REWILD + FREE - Planting Seeds for Success: From Growing a Garden to Raising a Family, with Gina DiSalvo

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

Do you have a hard time trusting your intuition and end up following other people’s strategies in order to find success?  What if I told you that leaning into your intuition and simplifying what you can handle is the secret behind sustainable growth and success? This week, I'm joined by Gina DiSalvo and we dissect what it means to follow your intuition and focus on what you can actually manage in this season of your life. Gina is a backyard veggie gardener, wife and mom of 3 on a journey to self sufficiency. She doesn’t have much time to spend in the garden but loves growing food for her family that is nutrient dense and free of chemicals. We talked about the importance of simplicity and trusting the natural processes of growth, whether that's in the garden or in our own lives. Just like seeds and plants naturally want to grow, our babies and businesses have their own journeys and growth timeline.   We also chatted about:Overcoming good girl conditioningRecognizing people-pleasing tendencies when you consider yourself a "rebel"Standing in your truth ,even around authority figures Taking radical responsibility in your household The simplest definition of trusting your intuition Intuitive gardening and connecting to nature without adding to your to do list ...and so much more! If you're a mom or a business owner looking for tips on finding balance and owning your authentic self, you don't want to miss this episode!Connect with Gina on IG (@ginasgardens)Grab Gina's FREE Ultimate Guide to Watering Less by clicking hereConnect with Nicole on IG (@nicolepasveer)Apply to be a guest on the podcast hereSupport the showConnect with Nicole on IG (@nicolepasveer) Want to be a guest on the podcast? Fill out this form

a lot of this is not in our control. We are, we are fighting against certain instincts that are hardwired into our brains, our primal brains. Right. And so it, it is, it is, it is changing by us rewiring this and changing this and, and, and mentoring this to our kids by example. And, and we are changing the future. We are killing generations of coding, you know, that we've had for so long. And we are here. We are in modern day society. We are able to change this now. We do not need to have these same survival instincts. We are able to move past them. Welcome to the Not Just a Mom Show, where we have open and honest conversations about the vulnerabilities and the victories within entrepreneurship and new motherhood. If we haven't met yet, I'm Nicole Pazier and I'm going to be your host. Here on the show,

we don't subscribe to perfection. In fact, being present is the new perfect and showing up messy is the new norm. My hope is that this podcast serves as a safe space for me and inspiration for you to stop living life watered down. Together, we will uncover versions of our most potent selves where we show up unapologetically, intentionally, and without filter. We are worthy, just as we are, as all that we are, not just the label we put on ourselves. We are more than just a mom, and I'm so glad you're here. I know I basically say this about every episode, but this one is probably one of my favorites. I'm joined by my friend Gina, who is a mom of three and a gardener, and she shares with us

just her journey into motherhood, her mothering experience of 10 years now, and just her story about good girl conditioning and people pleasing. And as you know, if you've been listening for a while, I've been navigating those things in my own life. And so it was just really cool to connect with her and just share some of our similar experiences. And it was just a really raw and vulnerable conversation where we were able to connect how those things show up in our life, even when we think we've kind of started to overcome them. And then also how that relates into birth and mothering and gardening and just connecting back to nature and learning from the great mother herself, mother nature. So listen to the full episode because Gina also shares with us the difference between soil and dirt.

I literally had my mind blown. And she also gives the most simple and easy to digest definition of intuition that I've ever heard. I have totally been overcomplicating the whole idea of intuition in my mind for way too long. So listen in. This is truly a valuable conversation and I'd love to hear what you think. I basically became friends with you through a birth worker academy, which is kind of ironic because I'm not actually a birth worker. So I guess it all started when I decided to home birth my son about a year ago. And I went down the deep, dark rabbit holes of Instagram and I learned all the things about

birth. And I found somebody that really kind of inspired me and her name was Kylie. And that's how we kind of met each other was through Kylie's portal. And she was starting a business, like a business membership. And I was like, can I be in it even though I'm not a birth worker? It was called the birth worker membership, but it was all about like starting your own business. And she was like, yeah, I'd love to have you in there. So I was like, okay, I'll be the only gardener in the birth worker membership. So I started with that. And I also took Amy Porterfield's digital course Academy. And I basically launched my own gardening business, which is like an online course teaching people how to garden from like the very beginning, like the very, you've never gardened

before, or you've like failed miserably at gardening before. And you think that you have a black thumb. Um, and I can just try and turn it around for you and be like listen if you just take it these easy steps you start with very simple principles and that's kind of I teach the basic foundations and yeah that's kind of how I do it I also am a mom of three I have a husband I have two dogs two nine chickens. It's a very busy, chaotic life. And yeah, it's really, it's really fun. Would you consider yourself a birth nerd? I would consider myself a big birth nerd. Yes. I feel like that's like exactly why you fit into Kylie's group, because I think the people that just get birth and respect birth are almost like on this just different level of how they see the world and how they connect with nature. And I can

just imagine all the parallels between preparing for birth and probably preparing your garden and growing a garden. Like in both instances, it's about growth and creating something from scratch. Yeah. And trusting, like trusting that a seed is going to grow into a plant that's going to produce fruit that you can eat. You put this like tiny little seed in the soil and you're like, oh, I think this is going to work, you know? And it's like, and then it just, sees want to grow, plants want to grow.

