Episode 66: Visiting with Hannah Landis of Danville, IL and her story, “The Big Fail.”

                                     

In "The Big Fail," Hannah Landis shared her experiences on stage in Danville, IL in March 2023. In the studio, Hannah, Jenette and Kerry get into a riveting discussion about the history of women's health and motherhood. 


ANNOUNCER 00:00 Raising women's voices. One story at a time.
Welcome to The She Said Project Podcast.

[Music: The She Said Project Podcast Theme]

JENETTE JURCZYK  00:25  Hey, Kerry Rossow.
 
KERRY ROSSOW  00:27  Hey, Jenette Jurczyk.
 
JENETTE  00:28  Today is a special episode of The She Said Project Podcast. Do you know why?

KERRY  00:32  Tell me, tell me.
 
JENETTE  00:32  Because we're welcoming one of the speakers from our very first show in a new community. In 2023, we welcomed That's What She Said to the community of Danville, Illinois, which is not too far from our mothership community of Champaign-Urbana. And so our guest today stood on a stage not very long ago and welcomed a whole new slew of ladies into the She Said Sisterhood.
 
KERRY  01:00  Yep, I was very lucky to be in the front row on a stormy night, it was great, because we didn't know if the show was really going to go on. And it did. And it was spectacular.
 
JENETTE  01:09  Thank goodness. There was some sticky weather. We were a little bit concerned. But yes, I'm very grateful the show did go on. Because those were stories that absolutely needed to be told, needed to be heard. And I'm so grateful to our podcast listeners for joining us today so they get to hear, experience, and feel the power of today's guest. So it's my absolute honor and pleasure to welcome Hannah Landis to The She Said Project Podcast. Welcome, Hannah.
 
HANNAH LANDIS  01:09  Thank you so much Jenette. I'm so happy to be here. This has been such a cool experience to be part of The She Said Project.
 
KERRY  01:47  So I had four kids in five years, and I love telling my birth stories. I love hearing other people's. And so the second I heard your background, I was like, Oh, we're going to talk –I'm going to tell you every gory detail.
 
HANNAH  01:58  I can't wait. [laughter]
 
JENETTE  02:00  Does that happen to you a lot?
 
HANNAH  02:01   Like everywhere I go!
 
KERRY  02:02  I bet.
 
JENETTE  02:02  I'm going to validate your comment because I had the pleasure of working with Hannah on her story and meeting her for the very first time, you know, as we do, in a coffee shop that first casual…
 
HANNAH  02:11 Definitely. You told me your birth story. I remember. [laughter]
 
JENETTE  02:14  And yes, that is absolutely true. So, for our friends listening, Hannah is a Certified Midwife. And that is very much a part of the story that she shared on the She Said stage, I don't know if I'm glad for you. Or if that's uncomfortable for you.
 
KERRY  02:29  It's never uncomfortable. I don't know what makes me uncomfortable, but definitely not that.
 
JENETTE  02:34  You definitely make a safe space in a comfort zone. Like we went right to the birth story in our very first meeting. It's true.
 
KERRY  02:41  It's so great. I think so many women want to talk about that experience. And you know, it isn't exactly like, you know, you don't bring it up at the grocery usually, or in your you know, if you're trying a case or whatever your job is. And so the second I hear somebody is a midwife, or in that field then I'm like, okay, so then the placenta. [laughter] I just jump right in, I get so excited to talk about it.
 
HANNAH  02:41  Yeah. My favorite is really when I'm working with clients and their mothers or their grandmothers come along. And whatever we're doing triggers something for them to tell a story that maybe they've never told before. And they dive in. And then they're processing and I'm listening. And they're telling a story of a totally different experience than maybe what my client is doing, which is, you know, in their home, natural. So it's been really interesting to have that experience of, you know, even older women who are maybe processing that story for the first time.
 
KERRY  03:38  Mm-mmm. Mm-mmm..
 
JENETTE  03:39  Do you think birth stories have been taboo for certain generations? Something we don't talk about?
 
HANNAH  03:44  Yeah, definitely.
 
