The Motherhood Mentor

Less screen time, more life. 

Join Rebecca and Nina (Balkanina)If you’re arguing about devices more than you want to admit and you feel like tech is shaping your family more than you are, this episode is for you.

This conversation is a practical guide for parents and adults who want a calmer, healthier relationship with screens. We talk about why screen limits alone often don’t work, how screen overstimulation affects behavior, and w...

Welcome to this mini episode where we name the “good discomfort” of growth and why trying to fix it too soon blocks expansion. We share how embodiment, not mindset alone, helps hold paradox—being content and still wanting more—while you move between identities.

• naming the spiral of upward growth
• why old tools stop working during expansion
• the urge to fix versus the need to feel
• mindset as bypass and how...

Do you have a strong-willed, big-feeling, highly sensitive child who feels like “too much”?

Parenting the “Spicy” Child: Strong-Willed Kids, Big Feelings, and Connection-Based Discipline

Parenting a strong-willed, big-feeling child can feel like living next to a volcano-beautiful, powerful, and unpredictable.

We explore what Mary calls the spicy child: kids with high intensity, low adaptability, high perceptibility, and high persisten...

Let's explore how to stay hungry for growth without missing the life you already built. We share practical ways to feel content now while nurturing ambition for your body, marriage, work, and motherhood.

• naming the gap obsession and its cost
• choosing hungry not starving as a core mindset
• celebrating wins you already own and wanting what you already have 
• body peace through strength, food freedom an...

Forget the sprint. We’re starting the year steady, grounded, and honest about capacity. Instead of chasing a dazzling future self, we look at what’s here now- what worked, what didn’t, and how to build change that outlasts a January dopamine hit. In this episode I share why integrity beats motivation, how to regulate your nervous system in real life, and what it means to show up in the messy middle with devotion and mercy rather th...

What if survival mode saved your life, and then quietly held you back once you were safe? That's the tension we unpack with coach, veteran, and mother of five Chonda Costin, whose journey from domestic violence recovery to military service to purpose-driven coaching reveals the hidden cost of operating in crisis long after the crisis ends.

The story is raw and generous: leaving an abusive marriage, joining the military at 25 wi...

Our bodies have unconscious patterns of responding to perceived threats that happen without conscious control, ranging from simple to complex defensive reactions.

• Fight response involves mobilizing energy against a threat with aggressive outbursts, criticism, or controlling behaviors

• Flight response means moving away from threats through anxiety, overthinking, or intellectual distancing

• Freeze response feels like "one foot ...

What if the thing sabotaging your communication isn't your words, but your body's stuck survival strategy just trying to keep you safe? We go deep with Enneagram coach Michelle McDonald to explore the instinct layer of enneagram-self-preservation, social, and one-to-one—and how these fast, automatic behavior patterns quietly steer your relationships, leadership, and daily choices. This is personal development that bridges...

We guide a short morning practice to center attention, reclaim energy, and choose how to move through the day with grace and clarity. Gratitude, body awareness, and gentle course-correction help build presence without pressure.

• orienting to day, time, and season
• sensory check-in with the world outside
• body scan from head to feet
• deep breathing to build calm energy
• naming agency, choice, and intent...

We guide a grounded practice to meet your emotions, feel where you end and others begin, and build flexible boundaries that protect your energy while keeping connection possible. Through imagery, breath, and simple prompts, you restore right distance, agency, and choice.

• orienting to room, time, age, and body
• mapping emotion by location, speed, and color
• sensing others’ presence and the space between
• ca...

Burnout doesn't have to be the cost of ambition. In this conversation with repeat guest and facilitator Camille Leek, we explore somatic healing and cyclical living for entrepreneurs balancing work and motherhood. Learn how to restore sustainable productivity by aligning with natural cycles- birth, growth, decay, and death-so your nervous system can support big work without collapse.

Instead of chasing forever-summer energy, we...

We guide a short morning practice to ground your body, soften your breath, and let the earth hold what’s too heavy so you can meet the day with steadiness. The session blends breathwork, body scan, orientation to time and place, and a gentle reminder to carry presence forward.

• grounding through feet and seat
• slow nose inhales, mouth exhales
• releasing past weight and future fear
• visualizing worries compo...

We guide a slow body scan that builds safety, sensation, and self-trust by orienting to the room, mapping the body from head to toes, and using breath and imagery to settle the nervous system. We close by reorienting eyes open, reclaiming energy, and choosing a pace that fits what comes next.

• orienting to safety through sight and context
• thanking the planning mind and writing tasks down
• scanning face, neck, s...

Success once meant strategy, systems, and performance. Now, it means truth, alignment, and peace.

This episode with Kristine Munro, founder of Illume Collective, explores what happens when your definition of success evolves-and your old identity can’t keep up.

We talk about the loneliness of pivot seasons, the power of honest community, and the nervous-system-level recalibration required to lead from authenticity.

Kristine shares...

What if secure attachment isn’t about perfect parenting-but about steady leadership, honest repair, and a strong nervous system you can share with your kids?

In this conversation, therapist and mom of three Hannah Dorscher joins Becca to demystify attachment theory and bring it down to earth. Together they unpack the four attachment styles-secure, avoidant, anxious, and disorganized-and translate them into real-life tools you can us...

Motherhood and business can both be holy and hard.  I often feel the very real tension between deeply caring about and wanting multiple things in the same season, and also butting up against my capacity and things outside my control. This episode is a love letter to every mom. 

I share the behind-the-scenes of a recent emotional upheaval moment where I decided to in real and raw time share the shame, embarrassment, and trying so fre...

We all have patterns that feel like personality, but are actually protection.

In this powerful conversation, Becca is joined by Enneagram teacher Katie Whitlock for a grounded, compassionate look at how the Enneagram helps us see ourselves and others more clearly.

Far beyond a personality test, the Enneagram reveals the why beneath our habits - the motivation, fear, and longing that quietly run the show. Katie, tr...

Motherhood will stretch you in ways you never imagined, but you don’t have to face it alone. In this raw conversation with Dr. Kim Murray, licensed marriage & family therapist and perinatal mental health specialist, we break open the truths no one is talking about on Instagram or in the baby books especially around postpartum mental health struggles. 

We cover:

1. Why perinatal mental health starts before conception and lasts ye...

What happens when healing moves beyond thinking and into feeling? In this rich conversation, Becca sits down with somatic practitioner Andrew Rosenstock to explore the profound world of embodied healing—the kind that words can’t quite capture.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode:

1. What somatics actually means and why it’s more than a wellness buzzword
2. How the lived, felt experience of the body differs from the concept of the body
3. Why t...