Meet Mother Coyote

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mother Coyote. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Mother, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.

Developing confidence and self-esteem has been a long, layered process over many years. I grew up in a small town in South Dakota where I, quite frankly, never fit in. After moving to the city for college at 18, I was extremely grateful for the veil of anonymity provided by attending a large university and being just another face in the crowd of millions of people. However that anonymity eventually became disorienting and came with a price. If I wasn’t anyone in a crowd of millions, I had to make some choices about who I actually was, because I didn’t have the expectations of people in a small community telling me who I should or shouldn’t be anymore.

As I tried to fit in with the Minneapolis music scene in the early 2000s and 2010s, I always knew that what I was doing wasn’t mainstream, and it wasn’t cookie-cutter, and again, I found myself not fitting in, and again, it was uncomfortable and disorienting. I remember recording my first album out in LA in my mid-20s, and some random guy coming into the studio mid-session with an artist he was working with, and he asked me the weirdest question – “how did you cultivate your image?” I just looked at him, completely puzzled, because never had I considered or felt compelled to make myself into something completely contrived just to fit in or make myself more palatable to the mainstream. If there’s ever anything that has been consistent within me, it’s a solid sense of non-conformity and demand-avoidance – but the price of that is many years of black-sheep syndrome and getting very comfortable as a lone-wolf.

Fast-forward now 10-15 years later, now a mother to two sons, and with more years of lived experience, my confidence in leaning into exactly who I am, and the principles and values on which I have built my life have paid off in spades, even when I have been the odd one out or lost friendships over it. I no longer have space to make myself small for people intent on misunderstanding who I am, or the message of my music. My ego had to die a thousand deaths to get here, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Currently I’m balancing my great love for music creation and performance, as well as facilitating yoga classes and sound baths. Music creation, for me, is a really slow-burn process. It takes time to write the music, especially creating cohesive collections of songs (which is something I’m very partial to, vs. perpetual releases of singles, appealing to the commodification and and short-attention-spans of music consumers vs. those seeking to deeply appreciate music as an art form). Then, the recording and production process takes more time to shape and craft the songs to be brought to their fullest potential. All of this is a years-long process as an independent and self-funded artist. And because I have two young kids at home, for now I’m not focusing on as much live performance, though the itch to get out there and share songs to live audiences has definitely been building in recent years.

To fill in the gaps of my creativity and desire to share acts of service, I facilitate yoga classes and group and private sound baths in my hometown, which has really grown to feed my soul in ways I hadn’t anticipated. When I first began the journey of yoga teacher training and eventually diving into the modality of sound bath facilitation as a healing modality, it was something I started because I wanted to feed my own curiosity and desire for deeper knowledge. Then, as these things do, it became imperative to share them with others, because my own life was so deeply impacted and changed that I wanted those with their own curiosity to have a place to explore it as well.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The three greatest qualities I believe are curiosity, a sense of humility, and gratitude.

Curiosity prevents stagnancy in life. When we can ask questions, both about the world around us and about ourselves and our own ways of moving through it, we open the door to change, both internally and externally. All change begins with the internal work and self-inquiry – questions like, who am I, and why do I think I am who I am? Where did these beliefs about myself come from, and are they really true? How do I know they are true? When we begin to change ourselves and align ourselves with our most deeply held values and principles, we being to walk the walk of embodied integrity, and *that* is what changes the world, one human being at a time.

A sense of humility keeps us honest through the process of self-inquiry. The recognition that no one has all the answers, no one is perfect – we all make mistakes, require forgiveness (of self and others), and we all have the opportunity to do better when we take an honest account of how our actions impact ourselves, our families, and our greater communities.

Gratitude keeps us going, and keeps both our limiting beliefs and our grandiose aspirations and desires in check. When we have a gratitude practice – even just acknowledging 4-5 things we are grateful for every day, this can do wonders for our sense of peace and acceptance for where we are, at any stage in our life.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

I have been blessed to have had several great teachers along my path, some whom I have worked with in person over years, and some of whom I have found online and have never met in person but have worked with digitally, but their offerings via the great connector of the internet have brought great impact to my life. Specifically, Matt Portwood & Jaina Two Rivers (formerly of Radiant Life Yoga in Minneapolis), who gifted me the wisdom of the yoga tradition; Nielle Arnold Sovell Song Salt of the Earth – life-coach, channel, and keeper of Earth wisdom teachings; Jessa Reed – comedian, podcaster, and an incredible, raw, and humorous guide on the internet; Laura Matsue & Bernhard Guenther – creators & facilitators of the Embodied Soul Awakening course, & hosts of the Cosmic Matrix Podcast; Allie (aka Cosmic Space Witch) – galactic astrologer and coach.

There are many others whose books, talks, podcasts, etc. have been deeply impactful and whose teachings still deeply shift the internal calibration of my own soul back to its rightful alignment, even from the non-earthly realms. As Ram Dass said, “we are all just walking each other home.”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mothercoyote.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mothercoyote/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mothercoyote/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mothercoyote
• Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/yTCxtz6tHkIgZsj3nh

Image Credits

Katina Elizabeth Photography, SmouseHouse Photography (Tom Smouse), Malwina Aviles Photography