009: Rooting Into What's Real | Jennifer Sterling

This week's guest is Jennifer Sterling, who lives in Manhattan with her 8-year-old son. In this episode, Jennifer gets honest about her experience of being pregnant, which lasted 44 weeks and included pregnancy-long nausea and trouble gaining weight. She also describes her traumatic cesarean birth experience and shares the difficulties she faced during the postpartum period, which included flashbacks to her birth, her divorce, and a period of homelessness. She reveals what she finds rewarding and difficult about being a single mom and what she does to stay nourished. We talk about Jennifer’s work as a registered Dance/Movement Psychotherapist, how she chose the term ‘bodyful’ for her organization that supports black women living with depression, and she suggests a gentle approach to gaining access to pleasure in the body. We also discuss her book Dear Strong Black Woman which speaks to the experience of upholding the “strong black woman” ideal through powerful poetic expression. Finally, Jennifer offers wise suggestions for women who find themselves navigating motherhood and depression, or any other of life’s challenges.

You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Sticher, Pocket Casts, Castbox, and TuneIn Radio, or listen below…

Jennifer Sterling is a registered dance/movement psychotherapist and holistic nutritionist based in New York City. She is also the creator of Bodyful Healing, an organization that provides mental health support to black women living with depression. Her book Dear Strong Black Woman is available here or here.

Visit her website for more information: jennifersterling.com or Bodyful Healing. She is on Instagram here and here, and on Facebook here. Her podcast The Bodyful Black Girl Podcast is available anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Oh, and you can also find Linger, her moving meditation album, right here or on Spotify and Apple Music. Linger contains six guided movement tracks and six instrumental tracks that you can move through in the comfort of your own home. From breath to stillness and everything in between, this is a full-body movement experience with vocals by Jennifer and music by William Catanzaro, renowned multi-instrumentalist and Alvin Ailey musician.

Thank you for listening!