019 – Eliza Reynolds: The Threshold of Mothering

[0:00] Music.

[0:08] I’m Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories, about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves.
The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life-saving tools.

[0:27] Music.

[0:39] Hello, hello, hello. It has been six months since I first recorded this with Eliza Reynolds.
At this point, she was eight and a half months pregnant and she was so generous to give us her time as she was just about to kind of close the gates on doing any outside things and really cocooning in for this last part of pregnancy and then moving into postpartum period.
So this was truly such a special time to talk to her. Eliza Reynolds is so full of wisdom, so full of humor and grace. By the age of 20, she and her mother, Cilla Reynolds, had written a best-selling book on mother and daughtering. They had sold out events all over the country, all over the world. She shares with us her threshold in which she left, this programming that she and her mother were teaching. She left this thing that she was so good at doing, had so much success, sold out every single event that they offered.

[1:48] That she had to have that hard conversation with her mother, that she had to leave it because she said it didn’t feel like bravery.
It felt like she had to because the relief of being in alignment with herself was greater than the terror of leaving everything that was safe, greater than the terror of not knowing the fact that she didn’t even know.
She didn’t know exactly what was on the other side, what she would build, what she would become, but she knew that this timeline for this particular thing that she was doing was over. Between that threshold…

[2:29] And the threshold she’s at now of motherhood. She’s created an incredible program called Badass Girls for those identifying as female in the preteen to teen years.

[2:43] It’s incredible. I’ll let you hear about it in the podcast. I know that for myself and a few of our mutual friends, we’re always like, oh my God, we wish we had this. We wish we had this, but we’re so happy that it’s there for our girls when they hit this point. We’re so happy that that people are doing the work that you’re doing and thank you for helping us to understand how we can better support those, in the preteen and teen years.
And really like how much it is just like reparenting ourselves in those time.
At the end, I asked her a bit about the way she’s celebrating seasons.
This is actual literal seasons, four seasons, what she’s doing to enhance each season instead of just kind of like rolling from one to the next.
And then we talk about the metaphorical season as she is now moving more into a winter season, into the postpartum season, and the revolutionary things that she is doing.

[3:40] To recognize the importance of her care in the postpartum period.
And she names for us the enormous amount of sacrifice financially and time-wise that she put into nervous system healing so that that could be the foundation, upon which she built Badass Girls, and that could be the foundation which she builds her family so that when it comes to slowing down, it feels safer to do so now.
I’m so excited for you guys to hear from her, for you people to hear from her. It’s such an honor.

[4:19] Music.

[4:28] Today, I am so, so excited to have a dear friend, Eliza Reynolds, here with us today.
Eliza is a best-selling author, a speaker, a professional mentor for preteens and teens.

[4:46] When she was just a teen herself, she and her mother, Syl, co-authored the best-selling book Mothering and Daughtering, keeping her bond strong through the years.
Since then, Eliza has been facilitating sold-out workshops for thousands of mothers and their preteens and teen daughters at Kripalu and other well-established venues.
Eliza now offers online and in-person mentorship programs teaching emotional intelligence, embodiment, body literacy, and more for big-hearted preteens and teen girls at badassgirls.com and is host of the Be Real podcast.
Welcome Eliza. Thanks, Sarah. I’m so honored and delighted to be here.
I was thinking as I was getting ready. I was like, I don’t know if there’s anybody else.
Yes, to be interviewed right now in this season of my life, but.

[5:44] I just feel such tender excitement and delight to get to share this conversation with you and and I also always feel whenever in podcast zone, like also with everybody listening in, I feel like, to be part of a collective conversation.
So hello to folks listening in too, so nice to have you. Thank you.
Thank you so much for naming that, even for me, because the podcast is called Threshold Moments.
And sometimes we look at these moments, you know, once we’re on the other side, and it’s It’s also really beautiful to be with people who…

[6:23] I feel like they have enough coherence while in a transition to be able to name processes so that others who are going through it might feel some accompaniment, like to feel like they’re accompanied. I can say that more clearly. And as you and I have switched Voxers back and forth, and I’ve listened to you, I am just like, I’ve been so in awe of your process.
And I was thinking that I could give a little background of how we met and maybe a few transitions that would lead us to where we’re at now.
Great, please do. Okay, so Eliza and I met a few times through our friend Kate and eventually, Kate Northrup, And eventually we were in a mastermind together and I just told the story yesterday at her baby blessing, which was at the mastermind check-in. We all kind of gave a synopsis of our last year and mine had some pretty tender points in it. I found myself in tears and kind of not expecting to be there or in that place or sharing what I shared. And when we were all complete, everybody went off their separate ways and I just kind of laid myself on the ground and.

[7:52] Overcomes Eliza crawling over and we’ve kind of like just meeting and she just snuggled up with me and it felt so natural and I want to name this explicitly in kind of a geeky way of, the work that we could do if we so chose as adults to rehab our dorsal vagal capacity.
I’m just going to geek just a tiny bit right now to say- Yes, please.
To say that this part of our nervous system is our most ancient part of our nervous system.

[8:30] It’s the part that would either have us freeze and collapse or collapse and connect. And the ability to collapse and connect is similar to a baby who feels safe in her mother’s arms, safe enough that she could breastfeed and digest, to digest while being in connection.
And it seems in my experience that most adults I know that we’ve lost the, I don’t know if we’ve lost the capacity as much as being the exposure to having platonic, consensual, physical connection and holding with one another and.

[9:18] I was just so moved that that was one of our first experiences together was just cuddling up on the floor and to feel so natural, like, Oh yeah, this, this is how it should be. This is how life should be here. So thank you for giving me that pleasure. And, and thank you right back. I remember it deeply. And at that, and this is kind of a little segue for you to at that mastermind, you were at a place where you were beginning a pretty big transition, or you were even… It was just like the consideration, I think, of a pretty big transition. And this is where I want to say, feel free to say, don’t want to talk about this now.
You had such a solid business built that you had been building, I’m going to say since 15.

[10:05] Where all of your workshops were sold out. It was, I would assume, a pretty… Something you could count on for income, your living situation, housing wise was stable enough in that it was there and you could count on it, but that you had an inner knowing, a pull that it was time to make a change.
And so to me, this is like such a beautiful example of a threshold moment of you don’t necessarily know perhaps the next step.
You don’t know what will catch you, but the pull is there and I’ll let you take it from there. If you’re willing to. You can say, no thanks. Yeah, go for it.
I’m thinking back on that threshold, right? So I’m sitting at a different threshold that I’m sure we’ll be talking about, which is I’m like eight and a half months pregnant right now.
Thinking back to that threshold, which, yeah, I want to say I was.

[11:04] I think a little bit about age and for folks who, you know, find astrology relevant, supportive, orienting in their lives. I think I was around Saturn return time. And I say that because there was another member of the mastermind, Jen Racioppo, who’s an astrologer. And I remember the first conversation I ever had, I was working with my mother. We were flying across the country to California for a sold out California tour of workshops with thousands of people. And in the air, that was the first time I said to her, I don’t think I can do this anymore. And when an.

