The Art of Self Worth
Did you know 85% of people have low self-esteem? Join Sarah Anne and Sarah Kelly for conversations about discovering our worth. Each of us has the potential to make a positive impact on the world. However, we often forget this and become disconnected from our true worth. Finding our worth is a lifelong journey that includes play, joy, pain, fear, healing, unlearning, re-learning, and more. In this podcast we share the good, bad and in-between around self-worth. You are worthy.
The Art of Self Worth
Coming Home to Yourself: Creating Sacred Spaces for Transformation and Healing
We know that embarking on a personal journey towards healing and self-discovery can be as intimidating as it is liberating, which is why the experiences and wisdom shared by others is crucial. In our newest episode self-love coach and priestess Melanie Monaco shares about the transformative process of 'Coming Home to Yourself.'
Melanie intertwines the essence of our physical being with our emotional landscape and our deeper soul, setting the stage for a deep exploration of self. The power of acknowledgment and emotional processing can reconnect you with yourself.
Melanie shares about the resilience of the human spirit and the potency of ancestral traditions, from ancestral shamanic practices to Kundalini yoga. This episode honors the cultural tapestry that shapes our healing processes, revealing how embracing our heritage can illuminate the road to recovery and self-empowerment.
As a priestess and ritual facilitator, Melanie has witnessed firsthand the enchantment that rituals and ceremonies can infuse into our daily lives, transforming mundane routines into powerful acts of intention. This episode is an invitation to explore the awe-inspiring effects of integrating ancestral connections and intentional practices to combat the stressors of the modern world.
This episode also showcases how creating moments of meaning can foster mental and physical well-being. Tune in and discover how you, too, can weave the magic of ritual into your everyday existence for a richer, more connected life.
And join us and Melanie again on Friday March 8th at noon ET as we kick off our new Embodied Worth Speaker Series.
You can find Melanie on Instagram at @theselflovelifestyle and join her Daily Guided Rituals Membership.
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Hey Sarah, Hi Sarah, we're back.
Speaker 1:We're back. We're back for our podcast, and so are all of you. We're happy to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Welcome. Our program, embodied Worth, starts this week, and so, to go along with it, we're going to be talking to some of our speakers that will be in the Embodied Worth speaker series, as well as having conversations between the two of us on the topics that are in the program.
Speaker 1:We're really excited about this because it's a comprehensive program. We talk about all of the things that impact our work. So how it shows up in our body, how it shows up in our emotions, our boundaries, our relationships, each aspect of our life, each aspect of our worthiness wheel, is addressed in this program and we want all of you to join it and, by the way, all of you still have time to join it, so please do. We have a special discount code for you in the description of this podcast. You can always reach out to us for more support, but it's going to be transformational, especially the speaker series. I'm really excited about this, especially after our conversation with Melanie.
Speaker 2:We just had the best conversation with Melanie Monaco, who is a self-love coach and a priestess. She created the self-love coach certification course, which is a seven-month program, accredited program for self-love coaching. She is a ritual facilitator, initiator. She does guided ritual membership. She has a podcast, Motherhood Rebirth. She has a podcast, the Self-Love Lifestyle. She does it all and she does it with such beautiful grace and authenticity and sweetness.
Speaker 1:I could not stop just nodding my head as we were talking to her. She's so in alignment with our work and y'all are going to hear that when you listen to it, the stories that she tells, the experiences that she brought forward on the podcast, like I was taking notes, not just for the interview but like for me to implement in my own life.
Speaker 2:Totally. By the end I was like I'm joining the guided ritual membership, sign me up. So without further ado, we want you to experience Melanie. After this podcast, you'll get to hear her again at the Embodied Worth Speaker Series. Information below oh, melanie, welcome to the Art of Self-Worth podcast today. We are so happy you're here.
Speaker 3:I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:We're having this conversation today because this Friday you'll be joining us for a live conversation for our new Embodied Worth Speaker Series, to talk about coming home to yourself. What does coming home to yourself mean to you?
Speaker 3:Okay. So I'm really excited to answer this because you and I were having a little voice notes back and forth about it. I thought it was so funny because last year I was in a mentorship and the mentor was like you just need to come home to yourself, keep coming home to yourself. And I was like what the F does that mean? Like I'm always in myself, like I was so resistant and I, you know, I'm sat with it and I'm sat with it. And then I thought it was so ironic when you were like you're going to do the coming home to yourself, I was like universe, come on. Like what does this mean? And you know, I realized over the last year I've been doing so, I mean I've gone through so much in the last few years like dark night of the soul, stuff, and thank goodness I feel like it's been exactly a year since I've really come out on the other side of it and in that process of healing I realized it's coming home to yourself.
