Feminine Energy: Leading from the Heart with Victoria Garcia

Welcome to the Motherhood Mentor Podcast! Today, we're joined by Victoria Garcia, a heart-led entrepreneur, female founder, community leader, and momma. Get ready for a deep dive into the power of feminine energy and the strength that comes from leading with heart and emotion.

In this episode, Victoria shares her personal journey of reaching a breaking point in early motherhood and how she rediscovered herself. We explore the dynamics of masculine and feminine energies, discussing how tapping into our heart's wisdom can transform our businesses and relationships as mothers.

Key topics include:

1. Recognizing toxic and healed masculine and feminine energy
2. Rediscovering passions and self-care in motherhood
3. The importance of rituals and creating space for self-care
4. Balancing entrepreneurship with the demands of motherhood
5. Finding flow and flexibility in both business and parenting

Join us for an empowering conversation that will inspire you to embrace your feminine energy and lead with heart in all aspects of motherhood and life. Tune in now!

Victoria : https://www.instagram.com/lafamiliamilligan/

Apapacho - Victoria's Cocoa Company:  https://www.instagram.com/apapacho_cacao/

Latina Owned Collective: https://www.instagram.com/latinaownedcollective/

Chapters

• 0:05 Heart-Centered Female Entrepreneurship
• 10:22 Cacao's Heart-Opening Magic
• 18:43 Embracing Feminine Energy and Intuition
• 33:49 Embracing Feminine Nature Through Movement
• 38:17 Rediscovering Presence and Joy in Motherhood
• 48:28 Motherhood and Flexibility in Entrepreneurship
• 56:38 Embracing the Language of the Heart
• 1:12:28 Prioritizing Self Nourishment for Motherhood
• 1:19:28 Embodying Self-Love and Presence
• 1:27:52 Mutual Love, Admiration, and Respect

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. I'm Becca, a holistic life coach, mom of two wife and business owner. This is a podcast where we will have conversations and coaching around all things strategy and healing that supports both who you are and what you do. So grab your iced coffee or whatever weird health beverage you are currently into and let's do the damn thing. Welcome to today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:32

Today I have a co-host who I'm very excited to have on to have a conversation with. I have on with me Victoria Garcia. She is a first-generation Mexican-American bilingual thought leader, entrepreneur and public speaker. She is owner and-generation Mexican-American bilingual thought leader, entrepreneur and public speaker. She is owner and founder of two Colorado-based businesses a Papacho Cacao, a chocolate company that sells vegan drinking chocolate, which I've tasted and experienced a cacao ceremony which we'll probably get into and it was amazing. And she also is the founder of Latina Owned Collective, a business community that celebrates and elevates Latina owned businesses.

Speaker 1: 1:09

So thank you so much for being here with me today. How me and you met it was the Unstoppable Conference in Greeley and we got connected through a really amazing friend and there was just this instant I had this like physical, like I felt myself just like leaning into you and we connected here and there on Instagram and then a couple of weeks ago, she had reached out and invited me to a day retreat at her house, which we'll talk about. But I want you for a minute, just introduce us to who you are and a little bit of your story and what got you started in these businesses and just who you are and a little bit of your story and what got you started in these businesses and just who you are today.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Yes, well, first of all, rebecca, thank you for this opportunity to be here with you today and have this heart to heart, girl to girl, woman to woman, mother to mother conversation. I love these types of conversations. I'm so excited that we are actually recording this, because I typically have the most beautiful conversations with women like yourself and they're never recorded and I'm just like, oh, this conversation needed to be recorded because there's so much juice and magic and wisdom.

Speaker 2: 2:18

Yeah, someone needed to be a fly on the wall and hear us saying this 100%, and so I'm so grateful that this is being recorded and hopefully it will touch the hearts that it needs to touch, because I, too, felt this magnetic energy coming from you as well that conference you mentioned that we met at and we have been following each other just on Instagram. I love your meme. Drop Fridays, I live for those. I'm like, yes, what hilarious stuff is Rebecca going to share today? I love your meme. Drop Fridays, like I would. I like, live for those. I'm like, yes, what hilarious stuff is Rebecca going to share today? So thank you for having me on.

Speaker 2: 2:51

Yeah, so I started both of these businesses for completely different reasons my cacao business and for those of you who don't know, because I know that it's not a common word but cacao is just basically chocolate in its raw form. So before cacao becomes chocolate, it's literally just a seed inside of what's called a cacao pod, and that raw origin of chocolate is what we, my husband and I, utilize to make our own cacao blends. Cacao is um, it's a very nutrient dense food. A lot of people don't know this, but chocolate in its raw form is food. It's extremely nutritious and, beyond the nutrient dense properties of cacao, it's also plant medicine. So it's very heart opening and that was the reason why I started working with cacao's energy back in 2019, when I went on a retreat solo trip to Costa Rica and then that's where I discovered cacao for the first time and I discovered all the benefits that cacao has. And when I came back to Colorado, I wanted to continue working with cacao's heart opening energy and that's how my my husband and I created our three blends that we launched back in 2021. So that was a business, truthfully, that I wasn't intending on launching or starting, but I and we had benefited so much from cacao. It almost felt like very selfish of me to keep this to myself and I was like I need to share this with others, especially with women, because women have a very sacred relationship with cacao for many reasons. All right, so that's about Pacho Cacao and then Latina Owned Collective. I launched that in the summer of 2020.

Speaker 2: 4:43

It just started off as an idea. It started off as a genuine desire to help Latinas based in Colorado, as doubly worthy because so many of us are bilingual, so many of us are bicultural. So in my mind, we had twice as much value to offer our employers, twice as much value to offer our clients. So when I found out about the wage gap and that all the racial groups in the United States Latinas were earning the least amount of money, I was horrified and angry and, honestly, confused. So I was like, okay, well, I want to shine some light to this whole wage gap thing, cause this is insane. Um, and I'm like, and in the meantime, this gap closes, because I mean, if I'm being honest, it probably won't close in my lifetime. So I was like, in the meantime, this gap closes. Um, I was like, in the meantime, this gap closes.

Speaker 2: 5:45

I was like we can be proactive and take initiative to supplement our income through the money that we generate through our businesses.

Speaker 2: 5:54

So I started hosting a lot of events where I bring together local Latina entrepreneurs so that we can invest in each other's businesses and stimulate and invest in our own economy. Like, I now get my haircut with a Latina owned stylist in Denver and if I want to I don't know buy new clothing, I go support my friend who has her boutique also in Denver. So I'm consciously investing in women owned, minority owned, latina owned businesses, because I know where my dollars are going. And as much as I love target all of target. I also love my amigas, my friends, and I know that my dollars are going to my friend and to her family, and to her baby and to her household, and that's one thing that you and I have in common is we're both mothers, we're both wives, we're both entrepreneurs, and it just feels so good to support a fellow woman, a fellow mother, who's out there hustling and just wanting to leave a legacy of wealth and love for her, for her family. So it's a little bit about both of my businesses.

Speaker 1: 6:59

I I love hearing more about your businesses because I got to know a little bit more about you, but I haven't gotten to know all about what you do and the heart behind why you started it. I love what you were just saying about women supporting women and when you invited me to this. So it was a cacao ceremony and a day retreat and there was this instant, like I think, most women have this aching desire to be in ceremony with one another and to be in ritual. I think so many of us we're living these individualistic lives where we have these routines that are so masculine. They're so like what do I get out of this? Or what do I give to others out of this? Like you, look at all of the routines that women are focusing on in either entrepreneurs or even moms, and there's like this I have to have this outcome. I'm going to this to get something.

Speaker 1: 7:56

And what was so beautiful at your retreat and one of the biggest things for me is being in a space where it was ritual. It was doing something for the sake of doing it, for the sake of being present, for receiving. It was so beautiful when you were handing out the cacao of. I give this to you with love, and then I receive this with love and learning to be in a room of women, being in a room of women where I could both receive and give, and it felt so heart opening. Like you said, heart opening. And that leads me to just I'm curious, what started that journey for you? This like getting women together and this heart, what, what made you like open up to and look at the heart so much?

