Naturally Prosperous Woman
Hosted by Tara Preston, an Authentic, Feminine, Spiritual Leadership Mentor for rising women from around the globe for over a decade. The Naturally Prosperous Woman is a platform for women leaders who want to cultivate a deep rooted connection to their inner authority, feminine power & innate ability to flourish in their creative power. It's for women who are on the journey of remembering that they are born to create wildly free, & wealthy lives through the vehicle of business.
Naturally Prosperous Woman
Embracing Motherhood and Transformation: Finding Flow and Balance Later in Life
What happens when you become a mother later in life, only to face immense changes and challenges just a few years later? Heather Travis, a shamanic and spiritual advisor, joins us to share her deeply personal story of motherhood at 35 and the subsequent transformation her body demanded at 38. Heather opens up about the delicate balance between motherhood, work, and personal well-being, emphasizing the crucial role of presence and stress management in her healing journey. Heather’s reflections offer invaluable insights into the beauty and hurdles of later-in-life motherhood and illustrate the necessity of self-care and holistic health practices for achieving true balance and well-being.
Ever wondered how aging reshapes our relationship with physical activity and creativity? Our conversation dives into the power of intentional movement and artistic expression, revealing how they nourish and support us in unexpected ways. From modifying exercise routines to incorporating daily creative activities like journaling and crocheting, we discuss the importance of living authentically and energetically. We also touch on the art of staying present amidst life’s constant demands, using breath as a tool to manage stress and find flow. Join us as we encourage a liberated approach to life, free from outdated paradigms and expectations.
Link to register for the MATRIARCH Akashic Channelled Healing Transmission Here: https://akashicwomenschool.com/matriarch
FREE: The Radiant Morning Power Hour (Come home to the power of presence, and recalibration to your most powerful, radiant self):
https://www.akashicwomenschool.com/free-gift
Reach out to tara@tarapreston.com to learn more about ways to work with her through your life reinvention.
Welcome to the Naturally Prosperous Woman podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm your host, tara Preston, founder of the Akashic Women's School, mentor to new paradigm leaders for over a decade and teacher of divine prosperity consciousness. This podcast is dedicated to empowering women leaders around the world who desire to tap into their authentic feminine power for more money, magnetism and, of course, impact. It's a platform for women leaders wanting to embrace their natural abilities to create lead and flow, unlocking their inherent potential for prosperity and living in alignment with their truest selves, because it's your birth right to flourish in the naturalness of the woman you were born to be. Thanks so much for being here. Let's dive in.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to another episode of the Naturally Prosperous Woman podcast. I've been away for a few weeks but I am super excited to be back with my special guest, heather Travis, shamanic and spiritual advisor, and we're going to be dropping in around this conversation on being a midlife mother and finding flow, grace and ease. And finding flow, grace and ease and, like with a lot of my guests, I often say I've known them for a while and Heather's one that I've known for a while and she really embodies this midlife mother finding flow, grace and ease. And I know there's always room for growth, there's always learn for expansion, and we all have our own edges and learning how to more fully embody this. But I know from you know, watching Heather over the last few years, for sure she's somebody who's really devoted herself to cultivating this in her life.
Speaker 1:So I felt like this could be a really important and rich conversation for us to have, especially for those midlife mothers who find themselves, you know, in their 40s and kind of, maybe even in the edge of like that perimenopause journey. And I think you know, being in my mid 40s too, we find that place where we know it's time to pivot a little bit. The ways that we did it, they don't necessarily work. So I'm going to introduce you, I'm going to hand it over to Heather Travis, actually, and I'm going to let her introduce herself, and then we're going to dive into this very important topic. Welcome, heather.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I am so excited to just be here and to get to talk with somebody that definitely speaks heart to heart. I think that is such an important aspect, especially in this phase of life, that we're able to have those people that we can just sit in that heart space and speak. I am Heather Travis. I am, first and foremost, right now, a mother to a beautiful 10-year-old daughter. I've been married 20 years. I live with my mom coming up on the cusp of being 46. And so there has been so much over my life, and especially the past 10 years, that has really allowed me to become like I think some of it's kind of becoming who I was always meant to be, but becoming more of myself and becoming more of someone that is not just comfortable in my own skin but that can stay in that presence of comfort, regardless of who and how I'm interacting with other people.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. Yeah, so it wasn't always like that, obviously.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, when we were dropping in around this topic, I really one of the questions I actually asked you was what kind of where did this journey begin? I wasn't even sure if you'd have an answer, but where you began with your journey you it's beautifully speaks to, I think, what's you know, to what we want to drop into today. Do you want to share a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this particular midlife journey really started at 35, becoming a later in life, mom, I think it's become more and more common, or mainstream if you will, for people to become a little bit, or to become pregnant later in life and to have children later in life, which, you know, there is so much beauty that can be in that because of how we can show up for our children. But there is the other side of that, in our bodies, being at a different phase in life, being at a different phase in life, and that's one of those things that really um, became very uh present for me very quickly. I was, I was trying to act like the 25 year old at 35 and the body just did not like that. Um, you know, trying to be the mom and work and start a business and burning not just three but four candles and not sleeping and forgetting to eat, and, you know, making sure everybody else was taken care of.
