Regena Thomashauer: The book is here to remind women, which is that no matter how life brings us to our knees, we are still the source of life itself. We know how to die, how to be reborn. It’s the cyclical nature of the feminine body.

Kate Northrup: I was either gonna go up in a ball of flames or in a shower of starlight, but I was going. Going. I have quite the conversation for you today. Twenty one years ago, I walked into the living room of a brownstone on the Upper West Side Of New York City having no idea what I was getting myself into And encountering the woman who educated me on the power of pleasure changed the course of my life. And her name is Regena Thomashauer.

And today, we’re unpacking she really unpacked, and then I just quoted her back to herself. As of yet, commonly unspoken thread between the erasure of the sacred feminine, the way in which we have raised our daughters to erase themselves, what that has to do with the divine and our power, and how to heal it backwards and forwards. This is not a conversation about before afters. This is not a conversation about getting it right or sticking any kind of landing. It is a raw, honest, and courageous conversation about aliveness and the erotic and life force and power.

So please enjoy Regena Thomashauer and a peek into her brand new book, On Our Nice. Welcome to Plenty, a weekly recalibration of power, money, and safety for high capacity humans. I’m Kate Northrup, best selling author and creator of Relaxed Money, and this is where neuroscience meets ancient wisdom meets real wealth strategy. This is the sacred conversation at the intersection of money, the body, and the life you’re truly here to live. If you’re ready to reimagine what’s possible for yourself and for the world, you’re in the right place.

Let’s go. Regena, this book, your work has always been wildly courageous.

Regena Thomashauer: Mhmm. And so

Kate Northrup: much of your career was as Mama Gina. Yes. And so there’s a certain layer when we’re in a

Regena Thomashauer: Persona. Persona.

Kate Northrup: Mhmm.

Regena Thomashauer: Versus when we are Barenaked.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. And so I’d love to know what do you okay. Just first question is, do you think you wrote pussy as Mama Gina more or as Regena more? It was

Regena Thomashauer: both. Yeah. It was both because I was still doing mastery full time, and it was the story of the woman behind Yeah. All that was created. This book was different because I began, you know, the moment that I left the mastery stage, which is, you know, many of us go through experiences in life where we have to say good bye to a thing that has been our identity.

And in some cases, it’s a marriage. Yeah. It can be a job. It can be a career. It can be a a lifestyle.

It can be a move where the everything about everything that you knew about yourself, you are saying this is no more. And so I the book is about the journey into the unknown for me. I nothing that I knew about who I was was anything about what happened following the end of mastery.

Kate Northrup: So we’re gonna go back a little bit because I I was there when mastery was birthed. And so Yes. You were. For you listening who don’t know what we’re talking about, Regena, for how many years? It was sixteen years.

For sixteen years Mhmm. Ran to this day, I think, the most extraordinary The most. Transformational Mhmm. Theatrical

Regena Thomashauer: Yes. Divine Playground. Playground For women.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. Which changed thousands and thousands Yeah. And thousands of women’s lives.

Regena Thomashauer: How many women came through mastery? Oh, goodness. I I It was thousands. Thousands.

Kate Northrup: I love that you don’t know that.

Regena Thomashauer: I don’t know.

Kate Northrup: That’s actually just so refreshing because I will just say, and we’re gonna get to how this is connected, I spend a lot of time with people who, like, track metrics that sound impressive. Yeah. And I just it’s so nice for you to just be like, I don’t know, a thousand.

Regena Thomashauer: There were thousands. I I will say the and I wanna speak to anyone who’s holding a dream. You know, in this world, in this lifetime, we have the privilege sometimes of putting a dream on its feet. And so mastery started, as you know, in my living room with 10 women, and that was twenty five plus years ago. And then it scaled.

I scaled it to thousands and thousands of women, you know, at the biggest venues in New York City.

Kate Northrup: You your final one was at the Javits Center?

Regena Thomashauer: The Javits Center and then we went on to a cathedral. Yeah.

Kate Northrup: The Javitt Center and then a cathedral.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. And then a broad and Broadway stage also. Full body. So when

Kate Northrup: I came to take the class Yeah. In your living room Mhmm. I did not know all the things going on behind the scenes in your personal life because why would I have? Yeah. That wasn’t like part of the curriculum.

But you shared in On Our moment where you needed to grow the business for two reasons. One,

Regena Thomashauer: the goddess was calling you too. Two, there was actually a real financial need. No. I was I was I was beyond broke. I was I first of all, I had a $250,000 tax debt after leaving my marriage and a seven year old Yeah.

To raise who, you know, she had Kids are she needed like food and

Kate Northrup: clothes. Expensive. Yeah. And then How did they how did you end up was it because of just what was going on in your marriage financially and like what you were looking at and what you weren’t looking at

Regena Thomashauer: that you ended up? I wasn’t looking at anything. Okay. The my deal that I cut was you this was my ex. I was like, you handle the business.

I will be the show pony. I will write the books. I will be on TV shows. I’ll go on the Today Show. I’ll be on Conan, and then I’ll teach all the classes.

Yeah. And you handle the rest. I see. And so the rest included the rest, which included slowly building up a tax debt of a $250,000. Okay.

So there you were. You had taken this leap to leave the marriage. Yeah. Yep. Because?

Well, it was it was so funny, you know, how life is so cute. I came back from my book tour for Mama Gina’s marriage manual. Okay. Which, you know, you you have to say, don’t ever write a marriage manual because it will destroy your marriage. It will destroy especially Noted.

Yeah. Just not note to self. Okay. And so I came back from the marriage manual. I found out there was this lean on everything.

