I’m Becky.
Advocate for empowerment, choice, mental health and wellbeing; longtime yoga student and teacher; proud corporate dropout; sober mama raising four teenagers.
I’m a pet lover, book hoarder, plant tender, change seeker, curator of things that smell good. Enneagram 8, anti-small talk, pro-hygge, big hugger. Midwest-born and raised. Mediocre cook, terrible (but enthusiastic!) tap dancer,
50 years old and forever figuring life out.
Mostly, though, I’m a meat-coated skeleton made of stardust – and I believe you are, too.
If there’s a question that stumps me, it’s: “What do you do for a living?” The answer was much easier in the old days when I worked in newspapers, political campaigns, and PR.
If you want an “elevator pitch,” I’ll tell you I’m an empowerment writer, teacher, and speaker, and founder of You Are Not Stuck®.
But that’s starting pretty far into the story. That’s the how I do what I do.
What lives beneath is the what, which is the way I describe my actual work: helping people identify and create the life that is calling to them.
In that way, I’m a soul whisperer. A dream doula. A change catalyst. I’m a guide into the questions for which only you have answers. Poet David Whyte refers to these inquiries as “questions that can make or unmake a life… questions that have no right to go away.” I see the divine badass in you, charm it out, and cheer it on.
The most important part of the story, though, is the why. Why is this work of empowerment what I’m called to do? The answer to that is simple:
I’ve lived a life that looked good on the outside but felt horrible on the inside.
I’ve lived a life that I didn’t feel authorized to change.
I’ve lived a life that I felt hopelessly stuck… and once I found freedom, I made it my mission to help others find it, too.
Please know this: You are not intended to spend this life squeezed and choked and squashed in a vise of Other People’s design, or values that aren’t your own, or an outdated world view; no, you were made for discernment, cultivation, and expansion.
Lines are not meant to be toed, they are meant to be moved and redrawn and colored in and erased until they suit you—and you can do that as many times as you like.
They’re your lines, after all.
Becky is no-bullshit real. She’s got an energy and warmth that’s born from her unique and relentless optimism. Yes, she’s a cheerleader. She’s a whip-cracker, too.
Scott Stabile
Author of Big Love
Becky combines deep caring with a kick-ass attitude (and humor!) to help you break the cycle, form new habits, and find a new — healthier and happier — path for your life.
Amy Calvin
Executive Coach
Want email updates and inspiration?
A sporadic love letter from me to you with insights, happenings, homework, and the occasional kick in the pants.
Newsletter
When my first book came out a couple years ago, someone left a snarky one-star review on Goodreads. "Another white, middle-class mom saved by... spoiler alert... YOGA."
I could only assume it was written by a friend of my ex-husband's new wife so didn't give it much thought. But every once in a while my mind goes back to the sheer ignorance of the insult.
Insinuating that someone doesn't deserve to experience healing and transformation – especially through practices like self-awareness, acceptance, contentment, deep breathing, meditation, physical and spiritual connection – is truly bizarre.
I wonder if she would have felt remotely justified making the same comment if we swapped out some key words. Can you imagine the absurdity of…
"Another white, middle-class mom saved by... spoiler alert... THERAPY?”
SOBRIETY?
EXERCISE?
MEDICATION?
MEDITATION?
CURIOSITY?
COMMUNITY?
WILLINGNESS?
FAITH?
Yeah, me neither.
So, "Desiree," thanks for the perfect reminder that anyone can criticize, and that not all criticism deserves a second thought.
I hope you've had the good fortune of discovering yoga for yourself and, if not, that you consider giving it a go. You might just find it to be transformative – even if you are, too, another white, middle-class mom.
#youarenotstuck ... See MoreSee Less
I ran into an acquaintance the other day. She asked if I was still teaching yoga. The question itself took me by surprise because, honestly, I can’t imagine *not* teaching.
It’s hard to put into words the 25-year love affair I’ve had with yoga. What started as a pinprick of curiosity opened an entire portal of experiences and emotions and lessons I didn’t know were mine to have. The practice has carried me along some of life’s most consequential journeys: growing new lives, grieving disappointments and deaths (literal and metaphorical), forging through protracted transitions of breathtaking uncertainty, dismantling old normals and conjuring up new ones, and learning – somehow, still – to hold myself in higher regard. When I was pregnant the first time, I came to my mat in awe; when my father died, I laid it in the shade of a tall tree and sobbed. Every time I have needed wisdom, support, rest, a place to put my eternal rages and fears, that rubber rectangle calls out as a haven. As home.
And the best part? Sharing the magic of the practice with others. First yoga was hobby, then vocation, then occupation, both part- and full-time – and for the last decade or so it has, along with writing, served as the foundation for all other work I do.
I scratched out some math the other day and estimate that I’ve led more than a thousand practices over the years, in all kinds of environments: in big box gyms and heated studios, at YMCAs and swanky health resorts, on community pool decks and Caribbean beaches, in church basements, under park pavilions and in countless students’ living rooms. I’ve taught preschoolers how to move like cats and breathe like lions, been the in-house teacher at companies, traded private lessons for house cleaning services, taught anxious 12-Steppers how to relax, even given adjustments in a Major League Baseball stadium. And, since 2020, I’ve taught via Zoom.
My own practice has evolved significantly over that time. Injuries and pounds have slowed me down; what used to be a high-energy, sweaty practice is now much softer. I’ve traded inversions for intention and arm balances for breath.
More than ever, the aim of practice not what it looks like...
… but how it feels.
Several months ago, I decided to record some of the live Zoom classes so folks could do them any old time. Now there are nearly 70 practices in the library, with more added every week.
If you’re looking to better strike that balance between effort and ease, I invite you to join me on the journey. I'll drop a link in the comments. ... See MoreSee Less
“On days I don’t have to see anyone I don’t brush my hair, I don’t wear underwear or shoes or chemical potions meant to extinguish my funk, and in these times, I am nearly perfectly happy. If you’re me, it’s luxurious to go unobserved. When asked the inevitable question, whether I’d wear eyeliner if I was the last person on earth, no, hell no. Eyeliner is war. When I’m alone, I lay my weapons down.”
– Diane Seuss, frank: sonnets
@dseuss #poetry #youarenotstuck ... See MoreSee Less