Women Who Travel

How Ceremonia’s Babba Rivera Finds Joy in Challenging Times: Women Who Travel Podcast

As our ‘I Deserve This’ series returns, we talk to Babba Rivera about how she’s learning to celebrate herself.
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Babba Rivera

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Just over a year ago, we launched I Deserve This, a series all about the different ways we should be prioritizing ourselves, whether that's with time, travel, or money. A few days after launch, the U.S. went into lockdown and the idea of spending copious amounts on any of those things felt like a pipe dream as we all stayed home. But, over the summer, we quietly started the series back up, chatting with the likes of free diver Kimi Werner about finding time for herself at the bottom of the ocean and photojournalist Malin Fezehai on planning trips to fuel her creativity. 

This week, we're back in full force, speaking with Babba Rivera, the Swedish-Chilean founder of Ceremonia, a haircare line inspired by the Latinx community. Despite its horrors, 2020 was a big year for Babba: she bought a house, had a baby, and launched a brand. We chat with her about finding ways to celebrate those moments amid the pandemic, navigating identity and representation, taking trips close to home just for the hell of it, and feeling homesick through it all. 

Thanks to Babba for joining us and thanks, as always, to Brett Fuchs for engineering and mixing this episode. As a reminder, you can listen to new episodes of Women Who Travel on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, every Wednesday.

Read a full transcription of the episode below.

Lale Arikoglu: Hi. This is Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condé Nast Traveler. I'm Lale Arikoglu. With me, as always, is my co-host Meredith Carey.

Meredith Carey: Hello.

LA: Last March, we launched a new series called I Deserve This, a space for us to explore all the conflicting emotions we feel when it comes to spending our time and money on travel. We were super excited about it—and then about one week later, the whole world shut down, so we decided to put those conversations on hold. But as you might have noticed late last summer, we've been quietly bringing it back. We are thrilled to dedicate this episode to I Deserve This with today's guest Babba Rivera, a New York–based entrepreneur and founder of clean haircare brand Ceremonia. Thanks for joining us, Babba.

Babba Rivera: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

MC: I feel like this is a question we're asking a lot of people, but what did travel look like in your life in 2019 and early 2020? And what does it look like for you now?

BR: Well, funny you ask. It's definitely a big difference. In 2019, I was traveling every month. I used to travel a lot for work, and would go to Sweden every other month and Europe in general. I think my last trip before the pandemic hit was actually a very long trip. I went for three weeks to Europe. I went to Stockholm for work, and then to Copenhagen for fashion week, and then I went to Paris for Hermes, who was launching their first makeup product. Yeah, it was this long work trip. I remember complaining about it at the time. "Oh, it's so long. I'm going to be gone for three weeks." Then earlier this year, when it was the anniversary of the trip, I started looking at photos, and I almost started to cry, because I would kill to be on that trip again.

I was actually starting a bit of a new chapter in...I don't know if it was in my life or more just a new commitment to sustainability. I remember questioning my lifestyle a lot, and being like, why do I need to be on a plane this often? It just doesn't feel sustainable. Part of me being on that trip for three weeks in a row was that I was trying to be more sustainable in bundling work assignments instead of going back and forth, which I would have done just in 2019. So I think coming back from that trip, I remember committing to myself that I will try to travel less, and travel with more intention, and rather be gone for longer at a time, and hit many purposes in one trip, and try to cut down on these irresponsible one off, two days here, one day there, back and forth.

MC: This past year has been a big year for you. You launched your clean hair brand, Ceremonia, in November. Pandemic aside, which I know is hard to think about, how different has launching a business been than what you expected?

BR: I launched my first business, it was a brand marketing agency, ByBabba, three and a half years ago now. I think at that time, relying on your community was a given. I feel like I gained a lot of my first clients and my reputation by attending seminars and hosting executive breakfasts. It was so IRL and really relying on my network and my community. So when launching Ceremonia, now three and a half months ago, it was very different. We didn't get to have a launch party—not that in the grand scheme of things, a launch party is the last thing that we should be crying over—but just to put it in perspective, it's hard to really give yourself those moments of celebration when you're just sitting alone, not even with your team, in a little room in your house.

