Welcome to Belonging, a podcast that explores being alive in the age of loneliness.

Becca Piastrelli is your host and guide on a journey of courageous reconnection as we explore topics like ancestral wisdom, cultivating meaningful community, living with the seasons and cycles of the earth and your body, and what it means to be a good ancestor.

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Episode 97: Writing as Pregnancy & Publishing as Postpartum with Asha Frost

Episode 97: Writing as Pregnancy & Publishing as Postpartum with Asha Frost

Asha Frost is an Anishinaabe (Ojibway) Medicine Woman (member of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation), Healer, and Spiritual Mentor. Last time she was on the podcast we discussed her viral article “Dear White Woman who wants to be like me,” and today she returns to...

Past Episodes:

Episode #96: Friendship deserts, creativity floods, and ancestral mothering with Megan McGuire and Ariella Daly

Episode #96: Friendship deserts, creativity floods, and ancestral mothering with Megan McGuire and Ariella Daly

Have you been craving a deep, expansive conversation about creativity, burnout, postpartum, paying for the village, and raising children in...

Episode #95: You have a right to feel good in your clothing with Dacy Gillespie

Episode #95: You have a right to feel good in your clothing with Dacy Gillespie

Dacy Gillespie is a personal stylist who intuitively guides us to discover the clothes we feel best in — uncovering and releasing what society says...

Episode #94: Re-writing the story on motherhood with Lisa Olivera

Episode #94: Re-writing the story on motherhood with Lisa Olivera

Lisa Olivera is a writer, therapist, and creative who shares work centered around radical acceptance, cultivating compassion, and integrating our...

Episode #93: Slow Emergence from Winter into Ancestral Rituals for Spring

Episode #93: Slow Emergence from Winter into Ancestral Rituals for Spring

Belonging is back! After my winter hibernation, I find myself craving a little vernal worship. So this episode is all about ancestral rituals and...

Episode #92: Winter Rituals & Practices

Episode #92: Winter Rituals & Practices

I've gotten several audience questions about seasonal rituals, so in this episode of Belonging, I thought I would address seasonal rituals for the...

Episode #91: Making & Keeping Adult Friendships

Episode #91: Making & Keeping Adult Friendships

This Belonging Podcast episode is about adult friendships — how to cultivate them and why they're so dang hard to create and maintain. I dedicate a...

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Follow me! @beccapiastrelli

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This post brought to you by my epic garden failures this year - and we're only weeks into planting 🙈
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What happens when things start getting hard? Do we give up out of the shame and guilt that comes with things going sideways or being stumped by a process gone awry?
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I certainly don’t see as many social media posts about that part in the process.
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I’m calling myself out here as well because I’m actually not a very excellent gardener. And yet I get so many compliments on my beautiful garden that I share on social media. Guess what? I only share what’s looking good and what’s gone well.
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When new things (particularly ones that involve working with your hands) get hard, remind yourself that there is no urgency in remembering the old ways and that these things take time. And you’ve got the time — you really do. You can’t hack your way to master status of ancestral knowledge.
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It’s been so helpful to remember that I have grown up in a culture of urgency, competition, and isolation — but those are false narratives in the great spiral of time. They are destructive to my soul and I no longer prescribe to them. I am here to remember the old ways, to opt-out of urgency and the pressures of linear time, and to be gentle with myself as I learn and remember how to be connected to my hands, to the earth, and to my ancient self.
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I offer that to you, friend — whatever project or task you are taking on these days. May you find the gentleness and ease of spirit to keep going and find joy even in the mistakes and frustrations along the way.
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Are you enjoying these topics and want to take it deeper? I have a 28-day devotional home practice called Tending the Flame to orient you to a new (more meaningful, slower, and wilder) way of being. You can learn more at tendingtheflamepractice.com or click link in my bio 🌱

