WTF is in Retrograde?! Using Astrology to Survive Motherhood

scottie  0:06  
Scott, welcome to the momplex Podcast. I am your host. Scotty durett, my passion and purpose is to help other moms just like me rediscover their joy and step into their confidence as their kids grow up. Join me as I share my own experiences, my own mistakes and aha moments as I navigate this incredible journey of motherhood while trying not to lose my identity. If you are a modern day mama who is ready to live for herself, not just for her kids, and knows that is the best possible gift you could give, then you are in the right place. This is momplex. Today.

Scottie Durrett  0:42  
Is a very special conversation. My guest Lauren degolla, aka chief expansion officer and bad ass mama. She is a total truth teller. She is dropping the kind of raw, unfiltered realness we live for on this show. We're talking about the kind of choices no one prepares you for as a mom, the ones that wreck you and rebuild you, the ones the world loves to judge but doesn't have to live through what happens when you choose your health over having another baby. What do you do when sickness and cancer comes back again, and how do you honor your soul and still be the mom you want to be? This episode covers all of it, and it is a gut punch and a heart healer. We go there postpartum, purpose, pressure, grief, growth and yep, even a little astrology, because sometimes the answers live in your chart, not in your checklist. If you've ever felt torn, tired or like you cannot choose you, then this is the conversation you want to listen to. Take a breath. Sit back. Let's get into it. You're not alone, Mama, not even close. Let's go. Sit down wherever the fuck you are. Grab your coffee, because it's worth your time. You don't need to multitask during this one. But my special guest, Lauren degolla, she and I are actually in a certification program together, but we found each other and felt super connected. And I'm so excited for y'all to meet her. She is an incredible badass, and you're going to hear all about her story and how she's going to share everything with you and help you become a badass. But I also she's a chief expansion officer, and we're going to dive into that first, because that's how you identify yourself. And I want everybody to know exactly what that is. So please take the mic and introduce yourself to everybody.

Lauren Degolia  2:31  
Hello, mamas. I'm so happy to be here and talk about badassery and expansion. It's like my favorite topic. I could talk about it all day, and I think you have to be a badass if you're looking for your next level of expansion like it's a prerequisite. And I kind of started this journey that I'm on reading you are a badass by Jen Sincero, like, back in the day. And I was like, Oh, yeah. This is Wait, this is me, and I call myself your chief expansion officer, because I think everyone needs that advisor at the their table, their board room of life, helping to provide guidance insights, both practical and maybe not so practical, in a way that feels like approachable and doable. And so my special Spidey skill is I have married the energetics of astrology with now the powerful subconscious conscious tooling of your mind to help you create a more expansive life that feels more like you. Okay, we're going to

Scottie Durrett  3:33  
talk about this for a little bit because I've dabbled a little bit in astrology. It's very dense. It's a lot of information. If you have any pull to it, I say, listen to that. You're being pulled for a reason. And it could be that confirmation that you need to finally say, oh, right, that okay, now I understand why I am the way I am. And I felt like once I started to learn about astrology, I could embrace my quirks a little bit and not try to filter and shift, because I understood that that's kind of my makeup. So how do you marry that, if you're working with somebody, how do you marry the astrology with the conscious and subconscious? I guess. How are you fitting this into somebody's everyday life?

Lauren Degolia  4:18  
Well, I'm starting with something that I call the cosmic cheat code, and let's just give the mamas a breakdown of what basic astrology is and why my flavor of it is very different and a more simple approach to all the cosmic chatter that is out there. So first of all, I really only give two shits about your sun, your moon and your rising sign, my moon sign was the thing that cracked me open in the depths of a major identity shift, and we can talk about that. I know you have some of that planned for our time together, but your sun sign is Your external energy. It's how you identify in the world, and a lot of astrology has been canned. As this personality test, or or generality test, where it puts us in a box with everyone else. And that's that's not the point. I'm sorry to break the burst the bubble here, but that's not the point of this work. So I'm a Capricorn son, which means, like, I do really well in boardrooms, I do really well having a high standard of excellence, I do really well with standards and process and being really grounded, especially in the workplace and truly like that's what burnt me out from Nordstrom corporate after six years of grinding hardcore on the inside your moon sign, which is the more feminine part of you, is how your internal dialog goes. So Sun, Moon, right? Moon sign is directly connected to your subconscious mind. It's how you process your emotions. So I have tried, and I'm not joking. I consider myself a somewhat intelligent woman that has done a lot of cool shit in her life, but I have tried for four years to get these two concepts to marry together, and it wasn't until anchored, and these last, like six months of being like, I'm going to figure this out, that I was really able to, like, make it stick. So I've created this, like, intro to how this works together. And one concept that I have really taught for a number of years now, which is this concept of energetic neutrality, and I wove that into a seven day private podcast experience within the cosmic cheat code. So I've written a decoding guide for all 12 Moon signs. Do you know your moon sign?