I think that's been the biggest difference is finding moments of celebration in this new time that feels so temporary, but it's been going on for so long. So I think if there's one thing I would do differently, it's to make sure to celebrate the wins along the way, and not postpone happiness. I think I have been constantly thinking that this will soon be over, so we will have our launch party then, or we'll have our team gathering then. I think I am now starting to feel like I should just celebrate all those wins and do all those team things with the resources that we have right now, regardless.

LA: I think what you said about how not having a launch party or a celebration is not the biggest problem in the world. I think that's been something that a lot of people who've been wrestling with when it comes to finding moments of joy and celebration, because it feels impossible to do that when the whole world is so sad. But it's also, if you deprive yourself of that, it's like to what end? Who benefits from you not having that and not allowing yourself those moments of happiness?

BR: That is so true. Actually, my therapist always reminds me, she's like, "No one is thanking you for struggling. No one is thanking you for being sad. No one is giving you a trophy for being guilty. It's a total waste of energy."

LA: Yeah. I feel like that needs to be all of our mantra right now.

MC: Yeah, exactly.

LA: But back to Ceremonia, the story is so tied to your personal life experiences and identity. Why did it feel like the right time to launch it now? Talk a little bit about the process behind how you formulated the idea.

BR: Yeah. Ceremonia is really something that I think I've subconsciously been working on for so much longer than I'm realizing. I am a Swedish Latina, which I don't think that's a real term. I just claim that as my intro. But it feels very accurate to who I am, because I grew up in Sweden, but both my parents are from Chile. So I grew up in this very Latin household. My parents only speak Spanish—they still don't speak a word of Swedish or English—so I grew up with these two cultures. I feel very Swedish and very Chilean at the same time.

Growing up in a homogenous country like Sweden, I just got very accustomed to being the outsider and just being different. I never saw myself represented in the teachers, in my friends at school, in the media, the products I consume—forget it. I just never saw myself represented in any aspect of my life growing up in Sweden. The sad part about it is that it came to a point where I didn't even expect to see myself represented. I just normalized being different, and assimilating to a world that was created by people that look differently from me and have different privileges than I had.

I think, when I moved to the U.S., it was the first time that I realized how many people there are just like me. I found so much inspiration and purpose in meeting with so many other Latinas who, just like me, grew up in a foreign country, and have a double identity. In this case, a lot of my Latina friends in the U.S., they feel very American. They speak English perfectly. But they also have very strong connection to their Latin roots. That was the first time that I realized that I am not the only one.

In my professional life, I just started to get very curious about, who are we? Who is this Latin demographic? What role are we playing in the US economy? After some extensive research, I just was so amazed by the numbers, and the fact that the Latinx demographic in the US is so extremely powerful. It really is shaping the economy of tomorrow. Yet, there is still no representation of us. I took all of that, I guess, frustration that has been living inside of me subconsciously, and turned that into a passion, and filled myself with a purpose of being that representation that I wish I would have seen growing up. I knew I wanted to start a new company. I am an entrepreneur at heart. I've always known that since I was eight years old. So when I was ideating my next venture, it was very clear to me that I wanted to do something that really celebrated the richness of the Latin culture, and at the same time, really broadening the heritage of Latinx and bringing it into mainstream media. I didn't want to create something that was by Latinas for Latinas only. I wanted to create something that found its inspiration in the Latinx heritage, and brought it to the world.

That's how Ceremonia was born. Ceremonia is a clean haircare brand that is rooted in Latinx heritage. We source all of our natural ingredients from different parts of Latin America. We feature Latina models. We work with Latinx photographers. We highlight Latinx artists in our Instagram. That's such a big part of our mission, but we're not exclusive. A blonde girl can still enjoy our hair products, and they will do wonders for her hair.

LA: It doesn't feel like a coincidence that you ended up focusing on a haircare brand. When we spoke to you back in the fall, you talked about how you grew up in an environment where self care was really prioritized, and looking after yourself was seen as very positive. Talk a little bit about that.

BR: Yeah, for sure. I guess I didn't realize until being an adult, that the way I grew up is not the norm. My dad is actually a hairdresser, but he was never able to get a job in the field in Sweden, due to the language barriers. So he would practice his passion for hair at home with his daughter, a.k.a. me, who just had really long hair to play with. He would braid my hair for hours, and then all my friends would come and be so jealous of my braids. So then he would braid their hair. He would cut my cousin's hair, and our aunts and uncles. We always had social gatherings in our home around this hairdresser chair that my dad had in the living room, because truth be told, we didn't have a ton of furniture. We just grew up very, very humble. My dad's passion for hair became part of the interior design.