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My affirmation in these times has been care care care.
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And I can now see how vital it was to soften my suffering and water the parched garden of my soul. My tender green sprout has emerged from the soil and I’m stretching towards the growing light.
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I share this with you because I am a firm believer that what is said for one may be said for most. And the private conversations I’ve been having with many of you have been on this theme. We are living in hard times, friend, and it’s high time we slow down to dig deeper to find the lasting tools to support our innate needs.
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Every day I’ve been practicing applying a lens of curiosity to the discomforts (or needs) that come up in my body by literally wondering why:
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Why am I feeling anxious and heart race-y? Because I need to eat.
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Why am I feeling sad? Because I was on my phone and saw a triggering post. I need to put my phone down and do something nourishing, probably involving drinking water
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Why am I feeling so expansive and chatty? Oh, I’m ovulating and I moved my body and got my heart rate up this morning. Note to self.
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Why am I feeling so creative? Because the flowers are blooming outside and there are colors and fragrances wafting through my open windows and I’m feeling hope again. Also thank you medication and body movement and therapy.
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This simple practice (the powerful ones are rarely complicated in my experience) has brought life back into my words and trust back into my relationships. I’m remembering that I am the keeper and tender of my soul.
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May you remember too - as many times as it takes.
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Interested in reading more of my words? This is an excerpt from an email I sent out to subscribers of my newsletter, called Slow & Seasonal. You can sign up to get the next one at beccapiastrelli.com/subscribe (or link in my bio).

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New podcast episode alert!
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@asha.frost is an Anishinaabe (Ojibway) Medicine Woman (member of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation), Healer, and Spiritual Mentor. Last time she was on the podcast we discussed her viral article “Dear White Woman who wants to be like me,” and today she returns to share her new book You Are the Medicine with us.
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Together we explore the medicine of publishing a book. We discuss why we felt called to write, how books can be like babies, and the ways releasing our books made us more resilient. We also talk about how both our books are invitations to move at a slower, earth-pace.
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Our conversation is a call to recognize the postpartum grief that comes when you release a creative work. And it’s an opportunity to embrace the end of the extended winter we’ve been undergoing and to craft rites of passage for ourselves that acknowledge a new season.
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Take a listen by clicking the link in my bio or searching "Belonging" wherever you listen to podcasts.

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I belong to myself.
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I belong to this body - this exquisite collection of bones and blood and skin and hair that make up all that I am and all that I come from. My DNA contains all the billions of ancestors that came before me, including the mycelium and stardust that came before them.
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I reclaim this vessel of magic. I reject the dominant culture's messages that I am not enough as I simply am. I will continue to work to heal the ways I project these societal self-image wounds onto others and repair any harm that has caused. I will take up space - with my body, with my words, and with my ideas.
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I am in devotion to holding your hand as you do the same.
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🛀 🌸 magical bloom bath from @bloomgeneration
📸 photo by @atinaka

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Weaving family with community. This is our greatest dream, and we’re getting closer everyday. 🕸

📸: @jedhubbard at our community Beltane celebration 🌸

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GIVEAWAY CLOSED

✨We’re hosting a giveaway!✨
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In honor of our very special podcast episode going live today and as working mamas in support of each other, we are hosting a giveaway. Read below on how to enter.
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THE WINNER WILL RECEIVE:

* A signed copy of Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community and the Self by @beccapiastrelli
* Access to @beekeepinginskirts’s Kindred Bees Lecture Series on Bees, Kinship, and Bee Tending.
* Access to @forest.whisperer’s Mothering as Ceremony Live Class and Recording

TO ENTER:

1. LIKE this post
2. FOLLOW @beccapiastrelli @forest.whisperer @beekeepinginskirts
3. SHARE this episode of the Belonging Podcast in your stories, being sure to tag us so we can see! (You can do this by taking a screenshot of the episode in your podcast player or sharing directly from Spotify to your stories)
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Terms & Conditions:⁠
* Only one winner will be selected ⁠
* Giveaway will run until 11:59 PST Thursday May 12, 2022.⁠ Winner will be randomly selected and announced on our stories Friday May 13, 2022
* Giveaway limited to Canada and US