Scottie Durrett  6:35  
Sis? There's a Pisces in there somewhere, but I think that's sun. I don't know when's your birthday. I can tell you what your sun sign is, okay, October 20, 1976

Lauren Degolia  6:45  
so you're probably a Libra sun. Okay? I have a moon sign calculator, actually, that my husband, who's an engineer, wrote for me. You can just go to stop. I know we're such nerds. Moon dot beyond your horoscope.com, because I want people to stop reading their fucking horoscopes, like it's a waste of time. You're waiting for an external something to validate you. Like we're not doing that anymore. We're creating our our reality, our expansion with our own free will, and we're going to stop subscribing to that side of the woo, woo conversation. Great. Love it. I'm game. I'm game for that. So we know our sun now. We know our moon now. And if you want to start seeing yourself and the reality that you're living in every single day, start looking at how your moon sign shows up in your conversations, in your work life, in your interpersonal relationships, and how you're talking to yourself every day, and how you're feeling about yourself every day, about how you feel, what's possible and so cosmic cheat code, which is kind of my intro. This is me. This is what I do. This is how I do it. I'll let you drop the link in the show notes below $45 but really like, I want every woman in the world to know this part of herself in a practical, applicable way. And then your rising sign. Sorry to interrupt you. I know you're going to jump in there. Your rising sign is what I call your cosmic growth edge. So when we talk about our big three, like, leaning into the energy of what your rising sign wants you to learn about yourself. Like, that's also an interesting conversation. I don't over index on that. I'm like, really just want people to tune into the moon because of, like, two main reasons. Number one, what I just told you about emotions. And number two, the moon is flowing through our life every single day. And the full moon and the new moon are cosmic checkpoints that you can just take a hot second to be like, where am I at? What am I doing? Yeah, where am I at? What do I need, which we don't do?

Scottie Durrett  8:36  
What a great tool for a busy as shit mom, who is out of practice checking in with herself. This is a great way, and you have a reminder, right? Like, oh shit, I forgot to check in with myself. The moon is in my face. Let me go figure this out. And you know you and I were in anchored together and just tied to what we've learned. You know that 95% of what we're doing is controlled by our subconscious. Isn't it nice to get to know your subconscious a little bit better? And you just gave us a great way, a cheat code to do that, right? Like, that's our moon sign, to really get to know that version of us that is literally not interested in external validation, right? It's from the core so, you know. And I mean, I get a lot of moms who tell me, I don't have any time. I'm too busy, and they're on autopilot. This is a nice way to kind of hit the brakes on that and just check in with yourself.

Lauren Degolia  9:25  
Yeah. See the seven day podcast experience that is the cosmic cheat code is like 10 to 13 minutes a day. There's one day that's 16 minutes that you can literally plug in while you're driving between errands, while you're getting yourself ready. And every day covers a different topic, and you literally can use it week over week, if that feels supportive to you, to just continue to glean insights and awareness and neutrality about the things that are feeling really dense in your life. Amazing.

Scottie Durrett  9:52  
So once they have access to the podcast, they have access to it, and they can keep replaying it. That's beautiful and it she's always walking. She's always driving. And she's making she's folding laundry, just tossing your air pods, and you could listen to it, which I think is okay. I'm gonna put all the links in the show notes. So as you're as you are discovering astrology like and you're understanding your own cosmic chart, and you're understanding your own cheat codes. Did this help you make peace with who you are, and where did this come in your life, in relation to you becoming a mom and being a part of Nordstrom corporate, I feel like you've had a couple of massive Stonehenge level pillars in your life. Where did astrology squeeze its way in there?

