Eps 529: Teen sexual health with Dena Moes

What does joyful courage mean to you

I love that!  It kind of reminds me of, in Buddhism, we have this Bodhisattva vow, where we vow to work for our own enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, and it kind of comes from this idea that none of us are free until we’re all free.  So, in community and in joy, we can liberate ourselves, together.  The other thing I was thinking about, especially in light of the current political climate, is to check your intention.  When you are acting, make sure you’re acting out of love and not out of hate, and then your courage will be joyful!

 

Resources

Dena’s Book: “It’s Your Body: The Young Woman’s Guide to Empowered Sexual Health” 

Dena on TikTok

Dena on Instagram 

“Baby Catcher” by Peggy Vincent 

www.aidaccess.org 

Planned Parenthood 

www.plancpills.org

www.heyjane.com  

Women’s Health Specialists of Northern California 

 

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Transcription

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
parenting adolescents, positive discipline, reproductive health, teen sexual health, STI statistics, birth control options, consent education, IUD benefits, abortion access, political climate, reproductive rights, cycle tracking, safe harbor, healthy boundaries, joyful courage
SPEAKERS
Casey O'Roarty, Dena Moes

Casey O'Roarty 00:04
Hey listeners, welcome back to the joyful courage podcast, a place for you to hopefully feel seen and heard as we talk about all the things that come with the season of parenting adolescents. Parenting teens is messy, no doubt, and when we remember that our kids are growing through what they're going through, and we are too things can start to feel okay. We can have faith and believe that everything will be okay. I am Casey overdy. I'm your host. I am a positive discipline lead trainer, a parent coach and the adolescent lead at sproutable. I have two young adult kids of my own, and have been in the trenches just like you. I love supporting families. I work one on one with parents all over the world, and run a thriving membership program. Speaking of the living, joyful courage membership program, doors are opening for new members, January 1. I would love for you to consider taking part in it. We currently have 40 members, many of which are in their second or third year. We do twice monthly group calls, quarterly, one on one, calls, office hours, and we have an active community forum. These are real parents moving through real challenges, showing up vulnerably and feeling the love and support from a like minded community. This is my favorite way to support parents, and I want you to check it out. Go to be sproutable.com/l J C, and before January 1, you can join the wait list and get early access to enrollment. Woo hoo. Again, that is be sproutable.com/l J C, for more information and to enroll, doors open January 1. Thank you for listening to my little promo. Let's get on to today's show.

Casey O'Roarty 01:51
Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. You have tuned in to an interview show, and I'm so excited for you to listen in on this conversation. My guest today is Dina Mose. Dina is a certified nurse midwife and reproductive health expert. She holds a master's in nursing from Yale University and has worked in women's health for over two decades. Her book, it's your body, the young woman's guide to empowered sexual health is a new release from Countryman press, an imprint of WW Norton. Learn more about her and her book at www. It's your body.net. Or follow Dina the viral Tiktok midwife at at Dina Mo's writer, hi Dina. Welcome to the podcast.

Dena Moes 02:39
Hi Casey. Thanks so much for having me.

Casey O'Roarty 02:41
I'm so excited that you're here. I'm really excited about this conversation as well. I think it's a super important conversation. Will you start us off by sharing a bit about how you found yourself doing the work that you do? Share your story

Dena Moes 02:56
absolutely well. When I was a very young woman and college student, I studied Women's Studies and literature, and I was very active in feminist activism. And then when I was 23 years old, I learned that something called a midwife existed, and as I researched the profession, I discovered that it's a combination of smashing the patriarchy of the Western medical establishment, serving as priestess to Sacred Feminine rights and providing compassionate health care to mothers and babies. And the more I learned about Midwifery, the more I realized this was my calling, and by the time I was 27 years old, I had my Masters in Nursing from Yale, and I was a certified nurse midwife. Over the course of my career, I had a home birth practice where I was the solo home birth midwife for about 12 years in my hometown in California, and I was a lead clinician in a feminist Women's Health Center during the first Trump administration, and that was a clinic that served mostly teenagers and college students. And that work inspired me to write my newly released book, it's your body.

Casey O'Roarty 04:14
Well, shout out to all the midwives. Thank you for your service. I was assisted by midwives the second birth was a home birth, and never have I felt so empowered and strong and just like in disbelief around what my body can do than when I got to birth my two babies so and I loved the book, baby catcher. Yes, I'm sure you know that book. Do you know that author? I think wives are our buddies, right? Oh yeah, oh yeah, yes, yes, yes, ah, so good. Well, yeah, today, we're going to talk about our teens, reproductive health. And I'm just going to say, straight off the bat, I think that my listeners know this. Yeah. But for anyone who's new, I am a pro choice, liberal leaning mama. I have a daughter and a son. We talk openly about sex and birth control and consent and all the things I would identify, I think, as sex positive. My hope is that with this conversation, you listeners feel empowered to be having really important conversations with your teens, and even offer up this conversation as a resource to them. So just straight off the bat, I wanted to make that really clear, and yeah, and really kind of start with the macro. So what are the current stats for teen sexual health right now, what are we looking at? As far as STIs and teen pregnancy? Are our kids having sex? What's going on? I mean, they are. I

