EP142: When the system sends you home and calls It care — with Guest Atara Parkinson

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There is a moment that Atara Parkinson describes in this episode that will stop you in your tracks.

She has just given birth after 32 hours of labour. Third degree tears. A baby in the NICU. And a security guard who tells her — as her husband attempts to wheel her out of the hospital — that she cannot take the wheelchair. It can't leave hospital grounds. Figure it out.

That moment, she says, became the image that defined her entire career. Because once the baby is out, it is as though the mother disappears.

Atara is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with 14 years in the mental health field, a certified integrative practitioner, and a mother of four — three of whom were NICU babies. Her work sits at the intersection of holistic healing, nervous system regulation, minerals and brain health, and postpartum support. She is also one of the most articulate voices I have encountered on what is actually happening inside the body when a woman cannot seem to move through her grief — and why.

This conversation goes somewhere most conversations don't. We talk about the biochemistry of getting stuck. About what happens at a cellular level when trauma enters the body and the nervous system decides it is not yet safe to let the guard down. About why the calcium spikes. Why the magnesium can't get in. Why your body is not failing you — it is protecting you. And what it actually takes to move through that, not just talk about it.

We also talk about the gap between what the medical system offers and what women actually need. About why talk therapy, as valuable as it is, is only ever engaging one part of the brain. And about why the body is sending 80% of the signals in this conversation — not the brain.

If you have ever felt stuck in your grief and wondered why — this episode is for you.

In this episode we cover:

Atara's own story — three NICU babies, a gap in postpartum care, and the moment that shaped her life's work