<script data-pm-proxy="intercept"></script><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:googleplay="http://www.google.com/schemas/play-podcasts/1.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[The Dark Rose]]></title><description><![CDATA[my provocative, unfiltered exploration of life and spirituality—where beauty meets ferocity, shadow meets wisdom, and the unseen finds its voice.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com</link><image><url>https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Ml-q!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2f29c23a-4e48-499c-856c-6128553ee030_1100x1100.png</url><title>The Dark Rose</title><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com</link></image><generator>Substack</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 04 Sep 2026 10:21:11 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><copyright><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></copyright><language><![CDATA[en]]></language><webMaster><![CDATA[andreabordeaux@substack.com]]></webMaster><itunes:owner><itunes:email><![CDATA[andreabordeaux@substack.com]]></itunes:email><itunes:name><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></itunes:name></itunes:owner><itunes:author><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></itunes:author><googleplay:owner><![CDATA[andreabordeaux@substack.com]]></googleplay:owner><googleplay:email><![CDATA[andreabordeaux@substack.com]]></googleplay:email><googleplay:author><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></googleplay:author><itunes:block><![CDATA[Yes]]></itunes:block><item><title><![CDATA[A weekend with God, grief, and magic mushrooms]]></title><description><![CDATA[How I guided a powerful woman into deep surrender and back to her radiance]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/a-weekend-with-god-grief-and-magic</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/a-weekend-with-god-grief-and-magic</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 22 Aug 2026 22:08:59 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!501r!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0a202051-9d9c-477a-a8c3-806667d923c0_750x500.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Last year, one of my favorite mentorship clients hired me to guide her through a private mushroom ceremony.</p><p>The first time she experienced the medicine, she&#8217;d been dosed without her knowledge or consent and had a terrifying experience that left her feeling scared and distrustful of sacred mycelium.</p><p>Over our time working together, she&#8217;d read my writing and had heard me speak about my own transformative personal experiences, as well as my experiences guiding others into relationship with the medicine.</p><p>She told me that she wanted to change her relationship with mushies and that I was the only person she trusted to guide her.</p><p>I felt deeply honored by her trust and confidence in me and was proud of her willingness to re-write the coding on what had previously been a very disregulating and traumatic experience&#8212;beautiful proof of the growth and inner bravery that I&#8217;d helped her cultivate in our work together.</p><p>Because the three most important components of an easeful and impactful mushroom ceremony are set, setting, and surrender, I got to work curating the best possible experience for her. She requested that I come to Texas where she had recently moved, and as it&#8217;s my home state, I knew exactly the kind of environment she needed.</p><p>I rented a beautiful remote country property near where I&#8217;d grown up, a property I&#8217;d visited a few times before and had fallen in love with. The home is over 100 years old, spacious, and surrounded by many acres of private land. Whenever I sit with the medicine, being able to lay in soft grass so I can gaze up the sky to see the sun and then the stars as day transitions into night is an absolute non-negotiable.</p><p>In the hours before her arrival, I prepared every inch of the property, designating each space to serve a specific function for our cosmic journey together. In the main living room, I prepared a beautiful altar with fresh flowers, candles, crystal wands, oracle cards, incense, and fruit offerings.</p><p>The main bedroom would serve as the quiet space when she needed a place to retreat to be alone with the guidance of the medicine. The second bedroom was designed as the visual room, where I&#8217;d project gorgeous images of nature&#8212;floral fields, marine life, rainforests&#8212;moving art that would allow her to immerse herself in beauty and wonder.</p><p>In the kitchen, I laid out art supplies&#8212;canvases, coloring books, colored pencils and watercolor&#8212;so she&#8217;d have a place to write and express any creativity that wanted to flow through her.</p><p>And in the living room, I stacked pillar candles along the base of the old&#8212;no longer operational&#8212;fireplace and layered blankets and pillows on the floor. This would be the music and movement space, where she could allow the frequency of sound direct her body&#8217;s natural expression, and have several comfy spaces to sit and rest.</p><p>The final space was the land and property itself, supplying acres of soft grass, wise trees, a pool, and hammock for delicious weightlessness.</p><p>For nourishment, I prepared several jars of fresh pressed juices&#8212;watermelon, orange and red pepper, and pineapple with pear and mint&#8212;so she&#8217;d be well hydrated in the hours leading up to and during the journey.