Dena Moes 05:47
have to tell you, Casey teenagers having sex is nothing new. So we look back at Romeo and Juliet, love and sex. It's really been a part of the growth and development of puberty, and teens love to take risks and try things and yeah, you know, and their hormones are blossoming with their new sexuality. And so it's really nothing new. The most recent CDC data that we have is that about 55% of both male and female teenagers have had sexual intercourse by age 18. So if you look at a room full of teenagers, you can assume that about half of them have probably been having sex or are having sex. And stunningly, about half of all the STI infections in the United States occur in people between the ages of 15 and 24 so STIs are a serious concern for our teenagers, and I've even seen multiple times, even while I was researching my book, that the statistic that at any one given time, one in four teenage girls has an STI, and this is usually chlamydia or HPV. The good news is, teenage birth rates hit a historic low in 2022 about 13 births per 1000 teens. And I don't really see any data since then, but it's very interesting to me, that it hit that low the very same year that Roe versus Wade was overturned.

Casey O'Roarty 07:26
So STIs, when I think about that, what you shared about STIs, I'm thinking they're not using condoms. And when I think about low birth rates, I'm thinking, the girls are on birth control,

Dena Moes 07:39
correct? Yes, yes, and we can get into that later. Yeah, condom use is not as pervasive as it was when I was certainly a teenager, and that's a real problem. The good news about Chlamydia is that it is treat 100% curable, but it is a good idea for kids to get routine STI testing if they're sexually active. Just

Casey O'Roarty 08:01
everybody that's listening take a deep breath. We're getting into it. Okay? We're getting into it. And have you seen just in your work, in the clinic that you worked in, in your book, it seems like kids are going from zero to 60 quick, like the hand holding makeout era is shorter. Maybe I'm just 50, and I'm just like, Oh, these kids today, but it seems like everything's happening so much quicker with kiddos. And you know, I know we're not gonna get in the rabbit hole of screens and technology, but well, and I'm gonna say like, I talk to a lot of parents who are concerned about the explicit nature of the text messaging that young kids are doing. What are you seeing with that? Oh,

Dena Moes 08:48
yeah, I talk about that in my book. And you know, as a clinician in a reproductive health you know, I'm just kind of there to take the situation as it comes without doing too much archeology, like, Well, why weren't you holding hands longer? And you know, how long are you making out before you have sex? I mean, believe

Casey O'Roarty 09:09
me, you're gonna miss the making out people. It's really fun. It's really fun. Do it for

Dena Moes 09:15
months, but, you know, and so I think you're right. There's this thing called hook up culture that's pervasive, and that's really accelerated by social media, and it's always been peer pressure and all these other things. So there's so many factors. So you know, it's hard to say, but you know what I tell parents at my clinic is, you know, if your child is showing interest in a person of the opposite sex and spending time with them. You know, it's a good time to consider birth control without knowing exactly what's happening and when what is going to happen. Yeah, good idea to consider birth control. Yeah. And

Casey O'Roarty 09:56
we're going to talk a little bit more about birth control too, but before we. Get there. What have you found in your work around why it's so important that our teens are given the autonomy to make their own reproductive health decisions? And when you think about reproductive health decisions, what does that mean? Right?

Dena Moes 10:14
I'm very adamant about this issue, and that's why I wrote the book. It's your body, not for parents of teens. I wrote it for teens, and this I'm very much influenced by the laws in California regarding reproductive health and parental consent. And basically, the bottom line is that sexual behavior has adult consequences no matter the age of the person engaging in it. And it's sort of a code of ethics in the reproductive health care setting to treat everyone who comes in, no matter their age, like an adult if they come in needing pregnancy care, needing STI testing, asking about birth control. In California, it's the law to treat them as an adult, and I have seen that this empowers kids to take their sexual health seriously and to take more responsibility for themselves. And what I see in my clinic is that when the girls themselves have autonomy and control over their birth control options, they're more likely to stay on it and to use it correctly. So this for parents is a really hard thing, because it's about letting go of control. And you know, for years, you're taking care of your kid and you're being very mindful of what they eat and everything they put in their body and what kind of school they're going to, probably a lot of your listeners will fall into this category, and part of adolescence, and the the children becoming teenagers is that they're going to make decisions that don't involve you, and you have to know when to be A supportive person, but let them make their decisions. And something that I've seen in the clinic too is my clinic, a lot of mothers bring their teenage daughters to the clinic to get on birth control and discuss it, and a lot of time, the mothers have pretty strong opinions about what they think is the best birth control, but that information is actually outdated and really no longer relevant. There's so many new birth control methods and there's so many different considerations, and so we really need to let each person choose their own path that way. And

