Alicia W.: Let's get back to connecting to your own body. Have you looked at your vulva since having given birth? Women are like, "No." I'm like, "Okay, look at yourself. Touch your own skin. What does your tissue feel like? Remind your body that you can feel pleasure."
Announcer: You're listening to the MILF Podcast. This is the show where we talk about motherhood and sexuality with amazing women with fascinating stories to share on the joys of being a MILF. Now, here's your host, the MILFiest MILF I know, Jennifer Tracy.
Jennifer Tracy: Hey guys. Welcome back to the show. Happy New Year. Happy 2019. This is the first interview of 2019. Very exciting. This is MILF Podcast, the show where we talk about motherhood, entrepreneurship, sexuality, and everything in between. And I'm your host, Jennifer Tracy. So lots of exciting things happening already in this new year. We are smack dab in the middle of our MILFmas contest, 12 days of MILFmas contest where we've been giving away a MILF T every day since Christmas. And that will go on until this Saturday, January 5th. That'll be our last day.
Jennifer Tracy: And on that last day, the contest will also award the top three entrants, so the three people that have the most entries will win not only a MILF T or tank, their choice, but they will win seven of my favorite femalecentric, female-authored books, which I'm very excited about that because I'm so inspired by women's stories, women's fiction, non-fiction, any kind of women's stories. I want to listen and then want to help you tell it. And I want to help you find it. So I'm excited about that. And I am announcing January's give this month.
Jennifer Tracy: So each month I will be, for ever iTunes review that I get, I will be donating $3 to that month's chosen charity or organization. And this month I have chosen Harvest Home, which is a housing in Los Angeles for homeless pregnant women and their children. And it's a beautiful organization. If you want to check it out, it's harvesthomela.org. And I just love what these people do and how they really care about these moms and their babies. And so their whole thing is that they provide a beautiful space and home and community for these women and their children, and they also provide resources, classes, development for them to be able to work and support themselves and give back to the community.
Jennifer Tracy: I think it's an amazing organization, and I'm really excited to be donating to them this month. So go ahead and leave us a review. You can go to milfpodcast.com/apple, or you can just go to iTunes directly and do it there. There's lots of ways to do it. What else? Oh, I wanted to mention the ratings thing again. So recently my team and I made the decision to put the explicit ratings, which, there's only two ratings. There's either just clean or explicit. There's no in between. And we're one of those sort of in between shows. I mean, occasionally an f bomb will be dropped. Occasionally we'll talk about things that are "dirty" or sexual or whatever. But for the most part not as much.
Jennifer Tracy: But I just, we felt, we made the decision to do that because we didn't want you guys to be listening to it, maybe with your kids in the car or maybe the kids are around. And they might hear a word. So we wanted you to be forewarned about that. That's why the change in the rating. But for the most part, it's not like there's explicit language the entire interview. So without further ado, I am going to introduce this week's guest, Alicia Willoughby. Alicia came to me through Instagram, I think. She found me on Intagram. And she was a fan of the show.
Jennifer Tracy: And she said, "Hey, I love your show and also I have a really unique message and something I want to talk about. Could I be on your show?" And I said, "Yes. Absolutely. What do you want to talk about?" And so I learned who she is, and I learned what she does. And she is a physical therapist in Northern California who works with women pre- and postnatal on their strengthening their pelvic floor.
Jennifer Tracy: Now, this is something before I talk to Alicia that I really knew very little about, really. And I feel like I think I'm someone who's pretty in touch with my body and my different parts. But, wow, it just really was I got an education listening to her talk. She's so smart, has so much experience with this. Alicia is a total baller MILF. And it was such an honor to have her on the show. I loved listening to her insights. And I loved learning more about the pelvic floor, my own pelvic floor. So, yeah, Alicia's a baller MILF. Also, just FYI, if you want to download these seven habits of baller MILFs, which is a little something that I wrote after having interviewed the first 30 women for the show, just go to my website, milfpodcast.com. Sign up for the newsletter, and you will immediately be sent this thing that I wrote about the seven habits of baller MILFs, because it's really true: These women all have very similar habits, and they embody that, and they're at the top of their game in many, many different areas of their lives. So enjoy my conversation with Alicia. Hi, Alicia.
Alicia W.: Hi.
Jennifer Tracy: Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Alicia W.: Oh, thank you so much. This is so fun. I'm so excited.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh my gosh. So you are in ... Where are you right now?
Alicia W.: I'm in Marin County. So I'm about-
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, right.
Alicia W.: ... 20 minutes north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Jennifer Tracy: So beautiful. And are you from that area?
Alicia W.: I am. I'm from Novato in Marin County. I live in San Rafael now, but yes, born and raised in Marin, and here I am now.
Jennifer Tracy: Beautiful. And so Alicia reached out to me and found MILF Podcast and reached out to me and said, "Hey, I have some interesting things to share with the MILF community." It's really interesting what you do. So tell me a little bit about what you do now.
Alicia W.: I'm an orthopedic and women's health physical therapist. So what that means is I started out in orthopedics, your typical knee pain, back pain, neck pain, surgeries. And then through my career, I started shifting into treating mothers. And that started with treating women during pregnancy. I started realizing that women, before I even was pregnant, that women were having back pain during pregnancy, and everyone was telling them that was normal. And I was like a new grad. I had spent all this money on grad school. I had all these skills. And I just was like, "I don't think that has to be normal." So I started doing some extra training because in PT school, you have one day about pregnancy lecture. And-
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. Really?
Alicia W.: Yeah, and one day about the pelvic floor, where you spend like a whole semester on the shoulder or something. You know?
Jennifer Tracy: I mean, can we just pause there for a second and talk about-
Alicia W.: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: ... the fact that the pelvic floor, and the vagina, and the hips, and all of that is why we're all here.
Alicia W.: Exactly.
Jennifer Tracy: First of all, and so, wow, the fact that it's really not looked after in that regard in that particular specialty of what you were studying, it's just like it's such a whole part of the body.
Alicia W.: Right, and that everybody has a pelvic floor, just like everybody has hip muscles and neck muscles. And it's a thing.
Jennifer Tracy: Do men have pelvic floors?
Alicia W.: Oh yeah. Yeah, and I don't treat men. [crosstalk 00:08:29]. I have no interest.
Jennifer Tracy: I don't either. I don't treat men either anymore.
Alicia W.: I have no interest. But, yeah, people that have strict pelvic floor practices, 50% of their patients are men.
Jennifer Tracy: Interesting.
Alicia W.: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: Because of incontinence, because of-
Alicia W.: Incontinence, erectile disfunction issues, pelvic pain. I mean, if you think of like a cyclist was sitting on that seat, and that's seat's pushing up on all of his bits for hours, they have a lot of like pelvic pain issues, and erectile issues, and prostate issues, and they can [inaudible 00:09:07] too, and they have a lot of bowel issues. So all that stuff, a pelvic floor therapist would treat.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. Okay, but you, part of your story is that you discover this, like you said, before you got pregnant with your child.
