How Ceremonia's Babba Rivera Finds Joy in Challenging Times
Women Who Travel | Condé Nast Traveler
Condé Nast Traveler
4.4 • 636 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2021
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
Read a full transcription of the episode here: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-ceremonias-babba-rivera-finds-joy-in-challenging-times-women-who-travel-podcast
Read our conversation with Babba from November: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/clean-hair-care-brand-ceremonia-is-inspired-by-latinx-beauty-rituals
Follow Babba: @babba
Follow Ceremonia: @myceremonia
Follow Meredith: @ohheytheremere
Follow Lale: @lalehannah
Follow Women Who Travel: @womenwhotravel
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condi Nass Traveler. I'm Lalei Aricoglu, and with me, as always, is my co-host Meredith Carey. |
| 0:13.1 | Hello. Last March, we launched a new series called I Deserved This, a space for us to explore all the conflicting emotions we feel when it comes to |
| 0:21.5 | spending our time and money on travel. We were super excited about it and then about one week later |
| 0:27.5 | the whole world shut down. And so we decided to put those conversations on hold. But as you |
| 0:32.8 | might have noticed late last summer, we've been quietly bringing it back and we are thrilled |
| 0:37.2 | to dedicate this episode to I Deserve This with today's quietly bringing it back, and we are thrilled to dedicate this episode |
| 0:38.5 | to I deserve this with today's guest, Baba Rivera, a New York-based entrepreneur and founder of |
| 0:44.0 | Clean Hair Care Brand Ceremony. Thanks for joining us, Baba. Thank you. Thanks for having me. |
| 0:50.3 | So 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? |
| 1:04.1 | 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 |
| 1:14.7 | would go to Sweden every other month and Europe in general. And I think my last trip before |
| 1:23.3 | the pandemic hit was actually a very long trip. I went for three weeks to Europe. I went to |
| 1:30.3 | Stockholm for work and then to Copenhagen for Fashion Week. And then I went to Paris for |
| 1:36.9 | Hermes, who was launching their first makeup product. And yeah, it was this like long work trip and I remember complaining about |
| 1:48.9 | it at the time oh it's so long I'm going to be gone for three weeks and then earlier this year |
| 1:54.9 | when it was like the anniversary of the trip I started looking at photos and I almost like started |
| 2:00.2 | to cry because I would kill to be on that |
| 2:02.6 | trip again. So I was actually starting to get on a bit of a new sort of chapter in, I don't |
| 2:11.0 | know if it was in my life or more like just a new commitment to sustainability. I remember |
| 2:16.5 | questioning my lifestyle a lot and being like, |
| 2:21.7 | why do I need to be on a plane this often? And it just doesn't feel sustainable. And part of me |
| 2:28.6 | being on that trip for three weeks in a row was that I was trying to be more sustainable |
... |
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