Family Health, Homesteading, & EMF Protection | Tara Lowther

00:00 – Michaela (Host)

Welcome to the Wave Forward, the podcast that dives deep into how technology shapes our health and well-being. From digital wellness to tech innovation, to the effects of electromagnetic fields, we cover the environmental, social and physical implications of technology. Ready to navigate the digital landscape with confidence, set your dial to discovery and tune in. You’re listening to the Wave Forward, tara. Thank you so much for joining the podcast. It’s good to have you. Thanks for having me. Okay, so tell me, tell me a little bit about you, especially in regards to, like, how you got to where you are now, because I know you started with like a little bit of a medical background, so give me a little synopsis of like started with like a little bit of a medical background, so give me a little synopsis of, like, how did that journey go?

00:53 – Tara (Guest)

Sure, yeah. So yeah, I started out wanting to be a nurse and went into nursing school and it was a program with a hospital. So I was working at a hospital and going to school at the same time and I just learned so much through that experience and I especially being in the hospital I started to see how it’s really, I felt like, not about the health and care of patients as much as it is a business, and that even if there are medical professionals who get into it with great intentions, they still have to follow the rules of the hospital and the way that they set it up is just really about business and them making money more than it is about really caring for people, and that just really bothered me. So I started looking into other options. I actually got pregnant with my first baby when I was in that process and in the hospital working, and I worked at the OB floor for a while and I decided that I didn’t really like what I was seeing and so I didn’t want to birth at that hospital. So I started looking into other alternatives and I started looking into natural birthing, and that’s kind of how it all started for me and I really started diving into that.

02:22

I became super passionate about childbirth and I wanted to have a home birth. So I tried for that with my first baby and I ended up having a really long labor. I read all the books but I didn’t really focus on like one set of techniques that I would use during the labor. I just thought, you know, I’ll get all this information from everywhere and then, and then it’ll just come back to me, you know, during birth and it’ll be fine and it was. Totally doesn’t work that way when you’re in labor, you know. You, um, I think you really have to practice something for it to come back to you during labor, because otherwise you just go into this whole different part of your mind, you know, and it’s so instinctual and yeah. So it didn’t really work out that way for me and I ended up transferring to the hospital and wanted some pain relief. So I got the epidural.

03:23

I had kind of your typical hospital birth, you know, and I transferred to the hospital that I worked at. So I knew everybody and they knew me and I could really advocate for myself because of that and it went well, like a happy, healthy mom, healthy baby, you know, but that is, that’s the most important thing about birth, but that’s not the only important thing. And so my experience was to me wasn’t a wonderful, great experience. And I realized, man, if anybody else had been in that situation, it would have gone very different for them, because I was able to advocate and knew the people, but most women don’t. And so after that I just really got into birth and I started learning all the different childbirth methods. I became a hypnobirthing instructor and I was doing that for a long time and teaching those classes and I used hypnobirthing for my second baby and it was amazing and it was mostly the relaxation techniques that were just so useful, and also learning the hormonal physiology of the body when you are in labor and just how important the mindset is and being relaxed and you know, seeing birth as a natural process and not a medical emergency. And so I wanted to share that with moms and started teaching and had amazing births after that.

04:55

I have four babies now. My fourth one I finally got my home birth. I actually the second one was at the birth center, the third one was at another hospital, but they were really well known in the area for being very supportive of natural birth, and I had a midwife who is in the hospital still, so I really wanted to try this place. And my fourth was a home birth and she was 10 pounds six ounces and two and a half hours was 10 pounds, six ounces and two and a half hours Amazing birth. I literally had like one moment where I was even uncomfortable.

05:33

I would say it was actually a pain-free birth. Um, and I actually was using my own method that I had created at that by that time, um, which was a more spiritual method. The one thing about hypnobirthing was it didn’t really have any spiritual aspect to it, and I’m a very spiritual person, so I wanted to add that in and so I really felt like that just completely made it for me and it was an amazing experience. And I say I tried all the different birth locations for research purposes for my students.

06:08 – Michaela (Host)

It’s so wild to me. So my mom was a labor and delivery nurse for many years, but she started taking that alternative route as time went on. So I’m the last of five babies. I was the only me and my older brother were the only ones to ever really go to public school. I was the only one to graduate high school. We were very like unschooled, like traveling all around, you know that kind of thing. And her medical background kind of pushed her more towards holistic lifestyle as well, because she was seeing that like almost every time there is some kind of intervention that leads to the next intervention and so it’s like okay, well, the epidural lowers your blood pressure. Now your blood pressure is like. It’s like just it goes. This like sequence happens almost every time that leads to not every time. I know there are, you know, awesome doctors out there as well that aren’t going to just go straight to a C-section, but you know what I mean.

07:00

So she kind of started going all turning around. So my, I actually witnessed my first home birth or it was at a birthing center like, but at the midwife’s house when I was 10. And so I was like watch my sister give birth when I was 10, I can believe now having child like children on my own. I couldn’t believe she had like the entire family and her in the room. But it was so normal to me because my two I had older siblings that were so much older that I was very young when they were giving birth.

