Ep 97: Part 10/12, Get In Your Body, Mama: Self-Discovery Through Somatics: Building a Relationship with Yourself Series

In this juicy and soul-stirring episode, Becca Dollard dives deep into what it really means to have a relationship with yourself—especially when you’re navigating the identity-melting, heart-expanding rollercoaster of motherhood.

Because here’s the truth: knowing yourself isn’t optional—it’s your superpower. Motherhood can crack you wide open in the most glorious (and sometimes messy) ways, and that’s where the growth lives. Becca shows us that the journey back to self isn’t linear—it’s embodied, emotional, and wildly personal. Through the power of somatics, you reconnect not just to your body, but to your truth. Boundaries become acts of love, not just protection. Relationships stop being formulas and start becoming sacred dances. You get to love what you love, ditch what doesn’t fit, and let your emotions be the fuel that moves you. Growth isn’t a destination—it’s a ride. And you’re worthy of enjoying every twist, turn, and revelation. You’ll hear:

-Why most of us don’t actually know who we are (hint: society’s been messing with us)

-Why the sacred power of somatics helps us reconnect with our bodies

-How contrast and chaos in relationships are actually pure gold for personal clarity

-Why boundaries are the ultimate act of self-love—and not just buzzwords on Instagram

-Plus, some simple-but-potent homework to help you find out what lights you up (and what’s gotta go)

To reach Becca, find her on IG Becca•Somatic Practitioner•Life Coach (@themotherhoodmentor) or email her at themotherhoodmentor@gmail.com

And as promised, here is a list of Somatic Sensory Words:

🔥 Temperature Sensations

• Warm

• Cool

• Hot

• Cold

• Burning

• Icy

• Tingly warmth

• Chilled

• Feverish

💨 Movement/Flow Sensations

• Buzzing

• Tingling

• Fluttering

• Pulsing / Throbbing

• Vibrating

• Wavelike

• Swirling

• Expanding / Contracting

• Floating

• Trembling

• Twitchy

• Quivering

• Rippling

• Undulating

🪵 Density/Weight Sensations

• Heavy

• Light

• Dense

• Airy

• Weighted

• Sinking

• Floating

• Pressured

• Buoyant

• Grounded

• Hollow

• Empty

• Full

• Swollen

• Bloated

🔩 Tension & Release Sensations

• Tight

• Tense

• Gripping

• Clenched

• Bound

• Braced

• Knotted

• Aching

• Sharp

• Cramping

• Stiff

• Locked

• Loose

• Relaxed

• Soft

• Open

• Melting

• Unwinding

💡 Energetic/Emotional Somatic Qualities

• Numb

• Charged

• Electric

• Alive

• Activated

• Buzzing

• Spiky

• Smooth

• Radiating

• Tinged (e.g., "tinged with sadness")

• Jittery

• Grounded

• Solid

• Fragile

• Leaky

• Dissolving

• Effervescent

🌀 Other Unique Somatic Descriptors

• Prickly

• Crawling

• Sticky

• Dry

• Wet

• Slippery

• Velvety

• Rough

• Gritty

• Levitating

• Collapsing

• Shimmering

TRANSCRIPT:

Janelle Orion 0:00

Janelle, struggling to discuss sex and intimacy with your partner, not feeling met, seen or heard in your relationships. I'm Janelle And I'm Andrea. We're two midlife Mavericks sharing our own experiences, messy, AF and no regrets with marriage, divorce, polyamory and pleasure. We've learned that when you're brave enough to figure out what you want and ask for it, with partners, friends, family and most importantly, yourself, you'll feel more alive and free question everything, especially your mother's advice. There's no rom com formula for this. But don't panic. Being alone matters, honey, I can't miss you if you don't leave, what if your breakup could be your breakthrough? Our podcast is for brave hearts. Anyone who seeks or has found the courage to confront their fears and limiting beliefs about breaking societal norms in the spirit of finding their truth. If you're seeking permission to be brave in your relationships and want to feel less alone along the way, we got you. We are so excited to be here today with our guest, Becca Dollard. She is our latest expert in our episode of building a relationship with ourselves.

Becca Dollard 1:20

So good. Thank you guys so much for having me. I am just so excited for this conversation. When you sent me all of the prompts, I was just I'm thrilled to have this conversation. It's one of my favorite things to talk about.

Janelle Orion 1:32

Well, brave hearts, we're excited to introduce you to Becca. She is a somatic healing practitioner, Legacy builder, podcast host, entrepreneur and mother who fuses deep inner healing with soul anchored coaching through intimate retreats high level masterminds and bespoke coaching, she provides support and community for high functioning women leaders, helpers, healers and founders, so They can feel held, seen and celebrated with multiple certification and podcast appearances. Becca says movement, lifting heavy things and music, 2000s rap are her medicine. She's a sucker for a good hammock and will eat tacos and ice cream anytime.