</p><p>We agreed to fruit fast the night before the day of the ceremony to leave plenty of room for the medicine to work through her system unobstructed, but for her journey back into the physical realm, I prepared nourishing and grounding sweet potato dal with coconut rice. I also had lots of fresh fruit and my client brought coconuts so she could have fresh coconut water throughout the weekend.</p><p>My main objective was for her to feel held and supported from the moment she arrived. The first day was just for arrival and settling, no feeling of being rushed, and to acclimate to the environment.</p><p>One of the first things my client told me when she arrived&#8212;I had not shown her photos of the property prior to her arrival, she fully trusted my vision&#8212;was the house reminded her of her beloved late grandmother&#8217;s home and she immediately felt safe and that her grandmother was present and watching over her.</p><p>I gave her time to put away her bags and get cozy, then showed her the altar I&#8217;d created and asked her to add anything she wanted to make it feel more personal. She placed some of her journals, favorite oracle decks, and a photograph of her beautiful daughter who had died about 7 years prior.</p><p>One of the reasons my client had begun her work with me was because despite years passing after her daughter&#8217;s death, she was still in deep debilitating grief and had not felt supported by the various means of therapy she&#8217;d tried. Our work together had helped her cultivate peace and acceptance for her daughter&#8217;s passing, and it touched me deeply that her sweet girl was present as a spirit guide for this monumental journey.</p><p>The remainder of the day was for rest and reflection.</p><p>On ceremony day, we woke early and spent quiet time sitting on the patio, journaling, and listening to birdsong. We swam in the pool, ate some light fruit and took our time as the hours passed, leading us to the moment where I&#8217;d officially open the ceremony space.</p><p>My client was feeling nervous, lots of tummy rumbles&#8212;a few nervous poops which is completely normal and expected&#8212;but was also feeling ready and excited.</p><p>When it was time, we sat in front the altar and I said a prayer calling in The Great Mother, her healthy ancestors, guardians of the land, and the spirit of the medicine&#8212;declaring the space be held in the highest expression of truth, love, and transformation.</p><p>I called upon The Great Mother to hold us in her divine wisdom and asked the spirit of the medicine to only open the doors that were meant to be walked through, to reveal what was ready to be seen, and to dissolve what no longer serves. I banished all energies that were not of the highest light and love, and consecrated the space as protected Holy ground.</p><p>As&#232;.</p><p>Then, I expressed my pride in my client&#8217;s bravery and thanked her for the opportunity to guide her. I assured her the medicine was present with us in nothing but pure, unconditional love, that it serves as the consciousness of our Creator. I shared that she would not receive anything that was not meant for her, and that her trust and surrender would be the doorway for her to both receive and let go.</p><p>Next, I handed her the medicine I&#8217;d be serving her and had her hold it as she spoke life and power into her intentions which were to let go, step deeper into herself, her power and purpose, have more clarity, and to unlock the parts of her that she hasn&#8217;t allowed herself to access due to fear. She wished to be open to receive, free of judgment and comparison, to simply <em>be</em>.</p><p>Her voice shook as she spoke and I comforted her, assuring her that it was okay to be nervous, and to return to prayer, return to the altar, call upon her daughter in any moments that might feel challenging. I offered to pull a card from one of the oracle decks to help reveal and ground the overarching energy. She asked me to pull from my Divine Feminine deck to reveal the goddess who would be supporting her&#8212;Mary Magdalene come through of course.</p><p>I left her with her card while I steeped her medicine.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!501r!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0a202051-9d9c-477a-a8c3-806667d923c0_750x500.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!501r!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, 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class="image-caption"><span>Credit: </span>Verywell Mind / Stocksy / Getty Images</figcaption></figure></div><p></p><p>When I serve mushrooms, I steep them in hot water combined with ginger tea and honey or agave and a squeeze of lemon juice. Ingesting mushies whole can be really hard on the stomach, causing gas, cramping, and nausea as the compounds are broken down by the stomach. The acids in the lemon juice breaks down and converts the psilocybin, the ginger soothes the belly, and the hot water pulls the medicine out of the physical shrooms. Not only is this preparation gentle on the stomach, it speeds up the &#8220;come up&#8221; from taking 60+ minutes to about 20 minutes.</p><p>My favorite time to take in the medicine is early evening, around 5-6pm. In the Spring, it&#8217;s such a beautiful time because the sun is dropping in the sky, which softens the light and cools down the Texas heat.