019 - Eliza Reynolds: The Threshold of Mothering
Welcome back, dear ones. Today, we have a powerful episode featuring my friend and mothering mentor, Eliza Reynolds.
Eliza is a best-selling author, speaker, podcast host, and professional mentor for pre-teens and teens. She and her mother co-authored the best selling book, Mothering and Daughtering, and facilitated sold-out workshops for mothers and their pre-teen and teen daughters for many years. Now, Eliza offers online and in-person mentorship programs teaching emotional intelligence, embodiment, body literacy and more for big hearted pre-teens and teen girls.
In this conversation, Eliza and I explore the deep work that mothering requires as well as the importance of including ourselves in the caring that we give. We also discuss healing and some of our favorite shared experiences in our healing processes.
Tune in to also hear more about:
The shedding that comes before and after threshold moments — and the joy that can be found there
The important role of parents in helping to find mentors for their teens and pre-teens
Reframing jealousy and examining toxic mean girl culture
The power in doing healing work from a healed place
Eliza’s commitment to living life seasonally and how she’s preparing for that with a baby on the way
Connect with Sarah
Connect with Eliza
Visit the Badass Girls Website
Visit the Mothering and Daughtering Website
Listen to the Badass Girls Podcast
Follow Eliza on Instagram
Follow Badass Girls on Instagram
💛 Join A Mother's Intuition on June 6th at 6 pm CST to learn from holistic nurse practitioner and former doula, NICU nurse, & lactation consultant Jen Ciszewski about creating the motherhood experience of your dreams! Click here to register
Episode Transcript
Sarah Tacy [00:00:00]
If you or someone you love is about to crossover that threshold into motherhood, Jen Suzuki, a holistic nurse, is offering a very accessible holistic pregnancy program based on her decade of experience as a NICU nurse, labor and delivery nurse, doula, and certified lactation consultant. She's seen beautiful and heartbreaking births. She's seen the impossible made possible in pregnancy. She's here to give you scientifically empowered and unbiased education about all possible interventions and outcomes. We'll help you to hone your intuition to guide you through the conception, birth, and breastfeeding experience. Both mom and baby have better outcomes this way. On June 6th, she has a free webinar called A Mother's Intuition. The link is in the bio and again, it's totally free. If you or a person you love that you're sending this to can't be there on the day they can get the recording, there is no downside. I know I was so grateful to have this type of support going into my first birthing experience, and I actually wish that I had more layers of support like the ones that Jen is offering now as I went into my second.
Sarah Tacy [00:01:29]
I'm so grateful for this and I hope it serves those who need it. Cheers. Hello, welcome. I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, the podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together, we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us. Hello, hello, hello. It has been six months since I first recorded this with Eliza Reynolds. At this point she was 8 1/2 months pregnant and she was so generous to give us her time as she was just about to kind of close the gates on doing any outside things and really cocooning in for this last part of pregnancy and then moving into postpartum period. So this was truly such a special time to talk to her. Eliza Reynolds is so full of wisdom, so full of humor and grace. By the age of 20, she and her mother still Reynolds had written a best selling book on mother and daughtering. They had sold out events all over the country, all over the world. She shares with us her threshold in which she left this programming that she and her mother were teaching.
Sarah Tacy [00:03:11]
She left this thing that she was so good at doing, had so much success, sold out every single event that they offered, that she had to have that hard conversation with her mother, that she had to leave it because she said it didn't feel like bravery. It felt like she had to, because the relief of being in alignment with herself was greater than the terror of leaving everything that was safe, greater than the terror of not knowing the fact that she didn't even know. She didn't know exactly what was on the other side, what she would build, what she would become. But she knew that this timeline for this particular thing that she was doing was over. Between that threshold and this threshold she's at now of motherhood. She's created an incredible program called ****** Girls for those identifying as female in the preteen to teen years. It's incredible. I'll let you hear about it in the podcast. I know that for myself and a few of our mutual friends, I was like, Oh my God, we wish we had this. We wish we had this. But we're so happy that it's there for our girls when they hit this point. We're so happy that people are doing the work that you're doing. And thank you for helping us to understand how we can better support those and in the preteen and teen years and really like how much it is just like re parenting ourselves in those time. At the end, I asked her a bit about the way she's celebrating seasons. This is actual literal seasons, The Four Seasons, what she's doing to enhance each season instead of just kind of like rolling from one to the next.
Sarah Tacy [00:05:01]
And then we talk about the metaphorical season as she is now moving more into a winter season, into the postpartum season, and the revolutionary things that she is doing to recognize the importance of her care in the postpartum period. And she names for us the enormous amount of sacrifice financially and time wise that she put into nervous system healing. So that that could be the foundation upon which she built ****** girls And that could be the foundation which she builds her family. So that when it comes to slowing down, it feels safer to do so now. I'm so excited for you guys to hear from her from for you people to hear from her. It's such an honor. Enjoy. Welcome. Today. I am so, so excited to have a dear friend, Eliza Reynolds here with us today. Eliza is a best selling author, a speaker, a professional mentor for preteens and teens. When she was just a teen herself, she and her mother still co-authored the best selling book, Mothering and Daughtering, keeping her bonds strong through the years. Since then, Eliza has been facilitating sold out workshops for thousands of mothers and their preteens and teen daughters at Kapalu and other well established venues. Eliza now offers online and in person mentorship programs teaching emotional intelligence, embodiment, body literacy and more for bigheartedpreteensandteengirls@badassgirls.com and is host of the Be Real podcast. Welcome, Eliza.
Eliza Reynolds [00:07:01]
Thanks, Sarah. So honored and delighted to be here. I was thinking as I was getting ready, I was like, I don't know if there's anybody else that's a yes to being interviewed right now in this season of my life, but I just feel such tender excitement and delight to get to share this conversation with you. And I also always feel whenever in podcast zone, like also with everybody listening in, I feel like to be part of a collective conversation. So a lot of folks listening in too. So nice guests.
Sarah Tacy [00:07:38]
Thank you. Thank. You so much for naming that even for me because right, the podcast is called threshold moments and sometimes we look at these moments, you know, once we're on the other side. And it's also really beautiful to be with people who feel like they have enough coherence while in a transition to be able to name processes so that others who are going through it might feel some accompaniment like to feel like they're accompanied. I can see that more clearly. And as you and I have switched boxers back and forth and I've listened to you, I am just like, I've been so in awe of your process. And I was thinking that I could give a little background of how we met and maybe a few transitions that would lead us to where we're at now.
Eliza Reynolds [00:08:37]
Please do OK.
Sarah Tacy [00:08:40]
So Eliza and I met a few times through our friend Kate and eventually Kate Northrop and eventually we were in a mastermind together. And I just told the story yesterday at her baby blessing, which was at the mastermind check in. We all kind of give gave a synopsis of our last year and mine had some pretty tender points in it. I found myself in tears and the kind of not expecting to be there or in that place or sharing what I shared. And when we're all complete, everybody went off their separate ways and I just kind of laid myself on the ground and overcomes Eliza crawling over and we've kind of like just meeting and she just snuggled. Up with me and it felt so. Natural and I, I want to name this explicitly in kind of a geeky way of the work that we could do if we so chose as adults to rehab our dorsal vagal capacity. I'm just going to geek just a tiny bit right now to say yes, please, to say that this part of our nervous system is our most ancient part of our nervous system. It's the part that would either have us freeze and collapse or collapse and connect. And the ability to collapse and connect is similar to a baby who feels safe in her mother's arms, safe enough that she could breastfeed and digest to digest while being in connection. And it seems in my experience that most adults I know that we've lost the, I don't know if we've lost the capacity as much as being the exposure to having platonic consensual physical connection and holding with one another. And I was just so moved that that was one of our first experiences together was just. Coddling up on the. Floor and to feel so natural like Oh yeah this this is how it should be this is how life should be here so thank you for giving me that pleasure and.