Speaker 2: 8:47

That's a really great question. The honest answer to that is what got me started on that journey was the fact that my own heart was so closed. For so many years, my heart was very closed years my heart was very close, very shielded, very protected, very um, closed off from women, closed off from myself, closed off from, like I don't know feeling in general, because I have as I'm sure many of us have I've gone through a series of very, very traumatic events, and I'm I've gone through a series of very, very traumatic events, and I'm an extremely sensitive and emotional person, and, for those of us who are very sensitive beings, like I am, your heart can only handle so much before it totally closes off and closes up and says like nope, no, thank you. Like this is a little too painful. I'm just going to create a bunch of walls and lots of protection so that I don't feel anything anymore. The problem, though, when you close off your heart, is that, yes, you close it off from feeling pain, but you also close it off from feeling joy and bliss and compassion and empathy and all these other emotions that are just so beautiful, and like, truly, what is life without love? And so I had closed my heart off from feeling love and also from feeling my own love, first and foremost.

Speaker 2: 10:22

So when I went to Costa Rica in 2019, I was in this place in my life where I had hit rock bottom, like I just I couldn't go any lower. I was like this is rock bottom, like I don't even this, like I feel like I was several levels below rock bottom, like that's how bad things were for me, I think, on an emotional, spiritual, emotional, all the levels, psychological. I was just at the lowest of the low in my life at that point, just like all the pain that I hadn't dealt with, all the pain that I was just kind of shoving under the rug and just being like nope, I'm just going to deal with that later, I'll just deal with that tomorrow, I'll just deal with that next year. It just like exploded. It just all came out in 2019.

Speaker 1: 11:02

And you're a mom in 2019, right, like this is happening in the context of motherhood too.

Speaker 2: 11:09

A hundred percent, and I knew, as a mother, I needed to protect my child and my family really from the pain I was experiencing, cause I was like this has nothing to do with my son, this has nothing to do with my husband, this has everything to do with me, and if I don't heal this, I'm going to end up causing them unnecessary pain which will then require more healing, and it's just like this insane snowball effect and I'm like I don't want to spend four decades of my life healing Right. And so I was like I need to self isolate and I need to figure out what the heck is going on. So then that's that was the impetus behind me going to this retreat, or it's not. It wasn't really a retreat, it was like it was this it's called an eco village. So it's this eco village in Costa Rica called Pachamama. You can Google it. It's incredible, um, highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in going. So I stayed in this eco village for two weeks, and I love chocolate.

Speaker 2: 12:07

I've always loved chocolate. I've always been a big fan of chocolate, consumed in my whole life, like I love chocolate, and when I was in Costa Rica, I tried cacao for the first time in my life, and it's raw form. I'd never had cacao before and I was shocked when I had what was called a cacao shot. That's literally what it was called on the menu and I just I ordered it out of sheer curiosity. I was like huh, what's a cacao shot? I'm like can't go wrong there really Totally.

Speaker 2: 12:37

I was like I think this is chocolate, but I'm not entirely sure, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 12:41

I'll just order it and see what happens. And so I drank it and, like in less than 10 minutes I was blissed out of my mind. I was euphoric, I was happy, I was like skipping in the rainforest and like, like looking at all the butterflies and the flowers and I'm like, oh my God, life is so beautiful and I just I felt high and I truly thought that the woman who had prepared my cacao drink had put something in it. I was like she must've put like mushrooms in here. Like what is going on? Cause I was like I've had, I've had chocolate my whole life, but I've never felt like this before. Yeah, so I went back to the girl who prepared my drink and I'm like what did you? What did you put in this? Like, be honest, like did you put something in my chocolate, my cacao drink? And she's like no, no. And she, just she responded in Spanish and she's like no, which means oh, that's just cacao's magic, um, or the magic of cacao. And I'm like what do you mean? And then her and I went down this rabbit hole of like what cacao is, and that was the first time I'd ever heard about cacao as a plant medicine and the heart opening properties of cacao. So what I had, or rather what I was experiencing in that moment, I didn't know it, I didn't have the language to articulate it, but what I was experiencing in that moment was the beginning of my heart opening, and that's why I felt so blissed out, because my heart had been so closed off. So the second it opened up just a little bit then, like joy and love and bliss, just like flooded in, and I was like what is going on? So those 14 days that I was in Costa Rica, I had a cacao shot every single day, and every single day my heart just opened up a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, more. And I just had the most profound, like magical, incredible feeling experience while I was in Costa Rica.

Speaker 2: 14:32

So when I came back to Colorado, I told my husband, who's a chef, I told him about this magical cacao drink I had in the rainforest and I was like, can you please help me recreate it? I'm like I want to keep drinking this in Colorado. And so we played with a bunch of different. We played with a bunch of different like ingredients, recipes, and we didn't figure it out. We didn't like create the final recipes until 2021, but we came very close to creating recipes in 2019 and 2020 that were comparable or similar to so for the because I went to Costa Rica in like and 2020 that were comparable or similar to so for the cause I went to Costa Rica in like the summer of 2019.

Speaker 2: 15:13

So the reminder of 2019 and all of 2020, I literally was drinking cacao like every single day because my my heart, just at that point in my life, it just needed it, it craved that heart opening because I had been so closed off for so many years. And so, basically for a year and a half, I worked very, very intimately with cacao's energy. I became familiar with cacao's energy just like one-on-one. I had no desire, I had no plan at all to start a business like whatsoever. It was never something I foresaw. It was never something I was like, oh, I'm starting a business Like. No, absolutely not. That. That energy or that desire or that calling came to me at the end of 2020, because, again, I had benefited so much from it and it truly didn't take that long, like a year and a half is really not a long time and in fact, I experienced basically immediate effects that working with cacao's energy for a prolonged period of time.

Speaker 2: 16:06

It just unfolded my heart even more, and when that happened, what I learned which is what I'm still implementing today was that my body has two brains, like I have.

Speaker 2: 16:19

We all have, not just me, we all have two forms of intelligence within our bodies. Like our brain, of course, is a form of intelligence, but our heart is also a massive form of intelligence, and what Kakao taught me is that your heart will always lead you in the direction of your dreams. It will always. It's like a compass. It will always point you in the direction of like what you want to create, what you want to create, what you want to do, how you want to serve the world. So it's like listen, listen to your heart, listen that's what that phrase like. Listen to your heart, because they will always point you in the direction of your dreams, and then what your brain does is your brain simply helps you strategize and plan to make those dreams come true. The brain doesn't do that, though the heart. The heart points in the direction of the dream, of your dreams. And then the brain is like, okay, here's the plan, here's how we're going to make your dreams come true. So that's a little bit behind why I started up a batch of cocoa.

Speaker 1: 17:16

Well, and I think what's so cool about this story and you know, I'm thinking of so many moms, so many women who I hear this they come to this breaking point. They have this moment of like I can't do this anymore, I can't keep going in the way that I'm going. I can't. There's some sort of moment where they realize there's a choice, and I think what's so fascinating is one you took action, you did something, but how interesting that it was literally just ordering something off of a menu that you wanted, that you desired, that you had a feeling about not this like knowing and I think so many moms they like get to the season where they're like I don't know who I am anymore, I don't know what I like, I don't know what my hobbies are, I don't have this sense of self. They're disconnected from their heart, they're disconnected from this feminine intelligence, which is not just in women, it's in everyone. But they're disconnected from this whole part of them. And what I love so much is that you literally found something that you loved, that made you feel good, and that you pursued it. And what's so, so cool, you pursuing that brought goodness and life to your family and then to the community and now, like Rafat and other women, like I think women are. So there's that like cute, like self-care is selfish, but I don't think it's a logical thing. I don't think women are logically sitting around thinking it would be selfish for me to do this. It's a felt sense in our hearts of if I take up this space, I'm taking it from someone else. But what they don't realize is that, like, fighting back against the whole self-care is selfish, doesn't actually work. But what does work't realize is that fighting back against the whole self-care is selfish, doesn't actually work. But what does work is stop worrying about this whole self-care, or selfish, or mom guilt whatever the hell we're calling mom guilt these days.

Speaker 1: 19:17

Not just what do you need? Yes, we need to make sure you're meeting your basic needs, but what do you want? What do you want? What do you like? What do you like? What do you like? What colors do you like? What music do you like? What food do you like? Start pursuing that. How do you like to move your body? What kind of women do you like to hang out with? What kind of books do you like to read? It could be the smallest thing.

