VBB 374 Edy Nathan: The Bitch is Back, For You!

Intro [00:00:01]:

Virgin Beauty Podcast, inspiring women to overcome social stereotypes and share unique life experiences without fear of being defiantly different. Your hosts, Christopher and Heather. Let's talk, shall we?

Christopher [00:00:20]:

For eight years, Heather and I have been asking women their impression and experience with any of the words in our podcast name: Virgin, Beauty, or Bitch. And consistently, bitch has produced the most provocative quotes. But one quote in particular has remained top of mind with us for four years. In fact, it will be an important pillar in a foundation that Heather and I are building in support of women's growth and self-empowerment. But before I share that quote, I want to introduce the woman who gave it to us. She is a licensed therapist, certified sex therapist, hypnotherapist, and certified EMDR practitioner, and also the author of “It's Grief, The Dance of Self Discovery Through Trauma and Loss,” Edy Nathan. Welcome back, Edy, to Virgin Beauty Bitch.

Edy Nathan [00:01:17]:

So the Bitch is back, and it's really great to be here. Thank you for inviting me back. And who knew that one sentence, one comment could change maybe the trajectory or the meaning of your work, or make you really think through things, and you know, it's kind of like the work we do in life. It can be one view in the room, one pat on the back, one I love you, one bitchy statement that saved your life, that can make all of the difference in the world.

Christopher [00:01:58]:

Absolutely. And we are honored to have you back with us. It's our Year of the Bitch 2026. A year where we are exploring Bitch as a path to women's personal growth and self-empowerment through five sequential stages: Betrayal, Identity, Trust, Change, and Healing.

B. I.T. C.H. Essentially, we're turning a painful word into a pathway to women's personal growth, which is an idea you encouraged somewhat from your quote in November 2022, when we asked you about your connection to the word Bitch and you said this quote: “I think that we, as women, have to learn how to be a Bitch and become really, really good at it.” That line was off the top of your head, but it also came from deep within your heart, and it's a line that can be motivational or misunderstood. Can you help us, maybe turn the latter into the former, the misunderstood into the motivated, by sharing your interpretation of those wise words?

Edy Nathan [00:03:04]:

I don't know that we've got enough time for this discussion, guys. You know, I mean, talking about the essence of the feminine, the essence of, and I'm going really deep here. Being cave dwellers and having to manage the cave, our Queen-Dom when we were left, and really having to manage much more than just the gathering of food and herbs, and being medicine people and our own kinds of shamans. We had to summon that Bitch, if you will, for survival. And there's nothing wrong with that. And we're living right now in a world where we may be undermined for having a voice, or for believing that our freedoms are important, or that we must have integrity, and we must have identity, and we must speak up, otherwise we'll be buried. And so the Bitch is not derogatory to me. It's our coming-out party, no matter what your gender identification.

Christopher [00:04:29]:

Well, you really touched on something that Heather and I are really focused on. When we look at Betrayal, it's really instinct to look at our own betrayals in our lives, the things that have betrayed us, the people that have betrayed us, but what you've touched on there is womanhood's betrayal. Like all through history, how women have been betrayed by systems and communities, whatever it might be. I really want to touch on that.

Edy Nathan [00:04:59]:

Yes, Yes. I interrupted you. I'm sorry. I'm so excited, and I just did it. Okay. I just did it. I betrayed myself. Why did I need to apologize? Why, like, if I, yeah, I stepped on you, and as a guest, I need to honor you, and I need to honor, you know, both of you. And yet I apologized. And it's that apology. It's a betrayal. That's a betrayal of a voice. I got excited, I broke in, and somehow it's like as much as I want to come up and be Bitch, and I am, and I can be, I can also retreat into small. And how that, the betrayal begins with the self.

Heather [00:06:02]:

I think that's something that so many women, especially, can identify with is feeling fierce and stepping into, you know, self-assuredness and believing in themselves, but the grooming that has happened, you know, since birth, around, you know, don't interrupt, make sure that you're creating space for others, make sure that you're almost following this protocol of preconceived notions of how social interactions should happen, you know? I think it's very easy to fall back into, Oh, my gosh, I'm excited. I'm gonna, you know, jump right in, perhaps before, you know, and that's important that you're excited, and you wanted to get your next thought in.

Edy Nathan [00:06:49]:

Absolutely.

Heather [00:06:50]:

But the grooming is. I think what Christopher spoke to is that it's so deeply embedded, and I want to almost say autopilot. It is for so many of us.

