An Inspired Chat with Rebecca Dollard of Greeley

We’re looking forward to introducing you to Rebecca Dollard. Check out our conversation below.

Hi Rebecca, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What do you think is misunderstood about your business? 
That my business is about motherhood. It both is, and it isn’t. One of the main reasons I started The Motherhood Mentor was because I saw a gap. There were resources for the act of parenting. The what to do or what not to do, or tossing out generic and often unhelpful advice like “just trust your gut”. But there was very little support for the women underneath all those roles and relationships.

I believe everything you do- your relationships, your work, your to-do list, your work- it all flows from you as the captain of the ship. This often is your circus and your monkeys and there is unfortunately no one size fits all strategy or approach. My work is to support that woman. To help her uncover, connect, and sharpen her own uniquely powerful skillsets. Skills that she can full own, trust, and adapt through every season and role.

When a woman, a mother, trusts herself deeply; when she is equipped to hold and juggle all those many things that matter- that confidence will ripple into every area. Motherhood is just one aspect of self. One straw on the camels back. One of many balls in the air.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
The Motherhood Mentor is a space for high-achieving women- the ones juggling babies, business, all the things all of the time and their healing all at once. The women who are building legacy and not wanting to lose themselves to this season or to have to burnout or burn it all down in order to survive. I don’t hand out cheap generic hacks, strategies, or vanilla personal growth work. I help them build depth skillsets and resourcing that helps them hold their big beautiful and often chaotic lives. You know the saying, “just because you hold it all well doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy?” That’s what I do, I support you as you hold it all. High-functioners don’t just need a safe space- they crave a brave one. One where they are called into even more health and integrity even though they already usually have it all figured out.

My work with women is somatic, it’s not just in the outward success or outward strategy. Sure, we do that work. But we get to the root of things, the deeper patterns often being held in the nervous system. We work with how your life feels. That’s the work I do in 1:1 coaching, intimate masterminds, and weekend healing retreats.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
The part of me that served a purpose is perfectionism and high functioning, and while I wouldn’t say I need to release it. I have been continually learning to re-purpose it. To give it a new job and role. It can’t always lead as much as it’s the shiny productive part of me.

In my work, both in my own life and in my work with others, I’ve learned that most of the parts of us we most deeply want to release, change, and shift- is a health. A wisdom.

So while I don’t want to release perfectionism, I am learning to adapt it. To find where it is being under or over utilized.
The perfectionist part of me is what tangibly feels and sees the gap between where things are and the ideal. I love the part of me that always wants to be better. To be a better mom, wife, mentor. I love seeing the world and wanting to fix things and having the audacity, ambition, and energy to take action toward that.

In this season though, I’m learning that my ideals and my ability doesn’t always match my capacity. In motherhood right now, I’m needed so much and sometimes that means certain projects get delayed or put on the back burner. It means that showing up is less than ideal. It means that giving my all and showing up looks and feels messier than I want it to. In this season, I’m letting perfectionism be a permission. A desire for more, with a relationship to loving what I want that I already have. Being able to be present to this version of me, of my business, my kids. It’s

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
So many times. And I wouldn’t just use this in the past tense.
There are moments or seasons where I think we need to have a “prescribed burn” if you will.
Where we give into that part that wants to give up and call it quits. I think we have to put it all down, even if only in theory.

Last year, I had to cancel my spring retreat. This would have been my 8th retreat. It didn’t feel like something I chose. It felt like I did everything that’s always worked before and didn’t get the outcome I wanted. I tried. so hard. I pushed the boulder up and up the hill trying to make it happen.

The morning that I made the call. I was a wreck of tears, disappointment, and fears. I think most of us have those moments. The ones where we wonder if its all worth it. If we really know what we are doing. If we are going to make it. If it’s worth all the work when we don’t always get the results we want.

I let myself feel. Really feel into giving up. Not just at my retreat, overall. And as soon as I put it down and felt the grief, I was also reminded why I do what I do. It re-lit a fire under my ass of how much I love my work. I love what I do and who I do it with. I remember realizing just how badly I want this. It’s always a good reminder.

