Belonging: Conversations about rites of passage, meaningful community, and seasonal living

If you're here, listening to this podcast, part of you probably really wants to re-village or come back into community with each other. Part of circling in community is finding intergenerational spaces and that includes making space for our teens.So I invited Eliza Reynolds on the show. Eliza is the founder of Badass Girls, is a bestselling author, speaker, workshop facilitator, and professional mentor for pre-teen and teen girls. In this episode, we talk about pushing beyond the stereotypes of teenage girls, inner teen work vs. inner child work, the teenage years as an initiation, periods and body changes, intergenerational disconnect and the need for mentorship + community (because yes, teens need adults!), and sexuality and pleasure for teens and our collective trauma from learning about sex.Whether you are the parent of a teen, have an important teen in your life, or are feeling the need to send some love to your own inner teen, this episode is a powerful reminder of our alchemical transformation.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/eliza-reynolds/Follow Eliza on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eliza.feelings/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/My book Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self is now available wherever books are sold! My intention with this book is for it to be your guide to reconnecting with the earth, your ancestors, and your communities as you come home to your whole self. Despite our best efforts, our modern world leaves so many of us feeling isolated, unworthy, and alone. We’re unrooted from the land, untethered from our lineages, disconnected from our communities, and separated from our deepest sense of self. Root & Ritual is meant to be a pathway back to connection and wholeness through rituals, recipes, and ancestral wisdom. Find more information at: http://rootandritualbook.com/

I've been waiting to do an episode on this topic because it's a practice that I engage in every month: yoni steaming.Not long ago, I shared on my Instagram stories my practice of yoni steaming, and I have gotten so many questions since then, so I invited the lovely Kit Murray Maloney who is not only my friend and a Vaginal Steam Practitioner, but she is also the creator of the steam stool that I use (and love!).Together in this episode, we talk about the word "yoni" (and the cultural appropriation in ancient wellness practices), the what/why/how of vaginal steaming, the dark history of gynecology, the contraindications for steaming, and Kit generously offers so much information on what to look for and how to get started with this body/spirit healing practice.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/kit-murray-maloney/Follow Kit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bykitara/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/My book Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self is now available wherever books are sold! My intention with this book is for it to be your guide to reconnecting with the earth, your ancestors, and your communities as you come home to your whole self. Despite our best efforts, our modern world leaves so many of us feeling isolated, unworthy, and alone. We’re unrooted from the land, untethered from our lineages, disconnected from our communities, and separated from our deepest sense of self. Root & Ritual is meant to be a pathway back to connection and wholeness through rituals, recipes, and ancestral wisdom. Find more information at: http://rootandritualbook.com/

I've been longing to have a conversation about food and body and fatness and fat-phobia and healthism, and I'm so excited to introduce my guest to you today. Hilary Kinavey is a professional counselor, facilitator, educator, speaker, writer, and activist working to bring more awareness to eight-inclusive approaches, weight bias, body trust, and the intersections of activism and therapy. She is also the co-founder of BeNourished and The Body Trust Approach.In this episode, we talk about how our bodies are meant to change throughout our lives, but our culture doesn't prepare us for that, that health and fitness don't have a look because health is a construct created by the culture. We talk about the intersection of health and race, the problem with the BMI scale, and needing to take the time to examine in ourselves where we hold attractive bias.Then we get into the connection between hunger and desire and pleasure, how dieting and shaming for body size disconnects us from our ability to tap into that hunger/desire, and then what we envision for a future body-inclusive worldFind show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/hilary-kinavey/Follow Hilary on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benourishedpdx/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/My book Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self is now available wherever books are sold! My intention with this book is for it to be your guide to reconnecting with the earth, your ancestors, and your communities as you come home to your whole self. Despite our best efforts, our modern world leaves so many of us feeling isolated, unworthy, and alone. We’re unrooted from the land, untethered from our lineages, disconnected from our communities, and separated from our deepest sense of self. Root & Ritual is meant to be a pathway back to connection and wholeness through rituals, recipes, and ancestral wisdom. Find more information at: http://rootandritualbook.com/