[11:44] Astrologer looked at my chart a few months later, they said that was the first day that the Saturn return hit my chart, like literally that day in the air. Isn’t it wild? I’m sorry, astrology is right? Is that surreal? Yeah, I find it, I find it fascinating, you know, fascinating layer to be with. And can you also name for people who don’t know astrology about the timeline of Saturn return like the about? Yeah, I think it’s somewhere in the 27 to 29 range. It was like late 20s. My logical brain is not holding numbers as well, but it was somewhere in there for me. So I’ve been doing this work for 13, 15 years at this point. And, um, I kind of describe, I’ve had a few other moments like that where I kind of call them like hand of God moments in my life where.

[12:37] I can’t not, right? So someone might describe that as like a brave moment, right? Maybe like, wow, that was so brave. In one conversation, you signaled the end of 15 years of really in-depth work and, something always confused me when somebody would look at a moment like that in my life and be like, oh, that’s brave. Because my experience on the inside was like, it wasn’t brave or not. That was irrelevant. What it was, was true. And it was almost like impossible not to, to continue to live in a moment where I hadn’t spoken that truth was worse than speaking it. It was false and congruous with what my body was feeling more than necessarily my mind. I didn’t have a plan.
It’s pretty freaking terrified, but I felt that that resonance point of truth in my body when I said the words that knowing that I think sometimes comes when you let go of something.
I often think of the shedding that comes before and during special moments and how we’re so often taught that letting go means losing something.
And while grief can come with that and pain can come with that, and I often find we don’t talk about the sweetness of the rightness of letting go sometimes, and speaking the words of truth in the moment where you’re called to, or where I’m called to, often feels like sweet relief, like sweet relief, like joy, like there’s a joy in letting go.

[14:07] I think often when I let go of my brain story of how I thought something would look or be or the rightness of it, I can get a little stuck in the black or white brain space very easily over here.
And so I think sometimes I have to fight my, pummel my brain on the way, like we fight on the way to surrender.
And then that sweet relief of like, oh, thank you. I was honest and that feeling in my body, that kind of softness, melting, yeah, warm rain feeling.
And so that’s one piece. And I’ll never forget being in the air on the way to California for, what, five hours or something.
And that was the space for the container for the conversation.
And the other part is, I’m so glad you named that Mastermind because I think.

[14:51] Right support is one of the biggest tools in thresholds, you know, and I know that I would have not known how to make in any way that passage of that threshold without that mastermind.
You know, I was in a place of deep uncertainty and I think right support, which we could talk about forever, like what is right support, what is availability to actually let in support, what a herculean effort to like the courage to be seen, to be crumbly, to be messy, and to let somebody see you.
And I think it’s one of the hardest, bravest, most beautiful and normal acts, like all of all at the same time.
But yeah. Yeah. No, as you say that, I’m like, Ooh, you’ve said so many things that I’m like, Oh, should I highlight or leave?
Keep going? Because you’re on a roll, which is the first thing that you said that my whole body was just a huge, this pull of a yes to was when you said, I wasn’t thinking about, Ooh, I’m I’m going to make a big change or what my, but it was, it wasn’t courageous.
It wasn’t not courageous. It was just true.
And then again, just highlighting when you said, and when you’re in the truth, there, there can be pain and there can be grief, but there’s also a sweetness to it.
Warm rain, you call that.
And.

[16:16] The next thing I’m just, I know I’m just like taking a highlighter to what you were saying was layers of support. And what I also heard in that was relational. You said to let somebody, watch you crumble and to feel safe, right? Because we could do it in containers that don’t feel safe, but to choose something that’s like, oh, I feel safe enough to crumble here.
And this, I also want to thank you because we’ll talk about this later, but you introduced me to Bridget Bixnin’s and alchemical alignment. And a huge tenant of that is that we come out of, our trauma physiology in the presence of others, in a safe, like in a safe presence of others.
And so it’s a bit of a new idea for me not to just do self-help and journal and do it on my own, which is great, but to actually do my healing in the presence of others.
Is wild. It’s for me, it’s wild. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s for most of us, it’s wild to especially where I think most of us have some form of relational harm in the past, you know, whether we’d call it that or not. Right. And to this, this terrible, exquisite, wonderful paradox of.

[17:32] Of the place where I will heal is with safe people in right timing in doable pieces, right?
Like it’s not an all or nothing. I’m not a big fan of there’s a line, you magically cross it.

[17:48] And everything is perfect and wonderful.
I’m really a fan of, yeah, being in the process. It takes the time it takes, like right timing.
And I was raised by a wonderful mama, obviously we worked together for a long time, and we’re still very close, more so, since we no longer work together, theme of that threshold conversation.
And she is by training, a Jungian trained by Marion Woodman.

[18:16] And so I grew up in a home where, you know, after school, she’d pick me up from middle school and she’d have like a whole back of her station wagon I get to be filled with scales that she’d like confiscated from her clients because she worked in women’s body image and healing from crazy diet culture and she’d be like, you’d stop at the dump so we can toss these in.
Wow. So I’d be like out there like talking about my day, like heave hoeing scales into the dump.
That’s amazing.
And yeah, you can imagine some of the conversations we had. And so I always remember she was the first person to teach me.
Consciously, I think that’s something we know as young beings and then we can remember but to begin to have language around time.
And the difference between Kronos and Kairos time and now Kronos time being chronological time, clock time, am I late, am I on time?
And it serves a purpose, right? Like we ideally will like be at our massage on time.
That sounds good to me, right?
But Kairos time, K-A-I-R-O-S, one of the ways she described it to me that I’m pretty sure her teacher, Marianne, had described to her was that it’s earth-based time. It’s soul time.
It’s the ripening of a fruit.

[19:40] It’s the time you’re with a friend and chronologically it’s five minutes watching a sunset, but it’s like eons. It just expands.

[19:49] Or she’d explain it to me like, you know when you have a play date with your best friend, and you know it’s gonna be three hours, but it just goes like that, it’s just over.
You know what I mean? Because time just right, we can become- Expands, it contracts.
We can expand, contract. It’s all time. Hard to tell.
Yeah. Yeah. And so I think, I often think of thresholds like there’s a ripening, there’s a rightness to it.
There’s an earth-based time. And I think our logical brains, which can be attached to the more the chronological timeline can get frustrated with like, what do you mean, feeling the ripeness, the ripeness of it.
And yet if we can allow ourselves to surrender to the process, it works us.
And there is such a thing as ripeness, even if we’re like, but I wanna be ready now.
I wanna be over with this now, this big change in my life, this initiation, this rite of passage.
Yeah, and so often we don’t get to. It’s ready when it’s ready, right?
And- It would be so lame of me to make an analogy to pregnancy right now.
Yeah. Oh, very appropriate.