Janelle Orion 2:18

Becca, welcome. Thank you. It's so good to be here. I'm so excited. If you're building a relationship with someone else, it seems really obvious and clear, like you get to know them. You spend time with them. You pay attention to what they say, what they think, what they feel, what they like, what they don't like, which is just important. But I think so much of that is that you're paying attention to them. You're spending time and energy getting to know who they are. And yet, so many people don't do the same thing to themselves. They don't spend time and energy and focus. And one of the most common things that women will say is, I don't feel like myself anymore, or I don't feel like myself. And this can be certain seasons of life, but I also think, you know, for me, that happens on a regular basis, where I grow or I change, and I go, Oh, I don't, I don't really know myself. And it's like, well, that's because I'm not feeling myself. And they mean that literally, like, I don't have a a connection to my experience, the way that I'm experiencing life. And when you're getting to know someone else, you're learning how they experience life, how they move through life, how they think, how they talk, what music they like, what foods they like, what things they love doing, what they don't like doing, and that whole range of experience. So getting to know yourself is that same relationship, but there's that relationship where you're feeling and paying attention to it, not just at a surface level, where you're like, you know when you go to coffee with someone and you're like, you're here, but you're not here, like you can tell they're not really in the room. There's like this. There's not that quality of presence. I think a lot of people are missing having that with themselves. Yeah, I think when I realized I didn't have a relationship to myself, I was fairly early on in motherhood, and early motherhood and birth really brought me out of a pretty high level dissociation that I didn't really even recognize that I had, because I didn't really know life before dissociation. I had some early childhood trauma and some teenage trauma that really just it was very, very rough, and then all of a sudden it wasn't and I thought, Oh, I'm better, and I'm healed, but really, like, I just didn't feel myself, and I was going through the motions. And you know, it's not that life didn't exist, that I didn't have like I had beautiful things happening in my life, but there was literally this season where it felt like I was waking up and I could feel myself again, and for someone who had pretty intense trauma in my body. Yeah, that wasn't all pleasant, like feeling present in my body, and actually having emotion and sensation coming back to places that I was completely numb to, that was actually massively uncomfortable. So building that relationship to myself, and I think also just having my daughter, like holding my baby girl in my arms, and, you know, I was motherhood was everything to me. I All I had ever wanted to be was a mom. So this was, like, My life goal, right? Like, I finally hit that thing that I've always wanted, and I'm holding this baby girl in my arms, and, you know, the older she got, the more I started to think, like, Man, I want to, like, want to teach her how to love her body. And then all of a sudden, I'd look in the mirror and like you talk shit to your body on a regular basis, like I had continued the abuse to my body that had been done to me. It's like, Wait, how are you going to teach her that? Because someday, like she's going to figure you out. I had this understanding of parenthood from a very early season that she was going to learn how to relate to herself, not from what I taught her, not from how I loved her, but how I loved myself. And I started to look at everything in my life so differently, of, how do I treat my body, how do I treat my emotions, how do I treat my mindset, my thoughts, the way that I think and talk and feel and act and how I move through this world. You know, I started to look at my relationships and as someone who was so frozen and fawning for so long, it was really uncomfortable to get to know myself, because it's like, What do you mean? I've walked this long in my life without really knowing what I like and what I don't like. It was just a responsive, reflexive, this is what I'm supposed to be. This is what everyone says I should be and could do, and not all of that was bad. And what's interesting is, like some of that still stayed the same, but the difference is, I was choosing it. It was coming from something deep inside me that lit up or pushed it away, or said no or yes, or maybe, like there was actually a responsive relationship with myself and the environment. It like I was responding instead of just going through the motions like a ship in the night. There was this awakening where the fog started lifting, and that's really and it was kind of awkward and weird. And, you know, it seemed really silly, because some of it was as simple as, like, what movies do I like? What music do I like and not like, how do I like to move my body? What feels good? What doesn't feel good? I mean, sexuality was a huge part of it for me. Like there's just everything is the relationship to yourself, because every relationship to everyone outside of you is just a mirror and a reflection of that, like the way that you know other people. I don't think you can know other people to their depths if you haven't known yourself to those depths. And you know, I got to know things that weren't so pretty about myself, that I didn't really like and that that was hard.

Janelle Orion 8:07

Okay, rave hearts, I'm gonna have us take a deep breath on Becca's answer right there, because she just named a lot in that. And one of the deep pieces of wisdom that I heard her say when she became a mother, somehow incredibly, she recognized that to order to give her child, her daughter, the life that she wanted to give her, she had to build this relationship to herself that was one that was more authentic and not from from her own childhood traumas. And what I heard in that is a lot of times we've hear about mothers who give themselves, give their whole life to their child, in a way, and lose themselves in in motherhood, but you somehow did the opposite, where it's just that you found yourself in motherhood.

Becca Dollard 8:57

Yeah, there's a lever of choice there of I truly think motherhood among many other things. I don't think motherhood is the only way. I think there's many different places where we find ourselves in this kind of call it spiritual awakening. Call it existential crisis, call it waking up, call it growth, journey, whatever. Midlife men, right midlife, there's something that happens and you go, Okay, who do I want to be in this? And you know, to be honest, early in motherhood, I do think I lost myself to motherhood. It became my full, whole identity. And I think for many, many women, it's like biologically natural to overly attuned to the child. I mean, it's it's what nature needs us and wants us to do, otherwise the baby won't survive. But then there comes this time. Usually it's toddlerhood, and I work with moms, and so I've started to see these themes of, there comes a time where you start going, I want, need something different than this child. And this child wants and needs something different than I want. And it creates this tension, it creates this discomfort, where you have to witness as a parent, and I really view parenting as leadership. It's just another leadership role where you say, Okay, do you want your kid to do what you say? Because they're going to do what you do at the end of the day, like, truly, deeply, like, what will deeply ingrain in them is what you do with your life. And I think I was very blessed to witness a lot of women who were still dealing with CO dependent mothers who needed their child to be okay, for them to be okay. And one of the things I learned fairly early on is if I want my child to be happy, I have to learn how to be okay and happy without her being okay and happy like my well being cannot be so deeply invested in her, because now my toddler is the one who has to be regulated for me to be regulated, which is really what happens when you lose yourself to motherhood. You put the weight of your life on your kid, instead of saying, I'm gonna build this big, beautiful, wonderful life, and it involves you. You're a big part of it. But like, you know, I have bigger kids now. I have a kid going into the teenage years, and I think one of the best gifts I've given them is for them to look at me and be go. My mom's good whether or not I am. And so I get to be this solid rock that has a life outside of my kids, and that gets easier as they get older. And some people don't always have, you know, a kid who maybe they have a kid who's medically fragile, or they have something going on, but to like, bring it outside of motherhood, I really think we all have these options with the people that we care for, because the same thing can be true in a relationship. The same thing can be true with a partner or a spouse or a boyfriend or a friend group or a religion. There's so many different places and spaces and people that you can anchor your identity into. And I like to think of like I have all of these different arenas that build into my identity, but the first and biggest one is my body. It's inside of me. It's not outside of me in a role. It's not mom or wife or entrepreneur or coach or helper or healer. It's like I exist outside of those things, just in this body, just as me walking through this world, living and breathing, tasting things and smelling things and doing things and not doing things, and that's a big gift that somatics has helped me do, is to really witness myself moving through the world, instead of only witnessing myself through my roles and who I love and serve, which is a very big part of me. Yeah, I'm going