Eliza Reynolds [00:11:07]
And thank you right back, I remember it deeply.
Sarah Tacy [00:11:13]
And at that and this kind of a little segue for you too at that mastermind, you are at a place where you are beginning a pretty big transition or you are even, it was just like the consideration I think of a pretty big transition. And this is where I want to say, feel free to say, don't want to talk about this now. You had such a solid business built that you had been building, I'm going to stay since 15 where all of your workshops were sold out. It was, I would assume a pretty something you could count on for income. Your living situation, housing wise was stable enough and that it was there and you could count on it, but that you had an inner knowing, a pull that it was time to make a change. And so to me, this is like such a beautiful example of a threshold moment of you don't necessarily know. Perhaps the next step, you don't know what will catch you, but the pole is there and I'll let you take it from there. If you're willing to, you can say no thanks not.
Eliza Reynolds [00:12:21]
I'm thinking back on that threshold, right? So I'm sitting at a different threshold, but I'm sure we'll be talking about, which is I'm like 8 1/2, what's the president right now? And thinking back to that threshold, which, yeah, I want to say I was, I think a little bit about age and for folks who, you know, find astrology relevant, supportive or orienting in their lives, I think I was around Saturn return time. And I say that because there was another member of our, of the mastermind in Rasiopi who's an astrologer. And I remember the first conversation I ever had, I was working with my mother. We were flying across the country to California for like a sold out California tour of workshops with thousands of people. And in the air. That was the first time I said to her, I don't think I can, I can do this anymore. And when an astrologer looked at my chart a few months later, they said that was the first day that the Saturn return hit my chart. Like literally that day in the air.
Sarah Tacy [00:13:27]
Isn't it wild? I'm sorry, astrology.
Eliza Reynolds [00:13:30]
Is right. Is that surreal? Yeah. I find it. I find it fast, you know, it's got a fascinating layer to be with and.
Sarah Tacy [00:13:35]
Can you also name for people who don't know astrology about the timeline of Saturn return? Like the About age?
Eliza Reynolds [00:13:42]
Yeah, I think it's somewhere in the 27 to 29 range. It was like late 20s. My logical brain is not holding numbers as well, but it was somewhere in there for me. So I've been doing this work for 13 15 years at this point. And I kind of describe I've had a few other moments like that where I kind of called them like hand of God moments in my life where like, I can't not right. So someone might describe that as like a brave moment, right? Might be like, wow, that was so brave. You know, you in one conversation, you signal the end of 15 years really in depth work. And something always confused me when somebody would look at a moment like that in my life and be like, oh, that's brave. Because my experience on the inside was like, it wasn't brave or not. That was irrelevant, but it was true, and it was almost like impossible not to. To continue to live in a moment where I hadn't spoken. That truth was worse than speaking. It was false, incongruous with what my body was feeling more than necessarily my mind. I didn't have a plan.
Eliza Reynolds [00:14:55]
Pretty freaking terrified, but I felt that that resonance point of truth in my body when I said the words that knowing that I think sometimes comes when you let go of something. I often think of the shedding that comes before and during threshold moments and how we're so often taught that letting go means losing something. And while grief can come with that and pain can come with that, and I often find we don't talk about the sweetness of the rightness of letting go sometimes. And speaking the words of truth in the moment where you're called to or where I'm called to often feels like sweet relief, like sweet rain, like joy, like there's a joy in letting go. I think often when I let go of my brain story of how I thought something would look or be or the rightness of it, I can get a little stuck in the black or white brain space very easily over here. And so. And sometimes I have to fight my pummel my brain on the way like we fight on the way to surrender. And then that's sweet relief of like, oh, thank you. I was, I was honest. And that feeling in my body, that kind of softness melting. Yeah, warm rain feeling. And so that's one piece. And I'll never forget being in the air on the way to California for what, 5 hours or something? And that was the space for the container, for the conversation. And the other part is I'm so glad you named that mastermind because I think, right, Support is one of the biggest tools in thresholds, you know, And I know that I would have not known how to make in any way that passage of that threshold without that mastermind. You know, I was. Yeah. In a place of deep uncertainty. And I think right support, which we can talk about forever, like what is right support? What is availability to actually let in support. What a Herculean effort to like the courage to be seen to be crumbly, to be messy and to let somebody see you. And I think it's one of the hardest, bravest, most beautiful and normal act like all of all at the same time. But yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:17:11]
No, as you say that I'm like, Oh, you've said so many things and I'm like, oh, should I highlight or late keep going because you're on a roll, which is the first thing that you said that my whole body was just a huge, this pull of a yes to was when you said I wasn't thinking about oh, I'm going to make a big change or what? My but it was it wasn't courageous. It wasn't not courageous. It was just true. And then again, just highlighting when you said and when you're in the truth there, there can be pain and there can be grief, but there's also a sweetness to it. Warm rain, you called it. And the next thing I'm just, I know I'm just like taking a highlighter to what you were saying was layers of support. And what I also heard in that was relational. You said to let somebody watch you crumble and to feel safe, right? Because we could do it in containers that don't feel safe, but to choose something that's like, oh, I feel safe enough to crumble here. And this I also want to thank you because we'll, we'll talk about this later. But you introduced me to Bridget Vixnans and alchemical alignment. And a huge tenant of that is that we come out of our trauma Physiology in the presence of others, in a safe, like in a safe presence of others. And so it's a bit of a new idea for me not to just do self help and journal and do it all my own, which is great, but to actually do my healing in the presence of others. Wild. It's for me. It's wild.
Eliza Reynolds [00:18:48]
Oh, yeah. I, I mean, I think it's for most of us, it's wild to, especially where I think most of us have some form of relational harm in the past, you know, whether we'd call it that or not, right. And to this, this terrible, exquisite, wonderful paradox of the, the place where I will heal is with safe people in right timing in doable pieces, right? Like it's not an all or nothing. I'm not a big fan of There's a line you magically cross it and everything is perfect and wonderful. I'm really a fan of yeah, being in the process. It takes the time. It takes like right timing. And I was raised by a wonderful Mama obviously work you work together for a long time and we're still very close, more so since we no longer work together. Team of that threshold conversation. And she is by training a union trained by Marion Woodman. And so I grew up in a home where, you know, after school, she'd pick me up from middle school and she'd have, like, a whole back of her Asian dragon would be filled with scales that she'd, like, confiscated from her clients. So she worked in women's body image and healing from, you know, crazy diet culture. And she'd, like, stop at the dump so we can toss these in. Wow. So I'd be like out there, like talking about my day, like heave hoeing scales into the dump. It's amazing. And yeah, you can imagine some of the conversations we had. And so I always remember she was the first person to teach me consciously. You know, I think that's something we know as young beings and then we can remember.