And it's like babies want to grow and bodies know what to do. And it's pretty, it is. There's so many parallels. It's really crazy. I love that. It's actually really cool to think about how, yeah, like when you're pregnant and you are growing a baby, there's so much happening behind the scenes, right? There's so much that's passively happening in the sense that like we don't have control over it. And even though it's happening within us, it really feels like we're not necessarily an active participant in it.

Because I mean, the baby's fingernails are still growing there. Whatever next milestone in utero is happening without our awareness. And I feel like the stuff that's happening in the garden, like under the soil before you start seeing the little like sprout poke through and then whatever happens next, like it, yeah, so cool. So similar. Can you speak on how, how you're doing it all? Like you literally have the kids, the dogs, the chickens. You, correct me if I'm wrong, but you also have a full-time job, do you not? Yes, I do. I do have a full-time job as a chemist, actually. Oh, cool.

Okay, how does that fit into all of this? Has gardening always been something that you've been interested in? Or actually, let's go there. How did you get into gardening? Yeah, so I've always been a gardener. In my mind, you know, it's always been something like, oh, yeah, I can do that. It's never seemed like I can't, I guess my dad was a big vegetable gardener. My mom was a huge flower gardener. So I always was out in the garden with one of them learning. And then as soon as I got my own house, it's like the first thing I did was like, I'm going to start my own garden. Right. And I learned a lot that year. And really what I learned was that I put a bunch,

like a bunch of plants into a small four by eight foot bed. And I put as much as I could fit in there, not really thinking about the later end, which is, you know, they're going to grow up and they're going to get really big. And it's, I couldn't even reach the back of my garden. Everything would just, you know, get big and fall off and rocks. I couldn't even find the fruit. It was definitely a learning experience. And it's the same thing i teach people now and it's the way that i handle it all it kind of all is one thing it's just less is more in the case when you don't want to be overwhelmed um it's keeping it super simple in all regards so like i plant as much as i can take care of, and you don't have to fill the

garden from ear to ear to, you know, get food. You know, if you actually do less, you let that plant take up as much space as it wants. You'll actually get more from that one plant instead of crowding it. You'll get less disease that way. And, you know, it's just keeping it simple and keeping the approximate space that you should have. So I have this whole like chart of how much space each plant needs and, you know, what you should allow for, because that's the most common thing I hear is like, oh, my tomatoes got so big and I couldn't, and like the tomato cages fell over and, you know, I couldn't find anything. And, and so they're just like, I don't know what I did everything wrong.

And it's like, no, you didn't do everything wrong. You just, you just didn't give it enough space. You tried to do too much with too little time, right. Too, too little space. And you could do that same thing with parenting or, you know kids and everything else right so it's like if you're not giving yourself that space yeah yeah I was just about to say everything you're saying like parallels with so many aspects of motherhood and so many aspects of entrepreneurship in the sense of it can be really easy to think we have to do all the things and like add things to our plate and we forget that like in those moments where we feel like we have bitten off more than we can chew we forget that we are in charge of that bite right we are in charge of how big of a bite we take and yeah less often is more and

simplifying often is an amazing strategy an amazing sustainable solution. Like in my own experience, like even just in my recent launch and gearing up to start my group mastermind called Recalibrate, like it was very easy to fall under other people's strategy and kind of clench on to, okay, well, it worked for them. So I'm going to do everything they've done so that I have the same success. And that kind of just like fills my plate and actually isn't in alignment with like what makes sense for me or what I can handle. And like you said in the garden, well, not the analogy, but like in your experience with the garden, even though your garden bed is a certain size, it doesn't mean you have to fill it. And it doesn't mean you have to do all the things. You don't have to plant all the plants. You can just focus on like one or two. And those one or two are actually going to potentially thrive even better because they're not just like overwhelmed with other things around them and then in the case of motherhood um like as you were speaking about that I was just reflecting on again it can

