Category: Pregnancy

Anthropology, Arctic, Awareness, Culture, Everyday life, Family, Genealogy, Health, Heritage, Homeschooling, Kids, Mental health, Motherhood, Neurodiversity, Neurological, Outfit, People, Photography, Pregnancy, Quotes, Saami, Sámi, Sápmi, Spirituality, Tromsø, Uralic, Womanhood

Mothers Did Not Play With Their Children For 99% of Human History

Ask the Mountains

Why the absence of autonomous, multi-age playgroups makes parenting suck. (This is a reshare of Elena Bridgers’ article).

Sámi mommy breastfeeding toddler in Tromsdalen, Tromsø, Arctic Sápmi, while smoking some tobacco.

“Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and (two or three) gentlemen, because we are about to dive into the my absolute favorite topic of all time: the importance of multi-age playgroups in hunter-gatherer societies. Honestly, I get more excited about this stuff than a dog whose owner just said the word “walk.” Back when I first started reading about motherhood in hunter-gatherer societies there were two things that made me go, “ohhhhhhhh, now I get it.” One is the longer interbirth intervals that probably characterized most of human history (as I wrote about here) and the other is the critical important of multi-age playgroups as a source of substitute childcare for mothers. It was a total epiphany for me, and I suspect you may have the same reaction, because once you see how this used to work, how human childhood evolved to work, it just makes so much sense. Over millions of years, we basically evolved a perfect system involving care of children by children, in a way that was wholly compatible with their own need for play, and that we have entirely abandoned in the modern context, to the detriment of all.

But in order for you to understand why this still matters for mothers in the modern context, I need to tell you my own story about just how much I hate playing with my children (even though I love them deeply) and how misguided I was about the role of a “good mom” and what she owes her kids…

I’d rather stick a fork in my eyeball than play pirates.

Only after I had begun doing deep research on hunter-gatherer societies did I realize that this is exactly how things were supposed to work. Children are supposed to play with other children. It was never meant to be the mother’s job. But trapped as we are in single-family homes where playmates can be hard to come by, parents often end up filling this tedious and time-consuming role…[..]”

Read the full article here.

Acrylic painting, Animals, Arctic, Art, Awareness, Beauty, Culture, Everyday life, Family, Finnmark, Indigenous, Landscape, Mental health, Motherhood, Nordic, People, Pregnancy, Relationship, Sámi, Sápmi, Self portrait, Siberian, Spirituality, Tromsø, Uralic, Womanhood

To all the lonely Mothers out there

Ask the Mountains

Humans are herd animals, we’re mammals. We are literally made to raise children in the company and with the support of other women.

This is something we have lost as a modern society.

I would go as far as to say that we have a pandemic of lonely Mothers. Home alone most of the time with their babies, doing their best, often without much mental, emotional or physical support or stimuli from other mums. It’s not natural. And it’s not healthy for the baby; having their start in life defined by this kind of isolation.

It’s not long ago in our human history that women and mums were much closer, and could rely on each other more. I often wish I could turn back time, and experience that closeness, that kind of Motherhood.

In rare small (indigenous) communities around the world, this is still the case, and used to be like that here too (in Troms and Finnmark).

Loneliness sucks a lot of the joy out of Motherhood. It sits like a gray veil over us and makes us even more isolated. Not to mention the shame and guilt many mums feel for even feeling lonely, bacause we have our babies, so we should feel more than content.

But the truth is that women need women. Mums need mums. Only other mums can truly understand the ordeal of birthing and raising children.

So, if you feel lonely in Motherhood, like me, please do not blame yourself, the fault is not with you. It is that we as a modern society have separated ourself too much and we don’t see the importance and value of a supported mum. It’s kind of obvious though; a healthy happy mum = healthy happy start of life for baby, and thus for the all humans and society at large. It all starts with mum.

A painting I did some years ago. “I will keep you safe and warm”.
Arctic, Art, Awareness, Beauty, Culture, Everyday life, Finnmark, Hair, History, Hypnobirthing, Indigenous, Keto, Landscape, Make-Up, Motherhood, Nordic, Outfit, People, Photography, Photoshoot, Pregnancy, Quotes, Saami, Sápmi, Self portrait, Womanhood

Surrendering to an unseen force

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“Pregnancy is a process that invites you to surrender to the unseen force behind all life.” 💚🧡🤍🩵 Photos taken by Gunhild Berg Johansen, I was ca 6 months pregnant here.

