We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Talia Molé, PhD. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Talia below.
Talia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
My path as a writer and developmental editor was forged by weaving both lived experiences and rigorous academic training. I specifically chose to focus my studies on the Humanities because they offered the space to be in conversation with the human condition. As an artist and activist anthropologist, curiosity is one of my greatest compasses. By constantly setting new horizons, I get to be in exploration mode every day. This emergent thinking is essential and offers me the opportunity to engage with my craft in a more expansive and compassionate manner. I move “with” my projects and acquiesce to their inherent timing as opposed to me forcing their development.
Talia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
As an artist, activist anthropologist and word doula, I focus my time on creating what I term “motherhood spaces” aimed at holding collaborative explorations around birthing liberatory worlds. My framework, Motherhood Phoenixing™, works with the language of matriarchies and queer mother/motherhood/mothering to alleviate labor pains inherent in the process of unlearning oppressive systems. It encourages a learning, leaning, and (re)membering centered around liberation, healing, and reconnecting humanity’s interconnectedness to each other and the Earth. I set my horizon at ushering a paradigm shift dedicated to midwifing sustainable, thriving, just and joyful futures. My forthcoming book “Motherhood Phoenixing: Queer REBELations” is the culmination of a decades long collaborative journey aimed at centering motherhood as a social practice.
As a developmental editor and creative consultant, I support and mentor practitioners across artistic disciplines who are struggling with creative blocks. By using my framework to create a collaborative space, I guide my clients through a series of explorative sessions that are focused on their specific needs and desired outcomes. Our time together is designed to help them stay connected and committed to their creative process. I strive to help clients overcome their creative difficulties so that they may arrive at transformative breakthroughs inspired, energized and full of joy and hope.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I love this word “unlearn” because that’s exactly the journey I am on—one of unlearning and learning. As a person of color, who sits at various intersections, I am in the process of unlearning decades of patriarchal narratives set to erase my story/voice. In its place, I am learning ways of knowing and being that better serve my lived experiences and those of the communities I am in conversation with. I am reclaiming my agency.
In thinking through this question, I return to a striking memory of a young Talia having recently arrived in the US. I barely spoke English and was therefore bullied for having an accent. To alleviate this pain, various well-meaning adults chiseled my mother tongue out of the English I spoke until one day I was fully acculturated. I recall a time when I almost stopped speaking Spanish all together. Thankfully, my lifelong curiosity for languages led me to recuperate the sounds I thought were lost and from that moment on I vowed to recover an important piece of myself. That journey led me to my life’s work of using my craft to challenge oppressive language—of liberating it from binary strongholds—allowing full accessibility to its emerging potential.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is that I get to bring to life creations that start in my dreams and daydreams. Can you imagine the power in that? I am constantly birthing ideas into being. Some come alive, some don’t, and that’s ok. What is important to me is knowing that I am a regenerative hearth for art—in all its messy beauty, grace and infinite possibility.
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/tmtalia