Speaker 3:It's like coming home to your soul, like your inner wisdom, soul, knowing that, like your lived experiences, the like traumatized parts of you, the like exiled parts of you, the parts of yourself, your belief system, your inner voices that think that, like the world is against you or it's all your fault, or like the voices of shame and judgment, Like sure that that can be part of you and in you.
Speaker 3:But that is not like your authentic soul self or I guess in internal family systems it would be called self energy. Whether you look at it from a spiritual or psychological perspective, it's the same right. It's like this full, authentic, grounded, confident, resilient, trusting self. So when I think about coming home to yourself, it's like that self energy, that soul self, and sure I can have all these other chaotic, traumatized parts of myself that I'm working with and healing and connecting to and bringing love to. But the best way to do that is through being really in touch with my most authentic self. And it's like enigmatic too. It's something that you can talk about, but you only get once you feel into it and we're all born with it. So it's really just about remembering and returning, and the process of remembering and returning to yourself again and again is a process of self love, which is why I love it.
Speaker 1:I love what you said just there about a big aspect of it is feeling it in yourself and a lot of when we talk about coming home to yourself. That's a lot of it too. It's figuring out emotions and how they impact us, how our emotions impact us in our body, in our mind, and especially what happens if we ignore those emotions, if we numb them down, if we try to push them away. I was just wondering how have you seen that manifest, either with yourself or with other people?
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm definitely experienced that with myself. Yeah, the emotions, oh my goodness, so okay. So one of the strategies that I really love and that has been a great service to me that I use again and again and again is when I experience an uncomfortable emotion, I try to see how this emotion wants to present itself to me. When I studied archetypal psychology in college, I viewed this through the lens of mythology and folklore. So the way it would show up would be through archetypes and deities. For those listening who don't know what I mean by archetype, it's like Cinderella is an archetype, these mythic figures that you see in stories again and again and again, or the maiden mother crone, are three archetypes. So that's how they would show up. When I started doing internal family systems with my therapist, it started showing up as my inner child, these versions of me, and now it's this whole amalgamation of all these other things. So the tool that I love to use and I also do in coaching with clients and the people that I train is like how can we identify this emotional experience as an entity so that we can negotiate with said entity? So much easier than just slapping an affirmation across, something which, like I love affirmation work.
Speaker 3:I use mantras and affirmations all the time but I realized I was like having this emotional experience that was very challenging and I was like, okay, I am safe, I am positive, I am safe, I wasn't doing anything for me. And then I was like, once I started to be like, okay, let me actually go into that darkness, let me go into the grief, let me go into the anxiety, let me go into the fear and see my soul self like actually caress and love and hold these like entities within me and they like show up in all different things. Right, as I said, they'd show up as like mythic archetypal figures and like I have an evil stepmother part, you know. But then I also have this like weird, like flaming ping pong ball part that like sometimes just needs to be held a little bit, you know.
Speaker 3:And one of the things I love about working in that way is especially like, as a priestess, initiate and ritual facilitator, I come from a space of understanding, this very like ancient spiritual earth based way of connecting, and when we are working with these parts of ourselves, it is like talking, speaking the language of the soul. The soul speaks through metaphor and symbols. The soul does not speak to us through, like in English usually, though, it can, but, like most of the time, it's in these more metaphoric ways, and I love to connect with my emotions in that way, because I know I'm doing this soul work, and I know I'm doing it in a way that has been practiced for thousands and thousands of years and has been proven by, like, modern day psychological research. You know, it has, like this double fold experience, for me, amazing.
Speaker 2:And I love the pointing out because I think the first thing people hear when they hear self love, coach, or self love in general, is affirmations and like love me, some affirmations, love me, some affirmations, just like you, and like there's so much more to it and there's so much more connection that can happen. Which is why I've loved EFT tapping is because it's really like bringing that body together with the mind, with the soul, to return to self. Yeah, when you are really connecting back to your soul piece, to those archetypes, what put your body like? How do you inform your body in this?
