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Interesting discussions aimed at gathering women together to engage as powerful forces for good in their homes, communities, and world.
Episodes
Thursday Oct 05, 2023
Thursday Oct 05, 2023
Dana Robb and Becky Rogers discussing the tenet, “We seek after knowledge and wisdom.”
Families Mentoring Families has educational tracks for teaching family life skills, basic literacy, academic, vocational skills, leadership, and agriculture. They have 110 literacy centers across Africa, in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, and Rwanda, and are working to continue to expand. They also have an aftercare program for girls who have been trafficked as well as an education program to help girls avoid the lure of out of country work as domestic servants that actually end up being trafficked.
“When you’re educating the current generation, they have that hope that they can make their situation better where they are at, rather than this false hope that something out there that’s enticing them is going to solve their problem.” - Dana Robb
“[Education] doesn’t just change that person’s life, it changes the trajectory of their entire family for all the generations to come.” - Becky Rogers
“We walked away with nothing, and we showed up here with nothing. Nothing. No money, not knowing what we were going to do. And so if I told you about the miracles, like the growth in our faith — I don't even have words for it, I can’t even describe it except to share stories of the ways that God has come through and provided.” - Becky Rogers
“Our perspective in that way, and what else is possible if you don’t kill it yourself, let God do it, and just watch and show up, that is probably the biggest thing, that’s the biggest way that I’ve grown.” - Becky Rogers
“God tailors things for us, and when He needs us to learn something, He’s got a plan for it.” - Dana Robb
“At the end of the day, when we sit with women from all different cultures, we want the same things. We want a better life for our families and our children. We’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish that, we’re heavily invested in our families, but the powers that be that make policy don’t value those same things. And so it’s a very crucial and important part of Families Mentoring Families that we share with Big Ocean Women in gathering. . . gathering the women to support each other and to create our own voice around the things that we really and truly value.” - Becky Rogers
“At the end of the day, we’re all sisters from all different cultures, and there are so many things that we have in common and so many values that we hold the same that we should gather and strengthen each other around that.” - Becky Rogers
“Don’t be afraid. Fear takes a lot forms and it stops us from doing lots of things because when we second guess our own abilities we have so many voices trying to tell us we’re not good enough or we can’t fit in one more thing, but if you feel called, God has a purpose and a passion and a mission for you, don’t put it off another minute because you have no idea what you’re missing out on all of the ways that you’ll be blessed, not just for you personally, but also in your family. The blessings that will come to you from following those inspirations and getting good at that practice of promptings, it’s beyond your wildest imagination. So don’t be afraid. Go. Jump in. Don’t spend another minute second guessing yourself or second guessing the promptings. If that’s what you’re feeling called to do, do it.” - Becky Rogers
Becky Rogers is a wife and mother of 10 who is passionate about families and education. She is the Founder of Families Mentoring Families, as well as her own personal development company, LIFEstory Transformation. In 2014, she received a u201ccall of the heartu201d to become involved with humanitarian work in Africa. Though it was completely impossible at the time, she followed that inspiration and FMF was born. She is continually in awe of the miracles that show up to move FMF forward, and she is deeply grateful for the love and support of her family & friends who are the backbone of this work.
Whenever presented with the opportunity for adventure, Dana Robb is all in. Currently, this includes riding the local mountain biking trails with her husband, canyoneering, and climbing the hills of southern Utah. She loves to learn and explore with her six kids. She is drawn to the opportunities being involved with Big Ocean Women provides. Dana loves connecting to a global sisterhood where women’s issues are being addressed through reframing and an abundance mindset.
Monday Sep 18, 2023
Monday Sep 18, 2023
We greatly value the unique and contributing role of families.
Margo Watson is joined by Gloria Boberg and Dr. Tres Tanner.