[20:52] No, I won’t. Yes. So I kind of cut in and I am glad I did because you just shared all that beauty with us, and you were in the middle of telling us before that there was a knowing, a truth, that it was time for a shift.
Then you were talking about the mastermind.
Is there anything else? And you don’t have to, But is there anything else about that transition or about the creation of Badass Girls that sticks out?

[21:25] Well, yeah, I think the piece I was gonna say was that it was a creation and a threshold really woven in vulnerable sisterhood that I couldn’t have done, I don’t think, in any other way or time.
And there’s something so…

[21:44] Yeah, I guess beautiful is the word that comes to me, but how, in right relationship, in true safety, we don’t give each other power or even necessarily permission, though it can sometimes feel like that.
That it often feels to me more like an act of soul mirroring where we hold up mirrors of unconditional love for each other, right? And so it’s like, if we can be in space together in authentic and genuine and doable ways of safety, we serve as reminders for each other of who we are.
And I think I’m so incredibly grateful for that mastermind time right at the birth of badass girls and for its first few years because it required such incredible devotion and weeps and I had so much terror, so terrified 90% of the time it really feels like the first year I’m just like everything was new there was so much new new new in the threshold and um.

[22:52] To have uh yeah companions and reminders is just the biggest gift and I think, is what genuinely birthed Badass Girls into the world, which is a epic world company creation.
We’ve now supported thousands of girls.

[23:14] Yeah, there’s so much there in that how that sisterhood was then woven into the mentorship, the mentors I’ve trained, the circles I’ve run.
We’ve launched a membership academy in the early COVID days, you know, and as you might imagine working around mental health and wellness and embodiment and body literacy with teens socialized as girls, yeah, COVID season was not a light time for us or for that demographic or anybody really in the world.
So, yeah, it was a few years, no, period.
It was not a light time. It was probably like the most important time, like the time in which girls needed each other.
Yeah, we grew 400% in a year and a half. Wow.
So it was such an incredible honor and I’m so, so grateful to this work and so much of the heart of my work with teens has been reclaiming right relationship as adults with teens in our society and being honored to sit with their hearts and knowing how to be well adults who can do that well, especially if we weren’t given that.
And it can be tricky.
Speaking of healing and relationship. When you spoke of being in a vulnerable sisterhood.
And mirroring. And I’m just thinking what a beautiful thing that you were in vulnerable sisterhood, creating a space for vulnerable sisterhood. You were exemplifying it yourself.

[24:44] Maybe even out of what felt like necessity, and then giving it on to the teens that you worked with. And then there’s another piece of my experience with you, which is intergenerational knowledge and experience.

[25:00] And so a little bit about your program, but also you moving into motherhood in your program, you have, you were speaking to Kate, Sarah, Jenks, and I, when we’re like, Oh, could you run a program about reparenting our teens?
Because everything you’re teaching them, we want to know about.
And you know, we’re also thinking like, if we could learn all this for you from you, then we could be the right fit for our girls.
And you also helped us to know, well, what your girls might also need is somebody in between, right?
That the parents can’t be everything for the children, that there was once a time where there would be cousins and neighbors that were a little bit older and people that would help bridge the gap.
And so in your program, you have mentors who are, my understanding, 18 to 21, something like that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I’m really here for how do we live not just be in theory around intergenerational re-villaging. And yeah, so many of us may have experienced incomplete or kind of harmful versions of that or mentorship. And because I think as teens, we are always, I think it’s actually a pretty primal urge to search for mentors. And I think sometimes it looks like.

[26:28] Whatever you’ve got available, right? Which could be the celebrity poster on your wall.

[26:34] In your teenage bedroom, right? You’re looking for examples in the world of blueprints of how to be, blueprints that are maybe outside of your immediate family or a parent. And often contrasting, You’re exploring your own wholeness, right? And I try and remind parents like, this is a compliment. They feel safe enough with you that they get to be different. This is, exciting. This is beautiful. Resistance is not rejection. They’re very different things.
And so, yeah, it’s really where my work began when I was 15. I saw the difference when I came meant to teach, you know, versus, you know, 40-year-old social worker, it was different. I came in and they looked up and listened.

[27:25] Well, I’m honored to do my work. I don’t think I was saying things that were remarkably different than a lot of their amazing parents or moms, saying, trust yourself, saying your body’s wise, saying, isn’t the menstrual cycle cool? And the parent would get the biggest eye roll they’ve ever forgotten for telling them their menstrual cycle was cool.
And all of a sudden I was 15 being like, oh, shit, did you know that periods are, and all of a sudden they’d sit up and they’d listen and they get excited.
And I think that’s part of the gift of the translation of intergenerational community, but also the gift of mentorship for all, right?
And as a parent, if you’re parenting a young person or a team or a team to be soon.

[28:12] Your role is to help find those mentors, to find the healthy ones, to help your kid get near them, right? So I still call all parents to me are team captain.
You know, like you’re still the adult, you’re still the positive authority.
Please stay in that. Your kid needs you deeply and it’s gonna be a really different role than when they were really little. And that’s beautiful and that’s great.
You’re the one who needs to step in if there’s a really weird mentor in there, you know, quote, unquote mentor, right?
And so that’s where I got obsessed with training professional, what I call professional mentors or professional big sisters or big siblings.
And that’s what the last two years of my own work at Badass Girls has been devoted to, has been training these brilliant young folks who have already received the medicine because everybody who got trained by us has been through.
18-hour teen programs. And so if you think about it, it’s like impossible.
As you were saying, it’s impossible, in some ways I heard you saying, it’s impossible to give what you haven’t received. And so there I was in mastermind sisterhood at other places, right?
Where I’ve been in circles to be able to teach about toxic mean girl culture, as we talk about it in our community and what we call the art of sistering, right?
So it’s an art, not a science. Like how do we practice being in a real relationship with each other to meet the things we’re socialized to do, like jealousy, right?
Passive aggression that like comes up.

[29:40] And to do that, I had to be living that. And so for example, whenever anybody comes to work for me after they’ve done our trainings, there is an agreement that you will be receiving mentorship as you mentor.
Wow. So whether that, you know, yes, it’s in our team with me, but also like you must be held to hold, right?
Yes. No compromise there, right? You must be deeply held to be holding.
And yeah, it’s the inhale, exhale of healthy intergenerational community.
And just that little part of me that’s like, oh, and the work that we have to hold mothers so that they can hold Jadie too.
I’m like, ooh. Yeah. The other thing you said, and I’m just so curious because I haven’t heard this before.
You said that jealousy and passive aggressive behavior is socialized.
I just thought that was a very natural.
Impulse or feeling that then we’d have to look at ourselves and say, what does that say about our desires?
What does that say about but I have never heard it as, something that’s socialized Yeah, it’s probably something that’s so obvious in your world, but I was just like wait what?