Janelle Orion 12:58

to pause you there, just because before we get into the somatics piece. I want to just, like, be able to pause and have a breath, and then, like, also ask, define somatics. Okay, brave hearts. Just so you know, Andrea and I are having some technical difficulties today, and Andrea is while listening in, doesn't have can't her microphone is not working, so she is participating as a bystander. So I'm gonna reflect here to Becca, that Andrea is like, this is absolutely genius. Like, this is just another place for CO dependency, just like business, just like partners. Like, what you said, Becca, about you, like, really hit it home when you're like, if I, if my, if I'm asking my toddler to be regulated. In order for me to be regulated was just like, holy moly. That is how a lot of us go through life. And I was in a co dependent relationship myself with my partner and husband. Of like, Oh, I didn't know how to stand on my own. Like my my happiness and regulation really depended on his. And so I love how you've tied this to so many different roles that all of us have, whether you're a parent or not, this piece of like, oh, is, is your individual happiness conditional on somebody else's?

Becca Dollard 14:13

Even outside happiness? Is your identity so wrapped up in one person or role or relationship, so much so that you lose yourself so almost think of if me and you are having a conversation, but you're not feeling your yes, your No, your maybe, so like me and let's say me and you are talking about ice cream. And I tell you that, like I love mint Oreo ice cream, like, I could just die. Like it's so good, like it just it's so happy. And I love coffee ice cream, and you no longer feel in your body what kind of ice cream you like, and you just start agreeing with me, but like, you hate mint, you think it tastes like toothpaste. I'm no longer really having a conversation with you. There's no relationship. There's just you being who and what, and I want, like and need, I don't actually get to know you when that happens. And what sucks about people pleasing and fawning is we can be in a relationship with other people, and they never get to know us. We never get to know us because we can't feel those internal signals of, I actually don't like this. I don't want this. I don't need this. And, you know, I'm trying not to jump too far ahead into like the somatics and the fawning. But I think so many women, they don't know themselves because there's a disassociation. They don't feel that connection and that response and that relationship to their environment from their own taste and sensing. It's only reflexive of what other people told them to like, want and need. This is what you like. And so she just thinks she likes that. And then one day, she goes, I don't like that anymore. I don't want that anymore. And it's like, Wait, that's so important. What you don't want, what you don't like. If we can just start there, you'll find what you do like, because you'll start, you'll start feeling the texture of life again, instead of just going through the motions.

Janelle Orion 16:11

So let's go into somatics, because I feel like you, if that's where there's so much richness is, I can't help it. Yeah. So one, can you define the term for bravehearts who don't know? And then also, how can, if someone is at least kind of clear that maybe they don't know what they want, maybe they have a recognition that they're codependent, where do they start?

Becca Dollard 16:32

Yeah, so the way that I define somatics, so Soma means body, and somatics is typically the exploration of you as a sensational being. So we're talking about the mind body connection, and the way I like to describe it as well, we're getting you back to your animal body and reconnecting to your nervous system and your emotions through sensation. And a lot of people are saying, like, somatics is this new thing? And I'm like, No, like even before there was language for somatics, it's really just relearning how to be human deeper than intellect. So our culture uses all mental health pretty much we talk about story, we talk about mindset and affirmations, but we're kind of ignoring the reality that most I mean, if you think of you're going from the neck and above just your head, you're missing out on 90% of your body. What happens in your throat when you talk to that person? What happens in your chest when you don't like mint ice cream? How do you know that? How do you know when you like and you don't like something? It's through a sensation that happens in your body, there's a tightening or an opening, there's a resistance or there's a leaning in. And when we start to pay attention to what the body knows, to what the body does, we start to connect to you as a whole person. So somatics is connecting all of your centers of intellect, because we can. We have intuition and intelligence in our heads, but we also have it in our hearts and our emotions. We have it in our gut and our intuition. And I believe, like in our souls, there's like a soul and a spirit of you that like it's a lot harder to define, it's a little bit harder to explain, to make sense of, but it is there, and there are ways of contacting it. So somatics brings you back to the patterns that are happening unconsciously, and makes them conscious. It helps you understand, who am I? What does it feel like to be me? What does it feel like to experience this person, to be in relationship to them. What do I like and not like about that? How much is too much? How close is too close? You know, everything is a felt sense, and it's really reminding ourselves that, like, your body knows a lot, but it's happening unconsciously. And also, our culture hasn't really given us language for these things, so it's somatics gives us language for those things. And I forgot your second question, because we were going to start with somatics. And then you said another question. What was your other question?

Janelle Orion 19:10

Yeah, the other question like, how do people start? If this feels new, I will say Andrew and I have spoken about the body for both of us,

Janelle Orion 19:19

our journey home to ourselves, we have said it's so much about us listening to the body. And so that's something that brave hearts have heard us talk about. And yet you, of course, are bringing another like level of nuance to it. And how you described it is like, just like we're going, you know, taking yourself out for a date, essentially, how much presence can you offer yourself and listening? So if someone wanted to start to building a relationship with their body. What would you suggest?