I highly recommend this very helpful and insightful podcast episode on breaking the fear-tension-pain cycle that most women go into when in labour, myself included. I am very close to giving birth to our second child, and feeling all the emotions that comes naturally leading up to that. This podcast episode really helped me, along with a hypnobirthing course I’ve been doing lately.

– Monica Amrita Mani

Adventure, Arctic, Art, Awareness, Beauty, Buddhism, Culture, Dharma, DIY, Dzogchen, Everyday life, Finnmark, Health, Indigenous, Keto, Landscape, Mahayana, Nordic, Outfit, People, Photography, Poems, Pregnancy, Saami, Sámi, Sápmi, Self portrait, Spirituality, Tantric, Uralic, Vajrayana, Yoga

Photo series: Everyday life

Ask the Mountains
In my summer sea sámi gákti. And small baby “shoes” made by mother-in-law 🙏🏼
Shades of blue shell
Rusty colours
Blue and purple hues
“Det er morgen igjen, vesle håp
og verden frotterer seg med nyvasket solskinn.
Livets ansikt er aldri det samme
selv om vi ser på det i all evighet.” – Kolbein Falkeid
#home #kitchen #midnightsun
Curious little guy on a short hike in the rain. ☔️
Summer details in some of my older paintings.
Just playing and experimenting with colours and techniques so that I will hopefully find the Joy of painting again 😄 I guess I have a little dry spell in my creative life at the moment..
Blue, orange and yellow are great together.
A bouquet I picked by the side of the road.
Details
Beef tallow.

Son and daddy 💙💛❤️💚
My partner of 14 years meditating. #yogisondisplay
Our shed with some new flowers.
Curious little rabbit in our garden.

Xx Monica Amrita Mani

Animals, Anthropology, Awareness, Chronic illness, Culture, Everyday life, Health, Keto, Neurological, People, Pregnancy, Saami, Sámi, Sápmi, Tromsø, Uncategorized

Is the Ketogenic Diet Safe in Pregnancy? (Very Important)

Ask the Mountains

This short video really highlights something that is close to my heart; right nutrition in pregnancy. Am currently pregnant with our second baby, and since going keto, the difference before and after is like night and day. Especially if I compare to my first pregnancy 4 years ago when I was not in ketosis. I was binging carbs all day and gaining a lot of weight, and barely had any energy. At the end of that pregnancy, I had to use crutches and/or wheelchair. The really shitty thing about using glucose as main energy source is that the more carbs you eat, the more you crave. I’ve noticed that when switching to (animal) fat as the main fuel, I don’t have cravings, mood and energy level is quite stable and I can function a lot better as a mum and basically as a human being 😅 I can write a longer more in detail post about what exactly I eat to maintain ketosis and how it makes sense for me to do that both from a health perspective but also from an ancestral point of view.

(Pictured: beef tallow I eat every day.)

Xx Monica Amrita Mani

Art, DIY, Duodji, Everyday life, Heritage, Indigenous, Pregnancy, Sámi, Self portrait

Traditional Sámi bracelet

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Was so lucky to receive this traditional Sámi bracelet from my partner’s mum as a gift “for giving her the greatest gift” (our son, her grandson) 🖤

It is made from black leather, reindeer antler button and decoration, and the braids are traditional tinwire used in duodji/daidda. It is made by @tinntraadfruen on instagram if you want to see her work 💫

What was a gift you received that had a nice meaning behind it?

Adventure, Arctic, Beauty, Everyday life, Health, Landscape, People, Photography, Pregnancy, Sámi, Sápmi

An eventful, colourful January

Ask the Mountains

It’s the last day of a very eventful January, and I am spending it curled up on our big sleeping couch with our newborn baby boy who is about 2 weeks old now, in his little baby nest and my partner who is sitting on the other end writing away on the computer. Outside, it’s already dark again. Polar night is officially over here but I have not seen the Sun yet. I am not outside so much, hardly at all as all time and energy is spent adjusting and taking care of this new amazing creation. I did however manage our first little walk with the pram!

Life is new and different and surreal as parents. Giving birth was intense and hard work, and unfortunately not how I envisioned, but nontheless a very powerful experience. A rite of passage of sorts.. At one point during delivery I felt like I connected with all other Mothers giving birth naturally, experiencing the same pain at the exact same time. When he was born, there was an incredible silence and love that I have not experienced before 🤱🏻

January is also my birthday month, and this year I celebrated at home with my little family and my friend Katharina. 29; last year in my twenties, first year as a mama! 🎉✨

How was your January?