[30:55] Yeah, so we call it again big air quotes here toxic mean girl culture, right?
And I will say that I am mildly depressed, that I have never had to define that for anybody.
You know, I say never, like, yeah, yep, okay, next, right?
I’m not, people aren’t like, wait, what a concept? What, what would that be referring to?
And it’s, I think one of the greatest example I have is that like most, many, many adults who hear what I do working with teen girls, they get a little nervous, right?
Or they’re like, oh, teen girls kind of scare me, you know? And it’s often because I think there’s a, there was harm done in our own teenage years or an incompleteness from that place.
And that to me is an example of toxic mean girl culture because we talk about it in the teenage years.
But I think we maybe forget that it continues way past.
Some of the biggest examples of toxic mean girl culture, I mean, it can be in mommy groups.
Like they can be in so many places, right?
And by socialization, I mean, we’re not, I don’t believe we’re born to be in toxic versions.

[32:10] Of competition with each other, right?
So like, I love a reframe of jealousy. I think I teach all of my teens about how jealousy is such a beautiful experience.
We can reclaim our experience. You’re right. And talk about our desires, et cetera.

[32:27] The tricky thing that we often assume about toxic mean girl culture is that this is just how girls are. I’ve got it. Right. This is, you’re not saying that jealousy doesn’t exist as a natural form. It’s the way that we then accept that, that girls gossip, that girls are mean that they like, that this is a natural thing as opposed to like, Oh, and we have the capacity to look at our feelings and how do we relate with each other? And how do we, so what do you do with any feeling like anger? Not good. Not bad. It’s neutral, right? Any feeling, all feelings are good feelings. All feelings are just feelings.
They’re just messengers. What do we do with them? Right. Things are meant to flow through.
And if we’re taught girls don’t have anger, you shouldn’t have anger. Then it’s going to come out sideways. It’s like, Oh, how, how do all the things that we’re suppressed come out sideways where all the things we’re supposed to want that we don’t actually want that we’re fighting for.
And it just gets all mixed up.
And mostly what I see tragically is that nobody’s really in there with the teens, teaching them how to relate to each other well, right? And so that’s the problem.
We kind of abandoned our teens at the threshold.

[33:42] They push us away and we go, I guess they don’t need me anymore.
And, you know, teens will be teens.
I wanted nothing, you know, internal voice goes, I wanted nothing more than for my mother to leave me alone.
So I guess I should just, she’ll figure it out.
And it’s like, yeah, she’s going to be more independent. But if we could listen a layer deeper, I bet a lot to our own bodies and our own memories and our own knowing, I bet a lot of us would go, actually, I didn’t want my mother to leave me.
I wanted her to know how to stay with me and relate to me deeply in the right moments, right?
You know, I wanted her to have my back and know how to be with me. And yeah, I think it’s tricky.
I have a lot of compassion for school and school counselors, the hard time. And I think we deeply need to find ways to stay with those parts of ourselves that we rejected in the teenage years or society shamed in us so that we can learn better to sit with teenage girls as they move through the threshold that is the teenage years. Right. So as we heal ourselves, that could be part of staying. And then I’m also thinking of that phrase, right distance. What is the right distance? It’s not that I leave completely. What is the right distance so that they know I’m here that I can bear witness and give them the space they need.

[35:10] Yeah, the container expands, right? You used to be in there in the bedroom.
You might be sitting in the kitchen, making tea, hearing them do homework in the other room.
Do you want a snack? And then they come out and then they start talking about their day, right?
Like literally, like it could look like rhythms and rituals in the home of connection.
I heard Glennon Doyle, I didn’t hear her. She was a post on Instagram and she was sitting back on her couch reading and you kind of see like her teen in the distance.
And she said, I read somewhere that we should be like a house plant.
You know, stay around, be in proximity. And so she’s there while her team is doing their homework.
And as you said, it could be like, oh, I’m hungry. Good, let’s get a snack. Let’s talk.
But it’s not like right in their space. That image really stuck out to me.
I’m like, okay, note to self, houseplant.
And I know that things change and I have to be like, you know, with each child, what does that mean? Yep.
To get back to you intergenerational wisdom is if it’s okay for me to say that yesterday at the baby blessing, I just noticed how intergenerational that was from what looked like someone maybe young teenage years to to Crone and a bunch of mothers.
You had maiden mother, Crone.
Yeah.
And as I.

[36:31] Was speaking with you earlier, the wisdom that you have going in around understanding the support a mother may need or just that you’re entering a threshold and that the pace may change, that your desires may change.
My memory of going into motherhood was, I’m gonna continue to do everything I’ve been doing almost all the way up until having my baby.
I did know the third trimester that I wanted to be in water and walking on beaches. And it did work out for me like to have a few weeks before just to change states. And I left my job and it was a whole transition for my whole family for multiple reasons. But I thought the cool thing and the essential thing was that once I had my child, that I would basically wear her and continue living the same life I lived before. And so it felt like a really painful death when the child I had was very much like, oh no, that will not be happening because I hadn’t seen it before.

[37:41] I hadn’t seen layers of support. I feel like we mostly tried to do it. I knew in my body, I knew in my bones, this was so interesting. Kate and I met a few weeks before I had my baby and I and I guess a month and a few weeks before she had hers.
And we were both saying, it’s so interesting. I don’t know if it’s like the oxytocin rising and other hormones lowering, but I knew in my bones that the most essential thing was community.

[38:07] So although I hadn’t really seen the transition into mothering, it was the first time that my body wasn’t obsessed with my career.
It was the first time that I was like, oh, yeah, it doesn’t really matter to me right now.
All I know is I want to find people I love being around.
Because like my body knew, my mind couldn’t have processed.

[38:30] But I just wonder what my process would have been like if I had known then through experience, through, I think because you were such a wise soul and brilliant, you have a lot of friends who have been through this threshold and most likely have learned a lot by being, you know, around many different age groups and people going through many different thresholds.
Yeah, are you willing to speak at all on how like what’s changing in you, whether it’s things you desire now that are different than what you desired before or seasons of life?
Feel similar to how I described the knowing of the threshold of the plain conversation, but such a different area of life and that there’s a there’s a relief to the rightness of orienting towards what feels true right now and also there have been times where I think, yeah the hardest part is it has really been for my brain.
Yeah because as the first person comes up is I didn’t know I got to move this slowly.

[39:42] Yeah you know I can I’ve been running my own company since I was 15. I wrote a book at 19.
You know, when I was 21, while going through college final and TA and teaching sold out weekend workshops during finals week, and then coming back to perform at college and dance show.
And then like, I… In all the things.
I have done a season of how many things, right? Can I do and then… Yeah. And then I built a business in my 20s, my late 20s, a new business. I shifted, right? And here we are. And yeah, So doing all the things is familiar territory for me.

[40:24] From what’s familiar to what’s optimal. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think it’s been a time of rummaging around in the truth of my own desires and looking at where sneakily the doing of all the things was a beautiful season of life and also a coping mechanism.
Of survival, like, oh, how fast can I just keep running? Because I think I was so terrified sometimes of what I would find in my own body and in my own psyche if I slowed down enough to feel.
And while that was certainly true, I’ve had to meet a lot of discomfort and old aches and pain that live in my body from past places of harm.
I think what I didn’t know was on the other side, the land was far sweeter than anything I could imagine, right, to find safety and presence in my nervous system and yeah, to get.

