PODCAST · health
Midwife Life: Midwifing you through health, motherhood, and the sacred mess of life’s transformations with Diane Ortega
by Diane Ortega of Willow Birth Center
Welcome to The Midwife Life—part podcast, part revolution that empowers and educates women on all things related to pregnancy, birth, postpartum care, and careers in healthcare. Whether it's understanding the options available to you, advocating for yourself in a health care setting, or simply knowing that you're not alone, I want you to leave each episode feeling stronger and more equipped.
Episodes
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78: I'm Scared You Won't Think You're Worth It
Eight days out from the workshop I've been building toward all year. I almost didn't record this one, because the truth in it isn't the polished kind. In this episode: Where the idea for The Rebirth Journey actually came from, and the rebirth I was living while I built it What it was like to sit…
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77: The Workshop I Cancelled
It's my birthday. I'm recording this a few days ahead, a little tender, and more honest than I planned on being. This episode is about the pattern underneath every role I've ever held, and the workshop I cancelled because of it. In this episode: Why I don't call what's happening this year a…
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BONUS REPLAY: Your Body Isn’t Broken: Rethinking Women’s Health, Hormones, and Longevity with Stephanie Gambetta
For decades, women have been told that fatigue, weight gain, slower recovery, brain fog, and hormone shifts are simply part of aging. But what if the real issue isn’t that women’s bodies are failing them? What if the real problem is that we’ve been given incomplete information about how our…
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76: There's No Such Thing As Dad Guilt
Last week at Rebirth Conversations, I asked a room full of women one question: what do you want that you haven't let yourself say out loud. What showed up right after they answered is the reason this episode exists. In this episode: The question I asked the room tonight, and what showed up the...
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75: The Room That Held Up a Mirror
This weekend I sat in a room full of women I'd never met, at a business event, not my usual crowd. By the end of it, one of them said something out loud that I haven't stopped thinking about since. This episode is about what she said, why it has nothing to do with business and everything to do…
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BONUS REPLAY: You Are Not Broken — Nourishing Your Body Through Life's Transitions with Courtney Smith
This replay is for the woman who looks like she's holding it all together — but feels very tired in her bones. Diane is joined by Courtney Smith, registered dietitian, exercise specialist, certified lactation counselor, and founder of Maternally Nourished. Courtney supports high-achieving women...
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74: More Than One Moment of Birth
This week, my oldest got married, my second oldest moved out, and my youngest started getting ready for college, on top of a fourth threshold I already lived through last year. This episode is about what that did to me, why eighteen years of catching literal births taught me something I needed…
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73: Burn, Slow, Listen, Move: What My Pilot Taught Me About Being Witnessed
For four weeks, every woman in my pilot opened each session with one word. On the last day, we went back through all of them together, and one woman's four words lined up into something none of us expected: burn, slow, listen, move. This episode is about what that pattern taught me, why the…
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72: Holistic Healing Through Pregnancy and Motherhood with Ashley Andrews
This week, Diane is replaying a favorite conversation with Ashley Andrews, an Integrative Nutrition & Holistic Health Coach, Yoga Instructor and Reiki Practitioner, who shares her journey into motherhood and the practices that carried her through it. From unexpected pregnancy and birth…
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71: Nobody Told You Summer Would Feel Like This
In this episode, I talk about the math of this summer season, whichever version of it is yours. If you're the mom in the thick of snack duty and referee duty and a phone that will not stop buzzing, this one is for you. If you're the mom like me, standing in the last summer before her youngest...
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70: Starting Over at 40 (And Why That's Not a Crisis)
In this episode, I talk about starting over, not once, but twice. The first time I was forty, and I walked away from what I knew to become a midwife. The second time, I was in my fifties, standing in a birth center I built with my own hands, signing paperwork that meant it was over after sixteen...
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69: What's Been Running You: Healing the Patterns Underneath Your Patterns with Molly Rubesh
There is a version of you that you didn't choose. She was built quietly, over years, by everything you watched and absorbed and inherited. And at some point, she starts running your marriage, your relationships, and the way you move through life. In this episode, I sit down with Molly Rubesh,...
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68: You Don't Need Permission
There is a life a lot of women are living that looks completely fine from the outside. Maybe even wonderful. And it is quietly draining the life out of them. This week, Diane gets honest about the thing nobody says out loud: you do not need permission to change your mind, change your life, or…
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67: You Are the Medicine: Holly Million on What Blossoms After the Fire
Some people arrive at their power quietly. Others pass through fire, more than once, before they understand what they are actually made of. In this episode of The Midwife Life, Diane sits down with Holly Million, shaman, artist, herbalist, and founder of Soul Arts Workshop, to talk about what it...
