Hi everybody and welcome back to our blog from the Kamasutra to 2020 where we address your questions, your concerns, even your worries around all things to do with sex and sexuality. So as always we have with us Dr. Anvita Madan Bihal. Anvita is a psychosexual therapist and she brings to the questions a psychological and clinical perspective to add to the advice of the Kamasutra. Welcome Anvita. Thank you Seema and welcome to our blog this week. So Anvita today we're going to talk about fetishes. You know over the last few weeks I've had a lot of emails about fetishes from men as well as women and I found it quite interesting because the questions that have come in that each fetish is different but it's much deeper than just the idea of the sexual preference that they're expressing. You know their questions are about how these fetishes have impacted their life, about how it has impacted the way that they think and most importantly how it is impacting their relationships because we always think of a fetish as an individual thing. It belongs to a person. We forget that there is a partner involved in what happens if the partner is not into the same fetish. So there's quite a lot of very interesting questions that have come in which I'm looking forward to discussing with you today. Interestingly also the one common denominator in all of these questions, the last line of every message every email has been is this a sin? Am I doing something bad? Is something wrong with me? So I think today we're also looking forward to helping a lot of these people understand themselves and get over their own fears but to begin with a very simple question and you might laugh at me but you know is there a difference between a fetish and a fantasy because whenever we use the word fetish somehow it has a sort of underground feel to it, something that should be hidden, something that shouldn't be talked about almost negative but fantasies are supposed to be fabulous. So is there a difference between the two? That's such an interesting question actually and you know we rarely think about it but if we just take the word fantasy, fantasy is about imagination.  Various fetishes are more real, they are more concrete in some ways, they could be about body parts other than your genitals so you've heard of the foot fetish very often or they would be to do with objects like leather or rubber or you know something else wearing lingerie like those could be the fetishes but I think what's important there is that the person feels that the arousal or how much pleasure they will get if the fetish is involved will be that much higher with or without the fetish and that's what makes it important and that's why fetishes you know become important for people. Okay so that's interesting so what we're saying is that fantasies as an imagining a personal imagining of the sexual act but the fetish is arousal and involving something other than the sexual organs that's the gist of what you said. Yeah I think it could as in it couldn't involve but it mostly involves things other than the genital organs. Okay so let me start with the first one the first question comes from a young man who says that when he was about 15 or 16 he realized that he really liked to wear women's underwear now that on its own is not an unusual fetish but he says that when he started to wear it it took him a few years to kind of get past that initial hesitation or the fear that somebody might find out etc but when he got to the point where he gave himself the permission to actually wear the women's underwear he realized that he only likes to have sex with transgenders so he says I am not gay I still like women but the actual sexual act he only enjoys with transgender so it was actually his fetish that brought him to this realization and now he's actually worrying whether he has done something bad or wrong or is this something that he shouldn't be doing now what would you like to say to this young man?  And of course the idea of having sex with the transgender community is also not individual to him because I think that there is also you were mentioning a big movement at the moment where a lot of people are saying that that is actually their sexual preference way beyond men or women it's sort of it's something that's really come into itself right now. Yeah actually somebody asked me this interesting question when I was teaching and they asked because we tried to separate gender from sexual orientation and they said what if somebody's preference is to have sex with a person who identifies as a trans person as a transgender person and obviously that would be another preference you know it is different from being heterosexual or gay it would be wanting to have sex with somebody who's transitioned or in transition or a lot of times we also see people enjoy sex by cross dressing like that's a big fetish and it can or it can not like you know sometimes people confuse it and say oh they must be interested in transitioning or it might be that they want to actually have a sex change but actually what we've seen is people enjoy cross dressing as a fetish like that gives them sexual pleasure and it might or might not really be related to their gender identity. Okay great thank you Anvita I'm hoping that this will really help this young man who just to help him to understand that he is absolutely okay in the way that he's thinking and the way that he's feeling because the last paragraph of his email was extremely worried about whether he was okay and whether he was doing the right thing so as Anvita says this is completely normal and okay in every way so Anvita next question a little bit following on from the first one it comes from a man who is in his 30s now he says that when he was much younger he took to masturbating in a woman's handkerchief because he didn't have a female partner and so this was his way of coming to orgasm the only problem is now the idea of ejaculating into a woman's handkerchief has become a fetish and even though he's with a woman now he cannot bring himself to come to orgasm within her even if they have penetrative sex at the last minute he has to pull out and actually orgasm into a woman's handkerchief and he's extremely worried because he feels that it's actually starting to break down his relationship. Yeah so this is like you said it's very complex and I think I would have taken or done more exploration work if someone was in our clinic but let's just take it on the face value of what you're saying and that you know it is impacting their relationship and he wants to change it so I'm working from the premise that he wants to change the fetish and he wants to have a better relationship sexual relationship with his partner and so one of the suggestions that I can make is that maybe they can introduce the women's handkerchief as part of their foreplay you know so it still gives him the arousal he still gives him the excitement he you know he still you know gets extra excited seeing that but that he doesn't need to actually ejaculate in it or there might be a transition period so you know it starts with initially that he keeps it on his side and then ejaculates and slowly and steadily it might be like keeping it by his side looking at it or then introducing it as a foreplay or playing with it or having it on the woman's body so there are transitions or the ways that he can include it with his partner which still gives him the sexual pleasure he gets from the handkerchief but at the same time if they as a couple want to experience you know penetrative intercourse then they can have that without him needing to ejaculate in the handkerchief you know what I think that's really helpful that is seriously useful and if you're listening to us on this vlog today I hope that you'll follow on with a suggestion because I think that there's real hope in being able to transition away from the women's handkerchief if that's what you really wish to do as you've mentioned to us okay great let's get a little bit more complex now my next question is from actually from a couple who indulge in this particular fetish and this is about playing with scat and urine but I bring this up because one is of course the couple who wrote to us said that again they wanted to know if there was something wrong with what they're doing because of course scat or feces for those of our listeners who don't know what scat is your feces your urine it's not a very nice pleasant sort of object to be playing with so you know I can understand that they're writing in to say are they doing something wrong are they doing something bad but since then I've also had a few emails from people saying my partner wants to do this and I find it awful what do you have to say about this particular fetish so yeah Seema like I know that most people who are listening might think that is absolutely weird why would somebody get sexual arousal from you know feces or urinating or scat or poo but it is a fetish that exists and it is a fetish that is that you would hear from multiple people that they have their fetish and what's important to really think about it so from both perspective from the individual's perspective once again who are we to judge that's what gives them sexual arousal and that you know gets them the excitement they get feel excited when feces are involved or scat is involved in love making and if that's what works for them I'm not we don't need to judge it that's their relationship and if they find a partner who gets as excited by scat or you know urinating then you know that's wonderful that they found somebody who gets as excited and that would make a really good amazing sexual experience however as you mentioned that for other people it might sound like that's disgusting that's weird how could somebody like something like that so it can be very difficult for individuals to actually verbalize their fetish to a partner you know to introduce it and say oh actually you know what this is what I'm interested in you know so can you imagine that conversation and how fearful they might be that it's going to get rejected like they would just always assume that it could get rejected so one of the suggestions that I would make is that if you have the fears of rejection then maybe present it as an idea present it as what do you think if somebody was interested in this how would you react if your partner has a very opposed reaction or they're not interested at all maybe try suggesting having it visually on a video or you know just as a picture behind you just like we think of other ways that we can introduce it so that you can get some excitement out of it whereas your partner doesn't have to feel as inhibited or disgusted by it so if there is a happy medium that the both of you can find and you know I know that we're going to discuss later on about partners as well because I can understand that for a partner if they're not interested in it it's a tall ask you know it's a tall ask to say let's have sex and I want to you know play with your urine now that is a tall ask so that can be difficult and I would you know it might require you to get some help to negotiate this space with your partner yeah because this is one of those fetishes that a lot of people have written in about about their partner's reaction so I've had a men writing in saying oh you know my wife always looks at me and says are you mad each time I suggest it and we've even had a couple of young women write in and say that this is what my partner wants me to do and I just find it so unacceptable I think it's a particularly difficult one to deal with because I was just thinking I mean like you said yes if it is a