Lauren Degolia  10:34  
I mean, it was the thing that saved me, truly. So let's just back up to mom, Lauren, which was now 13 and a half years ago. It's hard to imagine I have a teenager walking this earth. I always have felt a sense of intuition about myself like a knowingness, right? But I think my current Facebook, because I'm not really on there anymore, says the only thing I really believe is in duct tape, because I wasn't ever really super religious. I have a very Catholic mom, and, like, I subscribed to that, and then I didn't subscribe to that at 12 years old, and then, like, I had a kid, and I was like, wow. Like, this is a whole new world, and I ended up with pretty severe postpartum depression, and it was kind of the first part of me that experienced an emotional surge. I would call it an emotional surge like that. Breastfeeding was really fucking hard for me, and, you know, I didn't have a sense of my spirituality or belief then, and looking back, I wish I did. So fast forward just a few years, got through that, landed my dream job at Nordstrom corporate. I had many people in Seattle and within actually Nordstrom senior leadership that were like, Lauren, your skills aren't transferable here. And I was like, oh, okay, she was the head of talent management at the time, and we met at our mom's group. So picture this. I'll just rewind for a hot sec. So corporate Lauren had no idea, like no friend moms that were friends, that were moms, and so we signed up for this thing that's been a revolutionary program in Seattle for let me just add 13 years. We'll go with 38 years, because it was like 25 years when we first started, called peps pregnancy and early parenting. And essentially it's like parenting 101, you get, like, stuck in a cohort with people, and you have a leader, and they walk you through for 12 weeks in early in early parenthood. So the group that we got into had all of our kids were within like, three weeks of each other. They were all born within three weeks. So peps is, like, fantastic, and to this day, we are still part of our peps group 13 and a half years. Are you really? Yeah, they're amazing people, and I adore them. Ah, we sit down for this intro session where it's like all of Seattle, you know, you're coming from all different neighborhoods of Seattle, and I sit down next to this woman, and she's lovely, and her last name is Lauren, and so we kind of connect on that and like, I don't look pregnant at that point, and she doesn't really look pregnant at that point. We're like, why are you here? And then we're like, oh, we're both pregnant. Isn't that so cute? And she's like, oh, yeah, I work for Nordstrom. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, we make this instant connection, like, instantaneous and and she's like, Yeah, at that time I was in biotechnology, I used to work in drug manufacturing and device manufacturing from a quality assurance perspective, which is like, so nerdy compared to kind of what I do now. So she's like, you're never going to get a job there. I'm like, Cool. Thank you so much for that. I totally understand how people can't see the translation of skills. So, you know, our friendship kind of buds over the course of our first year of motherhood together. She's in a different peps group than I am. Our peps group gets going. We're in the trenches of new mom hood. I'm in the trenches of postpartum somehow, as we all do, we make it through. And by the time my kids, like, two or three, I had an intro into Nordstrom corporate. So here I am, like, I remember screaming in my garage, like, oh my god, I did it some. And it was like, literally, one of those things that the universe was like, how did that happen? Because not,

Speaker 1  14:21  
how did she elbow me out of the way? Hold on. I was not paying attention. I was

Lauren Degolia  14:25  
like, wait. People were like, half asleep in my interview and, like, it was like, all these weird things. And then they called, and they're like, well, he'd like to offer you a position. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? And so I started drinking the Kool Aid. And I started like, and I had this little tiny kid at home, two and a half years old, three years old, my mom was my full time caregiver, and I was like, I am going to make something of this opportunity, like I am running with this dream situation. So fast forward, five and a half years. Got to fly on private jets. Worked elbow to elbow with some of the Nordstrom brothers. Had an amazing, like, amazing opportunity, went to a gala, like, was very integral with you. Were in it. I was in it. Okay? I was learning technology. Oh, and by the way, I was learning how to be a technologist at the same time, which, I mean, that was never on my bingo card of life, to become, I'm married to an engineer, but I'm like, this is not this is what. And even my husband, when I was like, Yeah, I'm gonna go do this, he's like, you're gonna do what? And so I like, I made it, like, I figured out how to do it, and I made it, and I got really gritty. And you know what I also got is super fucking burnt out. I work 60 hour to 70 hour to 80 hour weeks. I commuted an hour each way to downtown Seattle. I subscribed to all the toxic corporate BS stuff. I remember I would get in an Uber so again, this is like almost 10 years ago, right? So I was also doing, like, all the internal stuff. And at one point, my OB GYN was like, hey, Lauren, I think you're gonna you need some mental health support on board here. Like, I think something would be, it would be helpful for you to talk to someone. Here's a list. Because I would just go and I would, I would cry, like I would just cry, and I was like, I don't know what's going on. I don't like, what am I doing wrong? Because it must be me doing something wrong if I can't cut it in this environment. And I constantly feel like I'm being cut down, like all the time. So got a therapist, and I would sit there and say, please just tell me how to surrender. Please just tell me how to put the knives down, like I'm so tired of fighting. Yeah, oh my god. And she'd look at me, she's still my therapist to this day, and she'd look at me and she's like, well, we're gonna figure that out. But I was like, doing all the, you know, parenting conversation, all the marriage conversation, all the personal stuff, all the toxic work environment. And so I started, like, following an astrologer on Instagram. And I was like, Oh, wait, some of this kind of makes sense. And I was like, but not it doesn't make sense because I am more practical, like, I'm a trained scientist. I was going to be a physician, so, like I got my underground undergrad in by the bio sciences, and I rage quit my job the end of 2019 because I had a me too. Moment, someone in leadership touched me, asked me for drinks, and then spent almost a year retaliating against me, and my soul was completely crushed, and I was like, fuck this shit. I'm out and at that at that point, my brain had me convinced that I only had two options to stay in this toxicity and endure more of the bullshit, which it knew it had no more capacity for, or to leave and trust somehow that the universe was going to have my back, and that was the only mantra that, like actually brought me peace in that moment, was the universe is going to have my back, and I had no idea what that meant at that time.