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66: When the Life You Built No Longer Fits
What happens when the woman who has held space for a thousand others finally lets someone hold space for her? Jennifer Hoeprich spent over a decade as a licensed homebirth midwife, witnessing the raw, sacred threshold of new life. And then she reached her own threshold. Leaving clinical practice...
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65: You Were Always Creative: Reclaiming Your Potential with Lydia Phelps-Alexander
What if creativity wasn't something you had to find, but something you never lost? In this episode, I'm talking with Lydia Phelps-Alexander, an art education consultant who has spent 18 years and thousands of hours reminding people - especially women - that their creative potential is not gone.…
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64: The Next Page Is Coming
Who am I when the thing that has defined me for years no longer fits? This week I removed “birth center owner” from my Instagram bio. What looked like a simple profile update turned into something much bigger: a conversation about identity, grief, reinvention, and who we become when the roles…
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63: The Women I’m Most Drawn to Right Now
What happens when ambitious women stop trying to perform perfection - and start craving deeper, more honest connection instead? In this reflective solo episode, Diane shares what surfaced during a recent “Build Your Dream Network” challenge and the unexpected realizations it brought up about...
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62: What Happens When Survival Mode Ends
What happens when the thing you’ve been surviving finally ends… but your nervous system doesn’t get the message? In this episode, Diane shares honestly about the weeks following the closure of Willow: the lingering exhaustion, waking up in the middle of the night, getting sick again, and the...
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Bonus Replay: Confessions of a Midwife: Stories, Healing & the Human Side of Birthwork with Brielle Jenson
In this bonus replay, I sit down with Brielle Jenson, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, a midwife with over 20 years of experience, an IBCLC, and the author of the stunning new book Confessions of a Midwife. Brielle has worked in hospitals, home births, and birth centers, bringing a...
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61: You’re Not Burned Out - You’re Outgrowing Your Life
Something in your life doesn’t feel the same anymore. Not in a dramatic way…but enough that you can feel it. You’re still showing up. Still doing what needs to be done. Still holding everything together. But something feels… off. In this episode, I’m exploring a shift I’ve been moving through...
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60: The Phoenix Phase: When Everything You Built Ends… and What Comes Next
Something in your life doesn’t feel the same anymore. Not in a dramatic way…but enough that you can feel it. In this episode, I’m sharing a more personal reflection on a season I’m currently walking through , where something I built is coming to an end… and something new is beginning to take…
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59: In Transition — On Closing, Grief, and Trusting What's on the Other Side
This week, Diane almost didn't hit record. But she's glad she did. In one of her most personal and vulnerable episodes yet, Diane shares that after years of serving families, her freestanding birth centers in Arizona will be closing their doors on April 30th. And while the decision to close was...
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58: You’re Not Meant to Do This Alone (But You’ve Been Trying To)
You can be surrounded by people… and still feel like you’re carrying everything on your own. In this episode of The Midwife Life, Diane explores the hidden loneliness many women experience during seasons of transition, especially high-functioning women who are used to being the strong one. If...
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57: Spring Doesn’t Rush…and Neither Should You
Spring is here. But not everything blooms right away. There’s a part of this season that’s quieter than we expect, the in-between phase where something is shifting… but nothing fully makes sense yet. You can feel that something is different. But your life doesn’t look like clarity. It looks like...
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56: The Moment You Know Something Has to Change
There’s a moment… quiet, often easy to overlook… when you realize: you can’t keep doing it this way. Not because everything is falling apart. Not because you have a clear next step. But because something deeper… isn’t working anymore. In this episode, I’m talking about that moment, the one many...
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55: Your Body Isn’t Broken: Rethinking Women’s Health, Hormones, and Longevity with Stephanie Gambetta
For decades, women have been told that fatigue, weight gain, slower recovery, brain fog, and hormone shifts are simply part of aging. But what if the real issue isn’t that women’s bodies are failing them? What if the real problem is that we’ve been given incomplete information about how our…
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54: You Are Not Broken — Nourishing Your Body Through Life's Transitions with Courtney Smith
This episode is for the woman who looks like she's holding it all together — but feels very tired in her bones. Diane is joined by Courtney Smith, registered dietitian, exercise specialist, certified lactation counselor, and founder of Maternally Nourished. Courtney supports high-achieving women...