“Families are the unit in society which is especially comprised of a man and a woman who are husband and wife who are bonded so that they can meet each other's physical and emotional needs as well as to, among other things, have the opportunity to procreate and bring children into the world so they can then care for those children” - Dr. Tanner
“The family is the stability of life. When you count on one another, and you form the foundation to build upon and to trust each other and learn from each other. If someone tries to take that apart, to me it’s like they’re trying to pull the power from the family unit.” - Gloria Boberg
“When there is a family nucleus, there’s always a strong foundation when we can support each other, love each other unconditionally. We, then have, love and respect for each other. Through communication, we learn how to make a healthy family.” - Gloria Boberg
“When a woman goes through nine months of carrying that fetus in her uterus and then birthing that child, that involves a high level of sacrifice and pain and commitment, which leads to the kind of motivation that [other people] will never have the same level of commitment as has a mother.” - Dr. Tanner
“One of the cool things about families is that we learn from one another. Parents learn from children as well as children from parents. So it’s a really cool unit of society, where you live together, and you learn together, and you reinforce each other with that unconditional love.” - Dr. Tanner
“You have to understand that a human being is not disposable. You don’t throw anyone away.” - Gloria Boberg
“One of the central reasons why there are so many problems is because of selfishness, and or, related to that is we live in a very much of an individually focused society and so it’s not natural… for people to think in larger terms, and we need to do that.” - Dr. Tanner
“People can and do change, are capable of turning things around… so you need to make sure you always stay focused on the hope that people are capable of learning how to be really strong and effective people, because what happens is once they start to do that, it becomes self reinforcing and they love it and they want to learn more and more and do more things to stay that way.” - Dr Tanner
“For people that have no family, or they have dysfunctional families, that does not mean that you can’t be healthy and build your own family, and that’s really important to remember.” - Gloria Boberg
“Part of building yourself up is to teach and guide other people to help them learn. We can share these experiences by what we know.” - Gloria Boberg
“Going back again to the family unit, it is so critical in the development of individuals, but also in the development of the community around us” - Margo Watson
“There are lots of people in this world that are quite alone, and they don’t have these family networks that they can depend upon, nevertheless, even a person, or a single parent, trying to do their very best to work with a child, without any other family support, can learn to become a very effective family unit, just those two of them, and what happens is when they develop that, and the great feeling of relief and satisfaction that comes, because they’re applying correct principles with one another, and they’re getting tremendous satisfaction from that.” - Dr Tanner
“Anyone out there can realize there are wonderful things that they can do to make their lives better and really find great satisfaction even if they haven’t had the advantage of having had an initial exposure to that.” - Dr. Tanner
“The husband-wife relationship is really the core relationship in life, because if that is going well, they’re in a much better position, that couple, to do a much more effective job of parenting.” - Dr. Tanner
Dr. Tanner’s 6 basic practices for a thriving relationship:
- Share
- care
- Connect
- Confront
- Resolve
- Grow
“Learn how to talk and have respect for each other.” - Gloria Boberg
“Families have to understand there’s give and take, and you have to learn, and you have to learn ways to communicate. I think having your own set of boundaries is important. You also have to understand the perspective of where other people are coming from.” - Gloria Boberg
“There is nothing that can even compare with the kind of benefit to society that happens when you are committed to your children as a mother or your spouse and you can just set the tone of having happy relationships functional people, there’s nothing quite like that and you can feel proud and grateful for the opportunity you have.” - Dr. Tanner
“Look for the good, because there’s a lot of it!” - Dr. Tanner
Dr. Tres Tanner has dedicated his career to strengthening families. He has helped thousands of individuals, couples and families in over 25 years’ experience as a Professional Relationships–Life Coach / Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist. He also has over 25 years’ experience teaching and training people in Seminars, Workshops, Professional Speaking Engagements, and in undergraduate and graduate University Classes, Marriage Retreats, etc.
Margo Watson is the Director of Outreach Marketing and Fundraising for Big Ocean Women. She has a Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Theatre and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communications and Music. Her dynamic talents led her first to critically acclaimed performances in countless Theater and Concert stages around the country as a soprano soloist and lead actress which included musicals, opera, operetta, orchestral works, comedies, movies, commercials and on-camera TV host. These experiences helped prepare her later as a young widow to work in the fields of in-house public relations and marketing for high tech, retail, medical industries and promotion for celebrities, so she could support her young family. Margo has had extensive experience as an on-camera talent, marketing, advertising, public relations-internal and external, public speaking, production, diverse writing for magazines, commercials, press releases, infomercials, books, press kits, speeches and such. She hopes her skills will be useful to help Big Ocean Women spread their mission of empowering women worldwide. She has six adult children and 9 grandchildren which are the most precious gifts to her.