Scottie Durrett  18:14  
Thank you for opening up and sharing all of that. You know, one of my main missions with this podcast is to have incredibly strong moms and women like you on here who aren't afraid to say what you've gone through. Because I think a lot of us have been in similar situations where we we only change when it's a reaction to something that isn't going well, right, whereas, you know, you even mentioned from the very beginning, like breastfeeding was freaking hard, right? And so from the beginning of this journey, you were already thinking, I'm the problem, I'm the problem, and just kind of powering through. And I believe women are the reason why we are the ones that have the babies. Are because we are very strong, and we have a very high threshold for pain, and we do have this incredible internal battle. How can I be better? How can I change? How can I I'm the problem? It's me, right? And then what happens is, even though we change, even though we do all the things have, all we have the best car, the best house, the best Jean size, the best holiday Christmas card still, it's we're still human, and we're still on a battle to figure out why we're here and what we're doing. So let me just try and dig into this a little bit, because I'm so thankful you had some key people along your path, right your OBGYN to kind of bring this to the forefront and tell you, like, hey, that there's some red flags I'm seeing. I think you should get some help. And then you found a therapist, somebody you clearly are still in a relationship with. So it's obviously a good one. But I think there's this true story that it's, it's comes more than one thing, right? You have more than one thing that you've grown into that's helping you. So can you talk about like, how did you allow that perception of yourself to shift? Right? Because in the beginning, you were like, I'm a badass. I'm going to do everything I can do it all by myself, and I am going to figure it out. Now you still are figuring shit out, but you're inviting and allowing some people to come in. It's been a long time. But how can you, if you can look back and kind of connect the dots, can you think of anything where you're like, Oh, I see how that really helped me. Because maybe there's a mom out there who's sitting here thinking, Could I do I need help? Could I accept help?

Lauren Degolia  20:36  
It's really hard as a badass of any magnitude to think that you need to be vulnerable enough to ask for help. And you know, if we go back even to the breastfeeding, because I know a lot of women struggle with breastfeeding, and it's very hard, oh my God, and it hurts, and it's okay if it hurts, gosh, I went to the La Leche League in Seattle when Declan was first born every Monday. Like, that was my homework, right? And I was supplementing with formula because my kid was hungry, like, all the time, and she's like, your kid's getting too much weight. You need to stop that. And here I was asking for help. And like, obviously one of our most vulnerable moments is women, right? And you're gonna sit there and criticize me like, I'm not doing it right. Like, fuck off. Like, I'm sorry. And so we get we get scared to ask for help. We get scared to be vulnerable, because we don't want to experience that kind of criticism and rejection when we literally, like, it's all we can do to get our kid in the car. Like, this is the perfect analogy to drive across Seattle, to sit here with 10 other women with our tits out, hoping that we can figure this the fuck out. Okay, like you're no more vulnerable, like you may as well be in birth, birth, child, birth. At the moment, it's the same level of vulnerability. Could you feel more insecure in that moment? Could you literally have more self doubt in that moment? Right? If I fast forward and think, sorry, I'm taking you on kind of my little journey with me here through this love it. If I fast forward to my Nordstrom story about rage quitting, I did try and take legal action. I did have a number of people who observed what happened to me, and I did have HR involved, and I did have all of the things. And then I also quickly had no one who would corroborate my story. And so it's almost the same kind of experience where women wouldn't stand up with me to say, This is fucked up. And I've never made that connection Scotty until right here. So this is, this is, we knew this was gonna be powerful. But, yeah, we knew this was good. Oh my gosh, literally, the same energy. And so I had a lawyer here in Seattle who was like, Lauren, you 100% I mean, I was a high achiever. I had two promotions in like three years. I was getting, like, bonuses out the ying yang, like, I mean, I was the pinnacle of the definition of success on the outside, and I felt like everything was a house of cards on the inside. And so when I needed and wanted some of these people to come forward and, you know, just say, hey, like this happened, and I witnessed this, nobody would do that. So it was like a double gut punch, right? Because I just blew up my identity as a corporate badass, and I wanted somebody to help me, and nobody was there to do that. So I invested about $20,000 in legal fees, which was a lot when you don't have a job. It was essentially all of my PTO that got paid out at that time, and two weeks later, I turned 40 years old, which just feels fucked, or felt fucked. I was like, this is how I'm starting my 40s. This is going to be a great decade, because I already don't want to experience this, and I already didn't want to experience everything I had. And I'm sitting there going, I have no idea what to do. I don't want to go back to corporate America in any way, shape or form. It is toxic. It is this, it is that. And two weeks later, it was literally January 2 or third, because my birthday is Christmas Eve. I was registering for an astrology school scholarship because I couldn't afford shit at that time. I Yeah,

