Out of the Reeds Episode 1: A Creative Homecoming

Why I Started Out of the Reeds: Motherhood, Creativity, and Transition

Natasha Preckajlo, LCSW introduces her podcast Out of the Reeds and explains why she created it. Drawing from her postpartum journey and her book The Art of Motherhood, which blends art, poetry, and memoir after her first son’s birth in 2018. A licensed clinical social worker with yoga, and energy work training, she shares how creativity helped her process identity shifts, sleep deprivation, anxiety, and the magnitude of parenting. She reads her poem “The Fire That Forged Me,” reflecting on the primal intensity of early motherhood. The podcast aims to feature diverse guests and real stories without prescriptive advice, exploring creativity, spirituality, and life transitions. She explains the title’s symbolism and previews next week’s first guest, Jacqueline Garcia.

00:00 Welcome to the Show
00:11 Why I Started
00:45 Motherhood to Art
03:26 From Poetry to Book
04:38 Therapy and Yoga Roots
05:55 Creativity in Transition
06:36 Poem The Fire
08:13 Sleep Deprivation Truths
09:58 Rethinking Parenthood
12:09 What the Podcast Offers
14:04 Everyday Creativity
19:24 Spirituality and Shifts
22:16 Why Out of Reeds
24:52 Guests and Community
26:35 Closing Thanks

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to Out of the Reads. I'm Natasha Percagolo, and I'm super excited to share this podcast with you. So today I figured what we would talk about and what I would share with you is why I even started this podcast. Because if there's no why, then what's the point, right? So if you're new to stumbling across this, thank you for joining us. And if not, if you've heard of the podcast or you've seen things out in the ether that it's coming, I'm so excited that you're here. So for those of you who don't know me and just in general, several years ago I wrote a book called The Art of Motherhood. And the book was inspired by my journey through my motherhood experience. In 2018, my son was born, my first son, and after he was born, I started to lose a lot of my hair. And I always was a creative person. And so, as a result of that, and feeling like I lost myself, as I feel like so many of us who are parents, especially mothers, do. You are left with wondering who you are. Oftentimes you don't know the new person that's standing in front of you. Motherhood shapes you in a way that for me at least, nothing else has. And I've gone through many stages of life thus far, and I will yet to do so. But motherhood has definitely been the hugest shift from knowing myself as an individual to now knowing myself as a parent, but not just a parent, the woman that I've grown in to be. So as a way to get back to myself, I started to with the hair that I was losing, put it on my shower walls. Because the longer it is, and my hair was much longer at the time. You don't want to snake the drain all the time. You just don't. It's pretty gross, and yeah, your husband or your partner or yourself just doesn't really want to do it. It's gross. So I decided to put them on the shower walls. And one day I had the idea, why don't I just start making pictures with this and like just arrange it in a way that would become art? And then I started documenting it. I took pictures of the artwork that I really liked that I had created, and I, you know, put it on Instagram, and there was like a good reception, Instagram and Facebook, but I just didn't feel that it was the right time. But I continued to do it until my hair started to come back, and the project and the inspiration kind of faded. I did a little bit with when you know my second son was born, but not as much as during the first pregnancy. But what I also did was write a lot of poetry, and writing poetry and writing things in general allowed me to express myself and be able to come back to who I felt I was and who I was becoming, process my experiences, process all the feelings and emotions and trials and tribulations that parenthood brought with it. And not just because of my children, but because of life, because of expectations, new roles, old roles fading, new roles being all-encompassing. So that's kind of what led to the book being written. I started to realize over time that, like, you have the components of a book here. You have artwork, you have poetry, and memoir from travels and from life experiences during my postpartum journey. So it's really an amalgamation of that. And I've always wanted to do a podcast. I was like, that would be really cool. Let me uh rewind and also share that I'm a licensed clinical social worker. So that's my background, that's my schooling. I've done a lot of therapy over the years with different, many different clients, but specifically with women, adolescents, children. And I found that in that work, doing that work and my professional experience, it felt like there were still things missing. So I went and did yoga teacher trainings and got certified in in yoga and got certified in prenatal yoga and postnatal yoga, and I started to see obviously a theme, like maybe you can too, like, oh, motherhood and helping people is and women is a part of her experience. And not I I'm not I don't want to just pigeonhole myself and say that it's only