fetish that you have that's fine and if you find a partner who's into it equally that's brilliant because you know you can't you can't get better than that frankly if both of you want the same things and you're sexually compatible that's fantastic but I was just thinking like even the basic stench of it or you know the smell it is kind of difficult I think for partners to come to that acceptance you know when one of the people had written in and said that her partner wants her to actually urinate on the floor in front of him now you can imagine you're in your bedroom and he wants you to sit down on the floor in front of him and then urinate and it is a difficult one to do so I know and it sounds I'm sure people are listening they are thinking oh that's bizarre but once again it's a fetish it happens people get aroused by it they get excited but as soon as we start thinking of another person in this relationship that goes beyond your relationship with your fetish it does get complex you know and we say this week after week if as a partner you're not interested in it don't go along with it first for the sake of it it takes away from your sexual pleasure you know if you're feeling uncomfortable about something or disgusted by something you're not going to enjoy love making and that's not the point that your partner is asking you to do so communicate talk about it you know and sometimes you know couples will come in where they have to face the tough question where is the fetish more important or the partner you know they have to figure it out and they really come up with creative solutions where the partner might say okay you can go enjoy your fetish somewhere else or you know I will do this much but not more I'm okay with like like seeing a picture of it but I'm not actually going to physically do it so they really negotiate the space and we also try and understand what pleasure or what emotion is this fetish fulfilling for the partner and can we replicate it through something else will something else satisfy it so it is a really interesting space to you know really maneuver and negotiate and understand but don't give up the communication you know it's not your partner is not bad for having a fetish and you're not bad for liking the same fetish so communicate and try and find a way out rather than you know judging your partner or feeling forced that you need to like partake in this I think that's really amazing I mean it keeps bringing me back to this idea of the fact that you know we don't talk about sex and sexuality it is so taboo even you know just the most average kind of missionary position between a married couple kind of sex even that is not spoken about and this is just that much deeper and nobody's going to talk to you and you can almost imagine somebody going out into the big bad world and say this is what I like you can imagine the sort of reactions that they're going to get face on so you know it must be so difficult to understand that this is what you have to and you know just keeping that trust between a couple to say that okay we are going to talk we're going to have this conversation no matter what happens we're going to discuss it and we're going to try and see if we have a way out so for this particular person and for everybody else who is written in on the idea of scat or urine understand that this is not the end of the world if your partner doesn't want it like Anvita says try it with just visualizing it I have pictures have photos have other objects nearby that remind you of that and see if that works and keep talking it through Anvita are you ready for the next one okay so the next one that I want to bring out is this idea of people in positions of authority now to me I think that that's again a very very ordinary average common fetish it's you know this idea of having somebody who's in power somebody who's important you know people have this thing about somebody in uniform that's a pretty common fantasy and a fetish isn't it or you know the sex with your boss because he's more powerful and so on so this is quite it's quite a commonplace one but I have recently had a couple of people writing in and talking about wanting to introduce their mother-in-law into the relationship now I'm just wondering does this in your mind also come under this idea of positions of power or positions of authority you know so the first time we discussed this question it was and it as an I'm sure for the listeners listening they're thinking whoa like you know that's really what's going on here it's crossing boundaries but I think if we come down I think all the relationships here what we need to focus is on the relationship so the mother-in-law might be somebody in a position of authority there is a certain amount of you know there might be some image of what she is how she is how she behaves and it might trigger something in that person you know so what we need to do is we need to focus on the relationship and not so much like if you think about it people have the fetish of having sex with policemen or having sex with teachers you don't actually bring the teacher or policeman into your bedroom what you might do is you might do role plays you might dress up as a police officer or as a teacher or something like that so once again here I think what's important for this person is that you're obviously not going to bring your mother-in-law into the bedroom so what is the relationship that you're seeking what is that is exciting in that relationship is that that she's very authoritative is it because she is a shouter what you know what is it does she use harsh language harsh word what is the trigger or what is exciting about that relationship or is there something that she does that you know feels exciting and once you figure out that you can obviously role play it with your partner you can you know if you like harsh language you can role play that harsh language if you like the shouting you can role play the shouting if you like the gentleness you can role play the gentleness but it's more about the relationship and less about who there is you know I absolutely love what you have said through this whole thing because I think we we generally tend to deal with fetishes like I said you know we always think of them as this slightly underground word slightly negative connotation oh ha ha you know that kind of thing and you just realize how much how much of yourself goes into a fetish how much of your mind your brain is involved in that and that you really need to have a better relationship with your own sexuality with your own brain and talk out some of these things even if it's to yourself if not to somebody outside just so that you can understand it in terms of the wider relationship you know with with your partner or with society or with yourself yeah you know what you're saying is very important because when I was preparing for this video one of the things that we learned is that fetishes sometimes make you feel a certain way so for example an example I was given was that cross dressing makes somebody feels less anxious or calm like that and then when they're feeling less anxious and they're feeling calm obviously love making you feel that much exciting and more pleasurable and they have to find that relationship that you know and then it became okay for the partner the dressing like full woman was too much but could they have a piece of clothing that they could bring in which still made them feel less anxious and calm and the partner could live with the fact that you know there was a piece of clothing that her partner was wearing and it was you know she could bear with that as well and they could have an amazing relationship but they had to peel through what was important for each person and what were they willing to overcome and what were they willing to accept so you're absolutely right that fetishes don't always need to be about sex they can be but they could be you know something psychological emotional about them as well and what it's worth exploring your own mind to figure out what that is okay btsm yeah I was waiting for that one to come it's the most common one but I I have a reason for having left it to the end but please tell us what do you think about btsm I was waiting for that one because you know it seems like people see it as a fetish and for me I think when we when we say btsm is a fetish you're really minimizing the community it's a very large community and it is now a community where people are saying that's where we need to go and learn about consent and contracts you know it's no if when we go to there's so many contracts and there's so much consent that is taken before somebody actually engages in sex um okay let's do yeah I was just waiting for that one to come because I think you know people always think about btsm and they think about it as a fetish but I think about it as a community it's a sexual preference and it is a community where now more and more people are saying that that's the community where we need to go and learn about consent you would be interesting um yeah because there are so many rules and regulations in that you know in that relationship where there is a contract before you actually negotiate what is allowed what is not allowed what are the signs for stopping and once the person says stop there is no like oh I did get that I didn't understand it's very clear when that sign and the sign could be putting your hand up could be anything and when that signal is given the other person stops there is no like oh I didn't realize and none of that is there and the biggest myth that I want to break is that people think people who are aggressive or violent within sex that's btsm and that is absolutely not what btsm is you have to understand that there's a combination there there is one partner who might be the submissive partner or you know that's one of the relationships that I'm talking about who like receiving pain and they meet up with a partner who like they might be the dominance partner the dominant partner who like inflicting pain and that's the combination that meets and sex is very pleasurable for them because one likes receiving one likes inflicting and so it's not like oh I like hitting somebody while I'm having sex and that's btsm does your partner like receiving sex do they feel aroused when sex is being uh when um when you know pain is being inflicted on it if not then that's not btsm that's not the other partner giving permission and I really want to break this myth because now with like social media and Netflix and everything people just believe that having violent sex is just one kind and 50 shades of gray and 50 shades of gray is not btsm the btsm community would be very horrified considering you know because once again there is a father differential in 50 shades of gray he is in the position of father and she is not somebody who's okay with that you know she's not somebody who gets aroused by that so it's really important that we find that combination you know when we're thinking like we said before if your partner doesn't like your fetish then they are not going to feel aroused they're not going to feel the pleasure sex is not going to be enjoyable for them so just because it's your fetish doesn't mean it needs to be your partner's fetish so yeah that's a really important you know so what I'm taking away from that and I'm fascinated that yes you are absolutely right we know that within the btsm community consent is so important I mean they have the safe words they have the safe gestures there are all these rules to it and people are so careful to stay within those rules you know when we attend workshops for