Becca Dollard 19:47

I think a really I'm going to say simple, but it's not always easy. Is to find a point in your day. I always like to use going pee. I. Um, mostly because, how often are you going through your day not even noticing one of your most biologically necessities of going to the bathroom? So when you have to go pee, noticing, what does that feel like? What is the sensation that tells you I have to pee? Hunger? Hunger is actually a really, really hard one, because so many of us have so much diet culture bullshit. Most people never learned how to be hungry. But this is actually a great I use this example a lot of somatic healing. Is the difference between me telling you, here's your diet plan, here's what to eat, when to eat, here's what not to eat, here's how much to eat, which is what people have been given of how to know themselves. So Maddox is saying Your body knows when you're hungry. Your body knows when it's full. Your body knows what makes you feel good and what doesn't make you feel good. It actually will tell you. It is telling you, but we never learned how to listen to that. And not only listen to that, but trust it. When your body says, I'm hungry, there's a lot of other voices that probably come in, versus Oh, I'm hungry, I'm going to go eat. What somatic healing does is it re empowers you to understand what I want, what I like, and what I don't like. And so, Ooh, let's use boundaries as an example, right? Because we were talking about people pleasing and codependency. And for so many of those women, they're, they're they're waking up and they're going, I need boundaries. And what I would tell you is you already have boundaries, but you have been taught over and over and over again to override those boundaries, to ignore them, to pretend that they don't exist in order to benefit what someone else wanted and needed, because you were taught to over associate with what they want and need from you, not your preferences, not your consenting and so let's say you're struggling with boundaries with your mother in law. When you spend time with your mother in law, next time, notice what? What does your body want to do? How does it feel? Do you feel nauseous? Do you feel sick? Do you feel aching in your chest. Do your shoulders collapse down? Do you over share? Do you find yourself being passive aggressive? What are the behaviors and the patterns that are showing up without you even choosing them? They happen. They happen without you choosing them. Right? One of the ways you can start healing that relationship to yourself and getting to know yourself is, oh, what happens if, when I'm talking to my mother in law, I lean back and stay quiet. Now, what does your body do? But you start feeling those sensations in your body and trusting them, playing with them, just like you would if you were on a date and someone touched your hand and you didn't like it and you might move it away. Well, not everyone would, right, because we haven't been taught how to feel what our body naturally wants to do in response to other people. So when you're alone, maybe, what do you feel in your chest, in your throat and your head? Where do you feel it, and what are the sensations of it? And I have, we can include this in the show notes, but I have a list of all those sensory of, is it light? Is it heavy? Is it bubbly? Is it sharp? Is it dull? Like what are those sensations that are coming with the emotion.

Janelle Orion 23:43

So I'm curious, right? Like, Oh, that's actually maybe the thing, right is just to get curious, yeah, is Yeah, to regardless of whether it's your mother in law or whether it's yourself, is at least start to tune your awareness and your attention to our bodies and to and you just said, you have this list, list of different words, of sensations, and then notice when a sensation comes up at different times,

Janelle Orion 24:14

and start there.

Becca Dollard 24:15

Even just that can be so, so powerful, because now all of a sudden, you're paying attention to yourself, not just the other person. So now, when there's a response that comes up, you'll feel it. You'll know what it is, and it is a practice, a practice in that it gets better and easier and stronger. But for a lot of people, that actually will be very hard to pay attention to themselves, because they probably learned at a very young age that what made them safe was not to pay attention to what they want to need. It was to pay attention to the adults in the room, because the adults were explosive, so they had to make sure that they paid attention to the other person's feelings more than their own. In and then caretake them and never really pay attention to what's happening here, that that is so so common for women. It happens to men too. But for a lot of women, they they didn't have that fight or flight instinct come up because they weren't in a position of power or strength enough to fight or flight the threat, or it was their parents, or it was someone in overpower of them. And so as they've grown up, their body never really learned how to attune to self. It learned how to attune to others. And so as we become women, as we become adults, it's so important to witness what relationships do I feel safe and even when I'm alone, can I stop paying attention to everyone else so much and actually feel me? Where am I? I mean, I even look at our culture right now, and a lot of women who are empathic are struggling so much because energetically and emotionally, they're so attuned to everyone else that they can't even feel how safe they are right now in this room, they don't feel how alone they are or when they're with other people, because they're so focused on everyone else, it's like their energy is everywhere, but in their own body and their own soul and their own well being, which When you do that. It does not make you more selfish. It it brings you energy and capacity to be able to show up for everyone else as a full well being, not as a martyr, not as this exhausted, burnt out person.

Janelle Orion 26:36

I want to go back to what you said about boundaries. Just want to call it out that because we do hear, Oh, it's we have to learn our boundaries, but that instead, you're like, oh, actually, we know. Our body knows what our boundaries are. We are just accustomed to crossing them. And I have been guilty of this like I was finally I was aware in my relationship, I was like, Oh, I'm honoring his boundaries and crossing my own. I just didn't even know I had a boundary there. Yeah, because

Becca Dollard 27:06

you can't feel it. You're not feeling your body, your body's response to Ick. You're not feeling the difference between a no and a it's a no, but I want it to be a yes. Those are two very different experiences, right? Like, I think of, you know, sex, like you're talking with a woman who's like, I want to, want to, so it's a no, but it's not really a no. There's something else there. Or I don't want to at all, but I know that you want to, so I want to for you. So they're like, there's such, like, a wide range of what a boundary would look and feel like, but in our culture, we've intellectualized it, and we've made it a formula. We've made it this very easy formula where you just it's not telling other people what to do. It's when you blank, I will blank, right? Like we literally made it into this formula. And I'm just like, does that work in some situations, yes, but in 98% of the time when I'm coaching a woman on boundaries, when we're helping her figure out boundaries, it's less of a formula and more of a relationship to herself and then to the other person. What does it look like to be in relationship to my boundary, to my no to my maybe, To what do I value in a relationship? What is my capacity? Right? Because this week you might have the capacity, and then next week you don't have the capacity, and the boundary will change based off of your capacity, not just their behaviors all the time. Boundaries don't have to be this manipulation of ourselves or other people. It can be this, this genuine right relationship of how do I be in relationship to you and myself, where I'm not lying to you about what I do and don't want what I do and do not like what I do and do not fuck with like I'm not gonna let you over set my boundaries so that I resent you and hate you. But that's my job, and what boundaries do I need to communicate and which do I just need to act upon? Right? Like you will feel that in your body once you can feel your boundaries. But again, this isn't just like a Oh, how do I set a boundary with my mother in law, it's like, I don't know. I don't know. Who are you? How are you? How does it feel to be you, and what is it like to be in relationship with her? What is she like in relationship to you? And maybe, maybe you move a little closer and move her a little bit further away, and then you see what she does. Because relationships are supposed to be a dance, not a formula. So that again, when you get to know yourself, when you start feeling yourself in action and a non action, then you get to relate to other people in their reality, not your expectations, not who you think. They should be, or who you want them to be, who they actually are. When you give yourself that sovereignty, you give that to other people, and it's the most beautiful thing when you can have relationships to other people, where you are fully yourself, where you tell them, hey, we made plans on Friday for coffee. I'm so freaking luteal and hormonal, and I'd love to have coffee for you. I just need you to know that all I'm going to want to do is vent and shit talk. So we either, I either need you to be open to that and or I don't want you to ask about how marriage is today, because everything that comes out of my mouth is going to be off perspective. Are you good with that? Or do you want to reschedule with me? It's telling other people the truth, which, at the end of the day, people pleasing is you not telling other people the truth because you don't feel it, you don't know it.