</p><p>After serving her the tea at a proper journey dose&#8212;I took a micro dose for myself&#8212;I guided her outside to lay in the grass and properly ground as the medicine began its magic, which always feels like a beautiful hug from God. </p><p><em>Within 15 minutes she told me she could feel the Earth breathing.</em></p><p>I laughed because it&#8217;s exactly what I experience with the medicine, and it&#8217;s something that you can&#8217;t fully explain, it really needs to be experienced. We laid in the grass for a long while as she experienced her senses and perception heighten beyond the physical. I can&#8217;t speak specifically to what she witnessed in those moments as my role was to be a silent witness, unobtrusive but available when she needed me.</p><p>When she felt ready, we moved inside. I lit candles throughout the house, turned on gentle music, turned on the projector in the second bedroom, and settled into the living room to give her space for her journey. She spent a long while watching moving art, then she came out and told me she wanted to dance to afrobeats. I put on her desired music and let her go.</p><p>I could sense when her body was in a state of resistance and reminded her that the more she allowed, the deeper she&#8217;d be able to go. She shooed me away so I went to sit in meditation for a little while as she danced. I would periodically check on her, hand her coconut water or juice to drink, and let her speak anything that was coming to the surface.</p><p>And then, the dam broke.</p><p>The deeper emotions that she had been resisting began to spill over and I watched them flow out of her through guttural sounds of grief, rage, and powerful movement. As the emotions slowed, I guided her outside to ground and see the stars that had come out because you simply can&#8217;t journey on mushrooms and not allow yourself to see the magnificence that is a starry night.</p><p>She spent some time in the quiet room, then she&#8217;d float between dancing, watching moving art, and standing before the hall mirror where she&#8217;d gaze on her reflection and marvel at her body and movement. As the medicine began to wane, she moved into the kitchen and began to draw pictures, like a child lost in her imagination. I served her some dal and we chatted a bit about her experience. After another hour or so, she was ready to rest and went to bed.</p><p>Throughout the night, I would check on her to make sure she was still blissed out and then I went to sleep after snuffing the candles.</p><p>In the morning, she was bright eyed, joyful, and smiling non-stop.</p><p>She told me about some of the deeper aspects of her journey, the spirits that came through and the messages they carried. I don&#8217;t recall specifics, but I remember her telling me how at peace she felt and that she was excited for integration so she could continue to process the depth of her magical journey.</p><p>Most importantly, she told me that the medicine felt loving and safe, and that she no longer felt the trauma of her first experience of being dosed without her consent or knowledge. She thanked me over and over for my guidance for holding her so lovingly during her journey, for not being obtrusive, but remaining present and available.</p><p>After breakfast, we got dressed and I drove us to Austin. She&#8217;d never been and really wanted to get some vegan cheese from Rebel Cheese. I took her to brunch at Bouldin Creek Cafe and to get her some cheese and we had a beautiful afternoon together. She was looking gorgeous so I made her pose in front of some beautiful flower bushes and took photos and videos of her for her archives. After returning home, we had a nice cozy evening together resting, chatting, and snacking.</p><p>The next morning we closed out the ceremony, packed up all of our things and said goodbye to the beautiful old house that held us over the weekend.</p><p>It&#8217;s been just over a year since I guided my beautiful client through this monumental journey and she tells me that she&#8217;s still receiving downloads and insights, how the medicine continues to work through her. She recently shared that a few of her friends now want to have a guided journey with me because of how passionately she speaks of her own experience.</p><p>I think of that weekend so fondly because not only was it an honor to be able to guide her through such a powerful transformation, but it helped me align to a gift for deeper guidance that I hadn&#8217;t even thought of offering until my beautiful client recognized me and invited me.</p><p>So when I recently decided to begin offering <a href="https://form.jotform.com/262197069501156">1:1 ceremonial retreats in Tulum, Mexico</a>, it was the opportunity she&#8217;d given me to curate and facilitate her weekend sacred medicine retreat that had laid the groundwork.</p><p>There was something so reverential about showing up in service this way, creating an immersive container for potent soul exploration outside of the confines of familiarity.</p><p>There are thresholds that require us to leave the familiar environment of our lives, step outside of the identities and responsibilities we inhabit every day, and enter a space intentionally designed for us to hear what has been whispering beneath all the noise.</p><p>This is especially true for the woman who has already done so much of the work.