JENETTE  03:46  So the work you do, I mean, it's akin to the work that we do at The She Said Project, just by creating that safe space. And actually just sitting back and listening, you're allowing these women the gift of talking about something that is so powerful, so intimate, and life changing, life creating. [Kerry with a knowing Ha Ha Ha Ha] I went there, I'm seeing the magic that you create, that we are very familiar with. And it's pretty powerful stuff. Now, I don't stay in the room when the woman goes into labor like you do. But it's got to be a beautiful, magical, crazy, insane, challenging process.
 
HANNAH  04:28  It is. It is. All of those things, but it's such a privilege that someone would welcome me into that space. And, you know, I think it's why I said yes to The She Said Project because it's another way that women can have that space to tell their stories. And, you know, I grew up with a lot of men. I grew up with a lot of brothers. I grew up with ideas about women, and it's taken me all of these decades and all of this time in the work that I do to really understand the importance of having a space to tell our stories and be who we authentically are. And so I've hoped to be that, and to bring that into my practice. And so it was so neat to find another venue to explore that.
 
KERRY  05:15  When I was a little girl, I used to eavesdrop on, I grew up with a lot of women. So eavesdropping on my mom, and all of my aunts telling those stories that I knew were somehow, this was just for, you know, around the table when they were having coffee and how they -- looking back, I think they were processing because often in those days, you know, childbirth was not the experience it is now. And it was not the openness to talk about these things, and to make placenta jokes, it just wasn't happening then. So they all were together and had that in each other. And then I have thought about that when we did the show, I wanted it to be like sitting around at somebody's house telling those stories, maybe stories you aren't comfortable telling out in the world, but you could do it in this safe space. So we're in that safe space. And so when I saw you – and you have just such a, an open demeanor about you, your face, your everything just makes you want to like "and then came the 80s. And then I got my period. And then like," you must just get this at like the grocery store and everywhere. Like, have you always been that person that people come to?.
 
HANNAH  06:18  I have not… 

KERRY  Really?

HANNAH  …necessarily always been that person. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's been a lot of growth and in my family would be surprised. They are surprised that I ended up where I'm at serving women, being interested in this work. But it really comes back for me to being around that kitchen table. While I said I was surrounded by men. I mean, of course there was my mother and aunts, and sister in laws too. And it was really in those moments of them talking about their births, that this early interest started getting cultivated in me. And my mother, shout out to my amazing mother who birthed eight children, and raised multiple more. She started giving birth in the 60s where things were really, really different. And she wasn't given any autonomy. She was told what to do. She was told her breasts are not big enough to breastfeed. And so she didn't. And she had four children under that, you know, iron fist kind of rule of the medicalized birth of the day. And then she had an eight year period between children. And she ended up having four more children. And she did it in an entirely different way. She had wandered into a bookstore in Seattle, Washington, where she read a book by La Leche League on breastfeeding. And she discovered well, having, having boobs that are small is not a contraindication for breastfeeding, it turns out.
 
KERRY  07:18    So for once, like size really doesn't matter.
 
HANNAH  07:58  Really doesn't matter. No. And so she did things differently. And so she would often repeat this narrative that she had done things two ways, in almost a scientific manner. Right? We had the control group, and then the intervention group, and then she had opinions about how it turned out.
 
JENETTE  08:20  I bet that was an interesting conversation. Like you have two sample groups and you get to hear mom's feedback. My mom was very into the La Leche League – like that was her, my mother was Earth Mother. I mean, wait, yeah,
 
HANNAH  08:34   I love that.
 
JENETTE  08:34   She had three babies all natural. My sister had three babies all natural. I had two almost all natural. I followed in her footsteps. That was what I wanted. I mean, just hearing the history of mom and the births and and I remember working with you, and there was definitely a journey for you to get comfortable to find your passion in this work and to work with women in this way. I think it'd be really great if we went ahead and played your story for our listeners so that they can truly understand the process that you went through to becoming a Certified Midwife because there's definitely some complications there. But let's take a listen to Hannah Landis on stage from That's What She Said in Danville, Illinois in 2023. With her story, "The Big Fail." 