Janelle Orion 30:52

What I'm hearing with that is, well, one is that a boundaries don't have to be fixed in stone, because we are not fixed in stone, right? As you said, like it's a relationship is a dance. A relationship with ourselves is a dance. So in any given day, in any given moment, what's true for me now, if I can check in with my body and I can hear and listen and trust and value what my body's saying, then that answer is going to be different. And that's like, one of the beautiful things about being human is that we are constantly evolving, changing being, and so then can, then our responsibility is, then to communicate our current state with whoever it is that we're relating

Becca Dollard 31:34

to, yeah, and that current state, what a beautiful thing, because We grow as humans. I've grown as a human, I get to say yes to things now that would have been an absolute no for me eight years ago, four years ago, three years ago, there's things that my body used to say no to that were resistance. This is, this is something I love when you're getting to know yourself, especially if you're a high functioner, you have learned to function over your no so your body says no, and you go, Oh, that's resistance, and I need to push through resistance. No means I work harder and smarter and I ignore what I'm feeling, and I push through that, that wall, right? It's so important for us to be able to feel what is my No, because this is harmful, and what is my no because this is hard, because part of the relationship to yourself is feeling that nuance between I don't want to and I don't like to, because this is not okay for me, and I don't want to and I don't like to because I've got a little inner child who's throwing a fit. So when you're getting to know yourself, you can't just get to know the really pretty shiny parts of you. You also start getting to know the parts of you that are in resistance to what you really want. When you have trauma, especially complex trauma, your boundaries are going to be a really, really tricky, weird, hard thing, because sometimes your body is going to say no to things that you consciously want. Perfect example, I wanted to start a podcast. There were parts of me, and that's important, parts of me, not all of me. There were parts of me that were freaking the fuck out when I went to start my podcast. Parts of me were like, we are going to die if people hear us and see us. This is terrifying. This is scary, right, being witnessed and perceived by other people was terrifying for my body. It was a huge part of my trauma, and it still sometimes is where I have to go. There is a part of me that doesn't know I'm safe and okay, and that I'm a grown ass adult who can handle other people criticizing me, who can handle other people not liking me, not wanting me, and that that's actually not death. I can come up against someone, and I have fight in me. I have flight in me that is so important for me to recognize and remember. But this is why it's so important to start paying attention to the subtleties of relationship, of knowing yourself, because sometimes our bodies aren't responding to the present moment current they're responding to the past expected threat. They're responding to the past pattern, or they're responding to an expected future threat that isn't in the room with me yet. I can't cross that bridge because I'm not there. But when our bodies are responding to the current present room, like right now, can my body feel where I am, when I am, who I am. Can I feel my backbone? Can I feel my muscle? Can I feel my access to choice and agency and safety that's happening right here and now, because that's where my most like. Aligned life comes from is now I'm in relationship to who I am in this moment, not who I was even two weeks ago, or who I will be in two weeks. It brings me back to here, because I know a lot of women who they're so in relationship to a future version of themselves that they're missing here and now they're so worse, and I can only speak to this because I've known it. I was so obsessed with my potential that it was stealing my presence. I was so obsessed with healing and getting better. I was so growth oriented and personal growth and personal development that I was missing what's so beautiful and good right here in this present moment. So can your body feel where, when and who you are, what you're doing? Can you can you feel what you're doing like, where you are?

Janelle Orion 35:54

So when you're working with clients, Becca,

Janelle Orion 35:56

like, what happens? How would you describe when they start to know themselves through their body, know what they're feeling, know what their body is speaking to them and then learning to trust it.

Becca Dollard 36:07

I think the biggest thing they're there, you can feel it. There is a potency. There is there is an aliveness that they're connected to. And when I witness happen, they start making decisions that feel really, really good, even when it's a hard decision, they trust themselves. And, I mean, they trust themselves and what that I don't think we actually know what that looks like, because I think people, when they think of, oh, I want to trust myself. I want to build confidence, they think I'm always going to know what to do. They don't always know what to do, but they know that no matter what they choose, they liked their reasons for choosing it, and they chose it, and they're going to have their back know what, no matter what happens. So they stop getting into this place where you're all or nothing, or I'm damned if I do, and I'm damned if I don't, and they start going whether I go left or whether I go right, I can always change my mind. I can shift. I can fight. I can go back. I can change my mind once I get there. Because no matter what happens from this point on, I've got me I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to find a way. That's what starts happening, because all of a sudden they no longer need an external validation and permission. And that doesn't mean they don't need people. It doesn't mean they're not getting support or help or like love and relationship and community. They're no longer looking outside of themselves for what they already know they can make decisions and feel really good about their decision. So the decision fatigue, I mean, it still happens, but they're able to move through it faster. They can check they they see the yellow and the orange flag before they get to like a red flag. So when they are in a decision that's not right for them, they're catching it so much faster. They're not burning out anymore, because they're starting to feel the subtleties of, Oh, this isn't me doing a hard good thing. This is me overriding something in my body that's like, Absolutely not, not now, not at this pace, not at this time, but they can feel that subtlety of, is this a yellow light? And I just need to slow down. I'm in the right direction, but it's a slowdown. They trust the peaks and they trust the valleys. They start having. Even on their worst, shittiest days, they know how to show up in health, because health is not just the highs. Health is what is health in winter versus health in summer? Those are two very different things. But when you trust yourself, when you are in tune with your animal body, you go, Oh, I need to slow down. Or, oh, I need to speed up. I know how to balance motherhood and work, not because someone else gave me this pretty perfect plan or system or, Oh, I have the perfect thing figured out. Everything's balanced, it's no I know how to make these small, subtle shifts when things are off. I can feel it, I can know it, and I can move my life to meet that. They feel like they're the driver again. They feel like they're in the driver's seat of their body

Janelle Orion 39:21

very hard to take a deep breath on that, because what if what I'm hearing Becca just speak to is there's zero perfection in this relationship to ourselves? Yeah, it's not like, oh, once I know myself, then everything is going to be better. It's that the reason why it's better is because we know ourselves. But it doesn't mean that every day is perfect, or every day I'm happy every day, but it's Oh, I'm attuning to what my body needs in any given moment. And so if it needs to rest today, if it if it's a cold, it needs to be cuddled up on the couch today that we're. Trusting ourselves for that instead of judging ourselves for that.