Scottie Durrett  24:24  
we're in this beautiful place where you can look back and say, you know, I'm glad it didn't work out at Nordstrom. I'm glad that didn't work out. I'm glad I faced this challenge. I'm glad, you know, it's Hindsight is 2020 I'm just so thankful though, that you also just never gave up, right? I think it's easy for a mom specifically to look around that La Leche room and think, Gosh, that mom's happy. She's sleeping through the night. She's not having any problems. They're not having Okay, they're not crying, they don't have shit on the back of their shirt, like I went to work one day with like they're not a rage eating. Cheese it? Yeah, in the bathroom, yeah, totally, totally, right? And I think so there's this interesting there's this interesting place where I believe a mom can live, where she lives in this non reality that she's put herself in, like, I have it all together. See my hair, it's beautiful. See my face. I clean the baseboards. But that's not really how her life is looking. It was like we kind of put forth in real life, the Instagram polished photo, like I am great on the outside, but on the inside, the House of Cards, we're falling apart and we're we are leaking confidence on the daily right, but also just trying to muster through with a bottle of wine and some, you know, housewives extra coffee marathons, extra coffee housewives, I just think what happens is we then we hold back to say how it really is going, right? Like I'm so happy that you guys are having a good time, but I'm also fucking jealous and I'm pissed I'm having a hard time, right? And I think there's this interesting place where we don't want to admit to ourselves that this motherhood thing, this job thing, this life thing, isn't really as good as we thought we dreamed it was going to be. I mean, for the longest time, I love being I love my kids. I did not like being a mom, and for me to admit that, that I didn't like being at home with my kids, raising them, in the very beginning, I couldn't say that for years because of the backlash that I was going to get from my mom, from social media, from everybody else. But then there was that one mom who said, Oh my god, same same cheese girl, yeah. Like, and that's all I needed to know. Like, oh, I'm not alone here. So I just thank you for sharing your story and that it didn't even work out the first time it didn't work out the second time. Right? Like, you still are fighting, but you're it's like, how can we make sure that we don't give up the fight, that how can we make sure that we are still working at the end of the day, no matter what hat we're wearing, if it's the corporate hat, the mom hat, anything that we're still trying to be ourselves.

Lauren Degolia  27:03  
I have the answer one of them. Oh, okay, great, not just silver bullet answer, because I don't believe in those. But I wanted so much to be seen. I wanted so much for people to see me. And that was my biggest learning as to why I was stomping my feet and making such a scene about how I was being perceived by Nordstrom and the leadership and all that and why I left. I wanted somebody to say what happened to you was fucked up. Yeah, I am so sorry that that I wanted somebody to have the compassion for me that I at that moment, could not even have for myself. And so it's crazy that us as moms and women and all the like, all the roles that we play, we're willing to bear the crush, the crushing vice of life, and then there's this deep down part of us, and it might not be everyone, and if it's not you, Scotty, like, maybe I'm talking out my ass here, but there's going to be a mom out there that that resonates with this. I just want somebody to really like let me know that they understand where I'm at and what it's actually taking to navigate through this.

