furious or curious: why anger is static that prevents the song from being heard
– Her husband's death, grieving without notice, and the concept of 8,000 days
– Her recent hysterectomy and the mystery of women's bodies to men and to ourselves
– The regret of missing her children's lives in the sprint of her mission
What You'll Hear:
– Kimberly's personal history with Alison's work across generations
– Frog farmers versus prince farmers: how women unknowingly turn princes into frogs
– What Alison learned watching her mother's three and a half husbands
– The 1970s addition: get a husband, keep a husband, but never need one
– How testosterone creates single focus and why interrupting men derails depth
– Men's instinct to provide and why they plan decades into the future without telling their partners
– Why men and women both decide what the other needs without asking—and then resent not being appreciated
– The word "help" as an action command and why women avoid it
– How to ask without interrogating: own your desire and wait for it
– Giving men three chances without shaming—and the difference between asking and condemning
– Actionable information in sexuality: show me, not shame me
– An hour of oral sex: what a panel of men actually said about "too long"
– Honor as doing the right thing no matter how you feel—and why love can't override it
– Why men leave: "It's dishonorable for me to stay when I can't make her happy"
– The incel generation: Kimberly's daughter on how all the boys are influenced
– Kimberly on learning to be around men after years of only working with women
– Emotional labor, the victim stance, and why "I shouldn't have to" keeps us stuck
– Predator, prey, herd, and pack: the animal instincts beneath human relating
– Status, quantity versus quality, and why two-income zero-parenting families form
– Die with Zero and 8,000 days: choosing what to spend a finite life on
– Resting as a valid activity: without rest, nothing else works
– Breadwinning and bread losing: honoring the provider regardless of who earns
– The regret of watching home videos of moments she missed—and her children's astonishing forgiveness
– Kimberly's reflection: mothering our children is also mothering the world
Resources
Website: allisonarmstrong.com
IG: @thealisonarmstrong
 
Celebrating Partnership
https://www.alisonarmstrong.com/products/celebratingpartnership.html

In this episode, the third in the Santa Fe trilogy, Kimberly speaks with Ranier Amiel, an artist, bodyworker, and single mother who is restoring a century-old church in Truchas, New Mexico, and turning it into a home, studio, and eventually a space of community and sacred inquiry. Recorded inside the church itself, their conversation moves between the balance of motherhood and creativity, the grounding power of physical labor, and what it means to hunt for and make God after losing faith in the spiritual community you were raised in. Ranier shares her vulva portraiture work, including its two-year run inside an immersive theater project in Amsterdam, and the stark contrast she witnessed between American and Dutch women's relationships to their bodies. They discuss the trauma orientation as a cultural overcorrection that can become avoidant of self-expression, the obsession with self-definition versus actually embodying who you are, and the need for hierarchy, tradition, and compression alongside the essential self. The conversation closes with reflections on the layers between: body and soul, survival and art, the seen and the unseen.
Bio
Ranier Amiel is an artist, bodyworker, movement teacher, and painter based in Truchas, New Mexico, where she is restoring a century-old church into a home, studio, and community space. Born in Santa Fe and raised deeply inside a spiritual community, she has spent the last two decades on what she calls a path of hunting and making God—seeking the sacred through the body, art, and radical vulnerability. She is known for her vulva portraiture and witnessing work, which she has practiced for over twelve years, including a two-year collaboration with an immersive theater company in Amsterdam. A single mother to her son Ollie, Ranier's life and work sit at the intersection of art, motherhood, bodywork, and the creation of sacred space. She envisions the church as a place of deeper meaning, community inquiry, and a different perspective on spiritual truth—guided by a board of priestesses.
What She Shares:
– The wrestle of motherhood and creativity as a single parent
– Restoring a century-old church in Truchas as her biggest art project
– How physical labor, trenching, building, moving rock, became the most grounding thing she's ever done
– Hunting and making God after spiritual disillusionment at 19
– Her vulva portraiture work and what it reveals beyond trauma
– The night-and-day contrast between American and Dutch women's body relationships
– A vision for the church as sacred community space led by a board of priestesses
What You'll Hear:
– Motherhood and creativity: the wrestle of being a full-time single mom and a wild artist
– Defining for herself what a good mom looks like and what she's willing to let go of
– The history of the church in Truchas and how she found it on Zillow
– Desperation and audacity: taking on a property with no plumbing and no heat
– How building her own home with her hands healed her nervous system
– Being a white woman in a historically Hispano community and being welcomed
– The church's journey from services to gallery to bedroom to future sacred space
– Growing up in a spiritual community that fell apart and watching people cling harder to beliefs
– What church means to her: hunting and making God, creating sacred space
– Removing the patriarchy from people's bodies through bodywork, movement, and painting
– The vulva witnessing work: reclamation paintings, celebration paintings, and touching the place beyond the trauma
– Two years of live witnessing inside an immersive theater project in Amsterdam
– American versus Dutch women: puritanical repression versus healthy embodiment
– Kimberly's reflections on writing Erotic Seasons and holding both wounding and alchemical power
– The trauma orientation as avoidance of self-expression and a block to maturation
– Watching her teenage son self-diagnose and the cultural swing from denial to over-identification
– The geranium and the jungle plant: helping people find the conditions they need to thrive
– Uniqueness tangled with individualism and the obsession with self-definition
– The loss of hierarchy, tradition, and roles—and why compression helps us find essence
– The body as the physical form of the soul, not a separate sack of flesh
– The layers between as that which actually makes everything separate and not
– Kimberly on occupying a between space in the culture and cultivating trustworthiness over customer satisfaction
Resources
Location: Truchas, New Mexico
Website: https://ranieramiel.com/
IG: @ranieramiel