Wednesday Sep 06, 2023
Wednesday Sep 06, 2023
A discussion with Kimberly Ells The Invincible Family
“Sexualizing children is not ok on any level, and the family destructive elements that are tied into the movement to sexualize children is especially concerning.” – Kimberly Ells
“The family… is the place of greatest power.” – Kimberly Ells
“The family is powerful for many reasons… When new people are born, they’re born as babies, they’re born to mothers in cooperation with fathers, and that matters a lot because then it is the mother and the father who get to impress upon the child what is true and what is right and what is not true and what is not right, and those lessons that are learned in the earliest days of life are crucial and they tend to matter for the rest of a person’s life.” – Kimberly Ells
“The task of loving and raising humanity has been given first and foremost, on purpose I believe, to mothers and fathers.” – Kimberly Ells
“The fact is babies are born to mothers, and mothers are women, and that puts women in a prime position of power and influence.” – Kimberly Ells
“When we cease to recognize that people are either male or female, which they inherently are, then it becomes difficult to recognize any realities that are based on maleness or femaleness which includes motherhood and fatherhood, because being a mother is a sex specific designation; being a father is a sex specific designation, so if sex specific designations don’t matter anymore, how are you going to legally define, first, and then defend motherhood, fatherhood and parental rights?” – Kimberly Ells
“I think if women are really introspective that there is a lot of meaning and purpose in family life.” – Carolina Allen
“Families are meant to be permanent.” – Kimberly Ells
“The solution to women’s empowerment is to see that the family unit is that basic building block and to hold onto it as a society, and women have a central role in that, and we have a huge bargaining power, in a way, in how we want to be treated within the family context, and then socially that influence will impact socially and women will have a much better situation all over the world once we can elevate the matriarchy, once we can elevate the status of motherhood.” – Carolina Allen
“The state cannot, and never will, care about a child in the way that a mother and father do.” – Kimberly Ells
“Having the family is the best way of being able to ensure that children are going to learn what they need to be their best capable selves.” – Dana Robb
“There is very little nobility in doing right because you’re forced to… but there is nobility in greatness, in learning what is right and what is wrong and choosing the right way, choosing the good, the noble.” – Kimberly Ells
“It seems very core and very important that people belong to each other.” – Kimberly Ells
“There has to be middle ground solutions that protect our children and nurture them in responsible technology use.” – Kimberly Ells
“When we hand our children a phone, we’re handing them the device to orient them to somewhere other than us, and that’s kind of the core of the problem.” – Kimberly Ells
Kimberly Ells Substack – “We can be aware of global threats but still live joyfully in our families today.”
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Friday Sep 01, 2023
Carolina Allen and Susan Roylance discussing standing up for the family.
“The family is that cellular level of society. And if we don’t preserve it, if we don’t look favorably upon it, it’s really hard to move forward in every aspect of society, and so it’s really critical that we talk about it in Big Ocean Women. It is central to who we are.” - Carolina Allen
“That’s kind of been the thing that I contributed or tried to contribute, is bringing together the good language (in UN and Conference documents) and getting into the hands of the people who would do things about it.” - Susan Roylance
“I got so tired of talking about poverty and doing nothing, that actually, when I finished the negotiating guide in 2000, I said, ‘Ok, guys, you’ve got this. I’m going to try and do something about poverty, ’ and that’s when my husband and I went to Africa.” - Susan Roylance
“I thought that this is something that is really important to share with others: The feminization of poverty: what happens when fathers aren’t present and aren’t providing for their families in a way that supports the family. It turns into the feminization of poverty where it’s women led households carrying the burden of everything on their shoulders, and we see this alot in the world.” - Carolina Allen
“I think that it’s really important if we’re even going to begin talking about poverty, and the feminization of poverty, we talk about the second half of our population which is men and fathers.” - Carolina Allen
“It’s such a critical point to make that men are part of the solution as well: that men and women working together for the benefit of their children and their future posterity, how everyone has some kind of a contributing role, that they need to be present, that they need to be engaged, that they need to be aware that their absence is really felt, not just at the very local level, but at a national and international level what happens when the family unit breaks down.”