Speaker 1: 19:38

Like me, creating this business started from me reading books, which led to me reading podcasts, which led to me hiring my first life coach. I didn't even know life coaching was a thing until I found it. All of that came from pursuing that heart led intelligence. And I don't think our culture. I think our culture is just now starting to value and give language and give the respect to our feeling, to our emotional intelligence, because for so long emotions have seemed like this lower level intelligence which is so fascinating, because in so many ways, I think our emotional, felt sense bypasses so much of the mental health drama that people run in circles around of overthinking and anxiety and intellectualizing their problems. And it's like if you could just get below your head, below your throat, like I don't know what to say, I don't know how to set this boundary, and I was like you, I'm like you will when, when you're back to connected to your feeling, to your heart center.

Speaker 2: 20:49

A hundred percent. I mean, I couldn't agree more with everything that you said, and I I, too, was lost in that world of emotions are a sign of weakness, and I, I joined the entrepreneurial community in 2016, which is heavily, heavily male dominated. Um, I was usually the only woman in the room, I was almost always the only Latina in the room, um, filled with a bunch of, you know, typically white males, and so, in those environments, oh my God, the heart is so not there. Like the heart is so not present, like there's no emotions.

Speaker 2: 21:23

Like all these men, are showing up like at all, like all these men are showing up super stoic, very like all business, no feeling, no heart. And so what did I do? I just started mimicking or mirroring my environment because I was in this like male dominated business world since 2016. And I was like okay, so apparently this is how you need to be to be successful. However, what I was noticing was that I was trying to be something I'm clearly not like. I am so not a guy. Like I'm incredibly feminine, I love, I love like sparkles and colors and like butterflies and unicorns, like I'm such a girl. And so, with my essence, like what my essence is, I was working against my essence and I was shockingly not shockingly having no success, even though I was pushing and pushing and pushing and like running around like a like a man, essentially packed schedule, doing proposals left and right. I had a business, a video marketing business at the time like scheduling myself like back to back to back, like I was not really having results, and so then I had to kind of take a step back. And that's this after, after this period of time of just like hustling, hustling, hustling, doing, doing, doing, pushing, pushing, pushing, exerting, exerting, exerting, and nothing, like nothing was happening, the needle wasn't really moving. I took a step back and I'm like, okay, clearly I'm doing something wrong. And so then, then 2019 happened, and 2020 happened, and then 2021, which is when we launched our big cow business. I was like, okay, what I was doing wasn't working, you do something completely different. So that's when I fully, 100% leaned into my femininity, I leaned into my womanhood, I leaned into my emotions and I completely unleashed my intuition.

Speaker 2: 23:21

I've always been highly intuitive, highly sensitive, but again, rebecca, like you said, emotions and feelings are always viewed as a sign of weakness. At least, that's the perception that we women, or we humans, have received forever and ever and ever. It's like don't be emotional, don't cry, all these things, which is like absolutely not true, because to be vulnerable with yourself, first and foremost, and then to be vulnerable in public, is like literally one of the hardest things you could ever do. Vulnerability is so difficult and the only way to tap into your vulnerability is to tap into your heart center. So, anyway, so in 2021, I was like, okay, instead of pushing, pushing, pushing, exerting which is a very masculine energy, I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to lean into my femininity and, more than anything, I'm going to open myself up to receive and to magnetize what I want for me and for my family and for my business and for my life. And so when a woman, when a woman what's the word like? Fully opens herself up to her, her feminine essence, like literally magic happens.

Speaker 2: 24:39

Like we women are, we have by nature our feminine energy is to receive. Our feminine energy is not to push out into project. That's very masculine energy. Our energy is like let's open ourselves up to receive and let's attract to us what we want, of course, like you said earlier, taking aligned action. We're not just going to like, sit on our couch and like, open our hands up and be like, okay, I'm ready to receive. Yes, energetically open yourself up to receive and then take aligned action and literally watch the magic happens. Because we had so much success without Papacho and it was effortless. I wasn't pushing, I wasn't exerting, I wasn't doing all this crazy hustle culture crap that I was taught to do. I was just being my own feminine self and um, magnetizing to meet the people, the opportunities and the, the magic that I wanted in my life. And it came and it. It came in like this abundant, like tidal wave. It was incredible.

Speaker 1: 25:44

Yeah. So I'm wondering, I'm I'm just thinking, you know, I'm sitting here like, oh my gosh, yes, I totally. I'm sitting here just like nodding my head, and I know that there's so many women who the concept of like leaning into the feminine or their heart center, like they're like what does that mean? Like, what do I do? And you know, one of the powerful things I think you said and I wanted, I wanted to like piggyback on this. Well, you, you didn't mention this specifically, but when we're talking, when you're talking about the masculine space, something comes up in me too. I think it's so powerful.

Speaker 1: 26:20

Obviously, this is a podcast for moms. Obviously, this is a podcast for moms. I mostly speak to women and feminine and masculine energy. I think our culture loves using the phrase toxic masculinity and unhealthy, unhealed masculine energy is just as unhealthy for the men as it is the women, but it's highly accepted and praised in men and they usually can get away with it in the same way that women. When they're in their unhealthy feminine, we tend to just be like, oh, that's her just being a woman and it's like, no, that's an unhealthy expression of this energy that can be really healthy, but because it's unbalanced, because it's on the extreme end and doesn't have any masculine energy. It's been thrown off balance.

Speaker 1: 27:20

So what for you, like, if someone's listening to this and they're like, okay, what does it even mean to be in my feminine energy or be in my heart space, Is there like a tangible way that they can start connecting to their heart? I mean, you mentioned cacao, is something really powerful. So I'm wondering if you know, is there a ceremony that you do? Is it just the plant medicine in and of itself? Is it the ritual that you do with it? Or even the other direction too, of like. What does it look like to implement and integrate on a daily level of being in your feeling? For you, Like, what's your experience with that?

Speaker 2: 27:59

Yeah, so the very quick, short, hopefully easy to remember answer to that is this mindset shift from do to be. That took me years and years, and years and years to understand that, because we are a culture that's so used to do doing. What am I going to do? What action am I going to take Versus being being that energy that you want to have or attract or receive? So I'll give you an example.

Speaker 2: 28:42

When I was working with Picacao in 2019, 2020, just privately, I would drink a cup and I wouldn't do anything. Well, I guess I guess drinking is kind of like doing something, but whatever, I would drink my cacao and I would sit there and I would just allow myself to be, know that in my beingness, I was worthy and whole already that, and so in that process of allowing myself to just be, I discovered that I've been whole all along, that I didn't need to to exert or do or achieve or perform again masculine energies in order to have worth or have value or have relevance, because I had so associated my ability to perform and to execute and to do with my value, with my worth, and it was only in my stillness and in my ability to just be that I discovered that my worth and my value have always been innate and they are not tied to my ability to uh, I don't know produce results which is again a very masculine energy.

Speaker 2: 30:02

So the easy answer here is switch doing to being. Or, if you can envision, envision the word do, just put like an X over it and then replace it with the word be, yeah, well and even in what you just said, I think too.

Speaker 1: 30:24

I think it's okay that there isn't an easy, oh, here's a one-step process, because that in and of itself is like how do we perform the feminine? And it's like you can't, you don't, and it's coming back to who we are and not just what we're producing. And one of the ways I like to think about it and one of the ways I describe it to clients is you know, when did little girls learn how to perform dance versus dancing? You know, we are a culture that does not dance. There's no dancing, there's no celebratory like let's all get other, let's get together and just dance to music. It's little girls. Get on a stage and they try to perform this step to this step, to this step, at the right time, at the right moves, and you learn exactly how to position your body, exactly how to do it in the right timing, exactly in sync with everybody else. That is performing. There's a difference between a girl on stage performing a dance, which is beautiful, it's an art, it's a creative act, there's nothing wrong with it. But that is the way that most of us have learned how to live. We have learned to do a performance. We have learned. Someone, tell me one through 10, and then I'll do it. And then we become mothers and we're like I can't do all of these steps. I can't tap, dance and do point at the same time, and yet you're expecting me to do these at the same time. Versus, cut all of that noise, the curtains closed, I'm going to put on a song, move to it, feel it in your body, feel it in your soul. How does this music move you? You don't have to move the music. You get moved by the music. You just receive the dancing. You're like it's just something that's happening with you and to you, and like it doesn't hurt anybody. It doesn't look as cute but it's so much more fun. I mean, I used to be obsessed with the show, so you think you can dance.