07:29

But my, so I had my, my oldest at home but then we had had transferred to the hospital after because he ended up having something going on with his intestines. He ended up having degeneral artresia, so no internal intestine, and we ended up being in the hospital for like six weeks and after, after giving birth at home which I was so glad I gave birth at home because I ended up having like a good 12 hours with him. He nursed all of these things that ended up leading to what I believe to be a lot speedier recovery, like he ended up not needing a. He had a G tube and a central line, all these things that he said he was going to need for two and a half years and like he may never eat through his mouth again because he’s going to have oral aversion and trauma to the mouth and all these things. But I really believe that because he was able to nurse and like have that time, that he was able to recover a lot quicker and go back to nursing after everything happened. So he healed a lot faster than what they had seen previously or ever before that surgeon specifically had ever seen before. So it was really fun.

08:26

But when we were in the hospital we talked to like 27 different nurses and every nurse was so shocked that I had had a home birth. Like they were shocked. Only one of them there was. Like I remember one came in at like three in the morning and then you know they come in at like every hour. They’re in there and we had made home in there. So we had set up mattresses, we had like hung things on the walls, I had all my supplements, we had like a you know cause I’m just I’m like we’re going to bring, I’m going to bring home here. We had essential oils diffusing. We just it was a vibe and nurses would come in because of the vibe, like they’re like it smells so good in here and they’re just coming out, but anyway, so this one was like, came in and she was like, you know, it’s just that like we only see, like cause, you know, pick, you and Nick, you stuff, it’s like they only really see the 3% of births that end, you know, that have some kind of traumatic events, and so they all are like, so afraid of, like the home. I got so many nasty like oh, like this girl like had a home birth. You know, I’m like, wow, that’s so weird for me because it’s so normal to me, like the thought of having a child in the hospital literally makes me like like, it makes me like hard to breathe. But it’s just so interesting how it’s different for everyone, because you know like I don’t know what your philosophy is, but I would, I would say, do what you feel most comfortable with. You know, like, where are you going to be most comfortable? But I just thought it was so interesting. That’s not where I’m most comfortable at all.

09:51

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09:55

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11:00 – Tara (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, me neither. But that’s exactly what I tell my students too is hey, if it makes you more comfortable, you feel safer in the hospital, then you should be in the hospital. You know you don’t want to go somewhere that’s going to stress you out. That’s defeating the whole purpose. The whole main thing you want is just to be comfortable and feel safe and be able to relax and, yeah, allow your body to do what it needs to do. You know.

11:26 – Michaela (Host)

Okay, so tell me a little bit more about your birth strategies and like how did you come about them and what? What does that look like? Like, how has it impacted?

11:34 – Tara (Guest)

people. Yeah, I mean I, I experienced home or hypnobirthing, and so that is um a lot of it which they? They’re really the first ones to teach a meditation or relaxation practice for labor.

11:53 – Michaela (Host)

So what is? Yeah, so is that? What hypnobirthing is is like breathing exercises.

11:57 – Tara (Guest)

There’s breathing exercises, but then there’s also guided meditations that you listen to, okay, and you listen to them over and over and over again throughout the pregnancy, so that when you are in labor you can listen to it, and it triggers that learned response in the body, right, just like Pavlov’s dogs, where they would ring the bell and then feed the dogs and they learned that we could, we could. The body learns an automated response to certain stimuli, right, and so using a guided meditation trains the woman’s body to release all those oxytocin hormones and endorphins that make you feel better and take pain away and helps you relax. And so through the meditation practice during pregnancy, your body gets this repeated over and over and over, and then during the labor, it just automatically boom, it happens. And as soon as you start playing that the body knows, oh, this means we’re relaxing. And as soon as you start playing, that the body knows, oh, this means we’re relaxing.

13:07

Where you know you’ll do it, laying down, you’ll use essential oils, and then the smell of the oil will remind the body hey, this means we’re relaxing, you know, release all those beneficial hormones to help the labor go faster and be more comfortable. And so that’s what my class now does too. But, just like I said, I added some like Bible verses and scriptures and more of a spiritual supernatural meditation type stuff and included, included that, but it’s still guided meditations and I think that that was really really the key and helpful. I mean, first you need to know what your body’s going to do. That’s one thing is a lot of women.

13:49

They’re not prepared because they don’t understand what the body’s actually going to be doing or why. And so when you first start feeling it immediately because of all the horror stories we’ve heard, because of you know, there seems to be this competition of who had the worst birth experience and we all want to tell each other the horror stories. I’m not demeaning those at all. I mean I my heart breaks for those women that have those experiences. But when we tell each other that all the time that’s what you think birth is going to be like, just like what you said about your mom and your, your siblings, you get to see that that was just normal to you and so that sets, you know, that sets the idea of what is birth going to be like for me. And when we tell each other the horror stories, when you watched the movies and it’s always, you know, dramatized and it’s always something horrible is happening to make it entertaining, right, but um, a normal birth is actually quite boring you just kind of sit there Like most people, didn’t even really what?

14:58 – Michaela (Host)

Yeah, be some coconut water and berries and leave you.