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53: What I’m Building Now
Last week, I shared the news about the closing of Willow Midwife Center and the complicated emotions that come with releasing something you built with your whole heart. Today’s conversation is different. This episode isn’t about loss or reaction. It’s about orientation. In this solo reflection, I...
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52: When something you built ends - Closing Willow, Grief, and the Courage to Begin Again
This week’s episode is a personal one. After publicly announcing the closing of Willow, Diane shares a reflection on what it means to release something you built, not as failure, but as completion. In this conversation, she explores grief, identity, leadership, sovereignty, and what integration...
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50: Chapter Five: Becoming — Living From the Ground You’ve Earned
In Chapter Five of the Rebirth Journey, Diane explores what comes after shedding, remembering, rebuilding, and learning to live rebirth as a way of being. This episode is about Becoming — not as reinvention, but as embodiment. Becoming is the quiet integration that happens when you stop…
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BONUS REPLAY: From Dreams to Decisions: Life Lessons in Your 20s
In this bonus replay, Diane welcomes two inspiring guests—her daughter Julia Ortega and her “adopted” daughter, Klea Soliman. Both are 23-year-old nurses navigating the ups and downs of their early 20s, from building careers in healthcare to prioritizing health and relationships. Together, they...
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49: Rebirth as a Way of Living (Chapter Four of the Rebirth Journey)
What if rebirth isn’t something you go through once, but something you learn how to live inside of? In this episode of The Midwife Life, Diane weaves together the four chapters of the Rebirth Journey: shedding, remembering, rebuilding, and integration—to explore what it looks like when rebirth...
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48: Rebuilding Without Burning Yourself Down
After shedding and remembering comes rebuilding—but not the kind that asks you to override your body or repeat the patterns that led to burnout. In this episode of The Midwife Life, Diane explores what it means to rebuild from capacity instead of urgency, and how the body—not the mind—signals…
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BONUS REPLAY: Yoga, Birth, and the Power of Connection: A Conversation with Nikki Brewer
In this bonus replay, Diane sits down with Nikki Brewer—ayoga instructor, doula, birth educator, and mom of three—to explore thepowerful connection between yoga, birth, and the motherhood journey. With over 15 years of yoga experience and a background supporting laboring women, Nikki brings deep...
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47: Before You Decide Anything, Come Back to Your Body
(Chapter Two: Remembering) After shedding comes the in-between. In this episode of The Midwife Life, Diane explores the quiet, often misunderstood season that follows collapse, the moment when the old skin is gone, but clarity hasn’t returned yet. If you’re feeling foggy… undecided… or unsure of...
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46: The Skin I Had to Shed: Collapse, Surrender, and the Threshold of Rebirth
In this intimate solo episode, Diane returns after a podcast hiatus to share what the end of 2025 asked her to release, and what she’s carrying forward into a new year. Rather than rushing into goals or reinvention, this conversation centers on collapse as initiation, illness as intelligence, and...
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BONUS REPLAY: From Darkness to Light: A Solstice Story + My Journey to Avalon
In this bonus replay of an intimate solo episode, Diane Ortega invites you into a powerful solstice reflection and shares the behind-the-scenes of her personal transformation. From the grief of letting go of a long-held vision to the light of spiritual rebirth, she offers a raw and radiant look…
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BONUS REPLAY: Listener Q&A with Midwife Diane Ortega
In this special Q&A episode, I’m answering YOUR biggest questions about pregnancy, birth, postpartum mental health, and how to build a strong support system—even if you’re not a mom! We’ll cover misconceptions about midwifery, how to prepare for birth, recognizing postpartum depression, and the...
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45: Postpartum Is Not a Phase — It’s a Transformation: A Conversation with Samantha Davis of NuHealth Placenta
Today on The Midwife Life, we’re diving into a topic so many mothers wish someone had prepared them for: what really happens after birth—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. My guest, Samantha Davis, CEO of NuHealth Placenta, is redefining what postpartum support looks and feels like.…
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44: Rebirth — The Missing Phase
What if this isn’t burnout? What if it’s rebirth? This episode reframes exhaustion, confusion, and emotional unraveling not as failure, but as a necessary initiation into becoming. Diane unpacks: Why women feel dismantled during identity transitions How this phase mirrors postpartum, wintering…
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43: Strength, Identity & the Real Postpartum with Meg Pasquel
In this episode, Diane sits down with women’s health and fitness coach, community leader, and Willow mama, Meg Pasquel. Together, they explore the identity shift of motherhood, the real postpartum experience, listening to your body, and redefining strength in a season that changes everything. Meg...