And then I was like, okay. I’m hanging onto this marriage by a thread anyway.

Kate Northrup: Okay.

Regena Thomashauer: There’s no way this is going to be a situation that will prevail for either my kid or myself or my business. I gotta go. We gotta get out. And so we went.

Kate Northrup: And so you needed to make a new plan for your business because in the class that I took, we were just at the point no more women could have fit in your living room. No. We were at our stuffed max capacity. Yeah. I came into the final living room class.

Yeah. And then there was this whole plan cooked up. So I want folks to listen in. If you are on the precipice of you have a dream, it’s big, and a financial need, both of those things can happen at the same time. Mhmm.

What did you do then to get yourself out of that financial situation and and begin?

Regena Thomashauer: Panicked. First, I panicked, cried, and then I realized, you know, I wasn’t gonna be able to solve the problem myself. So I hired Nathan Patmore who was very clever with things. And he said, basically, this is not gonna fly in your like, you need to go big or go home. And you have to leave your home and go big Right.

If you want to be able

Kate Northrup: in your living room anymore.

Regena Thomashauer: Can’t do it in the living room anymore. And so he was like, we need to book a venue that can hold at least a 100 plus people because my living room was maxed. And I was like, woah. That is so wild. A 100 people.

Woah. And so we did. And I literally took stacks of 0.25 that I had in drawers and any possible penny that I could find and put it all together and rented a venue, which I had to enroll at least 50 people that night, or we were gonna go under, and we had an intro to the School of Women in the Arts Mastery Program.

Kate Northrup: It was phenomenal. I was there. I will never forget sitting in the front row. It was so compelling, and there was, I think Feathers nose. Mary did her

Regena Thomashauer: She did. Feather burlesque dance. Didn’t Emily do Rolling on the River? That was like a little live entertainment.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. There a lot of live entertainment. That was so that’s it. And then I remember the pitch. I remember the whole thing.

Yeah. I signed up. I was one of those I paid for it myself on a credit card.

Regena Thomashauer: Thank you for doing that.

Kate Northrup: So I I will say this, because I get people asking this question all the time. They say, is it and this is a bit of an aside, but it’s related

Regena Thomashauer: to We’re doing it. Yeah.

Kate Northrup: They say, is it okay to pay for something Yeah. With money you don’t have? Yeah. And how do I know when that’s like consumer debt versus investment debt? Mhmm.

And I actually use signing up for mastery as an example. Yeah. For me

Regena Thomashauer: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: That investment led to so many good things in my life. Mhmm. Not to mention, like, very direct financial opportunities. Mhmm. I met Marie Forleo in in your in your she was one of the speakers.

Mhmm. I mean, so many women that I still know today and did business with whatever. Yeah. So I can never tell somebody one way or the other, but there are times when you just know and I just knew. Yeah.

And that investment completely changed my life.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah.

Kate Northrup: So okay. So Wonderful. What did it feel like that night knowing that the stakes were so high when you did that pitch?

Regena Thomashauer: It got worse.

Kate Northrup: The stakes got higher. Okay. Habit?

Regena Thomashauer: You know, we used to have fax machines.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. I had a fax machine in my apartment in New York.

Regena Thomashauer: Okay. So I get suddenly it starts spitting out paper before we’re supposed to go to this event. Uh-huh. And I got threatened with a lawsuit because I had hired Nathan from his former employer who felt that there were some kind of conflictive interests, although there wasn’t. Okay.

But in the object was to press fear into the hearts of me and my company. Okay. And it was effective. But it only made me even more determined to just shine like a diamond because what else was it gonna do? I was either gonna go up in a ball of flames or in a shower of starlight, but I was going.

And so it was both the most thrilling, the most terrifying, and I I always think that the moment that you leap off the cliff is the only time you get to feel the I don’t know. Is it a trampoline? Is it a net? Is it an like the trapeze comes and you grab on, you swing to a new planet? Is it Something miraculous happens when you take a great leap.

It’s never a mistake. It’s never a mistake. And

Kate Northrup: how many people did you enroll that night? 30. You enrolled 30.

Regena Thomashauer: So we didn’t get close to our goal. And so, of course, we it seemed that all was lost, but it wasn’t. Because the as the event grew closer, people came and word-of-mouth, and I I don’t remember all the things that we did that we never stopped doing wonderful things to inspire people to come and go. And finally, we got over a 100. You got over a 100.

And it was a whole new dawn, new day, and it was extraordinary. It was the most fun I’d ever had.

Kate Northrup: And that was the first class of Mama Gina’s program. Yeah. Yeah. And I was in the first five.

Regena Thomashauer: That is so cool, baby. Yeah. So happy you’re there.

Kate Northrup: So then, you decided, or the goddess decided Mhmm. In ’20 what year? ’19. 2019.

Regena Thomashauer: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: Which was tremendous intuition given what happened in 2020 with live events, but

Regena Thomashauer: Wasn’t that amazing? Because it is not inexpensive to book a live event. Like a 100 k you have to put down like Oh, the Oh my god. I would’ve it would’ve been financial strain, at least.

Kate Northrup: Do you remember the moment Yes. You knew that you needed to stop?

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. What going on, and how did it feel? Okay. First of all, I remember writing in my journal probably a few months before these a new sequence of events happened. I remember writing my journal, wow.

I wish that I could feel as free off stage

Kate Northrup: I know.

Regena Thomashauer: As I do on stage. I because, like, when I am on stage, I can feel the goddess everywhere. I feel like I do not make a move that I am not designed, held, loved. Like, I am flawless on stage. There is no one that parties on stage like I I I feel so free.