Especially once we are in the season of success or maintaining success. When you forget what it’s like to feel like you have something to prove and now you feel this sense of pressure to have it all figured out. To have this pedestaled professionalism. I only knew it so well, because I’ve witnessed in with my clients.

So many high functioners never really burn out. Not in the way we see or perceive it. Because we’ve learned how to rebrand everything into opportunity or growth. And that’s beautiful. But also brutal. It’s one of the biggest reason highly ambitious people burn out hard. They ignore the smoke for so long. They keep coping instead of giving themselves permission or space or container to fall apart. To have a prescribed burn. I think we need those moments for long term and holistic success- both personally and professionally.

Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. Is the public version of you the real you?
The public version of me is the real me, but I don’t think it’s the full me. I don’t ever think our public or professional personas are. When I was building The Motherhood Mentor, I had a lot of imposter syndrome and thought and felt into this a lot.

I didn’t want to build a persona or public image that wasn’t authentically me. I didn’t need to be a public people pleaser like I lived for so long in my own life. But the more complex truth, for all of us, is that context matters.

I’m a very dynamic person. Somedays I’m quiet, calm, and nurturing. Other days I’m a ball of fire and energy and spice. Those are both authentically me. I’m probably a different authentic person on a girls night out than I am at bed time with my kids. Catch me on a certain week of the month and I feel driven and powerful, the next week I may want to be left alone and not have expectations. The public me is the real me, but you are missing context. You are only really seeing me in one environment.

My first in person retreat was where I really learned this. It’s not that I was ever not the real me with clients or people who only know me from social media, but they had never been in the room with me. They had never had that access, intimacy, or proximity to me before. It shifted the way they knew the real full me.

This is such a big aspect of the intimate communities I build. I want to create rooms where we get to relax into ourselves. Not that those shiny clips of us aren’t real, it’s just that their just isn’t time or space or trust in which people get to experience us, see us and really know us. There are a lot of real and authentic public figures, but the reality is you only know them that way. Not as a sister, mother, friend. You don’t know them on a random Tuesday when their business is on fire. You aren’t with them when they are grieving. There is a distance and disconnect between our public professional selves and the full dynamic personal ones. Even if it’s real.

Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. How do you know when you’re out of your depth?
Honestly I could never spot when I was out of my depth before I found the enneagram.

Like a lot of other high-functioners, when things get tough, I tend to double down. If I start burning out, I’m more likely to make the smoke signal mean that I need to push harder. Because I’m so deeply focused on giving and helping, I can easily over-extend without realizing it. Honestly the more personal growth work I do, the better I get at bullshitting myself. At not admitting when I’m out of my depths and need a resource outside myself. I tend to try to clean up all my messes on my own. It’s a long deeply ingrained pattern to take everything and find a birght side, something to be grateful for, or a way to make it into a potential. For me, and for others, this means we struggle to admit to others but first ourselves when we are out of our depths.

Now with enneagram, for me, I can realize I am out of my depths when I start getting resentful at the people I want to love and start fixing and even nitpicking or shutting down. I can start to feel unappreciated, under-valued. My body and nervous system tend to go into fight/flight. I stop breathing deeply and rushing.
I tend to start morphing into others needs and desires and abandoning my own preferences, needs, and capacity. When out of my depths, I can become a yes woman. I start overly attuning to others needs and desires. I become the queen of needing nothing.

Truth is, when I am out of my depths, it’s not usually because I can’t handle it. It’s because I’m handling it at the cost of myself. My work for catching when I am out of my depths is noticing these cues earlier than when I’m already in full blown burnout.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.the-motherhood-mentor.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themotherhoodmentor/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-dollard-638559253
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themotherhoodmentor/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@themotherhoodmentor4509
• Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-motherhood-mentor/id1735994095

Image Credits

Aubrey McClanahan