###
 
HANNAH LANDIS  09:21 When I was 10 years old, I wrote an essay in school that said, "When I grow up, I want to be a doctor, but I'm afraid of blood." Ten year old Hannah thought tackling a fear like that was a bridge too far to ever cross. As time went on, the idea that I was just a weak girl, not likely to take on a challenge only grew in my mind. I never saw myself as talented. Not good at speaking. Not athletic. Not smart at math, like my brother. Even though I got A's in those subjects in school, the narrative in my mind at the time was that I'm is definitely not good at science and math like boys are. So when eventually I marched off to college, I decided to study anything that wasn't those things. I started with an education major. The reason being the only professional women I can remember seeing growing up are teachers. Even my mom's midwife was a man.  [laughter]
 
10:29  However, I quickly changed my major when I took a Political Science course that captivated me. Science, but no hard science or math, no chemistry labs, no calculus, count me in. It did happen to highlight something I did see as special about me. My propensity to argue, disagree with established rules, and go against the flow. Oh, yeah, political science was a perfect fit. So I graduated and started a master's. And amidst a series of absolutely devastating and life changing events, including the death of my dad, I dropped out. Quitting my master's felt like a big failure. But amidst all the death and sadness that descended on my life, during that time, I realized something. Failure is not the worst thing that can happen. And from that moment on, everything changed. So longing to connect with my father's memory, I abandoned every other path, and decided to pursue business instead, like he had. So I got the idea to start a coffee shop. Only I had no money. So I worked three minimum wage jobs and went to every bank in town and finally convinced one to give me a small business loan, and I marched forward with my plans, and opened a coffee shop and roastery.   [applause]
 
12:08  A few years later, I sold the coffee shop, and it somehow felt like a huge failure. But also like that wasn't the worst thing that could happen. One day, my husband Drew and I, when we had been married five years, but had never thought to discuss having children, found out we were pregnant. The first thing I did was open the phonebook, because this was back in the old days, to search for a home birth midwife, because I was from Washington state, the state in the US with the highest home birth rates, and also relatedly, the best maternity care statistics in the country. This was when my mom and my extended family members had had babies at home with midwives. And there was no midwife in the phonebook. For primarily political reasons, in Illinois, homebirth midwives only operated underground. In that moment, all my interests coalesced, and I found my cause, helping families get the evidence based health care they desire and deserve. Helping myself and other women achieve physiologic birth at home with a midwife. Arguing with politicians. [laughter] I went to work lobbying for the cause. And eventually I apprenticed and became a homebirth midwife myself.
[loud applause]
 
13:41   Now, the way that Certified Professional midwives are trained is an apprentice model. We're trained in the field on the job, and it didn't require any advanced science or advanced math. The Bachelor degree I already have is an adequate starting point. So I spent years studying during my kids nap times, and attending births while they slept at night and got my certification. But there was still one problem. Certified Professional Midwives are not licensed in Illinois. I regularly thought back to that first birth I had attended in my training, where there was trigger warning. So much blood. We walked in the door and the baby had come so fast, we didn't get there in time and there was a pool of blood and it was my job to clean it up. And it was trial by fire. Childbirth often involved blood, of course. Could I handle it? That question didn't go away quickly, but it came up over and over throughout my years of training. But I realized walking out of there that first birth that first night where I cleaned up blood, that I probably could do anything I put my mind to. So the years went on, and the problem persisted. CPMs were not licensed in the state and the chance of ever happening seemed slim and I was starting to give up hope. So when one day, I heard that Carle was opening a school of medicine at the U of I. It felt like a significant moment. And it felt like I said, happened many times over the years – something aligned. And I decided it was now or never, and how sad it would be if it were never. So at 36 years old, I marched off to finally take the prerequisites for medical school.
[loud applause]
 
15:40  At the local community college to hopefully eventually take my shot. What's a dream anyway, if you don't try to follow it? [pause] I thought maybe I'll fail. But maybe I won't. It helps that my best friend, who is also my husband, believed in me wholeheartedly and encouraged me to jump. This is the same man who wants took a two month leave from his job when I said, "Let's go live in Haiti for the winter." And proceeded to homeschool our children and potty train our terrorist toddler in a village in Haiti, while I caught babies at a local birth center there.
[loud applause]
 
