Marianne Wobcke On Self Discovery, Wellbeing And Perinatal Dreaming Guided By Indigenous Wisdom

Indigenous Midwife, Registered Nurse, storyteller and artist; Marianne’s work has been inspired by over 40 years of extensive experience with birthing and dying clients.

She was recipient of the 2021 Australia Council Ros Bower Award for Community Arts and Cultural Development for her pioneering work integrating culturally aware, trauma-responsive creative approaches for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander birthing women.

Indigenous lead with The Big Anxiety Research Centre (BARC), UNSW; she has presented her acclaimed Road Trip workshops for diverse audiences, interested in personal growth and transformation; for a variety of urban and regional Australian communities, including international locations, virtually.

Recently, as part of her doctoral research, she guided an innovative Virtual Reality collaboration: Perinatal Dreaming – Understanding Country. This evocative, immersive, therapeutic experience, evolved from her Stolen Generations maternal lineage and her commitment to transmute the compounding impacts intergenerational and perinatal trauma.

Marianne discusses supportive pathways to become conscious of the unconscious by working with perinatal Indigenous wisdom and the role the arts play in cultivating holistic personal and community wellbeing.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Sarah Ripper] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led you to where you are today?

[Marianne Wobcke] - I'd like to begin with an acknowledgement to the Turrbal and Jagera people in Meanjin (Brisbane) where I'm located today. This is the country on which I was born and grew up in, and the connection to this country here has been so significant in the unfolding of my story. My beginnings came after my mother was removed from her country, or the country in which she was connected, the Girammay Mob in North Queensland. I'd like to make an acknowledgement to all the mob in North Queensland who are dealing with such challenging conditions now. That acknowledgment of country is extremely important because I have a Stolen Generation history. I was adopted into a non-Indigenous family and grew up unsettled for want of a better word, but it wasn't until my Aboriginality started to emerge through life experience that life started to come into perspective for me. That's the foundation of the work I do; understanding at a deep level who we are, how trauma can deviate us from that path of knowing who we are, and how it affects us from expressing our identity creatively. The work I do now is inspired by that journey of self-discovery.

Can you tell us more about projects you're involved with and the impacts they're having on both individuals and the communities you're working with?

My work has evolved from wanting to be the best version of myself possible. These creative practices were things I discovered to support the emergence of sometimes traumatic material and helped integrate them into my own life. It was like a shearing away of what I call the Western dominant myth, which I embraced wholeheartedly (I had no reason not to), but it never resonated or gave me a deeper appreciation of who I was in the world. I was always terrified, unsteady is too light a word. I never knew how to navigate the world safely. I was coming from a place of unprecedented and internally generated fear and terror, and when I was a child, it translated into experiences in my environment; there were no high key traumatic experiences I'm fortunate to say. As I grew and started to explore my identity, a deeper understanding of what my identity was became revealed to me. It wasn't something I had to particularly pursue (although that was an intention), it was a pathway that step by step was revealed. From the beginning, I've captured the creative processes that depathologised what was happening to me. That transmuted experiences of intense trauma into things of beauty, artworks and creative pieces that resonated and translated to other people's experiences. The creative practices were shown to me as this pathway of self-discovery was revealed, and to me it became deep understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal culture. The way I translated it through my story was a feeling that when I started midwifery, my great grandmother appeared in that first intense and extraordinary experience. She showed me the knowledge system that was her custodial duty to share. Somehow, I was open and receptive to that. After 30 years I'm still integrating it, but what she showed me was an authentic truth, which is what I believe our First Nations people carry deeply in their cell tissue, an authentic creation myth.

There's such abundance and generosity in that knowledge, and if we could just be open to receiving it, it reveals to us not only a deep understanding of how incredible we are as individuals, but it shows us a prototype for living which allows us to flourish on every possible level.