And all I wanted to do is feel that level of freedom when I wasn’t on stage.

Kate Northrup: Rest your life.

Regena Thomashauer: I think that desire was the beginning. And then what happened was and you know so many of these women, My entire staff sat me down in the backyard one day, and they were like, we love this work, and we’re exhausted. Yeah. We have children to raise. We can’t keep up with this clip.

Because when you are holding a portal for the most devastated, disparaged part of the female body, soul, and psyche, meaning for her to fall in love with her erotic, with her pussy, body, with the sacred inside of her, you are gonna meet every single, I don’t know what to call it, like, spirit from the hellscape of the divine feminine that follows the unleashing of so much energy. And so it was a tremendous lift for my team both psychologically and physically and in all ways.

Kate Northrup: And then logistically. I mean

Regena Thomashauer: Oh my goodness.

Kate Northrup: Let’s even talk about the costumes. Yeah. And right. I mean, even if you weren’t holding space for Mhmm. The depth of transformation that you were Yeah.

Even if it was just a regular production, which it was not. Yeah. That would even be a lot. Yeah. That and then a 100 x.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. And it was and we were also scaling, and it was happening 365. Like, we were it was like doing a Broadway show all the time. Loading in, loading out. Yeah.

You know, just it was a lot. It was a tremendous amount. It was so divine. Oh

Kate Northrup: god. Okay. So they sat you down and they’re basically like, we’re burned out.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. And and it would have been different if it was one of them, but it was all

Kate Northrup: of them.

Regena Thomashauer: They were all done. That’s fun. They were done, done, done. So that happened. And then in addition to that, my daughter was struggling.

As many young women struggle with eating disorders, you know, they’re only becoming more and more prevalent in the world today, and they’re not understood. Yeah. And I don’t know any woman that doesn’t, at the very least, have disordered eating. Just don’t know how to

Kate Northrup: I know like one. Okay. You know I literally have one friend.

Regena Thomashauer: You have one friend. Struggled with it. Oh god. That’s incredible.

Kate Northrup: She is a miracle. Yeah.

Regena Thomashauer: Is a miracle. So I was in this world that needed my attention desperately, and I needed my attention. Yeah. So there was it was time. It was just time even though I tried

Kate Northrup: to fight it. By that point

Regena Thomashauer: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: You know, so you started in 2005, now it’s 2019. Mhmm. Were you in a place financially where you could, you know, essentially like go on sabbatical or was it more of a leap like, I’ll figure it out later? Do you remember? This is

Regena Thomashauer: the thing. I could have stopped Uh-huh. But I couldn’t stop. Because when you’re mission driven, like when you actually, you know, believe that the work you’re doing is valuable Yeah. You want to find a way to give your gifts even if it’s differently.

Yeah. And I was curious. I was like, okay. The great pussy in the sky obviously wants me to stop doing mastery. Right.

And I actually didn’t wanna stop doing mastery, but I was like, not gonna fight with you about this. I’m gonna surrender.

Kate Northrup: You knew.

Regena Thomashauer: And then I was like, okay. There must be something else Yeah. And I want to figure out what it is. But I had no idea how or where or even what to look for, so there I was. There you were.

Kate Northrup: And you had created a void in a way Yeah. Except that right away, that void needed to be filled by you showing up for your going.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. My girl and my family. You know, I came from

Kate Northrup: The whole thing.

Regena Thomashauer: The whole thing. My family was very fractured, and there’s a way in which my daughter’s illness even though it was you could say the worst thing that could ever happen, you know, when your child is cannot eat, the mother cannot breathe and that is the way it is. And what happened for us was what I learned the way to deal with an eating disorder such that the child has access to healing is yes. You have to put together a team, a psychiatrist, a therapist, a family therapist, a dietitian, group therapy, my own individual therapy. What I did was I invited all of my family to participate

Kate Northrup: to help her. So, like, your mom, your brother Mhmm.

Regena Thomashauer: Her dad. Dad. My current boyfriend at the time, the whole family to jump on board to stand for Maggie so she could feel held and grounded and loved. And it healed my family. We would get together.

We were so fractured. No one saw each other. Maggie grew up without really knowing her cousins because there was abuse in my family, so it fractured the family. And suddenly, we were having Shabbat dinners once a month. We were stuck in the kitchen.

I was like, we’re doing this people. We are Jews. We are going to figure out what Shabbat is supposed to be. And I’d be like, we are in the kitchen and we are all helping. Yeah.

And we are all doing this. And my brother would be, no. Don’t we just order takeout? I was like, no.

Kate Northrup: Is that Chinese food?

Regena Thomashauer: No. No. We are gonna cook the chicken. We are going to Yeah. Learn how to work together as a family.

Wow. And it was not a simple matter.

Kate Northrup: No. And you write it’s really intense. You write about some of the things that happened Mhmm. In your childhood, and I you know, we don’t need to go into those now because people will read the book. Mhmm.

But wrote about how your mom was not able to protect you No. From that. No. She was not able to meet you in the physical and emotional pain. Mm-mm.

So you felt very alone. And I’m curious with your mom showing up for therapy with Maggie Yeah. What was that like for her and for you? Because a grandmother’s relationship with her granddaughters

Regena Thomashauer: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: Is so different So different. Than her. There’s like a purity, or there can be.

Regena Thomashauer: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: And it’s very different than the relationship mother daughter Mhmm. I find. Mhmm. So what was that like for

Regena Thomashauer: you? Mhmm. At first, I was there like, it’s almost like I had to teach my family members that showing up was enough. Mhmm. And that however they entered this community of support was perfect and great.