</p><p>You know yourself. You&#8217;ve healed. You&#8217;ve questioned old beliefs, shed identities, ended relationships, changed patterns, learned how to choose yourself and built a relationship with your own inner knowing.</p><p><span>And still, you can feel there is </span><em>more of you waiting for you.</em></p><p>To be clear, this isn&#8217;t because something is wrong with you or that you have yet another wound to attend to, it&#8217;s because there are desires you haven&#8217;t fully surrendered to yet.</p><p>Just as my client shared, there are parts of your power you&#8217;ve only begun to touch, depths of pleasure you&#8217;ve only slightly felt, and there&#8217;s freedom, creativity, sensuality, truth and aliveness that your current life may not give you enough space to explore.</p><p>You don&#8217;t need another session or journal prompt.</p><p><em>You desire an initiation.</em></p><p>You crave an opportunity to step outside of your ordinary life long enough to meet yourself somewhere extraordinary.</p><p>That is what <a href="https://form.jotform.com/262197069501156">Radiance</a> was created for.</p><p><a href="https://form.jotform.com/262197069501156">Radiance is my private 1:1 ceremonial immersion in Tulum, Mexico</a>, where for five days there is no group to accommodate, no curriculum you need to keep pace with, and no version of yourself you need to perform.</p><p><strong>There is only you.</strong></p><p>Your desires, edges, body, pleasure, nervous questions, and your delicious becoming.</p><p>I build the entire experience around the woman who arrives to meet me there.</p><p>Depending on what you desire and what I feel is appropriate for you, our days may hold ritual, embodiment, womb work, grief or rage transmutation, adventure, beauty, rest, pleasure, deep conversation, time in nature, and sacred medicine ceremony for women who feel called to explore psilocybin.</p><p>Ultimately, the medicine is not Radiance or the mushrooms.</p><p><strong>You are.</strong></p><p>These opportunities are simply possible doorways.</p><p>And just as I did for the woman whose story you&#8217;ve just read, my work is to create the conditions in which you feel held enough, safe enough, and free enough to surrender to whatever is waiting on the other side of yours.</p><p>If this is what I have the power and presence to create for a single ceremony, imagine what I can do with five uninterrupted days with you.</p><p>If you feel thrilled to join me in Tulum, apply here:</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://form.jotform.com/262197069501156&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Apply for Radiance&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://form.jotform.com/262197069501156"><span>Apply for Radiance</span></a></p><p>And if what stirred you most deeply while reading this was the sacred medicine experience itself, I also offer private ceremonial journeys for women who feel called to explore psilocybin within an intentional, spiritually held container. Email me at andrea@goddessvibes.com so we can drop in together and discuss the possibilities.</p><p>See you on the other side, love.</p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><h4></h4>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[What happens when the life you prayed for no longer fits?]]></title><description><![CDATA[It took losing everything I worked for to discover what freedom actually meant]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-the-life-you-prayed</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-the-life-you-prayed</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 15 Aug 2026 19:44:25 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-E_t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8cd9e9eb-0a30-4df8-bca5-0b6b3139c121_1728x972.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I recently shared with y&#8217;all how <a href="/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/so-i-live-in-a-school-bus-life-is">five years ago, I was a TV star</a>.</p><p>I had booked the kind of role I&#8217;d spent nearly 20 years dreaming about. I was a series regular on a hit show, we&#8217;d been picked up for a second season, and I genuinely thought I was entering the era of my life I had worked so hard for.</p><p>And then I got fired for rejecting the covid shot.</p><p>Within a relatively short span of my life, my father died, I got divorced, went through a dark night of the soul, lost the career I&#8217;d spent decades building, lost a significant source of my income, became the subject of a public media firestorm, moved back into my childhood home with my mother, and found myself finishing the conversion of a pink school bus in her driveway.</p><p>*deep sigh*</p><p>There were days I would escape into my half-finished bus, sit on the raw plywood floor and cry until there was nothing left. I was angry, grieving, terrified, and being confronted with nearly every place I had unknowingly outsourced my sense of safety, identity, worth and belonging.</p><p>And underneath all of it, I knew my life wasn&#8217;t over. The life I had built was simply no longer big enough for the woman I was becoming.</p><p>Eventually, I realized I&#8217;d have to stop asking how I could get my old life back and start asking a much more important and interesting question.</p><p>What kind of life would actually feel delicious to me now?</p><p>Not successful according to my previous standards, the version of me I was leaving behind.