Simultaneously, I think, someone that has really inspired my approach to beauty is my mom, because my mom is the most natural woman you will ever meet. She never wears any makeup. She doesn't style her hair. She doesn't even care about clothes or anything. She really cares about nurturing her skin and her hair and her soul. For her, beauty rituals are really a form of self love. She really instilled that in me from an early age. I will never feel guilty for taking a long bath, or always having perfect nails, or doing a hair mask. That, to me, is a given. It's a form of self love. I practice that without needing an occasion.

MC: I want to know about this entrepreneurial effort you were doing at eight years old.

BR: Yeah. Because I was the only one in the family who integrated into the Swedish culture, I became the gateway to Sweden for my parents. I would go to the bank with my dad, and translate. At my wedding, actually, my dad had this really sweet speech, where he said that he had to work for my translating services. They were not a given. I would negotiate with him that I needed my favorite fika, a.k.a a cupcake and hot chocolate. I would also not do the service first and then get the payment, a.k.a the pastry. I needed the pastry up front. So it sort of became my little business, where I would just get what I wanted and then translate for my parents.

MC: I love that.

LA: I love it. At eight, you knew your worth. That's perfect.

MC: Entrepreneurship and travel are such an important part of your identity, as is being Latina and Swedish. Now, you've added mom to the mix. What has it been like getting to know and sorting through all these different parts of who you are now, in March 2021?

BR: Motherhood has been so...I can't find the words, because it's beautiful, fantastic, overpowering, overwhelming, hard, fun. It's everything. I was so scared of entering this phase. I have, for the longest time, had very severe pregnancy and birth-giving fears, to the point where I didn't actually know if this would ever happen for me, because I was just so scared, and started to think about maybe just not being pregnant ever. I think, therefore, I feel extremely proud. Sometimes I look at my daughter, and I'm like, I did it. It doesn't matter, anything, from here on. I have my daughter and the two of us—obviously, my husband too—but my daughter and I are just always going to be a team. Yeah. I think overcoming those fears has been extremely empowering for me.

I attribute that a lot to just entering a much more holistic approach with my life. I started thinking about my health differently. I tapped into my spirituality. Yeah, just got in touch with myself much more. I think as I started to connect with my inner self more, I gained much more confidence in myself too, and my natural power. It feels crazy to think, today, that I had such an enjoyable pregnancy and had an unmedicated birth. I think if I would have told that to my younger self, I would have laughed, and been like, "Fake news." I feel extremely proud. That's not to say that there is a right or wrong way to give birth. I think it’s just the journey that I have been on from this extreme fear to just embracing everything from within.

However, now having the baby here in this world sets a new set of challenges for me. I think the biggest aha moment for me has been the level of how touchy of a topic motherhood is. It's a very triggering topic. I really feel strongly that my purpose on this earth is to help women dismantle limiting beliefs, and really break stereotypes. Doing so in a career setting or being an advocate for entrepreneurship has been a very smooth ride. Then now adding being a working mom into the mix has really brought up a lot of feelings for people. It's interesting. I love to have conversations around motherhood on my platforms, because it really keeps opening my eyes to the fact that we still are so far from equality. It's a constant reminder how women are constantly told that they have to choose between family or career. When you try to do both, you have to constantly explain yourself. I just find it fascinating, because no one is asking my husband how he's doing both, or isn't he worried that he's not going to be a present dad. No one is telling him that he can't be great at his job and be a great dad. But I get to hear that all the time.

The sad part is that I get to hear it mostly from other moms, who basically will tell me that, "I see that you're a working mom, but I just made the decision for my family, because I love my kids too much, to not work, because I want to be there for them. I want to be present." It's just interesting how we still feel like there has to be one way or the other. I think for me, I don't really care how someone else wants to mother. I just want women to feel like they have the choice. You can make whichever choice you want, to be a stay-home mom or to be a working mom, or God knows how you want to mother, but I just want women to feel empowered to make that choice for themselves.