The amazing Ariella Daly, aka Beekeeping in Skirts, joins me for this first episode of 2020. Ariella is a beekeeper, which isn't a title that fully encompasses all of her work—she works with the bees in a seer and healership capacity with embodied womb-centric practices.So in this conversation, we talk about the esoteric realm of the bees with ancient way of the Melissae (the oracular bee priestesses of ancient Greece), how Ariella views getting stung by a bee, what we can learn from the bees especially when dealing with the heartbreak of living in a time of ecocide, reclaiming the feminine and ecstatic experience, and how the serpent relates to the bees.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/ariella-daly/Follow Ariella on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beekeepinginskirts/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/My book Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self is now available wherever books are sold! My intention with this book is for it to be your guide to reconnecting with the earth, your ancestors, and your communities as you come home to your whole self. Despite our best efforts, our modern world leaves so many of us feeling isolated, unworthy, and alone. We’re unrooted from the land, untethered from our lineages, disconnected from our communities, and separated from our deepest sense of self. Root & Ritual is meant to be a pathway back to connection and wholeness through rituals, recipes, and ancestral wisdom. Find more information at: http://rootandritualbook.com/

This is a special bonus audio for my Belonging podcast feed because I was interviewed about the Omen Days for my friend and team member, Caitlin Brehm's podcast Roots of Lore. The bulk of my interview will be in her January 1st Roost of Lore episode, but because the Omen Days start today (December 26th), we thought it would be fun to share my portion of the episode here today.Roots of Lore is a podcast that explores the roots of fairy tales and folklore and this season is all about the folklore of winter and why this is such a special, sacred time of year.Check it out by searching "Roots of Lore" wherever you listen to podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/roots-of-lore/id1444339621Follow Caitlin and Roots of Lore:https://www.instagram.com/rootsoflore/https://www.instagram.com/caitlinbrehm/http://rootsoflore.com/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/Credit for the phrase "be a good ancestor" goes to Arianna of https://www.quwutsunmade.com/

I chose this time of year — the winter, waning time of year — to talk about something that I have experienced a lot of in my life: burnout. When we go against the energies of the season, especially in this productivity-focused culture, we experience a lot of burnout — and some of us don't even realize that's what we're experiencing or we resist identifying with being burnt out because burnout has been equated with failure.So today I'm sharing some thoughts on burnout and I'm bringing in a couple other voices to share their stories. We're talking about the symptoms of burnout, the causes of burnout, and some of the ways that you can begin to heal yourself from burnout.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/burnout/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/Credit for the phrase "be a good ancestor" goes to Arianna of https://www.quwutsunmade.com/My book Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self is now available wherever books are sold! My intention with this book is for it to be your guide to reconnecting with the earth, your ancestors, and your communities as you come home to your whole self. Despite our best efforts, our modern world leaves so many of us feeling isolated, unworthy, and alone. We’re unrooted from the land, untethered from our lineages, disconnected from our communities, and separated from our deepest sense of self. Root & Ritual is meant to be a pathway back to connection and wholeness through rituals, recipes, and ancestral wisdom. Find more information at: http://rootandritualbook.com/

I took one of Morena Cardoso's Danza Medicina workshops for embodying the sacred feminine at Spirit Weavers a couple years ago and it was a profound experience in my relationship with my own body. Then, when I found myself circling with Morena for a Samhain gathering this year, I had to pull her aside to interview her for the Belonging podcast.This conversation goes deep. We talk about her embodiment work with Danza Medicina, working with the feminized experience while breaking down the oppressive nature of gender and the binary, Morena's perspective on what's going on in Brazil and her work in building relationships in reciprocity with some of the indigenous peoples of Brazil, and committing to our own growth and process — especially as people who hold space for other folx in this work.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/morena-cardoso/Follow Morena on Instagram: http://instagram.com/danzamedicina/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/Credit for the phrase "be a good ancestor" goes to Arianna of https://www.quwutsunmade.com/My book Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self is now available wherever books are sold! My intention with this book is for it to be your guide to reconnecting with the earth, your ancestors, and your communities as you come home to your whole self. Despite our best efforts, our modern world leaves so many of us feeling isolated, unworthy, and alone. We’re unrooted from the land, untethered from our lineages, disconnected from our communities, and separated from our deepest sense of self. Root & Ritual is meant to be a pathway back to connection and wholeness through rituals, recipes, and ancestral wisdom. Find more information at: http://rootandritualbook.com/