[41:25] To want what my sweet animal body wants and I think I’d yeah talked forever around like you know your desires are made for you they’re right sized for you blah blah blah and I think I don’t really know what I wanted I made a lot of beautiful things and co-created a lot of beautiful things in the world and I think a lot of it was looking left and looking right and being like what do other people have I guess maybe that that looks fun this feels fun this feels good but it’s it’s been a season of sinking into my own bones and letting it be enough to want really what I want in this season of life. And it felt, I, for I think almost a decade was like, yeah, I’m not having kids. The whole decade of my 20s, I was like, nah, for many reasons, that we could go into, but it felt so intimately private and gorgeous and scary and vulnerable.

[42:23] To discover that desire in myself and be like, oh wow, I really want this version of family.
Yeah, it’s a very vulnerable, vulnerable desire to sit in and then be in the process.
So, as I move into, you know, very close now, recording this to the shoulder of baby not no longer squirming around and punching my bladder every minute.
But being on the outside, yeah, it’s surreal and it’s gorgeous and it’s slow and it’s good. Yeah.
As I hear you share what you just shared, something that I’m feeling that I want the listener to lean into that we haven’t talked about yet is what your practice has been, we could say with somatics or with something else, but that you briefly touched on it, when you said what once felt scary, or perhaps it could have been frozen and so you didn’t know it existed.
And that when we go at a certain speed, when we have a certain momentum, It’s really easy to bypass.

[43:40] The deeper, sweeter pulls of our own body. But to slow down, as you also named, could mean that we have to potentially come into contact with the things that have hurt us or perhaps still hurt.
And this is a place that I think would be really nice to talk about if you’re willing to, some of your processes or what that support looks like, so that people might be like, Like, oh, I should feel safe being slow and calm, but that you’ve been so dedicated, to your process of healing your nervous system.
Yeah, I will say, I’m also like normalized for like, and my experience is like for 99% of us, 99% of the time, rest sucks.
Like, let’s just reclaim that like, you know, our culture will like, you should rest more.
And it’s this idea that like you flip the light switch and the lights go off and you’re like, now I rest perfectly. And yeah, in my system, that was very much not the case.
It was like, how, what the heck?
And so I think.

[44:46] It feels important to me to name that I have invested time, money, energy, resources in my own nervous system, somatic and body healing, the way some other people.

[45:00] It might be more normalized in our culture to invest in a house, a car, or a graduate degree.
Yes. Yes. I kind of, some of this was chosen. It was values that I said, OK, this is a value of mine, is I deserve support, and I will be well, and I want to enjoy my life.
And I need healing support to do that. And part of it was also necessity.
I think some of us reach those moments where you get sick enough, whatever symptom means to you, that it’s choice feels less like a choice. So that was a little bit of both for me. For me that, yeah, that looked like really intense anxiety, that looked like panic.

[45:44] Attacks or night terrors. It looks like health issues that didn’t make sense, quote unquote, right? And so as I became a student to my own body, it really became, you know, what if my body was not wrong? What if it was not broken? But what if all these symptoms were messages, right?
Were Mother Marion Woodman, I guess, an elemental, she’s always a teacher, my spiritual granny. But right, she has some quote that I’m going to slightly butcher, which is right, like, if we listen when the body whispers, it doesn’t have to yell. And I didn’t really know how to do that, so I ended up with a lot of yells. I try now to be a better listener. It’s a practice of mine to speak the language of my own body and to be in relationship with my own body. And so actually on the drive to that mastermind, I don’t know if you know this, drive to the first mastermind we.

[46:39] Met up with, I think I listened to a podcast episode where Bridget was interviewed. Oh, amazing.
And I had the chills in my body that knowing of like, I need to work with this person.
And this is where all of the, you know, the choice and the not choice comes together where I, I think I emailed her and I ended up making a song.

[47:09] That I’m pretty sure didn’t really exist at the time in her practice, which was, I got on a plane to DC, and I went and I stayed at like an Airbnb for three days and I saw her every day.
So I did like an in-person to kind of begin a relationship with her and yeah, she’s not a feeling practice.
And you introduced Bridget to me right before I was about to have my second baby, because I didn’t realize, talk about speed.
I feel like I’ve spent the last 20 years learning how to listen to my body.
And I literally used to say to some of my clients, listen to the whispers.
I didn’t know Marianne, Marianne Woodman. I’d say, listen to the whispers.
And I would literally say like, so they don’t have to yell. And everyone would be like, what are you talking about, the whispers?
And it’s so much easier to see in other people than to see in myself sometimes.
And yeah, it really took until I was weeks away from having Siana where I realized that I had some PTSD from birthing and from early parenting.

[48:19] And that there might be a lot of fear in me and that that might affect the way that I went into this.
And you said, listen, I have worked with so many people. This woman is the real deal.
And so I set up three sessions and she was kind enough to, because I was like days out, meet me on like Sunday morning at 6 a.m. And we were online.
And.

[48:47] And I just want to say that now I’ve been in her programming for three years. Yeah.
In her programming, that sounds cult-like. She has a training. And when my husband said to me, because there’s an option in the training that you would just keep retaking it, and she is growing the modules more as well. He’s like, so how long are you going to do this? So probably forever, just assume that at least three days out of every month, I will be in an alchemical alignment training. And then I want to say I supplement because it’s just as important is I have another mentor within that program who I try to meet with. I wish once a week, sometimes it’s every other week, our schedules, but it’s been so life-changing. We talked about, this is not where I was planning on going, but you and I, again, I talked about, I was like, Liza, I had this session and I haven’t been able to contact my bones in three years, like since we first like level one, module one is finding a bone for stability. And I was like, I found my bone and it lit up. And this still sounds so weird to a listener who hasn’t explored this.
But I was like, and it whispered to me, it whispered, I exist. And I’ve never been the same.

[50:04] Since then, it’s been easier for me. And it felt like when I got into my bones that there was was a library of ancient wisdom in there that I could contact my bone and ask questions and feel more sure about my state, my, the poles.
And yeah, and since then it’s easier for me to say, that doesn’t feel good to me, to somebody that doesn’t feel good to me.
I don’t think I’m available for that right now. And just to kind of claim what feels like a truth versus it being, oh, it doesn’t feel good for me to me because you’re doing something bad or you’re but just that I could be like oh yeah my body has a preference for somebody who’s studied my body for so many years. This type of work has helped me to pause.

[50:52] Feel, sometimes move down to the pace of nature and exist in a way that I didn’t, that’s not performative. Existence can be tricky. Existence can be tricky. Yeah. It didn’t exist for a long time for myself. And to the outside world, it would look the opposite, right? Totally. It’s I was crushing it.
You know? Totally, I was crushing it and I was, yeah, sharing big, beautiful bodies of work and it’s been tricky to heal and more and more and to come into more right relationship with myself and my body and be like, what was that work born from, you know?
And I think in a lot of ways, it was born from pure spirit and sweat and sometimes pain, but also in devotion.
You know, I choose to honor that part of myself and know how beautifully these work impacted and also be excited to learn how to give from a place of deeper wellness where I am not the sacrificial lamb to my work or to my life.