16:26  So with that critical support, I enrolled in those basic science and advanced math classes that I had avoided for so long, that I had told myself I wasn't good enough to take. The first weeks of that initial chemistry class felt impossible. Nothing was coming easily. So one day while hanging out at the coffee shop that I co-own here in Danville, with my brother, Sam, the one who's good at math, I saw a kid from my chemistry class. Only this wasn't any college kid. This was a high school kid, taking college classes exactly 20 years my junior. And I realized I felt less intimidated by him than I did those 19, 20 year olds who had it all together. So I marched over and used my clout as an older person, and the owner of the coffee shop that he was sitting in. To convince him to study with me, study chemistry, and of course, it worked. We became a very unlikely pair of friends, this 16 year old high school kid and 36 year old, ‘middle aged woman’ as he so rudely called me. And we traveled together on this pre med path, and encouraged one another along the way. I finished my prerequisites, and I started studying for the MCAT, widely regarded as one of the most difficult tests ever written. During the pandemic, with four children at home being homeschooled, I studied for the MCAT. While I stayed out all night working as a midwife, helping families stay at home and avoid the hospital during a global pandemic, I studied for the MCAT. And I finished a calculus course and studied for the MCAT. And I cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner for special diets every day for my kids, and studied for the MCAT. And then one day in mid 2020, I took the MCAT and I did really well by the way.
[loud applause]
 
18:30  And a couple hours later, I got called to a birth and I stayed out nearly all night. And the next morning, I cooked breakfast for my kids. I realized that day, after a nap, I didn't want to be a doctor. [laughter]
 
18:52    I had already done whatever it was I had set out to do. I proved to myself, I could do hard things. And I loved the clinical practice I already had. The pandemic convinced me how essential it was that women have the option for care at home if that was what they desired. But we still have that one pesky problem. Certified Professional Midwives were not licensed in Illinois, as they were in other states should I leave. The pandemic had also made it obvious staying in this community that my family is embedded in and loves was a higher priority to me than other goals. So I decided I had to go to work. Almost exactly a year later. I watched as the bill I served as the legislative liaison for the Illinois Council of Certified Professional midwives passed both houses. [huge applause and affirmations]]
 
19:59   I got to be In the room when Governor Pritzker signed the historic piece of legislation that women before me had worked on year after year for over 40 years.  [big applause]
 
20:17  I got to see it move across the finish line, a step toward more autonomy in health care for women. So I failed to go to medical school. But I learned so much. I learned I love science and math, maybe not so much math. And I learned it's never too late. Empowered by those two things, I found the most rigorous scientific training program where I could explore the science of maternal health and nutrition, which I had fallen in love with throughout the process. And I'm so proud to say that in about six weeks, I will graduate with a master's in Molecular and Cellular Biology at UIUC [HUGE applause] – a program that I promise required all the hard science and math how women are treated during the childbearing year is a big deal with big consequences. And there's so much more work to do. If I wouldn't have failed, I wouldn't be here doing this important work. It was a great failure. [applause]

###
 
JENETTE  21:36
So Hannah, it was a great failure.
 
KERRY  21:39
What the fail!
 
JENETTE  21:40  What the fail. So many failures, but it got you to where you are today. And look at all of your successes and look at your career and the things that you've seen, the things you get to do and the things that you've taught us along the way. What you said about the medicalized institution of birth, my best friend, Frank, his mother was told that stress will curdle your breast milk. And she, yeah, she was, she had anxiety and stress...
 
HANNAH  22:06  Oh my gosh!
 
JENETTE  22:06  ...and she could not breastfeed because her breast milk would be curdled, and sour. And so she bottle fed her babies because that's what she was told
 
HANNAH  22:16  Sour milk.
 
 
KERRY  22:16  My mom was unconscious until her fourth. She was, I think it was ether. I mean she was, she was out.
 
HANNAH  22:20  Yeah, yeah, they give you that ether. And that's how my grandmother gave birth
 
JENETTE  22:26  They call that ‘the twilight state.’
 