Scottie Durrett  28:12  
100% it's a basic human right. We want to feel See, we want to belong, we want to feel loved. We want to get nutrition Right. Like there's just basic human needs. I think it's why everybody places a lot of weight on how many likes they're getting. It's not because they're vain, it's not because they're dicks. It's because we're like, oh my gosh, I'm in a house by myself. I'm only talking in poop schedules and laundry times. I want to put something out there and have another person, right? Or what we're having for dinner. I want somebody else to say, Yeah, girl, I see you. So I think there's that awareness is really powerful, because it's, you know, we all are chasing something, and it gets hidden it, and I mean this in the most loving way, but it's like, I want to lose 10 pounds. Why? Yeah, I want to look fucking hot my bikini. Why? You know, if you dig deeper, I think a lot of the times, if we really, really did the work, it would come back to a lot of I want to feel seen. I want to be connected. I want to feel like I belong. I go, you know, I don't want to be on the outside looking in on my life anymore. And if I don't have these external things, I still feel like I'm on the outside. So when you're you know now that we the being seen, and it's a you know, when you're learning this about yourself and you're realizing, and astrology was a really helpful tool for you to realize this, like it's not outside of you, it's not the horoscope, it's not the 10 pounds, I'm sorry to say, it's not the size of the genes, I'm sorry to say it's not the car in the driveway, but when you do the work to identify that lack right, like where you are really feeling it, then you can start to understand how you can give it to yourself. Did astrology help you understand that about you?

Lauren Degolia  29:55  
Yeah, so my moon sign, and that's why I focus mostly on the moon, right? Like my. Sees Moon is super sensitive, like it, she feels a lot of stuff. She's also highly intuitive. We love that about her, but it really was the mirror of like, what, like, what is real here, right? You and I know because of the work and the certification that we're working through, like, not everything that we're telling ourselves or feeling like is actually real. It just feels really real and raw and hard. And so I went way down the astrology rabbit hole. I know more about astrology than I care to admit, but I also figured out like, I'm really fucking good at holding space for people like, wow. Because the astrology I studied was esoteric astrology, which is psychology based. So it gave like I started doing readings, and I started channeling information, and I, like, a whole different side of me, like that. I never, I mean, I was tapping her down so hard, because deep down, I knew, right? And that whole witnessing yourself when you want someone else to witness you like, I couldn't witness myself. I couldn't witness how miserable I was, or, you know, how the good girl like was always trying to contort herself. I used to call myself gummy because I would contort myself into all these different versions of me for whomever I was trying to appease. But yeah, I mean, astrology just gave me a sense of the time. The energetic, I call it, the cosmic tides of life, the energetic ebbs and flows, where different themes were coming up and showing me things. And if I would say astrology, if you're 35 or older, is a really powerful tool to look back on your life. It's powerful for everyone, but the more you go, the further down you go in your lifetime, the more insights you can you can glean. And so I had a theme around health. I'm a two time ovarian cancer survivor, and that was very much in my astrological chart, around my Saturn cycles, my Pisces Moon was obviously really big, and then my cancer rising, of really learning how to take care and honor myself was, like, the third piece that I'm like, damn, like, that's a lot.

Scottie Durrett  32:10  
That's a lot. And so I just want, I do want to touch on, you know what you just said? You're a two time ovarian cancer survivor. What is something that you want moms to know about the power of their body? Right? Like that, understanding the relate the communication, right? Like understanding how important it is for us to include our body in our daily conversation, even if the signs it's sending us might feel negative, right? Like, even if the signs are I'm not happy, or I'm not sleeping through the night, or, you know, there's some pain in my body, you know, it's like, I think there's this, this connection that gets lost as moms are working so hard to be selfless for everybody else, like you said, we're we know how to give. We know how to see people. We know how to hold people. We know how to carry people, but then we, over time, we lose touch with how to see and care and set boundaries for ourselves. Can you talk about the importance of our bodies in this relationship? Yeah.

Lauren Degolia  33:14  
I mean, our bodies are always telling us, right? And I have never read the book the body keeps score. But if, if there is something a health issue in your life, I would strongly recommend that you look at those types of tools and modalities. I have a weird relationship with ovarian cancer, especially what I feel about it, which is a weird thing to say. I know first happened at 21 in college, like I went to the Yeah, I was really young. I had one ovary removed then, so I only had one child, because that's all, that's all I was meant to have. My child was two and a half. I had just started at Nordstrom. My child was two and a half, and I had to have a full hysterectomy, because, essentially, my ovarian cancer markers started going through the roof. And my doctor at the time was like, Lauren, you had the perfect pregnancy, and you have a great kid. And, I mean, of course, my child and his darling little cancer moon, like, he's like, Mom, I want all the brothers and sisters I could possibly have. And like, he's angry with me for this, but to get back to your and I'm like, he gets it, but it's also like, it's, it's hard, but to get back to your question, we got to tune in. We got to pause and we got to we got to learn to listen. Because you're going to all of these things around our subconscious mind, as, you know, and around astrology as I'm going to drop like it's hot right here. It's all about patterns and cycles. We learn the same thing over and over. It keeps coming to the surface over and over and over until we decide we're going to change it. You're going to get the toxic boss. You're going to have the toxic relationship. You're going to have the same fight with your kid. You're like, you're going to have the same health issue. If you decide, like. If you if you haven't done the listening and the shift of perspective and the like witnessing right? Like this is where astrology really taught me to detach from the story I was telling myself about all the resentment that I had lived through and the resentment that I was carrying because there was some heavy shit. Like, I mean, yeah, I had ovarian cancer. Yeah, I rage quit my job. But there was a lot more than that in the in the rear view. And you know, that was my whole survive. I can survive. I'm gritty, I'm a badass. Like, that was the hard part of me. But what astrology started to do for me was the softening, the softening of, like, Wait, my journey is really unique. Wait, like, it all didn't happen to me, and what I teach is it happened for me. It actually brought me I'm gonna even just say to this moment, having this conversation with you today that's giving women out there the perspective of like, wow. What if I What if I could accept it as it happened for me instead of to me? Like, what would that feel like? It would feel like power instead of shit,