instance there are people who run workshops for btsm and you know it's very very important but you know where they would stop you constantly because I attended a workshop on that you know as part of my research and it was fascinating because you know there's the person like the person holding the workshop would say okay now the dominant partner must spank the submissive partner on the bottom with this particular leather strap or whatever but as soon as you do it you hit once and then you rub it better so you have to make them feel comforted with it as well so you know there was just so much there were so many rules and I like what you said that there is a whole sense of consent around this that you know the both people are saying yes we want to do it so for everybody out there listening in and thinking oh yeah you know we're so into btsm and is it we are not saying whether it is right or wrong we're saying that there are ways of doing it it is there a whole set of rules around it it's like if you get into a wrestling ring or a boxing ring there are rules around your boxing right it's a sport similarly for btsm there are a lot of rules and you can't just sort of you know go trigger happy and say well you know I'm going to start beating the other person up and this is all very exciting for me it may not be for the other person yeah and you know and when you were talking about it you know there is even contract of what is permissible it's not only like how what all can you do what can happen everything is they have first discussed it before before they engage in it you know how much is pleasurable how much is not and on the other flip side also I think the social media also presents this that just because there's a person who's the dominant person who likes inflicted pain or they are the villain you know they are the villain who are just devils and even in their sex making making they like to hit people that's not true either you know once again it's about the combination you know they're not going and hitting everybody so if they have a partner who's not into btsm they're not going and hitting them unless there is consent and a contract they will not engage in the same love making with somebody who's not part of the btsm community they will be very respectful of that fact so I think that from this particular question what I really want everybody to understand and take away because again a lot of questions came in about btsm from a lot of people who are fairly young who just are getting excited by the idea and I think it's more like a novelty thing that it isn't just a okay let's go out and do this please take very careful note of what Anvita has said there are a huge number of rules and the most important thing over here is consent now Anvita I understand one thing I just want to add sorry I'm just saying because I know we might move forward from btsm if you do want to be engaged in btsm and you do think that that's what is exciting for you and that's the community you want to join there are lots of resources online there are lots of classes like you said there are lots of groups there are lots of people who show you how it's done and what it is so do educate yourself and learn about it before even you know sometimes because people can be you know they they think they're entering a btsm relationship and they can get hurt in the process so go educate yourself go learn about it and then you know there'll be many more opportunities to do the experiment I was actually going to come to the point that I had an email literally yesterday from a young girl who wrote in and said that her partner so she's got engaged earlier this year and obviously with the lockdown she's due to be married later this year but with the lockdown she hasn't got a chance to spend personal time with her fiance it's all been you know over phones and so on and so forth like most of the world has and she was saying that her partner who otherwise is fantastic in every way has this thing about he said you know he's she said that he has all these fetishes about like he wants her to get injections in her bottom and wants to watch her getting this and various other things that he comes up and he tells her where most of them end up with her getting hurt or her being having some kind of pain inflicted on her now the reason I bring this up is because here is a young girl she says that she's still a virgin that she comes from a very conservative small town she's never even masturbated in all her life and there is this one person who is now going to be her husband who's now expecting all this of her and she's petrified she's so nervous because she says she said in her email she said you know I keep getting nervous I don't know what to say I tell him but this will be painful and he says to her well if there's no pain there won't be enough pleasure now she's obviously not in a mental space to understand that so she's getting even more frightened and then he'll just laugh at the end and say look just because we dream about something we don't have to go through with it now this is a young girl who at the normal time of life wouldn't even I mean this would even just having average missionary position sex would have been a huge thing for her huge step forward somebody who's still a virgin somebody who's never even masturbated this is really really out of the box is there something that we can say to her to reassure her what I want to say that this fiance has a lot of balls presenting it to her because you know there's no fear that you might get spooked because like you're saying that it is quite scary unfortunately I mean without I don't know either the fiance or the girl but I think unfortunately that's generally a way that um it's generally the way of society in smaller towns in India I mean you do you can't you can't even imagine a girl standing up a young girl standing up to him and saying no I'm sorry I'm not going to marry you it's it's hardly likely to happen so yeah no I have the upper hand he does but what I'm saying is that you know like we said we were coming from a very empathetic standpoint of people who have fetishes because they can be tricky and they can feel judged by other people I'm just saying this person must be very secure in their sexual identity to present this idea but because I'm sure for this young girl she must be wondering oh my god is this a freak is this sex like does sex actually is like that if she's never masturbated if she doesn't have a relationship with what she enjoys sexually she must be you know it is a very impressionable point right like she could be thinking oh that's what sex is and that's what she's going to stay with that sex equals pain and that's not true sex doesn't equal pain sex equals pleasure or sex should equal pleasure and so what I would really say to her is if you're not enjoying what gives him pleasure don't do it as in or find a way to speak to him and say look this is not you know this is making me feel scared this actually induces feelings of fear and you know I I'm not enjoying this and don't make him a bad person just because he has a fetish doesn't make him a bad person so not for once am I saying that he's somebody bad but obviously you need to build a relationship first there has to be trust there has to be intimacy there has to be a chemistry and then automatically maybe you would want to do something for him or you might want to live up to one of his you know fetishes or fantasies but if right now it feels too much then say to him very openly that I understand that that's your fetish but it feels too much for me can I get some time you know can we speak about this in some time and buy yourself time rather than giving into it and also maybe they could actually introduce it like you said for somebody else earlier that they could introduce it as a fantasy into their role play or into their foreplay so rather than actually doing it sort of fantasize about it talk about it build it up in the mind as opposed to in the body yeah as in because absolutely like there are we've spoken about fantasies if that's something that gives him pleasure maybe he can express it he can verbalize it and that can get him arousal and you know I don't know if they are meeting right now or not we talk about the phone sex video well it's all about fantasies and things so it's all right to say to him go gentle on this it's too much for me if she feels that it's too much for her there's nothing wrong in saying it's not this is a fetish for him you can go gentle and say it's too much for me right now and also as Anvita said earlier that there are a lot of online sites you can go to to find out a little bit more about sexual acts or fantasies or fetishes where there is some kind of pain involved or some kind of btsm so go on there and try and watch it listen to it so that maybe it might allay some of your fears if she wants to like I would really go back see I know what you're saying that she might not have a choice and she might be very stuck to go along but I always get worried that if it doesn't come if that if you're not open to experimenting or if that's not something that's exciting the relationship between sex and your pleasure gets really impacted by that so I would I would really encourage and say to what gives you pleasure and you know communicate with your partner rather than just go alone that's really good advice actually and I'm now going to tell you about another partner but from a very different point of view so this is actually a young man who wrote to me and he said that his partner who he has great sex with normally has now come to him and said that she wants a facial finish now for those of our viewers who are listening in and may not know what that means it means where the man pulls out of the woman during the orgasm part and actually ejaculates on her face now this is the girl has asked for it and he's written in he's very upset because he says this is really wrong I think it's demeaning to women and I don't think that she understands what she's saying I think that she's just heard it somewhere on you know on social media and she wants try it and it's not right and how do I persuade her that it's not right now I found this email rather interesting because you know there is there's a little bit of both I mean there is this guy trying to be really nice and thinking about the fact that okay he doesn't want to be demeaning to women and that's wonderful in its own way however I also think that if this young girl has asked for something I mean she also like we've said that it takes a lot of courage to talk about your fantasies your fetishes the things that you might want to do which are not the average everyday things but slightly out of the box must have taken her a lot of guts to actually say that she wants this and she's now being told that she doesn't know what she wants and that she's wrong in asking for it and that she's merely following the crowd and doesn't really understand what her own mind is yeah it does sound a bit patronizing I will agree with that and I think it's very similar to the previous message in some ways to the effect of that's her fetish you know that's what gives her arousal so just that we said for the previous guy doesn't make her a bad person doesn't make her that you know she's derogatory like she doesn't know what she wants or anything this is a woman who's saying a facial finish arouses me it gives me sexual pleasure I like it I enjoy it now as a partner you can say I don't enjoy it it takes away my sexual pleasure I don't like doing this to you so I don't want to engage with it but I don't think as a partner you have the right