15:01 – Tara (Guest)

Yeah, you know, you just like almost look like you’re sleeping, if you’re really relaxing, you know, and just letting the body do what it needs to do. But yeah, you see all those crazy stories and things and that sets your mind with okay, so when my body starts doing something, I feel something it’s going to be bad, Like, and I just need to assume that it’s going to be bad and when you know, when you focus on something, that’s where you’re going to go. So if that’s what you think birth is going to be, unfortunately, chances are that’s probably what it’s going to end up being.

15:35 – Michaela (Host)

Yeah, yeah, my um, I was in labor for almost three days with my with my first, because I was almost like he. It was almost like there was a communication happening where it was like when I would start getting a little bit fearful it would back up, and so I feel like that would have been very helpful and I definitely want to try that for my third, if we have a third of like really practicing Cause usually I just go in like survival, like primal mode, and you’re just like, okay, you know that this is, you know, going to be painful and you’re just riding through. But I really like and I know a lot of like. Now, as time has gone on and I’ve had, I’ve listened to more uplifting and vibrant birth stories of people having these very powerful experiences I’m like, okay, maybe it doesn’t have to be this, like you know, crazy, painful for the entire. You know what I mean. Yeah.

16:26 – Tara (Guest)

Maybe there are other ways.

16:28

Right, yeah, it really affects you. Your mindset really really affects you. Yeah, and that’s also what got me into where we are now with learning that through childbirth. I started, you know, after I had my fourth baby. I was just teaching, I was teaching in a couple of the hospitals in Phoenix where we’re from, and then I started to realize that in the suburbs and you know, we had just a typical life my husband worked nine to five job, I was home with the kids and I ran my own businesses and we’ve always homeschooled, so they’ve always been home with me. But I just started to realize that there’s so many things about normal suburban life that are just so stressful. For one thing, like we were always busy, busy, busy, like you have so much pressure to keep your schedule full, you know, keep the kids busy and just to go, go, go all the time. And also there was always so much noise, just so much background noise and cars going by and the air conditioners of the neighbors and airplanes overhead and the TV going all the time, you know. And I started to realize that it was really affecting my mindset and I wanted to try something different. I just need a more peace.

18:05

I was really struggling with anxiety and when the kids were little, you know, just worrying about them and everything going on in the world and their futures to, you know, and keeping them safe and in our neighborhood, and just you know, we’d have like straight dogs going around and like all kinds of stuff, like crazy stuff happening all the time, like one time we woke up and the SWAT, the police, SWAT like team, was in our backyard and they were saying that they were going to.

18:38

We all needed to get down because they were going to be shooting at the guy behind us because he had done some crazy illegal stuff in the house behind us. And we didn’t even live in like a bad neighborhood or nothing, you know, it was just a normal neighborhood and and it’s just stressful, you know. And so, yeah, when the pandemic hit, my husband’s job went all online and so we thought, well, we don’t have to be here anymore. Then you know, we can just go wherever we want to go. Let’s get out of here. And so we actually bought a motor home for a year and lived in it for a year and traveled around the country trying to find where we wanted to go, because we’re a little bit tired of this, the desert you know wanted like a green environment and not just the dirt of the desert. But it was funny is, after a year of that we ended up coming back to the desert like this is where I belong yeah, it’s where

19:42

we belong. So we um came up here to my parents, actually had two properties. They had a house in Mesa, which is down in the Phoenix area, and then they had this 22 acre piece of land that me and my dad started building a cabin on when I was about 12 years old and and he we finished it about 90%, but then something really tragic happened. He had a really good friend who was up here and he would help us with the cabin too and he ended up never being a smoker in his life. He ended up getting lung cancer and he would come down to Phoenix and live with us during the chemo treatments and he ended up passing away and it was my dad’s really good friend. So I think that that really took all the wind out of his sail, you know. And so he just abandoned the land and abandoned the cabin and it sat here for about 15 years and the rats got it and they totally took it over and it was such a huge project.

20:49

My parents kept saying you know, you guys can take it if you want, finish it. And we kept saying no, there’s no way, we don’t want to take that on. But turns out we were so desperate to leave the city that we were just, and we fix and flip houses. So my parents were ready to sell their house, my dad’s wanting to retire. They are from texas, we’re all from texas originally, so they wanted to move back to fam, be close to family and stuff again, and um, so we fix and flip their house and sold it in mesa. And then we decided, okay, we’ll take on the property too and we’ll just fix it, flip it, um, get rid of it and then go to go to wherever we, you know, decide to move. But now that we’re here, we just love it and we love the environment and the craziness of the high desert. It’s pretty extreme, but um, what?

21:49 – Michaela (Host)

a blessing, really. So now we’re here, yeah, yeah, so I saw that you had well water, did you have? Did you guys do that, or was that already established before y’all got the property?