Becca Dollard 40:03

Yeah. Well, and two, when we're coming back to this relationship, the only constant that you're promised in a relationship with another person is that they are going to change. The same is true with yourself. You are going to change your thoughts and views and opinions and feelings and what works for you today might not work a couple months from now, but what's beautiful when you're in relationship to yourself, you'll notice that while it's happening not 10 years down the road where you go, Oh my gosh, I've been asleep at the wheel for five years. Oh my gosh, I missed it. I mean, I primarily work with moms, right? And one of their greatest things is, I don't want to miss this, but we're going to miss it if we're living in the past, or we're living in the future, or if we're just in this constant reacting to life and never responding, never feeling like, okay, doing the laundry is just checking it off the list, versus like, No, you're doing the laundry. Can you feel what it feels like to feel the laundry? You might feel miserable doing the laundry, but can you feel that that's your aliveness, that's that's your aliveness, all that anger and rage and disappointment and dissatisfaction. Guess what? That's you. That's you feeling you going, I don't like this. I don't want this. And if you just allowed yourself to feel that, you would know what you do want, and you would have the energy to move you into that. Because our emotions, our emotions are quite literally the energy that moves our muscle. It moves us into action and into responsiveness. And when you have a relationship to that, when you can feel that, it changes everything, because now all of a sudden you have this dynamic range of health, and it's like, yes, you can love on people. And, you know, fawning isn't necessarily a horrible thing if you are you guys Engram people,

Janelle Orion 41:59

and it is more so. So I'm a seven, and Andrea's a counter for big six, so

Becca Dollard 42:05

I'm an Enneagram too. And while part of that is just a fixation, also part of my identity, part of what I love is caring for people. It's leaning into them. It's helping them. It's holding them. It's having deep conversations and questions. It's me loving on them. I have that, but now I also know how to have a fight. I know how to be in conflict with someone. I know how to hold tension. I also know how to walk away from a room that's not for me anymore. So my body has access to this dynamic range of identity, not this fixed identity that so often most of us get into which that's a lot of Enneagram, but that's a lot of life, is that we get fixed in these states of being, these patterns of relating to ourselves or the world or religion or sex or food or body, and then it changes. But we never learned how to be okay with the fact that, like, what used to work doesn't work anymore. You changed your mind what you thought you don't think anymore, or you realized that everything you were thinking actually was just a story someone told you, and it never came from you. It wasn't your own brain processing and examining it and going, how do I view this? What do I think about this? What are the nuances? What are what are the polarities of one? I see both sides. Where does that occur in you? And that's going to shift so much, and it's going to constantly change. But I think for many people that I've worked with, their parents are still the same people who raised them. I think something that's so different right now, and one of the greatest gifts I was given is that I saw my parents become different people when I was an adult, like I watched them still grow up. And I think it gave me permission that, like, I'm not just going to be 25 year old, Becca, for the rest of my adult life. Like, my 30s are going to look different than my 40s. And I get so excited of, like, what am I going to be like in my 40s? What am I going to be like in my 50s? Like, I can't wait to be that unhinged. I can only imagine. I can tell you, it's amazing after this second puberty, I keep hearing about where all of a sudden you stop giving a fuck about everything and everyone, and you stop trying to, like, care. And I'm like, Man, I can't wait for that season. But I don't think we talk about what it's like to grow up once you're an adult. That we're still growing up, that we're still figuring out what it's like to be human, and that that's constantly changing. It's changed. Like, how I'm a human today is, I mean, even from two weeks ago, it feels different, and that's scary and that's hard, but here we are. What

Janelle Orion 44:52

are the obstacles people have in wanting to get in touch with everybody we talked about? Like, you know. What the kind of the outcomes are, but what would prevent them? What are the obstacles they would have from from building a relationship with themselves?

Becca Dollard 45:06

Yeah, the obstacles to building a relationship with yourself, I think some of the biggest ones, one would be your relationship to other people, and mostly because humans at an animal mammal level, are tribal, like we survived by the people around us surviving, but that's become a very messy thing when my animal body is aware of people in states and cultures and religions that I'll never meet. My hands can't touch it. My feet can't touch it. I don't know it. I can't smell it. I can't taste it, I don't know the texture of it. So my animal body has, like millions of different people that it's trying to attune to. It's trying to look at someone in my culture and say, Am I okay? Do I belong? Am I safe here? And at a more basic level, most people, they don't get to know themselves, because, really, we only know ourselves through relationship. I mean, who are you? If you're just alone in the woods and no one can hear you or see you, you still exist, but most people don't live like that. Most people aren't wanting to live like that. And we define ourselves so deeply through relationships and roles and especially career like in this western culture and so we're so obsessed with checking boxes and accomplishing something that we've kind of lost the humanity in it and the journey in it and the like. What is the actual experience of being you look like? And for many people, they're very dissociated, and we just have so much information coming in all of the time from outside of us that it's hard to hear ourselves think. It's hard to feel ourselves breathe, our own heartbeat, our own what is it that I want? What is it that I like? What is it that I don't like, our own identity and self is so smothered by so much noise, and not all of it bad, right? Like, it's not all bad noise, which

Janelle Orion 47:31

is the quantity, not always the quality. All the quality is part of it, yeah, but the quantity too, it's

Becca Dollard 47:37

so much. And I think for a lot of a lot of people. They've never found a room where people genuinely want you to be you right where you are. They don't need you to be like, super shiny in your professionalistic role. They just want you to be you. They want to hear what you think. They want to hear what you have to say. But the reality is, is that, like people in our culture, don't really know how to do conflict, intention. Well, it's like, well, if you don't agree with me, I can't understand you, or I can't see you. It's like, we don't know how to talk to each other or listen or hear it's just people have gotten so obsessed with talking that we haven't learned how to listen to ourselves or other people, or just critical thinking. So

Janelle Orion 48:19

So you were saying, Becca, that the people around us want to get to know us and listen to us and to like know the authentic self in relationship to one another, and that hasn't always been our experience.

