We recently connected with Rebecca von Boeck and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Rebecca thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I am right smack in the middle of the biggest risk I’ve ever taken, punctuated with many small risks along the way. I left a job a few years ago, toward the end of the pandemic. It had been an emotionally toxic place to work and I decided that I would be very intentional about what to do next. As I began to search for new employment, I stumbled upon a job at a Functional Medicine office as a health coach. As someone who has spent the last 20 years researching and implementing a healthy lifestyle, this sounded like the perfect job for me, so I applied. The job description didn’t require any particular credentials, but technically I wasn’t qualified. They actually took the time to interview me based on the intro video I sent with my application! They did not hire me, but that’s when I knew what I wanted to do. So I went back to school and got my health coaching certificate, realizing that this is the path that I am called to. During my training, though, being a free spirit, I realized I wanted to try to venture out on my own so I founded DirtMama Wellness Coaching.

Starting a business with no funding is obviously a financial risk, but there are huge emotional risks too. For instance, I was recently tasked with speaking to a group of women CEOs. This created all kinds of anxiety for me, but I knew I needed to do it. All my life I believed that my voice was not worth sharing, to the point that I was terrified of public speaking. This trails back to 9th grade when we were required to take a speech class. I never prepared my speeches because I figured if I didn’t write anything and didn’t have anything to say they couldn’t make me talk. But as an entrepreneur I quickly realized that I have to rewrite that old narrative if I ever want any business. So I took the bull by the horns, hired a coach to help me, and my speaking engagement was a smashing success. This may seem like a relatively small risk, but overcoming a lifetime narrative is no small feat.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My journey to DirtMama started with a pink cookie. When my children were little I inadvertently discovered that giving them red food dye almost instantly created undesirable behavior changes. So I started to experiment, removing foods with dyes from the diet for a period of time and then reintroducing them. Sure enough it was like flipping a switch. I wondered, if something as seemingly benign as a food additive can affect a child’s behavior, then what else is in our food?
I started researching – all additives and their health effects. I learned so much about the food industry – from the intentionality of the addictive nature of food additives to how our crops are grown, our cattle, chickens, and pigs raised and it was overwhelming at times. I read every book or magazine article I could get my hands on to learn more about how food is grown, raised, prepared, and the effects it has on human health. So we made gradual changes to our diet. First removing all the harmful additives then swapping highly processed foods for whole food versions.When I was homeschooling my children we volunteered to work on a local farm in exchange for fresh produce and eggs.
As a result of all the gradual changes, my kids and I didn’t get sick with seasonal illnesses as frequently. I started to feel good in my body and gained more energy. The joint pain I previously had disappeared. I feel so much healthier now – even though I’m older – than I did then! So when I needed to look for new work after Covid, DirtMama Wellness Coaching was a natural transition for me.
But starting a business is hard. There’s a lot of self-doubt and imposter syndrome in the beginning. When I started my LLC in July 2022, I chose a logo with the yin/yang image, with a heart seed on the bottom and a sprouted heart on the top. The bottom represents fertile soil- the underlying processes that are necessary for anything that grows to be truly nourished – it’s underground – it’s what we don’t see, just like we can’t really see the inner workings of the human body. The top represents the earth – what we do see. The hearts represent the fact that love is literally at the root of it all – out of the seed of love, the soil nourishes and grows more love.
Shortly after I started my LLC, I started noticing and taking pictures of hearts that would show up in nature – rocks, snow shapes, pools of water, you name it. This wasn’t the first time I had noticed hearts in nature. The first one I ever took a picture of was in the winter of 2016 when I got out of my car and noticed that a perfect heart shape, about 2 feet in diameter, had melted in the snow. At the time, I believed that finding such natural phenomena was a rare thing. But the frequency of heart sightings has accelerated over the past two years. Exponentially. I believe this is because I am so attuned, both to the world around me and to the deeper meanings of my experience as a human being.
When I first started to notice the frequency, I realized that these were messages to me from God. A simple message that there is a deeper reality that binds all of humanity together, and that I get to be a part of that. We are seen, we are known, we are loved. I am following the path I am supposed to – my part of hope and healing in the world, small as it may be. And in the end – all is well. The fact that I have collected almost 300 photos as well as some tangible stones, shells and wood pieces, just in the past 2 years, gives me great joy, keeps me focused and provides a sense of equanimity in my life.
There is so much messaging about what we have to do to be healthy: give up wine, sugar, coffee, and god-for-bid, an entire food group. But what if there’s a different way? And that’s where DirtMama comes in. I help free women from toxic diet culture. What I mean by that is helping them to let go of everyone else’s idea of what’s right for their body and help them attune to their own bodies to find what truly nourishes them.
I believe that a nourished body creates vitality, energy and joy. Food obviously can nourish a body or harm it. I am passionate about helping women learn how to work with their bodies instead of against them by eating whole unprocessed foods that honor both their unique body and the environment at large. We are all connected. We are not separate from the land or each other. Yet we live in an environment and culture that is constantly working against us.
There is no one way. You don’t have to do a radical overhaul to change your health trajectory. Whole food has a way of creating energy, vitality, and joy. Our bodies are meant to thrive, not merely survive by living on temporary pleasures. When we honor the land and animals through our food, we honor our body too and in doing so we are better able to give back to the world.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson I’ve had to unlearn is the philosophy I’ve always had about work. I always believed that work was a means to an end – the end being it funded my life. Which was true. But when the pandemic hit, I felt an urgency to do something more aligned with my gifts and talents.
I believe we are all here for a reason with a unique contribution to society. The pandemic just pushed to the forefront the fact that what I have spent the last 20 years being passionate about could actually become my work rather than a hobby. I realized that I could catalyze change at the grassroots level if I took the risk. So work is no longer a means to an end. It’s not just about funding. It’s about giving back and making our society stronger, connected, and more resilient.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Part of my life journey, a few years back, was becoming a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. The particular dojo where I practiced had really intense belt tests – physically grueling and incredibly mentally and emotionally challenging as we pushed our bodies beyond what we thought we were capable of. I remember one test specifically, after several hours of sparring, techniques, push ups and sit ups, we were required to hold a horse stance position for a certain amount of time.
A black belt came around and tried to push me over, but I was in a zone where I knew they couldn’t break me. In that moment, I had a weird connection to humans throughout history who have suffered and I understood on a visceral level what resilience is. It’s something deep inside that despite the circumstances surrounding you, you are a rock. Solid. Unbreakable. In a place of equanimity.
This type of resilience has served me well in trying to launch my business. The obstacles of not really knowing how things work in the entrepreneurial space, not knowing how technology or networking can be harnessed to grow my business, not knowing how to get clients, and struggling with imposter syndrome, have been crushing at times. I’ve been tempted so often to give up, but I keep coming back to the lessons I learned about resilience and bouncing back from the hard things. I’m keeping my eyes focused on what really matters – bringing hope and healing to a world that needs it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.codirtmama.com
• Instagram: co_dirtmama
• Facebook: Rebecca von Boeck
• Linkedin: Rebecca von Boeck