[52:06] And I could talk about that a million times a day, but now I live it.
And what I will say for folks listening in who are also practitioners, healers, guides, et cetera, what I find is the more that I live it, the less I actually have to say it to my clients, right?
Like I don’t repeat the same go-to phrases, you know, to pep talk them.
They feel it in my presence and it really is like, that’s where the alchemy happens just in the presence that I’m somebody who lives that now.
And that’s where it’s like right relationship heals. You know, my mentees and the folks who work with me, I feel like more and more, yeah, my presence is the work.

[52:49] Your presence was the work. Yeah. Jen Reciopi said that to me when I was pregnant. Really?
Really, I was really questioning, it was so hard for me to be in this mastermind with, it was like such a blessing and so challenging because I was pulling- A gorgeous invitation to grow, I’m so proud of you.
Oh my God, I was, it was everything I dreamt of. I literally, when I lived in New York I did everything. I shouldn’t say I did everything, that’s an all or nothing. I did so much of my work on my own, creating the programs, teaching the program, selling the programs, one-on-one work.
I would look at various examples of what it was to be in a group of women who could, share ideas with each other. I think when I looked, I also looked at Marie Forleo and assumed that she was with Chris Carr and Kate. It was so funny to then be in a mastermind with these incredible women. And I’m like, Oh, this is what I dreamed of. But at the exact same time that I’m and drain.
I’m having to also pull out, right? I was like slowing down my business instead of growing it and.

[53:56] Jen looked at me and she said, I’m so happy you’re here. And she also said, this is Jen Raciopi, our friend who is this incredible astrologer. She said, your currency, is your presence. And that really helped me just be in this group in general when I was like, I don’t know all the things these women know about growing businesses. I don’t.
And it was just, I had to kind of like keep that as my mantra.
And I think it’s been a mantra since is how beautiful it is to just do the work and to be present in myself and to know that that’s enough.
I noticed that when I’m in a session with Tell, Tell Darden is another practitioner of alchemical alignment who is a mentor.
And I might say a mentor and friend now that if I start in a session with her that almost immediately upon sitting, my body will know if I wanna sit or suddenly I’m like, I’m gonna go snuggle up in my blankets like just by being in the presence of somebody who is so in herself and doing the work to honor herself and where she’s at that day.
And it makes like that she wouldn’t have to name, she wouldn’t have to say, I’m not gonna be the sacrificial lamb so that you can do your healing.
I’m not gonna digest your undigested stuff.
She just is. And she’s just like, and it’s such a blessing to be in the presence of people who are doing their work.

[55:20] Yeah, yeah, I think it’s rarer sometimes than I may have earlier believed.
And I think that’s shifting more and more in the world, but I think there was, for a long time, a pretty, yeah, the wounded healer archetype, which can have beautiful sides to it, meaning I think many of us get into the work we do because it’s what we need and it’s, you know, it’s our own tender places to grow.
And what a, yeah, at times gorgeous and necessary initiation and, and, and I think it is possible, and necessary to move beyond the place of holding to the wound, right, as the only way to be of service.

[56:05] And to reclaim our, yeah, our right to sweetness, right to sweetness, to have an unearthed in our own body, especially in these times that are trying and challenging and intense and apocalyptic in many ways. I think it’s part of what we must learn to anchor into ourselves more and more, not as a way of avoiding the reality but a way of being in a right relationship with it, and I’m genuine in service.
Eliza, for anyone who’s not more familiar with what we’re talking about, I’m going to try to be like real explicit. So my way of experiencing this is that often people who, would say they’re empaths, just people who I think are emotionally available to other people’s emotions. And I think we all do this no matter what we’re all in relationship to each other’s emotions. If we were in a situation of coach and client, inside person, outside person.

[57:09] That there’s been this way demonstrated in which it would seem normal, or it might even be like parent and child, or it could be two partners where one partner comes in hot, just like like had a hard day and then the other partner sits there and just takes it all in.
And the first person feels good cause they got it off their chest.
And the second person’s now like, wow.

[57:36] I don’t know if this is what you’re talking about, but I think this can sometimes happen with practitioners.
Wow, now I have to digest it. Now I feel the heaviness.
And I think the practice of finding heaven on earth earth and our bodies is also having trust that other people can do the alchemy in their bodies, not that, oh, you need me to transmute this for you. Whereas like, I will be a mirror of stability and I will almost like you were saying, I would think with a teen, it’s like I will sit at right distance as a parent and I will be here stable, kind of no new injuries. I won’t necessarily injure myself so that you can be healed, I will take care of myself and in me taking care of myself that that is potentially healing to those who can witness it as a possibility.

[58:37] Yeah, I think that’s one very real piece of what I’m talking about and I think some of other examples I think about in terms of serving from a place that is more authentic and less of an open wound can also be that we are included in the care we give. We’re included in the care we give. You’re included in the care we give. Right, so the vision you have for the world, the your clients, how you want them to feel, the healing that they deserve, that you bring to them, them.

[59:13] That you are included in that. You receive that too, right? That might be a small part of the energy of the session, right? That you give, you’re like five percent goes to me. I get to also receive, or it looks like that you are mentored as you mentor, right? That as that you are held as you hold, whether that could translate into, as I was saying, like y’all financially, I was just like, I’m gonna get healed.
I flew to DC. Did I have a savings? No, it was in my mid twenties, like transitioning businesses, dealing with weird health symptoms.
And I was like, I’m gonna figure it out and I’m gonna get my cute little butt to DC and I’m gonna be there for three days, right?
So it was really like, like I moved back in with my mother and lived in a portion of an apartment she was renting, not ideal in a lot of other circumstances.
It also meant that I went to like weekly and sometimes I had like two sessions a week and it was just like right choice for me at that time, you know, because it gave me, I was in an, as there’s an investment in a foundation within myself that has paid off, like a million fold, it feels like, right?
And- I can see it.

[1:00:30] Yeah, and then I think also to me, I think sometimes as healers, and I use that word very broadly because it can mean so many things to so many of us, but as people who teach or guide or space hold, there can be a little bit of a piece of like.

[1:00:51] Yeah, lead from your trauma or lead from the hard stuff, you know, like people will feel inspired or connect to you about that. And I think, right, sometimes when it’s healed enough, it can be really beautiful to share or be connected to this in an all or nothing piece here. And I think part of our role as healers can be to deepen our own wellness so that we are living vision of what’s possible in wellness as well, as well as honoring the hard places and the hard parts. And so to me, that’s also like any mentor or guide that I work with, I’m like, I’m looking for how you’re living it up. I’m looking for what’s your relationship to pleasure? What’s your relationship to boundaries and your own nourishment? Do you have so many wellsprings that you turn to in your inner life?
Because otherwise, I’m not that interested. That’s where I want to commune. That’s where I want to be met. And so that could look like really great boundaries around when you work and don’t work.
That could look like the practitioners you work with, the massages you get. That could look like.