Eliza Reynolds [00:20:36]
But to begin to have language around time and the difference between Chronos and Kairos time and now Kronos time being chronological time, clock time, Am I late? Am I on time? And it serves a purpose, right, Like we ideally will like be at our massage on time. That sounds good to me, right? But Kairos time Kairos, by the way, she described it to me that I'm, I'm pretty sure her teacher Marion had described to her was that it it's earth based time, it's soul time. It's the ripening of a fruit, you know. You know it's the time you're with a friend and chronologically it's 5 minutes watching the sunset. But it's like eons, you know? It just expands, right? Or she'd explain it to me like, you know, when you have a play date with your best friend and you know it's going to be 3 hours, but it just goes like that, it's just over, you know what I mean? Because time, just rightly, we can we, we can become.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:33]
Fans that can have.
Eliza Reynolds [00:21:34]
Fans contract.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:36]
It's hard to tell, yeah.
Eliza Reynolds [00:21:38]
And so I think I often think of thresholds like there there's a ripening, there's a rightness to it, there's an earth based time. And I think our logical brains, which can be attached to the more the chronological timeline, can get frustrated with like, what do you mean feeling the rightness, the ripeness of it? And yet if we can allow ourselves to surrender to the process, it works us. And there is such a thing as ripeness, even if we're like, but I want to be ready now. I want to be over with this now, this big change in my life, this initiation, this rite of passage. Yeah. So often we don't get to. It's ready when it's when it's ready, right. And.
Sarah Tacy [00:22:19]
It would be so lame of me to make an analogy to pregnancy right now.
Eliza Reynolds [00:22:24]
Very appropriate.
Sarah Tacy [00:22:26]
No, I won't. Yes. So I kind of cut in and I'm glad I did because you just shared all that beauty with us. And you are in the middle of telling us before that there was a knowing, a truth, that it was time for a shift. Then you were talking about the mastermind. Is there anything else? And you don't have to. But is there anything else about that transition or about the creation of ****** girls that sticks out?
Eliza Reynolds [00:22:58]
Well, yeah, I think the piece I was going to say was that it was a creation and a threshold really woven in, in vulnerable sisterhood that I, I, I couldn't have done, I don't think in any other way or time. And there's something. So yeah, I guess beautiful is the word that comes to me. But how? In right relationship and true safety, we don't give each other power or even necessarily permission. Though I can sometimes feel like that, it often feels to me more like an act of soul mirroring. Where we hold up mirrors of unconditional love for each other, right? And so it's like if we can be in space together in authentic and genuine and doable ways of safety, we serve as reminders for each other of who we are. And I think I'm so incredibly grateful for that mastermind time right at the birth of *** *** girls and for its first few years because it required such incredible devotion and leaps and I had so much terror, so terrified. 90% of the time. It really feels like the first year I'm just like, everything was new. There's so much new, new, new in the threshold. And to have yeah, companions and reminders, it's just the biggest gift and I think is what is what genuinely birthed about *** girls into the world, which is a, you know, epic world company creation. You know, we've now supported thousands of girls, you know, like we yeah, there's so much there in that how that sisterhood was then woven into the mentorship, the mentors I've trained, the circles I've run right. The we've watched like membership Academy in the early COVID days, you know, and as you might imagine, working around mental health and Wellness and body meant and body literacy with teens socialized as girls. Yeah, COVID season was not a light time for us or for that demographic or anybody really in the world. So it was not a light few years, no.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:24]
It was not a light time. It was probably like the most important time, like the time in which girls needed each other.
Eliza Reynolds [00:25:30]
Yeah, we grew 4. 100% Four 100%. In a year and a half. Wow, so it was. Which is such an. Incredible honor. And I'm so, so grateful to this work. And so much of the heart of my work with teens has been, yeah, reclaiming right relationship as adults with teens in our society and being honored to sit with their hearts and knowing how to be, well, adults who can do that well, especially if we weren't given that. And it can be tricky. Speaking of healing and relationship.
Sarah Tacy [00:26:02]
When you spoke of being in a vulnerable sisterhood and mirroring, and I'm just thinking what a beautiful thing that you were in vulnerable sisterhood, creating a space for vulnerable sisterhood that you were, you were, you know, exemplifying it yourself, maybe even out of what felt like necessity. And then giving it, giving it on to the teams that you worked with. And then there's another piece of my experience with you, which is intergenerational knowledge and experience. And so a little bit about your program, but also you moving into motherhood. In your program, you have, you were speaking to Kate, Sarah Jenks and I when we're like, oh, could you run a program about re parenting our teens? Because everything you're teaching them we want to know about. And you know, we're also thinking like, if we could learn all this for you from you, then we could be the right fit for our girls. And you also helped us to know, well what your girls might also need is somebody in between, right? That there's that is that the parents can't be everything for the children that there, there was once a time where there would be cousins and neighbors that were a little bit older and people that would help bridge the gap. And so in your program, you have mentors who are, my understanding, 18 to 21, something like that.
Eliza Reynolds [00:27:30]
Yeah, Yeah. I'm really here for how do we live not just to be in theory around intergenerational rebillaging. And yeah, so many of us may have experienced incomplete or kind of harmful versions of that or of mentorship. And because I think as teens, we are always. I think it's actually a pretty primal urge to search for mentors. And I think sometimes it looks like whatever you've got available, right? Which could be the celebrity poster on your wall in your teenage bedroom, right? You're looking for examples in the world of blueprints, of how to be blueprints that are maybe outside of your immediate family or parents and often contrasting. You're exploring your own wholeness, right? And I try and remind parents like this is a compliment, they feel safe enough with you that they get to be different. This is exciting, This is beautiful. Resistance is not rejection. They're very good things. And so, yeah, it's really where my work began when I was 15. I saw the difference when I came in to teach, you know, versus, you know, a 40 year old social worker. It was different. I came in and they, they looked up and listened and I, you know, well, I'm honored to do my work. I don't think I was saying things that were remarkably different than a lot of their amazing parents or moms, right? Saying trust yourself, saying your body's wise, saying, you know, isn't the menstrual cycle cool? And the parent would get the biggest eye roll they've ever gotten for telling them their menstrual cycle was cool. And all of a sudden I was 15 being like, oh, **** did you know that that periods are? And all of a sudden they sit up and they listen and they get excited. And I think that's part of the gift of the translation of intergenerational community, but also the gift of mentorship for all, right. And as a parent, if you're parenting a young person or a teen or a teen to be soon, your role is to help find those mentors to find the healthy ones to help your kid get near them, right? So you're I still call all parents to near team captain, you know, like you're still the adult, you're still the positive authority. Please stay in that. Your kid needs you deeply and it's going to be a really different role than when they were really little. And that's beautiful and that's great. You're the one who needs to step in if there's a really weird mentor in there, you know, quote UN quote mentor, right? And so that's where I got obsessed with training professional, what I call professional mentors or professional Big Sisters or big siblings. And that's what the last two years of my own work at Batus Girls has been devoted to, has been training these brilliant young folks who have already received the medicine because everybody who got trained by us has been through at 18 hour team programs. And so if you think about it, it's like impossible, as you were saying, it's impossible in some ways. I heard you saying it's impossible to give what you haven't received. And so there I was in mastermind sisterhood at other places, right, where I've been in circles to be able to teach about toxic mean girl culture as we talk about it in our community and what we call the art of sistering, right? So it's an art out of science. Like how do we practice being in a real relationship to each other to to meet the things for socialized to do, like jealousy, right, passive aggression, that what comes up and to do that I had to I had to be living that. And so, for example, whenever anybody comes to work for money after they've done our trainings, there is an agreement that you will be receiving mentorship as you mentor. So whether that you know, yes, it's in our team with me, but also like you must be help to hold right.