Speaker 1: 32:23

And one of the common, common things that the judges would say is they like you're doing all the right things, but I can tell your heart's not in it. I can tell that you don't feel it, and you can witness that in other people. You can see, you can feel it and there's not a way to describe it, but you're like man, they're doing all the right things, but it feels off and that's because it man, they're doing all the right things but it feels off. And that's because they're doing all the right moves but they're not embodied in it. And that's how I like to describe that difference between head, masculine, performing and heart-led embodiment and leading from the heart and being. That's what I think of when I think of being.

Speaker 1: 33:04

I'm like, okay, sometimes I'm still, and sometimes I'm moving, but I'm literally just like letting myself exist instead of forcing myself into this performance act of what I should do. It's okay, what's next? What's next there's, and it's messier. I don't know your experience, but like it's messier, it's harder to explain. And I don't. I don't have this like easy telling other people why I don't have all of my reasons anymore, but I also don't need them. I don't need to like explain to you why I'm doing this. I just am. Does that resonate to you? Is that, does that? I'm just curious what your response is to that.

Speaker 2: 33:49

Yeah, I, I do resonate with that, because I wouldn't say that my life is messy or ever since I leaned into more of my feminine nature, but I would say that I've had to really, really, really learn to trust myself and to trust my intuition.

Speaker 2: 34:14

That process of learning to trust that can be really messy, because when the head gets in the way, sometimes um, I don't want to say mistakes happen, but sometimes you're like, oh shoot, darn, I should have listened to say mistakes happen, but sometimes you're like, oh shoot, darn, I should have listened to my. Some people call it their gut, right, I just call it my intuition or your heart, whatever word resonates the most with you. So when I was in that window of time where my head wanted to keep leading my life but my heart was taking, taking hold of the steering wheel, essentially there was this, this tug of war for, for power, right, it's like. The head was like, no, this doesn't make sense, we shouldn't be doing this right now. And the heart was like, yeah, but this brings me joy. So, like with your dancing example that you gave, um, I don't know if you've ever participated in an ecstatic dance event. I have just once. And it's so interesting what you said because at the beginning of this ecstatic dance event, I was a professional dancer for seven years.

Speaker 2: 35:15

So when you talk about performing, I know exactly, yeah, I know exactly what you mean, because, well, I mean I did it professionally. And so I noticed at this ecstatic dance event that I attended, that the first, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 minutes of it I was performing. But then I'm like wait a minute. I'm like who am I performing for? I'm like nobody's watching me, nobody cares, everybody's in their own little bubble doing their own little ecstatic dancing that they're doing. And as soon as I removed that, it was almost like preconditioned desire to perform or whatever. I was like whatever, I'm just going to dance, like you said, according to what my body wants to do, according to what the music is doing or the drums are doing. Body wants to do according to what the music is doing or the drums are doing. And when I did that, oh my gosh, like the sense of happiness and joy and fulfillment that came from a place of dancing for my heart, as opposed to dancing to perform or dancing to please or dancing for applause totally different experience.

Speaker 2: 36:23

So that that perhaps is another way that a woman can get in touch with her femininity is like give yourself permission to move and sway your hips and sway your arms and your shoulders and your hair, like that. All of that is very feminine nature and we have been like raised to believe that if we move in these sensual, beautiful ways, that it is, I don't know, wrong or unholy or it's I hate the word sluttier, but it's a word that's used so much and it's, it's something that I want to. I don't want to reclaim that word, but I'd rather replace it with embodied. Like we are women, we are sensual and sexual and beautiful by nature. That's just like our bodies are designed.

Speaker 2: 37:12

That's why literally like sculptures would make sculptures of women's bodies. Like we are beautiful, we have beautiful bodies and and it's okay, and we can lean into our beauty and we can lean into our sensuality, into our beauty. And we can lean into our sensuality and as and the key here is to remove the sense of shame that many of us were raised with as soon as you remove shame from the equation and you allow yourself to just let love flood in, like self-love, first and foremost, all those old narratives they just start like dissipating, they just start like floating away because they're just not relevant anymore.

Speaker 1: 37:51

Yeah, I love. I love that we've moved into movement because I have really found you know, as a somatic coach, my experience what led me into somatics was I realized that movement is what brought me back to my body and to being a person in my own being and not just being in performance, not just being in this people pleasing. Who am I making happy and what am I checking off my to-do list? I felt motherhood woke me up to my body in a very intense way. Motherhood woke me up to my body in a very intense way and it was very hard because I was both completely dissociated or I felt completely flooded by my emotions and movement became this bridge of reconnecting to my heart and to my feeling. And I think to myself, like when, when moms say, like I don't know who I am or I don't feel myself, it's like learning how to sensationally feel your body and move your body from a place of you are moving it instead of something else, moving you instead of something you doing all of these should lists and like mentally thinking about yourself. You start feeling in your body what it's like to move and movement for me was so powerful, and especially when I started realizing that emotions are an energy of motion, right, like anger and all of those things. They were something that needed to be moved through my body and booty yoga was one of those things for me or kickboxing, or moving in a way that was more feminine and feminine in that, like a lot of the ways we move in our culture are like these very masculine workouts, which I love weightlifting, it's like one of my favorites, but also dancing and swirling and like doing that with other women. Booty yoga has been so, so powerful for me to be able to just dance, to listen to music, to be emotional, to be in a place where you know it's funny.

Speaker 1: 40:02

I've been doing booty for a while and I'm about to be certified in it and my daughter the other day she was like, well, are you good at it? I said it doesn't matter, it's not, it's, it's one of the. It's one of the first things I found in my life where I was like it doesn't matter if I'm good at it, because that's not the point. The point is not to be good at it or burn calories or get in shape. It is literally because I want to, because I like it, because it feels good, because I like the way I feel when I'm done. I like who I'm being when I'm doing it, but also when I get done, I'm reconnected in a way that I hadn't ever felt before and so just having a way to move my body in a way that like it wasn't for anyone else, it wasn't for the way that I looked, it wasn't for the way that I performed, it was literally just because it feels fun to dance and shake your hips and do these hard things and sweat and be in a place where, like I think, our human bodies, at a biological level, we were made to dance and sweat and cry and like sensuality is just sensation.

Speaker 1: 41:11

So if you feel cut off from your sensuality or sexuality, start thinking about sensation and taste and texture and like cacao that was one of the beautiful things at that ceremony of like, smelling it and tasting it and feeling the warmth and just reconnecting to it. Do you feel like being reconnected to sensation was a part of your journey when it came like, when it came to like what you experienced with cacao? Was that a part of it for you?

Speaker 2: 41:43

A hundred percent because, again, because I was coming from this like heady masculine space, I was not at all used to being in the present moment. I was always thinking about some, either the past and like yeah, like, oh, shoot, you know what, what could I have done better at this meeting? What? Why didn't that client sign this proposal? Or, shoot, I didn't, whatever, send out the email I needed to send. So I was living in the past and I was also living a little bit, or rather a lot bit, in regret and the could have, should have, would have, um, mentality or energy space. Or I was living in the future, like goal oriented, just being like, okay, what's my 90 day plan, what's my six month plan? Like, what are my goals for 2020?, whatever year it was. So I was rarely, if ever, hardly ever, in the present moment, and presence is a state that, male or female, can benefit and heal us so much. Because, at the end of the day, this present moment is truly all we have, and that's another massive, powerful lesson that Kakao taught me is the beauty and the absolute gift of presence, a full embodied presence, like allowing myself to be fully present, allowing all of my senses to be activated with this cup of cacao became part of my personal ritual when I was, you know, having my my ceremonies here with just myself and the cup of cacao. I I would take a moment to activate all of my senses, just like I facilitated during the um, the women's retreat, during the cacao ceremony that I was um, that I was facilitating for. I did that for you, ladies, because I did that for myself, for you know, a year and a half and I discovered how healing and how nurturing and just how like grounding it is to give yourself full permission to be present. But it's okay. You can give yourself permission to be present and and in fact, you'll find so much more joy in the present moment, as opposed to focusing on the past and what you didn't do yesterday and what the goals you didn't accomplish last year, or you know what your goals are for the remainder of the year Q1 or Q2 or Q3 or Q4, like all that very masculine energy that's all about, like goal. Or it's a goal oriented future planning and it's and it's great and it's necessary and we do need to live our lives in that way. However, this is a yes and like yes. Let's plan for the future and let's give ourselves permission to be present in this moment and whatever it is that we are doing, whether we are having a conversation with a fellow woman, or we are sitting in ceremony with a cup of cacao, or we are with our children, giving ourselves permission to be present, because that endless mental mother could to-do list will always be there. It's always, it's never going to go away. Be there, it's always, it's never going to go away. Yeah, it's never ending. No, and that's okay, we're not meant to win it because it's it's this ongoing in perpetuity, never ending thing. So there's no, it's like this fruitless pursuit, it's like the.