22:02 – Tara (Guest)

Well, we got the well about 20 years ago when we back, when he first got the property. But actually it got struck by lightning, so when we took the property over we had to have it fixed and the whole thing pulled and a new pump put in because it had gotten struck by lightning and didn’t work anymore. And so now we have a solar well and it’s really great pristine water. And it’s 220 feet down to get to water here and a lot of people have to haul their water. So that’s one really tricky thing about this area is you could go drill a well you know and go 300 feet and you might still never hit water. So wow, yeah, and it’s expensive to drill a well, you know, and you still got to pay, even if you don’t get water. So it’s a little. It’s a little tricky. You got to be real careful where you pick a spot, but yeah, that’s so cool.

23:05 – Michaela (Host)

I love that for you. So you’re, you’re. You’ve been on this like homestead journey for almost two years. Yeah.

23:15 – Tara (Guest)

Almost two years now.

23:17 – Michaela (Host)

How are you staying connected to society? I mean, I feel like that’s such a big question that people have because we’re we’re also making this transition. I feel like that’s such a big question that people have because we’re also making this transition. I feel you so deeply about. Like it’s time Our kids are like five and three. We live on two acres now, but it’s still like there’s no privacy and it’s just like I want to be away. I want to be away and I want you know. We really feel that. So that’s where our transition is as well. But I feel like the question that people always ask is like, how do you stay connected? Like for me, I run my businesses solely online and you know I am able to stay home and do that. But what does that look like for you guys and you know how do you manage that? Like connectivity, but also like the disconnect.

23:58 – Tara (Guest)

Well, for one thing, me and my husband both were basically only children. He’s an only child. My one sibling is 13 years older than me, so by the time you know I was five, he was already moved out of the house and, um, we’re both introverts and we’re used to being alone. So alone isn’t that big a deal. It’s not a negative thing to us. We, we really enjoy it and, um, we do have online businesses. You know, I still have my class online and I communicate with my students frequently. Um, and I’m on social media, so I have to post a lot and we.

24:46

Internet was a really important thing for us and it’s funny because I get so you wouldn’t believe the horrible mean comments that I get really yes, about not truly off grid. Yeah, you’re not off grid, you’re on the internet. You have social media, you know, but I think it’s just there’s so many different meanings to the word off grid. Now, right, I say I’m off grid because I have my own power, my own water. You know, I’m not on any utility grids.

25:19

Now, I’m also striving for self-sufficiency, because diet is so incredibly important to me.

25:27

That’s something I’ve always taught in my classes to pregnant mamas that you know your diet is really going to help with your labor and keeping you fit and all that to be able to do the work, because, you know, giving birth is like the equivalent of running a marathon, so you need your body to be in good shape. It’ll really help. But also the food we eat. You know, I’ve just always really been into health and and the food that we eat is, you know, really getting questionable. Yes, oh great. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on in our food systems right now. Yes, and I wanted to grow my own that I knew was going to be clean, healthy food for me and my family, and so that was a big, a big motivating factor so that we can have big gardens, we can have raise animals, we have all kinds of birds you can probably hear in the background, I got turkeys and chickens and ducks, and we have rabbits. We don’t eat those, they’re way too cute.

26:40

We use them for fertilizer for the poo. We use their poo for fertilizer for the poo. We use their poo for fertilizer for the gardens and we love them a lot.

26:48 – Michaela (Host)

So were you just learning all this as you go, or did you? Were you raised like this? Like how did no?

26:55 – Tara (Guest)

I wasn’t raised like this at all. No, and we have. Like, if you go back a generation or two, my family was all into farming. They were all farmers. But with my parents, my dad, he was the first one in our family, in his family, to go to college and he’s an electrical engineer. So you know, he’s always had a big career and we we were just living in the city, you know, and a couple of years before we came out here I started preparing. We had this goal that you know eventually we were going to get the land and we were going to homestead and we didn’t really plan for it to be here, but that was our goal. So I started preparing by just having a backyard garden. You know, learning to grow in the desert has been so helpful because it’s very tricky, and we actually acquired some backyard chickens as well.

28:00

We were on a family ice cream night in the middle of Phoenix, arizona, in like a strip mall, and a chicken walked up and and it must’ve escaped, you know, from some neighboring yard somewhere in the middle of the city. It was so random and weird, but immediately I was like, told my husband get the chicken. They’re all calling security, somebody come get the chicken and I was like no, no, no, I’ll take the chicken. So we got that one, we got a couple other ones, we started having backyard chickens in our neighborhood, in our tiny yard, you know, just to get to know how those animals are, cause I’d never had them before. Um, so that helped a lot, and then just started reading books.

28:48

I’m a big reader so I read books. My husband prefers doing things on audible or, you know, youtube or yeah, anything like that. We would just learn as much as we can learn to prepare. So we started learning about gardening and building and you know, we did fix and flip houses, and that is in my family. That’s what all my family has pretty much always done is build. They’ve always been builders. So I had a lot of prior knowledge on that, which was very helpful for us to build our out houses, like the chicken coop. We built a greenhouse. I just built that garden, yeah, thank you. And we’ve also built some, um, tiny cabin airbnb rentals and on your property.