to judge the other partner's fetish you know to say oh that fetish is derogatory that fetish is yucky that's not a okay fetish that becomes problematic because then in some ways you're judging your partner's fetish you don't like it you don't enjoy it don't partake in it you know just the way we said for the other young woman don't if you don't want to don't do it and so the same thing for this man you don't like it it takes away from your sexual pleasure say to her doesn't do it for me I would like to not you know partake in it but don't say to her you don't know what you like because I think if she's come to this point to say she likes a facial finish she definitely knows what she likes you know um so I don't think or even if it's something that she just wants to try out absolutely like if she wants to experiment with it she might like it she might not like it or you know but at least this she's definitely not someone who she has the courage and she has the spirit to explore the sexuality she wants to try different things and this is one of the things like if she's made the suggestion or request it means that she's fantasized about it she's thought about it and it has excited her you know so I don't I definitely feel that we shouldn't judge it we have the full right to refuse to partake in it but I don't think we should judge a fetish I think that's really um sensible advice actually and for this young man I would particularly like to point out that you know that this whole idea of saying that it is demeaning to women I totally appreciate your sentiment around it but you know it it may not be such a bad thing to try something that your partner wants to do which is not really hurting anybody in too many ways so I think that it might be worth sort of also sometimes opening up our mind to certain other things for the pleasure of the partner and you know like I said before that is a whole you know it sounds like a small like oh we can just do it for our partner but I think it's not actually such a small space it's a really huge space because there is so much around our choices do we like it do we not like it we say yes to one thing but then when it comes to something else we're like oh that's too yucky so I just think that it is a very big area and the combination with the partner I think it is a tricky one I think it does take loads of couple into therapy rooms to really try and really unpick and figure it out and sometimes it also leads to some couples never ever talking about their fetishes because they're really scared that their partners would reject it so it happens both ways and I would you know it is a tricky space absolutely so I'm actually going to give you my very last one now because it actually follows on very very well from the previous one and as you said it's all very well for us to sit here and say well look you know if she's suggested it you should try it even if it's something that you feel so strong about you feel that it's demeaning etc if your partner really wants it it might be worth trying but sometimes we understand that certain things can be really difficult now there was a man who wrote to me who said that they are in their 40s he and his wife they have a very good relationship with each other but that the sex is starting to become a little bit boring and he said that what he finds is that what really arouses him is rough language or bad language or really abusive language he says however that his wife absolutely refuses to do this she can't do this now just to put it into context this is a South Indian couple and the woman wrote in and said that she come there's such a conservative family that when she speaks to her husband in public she does not even raise her eyes to look at him in the eyes I mean she actually has her head lowered when she speaks to him in public but he thinks that when they go into the bedroom she can just drop all of this and start speaking to him in abusive course language so for me it like it has lots of ideas floating through because one I feel like sometimes our public persona might or might not match our sexual persona so we might be different people in bed than we are in public but at the same time I also do think that there are you know how much you can push yourself is individual to every person and also who do you believe you're as a person so as a woman if she has ideas of what is right what is wrong what are sensibilities that should be followed what is culture wise not acceptable acceptable not those are her values so maybe you can introduce it as an idea and say let's role play so you're paying the role of an ex-person where she can give herself permission to use that language because otherwise I can imagine that it's too far away from who she is to suddenly behave like that like and that can feel too much for her and you know once again when she starts partaking in that are you taking away from her sexual pleasure like in the moment is she feeling like oh I don't like this I'm not a nice person for stalking like this I'm like you know not a respectable woman talking like this or whatever like I don't want to get into respect or no respect but for her it might not be pleasurable so one of the ideas would be to do role play to say she is pretend this person and in that persona in that role she might give herself permission to talk a certain way I want to also say that you know sorry to interrupt but I was just thinking that a lot of times it's about opening a door and sometimes we might say oh you know it's great to be able to do this and if you could but it's like the very first fetish that we dealt with where this this young boy said that he started to give himself the permission when he didn't feel guilty about wearing women's underwear anymore he gave himself the permission to wear it and then suddenly it opened up his mind to the fact that he likes to have sex with transgenders which was something that he only came to after he gave himself permission to follow his fetish now it could be that this young woman the wife gives herself permission to do this but what are the changes that it brings in you subsequently because that can also happen and a lot of times I think partners don't think about that necessarily and I think this is also something I would like people to take away from this video is that when you do all of this it's wonderful if both partners can be on the same page when it comes to a certain sexual act or a desire or a fetish it's fantastic because it leads to really pleasurable joyous intimacy but you have to be prepared for all the things that come with it because when you make a change then change is welcome yeah I and I think it's especially difficult for women it's the whole Madonna versus whore thing that we talk about where women are supposed to be you know they are supposed to behave and act a certain way and then people just expect them to change or you know flip when they come into the bedroom and that is a difficult ask you know it's not easy you can't just ask people to shift and once again you know it and if you're going to ask for the change like you're saying then it's not necessary the change will be limited to the bedroom then it might go out and are you prepared for that and is it okay yeah I think that this is a subject that we could probably go on talking about for a very long time because it is so much a part of the human psyche but I think that it's time to bring it all to a close once again just to reiterate a lot of Anrita's advice that a fetish is not an underground negative bad thing it's very much a part of your mind it's how you think but if you do have a situation where either your partner is not okay with it or it is impacting your life in some perceivable way then it is time to understand how to renegotiate the way that you act out your fetish keep your communication corridors open with your partner at all times the more you build up a trust between yourselves the better things will be at any given time even more so for this and that at some point you have to understand that if you both don't share the same ideas the same desires or the same fetishes you have to understand that it has to be negotiated it isn't something that you can go ahead and just put on the other person you have to make sure that you negotiated that you get their consent and so on and with all of that in motion we hope that this leads to a wonderfully productive healthy sexual life for all time to come as always on the video please do like subscribe and comment if you have any questions the email is info.seema.anand at gmail.com and if you need to consult Anvita please email her directly on anvita madan behel.com we'll see you here next week see you next week


We continue today with Chapter 25, Perception and Choice. To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent you will perceive attack cannot be justified. This is in accord with Perception's fundamental law. You see what you believe is there and you believe it is there because you want it there. Perception has no other law than this. The rest but stems from this to hold it up and offer it support. This is Perception's form adapted to this world of God's more basic law that love creates itself and nothing but itself. God's laws do not obtain directly to a world Perception rules. For such a world could not have been created by the mind to which Perception has no meaning. Yet are His laws reflected everywhere, not that the world where this reflection is, is real at all. Only because His Son believes it is, and from His Son's belief He could not let Himself be separate entirely. He could not enter His Son's insanity with Him, but He could be sure His sanity went there with Him, so He could not be lost forever in the madness of His wish. Perception rests on choosing. Knowledge does not. Knowledge has but one law because it has but one Creator. But this world has two who made it, and they do not see it as the same. To each it has a different purpose, and to each it is a perfect means to serve the goal for which it is perceived. For specialness it is the perfect frame to set it off, the perfect battleground to wage its wars, the perfect shelter for illusions which it would make real. Not one but it upholds in His Perception. Not one it can be fully justified. There is another maker of the world, the simultaneous corrector of the mad belief that anything could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God. Not as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it, but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes He has. Corrected error is the error's end, and thus has God protected still His Son even in error. There is another purpose in the world that error made because it has another maker who can reconcile its goal with His Creator's purpose. In His perception of the world nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness in the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind where it must be and light the body up instead of it. The lamps of heaven are not for mind to choose to see them where it will. If it elects to see them elsewhere from their home, as if they lit a place where they could never be, then must the maker of the world correct your error lest you remain in darkness where the lamps are not. Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no one has entered it alone, nor need he stay more than an instant, for he has come with heaven's help within him, ready to lead him out of darkness into light at any time. The time he chooses can be any time, for help is there awaiting but his choice. And when he chooses to avail himself of what is given him, then will he see each situation that he thought before was means to justify his anger, turn to an event which justifies his love. He will hear plainly that the calls to war he heard before are really calls to peace. He will perceive that where he gave attack is but another altar where he can with equal ease and far more happiness bestow forgiveness. And he will reinterpret all temptation as just another chance to bring him joy. How can a misperception be a sin?  What then is justified? What do you want? For these two questions are the same. And when you see them as the same, your choice is made. For it is seeing them as one that brings release from the belief there are two ways to see. This world has much to offer to your peace and many chances to extend your own forgiveness. Such its purpose is to those who want to see peace and forgiveness, to send on them and offer them the light. The maker of the world of gentleness has perfect power to offset the world of violence and hate that seems to stand between you and his gentleness. It is not there in his forgiving eyes and therefore it need not be there in yours. Sin is the fixed belief perception cannot change. What has been damned is damned and damned forever, being forever unforgivable. If then it is forgiven since perception must have been wrong. And thus is change made possible. Holy Spirit too sees what he sees as far beyond the chance of change. But on his vision sin cannot encroach, for sin has been corrected by his sight. And thus it must have been an error, not a sin. For what it claimed could never be has been. Sin is attacked by punishment and so preserved. But to forgive it is to change its state from error into truth. The Son of God could never sin, but he can wish for what would hurt him. And he has the power to think he can be hurt. What could this be except a misperception of himself? Is this a sin or a mistake, forgivable or not? Does he need help or condemnation? Is it your purpose that he be saved or damned?  For you make it now, the instant when all time becomes a means to reach a goal. Make then your choice. But recognize that in this choice the purpose of the world you see is chosen and will be justified. And from the workbook, Lesson 193 All things are lessons God would have me learn. God does not know of learning, yet his will extends to what he does not understand in that he wills the happiness his Son inherited of him be undisturbed, eternal, and forever gaining scope eternally expanding in the joy of full creation and eternally open and wholly limitless in him. That is his will. And thus his will provides the means to guarantee that it is done. God sees no contradictions, yet his Son believes he sees them. Thus he has a need for one who can correct his erring sight and give him vision that will lead him back to where perception ceases. God does not perceive at all, yet it is he who gives the means by which perception is made true and beautiful enough to let the light of heaven shine upon it. It is he who answers what his Son would contradict and keeps his sinlessness forever safe. These are the lessons God would have you learn. His will reflects them all, and they reflect his loving-kindness to the Son he loves. Each lesson has a central thought, the same in all of them. The form alone is changed with different circumstances and events, with different characters and different themes, apparent but not real. They are the same in fundamental content. It is this. Forgive, and you will see this differently. Certain it is that all distress does not appear to be but unforgiveness, yet that is the content underneath the form. It is the sameness which makes learning sure because the lesson is so simple that it cannot be rejected in the end. No one can hide forever from a truth so very obvious that it appears in countless forms, and yet is recognized as easily in all of them if one but wants to see the simple lesson there. Forgive, and you will see this differently. These are the words the Holy Spirit speaks in all your tribulations, all your pain, all suffering regardless of its form. These are the words with which temptation ends and guilt abandoned is revered no more. These are the words which end the dream of sin and rid the mind of fear. These are the words by which salvation comes to all the world. Shall we not learn to say these words when we are tempted to believe that pain is real and death becomes our choice instead of life? Shall we not learn to say these words when we have understood their power to release all minds from bondage? These are words which give you power over all events that seem to have been given power over you. You see them rightly when you hold these words in full awareness and do not forget these words apply to everything you see or any brother looks upon to miss. How can you tell when you are seeing wrong or someone else is failing to perceive the lesson you should learn? Does pain seem real in the perception? If it does, be sure the lesson is not learned and there remains an unforgiveness hiding in the mind that sees the pain through eyes the mind directs. God would not have you suffer thus. He would help you forgive yourself. His son does not remember who he is and God would have him not forget his love and all the gifts his love brings with it. Would you now renounce your own salvation? Would you fail to learn the simple lesson heaven's teacher sets before you that all pain may disappear and God may be remembered by his son? All things are lessons God would have you learn. He would not leave an unforgiving thought without correction nor one thorn or nail to hurt his holy son in any way. He would ensure his holy rest remain untroubled and serene without a care in an eternal home which cares for him and he would have all tears be wiped away with none remaining yet unshed and none but waiting their appointed time to fall. For God has willed that laughter should replace each one and that his son be free again. We will attempt today to overcome a thousand seeming obstacles to peace in just one day. Let mercy come to you more quickly. Do not try to hold it off another day, another minute, or another instant. Time was made for this. Use it today for what its purpose is. Morning and night, devote what time you can to serve its proper aim and do not let the time be less than meet your deepest need. Give all you can and give a little more. For now we would rise in haste and go unto our Father's house. We have been gone too long and we would linger here no more. And as we practice let us think about all things we saved to settle by ourselves and kept apart from healing.  Truth is his message. Truth, his teaching is. His are the lessons God would have us learn. Each hour spend a little time today and in the days to come in practicing the lesson in forgiveness in the form established for the day. And try to give it application to the happenings the hour brought so that the next one is free of the one before. The chains of time are easily unloosened in this way. Let no one hour cast its shadow on the one that follows and when that one goes let everything that happened in its course go with it. Thus will you remain unbound in peace eternal in the world of time. This is the lesson God would have you learn. There is a way to look on everything that lets it be to you another step to him and to salvation of the world. To all that speaks of terror, answer thus. I will forgive and this will disappear. To every apprehension, every care and every form of suffering repeat these self same words. And then you hold the key that opens Heaven's gate and brings the love of God the Father down to earth at last to raise it up to Heaven. God will take this final step himself. Do not deny the little steps he asks you take to him. Amen.


How much can I earn teaching English in Turkey? Known as a bridge between East and West, Turkey offers a fascinating destination for teaching English abroad. Although salaries are not high in comparison with many other countries, a relatively low cost of living means the average monthly salary of around 1,000 US dollars should provide a comfortable lifestyle. As it is one of the few countries in the world that overlaps two different continents, Turkey has long been a popular destination for international travelers. Due to a steadily growing demand for the English language across much of the country, it is now also an increasingly popular destination for teaching English abroad. Job opportunities can be found in many parts of the country, but the big markets for ESL teachers are located in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. Technically, a decree on any subject is required for all teaching jobs. However, there are often not enough teachers to fill vacant positions, so a TEFL certificate is sufficient for many employers. Salary The monthly salary you can expect when teaching English as a foreign language in Turkey will vary from around 800 to 1,800 US dollars per month, depending on qualifications, experience and the type of employer. Although the majority of first-time teachers will find themselves earning the lower end of this pay scale, it is common practice for teachers to top up this amount by taking on private students in their spare time. When offering your services as a private tutor, you are free to charge any amount you like, but a typical price would be around 15 to 20 US dollars per hour. Employers A large percentage of jobs for foreign teachers in Turkey are in language schools that can be found in most parts of the country. In cities such as Istanbul and Ankara, you will find hundreds of potential employers, but it is wise to do as much research as possible before accepting a job. Unfortunately, there are a few untrustworthy schools who will offer a great deal before you start work, but then fail to deliver on their promises once you enter the classroom. Researching online blogs, job sites and teaching forums should help you to avoid these pitfalls. However, conducting your job search on the ground in Turkey rather than from within your own country is probably the most effective way of avoiding any problems. If you are keen to work with children and have some experience in this field, then you can apply for jobs in private middle schools and high schools. These positions offer a higher salary and more holiday than language centers, but you will probably require a degree, a TEFL certification and at least two years experience. Those with high end teaching qualifications and relevant experience may also find potential positions in private universities. Although few in number, these positions are highly sought after as they generally offer good working conditions. Although many teaching jobs in Turkey only pay a relatively small salary, there are plenty of opportunities for most teachers to significantly increase their income by offering private tutoring.  By focusing solely on private tutoring, many teachers find they are able to bring in a significantly higher income than those working for a language school. Cost of living The cost of living in Turkey is still quite low in comparison to many western countries, but it has risen significantly in recent years. Istanbul in particular has seen a sharp rise in apartment rental costs, so most teachers choose to share accommodation to keep their expenses down. Other out goings such as local food and public transport are still relatively cheap. However, due to high import taxes, western goods can be expensive. Away from Istanbul, you will find a significant drop in the cost of accommodation which is one reason why cities such as Ankara and Izmir are becoming increasingly popular with foreign teachers.


