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

MaryBeth Bonfiglio joins me on this episode of the Belonging podcast to talk about the many commonalities we have in our ancestral connection work and lives. MaryBeth is a writer and a practitioner of ancestral folk magic of her ancestors (from Sicily and mainland Italy). She is deeply devoted to knowing and understanding her roots and learning their ancient and not-so-ancient ways of being together, and with the land. She also gathers people on her ancestral land of Sicily to anchor in the earth, village practices, food stories, ancestral arts, dance, music, and celebration—all within community.Together we talk about feeling (un)belonging where you live and finding a sense of home, how to live in apology and do the repair work when it's hard to stay on colonized land, connecting to ancestral lands as a relational experience, and coming back to the "why" of ancestral connection.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/marybeth-bonfiglio/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/Follow MaryBeth on Instagram: http://instagram.com/marybethbonfiglioFollow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

This episode really feels like I'm inviting you into my home and into a relationship that has been really vital and nourishing to me and that is with Bethany Gurrola of Alma Rising.Bethany is my post-partum doula, but as we talk about in this episode, the relationship and support system we're building is really so much more than that. It's built on a real sense of reciprocity. So in this ongoing exploration of what it means to be in deep community, grieving the loss of the village, and navigating a way back to re-villaging, Bethany and I realized that something about what's happening between us feels like we're on the right track.So together we talk about the nature of this relationship and the importance of doula support for everyone in a variety of important life moments. We talk about boundaries and self-care in doula work, reciprocity of energy within Capitalism, how doula care ripples outward into your community, the difference between nannies and doulas, dreaming forward better medical support — for queer, nonbinary, trans, Black, and Indigenous folks and families, and teen moms, and working with the youth to set change in motion and foster emotional intelligence from a formative age.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/bethany-gurrola/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/Follow Bethany on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alma_rising_doulacare/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

This conversation is another tender one for me. I find as I'm navigating these initial months of motherhood (and in the absence of being able to have lots of community come over to my house), I'm having the essential conversations here on the podcast.The wonderful Jessie Harrold joins me in this episode to talk about major life transitions and the skills we need to traverse change. Jessie is a coach, women's mentor, and doula who has been supporting women through radical life transformations and other rites of passage for over a decade. She works one-on-one with women and mothers, facilitates mentorship programs, women’s circles and rituals, and hosts retreats and wilderness quests.Together we talk about "arriving" at motherhood as an identity, how major life transitions (like motherhood and loss of a family member) make painfully clear that we as a society don't know how to show up for each other, the skills we need to learn as a society to traverse change better, learning how to ask for community care and learning how to extend care without being asked, the tension that can arise in asking for and navigating community care, nonlinear reciprocity, practices around major life transitions, and the invitation to create new culture.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/jessie-harrold/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/Follow Jessie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessie.es.harrold/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

Today on the Belonging podcast, I am joined by Rachelle Garcia Seliga. Rachelle is a Mother, Wife, and Midwife who has spent the past 18 years working with women and families, in service to woman-centered/ family-centered birth, health, and Life. She is deeply invested in the revitalization of community living as the most important medicine of our times. All of her work is dedicated to midwifing a cultural shift — honoring our innate wisdom, personal authority, and the sanctity of Life.This conversation with Rachelle was one I deeply needed to have in one of the hardest weeks of my postpartum journey. Her words really land deeply with me, and I truly don't think you need to have given birth or have a child to feel the depth and the urgency of this conversation. Together we talk about defining midwifery as the original tenders to community care, the unavoidable grief at the repair work we as a global community must do to tend to birthing folk and re-village, returning to our biology to break the cycle of dis-ease, pathology treatment vs. care-taking, the importance of the exo-gestation period (aka postpartum), how to begin the process of re-villaging and creating a regenerative future, and honoring the mother.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/rachelle-garcia-seliga/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/Follow Rachelle on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/innatetraditions/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

I get so many questions about working with the moon, so I could think of no one better than the Moon Witch herself, Sarah Faith Gottesdiener, to join me on the Belonging podcast and talk about moon work.Sarah is a queer artist, teacher, business owner, and psychic tarot reader. She has written, edited, and distributed 10 books about the moon (you many know them as the Many Moons workbooks). Her most recent and comprehensive book, The Moon Book: Lunar Magic to Change Your Life, came out in December 2020.Together in this episode, we talk about being in a dark moon time (I usually call this a winter time) and the cauldron of profound transformation where you need to be okay with not knowing what comes next. We also talk about disentangling your creations from systems of oppression, moon work as energy work, becoming stewards of our energy, the moon as a reflector vs. the moon as a projector, the sacredness of grief, and resisting scarcity mindset — all with the foundation and guidance of the moon.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/sarah-gottesdiener/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/Follow Sarah on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gottesss/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