- Carolina Allen
“There’s so much scientific research that shows that an intact family is the best thing for a child! There are so many measurements that show that the child does better if they are in a home with their biological parents, their father and their mother, and I think that because of the whole feminist movement we have devalued the value of fathers, and fathers are critical to a functioning family. If you care about poverty at all, fathers are the solution. We need to have fathers involved in helping to provide.” - Susan Roylance
“I think as pro-family people we need to be more armed with scientific information that shows, just ample data to show that without the biological mother and father in the family, the children are not going to receive the kind of help they need in their growing up process.” - Susan Roylance
“I see the value and the presence of good men in the lives of their children, and them striving to be good partners and husbands, and I think that is such a beautiful thing to witness generationally, that little boys can look up to their fathers and to see the things that they’re doing well, and the things that they can then improve on into the future, and hopefully society just improves generation upon generation.” - Carolina Allen
“The family unit…as a functioning unit that is healthy and thriving, it is that protective layer that preserves free will, that preserves individuality, that preserves the innate dignity of children in their wholeness, and it can grow them into their most healthy self.” - Carolina Allen
“What else do we have? It’s worth saving! The family unit is worth saving, it’s worth investing in, it’s worth talking about.” - Carolina Allen
“Creating human civilizations is the greatest power that exists. It’s all centered around that, and we hold that power, and I don’t think that very many women stop and recognize the depth and the magnitude of our power.” - Carolina Allen
“As mothers, when we fully embrace our motherhood, we get to influence that life, we get to pass along our values and our way of looking at the world… And if we do that jointly, yoked to a partner, a husband, a father that equally values our contribution, and that we can really value theirs, we’ve got something impenetrable.” - Carolina Allen
“I think that when we give each other grace and really try to listen, that there are many lived experiences that testify to the things that you’re saying, that you’ve seen, that you’ve been involved in that it adds a whole other level of expertise that is worth our while to listen to.”
- Carolina Allen
“I think that it is really important that we’re positive… My motto is, when I go to the UN, that I want to be a light on the hill… we need to be for something. We’re mothers of boys as well as girls, and we have a real impact on raising the boys of the future. That whole idea that we need to be opposed to all of these things that are happening isn’t going to get us anywhere. We need to be promoting the good things and we need to be an example.” - Susan Roylance
“As individuals, as human beings, we have God given gifts, talents, capacities, inclinations, skills,... whatever that is, it comes from within, and when we’re able to fulfill that to bless other people, and the people that we can have the most impact with is in our families, and we all belong to a family, and when we can use those gifts and talents to bless others, then we find more meaning and purpose in life, and our leadership capacity grows, and our ability to add upon other gifts and talents, it amplifies and grows and the meaning and the purpose grows and so it becomes this beautiful feedback loop that the more you give, the more you receive!” - Carolina Allen
“I learned leadership through motherhood.” - Carolina Allen
“There is true partnership in creating a family.” - Carolina Allen
“No family is perfect, but truly, we shouldn’t give up on families, we shouldn’t give up on our families. We should always be seeking together with divinity in our lives how we can improve upon and strengthen the families that we have.” - Carolina Allen
“If you don’t focus on your family, then you’re likely to have problems. Families are fragile, they are also the greatest thing that can possibly happen to help us to be able to be a strong society, a strong nation, a strong world. That’s the most important thing we can do, and as we recognize that and work towards it, that will make all the difference.” - Susan Roylance
2.18
Thursday Jul 20, 2023
Thursday Jul 20, 2023
Native American Fatherhood & Families Association (NAFFA) began in 2002 with just one father and the mission of bringing men back to strengthening their families. Since then, NAFFA has successfully impacted thousands of lives and families.
Listen as Carolina and NAFFA Founder, Al Pooley, take an in-depth look at the challenges that fathers and families face, and the heart of the solution based on NAFFA’s great success!
Monday Jun 19, 2023
Monday Jun 19, 2023
Kim Landeen and Carolina Allen discuss the tenet, “We value the irreplaceable role of fathers and build interdependent relationships with men.”