Becca Dollard 48:34

I would say, I agree. So there, there's very few rooms, actually, where I've been in where it genuinely feels like, not only can I be my authentic self, like truly, genuinely just have the reactions and say what I want to say without people pleasing, and people actually care and hear me and see me and aren't going to judge me or shame me or misunderstand me. It's actually very rare. It is very hard to find those relationships in those rooms, and even what just happened, where I said something and Andrea heard something and she goes, Wait, what is that your experience? Tell me more the contrast, the contrast between what I said and her life experience. That's relationship, that's relationship between me and her where she goes. Wait, that's not my experience. Can you tell me about that? What does that look like? What does that feel like? Where is that? Who is that? And then we could talk about it, right? Like, if Andrew was a lot was if Andrea could record right now, we could talk about, like, how life has felt so different, because all of a sudden, when she when she said that, I was like, Oh, if I said that, that's not what I meant. What I meant was this. But that takes time, and it takes listening, because she was listening to what I said, and maybe she heard something, or maybe I said it. I constantly say things in a way that like, Oh, that's not what. Meant, that's not what I was trying to say. But there was a slowing down, and there was a question, and there was a curiosity of like, ooh, something in me responded to that. Something in me doesn't understand or doesn't like that, or I need you to slow down or tell me more about that. That's relationship, and that's relationship to other people, but it's also how we relate to ourselves. Because there's constantly times where I go, Ooh, I like that, and then all of a sudden, something in me goes, not anymore. What used to feel good isn't feeling good anymore. What you used to wear isn't fitting it's like that happens when you're growing, when you're healing, when you're getting to know yourself. All of a sudden you go, that shirt doesn't fit me anymore, that mindset, that belief, that way of mothering, that way of being in relationship to my partner, the way that I'm showing up in my business, that doesn't fit me anymore. I've outgrown it, or it's too big for me, and I need to go put on something smaller because I'm puffing up and pretending to be something I'm not anymore. That relationship only happens with that back and forth, with a presence, with it attuning, and even just like, what happened just now, like between three people, like, you see how complicated it gets when you're trying to understand. Like, no, what is it like? Can we what is it actually? What? What is that thing that you're trying to say that you actually believe, and do you fully believe that? 100% do you believe it a little bit? Do you find spaces and times where that isn't actually true, but it mostly is for you? Yeah,

Janelle Orion 51:33

that ended up being a really beautiful example. And when you said the contrast here, I wanted to give a shout out to Allison birch, who gave Andrea and I both the phrase, thanks for the contrast of just like showing, Oh, it's okay that we have a different we have a difference of opinion here. Let's be curious and like, get or, you know, we feel something different. And let's dive in a little bit more. But that there is the relationship is in the contrast, if we always agree with everything everyone said, then there'd be nothing to be talking about.

Becca Dollard 52:06

I don't even agree with myself half the time. But when you find that contrast in yourself, that actually is such a beautiful way to get to know yourself, if you allow that contrast, which is very uncomfortable, by the way, for most people, internally and externally, if you can get comfortable with that contrast, that's where you get your deep values. That's where you get this. Like, ooh, this is what wakes me up in the morning. This is what I stand for. This is what I believe. This is what I will die. I will die on this hill right. There are things that I'm like, I don't know whatever flavor of ice cream, agree to disagree, but you start talking about certain things, and I'm like, no, no, Janelle, I will die on this hill. You stay on your Hill, and you die on your Hill, and let's see you. Tell me why you would die there. Tell me why it matters to you. Tell me your life story. Tell me what runs through your blood and your muscles and your soul, and I'll tell you why I would die on this one, I think we missed that because we're not willing to have those conversations where the contrast exists. We don't like contrast. We don't like contrast because we don't like being wrong. We don't like not knowing the answer. Our culture is so obsessed with being the smartest in the room, with having all of this information, and I'm like, we know more than we've ever known, and we're so dumb, and that, me included, like we have all of this. I don't mean that in a mean way that sounded so gross, like, the way I heard it coming out of my mouth, and I was like, That sounded so mean. What I mean is we have more information than ever. But what do you know in your bones, like, what do you know that you know, that you know, even if no one else agrees with you, that's not just something someone told me on the internet. That's something I know because I lived it, because I walked it, because I felt it with my emotions and with my experience, and I had to live it. You can't take that knowing away from me, because it's in me. It's not just something I heard. It's not just information my whole body knows it not just my head, that's built through contrast, that's built through relationship and resonance, and that sensational emotional experience with ourselves that we can't just get on paper or by looking at our behaviors. We can't just get that through. Am I checking all of the boxes? Whose mother am I? Whose wife am I? It's like, okay, anyone can be a mom, right? Anyone could come in my house and clean and take my kids to the library, but like, no one's gonna say it the way that I say it, the way that I do it, the way that I embody motherhood, is different than the way someone else embodies motherhood.

Janelle Orion 54:41

I love this idea of standing on that we're willing to die on, but not from the like, Oh, I've got it right and you got it wrong. It's like, oh, we can both be right. I'm like, because you just have a different Hill than I do.

Becca Dollard 54:54

Yeah, you might have an experience that led you to believe and see and feel something differently and Like. Um, it's one of the greatest pleasures of my life, like, the greatest things, like, for example, like, let's say me and Andrea. Like, didn't agree earlier on what I said, it would be amazing for me to be to sit and get to hear and know and understand what led you to that? What does that feel like? What in your body tells you that this hill is that hill? Because I don't know about you, but I was raised being told this is the hill you'll die on. And then I became an adult, and I was like, Really, this is where you want me to stand. This is what you want me to think about and obsess about, and this is how you want me to behave. No, no, like no, thank you. And so it's such a joy to get to outgrow those things.