be really easy to fall into some of the boxes and like the um like basically like the mom groups like oh I'm a crunchy mom and then feeling like you have to do all the crunchy thing and like no that's not true like you don't have to do all the things and if you don't do one of them it doesn't mean you're not holistically minded it doesn't mean you don't value um like low-tox living and like the natural stuff like it just means that you are taking on what you can handle. And yeah, so simple is often best. Yeah, simple is best. And I agree with that last part too, because I've always had trouble like fitting in in certain spaces because it's like, for example, I was a cheerleader, but I was also like super smart and in AP classes and like some of that doesn't really mesh or something, you know, and then I was, I am a gardener and I mostly

holistically minded, but I also work in big pharma. So, you know, there's also that. So it's very interesting how if you try to get into a box and you're like, if I do anything outside of this box, I no longer qualify. Versus getting rid of all of that and saying what feels true for me, right? It's like, what makes me happy? What serves me best? And what actually feels true for me, no matter what the stories you've been told or the narratives you've been told from different people, from your parents, from media, from whatever, but does that actually feel true for you? Because that's really what matters. And you shouldn't do anything that doesn't feel true for you just because someone told you to do it. And that's one of the biggest things I try to instill in my kids. You don't just do things because someone told you to do it, right? You do it because you want to do it. It feels true for

you. And yeah, that's a big part of just stepping into your own intuition, stepping into trusting yourself, trusting your body, right? Trusting your own body and mind to lead you to where it's supposed to go. I love that we're going in this direction because I think at the core of gardening and at the core of birth and at the core of motherhood. And yeah, just like leading with your intuition and leading with your heart instead of always falling into the mind chatter and the shoulds. And often like the things going on in our head aren't even our own like beliefs, right? We're always influenced by someone else and we're constantly trying to fit in and feel like we belong. So it can be really, really easy to grip tightly to the thoughts, the beliefs, the opinions, the judgments from other people. And I love when you brought up even like your

experience in high school about being a key leader, but also being smart and like in AP classes. And like those are typically, I mean, I don't want AP classes. And like, those are typically, I mean, I don't want to stereotype, but like typically those are different groups of people. And I can just imagine the conflict in your own, just like way of being, like who do you go sit with at lunch or which party do you go to on Friday night?

Like it starts so young. And I think people don't realize how much of societal conditioning is like heavily weighted on us. And I know you and I have connected because of our people-pleasing tendencies and both recovering people-pleasers and working past that and just having more of an awareness of when that's showing up in our life. Do you want to speak a bit on that and like how you've been navigating motherhood and how you've been navigating just where you're at in life right now and how you constantly come back to your intuition? Because I think that can be a very aloof,

if that's the right word, it can be just this very vague piece of advice. Like, oh, just trust your intuition or just do what feels right. And I think for a lot of us, we don't actually know what that feels like. I know for me, birth really helped me to practice some of that. But yeah, I would just love to hear kind of your experience in that whole area. That was a big question. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I, I actually, I, yeah, people like when I say intuition, some people are like, like, I don't even know what that is. Like intuition, just for anyone listening, is just knowing what to do with thinking about it. That's the definition, right? So the definition is just when you go and your kids spill cereal on the floor and you vacuum it up, that is your intuition

telling you, I need to clean this up, right? That's just something you do without thinking about it. You're not like, Oh, should I clean this up? Should I vacuum it? Like, it's like, no, I'm going to vacuum it. Right. So that's, that's how your intuition leads you. It's so, it's so known to you that you're like, yeah, that's the way I'm going to go. And that makes sense. That feels true. And I have really, like you said, uh, struggle with the people pleaser tendencies for a long time. And I probably didn't identify them until about four years ago. Um, when I had my second daughter and that was like a precipitous unmedicated birth that

took me by surprise and like rocked my whole world. Um, so what is like this constant evolving, I guess, as a mother. So my oldest is about to be 10. So I've been mothering for a decade. When I started mothering 10 years ago, I was a completely different version of myself than I am now. Right. And I was way more inclined to do what other people suggested than I would ever consider now, even though I would say as kind of like a disclaimer in my whole life, I've never been wanted to kind of do what people say. I've always been kind of a rebel, or I've always like dressed differently, or I've always like, you know, I like to stand out in certain ways, and do things like against the grain, kind of for attention. But my people

pleasing tendencies really happen with authority. So for example, when the doctor is challenging me, even though I know what I want to do, and what feels good for me, I have trouble verbalizing that. And I really fawn like in that like fight, flight, fawn, freeze, whatever. I really fawn like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. And I just like I will actually lie. Typically, I'll just a lie will come out of me to like just tease them, whatever they want to hear. It's like get me out of the situation and go. It's like for a recent example, this happened just just a couple months ago with my son's appointment and