[1:02:00] You get up and you go for a nature walk in the morning. And it was a Herculean effort to reschedule your family to make that happen. So you get 20 minutes to solo commune with the sunlight and listen to a podcast or whatever it is, but I want to know what’s filling you up and are you turning towards that? And to me, yeah, that’s an edge that can make us more well practitioners and guides in the world and humans. Thank you for redefining that. I missed, I was like, oh, we’re talking about the same thing. Oh, I know what she’s talking about. And when you redefined it as being included in the care that we give. And then you’re looking for people who are, leaning into pleasure into self-care and not just the people who are talking about the wound.

[1:02:48] Not that that doesn’t suddenly doesn’t exist, but that they both get to exist. I recently went on a retreat where the woman definitely led from what is pleasurable and what is joy and rising up to a certain frequency. And I was like, but does the wound get space? I just felt my body so triggered, but my body also knew, this is more than my mind, and maybe my mind was trying to be in there too, which is great. Oh, there’s something to this.
Yeah, she’s onto something.
I wanna fight her, but also like, no, there’s something here.
So just hearing you say it that way too, it’s just, it’s helping me integrate the possibilities.
Yeah, could there be a piece of that?
It all gets, you said it all gets to be there, right? And I think, yeah, in places of tenderness or wounding or healing, sometimes we forget, that comfort and pleasure and joy get to exist, could exist.
I think, you know, as you and I both know, that’s also the work of a great practitioner and some of the ones we’ve both been helped by is they get to hold that when we’re in a place that’s tender and hard to let that in.
So, you know, it becomes part of the threshold process, right, that it is a process.
For me, it is very much a process and not just one moment.
And often it, yes, it culminates, yes, there is intensity in the journey of a threshold.

[1:04:16] But yeah, there are waves and layers and nuances to change and to being changed and to the mystery of not knowing.
And I think every threshold I’ve been through invites me to not know and to also perhaps trust that I’m on the other side, it’ll be sweeter than I ever could have imagined.
Thank you. Part of me is like, I just want to close it there.
I just want to close it there.
And I’m pausing to see.

[1:04:48] Like, there’s one thing that I wanted to share with the listeners that you shared with me.
And so I’m gonna hold what you just said as a highlight and would you be willing to share the process, that you have, the seasonal process that you and Will are currently engaging in.
Just as like a little sweet thing for us to hold on to a little like, I feel like it’s a nice coordinate to see, oh, and here’s another way that Eliza is building in pieces of pleasure throughout the year.

[1:05:22] Yeah, so I was sharing with Sarah that my partner Will and I, my husband and I, are always investigating seasonal living and what does it mean to be in more right relationship.
We live in southern Vermont as of a year ago. And so the seasons here feel more intense than places we’ve lived farther south.
And that feels exciting and good. And I shared with Sarah when I was in the fall, how fall often feels like a season that collapses, that gets rushed by, you know, we do summer and then fall comes and it starts and all of a sudden it’s the end of November.
Right, and you’re like, what happened? It’s like, you kind of like, you know.

[1:06:00] Like you get on that fast moving ramp at the airport And all of a sudden you’re like, it’s holidays.
Wait, that means winter or whatever it is.
Those of us who celebrate winter holidays. And Will and I created this little practice where we would say, okay, what is one to two things that to us feels like really help us honor and be present in this season to not miss it.
And then sometimes it’s just one thing. Okay, so let’s do that.
And that means you’ve really done this season. So for summer, it was wild swimming.
So it was like, not like the town pool. It was like, let’s go find lakes or waterfalls.
And we live in a place where that is very available.
And so let’s see how many we can find and go swimming. So that was our like, this tastes like summer to me.
And that was an epic and magical adventure. And then in the fall, it’s been two things.
It was going on really slow walks outside. So it was like, and really noticing the change in colors, live in a place that really beautifully does that.
And yeah.

[1:07:07] It really ended up showing up as like really paying attention to the tree, right? Like I’ve never paid so much intimate attention to like how each tree changed in a different pacing and its different colors. Like it was like a lot of friendship there. And our second one for the fall was go get cider doughnuts. So yeah, those are so good, which we did. We were very committed to and timed well with my pregnancy. I was extra excited, but yeah. So hopefully you can feel the range and like, wow, beautiful colors and cider doughnuts.
And I feel very much like I’m heading into winter, even though it’s still fall where I am.
And I’m recording this because, especially because I’m on the cusp of, of birth and culmination of pregnancy.
And so it feels like winter started a week or two ago for me, but we’re kind of investigating what it’ll be, but I think it’s really going to be something around, around rest practice and curling up inside.
Um, and it might be different things in different seasons, might be things we cook, or it might be adventures outside and relating to the outside.
But for me in this season, it really feels like, um, I have a fun challenge I often give to preteens or teens, which is like, how many layers of cozy or comfort can you do when you rest?

[1:08:21] So it’s like, not just like, oh, I probably love to read a book, but it’s like, and I put on my comfiest PJs and I have two beverage options and I put on music and I lit a candle and right.
So we’re like, I have a snack plate. So it’s like, how many of the senses can be delighted?
Maybe it’s a weighted blanket, right? Like, what is it? If we’re gonna cocoon, if we’re gonna care, like, you know, it’s the fun challenge.
Like, how many can you do? And so I think for me, it’s, yeah, how cozy can I get?
And so much of the, for me, the medicine of winter and living in a place that really does an intense seasonal winter relatively to a lot of other places is.
Yeah, pushes me to live my values of seasonal productivity and value and worthiness.
And it’s one thing to speak them and it’s another one to be at my own threshold of rest and cultivate things that.

[1:09:21] Yeah, help me drop in and feel safe enough to actually be here in this body.
In this pregnant body, this pregnant body in the middle of winter, this threshold of mystery and not knowing. And it may seem simple, but it’s often the little sensory delight that serves as glimmers of little signals to myself, it’s safe enough to stay here another moment.
Yeah, that’s so beautiful. And this winter season that you’re speaking of does line up so well with the first 40 days or the trimester. I know, I know it’s time for us to go and I’m just, Oh.

[1:10:02] Would you name a thing or two that you’re lining up ahead of time to honor the season of rest or to give people ideas? Yeah. Pregnancy postpartum specific or just winter in general?
Pregnancy postpartum. I mean, I guess they could kind of overlap, but just some things in there, because for some people it’s a brand new idea of what you might begin to describe.