And then specifically for my mom to watch her overcome whatever hesitation or resistance and to stand for my little girl was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. It was heal it healed me to have her there. It healed me to know, oh, you know what? If she had only had somebody to support her back then, she might have been very different than she was. Because she had me saying, no.

Your voice matters. Your showing up here matters. It’s so meaningful to me. It’s so meaningful to my daughter. It’s so meaningful to our family.

And once she understood that, there was no way to keep her away.

Kate Northrup: One thing you wrote about is that when Maggie was little, even, like, snuggling with her wasn’t totally natural. Like, you needed to learn that. And then Maggie said to you, mom, I I can’t feel you. Like, I can’t feel your love. Then you learned Yeah.

How? And what I’m struck by is, as your friend, I have experienced you Mhmm. To be so incredible at Mhmm. Acknowledging people and saying the appreciation Yeah. Saying the gratitude Yeah.

Saying the acknowledgment acknowledgement that most people never say. Yeah. So can you talk to me about how you melted the parts of you that were armored against that level of intimacy and connection because I experience you as really good at it now. Yeah. And you say things that are so beautiful that I think for many people, it would feel too vulnerable and intimate to even express those things and I know that that wasn’t what was modeled for you.

Yeah.

Regena Thomashauer: Well, I grew up without I can’t remember any physical contact with me or any family member. I was really, like, so on my own. My safety was when I was hiding in my room Except for abuse. Yeah. I was by myself when I was safe.

So even when Maggie would hug me as a little toddler, I’d be like, how do I take this? Wait a minute. I don’t wanna pull away from her. Now her cute little arms are around me. Oh, no.

I think I thought, am I worthy of this love of this little beautiful little girl? Like, I I think she and so I would breathe through. She she and I wasn’t used to cuddling, but Maggie’s a snuggler from, like, way back.

Kate Northrup: We are who we are. Yeah.

Regena Thomashauer: And so I learned, you know, because she loved to like, if she got scared at night, she’d come running in my bed, and she would just wanna cuddle, and I’d be like, I’m helping her? My presence

Kate Northrup: Yeah.

Regena Thomashauer: Is helping her? Okay. And so it was it was effortful at first. Mhmm. But then as she grew up and she still felt like she couldn’t feel my love when she was going through things, I learned did you ever read that book, The Five Love Languages?

Kate Northrup: I haven’t read the book, but I have taken the quiz.

Regena Thomashauer: Okay. Fine. So which one are you?

Kate Northrup: I am words of affirmation

Regena Thomashauer: I’m at two. And physical match. Oh, okay. I’m acts of service. Okay.

So I would be doing things like, oh, Maggie, let me help you with this. Maggie and she she couldn’t feel that. So I had to learn how do I speak her love language. And for her, it was always physical connection and approval, like her feeling seen by me, feeling heard by me no matter how she was coming across just so that I could learn how to be reflective in my listening, really, really take in her position or point of view, and then just, like, loving her, holding her, cuddling her. Like, it’s and and now it’s like my happy place.

The first thing I wanna do when I see her is I just need to, like we just like to jump in bed together and read a book, watch a movie, like, just be together. It’s like the sweetest and the most adorable thing.

Kate Northrup: And she’s 28. Yeah. Right? Mhmm. So to keep that kind of connection Yes.

With a fully adult woman Yes.

Regena Thomashauer: Is amazing. Yeah. You know, I wrote in the dedication, you know, thanking my mom for giving me life and thanking Maggie for teaching me how to love. Because, you know, loving somebody doesn’t happen on your terms. It happens because you can connect with them on their terms.

Yeah. That you love past your own limitations and your own ego, and that you are willing to do whatever it takes so that their soul can relax Yeah. And they can feel you. And I made it across that bridge.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. You did. And with the words of affirmation piece, one of the tools that you teach is upriding people. Oh, yes. Right?

And Yes. And you are brilliant at it, and it really is, I think, an undersung skill skill

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah.

Kate Northrup: In in community, in sisterhood Yeah. For sure. So that one, did you also you also had to learn and practice, or do you think you came in more naturally good at?

Regena Thomashauer: Oh, no. I learned it from Maggie’s first grade teacher.

Kate Northrup: Really? Yes. Oh, great.

Regena Thomashauer: I was in class one day, and she actually coined the term. She was like, right. You know, so and so said whatever so and so said. And then she said, now we’re gonna upride them. And I was like, that is incredible.

And so I just I learned it. I I took it. I was like The first grade teacher. Yeah. That’s so Because, you know, that’s a time where you’re kind of finding your way as a little person.

And one of the ways that we get to experience ourselves in the world is when you know, how you know you sunk the putt is if somebody reflects it to you and said, you did great just then. Yeah. That was important what you just said. Yeah. And so I just like took that and ran.

Took it in. Did it ever make you uncomfortable? To upright someone? Yeah. Oh, never.

Not even one time. It’s just such a pleasurable thing to do is you know what it is? I I feel like one of the great joys of life is and and it it kind of my way, I make my way through the world is like, how can I raise the temperature of the experience that I’m having with this person? I used to do it when I was waiting tables. You know?

Okay.

Kate Northrup: I did.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. Even before I, you know, knew anything. I was just like, oh, these people are struggling over here. Let me just see how I can raise the temperature a little for them just to Just because. Just because.

Why not? Just because. Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: And that, what you’re describing Yeah. Is the thread of your book. Yeah. That That is life force. Mhmm.

That’s the power of the erotic. Mhmm. That’s aliveness. Mhmm. And you were doing it even when you were waiting tables hiding from the world Yeah.

In the rest of your life. Right?

