Finding the Lyrics
Finding the Lyrics: The Lost Heartbeat - Reclaiming Our Shared Rhythms
Introduction: The Primal Shift
The first time I held my newborn son, I felt like any new parent who'd just been handed a complex system with no user manual. Despite years of studying engineering, then nutrition and herbalism, despite always wanting to be a mother, despite my careful planning and research, nothing had prepared me for this moment. My brain—the analytical, problem-solving instrument that had served me so well in my career—seemed suddenly inadequate for what this tiny life needed.
I stood there, totally sleep deprived to what some would consider torture - waking up every 3 hours to nurse for 1.5 hours at a time around the clock (yes, that means 1 hour of sleep at a time, one 4-hour shift being the longest sleep stretch for what, for me, would last 9 weeks straight, then only gradually improved) - holding this tiny human in my arms, and realized I was humming along through our shared tears. Not a lullaby I knew, nothing I could name. Just a simple, rhythmic humming that seemed to rise from somewhere deep within me. People just assume our motherly instincts will just kick in, but I had been trained to be a man. It would take us all a while to find our flow, especially without any role models around. I would find them.
For those moments when he slept on our chest, we breathed together in synchrony. How had all these humans around made it to adulthood?
The Awakening
Motherhood cracked open something primal in me. My brain physically changed—studies saying mother’s brains shrink temporarily by up to 25% during pregnancy as it rewire itself, then growing back larger than before. That is to say, motherhood takes its toll, but it gives us far more back in return. Women who breast feed are far less likely to get breast cancer. And being a mother gives us so much in return.
While pregnant, before I even knew I was, I started to have dreams of being a samurai fighter. I would wake myself up in a sweat, having just taken a dive off a huge cliff. I was slowly turning into that mama bear in my sleep. By the time of my second pregnancy, I do not remember these kinds of dreams. My transformation had already been complete with my first child.
My quiet voice—the one my college roommate had always asked me to raise above a murmur when singing along to the radio—found its strength. For the first time, I had someone to fight for beyond myself. And I was always better at sticking up for others than for myself.
I also learned that the sound of a parent's voice, especially a mother's, is a baby's favorite sound. We are told to sing to your baby, full throttle. All of a sudden, I could sing to my babies. I sometimes felt like I had to sing to them, to calm them down, to change the energy in the room, or for all our sanity, and we all loved it.
The more I researched, this hesitancy to sing was not just me being shy; it was the result of cultural teachings spanning the last 2,000 years. It was part of my unspoken training to be a prim and proper good girl.
Being a Parent: The Full-Time Job That Never Ends
Being a parent is more than a full-time job—it's three of them! It is literally three x 8-hour shifts in a day. There is a video of someone interviewing for the job with a bunch of candidates: there are no breaks, no sick days, and the most demanding boss in the history of bosses: a baby.
In today’s world, both parents are expected to be at work from 8am to 5pm, yet school starts at 9am-12pm, then 8am-3pm. Who is supposed to clean, cook, plan to cook, get food every day? We are forced into fast food because we're exhausted. But that only makes us feel more exhausted and depleted.
By the time my children were 1 and 3 years old, I saw a naturopath for feeling entirely warn down. Usually full of energy in the morning, like a songbird in the early sunlight (I had a cockateal growing up that was on the same daily pattern as I was, cranky by the end of the day), but now I just could not get my engine revving. Nothing could get me going. After a series of blood tests, I learned my testosterone levels were off-the charts low. I scored a 4, on a scale where normal is 8 to 60. Low testosterone shows up as low energy, even with symptoms much like depression, a rational response to 4 years of bad sleep. It also turns out most parents, when checked, have this problem, especially moms.
Our brains, as mothers, are hard-wired to wake up in the night, even if our kids sleep through it. We find out body builders, if taking illegal testosterone, can trick the tests by missing sleep. That is what parenting is like, for years at a time. It took my body about 5 years of bad sleep (counting pregnancy) to just wear my body out totally.
The Rational Depression
When studies look at women with postpartum depression, the thing that sets women apart as not having it is the amount of perceived support they have. It is all about perception. It is about getting help. If she feels alone, her body just gives out. It is overwhelming and incredibly sad, considering the enormity of the task we’ve been so lucky to be given. At how much she wants to be present.
Even a teacher gets time off to prep for the next day (unless she has her own children at home). A parent, if never away from their children, especially small children, never gets a chance to breathe. She, or he, is just running in a hamster wheel of chores and tasks. It is very hard. I like to do things well, but it’s hard to do the same thing 8 times a day.
And for someone like me, who considers myself to be an empathetic person, if my child is crying or upset, I feel the same way too. I have to work extra hard to stay calm and try to calm them down. When my newborn would cry for almost all waking hours, my whole body felt like it was on high alert 24/7.