Speaker 2:And, you know, by 38, 39, I, you know, my body just said no and I really began my process with working with a health coach and a holistic health coach and a functional medicine doctor, and you know, my body was already beginning to change hormonally and I had an audit, got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and so it was really crucial for me to not just pivot but to get present with what and how I was choosing to do things so that my body could heal. And I think that's something within this process too, like we can still be so caught up in doing all of the things healing that we forget to be present for the body to heal that that is so true.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I love that you keep speaking to like to to presence. I think that's so powerful, beyond the nutrition and the food, which I know is a really important piece. It definitely was for me, too, and it was right around 40 that that started to get my attention in a big way. Was there anything else that you notice kind of when you're talking about this not necessarily pivoting, but like actually having to bring some attention and and presence? Was there anything else, that start that you started to kind of integrate at a foundation level that really started to help break? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's like the.
Speaker 2:The stress piece is the, the.
Speaker 2:I think an even bigger piece sometimes than even what we're choosing to put in our body, because it is how, like, like the stress and the adrenals are and kind of become this filter with which what we feed into our body passes through.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, stress inevitably creates that fight or flight reaction in our body. You know there's a couple other variations with which, how it shows up, but ultimately, at a kind of basic level, you know it's turning on and creating an abundance of hormones in your body with which your body doesn't know what to do with in modern time, right. And so it really isn't until we are able to manage our stress and I think that is, you know, can for some people, can really be anxiety. For me it was like disassociation, and so that's part of that presence of you know, slowing down and recognizing what was stressing me out, what was causing me to disassociate, what was causing me to react, what like and what were the external stressors and where they were the ones that I was placing on myself through expectations and conditioning of doing everything and doing it all right that's so big.
Speaker 1:The expectations piece too, which I think is like such a gift in the aging journey, like that we often, yeah, start to peel back. You know, like where we can start to lower some of those expectations, like in a beautiful way, where we become attached to an outcome that we know we start to recognize doesn't truly serve or honor us.
Speaker 2:So it sounds like, you know, that was kind of one of the pieces that you started to pay attention to that sound, yeah, and I think, and and recognizing that the expectations aren't simply what somebody else told us right, but it's that recognizing where, through the various points in our life, the lens that we saw or heard or took in information shaped how we then decided to interpret what we need, what we should do right, and then created that expectation on ourself, because it is so easy to push blame on the outside right and say, well, you know, society is telling me I need to be this or I need to be that, but it would not be the expectation or the stressor within our system if we did not take that on.
Speaker 2:And so you know, really I don't think that's for me like always, that big part of slowing down enough to recognize that part of it was huge right, because then you're not just swept up in emotion, you're not just swept up in how things have always been, you're not just swept up in the energy of the flow that was created from that space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think too, it's like that beautiful return to like authenticity, which is, you know, kind of swings back to being comfortable in your own skin and so we're not so rocked around by the external world. There's like a comfort that exists in our own skin and our own core and we can let go of a lot of those things that sometimes pull us around, that don't serve us. That's really beautiful. Pull us around that don't serve us, that's really beautiful. So is there any other practices or tools that you've kind of started to figure out or develop that allowed you to come back into that? And you have to give us, I guess, specifics, we can deepen into that, and you have to give us, um, I guess specifics, uh, we can deepen into that a little bit at the end. But is there any other um steps, practices, tools that really allowed you to come back to that center, to come back to that place of feeling a little bit more at home in your body and in your flow?
Speaker 2:well, for me, one of them was definitely movement, and not just exercise because, like, I was always a very physically active person and notions of what I believed my body could do, what I thought my body should do as far as how it moved, especially within physical exercise.
Speaker 2:And, you know, coming back to from the place of being a little bit older and having my body respond differently, of approaching movement with much more intention and it not being this, um, and allowing I guess better thing is allowing it to mirror where I am in the rest of my life, right, and so I can still hold some of those beliefs that I still resonate with as far as, like, lifting and taking things, like, and the way, the like, it's the, the form, right, so, like the ability to stretch the body and to move through the different lines and outstretches and and that sort of thing, right, um, I just I get this image of like a dancer being pulled from one arm and one leg in one direction and flow in the other direction.
