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

I’ve got something to share with you... As the sunlight grows, so does the little soul inside of me.This is so tender for me to share with you. I feel the fragility of life itself at all times right now. I feel the potential for life and death in every cell. I am intimately living inside of myself and so vulnerable when I am out in the world.I'm pregnant.And with hope in our hearts, our little one will be joining us by summer's end.It's been a deep and dark winter as my body has adjusted to creating life. First trimester nausea, exhaustion, and headaches have been brutal. We've been walking the edge between fear and excitement for months now. But as the sunlight warms our side of the hill, I feel myself rising above the soil with hope in my heart and joy in my body.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/something-big/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/

Anxiety is something that feels so pervasive and yet still carries so much stigma. In this technology-obsessed age of loneliness, it seems as if everyone is experiencing anxiety—at least a little bit—but still feels so alone in the struggle. Anxiety can bring about a lot of shame and prevent us from feeling a true, deep sense of belonging—particularly within community.So in this episode of Belonging, I've got Kelsey Mech, a counselor and therapist in Victoria, British Columbia, joining me to speak about anxiety. So together, Kelsey and I are normalizing anxiety, talking about exactly what is going on in the brain when we're experiencing anxiety, and talking about ways to navigate anxiety so that it's not what's running the show.Find show notes for this episode here: https://beccapiastrelli.com/kelsey-mech/Follow Kelsey on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/kelseymechFollow 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/

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/