with women, but I definitely have felt a stronger pull. And so yeah, so out of the reads, this podcast was born from wanting to continue a conversation. Creativity holds a space near and dear to my heart, and I think it can bring us back any of us back during times of transition, and motherhood is an ultimate transition. Parenthood, death of a loved one, divorce, marriage, uh, children being born, the loss of children, um, moving, traveling, uh, life shifting and changing. Any huge transition in life, I feel like creativity and any way that that is expressed has a relevancy. So to open the show, to explain more about things and the bringing back of creativity, I wanted to share this poem with you from my book. It's called The Fire That Forged Me. And above it is a little picture of uh Medusa. Because why not? You know. The fire that forged me. My tale isn't one of dragons slayed or foes outweighed, nor is it one of feats of grandeur or spoils of war. It is in theory a simple journey, a task which many take. But do not be fooled, for in practice, unlike in theory, mistakes are easy to make. Armed with only my courage of heart, and little more than gumption. I took to my charge, for it was at that junction I could have not known yet of the fire that was to forge me. The alchemy of time to others might be trite, but to me there is no greater plight. The comparison, it might be said, is far too much made, but I beg to differ, for only now as I am saved. I recall a time of feeling in the trenches, deep in despair. I wondered when will this end, when will the night turn to dawn and dispense with all my senses. That poem that I wrote, I remember the feeling. I don't remember exactly the night I wrote it, but I do remember what surrounded the sentiment of that poetry, and that poem was feeling the nervousness and the anxiety and the angst of night falling, and feeling like I didn't know what was gonna happen. Would my baby sleep? Would I end up somehow nursing in a rocking chair, not knowing where my body was, maybe still holding him, having like him fallen asleep in my arms, and startling awake to realize, oh my god, where's the baby? Where's my body? Where am I? And so many times that happened, so many times that happened to where I mean, thankfully he was fine and he never like rolled out of my arms or anything like that, but just not knowing where you literally are in space and time because of such lack of sleep, and it's no wonder why soldiers are trained in extreme measures with sleep deprivation and like hearing babies cry as like desensitization training or something, because it's extremely on a primal level, it like breaks you in some way, and it's really the fire that forged me, you know, it like cracks you open, and you're left with discovering all the raw and wrought insides of yourself, and that's exactly what happened, and it's something that I think in our society we take for granted. Like, just have kids, no big deal. That's just what you do, and for many years it's like you follow that path, right? The traditional path, or at least for me, coming from my own background, you know, I'm I'm a first-generation American, so half of my my lineage is Egyptian and the other half is West Indian from Barbados. And then the caveat to that is that they're you know English and Irish and Scottish on my mother's side being from Barbados, and both of my parents being minorities in their own culture. So it's really it's uh having that be, you know, the background I came from, at least speaking for myself, there I think, you know, society at large too. But the idea that you get married, you have the kids, you do the thing, you and that's the end of the story. Happily ever after, you raise your kids. But motherhood was really something that I never took for granted. I always knew I wanted it, but I never took it for granted because of the weight of that, the magnitude of what it means to be a parent. Who are you raising that is going to be a person and out in the world and make decisions for themselves and have their own lives later on? Like teachers, right? At least in the United States. I know in other countries teachers are highly praised and valued, but at least here, you know, it's always getting cut. Education, teachers pay, and you're shaping minds, you're shaping the citizens of the future, and parents are doing the same thing. And that weight of what that means, you know, not to be taken lightly. Anybody who's on the fence of such a big decision, it is huge. Like Hamlet, you know, to be or not to be. It's like to have kids or not to have kids. It's a huge thing. So yeah, this podcast, what I hope for it to be is a place for interviews for guests who have real stories, who have real experiences, who personally a lot of them in some of the subsequent episodes coming are are friends or people I know, women I know, and and other friends who will be on the show, not just women. And their stories matter because it signifies to us that if it can be done, if someone else is out there doing it, it doesn't mean that they have your answer. It doesn't mean I have your answer, but we are trying to show uh at least a map of what something does look like and a reference point. I'm not one for unsolicited advice. So