29:37

Yeah, we have those here on the property. Yeah, it’s a beautiful location here, um, and we have a great view, so it works out great and we’re booked, like every weekend, um, so it’s been really, really good to have the rentals and I think that that’s definitely something that people could check into if you want to do this, uh, and then, like I said, we have the internet businesses, so we do have Starlink. That’s how we stay connected to answer your question and go back a little bit, but that’s how we stay connected. We got Starlink. How long ago was that? We’ve had it for over a year now.

30:22 – Michaela (Host)

I think Okay, I didn’t realize, it was like that distributed already.

30:26 – Tara (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, that’s what a lot of people out here in this area have. The cell service is pretty bad, so you can’t really use, you know, your cell phone for internet and stuff. Here here when I’m at, I am in a little valley and then there’s this ridge all around us, except for one side where you can see down the valley and that’s the really cool view we have. But I literally have only one neighbor and they’re they’re 20 acres away and if I look around everywhere else I don’t even see any other people. There’s maybe a house way up on the ridge, but that’s how rural we are. We’re down a dirt road that takes about 15 minutes to go before you can hit a paved road, which then you go down the paved road for a while before you see any houses, and the nearest town is about 30 minutes away. So we’re very rural, but, um, the internet’s great.

31:27 – Michaela (Host)

Actually the internet’s better here I know I’m like your video quality is amazing. It’s actually better for it to go out like she’s in the middle of nowhere. This is this is gonna go.

31:38 – Tara (Guest)

How did I know it’s crazy, like I was a little like freaked out Cause I’m like you know this is kind of a little too terminator-y for me, but it does work. It works really well and actually I have better internet here than I did at my house in the city, that’s awesome and I feel like with kids.

31:57 – Michaela (Host)

I think, like the off-grid thing, like with getting comments, that way I’m like okay, well, if you lose internet, you can still survive. To me that’s off grid. It’s like if you lose water or lose electricity or you lose food supply, you’re kind of screwed If you don’t already have those systems in place. Internet’s one of those things where it’s it’s a perk to have internet. It’s also when you have children and you, you know, like you live 20, 20 acres away from a neighbor, like you want to be able, you want your children to have the ability to call someone. If like the land you know what I mean Like if something’s going on, but at the same time, if the internet was cut off for whatever reason, like you would still have your basic needs covered, and I think that that is really off grid to me.

32:40 – Tara (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, that’s what I feel like too, but and you know I won’t need internet if it gets cut off or if anything crazy like that happens’s regenerative on its own, so that I don’t have to have a lot of inputs from outside, because that’s how a lot of conventional homesteading and farming is done.

33:16

Even a lot of the homesteaders that I follow on online I love learning from them. I have learned so much from. That’s definitely one of my main ways that I’ve prepared and learned is just by following people online and watching their content, you know, but they, most of the time, are on the grid, have electricity, and electricity has been the biggest adjustment for us because they’ll have these beautiful greenhouses and I just made a post about this that are like made out of the recycled windows, and that’s a big trend right now and it’s beautiful. But the only problem for us is that it doesn’t hold heat and we live actually in the high desert, so in the winter it’s quite cold and we get a lot of snow and we’re in the mountains, so we’re at a higher elevation and our greenhouse wouldn’t hold enough heat if it was made out of windows, because they just are so inefficient and all of these ladies have heaters that they can plug in and, you know heat mats that they put under their seedlings and stuff.

34:29 – Michaela (Host)

And I’m like well, that’s not going to work for me. Yeah, it’s, it’s. It’s almost like a trend right now, Kind of the bougie homesteaders like you still got your. You still got all your amenities, but you got some chickens and a cup of go yeah.

34:47 – Tara (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know you can do that and I totally think that people should do that.

34:53 – Michaela (Host)

Yeah, especially if that’s your only choice.

34:55 – Tara (Guest)

If that’s your only choice, yeah, and that’s where you’re at. You should absolutely do that because it’s better than nothing. I mean, you should have a way to grow food. You know, and and that’s one thing that I’ve been really my eyes have been open a lot about lately is just how dependent we are on the grocery store and we just don’t. You know, everyone used to have gardens.

35:19

If you go back, you know one or two generations, they all had gardens. They all had food storage that they had stocked up and canned themselves. You know, canning is my next adventure. I have to learn. I haven’t done that one yet. Yeah, I have to learn that one. But you know they all had that, and now we don’t, nobody does. But you know they all had that and, and now we don’t, nobody does. And so there’s been some stuff happen in the world lately, in our country, you know, like with the pandemic and other things, where there were shortages and people are now starting to have their eyes open, seeing like, oh gosh, you know what? What would happen if the grocery store shut down, and not from a fear mongering, like not from a fearful place.

36:03 – Michaela (Host)

I think the reality is there’s just so many situations Like it’s not. You know, for me it’s like it’s not, there’s not just one reason to do it yeah, there’s probably 15, you know, like there’s so many reasons to do it, to have that sense of sustainability, not just because, oh well, we could have an EMP, or, like you know, whatever it is like, yes, those things, those conversations are happening, or whatever, but they can have always happened, but the reality is is like I just don’t even want to have to like load my kids up to go to the grocery store.