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. But you have to remember, I got this gift which was the goddess or the great pussy or the divine feminine or the universe as embodied in the feminine came to me when I was a little girl. When I was a little struggling five year old. And how she came to me wasn’t in words. It wasn’t like God saying, Regena.

It was this feeling of this beauty and this radiance, and she would come and sit on my bed at night. And it could have been the twisted imagination of an abused five year old, or it could have been, you know, goddesses predate the patriarchal world’s culture. Right? You scratch the surface. You know, patriarchy is only 5,000 years old.

50,000 ago, it was she who bleeds but does not die and gives life. It was the goddess that runs through the rivers, through the wind, the rain, the crashing ocean waves, that erotic living, breathing life force that allows trees to grow from seeds, like that is happening all around us only always. The earth holding us, feeding us, shifting day to night. And we don’t plug into that too much. But I got lucky and I got plugged into it as a little girl.

And it allowed me to kind of recognize almost like, I know you recognize this about yourself, like, oh, I am the holder of this life force. I can use it to elevate if I like. Yeah. You know, women are Or to destroy. And we can use it to destroy.

You know.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. We have choices.

Regena Thomashauer: We have choices. We could torch a small village with our rage if we chose to, and that’s a lot of power.

Kate Northrup: Do you remember where you were or how old you were, what was going on when you realized that’s what was happening for you as a little five year old girl? Because at five, you probably weren’t saying like, oh, the goddess comes to me at night sits on my bedside. Or do you think

Regena Thomashauer: No. I was definitely thinking that. No. I I this is how weird I was. No.

I was so strange. That is amazing. No. Because here is how crazy I because I I thought she came, and I thought the reason she came was because she was like, oh, Regena will feel me. So I thought, okay.

I get it.

Kate Northrup: Well, I

Regena Thomashauer: mean She

Kate Northrup: sounds true.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. She wanted she wants to be felt. And then I thought my job was, you know, to find her. Okay. And I thought she was hiding in some church.

I thought she was maybe with the Catholics because of Christmas because y’all have that. What are you? You’re not Catholic. You’re something. No.

But you had Christmas.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. I grew up like vaguely

Regena Thomashauer: Vaguely Christian. Vaguely Christian. Pagan, whatever. Yeah. But you had like Yeah.

We didn’t we celebrated. We were Jewish. We had no sparkling. That makes sense.

Kate Northrup: So maybe she’s over there because there’s lights

Regena Thomashauer: and tinsel and Santa.

Kate Northrup: I thought that it’s gotta be. Goddess is there, but the goddess.

Regena Thomashauer: No. No. I thought I was on did you ever see Peter Pan?

Kate Northrup: Yeah. Where I mean,

Regena Thomashauer: kind thought I I thought maybe Tinkerbell was you know, because he had a clap and a Tinkerbell. Yeah. Anyway, fairies. So I was always looking because I thought there was gonna I was gonna find some religious edifice Uh-huh. Where it was all about the goddess.

And And I didn’t, so I made one.

Kate Northrup: That was not the case. So you made one. Yeah. You created

Regena Thomashauer: I agree.

Kate Northrup: A School

Regena Thomashauer: of Yes. Yeah. Wow. Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: When Maggie was struggling and you needed to show up Yeah. To stand there at the threshold Mhmm. Until she came back Mhmm. To the living world. Yep.

What did that require require of

Regena Thomashauer: you given that you were not stood for? Like, when we’re asked to do something that was never done for us Yep. Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: Where do we go? Where do we

Regena Thomashauer: where are the resources for that? Where did you dig? Everywhere I could, I dug, and I dug, and I dug. I was unstoppable in trying to find resources, and what I found was that the world of eating disorders are extremely under resourced and under researched. But it didn’t mean that there was no.

I just kept going. I can’t even tell you how many therapists, psychiatrists, programs. There was nothing that was going to stop my search. And you know why I in this book, I describe at least 10 different goddesses. I could have gone on.

There could there’s thousands of them. But there was there’s a story in there of Demeter and Persephone. Yeah. And when Demeter’s daughter Persephone disappeared one day, and it’s not dissimilar to an eating disorder because an eating disorder really literally because of the chemistry in the brain when the brain is deprived of food, it is not your child. Yeah.

It is a disease, and you don’t know that because the body is still there, but it is a disease. So I was in this incredible grief, and I did not know where to go or what to do. And it’s a parallel to the story of Demeter, which is she did not know her daughter was with Hades, but she would not stop searching. She could not be stopped. She was in so much grief.

And because she was the goddess of light and life, the earth began to die. I think of that as such a potent metaphor for where we are right now as the world of the feminine is dim in so many ways. We are losing so many rights that we took for granted. For example, abortion. There are so many countries in this world where women don’t have privileges even to drive or vote.

There are is so much discrimination. And so it’s almost like light and life are dying or diminishing, and it requires first a grieving, which Demeter did not hold back on, and it also required a remembering, because there was a moment when Balbo, who’s a goddess, encountered Demeter recognized that the planet was dying and she needed to be back on point as the goddess she was. But she wouldn’t stop looking for her daughter. So Balbo literally flashed her pussy and told her body jokes. Demeter laughed, and she remembered something that the book is here to remind women, which is that no matter how life brings us to our knees, we are still the source of life itself.

We know how to die, how to be reborn. It’s the cyclical nature of the feminine body, and that when we truly feel the depth of what is ours to feel and connect to that erotic life force that runs through all living things, including these bodies, from that place, we can create solutions that we might not see if we’re blinded by grief. And from that place, once she was joined in sisterhood with Balbo, she was like, god damn, Hades has her. Gotta go

Kate Northrup: find that mother and get my kid back. And she did. And what’s so beautiful about your work and what I know you’ve crawled through in the these past couple of years is that there is not one single slice of avoiding Mhmm. The grief or the pain or the sadness. Right?