Speaker 3:That is such a good question and I also I just want to respond to what you said about EFT, because I love EFT too and what I love about it is it doesn't toxic bypass, like you do. The statement of like this really freaking sucks, like I hate this. I mean, do that part. I just when I started doing that, I was like this feels so good. You know, to just acknowledge the pain first and then to like cover it with the like positive work. I just I love that. So, yes, I agree, eft tapping is so transformative and I'm so glad that you offer that in this space.
Speaker 3:How does this? How do I like get my body involved? Well, the first thing I do when working with these entities within me or these parts of myself again, whatever lineage you want to come from, whether it's internal family systems or not, like just archetypal, psychology or spiritual lineage you know you call it different things but the first thing I do is like where does this live in or around my body, where is it in me? And I go to that feeling first. So, if I'm working with like a voice or a belief, that is like the imposter syndrome, right? So many entrepreneurs and so many people have this. It's like where, where is that within me? And for me it's like kind of behind my left ear and again, like these things are so personal and don't we don't always have to like make sense of them, but it's just going to that feeling and having a background, as I started dancing when I was like two which is wild to think about because my son is two and my mom was a yoga teacher and a group and her yoga classes and then taught yoga myself and then group fitness, so I've always been like very in in movement and so I think for me, like I've had that ability to connect and feel into my body.
Speaker 3:But I think for people who maybe don't have that same background, it really is like the more that you, to your best accessibility and safety, like move your body in order to feel these different parts of your body, in order to feel like, wow, I continually have tension behind my shoulder blades, like where is what's holding that?
Speaker 3:Like why, where is that tension from? And like what is the emotional context of it? Like just getting to know your body is such a beautiful, beautiful way to like begin to do the somatic work and even now, like I just started working with a massage therapist and I I showed up to her office. I was, like I am not here to relax, like get the trauma, get this trauma out of my body. Like I am here for you to like get this stuff out. I don't want it anymore. Because I know, like and she, you know she laughed of course, and like it is so relaxing. But I also know that like there I'm with the intention of like doing that work of with release and it with, because of that it's like so much more impactful.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, that is so beautiful. I've never heard somebody make that link between like consciously going to a body worker to help release not your attention in your body but the tension in your soul.
Speaker 3:That's so cool. Yeah, well, after I gave birth, I did not have the experience that I had planned or wanted, even though I wasn't really having physical symptoms. I went to a pelvic floor therapist because I was like you know, I know that this is stuck in my body somewhere and my I ended up with PTSD from my birth and so I was just in like regular therapy. I did EMDR, you know, I did all of the like psychological tools and of course, I was doing ceremony for myself. But then I realized, wait, I'm not doing the body, because I wasn't having these like big physical symptoms. I didn't think about it.
Speaker 3:But then, once I started incorporating that into the healing experience, I do think it made. It made a really big difference for me and the way that I just relate relate to my body, because for a while it was like I would get on my mat and I would start moving and breathing and it would remind me of being in labor and I was like, oh, okay, I need to. My body is. This isn't my mind remembering it, it's my body. So how can I reprogram that? And, yeah, now I can easily do yoga and move and breathe and not have flashbacks. Think, think the goddess.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons. We have countless reasons so far. We are so excited that you're joining us, but you're focused on ritual. You're a goddess. So, like a goddess, you're a goddess and you're also a priestess. That's what I would say. But you're both right and we all are, and, in particular, calling yourself a priestess in this modern world is bold. So I know that ritual is a super impactful part of your life and I'm just curious about when did you first realize the impact of ritual?
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness. Well, my first ceremony that I ever remember, I was, I don't know, like four years old, maybe five. My great uncle, so my grandmother's brother, was a shaman. His name was Hayoka and he did this really important work in our family of connecting with our indigenous roots. And you know, we have, I have a great, great great grandmother. We believe her indigenous name was Lulaski. The records are like, of course, so hard. I like continue to do research on this. My grandmother's cousin had done a bunch of research on this. So, thank goodness, like so many of the people who came before me and my family really set the stage for this. But you know, it was very likely that she was kidnapped or she was forced into a marriage. These things are still happening today, and so a lot of my great uncle's work was like realizing okay, we have for him.