Alicia W.: Yeah, before I got pregnant, I discovered the pregnancy component of it. I wasn't even aware of the postpartum component under that, right?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Alicia W.: So I started, I did some extra training to learn more about pregnancy and postpartum at that time. And I was working in San Francisco at the time. And then I started marketing myself to the OBs in San Francisco, saying, "Okay, hey, if you have a woman that's had back pain, I'm here. Don't tell them it's normal. Don't tell them it's going to go away. I'm here." So I started getting more women coming in for back pain. And I was making a pretty significant difference in the rest of their pregnancy.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow.
Alicia W.: And then I got pregnant with my first babe. And it really amazed me how patients, and clients, and people would say, "Oh, do you have back pain yet?" as if-
Jennifer Tracy: It's inevitable.
Alicia W.: Right, because I'm pregnant, that means my body needs to be in pain, and how we've normalized that as a society. And I was able to have a pretty healthy pregnancy from that standpoint. Maybe it's because of what I knew already. Maybe it was just my body. I don't know. As physical therapists, we kind of use our own bodies as experiments at times, like trying things out. And then after I had my first baby, my daughter Charlotte, I moved to Marin. I wasn't working in the city anymore. I experienced my postpartum body for the first time. And then when I went back to work at a different clinic, it was still strictly orthopedics, but the really big thing-
Jennifer Tracy: Well, hold on. I want to pause because I feel like we missed ... I want to know what your postpartum body felt like and what that was like as a whole not just physically, but what was your experience postpartum?
Alicia W.: Oh yeah. That story? Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, that little blip, that little thing.
Alicia W.: Oh man, postpartum felt like I ... It rocked my world. Physically, I felt like I didn't know whose body this was anymore. I had always been very active. I had always been for better or for worst very in control of my body sometimes for worse. I ran half marathons and marathons. And I have a history of restricted eating and all that stuff. So pregnancy and postpartum for me was I was no longer in control of what was happening to my physical body.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, that powerlessness is really scary, that feeling like-
Alicia W.: It's really scary. And I really think it's the first time a woman starts to feel disconnected with her body, that disconnect start of, "Oh, this body isn't mine anymore. This body is to create a baby. This body is to birth a baby. This body is to feed a baby." And my husband needs my body too. My body isn't mine anymore, right?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Alicia W.: So physically I felt okay. I didn't have any injuries, but I felt disconnected and lost within my physical body. I had a little bit of like typical baby blues when my daughter ... I remember around four months of friends saying to me, "Do you think you have a little postpartum depression?" because I was kind of just in a little bit of a funk.
Jennifer Tracy: What did the funk look like? What does that look like?
Alicia W.: What did it look like at that point? I'm trying to remember. I just felt kind of ... I just felt down. I wasn't enjoying myself. I wasn't enjoying myself. People would say, "Isn't this wonderful?" And I'm like, "Eh, yeah." I just wasn't enjoying it yet. I think more of my, after I had my second, that hit me even harder than my first, because by the time my first was 16 months, I was pregnant again. At six months, the clouds really parted for me with her. I was like, "Okay, she's sitting up. I can put her down." No? Okay. I can do that.
Jennifer Tracy: You had a routine. You had, you know what it was-
Alicia W.: I had a routine. Right. It felt like I could do it. And I pushed my body, I think looking back on it, too much to start getting fit again because I felt so gross inside. So looking back on it, I think I didn't give myself the gentleness that I wish I would have with the first babe.
Jennifer Tracy: Right. And you had all this amazing knowledge that most women don't have.
Alicia W.: Right.
Jennifer Tracy: So it was probably like, I'm guessing, it was probably like, "Let me put this into action." You know what I mean?
Alicia W.: Right.
Jennifer Tracy: It's like a big ... because that makes me feel empowered in a situation where you had been feeling powerless, like, "I know how to do this."
Alicia W.: Exactly.
Jennifer Tracy: You know what I mean?
Alicia W.: And I think I thought because I had all the knowledge, I could make it happen faster.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes, that makes sense.
Alicia W.: Right, which now I'm like, "No." It doesn't matter of who you are. There is a timeline for healing that we need to respect and honor. And I was like, "Oh no, I can make this happen faster because I-"
Jennifer Tracy: God, that's so profound what you just said. That is so profound what you just said: There's a timeline for healing, and we have to respect it. And, God, that goes for everything. I had just lost a dear friend to suicide. And it's only been five and a half weeks, and it's like the timeline ... Anyway, just I'm relating that to so many different areas of all of that. The timeline for healing is the timeline for healing. It's not ours. It's not up to us. So I love that. Thank you for saying that. Anyway, sorry for the interruption. That just really-
Alicia W.: No, that's fine.
Jennifer Tracy: ... hit me.
Alicia W.: And I say it all the time to my clients now, all the time, because everyone wants [crosstalk 00:15:11]-
Jennifer Tracy: Because they're impatient probably, yeah.
Alicia W.: Absolutely, which I get. I mean, I get. I say that to them: "I hear you. I understand you."
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Alicia W.: "I've been there."
Jennifer Tracy: So you push through with your first child and you've won?
Alicia W.: I pushed through.
Jennifer Tracy: And then you physically got your body back, and then you got pregnant again.
Alicia W.: Yeah. Physically I felt fine. And then I got pregnant again. I remember being like, "Holy shit." I checked, went out and bought new clothes. I just started feeling like myself again. And now we're going to do this again? And it wasn't a surprise necessarily. I had actually gotten pregnant by accident when my daughter was 12 months. And that, I remember sitting on the floor and crying, like I didn't want to be pregnant. I wasn't ready to be pregnant. And I ended up miscarrying. And I just knew from the start of that pregnancy that baby wasn't going to stay. I remember putting my hand ... I put my hands on my uterus and say, "If you're ready to go, you can go. It's okay." And I just, it never stuck. And people have their own thing about miscarriages. Everyone has their own kind of belief of that if that's a baby they lost.
Alicia W.: But then when I got pregnant with my son, I know that was him coming back. I just know, because before I got pregnant with my son, I felt this like being there. I knew I was going to conceive a boy. I just knew. And I remember saying to him, like journaling and being like, "I'm not ovulating yet. Just hold on. I can't create you yet. I know you're ready, but I just can't-"
Jennifer Tracy: That's so beautiful.
Alicia W.: "I can't bring you in." And so I really feel like he knew I wasn't ready, and he came back a few months later when I realized I was. So it's-
Jennifer Tracy: Wow.
Alicia W.: Yeah. It's so special.
Jennifer Tracy: That's beautiful.
Alicia W.: It was special for me in that way.
Jennifer Tracy: And how old are your kids now?
Alicia W.: So my daughter's eight and a half, and my son is six and a half.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, wow. Yeah.
Alicia W.: So first grade and third grade.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, you can breathe a little bit.
Alicia W.: I can breathe a little bit, oh yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: It's still a lot. I mean, mine's nine and a half-
Alicia W.: It's still a lot.