You actually have an incredible practice to turn up your own emotional metabolism. Yeah. Yeah. So because I think many of us can misunderstand and think, oh, this is about feeling happy all the time. Right.

And that if I’m not, I’m doing it wrong or I’m failing at connecting with my aliveness. Right? So can you talk about swamping? Yeah. And how that’s come to play in these recent years that were really Swampy.

Hard in there sometimes.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. First of all, the reason I titled this book on our knees Mhmm. Is because if we are living well, we are never too far from our knees. There is always something at all times that is pulling us there in one way or another. Right now, for example, my daughter is doing great.

She lives in London. She has a job she is excellent at, and she’s doing really, really well. She has a boyfriend that loves her and she loves and he is so spectacular. We’re actually going to Norway to meet his family because he’s half Norwegian, half Swiss. So we’re for Christmas.

So they’ve been together for three years. So I’m like, what? I am not on my knees with my kid at the moment. She is spectacular, and I’m on my knees with my mom. You know, my mom is very elderly.

She is approaching her 100 birthday, which on one hand is sheer delight. And on the other hand, the day to day struggles Yeah. Of a body that fragile are so heartbreaking. Yeah. And there’s no amount of give that would be enough to relieve her of the burden of both the blessing and the curse of such a long well lived life.

Kate Northrup: Mhmm.

Regena Thomashauer: And so I have heartbreak about that. Yeah. And so that grief lives in me right next to the joy of my daughter and so on and so on and so on of all the so ons.

Kate Northrup: Yeah.

Regena Thomashauer: So the book is about please do not feel that you are failing if you are overwhelmed by grief or sadness or rage or devastation or jealousy or you’ve just had a breakup or you’ve

Kate Northrup: just been

Regena Thomashauer: fired. All of those moments, yes, they will, if you’re living well, will bring us to our knees. And when you own them and allow the fullness of the feeling, they become portals. It’s almost like the floor becomes the door. So Love that.

And if you want to, we could do a little practice right now. Sure. And this will be a practice anyone watching can Okay. Join us. Let’s do it.

Okay. Here, I happen to just have a little song on my playlist that So we could how this works is you kind of think of something you’re holding that’s hard to hold at the moment. Do you have an on on your knees moment that you’re holding right now? Mhmm. Do you wanna talk about it for a little minute?

No. But I will

Kate Northrup: say it is about family. Yeah. And it is hard to see things have turned out in this situation the way they have. And I have a mix of grief, anger, and mystification.

Regena Thomashauer: Okay.

Kate Northrup: Okay. Alright. Yeah. I hear

Regena Thomashauer: you on that one. I hear you. I see you. Yeah. So part one of the on our knees move would be, I would call it, the truth tantrum.

Yeah. Which is very similar to swamping. It’s like you just let the raw emotion run through your body just Yeah. And we’re we’re just gonna do it for thirty seconds. Okay.

But and let’s say we’re not gonna hit our knees even though if we had a live camera crew We would. We would. Yeah. But we don’t. So No.

You can do

Kate Northrup: a lot of frame

Regena Thomashauer: if you Yeah. You can do a lot in your chair.

Kate Northrup: Oh,

Regena Thomashauer: yeah. You know, there’s a lot of movement from the waist up. K. Alright. So we’re just gonna give a little music.

Song.

Kate Northrup: Because everybody’s disapproving. So

Regena Thomashauer: here we go. So how you do it is you put on a piece of music that moves you, and you just let the feelings of frustration, of grease, rage move through your back, through your shoulders, through your neck. Maybe just give like move that head just like, why? Yeah.

Kate Northrup: Just let that

Regena Thomashauer: unfall truth fly.

Kate Northrup: Okay.

Regena Thomashauer: Now, that’s part one. And how’s it feeling just off of part one?

Kate Northrup: I mean

Regena Thomashauer: Better? It it it is. I don’t know why. It’s just like when we try to solve all this shit in our head, dude

Kate Northrup: It feels a

Regena Thomashauer: little bit doesn’t work, but you start moving it Sure. And letting your body handle it Yeah. It starts feeling better. Okay. Wanna take one more level up?

Kate Northrup: Yep.

Regena Thomashauer: Alright. This is where we go, alright, goddess. Give me that life force, that erotic life force that runs through everything that exists in this feminine body, and you are just adding a drop of turn on, a drop of turn on and a drop of tenderness to exactly the same emotions that we just had. And we’re gonna go back in keeping the song the same.

Kate Northrup: Great. Okay.

Regena Thomashauer: So it’s that same frustration, that same grief, that same outrage, but now you’re gonna turn it on. You’re gonna let a little erotic pour through. Yes. So good. So good, Kate.

Yes. That’s gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

Kate Northrup: Yeah.

Regena Thomashauer: Oh, my

Kate Northrup: god. This song is so good. So good?

Regena Thomashauer: Alright. Okay. How does it feel differently in part two? Just adding a little turn on to the

Kate Northrup: Well, I will say that song always does it for me.

Regena Thomashauer: I’m so

Kate Northrup: glad. You know, as they say irregardless. But, I mean, it’s like really good compost.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. Exactly.

Kate Northrup: It’s the the turn on is the activating agent in the compost. Maybe it’s the nitrogen. I don’t know how exactly compost works, but you can’t just like throw a bunch of Mhmm. Rotten food. It doesn’t just like turn into fertile soil.