“It gives us all the more authority to speak because it can be an interesting thing to be getting advice for the world from a group of people that have completely disavowed, or just said, ‘Hey we are not engaging with men anymore; we’re completely writing them off from any sort of significant interaction.’ That doesn’t give you credibility in the world because the men still exist, and they’re still a part of this world with us. To have a feminist voice that’s saying, ‘I am in these messy trenches of a hard relationship, and I am making it work. We’re working on it, that gives us way more authority to speak on behalf of feminism in general.” – Carolina Allen
Partnership – “How much better off am I when I have a partner in the work equally yoked, so that I’m not feeling less than or being treated like an employee, or that my husband is my supervisor or my manager… my husband is equally yoked to do the work with me, where his contributions outside of the home and inside of the home are valued, and likewise with my contributions outside of the home and inside of the home, and where we can fill in for each other with our unique gifts and strengths and lighten the load wherever we are and see each other as teammates.” – Carolina Allen
“People don’t get through life unscathed, and as we are willing to invest in the healing of our spouses, in the healing of our partners, great things do come from that.” – Kim Landeen
“We need fathers. They are truly key players in establishing our homes; they are key players in establishing communities that really respect women and respect girls. Without them, we lack so much.” – Kim Landeen
“We need the men in our lives to show up… We don’t need men just to be present, we need men to be actively engaged in the home.” – Kim Landeen
“The idea of ‘fathers’ and the idea of ‘fatherhood’ implies a selflessness that’s embedded in there: that you’re living not just for yourself, but for someone else, and there’s a maturity level there. We’re inviting me to rise to that level of ‘father.’” – Carolina Allen
“(Men), become better with us, rise to the occasion. Be partners in marriage, be partners in life, be partners in rearing children, and in society and all of the good things that come with that.” – Kim Landeen
“Building takes effort and building takes time. Building takes forethought and planning, but it’s worth it.” – Kim Landeen
“Our call to women is to see this value in men. See the struggle, recognize the struggle, see that there is value in the struggle, there is value of partnering with these men in our lives, of surrounding these men with love, even when they’re not necessarily exhibiting the best behaviors, because we see the value in these men, we see the potential in these men. And men, we ask you to partner with us. Truly partner with us. Step up. Yoke yourself beside us. Let’s raise these families, let’s raise society, let’s raise each other in the process. Let’s become the best us we can be by becoming the best we that we can be. Let’s raise our families, let’s strengthen our society. We need you!” – Kim Landeen
Carolina is the founder and leader of Big Ocean Women, the international maternal feminist organization representing perspectives of faith, family, and motherhood throughout civil society. Carolina holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Utah with an emphasis in cultural religions and philosophy of science. Her inspirational and philosophical work has been presented at various international U.N. conferences. She is a native of Brazil, and a fluent trilingual. She and her husband Kawika are parents to 7 children. She is an avid soccer fan and had a brief career as a semi-professional player.
Kim Landeen is a founding member and a Global Team Director of Big Ocean Women, the international maternal feminist organization representing perspectives of faith, family, and motherhood throughout civil society. Kim has a deep love for the natural world. She lives in Alaska with her family where she enjoys spending the slower paced life with her children combing the beach for treasures, gardening, picking wild berries, and spending rainy lazy days making bread, reading books, and watching movies. She is an ecotour captain in Glacier Bay National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site where she helps educate her clients on the relationship between humanity and the larger eco-environment. In addition to her love of nature, she also enjoys studying theology and the inner workings of the soul as well as tracking global political and social movements. Her love for God, people, and this world drives her to continually seek to improve her own circumstances and the circumstances of all those with whom she comes in contact.
Wednesday May 24, 2023
Wednesday May 24, 2023
Kim Landeen and Carolina Allen discuss the tenet “We are empowered by our feminine nature and biology, and we honor our procreative power.”
“I hope that this episode today can inspire and spark just gratitude for yourselves for anybody listening, any woman listening, that this is for you, and that you’re included.” – Carolina Allen
The Big Ocean Women definition of “mother” is: every woman who has the best interest of the rising generation at heart, and willingly gives of herself to nourish and protect the rising generation.