Sarah Tacy [00:31:38]
Yes.
Eliza Reynolds [00:31:39]
No compromise there, right? You must be deeply help to be holding and yeah, it's the inhale exhale of healthy intergenerational community.
Sarah Tacy [00:31:49]
And I'm, you know, just that that little part of me that's like, and the work that we have to hold mothers so that they can hold shady too, like the other thing you said. And I'm just so curious because I haven't heard this before. You said that jealousy and passive aggressive behavior is socialized. I just thought that was a very natural impulse or feeling that then we'd have to look at ourselves and say, what does that say about our desires? What does that say about? But I have never heard it as something that's socialized. Probably something that's so obvious in your world, but I was just like, say what?
Eliza Reynolds [00:32:27]
She just is great. Yeah. So we call it again, big air quotes here. Toxic mean girl culture, Right. And I will say that I am mildly depressed that I have never had to define that. You know, I say it and I was like, yeah, yeah, OK. Next, right. I'm not like, wait, what it comes? What, what would that be referring to? And it's, I think it one of the greatest example I have is that like most or many, many adults who hear what I do working with teen girls, they get a little nervous, right? Or they're like, oh, teen girls kind of scare me, you know? And it's often because I think there's a there was harm done in our own teenage years or an incompleteness from that place. And that to me is an example of toxic mean girl culture because we talk about it in the teenage years, but I think we maybe forget that it continues wave path. Some of the biggest examples of toxic mean girl culture. I mean, they can be in mommy groups like they can be in so many places, right? By socialization, I mean, we're not, I don't believe we're born to be in toxic versions of competition with each other, right? So like, I love a reframe of jealousy. I think. I think I teach all of my teams about how jealousy is such a beautiful experience. We can reclaim our experience, you're right, and talk about our desires, etcetera. The tricky thing that we often assume about toxic mean girl culture is that this is just how girls are.
Sarah Tacy [00:34:07]
I've got it right. You're not saying that jealousy doesn't exist as a natural form. It's the way that we then accept that that girls gossip, that girls are mean, that they like, that this is a natural thing as opposed to like, oh, and we have the capacity to look at our feelings and how do we relate with each other and how do we. Yeah.
Eliza Reynolds [00:34:30]
So what do you do with? What do you do with any feeling? Like anger? It's not good, not bad. It's neutral, right? Any feeling? All feelings are good feelings. All feelings are just feelings. They're just messengers. What do we do with them? Right? Feelings are meant to flow through.
Sarah Tacy [00:34:43]
And if we're taught girls don't have anger, you shouldn't have anger, then it's going to come out sideways. It's like, how, how do all the things that we're suppressed come out sideways for all the things we're supposed to want that we don't actually want, that we're fighting for, and it just gets all mixed up?
Eliza Reynolds [00:34:59]
And mostly what I see tragically, is that nobody's really in there with the teens teaching them how to relate to each other. Well, right. And so that's the problem. We kind of abandoned our teens at the threshold. We they push us away and we go, I guess they don't need me anymore. And, you know, teens will be teens. I wanted nothing, you know, internal voice goes, I wanted nothing more than for my mother to leave me alone. So I guess I should just she'll figure it out. And it's like, yeah, she's going to be more independent. But if we could listen a layer deeper, I bet a lot of to our own bodies and our own memories and our own knowing a better, I bet a lot of us would go. Actually, I didn't want my mother to leave me. I wanted her to know how to stay with me and relate to me deeply in the right moments. Right. You know, I wanted her to have my back and know how to be with me. And yeah, I think it's tricky. A lot of compassion for school and school counselors, the hard time. And I think we we deeply need to find ways to stay with those parts of ourselves that we rejected in the teenage years or society shamed in us so that we can learn better to sit with teenage girls as they move through the threshold that is the teenagers.
Sarah Tacy [00:36:24]
Right. So as we heal ourselves, that could be part of staying. And then I'm also thinking of that phrase, right distance. What is the right distance? It's not that I leave completely. What is the right distance so that they know I'm here, that I can bear witness and give them the space they need?
Eliza Reynolds [00:36:44]
Yeah, the container expands, right? You used to be in there in the bedroom. You might be sitting in the kitchen making tea, hearing them do homework in the other room. Do you want a snack? I'm gonna come out. And then I start talking about their day. Right. Like, literally like it could look like rhythms and rituals in the home of connection.
Sarah Tacy [00:37:01]
I heard Glennon Doyle. I didn't hear her. She it was a post on Instagram and she was sitting back on her couch reading and you kind of see like her teen in the distance. And she said, I read somewhere that we should be like a house plant, you know, stay around, be in proximity. And so she's there while her team is doing their homework. And as you said, it could be like, oh, I'm hungry. Good, let's get a snack, let's talk. But it's not like right in their space. That image really stuck out to me. I'm like, OK, note to self houseplant. And I know that things change and I have to be like, you know, with each child. What what does that mean to get back to you intergenerational with is if it's OK for me to say that that yesterday at the baby blessing. I just noticed how intergenerational that was from what looked like someone maybe young teenage years to Crone and a bunch of mothers who had maiden mother Crone. And as I was speaking with you earlier, the wisdom that you have going in around understanding the support a mother may need or just that you're entering A threshold and that the pace may change, that your desires may change. My memory of going into motherhood was I'm going to continue to do everything I've been doing almost all the way up until having my baby. I did know the third trimester that I wanted to be in water and walking on beaches. And it did work out for me like to have a few weeks before just to, you know, change states. And I left my job. And, you know, it was a whole transition for my whole family for multiple reasons. But I thought the cool thing and the essential thing was that once I had my child that I would basically wear her and continue living the same life I lived before. And so it felt like a really painful death when the child I had was very much like, Oh, no, that will not be happening because I hadn't seen it before. I hadn't seen layers of support. I feel like we mostly tried to do it. I knew in my body, I knew in my bones. This was so interesting. Kate and I met a few weeks before I had my baby and I guess a month and a few weeks before she had hers. And we were both saying, it's so interesting. I don't know if it's like the oxytocin rising and other hormones lowering, but I knew in my bones that the most essential thing was community. Although I hadn't really seen the transition into mothering, it was the first time that my body wasn't obsessed with my career. It was the first time that I was like, Oh yeah, it doesn't really matter to me right now.
All I know is I want to find people I love being around because like, my body knew, my mind couldn't have processed. But I just wonder what my process would have been like if I had known then. Through experience through I think because you're such a wise soul and brilliant, you have a lot of friends who have been through this threshold and most likely have learned a lot by being, you know, around many different age groups and people going through many different thresholds. Yeah. Are you willing to speak at all on how like what's changing in you? Whether it's things you desire now that are different than what you desired before or seasons of life.