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Have you been craving a deep, expansive conversation about creativity, burnout, postpartum, paying for the village, and raising children in ancestral ways amidst climate crisis? I know I have been. So I invited my friends, fellow mothers, and past guests Ariella Daly @beekeepinginskirts and Megan McGuire @forest.whisperer to join me on the podcast again to commune “in the mammoth bone tent.”
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Together we have an open and vulnerable conversation about creative surges and depletion postpartum, how motherhood has isolated us from our communities, our desires to know our neighbors and celebrate rituals with them, and our visions for our childrens’ futures —including the ways climate crisis impacts where our families can live and flourish.
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Ariella is a beekeeper, seer and healer with a young daughter. And Megan is a permaculture gardener and ritual weaver with three children. I hope you’ll join us in conversation about mothering and enjoy this episode.
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✨Enter our giveaway!✨
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In honor of this very special podcast episode, Megan, Ariella and I are hosting a giveaway. The winner will receive: a signed copy of Root & Ritual, access to Ariella’s Kindred Bees Lecture Series on Bees, Kinship, and Bee Tending & access to Megan's Mothering as Ceremony Live Class and Recording.
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Check out my next post to learn how to enter.

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What I wished we’d had when we were in the early baby days 🍼

A few weeks ago @lianebourke and I were chatting on Marco Polo - her a birth and postpartum support professional and me - a new mama who wants to shout from the rooftops about how we need to support families better in the postpartum time.

We were talking about how partners can feel so helpless and lost in those early days while the mamas are totally consumed by birth recovery, bonding, and feeding. “What they need is a checklist!” I asserted into the computer phone camera in my hand. I’m thinking back to all those moments when I was very much in need, exhausted, and Tim was pacing the bedroom trying to figure out what he needed to do and exhausted at the idea of needing to figure it out.

So, for what it’s worth, here’s what we can share from our experiences. What would you add?

#postpartum #the4thtrimester #thefirst40days #postpartumsupport

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I'm curious about why we don't do the things we really want for our lives and for the world we are trying to build for the generations to come.

I know the answer is complex and nuanced and has to do with things like systemic oppression and generational trauma, but also don't want the complexity of it to get in our way of taking the next right step. Because if there's anything I've learned in my years on this planet so far is that sustainable change happens one small action at a time - one building upon the next. That's how you climb a mountain - step by step. That's how you do the dishes - one plate at a time. That's how you shift the culture - you stay in the practice and root it into habit.

This was my deep intention behind the creation of the Tending the Flame Home Practice - to move us away from a place of paralysis that comes from information overload and doom scrolling and into a deeply rooted, smaller, and do-able space of ritual, reflection, and embodiment of our values.

I’m going to be honest: you can join this home practice journey at any time. The whole reason I created it was to have something to offer folks who just discovered my book, Root & Ritual, a way to take the practice deeper as soon as possible. It’s also a way I can sustainably provide income to my business even when I’m at low capacity because of mothering or my health or anything else that naturally comes up in this human experience of life in these times. So, even though I know having a deadline to join is the surest way to create urgency for you to sign up, I won’t be doing that. You can join now, you can join on a new moon in the future, you can join in a few years (assuming I’m still offering it).

But what I can say for certain is that the sense you have that your life can be lived in a different, more life-nourishing way won’t be going away any time soon. Head to the link in my bio 🕯️

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Let’s take a deep dive look into the SELF theme of the Tending the Flame Home Practice.

In this 28-day journey, I’ll guide you through rituals and practices to reclaim your rooted sense of self. We’ll move from releasing old stories to crafting a talisman to knowing how your body connects to the greater seasons and cycles of the wild. You’ll complete your practice with deep reflections, rituals and a toolkit of practices to incorporate into your daily life.

Feel called to dive in? Head to tendingtheflamepractice.com or click that link in my bio 🕯

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Let’s take a deep dive look into the COMMUNITY theme of the Tending the Flame Home Practice.

In this 28-day journey, I’ll guide you through rituals and practices to be in the consistent practice of calling in and being supported by community (even if you’re an introvert or limited because of the pandemic). We’ll move from releasing the pain of past hurts to conscious communication and intimacy building practices to actualizing community care in your life. You’ll complete your practice with an intentionally thought out and sacred gathering for your growing community and a toolkit of practices to incorporate into your daily life.

Feel called to dive in? Head to tendingtheflamepractice.com or click that link in my bio 🕯