Janelle Orion 55:41

This is a question that we can all ask each other from a place of genuine curiosities. How did you come to believe that? And it doesn't have to be like how did you come to believe that? It's how did you come to believe that, what's your life experience that led you there? And that gets to be an opportunity for connection and for relationship, instead of disconnection and separating.

Becca Dollard 56:05

Yeah, and that comes because you're listening and you're paying attention, and that's the same thing with yourself. How often do we make a choice or redo something and we slow down enough to go? What led me to that decision? Where is that coming from who told me that, who said that before, who embodied this that I looked to and said yes, that? And is there some other part of me that maybe thinks differently, that feels differently, that sees this differently, because we all have different parts of us. You have younger parts. You have immature parts. You have shiny, pretty, you know, gifted parts. And then you have parts of you that are struggling. You have parts of you that are full of bullshit. You have ego parts. You have all of these different parts. What part told me that? What, what experience in my life, taught me this, and do I agree? Do I agree with it?

Janelle Orion 57:05

Okay, beautiful. Thank you for this rich conversation. So Becca for bravehearts listening. What Braveheart homework do you have for them?

Becca Dollard 57:14

You know, I changed my mind on this because as we were talking, the homework that came up is a very tangible, practical one. And you get out a piece of paper and you set a timer for five or 10 minutes and you're gonna write down everything you don't like. What are you mad about? What do you hate? What do you not like? I think so often women are so accustomed to I need to be good and grateful, and that good and grateful has led them down this people pleasing path where she says what she thinks other people want her to say, not what her voice needs to say. She likes what other people like. She never finds out I don't actually like that. And so many people who say I don't know who I am anymore, and I don't even know what I like, right? I think there's so many moms who are like, I don't even know what I like anymore. And I'm like, great. Let's start with what you don't like. Make a giant list of everything you don't like, everything you don't want, and then just sit there and read it through. Sit and read it through. Set another timer for five or 10 minutes and just sit there and do nothing. Just notice it. Don't try to change it. Don't try to fix it. Just be with it, get curious about it, and then when you feel ready, you start at the top of the list, and you go, what is the opposite of that? If that's what I don't want, that is a direct line to what I do want. It's a direct line to what I do desire. But most women are so afraid of not liking things, of not being grateful for so and so, that they're missing out on what they really are grateful for, what they really do want, what they really desire. So now you get to go back down that list and go, What do I like? What's the opposite of that? If I don't like this. I like the opposite of that. So what would that be? I usually have really, really good examples, but my brain is like, not giving any examples. Oh, let's use the ice cream one from earlier. Like, okay, I I hate mint chip ice cream. I think it tastes like toothpaste, and it's so weird that people like it. Okay, I don't like that. What ice cream Do I like? Do I even like ice cream, or do I like cookies better? What's my preference here? This is such an easy, fast way to find what you like and what you want by witnessing what you don't want. Because especially if this is something deeper than ice cream, if this is something like what you don't like in your partner, you might realize what you really do, like and appreciate in your partner, but you're going to feel it in your body. Instead of just intellectualizing what you do and don't like, you're going to feel it in your body, which is actually where it matters most, that your body feels. Yes, this is my aliveness. This is me. This is me moving through the world. You. Or showing up, not just going through the motions, but actually choosing it. What am I doing and who am I doing it for? It brings you back to this agency and choice where you're going. If I don't like this, why am I doing this? And what would I do differently? What do I want different than this? Which it's this hinge of choice and agency that brings you back into relationship to yourself in your life, where life isn't just driving you, you're driving your life, which that's what most people want, right? Like, they want deep presence. They want connection to other people. They want joy, and not just like an easy joy, but sometimes like the hard joy that like, takes a while to work for. You can't get that unless you're attuned to to, like, the good kind of hard or the unhealthy. That would be my homework. And it's, it's something that I try to do pretty frequently, and it's something that has helped a lot of clients really remember who am I, or, you know, Rediscover who am I? Because if you're changing constantly, I work with a lot of women who come and they say, Okay, I have this great, successful, amazing business, but none of it feels good. It all looks great on paper. My motherhood great on paper. You look at it from the outside, looks fabulous, looks amazing. It doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel right, and it's like, okay, let's figure out the subtlety of it, the texture of it. What part is it, all of it, or is it just this one little part and like, let's, let's get into relationship and get curious. What is it? What is that like for you? And how do we shift that

Janelle Orion 1:01:37

beautiful so on that note, how can bravehearts reach you.

Becca Dollard 1:01:41

Well, I have a podcast as well, the motherhood mentor podcast, that's also where you can find me on Instagram. Instagram is probably where I hang out the most. They're also welcome to just send me an email. I like you guys, probably too. I love the relationship of it. I love teaching and conversations, but I love the relationship. I love to hear, how did this land for you? What questions do you have? Did something I say, just like, resonate with you. So I would love to hear, like, how the episode, like what they thought, if they loved it. Obviously I have ways that they can work with me as well. But just, just reach out, let me know you listened and that you loved it. And if we want to keep talking, we can, and if not, I'll be like, good for you. I'm so glad you loved it.

Janelle Orion 1:02:23

Okay, beautiful. So motherhood mentor on Instagram, is that correct? Yep, the motherhood mentor, that motherhood mentor, okay, great. Well, okay, Bravehearts, another beautiful episode full of mic drop moments and so much wisdom and technical difficulties and living in the imperfection of being human. So Andrea is waving at us. She was here in presence, if not in her voice. But Becca, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us and all the brave hearts. So bye, brave hearts. Have a great day.

Becca Dollard 1:02:57

Thank you. Bye. You

Janelle Orion 1:03:04

Hey, Bravehearts, looking for permission. Work with us. Andrea offers permission coaching, and Janelle offers erotic wellness sessions. Follow us on Instagram, meet us in real life at permission to be human workshops in Denver. Subscribe to our newsletter. Do all this and more at our website, permission to be human. Dot live. You.