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The Motherhood Mentor
Welcome to The Motherhood Mentor Podcast your go-to resource for moms seeking holistic healing and transformation. Hosted by mind-body somatic healing practitioner and holistic life coach Becca Dollard.
Join us as we explore the transformative power of somatic healing, offering practical tools and strategies to help you navigate overwhelm, burnout, and stress. Through insightful conversations, empowering stories, and expert guidance, you'll discover how to cultivate resilience, reclaim balance, and thrive in every aspect of your life while still feeling permission to be a human. Are you a woman who is building a business while raising babies who refuses to burnout? These are conversations and support for you.
We believe in the power of vulnerability, connection, and self-discovery, and our goal is to create a space where you feel seen, heard, and valued.
Whether you're juggling career, family, or personal growth, this podcast is your sanctuary for holistic healing and growth all while normalizing the ups and downs, the messy and the magic, and the wild ride of this season of motherhood.
Your host:
Becca is a mom of two, married for 14years to her husband Jay living in Colorado. She is a certified somatic healing practitioner and holistic life coach to high functioning moms. She works with women who are navigating raising babies, building businesses, and prioritizing their own wellbeing and healing. She understands the unique challenges of navigating being fully present in motherhood while also wanting to be wildly creative and ambitious in her work. The Motherhood Mentor serves and supports moms through 1:1 coaching, in person community, and weekend retreats.
Follow on IG: @themotherhoodmentor , send me a dm and let me know you found me through the podcast!
Website: https://www.the-motherhood-mentor.com/
Want to join the email fam for free workshops and more support: https://themotherhoodmentor.myflodesk.com/ujaud8t4x9
The Motherhood Mentor
Health in Winter or Burnout Seasons: When Life or Healing Force You to Slow Down
Join me for this vulnerable solo episode where I share about a current season of winter in my personal life while my business is blowing up (in the best ways). How my kids new season and age alongside advanced somatic trainings invited me into an unexpected new depth and potency of healing personally. When you are a high functioner, it's really important to learn how to prevent burnout by honoring your seasons, so I wanted to share how winter feels and looks like while life keeps moving at the same pace.
This episode invites you to trust your own season of life, whether you're finding solace in introspection or embracing a whirlwind of action. We'll discuss the importance of honoring your personal pace and the balance between ambition and contentment, especially when life demands more than we think we can give. By sharing insights and encouraging bold steps, I aim to foster a supportive community for moms and women ready to transform "aha" moments into tangible actions. Remember, self-care isn't just a buzzword—it's a cornerstone of making a meaningful impact in your world. Listen in, find your peace, and let's grow together.
1:1 Somatic Coaching and Mentorship
Chapter Markers:
0:02 Navigating Seasons of Healing and Growth
10:19 Trusting Your Season and Pace
17:24 Empowering Actions for Women
Join us next time as we continue to explore the multifaceted journey of motherhood.
Thank you for tuning in to The Motherhood Mentor. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review us.
Stay connected with us on social media and share your thoughts and experiences tagging @themotherhoodmentor
Welcome to the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. I'm Becca, a somatic healing practitioner and a holistic life coach for moms, and this podcast is for you. You can expect honest conversations and incredible guests that speak to health, healing and growth in every area of our lives. This isn't just strategy for what we do. It's support for who we are. I believe we can be wildly ambitious while still holding all of our soft and hard humanity as holy. I love combining deep inner healing with strategic systems and no-nonsense talk about what this season is really like. So grab whatever weird health beverage you're currently into and let's get into it.
Speaker 1:Welcome to today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. Today is a kind of different episode where I'm just going to share a piece of the season I've been in, and the reason I decided to do this podcast is because every time I've had this conversation with a woman, I have watched her shoulders drop and her realize that like it's okay to be in this season, that I'm in or similar something similar to it, and so I just I thought I'd have a little bit more of a vulnerable personal share on this podcast. Um, so you know, I've I've had quite a few conversations of people coming up and being like okay, what are your big goals for 2025? What's your word for the year? How you feeling Like, what are your business ambitions and goals for this year? And every time they and they're like how are you? And I've paused a couple times checking into like because I'm good, I'm really good, I've been good and there's I love having deep conversations where we give the more like nuanced, full, human, messy responses that like aren't an elevator pitch. I hate elevator pitches. I hate the like light hearted networking. I'm like no, give me the good stuff. Like, actually tell me. Like when I say, how are you? Like, I actually want to know how you are. I really want to take the time to like meet you and connect with you and be where you are and be able to like resonate or ask you questions. So, anyways, when a couple times when someone asked me like hey, how are you? Like, what are you excited for this year, my honest answer has been I'm really good, things are good, and it has been a really difficult season where it feels like so much of me is really good. I feel like you know I'm so resourced. You know things like parenting and marriage and business are better than they've ever been. They feel so good.