we were discussing doing I'm not sure if you want to talk about this on this podcast but we were just discussing vaccines and at this point we have decided to not do them with my son and that's a personal decision and I'm not trying to get anybody up in a tizzy, but that's just what I've decided. And my pediatrician was just like, they were just asking me like, Oh, so what are you going to like, my, my pediatrician doesn't care if you get them or not. Like I have, you know, a unicorn or whatever, but she's just like, are you going to do them? And I'm like, Oh, I really do want to do them. And then I'm just like, well, like, you know, my husband, my mom, his mom said that he had a reaction and I literally made up a lie so that she would just stop talking about it and move on. And it was like, Oh, she was like, okay, yeah, that sounds legit. And okay, we won't do it

on. Let me know when you're ready. And it's like, I just knew I needed to say something to make like, okay, she's appeased. Like, and it's a really bad people pleasing tendency that I have specifically with authority. And, um, yeah, so I still struggle to this day. I'm way, way, way, way better than I, I might've just been like, okay, yeah, let's do them, you know, like 10 years ago. Um, but I would have completely gone against everything. Now I'll stick with myself, but I still can't say it in my own voice. I can't still can't stand. And I work on it constantly. And I'm trying to get that, you know, like that inner mastery and stuff like that. But it's still a struggle to this day. But really, every year of motherhood, I get stronger, I get better, I'm able to stand my ground. And it's not something that just instantly,

like, comes and you're like, this big mama bear, right? And it's like, you want to my ground. And it's not something that just instantly, like, comes and you're like, this big mama bear, right? And it's like, you want to do that. And I am that in a certain regard. But it really, it really develops over time more and more what, what do you stand for? And, and how, how hard are you going to fight for that? You know, how easily are you overturned, you know, or how easily will you stray from your convictions before, you know, and now it takes a lot more to pull me away from my convictions, if you can at all, in certain regards, you know? Well, and do you find it, sometimes it's one of those things that's like hindsight is 20-20, right? Like in the moment and when we understand this stuff from a nervous system perspective and our body is constantly looking for safety and like we do things that are most familiar,

even if it's not actually the best choice for us. So I find, at least in my own experience, I think I'm shedding these layers of people-pleasing. I think I'm getting better and I am, but like you said, it's not an overnight fix. It takes some time. And what I'll notice is after the event has happened, I now have the awareness to be like, oh, okay, my people-pleaser tendency came up again, but that's because I obviously wasn't feeling safe. So my nervous system just did what it always does because that's more familiar and that's more comfortable. And it's like an opportunity to do something different the next time. And so I guess I just say that because

it's not about doing things perfect right away. Like it takes a long time. And like you said, you're already a decade into mothering and like these things are still coming up for you. Yeah. I just think, again, it can be one of those things that we think that, okay, as soon as we have the awareness that we have been people pleasing, that we're never going to people please again. And it doesn't work that way. Even just yesterday, we were at my in-laws for my mother-in-law's birthday. And there were a bunch of, I mean, this doesn't matter, but there were a bunch of people and my daughter Aubrey was with grandma. So I really wasn't thinking much about anything really. I thought she was good. And then I go outside and see Aubrey with like a giant piece of red licorice and I was like uh no like we don't do a ton of candy in our house and if we're going

to do candy it's definitely not going to be red licorice with a bunch of like red yucky dyes in it and I took it away and I'm like I'm sorry Aubrey but like I don't want you to have licorice right now and like I tried to give her something else And what I didn't realize by doing that is like, I think that actually made my mother. Well, my mother-in-law did feel bad. She's like, I'm sorry, that was my fault. And she like, didn't even understand why I was doing it and like the rationale behind it. But then she kind of felt weird about it. And then I was talking to my husband last night. I'm like, was it mean of me to do that? And he's like, yeah, it kind of was. And I'm like, well, but wait a minute. I'm not supposed to sideline my own opinion and choice about what my daughter is eating just so that I make other people more comfortable. And it just occurred to me like, that's like a perfect example of this still happening, even though, yeah, I feel like I have one. I mean, the fact that I took the licorice away, that is a huge improvement,

because I feel like a year or two ago, I wouldn't have because I would have felt bad for taking it away. It seems like such a silly example, but like the thoughts of, oh, did I make someone feel a certain way keep coming up? And the truth of the matter is, is we aren't responsible for other people's feelings. And I'm constantly having to remind myself of that. Yeah, it's that responsibility that comes back every time. Pretty amazing. But yeah, I lost what I was going to say. I was going to say something about that. I lost it. That's okay. I can go back to, so when you were kind of giving us a nice and simple definition of intuition, which I love, by the way, because intuition can be this like, big thing. And we can think, oh, well, like, I don't have that. Or like, I don't know how to

