Coffee with a Rebel Podcast 

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Show Notes 

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Where I am from and how I got to where I am today 
• Some of the stories I used to tell myself of why I can't be successful 
• Snippets about my son's journey and how that impacted me and my life 
• How the Rebels Den came to be and what it means to me 

Links

Lennon Steps 

Betrayal: The Journey: ...Childhood Memories And The Adult Awakening

The Rebels Den

Petra Monaco

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Full Episode Transcript

So let's dive right in with an introduction of who I am, as you know, I am Petra and I am the owner of the Rebels, Dan and I'm a coffeeholic! Coffee is life and my birthday falls on the national coffee day, so it was destined to be this way, but a quick story on my background.

I grew up in the system in foster care in Germany, from I think from the time I was two until I was about fifteen. I graduated high school at fifteen, an emancipated, and start a job that eventually for health reasons, I had to quit, and because I was also a very angry teenager, and really into partying mood, and just didn't know any better and partying was a way of life. You know the drinking age is different in Europe.

I ended up meeting my kid's dad. It kind of worked and then he got orders back to the United States, and I was left behind. The intention was for him to always come back, but then stuff happened in his life that hindered him from doing it, and I just kind of carried on with life, and as it goes at the tender age of eighteen, I ended up meeting somebody else, who proposed to me saying? "Hey? Why don't you come to the states and see if you'll like it? See if we can make this work, and we can see if our relationship evolves from there?"

I said, sure why not so at eighteen with an eight-month-old baby, I stepped on an airplane and I gotta tell ya I didn't know the culture. I didn't know the language. I didn't know anything about the United States. Other than what was shown on TV grown up and so I ended up in Oregon for about three months and the relationship fizzled out. Things didn't work out, so the plan was to go back to Germany, and you know live life there. However, I ended up making a pitstop in Virginia, because that is where my son's father is from so that he could see his kid, and a low and behold, we had decided to get married and that's what we did and so I've been here ever since.

It was a challenging relationship on again and off again, toxic for the both of us, we had a few more kids together until one day we ended up just calling it quits. It just wasn't gonna work and in the scheme of things. During all those years I didn't really work. I was a stay-at-home mom or stay-at-home wife if you will. Taking care of the kids and he was doing the bread-winning stuff. I ended up going to college for being a bookkeeper and accountant because he started his own business and I was like well, "I can support you that way. I can go to college and I can do the books". That was the ultimate plan, and in that process, as I said, we ended up splitting and everything ended.

Shortly thereafter I ended up meeting my current partner and moved in with him, Yeah, we blended our families, him and his daughter, me and my three boys. We blended the family relocated, and this is where my youngest son was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder. We always knew there was something wrong, but nobody could figure it out. He was about four years old when we learned about Urea cycle disorder and the implications of what it means to leave it untreated. I wrote a book about it it's called Lennon Steps and you can find it on Amazon.

Once we had a diagnosis, there's a bunch of other stuff that happened, he ended up having liver transplants. But it was in that phase that I decided to go back to college and get my Masters's degree as a mental health counselor. Because I believed that was my purpose, I was gonna work as a therapist and help other ad risk youth and their families, because I understood where they come from. I understood what it was meant to be them. Because I had lived that life. The challenge was that I really hadn't healed any of my own stuff until I had written my first book which was about my adult wakening and growing up and the life that I had and a betrayal I experienced from the people that weren't supposed to betray me, but also betraying myself along the way.

It is in writing that book and then writing my son's story where I sorted I healed some of the things that were holding me back and address some of the issues that I've had. And challenged you know my own toxic behavior that I was fielding this world with and it was a really really tough time. Because during that time, while college, while becoming aware of all of these things, my son was fighting for his life.

The first liver transplant didn't take. The second liver transplant ended up failing after a year and a half, and you know he was terminal, and so I became aware of all these stories. That I've made up about life that I'd have made a myself that just kept me stuck. I had so many dreams I wanted to pursue and I just couldn't get myself to do them. Because who the heck do I think I was to do that, foster kids cannot be successful. I'm an immigrant and English is my second language, there were all of these different stories that I was telling myself, "I'm not loveable and nobody likes me",  that I had to overcome and deal with because of my upbringing and because of all that I went through.

It was because of my son's story, really where I became aware and realized that everything I told myself was just a bunch of bullshit like I'm a foster kid success; for just being alive, for just being here and taking our space in this world. I'm a foster. kid success because I graduated high school and went to college. If you look at the statistics, it's just not the norm, unfortunately, because for foster kids aren't being given the right tools and resources and are expected for them to figure it out themselves anyway.