Speaker 2:Right, so, like there's still this like, because there's that, the, that natural expansion of that happens within our body with movement, um, and pliability and all of that kind of stuff that carries through regardless of age. But you know the, the ways with which you would push yourself, and intensity and duration that no longer felt good or felt supporting, and so so you know the practice of being part of its presence again, but the practice of showing up to um my movement practice with what feels good in the moment, right, and so, whether I'm choosing to lift that day, whether I'm doing yoga, whether I'm doing cardio, like what can my body really handle that day?
Speaker 2:And um, and for me, especially with where I'm at and what I've been going through, that felt very nourishing and supportive, um, um, you know, and they, I think the other big um thing that has been very supportive through this process is having intentional time for creativity, right, some sort of artistic expression and and it and allowing that to be diverse, right, in the sense of, like it doesn't have to be your paints, it doesn't have to be your markers, it doesn't have to be anything specific.
Speaker 2:And you know, and, and for quite a while, there there was this really beautiful synthesis of my morning journaling practice that was just a blank page and so, like this, allowing the creativity to flow and to um have whatever message that wanted to emerge or whatever I was moving through or processing emerge on the blank piece of paper in some form of art right and so like the word, the shape that the words took as you wrote them out, or the lines that wanted to come through, or the colors that wanted to be used, right, and so just allowing that creativity to flow through, without any expectations, without any, um, specific purpose, right?
Speaker 2:because I think so many, so many times when we, even when we're sitting down to paint a picture, or we're sitting there like I like to crochet and stuff like that, whenever we sit down to do something, it's with the intention of creating. You know, if you're going to create an artwork, you're creating a picture, right, like if you're creating, um or crocheting, you're creating a blanket or a piece of clothing or something, right like there's this a natural intention of something you want to create at the end, but just to sit in flow with the ability of like whatever comes out comes out, and it's for nothing other than the pure process of sitting in that pure process of creation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really powerful way to tap into flow without attachment to an outcome. Yeah, that I love. I have another question for you and it has to do because we've been talking a lot about presence and I think you know you're working with moms for so long is that they're often so busy with their to do's and their lists and their managing of their people, like their families, and so I'm curious, like how do you find balance with that? Like how it because I you know you seem like you've been able to organize yourself in a way where you can detach from that a little bit and find flow within it. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:It does. And I think one of the things that has always come a little bit more naturally when I step out of conditioning is I I'm not this type of person that spends my life wondering what if and spends my or spends my life worrying about what could be right, and I think that's like and so having if for me it comes a little bit easier. But like that learning to practice, to be present, like to recognizing that in this particular moment in time I cannot actually impact anything other than what is right in front of me. What I do with what is right in front of me, what I do with what is right in front of me, will impact things down the road, but it is literally only what is happening in my presence in that moment.
Speaker 2:And so I have found that the more and more that I allow myself to sit in that space and not get caught up in others, other people because I do live with a lot of people that have a lot of anxiety over like what, like worrying about what could happen, like just not buying into that I'm not putting so much of my energy in what I have to do next or making sure that everything's taken care of, because, as I step through and move through the process, I am confident that I'm taking care of what I need to, so that, when we get to that point, it's taken care of right. So I'm not expending and wasting so much energy on worrying about something that hasn't happened, instead of placing the energy into making sure that, as I'm moving through my process and moving through what I'm doing in day-to-day, the end that what I know I need to take care of is ultimately achieved because of how I'm being present. Yeah, I keep using that word.
Speaker 1:I don't know why it is, though I mean like I do know, but when we're talking about gray flows, gray grace, gray grace, flow and ease, we have the most power in the present moment. It's a complete reversal often from how many of us have operated and yet when we can really keep gathering our energy into that place, we anchor ourselves into such a different vibration and it can really shift how we show up. So I think that it's cool that you keep saying it and it's important for sure, and there's it sounds like you've developed like a lot of tools and supportive practices and awarenesses around. That it's very embodied for you. Um again.
Speaker 2:so I was just to say, like, the one last thing I want to attach on that is like, like you're the awareness of it, right, because the it isn't always about practices, right? Because, like, when we think about practices, it's something else to do and it's really more of just becoming more and more aware of how we're showing up and just being in. What we're showing up and what I think is a beautiful thing that happens as a result of that is time takes on a different sense, right? So, because you are present and active and aware of what is happening, things like life doesn't speak by you in the same way, and then sometimes, like this, there's just this much more expansiveness in the moment that helps to continue to reduce the stress of not having enough time for things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I know the practices were very supportive of me and building that muscle, but once it was there and I, it was really embodied and integrated, it really did allow me to flow in a different space. Heather, we were talking about like stress a little bit earlier. So I was curious, like when you do because of course we're still going to have, you know, our stress response sometimes and have our triggers but like when you do notice that you're operating in that, what's your go to Like? How do you like? What do you where? How do you maneuver that? How do you find your way back to like flow from that space?