Jennifer Tracy: ... and it's like full-time mommy. And I-
Alicia W.: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Okay, so you have your son.
Alicia W.: I have my son.
Jennifer Tracy: So now you have two babies.
Alicia W.: I have two babies. Oh my God.
Jennifer Tracy: And are you, you're back at work part time, or what does that look like?
Alicia W.: I worked part time through his pregnancy, and then I took four months off, and then went back to work when he was four months old, part time, still part time, yeah, so working for somebody else at the time. And I knew I wanted to go back to work. They all laughed, but they knew I'd be back because I was the only person who showed up Monday morning. I was the only person that had kids. And I was the only person that would show up Monday morning like, "Hi!"
Jennifer Tracy: So happy to be there.
Alicia W.: Right?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Alicia W.: Charlotte was only two years old when Brandon was born. She was a baby still. And that time rocked my world more.
Jennifer Tracy: Having the two kids or the birth of the second child?
Alicia W.: My births were amazing. I would birth, but I don't want more kids. I had home births with both of my kids. I had really empowering peaceful births. I feel so blessed in that way. So giving birth was a very empowering experience for me. It was the aftermath of it all. The kids, having the two kids, and my daughter, right around two, started just being really spirited and fiery. And she's been very explosive. And it just started me on this really big struggle of motherhood, more than ... The first one was hard, but the second one, I say sometimes I'm still trying to adjust because, I just, it's motherhood, and why I love what you're doing is because there are these real honest raw conversations that I have, I really believe in having because so many women and so many of my clients sit in front of me, and they feel like they're having a experience that's different because always see it as Instagram, and Facebook, right?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Alicia W.: I probably look like I really love being a mom on Instagram and Facebook. But motherhood is a role that I feel like so uncomfortable in. It's like it's like an itchy wool sweater that like I can't get off. It's like it doesn't feel comfortable. I struggle a lot in it, and that started right after I had him, where it's just been, and it still is a really big uncomfortable struggle.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. I so relate to that. I so relate to that. Yeah, it's not easy, and it's not something that I ... It's not something that I always enjoy.
Alicia W.: No, oh God no.
Jennifer Tracy: And there's a shame around that, and there's a fear of judgment around that. But it's really important for me to say that most of the time I just want him to go to bed. I'm tired, and I'm newly divorced. We've been separated for two years, newly divorced, amicably--I always say that. I'm very grateful I have an incredible ex husband. And when my son is with him, like today, this morning, I woke up. I was able to sit by the fire. I was able to journal. I was able to meditate. I was able to do all those things. That's one day a week I could do that. And I cherish it. Yeah, see. [crosstalk 00:21:02].
Alicia W.: Oh my God.
Jennifer Tracy: It's heaven because normally, since the time he was born, it's like I wake up, and I'm shot out of a cannon, and it's just go, go, go, go, go. There's no like quietly waking up. I mean, that's just also partly my child's personality, but-
Alicia W.: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that's how my daughter is.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. It's just like, "Ma, Mom, let's ..." He's always been like, "Get up. Let's go." Da, da, da, da. There's no like getting into bed and snuggling with Mommy. That's never been the case. So I completely relate to the itchy wool sweater. And it is most of the time very uncomfortable. And I feel overly exhausted most of the time.
Alicia W.: Yeah. I know. I always say I sleep great. I sleep eight hours. I sleep great. My kids sleep great. And I'm exhausted all the time. I think my nervous system is on overwhelm and overstimulated all the time when I'm around them. It's like I just ... And then I go. I have anxiety, and so I go into this like paralyzed place where I just like can't even function because they're so loud. And I can't even get myself to like put the dishes away, because I'm so overstimulated that my system is just like on shut ... It's like hovering around shutdown mode all the time. In all honesty, there are like less moments where I feel like I got this, I'm doing this. This is great, than the moments where I am just like, this is a shit show, and how do I escape?
Jennifer Tracy: "How do I escape?" Totally. Oh my God, yes! Yes. Totally.
Alicia W.: You know? Just this morning, my daughter was mad at me because I wouldn't let her keep red lipstick. That's a whole other thing. And she walked out the front door and like sat out on our porch. And it's cold. Like, "All right. There you go. Hang out there as long as you need to."
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, yeah. Oh, and just trying to be a conscious parent who allows my child to feel his feelings and helping him sort through his feelings, and that part is really like I'm glad that I'm trying to do that, but I also can understand why my parents were like, "Jennifer, stop crying. Go up to your room." You know?
Alicia W.: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: I could understand that impulse because it's exhausting. Also he's so much more evolved that I was at nine. He's more evolved than I was at 25 emotionally, literally. I mean, he can advocate for himself. He can express himself. His thing right now, he loves to flip me off. He loves to give me the middle finger.
Alicia W.: Oh my God.
Jennifer Tracy: And then I'll be like, "[Blooms 00:23:50]." And he'll say, "I'm not doing it to you," because the finger isn't facing outwards. He'll like hold it up to the side. So I'm like, okay. So I let it go because he only does it here at home, but I'm like, "Am I ... I know I'm screwing this up somehow." But it's almost like a funny joke between us because it lets him like let his anger out in this way-
Alicia W.: Exactly. It's like at least he's expressing it. And he's not repressing it. He's not like shoving it down.
Jennifer Tracy: No, he's very expressive.
Alicia W.: ... where he's going to explode later at someone else.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. And he really gets that, and I felt like one parenting win for me was one day when I was crying over something. I don't even remember what it was. It might've been the loss of my friend recently. And he was home. And I was just crying. And he came over, and he rubbed my back, and he said, "It's okay, Mommy. It's okay to feel your feelings."
Alicia W.: Oh.
Jennifer Tracy: And I just thought, "Okay, I did something right." He wasn't trying to figure it out of fix it. He was just being supportive and validating and loving.
Alicia W.: Oh, that's wonderful.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. I just thought, "Okay, that's a good ..." I did something right.
Alicia W.: Yeah. Oh, definitely. I know. There are those moments.
Jennifer Tracy: He still flips me off when I tell him to turn his video games off.
Alicia W.: My son came over. He was yelling at me the other night. And I took a timeout for myself, and I was sitting on the couch trying to get my act together. And he came up to me and said, "Mommy, I'm sorry for yelling at you." And I was like, "Wow. Oh my gosh, this is amazing."
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, but it's because you've done that, I'm sure.
Alicia W.: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: I mean, they pick up on all that we model to them.
Alicia W.: Right.
Jennifer Tracy: So you mentioned that you have a husband.
Alicia W.: I do.
Jennifer Tracy: Because of all that we were just talking about and how depleted we feel, how do you maintain a relationship with him?
Alicia W.: I don't know. I'm like, "Is he going to hear this?"
Jennifer Tracy: Maybe. I don't know.
Alicia W.: It's something we struggle with every single day. And we go to therapy. And we've gone to therapy for years. And it's a struggle every single day. I don't have the answer. I don't know. It's something we're trying to figure out. Having kids rocked our relationship. And we had kids quick.