LA: You're very engaged in the comments on Instagram and keeping a dialogue going, which I really appreciate and really, as a follower, really enjoy. Also just as a young woman who has things like motherhood on her mind, being in my early 30s, it's helpful. It's great to see these conversations. But I imagine it must be quite tough to engage with people who are being judgmental or casting assertions over the way you are leading your life. How do you approach those conversations? Also how do you not let it get to yourself?

BR: Yeah. I would say the motherhood one is definitely the hardest. I feel like with anything else, I always encounter...I have 150,000 followers. Obviously, not everyone is going to be of the same belief, so it's part of the game. But it doesn't get to me as much when it's about entrepreneurship or about what clothes I'm wearing. I don't care. With motherhood, it's an active training for me to not let it get to me. I will admit that. At the same time, I find it to be my responsibility to have these conversations, because it's not about me telling people how it's done, or what's right or what's wrong. It's about having these conversations in the first place, and dismantling what's behind them.

I normally just try to meet people vulnerably. I rarely get into an argument like, "You're wrong." This is how it is for me." It's more interesting to just have a conversation or remind them that I'm not preaching for one or the other. I'm just sharing how I am doing it. I really want women to be celebrated for whatever choice they're making, that's right for them and their family. Actually, 9 out of 10 times, those conversations end up in a place where we both learn something.

I get reminded that we live in America, where there is no support for mothers. I come from Sweden, so sometimes I forget how the system is just so incredibly broken in the U.S. It really, really punishes women, first and foremost. So I think, for some of these women who are in situations where they just feel like the system has failed them, it's hard to look at someone like me being like, "You can work and be a mom." I can see how that can be triggering. I think I just have to remind myself that everyone is living in their own reality, and be respectful of that.

Simultaneously, I ask my followers to be respectful back. I think when we can have that dialogue from a vulnerable place and with respect and not judgment, it's very, very powerful. I feel actually super grateful for those conversations. I feel like I always learn something new.

LA: Talking about being from Sweden and having to learn how the U.S. works, that's something, as an English person, I very much relate to. You've launched a business and had a child here in the past year, and it isn't the country that you grew up in. How have you been managing homesickness, and being away for so long, when these two huge milestones have taken place?

BR: Yeah. The homesickness got real during pregnancy. You go through so many emotions. I feel like you start to really reflect on your own childhood. You start to see your own mother from a different lens. I think, for me, I just started to finally realize all the sacrifices my mom made, and how hard it must've been for her, and how teenage Babba was so ungrateful. It just made me want to just hug her. So I definitely felt really homesick during pregnancy. I think the combination of the pandemic and the borders being closed, my mom not being able to enter, and me not being able to leave—I was waiting for my green card process at the time, which meant that if I would leave the country, I wouldn't be able to come back in—so I think that just felt extremely hard.

I tried to stay very positive. I would try to focus on the things that I do have. I would focus on the fact that I have a supportive husband, and that we can connect over FaceTime, and the fact that I'm able to slow down, but it came to a point where I had pulled all the positivity cards. That bucket was empty. I couldn't find more positivity to add into the mix. I just needed to grieve for a moment, and to feel the pain that this pandemic is costing, even on someone like myself, who is privileged enough today to have a job that can be done remote, and who can provide food on the table and whatnot. But just because I have my basic needs met doesn't mean that I am not also entitled to feel the hardship of my own life sometimes. I think I had to allow myself to feel the pain that was real for me at the time.

With going through pregnancy, and thinking about giving birth without the support of my mom, was a big loss, because I had always envisioned myself going through this journey with the support of my mom. But I am actually really, really lucky that she made it here now. She wasn't able to be here for the birth or for the first weeks of Alma's life. But she came in January and has been spending a couple of months here, which has been a true blessing.

LA: What was that reunion like? It must've been ...

BR: Oh, I wish I would have recorded it, because it was so special. My mom came in. She didn't want to hug us immediately, because she had just been on a plane, and she wanted to self isolate. So she was standing with full on masks and six feet apart, and just fell down on her knees in a prayer position, as I was holding the baby. She started crying, and was just saying to Alma that she's here and she was thanking the Lord for making it possible. It was just very...My mom is very spiritual too. I think she had really been praying a lot for that moment to come true. That was very emotional.