HANNAH  22:27  Yeah. And she was not even able to access those stories. It was,
 
KERRY  22:32  That's what makes you sad is I love those stories so much. And I think three of my mom's four she was completely, she doesn't remember any of it like literally waking up...
 
JENETTE  22:41  How do you get the baby out?
 
HANNAH  22:42  Forceps.
 
JENETTE  22:44 For-serious?
 
HANNAH  22:45  Mm-hmm. Always. 100% of the time.
 
JENETTE  22:47  So the mother is unconscious? And they yank the baby out? Do they do it like on the rhythm of the contraction?
 
HANNAH  22:55  I'm assuming. I mean, it sounds so dangerous.
 
JENETTE  22:59  Why was that decidedly better?
 
KERRY  23:01  I was just reading something about when we moved away from midwives. And often it was black women in the community. And as we started to transition from, you know, it was it's all the things, you know, we want to take women out of positions of power, we certainly want to take black women out of positions of power. And we want to make this powerful thing that women have control over, one of the few things that control over that time, and we're gonna take that too.
 
HANNAH  23:23  Yeah, yeah. And so the American history of midwifery was that it was black midwives that birthed our nation. And, you know, white people seem to have no problem having black midwives come and serve them. Until there were what was first called male midwives, which soon became called obstetricians, who came in and started a smear campaign against midwifery in saying that it was a whole marketing campaign that midwives were dirty, unsafe, uneducated, and a lot of that was racist rhetoric. And so, while many of these midwives actually at the time, had a state license, those licenses were revoked. And that happened in Illinois in the 1970s, midwives had actually carried a state license to practice and the state revoked the license
 
JENETTE  24:22  So the licensing used to exist, and then it went away.
 
HANNAH  24:25  That's right.
 
JENETTE  24:26  And you were part of the movement to bring it back.
 
KERRY  24:28  Right. So it started with some really courageous and amazing women decades ago, who knew it wasn't right and knew that women had the right to birth wherever and with whomever they wanted. And that birth doesn't have to be a medical procedure, that it can be a normal family event
 
JENETTE  24:49  Which it was for centuries and centuries.
 
KERRY  24:51  Right. And so they started working and it was a very long legal road to make it happen. And I started on this path 15 years ago, and I just remember that discouragement at that point in time that it probably would never happen.
 
JENETTE  25:07  But then it did,
 
HANNAH  25:08  But then it did.
 
JENETTE  25:09  So you are a licensed midwife.
 
KERRY  25:12  So that's complicated, Jenette. So the state passed the licensure bill in late 2021. And right now,
 
JENETTE  25:21  But the work is not done,
 
JENETTE  25:21  They're still processing.
 
HANNAH  25:21  ...the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation is drafting the rules governing the license. So there's been a nice grace period for us that we're living in the in between times, and it's something I watched the Indiana midwives go through a decade ago. It's still a challenge to access services, to get the respect from the institutions for the work that we do.
 
JENETTE  The work is not done.

HANNAH  25:51  The work is not done. And it won't ever be. Because other countries have maternity care built around the idea that the low risk woman should have midwifery led care. So that doesn't mean a midwife under an obstetrician. That means midwifery lead, and it's really interesting, Medicaid, actually, in 2019, published a study that had been in the works for quite some time involving tens of thousands of people and three different types of intervention in which they were trying to look at this idea, why are maternal outcomes so bad in America, compared to every other industrialized nation? So they tried some different interventions that might improve outcomes. And the one intervention that was shown to very significantly improve outcomes was midwifery led care. So in the write up in the study synopsis, they wrote, you know, this isn't taking midwives and sticking them inside of hospitals, because that is still a midwife who is, you know, working for an institution, a medical institution, and, and that's not a bad thing for many things. But when it comes to maternity care, the facts are in the data is there, that it doesn't lead to the best outcome. So we even have now Medicaid, the Medicaid working group saying, Well, we know what can improve outcomes, not only in morbidity and mortality, but also saving $2,000 for each mother/baby pair in the first year of life by preventing hospitalizations, unrelated childbirth and health, right. So it's interesting, it's becoming mainstream, but we also have so much work to do,
 
JENETTE  27:49  You are clearly at the forefront of this work, like I just got an education. It's one thing for you to serve your clients? patients?