Jennifer Tracy: How long were you together before-
Alicia W.: Not long.
Jennifer Tracy: Not long.
Alicia W.: By the time we had Charlotte, we had only known each other for three years. And so it was a very quick, like quick engagement, got married, bought a house, had a baby. It was like bam, bam, bam, and then waking up and being like, what the hell? So it's a struggle. And we struggle with it a lot, and we struggle with it probably more than people know. I think, I feel like [inaudible 00:26:52] people don't talk about. Yeah, we struggle with it more than people know. And it's an ongoing work. It's ongoing work.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Well-
Alicia W.: I wish I had a really great answer.
Jennifer Tracy: That is a great answer. But that is a great answer because that's the truth of it, is that it is ongoing work, and anybody that says ... I had my OB-GYN, Susanne Gilbert Glens was on the show a couple weeks ago, and she's just so lovely and amazing. And she said, "You know, those families that you see on Instagram that are like the perfect family photo and the perfect ..." She's like, "I always think ... I mean, this is ..." And she will say, "I feel bad saying this," she's like, "But sooner or later, you learn that those are the ones that are on the skids because it's like-"
Alicia W.: Totally.
Jennifer Tracy: It's just, it's really hard to maintain two professions, right?
Alicia W.: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: Or even if one of the parents is home more with the children, or it doesn't ... I don't even know if that matters as much. It's hard to maintain both being parents, two children, and a marriage, maintaining a relationship to the other ... to your partner. That is-
Alicia W.: I always feel like it's that, have you seen that, there's like a triangle of like ... Although I think there's actually four corners to it. There's my sanity, my kids, my marriage, and my business. And I think the original thing, there is three. Maybe business isn't in there. But and you could only give to two of them. So one of them is always going to be sacrificed. And so if you add in the forth one of like myself, my business, my kids, and marriage, if I can only attend to two, then two are always falling apart. I turn my head to one, and then I look over, and something else is on the ground.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Alicia W.: Just, yeah, so what you just said reminded me this year when I was trying to make our Christmas cards, I felt exactly what your OB-GYN was saying of like, because we just got family photos done, and I'm like, "This is bullshit. This is not our life." And so I went on Etsy. And then I didn't know this. On Etsy, you can have someone make a Christmas card for you instead of like a pre-template.
Jennifer Tracy: I like that.
Alicia W.: I found a template. I mean, they make their own templates, but they're different than like the Happy Holidays. I found a template, and I just got them printed. And so it says on the bottom, "This card has zero resemblance to our actual lives. Happy Holidays."
Jennifer Tracy: I love it. Oh, I love that. That's brilliant.
Alicia W.: You know?
Jennifer Tracy: That's so honest.
Alicia W.: My kids don't sit still. They don't smile all the time. We're not all hugging each other. Come on. Let's stop pretending like this is our life. If we just all stopped pretending and were honest to each other, I feel like we wouldn't feel so fucking alone all the time, being like, "Is this me? Am I the only one struggling?
Jennifer Tracy: I love that Etsy piece. I think that's so brilliant and so honest. Yeah, I mean, it's when I split from my husband, I was met with a lot of shock from people that know us in our community. It was like, "Wait. What?" because we were at the beginning of our relationship. We had our struggles at the beginning. But I think we were in our community a couple that a lot of people looked up to and like, "Oh, they know how to partner. They know how to do this." And we did, and we got tools, and we went to therapies like right away. But I will say also, just to echo what you said, having a child was like, a friend of mine says like the kiss of death for your marriage.
Alicia W.: Totally. Oh my gosh.
Jennifer Tracy: Because, and it's so interesting because I remember thinking I was so in love with my husband and so just excited to have his baby. And I wanted to get pregnant. I was like ready, ready, ready. And I just all of my pregnancy, I just thought, "This is so great." I was so blissed out my whole pregnancy. I, too, had an amazing birth. It was just gorgeous. It was stunning. I loved every moment of it, even though I had third-degree tearing, by the way, and I had to sit on like an inflatable donut for four weeks, so yeah, and had to take Vicodin I think for ... I don't know. I can't ... It's foggy, maybe a couple days?
Alicia W.: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: And I hated it. I finally got off it because I called Susanne, and I was like, "I haven't had a bowel movement in like I don't even remember." And she was like, "Oh, you have to stop taking Vicodin." And I was like, "Oh, okay." And then I thought I was going to have to go to the hospital again when I eventually did have to go to the bathroom. This is way TMI. I never usually share this much, and I'm going to apologize to my editor Derrick, this sweet young boy. It's like probably listening right now going, "Ew, I don't want to know about you pooping after-"
Alicia W.: Well, this is this things I talk about at work all day long [crosstalk 00:31:56].
Jennifer Tracy: Great, because it'll segue us back into the pelvic floor, which I really want to dive in.
Alicia W.: Like, that, I'm on it. Now you're talking my jam.
Jennifer Tracy: So there's a reason I was inspired to share about my bowels. But that part of thinking that it would bring us closer together, and it actually, in my experience, did not. And the irony is ... This is so interesting. And I've never articulated this until this very moment. Now that we're divorced, and I feel very fortunate again that it was as amicable as it possibly could've been, there were moments in mediation that were really tough, but we really got through it with a lot of love and compassion. And now I really actually feel like we're closer as a family and that my ... We spent Thanksgiving together a couple weeks ago. We're going to spend Christmas together, all three of us, with my parents.
Jennifer Tracy: We have like a mutual respect and healthier boundaries than we did when we were married. I'm not advocating that people should split up, I'm just saying it's very interesting to me that I feel more secure in my relationship with my husband now that he's not my husband, which there's so many layers I could dive into. I won't because I want to get back to pelvic floor. We don't have sex anymore. So that's off the table, and that's not a pressure and a thing. I remember when my son was born and I hadn't seen my husband because he had to leave town right after our son was born. I didn't see him for like eight weeks. And then I brought the baby to Boston where he was working on a film. And he wanted to have sex, and I was just like, "I can't. I can't. I can't have another person on my body. I can't have another mouth on my boob. No."
Alicia W.: Yeah. Absolutely.
Jennifer Tracy: Okay, so pelvic floor, this is so fascinating to me. I do Pilates, which I know is not pelvic floor work. But can you explain to me a little bit what the pelvic floor is in a woman's body?
Alicia W.: Sure. So there's about 14 muscles. Some people say 12, some people say 16. I say 14, 14 muscles down there. And they have multiple functions. So they're a group of muscles that keep us continent, so they close up our openings. So they close up our anal open, our vaginal opening, and our urethra. So they close everything up to keep our bodily fluids in. They also provide a lift to the pelvic organ. So there's like an elevatored lift that the deepest layer does to hold our organs up. They attach to all of the bones in the pelvis, so your sit bones, and your public bone, and your tailbone, and your sacrum and your [crosstalk 00:35:00]. The pelvic floor is like the first line of defense. It's like the foundation of your house. When they contract, they pull all of those bones together to keep them stable.