Casey O'Roarty 12:37
what are the laws as far as our girls? Because, you know, I was one of those moms who was like, let's go, let's go get the information, you know, and I know that there are teenagers out there who do not have that kind of support. What are the laws, as far as, like, permission from a parent? And, well,

Dena Moes 13:00
unfortunately, this is a really state by state. It is question, and I can't answer for all the states. California has specifically very strong laws regarding this that anyone can come in and get reproductive health care. There's no parental consent. There's no permission slip for school needed. They can leave school, and they don't have to tell the school why. And you know, I've seen 12 and 13 year olds come on the bus to our clinic and get depo provera shots, which is a three month contraceptive injection, and it's no questions asked, because if I start asking, Well, why do you need this? You're only 12. Like, what's going on? You know, what's gonna happen? She's not gonna get the service that's needed. She's gonna end up a 12 year old mother. And so these laws protect kids by reducing barriers to care, and that's why I put all this information about the birth control methods into a book for them so they can look through it themselves and start thinking about these things. And in many homes it's safe to talk about these topics, but in many homes it is not,

Casey O'Roarty 14:12
yeah, well, and it sounds like it'd be a great resource too. You know, we all come into parenting with our own experiences, and my guess is that there is many of us have baggage around sex, and you know, whatever our sexual journey has been, and it might get in the way and make it really challenging to have these conversations with our kiddos. Exactly I love about books like yours, and listeners hear me when I say, this is something you could get hand over to your child. Is it for the girls?

Dena Moes 14:48
It's for teens and young adults, mostly for girls. But I think it's very valuable for us to know about these things too sure to really be partners to their girlfriends and who can get pregnant. Yes,

Casey O'Roarty 15:00
yes, yes, yes, yes. So what a great resource to have. I remember, as my kids were going through early puberty, there was a couple books that I loved that, you know, started off as this is for you, and then I'm gonna check in and see, what are the place like? What are you curious about? What do you want to talk about? Or I'd bring something specific to them, and we'd look at that part of the book. But I remember both my kids going into their rooms and seeing the book out, or seeing pages marked, and I was always really grateful because there's no class about I mean, there are actually, there are people out there who teach us how to talk about all this stuff with kiddos. But you know, if we're not actively seeking out those resources, it can feel really daunting. And I think most of us have learned like the last thing we want is for our kids to develop shame around their bodies or their desires or their actions or what happens to them. And so yeah, thank you for creating a resource like this, yeah.

Dena Moes 16:02
And it's a really small book, like, it doesn't cover every topic from the onset of puberty until midlife. I mean, it just really focuses on, hey, like, these are the things you need consider if you're sexually active, and so that it's just, you know, an easy to use guide,

Casey O'Roarty 16:20
yeah, and we can't ignore the climate right now here in the states around female reproductive health, are you already seeing the political climate impacting our teens access to services? Well,

Dena Moes 16:34
I was reminiscing, you know? Well, I was in California, which is a very blue state,

Casey O'Roarty 16:40
very I'm in Washington, right go west coast,

Dena Moes 16:44
and now I'm in New Mexico, which is also a very blue state. And in fact, when I moved to New Mexico a year ago, when I drove in off the Arizona border, the billboard said, Welcome to New Mexico. Your abortion is legal here. And I was just like, wow. But truthfully, we're getting people pouring in from both sides, Arizona and Texas, and unfortunately, in the post row landscape, state by state, everything is different. So it is very difficult right now to figure out what I've been wanting to emphasize to people is that even with a new presidency coming in, nothing is going to change overnight. Right now, there is still access to birth control in all 50 states, and if any changes happen to that, it is going to unroll slowly. But I do think it's wise to think about the needs your especially if you have a daughter, what she might need in terms of contraception and sexual health in the next few years, and what you can do is get a consultation visit at a clinic or OB GYN office and just let your kid ask questions and get some information about her options that way. You know, maybe she wants to get on birth control now. And you know, you don't have to be sexually active to get on birth control. You can get on it for other reasons. And unfortunately, with abortion access, you know, depending on where you live in the country, it's very, very different. It's practically illegal now in states like Florida, Georgia, Texas, and there is a website called aid access.org which will help you find your closest legal abortion services. Yeah, I

Casey O'Roarty 18:44
uh, so you had mentioned, I know you don't have all the states memorized, and that's okay. So there are places where our girls need parental consent to get on birth control. That's

Dena Moes 18:55
a great question. I believe that there are, and I actually don't have the answer to that question, yeah, something I could look up and get back to you.