Speaker 1:And then there's this one part of me that is deeply struggling, that is grieving, and it's been such a weird season because some of this grief and some of this deep healing work that's come up, part of it has come up because I think I'm really resourced and my body and my soul and my spirit kind of knew that I finally had time to and energy and capacity to be able to move through and process and metabolize some things that have been deeply frozen for a long time, metabolize some things that have been deeply frozen for a long time. And then part of it is that my daughter is the same age I was when some pretty intense trauma happened and a pretty intense long season of CPTSD and a lot of emotional, social, emotional dysregulation happened and a lot of pain and hurt and grief. And I'm seeing it in a new, different way. There's been a lot of new emotion around what I had to go through and kind of the outfall of it, like how that impacted me for a very long time and how it still does. Honestly, and I don't know about you, but I somewhat often I get really sick of healing. I get really sick of like this again, this shit again. I've done this, I've talked about this, I've felt this, I've cried about this, like will it just leave me alone? And you know, there was a powerful season in my life where I still remember a night at like a worship service and I was praying like God, I need you to like why does this have to be my story? And I was like, well, that's not going to change, like that doesn't go back and go away, but it can be redeemed. And so, you know, another facet of this is that I started, you know, in fall I started, an advanced somatic training that was working with trauma fields and I thought it was going to be cute, like I.
Speaker 1:Like you know, somatic work you're usually not just learning logically, you're not just like cognitively talking about concepts, you're experiencing it, you are doing the work yourself, because it's one thing to know about it, it's another thing to know it in your bones, it's another thing to have experienced it and walked through it and know the sensations of it and know the experience of it. And I, intentionally, will look for trainings where I'm experiencing the healing. So when I jumped into this training, you know I knew what I was getting into but I didn't know what I was getting into. I did not expect the depths of my stuff that I I've never experienced or felt to this degree, um, the level of existential wounding and pain and fear and freeze response that you know came up in my body. That's been there, it's been there, but it's, you know, it's been frozen and, as that has been thawing, as I've made contact with some of those parts of me, it's been painful, there has been grief, there has been anger and you know, in one of my coaching calls we were talking and you know some of this trauma happened at a very early age but I was talking about how I'm pretty resourced, like I've been developing resource and tools and maturity and ways to support myself, both like on my own and, you know, outside of myself for years on my own.
Speaker 1:But I've also been doing this work professionally for five years. Like people pay me to do this, I love using that for myself. Like people pay me to do this. Like I know what I'm doing and yet I found this that for myself. Like people pay me to do this. Like I know what I'm doing and yet I found this part of me I felt like a colicky baby was the way that we find I found the language of like, I feel like a colicky baby and for the first time in a very, very long time like I can't remember the last time I had this it it's been hard for me to figure out what I need or for anything to actually make it better.
Speaker 1:Like you know, when you have a colicky baby and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter how good you balance, it doesn't matter how you wrap them, it doesn't matter how you feed them or burp them, they just, they just cry and that's all there is to do is just be with them while they cry. That has been the season for me. That has been this weird type of grief and healing is like there's nothing here to do. There's nothing here to like, make sense of or know. There's no way to fix it or make it better or help it, which is my least favorite thing. Like I want problems I can fix, I want solutions, I want to solve things, I want to make it better and, like I said, most of me has been really, really good. And then there are these moments, or these parts, or these pieces that just everything is too much or too little. It's, you know, resting and taking a nap is too slow and working out how I used to is too fast, and it's been. It's been frustrating.
Speaker 1:It's been really irritating to just let this be a winter season, to let this be a season where things composted and died off and where I had this trust in this slow process that, like, one of the things about winter is that when you look outside, it doesn't look like anything's happening in nature. When it comes to like I think of, like the trees or like the plants, like our garden looks hideous, I never, we never like pulled out the dead plants of our garden. So just like it does not look pretty right now, but I think of that soil and I think of all of the things dying in it right now. That's composting and it's going to be nutrient rich soil. That's even better come spring to plant things in.
Speaker 1:But that's not exactly a shiny season. It's not exactly a productive season. It's not exactly an easy like hey, what's your goals and word for 2025? And I'm just like I don't know yet. Like, leave me alone. Like leave me like I've had to learn how to leave myself alone a little bit better this season and just let myself exist and take up space and realize that that's enough. And it hasn't been. This major season of external, oh my gosh, look at all of this happening. And yet I keep seeing all of these deep signs of like the roots of my health, and I keep looking at what does health look like in the middle of winter? What does health look like in the middle of grief? What does health look like when healing looks like anger and letting that move through my body and how that's healthy and holy and not being afraid and not panicking, not spiraling, not spiraling or losing context of who and where and when I am, because a lot of times that's what trauma does to us it brings us back to those moments because we never fully integrated them and so I've just been allowing things to integrate, and that takes time and presence and pressure and intention, and so, yeah, I still. You know we're here at the end of January.
Speaker 1:I don't have a year for the work. I don't have a year for the work. I don't have a word for the year. I don't have big, giant personal professional goals and part of that is being in winter and honoring. Just like you know, spring will come. Spring will come when, all of a sudden I'm going to get these ideas of things I want to plant, or things I want to build, or the land I want to like, how I want to like cultivate my life.