listen to my intuition. Or like, I don't have those gut feelings that people talk about. And that's not true. You do. But what I was thinking about as you were saying that is, my whole life, I've always been an overthinker. And I feel like I've been praised for my logic. And I've been praised for actually thinking things out and not being impulsive. And I feel like that could be kind of like a common story for a lot of people where they feel like if they're just constantly trusting their intuition, then that's impulsive. Because I think society has kind of painted this picture that, no, you're supposed to take your time to think about things. You're supposed to be very logical. You're supposed to

look at all your options and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if you are just like quick to make decisions, and I feel like the people that are quick to make decisions are often making decisions with their intuition and with that gut feeling and really like our culture just doesn't give space for that it's almost like judged on and yeah those people are called impulsive what do you think about that well i think i think if you can't if you can't a decision, it's not time to make a decision, right? So if you don't know the answer, then your answer is just not there yet. You haven't collected all the things you need to make that decision yet, right? So it really is just that simple and just going by your intuition doesn't mean you need to be making on the fly decisions and you always have

to know the answer right there. Sometimes you might sit with a question for a month in your head and you know, you're thinking about it and you're thinking about it. And yeah, that, that just all of a sudden you're like, okay, like this feels really good. And you think about that and you're like, yeah, I'm going to go that direction. And then you can't really think of any reason you wouldn't. So yeah, it kind of just falls into place when it's supposed to, right. And it's not, it's not always going to be an instant thing. But it's like, you know, when you know, and you're no, or, you know, like that corny, corny saying, but it also goes back to that, what you were kind of saying with the praise is like that good girl, right? Like we

were good girls, we were raised to, you know, be a good girl and, and, and do what they say. And, you know, that's gotten a lot of, um, that's gotten while I'll talk about me personally, you know, that, that is where that people pleasing comes from. It's like, don't, don't rock the boat. Don't, don't speak your mind, you know, don't, don't say anything bad. Right. And, and that all goes back to that good girl ties into the people pleaser. It's all related. And I just think if we could really just surround our children with, you know, the courage and encouragement to have their own free thinking skills and to be respectful, but that doesn't mean you have to oblige right there's a difference between respectfully declining and just obliging to not rock the boat and that's really the difference

because yeah and like you pointed out it's not even necessarily about declining or saying no it might just be asking for more time and even that in itself can sometimes be really hard to do because the good girl conditioning at least within me makes me think that well if I ask for more time or if I say like I don't I'm thinking in the case of um having to make a decision with like an authority figure so like when you're at the doctor's office or something I'm just thinking for, if I didn't have an answer yet. And so the correct, the correct response for me would be to ask for more time. The good girl in me says, no, you can't ask for more time because you're going to waste their time. And they're already spread

thin. And I think for me, especially coming from my nursing background, I know what it's like to be that healthcare provider and already just pulled in all directions. And I desperately don't want to be seen as that difficult patient. So I think it's important to understand that just by asking for more time or even by saying no that doesn't mean you're a difficult patient I don't even know where that narrative came from and why so many of us are scared to be called that um but that's definitely been a part of my experience yeah and there's like the responsibility that is not yours to like you you should be encouraged and allowed to express your genuine opinion and request informed information regarding the topic both for and against doing

whatever you're doing at the doctor's office and most times in a doctor's office they have decided what the best path is for you. And they're going to basically almost coerce you into doing what they believe is the next step based on their training or their protocol or whatever. So yeah, like I believe that it is more of a responsibility on healthcare to change in a regard to say, Hey, do you want to do this? Here's the benefit. Here's the con. And you know, this is, that's true informed consent. And that's what I think this whole separation from allopathic medicine and not trusting doctors, that's, that's where this, this, this, one of the roots comes from, right. It's just not being able to get a full answer from the provider regarding all of, all of the good and bad that could come out of a specific treatment. And they just say,

this is what, yeah, this is the answer. This is my prescription for you. And I will say that a lot of people I interact with, they just want that. That is what actually that's what they want. They want to go to a doctor and they want the doctor to say, here, do this and it will fix you. And they say yes. And they question no more. And I think there is I am not in that majority of people. And that's where the problem comes, you know.

Well, because if you are in that camp, that's just perpetuating where, like, who's holding the power. And in the sense of taking radical responsibility, that means you are discussing, but those people that do just go to the doctor and just want to take whatever advice is given and whatever prescription is handed over, those people aren't at a place yet where they can actually handle the responsibility and the consequence and whatever unfolds from that decision. So they continue to let someone else make the decision for them so that when and if something bad or negative happens, they can point the finger to someone else. They're not, they're not ready to point the finger at themselves.