“In today’s standards, the word sacrifice, to put yourself kind of in the background so that something else can flourish and grow has become a really bad thing. But I want to highlight it as a really good and powerful thing.” – Carolina Allen
“I want that [menstruation] to be a celebrated time of life [for my daughters] when they do recognize that they’re coming into womanhood, a time when they’re recognizing their ability to create, which is such a divine power… my definition of divinity is something of creation.” – Kim Landeen
“I wish that everyone around the world, all young girls and women, had that kind of celebration and dignity in their menstruation.” – Carolina Allen
The Power of Days: A Story of Resilience, Dignity, and the Fight for Women’s Equity
“One reason why I will never ever stop talking about biological reality is because women deal with it every single day, and it all starts with our menstruation. I refuse to be called a menstruator or a menstruating person. It’s extremely, extremely offensive, and it’s … psychologically gaslighting millions of women around the world. You can’t pick up and just divorce yourself from your biological reality. It’s just completely absurd.” – Carolina Allen
“The biological evolution of life is you start with menstruation, and hopefully there’s empowerment there. And when there’s empowerment there then there’s empowerment in other relationships that progress. So the relationship with intimacy and the beauty that can be had in our procreative power and … that we get to decide who is part of that process, that nothing is forced upon us, that we get to be very careful and meticulous gatekeepers of that power. … If there’s empowerment there then it’s built upon that foundation and then there’s empowerment in birth.” – Carolina Allen
“If women, if we step into that power and link arms as sisters, then the rest of society has to start shifting their perspective and worldview on who women are, and the power and strength that we have.” – Carolina Allen
“The highest level of power is influence.” – Carolina Allen
“The most generative and sustainable change happens generationally, and the gatekeepers of that generational change are mothers and women because of our sacrifice for the rising generation.” – Carolina Allen
“I love this idea of linking arms together because through this struggle, through these joys, through this experience of motherhood, we have or should have sisters in our lives. We should have Aunties. We should have Grandmothers. There should be this intergenerational connection, and whether that occurs in a biological family … or you create that, I think it is of a vast importance to have multiple different ages of women leading and guiding and holding hands together as we raise these precious, precious children.” – Kim Landeen
“We as individuals, as independent actors have the choice to be a victim and/or to grow from that experience. And to take that experience and say, you know what I am going to make it better; I'm going to make it better for me; I'm going to make it better for my kids.” – Kim Landeen
“The word sacrifice really embodies that you’re setting something aside for something greater in the future, and that’s a hope driven thing. That’s a faith-filled thing.” – Carolina Allen
“Everything can be taken from a man [or woman] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” – Viktor Frankl
“Your children will never get another childhood, and you are the one that can facilitate and create that for them, thus healing your past self.” – Carolina Allen
Carolina Allen is the founder and Exective Director of Big Ocean Women, the international maternal feminist organization representing perspectives of faith, family, and motherhood throughout civil society. Carolina holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Utah with an emphasis in cultural religions and philosophy of science. Her inspirational and philosophical work has been presented at various international U.N. conferences. She is a native of Brazil, and a fluent trilingual. She and her husband Kawika are parents to 7 children. She is an avid soccer fan and had a brief career as a semi-professional player.
Kim Landeen is a founding member and a Global Team Director of Big Ocean Women, the international maternal feminist organization representing perspectives of faith, family, and motherhood throughout civil society. Kim has a deep love for the natural world. She lives in Alaska with her family where she enjoys spending the slower paced life with her children combing the beach for treasures, gardening, picking wild berries, and spending rainy lazy days making bread, reading books, and watching movies. She is an ecotour captain in Glacier Bay National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site where she helps educate her clients on the relationship between humanity and the larger eco-environment. In addition to her love of nature, she also enjoys studying theology and the inner workings of the soul as well as tracking global political and social movements. Her love for God, people, and this world drives her to continually seek to improve her own circumstances and the circumstances of all those with whom she comes in contact.
Saturday May 06, 2023
Saturday May 06, 2023
One of the most important things we can do as communities is to create spaces for connection and creativity, places that nurture the bonds between community members that are not places of commerce. Spaces that serve multiple purposes. Gloria Boberg talks about how a few extra acres in her community became one of those places, offering the space for a community garden that has served to connect and foster the relationships between all the members of her small town.
Dana Robb loves adventure. Whenever presented with the opportunity, Dana is all in. Currently this includes riding the local mountain biking trails with her husband, canyoneering, and climbing the hills of southern Utah. She loves to learn and explore with her six kids whom she’s been homeschooling since 2009. Her other interest include health and wellness and humanitarian work. If given the choice between cleaning her house and reading, she will choose reading every time. Drawn to the opportunities Big Ocean provides, Dana loves connecting to a global sisterhood where women’s issues are being addressed through reframing and an abundance mindset.