You actually need certain things. Yeah. And so the turn on are probably

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s almost like there’s almost like a chemistry to the turn on.

Kate Northrup: Yeah.

Regena Thomashauer: And there actually is.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. There’s

Regena Thomashauer: Like, when you you know, women are especially wired for pleasure because we have 10,000 nerve endings dedicated to pleasure. And when we plug into that, when we choose to be like, okay, life, I see you. I meet you. I’m going to turn onto you rather than turn off to you. Then you’re actually releasing a whole chain of chemistry like oxytocin Yes.

Which is the hormone of bonding. Yeah. It also kind of lowers cortisol Yeah. In the body. And then you have the endorphins, which are like a natural pain relief.

Yeah. And then you have prolactin. Mhmm. And prolactin kind of it’s it’s it acts as a almost like a reset of your nervous system. Almost it it makes you calms you.

It makes sleep easier.

Kate Northrup: It’s like higher when you’re pregnant.

Regena Thomashauer: Yes. And also And also in a state of turn on. Yeah. Okay. And why I love prolactin is because if you can sleep, that’s where rest and repair happen.

That’s where trauma gets processed at night when you’re sleeping. And then the big the big d is dopamine. Why do I love dopamine? It’s like the hope chemical. Mhmm.

If you’re experiencing depression, you probably have a deprival of dopamine or a lack of motivation. That’s a deprival of dopamine that you can actually do something about. Right. Because when you have a pleasurable experience, you’re releasing dopamine, which is an antidepressant. It starts to actually connect you to your own motivation, to your own life force, and it it moves you from your sympathetic to your parasympathetic where you can start to feel safe.

It’s almost like women don’t heal through motivational lectures or Goal setting. Goal setting or even therapy. Healing happens through an experience of pleasure, which is means you can have safety in the body. Yeah. So pleasure, orgasm, erotic life force provides so much healing chemistry.

It’s almost like we are opening this medicine cabinet that lives inside of us and accessing it as opposed to what the pharmaceutical industry would like you to do, which is take an SSRI. You know?

Kate Northrup: And It was a very brave thing that you actually listed an SSRI along with alcohol and doom scrolling and all these other you know, it’s Yeah. Actually a bold thing to say. And, you know, and I will just, you know, give a caveat, which is, listen, sometimes we need what we need, and I am never going to be the person to say. However, there comes a time when we say, what is my body capable of that I’m actually outsourcing Yeah. To big pharma, to my revenue goals Yes.

To

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah.

Kate Northrup: My marriage, to, you know, whatever. Yeah. Right? Like, okay. Thank you for taking me us through that practice.

So, Regena, one of the things we talked about this morning, this is not a before and after book. Mm-mm. Yours is like everyone else’s. Mhmm. Not a story of, look.

Mhmm. I fixed it all. Perfect. Follow my seven step framework to do the same. And no one’s is.

But you’re just one of the only people telling the truth about that. So if it’s not not a before and after Yeah. If it’s not a how to Mhmm. Mhmm. If it’s not a seven step framework to who’s e what e whatever Mhmm.

Regena Thomashauer: What is it? It is a invitation. An invitation to give a woman permission to live the full range of every courageous drop of a human being that she is. For her to feel righteous about her rage, righteous and beautiful and gorgeous in her devastation. For her to feel like, oh, I just up so profoundly.

Wow. I was so brave when I did that. Yeah. And and to begin to trust life rather than be afraid of it. To know that the great pussy always has our back, no matter what the circumstance, to know that each moment you are so held.

And I grew up thinking that unless you know, what do you say when people say, Kate, how are you? What were you taught to say? Good. You’re good. I Another word would be fine.

Yeah. Okay is another one.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. I would never say fine or okay because that sounds so boring, but yes. Yeah. But that is common. That is com yes.

Regena Thomashauer: And Totally. Fine. Fine. Okay. Can’t complain.

Can’t complain. Yeah. Yes. That is we are never fine, first of all. There is not an emotion called fine.

There just is Oh. Were things were Yeah. Devastated, were enchanted, were so moved, were something. Yeah. Curious.

I don’t know. So this book is like saying there’s 88 keys on your piano, sister. Uh-huh. Stop playing middle c. Totally.

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it right now. Play your range. Yeah.

Be loud and proud of every drop of experience. Be proud when you know that moment has arisen for you to say, I gotta kill this. It needs to die. I need to leave this marriage. It’s not going anywhere.

I need to write that book no matter what it costs me to write that book. I need to say yes. I need to say no loudly and proudly and trust that it is leading to the evolution of you as a woman in the world. It’s a big giant pink permission slip saying

Kate Northrup: You are a big giant pink permission slip. I have said this many times. I will just say it again right here. I would not live the way I live if it weren’t for you.

Regena Thomashauer: Okay. I have I wanna layer something on top of that. First of all, I thank you for that. Sure. I thank you so deeply for that, for saying that, and for being in my life, and for our friendship, and our love.

But seeing your girls, oh my love, seeing how much they love their bodies, how cute and smart they think they are, they know they are, how much, how brave they are, how affectionate, how expansive, how I have not met wild and free little girls like you have. And I know that’s a consequence, you know, because I know your mom. I know you. I know your sister. I know your whole family, and I know that that all of this is a consequence of all the transformations of all the generations and the way you have chosen to hold space for the vastness of those little beings that are your girls, and they are spectacular.

Kate Northrup: Thank you. They really are. They really are. You talked about in the mother daughter chapter

Regena Thomashauer: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: How when any of us digs in Yeah. And does that Mhmm. Work and changes lineage, it actually does Mhmm. Heal backwards and forwards.