Jennifer Tracy: I'm like doing it right now, as you see. I can feel myself trying to-
Alicia W.: Totally.
Jennifer Tracy: ... get in touch with it.
Alicia W.: You can't talk about pelvic floor without people starting to do it.
Jennifer Tracy: I'm like, is this a Kegel? Is this a ... What is this happening? I don't know. But you're going to help me figure it ...
Alicia W.: Because they attach, because they connect to the pelvic bone, they therefore provide stability for everything above the pelvis and everything below the pelvis. So sometimes, for instance, I had a woman who had neck pain with running after her C-section, and it wasn't her pelvis that was complaining. But because her pelvic floor wasn't functioning efficiently, her neck was compensating. So it's not always the pelvis. The obvious things with pelvis floor is you're leaking urine, gas, or stool. You have pain with sex. You have and decreased sensation with sex. Those are like the big obvious things, because then the other, the last function of the pelvic floor is sex.
Alicia W.: The pelvic floor needs to be able to stretch open for any kind of vaginal penetration. And the pelvic floor needs to be able to contract efficiently so that if there's something in the vagina, you feel it, that like all of your yummy nerve endings feel the sensation that is meant to be provided. An orgasm is produced by pelvic floor contraction. So a common complaint is like, oh, I just don't feel ... It doesn't hurt. But I just don't feel much after having a baby. Or my orgasms are less intense. Or I have pain with sex. I have pain where I have a third-degree tear. I have pain at my scar tissue. I have pain deep inside. It feels like my husband can't fit in there anymore, are some of the common complaints postpartum.
Alicia W.: So, yeah, the pelvic floor has very, very important functions. And unfortunately and why I started my own business to focus only on mothers, so in my practice, I only ... My practice is 90% mothers, is that we all have experienced, the medical system doesn't take care of us as mothers, right? We have our babies. You're healthy. The baby is healthy. Your stitches have dissolved. Bye. See ya. And healing has only just begun. But nobody is guiding a woman through her postpartum journey. And so we have women returning to exercise too fast or having unresolved issues. And then society normalizes them, "Oh, you leak? I leak too. Great. It's all normal." You just wear a pad when you run. It's fine. Or you have pain with sex? Well, have a glass of wine and relax. And it'll be fine. We've normalized what happens to women after having a baby, where we would never normalize that if it was any other part of the body or if it was a man.
Alicia W.: And it breaks my heart all the time when I hear women that are like, "Oh yeah, I can't play soccer anymore because I leak urine," or older women who babies are 20 or 30 have said to me, "Oh yeah, sex was just painful after having my baby," or, "I just connected so much with my pelvic floor, with my vagina, with my pelvis after having a baby because of a traumatic birth, or all the reasons why. And then I like had decreased interest in sex, and years later my marriage ended." I've heard that story many times from older women when I used to work in a normal orthopedic clinic.
Alicia W.: So it's like if I ... I just got this fire under my ass. It's like, if I can get this information to women sooner, they're going to not only feel better in their own bodies, like motherhood is hard enough without pain, without leaking, without feeling like your body can't even do what it's meant to do to take care of your kids, to be able to lift your kid and not be afraid that your back's going to hurt, that you're going to prolapse, that something is going to fall out of your vagina, that you're going to leak.
Alicia W.: You should be able to have sex and know. I talk to women all the time. They're like, "Well, I'm not really interested. I'm really tired." I'm like, "Look, I get it. I get it." But my job is when you do have sex, that it feels good, that you're not afraid of pain, that you're not afraid it's going to hurt, that you just have ... If it doesn't feel good, who's going to want to do it? Right?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. It's like Handmaid's Tale situation.
Alicia W.: Yeah, we have enough on our plate. We have enough on our plate. So it's a big deal, and my business is all about providing women what they're not getting anywhere else. It's like, the care, the guidance, the support, the I'm on your team to help you return to being a full woman. I talk about sex all the time. I have a little spiel I always give them postpartum about sex, about how like, okay, we always ... I know I did when my midwife was like, "Okay, you're clear." I was like, "Okay. We have to go have sex." My poor husband, he's waited so long. Let's get to it. And we skipped everything that's supposed to happen before sex. So what I tell to my moms now is take sex off the table. Remember all the things that you used to do when you used to mess around in a car in high school? I did.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Alicia W.: Let's get back to connecting to your own body. Have you looked at your vulva since having given birth? Women were like, "No." I'm like, "Okay. Look at yourself. Look at yourself. Touch your own skin. What does your tissue feel like?" Remind your body that you can feel pleasure. And when you can feel pleasure, because I think this has been mentioned before on one of your podcasts, but motherhood and sexuality for me felt like they didn't belong in the same box together. Becoming a mom stripped-
Jennifer Tracy: Sure, or the same universe, honestly.
Alicia W.: Totally. Becoming a mom stripped me of my view of myself as a sexual being.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes.
Alicia W.: And I had to fight hard to find that again, hard to find that again. And S Factor was one of the things that helped me with that. But I see it all the time. And so I really try to help guide women to remember that your body is supposed to give you pleasure with a partner or without, with intercourse or without. And it's a big deal because no one's talking about it. So I-
Jennifer Tracy: It's true. Yeah, it's true. And I think it's why I talk about it so often on the podcast, and thank you for bringing that up because that was a big piece of what happened for me. And I've talked about this before, once my child was in preschool, and I kind of, my head looked up, and I was getting treatment for my postpartum. And I got a medication. I was in therapy. And I was 37, 38, I think. And I just was like, "Oh, I'm ..." And I started S Factor. And I said, "Oh, I'm as sexual being." And then I kept doing S Factor, and I was like, "I'm a really sexual being. I'm actually more in touch with this sexuality at this age than I've ever been."
Jennifer Tracy: And I remember years ago, long before I even met my husband, and I had a friend who was in her late 30s, and she was single and having a lot of sex. And she said, "Oh, just wait." She's like, "When you hit like your late 30s, and something just happens." And I was like, "It does? Okay." And then I had my baby. I was 34. And I thought of her often. I was like, "Ooph, well that's never going to happen," because I was so deep in the fog of like, like you said so brilliantly, just being completely disconnected from my body, not feeling empowered in my body, not feeling unified with my body, feeling honestly kind of betrayed by my body.
Alicia W.: Oh my God, yes.
Jennifer Tracy: You know?
Alicia W.: Yes.
Jennifer Tracy: And just like, "Ugh, well, A, you got me into this mess because I got pregnant, and, B, why are you so tired, and why is ..."
Alicia W.: Right.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah, so fascinating to me. So when you get a new client and she comes to you with ... I mean, I'm sure you have a variety of different complaints or issues that people come in with, but what do you treat with? So you're a physical therapist. What methodologies do you use to help them strengthen and heal?
Alicia W.: So, yeah, I see people who have pain, like either pain in their pelvic floor or any other shoulder, necked pain, hip pain, like all the other kind of pain stuff that we get as moms from all the hovering and holding and lifting. I see women for abdominal separations that aren't resolving on their own and a lot of core weakness problems, and then the pelvic floor issues that I describe. So when a woman comes in, we spend a lot of time-
Jennifer Tracy: Can you at least tell us-
Alicia W.: Yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: Just, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Alicia W.: That's okay.