Speaker 2: 45:20

The image I get in my head is like the, the carrot dangling in front of the course. It's like that. So it's like stop trying to eat the carrot, you'll never be able to eat it, It'll just frustrate you and then you'll miss your whole entire life, you'll miss your children's life, because you're always like chasing this dangling carrot in front of you. And so, instead of just allowing yourself to be really present in every single moment, and when you live your life that way, with that much presence and that much intention, oh my gosh, everything becomes a miracle. Everything becomes like, almost like high definition, high color, because you just start to appreciate everything that's around you all the time and that level of joy. You transmit that to your children, you transmit that to your partner and you certainly transmit that to your children. You transmit that to your partner and you certainly transmit that to your clients, your customers.

Speaker 1: 46:09

Yeah, you, you just hit something so profound that I see in so many women is they're chasing. They're chasing like a success in motherhood in this season. That looks good on paper and when they come to me, a lot of times what they expect is like you're going to help me figure out the 10 steps that enable me to reach this success on paper and I'm like take the paper and burn it. This will have you running on a hamster wheel. Whether you are looking at, the thing that felt really familiar in entrepreneurship is, all of a sudden, I got here and I started chasing the carrot. And then what was so cool and so fun for me is I got to work with pretty early on as a coach. I got to coach women who already were at the level of success I wanted to be as an entrepreneur and I was like they're still chasing the carrot, they're still denying themselves presence and joy and pleasure and celebration because they're still chasing the carrot. They're still denying themselves presence and joy and pleasure and celebration because they're working for something that they already have and the thing that they wanted so bad the success and the thing that would make them feel so good in this season was presence and being present with their children and connecting with themselves and feeling good about their children and connecting with themselves and feeling good about their day to day, which didn't always look pretty, it didn't always check things off the boxes, but it felt even better than that and that, I think, only comes from slowing down. And you even you said, like it's not that we ignore the masculine, it's not that we don't create structures and systems and schedules and time blocking. It's not that we ignore the masculine, it's not that we don't create structures and systems and schedules and time blocking. It's not that we think we don't need all of those things, but we can only do so much of those things until we realize there's also a power in sitting down with a hot cup of cacao and feeling the warmth or looking at your kid and taking in the texture of their face. Because if there is a gift of motherhood that brings us to a deeper level of spirituality and healing, it is.

Speaker 1: 48:15

We have to be present, because you will make all of the best laid out plans and then your kid's going to get sick, or you have the best mothering or parenting strategy and then your kid enters a new season and guess what it doesn't work anymore. There is a strength, but if you think of like a backbone, it is strong but it has to be flexible, it has to be able to move, it has to be able to flow, and that comes from feeling, that comes from the up and downs of emotion, and I think we're so afraid of that flexibility, we're so afraid of that looseness, like I don't even like messy You're right, I don't think messy is even the language I want to use for it anymore. But there is this like I think we want this very structured, straight path and I'm like okay, that's all good and great if you're looking at something that can get you from A to B, but that isn't motherhood. You can't win that way. You won't win that way.

Speaker 1: 49:15

You'll always feel like you're failing, even when you're like. You'll always see the gap instead of seeing the gain. You're always going to look at what you thought you should have been instead of witnessing the beauty of who you are, who your kid is, and being present to that. I'm so curious, if one I don't want to forget to ask this do you have a recipe for your cacao? This is like my ADHD moment of all of a sudden I'm like wait, I need you to share the recipe for the way that you make it, because it was so, so good. Is that something that you share?

Speaker 2: 49:49

Yeah, absolutely yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm happy to share that yes.

Speaker 1: 49:54

I just got of like I'm like in this profound flow and then all of a sudden my brain is like how do we make the cacao?

Speaker 2: 50:01

You're like anyway, talk to us about the recipe. Yeah, no, I just want to acknowledge, before I share the recipe yes, I'm happy to share it that what you said is, I mean, yes, true, and I also want to point out that motherhood and entrepreneurship are so, so similar, because you have to be flexible. You cannot be rigid as an entrepreneur. You're not going to make it, you will fail immediately, because you'll make a failure as a parent.

Speaker 2: 50:31

Yeah, absolutely. And even as a parent, like you also, especially as a parent, you have to be incredibly flexible as well. Any level of rigidity, your child will immediately fight you back, because children cannot be raised in healthy environments where there's a lot of rigidity and, like you mentioned as well, like there are. So my, my son will be 13 later this year and we've been through all the stages you can possibly imagine, like all the stages, and we couldn't, we couldn't have possibly made it through all the different stages newborn, toddler, kid, queen. Now we're entering teenager With this sense of rigidity. We had to be flexible.

Speaker 2: 51:21

I was able to really lean into the wisdom and the strength of flexibility was through my intuition, which all of us mothers have. That's where that phrase mother's intuition comes from. I had to lean into my intuition and know when something wasn't right anymore. I'm like, okay, this worked when my son Liam was five, six, seven, but now that he's eight, nine, 10, this isn't working anymore. So, to lean into my intuitive, feminine wisdom to figure out, okay, well, in this stage of his development and his growth, what's going to work for him now. And many times that didn't come from here, that came from here. I'm pointing to my heart. We want to think our way through solutions, but 99% of the time we can't. We need to feel our way to the solution, and as soon as I allowed myself to think from my heart as opposed to think from my head, the answer almost always came immediately and it was always accurate. So I just wanted to touch on that before sharing the recipe. Okay, so the recipe that I hold on.

Speaker 1: 52:31

I know I got so excited for the recipe, but maybe we can link it or share it. But I want to respond to what you just said of like there's some things I think so many women, especially very intellectual women or women who like are very mentally strong, they're terrified. They're probably hearing this and they're like oh my gosh, I'm not a feelings person, I'm not a crier or whatever. Right, they're maybe not as much feeling people as we are. We're both like big, sensitive feelers and I like there's women who aren't that way. What I like to encourage them and, as I was, like we're not telling your head to shut off, I'm not telling you to disconnect from your intellectual intelligence.

Speaker 1: 53:11

You absolutely need your intellectual intelligence, you need your thoughts, you need your mental capacity, but what I'm saying is you are cut off at the neck. You are missing 80% of your intelligence when you're ignoring your body, and your body is what is reading the other people. So, if you want to be successful in relationships or parenting or business because ultimately, business is working with other bodies you need your body, because your brain cannot interpret the intelligence of their body until you learn its language. So, instead of thinking it of like, oh, I need to, like, cut myself off from thinking. It's like no, you need your whole listic, your holistic, whole self online so that you are connected to your information, intellect. Intelligence that's like mental in your head and your embodied emotional feeling sensing, because that is just as powerful, it's just as needed and those two were meant to work together. It's like if you had a three-legged bar stool and you cut off one of the legs, it's not going to be balanced, it's not going to be mature. And yet we walk around as people who expect ourselves, like, oh, I don't have any inner child work. And it's like, oh well, no, you do have an emotional nervous system body. That's not working on intellect, it's not working on what you know up here in your head, it's working on what you experienced, it's working on what it knows, and until you learn that language, you are cut off from having any impact or influence on it. So you're repressing this entire part of you that has so, so much power.