So, my name is Lorraine Mogford and I'm one of the organizing members of this conference and I'm going to be introducing Dr. Cindy Farley. It's my honor to introduce you to her. This is our seventh year working together at VIDM. Cindy Farley studied midwifery at Emory University. She earned her BSN and PhD from the Ohio State University and her MSN from Emory University excuse me. She has worked clinically in a variety of birth settings including University Hospital in Cincinnati, Mount Eaton Care Center in Mountain Eden, Ohio. She is a professor at Georgetown University and in the nurse midwifery women's health nurse practitioner programs. She currently serves as a locum tennis midwife for Palmarine Hospital, a rural hospital in Millersburg, Ohio. Dr. Farley reviews selected legal cases involving midwifery regulatory issues and clinical care. She's co-editor of the clinical practice guidelines for midwifery and women's health, an American Journal of Nursing 2002 book of the year and a prenatal and postnatal care, a women's centered approach. She has been instrumental in organizing groups of midwifery and WHNP students to visit their federal legislators and advocate for positive change in important maternal health policies and legislation. She received the 2020 American College of Nurse Midwives Public Policy Award for this work. She was awarded a faculty residency in the fall of 2019 at Oxford University in England learning from British midwives and midwifery students and exploring their systems of care for childbearing families. She has contributed to global health efforts in Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, and Liberia. Making midwives to improve health and well-being of all people is Dr. Farley's passion. She's on the board of directors of the new Cincinnati Birth Center and will offer women – oh, I did – and she will offer women birthing people and families in Cincinnati surrounding areas a safe and satisfying birth experience with competent and compassionate midwifery care. Cindy Farley will introduce our students as they come along. We have five student panelists, Kelly Grant from Oregon, Zoe Papas from Georgia, Kayla Tingstead from California, Flora Fraser from California, and Jennifer Piercy from Florida. They are members of the 35th cohort of Georgetown University's Hybrid Distance Education program in midwifery and women's health, and they are all completing their first course in labor birth, postpartum, and newborn care. Students are in program tracks ending with either the master's or doctoral degree, and there you can learn a little bit more about them there. So welcome, and I'm going to give Cindy the presenter status now, and there you go. Welcome, Cindy and students. Thank you, Lorraine. Certainly always a pleasure to be with you at our seventh year together, and I really appreciate your support as facilitator. My Georgetown students are going to share their experiences of peer support in a distance learning program. I want to point out the two Bulldog peer puppies there in the photo. Bulldog is the mascot of Georgetown, and there have been a succession of live Bulldogs named Jack living at Georgetown. I find this photo heartwarming, the same warm fuzzy feeling that can come from peer support. And Lorraine described my background pretty well, so I'm just going to move on here. Other than to mention, I don't think these books are a conflict of interest so much as a Georgetown requirement to post. These books are sold in 28 countries. I'm always so fascinated by that, so thank you. And I donate my royalties to midwifery causes, so. I do live in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a small village of about 4,000 people located in the Midwest area of the United States. I started my teaching career in the launch and early days of Frontier Nursing University back when distance learning was not cool. Teaching and learning remotely were novel at the time, but have grown in educational endeavors since and was fully accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, I would make a distinction between forced distance learning versus planned distance learning in the way that faculty and students connect and work with the differences. What we can say unequivocally is that distance learning works. The remote environment does present some challenges for developing peer support, but it is quite possible. I like to point out that relationships can and do form over the internet, from friendship to romance to even sex. So peer support is very possible and should be mindfully encouraged by faculty so that meaningful peer relationships can be formed among your students. Together we care for each other is a theme of this year's conference, and this is a perfect fit for our topic of peer support. A peer is someone who shares common experiences and social similarities. Peer support has a number of meanings, but most pertinent for us today are these. To hold up, to serve as a foundation for, to keep from losing courage, to keep going. A midwifery student peer can provide the deeply felt empathy, encouragement and assistance that comes from going through similar experiences in their midwifery education. Think about how peer relationships can develop and then see how these elements are reflected in our students' stories today. Peer support can be informally developed through connections made in and after class. In our modern world, many connections are made through the use of social media, such as what we're doing right now. Formal peer support programs can be structured by faculty. These are often voluntary. For example, our friends at Oxford Brooks University in Oxford, England, pair their second year students with their first year students to develop peer support. About seven years ago I met with a group of Georgetown students to develop our own formal system of peer support, and we call this SACSA siblings. This is derived from Georgetown's official cheer, Hoya SACSA. And that comes from the ancient Greek and Latin for what rocks. And if you ask me, I think midwives rock. We all rock. We invite students in their first term of our program to become a SACSA sibling. And I pair them with a volunteer mentor in their fourth term usually. And it's a process I like to think of as similar to match.com. I am a matchmaker for sure. We encourage a phone call at a mutually agreed upon time to start this relationship, and then what they make of it is up to them. I try to match by geographic location as our distance learning students come from all over the United States, which encompasses five different time zones. My rationale for this is that they will begin their careers with a local network of support and can continue their connections through involvement in professional midwifery organizations in the US, such as the American College of Nurse Midwives. This creates other avenues of peer support as students step out in their career. There's limited research on the influence of peer support in midwifery education, making this a great idea for future research students out there. Just putting it out there for you. The existing evidence regarding peer support among midwifery students suggests that benefits for peer mentors includes the opportunity to develop mentorship and leadership skills. And another feature that I find is it allows them to reflect on their own personal growth as they share their stories with their sex siblings. And for the peer mentee, enhanced confidence and practical advice help to optimize their educational experiences. And so for this panel discussion here are our objectives. Our students will describe their experiences of both giving and receiving formal and informal peer support in their US Distance Midwifery Education program. To our live audience, we're curious about your own stories of peer support. So feel free to share anything. And I want to proudly note on this slide our previous Georgetown student presentations. We have presented on advocacy, confidence for first birth, developing publications, food and culture, international student experiences, and COVID effects on the student experience. So I'm now going to hand over our talk to our midwife student panelists. And first up is Florey Frazier. Happy International Day to the midwife. Thank you, Dr. Farley. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. And thank you for all joining us today. I'm Florey Frazier, student midwife and student women's health nurse practitioner at Georgetown University. And just next week, I'll start my final semester of my program. And I'm very much so looking forward to the bright future ahead of midwifery. So just being here and being surrounded by so many midwives and midwifery students is truly inspiring. And I feel very honored to be here today. A little bit about me. I've grown up in and lived in beautiful San Diego County, California, my whole life. And I always planned to grow up here, go to school here, live here, work here. Because this is where my tribe is. And the Cambridge Dictionary definition of a tribe is a group of people, often related families who live together, share the same language, culture and history. And this is where I feel most at home, most connected and most loved. But however, with all that being said, there's also a Yiddish proverb that states, you make a plan and God laughs. And that has definitely been true to me and my story. My career journey up until this point has been completely nonlinear. My journey has taken me from job to job, state to state, and all around the globe. And while it hasn't gone according to my plan, I truly would not change a thing about it because I've learned and found that my tribe can exist outside of the community that raised me. So just as most things, when they're happening in the moment, it may be hard to understand and we might not appreciate it. But when we look back on our journeys, like I've looked back on my journey this far, I so appreciate the people that I've met and the places that I've been. And some of these people, like Susan, who is one of my preceptors here on this chat, I would consider one of the key players in my journey. I love the guidance, the love that they've given me, the friendship, the mentorship, has all helped shape me to be the woman that I am today. So mentorship has always been very important to me without even having the conscious thought of, oh, I need a mentor. I've always sought out the advice from others who've come before me, others that know more than I do or more successful than I am to learn and to grow from them. And I've always been interested in teaching others what I know as well. For me, this goes back to high school. I was a junior volunteer at a local hospital. I was super excited to get into the hospital, learn all that I could from the more seasoned volunteers, get my experience and be able to train new volunteers. And then in nursing school, my undergrad program, with the guidance of my nursing school dean and a few of my professors, I was able to found and create from the ground up a nurse mentorship program at Shenandoah University. And now in graduate school as a midwifery and women's health and practitioner student, I benefited as a mentee in the Hoya Sox program from my professors and my preceptors. And most importantly, I have benefited from the mentorship and companionship of my classmates. And I can safely say that without them, I would most certainly not be where I am today. I've been able to make connections with my classmates, even in this distance setting. And I've also been able to make connections with prospective students that have reached out to me via LinkedIn or Instagram and have asked me about my experience, should they apply, what's it like once you get accepted. And I just find that to be really, really cool. So mentorship and building a midwifery tribe that breaks boundaries and crosses borders is very important to me. And I have a couple of reasons why. So first is power and community. Power and community is the together in our theme together we care. Today we're celebrating a hundred years of progress in our profession and that is a huge accomplishment. There is so much power in our midwifery community. We've broken barriers, we've changed policies, we've improved health outcomes globally. And not