So I went through all of that and I had dreams to make art. You know I'm a wood-burning artist, I crochet, so I do all of that, but also love to write and have written several books, and I wanted to do all of that, but I also wanted to help people, like I know I'm here to help people. And it took me a few years to figure out what that even means what that even looks like. I ended up graduating from college with a master's degree to become a therapist and also worked in the field for several years, but a knew, and it wasn't the be all of my destiny, if you will, there were other things that I was meant to do and I had heard about life coaching, years ago on a show called "Starting Over" with Rhonda Britten, who I adore and was so grateful to have met a few years ago and one of her workshops but I had heard the term and looked int and said well I can do that. I can life coach. 

I have the experience like I have the life experience to overcome so many different challenges that I knew I could do and so I started blogging and writing about all these different things that I've overcome and dealt with and something was still out of alignment. You know people were like, "Oh you're great at setting boundaries, so you should be focusing on coaching around boundaries and that didn't feel right. I mean I could help you with that, that all fall under the umbrella of the work that I do for sure, but there wasn't a specialty I wanted to go into. And so just kept nudging along, trying to figure out all out, invested in courses and programs, and all of the things that we do as beginning entrepreneurs, had a website, and you know I was branding myself as Petra Monaco, which is now my artist website, in case you're curious, and that was wonderful. I got clients. I'm helping clients. I still had to maintain some kind of a part-time job just to pay some bills.

And then I went to a rock festival in our state for the first time, we had never done a music festival and was as like let's do this. This is going to be a great time. It's with camping for the entire weekend, you go to the festival grounds and you listen to the music, and you know maybe make some friends and friends we made. And it was on those nights where we were sitting around the campfire or, and everybody was having a conversation and I was talking to this one person. Just kind of do what I do, very naturally which is to bring the positive out in them. You know I don't love it when people talk down on themselves in any kind of way, And I just realized that the community around the campfire was something I wanted to represent my business.

Side note I was reading, I a lot of paranormal Shifter romance books, and it was really focused on the pack community and again around community, and there was a series where they would sit around the campfire and have their community dinners, and so that is how The Rebels Den was born. I slowly realized that I work really well with creatives and multiple. I am multi-passionate.

You know I do art and I write books and I love to help people. I also do virtual assistant work periodically for some of my clients, and so multi-passionate just made sense to me and it's because we get stuck in the overwhelm. You get stuck in the "Oh, I dunno what to do. I don't know which one to choose and you don't have to choose all of them. You can just focus one at a time and a realize that I probably fall into the neurodivergent spectrum in some kind of way, because I get hyper-focused on a project and then lose interest after a while and focus on something else, and thus go through these rotations about it.

And it's the creatives because they've been telling themselves "One day I will, Someday I will", and it's in my experience through my son's journey with facing death is that, listen, one day may never be here. One day maybe gone already. Someday doesn't exist.

So this is what I'm here to do. I'm here to gently kick you in the booty to get going on that dream you've had and no dreams and goals are the same right. We are all so very different. I was sharing the other day that I have zero interest in going to Bali. My interest is going to music festivals, so that is my dream, and my goal is to do at least one of those every year.

It can be whatever you want, if you just want to be a homebody, tend to your own garden and make that happen and don't know how to get started. If you want to write a book, but you don't know how to get started and you need some accountability because your thoughts go all over because you don't know how to sit down and be productive. That is my jam.

I'm very self-disciplined and this is the only way I was able to even make it through two online colleges, just because I knew I had a deadline and I had to submit things. So self-discipline I have got that I'm not worried about that.

This is kind of where I started and how I got here today, right, so I help creatives and multi-passionate get clear on what they want. How they're going to make that happen, so there's some strategy and some consulting happening, as well as the accountability that I offer in my community. I write daily accountability to show them what I do every day and it's not drinking champagne right. It's literally like I am doing a workout, and I'm writing in my book today, and I'm gonna make some art today because that's the life I wanted to create.

To do the things that I wanted to do and that's that and my podcast will be very very similar. I want to talk about things that I find important, about the stories that I want to share with you Because that feels important to me and I just want to take up a little more space than this world. So if you have enjoyed my ramblings, thank you for listening all the way to the end, make sure you visit our website. The Rebels Den, if you enjoyed this episode.

If you’re looking for a podcast where the host looks and feels like having it all together, always stays on topics, and is planned and strategic about all the things - then this is not the podcast for you!

If on the other hand, you like listening to a podcast where it feels like you're having coffee with a friend and the ability to talk ... well just about everything from life, business, creativity, mindset, and all that stuff that falls into the middle, then the Coffee with a Rebel Podcast is for you!

Want to Sponsor an Episode?

Submit 30-second audio with your name, what you do and where people can find you OR you send me a script and I read it on the podcast! 

Let’s Do It