Natalie Ross of Earth Speak joins me on the Belonging Podcast today. As the title of her podcast suggests, Natalie is intimately in relationship with the earth and is in regular communication with the land through her intuition and the senses that we normally don't pay attention to or place value on in our modern world.So in this conversation, we talk about tapping into those senses, finding messages in the shadow aspects of our society (like reality TV and litter), learning how to ground and calibrate your energy (especially as a Highly Sensitive Person), and wrestling with the mindset that this is all made up.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/natalie-ross/Follow Natalie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthspeak/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/Credit for the phrase "be a good ancestor" goes to Arianna of https://www.quwutsunmade.com/My book Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self is now available wherever books are sold! My intention with this book is for it to be your guide to reconnecting with the earth, your ancestors, and your communities as you come home to your whole self. Despite our best efforts, our modern world leaves so many of us feeling isolated, unworthy, and alone. We’re unrooted from the land, untethered from our lineages, disconnected from our communities, and separated from our deepest sense of self. Root & Ritual is meant to be a pathway back to connection and wholeness through rituals, recipes, and ancestral wisdom. Find more information at: http://rootandritualbook.com/

Rachael Alaia joins me on the Belonging podcast for a potent and important conversation about facing an uncertain future in the midst of eco collapse, ecocide, and the grief and anxiety that comes with it. Many of us across the globe are experiencing more extreme weather and natural disasters (the fires here in California being just one example), and Rachael helps folx engage in body awareness, ecological sentience, and personal inquiry for personal planetary healing.Together we talk about the physiological response to trauma as a result of ecogrief, finding community to co-regulate and creating a plan for environmental disaster, how to feel safe coexisting with others despite trauma, examining our reality through Systems Thinking, and honoring enjoyment and pleasure in the midst of grief work.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/rachael-alaia/Follow Rachael on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachael.alaia/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/Credit for the phrase "be a good ancestor" goes to Arianna of https://www.quwutsunmade.com/My book Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self is now available wherever books are sold! My intention with this book is for it to be your guide to reconnecting with the earth, your ancestors, and your communities as you come home to your whole self. Despite our best efforts, our modern world leaves so many of us feeling isolated, unworthy, and alone. We’re unrooted from the land, untethered from our lineages, disconnected from our communities, and separated from our deepest sense of self. Root & Ritual is meant to be a pathway back to connection and wholeness through rituals, recipes, and ancestral wisdom. Find more information at: http://rootandritualbook.com/

We're here in the witchy time of year—of thin veils, of the Great Hunt, Season of the Witch, and of the beginning of the darkening times here in the northern hemisphere. So in this episode of Belonging, I'm talking about Samhain and what this time of year meant for the ancestors.I'm digging into what it means to embrace the dark side of the year, I'm sharing some folkloric origins of Jack-o'-lanterns, trick or treating, and ancestral offerings, Samhain as the new year in Gaelic traditions, and the preparation this time offers us for the winter ahead.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/samhain-wild-hunt/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/Credit for the phrase "be a good ancestor" goes to Arianna of https://www.quwutsunmade.com/My book Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self is now available wherever books are sold! My intention with this book is for it to be your guide to reconnecting with the earth, your ancestors, and your communities as you come home to your whole self. Despite our best efforts, our modern world leaves so many of us feeling isolated, unworthy, and alone. We’re unrooted from the land, untethered from our lineages, disconnected from our communities, and separated from our deepest sense of self. Root & Ritual is meant to be a pathway back to connection and wholeness through rituals, recipes, and ancestral wisdom. Find more information at: http://rootandritualbook.com/