Edy Nathan [00:07:03]:

Heather, you got it right. It is autopilot. Yeah, absolutely. And so to have the voice, we're not going to, you know, we're imperfect, right? We're all imperfect. But to be able to take a moment and say, you know, man, I just did it. It’s what I would love more of us to do, to have to say, okay, that was a hiccup. Next!  And I'm not going to follow it with shame. I'm not going to follow it with self-loathing or disgust. These are terms that I'm now using in my new work because they're uglier in some ways than shame. And we need to get down to the fact that first we need to honor our own Bitch, our own integrity, our own identity, our own sense of transcendence, and our ability to morph into more than the messages that were given to us by our primary caretakers, who, for the most part, were women, and who may very well have told us to play it small.

Christopher [00:08:18]:

They had to for pure survival.

Edy Nathan [00:08:22]:

That's right.

Christopher [00:08:22]:

That has changed somewhat. Not all over the world, unfortunately, but in our culture, that has somewhat shifted. I wanted to ask you, you have so much faith, confidence, and bravado in your Bitch. How did you connect the dots of it being a shameful way to be, to being a powerful woman? What happened? Do you recall that?

Edy Nathan [00:08:52]:

I would love to be able to just say there was that moment in time where a metamorphosis occurred, and there was an awakening to the Bitch. I think, though, the Bitch is a gradual relationship for me. And it came, you know, really the way that you identify Bitch. Right. Betrayal. Right. Perhaps it is a nonlinear experience, but to think about the ways that I might have betrayed, or betray myself, and the ways that I no longer want to, and when the voice begins to get summoned. I'll never forget. I was very much involved in the theater, and I had a terrible time in junior high and high school.

Edy Nathan [00:09:47]:

I was teased, I was bullied. It was just blech. But I went away to go to theater school, actually in high school. And I came back to that high school early because I could graduate early. And it was like anything I could do to just get me out of school. And I auditioned for this play, and the theater teacher who knew me, Greener, said, where did you get that voice? And it was like in that moment, I knew that I had transcended the bullies and the teasing, and I could audition, and I could show up with that voice. And I would say that that voice and being able to be in theater saved me in many ways, and in being able to get involved in many different roles as a mask. And when the masking of those roles came down, when I left the theater, and I had to find my natural voice that wasn't hidden between the actor, that was another revelation of how am I going to survive? How am I going to have a voice, and who do I want to be?

Heather [00:11:07]:

That's such a beautiful bridge into the “I” of our Bitch, which is Identity. And, you know, I think that's, you know, when I hear, you know, a person similar to how we started this conversation. One sentence, or one feeling that really took you and opened up a whole new, many more doors for what you wanted to explore about yourself. No longer was it about the bullies or what other people had to say about you; it was about what you wanted to bring to the table in a safer space to try on different roles. So when it comes to identity and taking that kind of next leap into, okay, now I'm not what other people call me or tell me that I am. I'm something completely different. What has that process been like for you? Because I also feel like that's not linear, but constantly evolving, while still there being almost like a core that is true to you.

Edy Nathan [00:12:10]:

So again, it's nonlinear, so that it's not as if, and I really want your listening audience to hear this. It's not like I don't meet hiccups even now, so many years later. Okay. Because I do. And I go back to feeling voiceless, or feeling crushed, or feeling like I don't know what I'm doing, but part of the identity, and this is where the work of grief comes in, and actually, this new work that I was telling you a little bit about, Invisible No More. When there are traumatic imprints, and we all have them in one way or another to different degrees, but when they're of a predatory nature, or even when there's a developmental violation, what happens to that identity is it gets crushed. And we then need to say, I don't even know who I am anymore. And we want to make ourselves invisible. To make ourselves visible is part of the re-establishment of and meeting of our identities. And that's personal, that's social, and that's sexual, and it's a trifecta. And that is what makes up, I believe, our identities.

Edy Nathan [00:13:24]:

And that's what the traumatic imprints leverage as a way to make one feel small. And I've had those experiences. I've had. I was at Oxford, and I was in a group, and I know Oxford like I know the back of my hand. I mean, I can walk it, I know it, and I ended up being 10 minutes late to a group presentation. And I cannot tell you how humiliated I felt, or how badly I felt. Now, nobody in the audience would have known because I came in with that identity and with that personal, social, and sexual identity, and I said, “I feel like Dorothy, and I'm, you know, I've gotten lost on the, on the Yellow Brick Road, and I finally found Oz, and here I am.