Speaker 1: 54:56

And I love hearing your story and your journey in that, because I think this is so much of what moms are missing, because I think so many of the parenting experts. They come at a logic, they tell us what to do, right? How many experts are there who tell us what to do as parents? Now, I think that's helpful information. I'm not saying we don't need that and I'm like. None of that. Logical matters if I'm too emotionally dysregulated, if I'm too emotionally flooded or disconnected, right? How many moms are having a hard time stopping yelling at their kids because they're flooded with emotion or because they're completely disassociated from their emotion? All of the tools and tricks of how to stop yelling for your kid, they're not going to matter. Until you address the emotional intelligence, not just the logical intelligence, you can tell that's like a soapbox of mine, of like are telling people what to do only gets you so far without the being, without who you have to become, and that's not just an intellectual story, that's a embodied sense of being, like what you were talking about.

Speaker 2: 56:13

Yes, a hundred percent, and I love that you mentioned about the fact about not turning our head off. Quote unquote.

Speaker 1: 56:22

And.

Speaker 2: 56:23

I just want to reiterate and highlight that I too am also saying no, you can't. None of us myself included, none of us can turn off our head. We wouldn't function, we wouldn't survive, Like the brain is literally there to help us survive. Yes, All I'm saying and all I'm sharing is the fact that, yes, we are capable of having an open mind and we're capable of having an open heart. At the same time, we don't have to have one closed and one open. They both can be open.

Speaker 2: 56:54

And you're putting yourself in a highly leveraged position when you're operating with two forms of intelligence as opposed to just one, and your life just becomes so much easier. It's like you're so much more effective as a mother, as a business owner, as a woman, when both of these forms of intelligence are A recognized and accepted and B activated. You have to activate your heart center, and when you've activated by activated I mean like open it, lean into it, tune into it, learn to listen to the language of your heart or the voice of your heart. And I always like to say this the mind yells. The mind loves to yell, the mind loves to scream.

Speaker 2: 57:40

The mind is very obnoxious, Like I can always hear my mind but my heart. It's very gentle, it's very subtle, it whispers and that's why it's so easy to ignore it. Because it whispers, it doesn't have a loud voice, it's not obnoxious at all, it's very dainty and soft and that's why I think people just dismiss the calling or the voice of their heart. And I'm telling you, please do not dismiss those whispers. You will regret it. If you hear a whisper, listen to become silent. Ie meditation. Listen to become silent ie meditation. Become silent so that you can hear the whisper and you can discern what it is, and then you can use your mind to act accordingly.

Speaker 1: 58:36

Man, what you just said, it just resonated so deeply in me of how many women are trying to get out of their heads. They're like they're exhausted of the mental chatter, they're exhausted of the mental constant running of their to-do list and what they should do. And you just like I don't think I've ever had that language before of like my mind is really loud, which also, like ADHD, doesn't help with that but like my thoughts are, like I'm constantly hearing my thoughts and I think one of the reasons why I love somatic work and yoga is it's in movement and music and getting into more feminine and body healing is that I finally get a break from my mind. Not I get a break from my mind, but my mind has been working over time. My mind is working so hard all of the time because I was disconnected from my body.

Speaker 1: 59:30

And I love what you were saying of the two languages and I even had this thought of like it's like going back to what you were saying at the beginning of being bilingual, of having two languages, and how that's such like a powerful concept, and I had this thought of like you know, you like I have never had no, that's not true.

Speaker 1: 59:49

I have had the experience where my family went to Chile and every we lived in a house where they only spoke Spanish and I remember having this like it was. It was so hard to not be able to like fully communicate, to fully understand and we were able to connect on different levels. But having that experience I think of like I wish, so bad. In those moments I was like I wish I could speak your language. So bad right now because there was a lack of unity and communication, because we were speaking a different language. And how powerful if we have both of those languages online. Like what a dynamic, powerful thing to have. I mean one to be literally bilingual, but also to have this experience of knowing the language of emotion and heart and mind Right thank you for saying that.

Speaker 2: 1:00:43

I have never thought about it. I guess we both gave each other new perspectives or new, new forms of thinking. I had never thought I, or rather I had never made that connection with. You know, my bilingualism connected with these two very different languages that I've learned to interpret, which is, you know, the language of the head and the language of the heart, which are two totally different languages. But yes, I think that's why I was able to, like I don't know, activate it so quickly is because my mind has always thought in two languages. I speak two languages all day, every day, like I speak Spanglish all the time. And so when you said that I'm like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense. I'd never paused to see it that way. But it logically makes sense that I was able to interpret and understand both of these languages because my brain has been primed to do that, literally.

Speaker 1: 1:01:45

My whole life and you know it's so cool and this is, I hope. I hope this feels good for you to receive. Tell me if it doesn't.

Speaker 1: 1:01:53

Legitimately, I, I was so attracted and like in love with watching you be bilingual, to watch you speak Spanish and English and getting to see the full expression of you and I think of like, how much, how much of you I would have missed out on if I only heard you speak English, if I only, like, even when I didn't understand you in Spanish, like you would say something like to someone else, I like there was this, like I would have missed out on so much of you, and I think that speaks to this topic we're talking about, of we're missing out on each other when we're not speaking this language of heart.

Speaker 1: 1:02:37

We're missing out on whole parts of us because we don't understand this language and I think our culture is starting to value it. We don't understand this language and I think our culture is starting to value it, and this is one of the reasons why we wanted to have this conversation is so that we can start to value this language that is so beautiful and life-giving and it only makes us that much more potent and powerful and it doesn't take away from your English speaking. When you spoke Spanish, it added to it. It added this other layer of like in fact, I was sitting there like I want to speak this language too, you know, like this beautiful invitation, and I love that as like a place to end. But I'm just wondering if there's anything you would add to that, or just your perspective on how that feels for you.

Speaker 2: 1:03:32

Oh, I love that, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, because the majority of my community is bilingual, like I. Just, I'm just being honest here. Like I, almost everyone in my sphere is bilingual. Like I, just, I'm just being honest here. Like I, almost everyone in my sphere is bilingual. So I hadn't heard what you just said, uh, ever.

Speaker 2: 1:03:54

But it makes so much sense that we would be missing out on like half of a person if we only experienced one side of them, let's say, and that what you just said also is applicable to all of us who are still I am including myself here we're still unfolding our hearts, because if we only show up with our head first, or with our head only, that's only like half of who we are, or maybe even less than half of who we are.

Speaker 2: 1:04:32

We're not our minds, we are, as you said earlier, this is a holistic journey, this journey of being here on earth, this journey I call it earth school.

Speaker 2: 1:04:42

Like we are all here as students on earth, just learning, evolving, transforming, growing constantly, and so to show up as only I'll just call it half of ourselves or half of our potential, or half of who we are, would be like to deprive our loved ones and our friends and our community of this whole other magical half.

Speaker 2: 1:05:04

So let's this is like my call to action Like let's show up as our whole holistic, magical selves, like fully embodied in our, in our mind, fully embodied in our heart, and let's show up as this If you, if you can envision a heart, there's like two halves right, and so I've always envisioned like one half is your head, the other half is your heart, and and those two when they come together they form the heart. If you just saw one side, you know it's just kind of like this weird curvy thing, but when you put them together it's a heart. So just, you can envision that in your mind. That's what happens when you allow yourself to show up open-minded and open-hearted. You show up fully essenced and fully embodied, which is who we all came here to be.

Speaker 1: 1:05:56

Yeah, and you know what's so beautiful you showing up in your fullness at that retreat day. It didn't take anything from me at that retreat day. It didn't take anything from me, like you showing up speaking a language that I didn't know yet didn't take anything from me. It didn't leave me out. It didn't leave me feeling like there wasn't space for me. It gave me permission and it actually grew capacity in me.

Speaker 1: 1:06:21

And that's what happens when women become full of themselves. That's what happens when women reconnect with their whole selves and they take up space with all of their neediness and our wantingness of like we want, like reconnecting to those parts of us that, like want a shot of cacao or want to go to Costa Rica. When you start taking up space like that, it does not rob other women of space, it gives them permission, and it won't do it to your kids either. I have realized that, like I was so terrified that, like me, pursuing caring for me was like somehow cutting off care from them, but actually what it did is it grew my capacity to give them more because I was cut off from part of myself. So when you show up in your fullness, you're giving other people the best of you. You're giving them all of you. You're giving them all of your capacity because you're no longer just offering them the easy manner that, like, you're just giving, giving the cultural productivity you're giving all of you.

