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

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/

We're continuing our very special, two-part conversation for you today coming to you from inside the Hearthfire community.Hearthfire is my virtual healing and support space for us to devote ourselves to this work of creating a life for ourselves that truly nourishes us. We seek to create lives that are in deeper integrity, that have us being better ancestors, that have us healing the wounds from living in systems of oppression that have us holding ourselves back in a time where our voices and our actions and our hearts are deeply needed.This episode is the second part of a recording of one of our regular calls in Hearthfire where we might practice the art of witnessing, do rituals, do meditations, learn from guest speakers, or have deep and meaningful conversations like the one you'll hear here.In this second part, you'll hear us talk about learning to belong to yourself particularly when you struggle with anxiety and depression, and in fact loving your depression, the struggle with sharing your depression journey with your community, struggling with sickness when no one knows how to support you (including yourself!), finding connection with the earth when you live in a city and come from a lineage of colonizers, and learning how deep you can really go in community.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 Kelsey Mech on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelseymech/Follow Lindsay McCance on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindsaymccance/Follow Janna Meiring on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jannameiring/Follow Allie Salter on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allie.salt/Follow Alyson Wright on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simplyalyson/Follow Caitlin Brehm on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caitlinbrehm/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

I have a very special, two-part conversation for you today coming to you from inside the Hearthfire community.Hearthfire is my virtual healing and support space for us to devote ourselves to this work of creating a life for ourselves that truly nourishes us. We seek to create lives that are in deeper integrity, that have us being better ancestors, that have us healing the wounds from living in systems of oppression that have us holding ourselves back in a time where our voices and our actions and our hearts are deeply needed.This episode is a recording of one of our regular calls in Hearthfire where we might practice the art of witnessing, do rituals, do meditations, learn from guest speakers, or have deep and meaningful conversations like the one you'll hear here.In this first part, you'll hear us talk about what's been a challenge in each of our journeys with cultivating a deeper sense of belonging in our lives. We talk about navigating friendship, the very real experience of loss and grief (and the subsequent relationship losses that come with it), how to better support one who is grieving, remembering we are never alone, and the loneliness of the mothering journey.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 Kate Youdell on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/books_and_caffeine_7/Follow Azalea Moen on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/azaleamoen/ Thank you also to Justine Hearn for your words.Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

In this tender episode of Belonging, I'm sharing the story of the birth of my daughter, Atlas. To help me piece together all that happened (because parts are already beginning to fade and other parts exist for me outside of time and space), my dear friend and new doula who was with me through the whole process, Nisha Moodley, joined me to guide us through the conversation.Together, we weave the story of what happened over the course of my 48+ hour labor — sharing moments of celebration, moments of grief and fear, and moments that happened outside of my awareness. As I share with Nisha, it's helpful to be witnessed in my own processing of this birth experience. It's something I'll be processing forever and a story I will want to tell again and again.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/birth-story/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 Nisha on Instagram: http://instagram.com/nishamoodley/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

Amber Magnolia Hill is the woman behind Mythic Medicine and the Medicine Stories Podcast for people who year for knowledge about herbalism, deepening ancestral connections, and remembering what it is to be human upon the earth. She helps folks drop the cultural lies, disconnection, and disempowerment, and remember that the old ways are in our bones. I first met Amber at the Spirit Weavers Gathering where she was teaching an herbal body oiling class. Her Medicine Stories Podcast has featured so many conversations that have really shifted my perspectives and given me a deeper understanding of being an ancestral being and a being on this earth.I invited Amber on the Belonging podcast, knowing I would release this conversation while I am in the tender moments of post-partum with my new baby because she has had so much to say about mothering and how mothers are not supported in our society. We talk about the desire to re-village, slowing down in these times and finding our way to a parasympathetic state, ancestral connection in motherhood, expressing and interacting with folks who are grieving, and the Grandmother Hypothesis.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/amber-magnolia-hill/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 Amber on Instagram: http://instagram.com/mythicmedicineFollow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

I've got a much-anticipated conversation to share with you today with Toko-pa Turner, author of the bestselling book Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home which explores the themes of exile and the search for belonging. I named this podcast Belonging before I came across Toko-pa's book, and then once I learned of it and as more and more folks shared her work with me, I felt more of a love and resonance for Toko-pa and I knew I would have her on the podcast someday.Toko-pa is a Canadian author, teacher, and dreamworker. Blending the mystical tradition of Sufism in which she was raised with a Jungian approach to dreamwork, she founded the Dream School in 2001 from which hundreds of students have since graduated. Sometimes called a midwife of the psyche, Toko-pa's work focuses on restoring the feminine, reconciling paradox, and facilitating sacred grief and ritual practice.Together we talk about initiations by exile — specifically as it relations to isolation during COVID-19, false belonging, the wound of isolation when you need community support and cannot get it, intergenerational displacement of belonging, learning to show up for others in a sustained way, the grief of living with a degenerative disease, receiving dreams at an early age and how they parented Toko-pa when she was in the foster system, dreams as living creatures, and using "belong" as an active verb.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/toko-pa-turner/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 Toko-pa on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tokopa/Follow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

I'm so happy to bring you this conversation with my friend and former mentor, Lola Pickett. Through her courses and programs, Lola empowers empaths and sensitive folk to rewire their brains, bodies, and behavior for internal and external resilience — shifting from self-repression to soul-expression. She is the published author of the Wild Messengers Alchemical Tarot and founder of EMPATH*ology™—an emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual resiliency training program. Her offerings blend cutting-edge neuroscience with trauma healing, herbalism, permaculture, ritual, and play to create powerful and lasting results.I invited Lola on the Belonging podcast to talk about resilience — you'll hear in this episode how I'm feeling tender and curious about motherhood and pregnancy. So Lola is sweet to share her perspectives as a mother of two. We also revisit the theme that you may have noticed in this podcast: the power of naming. Lola shares the story of renaming herself and also of her perspective on the responsibility of naming her own children. We talk about approaching resilience with integrity (not muscling through) and learning to trust yourself, how to respond when it all feels like too much, treating resilience like trauma work, the four Fs (flight, fight, fawn, freeze), and dealing with social media addiction.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/lola-pickett/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 Lola on Instagram: https://instagram.com/moonandmanifestFollow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/

Joining me in this episode of the Belonging podcast is Mara Glatzel, an intuitive coach, writer, and podcast host who helps perfectionists and people pleasers reclaim their sovereignty. Her superpower is saying what you need to hear when you need to hear it, and she is here to help you believe in yourself as much as she believes in you.I invited Mara on the Belonging podcast to talk about a topic we really bond over, which is overcoming the patterns and behaviors of overworking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and instead claiming our needs in a really deep and radical way. There's something about the way Mara talks about it that is just so refreshing. So together we talk about self-care as a function of privilege and how we see neediness and having needs as something that is "cringe-worthy" when really we all have needs and it's not neediness itself that is the problem, but your belief about your needs that is the problem. We also talk about expanding needs beyond physical needs, how needs and belonging intersect, the difference between needs and wants, lineages of needs that went unmet, asking ourselves "who am I doing this for?", navigating needs with a partner and children, seeking validation through striving, and the grief in our limits of our capacity to do.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/mara-glatzel/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 Mara on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maraglatzelFollow Becca on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beccapiastrelli/