Edy Nathan [00:14:11]:

But when I left, I had such self-loathing, and that's what I had to deal with. So I just, I guess I want to say that we can get better, and we can get better, and better, and it doesn't mean that our creepy crawlers don't come in and annoy us, and hurt us, and affect the language of the Bitch. And I think that's what set me up for what I initially said. We need to know how to be better Bitches. And that was not just a message to you, to your audience, but to me too. I'm your audience.

Heather [00:14:54]:

When I hear you say those elements of identity, personal, social, and sexual, as a trifecta. And trifecta has got to be one of my favorite words. That works, you know.  Your work, certainly many avenues of your work, but one, being a sex therapist, and really putting your sexual identity as a huge piece of the total part of self. You know, I think that, you know, as Christopher alluded to, so much has changed for women in North America, and if we want to call it the West, and things continue to change globally with access to different, you know, thoughts and ways and moving, but similar to again, where we started with grooming, that starts at birth. And despite, you know, a lot of progress that has made around women's identity to their sexual pulse, and being comfortable with it, and feeling deserving of pleasure, and what all of that means, you know, if somebody's listening to this and perhaps this is very new for them, and they want to start to understand their sexual identity beyond what, you know, is asked of them from a partner, or asked of them of society, but truly stepping into understanding their own sexual identity, what would you say to like, help spark curiosity?

Edy Nathan [00:16:23]:

Oh, and curiosity is one of my favorite words. So in this new book that's not published and doesn't have a publisher yet, so, you know, just saying that, so I'm doing like some teasers, I've created something called, that I call the Liberation Protocol. And the Liberation Protocol begins with Embodied Curiosity. And what we as women often deny ourselves is an embodied curiosity about our feelings. Senses of aromas, and how we explore ourselves, our bodies, and our emotions. And we take moments of meaning to meet our body memoirs. Because our bodies hold so many memories. They're good, they're not so good, they're painful, they're joyful.

Edy Nathan [00:17:13]:

And the exploration of the sexual self is so important. It's so important. And even when we do, we as women, and I think that we do at times ask the self what gives me pleasure? Can I give myself that pleasure before I ask anyone to give it to me? Can I give myself permission to take a night and take a bath, if you like baths, or take a shower, and see what it feels like on the skin to have cold water and warm water, and to put an oil on, or not? And to explore language and to explore novels that may pique their interest or their curiosity. And to understand that there is no need for self-loathing in the simplicity of being with their own souls, their sexual soul.

Christopher [00:18:24]:

I’m getting quite misty. The shame of it all, Edie, is that women are ashamed just to even think of their own pleasure. You are conditioned to understand that your body is for producing a child, or for a man's pleasure. So, from the day that you learn about sexuality, you have been conditioned not to think about yourself sexually, but as an instrument for others, which is something now that you have to overcome. That, to me, is just another betrayal.

Edy Nathan [00:19:07]:

Right, Right. That's right. That's right. And we've got the lusciousness of our bodies. And our bodies speak to us if we listen. If we listen. And women who are, you know, within the life cycle of a woman and the ever-changing evolution of the body and of this, the sensory elements of developing, and menses, and aging, and gaining weight, or losing weight, or childbirth, where the way you knew, your body doesn't necessarily exist. And I actually have a term for that.

Edy Nathan [00:19:50]:

And again, because women don't talk about it, they're just supposed to be so happy that they gave birth. Meanwhile, their vaginas are grieving, or if they had a C-section, their bodies are grieving because there was pain and there was sensitivity and there's angst as much as there is joy. And that's not for every single woman, but I would say a fair amount. I don't have percentages, certainly with menopause. Thankfully, the menopause conversation is out there far more. But again, we need to have an embodied curiosity about all the different ways our bodies are changing over time, and because of the environment, and because of the relationships that we have, you know, whether they're cisgender, or not, whatever they are and whatever you have allowed yourself to engage in or with sexually, that's to be, to have an embodied curiosity about how your body and your sexual sensual self feels is a conversation that the needs to have because it's part of identity.

Heather [00:21:12]:

Yes. I want to swing that back around to something you said earlier, which is this self-loathing, you know, there's just so many elements, or times or moments, or stages of life, or changes of body or changes of circumstance where that self-loathing creeps in full strength. And I am just imagining that self-loathing as almost like a persona meeting.

Edy Nathan [00:21:41]:

Oh, I would love to hear them have a conversation because what would the Bitch say to self-loathing?