The System Is Not Set Up for Success
Newborns do, in fact, require 24-hour care. This means 3x 8-hour shifts, which means it should be 3 adults to one child, at least at the start, then at least 2:1 until probably age 5.
That doesnt mean we need 1 person at each 8 hours shift, but a complimetary of voices, and bodies, playing together and learning each others needs.
There are just so many moments of emotional, mental, physical Olympics in raising children. And the hardest of all, is understanding that this time is sacred. The days are long but years are short . We blink and it’s over, we are expected to let them go after needing to be everything for about 5 years to them.
When we are with our kids, we want to be present, having a good time also, not just cleaning and disciplining. We need time to be our best selves. We need time and space to fall in love.
My husband and I both say we never sucked at anything so bad until we became parents. No matter what we did, our first child would not sleep, would not eat. Finally, at 3 months, he would sleep for longer than 45-minute naps, but still, doing the same thing 8x a day is hard. My husband had to do everything I used to do, and whatever he used to do, and still try to find his time to bond and relax, with the child, and me, his wife. A ratio of 2:1, 2 adults to 1 baby, was simply not enough to remain sane. And we were lucky to have that.
Finding My Voice in a Man's World
For most of my life, I'd navigated a man's world with confidence. I hadn't thought much about feminism; I hadn't needed to. I had simply assumed my place in the professional sphere, competed successfully, and never questioned the systems around me.
Maybe there was something special about how we were raised that we did not see a need for women to get an “artificial leg up” or notice in society. I later saw how this kind of thing only hurt my brothers. Maybe the way my parents taught me never made me feel like I was below men. I was taught I could be president, that I could be an astronaut, a ballet dancer, doctor, and if I chose that route, that one day I would cure cancer. I would change the world.
In reality, I think I am of pretty average intelligence. But I was made to feel as if anything was in my power, if I put the work in. I wish everyone had this feeling.
Excavating History: The Systematic Silencing of Women
My journey into parenthood coincided with a deepening curiosity about our cultural traditions. It began innocently enough—I simply wanted to understand the origins of our holidays to share them meaningfully with my children.
What I discovered was synchronicity so beautiful it took my breath away: Mother's Night, celebrated by Germanic peoples at the winter solstice, fell exactly nine months after the spring equinox festivities that would later become Easter. The German word "Eostre" preserved the "east" sound from Egytpian Aset/Ishtar, spelled ist, but pronounced “eest”, later known and Isis of Greece and Rome, the mother goddess, of the child, the sun. His name was literally Ray, or Horus, of the horizon. Ray of the reign of a queen or sunRAY of the sun. Her name as Ishtar or Astarte, or Astorath in the hebrew bible, and later Esther in Germania, all give us the same root for the word "star", as well as east. Scholars today, in biased interpretation, say the cardinal direction is of unknown origins, but the aust word has something to do with dawn, the rising sun. SHE was the mother goddess of the rising sun and brightest star in the sky. And that -t ending preserves the feminine Egyptian ending. That Isis/Ishtar/Aset was the queen of Heaven, with an image of a throne as her hieroglyph. Where was this divine woman in today’s world? Her modern counterpart, Mary, was the only one in the divine family not considered holy, and there are constant warnings not to worship her, but to adore her.
Our calendar was marking not just arbitrary dates, but a cosmic cycle of the creation of life matched to the earth's cycles: a germinated seed in spring, pregnancy through summer and fall, birth mid winter when the sun defeats darkness, and blooming again in sprin, and even a rebirth, if people chose later chose a new spiritual path. These were not just christian ideas, they were much older and once connected us to the rhythms of the earth itself.
The more I dug into various religions and holidays, I saw a pattern emerge. We were all celebrating the same things in beautiful synchrony with the seasons. All life was honored. And at the center of it all was not a single man-god birthing life alone, but the divine dance of masculine and feminine energies creating life together.
Do you really know anyone who watches a natural birth, and credits the father alone for the miracle of life?
The Systematic Silencing
As I researched deeper, I discovered something extraordinary: the drumbeat. The first instrument, mimicking the first sound we ever hear—was our mother's heartbeat in the womb.
The oldest depictions of drummers are always women. The oldest homes and graves show women in higher status than men. The frame drum, held predominantly by women for thousands of years across cultures, was systematically taken from their hands.
I found a pattern of recorded record of silencing across time. Whereas women had been depicted with drums for 40,000 years, within the first hundred years of official christianity, we see official members of the church, in writing, restricting women's speech. (A fuller detailed timeline shared below).
Corinthians 14:34-35: "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission... If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."