this show is not like this is what you need to do, and these are the seven ways in which you can do it. Because I don't think that there are only seven ways to do something. You know, there's many different ways to do the thing, and it has to resonate and feel good to you. And I'm not you, I'm me, but I hope to inspire you, or I hope that what the content of the show will bring forth is something that allows you to feel like, hey, maybe I've been seen in that, or I can see myself in that, and that feels inspirational, or that feels like thank you for shedding a light on that, because I've thought about that before, but I never knew what that could look like, or who was doing that, or what that might be like for someone. So that's the hope of this show. Not to have anyone feel that they don't know what's best for them. And art and creativity are definitely one of the focal points that I want to highlight of the show because so many times I think in motherhood we lose that sense. Like we have the ultimate, right? We've done the ultimate creating as mothers, as parents. You know, we came together and we did the ultimate creating. You literally created a being in your body, and then like it left your body in many different fashions, but it left your body, and that's amazing in and of itself, right? That is like that's the ultimate creating. But then I think we we've done so much, we did that. You did that for like the nine, ten months, and then then they're there, you know. The child, the baby is there, and it's like, wow. Not to say you suck the life out of me because it's beautiful, but like there's there's the culmination of the life you created, and that life was literally sucked or pulled or pushed out of you, right? So kind of literally, and then it's almost like there's a depletion, it's like, oh my gosh, like that, it took everything out of me to do that, to bring this person here. Now I have to replenish myself again, and so many times there's no replenishing for the mom. It's like go back to work, okay, cool, chop chop, let's keep going here. And you're like, but wait, hold on. I've only yet to hold my baby, like for a month or two, and you know, all the things of what it looks like to keep on pursuing and being a mom and a parent, because oftentimes, too, even dads don't get a break. It's like you, okay, you gotta go back to work. It was kind of cool. You were there for the birth, and now get on, get on it. So bringing back creativity, even if it's subtle, to restoration for ourselves. And like I'm saying, it doesn't just have to look like visual art, it doesn't have to look like writing, it doesn't have to look like painting, or it can look like anything. I had this discussion the other day in a book group that I created for the book, The Art of Motherhood, and we were talking about how creativity doesn't have to necessarily look like what we traditionally think of as creative. It can look like maybe organizing books on a shelf in a color-coded fashion, or maybe it looks like just, I don't know, cooking a simple meal, but you added something different. Or you tried folding the clothes in a different way in which you normally would fold them, or countless other things. You decided, okay, today is the day that I'm going to be a little risky, a little creative, and instead of using my GPS, I'm gonna see if I can do it from memory. These are different solutions to not problems necessarily, some of them could be problems, but some of them just might be just a way to have fun, to play. And creativity, I think, brings that back in when we feel like we're gotta keep on to the schedule, gotta keep on to the structure, gotta keep it. It can become monotonous if there's not something playful or something interesting thrown in, something that makes you feel that it's worthwhile. And there's plenty of us that enjoy structure and enjoy routine, but I think there's also something about each one of us, if we look hard enough, that we can find that there is a creative element. Maybe it's just even like the fact that you have a love of the new, so you'll go out and try new restaurants, and then you like tell your friends about it. That to me is so even that's a creative element, you know. I'm I'm willing to try something new, and the newness and the play of that I get to share with my friends in a way, and that is that's my contribution, or that's what fills my cup, or what have you. But the play, the creativity, and getting back to that, I think is an element that's really near and dear to my heart that this show is going to explore. So I'm excited to have guests of all ages and all shapes, sizes, colors, creeds. I want everybody as much as possible to be on the show. And I think there's so much to say about voices that don't echo the one we have. You know, that's what creates a rich tapestry. Having different voices, different people who inspire just by being themselves. So that is the purpose of the show. And some things that I wanted to highlight why I think this and shows like this are really pertinent now, is that things are shifting, things are changing. Future episodes will go into the other side of creativity for me, is also spirituality. So I think there's creativity on one hand and spirituality on the