Heather [00:21:46]:

Right. She would have a lot to say, I think.

Edy Nathan [00:21:51]:

I think so.

Heather [00:21:52]:

You know, and I don't necessarily think that it would be our traditional concepts of that. She wouldn’t just kind of lay into self-loathing and tell it to go fly a kite. I think that, you know, this feminine, powerful, fierce sense of the Bitch that we're talking about in this Year of the Bitch, if she had a conversation with self-loathing, I think it would be like almost like a sassy aunt who, you know, sees her niece crying over some boy, or something that didn't go right. And it's more of a pick yourself back up, girl, because we got a lot that we done. And I know you got it. I know that you got it. So let's try to change this around.

Edy Nathan [00:22:37]:

That's right. And to add to that, the sassy Bitch might say, come on, girl, let's get liberated. Let's not stay in this self-loathing so that we can then get to self-love, which is really, really hard. That self-love is so hard.

Christopher [00:22:57]:

That conversation you both just had is something we have not unveiled. However, we've broken Bitch down into four different identities, four different characters. So it's not when women are confronted with the word Bitch, it is one demon that they see. We're trying to unveil that it's not just one demon character; it is very, very different levels of this world that can be identified as Bitch, and some of it can be extremely encouraging and loving.

Christopher [00:23:42]:

We never think a Bitch is loving. No, but it is, and it can be. That's what we're trying to bring to the forefront

Edy Nathan [00:23:53]:

Yeah, it sounds like an oxymoron, the Loving Bitch. Right. But in a way, it is. It's like the Loving Bitch is the one that says, stop being fused to the negativity. You're so much more than that.

Christopher [00:24:10]:

Yes, yes.

Edy Nathan [00:24:12]:

The loving Bitch says, come on, let's get liberated. Right.

Heather [00:24:16]:

And in a way that's like, and we're not backing down from that. We are going to go.

Edy Nathan [00:24:19]:

We're going, oh, yeah. And she's got to have that hand movement, you know? Oh, yeah.

Heather [00:24:23]:

Buckle up. Let's go, baby.

Christopher [00:24:27]:

The bottom line is this individual, this version of Bitch survives in every single person, and women especially, because they are shamed with that word so much that they avoid it. They have cast it out of their life. They don't want anything to do with it. That means a part of yourself, a part of you, the strongest part of yourself you've cast aside, which is the biggest shame for us of all, is that you're doing this to yourself because someone has defined a word for you instead of you defining it for yourself.

Edy Nathan [00:25:02]:

I like that. Can I use that?

Christopher [00:25:04]:

You can use that. We've used yours. You can use ours.

Heather [00:25:09]:

Fair exchange. But to me, that is the change, Christopher. Right. Like, that's the change that we're talking about, is going from what we believe the word is, or the immediate groomed response that we get when we hear it, and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You know, if anything, there’s, I want to say a lot in that bathwater, but that's probably not the right analogy.

Edy Nathan [00:25:42]:

That's interesting. Yeah. The thing is that it's important to know that the bathwater is there and to see the trajectory of where we've been. So as we're growing, as we're nurturing that identity, we're understanding how we betray ourselves first, that we can begin to see that the complexity of Bitch is actually allowing us to foster a greater intimacy with our own identity and self.

Christopher [00:26:25]:

You know what I find fascinating about your work and how it ties to ours is that in grief. In fact, you call grief a hero, and we see bitch as a hero as well.

Edy Nathan [00:26:37]:

There it is.

Christopher [00:26:38]:

It’s powerful.

Edy Nathan [00:26:40]:

Yeah. Thank you. Yes. It's funny, I was just writing about that. About, you know, how grief is a hero and that we don't think about it as such, but I think of a hero as a teacher. And so grief is one of our greatest teachers, and learning how to invite it in and to partner with it rather than pushing it away, which just makes it get louder.

Edy Nathan [00:27:08]:

And the more we want to ignore it, the louder it gets. And perhaps the louder that our voices become internally, and the more we push them down, we then have the tentacles of the diagnoses: anxiety, depression, OCD, which is more in the brain, but still there can be OCD as a complement to. Oh, I've got to push my voice down: Erratic behavior, out of control, sexual behavior. Just keep the voice down, keep the voice down, keep the voice down. And if we can bring it up, if we can bring up the voice, we're then acknowledging the grief of having had to annihilate the voice. I call it the guillotine effect. Our heads get cut off. We're walking around with our head. Our bodies are cut off from our feelings, and we're just completely disconnected. And the goal is to become in sync.