Eliza Reynolds [00:40:41]
Feel similar to how I describe the knowing of the threshold of the plain conversation, but such a different area of life and that there's a there's a relief to the rightness of orienting towards what feels true right now. And also there have been times where I think, yeah, the hardest part is it has really been for my brain. Yeah. Because as the first, first, second stuff is, I didn't know I got to move this slowly. Yeah, you know, I can. I've been running my own company since I was 15. I wrote a book at 19, you know, when I was 21 while going through college final and TA ING and teaching sold out weekend workshops during finals week and then coming back to perform at college and dance show and then like I.
Sarah Tacy [00:41:39]
All the things.
Eliza Reynolds [00:41:41]
I've done a season of how many things right can I do? And then, yeah, and then I built the business in my my 20s, my late 20s. A new business has shifted, right. And here we are. And yeah, so doing all the things is familiar territory for me and.
Sarah Tacy [00:41:57]
From what's familiar to what's optimal.
Eliza Reynolds [00:42:01]
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's been a time of rummaging around in the truth of my own desires and looking at where sneakily the the doing of all the things was a beautiful season of life and also a coping mechanism of survival. Like, oh, how fast can I just keep running? Because I would think I was so terrified sometimes of what I would find in my own body and then my own psyche if I slowed down enough to feel. And while that was certainly true, I've had to meet a lot of discomfort and old aches and pains that live in my body from past places of harm. I think what I didn't know was on the other side. The land was far sweeter than anything I could imagine. Right? To to find safety and presence in my nervous system and, yeah, to get to want what my sweet animal body wants. And I think I'd yeah, I've talked forever around like, you know, your desires are made for you, they're right sized for you, blah, blah, blah. And I think I don't really know what I wanted. I made a lot of beautiful things and Co created a lot of beautiful things in the world. And I think a lot of it was looking left and looking right and being like, what do other people have? I guess maybe that. That looks fun. This feels fun. This feels good. But it's, it's been a season of sinking into my own bones and letting it be enough to want really what I want in the season of life. And it felt I for I think almost a decade was like, yeah, I'm not having kids. The whole decade of my 20s. I was like, Nah, for many reasons that we could go into. But it felt so intimately private and gorgeous and scary and vulnerable to, to be like, to discover that desire in myself and be like, oh, wow, I really want this version of family. Yeah. It's a very vulnerable, vulnerable desire to to sit in and then be in the process. So as I move into, you know, very close now according this to the threshold of baby not no longer squirming around and punching my bladder every minute, but being on the outside. Yeah, it's surreal and it's gorgeous and it's slow and it's good. Yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:44:32]
As I hear you share what you just shared, something that I'm feeling that I want the listener to lean into that we haven't talked about yet is what your practice has been. We could say with thematics or with something else, but that you, you briefly touched on it when you said what once felt scary or perhaps that it was, it could have been frozen and so you didn't know it existed. And and that when we go at a certain speed, when we have a certain momentum, it's really easy to bypass the deeper, sweeter pulls of our own body. And so, but to slow down, as you also named, could mean that we have to potentially come into contact with the things that have hurt us or perhaps still hurt. And this is a place that I think would be really nice to talk about if you're willing to some of your processes or what that support looks like. So that people might be like, oh, I should feel safe being slow and calm, but that you've been so dedicated to your process of having your nervous system.
Eliza Reynolds [00:45:51]
Yeah, I will say also like normalize for like my experience is like for 99% of US, 99% of the time rest sucks. Like let's just reclaim that. Like, you know, our culture will like you should rest more. And it's this idea like you flip the light switch and the lights go off and you're like, now I rest perfectly. And yeah. And my system, that was very much not the case. It was like, how, what the heck? And so I think it feels important to me to name that I have invested time, money, energy, resources in my own nervous system, somatic and body healing the way some other people, it might be more normalized in our culture to invest in a house, a car or a graduate degree. I kind of so this was chosen. It was values that I said, OK, this is a value of mine as I, you know, I deserve support and I will be well and I want to enjoy my life and I, I need healing support to do that right. And, and part of it was also necessity and make some of us reach those moments where you get sick enough, you know, whatever that symptom means to you that it's choice feels less like a choice. So that was a little bit of both for me. For me that. Yeah, that looks like really intense anxiety. That looks like panic attacks when night terrors. It looks like health issues that didn't make sense, quote UN quote. Right. And so as I became a student to my own body, it really became, you know, what if my body was not wrong? What if it was not broken? But what if these all these symptoms were messages, right? Where Mother Marian Woodman, I guess the liminal, she's always a teacher, My my spiritual granny. But right, she has some quote that I'm going to slightly butcher, which is right. Like if we listen when the body whispers, it doesn't have to yell. Yes. And I didn't really know how to do that. So I ended up with a lot of yells. And I try not to be to be a better listener. It's a practice of mine to speak the language of my own body and to be in relationship with my own body. And so actually on the drive to that mastermind, I don't know if you know this drive to the first mastermind we met up with, I think I listened to a podcast episode where Bridget was interviewed.
Sarah Tacy [00:48:18]
No. Amazing.
Eliza Reynolds [00:48:21]
And I had the chills in my body that knowing of like, I need to work with this person. And this is where all of the, you know, the choice and the not choice comes together. Where I, I think I emailed her and I ended up making a sound that I'm pretty sure didn't really exist at the time in her practice, which was I got on a plane to DC and I went and I stayed at like an Airbnb for three days and I saw her every day. So I did like an in person to kind of begin a relationship with her. And yeah, there's a matter of feeling, practice, and you.
Sarah Tacy [00:49:02]
Introduced Bridget to me right before I was about to have my second baby because I didn't realize. Talk about speed. I feel like I've spent the last 20 years learning how to listen to my body. And I literally used to say to some of my clients, listen to the whispers. I didn't know Marian. Marian Woodman I kind of listen to the whispers and I literally say like, so they don't have to yell. If I remember when I'd be like, what are you talking about? The Whispers. It's so much easier to see in other people than to see in myself sometimes. And yeah, I, it really took until I was weeks away from having Sianna where I realized that I had some PTSD from birthing and from early parenting and that there might be a lot of fear in me and that that might affect the way that I went into this. And you said, listen, I have worked with so many people. This woman is the real deal. And so I set up three sessions and she was kind enough to because I was like days out, meet me on like Sunday morning at 6:00 AM and we were online and, and I just want to say that now I've been in her programming for three years in her programming. That sounds cult like. She has a training. And when my husband said to me, because there's an option in the training that you would just keep retaking it. And she is growing the modules more as well. He's like, so how long are you going to do this? So probably forever, just assume that at least three days out of every month I will be in an alchemical alignment training. And then I want to say I supplement because it's just as important is I have another mentor within that program who I try to meet with. I wish once a week, sometimes it's every other week our schedules, but it's been so life changing. We talked about this is not where I was planning on going, but you and you and I again, I talked to I was like Liza, I had this session and I haven't been able to contact my bones in three years. Like since we first like level 1 module 1 is, you know, finding a bone for stability. And I was like, I found my bone and it lit up. And this sounds so weird to a listener who has hasn't explored this, but I was like, and it whispered to me. It whispered I exist. And I've never been the same. I've never. Since then it's been easier for me. And it felt like when I got into my bones that there was a library of ancient wisdom in there that I could contact my bone and ask questions and feel more sure about my state, my the polls. And yeah. And since then, it's easier for me to say that doesn't feel good to me. But, you know, to somebody that doesn't feel good to me. I don't think I'm available for that right now. And just to kind of claim what feels like a truth or is it being, oh, it doesn't feel good for me to me because you're doing something bad or you're. But just that I could be like, oh. My body has a preference. For somebody who studied my body for so many years, this type of work has helped me to pause, feel sometimes move down to the the pace of nature and exist in a way that I didn't. That's not performative to exist in a way that.