And that's really, really hard. Yes. That is the perfectly explained. You explained that perfectly. Yes. And if I'm being honest, like I don't even know how to tell or like coach someone how to want to do that. Like, I think it has to be a deep desire within you. And I think for me, and it kind of sounds like in your story too like motherhood really was a catalyst for making that desire burn even brighter because now we're responsible for little humans and those little humans are completely dependent on us so like the mama bear instincts are real and I couldn't ignore them so that's kind of where I think the trajectory in my story shifted was motherhood. Would you agree? Like, is that kind of when in the sense of like being comfortable taking radical responsibility? Is that when things shifted for you? Were you kind of on that path before? Yeah, I would say, I would say a little bit of both. And I think a lot of it also traces

back to, to almost like a traumatic or a, it doesn't have to be traumatic. I don't know if I had a traumatic experience, but I would say I had like a shocking experience, you know, and it was not what I expected. Right. And I didn't feel supported in the way that I wanted to from the doctors who I expected. And that all relies on the expectations of their people and not taking responsibility. So it was more like your first birth. Right. My second birth that was precipitous and unmedicated. And yeah, and I wasn't really ready for that at all. The plan was to have an epidural and go in the hospital and have a baby just like I had my first one. And then the whole, the whole world was flipped over. And I think that two things

happen after a woman has that traumatic experience, traumatic being in quotes here, because it's not exactly the right word. I can't find the right word, but, um, unexpected. You either cling to the medical system and you say, they saved me. I could never do this without them. They are my hero. Right. Or you go completely 180 on the other side and you say that was not correct. And I feel either violated or, you know, traumatized or, you know, something's not whole within me because of this experience. I came out broken in some, some regard. And then you're like totally on the other side, you know, of, I don't even want to, I don't even want to interact with them I've lost all trust

right it's because it's a relationship so it's either you're clinging on to that relationship to save you or you're that codependency or you're you are completely separating yourself and saying this relationship no longer serves me right yeah yeah so that's I mean sort of unfortunate in the sense that I think for a lot of people, they almost have to have that nearly traumatic experience to be put at the crossroads of changing the way they make decisions. And that is unfortunate because obviously the world would probably be a much better place if we were all just born taking radical responsibility. And I mean, I think that's why you and I get excited about some of this stuff is because we realize like the responsibility and the influence that we have on the future generation.

And you've already spoken about this a bit about how you are teaching your kids how to make decisions that aren't from outside validation. And that is seriously, like, I think one of the biggest gifts we can give to our kids as a mother. Truly, truly is. Yeah. One other thing I wanted to comment on. I loved when you were speaking about how growing up you were more of a rebel and you would wear different clothes and like watch different movies and the people

pleasing tendencies came up for you in spaces where you were with an authority figure. And I love that distinction because, well, one, I relate to it where the people pleaser in me is still quite strong in the space of an authority figure. But the reason I wanted to bring it up is I think so many people think, oh, well, people pleaser is someone that just like does whatever the people around them are doing. And like, they can't say no. And they are just like followers and not leaders. And I don't even know what else would be part of like the common, the common description of a people pleaser. But I know for myself for the longest time time I didn't identify as one because whatever definition I have at whatever definition I had of a people pleaser I didn't think I fit into and much like

your story it wasn't until I started realizing that no like when I'm making decisions especially in the presence of an authority figure whether that's a parent, a teacher, a doctor, whatever, someone that I feel like I want to be respected by. I think that's what it comes down to at the core for me is wanting to be respected. And I just don't want people thinking differently of me. So obviously, the weight of that importance is higher with, I think, authority figures. Anyways, like I'm just bringing this up because I think actually like painting that picture and sharing that distinction might be helpful for other people that are listening that think, oh, well, like I'm not a people pleaser because I don't just follow the status quo. Like I actually am quite rebellious. And I guess I'm saying like, you can be both, you can be rebellious and still

have people pleasing tendencies. Yeah. No, I totally agree. And I would say I didn't identify that at all until I really looked at my good girl side and realized, oh yeah, I am saying yes when I want to say no yeah just to appease people and then once I stopped doing that it was very easy in um social situations which I now do with ease because that was never really my biggest struggle it really it really comes when when I want to yeah be respected by the authority be um you know just not looked down upon as a you know as a person that doesn't know what you're talking about well and or how the way that how that layers in with good girl conditioning I think I think the two often do go together and I don't think you can really talk about one without talking about

the other and again very similar to your story like I always got good grades in school and I think what happens for people like us is now that becomes an expectation. And so if we don't get a good grade, we feel like we're letting someone down because people are now expecting and we have that reputation. And so you want to maintain that reputation. And I think just looking back to my story, that is a big piece of where that desire and craving for respect came from. And I'm only now able to kind of see through it and work on it. But for the longest time, yeah, it was about maintaining this reputation and feeling like if I failed, for lack of a better word, I'd be letting someone down. And the silliest part about that is like, in my mind, in the example of getting good grades in school, in my mind,