In my first interview back after having my babe, it feels so fitting to be talking to the delightful Nic Strack as I begin to navigate the parent path.Nic (pronouns they/them) is a Whole Human Parenting Coach, supporting parents to honor and embrace the fullness of their own & their child’s humanity. In working with Nic, folks have opportunities to cultivate self-awareness in order to live and parent in alignment with their integrity.Nic got me thinking about parenting and re-parenting, and I'm finding there's such a deeper piece in their work — in reflection of self and the way we operate and lead ourselves in the world that is a reflection on the way we were parented and the way we want to show up for each other in the world (whether that's for our children or otherwise).In this episode, we talk about how parenting relates to self-parenting and harboring resentment of how you were or were not raised — and then how to find compassion through all of that. We talk about seeing something as a problem that needs to be fixed vs. something to be with, and then getting precise about what you're actually experiencing when faced with discomfort. And we also talk about navigating the gender binary for your children and checking yourself when you're projecting in your parenting.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/nic-strack/ 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/Follow Nic on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicstrack/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

I'm back for the first episode of 2021 and my first solo episode after giving birth to my baby, Atlas. I'm in this place where all the rituals I held before having a baby feel a little foreign in my system. In this episode, I'm sharing a who I am becoming now, how I'm navigating this major life transition, and how I'm re-ritualizing my life in what really feels like the beginning of a second lifetime.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/re-ritualizing-life/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/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

Yaya Erin Rivera Merriman is a Plant Spirit Medicine Practitioner specializing in sacred plant medicines for communication and relationship. Believing strongly in the necessity of hybrid medicine to meet the unique challenges of modern life, Yaya is engaged in the continued study of Plant Medicine, Active Dreaming, and Goddess Traditions from around the world as gateways into the richness of direct personal experience of uncurated reality. A Devotee, Artist, and Mother of primarily Taino and Irish descent, Yaya offers multi-dimensional, plant medicine assisted, sex-positive prayer spaces, and healing experiences designed to help you integrate all that you have encountered on your soul's journey and come to live from a place of deep understanding of the way that each of your life experiences has contributed to the uniqueness and potency of your personal spirit medicine.In this episode, Yaya shares her experience of being of mixed descent and the braided blood of the Taino indigenous people. She shares how she's developed a relationship with the land she lives on and how she very much sees being in relationship with the land like being in a romantic relationship. We talk about the cyclical wheel of the year to foster reconnection to nature and how linear time is a tool that can facilitate a certain way of being, but that doesn't necessarily need to be adhered to. And finally, we talk about plant allies for a time of racial uprising and healing from white supremacy and how Yaya has found the medicine of kava to enable her to feel herself in a time when we lose ourselves.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/yaya-erin-rivera-merriman/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/Follow Yaya on Instagram: http://instagram.com/activeculturefamilyFollow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

For this vast, wide, deep, multi-layered topic of Belonging I've got a powerful conversation to share that I had with Madison Morrigan. Madison is a life coach and speaker whose work is centered on self-responsibility and full expression. She coaches ambitious and creative womxn to shed layers of old programming that are keeping them small so they can finally come home to their true selves. Madison is also someone who has left the evangelical church, grew up in a household of narcissistic abuse, and has recently come out as queer, so she's been doing a lot of personal work in the realm of belonging, unbelonging, and false belonging.Together we talk about belonging as sovereignty, Madison shares her story of leaving the evangelical church, growing up with an alcoholic father who went to prison and became born again, how she joined a radical church and spent 5 years questioning the abuse in that space before leaving and processing that trauma, and then how she found her own wholeness after leaving the church. Madison sweetly shares that in the last two years she's discovered that she's queer and fell in love with a woman. We talk about the behavior of defaulting to rigid belief systems when you aren't willing to heal and the either/or response to uncertainty stemming from traumatic events over generations. Finally, we discuss whether or not there can be beneficial uses of shame and breaking down narcissistic abuse in our culture.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/madison-morrigan/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/Follow Madison on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madisonmorriganFollow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

Luna Grace Isbell-Love is someone who has been in my orbit for a while. You'll hear at the beginning of the interview that I invited her on the Belonging Podcast and she said, "Yes! I've been waiting for this." Luna is a truth-telling, shadow-walking, trauma-informed, nervous system exploring woman of devotion. Her work lies at the intersection of exploring what it means to be both human and holy, welcoming the full spectrum of life: the agony, the ecstasy, and everything in between. Luna is devoted to social justice advocacy, working primarily with the addiction recovery and incarcerated communities, through the integration of council work, spiritual psychology principles, and restorative justice practices.In this episode, Luna shares how she uses tea ceremony as ritual for beginning each day, we talk about how we all have the same mother tongue of earthspeak, and Luna reframes belonging as "longing to be" as a way of asking ourselves what we long for in order to remember that we belong. Luna shares her connection to her ancestors and growing up in a multi-generational Sicilian Brooklyn household and how we can connect to the ancestors through food. We talk about stopping the war inside of ourselves to stop the harm of whiteness, how grief and death are tools for allyship and resilience, and how busy hands calm the mind.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/luna-grace-isbell-love/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/Follow Luna on Instagram: https://instagram.com/lunagraceisbellloveFollow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/