Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage with Becca Piastrelli

01/30/23 • 67 min

It’s an honor to have Becca Piastrelli back on Rising Women Leaders. It’s been a few years (and a lot of transformation) since our last conversation (episode 10!). We’ve both transitioned from maiden to mother, and our lives and businesses have transformed along with us. In this conversation we share the real, the raw, and the beautiful of being initiated into mothers: Becca shares of her journey of the last 2.5 years after birthing her daughter, her journey with delayed postpartum depression (and rage) at 18 months, how she has done her best to recreate the village we all long for, what it looks like to untangle from patriarchy and letting go the need to always do more, and how we can honor and ritualize the powerful rite of passage of shifting from maiden to mother.

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Becca Piastrelli is the author of Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community & the Self and is the host of the Belonging podcast. She teaches and speaks on the nature of belonging and runs retreats to help women reconnect with their rooted sense of self. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area (soon to be Hudson Valley, NY) with her husband, child, two cats, and five chickens, where she gardens, cooks, mothers, and gathers with the ebb and flow of the seasons.

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Previous Episode

Reigniting a Passion for Life with Renee Linnell

Enrollment is now open for the Way of the Priestess Training Program with Meredith Rom. Download the program guide at risingwomenleaders.com and book a call to learn more.

It’s an honor to have Renee Linnell back on Rising Women Leaders!

In Renee’s latest book, Still on Fire, she shares stories of magic, miracles, travel and romance... from traveling over 50 countries, love affairs with men half her age, being rescued by angels, getting stranded at 22,000 feet in the Himalayas, Renee takes us on a wild adventure in her book, sharing soul-soothing wisdom she gained along the way.

Where her first book, The Burn Zone was an exploration of what happens when we don't listen to our Inner Guidance, Still on Fire is an exposition of what happens when we do.

May this conversation support you to remember who you truly are and reignite a passion for being alive on Earth at this time.

“Freedom, I have discovered, is letting go and jumping into the stream of life. Being willing to be uncomfortable and trusting that divine choreography will always lead us to the next right unfolding. It is looking for the good in everything we gaze upon or stumble upon... finding the miracles in each moment instead of the grievances.”

In this episode we discussed:

How Renee shifted her mindset from victim to warrior
What is soul sickness? and how to realign with your soul’s truth
How to survive as a sensitive being on this planet
Renee’s wild and powerful stories of magic, travel, romance and miracles
Why we need to shine our light and how to navigate losing people in our life who can’t resonate at the same frequency
How to let go of people pleasing and caring so much of what others think of us
What finding our power really means
Listening to our intuition - and tips to realign with love and freedom when fear or self-doubt appears

Links in this episode:

Renee’s previous Rising Women Leaders episode 068: Your Difference is Your Destiny
Buy the book: Still on Fire or The Burn Zone

Stay in Touch with Renee:

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Renee Linnell is a serial entrepreneur who has founded or cofounded five companies and has an MBA from New York University; before that she was a model and professional dancer. Having an unorthodox childhood and being surrounded by death at a young age led her on a spiritual quest that took her all over the world, culminating in her ordination as a Buddhist monk (by a bi-polar guru with delusions of grandeur so she’s not 100% sure the ordination counts.) What began as writing for catharsis in 2013—as she struggled to regain her sanity after being brainwashed in a Buddhist cult—turned into her first memoir, The Burn Zone: A Memoir (She Writes Press, 2018). Still on Fire is the sequel. Her mission is to remind people Who They Truly Are and to reignite their passion for being alive. For more information, please visit https://reneelinnell.com

Next Episode

Creating a Nourished Postpartum with Kerry Ingram

This Fall I participated in a weekly new parent-baby group in Sebastopol, CA with Kerry Ingram. I met Kerry years ago when she found one of my self-care guide downloads and invited me to be a wise woman to visit her mom and baby groups. I remember thinking I would love to join something like that to meet other mothers and babies if I ever had a child one day... and about six years later it happened!

Kerry has been supporting new mothers, babies and families for the past decade in CA and now is sharing her curriculum to create a ripple effect of sharing more of these nourishing postpartum groups around the world.

Care for the next generation really does start with the mother, and the more we can surround families with support in early postpartum the easier it will be to interrupt harmful narratives and create networks of love, care and support when we need it most.

In this episode we discussed:

Kerry’s experience postpartum: the surprises, challenges and ways she found the support she needed
How community support impacts early parenting and is culture-making by creating space to see and interrupt harmful narratives
How to be a village tender and step into leadership for new parents in your community
The “Early Parenting Villains” and how these systems, for example, ‘consumerism’ ‘diet culture’ or ‘patriarchy’ come up so often in new motherhood, how to identify them and ways to shift our relationship with them
Self-care in postpartum, asking for help and building community

Links in this episode:

Kerry’s Course: Village Tenders Postpartum Community Care Course

Stay in Touch with Kerry:

IG: @villagetenders
FB: Community Supported Postpartum

Stay in Touch with Rising Women Leaders:

Kerry Ingram is the founder of Community Supported Postpartum whose mission is to build ecosystems of care one community at a time. She contributes to this vision by teaching folks all over the world how to step into the role of Village Tender by creating local parent and baby groups that get parents out of isolation and into a web of support and care.

Kerry is a parent (both biological and foster), an early childhood educator (20 years), a postpartum doula, with additional education in women and gender studies (SUNY Oswego), and maternal mental health care (PSI). She has been facilitating local parent and baby groups for over 10 years and teaches others around the world to step into leadership with her Village Tenders Postpartum Community Care course, curriculum and business framework.