MC: I'm getting teary thinking about that. I think throughout the pandemic, we've all been feeling our attention being pulled in a million directions, and not feeling like we have enough to give to everything that needs our attention. I feel like your attention, even before the pandemic, was being pulled in all these different directions. I can only imagine it's more so now. For me personally, vacations were always a chance to escape that, and really prioritize myself, and reconnect with what I wanted and what I wanted to be spending my attention on. Obviously, that's not as much of an option these days, but I would love to know how you're finding time, the time that you deserve, to focus on you and get that reset that you would get from travel in the past.

BR: Yeah. The lack of travel has actually been hard from that perspective, because I was talking to my husband about it, how we're the kind of workaholics who only really take time off when there is a trip involved. It's hard for us to just take time off to be in our home. It's weird because we should. Why wouldn't you be able to vacation in your own home? But it just never happens, because it never feels like it's the right timing. It's the kind of thing that's easy to push to like, "Oh, maybe I do it another week." Whereas if you have a trip planned, there is a plane involved and a hotel booking, and you’ve got to make it work.

During my pregnancy, I had a few moments of like, "I'm just grateful, grateful, grateful. Everything is great." Then I would have a few breaking points, where the final straw would be something. Not being able to go on a babymoon was one of those. I had always envisioned that the first trimester is hard, you're nauseous, whatever. Then the second trimester, you are the 2.0 version of yourself. That's when I wanted to go on a babymoon with my husband, I wanted to go to Mexico and just soak it all in, that we're becoming parents. It was something that I had visualized in my mind since years back. I would see these young parents, with either a newborn or highly pregnant, be on these beach vacations and be like, "Oh, I want that one day." Obviously, that did not happen. I think I might've cried a little bit and felt a little deprived of that.

But what we did instead was that we decided to just start living the best version of our lives that we could in our own home. We bought an upstate house. We spent the summer weekends here, even though the house was empty, and it was definitely not livable, but we'd still come here, and just be in the backyard and enjoy the pool, and then drive back into the city for the work week—that brought us a lot of joy.

For the summer, we also rented a house in Shelter Island and hosted a couple of friends who all felt deprived of vacation. Honestly, Shelter Island, I think, was a saver for me, because it really felt like a vacation. We had the beach. It was such a warm summer. Yeah. I think after that experience, I was like, Wow. We should be better about exploring vacation opportunities locally. Also given my commitment towards sustainability, I don't want to be flying every time I need a break. So I thought that was very exciting, actually.

LA: Then it's funny to think that before you were living in the States, when you were in Sweden, you would've been like, "Wow, Shelter Island. Incredible. So far away." Now, it's a few hours away. It's like, "But where else could I go?" It's a good reminder that there's amazing stuff around us here, and around so many places in the U.S.

MC: I know that I've been finding a lot of inspiration, not even just for future trips, but in bringing joyful practices into my life from a lot of Instagrams that I follow, yours being one of them. I would love to just know, with our last question, if there are any women on social media that have really inspired you, or kept you going in big or small ways, throughout this pandemic time.

BR: Yeah. One of my best friends also just had a baby. Her name is Hanna Stefansson. She's based in Copenhagen. Her Instagram is just @hannastefansson. Her account always inspires me, because she's the best at just capturing everyday joys, from buying herself a croissant and a coffee, and setting the table really nicely to enjoy that one croissant, or buying fresh flowers, or just taking a walk and really putting on a fun outfit, just because. She's so good at living life at its fullest without it needing to be a big event or a big spending thing. It's been really inspiring to follow her do that into motherhood. Yeah. She really inspires me.

MC: Well, if people want to follow you on social media, Babba, where can they find you?

BR: I would say Instagram is the best. I'm just @babba.

MC: Perfect. Where can they get Ceremonia?

BR: On ceremonia.com.

MC: Perfect. I'm @ohheytheremere.

LA: I'm @lalehannah.

MC: Be sure to follow Women Who Travel on Instagram, subscribe to our newsletter, and join our Facebook group. Also a reminder that you can send trip ideas for your first big trip back out there to WomenWhoTravel@cntraveler.com. It's a voice memo with your name, where you are, and where you want to go. You might hear yourself on an upcoming episode. We'll talk to you next week.