one individual was able to make this level of progress on their own. But it is the result of us coming together, advocating together that we are able to make these changes. And I know that we'll continue to do so as we move forward in our careers as midwives. Then the next point is strength and shared experiences. And this is the we and together we care. I'm not sure if you've ever tried to explain what it feels like to care for a pregnant or laboring patient or the way that you too might hold your breath when the fetus is restituting or when you have to support a birthing person that is either had passed undesirable experience or current undesirable experience. And while it's not impossible to explain what that feels like to a non-birth worker, a birth worker knows and understands because they too have experienced those same or similar feelings. They've been there, they've done that, and they can uplift you, encourage you, teach you and motivate you just as someone did for them when they experienced it for the first time. And finally, relationship building is the care and together we care. Relationship building is more important now than it ever was before. Relationship building is what brings the heart of midwifery to everything that we do. And especially after two years of being physically and sometimes emotionally separated from community. We are now working very hard to build back those relationships and create new relationships and friendships. As an online student, I at Georgetown, I never had the opportunity to meet my classmates face to face until just two weeks ago. And the relationships and friendships that we created in the online setting were only strengthened and made unbreakable by seeing each other in person. And these relationships, I know, will carry on throughout our entire careers. All of my classmates are always going to have a midwifery friend in San Diego through me. And I'll always know I have a friend in Florida through Jen or a midwife friend in Oregon through Kelly. And I just think that's amazing. I'll definitely lean on my my classmates and cohort members as I know they'll lean on me as well. So to just wrap up, I want to leave you with a final thought from Toy Story. I'm not going to sing it, but you have a friend that you've got a friend in me. You've got troubles. I've got them too. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you. We stick together and we see it through because you've got a friend in me. So happy International Day of the Midwife and we'll turn it over to my next classmate. Hi there, let me get this going. OK, Florey did a great job. It's hard to follow. But my name is Kelly Grant. I was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon in a small town called Newburgh. I've lived here my entire life and probably would continue to live here. My entire life only now I'm leaving to move closer to the hospital for my job upon graduation in August. My background as a nurse is primarily an abdominal organ transplant, urology and major plastic surgery, specifically gender confirmation surgeries. As a nurse, many of us know we lean on peer support constantly from things like asking our shiftmates to take a look at something or even talking to them when we've had a rough day on the unit. And they're sure to be the people to understand. In distance learning, it's no secret that peer support is a challenge. We have women in this room from as far as students go from as far west as Oregon and California to as far east as Florida and Georgia. How do we bring these women close together and provide support for one another? Well, that's the big question. And Georgetown has done a great job in providing an answer. Unless you know somebody starting school at the same time as you, beginning a master's program can feel extremely lonely and isolating. Late night studying, hours reading, stress about the next exam. The isolation starts when you realize no one at home knows what you're going through and can't really relate. During my first term in the program, an email slipped into my inbox about the SACS's sibling program. It's a peer support program that Dr. Farley mentioned, organized by Georgetown to connect new students with students nearing the end of their program. I was matched with my sibling, Ashley, who offered advice and comfort as the first few terms were beating me down. Specifically the first term. It was so refreshing as a person knew the program to have somebody there who had been through the classes and could relate to my questions, concerns, and occasionally frustrations. Talking to Ashley felt like a safe place to ask questions and was a great resource when I wasn't quite sure who my other resources were. She always pointed me in the right direction. I decided that I was going to be a sibling when it was my turn to help a new student. Well, this year in late January, I was matched with my sibling, Carly, this time in the mentorship position. I've asked Carly if it's okay if I can share a little bit about our interactions and a little bit about her. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to get a picture of her on the slide. But Carly is a labor and delivery nurse from Washington who just completed her first semester at Georgetown. She has a young daughter and continues to work while in school. During her stressful time in the pathophysiology, which I'm sure even if you've been outside of school for a little while, you can relate to patho being a little bit challenging, maybe a little frustrating at times, certainly scary at times. She had questions about body systems and what to look forward to next semester. And so Carly reached out. No matter the day or the time, I made myself available to Carly for questions and support and have continued to make myself available. In coincidence, she just texted me this morning asking me a question. Questions like, what does next term look like? How was your professor for pharmacology? Would you recommend them? Should I buy the recommended textbooks or just the required textbooks? What did you really use? Support was often surrounding the stress of being in grad school for the first time and frankly, the ingrained fear of not passing patho. Our first call lasted about an hour and Carly and I have had many calls and messages since. I'll admit my favorite calls are always the pep talks. I remember being in the first few semesters and wondering, why is this so hard? Am I going to pass patho? How did I do so well in undergrad? And now I'm having so much trouble. Little did I know, those are the same questions that many new students have. The first terms and especially the first few terms are so anxiety provoking with all the new challenges that you face as a new student nurse midwife and a new master student. Through the SACSA sibling peer mentorship program, I have met amazing women who are looking for support, community and understanding. I have gained insight into the lives of my peers, gained mentorship skills and tips for how to study in things like complex guide and things that are more challenging for some people and were certainly challenging for me. The emotional and personal satisfaction I feel from being a SACSA sibling has been the most exciting takeaway for me. With every exam, I text Carly and check in, see how she's holding up and celebrate her victories with her. When things go sideways, we game plan and strategize for the next time. Watching growth and celebrating every win has been so fulfilling. To me, the beauty of the SACSA sibling program is that regardless of the distance between us, we can be there to support each other, hype each other up and celebrate together at vulnerable points in the program. There's a saying I'm sure many of us have heard that nurses eat their young, but I'm here to tell you that nursing master's students don't. The one-on-one peer support is our opportunity to break down the distance, build confidence, friendships and realize that we're better together. Thank you for listening to me and happy International Day of the Midlife. Thank you, Kelly. Happy International Day of the Midwife, everyone. I am extremely honored to be present with you all today, and I thank you for celebrating an invaluable profession, a profession that I am excited to continue learning about and becoming a part of. My name is Jennifer, and I am currently in Navar Beach, Florida with my husband, Joe, and seven-year-old daughter, Lottie. We are a military family. We have lived everywhere, all over the United States and in Okinawa, Japan, over the course of the last 21 years. And because of our experiences, I have had a lot of practice finding our support system within wherever the military sends us. So, thinking back two years ago, I remember my very first semester as a graduate student and all of the adjustments I needed to make. Firstly, learning to navigate an online platform and the flipped classroom with the volume of course work and the large amount of material to consume weekly was definitely challenging. But also, the 10-plus-year gap between my last experiences as a student felt overwhelming. I could say, in a way, I can compare this to a military move in where you know no one and immediately find that value in establishing a network of support. With my rusty study skills, I reached out and posted on the wall asking if anyone would like to start a study group. And I quickly realized that I was not the only one who felt anxious and a bit overwhelmed. And now, we have all become fast friends and the best support system. Through the last two years, our study group has grown and evolved into so much more than helping ourselves meet our objectives. They are often the first people I reach out to when I need advice, when I need to vent or commiserate in this great work that consumes us, and of course, to celebrate all of our victories. Honestly, they have all become family as we've shared our lived experiences, not just with school, but beyond our studies. I attribute part of my access and happiness within this program to those connections I have been privileged to make. A year into my graduate school experience, I had an opportunity to apply and become an ambassador and saxa sibling for the university presented itself. Because of the value I found in the connections I've made with my peers, I thought this was a wonderful, formal avenue and where I can pay it forward. As an ambassador and saxa sibling, I am available for prospective students and new students just beginning their journey on becoming a midwife or a women's health nurse practitioner. I help ease any anxiety by answering questions regarding my personal experiences regarding my personal experiences and pointing them in the right direction. Oftentimes being a mom and a military spouse who also worked while in school, many new students wondered how I was able to balance everything. My answers were always simple. Firstly, a supportive family, and then next important thing was my cohort. I always give this one piece of advice. Find your people. The people that are alongside you within this program. The ones next to you on the Zoom screen when you're in class. No one else will understand how you are feeling better than them. Your support in the beginning of my journey to becoming a midwife will be the foundation to how I want to practice midwifery. As a student and we as student midwives and someday soon practicing midwives, we'll need our people, our cohort of wonderful humans who share many things with us in common. I know I will need advice and guidance as I navigate my future midwifery practice and I truly believe in making connections because honestly, we are so much stronger together. My experience as a student midwife has been enriched by these relationships I've gained with peer support. And moving forward, I really hope to continue to connect with students that are following in our footsteps by providing them with the encouragement and moral support we all have in morals. Part we all have a common goal. And when we collectively care and support one another, our future patients will think us. Thank you so much for your attention and happy international day of the midwife. Hello, everyone. My name is Tayla Tingstad and I am a student midwife, WHNP, and I am also pursuing my doctor of nursing