04/20/2026
Below is the text from an Instagram post shared on Free Range Learning - someone else's Instagram, not FRL.
It turns out the link produced something wonky, even on the FRL page, so I'm just putting the text here.
Please ignore the poor grammar/writing; the message is thought provoking.
There are many 'tells' of a society, this being one of them and being part of broader fundamental problems.
The picture is not good.
Fortunately, there are a large number of people with their eyes open and many of them creating/living change.
Being aware - and then improving - does not take an imposing amount of time.
It's a choice.
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"Every culture on earth built a ritual around the 40 days after birth. We built a diagnosis.
China, Korea, India, Nigeria, Latin America, Japan, the Middle East.
Cultures that developed completely independently of each other, separated by oceans and centuries, all arrived at the same conclusion: The mother needs 40 days of rest, nourishment, and someone else holding everything together while she heals.
That number appearing across unrelated civilizations isn’t a coincidence. It’s biology that got codified into tradition. Collective wisdom passed down because it worked.
Somewhere along the way, the modern West decided something else was more important.
And I think that something is the clue. Because in the cultures that still practice these rituals, family isn’t something you fit around your life. It is THE life.
Children are not an inconvenience to be managed.
They are the center. And the woman who brings them into the world is treated accordingly.
She is fed, rested, held, and relieved of everything else for 40 days. Not as a luxury but as a given.
In the West, we send her home with a pamphlet.
We celebrate her for bouncing back.
We schedule her follow-up for the baby and give her a 10-minute slot at 6 weeks.
We built an entire culture around snapping back to normal as fast as possible, as if what just happened to her body and her life was a minor interruption.
Maybe how a society treats a woman in the 40 days after birth tells you everything about what that society actually values.
Not what it says it values.
What it proves it does.
We don’t have to wait for the system to catch up.
We can start by showing up for each other the way these cultures never stopped doing. 🌷💌"
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