Speaker 2: 1:07:31

Yes, and actually, on what you just said, it's showing up like expanding your capacity to give the best to your children. Of course, all of us all of us mothers, all of us caretakers, parents we want to give our best to our children, like duh, of course. However, we cannot if we're not even giving the best for ourselves, if we're feeding ourselves scraps or we're feeding ourselves crumbs or we're feeding ourselves like junk energy. What we put in is what we give out. So when we decide to invest in ourselves, of course we're going to give our children and our loved ones and anyone that's in our field the best of us, because we're putting the best in. Therefore, we're giving the best out. And I do want to end with this back in 2015,. I believe it was either 2014 or 2015.

Speaker 2: 1:08:27

I went on my first solo trip because I recognized that I was losing my essence. I was losing myself in motherhood and I was losing myself in the act of being a wife and being a housewife, and I was so scared of disconnecting from who I am, from what my core essence is, that I was like I don't want to get lost in this rabbit hole of all these like crazy hats that I'm wearing and and I'm like I need to reconnect with who I am, and so it was. In whatever year 2014, 2015, I went on my first solo trip. I went to Italy and I was there for two weeks and had the most incredible time and, just like you said, rebecca, when I came back home, of course I gave my son and my husband and my home the absolute best of me, because I had poured so much quality, love and energy and fuel into my physical body and into my energetic body that when I, when it came time for me to give, they were only receiving my best. But I had to be willing to give myself the best first. So, after that trip taught me so much, that trip taught me the importance of not neglecting myself, because I had been doing that and I was.

Speaker 2: 1:09:54

I was slowly withering away and I could feel that and I was like I can't, I can't keep withering, and so then I made it this like yearly, yearly, habitual thing. And so then I made it this like yearly, yearly habitual thing, and every year since then I've gone on solo trips to different places around the world to reconnect with my essence. I literally just got back from my solo trip this year that I took to this magical place in Mexico called Tepoztlan and I spent a week there. And then I spent the previous week in Mexico City, which is where I'm from a week there, and then I spent the previous week in Mexico city, which is where I'm from, and it was just so incredible again to fill that energetic tank with the best quality fuel.

Speaker 2: 1:10:39

And now that I'm back in Colorado and back in my rhythm and back into giving and speaking and doing for my people, for my community, for my family, for my household, I have so much energy. Anybody is going to get the best of me because I poured in the best first. So I do want to leave with. I do what I would love to end with that message for moms and caretakers everywhere Please, please, please. The trap of shame and guilt of like pouring in and investing in yourself. You're only going to enhance the quality of what you give to others when you decide it's a decision we all have to make for ourselves when you decide to pour into your cup and to do it from a place of love instead of a place of guilt and shame. Just do it from a core, into yourself lovingly, and you will pour into others lovingly too, that's that's so good, it's like there's.

Speaker 1: 1:11:39

They often say like there's this. You know the motherhood quote of like you cannot pour from an empty cup, and I'm like bullshit. Moms are constantly pouring from empty cups. But that's why it's problematic is because then eventually they become empty and now they're pouring from a negativity. So I think it's so fascinating that motherhood has really become this honestly codependent martyrdom of I am starving myself to feed you and I'm like no, you know what happens when you feed yourself, when you receive, when you nourish yourself as a human being who requires needs, who requires wants, you start giving and helping and mothering from a place of nurturing and not starvation. Starving women will become selfish because they're desperate. They are desperate for something Women who are well-fed, women who are nourished spiritually, mentally, emotionally, at any cost, women who recognize that they have to be a priority.

Speaker 1: 1:12:44

They witness that they get to be leaders to their children and give, not always from an overflow, like not always.

Speaker 1: 1:12:52

There are days when my kids are sick or when you're in the season of babies where you put their literal needs before yours.

Speaker 1: 1:12:59

But that's like saying, if you're driving and you have to pee, pee your pants, it's like no drive. And then when you get home, go pee. It's not that you just driving, you have to pee like pee your pants, it's like no drive. And then when you get home, go pee Like it's not that you just pretend that you don't have needs, it's that sometimes you have to put them off because your kids are more immediate, but they get. We get in this phase where we treat our kids once as if their needs which you know I'll get up. I'm about to go off on a whole nother rabbit trail, so I'll bring myself back of. Like, when mothers and women are nourished, the way that we lead and parent is fundamentally different and we're no longer constantly overwhelmed and exhausted and we don't become these emotional martyrs where our children need to be, where our children have the pressure of needing to make us happy or their regulations need to regulate our emotions.

Speaker 2: 1:13:46

We become self sufficient in that, like we start regulating our emotions, we start caring for our needs, we show up to care for us because we are the adults and then our kids get to be the kids and just receive from us A hundred percent and, with everything that you just said, the image that immediately triggered in my mind as like a very simple analogy for any women out there who might be like, oh I just can, I just feel so bad, I just feel so guilty, I feel so much shame when I, whatever, or like the woman that are like, oh my God, I could never go on a solo trip, like I could never leave my children, like I could never pour into my cup. Here's a very easy analogy that came to mind as I was listening to you speak, rebecca. Here's a very easy analogy that came to mind as I was listening to you speak, rebecca.

Speaker 2: 1:14:27

So when I was nursing my son, I was eating and drinking like more than I've ever consumed in my life. I was eating so much food, and not just any food. I was eating very nutrient dense food. My husband was purchasing like extremely expensive vitamins for me because it takes so much calories your body is. It's burning so many calories to produce all this milk to nourish your baby. I literally would have stopped producing milk. I would have stopped feeding my child if I wouldn't have eaten, if I wouldn't have eaten any food and I would have had no water and I would have taken no vitamins and I wouldn't have eaten all the healthy stuff I was eating at the time. That's it. My milk supply would have been gone like done, dried up. In order for me to nourish my child with the highest quality milk that I could possibly give him.

Speaker 2: 1:15:23

At that time in my life when I was nursing him, I needed to nourish myself with the high quality nutrients and water and vitamins and all the things I was consuming at the time in order to keep my milk supply up and not just keep my milk supply up, but make sure that it was a nutrient dense milk supply. But the key here is the mother needs to nourish herself first before she nourishes, before she has even the capacity to nourish her baby with her milk. So for those of you women who are out there maybe listening to this and you're, you're feeling bad or feeling guilty and if you've had the experience of nursing, you will know your body needs so much food and drink when you're in that stage of nursing and you never, you would never feel guilty for eating or drinking in order to produce breast milk. So this is this is very similar to that. I'm saying apply that same mentality, apply that same energy.

Speaker 2: 1:16:22

So all of motherhood, not just that period where you're nursing your baby, yeah, the entire experience of mothering your children requires you to consume the highest quality nutrients. Of all kinds of nutrients. Friend, friends are nutrients to movement is a nutrient. Mental health, doing things for your mental health, that's another nutrient. Never, ever, feel bad or guilty for nourishing yourself, so that you can better nourish your children.

Speaker 1: 1:16:53

Yeah, and I think I think the I think a lot of women use the phrase mom guilt for this scenario, right, where, like, they're choosing themselves over their kids, where, like, they're choosing themselves over their kids. And I'm really trying to bring a new language of that feeling of discomfort isn't guilt, because guilt is doing something wrong, right? I think what a lot of women are experiencing is shame, which is you feel like there's something you should do and you're not doing it, which there's going to be a million and a half of those as a mom, and you're never going to win because, depending on the expert, depending on the book, there's all these other shoulds. But really, what you're feeling is the conflict of being a leader, the conflict of they need something and I need something, and there's a discomfort, there's an uncomfortability of using your intuition to have to choose in moments of like okay, can I meet the baby's need right now and meet my need later? How do I make decisions with my time and my energy and my attention of focus so that both of our needs get met, because both of us are on the train of like?

