home birth

132 | Creating a Nourished Postpartum with Kerry Ingram

 

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This Fall I participated in a weekly new parent-baby group in Sebastopol, CA with Kerry Ingram. I met Kerry years ago when she found one of my self-care guide downloads and invited me to be a wise woman to visit her mom and baby groups. I remember thinking I would love to join something like that to meet other mothers and babies if I ever had a child one day… and about six years later it happened!

Kerry has been supporting new mothers, babies and families for the past decade in CA and now is sharing her curriculum to create a ripple effect of sharing more of these nourishing postpartum groups around the world.

Care for the next generation really does start with the mother, and the more we can surround families with support in early postpartum the easier it will be to interrupt harmful narratives and create networks of love, care and support when we need it most.

In this episode we discussed:

  • Kerry’s experience postpartum: the surprises, challenges and ways she found the support she needed

  • How community support impacts early parenting and is culture-making by creating space to see and interrupt harmful narratives

  • How to be a village tender and step into leadership for new parents in your community

  • The “Early Parenting Villains” and how these systems, for example, ‘consumerism’ ‘diet culture’ or ‘patriarchy’ come up so often in new motherhood, how to identify them and ways to shift our relationship with them

  • Self-care in postpartum, asking for help and building community

Links in this episode: 

Stay in Touch with Kerry:

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Kerry Ingram is the founder of Community Supported Postpartum whose mission is to build ecosystems of care one community at a time.  She contributes to this vision by teaching folks all over the world how to step into the role of Village Tender by creating local parent and baby groups that get parents out of isolation and into a web of support and care.

Kerry is a parent (both biological and foster), an early childhood educator (20 years), a postpartum doula, with additional education in women and gender studies (SUNY Oswego), and maternal mental health care (PSI). She has been facilitating local parent and baby groups for over 10 years and teaches others around the world to step into leadership with her Village Tenders Postpartum Community Care course, curriculum and business framework.

 

131 | Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage with Becca Piastrelli

 

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It’s an honor to have Becca Piastrelli back on Rising Women Leaders. It’s been a few years (and a lot of transformation) since our last conversation (episode 10!).

We’ve both transitioned from maiden to mother, and our lives and businesses have transformed along with us. In this conversation we share the real, the raw, and the beautiful of being initiated into this new phase of life.

Becca shares of her journey of the last 2.5 years after birthing her daughter, her journey with delayed postpartum depression (and rage) at 18 months, how she has done her best to recreate the village we all long for, what it looks like to untangle from patriarchy and let go the need to always do more…

Listen to today’s show to learn more about how we can honor and ritualize this powerful rite of passage of shifting from maiden to mother.

In this episode we discussed:

  • The first two years postpartum 

  • Letting go and surrender 

  • Postpartum depression / anxiety 

  • Loneliness in new motherhood 

  • Longing for community - where to start with how to create deep & authentic connection with other women

  • Untangling patriarchy and “doing” mentality & how to slow down in such a fast paced world

  • Ritual in new motherhood 

Links in this episode: 

Stay in Touch with Becca:

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Current Offerings with Meredith:

Becca Piastrelli is the author of Root & Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community & the Self and is the host of the Belonging podcast. She teaches and speaks on the nature of belonging and runs retreats to help women reconnect with their rooted sense of self. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area (soon to be Hudson Valley, NY) with her husband, child, two cats, and five chickens, where she gardens, cooks, mothers, and gathers with the ebb and flow of the seasons. 

 

130 | Reigniting a Passion for Life with Renee Linnell

 

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It’s an honor to have Renee Linnell back on Rising Women Leaders!

In Renee’s latest book, Still on Fire, she shares stories of magic, miracles, travel and romance… from traveling over 50 countries, love affairs with men half her age, being rescued by angels, getting stranded at 22,000 feet in the Himalayas, Renee takes us on a wild adventure in her book, sharing soul-soothing wisdom she gained along the way.

Where her first book, The Burn Zone was an exploration of what happens when we don't listen to our Inner Guidance, Still on Fire is an exposition of what happens when we do.

May this conversation support you to remember who you truly are and reignite a passion for being alive on Earth at this time.