Speaker 3:His great grandmother carried with her this beautiful way of connecting to the land. Originally she would have been in Tennessee, I think, and then Missouri, all over the place in the South. But so he went and he lived with a couple of different reservations. He ended up becoming a sun dancer with Crow Nation in Montana and he did so much work in his community offering ceremony and sweat lodges. His modality with ceremony was the peace pipe and a very specific lineage of work. So I grew up in his ceremonies and simultaneously, as I said, my mom was a yoga teacher. So I also grew up and she did Kundalini yoga which, like I mean, you know, that's like the most like esoteric, like spiritual out there for us here in the West way of engaging with yoga. So I had these really beautiful influences. And then my grandmother was the like daughter of a Baptist minister and broke with angels. So I had like all these different things going on in my family. And then my dad is like a full on atheist. So it was really interesting, you know, to grow up with all of those influences. So when my uncle you know, over time, like he and I in our relationship realized like wow, we both really vibe with this whole ceremony thing and his daughters weren't interested in doing ceremony and so he initiated me with, like I will say, a very mild mini vision quest when I was in my mid twenties or early twenties. And yeah, by that point I'd gotten my yoga teacher training and was doing like energy healing and I feel like for me I actually just started to hold so much more reverence.
Speaker 3:For this week I realized my goddess cards that I have. Those who are listening to this won't be able to see, but if there's a video they'll be able to see. I have had these goddess cards since I was 13, because I bought these for my 13th birthday party, in which we were at my favorite Moroccan restaurant because there was always belly dancers there and I'd been going there my whole childhood and made friends with the belly dancers and they'd always invite me up to belly dance with them and I was like I want to have my 13th birthday party here and we did. And I went around the room and all my 12-year-old, 13-year-old middle school friends were pulling goddess cards and the belly dancer came and I was belly dancing with her and I realized I threw a divine feminine ceremony for myself when I was 13. I didn't even realize it and so, okay, fast forward to starting the self-love lifestyle in my business. I thought I wanted to be a health coach. If you had told me I was going to be a priestess, I would have been like what? But it's really. I mean, it's been a coming home to myself, right, because I'm looking at like I just did a retreat last September. We pulled these goddess cards, we did belly dancing and it's just like this has always been a part of my life and a part of me, and because it's just so like out there and not mainstream, like it, just I didn't even think it could be like a career, but here I am, like hosting a retreat, getting paid to do the same thing I did at my 13th birthday party, really standing on the shoulders of, you know, my uncle and my mom and my grandmother and these beautiful influences, and now I'm on the path.
Speaker 3:I'm a priestess initiate with the 13 Moon Mystery School, because I was calling myself a ritual facilitator beforehand, and then I came across this particular lineage of work, and I you know it's so important to me to be in a really ethical place when it comes to spiritual leadership or any kind of leadership, and so, though I'd had this incredible blessing of working with my great uncle, I also honor the fact that, like, the majority of my family are colonizers, right and like people from Northern Europe, and so what does it look like for me to decolonize that part of my lineage and to go back to, like these Avalonian mysteries of Great Britain where my ancestors are from.
Speaker 3:I have ancestors who were, you know, in Scotland before the Roman invasion, before the Crusades, before the Abrahamic religion. So what would it be like for me to do that healing work and that shadow work on that lineage of my family, you know, because my uncle did all of this beautiful work to bring forward the indigenous wisdom and remember that, with the blessing of his communities that he was in, what would it be like for me to bring some of that forward, and also this whole other part of my bloodline, which is where I'm at now, in doing this priestessing work?
Speaker 2:I love all that. I can just also picture 13 year old Melanie belly dancing and pulling cards like gosh. So, knowing some of the listeners out, there are going to be newbies to this ritual. What is one thing that either you have in your own regular practice that's, daily or that you would offer as a way to start bringing ritual into your life?
Speaker 3:Oh man, well, we all do rituals. So rituals there's evidence that Neanderthals were doing rituals before home of sapiens ever existed. Okay, no-transcript. This is a legit like. Our human existence has always been ritualistic because it predates our human Homo sapien species, and there's just evidence of sacred ceremonies that go back as far as as anthropologists can find. We're very ritualistic as a species and Even outside of our species. Animals are also very ritualistic. Right Like there's this beautiful thing about elephants grieving together and surrounding a mother when she's giving birth. Right Like this, this is not just us, it's very inherent to our planet and we just have this as humans, weird consciousness that like it makes us somehow different from other animals. That like. If somebody has the answer to that, please let me know, because always my existential crisis is musing about it. But we have this ability to bring ritual into so much of our lives and it's like your morning coffee is a ritual, right? Or your morning tea. Brushing your teeth every day Please do it twice a day is a ritual.