Speaker 1: 1:18:00

We're not saying don't take care of your baby. We're saying in order to take care of your kids. You have to take care of yourself. Short term, sure, short term. Sometimes you're going to have to cut costs for yourself. I believe that there is a sacrifice that comes with motherhood, but you have to be willing to repay that sacrifice and relearn how to receive and learn how to lead and nourish yourself well. Because if you build your entire motherhood on guilt and self-sacrifice, it won't just negatively impact you, it will negatively impact your kids. And I say that because I know that that's one of the greatest motivators is we could do this as like a guilt, shame thing. Or we could say like it's amazing to get to mother from a place of nourishment. It's so good, it's so much easier, it's so much more fun, it changes the entire experience.

Speaker 1: 1:18:53

And it changes things for your kids too. Like, I think my kids experience me as a mom in a way that they would never have if I wouldn't have pursued what I want and I don't just mean my business, you know. I think my business is a beautiful benefit of it, but having a mother who prioritizes my needs as a necessity and my wants as a necessity, like my humanity matters just as much as theirs, because I want them to grow up watching what a healthy adulthood looks like, not just me. I realized when my daughter was very young.

Speaker 1: 1:19:30

She's going to grow up learning how to care for herself, not how I love her by watching how I love me. She's going to learn body image by watching how I treat my body. She's going to learn relational marriage by how I am or I'm not speaking up for myself, or the kind of relationships I'm in. She's going to learn female relationships by the women that I bring her around. She's going to learn these things by watching me embody them. And so at first it started for her, and then I realized, like, oh, I deserve all of these things too. Like if it's true for her, it's also true for me, because I'm just as much a human as she is. Oh, I could, just I could talk to you all day, victoria.

Speaker 2: 1:20:14

I know We'll have to do another one. Maybe this is like part one.

Speaker 1: 1:20:21

Part one with Victoria. Thank you so so much for being with me today. Is there any like last things that are just like burning for you to say and then also just tell people where they can find you? Of course, we'll have links in the bio. If you have a recipe that you want to share, that you're good with sharing, I'm dying to know it. But yeah, I'd love for you to just if there's any last thoughts or where people can find you.

Speaker 2: 1:20:45

Yes, absolutely Okay. So last thoughts are you are worthy, you are whole and you are valuable right now, in this moment. Be present. You deserve presence. It's okay to be present. So those are my last thoughts.

Speaker 2: 1:21:07

And in regards to handles, I mean you can follow the Latina Owned Collective on Instagram at Latina Owned Collective, or, if you're interested in working with cacao, my cacao company is at apapacho underscore cacao. I know that's a crazy word and we're going to put the links, but if you want to look at that, right now it's it's basically just a and then Papa, and then show a P, a, p, a, c, h, o underscore cacao. In regards to the recipe, I created a recipe in 20. Yeah, I guess it was 2019, which is that like that. This recipe that I'm going to share is the creation of our first blend, which we called our love blend. Okay, so it's basically just around six to eight ounces of it can either be water or, if you want it a little bit creamier, you can use oat milk.

Speaker 2: 1:21:57

Macadamia milk also tastes really, really good with cacao. You can find macadamia milk at like vitamin cottage. So oat, macadamia or water, um, and I would put in about 20 to 30 grams of cacao. So I don't know if you, if you have one of those little scale things at home, you can measure it, which is always easy.

Speaker 2: 1:22:16

Our product, we, um, we have like little parts in our bags and each of our heart pieces are 10 grams. It's very easy to measure how much cacao you're consuming. So like 20 to 30 grams of cacao mixed with six to eight ounces of the liquid of your choice, and then I would add, um, just sweet in it, either honey or agave or maple syrup Any of those sweeteners are fantastic with cacao and our recipe is literally just coconut, sugar, cacao, a little bit of Himalayan sea salt, vanilla, vanilla extract, rose powder and a little bit of cayenne. The cayenne just helps your body just absorb the cacao a little bit faster because it stimulates blood flow and it just helps you receive the energy just a lot bit faster because it stimulates blood flow and it just helps you receive the energy just a lot faster because your blood is flowing fast. The feeling was like the best.

Speaker 1: 1:23:13

It was like I seriously was like I want to have this every morning, um, and so that would you share? Just like, really quickly I know we've gone so long what is like a quick way that they can create like a ritual or a ceremony with it?

Speaker 2: 1:23:30

Yes, okay. So I literally will just share with you what I did I. This is exactly what I did. I'd prepare my cup, I'd go down. If you have like a space in your home that is your, your sacred space, go there, go. And if you don't have a sacred space, I recommend going outside. Connecting with nature is always the fastest way to connect to your divinity. And so go outside or go to your sacred space and then create a moment of presence.

Speaker 2: 1:23:57

I would always place my hands over my cup of cacao and I would place a very specific intention into my cup of cacao. Cacao has very feminine energy. So, again, anything with feminine energy receives, magnetizes, attracts, takes in. So I'd place my hands over my cup, I'd place a very specific intention into my cup of cacao. I'd express some gratitude, the moment. Gratitude is also very I highly recommend that as just like a daily practice in your life. I'd express some gratitude for my life and my cup of cacao and then I would give myself a few seconds or minutes to be really present, just to look at the cacao, to smell it, to feel the warm, just to really be present with the cup, and then I would slowly, slowly drink it.

Speaker 2: 1:24:41

I'd play whatever music I was feeling that day, like maybe I was feeling singing bowls, like maybe I was feeling more like meditation music. Um, sometimes I'd feel like, um, like love. There's like this love frequency. It's like however many Hertz I don't even remember how many Hertz it is. It's kind of dependent on what like energy I wanted to work with that day, so I'd play some music. Um, I'd light a little incense stick. I always use copal. I have this lovely Mexican copal that I've been using forever and ever. Now you can use whatever incense stick you like. Copal is what we use in Mexico for ceremonies. That's always what I light when.

Speaker 2: 1:25:15

I have a cacao ceremony and oh, and a journal, because when I, when I drink cacao, I just get I call them downloads. I get all these downloads of information and it's it's information from my higher self, and it's like she is able to connect with me a lot easier when I'm drinking a cup of cacao, and so I just would receive the most beautiful messages. So I would always have a journal and a pen nearby to just write all the things that I was receiving, again, receiving feminine energy, and that's it. I would sit in this space for about probably 30 minutes. Oh, I'd also light a candle just to signify to myself like, okay, I'm lighting, I'm illuminating, I'm creating this space in my life to turn on my own light, to illuminate my own life, and so the candle was always very symbolic for me as well. To light that candle to symbolize the beginning of bringing light and love into my life, so again, I could share that light and love with my family and with others.

Speaker 1: 1:26:20

So those are all the elements that I used incense, candle, music, journal and cacao, yeah, and what I love about that is all of it is just it's, it's the intention. You know, it's not a list that someone has to check. You know, I it, you could make it and just speak intention and then drink it out and outside on your patio, taking five minutes for yourself. Drink it out and outside on your patio, taking five minutes for yourself. It's slowing down and having ritual and ceremony, which is something that we don't often have when we're so focused on doing so. What a beautiful way to connect.

Speaker 1: 1:26:57

Thank you so much for like taking a moment to drop that in Cause I really wanted people to be able to know like the experience of it and giving permission to like slow down, because I think we're so in our culture. We're so disconnected from being behaviors. We're very connected to like give me my morning routine and then more like hey, take some time to be with you, take some time to drop into your senses and into the warm cup and drinking it and tasting it and feeling it move through your body and seeing how it makes you feel. So, again, thank you so much for being here. I have just really enjoyed and received this conversation, so it's just lit me up. So I just I'm so glad I know you and I'm so glad that I got to bring this conversation for other women and we'll definitely have to come back for part two.

Speaker 2: 1:27:52

Yes, well, the love, the admiration and the respect is mutual, rebecca. So thank you for having me here. It was my pleasure, my honor and muchas, muchas gracias.

Speaker 1: 1:28:01

Yes, and for any of you listening, if you have any questions, we would love to hear from you. We'd love to hear how this resonated with you, your aha moment. So definitely tag us, definitely go, follow Victoria and we will talk to you later. Thanks for hanging out today on the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. If you loved today's episode, share it with a friend, or tag me in your stories on Instagram so that we can connect. Take up audacious space in your life and I'll see you next time.