Caitlin Erika does not arrive through the expected door. She enters through the places most women have been taught not to look. In this conversation, birth, stripping, sexuality and embodiment are not separate threads but part of the same intelligence moving through the female body. What she reveals is not a performance of empowerment, but a dismantling of it, asking a far more confronting question: what happens when a woman stops managing herself, and starts listening instead.

1. Could you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?

I help women to reclaim the forbidden feminine, all of the parts of themselves that we've been taught to hide, to fear, to distrust. And the way that I came into that is because after training as a birth doula, I had this unyielding intuitive call, call it the voice of intuition or spirit or delusion. I don't know.

But it told me to become a stripper and that the women there had access to something that I didn't yet and that they were to be my next teachers.

2. How did you grow up?

I say that I was riddled with shame and that's true, but not in an obvious way, not in a way that I was even aware of it. You know, it's like when you go on this inward journey, you start like waking up to these pieces.

So I had a very, I had like a beautiful childhood growing up. I'm the youngest of six. I grew up going to church every Sunday, like it's very loving.

3. What led you initially into birth work?

I remember the first time I ever went into a birthing room in the hospital and like in the birth centre and I was like walking down the halls and I just, I knew that I was in a place where miracles happen and I could feel this reverence.

It's interesting actually, because growing up in the church, it's like the thing that the church taught me was reverence. And I feel that sense of reverence when I'm in a birthing room.

4. What shifted you out of doula work and onto the next path?

So I got tipped off by my spiritual teacher. She said, I'd only just trained. I'd only just finished my training. And she said, I don't think you're going to start taking on birthing clients straight away. There's more that life wants to teach you that no doula school is teaching.

And the path is going to be seemingly unrelated. You might get a job at a fruit shop or something thinking, what am I doing here? I've just trained as a birth doula. Please, please, please, please, please, would you trust the path because I promise you wherever life leads you next will absolutely be connected to birth work.

5. What happened when the call to go to a strip club came through?

Fast forward to two or three weeks later, this voice dropped in and told me to go to a strip club. And I laughed it off at first. I was like, yeah, okay guys, sure, good one. It came back and it said, no, no, really, the women there have access to something and they're to be your next teachers.

6. What did you see when you watched the women dance?

So I went into the strip club and I watched these women dance and I was like, I would want to see you give birth. Like in my head, I didn't tell any of them, I don't think, but I was watching these embodied women that had a connection to their body that knew how to follow the pulse of aliveness.

And I thought they're gonna birth in a different way but on top of that they're also living a different path that's going wildly against the grain.

7. What did stripping teach you about changing the face of birth?

When I started stripping, I was like, oh, oh, if I really want to change the face of birth, I got to get to women way, way earlier before they're even thinking of having their babies.

If I can help women release shame, come home to their body, trust their body, trust their intuition, like choose themselves over and over again, have that like deep anchoring of who they are and have their own back and love themselves and have, the confidence to command, you know, their or assert their boundaries or ask for what they need or, you know, like just all of these different threads and filaments.

8. How do you live your life differently the more you understand birth?

Once I connected these dots, I realised birth is erotic and so is life. Like life is erotic. Everything. Like my teacher said, if it's of the physical world, it's sexual energy.

Like sexual energy is the energy of everything that allows us to move through life. And I like that. It's like, well, we're always having sex even if you're taking out the trash. So we might as well be having good sex.

9. What does embodiment mean to you?

This concept of like embodiment means really living from the body and coming home to the body and like making it a home.

So that there is no part of you that you're in denial of, that you're ashamed of, that you deem unworthy. You know, it's this union, this inner union.

10. What does living an erotic life mean?

The more that we come home to our bodies and we accept that we are erotic beings, it's in the way you make your tea, it's in the way you eat your food, it's in the way you turn on that water in the morning when you have your shower, it's in the way that you like massage your moisturiser into your face.

When people talk about like wanting to live a life that's turned on and frame it as sexual, it's like turned on just means like the lights are on, like you're awake. Turned on means you got to feel the icky stuff. Turned on means you feel the triggers. Turned on means you feel the discomfort. Turned on means you don't run away from any of it because you can't just pick and choose.