Scottie Durrett  36:03  
yeah, and unstuckness, right? What does the frustration do? It just tells you that you can't do something right. And I love that you have that grit, because it's probably what got you the job at Nordstrom, right, that everybody told you that you couldn't have. It's the reason why you know you have the strength to survive cancer twice, and why, you know, and deep down, the universe does have your back, and that things, it allows you to have this trust that, yes, your son might have wanted three and four siblings. That's not the journey. And there's a reason why. Maybe we don't know the reason yet. And I believe the same thing. I, you know, I think for a long time, I really had this one definition of pain. Pain meant that I was failing at something. Pain meant that something was wrong with me and that it needed to go away as quickly as possible. How did I need to contort to make the pain go away? Maybe that pain was even someone talking shit about me or me about not being or my kid not being invited to the birthday party. Now that I've I'm learning how to grow up a little bit. I'm still, I'm starting to see pain as information. Like, why? What is this coming? What is this trying to grab my attention to focus on? You know, it's like, why am I staying up till two in the morning, scrolling Tiktok. What am I getting from that? What am I missing in my life? And, you know, it's not that I'm a bad mom and I can't wake up and have energy. What am I missing in my everyday life that I can give to myself? It's very it's a beautiful reframe. It takes practice, just like going to the gym holding a plank, right? You don't get it first time, but when you learn what it is you need to thrive. You can then start to put yourself around people who are similar. So it makes these conversations easier, right? So I know that if I said to you, Lauren, I'm having a really hard time. I'm struggling through this to be like, All right, talk to me. I can hold space for you. Let's get through this, right? Versus you gaslighting me well.

Lauren Degolia  37:58  
And let's get down to what the real problem is, right? Like, what is the actual real problem? Let's get down to the real problem, because that's what we are truly bypassing, is we associate. And I was just talking about this online the other day, because triggers came up. It was the Scorpio Full Moon A couple days ago, and everybody was getting, like, a couple people I am close to were getting really effing triggered. And I was like, I got online, and I was like, we got to talk about triggers. 95% of a trigger has nothing to do with your actual current experience. It's all under the subconscious shit that has been going on in the background. And when you start to recognize the connection between your thoughts, your emotions, your actions, your experience, when you even just get that little bit and like, my mind was kind of blown when I first started learning this, and I was like, wait, what like, what like? They're all independent, but when you start recognizing that they're part of the patterning, like, that's where you're like, wait, wait, I have the opportunity to show up in this differently. What like I could think about this differently, that emotion coming up, that trigger is showing me where I have some shit to clean up in the best possible way that serves primarily me first, that feels like power, sis.

Scottie Durrett  39:19  
Talk about being seen Right? Talk about really being seen right. Like that is you're seeing your shit real truthfully, right? Like you're really opening up and saying, talk to me. What is it that I'm meant to be seeing from this trigger, from this pain, from this the self doubt, this insecurity, and as soon as we can get over that there's such a thing as bad emotion and a good emotion, and we can just see it as all emotion information, and here to help us, think about how that's going to help us, help raise our kids like when they're not with us, right? I think moms are always so concerned. I have to be person. Perfect and do the perfect thing, perfect. I have to say the perfect thing and look the perfect way. Honestly, the majority of our kids life is going to be when they're not with us, period. So we want to make sure that that voice that they have in their head that's us talking to them is that badass voice that's like, you can fucking figure it out. How can we how is this happening for you? How can we look at this and see this challenge, this obstacle, this hurdle, that it's meant for you. It's the universe nudging you. It's the universe. It's your body teaching you. It's your body communicating with you. It's trying to save you. How can we see that? And I think we have to go first. That's always my mantra. It's like we have to go first. We have to learn how to we have to learn how to swim before we can teach our kids how to swim, right? And so, and that's what you've done in such a beautiful way, and I really appreciate you are being honest that it has not been flawless, right? You have had,