Speaker 3:Like putting on your seat belt before you start driving Please do that too is a ritual right, like these things that we do all the time are rituals, and when I'm coming from is like, how can we make these things also ceremonial right? So it's like rituals are. We're just ritualistic in nature. The difference between us and our ancestors like all of our ancestors, if you go back far enough is that their rituals were also ceremonial, and All we have to do to engage with that. You know, really, blood memory we all carry is in view ceremony, and to our rituals that we already have. It's so simple and all you have to do is do is just be intentional about it, and the things like the somatic work, like Connecting to your body, connecting to your breath, getting to know yourself on a deeper level, like your emotional self, and then, of course, if you want to go there, like your spiritual belief systems and the deities or energies that you work with, will imbue your ceremonial Rituals with so much more meaning. And it's really about finding meaning. And you know, there's all these incredible studies coming out.
Speaker 3:I'm just reading I'm reading a book right now and this is the second book I've read on this topic about awe and enchantment and how it is something that is like really missing from our modern-day society and that it helps with depression and anxiety and like clinical diagnoses, both physical and mental.
Speaker 3:And I'm realizing ceremonies for me create that sense of awe and wonder and and, so to speak, to like the skeptic mind that like I have and so many of us have, like there are so many ways that you can prove Scientifically how important ceremony is. Cultivating on wonder is just one of those ways. But also community connection. You don't have to be in community to do ceremony but like that is a big part of it if you allow it to be and and you know, like the studies with the blue zones are actually not so much about like how much fat you're eating or whether or not You're drinking red wine or whatever. It's like the people in community right, it's like having that structure of connectedness and I feel like ceremony, if we can find the people to do that with, it, adds that, that magic quality in that really our bodies respond to in health and vitality.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. I love the fact it's a ritual plus ceremony. That is just so beautiful, lovely distinction. So one way that people can get to know you more is by joining us on Friday live. It's at noon Eastern time, but for people that are either busy then or who are listening to this later or just want more of you, melanie, can you tell us how people can find you? What's the best way to connect with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I share a lot on Instagram. I have a really beautiful, cozy community there and I go live every so often to pull those same goddess cards, so you want me to pull a goddess card for you. That's a really great space to connect with me, and I have a website, melaniemonacocom, where you can find my offers. If you are interested in exploring ritual, I have a guided rituals membership, which is a really easy way to bring ritual into your daily life. My rituals are 20 minutes or less, and I hear again and again from members that they're like I could never commit to a meditation practice before, or like I couldn't commit to a daily spiritual practice before. I just didn't have the quote willpower to do it. And now that I'm in this membership, I feel like I can do it because it's so easy and simple and effective. All I have to do is log on to the app on my phone and like it's there and it's always like relevant and this was my practice that I started doing.
Speaker 3:It's really like three parts.
Speaker 3:It's divination, so usually a card poll, or maybe it's about the astrology, or the solstice or the Gwinox, or like whatever influence is coming forward or just my intuitive nudge about what our community is needing, and then a inspirational conversation of like this is what this might mean for you, bringing in some of my coaching background of like here are some ways we can think about this or work with us.
Speaker 3:And then an integration practice, which is the somatic work. It's often like a guided meditation, a soul journey. I do tapping, you know, energy work, all these different modalities. Depending on the message that comes through, I pair it with a modality that brings it deeper in, and it's less than 20 minutes every time. And you know, the joke is like, no matter what you're going through, I have a ritual for that. So I feel like that's a really great place to start. It's a seven day free trial and then it's a dollar a day. It's like a very low bar of entry, but that's something that I'm really excited about and I have, you know, like big structured programs and offerings too, but based on this conversation, I feel like that's the most relevant thing that I would share.
Speaker 2:Love it. Thank you so much for your time today and sharing part of your story and your journey with us, and we're excited to hear you again next week about coming home to yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's going to be so fun. We'll talk all about a lot of the self love work that I do and the different ways that you can come home to yourself, and it's going to be done in a very like ceremonial way so that you the participants listening are able to be resourced with a way to come home to yourself that is unique and authentic to you, and I know it's a bit enigmatic but, like, trust me, it's going to be amazing.
Speaker 1:Thank you, melanie. So so much. It's been such a joy to get to know you a little bit more, and here's to Friday. I can't wait to dive even deeper.