Jennifer Tracy: But can you tell us, for my listeners who may not know, what is abdominal separation?
Alicia W.: Sure.
Jennifer Tracy: Because I think a lot of people don't know about it and also may have it and not know that they have it.
Alicia W.: Yeah. So an abdominal separation, the medical term is called a diastasis rectus abdominis or diastasis. Depends on how you say it. And we all had one at the end of our third trimester. So at the end of our third trimester, the connective tissue down the mid line of our abdomen gets stretched open so that our right side abdominal muscles and left side abdominal muscles are not touching in the middle anymore. There's now a gap in between the two. So it's a normal beautiful adaptation that our body makes to grow our babies.
Alicia W.: Postpartum, when our babies our out and our uterus has shrunk down, the question is how much does the left side and the right side recoil back together? If a woman at about eight weeks postpartum or beyond, let me first day they don't all come all the way back together, and they don't have to. So they don't have to come back together. I have met few bellies that come all the way back together. So it's normal for there to be a little bit of a gap in between the two. Nothing has torn open. It's a stretching of the tissue, and how much it recoils back together, a lot is due to your genetics, how much, how springy is your connective tissue? So we could thank just genetics for that, something that has to do with how you carried your baby.
Alicia W.: I'm 5'9. If I carry a nine-pound baby, but if a woman who's 5'1 carries a nine-pound baby, she's probably going to get a lot bigger out the front of her abdomen that I am because I have more space for that size baby in me. So I tend to see that the smaller, more petite women will end up with a larger abdominal separation. So the question is if it comes back together, so when a woman gets a diastasis or an abdominal screen, I'm looking for what is the structure? So what is the size of the gap that's in the middle? If something is over, if something is two-finger width or smaller, I'm not concerned about the size, if it's two fingers or larger, so I've had four-finger separations, five-finger separations. They can get pretty large. It's rare that they get that large. But they do.
Alicia W.: So the question is, how far apart are they, and then how deep is it? Does it feel like I can sink my finger all the way through their abdomen, or is there a little bit of a floor there, like there's a shallowness to their, to the abdominal separation. We want a narrower separation, and we want a shallow separation. And then we checked the function. When the woman engages her core, what does that look like? I've met large diastasis that have really good function, the brain still connected to the abdomen. And I've met small diastasis that can't function at all.
Jennifer Tracy: And what do you need to have that repair? What is the function of a repaired abdomen? Is it all connected to the pelvic floor that you were talking about? What's the symptom that if you had a split abdomen-
Alicia W.: You can either have like ... If you think that you've lost the structural integrity of the muscles that hold your pelvis and spine, so you can have any kind of like orthopedic hip pain, back pain, pelvic pain, knee pain. You name it, because you've lost ... The pelvic floor and the deep abdominals are best friends. They work together. They need each other. So you can have orthopedic type of pain. That's usually the biggest pain symptom. But then there's the aesthetic part, where when are like, "I still look six months pregnant."
Jennifer Tracy: I see.
Alicia W.: "I've been doing all these ab exercises, but my belly isn't shrinking," because their brain can't find your their muscles.
Jennifer Tracy: It can't access it.
Alicia W.: Right. There's this brilliant quote that says, "You can't strengthen a muscle that the brain can't control. And in a postpartum body, this is what I see all the time, is that a woman might say, "Okay, well, I'm doing my mountain climbers, and I'm doing my whatever. But I lay them down, and I, with my hands on their body, ask their brain to engage their muscles. And the correct muscles that hold the spine and pelvis are not connected. The brain cannot find them after that big stretch that happened or after the cutting and the stitching of a Cesarean.
Alicia W.: I mean, don't get me started on like every single woman has a Cesarean should get a physical therapy. You just had surgery. Would we ever operate on a shoulder and not send that person to physical therapy? So, yeah, it's a big word. There's a lot of information about diastasis now on the Internet. Not all of it is accurate. So it's, I mean, of course I advocate that every one gets a postpartum evaluation by a women's health physical therapist to look at how are you holding your body? How is your muscles working? Do you have a diastasis? What's your pelvic floor like? Because if you're going to go exercise, don't you want to know that your pelvic floor and your abdominals are working?
Jennifer Tracy: Totally. And I remember like ... I can't remember who said it to me over the years, but I would hear either from medical professionals or yoga teachers, like, "Just do Kegels." And I'm like, "What the fuck? How do I even know if I'm doing it-"
Alicia W.: How [crosstalk 00:49:41]? Exactly.
Jennifer Tracy: You know?
Alicia W.: Yes.
Jennifer Tracy: I still don't really know. I remember-
Alicia W.: No. Right.
Jennifer Tracy: ... Kundalini teachers say, I asked her afterwards, I was like, "How do I know what a Kegel is?" She's like, "Well, when you're peeing, stop the flow of urine and hold it, and then start again, and then stop again, and then start again." She's like, "That's basically a Kegel." And I was like, "Okay." That's the only explanation I've ever gotten, Alicia. So take it away.
Alicia W.: And that's really common.
Jennifer Tracy: Tell us. Tell us everything too.
Alicia W.: I know. That's the common thing. That's a common explanation. So I can't remember the statistics, but I learned in my pelvic floor training that a large percent of women who are just told do Kegels will do them incorrectly. And a portion of the women who are doing it incorrectly are actually doing it in a pattern that will worsen their symptoms. So instead of squeezing, they might think they're squeezing, but they're actually pushing down.
Jennifer Tracy: Pushing.
Alicia W.: Yeah, right. So and if you are only squeezing like you're stopping to pee, you're only contracting about a third of the pelvic floor muscles. You're not getting the pelvic floor muscles that wrap around the vagina. You're not getting the pelvic floor muscles that wrap around the anus and hold your pelvic bones together. You're not getting any of that. So a better verbal cue, and it had to be paired with breath, so I can't talk about this without talking about breath. Then you inhale your breath, when you inhale and your diaphragm drops down into your abdomen, that's when your pelvic floor should relax down to the floor like you're letting an egg fall out of your vagina.
Alicia W.: Then when you exhale, like you're going to pick a marble or an egg back up. Your pelvic floor should close. And then draw that marble up towards your head. But it should be a closure of all of it, your anus and your vagina. I don't even talk about urethra unless there are specific cues if someone's leaking. But it's more like you're trying to pick up a marble out your vagina. You're closing around it and drawing it up on an exhale. And on an inhale, you drop and lower it.
Alicia W.: And the lowering part's really important because if you've been told anything about a Kegel, it's been squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Tight, tight, tight. I'm a woman. I should be tight. My vagina should be tight. I need to be tighter. I need to be tighter, right?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Alicia W.: But we forget like any other muscle in the body, like, if I walked around with my bicep tight all the time, that's not [crosstalk 00:52:09] help.