Casey O'Roarty 19:04
Yeah, I just can't believe where we're at. But listening to you, thank you for aid access.org We'll make sure that link is in the show notes. So what are we doing? Like, what do we do? How can we protect our daughters? You know, in these coming years. I appreciate you saying that you know that what may will slash may change in the coming years because of the change in the administration won't happen overnight. So like, what can we do? What would you suggest we do as people who are listening, who care about making sure that our daughters have access to what they need. How do we protect them? What can we be doing that is supportive of their rights to reproductive health?

Dena Moes 19:50
That's a great question. Well, I mean on the larger level, getting involved in reproductive rights activism. I mean writing letters to your senator. And your legislative representatives, you know, going on marches and protests. I don't know. I don't know how to stop the war on women's health. Yeah, and then in the micro again, you know, just making sure your daughter has access to contraception, because, again, prevention is the best remedy for an unplanned pregnancy. And besides that, it's a great idea. You know, you can work with your daughter. You can give her like a little cycle tracking journal and let her start tracking her menstrual cycles, because the earlier you discover a missed period, the easier it is to access options. You can make a little kit to have, sort of a sexual health first aid kit. Make sure you have plenty of pregnancy tests, home pregnancy tests, condoms. You can buy Plan B, which is an emergency contraceptive pill. It is not an abortion pill. It does prevent pregnancy in about 80% of users. So you can take that up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. And I

Casey O'Roarty 21:09
just want to interrupt you and share. So my youngest went off to college, and I made a whole box of over the counter meds for him, and I included condoms, of course, but I also included Narcan and plan b2, doses of plan B, because I think it's really important, too, as we talk about our daughters, to also, and you've already mentioned that empower our sons, right? Empower our sons to be supportive. You know, those of them that are in heterosexual relationships to be supportive of the women that they are choosing to be sexually active with. So I just want to say that I'm proud. That's

Dena Moes 21:49
great. That's exactly what I recommend doing. And you know, for your teens, I know a lot of people, you know, they have this sort of reaction to IUDs. And you know, IUDs are what's called long acting reversible contraception, and they are very safe to use, and teenagers get them all the time. And like, for example, the Marina IUD is good for eight years, which is two presidential terms, and the paraguard IUD is hormone free. And that one is good for 12 years, which is three presidential terms. And the thing about an IUD is that no one has to know it's in there. There's nothing to take or remember or have to bring with you. And I first saw when the first Trump presidency began in 2017 I was working in this Teen Clinic, and I just helped so many young people get IUDs, and so I've become a pretty big fan of them. Yeah, so

Casey O'Roarty 22:50
let's talk a little bit about birth control. So you had mentioned that you saw a lot of girls coming in with their moms, and their moms kind of had some outdated ideas. I remember early on, it was, you know, when my daughter wanted to start birth control, it was about her skin. She wanted, you know, she had another friend who had been on birth control, and it helped clear her skin up. She wasn't sexually active yet. I was worried about the hormones. I was not informed. Really, it was more of just I didn't know enough, and it felt like I was messing around with something that didn't need to be messed around with. So what are some of the things that we're holding onto that are outdated?

Dena Moes 23:32
Well, there's a lot of free floating anxiety about putting our beautiful, perfect daughters on synthetic hormonal break

Casey O'Roarty 23:41
because they were just 10. So we can

Dena Moes 23:45
all just acknowledge that. We all feel that like, Oh no, my precious daughter's perfect body. But here's the thing, by the time she's a teenager, she's probably putting all kinds of other junk in her body too that you're not seeing, like Taco Bell at three in the morning, like, God forbid, but very likely vaping nicotine, like drinking like even some

Casey O'Roarty 24:10
of the skin care products that they're not for sure, crazy, yeah, you know,

Dena Moes 24:14
we just have to sort of parse out our anxiety with reality. The other thing I like to tell people, and you know, people have this fear of something that's not natural. Well, what is natural for human women is that from the time we entered puberty in all of history, up to about 100 years ago, we were married off at puberty, we were married off, and we started having babies, and we were pregnant and breastfeeding, you know, pretty much consistently through our reproductive life. And I know we can all go back in our family trees. And this woman had eight kids, and this woman had 10 kids, and this woman had 12 kids. Well, guess what? That is? What's quote, natural. Yeah. So nowadays we. Need to hack a little bit because we want our daughters to have a different kind of life. And part of that means, you know, using a little hack to improve their quality of life, yeah. And what the hormonal methods do is just kind of put a pause on the cycle of ovulation and preparation for pregnancy that happens every single month, month after month, unless she gets pregnant. It's like pushing the pause button. And birth control pills have been used since 1972 and they have been proven safe. All the hormonal methods have no association with increased cancer risk or increased risk of fertility issues. Later on, most birth control side effects, they go away on their own if you just stop using the method, because your body cycle does return. And then the final consideration that I just want to say is this, if a person with a uterus is under 24 years old and is having heterosexual sexual intercourse with no birth control method, she has an 80% chance of getting pregnant in one year. So actually, our young people are at their most fertile. They will be their entire lives. And so when you are considering side effects and risks. You need to consider the side effects and risks of pregnancy as the other side of the equation. Yeah, well,

Casey O'Roarty 26:29
and talk a little bit. So there's birth control pills that they take every day, and there's that, you know, needing to remember. There's, you know, I think we're all really familiar with that technique. You mentioned the shot. That's good for three like, talk to us a little bit about what are the options when you see it?