practice degree. I am very honored to be here today. I currently live in San Diego, California, Lake Fleuray. And this picture I have here is actually me in front of the runoculas which are in bloom in San Diego right now and they are very beautiful. So my background as a nurse was in the postpartum setting, which also happens to be what my doctoral project is on. In particular, I am focusing on providers' beliefs and practices regarding postpartum care. And I see that Dr. Walker is here today. She has been my doctoral project mentor and I thank her for all of her support. So I am a Saxa sibling mentor and I have found it very rewarding. Saxa siblings are all about peer support. As a mentor, my role is to provide support to my mentee, but support can go both ways. It's always nice to have someone that truly understands what you're going through. You know, our family and friends are very supportive, but they aren't fully capable of appreciating all of the struggles that we go through. And so my mentee and I have been able to support each other also on a personal level. We found out that we both had struggled with infertility, which for a midwife student surrounded by pregnancy and birth can be very challenging. And so to be able to connect on that level as well has created a friendship between us. And luckily, I am now a mother of a beautiful one and a half year old little girl who keeps me very busy and she is napping right now. So hopefully she will continue to do that through this presentation. And being a mentor also helps me to connect and being a mentor also illuminates how much you have personally grown. It is rewarding to look back and see someone in your position from a year or two ago and to realize how much you have grown professionally and personally. I remember when I first started this program and hearing other students speak who were much further along than I was and I was just in awe and I had on admiration for them some were graduating soon and only had a few more births to attend and I didn't even know how a speculum worked. But now I am in my final semesters and I have learned and grown so much. And in just a few weeks I will get to start catching my first babies, which is very exciting. And I still just can't believe the journey that I've been on to get to this place in my life. And I am very aware that I still have a long way to go. But it's also satisfying to then be able to help prepare your mentee for what is to come in the program, whether it be challenging courses, issues with securing clinical placement, or just how best to find that school work-life balance. It is so easy to forget in this chaos that it is necessary to take time for ourselves and focus on our own mental well-being. So I like to give my mentee tips and tricks that I've worked for me in the past, hoping that she may be able to use them as well. It's also important to remember that these peers, our mentees or our mentors, will soon be our future colleagues. So to be able to build these professional and friendly relationships is great because you never know when you might need to call someone for advice on a case or just to figure out what the most recent guidelines of care are. And it's always valuable to have professional connections and developing these while you're in school with your mentee can be mutually beneficial. So thank you all very much and happy International Day of the Midwife. I will now turn it over to the next presenter. Hi, good afternoon, good whatever time it is, wherever you all are coming from. I am absolutely delighted to have this opportunity to share on this topic of peer support in midwifery and in midwifery education. My name is Zoe Pappas and I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. I am a WHMP student and a nurse-midwife student at Georgetown University like my peers. And I am finally entering my last semester, which has me absolutely ecstatic. For the past seven years, I have been a pediatric hematology oncology nurse at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. I am the oldest of five siblings and 21 cousins. So from a very young age, I knew two things about myself, that I loved being an older sibling with the unique spirit and energy it can bring and I very much wanted to serve people somehow, somewhere in the birthing process. I've come to find and truly believe that the best way for me to be both is by being a midwife, hopefully once I graduate. In my final semester of midwifery in nursing school, however, many life events brought me to taking the job at Children's with the pediatric hemat population. And I felt as though I'd set aside my path of becoming a midwife. But to re-quote the Yiddish proverb that Fleur earlier cited, you make a plan and God laughs. And sometimes he laughs really good, but that's neither here nor there. As I reflect back on my previous semester and ponder how I made it through midwifery school this far, the answer is easy. I made it this far because of the support of my peers, not only in formal ways, in no sort of required way, but just from their own kind spirits of not leaving anybody behind. And I think I can best illustrate this with a couple of stories. When I came across the Georgetown midwifery program three years ago, I was delighted that they did not require labor and delivery nursing. As I said earlier, I needed to take a job within pediatric chemoc, and I was very worried that that had derailed my dream of becoming a midwife. I felt like this was finally an opportunity to get back to my dream and to get back on track, and I was really, really excited. However, after making it through patho and pharmacology and all the other things, I found myself really, really anxious for beginning clinical. On my first day of class and my first clinical semester, I was honestly really terrified and was seriously concerned I'd made an error in judgment.  I shared this concern with my class mainly because I was afraid they would think it when I introduced myself as a PT mock nurse. After sharing, a couple students reached out to me and said that they were also from different nursing backgrounds. They shared with me their different nursing backgrounds and how they felt that it was helpful in their path to becoming a midwife. This was a tremendous comfort to me. Another peer reached out and said after hearing what I said that she had sat down and written out a list of things that she was glad she knew from being an L&D nurse over the past years. She thought these were the things that would help her most in her future of pursuing being a midwife. The amount of times I have looked over this 12-page document, which is a tremendous amount of time to share with another student in the very busy academic rigor of midwifery school, is absolutely unreal. It truly was an amazing gift from a peer and I've consulted it numerous times out of comfort, out of lack of knowledge, out of just reminding myself what it is I need to know going forward. Two semesters later, I was feeling more confident. I was loving when I was learning. I could actually work a speculum. I knew what people were talking about with cervical exams. I could even do them. I could place an IUD in a reasonable amount of time and these were all tremendous accomplishments for me. And then out of nowhere, I found myself falling seriously ill. I was hospitalized in Atlanta for a week, out of class for two weeks, and out of clinical for four weeks. And I was completely sure that I would not be able to stay in that semester. And I was even more sure that this was going to once again derail my dream of becoming a midwife. After noticing I was in class, which in this midwifery school, no one really misses class, a student got my number from another. She reached out asking where I was. When I explained her what had happened, she immediately asked what she could do to help. At that time, I really had no idea but she didn't hesitate. She and some other students jumped immediately into action. My peers sent me class notes and study guides and practice questions that they had made up. They shared their hard work with me without a second thought. They shared their thoughts, their prayers, their words of encouragement. They checked in. I even got a call from a DoorDash employee saying that someone from Nevada had sent me a bunch of soup, which is like, I think, 11 states away from Georgia. And with their amazing support and generosity, I made it through the semester and I felt really confident about the knowledge that I had acquired throughout the semester. As peers in this program, even though we're miles apart, we look after each other and I've truly benefited from the amazing spirit of looking after one another. Everyone's success is success to our profession. As peers, we uniquely understand each other, not only as students, but as people seeking to become midwives. I'm new to the Texas sibling program. This past semester, I had heard of an opportunity to be a Texas sibling. I felt so excited to join in. As I said, I'm very new to being a sibling, but what I can say as my relationship with my sibling has unfolded that it is a beautiful way to pay it forward, as Jen said, and to look out for those coming in behind us because we're all in this together and we all plan to be midwives and supportive one is supportive midwifery. As student midwives, in care and support of each other, we remind each other of many important things. And I think the tone of peer-to-peer support that I've seen at Georgetown amongst my peers can be summarized in a very important Winnie the Pooh quote because I have to sneak in my Pete's background just a little bit. So the quote goes, you must always remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart, we will always be there with you. Thank you for listening to me. Take care wherever you are and happy International Day of the Midwife. Thank you. Thank you, Zoe. That was powerful. And thank you to all the amazing students of cohort 35. You do rock. This is a photo of online sex sibling support and Mallory Ricketts is here in our audience. That's Jennifer Pierces sex sibling mentee. So you can see that sex sibling support can be fun as well as practical and useful. Thank you so much to our student panelists for sharing their stories. And thanks to our faithful facilitator Lorraine Mockford and also to our global audience for your kind attention. We would be happy to entertain any comments or questions that you have. Happy International Day of the Midwife. I think we have time for just a couple of questions or comments. I see Jane is saying great peer support. Lots of wonderful comments supporting the students as they told their stories. They're quite powerful stories as well. And I appreciate the sharing. It's very touches my heart. And I'm very happy that these relationships are being built. I'll just share a few questions for consideration for our audience. And to everyone what has been your experience of peer support as you were in school or since when you stepped out into your midwifery career. Peer support remains a powerful and important influence as we go through our careers which have such rewarding moments. Very nice to share those but also support when you need a boost. Lots of great thanks in the comments Cindy and thanks to you and to all the students and Jennifer Kaiser says you're the mentor of mentors. And I agree. Well that is so kind. Thank you everyone. Yes. Heather Bradford says that there's a lack of formal mentoring programs in the U.S. and we could learn from models in New Zealand which are where they're well established. And Jane Houston points out that peer support is essential. We stand on the shoulders of our foremothers and fathers. Absolutely. And Jessica Olson is saying she still talks to her saxa sibling years later. So peers can become lifelong friends as well. Absolutely. I've been busy scribbling notes about how I can implement some of this with my online programs. All right. I'm gonna just say thank you to everyone for your kind attention and I think we're we're done. All right then. Thank you. I see Jennifer Kaiser still writing but we'll grab that later. But thank you very much. Thank you Cindy. Thank you to all the students. They were just wonderful. Your stories have touched my heart very deeply.