[1:10:25] Yeah. So I’d say I’m taking the postpartum season. I’ve yet to experience, but I’ve witnessed a lot of other beloveds in very seriously in the best possible sense as in I matter deeply and, um, and also, yeah, kind of some of the research into how important it is like to refuel the nutrient stores and the energy stores of this precious body that’s mine and this is such an important window. And so what that’s looked like is I actually planned my postpartum before I gathered birth team support because the way my business works also I had to, I’m an entrepreneur, I run my own gig and I had to really plan what I’d be available for, what I’d not be available for is enrolling new clients who work with me for often nine or ten month chunks of time And so, last summer, I was like, even earlier, I was like, I had to create time off for myself. I don’t have that, as I know many of us within the US, don’t have. And as an entrepreneur, I was like, I create it or it doesn’t happen.

[1:11:38] And so that looks like I have six to eight weeks fully off from work in any capacity. I have an amazing infrastructure in my business. I have a facilitation assistant, a mentor who works.

[1:11:54] Who holds my clients, I have a personal assistant, a team that’s just like fully prepared, flexible, excited, intergenerational, and knows when I’ll be off, when I’ll be on. It means every client who enrolled with me, I had conversations about the fact that I was pregnant. And I need to really clear in the beginning, because I basically said, rather than seeing this as like, oh, no, what a bummer, I’ll be off for six weeks, and they’re going to have such a loss of me. And what a bummer that, you know, it’s like an inconvenience. I instead approached it as, what a tremendous gift for the right people that they’re going to have to get to have a mentor who’s honoring themselves that deeply in that season. And also I specialize in intergenerational mentorship. They’re going to have a mentor who’s moving across a biological, as well as other layers threshold, and they’re going to get to see aspects of that in healthy and appropriate ways.
And so every single client I enrolled to work with me this year is like embodied.
You say it embodied. Hell yes to that is like giddy about the fact that they’re witnessing a mentor going through the pregnancy threshold.
I didn’t even think about like, I was just so in awe of the layers of support that you’re creating for yourself at home that I didn’t think about how powerful it would be.

[1:13:12] For you to embody and live into everything you’ve been teaching at such an important threshold for people to just witness you in the doing and being.
Right, so think about if you were a teenage girl. Now it’s like, oh, and she’s doing it, she’s being it.
I mean, think about it, if you’re listening in, if you were a teen and you’d gotten to witness a mentor that you had a really intimate, close relationship with who held you and had your back and was like your go-to person, and they were in really authentic, transparent ways sharing and modeling about the vulnerability and the edges and the excitements and the joys and the exclusive support they had for themselves.

[1:13:55] And the mystery and the unknown of being at that threshold.
Because I think there’s something so uniting about thresholds and initiations of all kinds.
You know, I say this about working with teams is like, you don’t need to be like, see teen, I’m like you, you need to be like you because you still have thresholds and you still have initiations.
And I still know, like I know what it feels like to be in that pre-butterfly cocoon when you’re more goo than not.
You’re in your goo stage. And every time I talked about this, like, yeah, I just feel like permanent goo, like hoping I figure out who I am and how it’s gonna work.
And so I think these moments unite us. And so that’s been one big piece. What else?
Postpartum doula feels really, really important who is gonna come do body work and care for me.
And I really interviewed a lot of people to find the right relationship.
And she feels like just such a cozy auntie coming into my home.
We have meal trains, which are pretty popular meal trains of food support.
But also my husband is like an amazing cook and former chef who now is an architectural designer, but it’s like, that’s their devotion of, their area of devotion and care.
So like we have a chest freezer that’s like.

[1:15:12] Maxed out almost, and herbal support. So I also did herbalism training a few years ago as care for myself.
And so herbal remedies and recipes prepped. I have friends who are also herbalists who are in the area, but I also have a dear beloved pregnant mama friend who’s due like two weeks, three weeks before me, and…
We both went through the same herbalism training. And so we are gathering together to make herbal care that we could buy, but we’re like, we want to make it for ourselves and infuse it with love for each other. Oh, I have therapist, somatic help. So continuing to see mentors before and during online, you know, and that that needs to continue for me to be cared for. And then also just really, really intense boundaries, you know, so like Will and I are both profound introverts and we’re prepared that we might not tell anybody for six weeks that our baby’s been born, if we don’t want to. Yeah. Like literally, we get to protect the cocoon and the hormonal, dance of our intimate family being born. And also we get to tell everybody if we want, and we get to.

[1:16:28] Have all the support. And we’re living in a pretty small place right now, and we’re supposed to move and construction slowed us down, but as it does sometimes, so we’re in this like really like a one bedroom experience. And initially I was like, ah, bummer. And then it was like, it’s been this invitation to be in the rightness of our cocoon and our family unit. And it also means like nobody can move in, you know? So it’s kind of been good and like, wow, we get to have some right support, right distance come in and then give us space again. So I’m fully, yeah, I’m taking my rest practice gosh, pretty gosh darn seriously because I’m also going to be, you know, flexing those rest muscles lying in bed. And yeah, I mean, what else? I’ve got a lactation consultant. I’ve got a pelvic floor therapist. It’s so beautiful. I’ve got an acupuncturist, I’ve got a body massage person. When I tell you y’all that I take it very seriously, getting support is like my number one thing I invest in. I mean it, you know, and my quality of life and yeah, the safety and joy I feel is I think a direct result.
We work with a developmentalist who is just when we’re like, well, what do we do about about X, Y, and Z, and he’ll say it’s take care of your nervous system.

[1:17:55] And then your child will feel safe. And then whatever you see coming up is just going to dissipate when they feel safe. And it is all about just like that our nervous systems are teaching our kids more than our words. And so I hear you saying this and how it could affect the preteens, teens, the mothers and fathers or parents, I’ll say of the preteens and teens, and then your own baby who gets to be with a mom who took her rest seriously.

[1:18:26] This is what you’re mirroring. And that’s the nervous system, and baby mama nervous systems are so in tune with that one that it’s like, ooh.
So our culture would normally say like, take care of the baby, and everything’s fine when we take care of the mama.
Yeah, that’s the vision is really holding that, uh, yeah, that container as the heart of my, the heart of my work and my soul tending right now is, um, yeah, it’s blowing that cocoon in that space within myself, hot off the press of last week, I finally have much kicking and screaming mentally decided to pause all new projects between now and fall 2023.
You know, because I just, it’s again that sweet relief of, oh, that’s what I secretly really wanted.
But I thought there was all these things I needed to do and I was excited to do and, you know, work and get back at it.
And yeah, I think feeling sated, satiety in my life is a value I’m also exploring.
Yeah. Not overflowing our stuff to the gills, but safe.
Thank you so much. My pleasure. you’re having me do on. Such a gift.

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[1:19:55] Thank you for tuning in. It’s been such a pleasure. If you’re looking for added support, I’m offering a program that’s totally free called 21 Days of Untapped, to support. It’s pretty awesome. It’s very easy. It’s very helpful. You can find it at sarahtacy.com.
And if you love this episode, please subscribe and like. Apparently it’s wildly useful. So we, could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom, subscribe, rate, maybe say, a thing or two. If you’re not feeling it, don’t do it. It’s totally fine. I look forward to gathering, with you again. Thank you so much.

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