ShelliRae Spotts is an essayist, advocacy writer, screenwriter, and sometime poet who teaches creative writing and composition at Brigham Young University. She is passionate about exploring the ways we use stories to build bridges within our communities and her essays delve into the connections we discover through languaging our lived experiences. Shelli has attended the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women as an advocacy writer for the last several years, and is dedicated to social justice and environmental causes. She was the co-director and writing mentor for "Words for Water: Dancing the Stories of our Home Waters," a collaborative writing/dance advocacy project focusing attention on the challenges facing our rural river watersheds. She is the author of a forthcoming essay collection, "Radical Creativity: On a New Economy of Care." When she is not teaching, writing, or reading, Shelli loves to spend time with her husband and four adult children watching great movies, attending live theatre, or dragging everyone outside to “look at the sky.”
Saturday Apr 29, 2023
Saturday Apr 29, 2023
Carolina Allen and Maddi Cheers discuss environmental stewardship and earth stewardship and our tenet, “We live and promote a life-culture within the womb, the home, and our ecological environment.”
“When we appreciate that we were given this great planet to look after for everybody, when we establish a relationship with her and with the Creator, then we are serving each other.” – Maddi Cheers
“The biggest difference between the way native people work, the way we work, the way you work, and the way environmentalists work is that native people establish a relationship with the earth… There is no saving the earth without having a relationship with her. And that relationship is one of appreciation.” – Maddie Cheers
Original Instructions: to be grateful, to treat each other and all of nature with kindness and respect, to live in families/clans that create loving communities.
“You can’t be a steward of the earth if you are not a steward of human beings also. You’re not being a steward if you are angry at everybody and all of your energy is directed at, ‘Oh, I’m worried about the earth because my generation may not survive.’ That’s selfishness… That’s a way different attitude than waking up every morning giving thanks for all the people, giving thanks to mother earth and all of nature, and proceeding with your day from there.” – Maddi Cheers
Blackfoot Physics by F. David Peat
“I myself have no power. It’s the people behind me who give me any power that I have. Real power comes only from the Creator. If you’re asking about strength, then I can say that the greatest strength is gentleness.” To Become a Human Being by Steve Wall
“The biggest problem with the environmental movement is that it’s a disconnect from nature at the same time as they’re saying, ‘We have to take care of nature,’ you can’t take care of something you’re disconnected from.” – Maddi Cheers
“The reason we are going through all of this turmoil on this earth … is because we are disconnecting from each other, and She is trying to wake us up.” – Maddi Cheers
“We know from ice core samples out of Antarctica, and this is solid geological science, not greenhouse theory… that the earth goes through these cycles of cooling and warming ever since it has been the earth.” – Maddi Cheers
“Just because we can, does it mean we should?” – Maddi Cheers
“Spirituality, religion, these invisible, intangible things are real, and they’re important. And I think that more and more people are feeling it, because it’s a feeling, it’s a gut, intuitive thing that they’re recognizing that family is important, relationships are important, community is important, love, respect, gratitude, all of these things have a creative force, and they have a protective and a healing force.” – Carolina Allen
“Sisters, cling to your children, cling to your families, bring your men with you, convince them; this isn’t a battle against men, our maternal feminist identities are bigger than that. We’re stewards of not only this planet, but of spirits, and this is our stewardship… claim it and step into that power.” – Carolina Allen
“This is our work, to bring that kind of calling, to bring that to the women and to stand together.” – Carolina Allen
“When you look at these great wisdom teachings all over the world, they have the same message, it is the same message of love one another. Don’t lose your connection to the planet.” – Maddi Cheers
The Good Mind and the Quick Mind:
The Good Mind is slow to anger, slow to judge, quick to love.
The Quick Mind is quick to anger, quick to judge, slow to love.
