Kultivating Kapwa: Decolonizing Parenthood Episode 3.18
"The Will to Change: Becoming Your Self Again and Again in Motherhood"
In this episode, we are joined by Vanessa Ramalho. We reflect with Vanessa about what she has learned over this past year of her life in transition, how she has learned to prioritize her well-being and values, how she is manifesting her desire for her children to see her in her fullness, embodying unlimited possibility, and more.
Vanessa Tulop Ramalho is a settler on the lands of the Nanticoke Lenni Lenape, aka South Jersey. She is a multiracial woman, the daughter of Joseph Francisco Ramalho, Jr. and Corazon Tulop Ramalho. Her ancestral lands on her father’s side are Cabo Verde, the Portuguese colonized islands off the West Coast of Africa. Her ancestral lands on her mother’s side are Samar in the Visayas region of the islands known as the Philippines. She is the mother of Talia (7), Enzo (5), and Inara (2), and bonus mom to DJ (18), who she helped raise since he was 6 years old. Vanessa currently raises her three children in an intergenerational household in her childhood home alongside her parents while also navigating coparenting with her children’s father, Daniel Rodriguez.
Vanessa is a community educator with a focus in sexual and reproductive health and a wide range of social justice issues and a background in public health advocacy, sexual and reproductive rights, community organizing, and activism. She has also been a birth worker for going on 6 years: She is a Full Spectrum Doula trained through Ancient Song Birth Services in Brooklyn, a Postpartum Care Specialist trained through the INNATE Traditions, a Childbirth Educator trained through Birth Arts International, and a Certified Lactation Counselor through the Academy of Lactation Policy and Practice. Vanessa is also an artist, jewelry designer, student harpist, aspiring farmer and herbalist, and has found a new love in pole dancing. One of Vanessa’s primary goals as a parent is to discover how one can be their fullest, healthiest, most whole and authentic self as a person, and how that expands, enlivens, and deepens her capacity as a mother. She aims to have her children witness her as a multifaceted human being who is alive with thoughts, needs, desires, interests, boundaries, faults, and divinity...and in turn create the space for them to be their fullest, most whole and authentic selves as well. Her biggest inspirations right now are adrienne maree brown and Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry, as their work around pleasure activism and rest as liberation respectively have been critical to her healing journey over the past year.
Vanessa is also a Core Organizer for the Center for Babaylan Studies and is immensely grateful to her CfBS family for their unyielding love, support, wisdom, care, and for inspiring her in innumerable ways.
*Episode Notes: This episode contains brief instances of profanity.*
You can listen to this podcast on the Center for Babaylan Studies website (centerforbabaylanstudies.org/podcast), Spotify (https://tinyurl.com/KultivatingKapwaSpotify), PodBean (centerforbabaylanstudies.podbean.com), Google Podcasts, or Stitcher.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to the podcast! If you want to contact us, email kultivatingkapwa@gmail.com, or add us on Instagram at @kultivatingkapwa and send us a DM. If you would like to donate to help us continue this podcast, please do so here: donorbox.org/kultivating-kapwa-podcasts.
Hosted by Jana Lynne Umipig//
Produced by Olivia Sawi//
Co-Produced by Annie Aarons-Sawi//
Music by AstraLogik
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