Eliza Reynolds [00:52:38]
Existence can be tricky. Existence can be tricky. Yeah, yeah, it didn't exist for a long time to myself.
Sarah Tacy [00:52:49]
And to the outside world, it would look the opposite, right?
Eliza Reynolds [00:52:52]
Totally, you know, totally. I was crushing it and I was, yeah, sharing big beautiful bodies of work. And it's been tricky to heal and more and more and to come into more right relationship with myself and my body and be like, what was that work born from? You know, and I think in a lot of ways it was born from pure spirit and sweat and sometimes pain, but also in devotion. You know, I choose to honor that part of myself and know how beautifully these work impacted and also be excited to learn how to give from a place of deeper Wellness where I am not the sacrificial lamb to my work or to my life. And I could talk that about that a million times a day, but now I live it. And what I will say for folks listening and who are also practitioners, healers, guides, etcetera. What I find is the more that I live it, the less I actually have to say it to my clients, right? Like I don't repeat the same go to phrases, you know, to pep talk them. They feel it in my presence. And it really is like, that's where the alchemy happens, just in the presence that I'm somebody who lives that now. And that's where it's like, right, relationship heals. You know, my mentees and the folks who work with me. I feel like more and more. Yeah, my presence is the work. Presence was the work.
Sarah Tacy [00:54:25]
And said that to me when I was pregnant, really, I was really questioning so hard for me to be in this mastermind with it was like such a blessing and so challenging. It's a gorgeous.
Eliza Reynolds [00:54:38] I
nvitation to grow. I'm so proud of you.
Sarah Tacy [00:54:41]
Oh my God, I was. It was everything I dreamt of. I literally when I lived in New York and I did everything. I shouldn't say I did everything. That's an all or nothing. I did so much of my work on my own, creating the programs, teaching the program, selling the programs, one-on-one work. And I would look at various examples of what it was to be in a group of women who could share ideas with each other. And I think when I looked, I also looked at Marie Forleo and assumed that she was with Chris Carr and Kate. And and so it was so funny to then be in a mastermind with these incredible women. And I'm like, oh, this is what I dreamed of. But at the exact same time that I'm entering, I'm having to also pull out, right? I was like slowing down my business instead of growing it. And Jen looked at me and she said, I'm so happy you're here. And she also said, this is Dan Rasiopi, our friend who is this incredible astrologer. She said your your currency is your presence. And that really helped me just be in this group in general when I was like, oh, I don't know all the things these women know about growing businesses. I don't. And it's just I had to kind of like keep that as my mantra. And I think it's been a mantra since is how how beautiful it is to just do the work and to be present in myself and to know that that's enough. I noticed that when I'm in a session with Tell Tell Darden is another practitioner of alchemical alignment who is a mentor and I might say a mentor and friend now that if I start in a session with her that almost immediately upon sitting, my body will know if I want to sit or suddenly I'm like, I'm going to go snuggle up in my blankets. Like just by being in the presence of somebody who is so in herself and doing the work to honor herself and where she's at that day. And it makes like that she wouldn't have to name, she wouldn't have to say, I'm not going to be the sacrificial lamb so that you can do your healing. I'm not going to digest your undigested stuff. She just is, right? Is she just like? And it's such a blessing to be in the presence of people who are doing their work.
Eliza Reynolds [00:56:55]
It's rarer sometimes than and they have earlier believed, and I think that's shifting more and more in the world. But I think there was a oh for a long time, a pretty yeah, the wounded healer archetype, which can have beautiful sides to it. Meaning I think many of us get into the work we do because it's what we need and it's, you know, it's our own tender places to grow. And what a yeah, at times gorgeous and necessary initiation. And, and, and I think it is possible and necessary to move beyond the place of holding to the wound, right as the only way to be of service and to reclaim our, yeah, our right to sweetness, to heaven on earth and our own body, especially in these times that are trying and challenging and intense and apocalyptic in many ways. I think it's part of what we must learn to anchor into ourselves more and more, not as a way of avoiding the reality, but a way of being in a work relationship with it. And I'm genuine service.
Sarah Tacy [00:58:09]
Eliza, for anyone who's not more familiar with what we're talking about, I'm going to try to be like real explicit. So my way of experiencing this is that often people who would say they're empaths, just people who I think are emotionally available to other people's emotions. And I think we all do this no matter what. We're all in relationship to each other's emotions. If we were in a situation of coaching clients inside person, outside person that there has been this way demonstrated in which it would seem normal or it might even be like parent and child or it could be, you know, two partners where one partner comes in hot, you know, just like had a hard day and then the other partner sits there and just takes it all in and the first person feels good because they got it off their chest and the second person is now like. Wow. I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but but I think this can sometimes happen with practitioners. Wow, now I have to digest it. Now I feel the heaviness and I think the the practice of finding heaven on earth in our bodies is also having trust that other people can do the alchemy in their bodies. Not that oh, you need me to transmute this for you verse like I will be a mirror of stability and I will almost like you were saying, I would think with the teens like I will sit at right distance as a parent and I will be here stable kind of no new injuries. I won't necessarily injure myself so that you can be healed. I will take care of myself and in me taking care of myself that that is potentially healing to those who can witness it as a possibility.
Eliza Reynolds
[01:00:11] Yeah. I think that's one very real piece of what I'm talking about. And I think some of the other examples I think about in terms of serving from a place that is more authentic and less of an open wound can also be that we are included in the care we give.
Sarah Tacy [01:00:33]
We're included in the care we give. You're included in the care we give.
Eliza Reynolds [01:00:38]
Right. So the vision you have for the world, the your clients, how you want them to feel, the healing that they deserve that you bring to them that that you are included in that you receive that too, right. That might be a small part of the energy of the session, right, that you give you're like 5% goes to me. I get to also receive or it looks like that you are mentored as you mentor rate it as that you are held as you hold. Whether that could translate into as I was saying, like y'all financially, I was just like, now I'm going to get healed. I moved to DC. Did I have a savings? No, it was in my mid 20s, like transitioning businesses, dealing with weird health symptoms. And I was like, I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to get my cute little **** to DC and I'm going to be there for three days, right. So it was really like, like I moved back in with my mother and lived in a portion of an apartment she was renting. Not ideal in a lot of other circumstances. It also meant I went to like weekly and sometimes I had like 2 sessions a week and it was just like right choice for me at that time, you know, because it gave me I was in as there's an investment in a foundation within myself that was paid off like a million fold it feels like right and I can.