Timothy 2:11-12: "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet."
363 AD: Council of Laodicea forbids women from singing in church
576 AD: Christians are not allowed to teach their daughters singing, the playing of instruments or similar things because, according to their religion, it is neither good nor becoming.
1700s-1800s: Women composers forced to publish under male pseudonyms or remain unpublished
Even into the 1900s: Women jazz musicians relegated to singing roles, not instruments
This realization of a forced suppression of a woman’s voice and singing and playing music, paralleled what I was learning about parenthood itself—how artificial our modern separation of roles had become. Women locked into motherhood alone, bearing the full weight of nurturing while fathers were systematically removed from meaningful connection with their children- often not allowed in the birth room for fear they would not leave his family to go fight. Neuroscience now shares this understanding of immediate imprint. Yet evidence suggests that prehistoric fathers were far more involved with their children than many modern counterparts. But we have to go back beyond 2,000 years ago, before roman times.
The Lost Heartbeat
I discovered that what I had experienced as a personal struggle with my new family was in fact an echo of a much larger silencing—a deliberate forgetting that began thousands of years ago and continues to shape our lives today in ways we rarely recognize.
The pattern became unmistakable: whatever held true power was diminished, not because of any inherent flaw, but precisely because of its strength. Like heirloom seeds that naturally reproduce—now illegal to plant in parts of Africa, replaced by genetically modified varieties that require annual corporate purchase—the self-sustaining wisdom of women, indigenous peoples, and ancient traditions was systematically outlawed.
Reclaiming Our Shared Rhythms
Beneath these systems, the ancient rhythm continues. Like a melody we've been humming without knowing the words, it persists in our bones, our blood, our DNA, in our food, and recipes, and stories and songs. The science I studied as an engineer confirms what indigenous cultures have always known: we are rhythmic, vibrating beings. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. We match flows of energy around us. We have way more than 5 senses. Our hearts sync with those within 5 feet of us. Our very cells respond to cycles of light and dark, warmth and cold.
What I've come to understand is that this rhythm isn't just women's wisdom—it's human wisdom. When fathers connect deeply with their children, they too experience the transformation of priorities, the fierce protectiveness, the broadening of perspective that I felt and my husband felt. When we align our lives with natural cycles rather than fighting against them, we regain energy rather than depleting it. But we need help.
It is so much more fun, as I discovered, to be connected in it all together. Watching my husband develop his own parenting style, seeing our children bask in the different gifts each of us brings, experiencing the support of friends and family who step in as part of our modern "village"—these joys would have been impossible in isolation. But many times I had to close my eyes and pretend it was there.
Finding the Lyrics
This is not a story of blame or division. We cannot point to one human or time or place for the trouble we got ourselves in today. We especially cannot blame a whole gender, which includes our young sons, on this shift. But we can reveal its story to help both our sons and daughters thrive in this world—this only life that we know we have.
This story is about finding our way back to rhythms that sustain rather than deplete, that connect rather than isolate, that honor the complexity of living experience rather than reducing it to market transactions.
When I finally found my voice as a mother, it wasn't just my own voice I discovered. I was never a writer, yet I felt compelled to write. Like a force was animating me I could not control. I was catching on to an ancient chorus, singing across time, and I was lucky to be within its breeze.
Now I invite you to join in—to move beyond humming along, to singing with your full voice, to sing along with the lyrics we are now discovering with each decipherment of ancient traditions, and with full understanding of the lyrics. Our ancestors have been waiting for us all along.
Mantra
Hard now, easy later. Put in the work now to create the humans that make a better world. We need to set up the world to be worthy of them.
A Rational Hesitation
I learned that the sound of a parent’s voice, especially the mother’s, is a baby’s favorite sound. Sing to your baby, full throttle, they tell you. All of a sudden, I could sing to my children, since it was good for everyone. I sometimes felt like I HAD to sing to them, for all our sanity, and we all loved it.
The more I researched, this hesitancy to sing was not just me being shy, it was the result of cultural teachings of the last 2,000 years. It was part of my unspoken training to be prim and proper good girl.
Angelina Jolie spoke of the training for staring in the opera movie called Maria. She said she wishes every human, but especially every woman, could train in opera. It teaches a person how to use their entire body to get their full voice out.
In contrast, in Iran after 1979: (not before it) Women banned from singing in public or in the presence of men outside their immediate family. But it is not only in the Middle East.
Christian Banning of Women in Music and Speech:
In the first Christian Century (aka, the first 100 years after 0 BC/AD): official church writings restrict women's speech:
Corinthians 14:34-35: "Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission... If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."
Timothy 2:11-12: "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet."