My work is about helping people, whoever they are, to break away the shell of trauma that distorts our perceptions, and birth who they are authentically to shed that hardened fear, terror, and resistance to allow ourselves to be creatively free again. The Road Trip and Perinatal Dreaming VR experience, most of the work I'm doing now involves enhanced states of awareness, that beta hyper vigilant brainwave state we're so addicted to in Western culture. Those subliminal states are usually so ruthlessly exploited, but beta into alpha brainwaves can help people start to get in touch with their own magnificence and understand the solutions for everything they desire comes from within. Solutions do not come without the arts, creative processes, or multidisciplinary approaches. This holistic paradigm is what was revealed to me, of course that's the way we would flourish. That opportunity we're stepping into more, and Impact Boom you are revolutionary in how you're supporting people through events & programs like the recent FFFWD program with those genius women. When people are given space to bring their unique knowledge system, then something extraordinary happens and the arts is so much more than an opportunity. It's a critical element in how we create this new state of well-being.

Can you dive a little deeper into what perinatal dreaming is, how that impacts the collective through an Indigenous cultural lens and your therapeutic and creative experiences as a practitioner?

The perinatal from an Indigenous midwife's point of view is my custodial responsibility. Working at the interface of birth and death is what brings me alive, that's my superpower. In the process of understanding and listening deeply to people in those states, I saw repeatedly on a very intimate level people that were giving birth and then later people in the hospice environment who were dying. You were immersed in this extraordinarily intimate experience where any misperceptions, toxicity and hostility are shed because they can no longer hold a priority. You’re able to hang on to things less and less in those deeply dynamic, alpha amigous states of being. In midwifing, those states are what I came to understand, and what my great grandmother so eloquently showed me was our original creation myth. This is what I try and bring to the events and experiences I facilitate; it involves bringing us right back to the setting, and to consider this you need to develop new maps. When I'm looking at maps that spiritually affect humans, your biography is down one end, but how I see the trajectory of power is we're starting to understand childhood experiences (particularly adverse ones) have an impact on how we perceive and create our lives. For me it's back in the other direction, even more so in those perinatal experiences. Experiences from the first 1000 days of life are where we are coded by other people's stories often. With that comes an incredible responsibility, and in traditional times, midwives, elders, and the community held pregnant women in such high esteem. This is because they knew that the story from her environment and experiences while she was gestating this soul were so integral to how that child would experience the world. Would it experience the world as a loving, safe container full of opportunities and creative genius? Or is it (as is now the case in Western culture) something full of resistance to be fought against and protected from? All these feeling elements were never part of that sacred woman's business.

What I try and introduce in the work I do now is this understanding of what the creation myth is, and if anybody is perplexed by this, Hollywood has exploited it ruthlessly to great monetary value. It is the original death and rebirth cycle, a trajectory we know deeply in our DNA.

In relation to birth, it's the idea of coming from the sacred into a good womb, the amniotic universe, and oceanic bliss. This marries with an understanding of country; this deep understanding of space and nourishment where in the amniotic universe and through the cord every possible nutrient requirement is delivered in a container of absolute safety and love. There's no need to do anything, not even breathe, every possible thing is taken care of. This is an archetypal space we are unfortunately corroding and corrupting with toxicity all the time, yet this is a state that increasingly we're being pulled back to through mindfulness opportunities and a deep appreciation of country. It’s the same with the oceanic bliss, the deeply nurturing connection to water we have.

I usually take people through evocative experiences of this, whether through images or music. The toxic womb is again exemplified in Western culture, but what it speaks to in an organic sense is the timeliness of change that traditionally we would rely on the seasons to navigate. Seasons would motivate us to move to a new area and let the area we've just been in do a cool burn and rejuvenate.

There was this constant cycle of change that wasn't rigidly adhered to, it was intuitively danced with. When the limitations of the womb become such, it's no longer supporting growth, so labour commences and it's time to change. It's time for the baby to come from that space into the world.

In Western culture, labour has been ruthlessly corrupted. The feeling elements that go with labour were never part of traditional birthing, the feelings of hopelessness, despair, or not being able to do it. Victimisation and the dark night of the soul are western constructs that are now infecting our psyche and emerging physically in endogenous depression. With this longing to go back to the sacred, there's a lethargy. All these feeling elements can be imprinted during the labour experience. Traditionally, labour involved shedding any toxicity in that process of gearing up and meeting a challenge full on. Again, with music I tend to include two or three different tracks to help people feel instead of becoming stuck. In that experience, where the cervix is closed and there's no exit, that becomes imprinted into our psyche. The next part of the Road Trip or VR experience is critical to reminding us about why initiation was so important in traditional cultures.