Sarah Tacy [01:02:02]
See it?
Eliza Reynolds [01:02:03]
Yeah. And and then I think also to me, I think sometimes is healers, and I use that word very broadly because it can mean so many things to so many of us. But as people who teach or guide or space hold, there can be a little bit of a piece of like, yeah, lead from your trauma or lead from the hard stuff, you know, like people will feel inspired or connect you about that. And I think right, sometimes when it's healed enough, it can be really beautiful to share or be connected with an all or nothing. He's here. And I think part of our role as feelers can be to deepen our own Wellness so that we are living vision of what's possible in Wellness as well, as well as honoring the, the hard places and the hard parts. And so to me, that's also like any, like any mentor or guide that I work with. I'm like, I'm looking for how you're living it up. You know, I'm looking for what's your relationship to pleasure? What's your relationship to boundaries and your own nourishment. You have so many wellsprings that you turn to in your inner life because like otherwise, I'm not that interested, right? That's that's where, that's where I want to commune. That's where I want to be met. And so that could look like really great boundaries around when you work and don't work. That could look like the practitioners you work with, the massages you get. That could look like you get up and you go for a nature walk in the morning. And it was a Herculean effort to, like, reschedule your family to make that happen. So you get 20 minutes to solo commune with the sunlight and listen to a podcast or whatever it is. But I want to know what's filling you up and are you turning towards that? And to me, yeah, that's an edge that can make us more, well, practitioners and guides in the world and humans.
Sarah Tacy [01:04:00]
Thank you for redefining that I missed. I was like, oh, we're talking about the same thing. Oh, I know what she's talking about. And when you redefined it as being included in the care that we give. And then you're looking for people who are leaning into pleasure, into self-care and not just the people who are talking about the wound. Not that that doesn't suddenly doesn't exist, but that they both get to exist. I recently went on a retreat where the woman definitely LED from what is pleasurable and what is joy and rising up to a certain frequency. And I was like, but does the wound get spaced? You know, like there's. I just felt my body so triggered. But it my body also knew this is more than my mind. And maybe my mind was, you know, my mind was trying to be in there too, which is great. Now there's something to this. Yeah, she's on to something. I want to fight her, but also like, no, there's something here. They're just hearing you say it that way too. It's just it's helping me integrate the possibilities.
Eliza Reynolds [01:05:04]
Yeah. Could there be a piece of that? It all gets, as you said, it all gets to be there, right. And I, yeah, in places of tenderness or wounding or healing, sometimes we forget that comfort and pleasure and joy get to exist. Could exist, I think, you know, as you and I both know, that's also the worth of a great practitioner. And some of the ones we've both been helped by is they get to hold that when we're in a place that's tender and hard to let that in. So, you know, it becomes part of the threshold process, right, That it is a process. For me. It is very much a process and not just one moment. And often it, yes, it culminates, yes, there is intensity in the journey of a threshold. But yeah, there are waves and layers and nuances to change and to being changed and to the mystery of not knowing. And I think every threshold I've been through invites me to not know, and to also perhaps trust that I'm on the other side. It'll be sweeter than I ever could imagine.
Sarah Tacy [01:06:10]
Thank you. Part of me is like, I just want to close it there and I'm pausing to see like who should. There's one thing that I wanted to share with the listeners that you shared with me. And so I'm going to hold what you just said as a highlight. And would you be willing to share the process that you have, the seasonal process that you and Will are currently engaging in just as like a little sweet thing for us to hold on to a little like I feel like it's a nice coordinate to see. Oh, and here's another way that Eliza's building in pieces of pleasure throughout the year.
Eliza Reynolds [01:06:56]
Yeah. So I was sharing with Sarah that my partner Will and I, my husband and I are always investigating seasonal living and what does it mean to be in more right relationship. We live in southern Vermont as of a year ago, and so this season's here feel more intense than places we've lived farther South. And that feels exciting and and good. And I shared with Sarah when I was in the fall how fall often feels like a season that collapses, that gets rushed by, you know, we do summer and then fall comes and it starts and all of a sudden it's the end of November, right? You're like, what happened? It's like you kind of like, you know, like you get on that fast moving ramp at the airport and all of a sudden you're like, it's holidays. Wait, that means winter or whatever it is. Those of us celebrate winter holidays. And Will and I created this little practice where we would say, OK, what is one to two things that to us feels like really help us honor and be present in this season, to not miss it. And then sometimes it's just one thing. OK, so let's do that. And that means you've really done this season. So for summer, it was let's it was wild swimming. So it was like not like the town pool. It was like, let's go find lakes or waterfalls. And we live in a place where that is very available. And so let's see how many we can find and go swimming, right? So that was our like this, this tastes like summer to me. And that was a epic and magical adventure. And then in the fall, it's been two things. It was going on really slow walks outside, right? So it was like, I'm really noticing the changing colors live in a place that really beautifully does that. And yeah, it really ended up showing up as like, really paying attention to the trees, right? Like I've never paid so much intimate attention to like how each tree changed in a different pacing and it's different colors. Like, it was like a lot of friendship there. And our second one for the fall was go get cider doughnuts. So yeah, we're off. Those are so bad. Which we did. We were very committed to and time dwelled with my pregnancy. I was extra excited. But yeah, so hopefully you can feel the range and like, wow, beautiful colors and cider doughnuts. And I feel very much like I'm heading into winter or even though it's still fall where I am, and I'm recording this because especially because I'm on the cusp of of of Soros and combination of pregnancy. And so it feels like winter started a week or two ago for me. But we're kind of investigating what it'll be. But I think it's really going to be something around around rest practice and curling up inside. And it might might be different things in different seasons, might be things we cook, or it might be adventures outside and relating to the outside. But for me, and this season, it really feels like I have a fun challenge I often give to preteens or teens, which is like, how many layers of cozy or comfort can you do when you rest? So it's like not just like, oh, I called up to read a book, but it's like, and I put on my comfiest PJS and I have two beverage options and I put on music and I lit a candle and right, so we're like, and I have a snack plate. So it's like how many of the senses can be delighted did maybe it's a weighted blanket, right? Like, what is it? If we're going to cocoon, if we're going to care, like, you know, it's the fun challenge, like how many can you do? And so I think for me it's yeah, how cozy can I get? And so much of the, for me, the medicine of winter and living in a place that really does an intense seasonal winter relatively to a lot of other places is, yeah, pushes me to live my values of seasonal productivity and value and worthiness. And it's one thing to speak them, and it's another one to be at my own threshold of rest and cultivate things that, yeah, help me drop in from. Feel safe enough to actually be here in this body, in this pregnant body, in this pregnant body in the middle of winter, in this threshold of mystery and not knowing. And you know, it may seem simple, but it's often the little sensory delight that serves up glimmers of little signals to myself. It's safe enough to stay here another moment.
Sarah Tacy [01:11:20]
Yeah, that's so beautiful. And and this winter season that you're Speaking of does line up so well with the 1st 40 days or the 4th trimester. You feel grateful for that. I know, I know it's time for us to go and I'm just. So would you name a thing or two that you're lining up ahead of time to honor the season of rest or to give people?
Eliza Reynolds [01:11:42]
Ideas. Yeah. Pregnancy, postpartum specific, or just winter in general?