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42: Rewriting the Mother Code: How to Mother Yourself with Dr. Gertrude Lyons
What if “being a good mother” has less to do with self-sacrifice…and everything to do with self-actualization? In this powerful episode of The Midwife Life, Diane sits down with Dr. Gertrude Lyons, master coach, speaker, and author of Rewrite the Mother Code: How to Mother Yourself and Others in…
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41: Why Rebirth Is the Opposite of Burnout
It’s been one year since The Midwife Life began —and what started as a podcast has become a movement. In this special anniversary episode, host Diane Ortega, DNP, CNM shares the story behind her own burnout, the lessons that shaped this year of growth, and the next evolution of The Midwife Life:...
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40: You Asked. I Answered: Listener Q&A on Healing, Identity & Rebirth
In this special Listener Q&A episode, Diane answers your most vulnerable and powerful questions—on postpartum healing, identity loss and rediscovery, pelvic floor care, and the sacred mess of transformation. From what’s really normal 6 months postpartum to how to know when it’s time to let go of...
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39: Postpartum Recovery — Healing Your Body After Birth
In this heartfelt episode, Diane explores what true postpartum recovery looks like — beyond the six-week checkup. From honoring rest and nourishment to building community and seeking support, you’ll learn how to navigate this sacred season with compassion, confidence, and care. In this episode…
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38: Something New Is Being Born
Take a deep breath with me. (exhale) This episode is an invitation to slow down, to stop rushing and listen for what’s rising within you. Because something new is being born… not just in the world, but inside you. Lately, so many women have been whispering the same truth: “I don’t even know who I...
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37: What If It All Went Well? Rebuilding Safety in Our Nervous System
What if your nervous system could believe—deeply, fully—that it’s safe? In this episode, Diane explores the concept of nervous system safety, why it matters for women and mothers, and how we can begin to rebuild it. Through the story of a mother who transformed her second birth experience by...
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36: Sleep, strength, and sanity: The seven branches of midlife wellness for high‑achieving women with Karen DiGenova
Is midlife burnout just the price of success? Not if Karen DiGenova has anything to say about it. In this episode of The Midwife Life, Karen joins Diane to talk about reframing midlife from a season of decline into a time of powerful transformation. A former global HR leader for brands like...
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35: Confessions of a Midwife: Stories, Healing & the Human Side of Birthwork with Brielle Jenson
In this deeply honest and inspiring conversation, I sit down with Brielle Jenson, a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, a midwife with over 20 years of experience, an IBCLC, and the author of the stunning new book Confessions of a Midwife. Brielle has worked in hospitals, home births…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Welcome to The Midwife Life—part podcast, part revolution that empowers and educates women on all things related to pregnancy, birth, postpartum care, and careers in healthcare.
Whether it's understanding the options available to you, advocating for yourself in a health care setting, or simply knowing that you're not alone, I want you to leave each episode feeling stronger and more equipped.
HOSTED BY
Diane Ortega of Willow Birth Center
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Midwife Life: Midwifing you through health, motherhood, and the sacred mess of life’s transformations with Diane Ortega have?
Midwife Life: Midwifing you through health, motherhood, and the sacred mess of life’s transformations with Diane Ortega currently has 96 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Midwife Life: Midwifing you through health, motherhood, and the sacred mess of life’s transformations with Diane Ortega about?
Welcome to The Midwife Life—part podcast, part revolution that empowers and educates women on all things related to pregnancy, birth, postpartum care, and careers in healthcare. Whether it's understanding the options available to you, advocating for yourself in a health care setting, or simply...
How often does Midwife Life: Midwifing you through health, motherhood, and the sacred mess of life’s transformations with Diane Ortega release new episodes?
Midwife Life: Midwifing you through health, motherhood, and the sacred mess of life’s transformations with Diane Ortega has 96 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Midwife Life: Midwifing you through health, motherhood, and the sacred mess of life’s transformations with Diane Ortega?
You can listen to Midwife Life: Midwifing you through health, motherhood, and the sacred mess of life’s transformations with Diane Ortega on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Midwife Life: Midwifing you through health, motherhood, and the sacred mess of life’s transformations with Diane Ortega?
Midwife Life: Midwifing you through health, motherhood, and the sacred mess of life’s transformations with Diane Ortega is created and hosted by Diane Ortega of Willow Birth Center.
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