In the next hundred years, from the 100’s AD: Clement of Alexandria condemns women's musical participation
Explicitly attacks female musicians: "Such a man creates a din with cymbals and tambourines. He rages about with instruments of an insane cult."
In the 200’s AD: We see the first documented ban on women attending religious service where music was performed
363 AD: Council of Laodicea forbids women from singing in church
Canon 15 explicitly bans women from singing as part of choir
St. John Chrysostom limits women's vocal participation. He writes that women should not speak in church beyond saying "Amen"
375 AD: The Didascalia of the 318 Fathers (c. 375 CE) states:
"Women are ordered not to speak in church, not even softly, nor may they sing along or take part in the responses, but they should only be silent and pray to God."
550 AD: Pope John III outlaws the tambourine, the principal instrument of women's sacred traditions
576 AD: Commandments of the Fathers Superiors and Masters (c. 576 CE) decrees:
"Christians are not allowed to teach their daughters singing, the playing of instruments or similar things because, according to their religion, it is neither good nor becoming."
By 603 AD: even women's choirs of virgins were silenced in churches
826 AD: Church Council prohibits singing and dancing by women
800’s AD: The development of polyphonic church music is restricted to male monasteries, excluding women from musical innovation
1100 AD: Women are not allowed to attend university music training sessions
1200 AD: Church regulations forbid women who "dance in pagan fashion" or "go to the grave with drums" from attending church services
1300’s AD: Persecutions within the Beguine religious communities of women, partly for their independent musical practices
1500’s AD: Protestant traditions under restrict or forbid music.
Anabaptists allow women to sing, but only let mean play instruments
Spanish colonizers in the Americas suppress indigenous women's ritual music
1545 AD: Council of Trent (1545-1563) restricts elaborate music in churches and reaffirms exclusion of women from official liturgical roles
1500’s AD: The beginning of opera features castrati (men with their balls cut off) rather than female voices for soprano roles in many regions
1600’s AD: The Beginning of America. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, women were prohibited from singing in church services.
Christian missionaries across Africa, Asia, and Oceania ban traditional women's musical practices, especially percussion and ritual dance
European Roma communities: Women's traditional musical roles disrupted by persecution and forced assimilation
1700’s AD: Women largely excluded from emerging professional musical institutions and orchestras
1830: Influenced by the missionaries and converted to Christianity five years before, the Hawaiian Queen Regent Kaʻahumanu banned public performances of hula, a sacred dance.
1840 AD: Women composers forced to publish under male pseudonyms or remain unpublished
Fanny Mendelssohn's father writes: "Music will perhaps become his [Felix's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament."
1800’s: Many orchestras and professional music organizations explicitly ban female musicians
The Vienna Philharmonic does not admit women until 1997
Women's musical education restricted to "feminine" instruments (piano, harp) rather than percussion or brass
British administrators in India restrict temple dancing traditions (Devadasi), which featured women's musical performance
1900’s: Women jazz musicians relegated to singing roles, not instruments
1970’s: Major orchestras still employing "blind auditions" to overcome bias against female instrumentalists.
1996: Under Taliban rule in Afghanistan (1996-2001), women prohibited from any musical activity or even listening to music
This policy briefly returned during the Taliban resurgence in 2021
Present Day:
Orthodox Judaism: Some communities maintain kol isha prohibition (men hearing women sing)
Conservative Islamic interpretations: Restrictions on women's musical performance in various regions
Some conservative Christian denominations: Continue to prohibit women from leading worship music
Did women ever stop singing? Based on the bans of the last 2000 years, the answer is no. We see women rebelling time and time again, in the middle ages, in the 1600’s when noble women had their own musical salons. In the 1800’s when women were allowed to go to music school with “gender-appropriate” string instruments. In Serbia where they invented a one string instrument and today can hear women singers in old bars. In the 1900’s, women’s success in Jazz continued to push institutional boundaries. It is not until the 1970’s that women in western culture return to their legacy of the drums in spiritual context.
How do we know this musical ban was not always the case?
Aside from the overt attempts to control them, we see many cases of imagery, preserving woman’s legacy in the musical arts, often associated with goddesses, who were later turned into demons through story. The connection between women, rhythm, and sacred experience was broken, and with it, an ancient understanding of the transformative power of rhythm. The suppression of women's drumming wasn't merely a historical curiosity but represented a profound loss—a severing of our connection to cyclical time, bodily wisdom, and communal ritual.
By understanding this story, we can begin to heal what Redmond calls "the witch wound"—the cultural trauma inflicted by thousands of years of patriarchal suppression. Through drumming, we all can reclaim our own spiritual authority and reconnect with the rhythms of the earth, our bodies, and the cosmos. But the story does not stop with just music. It continues with YOU finding your voice again.