Jennifer Tracy: Right.
Alicia W.: But like any other part of the body, the muscles should be able to contract, and the muscles should be able to lower and relax. And there's a big population of women walking around that have pelvic floor disfunction because their pelvic floor cannot relax. And so those are the women that might try to do Kegels or might try to ... And their symptoms actually get worse because the last thing that pelvic floor needs is to be tighter. That woman actually needs to learn how to release and let go of her pelvic floor.
Jennifer Tracy: Well, sure. And the first thing I think of when you say that is how painful sex would be.
Alicia W.: Exactly. Absolutely. And you know what? Our pelvic floor is a really good defense muscle. Our pelvic floor, I say this to women: "Your pelvic floor is acting like there's a bear behind the curtains ready to attack." Pelvic floor is like contracted all the time. And there can be real reason for that, from like birth trauma, or a history of sexual abuse, or chronic pain, or just someone who has like a lot of anxiety and stress or any kind of trauma. There's a reason why the pelvic floor tightens up. But many women don't even know. It's not like you're walking around tightening it on purpose. The brain doesn't even know.
Alicia W.: A lot of women post-C-section will end up with a pelvic floor that is overactive because a C-section is such a big trauma to the body that the pelvic floor is trying to protect the body by tightening up. And even after the Cesarean heals up top superficially, the pelvic floor is still on guard, like ready to protect you. And I will also throw in that I would say about 50% of women, that breathing cue that I gave feels [inaudible 00:53:50] opposite to them. So they want to contract on an inhale instead of on an exhale.
Jennifer Tracy: I just did it while you were saying it at first, and I remember, and that's exactly was my experience. You said inhale, and then I was like I was pulling up the marble before you said pull up the marble. And I was like, "Oh, oh, oh, relax now. Relax." It was the opposite. It was very [crosstalk 00:54:12].
Alicia W.: Exactly. Yeah. So if the breath is opposite, that is like the first thing that a woman needs to clear out.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. Retrain. So that's one exercise that you have. What are some other ... I'm sure you have a coterie of things that you do, but what are some other examples of things that you do with your patients, with your clients.
Alicia W.: Yeah, it's, I'll say that if someone, just so that people know, if they do go see a women's health physical therapist, what they're getting themselves in for because not many people even know. So there's a regular type of like, "Let me check out your abdominals," like I mentioned. But then a pelvic floor exam is a vaginal exam. So you're looking at your scar tissue. And then you're looking at what the muscles feel like and what the strength is of the muscle within the vaginal canal.
Alicia W.: Unlike at an OB's office, there's no stirrups. There's no speculum. It's done with just one finger inside the vagina, so it's a lot more gentle. It's a lot more care put into that type of pelvic floor exam. You're talking with the client through the whole thing, explain exactly what you're doing versus like a speculum exam, where you don't even know what they're doing when they go in there. I could say in general, it's reconnecting the woman with the muscles that need to be reconnected. How do I contract and relax my pelvic floor? How do I contract and relax my abdominals in a correct pattern, in a correct breath?
Alicia W.: And then the reason why Kegels don't work or the reason why Kegels, you hit a plateau quickly is that the pelvic floor doesn't work alone. If you're going to do Kegels, you're going to do them just sitting here, right?
Jennifer Tracy: Right.
Alicia W.: Like one, two, three, four. But your pelvic floor, when do you need your pelvic floor. You need it when you're standing. You need it when you're walking, when you're walking up the stairs, holding a toddler and a grocery bag. You need it when you're going to jump. So you have to very quickly take the pelvic floor and integrate it with the abdominals, integrate it with the glutes, integrate it with the hip muscles, integrate it with movement. That's what I teach is like the exercise might look like a normal like shoulder exercise or a side-stepping exercise, but in that moment, that women is consciously engaging her pelvic floor, and her abdominals, and breathing, and stepping. And the only way I know she's doing that is because I've manually checked her pelvic floor and her abdominals before she even got started.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. That's amazing. It's so cool. So, like, wow, that's awesome that you do that. I feel like that's such an underserved demographic. It's just the demographic, I mean, half the population are women. And I don't know what the percentage is who've given birth, but you're right. I think back to nobody checked in about ... I do remember Susanne, my OB-GYN, had said, "You should do some pelvic floor. Like try to get a prescription. Your insurance may cover it. They may not." And she wrote out a place where I could go for Pilates.
Jennifer Tracy: But at the time, I was so deep in my postpartum depression and anxiety that I was just like, "I can't even." And I didn't have childcare and da, da, da. But it is just it's kind of mind-blowing that that's not looked after, like just an automatic.
Alicia W.: Yeah. Right. Every woman should say, "Okay." The next part of your healing is to go see a women's health physical therapist. At least get cleared. At least get someone to say, "Okay, you're good," or, "This is what I think you should work on," because, like you, at six weeks postpartum, I didn't even know which way was up, let alone if I needed any therapy for my body. Right?
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah.
Alicia W.: So we should be checking in with women at six months postpartum. But we don't do that.
Jennifer Tracy: Sure, a year. Totally.
Alicia W.: Our medical system doesn't do that. So women have to be advocates on there own. They really have to seek out physical therapy and help on their own because the medical system isn't going to necessarily provide that for them.
Jennifer Tracy: Wow. So you are in Marin. So we can all come see you in Marin. But for those women that don't live nearby, what would you advise?
Alicia W.: Yeah. I could give you a couple links where that are women's health physical therapy directories that you could post in the show notes, because there's two directories that you can put in your zip code, and it'll pull up where the closest women's health physical therapist is.
Jennifer Tracy: Great. So there are other versions ... I mean, there's nobody like you, Alicia, obviously.
Alicia W.: Oh, obviously.
Jennifer Tracy: But there are other women or other there are other therapists doing this work.
Alicia W.: Yes.Oh, absolutely. I mean, I would say my practice is geared just towards mothers. There's fewer of where I'm here for the mommies, but there are many more pelvic health, pelvic floor women's health physical therapists around. Absolutely.
Jennifer Tracy: Great. Awesome.
Alicia W.: I just, I want to treat the mommies.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. Yes. And thank you for that. And this has been such a treat. And we've come to the time, my dear-
Alicia W.: Oh boy.
Jennifer Tracy: ... where I get to ask you the three questions I ask every guest. And then we go into a lightening round of questions. So first question: What do you think about when you hear the word MILF?
Alicia W.: Now I think about a woman who, regardless of her shape and size, is connected and rooted in just the power she is as a woman, just the power that she has, and the power of her sexuality, and owning just how fucking hot she is because she's a woman.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. What's something you've changed your mind about recently?
Alicia W.: For better or for worse, I don't change my mind a lot. For better, is I'm the type of person that when I decide something, I stick to it, and I push, and I go, and I am like, I'm going to get it done. For worse, I'm stubborn, and I-
Jennifer Tracy: You must be a Virgo or a Taurus.
Alicia W.: I'm a Capricorn.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, you're a Capricorn.