“When we are using that good mind, we are connected to everything and everyone, because our connection is through love, is through understanding that we are here for each other, and when we look at the natural world, that is what the natural world teaches us.” – Maddi Cheers
Maddi Cheers is first and foremost a Wisdom Activist. She is a storyteller, ceremonialist, dancer, teacher, poet, and interfaith minister. She is also the founder of The Women’s Oneness Project, dedicated to bringing women (and men) together to respectfully discuss and consider our differences. In 2019, at 65, Maddi dedicated her final chapter to passing on the knowledge and teachings she has gained from indigenous elders, spiritual leaders, and her own life experience. “In every decision we make we must consider how it will affect the next seven generations, based on the wisdom of the seven before.” - The Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee
“You know what the two most
important words are?: Thank you.” Tom Porter, Bear Clan, Mohawk Iroquois
Spiritual Leader
Carolina Allen is the founder and leader of Big Ocean Women, the international maternal feminist organization representing perspectives of faith, family, and motherhood throughout civil society. Carolina holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Utah with an emphasis in cultural religions and philosophy of science. Her inspirational and philosophical work has been presented at various international U.N. conferences. She is a native of Brazil, and a fluent trilingual. She and her husband Kawika are parents to 7 children. She is an avid soccer fan and had a brief career as a semi-professional player.
Wednesday Apr 19, 2023
Wednesday Apr 19, 2023
One of the Big Ocean Women beliefs is that we live and promote a life culture in the womb, the home, and our ecological environment. These three environments form the basis of an ethical code of consistent life culture. Join Carol and Kim as they discuss these three environments.
“It’s an idea that is really integral to Big Ocean Women and how we work… We promote life culture within the womb, which is our first environment, and then we promote that into our second environment which is our home, and then everything else, community, ecology, ecological environment, outside of those two environments is the third environment. It’s the idea that if you can preserve peace and non-harm and abundance within those spheres that it just will naturally flow outward into the community or into the ecological environment because we’re all integrated. We’re all part of each other as human beings; we’re all part of our greater ecosystems. It’s important to look at the womb as an ecosystem. It’s important to look at the home as an ecosystem, and then it just spills over all of the abundance created within those first two spheres, those first two environments, it will spill over to the third.” – Carolina Allen
“This is a topic that we can address literally every single issue and/or problem and/or positivity in this world is through this lens of the three environments.” – Kim Landeen
“Environmental activism, Environmentalism, it very much pits human beings as an enemy to the environment… Environmental stewardship, on the other hand, looks at human beings as an integral part of the ecosystem, that we’re not apart from the environment at all, that we’re completely integrated, and that we have a more protective stewardship responsibility with the environment.” – Carolina Allen
“The abundance mindset that’s just generated from gardening is unreal.” – Carolina Allen
“The family system is an organic system.” – Carolina Allen
Carolina refers to being inspired by the work of Vandana Shiva; read more here.
“There truly is a cost to creation.” – Kim Landeen
“Truly when you’re caring for the earth, it feeds back into the family, it feeds back into the individual, and vice versa, when you as an individual feed into the earth obviously, it is improved, if done in organic, natural, and cyclical ways.” – Kim Landeen
“Our faith should lead into our environmentalism, into our environmental stewardship.” – Kim Landeen
“The word stewardship perfectly encapsulates what this is all about. It’s not environmental authority over, it’s environmental stewardship which means that you recognize that this doesn’t belong to you, that it’s just under your watchful care, and that as a steward you have the responsibility.” – Carolina Allen
Carolina is the founder and leader of Big Ocean Women, the international maternal feminist organization representing perspectives of faith, family, and motherhood throughout civil society. Carolina holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Utah with an emphasis in cultural religions and philosophy of science. Her inspirational and philosophical work has been presented at various international U.N. conferences. She is a native of Brazil, and a fluent trilingual. She and her husband Kawika are parents to 7 children. She is an avid soccer fan and had a brief career as a semi-professional player.
Kim Landeen is a founding member and a Global Team Director of Big Ocean Women, the international maternal feminist organization representing perspectives of faith, family, and motherhood throughout civil society. Kim has a deep love for the natural world. She lives in Alaska with her family where she enjoys spending the slower paced life with her children combing the beach for treasures, gardening, picking wild berries, and spending rainy lazy days making bread, reading books, and watching movies. She is an ecotour captain in Glacier Bay National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site where she helps educate her clients on the relationship between humanity and the larger eco-environment. In addition to her love of nature, she also enjoys studying theology and the inner workings of the soul as well as tracking global political and social movements. Her love for God, people, and this world drives her to continually seek to improve her own circumstances and the circumstances of all those with whom she comes in contact.