HANNAH  27:57  Clients
 
JENETTE  27:57  Clients. But clearly you had to go down a deep path of research, and you're incredibly knowledgeable, I loved in your story, you slipped in these phrases that absolutely caught my attention. And they were so well placed when you added things like evidence based. And then you said relatably, the maternal mortality rates in the state of Washington, yeah, like relatably. So like you, you brought those moments in so it was your story, but also, like an education for our audience. And that's always a beautiful time when you can learn something through the eyes of a woman who's experienced something. So thank you, thank you.
 
HANNAH  28:36   I'm always trying to turn everything into a TED Talk. [laughing]
 
KERRY  28:42  It was fabulous. I just loved every second of it.
 
JENETTE  28:45  I mean, talking about the expert on the subject here. So Kerry, you remember in her story, she talked about challenging herself and going back for her master's degree.
 
KERRY  28:54  And?
 
JENETTE  28:55  And I think just very recently, before we recorded this episode, you finished you finished your masters and graduated and walked and you have a Master's, an MS in Molecular and Cellular Biology, ding, ding,
 
KERRY 29:10  Boom boom
 
JENETTE  29:11 I did my homework, and you continue to challenge yourself, you continue to not accept the status quo, for yourself, for your family, for your clients, for the state, for women. That's what I mean. That's absolutely something that I admire in you and makes you incredibly special.
 
HANNAH  29:28  Thanks.
 
JENETTE  29:29  Do you hear that a lot?
 
HANNAH  29:32  I'm over here blushing.
 
KERRY  29:35  I’m just so happy knowing that you're out there advocating for women, 

JENETTE right? 

KERRY  …educating women and just all of those things like that's, that's right
 
JENETTE  29:42  here. I can't tell you how much I learned spending several months in her presence and just all the there were so many things that did not make it on the stage just so many incredible conversations, so much detail, both in your experiences in your history in the history. the history of midwifery in the state of Illinois. They just like blew my mind. Because I didn't know, we don't know.
 
KERRY  30:06  And I think the difference between so my mom who was, you know, pretty much knocked out during her deliveries to the experience I had. And then now I have daughters and thinking, that's one generation of how much, and it has to be women talking to women and educating each other. And I remember like, I thought I was pretty educated. But I remember saying to my midwives, like, what was that? [laughing] Was that me? And they were so great, because they walked me through. And there were things like, I always felt like I was a full participant of this thing that was happening.
 
HANNAH  30:43  Yeah, I love how you said that: a full participant, because that's what it should be, you should be the central character. And there are people who describe this experience, like they are an accessory, like they are, like a non playable character, in in the process of childbirth. And that's not what we should be doing. Right. Like you should always be the central character in what's happening. And that's always stuck out to me, someone described it as, like, it was a play that was going on around them. And maybe they weren't even a part of it.
 
JENETTE  31:19  All this was happening around and baby's just going to show up at some point,
 
HANNAH  31:23  right? Yeah, they're just kind of this accessory.
 
JENETTE  31:25  Yes. I remember very intentionally choosing and telling, you know, my OB my birth plan. I did not want... What's the thing?
 
KERRY  31:34  Epidural.
 
JENETTE  31:35  I didn't want that. Because I wanted to feel everything I wanted to participate. I'm very much into the Inspire Emotion, feel all the feels, and I wanted all of it, the pain the joy.
 
KERRY  31:48  Oh yeah, not me. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I did. But it was like, Is there a workaround? Here? 
 
HANNAH  31:52  It's like you do until it’s there.
 
KERRY  31:54  Yeah. And then I was like, Okay, so maybe not that. But is there something we could talk about?
 
JENETTE  32:00  No, I told her don't even offer it to me. Because in the moment, I don't know that I'll have the strength to say no, don't even offer and she didn't she honored my wishes, which was absolutely great. So I had I had the birth that I wanted, as much as possible. So, yeah, it's a wonder, I wonder what it would be like to have been at home with a midwife, I do wonder, I don't know that I had that option.
 