Lauren Degolia  40:54  
oh, it's been far from flawless. And I just want to tack on a couple things to what you just said, because you could translate that to a toxic positive, oh, this is an opportunity. Like, let's, let's just fix it. And like, I am not here for the toxic positivity. So I want to be super clear. I fell the fuck apart after leaving Nordstrom, after learning astrology, I was in the deepest, darkest depression I have ever experienced, and my kid covid happened, like, literally, at the same time. And so we're home, and I'm sitting on my med, like, going to my our guest room, meditating every day, trying to, like, duct tape myself back together, and he's just watching me like he's and I'm trying to keep it together, right? Like, but he saw my humanity, and he saw me learning to be softer with myself and acknowledging where I'm at. Hey buddy. Like, Mom's having a hard day. Mom's having a lot of emotions. Mom's navigating some tough stuff. And it was always like, Hey, I mean, he was eight at the time, right? Hey, Mom, do you need a hug? Hey mom, like, do you want to do the like he's but this is where, like, our kids have to see, like, yeah, the resilient sides of us that are the bad asses. But they also have to see the humanity of how we show up in the face of adversity. When our life is feeling like the rug got pulled out from under us.

Scottie Durrett  42:21  
They need to see the sun and the moon, right?

Lauren Degolia  42:24  
I love that. That's actually like the perfect ending to our time together. They need to see the sun and they need to see the moon. I have goosebumps me too. I've had goosebumps this whole time, sis, oh my God, 

Scottie Durrett  42:35  
you're amazing. I could talk to you forever. We'll probably have you on again. How can everybody find you? Where can they find you? Because they're going to be obsessed. Find me everywhere.

Lauren Degolia  42:48  
I'm mostly on Instagram these days. Lauren dot degoglia, okay, I have a website. I'm as part of this anchored certification that is happening in like t minus 17 days or something ridiculous. I'm flying to Boston. I'm doing a whole photo shoot. Like I really feel like I'm stepping into my next expansive era, and how I serve and how I show up, and I just like, it's mind blowing, and this is how it goes. So let's, let's end on this. Everyone thinks when they're starting this journey of becoming a version of themselves, that they have this pinnacle North Star. This is who I desire. And while that's a beautiful sentiment, she really fucks you up a little bit the end. And here's why, the end, she fucks you up. Because you start measuring everything against her, and that's where you start comparing yourself to other people. Oh, she has this, or she has that. Oh, she's figured this out. Oh, I haven't figured this out. So I want you to just my, my only unsolicited piece of advice here is figure out what this version needs and how to, like, neutralize or create more peace for this version, because as you master that part of your Self Mastery journey, every version after this, because you're not going to just be that one version you're holding in your vision right now. You're going to be about 400 versions of her, but you're going to get to that place at some point. If you take this from a self mastery, like, I am just here to become the best version of myself, and I'm going to use all these tools, astrology, hypnosis, tapping Akashic, like, health, wellness, like, that's your job. That's your only gig here is to figure out how to master yourself. You can do that, you're gonna feel more satisfaction over the course of your life than you can even comprehend.

Scottie Durrett  44:46  
Yep, and way more fun

Lauren Degolia  44:50  
and way more fun, because you're gonna be like, fuck this shit I don't want to do, because that version of me, this version of me, does not subscribe. Unsubscribe. Oh my

Scottie Durrett  44:57  
gosh, I love it. You're amazing. Hmm, you're amazing. I really appreciate you spending this time opening up being brutally honest, and I know you've shifted a mom's life today. So thank you so much.

Lauren Degolia  45:08  
Thank you for having me. Scotty, Love You badass. You're a badass. Talk to you soon.

Scottie Durrett  45:16  
Hey Mama, thank you so much for listening before you dive back into the beautiful chaos of your life. Please take this with you. You're doing better than you think. You are not alone, and you do not have to do this on autopilot. If this episode helped you in any way, please share it with a mom who needs to hear it, because we grow faster when we do it together, and if you have a second, leaving a five star review helps momplex reach more mamas who need this kind of real talk and support. If you want more support and guidance or just someone in your corner, be sure to visit scottyderette.com to learn more. Get in touch with me or dive deeper into this work. Until next time. Mom, Trust yourself, trust your gut. You already know what to do, and you are exactly the mama your kids need. I love you. I'll see you next time you.