“Freedom, I have discovered, is letting go and jumping into the stream of life. Being willing to be uncomfortable and trusting that divine choreography will aways lead us to the next right unfolding. It is looking for the good in everything we gaze upon or stumble upon… finding the miracles in each moment instead of the grievances.”

In this episode we discussed:

  • How Renee shifted her mindset from victim to warrior

  • What is soul sickness? and how to realign with your soul’s truth

  • How to survive as a sensitive being on this planet

  • Renee’s wild and powerful stories of magic, travel, romance and miracles

  • Why we need to shine our light and how to navigate losing people in our life who can’t resonate at the same frequency

  • How to let go of people pleasing and caring so much of what others think of us

  • What finding our power really means

  • Listening to our intuition - and tips to realign with love and freedom when fear or self-doubt appears

Links in this episode: 

Stay in Touch with Renee:

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Renee Linnell is a serial entrepreneur who has founded or cofounded five companies and has an MBA from New York University; before that she was a model and professional dancer. Having an unorthodox childhood and being surrounded by death at a young age led her on a spiritual quest that took her all over the world, culminating in her ordination as a Buddhist monk (by a bi-polar guru with delusions of grandeur so she’s not 100% sure the ordination counts.) What began as writing for catharsis in 2013—as she struggled to regain her sanity after being brainwashed in a Buddhist cult—turned into her first memoir, The Burn Zone: A Memoir (She Writes Press, 2018). Still on Fire is the sequel. Her mission is to remind people Who They Truly Are and to reignite their passion for being alive. For more information, please visit https://reneelinnell.com 

 

129 | Spirituality & Love at the Center of Anti-racism with Porsha Beed

 

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It was an honor to sit down for this heart opening conversation with a personal mentor and friend of mine, Porsha Beed.

It was just before the pandemic when I first met Porsha in a song circle in Sebastopol, CA. I was touched by the songs her and co-founder Aaron Johnson shared with our group and how effortlessly they brought us into our hearts.

I attended their daylong anti-racism workshop and went on to work privately with Porsha over several months to move through my own grief around racism, look at my blind spots as a white woman with privilege and come into deeper alignment with how I show up for my work, friends and larger community.

I think a lot of white people do end up (sadly) avoiding relationships with people of other races because of the shame and guilt that often arises.

When we focus on the fear and guilt, we take the focus away from truly getting to know and caring for another human being.

Porsha is here and reaching for us to heal this divide.

May this conversation open a door for us all to look within, to heal, and to create deeper relationships and a better future for all the generations to come.

In this episode we discussed:

  • Approaching anti-racism work through song and building relationships

  • Healing and tending to grief

  • Letting go of perfectionism and embracing willingness

  • Spirituality and love at the center of anti-racism and social justice movements

  • Healing shame to let down barriers and form true relationships

  • Stories of healing from Porsha’s work

  • The importance of self-forgiveness

  • All about Porsha’s upcoming deep dive series, “Can You Hear Me?” (Links below)

  • How Porsha overcomes fear and doubt and anchors back into her roots and reasons behind this work

  • A beautiful song to remember our connection to spirit

Links in this episode: 

Join Porsha for one of her upcoming deep dives:

Stay in Touch with Rising Women Leaders:

Porsha Beed (she/her) is a co-founder of Holistic Resistance and Grief to Action. Porsha is a practitioner of love, grief work, and deep heart/soul work. She is a mentor, love prophet, poet, spiritual healer and facilitator who pulls from a spiritual ancestral lineage and the earth as guides to support and hold her as she works towards a vision of healing work that aids in the dismantling of racism and oppression. She weaves her African heritage and queer experiences into seeds that she sows in her authentic creative expressions through facilitation, ritual practices, poetry, and song.

 

 

128 | Meredith & Ella's Birth Story

 

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This week I sat down with dear friend Jane Mayer to share the story of my daughter's birth. She was born March 15, 2022 at our home in Boulder, Colorado. In this story I share about everything from unexpected emotions during pregnancy, what I did to prepare for birth, practices to help baby be in the most optimal position for labor, the story of the birth itself as well as lessons from the first six weeks postpartum. 

After spending years preparing for motherhood and holding space for women to heal their womb and their own birth stories it's such an honor to share our birth story with you today. 

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