KERRY  32:22  So that's the beauty of having that option, that would be the beauty. You know, they're they're, like, in my family, they're a bunch of girls. So like one woman, one of my sisters was like laboring on the side of a mountain. And that worked for her. And for me, I was like, I'm very OCD, like, I want to go somewhere else, I want to come home to my house, everything's tidy, and in order that worked for me, and then another store, like it was somewhere in between, but the whole point is like what works for you, they really don't have that option. It's taken off the table for you.
 
HANNAH  32:52  That's really the point that you need to be where you feel safe. And for many women, if not most women, that's the hospital. But for some women, it's not. And it's important that they are where they feel safest, because that's where childbirth is safest,
 
KERRY  33:12  Well that’s our norm, we, you know, is that because it's where you naturally feel safer? Or because that's, that's the image that we have.
 
HANNAH  33:19  Right? There's any of that grown up
 
JENETTE  33:21 with you talk to me a lot about women trusting themselves, but also the medical professionals believing and trusting the women who are, you know, who who are the ones having the child, like you said, you share that there's a lot of yeah, a lot of stories of doubt and disbelief around what the woman feels or wants or experiences and, and not really trusting your own your own body at that point,
 
HANNAH  33:49  Right. Yeah, it's so important to hear what women are saying. That keeps them safe. It keeps everybody safe if we can really take the time and listen and then believe, because that's it. It's a principle that I adopted a long time ago. And it's actually it's surprisingly controversial, that I believe the story a woman tells me, and it hasn't proven me wrong yet, even when it sounded wild. And then my gut is like, I don't know about this. It's always been true. And then this reward from believing that story has been enormous. So I'm going to keep doing it. Even if I am proven wrong someday. Maybe that'll happen, but it's still worth it.
 
KERRY  34:41  Your fails are epic. I would take your fails any day.
 
HANNAH  34:45  I'm all about the epic fails. 
 
JENETTE  34:47  Epic fails got you to where you are today. 
 
HANNAH  34:50  I’m not afraid to fail. I'm really not.
 
JENETTE  34:52  Obviously 10 years old. I want to be a doctor, but I'm afraid of blood. Hannah Um, you have given our listeners and carrier myself, so many things to think about and reflect on lessons learned. Remind me when we're done here, I will send you a link. Kerry actually shared one of her labor stories on stage. And That's What She Said, as part of her opening act. And, and yeah, I mean, you went there, you shared the good, the bad, the ugly. So I'll send you that link later. Alright. But we want to thank you for coming in and talking to us here on the podcast. Thank you so much for spending time with The She Said Project. I have to say that you were one of an amazing group of women who said yes to this first inaugural experience in Danville. I had such an amazing time, getting to know these women like just just powerhouses right. I hope that the whole experience brought you joy. And I don't know, I hope I hope it did for you a fraction of what you were able to provide to me and the women that we worked with
 
HANNAH  36:00  It really. Yeah, I mean, just getting to know the women that I shared the stage with was the best part. And that relationship continuing and they are impacting my community that I care about so much, and I can't wait to see what's next.
 
JENETTE  36:15 Yeah there's a lot of great things happening in Danville and we're so glad that She Said is now there on the ground. We're not going anywhere. We will keep sharing women's stories for many years to come. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you to our listeners. Thank you to our partners in crime, Illinois Public Media. Thank you Kerry Rossow for being one of the co-founders of this amazing movement. This is Jenette Jurczyk, National Director of The She Said Project. Thank you for joining us today on The She Said Project Podcast.
 
KERRY  36:42  Over and out!

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[Music: The She Said Project Podcast Theme]

ANNOUNCER 36:47 Thank you for listening to The She Said Project Podcast in partnership with Illinois Public Media. All materials contained in the podcast for the exclusive property of The She Said Project and That’s What She Said, LLC. For more information on our live shows go to [url=https://shesaidproject.com]https://shesaidproject.com[/url]
 
This podcast was made possible with support from Carle and Health Alliance and presented by Sterling Wealth Management, empowering women to live their best lives.