This is why art is so therapeutic in a sense because you go through this creative process to gestate and bring something new and different into the world. Similarly in labour, this is often the point where women feel they can't go on or face the challenge; they're still caught in the past.

My skill is to help women seek everything they need from inside, to lean into that transformation and imagine what's ahead, not get stuck in the past and what's behind. If they do, then there's this incredible leap of faith into the unknown. Western culture is set up to keep things familiar. When we're in survival mode, our brain is operating in a way that will take us back to the familiar rather than risk moving into the unknown. That is an antagonist providing incredible resistance to that authentic creation myth where we should feel excitement, curiosity, and enthusiasm as we lean into that leap of faith. In Indigenous culture, if you were creating an opportunity where somebody took that leap of faith, then the magic is in how they're received. On the Road Trip and in the VR experience, the silence, gap, and then the containment, holding, landing, and floating lyrically into a new way of being is critical in the imprinting of why we would lean into the inevitability of change. If we understand that at a deep level, we don't build this resistance and allow our thinking to keep taking us back to the past. With that comes all sorts of physical, spiritual, emotional, relational, societal, and ecological problems. It's not just coming through the experience, birth of a new project, child, or way of being, it’s what happens next that's so critically important. That's where a community needs to hold an individual as they step into that new way of being. If you do that alone, it's too challenging and we tend to default back to past paradigms, whereas if we have a creative community of care around us, individuals that see and listen to who we really are and celebrates our uniqueness, then we begin to flourish. If you've ever been at the birth of a baby (that's not being interrupted by stressed out or time affected professionals), it is one of the most gorgeous celebrations possible, and even more so when it's nonverbal, when it's just tears and singing, sound, song, and movement. The tangible feeling of love is what you want to imprint on someone in that vulnerable place of new beginnings. You are becoming magnificent after that, remembering who we are, and understanding how great we are together. That's the message of the work I do; it's not even so much about the resources, it's about finding everybody's ancestors, spirit and creative force that's constantly expanding, progressing, and evolving us. I create opportunities where people can step out of this mad and often hostile world into the space to connect with themselves. They don't need an expert; they need a container and somebody who can allow you to go inside and discover just how magnificent you are.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive social change?

Just to briefly refer to what I said, I feel like we're at a time historically where people are birthing themselves. The work's been done, this is just a time of great opportunity. The work you and Tom are doing, Ally Kelly, and every single one of the women in the FFFWD Impact Boom event you sent me the material about have left me awestruck. I'm doing my doctorate at Griffith University now, and I'm fortunate to be doing Arts & Health. Professor Naomi Sunderland has been hugely impactful in offering this opportunity. Professor Naomi Sunderland and her team (I can think of three people immediately) are doing their doctorates through CARI, the Creative Arts Research Institute at Griffith now, as part of The Remedy Project. This is mind blowing. World class, award-winning projects are happening. There are so many things happening we can't keep up with them all. Out of the work I've done with BARC, a Big Anxiety research centre, I’d like to mention Professor Jill Bennett, Dr Gail Kenning, her team there, the VR team, and Volca and their team. These people are extraordinary and on the cutting-edge of innovation.

It's these collaborative projects and geniuses coming together and no longer competing, who are wise enough souls to flourish in a holistic, collaborative environment that are succeeding. They flourish from that interdisciplinary expansion that occurs when everybody brings their best.

In Warwick, we were part of a film that Article 1 made, Changing Our Ways, and this was a documentary focused on a community that's been smashed by youth suicide. These incredibly strong women Kushla Rabbat, Cynthia Hoffman Delveen Charles, and so many other are emerging with their community in defiance of such horrifying trauma to transform their lives. I would encourage people to get out amongst it and trust your inner guidance. What I'm finding is there's so much material that if you move forward with this quiet intent about what you need next for your own progression and development, then it will miraculously appear. But stay in that open hearted, generous space of appreciating what an extraordinary time in history we're enjoying at this moment.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our audience?

There is a paper that is in a very process of being published today, and that's Connecting Us Back to Ourselves: An Aesthetic Experience as Means of Growth After Trauma. That's a collaborative paper published with the BARC team, Professor Jill Bennett, Gail Kenning, and her team there. It’s a great read, get a hold of that. There are many articles out there and some great books on social justice coming out; Professor Caroline Lenette is a fantastic author. Trust your guidance and expose yourself to as much as you can.