36:34

You know, like, like I just want and I want them to have the knowledge like to be able to, like you know, to be able to build an apothecary instead of a medicine cabinet. That that’s kind of like my, my, my mental, like okay, I want my children to be able to have the knowledge to build their apothecary instead of building a medicine cabinet, and really understand like that’s where I’ve been focusing, because we’re in a rental and so it’s like, okay, I can start there with like herbs and tinctures and like essential oils, and like what is this for and what is this for? And like it’s just like where can you begin? I think that this is a really good conversation for people who are, like, maybe renting an apartment or living in the suburb you know suburban area. It’s like you don’t have to wait to start, like you can start educating yourself. But there’s also things that you can start doing, like in your home. You can start, like I saw you did, like the green onion thing. It’s like you can get organic green onions from the store and then just put them in a bowl of water after you’re done using them and let them grow again. It’s like it’s it’s things that it’s.

37:30

It’s it’s silly that we, that that people, aren’t doing those things when it’s just readily available right there and we’re just tossing it, you know, just tossing out our opportunity to like it.

37:40

You know, just tossing out our opportunity to like keep growing, growing food for ourselves. And and with the rental, it’s like I was so hesitant for so long, cause I really I was like I don’t want to like plant seeds here If this isn’t where we’re going to be, like I didn’t want to put my energy into it. And then eventually it was like no, I have to learn the skills. Like we had chickens and then we did the garden and then we, you know, we built an outdoor shower, just kind of like playing with how to build things. You know, we, we just it was like no, we just need to start, because first we’re planting seeds for whoever’s coming here next, but also we have to learn this. It’s going to be so much easier to have some skills, cause there’s also going to be so many things that we need to learn when we get land that like get as many resources and skills as you can in your own home right now, wherever you are, and then you can learn how to can later.

38:27 – Tara (Guest)

Yeah, absolutely, and it’s so different, you know, yeah, and it’s so different to just learn something from reading it or watching someone else do it, but versus you actually getting your hands in the dirt, you know you learn so much more, especially in your area. That’s the key with I think I’ve learned with gardening is you have to know your environment, your bio, and until you actually get the seeds in the ground, there’s so many things that you’re not going to know about that’ll destroy your garden later, um, and know you’ll lose all your effort. But if you just try it now, you know you’ll see what’s going on and be able to, next time you plant, prepare for all of that. And so, yeah, practice is so important. Yeah, I couldn’t believe what we actually grew.

39:21 – Michaela (Host)

I was like wait, okay, like our, you know, like this area because you know people say like in this area of Texas is like it’s so hard to grow things I was like we had so many different vegetables growing fairly easily. So I was like that’s really good to know. You know that it is possible.

39:36 – Tara (Guest)

Yeah.

39:37 – Michaela (Host)

Okay, so I have one last question. So I connected with you because, you get, you were using the same EMF protection that I used and so I wanted to know a little bit about, like, what was your aha? Do you have an aha moment? Like for me it was kind of like one thing led to the next because, even though my mom had this knowledge, like I was still in high school, I was still doing the high school Texas thing, which is like going out eating junk food, running to Sonic at 2 AM, playing beer pong. You know, like that was my high school years, and so it took me like really getting sick with like chronic sinus infections, from getting my wisdom teeth removed to really start paying attention to the sugar and and the glue, you know all that stuff. That was like my first aha moment.

40:16

And then my second aha moment with, like EMFs and like, oh, there’s more than just what I’m putting in my body. You know, like that was like step one. Okay, what I’m putting in my body is not just affecting me physically, it’s affecting my mental health, like that was what I was really realizing. It was like when I’m drinking, you know, alcohol, or eating sugar, or you know loads of wheat. You know gluten. I am actually like struggling mentally. I have a brain fog, I’m like emotionally just abnormal hormones all over the place, and so it took me, like cutting all of that out, to like really realize, as I was integrating it back in, that like, oh, I’m having I had like food sensitivities, and then later on found out I had the MTHFR. So it all made sense, but I didn’t know that at the time.

40:53

But then, with my first son, what really was the aha moment for EMFs was like okay, they didn’t. They like I did everything right. I was like I was eating all organic and I was doing my folate you know my folate instead of all. You know I did all the things, and so I was just so mentally struggling with why did this happen? Cause for me yes, I understand that things just happen, but also like there’s something physical you know what I mean there’s something. There has to be something that led to something. That led to something you know what I mean In my mind everything kind of leads to something else.

41:22

But like they just left me, you know, in the hospital six weeks. We are leaving and they’re like, oh, you know, it just happens sometimes in the first couple of weeks of gestation and the only thing and I’m not claiming that this is what happened, but this was my aha moment. The only thing that I could really think of besides finding out I had the MTHFR and so there were probably things that I could have been doing was EMFs, because I had. We lived in this like 200 square foot loft apartment and we were sleeping by our wifi router for like the first couple of months of my gestation and he had.