Regena Thomashauer: Yes.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. And I’ve seen that so beautifully. And now Maggie’s descent and ascent Yes. Activated that for you. And I think it’s you know, life is really big, and we don’t as you said, the goddess always has our back.

Regena Thomashauer: Always. And we don’t

Kate Northrup: know Mm-mm. What gifts are still going to be revealed.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. So yeah. And I think that, let’s say, the more that we can fall in love with our darkness Mhmm. You know, the more you love the darkness, the more radiance you’re cultivating inside of you. Not just for yourself, but I think it’s almost a responsibility to the girls of today who will be the women of tomorrow for us not to shrink and not to make ourselves smaller and less, but continue to expand in our radiance, to love more and more outrageously so that ourselves.

So that we can show other girls and young women the pathway. They don’t have to shrink to be accepted. You actually have to expand so you can expand everyone around you. Here’s the

Kate Northrup: part I need every mother and every daughter to hear. The trauma is inherited, but so is the healing.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah.

Kate Northrup: Think that’s what you were speaking to right there. Yeah. If there’s a piece here about matter and matter Mhmm. Right? Yeah.

Which what you said is, I have spent years studying the ways patriarchy severs spirit from flesh. How it teaches us that holiness lives in the sky or behind a pulpit, never in the body. The more distance a culture creates between human beings and their own matter, the easier they are to control. When you disconnect people from the truth of their bodies, you disconnect them from their inner authority. Right?

You disconnect them from their power. And what happens to a culture that worships father and forgets mother? It forgets matter. Matter. It forgets the holiness of the body.

It forgets how to feed itself spiritually, emotionally, and literally. When matter is not sacred, the body becomes an enemy. When the feminine is erased from the divine, girls learn to erase themselves from themselves. Matter is mother. Mother is source.

Source is body. Body is holy. When this thread breaks, girls fall. When this thread is rewoven, girls rise.

Regena Thomashauer: Mhmm.

Kate Northrup: This is why the mother daughter wound matters. This is why matter matters. This is why mothers matter. Because the body is the place where lineage meets the present moment and either fractures or begins to heal. Mhmm.

Mhmm. Yeah. And, you know, Like, you did that for me and my family. Yeah. And then after, you did it for you and your family.

Yeah. Yeah. And then my girls, you know, Regena showed up yesterday and they were like, Regena, do you wanna go skinny dipping? And they were like, do you think Regena would wanna go skinny dipping with us? And I was like, absolutely.

So we all just got in the pool naked and, I was much earlier Yeah. Before the age that Penelope is Yeah. When I first thought there was something wrong with my body, and I would not have done that Ever. Never. Not past the age of, I think, seven.

Right. And both of my girls are quite a bit past seven. Yeah. And it feels like a miracle. It’s miraculous.

So, anyway, thank you. Yay. Yay. We did it in some way. And then there’s more.

Right?

Regena Thomashauer: And then there’s more. And you are absolutely right. Kind of, let’s say, having had the privilege of holding space for your family allowed me to hold the space for mine because I knew it was possible.

Kate Northrup: For this mobius story.

Regena Thomashauer: Yeah. Exactly.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. And the story is not fully written No. Ever. So I wanna know, Regena, as we do actually

Regena Thomashauer: Miss Kate.

Kate Northrup: Finish. Do you feel as free now in your life as you did on stage?

Regena Thomashauer: So much more free. Oh my god. This means so much more free. And maybe even more importantly, I can now sleep through the night. And there’s just nothing like being

Kate Northrup: on stage. Yeah.

Regena Thomashauer: You know, it’s a portal Yeah. That I had the privilege of living inside of for so long. But I will say this, I can feel the goddess at my back at all times. There are moments when I can be there doing dishes and feeling holy as Yeah. Or meeting my lover and thinking, how is this splendor mine at this time?

Or experiencing being my mother’s daughter or my daughter’s mother or just walking walking the dog down the street and knowing, yes, I am hot and amazing and incredible. Yeah. And those are things that I would not have experienced while I was holding space for all that I held. Yeah. So I still pawing at the ground to get to do my live event next to the week after next.

I can’t wait. Yeah.

Kate Northrup: Because we are who we are. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And there is no ending to the story.

No. But there’s aliveness in every piece of it. That’s right. That’s right.

Regena Thomashauer: Thank you. Yeah. I love you.

Kate Northrup: Thank you. A joy. On our knees is available everywhere books are sold. Is there a particular place you’d like people to go get it? No.

Regena Thomashauer: It’s Amazon. It’s Barnes and Noble. Great. It’s local bookstores.

Kate Northrup: Of course.

Regena Thomashauer: Local bookstores because we cherish them and they are fragile. Yeah. And I just really appreciate anyone who reads a book. You or audiobook. That is a Discovery.

You read it. Yeah. Yeah. You can it’s recorded on Spotify, everywhere on audiobook. Great.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. Thank you. I love you, Regena. So much. Thank you for everything.

If you’ve been feeling called to write a book, but just haven’t got around to it yet, can’t find the time to prioritize it, or just aren’t doing it for whatever reason, I have something for you. Keira Brinton, who was a sponsor of our most recent Relaxed Money Live, has an incredible program called The Author Threshold. What I appreciate about the way Kira works is that she doesn’t just talk about writing. She actually integrates the nervous system in the process because writing a book is way beyond authorship. It’s about being able to have the alignment and the expansion and the capacity to be with expansion that comes from getting your work out into the world in a bigger way through a book.

If there’s a message within you that just won’t leave you alone, this could be your next step. You can join Keira’s free workshop at katenorthrup.com/keira, which is spelled keira. The link is also in the show notes.