How I Marked My 40th as a Rite of Passage with Mara Glatzel

Belonging: Conversations about rites of passage, meaningful community, and seasonal living

How can we add meaning and ritual to growing older? For my 40th birthday, I hosted and experienced a Threshold Crossing: an embodied and community-led ritual that initiated me into my next decade. In today’s episode, I sit down with my dear friend Mara Glatzel, who designed and led part of the ritual with and for me. With her, I share about how my desire to claim this threshold saw me move past feelings of cringe and embarrassment and embrace the process of creating something meaningful, incorporating others in it and feeling witnessed in the process.

Tune in to hear more from me on:

• What it means to ritualize a threshold crossing and the transformational power it holds
• How I designed the celebration and what factors were involved
• The vulnerability I had to lean into throughout the whole experience
• What it looked like and meant to me to leap across the threshold
• How I have been integrating the experience and the importance of the pause of becoming
• The power of being witnessed and witnessing transformation
• How Mara celebrated her own 40s threshold crossing and how it differed to mine
• What it means to us to grow older and different ways we’re embracing that

Resources + Links

• Rooted Magic, my October 2025 retreat at the Kripalu Center
• Previous podcast episode #66 and episode #112 with Mara Glatzel
• Find Mara on Instagram @maraglatzel, her website MaraGlatzel.com and her book, Needy
• My book, Root and Ritual: Timeless Ways to Connect to Land, Lineage, Community, and the Self
• Connect with me on Instagram @beccapiastrelli

Timestamps

[0:00] Introducing Mara and the Threshold Crossing Ritual

[8:21] Claiming and Witnessing the Threshold of Turning 40

[19:20] The Vision and Process of the Ritual

[29:30] Leaping over the Threshold

[44:55] The Transformational Power of Ritual

[48:39] Embodying and Integrating a Threshold Ritual Experience

[52:00] Different Ways of Experiencing the 40s Threshold

[59:27] Experiencing the Joy of Being Alive and Growing Older