Dena Moes 26:48
Well, there are so many options. I will try to give you a brief overview.

Casey O'Roarty 26:52
Give us the gist. Okay, so

Dena Moes 26:54
there are, first of all, non hormonal methods, and that would be like condoms or barrier methods like a diaphragm. And do people still use diaphragms? Not really, but we always list

Casey O'Roarty 27:07
it so retro, very retro condoms

Dena Moes 27:10
are problematic, which we can talk about later, because it's just not cool to use them anymore. And the girls are getting a lot of pressure from the guys. Not cool

Casey O'Roarty 27:19
to have chlamydia, Come on, girls, and it puts the power

Dena Moes 27:24
in the hands of the guy, not the girl, to have control over the contraception. Yeah. And so these other methods, it's like the woman takes care of her own body, and because she's the one who's going to have the biggest consequence, right of a pregnancy, not the guy. So there's the pill, which has a combination of estrogen and progesterone, and then that same combination comes in two other forms, a patch that she changes once a week and a vaginal ring that she puts up inside, which is surprisingly popular with young people, because you don't really feel it in There, it has very low side effects, because you can use a smaller dose when it's absorbed through the skin that way. And again, it's pretty private. Nobody really has to know it's in there, and you just change that out once a month. Oh, okay, that's called the maneuvering. And see a lot of moms don't know about that one. It's a great method. It's actually lower dose of hormone than in birth control pills. And then we have the progesterone only birth control method, so they don't have any estrogen in them. And in these methods, the woman tends to not have her period, which for some people is a real win. And for some people is I don't love that. And the Depo Provera injection is like that, as is the next plan on implant, which is a little implant that goes in the arm. It looks like a match stick. It goes under the skin and it stays in there for three years. And the hormonal IUDs, which are the Skyla kylena and Marina. So that's kind of the full menu. That is

Casey O'Roarty 29:02
a full menu, and it's so useful, I think, for everybody to hear you kind of list them all off. And listeners remember you can push pause and you can go back and listen to this and take notes here too.

Dena Moes 29:14
I express in my book The risks, the benefits, the advantages and the things to consider. One thing with teenagers is you want birth control. That is what we call party ready, and that's because teenagers tend to have sex more often after they've been partying, because that's how they relax and let go of their inhibitions and overcome their shyness. So thing again, the problem with condoms is it's not very party ready. If you've had a few drinks, you're not going to remember to use it.

Casey O'Roarty 29:46
Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm just laughing at myself thinking that, saying to my kids, literally, like, no sex if you're drunk, thinking about how much drunk sex I had college, like. Sure Mom, I've had some conversations with my daughter about IUDs, and I've heard from other people there's a fear that the insertion can be painful. Is that true or yeah,

Dena Moes 30:13
that I know I've seen so much going around social media about that, and it really is a shame I put in IUDs every day that I'm at my job, and I have to say that for most people, it's a brief cramp, very similar to a period. It's not this excruciatingly painful thing that you need to be put under general anesthesia, because honestly, it takes about three minutes. So it would actually take longer to put in an IV and intubate you and knock you out. It would take, like, 20 times longer than it would take to just put the IUD in. And there's a lot of tricks that seasoned providers can do to make the IUD insertion more comfortable. There's a pill that we can give young women who've never had babies called misoprostol, and she can put one into her vagina at bedtime the night before her IUD insertion, and this softens and opens her cervix a little so the IUD inserter will slide more easily through we use lidocaine, but really the cramp is more like a menstrual cramp, and you can't really use lidocaine to numb that. It's just there's a cramp, your body reacts. You know, I would not be advising IUDs if I thought it was some brutal thing to do to people, and like my nurses and I at work, we have this joke where pretty much 90% of the time we finish the IUD insertion, and the person looks at us and goes, That's it. That's nowhere near as bad as I heard it would be on Tiktok, right? Thank

Casey O'Roarty 31:58
you. Like, yeah,

Dena Moes 32:00
I mean, and then some women, it is very painful, but, you know, like, very crampy, and they really don't like it, but again, it lasts about five minutes, and then, yeah, you walk out the door, like, Fine, you know, it's not like you're on pain medication, like you've just had surgery or something, right, right, right. Unfortunately, there's a lot of misinformation, but there's also a lot of young people who have IUDs and are really happy about it, because I've been putting out tiktoks discussing this topic, and I've gotten hundreds of comments from women who are like, I love my IUD I haven't had a period in five years. It saved my life. I had endometriosis, and boy am I glad not to be pregnant right now. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 32:41
like, just going back to what you said when considering side effects, right?

