Clare Foale is a Mum, a creator, a space holder, a brink walker and an ocean lover, living on Garigal Country in Australia.

Together, Clare and I have an open and vulnerable conversation about our experiences with delayed postpartum depression. We share the moments beloved practitioners finally helped us see we weren’t okay. The strength it took to acknowledge our pain when so many people dismissed it. The ways our depression was separate from our love of our children. And the power of letting your family witness how you take care of yourself.

This conversation is medicine, and I hope you’ll listen to it, especially if you enjoyed my solo episode on postpartum depression.

More from Claire:

• Clare’s website
• Clare on Instagram @clarefoale
• The Spacious Card Deck

Resources

• If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie

So much has changed since I last had my husband Tim on the podcast. We became parents. We decided to leave California. We bought a house in upstate New York.

It feels like almost everything is different since that last episode three years ago. So this week I’ve invited Tim to come back to the show for an open conversation about our family and how we navigate change.

Together we discuss why having our daughter was a catalyst to slow down, how we handle the tension between his tech-paced career and our earth-paced life, and the many challenges of facing sleep deprivation & postpartum depression together.

Tim also shares about his experience with men’s work and men’s retreats, and how his relationship with Atlas has evolved since she was born. And we both open up about how we return to each other when we feel distant or disconnected.

Resources

• Episode #32: Navigating Marriage, Spiritual Transformation, and Witchy Life with Tim Piastrelli
• Episode #101: Lessons from my journey with delayed postpartum depression

Marysia Miernowska is a teacher, author, Earth activist, green witch, folk herbalist and healer rooted in the Wise Woman Tradition of Healing. She has spent her life traveling, learning and sharing different regenerative ways of tending to the Earth, healing land, and healing people. She is the Director of the School of the Sacred Wild and author of The Witch’s Herbal Apothecary.

Together, we have conversation about our beloved crystals, particularly how to be with our stones and how to return them to the Earth.

We discuss how the mining industry harms the planet, how to make gem essences, and why rituals for embodied Earth healing are always available to us.

This conversation invites us all into deeper relationship with the Earth, not by collecting crystals to keep for ourselves but by returning them to receive earthly wisdom.

More from Marysia:

• Buy Marysia’s book, The Witch’s Herbal Apothecary
• Marysia’s website, School of the Sacred Wild
• Marysia on Instagram @marysia_miernowska

Resources:

• Dori Midnight on Stone Rematriation
• Joanna Macy

🍄 Sign up for Passagecraft — a workshop to help you reclaim the meaningful moments of your life and craft the ritual you crave to honor them — on September 18th.

While I often talk about mothering on the podcast, it’s been a few seasons since I shared a personal reflection on being a mother. So this episode of Belonging is a solo episode where I open up about my journey with delayed postpartum depression.

In this episode, I talk about struggling with anxiety and rage, realizing that I was taking out my anger on my partner, being diagnosed with PPD, trying meds that helped and then didn’t help, microdosing psilocybin to support extended breastfeeding, and finding my way forward with as many questions as answers.

This episode was really vulnerable to record and share. My hope is that it helps mamas in a situation like this feel less alone. Whatever you need to do to feel better, I’m with you.

Resources:

• Episode #96: Friendship deserts, creativity floods, and ancestral mothering with Megan McGuire and Ariella Daly
• Episode #98: Being Alone in Nature with Nicole Antoinette
• Becca Piastrelli: The Baby Bomb on The Pop-Up Pod
• Lindsey Koelman of Marin Acupuncture
• Episode #77: Mothering the Mothers with Rachelle Garcia Seliga

Anoushka Florence is a teacher, an author, a circle-tender, and a mother. She is the Keeper of the Mama’s Village, the Mama of The Goddess Space, and the author of The Women’s Circle. Her work is based on ancient spiritual feminine practices that are grounded in the belief that the power to heal comes from within.

Together, we begin with the question what is circle? and spiral out to the importance of women’s circles, rituals, cleaning as clearing, ancestral lineages and more. We also discuss common questions about circle, such as— how do I find a circle near me? what if I’m an introvert? and what if I feel uncomfortable or unsafe in circle?

At its center, this conversation is about how circles can serve us all well. And it’s an invitation to hear if circle is calling you.

More from Anoushka:

• Buy Anoushka’s book, The Women’s Circle
• Anoushka’s website
• Anoushka’s on Instagram @thegoddessspace

Tracy Benjamin is a food photographer, stylist & blogger based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this episode, we have a tender conversation about grief, and all the ways she’s experienced it since her mom’s sudden death in 2017.

Together we explore how loss can encompass our full range of emotions and impact every area of our life. Tracy shares what it feels like to be the only woman left in her family and the joys and struggles of becoming her family’s keeper — hosting their gatherings, their values, and their grief stories.