like failure was a B plus if I knew I could have gotten an A. And to hold that pressure for as many years as I did, it's actually really sad. And I have a lot of compassion for that younger version of myself because that was really hard work. That was really heavy. And I can see so clearly now that it was only me putting that pressure on me. I didn't have parents that were telling me that, oh, you can only like have this if you get good grades. Like I was never getting external pressure from somewhere else. It was always this like internal pressure from me, from a place of wanting to be respected and fitting in. And again, hindsight's 20-20. It's easy to say that now. When I was in the middle of it, it felt like life or death. Yeah, no, and that just kind of, it just brings stuff

up for me, like just wondering, like, yeah, like the fitting in thing, for sure. But yeah, is it almost like, it kind of reminds me of how it's like that it's a survival instinct, right? Like humans were part of villages and communities, right? And you needed to fit in to survive. If you were outcast from your village, you had no food, you had no water, right? So it's kind of like almost, if you have those really strong instincts that would have helped you survive, you actually would, you know, that's how we came here today through all of our bloodlines. Like we have these really good, strong survival skills that now get transmuted into totally different things in this modern day society. Right. And, and that's just wild. Well, it's just so much bigger than us. Right. And if we actually start having awareness

on generational trauma and actually like looking at our ancestors and like just our lineage and stuff and thinking back to just women in general for many, many years, not that long ago, it wasn't safe for them to speak their truth, right? It wasn't safe for them to disagree. It wasn't safe for them to even be seen as like a healer or a leader or an expert in some capacity. Like they were literally like way back in the day, like burned for those kinds of actions. And so that type of trauma, like the body literally does keep score. Like that type of trauma is within us. Yes. And the consciousness, like the universal consciousness knows that too, you know?

Yeah. And so just like, again, having some of that awareness and it's one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it. But at least for me, having that awareness helps me understand maybe like why I am the way I am or at least why I was the way I was and it's not just as simple of like looking at like your childhood um upbringing and like reparenting yourself and like doing inner child healing like it's not necessarily about our parents it can go so much deeper than that. And there's just like, again, back to gardening, there's so much beneath the soil, right? Like I'm sure you can speak to this.

If the soil isn't in a good condition and it doesn't have the right, I can't even spit words out here because I don't know what I'm talking about, but like, there's just so much under the surface that we don't know about, but it has an impact on what comes out. Right. Does that make sense? Yeah. No. Yeah. Like there's a difference between soil and dirt, right? Like soil is alive. Dirt is dirt. Whoa. Mind blown. I didn't know that. Soil grows things, right? Soil is like actually alive. It is full of an entire ecosystem below the surface like you're like you're talking about. And, and there's the things that build things up. And there's the things that break things down. And there's, you know, there's the whole the whole cycle of life down there. And, and yeah, it's, it's, it is, it's, it's really crazy that we are so hard on ourselves when really what you're, you know, what you're saying, what I'm hearing is that, you know, a lot of this is not in our control. It's, we are, we are fighting against certain instincts that are hardwired into our, our brains, our primal brains. Right. And so it, it is, it is, it is changing by us rewiring this and changing this

and, and, and mentoring this to our kids by example. And, and we are changing the future. We are, we are killing generations of, of coding, you know, that we've had for so long. And we are here. We are in modern day society. We are able to change this now. We do not need to have these same survival instincts. We are able to move past them, right? We are able to bring in a new earth type feeling for what's necessary here today and now. And, and I think it's just, it's, it's deep work. It's good work and it's going to serve everybody. You know, it's, it will become the majority. I hope. I hope too. I feel like we're, we're, we're going in the right direction. At least it feels like that.

And I don't know if that's just because that's kind of the circle of the circle of people that I've put myself in, but it does feel hopeful. I think more and more people are, quote unquote, waking up and becoming aware to kind of everything and just thinking about how you are literally in your car right now driving to the beach with your kids and your kids are in the car listening to you say all that like that is powerful that is yeah freaking amazing that even these conversations are being spoken out loud because i don't think they were 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. So that in itself is, is changing things just by speaking with stuff out loud. Yeah. Super cool. Anyway, this was really cool. We went in a lot of different directions and I knew we would, I was really excited for this conversation because I knew it wouldn't just be about gardening and I knew it wouldn't just be about motherhood I knew we would get into things so I'm glad we did I'm literally mind blown about the dirt versus soil thing and I feel like this is probably an elementary question but now I need to know like

how do you know if you have dirt or if you have soil? Well, dirt is just like pretty much like a sand, right? Like a sand consistency. And like if you dug your hands into it and you picked it up, you'd find nothing living. There would be no moisture, right? It would just be like dry dirt. Yeah. Okay.