Alicia W.: Yeah, I'm very like work-
Jennifer Tracy: That shows how little I actually know about [crosstalk 01:00:27].
Alicia W.: I'm really like work-driven, like this is the plan, and this is how it's happening. And you just don't prepare for the plan, hence why motherhood shook me up so much, right?
Jennifer Tracy: Right. Exactly.
Alicia W.: [crosstalk 01:00:37] the plan.
Jennifer Tracy: You're like, "Flexibility? What are you talking about? I don't do that."
Alicia W.: I don't use my mind very often. I should. I'm going to try to more.
Jennifer Tracy: Or not, or not. Be you. Do you. How do you define success?
Alicia W.: I define success as finding the reason why you're here, like finding the purpose, like your calling, what lights you up and being able to do it, being able to give your genius, give your gifts to the world, and for me, and getting paid to do that. I'm not going to lie.
Jennifer Tracy: Yes.
Alicia W.: Nothing feels better ... I feel the most rooted and grounded when I'm at work, when I'm sitting in front of a client, and I'm in my intuition, and in my genius, and providing, and giving, and listening. That's success. That's success to me.
Jennifer Tracy: Lightening round of questions.
Alicia W.: Okay. I'm ready.
Jennifer Tracy: Ocean or desert?
Alicia W.: Ocean.
Jennifer Tracy: Favorite junk food.
Alicia W.: Dark chocolate-covered almonds, although I don't really consider that junk food. I consider them a necessity.
Jennifer Tracy: Yeah. No kidding. And there's protein in that. So ...
Alicia W.: Exactly. That's [crosstalk 01:02:05] like-
Jennifer Tracy: How junk is it really? That's pretty good.
Alicia W.: I know. Right.
Jennifer Tracy: Movies or Broadway show?
Alicia W.: Kind of neither. I'm more of a-
Jennifer Tracy: I love it. You're more of a Netflix [inaudible 01:02:17] kind of [crosstalk 01:02:18].
Alicia W.: I'm more of a like give me an hour show and now more than that.
Jennifer Tracy: Totally, and preferably beginning before 6:00 PM because by 8:00 I'm in a coma.
Alicia W.: Exactly.
Jennifer Tracy: Daytime sex or nighttime sex.
Alicia W.: Daytime, which is a problem, but daytime.
Jennifer Tracy: Cat person or dog person?
Alicia W.: I have a cat. I would say a cat person. I love dogs too. We just don't have one yet, but cats. I've always had a cat.
Jennifer Tracy: Have you ever worn a unitard?
Alicia W.: No.
Jennifer Tracy: Shower or bathtub?
Alicia W.: Bathtub.
Jennifer Tracy: Ice cream or chocolate?
Alicia W.: Chocolate.
Jennifer Tracy: On a scale of one to ten, how good are you at ping pong?
Alicia W.: Oh my God. Maybe a five.
Jennifer Tracy: What's your biggest pet peeve?
Alicia W.: Oh God. What's my biggest pet peeve? I don't know. I probably have one. My children?
Jennifer Tracy: I love that answer.
Alicia W.: I don't know.
Jennifer Tracy: We're going to go with that.
Alicia W.: Okay.
Jennifer Tracy: If you could push a button and have perfect skin for the rest of your life but it would also give you incurable halitosis for the rest of your life, would you push it?
Alicia W.: No.
Jennifer Tracy: Superpower choice: invisible, super strength, or ability to fly?
Alicia W.: Well at S Factor I feel like I already have super strength and ability to fly. So I'm going to go with invisibility.
Jennifer Tracy: I love it. Would you rather have six fingers on both hands or a bellybutton that looks like foreskin?
Alicia W.: I'm going to say six fingers because I do a lot of hands-on body work on my clients, and maybe that would improve it. One more finger to get into an extra muscle. I don't know.
Jennifer Tracy: I love it.
Alicia W.: But then I guess I'd have to see it, though. I don't know. But I'm going to go with the six fingers.
Jennifer Tracy: They would have to see it, but then they would see the results. And it'd be like-
Alicia W.: Totally. And they might be like, "Go to the therapist that has six fingers."
Jennifer Tracy: Go to 12-finger Alicia, 12-dozen digits. There it is.
Alicia W.: There you go.
Jennifer Tracy: Seven-digits Alicia.
Alicia W.: Seven digits, yeah.
Jennifer Tracy: I could do that all day, just come up with names for your new practice with 12 fingers. What was the name of your first pet?
Alicia W.: Kitsy.
Jennifer Tracy: What was the name of the street your grew up on?
Alicia W.: Okay, so the street I grew up on was Orchard Way, but because I know where you're going with this, the street that I lived on when I was a newborn was Cherry Street. So Cherry Street-
Jennifer Tracy: Oh yeah. Kitsy Cherry?
Alicia W.: Totally.
Jennifer Tracy: Kitsy Cherry? Oh. That's the gift that keeps giving.
Alicia W.: Right.
Jennifer Tracy: Kitsy Cherry and-
Alicia W.: [crosstalk 01:05:19] with 12 fingers.
Jennifer Tracy: Oh, Kitsy Cherry 12, yeah. We're going to work on that. I got to ... Kitsy Cherry dozen digits, something. I don't know. I got to work on it. I'll get back to you. But, boy, that is something.
Alicia W.: That's good.
Jennifer Tracy: She could have her own pelvic floor practice and her on burlesque show-
Alicia W.: Totally.
Jennifer Tracy: ... all in the same space.
Alicia W.: It's so funny. A friend of mine says that I'm going to be the physical therapist that has like a red room, like ...
Jennifer Tracy: Yes.
Alicia W.: And behind here, let me show you my-
Jennifer Tracy: With a pole.
Alicia W.: My pole.
Jennifer Tracy: Absolutely. Oh God, I would go there all the time, all the time.
Alicia W.: Oh, I love it.
Jennifer Tracy: Alicia, it's such a treasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much. This was a delight.
Alicia W.: Thank you so much for having me. So fun.
Jennifer Tracy: Thanks so much for listening, guys. I really hope you enjoyed my conversation with Alicia. I hope you will tune again next week. I will be speaking with Kimberly Muller, who is really a Renaissance Woman, and I just loved meeting her. And I walked into her house, and I just ... Not only was her home just impeccably designed, which was amazing, but I kind of breezed past that because I just was like entranced by this woman and her gorgeous red mane of hair, this just like thick, gorgeous red hair. And I just thought, "Oh my God, I would follow you anywhere or do anything you ask me to." I was sort of entranced by her and really loved having a conversation with her about all that she does and all the different creative ways that she expresses herself.
Jennifer Tracy: And so that's next week. So be sure to go on iTunes. Leave us a review. For every review I get in the month of January, I will be donating $3 to Harvest Home in Los Angeles, which is a home for homeless women and their babies. And it's an amazing program. It's very nurturing there, and they offered a structured program that helps women change their lives to attain independence and stability for themselves and their children. Their website is harvesthomela.org, and I'll talk to you guys next week.