Sarah Tacy [01:11:48]
Pregnancy, postpartum, I mean, I guess they could kind of overlap, but just some things in there because for some people it's a brand new idea of what you might begin to describe.
Eliza Reynolds [01:11:58]
Yeah. So I'd say I'm taking the postpartum season I get to experience, but I've witnessed a lot of other beloved Zen very seriously in the best possible sense, as in my matter deeply. And and also, yeah, kind of some of the research into how important it is like to refuel the nutrient stores and the energy stores of this precious body that's mine. And this is such an important window. And So what that's looked like is I actually planned my close pardon before I gathered birth team support because of the way my business works. Also, I had to, I'm an entrepreneur, I run my own gig and I I had to really plan what I'd be available for what I'd not be available for as enrolling new clients who work with me for often 9 or 10 month chunks of time. And so last summer I was like even earlier, I was like, I had to create time off for myself. You know, I don't have that as I know many of us live in the US don't have, right. And I was an entrepreneur. I was like, I, I created or doesn't happen. And so that looks like I have 6 to 8 weeks fully off from work in any capacity. I have an amazing infrastructure in my business. I have a facilitation assistant, a mentor who works, who holds my clients. I have a personal assistant, a team that's just like fully prepared, flexible, excited, intergenerational and knows when I'll be off, when I'll be on. It means every client who enrolled with me, I had conversations about the fact that I was pregnant. And I made a really clear in the beginning because I basically said rather than saying this is like, Oh no, what a bummer. I'll be off for six weeks and they're going to have such a loss of me. And what a bummer that, you know, it's like an inconvenience. I instead approached it as a tremendous gift for the right people that they're going to have to get to have a mentor who's honoring themselves that deeply in that season. And also I specialize in intergenerational mentorship. They're going to have a mentor who's moving across a biological as well as other layers threshold and they're going to get to see aspects of that and healthy and appropriate ways. And so every single client I enrolled to work with me this year is like a embodied, you say? An embodied hell yes to that is like giddy about the fact that they're witnessing a mentor going through the pregnancy threshold.
Sarah Tacy [01:14:35]
Think about that. I didn't even think about, like, I was just so in awe of the layers of support that you're creating for yourself at home that I didn't think about how powerful it would be you to embody and live into everything you've been teaching at such an important threshold for people to just witness you in the doing and being.
Eliza Reynolds [01:14:57]
Right. So think about if you were a teenage girl like.
Sarah Tacy [01:15:00]
Now it's like, oh, and she's doing it. She's being it. I.
Eliza Reynolds [01:15:04]
Mean think about it, if you're listening and if you were a teen and you'd gotten to witness a mentor that you had a really intimate, close relationship with who held you and had your back and was like your go to person. And they were in really authentic, transparent ways, sharing and modeling about the vulnerability and the edges and the excitements and the joys, the exclusive support they had for themselves and the mystery in the unknown of being at that threshold. Because I think there's something so uniting about thresholds and initiations of all kinds. You know, I say this about working with teens is like, you don't need to be like feet teen. I'm like you. You need to be like you because you still have thresholds and you still have initiations and I still know you. Like I know what it feels like to be in that pre butterfly cocoon when you're more goo than not, you're in the you're goo stage. And every time I talked about this, like, yeah, I just feel like permanent goo, like hoping I figure out who I am and how it's going to work. And so I think these these moments unite us. And so that's been one big piece. What else postpartum doula feels really, really important? Who is going to come do bodywork and care for me? And I really interviewed a lot of people to find right relationship and she feels like just such a cozy auntie coming into my home. We have meal trains, which are pretty popular meal trains with food support. But also my husband is like an amazing cook and former chef who now is a architectural designer but is like that's their devotion of their area devotion and care. So like we have a chest freezer that's like maxed out almost and herbal support. So I also we did herbalism training few years ago as care for myself and so herbal remedies and recipes prepped. I have friends who are also herbalists who are in the area. But I also have a dear beloved pregnant Mama friend who's do like 2 weeks, 3 weeks before me. And we both went through the same herbalism training. And so we are gathering together to make herbal care that we could buy but we're like we want to make it for ourselves and infuse it with love for each other. Oh, I have therapist somatic help. So continuing to see mentors before and during online, you know, and that that needs to continue for me to be cared for. And then also just really, really intense boundaries, you know, so like, Will and I are both profound introverts, and we're prepared that we might not tell anybody for six weeks that our baby's been born if we don't want to. Yeah. Like literally like we're just like. We get to protect the cocoon and the hormonal dance of our intimate family being born. And and also we get to tell everybody if we want and we get to have all the support And we're living in a pretty small place right now and we're supposed to move and construction slowed us down, but just sometimes. So we're in this like really like like a one bedroom experience. And initially I was like, and then it was like, it's, it's been this invitation to be in the rightness of our cocoon and our family unit. And it also means like nobody can move in, you know? So it's kind of been good and let like, wow, we get to have right support, right distance, come in and then give us space again. So I'm fully, yeah, taking my rest practice, gosh, pretty gosh darn seriously because I'm also going to be, you know, flexing those rest muscles lying in bed and yeah, I mean, what else? I've got a lactation consultant. I've got a pelvic floor. If they're physical, it's.
Sarah Tacy [01:18:57]
So beautiful. It's so beautiful.
Eliza Reynolds [01:18:58]
I've got an acupuncturist, I've got a body massage person. When I tell you y'all that I take it very seriously getting support, it's like my number one thing I invest in. I mean it, you know, and my quality of life and yeah, the safety and joy I feel is, I think, a direct result.
Sarah Tacy [01:19:17]
We, we work with a developmentalist too. It's just when we're like, well, what do we do about XY and Z? And he'll say it's take care of your nervous system and then your child will feel safe. And then whatever you see coming up is just going to dissipate when they feel safe. And it is all about just like that.
Our nervous systems are teaching our kids more than our words. And so I hear you saying this and how it could affect the preteens, teens, the mothers and fathers or parents, I'll say of the preteens and teens and then your own baby who gets to be with a mom who took her rest seriously. This is what you're mirroring. And that's the nervous and baby Mama nervous systems are so in tune that it's like. Our our culture would normally say like daycare for the baby and everything's when we take care of the Mama.
Eliza Reynolds [01:20:17]
Yeah, that's the vision, Vision that the vision is really holding that. Yeah. That container as the heart of my the heart of my work and my soul tending right now is. Yes. It's been that cocoon in that space within myself, hot off the presses. Last week, I finally, much kicking and screaming, mentally decided to pause all new projects between now and fall 2023, you know, because I just, it's again, that sweet relief of, oh, that's what I secretly really wanted. But I thought there's all these things I needed to do and I was excited to do and, you know, work and get back at it. And yeah, I think feeling sated satiety in my life is a value I'm also exploring. Yeah, not over, not overflowing your stuff to the gills. Let's see.
Sarah Tacy [01:21:11]
Thank you so much.
Eliza Reynolds [01:21:14]
My pleasure. Thanks for having me, dear wife.
Sarah Tacy [01:21:15]
Such a gift. Thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy, it's very helpful. You can find it at sarahtacy.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe. And like, apparently it's wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you Scroll down to the bottom subscribe rate, maybe say a thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.