Figuring Sh!t Out

119. You Were Made to Love and You Were Made to Feel

to remain tender is a gift.this episode is an exploration of everything i've learned about love.put simply:"we have all known the bliss of sunshine hitting our skin on a cold day, and we have all belly laughed until our breaths disappeared, and we have all come home chewed up by the world and sunken deep into a familiar withering, and we are all either healing from something or learning how to hold it, running from something or learning how to return - because we have all loved and we have all lost, and we have all mistaken losing for a promise that it was never safe to love. and we have all been wrong about that." - from my essay "let me remember you" which you can read here on my Substack--LAST WEEK to Sign up HERE for the FREE Heart-Healing 10-Day Challenge co-hosted with CURE Hydration - starting MONDAY, 2.16.Sign up for the mailing list

118. Actually, Life is Beautiful and You DO Have Time.

If the devil can't get to you, he will make you rush."We think our limits live in the dreams we don’t chase, in the tasks we put off, in the emotions that we avoid - but they’re most alive in all of the small ways we deny our right to enjoy life.In the ferocious hurry between movements, in the relentless devotion to our False God of Control that promises certainty we never actually find.We yearn for love, but refuse to let life touch us. Even when it’s right in our hands - fragrant, bright, asking only to be received, we mistake consumption for communion." - Realizations from Near DeathLet this episode bring you home. -—  Sign up HERE the FREE Heart-Healing 10-Day Challenge co-hosted with CURE Hydration - starting MONDAY, 2.16.Sign up for the mailing list

117. And Suddenly, Your Dreams Start Chasing YOU

"I learned how to reach for my dreams with a shaky hand. And time and time again, I’ve seen that once they are in my palms - it makes no difference if I really believe they should be there or not. Because here they are. In my hands. I cannot drop them. I have claimed them. They are a gift and yet - they have always been mine."- an excerpt from my most recent essay "Dreams" (which I read to you in this episode

116. Every Part of You Deserves to be Loved: Letting The Shadows Free

We won’t ever say it aloud - but most of us hold an ideal of perfection inside of our self-development routines. And after spending enough time nipping and tucking away pieces of ourselves that we don't like in an effort to curate the most acceptable, palatable, "perfect" version of us - what many of us will find is this:We are only as whole as we are able to accept the parts of us that don’t make us feel like it. We are only as healed as we are able to hold our brokenness. We are only as loving as we are to the pieces of us that we can’t fathom. And we will come to know, by peering into the depths of our own hearts long enough to see the it's shadows, that the space that is our bodies was created to hold love for our imperfect flesh. This episode is another reflection on a topic that is core to Figuring Sh!t Out: Shadow-Work. It is a continued conversation from recent dialogue on stretching our capacity for complexity within us and expanding our conscious creation in this world.May it be a friend to you when you feel the tenderness of being deeply human.xxTHANK YOU for listening!! If you love FSO & this episode, leave a comment!! Tell me what resonated, share what you want to hear next

115. You Contain Multitudes

"We are mosaics. Pieces of light, love, history, stars. Glued together with magic and music and words." - Anna KritzenThere’s a quiet grief that lives inside a lot of people. Because we’ve learned how to contain ourselves. Creativity was once somewhere we all went to feel alive, and became something we use to prove who we are. We learn to identify with a medium, a label, an aesthetic, a version of ourselves to be understood, admired, approved of. And without realizing it - these identities shrink us. This episode is about how identifying too tightly with a creative medium - or with being good at something - can quietly disconnect us from our true nature, which is plural, fluid, and undefinable. When creativity becomes performance, identity, or ego, it stops being an expression of our aliveness and starts feeding validation instead.Today, I’m talking about creative repression, the “shadow artist,” and what it really means to be a starving artist - not financially, but spiritually. We’ll explore how boxing ourselves into one identity limits our expression, why losing passion is often a sign of creative deprivation, and how curiosity, play, and permission to be bad can reopen the door.As Julia Cameron once said: ""You're either losing your mind or gaining your soul."--THANK YOU for listening!! If you love FSO & this episode, leave a comment!! Tell me what resonated, share what you want to hear next