other, and I think there's a nice interblending of the two. And that's something that this show will also explore. Outside of just motherhood and parenthood, I think it's really the juxtaposition of creativity and spirituality and transition in life. Any type of, I think, of a challenge or something that we're shifting from one element into another in our lives. When we look to those two things, creativity and spirituality, at least from my own journey, those have been the things that have really enriched and allowed for me to make it to the next step in a way that explored new parts of myself and brought in and brought a homecoming to the other parts of myself. So I'm really excited for some of those things because I feel that there's a great shift, at least in my algorithms. That's what I see. But maybe your algorithms are different, but I see that there is a world that's very much intrigued by the spiritual nature of life, the magic of life, the things that are not always just explained by hard science. And art is something that allows for that to be a way in. Creativity allows for that to be a way in because it goes into the right brain, right? In the right brain, we house imagination, we house spirituality, things, mystery, things that don't have hard and fast explanations. The very counter to the left brain, which most of us and societally most of us spend our time in is that left brain. So being in a right brain state allows for play, allows for openness. And I think so much of our society wants that because we're We're pulling away from and we're going against maybe not everybody. I don't want to like generalize, but there's a shift. A shift is happening. And so I'm really excited to be part of that. And the whole reason why I even titles the show Out of the Reeds, it's something that has a spiritual element as well as a grounding element. Reeds grow in water. You know, they're connected to the earth, but they also grow in water, which is fluid, and which is the idea of the feminine. So there's a grounded element, but also a fluid one, which allows for a nice union between the two. We need structure as well as fluidity. It's not just an all-or-nothing, it's a blending. And so coming out of the reeds also to me signified feeling lost at times in my parenthood, in my motherhood, and it's still an ongoing journey. My children are are eight and four. So it's an ongoing journey that will continue until I'm no longer here on this planet, no longer they're here on this planet. It's a lifelong, it's a lifelong endeavor. But in my parenthood, I've felt at times very in the reeds and looking to come through that and also embracing the journey. So while I'm in the midst of the reeds, there's so many things that are happening, you know, so many things that I'm going through, challenges, but no challenges, just negative. There's growth that comes from that. And then coming out of the reads too, shedding of the light and being able to see things in a whole new perspective. So that's the whole, the whole reason why the show is titled Out of the Reeds. And I'm hoping that it will again resonate with so many of you and feeling like there's been times in your life where you felt like you're in the thick of it. And this again speaks to more than just the trajectory of parenthood. It's anything. Starting a business, being an entrepreneur, that is like full of I don't know what I'm doing. What am I gonna do next? How is this gonna go? This journey, that's huge. Shifting a career, or again, death of a loved one, marriage, maybe divorce and remarriage. It can speak to so many different things that happen in our lives. So yeah, I'm really excited to see where this goes. I'm excited to share with you about the guests that we have coming on the show. Next week, we'll have our first guest, Jacqueline Garcia. She's a friend of mine actually from my college days. So we'll get a chance to hear from her. And I'm super excited just for the lineup of guests we have and to share more of things with you and my perspective in terms of being a mental health professional, but also a spiritual seeker, and what that looks like as well. So I've like I alluded to before, I've done yoga and continuing my own growth not only as a clinician but as an individual, and that also led me to energy work, and that's something that's highlighted in the book as well. That spiritual side of things that allowed me to come back to a grounding that I needed for myself. So now I offer energy work and seeing things from a very right brain perspective as well as having a left brain perspective from my education. So that's what I'm here to bring to you, to bring to the table, to share with you and to create conversations around. This is a continuing conversation. So please reach out. We would love to hear from you about the show, about your own experiences, and I look forward to creating this community with you. So thanks for joining on our first inaugural episode of Out of the Reeds. It was more like an introduction than it was even to our show, but it's to the show, it's to the community that's being built, and yeah, for continuing dialogue and conversations. So I look forward to fostering that with you and your help. Thank you guys and see you next week.