Speaker 2:your way back to like flow from that space. Um, I mean, I think there's always a lot of that always depends on the degree with which you are stressed, but for me usually it comes to the breath, right like the, because it is that one thing that is always going to bring you right back to the present moment, because when you are focusing on breathing, you're focusing on being in your body and then what the breath does physiologically to you helps reduce the stress hormones in a way that nothing else does.
Speaker 1:Love it, love it. Is there anything else you feel that the community, that you might want to say to the community around your journey, or just, I don't know, just any kind of like inspired words of wisdom, if you will?
Speaker 2:I think the letting yourself know, explore, right, because we are in such a time of change and such a time where so many old paradigms and beliefs have already been shed that there is, whether we always believe it or not, there is this space for the freedom to explore what it means to be you in this life, what it means to move through life in a way that feels really good to your system, in a way that allows you to feel energized, you know, or what doesn't right, like, so like, but being in a place where we have a little bit more of that freedom to explore, um, and, and giving yourself permission to do that, uh, I mean without necessarily, again, conditions, without expectations.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I love this and well, you've actually. You know you've given us a couple. You've given us one tool with the breath, but is there anything else, any other? You know I like practices and tools that help. It really helps me feel embodied in all of the, the flow pieces, but I don't know, is there anything else? You've mentioned creativity, you've mentioned breath. So really you've given us a lot, but if there's anything else you feel inspired to share that you know has really worked for you, um, I'll let you do that, but if not, then yeah, then we can start to close up our conversation.
Speaker 2:I think, like with what I think, one of those things that I will expand upon is like with the breath. I always feel that if we can touch our body, so putting our hand on our heart or our belly or our legs or wherever we feel called to, it's just another layer of grounding into our body, right and and connecting different neuropathways. That again is just another layer of feeling really supportive, um, to some of the mental aspects of things in a way, and when we do that, it allows us to utilize the breath as well, because when we breathe in and we're just focusing on how the breath is coming in and out, it's beautiful, it has its effect, but when we put our hands in, we automatically tend to want to breathe into where we put our hands and we begin to teach our you know, and then, when we can become conscious of it, we begin to recognize that breath is one of those things that can be done both unconsciously, like it is, you know, you don't just stop breathing it's not something that we have to be.
Speaker 2:It's not one of those things that we have to constantly be thinking about. Your body is going to automatically breathe to keep you alive, but it is also one of those things that we can bring our mind, attention and awareness to and control right. And so there becomes this power. Like when we put our hands and we breathe into where we put our hands. Like we begin to train our brain to notice and recognize what breath feels like coming into and expanding those areas and what relaxation feels like in that, in different areas of our body as we release the breath. So that has become like that is a really big practice for me. That you know like it's something you can do is just your mind, but for me, the hands and the warmth and tactileness of that was a huge, made a huge difference for me.
Speaker 1:I love that that is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with us and thank you for joining me here today. Can you tell our listeners where to find you? And then also, I don't know if you have like a free gift.
Speaker 2:You might not, and that's okay, um, but yeah, um, so, like I have I do, you can visit heathertraviscom or I am on most social media outfits outlets, typically instagram, and threads at soul healing mission. Um, but if you do go to my website, there is a link for expressions of soul healing, which is just a 10 day free thing that I did, where I walk you through some of these practices over the course of 10 days.
Speaker 1:Oh, fabulous, all right. Well, thank you again for joining me, heather. This was so beautiful, so rich with wisdom, and actually it's so like, applicable, and I so I really think that the community, community will appreciate this. So, once again, thank you for joining us. If you have any questions or comments, make sure and pop into the Naturally Prosperous Woman Facebook group, or you can even email me, tara, at Tara Prestoncom. Until next time. Thanks for listening. Bye for now. Hello friend, thanks for joining us this week. If you'd like to stay in touch, head on over to the Akashic women's community on Facebook group. Come share your takeaways, your insights, your reflections. I would absolutely love to hear if you'd like to deepen into any part of this work. Head on over to the Akashic women's schoolcom. Slash free dash gift and grab the Akashic radiant womb awakening and clearing morning practice to start to sink into your feminine power. I'll talk to you soon. Bye for now.