41:51

When he told me it was in the first couple of weeks of your gestation that this would have happened, I was like that was the thing I immediately thought of was like that, like the wifi. We literally slept next to the wifi for like the first couple of months of my pregnancy and I didn’t even really think about it. It was like just out of sight, out of mind, and so that’s kind of what led me in that direction, and will I ever be able to prove that? No, but like that’s what opened it up. So where do you feel like? Like I feel like it’s just like you peek behind one curtain and you realize like, oh, that’s not what I thought to be true, and then it just leads you to start peeking behind all the other curtains. So what do you feel like? Was your aha moment, if you have one?

42:33 – Tara (Guest)

Yeah, Well, kind of both, because I was already kind of starting to get into peeking behind all the curtains through the medical field Right Because of my background and then teaching the childbirth classes and stuff. But then I also got very sick and I also have MTHFR. Nice, I totally know what you’re talking about. Yeah, and I got really sick. I think it was two years after I had my fourth baby and I think that I was triggered by getting an IUD and so then I started looking into, you know, IUDs and um birth control and you know we had just had a whole other conversation.

43:27

I know we need to do more podcasts, but, yeah, I had just had four babies back to back to back.

43:34 – Michaela (Host)

So, um, we wanted a break for a while, right, and so I was like I gotta learn how to can eventually guys come on.

43:52 – Tara (Guest)

And you know, I knew because, of my medical background, that birth control is not great, you know, and, and that there were some risks and all that. But I thought, you know, I really think that I want to try it like, just have this put in and, um, it’d be easy and simple and that it was the best option of all the options.

44:10

So, because we had actually already tried doing family planning and a couple of the natural methods, which obviously I wasn’t that great, um, but so the Iud, though I think it just totally threw my hormones for a loop and um put everything out of whack and I started having crazy symptoms and I got really sick too and I, um, had still had my baby, my pregnancy you know from the prior pregnancy and it was actually the heaviest I had ever been in my life. I think I was like 215 or so pounds and when I got sick I suddenly lost about 60 pounds within like four months. And so it was. And it was just because I was so sick I couldn’t keep food down. Anytime I ate I would start getting like stomach cramps and I would have to run to the bathroom and I would have nausea and vomiting and just all these crazy symptoms. So I started going to all these doctors you know, everybody’s doing blood tests and all these tests and scans and everything was coming back normal and they were all just saying you know, I don’t know what it is, we, we don’t know, um. And I think it also had to do with a lot of stress, because I was like I told you earlier, I was really starting to struggle with anxiety, which maybe could have been because my hormones were all out of whack, um, but then I was having this anxiety and I think that I I was just eating a typical diet too. And I actually knew that I had had a gluten allergy prior because when I was, um, about 18 years old, I had some testing done and they confirmed that I had a gluten allergy or sensitivity allergy. You know, it’s kind of hard to tell which one, but I completely cut out gluten and I did that for I think it was about seven years and it helped tremendously.

46:22

But then, after having all the babies and life got busy, you know, I started introducing it back again and I seem to be okay. So I just start kind of going back into bad habits of eating, um, a lot of processed foods and sugar and junk food, you know, to survive the mom years, right, yes, and the little years, yeah. Yeah, I totally know that they can be a lot of work and and rough and very little sleep, yeah, and so you know. But I think that that really affected me and it threw my body into just this crazy cycle of rejecting everything, making me fast all the time. You know, I lost all this weight and I started doing all these things to heal, about EMF and about using sauna treatment and red light therapies and all these other modalities that you can do. And I started doing them all and, man, I felt amazing.

47:37

I completely healed, I got super fit and healthy, and then I started realizing I’ve got to watch what I eat and and really being careful about my diet, and I think that that’s really what woke me up, like a big sudden wake up was, was that experience? Um, because I was literally on my deathbed. Like I had there was one at the very end I hadn’t eaten for five weeks and I couldn’t have anything. And I was going to all the doctors. I was even seeing natural doctors and telling them like I’m going to die, like I haven’t eaten in five weeks. This isn’t normal. Like what am I? What am I doing here? Yeah, and, and all I could have is maybe some um shakes, like those nutrition shakes and stuff, yeah, and they really had no answer.

48:30

And so that was a huge supernatural thing for me too, I think, and a spiritual experience as well that really got me to focus on my spirituality a lot, but also just my diet and how we care for ourselves. And we started traveling, uh, a little bit before we got the motor home and we would go out of the city, and I noticed every time we went out of the city, I, the ringing in my ears would stop. I had horrible ringing in my ears. Um, we would get headaches me and my husband would get headaches pretty frequently, like not all the time, but more than I had ever gotten headaches. And then I realized all these little like small symptoms that are can be associated with other things and they’re also so easy to just kind of well, you know it’s not that big, it’s so normal.

49:24 – Michaela (Host)

Everyone’s experiencing it. It’s hard of being the same a mom or whatever, yeah.

49:29 – Tara (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it’s just probably something else. It’ll eventually go away. But we, we started to realize, hey, every time we go out of town and we go out into the mountains, all this stuff stops. And and so we really started thinking I swear it’s got to be like all these 5g towers that they’re putting up everywhere.