Dena Moes 32:45
Yeah? Like, there's no way you're gonna have a baby without some discomfort. Like, yeah, pregnancy,

Casey O'Roarty 32:52
birth, and then you have a baby, and

Dena Moes 32:55
we're talking about a three to five minute cramp, and you're protected from pregnancy for up to 12 years. So, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 33:01
well, and I have clients, and have heard of, you know, kids that have really painful periods. So yeah, what I'm hearing you say, too, is the IUD could be a solution for monthly painful periods as well.

Dena Moes 33:18
Hormonal birth control is a treatment for painful periods. Yeah, almost all the methods will make the period lighter, and some of them, like I mentioned, the ones that are progesterone only, will likely make your period sort of disappear for the duration that you're using that method. So it is and for people who have endometriosis, or suspect they have endometriosis. These things are very helpful,

Casey O'Roarty 33:44
yeah, and I realize, like, not everybody has the relationship that I have with my kids. My kids were just really open, and I'm grateful for that, and I attribute it to a lot of things. And I know that there are parent child relationships that are just a little bit more guarded. Where kids are more guarded, they're not talking to their parents about sexual health, even as I know you listeners, are doing your job at your you know, trying to find those opportunities to connect and throwing things out there. What tips do you have for parents around both respecting, you know, their child's desire for privacy while also making sure that their kiddo has the resources that they need.

Dena Moes 34:27
That's a great question, and it's really true that you know, no matter how open and woke parents are, the kids are their own people, and some kids just don't want to talk about certain subjects with their parents, and it is really important to respect that what you want to try to do is give them access to the reproductive health services they need without having to exact specific details about their lives from them. Yeah, so if you can try to, like, set. Separate those two. And so we were just discussing the fact that hormonal birth control methods can treat common adolescent medical issues such as acne and painful periods, irregular cycles, migraine headaches. You know you can take your kid to an appointment to talk about treating those things. And then if they end up getting on birth control to treat those conditions, the side effect is they happen to be contraceptive, yeah, yeah, you know. And I guess if you have a teen at this point, and you know, you've been in sort of maybe a power struggle about, I don't want to go to a clinic, I don't need to see anybody, and you know, you would maybe just say hey, you know, with the incoming presidency, access to services might not be here down the road. We don't know. So I'd like to just get you in to talk to a nurse practitioner or something between now and January, just so you know what things are out there. Yeah, you know. And to be honest with them about our concerns, yeah. And that way, you know, it's not just mom's crazy. She's always pressuring me to do these things I don't want to do. They're like, okay, you know.

Casey O'Roarty 36:19
Yeah. And I would also encourage those of you that maybe have daughters that aren't readily sharing with you to identify other women in your life that can kind of saddle up next to your girl and be willing to offer that kind of support. And there's no shade. There's no shame. I mean, there's a variety of reasons that our kids, you know, might want to talk to somebody a little further removed than their parent about things like this. I wonder, though could an auntie or a friend, or does it have to be a parent, then, yeah,

Dena Moes 36:58
this is great. I love that you're bringing this up two things. Like, first of all, if you do bring your daughter to like, a Planned Parenthood kind of clinic, you can opt to not stay in the room with her, but let her have the time with the nurse practitioner and establish her own relationship and talk about her needs, not filtered through what she thinks her mom is going to think about this or that,

Casey O'Roarty 37:21
right? That's major. Like, I just want to pause for a second on that. Like, get out of the room, right room? Get out of the room. You don't need all the details exactly. And I'll tell you from experience, you might not want all the details. You don't let her Yes, I love that. So, yeah, that's

Dena Moes 37:39
important. And get out of the room. Let her have her own visit, let her have her own relationship with the healthcare provider, and that's part of that. This is adult behavior. We're going to treat you like an adult now, yeah, my good friend brought her friend's daughter in for her IUD. Her friend just didn't want her mom there. She didn't want her mom involved, but she was comfortable with a family friend and so, yeah, I mean, that's part of our whole culture, which we could get into another conversation. I remember when both my now adult daughters were teenagers, I kept thinking like, this is when we need the village like they don't want to hear it from their mom anymore. Where's the auntie? Where's the grandma, where's the this one? Where's that one? We need an extended family now, you know, and we're in modern America, so we don't have it, but we do have our friends, and we do have our allies. And so I think that's an important point, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 38:34
and thoughts for parents who come to find out that their daughter is indeed pregnant. Do you have any helpful

Dena Moes 38:44
suggestions? Well, I have some suggestions, and they might be hard to hear. Ultimately, you should not pressure your child in any direction to either keep the pregnancy or to not keep the pregnancy, that is a choice that they need to make on their own, and this can be the hardest thing you'll ever do as a parent, but remember, it is your child that will have to live with the decision for the rest of their Life, and it's so important that they make the decision. And then again, as a part of that is don't rush a decision either, because what you decide to do with a pregnancy, it's really important you sit with that and you get really clear what your innermost decision is, that it's coming from you. And so I just want to caution people, you know, if you find out your child is pregnant and she's like just past four weeks under eight weeks, they still have time to sit with it and think the timeline for a medical abortion is up to 10 weeks and a surgical abortion is. Is beyond that. So it's not something to like hastily, you know, take care of the next day, but really allow the time to make that decision.