Top soil is like a perfect way for parking lot. And then soil, you pick it up with the opposite. So that would be that versus like soil. That's actually really cool. That would be like you dig your hands into it. It's like black and it's like, you know, you can squeeze it and it kind of like holds its shape. And it's like just full of all these webs of fungus and bacteria. That is so cool.

It's actually really, really cool. I'm sure you could. Why don't we close with that? Why don't you tell everyone just a little bit about what you're currently offering and where they can find you and just more about your gardening course and all of that? Yeah, so I am going to relaunch my course it's called backyard veggie gardening made easy my first cohort just finished so around the time this episode comes out i believe the first week of june is when the launch will start so you can find me on instagram at gina's gardens

and um i usually have at least one or two freebies linked in my bio there too. So you can collect a little bit of gardening knowledge. And yeah, check me out. Come over to the dark side of the garden and learn how to grow your own groceries. Yeah. Off where we were talking about how in your gardening course, it's not just about okay like here's like steps one through ten of how to do it it's it's truly about how do you actually start trusting your intuition it's about intuitive gardening and autonomous gardening and taking radical responsibility it's literally everything we just talked about in this conversation you've thrown into your gardening course and that's amazing yeah and it's and it's doing it like I have like a simple growth method. So each letter stands for

something else. And it's basically how do you could do some one little thing each day for 10 minutes a day. And, and then that that's, you did your garden for the day because we are all busy moms and we all have a lot to do and it shouldn't be like another chore on your to-do list. It should be actually a place where you go to like find refuge and find solace and, you know, sit in your garden and even meditate a little bit as you water your plants. Or it's just, it's, it's still part of the day, not a day like, Oh, I got to go out to the garden and go do this. It's like, no, I can't wait to get to my garden. So I encourage you to put lots of flowers, make it pretty. And yeah, we do everything without chemicals too. So I do teach people about

chemicals, but then I also give you tons of ways to garden completely chemical free because I really don't find, I don't really find the point of gardening and spending all that hard work if the food is just going to be covered in the same stuff it is at the grocery store totally yeah it's definitely beneficial to you might as well let my kid eat the red licorice then yeah uh no I love that and I love like that you brought up that it should be something that you look forward to doing and not just something on your to do list and actually like treating the garden as a source of soul care. And that place for peace and reconnecting to yourself and reconnecting to nature.

Like those are things that I'm slowly trying to incorporate more routinely in my life. And yeah, I think there's just so much medicine in gardening. And it's beautiful because you are teaching people how to do it without feeling like failures and feeling inadequate and feeling like, oh, well, I don't have the garden that I see in the beautiful home and garden magazines. Like that's not the goal here. No. And if I like encourage people to start with containers, you know, if you want to and have

a few pots and, you know, just tend to them and nourish them and see what they give back to you. And it's really cool. And it's also a really easy way to reconnect with nature because a lot of times it feels like, oh, I need to go out on a hike and I need to drive an hour to the hiking place and pack the kids up and bring lunch. No, you can just walk outside to your backyard, even your patio if you have an apartment or whatever and reconnect that way.

Trim a plant, water the the plant fertilize the plant like you know get your hands in the soil and and you can reconnect right there on that level you can include your kids and you don't need to pack lunch like it's it's it's an easy way to get your hands get your hands dirty and you know and feel feel the power of the earth and like what she can grow and what she can do. Yeah. Well, and again, it's just how do we make this more simple? I think so often we're trying to overcomplicate things and we're trying to truthfully write someone else's story. And it's like, can we just like stay in our own lane here, stay in our own garden?

Yeah. And just do what we can actually manage. Because like you said at the beginning, sometimes less is more. And when there's like less things in your big plot of garden, they might actually grow better than being with a bunch of other things and getting overcrowded. One more thing that I just thought of as you were speaking to all that, is just this theme of abundance. And in my own experience, this is something I've been really working through the past couple months of healing from a very deep scarcity mindset. And something that I've been doing to really help me move through that is finding sources of abundance outside of money in all areas of my life. And for me, that has truly been in nature.

That has been looking at the sun and even on cloudy days, knowing that the sun is still going to come back. Or looking at in the winter, there's no leaves on the trees, but like, you know, there's going to be leaves on the trees in the spring. Like, you know, it's coming back. And like, yeah, it's just again, back to just how, how much healing can be done by getting your hands in the dirt and just like being in nature and learning from the great mother herself. It's amazing. So thank you for doing the work you do. Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. Okay. Before you go, I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. If you were thinking of anyone while listening, please send it their way. And if anything

resonated with you or you love these conversations please subscribe and leave a review this really helps the podcast algorithms put my show in front of more people just like you and the last thing I would love nothing more than hearing from you so say hi dm me on instagram and give me a follow at nicolepasvir until next time So say hi, DM me on Instagram and give me a follow at Nicole Pasvir. Until next time.