We also talk about parenting our children and our selves, normalizing death in our society, grieving our dreams, letting our creative work evolve, and keeping grief weird through it all.

Our conversation is hard, heartbreaking, and so, so honest. If you’ve lost a parent or someone close to you, what Tracy says will resonate deeply. And if you haven’t felt that specific grief, this episode is also a balm for the collective grief the past few years have brought us all.

Resources

• Join me for Passagecraft 🌙

More from Tracy:

• Tracy’s blog Shutterbean
• Tracy’s Instagram @shutterbean

Nicole Antoinette is a writer, podcast host, and community-builder who is super into long-distance hiking. In this conversation, she tells us the story of how long solo hikes have become her spiritual & devotional practice.

Together we explore the power of facing fear and discomfort, the lessons gained from embracing loneliness, and the self-trust that comes when there’s no one else to ask for answers.

Our conversation is an invitation for the hikers and non-hikers among us to consider how we can deepen our devotional connections with the land and ourselves. The lessons Nicole shares support us all in being honest with ourselves and facing scary things.

Resources:

• Becca Piastrelli: The Baby Bomb
• Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart by Carrot Quinn
• Geartrade
• The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter

More from Nicole:

• Nicole’s book How To Be Alone: an 800-mile hike on the Arizona trail
• Nicole’s website
• Nicole’s Instagram
• Nicole’s gear list

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

Together we explore the medicine of publishing a book. We discuss why we felt called to write, how books can be like babies, and the ways releasing our books made us more resilient. We also talk about how both our books are invitations to move at a slower, earth-pace.

Our conversation is a call to recognize the postpartum grief that comes when you release a creative work. And it’s an opportunity to embrace the end of the extended winter we’ve been undergoing and to craft rites of passage for ourselves that acknowledge a new season.

Resources:

• Episode #26: Ancestral Constellations & Conscious Dreaming with Grandmother Sarah
• “A Love Letter to COVID Authors” by Kaitlin Curtice

More from Asha Frost:

• Asha’s book You Are the Medicine
• Asha’s website
• Asha’s Instagram
• Belonging Episode #57: Web of Connection with Asha Frost

Have you been craving a deep, expansive conversation about creativity, burnout, postpartum, paying for the village, and raising children in ancestral ways amidst climate crisis? I know I have been. So I invited my friends, fellow mothers, and past guests Ariella Daly and Megan McGuire to join me on the podcast again to commune “in the mammoth bone tent.”

Together we have an open and vulnerable conversation about creative surges and depletion postpartum, how motherhood has isolated us from our communities, our desires to know our neighbors and celebrate rituals with them, and our visions for our childrens’ futures —including the ways climate crisis impacts where our families can live and flourish.

Ariella is a beekeeper, seer and healer with a young daughter. And Megan is a permaculture gardener and ritual weaver with three children. I hope you’ll join us in conversation about mothering and enjoy this episode.


✨Enter our giveaway!✨

In honor of this very special podcast episode, Megan, Ariella and I are hosting a giveaway.

The winner will receive: a signed copy of Root & Ritual, access to Ariella’s Kindred Bees Lecture Series on Bees, Kinship, and Bee Tending & access to @forest.whisperer’s Mothering as Ceremony Live Class and Recording.

Find me on Instagram @beccapiastrelli to learn how to enter.


Resources:

• Tending the Flame
• Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkins

More from Ariella Daly:

• Ariella’s website: Honey Bee Wild
• @beekeepinginskirts on Instagram
• Belonging Episode #47: The Kindred Call of the Honeybee with Ariella Daly

More from Megan McGuire:

• Megan’s website: Living Mythic Time
• @forest.whisperer on Instagram
• Belonging Episode #82: Mothering as Ancestral Reverence with Megan McGuire

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

Together we explore the question “what do you want to wear?” and we talk about how pausing before purchasing can help us make more ethical decisions and find clothes we love. Dacy also shares why “flattering” is a fatphobic concept, how to approach your clothes when your body changes, and her advice for online shopping and creating a capsule wardrobe. 

Our conversation is an invitation to stop settling for clothes you don’t really like. It’s also a reminder that you have a right to feel good in what you wear. Enjoy.

Links & Resources—

• Belonging Episode #66: Radically Claiming your Needs with Mara Glatzel
• Dacy’s Forbes feature — How to Build a Mindful Close that Sparks Joy
• Atlantic article on returns & landfills — The Nasty Logistics of Returning Your Too-Small Pants
• Becca’s beautiful measuring tape & more options on Etsy

More from Dacy Gillespie—

• Mindful Closet.com
• @mindfulcloset on Instagram