Casey O'Roarty 40:09
What's the difference between those two things, a medical and a surgical abortion?

Dena Moes 40:14
So a medical abortion is an at home abortion, so it's kind of like an induced miscarriage, where there are a series of medications that you take. The first medication stops the pregnancy from developing, and then 24 hours later, you take a second set of medications that causes cramping and bleeding and causes the products of conception to be expelled from the uterus, and so it's basically like an at home. It's like an induced miscarriage, okay, a surgical abortion. It's not truly surgery. It is a procedure, but it's done through the cervix, so nothing is like cut open in a classic surgery. And it's a very quick, very safe procedure where the contents of the uterus are suctioned out of the uterus in like a 10 minute or so procedure in a clinic or in an office setting. And another term for that is like a DNC, sometimes that needs to be done even after a spontaneous miscarriage, to finish cleaning everything out of the uterus so that the body can heal with pregnancy, there are three options. You can carry and continue the pregnancy and have the baby and raise the child. You can continue the pregnancy, and then you can have the child placed in an adoption, and you can terminate a pregnancy.

Casey O'Roarty 41:48
Yeah, well, and like what you said, to start from this question that imagining being with our girls and not pressuring one way or the other, how challenging that would be, yes, and you're so right, because it isn't our decisions. And this has come up a couple times recently on podcast, we think we know what's best. We think we know the outcome. And I mean, yes, we do have experience and perspective that is our own based on our experiences, but we don't always know best. I think about I had a student who, when I was an elementary school teacher that I stayed really close with, and she ended up having a baby at 15, and she is now God, over 30, which makes me feel really old. And has four boys, and her oldest, that boy that she had so young, is thriving, and she is thriving and the family is thriving. And, you know, she was so on paper, absolutely the statistic story, and she was not someone who had a ton of resources at all, and yet she's created this incredible family. And so we just don't know. We just don't know.

Dena Moes 43:15
We don't know. So one of the things I did that I love in my book is that the very end of the book, I gathered stories from three women who became mothers as teenagers, or in their very early like 2021 three stories of teenagers who placed their babies for adoption, and three stories from women who terminated their pregnancies as teens, and they all wrote and shared their stories. And I love that this is in my book, especially the adoption stories, because adoption is not common, it's pretty rare. And these stories are just they're so beautiful, and people forget that that's an option, and they're in my book, so that if someone is facing a pregnancy they weren't planning, they can read these stories and just not feel as alone. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 44:15
I really appreciate that. And as I talk about a lot the adolescent years parenting and adolescent is one long ongoing opportunity for parents to be in their own personal growth and development and to really take a look at, you know, the reactions that come up for us and untangling our own issues from how we are responding To our kiddos, and this is like that on steroids. I think it feels like for

Dena Moes 44:44
sure, for sure. And I always reminded myself about my daughters that they came into the world with their own paths. You know, they are not a mini me, and I don't want them to live the life I. I lived because, boy, I was sure, a mess when I was a teenager and young adult, different from them. But they have their own path to walk. They came into the world their own people.

Casey O'Roarty 45:10
Yeah, well, and I think this leads us right into you know, no matter as you listen, no matter your family or spiritual values that you've been sharing and hopefully modeling and living your kids are still going out in the world and making their decisions for themselves, and no doubt your kids are exploring their sexuality, and I talk so much here on the podcast about relationships and really landing that you the parent. You listening parents, you get to create a safe harbor for when the unexpected shows up. What are some things Dina that you believe are crucial for parents to be talking about with their teens when it comes to sexual health, I