Christopher [00:28:11]:

I love that analogy because I think that's what we do to human beings is, we want you from the head up. We don't want you feeling anything. We just want you thinking the way that we want you to think.

Edy Nathan [00:28:24]:

That's exactly right.

Christopher [00:28:25]:

Leave the head behind. The body can, you know, do what it could do what it wants.

Edy Nathan [00:28:30]:

It is so true. And the greatest example that I can give is a very public figure, Simone Biles, at the Tokyo Olympics. And she had something called the twisties. Now, the twisties within their world, it's a word, it's an idea, a theory that's in their world where you really can't find the right place to land. And she was this star of an athlete, an amazing athlete, who could not find her place to land. But what no one was talking about was that she was getting all these accolades and accolades, but what had preceded that was that she was very much engaged in the trials against the man who had abused her multiple times. And they still had an expectation that her performance should be stellar.

Edy Nathan [00:29:19]:

And no one was talking about it. Want to talk about a silenced voice? Want to talk about, like. Like really, like. It was like, suppress, suppress, suppress. It's got to come out somewhere. And that's where there was the twisties. Her body and mind were not in sync. But now her Bitch is out. And I love listening to her, hearing her speak. And she's quite the advocate, and that's her Bitch, and I love it. And thank you, Simone Biles, for that.

Heather [00:29:51]:

Yeah, I was gonna say, you know, she took that time to reflect on what she needed. She took a break from the sport she loved, and she honed in on what she wanted, who she is, and how she wanted to move forward. So I applaud her. In a world where, you know, it's been an uphill battle for athletes to come out about abuse and, you know, the bravery of so many athletes to come forward to make that change and to call to account people who are in powerful positions that can either advance you forward or not, I think her story is just such a powerful story. I take my hat off to her 10-billion times.

Edy Nathan [00:30:40]:

That's right. And she has opened the doors for the women of our time in this moment in time to have voices. We don't need to bring up any names, but to have voices and to tap into their Bitch of freedom, and of being able to have a voice around something that has been secreted away.

Christopher [00:31:02]:

Edy, this has been, I don't even know if I can find the right word to express our gratitude for you. What you believe, and how you express, really has shaped, I've said this before, it has shaped Heather and me in a direction that we are going in. And it was just one comment that started this cavalcade of momentum around this word and what it can mean to women in general. No matter where you are, who you are, what culture, and it doesn't matter your situation, but to focus on a part of yourself that the world tells you is of no value. And if we can change that mindset, if we can allow even one woman to look in the mirror and see herself differently and pull out from herself that strength. Oh, this is amazing. This is amazing.

Edy Nathan [00:32:09]:

You made me tear up. Whatever I can do, and I'm saying this to your audience to support you in this journey, I am 100% on board. I thank you for your work and for getting these messages out to the very people who need to know that their bitch is allowed and welcome at any time.

Christopher: [00:32:41]

Beautiful.

Heather [00:32:42]:

I'd love to end kind of where we started in that, you know, the quote of, let's just say, inviting a world where women hear this sentence and think of it differently, that, you know, we have a lot to gain from being better Bitches. So to our listeners, you know, if that stirs something in you, we hope that it does because it is a controversial word that we are unpacking, reimagining, and evolving. So we would love to hear from you on how you're connecting with this work. But, Edy, thank you so much for everything you bring to the table. It really is, it's like a North Star for a lot of what Christopher and I are working on. So we really appreciate it.

Edy Nathan [00:33:35]:

Thank you. I so appreciate your work and being here, and just keep the conversation going and be the best Bitch you can be.

Christopher [00:33:45]:

And if we can make a future date with you when your book comes out, we will be able to share that with you and share that with our audience. We definitely want to be top of that list when you get that completed.

Edy Nathan [00:34:01]:

Thank you so much. And just right now, everyone, the working title is Invisible No More: Liberate the Self from Traumatic Wounds and Dare to Live.

Christopher [00:34:13]:

Dare to live. Dare to be a Bitch. Thank you so much, Edie. Thank you so much. And this is all coming to you

Heather [00:34:21]:

From the Virgin.

Christopher

The Beauty

Heather

and the best being created in the Bitch year 2026

Christopher [00:34:31]:

And that could be you. Come on back. Find us. Like us. Share us! Come on back. To become a partner in the VBB community, we invite you to find us@virginbeautybitch.com.  Like us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and share us with people who are Defiantly Different like you.

Until next time, thanks for listening.