Joy Is an Act of Defiance: Ancestral Healing, Pleasure & Reclaiming Our Power | Feminist Education

What happens when remembering where you come from becomes an act of rebellion?
What happens when we reconnect with our roots, reclaim our pleasure, and begin breaking the patterns of generational trauma that taught us to be smaller, quieter, and more obedient?
In this powerful episode of the Please Me! Podcast, Eve Hall sits down with Christine Olivia, Mayan astrologer, spiritual guide, cacao ceremonialist, author of Remembering Your Roots, and creator of the Mayan Oracle Deck, for a deeply layered conversation about ancestry, sexuality, pleasure, feminine power, cultural erasure, and the radical act of remembering who we are.
Together, Eve and Christine explore what happens when we stop looking at our ancestral histories only through the lens of trauma and begin making space for the wisdom, resilience, traditions, spirituality, and pleasure that also live within our lineages.
They talk about Mayan astrology and cosmology, the Mayan calendar, ceremonial cacao, inner-child healing, re-parenting, gratitude, dance, singing, rest, sexuality, and self-pleasure—and how these seemingly simple acts can become pathways back to ourselves.
But this conversation also goes somewhere darker.
Women’s bodies have been controlled, punished, silenced, violated, and medically manipulated for centuries. From historical attempts to literally silence women—including devices such as the scold’s bridle—to the forced sterilization of Black, Brown, Indigenous, disabled, incarcerated, and other marginalized women, Eve and Christine examine the long history of reproductive control and bodily autonomy.
They also discuss how reproductive coercion and medical abuses have not simply disappeared. Contemporary reports of reproductive and medical abuses involving women in immigration detention raise difficult questions about whose bodies are considered worthy of autonomy, choice, and protection.
And then comes the radical question:
What if joy itself is resistance?
What if dancing, singing, resting, laughing, feeling good in your body, experiencing pleasure, and choosing what happens to your own body are not frivolous acts—but powerful ways of reclaiming humanity from systems that have historically demanded women be quiet, productive, obedient, and small?
Eve and Christine explore the divine feminine not as a rigid identity or prescription for how women should behave, but as an invitation to reconnect with intuition, creativity, embodiment, sensuality, power, and the parts of ourselves that patriarchal conditioning taught us to suppress.
They talk about the pressure women face to make themselves smaller—less loud, less sexual, less ambitious, less demanding, less joyful, less everything. And they challenge the idea that taking up space is something women need permission to do.
Because sometimes healing isn’t about becoming someone new.
Sometimes it’s about remembering who you were before you were taught to disappear.
In this episode, we explore:
Ancestral healing and breaking cycles of generational trauma
Mayan astrology, cosmology, and the Mayan calendar
Reconnecting with ancestral wisdom and cultural identity
Cultural erasure and the loss of connection to our roots
Ceremonial cacao and its role in ritual, connection, and embodiment
Inner-child healing and the practice of re-parenting ourselves
Sexuality, self-pleasure, and authentic self-expression
The divine feminine and reclaiming feminine power
Why women are so often conditioned to make themselves smaller
Patriarchal conditioning and the systems that police women’s bodies
Historical efforts to silence and control women, including the scold’s bridle
The history of forced sterilization and reproductive control disproportionately affecting Black, Brown, Indigenous, and marginalized women
Reproductive autonomy and contemporary concerns surrounding women in immigration detention
Body autonomy and the right to make decisions about our own bodies
Pleasure as resistance
Why dancing, singing, resting, and joy ca...