Dena Moes 46:02
love this question, and I love the term Safe Harbor, because if you can do that, then you are being such a wonderful parent for your child, because that's what your children need. They need you to be a safe harbor. So crucial, something that I really feel like is so important, and this can be discussed even before your kids are older teens and becoming sexually active. I think something that you want to model and discuss with your kids is consent and healthy boundaries. Consent is the foundation of healthy relationships in all facets of life, and especially in sexual relationships, and when you start practicing consent in smaller things, different aspects, like, may I give you a kiss? Can I take a photo of you? Would you hug your Uncle Fred? You model a culture of consent, and that's how we change the culture. And teaching your child to listen to their inner voice, to hear if something is a yes or no, and then vocalizing it is one of the most powerful things you can do for your child and mothers of men and boys, you can teach your son so much about consent, such as what she's wearing, how she's dressed, is not consent. What she did last time you were with her is not consent. And learn how to observe someone's body language. Is she crossing her arms? Is she looking away? Is she laughing nervously? Step back and let her exit the interaction. And remember it's hard to hear no. It's harder to say no, and if you get a no. You can practice saying thank you for taking care of yourself. So if people say, Well, what is consent? Exactly? I like to use the acronym fries. Like french fries, consent is freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic and specific. I'm

Casey O'Roarty 48:26
just laughing, because whenever I have conversations like this on the podcast, I'm gonna finish up with you, and I'm gonna immediately call my kids and be like, Okay, let's talk about a few things.

Dena Moes 48:36
So the overarching, you know, social construct we're in is a rape culture. It's patriarchy. That's why Trump has been elected president and not Kamala Harris. So what do we do? We start modeling a culture of respect consent, honoring boundaries, exploring our boundaries. I feel like this is an answer to the question that you asked me earlier in the show, like, what can we do? What

49:07
can we do? Right?

Dena Moes 49:09
The answer is, let's build our culture of healthy boundaries and consent.

Casey O'Roarty 49:16
I love that. What are your favorite organizations you mentioned, well, actually, before I asked this question, I underlined something that I wanted to come back to. This is kind of going to be a random order. Listener, sorry about that, but early on, you had encouraged our girls to cycle track. I kept meaning to pop back in on this. I just want to say what a gift it becomes for us, women, to know our bodies, to learn our bodies. And I feel like cycle tracking, you know, along with masturbation and feeling things out like we get to know our bodies. And that's such a beautiful way to invite young women, adolescent girls, into that understanding. Understanding of their own internal system. So I just wanted to throw that out too.

Dena Moes 50:05
I love that. Thank

Casey O'Roarty 50:06
you for mentioning that. But what I would love to know too, so you had mentioned Aida, access.org, what are your other maybe one or two other favorite organizations that listeners can check out and support, either through volunteering or donating or spreading the word that is in the fight for female reproductive rights. Planned Parenthood, I'm guessing, is yes

Dena Moes 50:27
at the top of the list, is tried and true. They have clinics everywhere. They are doing everything they can to keep their doors open. I also really appreciate the work that plan c.org is doing and Hey Jane health, those guys are providing telemedicine and telehealth, birth control and medical abortion. My clinic in Chico, California, the Women's Health Specialists of Northern California, has been providing free and low cost reproductive health care for 46 years. Love it, yeah. So those are my favorite ones.

Casey O'Roarty 51:05
Good. Well, we'll make sure that those links are in the show notes. Thank you so much for the work that you do. Thank you for your book. Thank you for being in conversation with me. Dina, is there anything else you want to leave listeners with before we close? Yes,

Dena Moes 51:17
yeah. You know, I think something else that we can teach our girls, and that's really a theme in my book, it's your body. Is that your number one relationship is you with you, and it's the only relationship that is guaranteed to last a lifetime. That's why it is worth it to learn how to take care of yourself. Love

Casey O'Roarty 51:44
it. Love it. My final question that I ask all my guests is, what does joyful courage mean to you?

Dena Moes 51:51
I love that. It kind of reminds me of in Buddhism, we have this bodhisattva vow where we vow to work for our own enlightenment, for the benefit of all beings. And it kind of comes from this idea that none of us are free until we're all free, and so in community and in joy, we can liberate ourselves together. And the other thing I was thinking about, especially in light of the current political climate, is to check your intention and when you are acting, make sure you're acting out of love and not out of hate, and then your courage will be joyful.

Casey O'Roarty 52:38
I love that. I know I mentioned it in your bio, but will you remind people where they can find you and follow your work?

Dena Moes 52:46
Sure. So I'm on Instagram and Tiktok as Dina Mo's writer, and that's my name, D, E n, a, m, o, e s, writer is, W, R, I, T, E R. It's all one word. My book, it's your body, the young woman's guide to empowered sexual health is available everywhere books are sold, there's a ebook, there's an audio book, it's on Amazon and book shop, and I have a website. It's your body.net.

Casey O'Roarty 53:16
Thank you so much for hanging out with me today and having this really important conversation. I so appreciate it.

Dena Moes 53:21
Well. I appreciate you. I think it takes some joyful courage to bring up this delicate subject to parents of teenagers. Thank you.

Casey O'Roarty 53:36
Thank you so much for listening in today. Thank you to my sproutable partners, as well as Chris Mann and the team at pod shaper for all the support with getting this show out there and making it sound good, check out our offers for parents with kids of all ages, and sign up for our newsletter to stay [email protected] tune back in lat

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