Speaker 1:But right now I'm just doing the next right thing, doing what honors my capacity and what feels good and trusting my pace. And you know, there's been days where that pace has been joining the 5am club again, like my daughter has early morning basketball practices. So the days that she's been having that I've been going to the gym and it's been feeling so freaking good. It's been a long time since I've been 5am weightlifting club and yet it's felt so good on some days. But I didn't come into the year like I'm going to do it every day. It was just like okay, on the days that feel good. On the days that feel good, I'm going to make sure I get in all my steps. And how am I nurturing and nourishing myself? And am I spending time moving my body and listening to music and reading really good books and snuggling with my babies and doing all of the things that make up life?
Speaker 1:And honestly, I think part of it too. I think one it's winter season for me, but I think another part of it is I've spent the last year feeling more present than I ever have in my entire life and I have realized I feel deeply content, like I want things, like I'm hungry, I'm ambitious, I've got shit I want to do and it is big, like it's some big shit, but none of that's coming from this pressured place right now. It's coming from this permission of like yeah, that'd be cool and right here is really good. I really like it right here. It's this thank you more, please, thank you more please.
Speaker 1:And so, anyways, if you are in a winter season, if you are in a season where you are just humbly crawling through, what does health look like there on your knees? What does health look like in the depths of winter? What does health look like when you are feeling burnt out? What does health look like when you are grieving or angry or frustrated or overwhelmed or overstimulated? What would health do? What would it look like? How would it move? What is its pace? Is it slower or faster? One of the things I play with a lot lately is that pace, like, what is the pace of my peace? And peace doesn't always mean calm. Peace doesn't always mean slow. Sometimes it means intensity. Sometimes it means, ooh, I'm really, I'm really letting some behaviors or some things into my life that don't serve me, that don't feel good, that like okay, this is comfortable. But comfortable is very different than peace. Sometimes peace is only accomplished through intense violence or conflict Like or conflict Like. Sometimes peace comes with a cost, sometimes it's not cute and gentle and sometimes that's an intensity of fighting for something.
Speaker 1:But I, you know, if you're a high functioner which you likely are if you listen to this podcast and you really relate to me in the way that I share news, check you like me because you are me. No, not really, not always. But I think for high functioners, we're very used to doubling down, for saying like I just have to work harder, I just have to work better, I just have like it's just something goes wrong and we double down and we've never learned the art of something goes wrong. And we double down and we've never learned the art of something goes wrong and we realize that it's not actually our fault and we have actually no capacity or capability to fix it and we just have to learn how to be with it. That sucks. I hate that for us. I hate that for us, that there isn't always a pretty bow that we can tie on things, that there isn't always a way that we can double down and fix it, but there is a way that we can say, okay, how do I relate and respond to it, how do I build healthy relationship to this part of me or to this place of my life, that we can do so.
Speaker 1:If you're in that season two, I feel you, I get you. Hang in there. You know we never freak out that spring isn't coming. We might get annoyed with how long winter's taking, we might get really excited for spring and then we hit that early part of spring where it's just like really muddy and it's not even really much better than winter and we're just like, god, give me the snow back, like I'll take the snow over the stupid mud any day, or the wind, or you know, I'll always find a way to complain about the weather. If you know me in real life, you know that it's one of my passions to complain about the weather or temperature, because I'm a highly sensitive person and I'm apparently a delicate flower when it comes to the weather. But anyways, hold on in winter, find ways to make it cozy and healthy.
Speaker 1:And you know what, if you're in a spring and a summer, I love that for you. I freaking love it for you. If you came into 2025, hot, I love it. Keep at it. Trust your pace and your season. Again, do not let people who are in winter tell you that you're doing something wrong or that you're trying too hard, or that you're too ambitious or you want too many things. No, no, trust your pace, trust your season. Give yourself permission to speed up or slow down as many times and as often and as intensely and dramatically as you want and need. So I hope this podcast supported you. I hope to help you.
Speaker 1:Let me know if you like these episodes, these more like, I don't know, I'm not coming here with notes or something specific to teach, I'm just kind of sharing and riffing. Let me know if you like these episodes. Send me a DM. I'd love to hear what season you're in and if you loved this podcast, would you take a minute and follow the podcast? That way, you always get updates. I have some of the best you guys. I have some of the best interviews coming. You don't even know. Like, just get ready, because these are so good that, like, I am excited to go back and listen to them and I've already heard them.
Speaker 1:So make sure you are subscribed and following and whatever app you listen on, and will you please take a minute and leave a review. That will make such a big difference for me and for my business. So thank you so much and I will see you next time. So thank you so much and I will see you next time. Thanks for joining me on today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. Make sure you have subscribed below so that you see all of the upcoming podcasts that are coming soon.
Speaker 1:I hope you take today's episode and you take one aha moment, one small, tangible piece of work that you can bring into your life, to get your hands a little dirty, to get your skin in the game. Don't forget to take up audacious space in your life. If this podcast moved you, if it inspired you, if it encouraged you, please do me a favor and leave a review. Send an episode to a friend. This helps the show gain more traction. It helps us to support more moms, more women, and that's what we're doing here. So I hope you have an awesome day, take really good care of yourself and I'll see you next time.