49:49 – Michaela (Host)

I mean we went to Phoenix because a good friend of mine lives there and I know you have to go, so we can. We can wrap this up very shortly. But, um, we were walking like across the crosswalks and there’s 5g towers at the crosswalk with warning signs saying do not stand within 200 feet. And you’re like, okay, it’s literally at the crosswalk. I’m like this is crazy. So far, like where I live, in Waco, they haven’t like deployed the 5g like that yet, but in Austin and Dallas, like an hour, either way, they do and you can, I feel, like you can feel it. Maybe it’s just me, but I do think like and I know people have hypersensitivity and they really can hear it and feel it when they’re coming in. It’s wild, wild.

50:25 – Tara (Guest)

Yeah.

50:27

So yeah that’s when we really started thinking about EMF too, and so that’s one thing that I thought was really important is, since we do still have to have internet which I really wish we didn’t have to have it at all but since we do have to have internet for both of our jobs, I want to make sure that we stay protected. So we have our life tunes all over the house and we also have one that I keep in the truck. So every time we go to town because town, which is thankfully 30 minute drive away, they already have a 5g tower, so yeah that’s awesome.

51:07 – Michaela (Host)

Yeah, I have one of my keychain and my I’m like everywhere and then like now that my kids he’s going to like a you know kind of like a small nature school and so I just like put one in his backpack. Everyone there is protected. We’re good.

51:19 – Tara (Guest)

I just can’t believe that they’re putting these things in schools like right I know I’ve been doing so much right next to the little kids schools. I mean it’s just insane to me and yeah it is.

51:30 – Michaela (Host)

It’s so wild I’ve seen a lot of parents coming together to get it removed or to get it shut off. Like a lot of it’s happening a lot it seems like right now. Okay, I know you have to go, so tell us how people can find you, um, where to connect with you, all the things.

51:46 – Tara (Guest)

Yeah, so I am on Instagram. Instagram is my main platform right now. Um, I’m trying to expand, so I’m on X two and I’m going to start posting on YouTube again so I can do more long form videos. But on Instagram I’m the Maverick Mama and, yeah, just follow, connect, reach out to me. I love answering questions, so I always tell everybody don’t hesitate to send me a message I love to talk to people. I’m an introvert, but I’m also like I’d love to have my social time too, you know. So I love talking to people and I’m happy to answer any questions. And, if you, I have a lot of people who are interested in moving out, you know, away from the city, and they hit me up for just advice on how to find land or how to make sure you’re picking the right land. So I’m always happy to help, because this is really my new passion. My passion was childbirth and I still do love it, and I I want to share all my knowledge because I’ve been in it now for 12 years.

52:59

But yeah, now I’m going into a different phase of life and now my passion really is moving out away from the city and I’d love to see the rural communities become a thing again. I feel like our last generation was told to leave all the rural communities and now we need a lot of people to go back to them and get back into farming and self-sufficiency and growing your own food, and all that because I think there’s so much unfortunate corruption in the world and in our country, and even when it comes to, especially, corporations. The food that we eat is so bad because these corporations are greedy and they’re trying to make a lot of money and so they’re gonna use the cheapest, most low quality ingredients that they can possibly get, and then they’re not telling people about it. And the way that we can battle that, you know, is by not buying their products anymore, and if you’re growing your own food, guess whose food you’re not going to buy anymore?

54:12 – Michaela (Host)

So, yeah, especially working in community with people it’s like, hey, I’ll grow this, you grow that. I mean we have. We have our own little group of people. We’re kind of like planning the 10 year plan, like, okay, we’re going to start here, five years we’ll all buy land.

54:25

Yeah, it’s so fun because it’s so much better to do when you have other people who are on that vision with you and not, you know, like the one really big choice you have to make and like, or a really big pivot that we had to make was like we had to start surrounding ourselves with those types of people and like stop trying to, you know, finagle these, these relationships where they’re like trying to like they’re kind of telling you you’re crazy or they’re trying to, you know, you, we just kind of pivoted and like found friends who really are on that and we still love our, our friends as well. But we, we realized like okay, we need the, the permaculture friends, and that you know that we want to be able to help each other and learn from each other. But it’s also just so much more motivating and, uh yeah, like just communal and you feel like you’re not alone in it so.

55:11

I feel like I can tell, I can see that that’s what you’re building online which is so fun, and I feel like that’s why, being an introvert, it doesn’t really matter so much whenever you’re like, when you’re, when you have something you’re really passionate about and people are wanting to learn, or wanting to connect, or wanting you know whatever, share information.

55:27 – Tara (Guest)

It’s just like the introvert is like gets all like yes yeah, yeah, exactly, and we have one amazing neighbor next to us, and that’s something I tell people when you’re looking for land too, is make sure you meet your neighbors before you buy the land, cause some of them you might not want to be neighbors with, but some of them are really awesome and you want some awesome people around you, but we only have one right now, so I’m I’m needing some more in this community, so if anybody wants to, Tara, yeah, she’ll help you find land in the desert.

56:01 – Michaela (Host)

I really appreciate it and please, let’s, please, let’s schedule another interview soon, because we have so many different topics we could dive into.

56:07 – Tara (Guest)

Oh yeah, we could Thank you so much for having me.

56:10 – Michaela (Host)

Bye, bye. You’re listening to the Wave Forward.