</p><p>But the woman I was becoming</p><p>I desired freedom, beauty, adventure, pleasure, sovereignty, deep intimacy with myself, and work that meant something to me on a deeper soul level.</p><p>I wanted the ability to use my voice without wondering whether it might jeopardize my livelihood. I wanted to wake up and decide where I wanted to go, what I wanted to create, what I wanted to charge, what I was no longer available for, and who I wanted to become next.</p><p>And little by little, I built that life.</p><p>Today, that pink school bus is my sanctuary. I&#8217;ve made forests, mountains, deserts and beaches my backyard. I&#8217;ve traveled the world. I&#8217;ve built a business around work that feels deeply connected to my purpose and taught thousands of women how to heal and how to live a life they&#8217;re excited to wake up to.</p><p>I&#8217;ve become more discerning, more sovereign, more devoted to my desires, more willing to disappoint people, more willing to change my mind, and much more willing to leave behind identities, relationships, opportunities and definitions of success that no longer belong to me.</p><p>Perhaps most importantly, I&#8217;ve learned how to become my own favorite place to live. And this is a huge part of why I&#8217;m so fucking good at the work I do with women.</p><p>I don&#8217;t teach self-devotion because I read about it in a book. I teach it because life stripped away nearly everything I thought I needed in order to be somebody, and forced me to discover who I was without it.</p><p>I know what it&#8217;s like to be powerful, intelligent, talented and deeply self-aware and still realize that the life you&#8217;re living has become too small for you.</p><p>I know what it&#8217;s like to have done years of healing and still find yourself standing at the edge of the life you actually desire.</p><p>I know what it&#8217;s like to choose yourself when the choice has major consequences, to rebuild when the old dream dies, and to discover that the thing you thought was the destination was actually just one chapter.</p><p>And I also know that healing isn&#8217;t the destination.</p><p><strong>Living is.</strong></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-E_t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8cd9e9eb-0a30-4df8-bca5-0b6b3139c121_1728x972.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-E_t!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8cd9e9eb-0a30-4df8-bca5-0b6b3139c121_1728x972.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-E_t!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, 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class="image-caption">Live footage of me being a water nymph in a cenote in Tulum</figcaption></figure></div><p>There comes a point when you don&#8217;t need another five years of analyzing why you became the woman you are. You need to decide what the woman you&#8217;ve become gets to experience now.</p><p>What does she desire? What feels delicious? What is she no longer willing to tolerate? What would she choose if she trusted herself completely? What kind of life would make her ache to wake up to in the morning?</p><p>That is the work I&#8217;m passionate about.</p><p>I spent twenty years chasing the life I thought would set me free, when it turns out, freedom was waiting for me inside a pink school bus.</p><p>Now, I initiate powerful, self-aware women into delicious lives they are deeply, sensually, unapologetically devoted to living.</p><p>You&#8217;re a powerful, self-aware woman who has already done the healing, the identity shedding, and you can feel that your next chapter is no longer about fixing yourself, but about creating a life that feels as extraordinary as the woman you&#8217;ve become.</p><p>I guide women exactly like you in closing the gap between the woman you&#8217;ve become and the life you&#8217;re actually living&#8212;so that your relationships, work, pleasure, freedom, standards and everyday experiences finally reflect who you know yourself to be.</p><p>My private 1:1 guidance is where we take everything you already know about yourself and turn it into a life you are deeply, sensually, unapologetically devoted to living.</p><p>If you&#8217;re done with waiting and ready to truly <em>live</em> as the version of you that you worked so hard to cultivate, I welcome you into my world.</p><p>Here are two incredible ways you can work with me 1:1</p><div><hr></div><h4>Transformational Mentorship</h4><p>There comes a point when knowing yourself is no longer enough.</p><p>You&#8217;ve done the reflecting, named the patterns, learned to hear your intuition. You&#8217;ve probably already healed, grown, unraveled, awakened and reinvented yourself more than once. You are powerful, self-aware, and deeply capable. And yet, there are still places where the life you are living does not fully reflect the woman you know yourself to be.</p><p>This mentorship is for the woman who is ready to change that.</p><p>My private mentorship is an intimate space for women who are ready to become deeply, sensually, unapologetically devoted to creating a life that feels delicious to live. </p><p>Together, we work with whatever stands between you and that life: the patterns you can see but haven&#8217;t fully interrupted, the desires you keep negotiating with, the standards you know you&#8217;re ready to raise, the decisions you&#8217;ve been circling, the relationships that require a new version of you, and the places where you know more than you&#8217;re currently embodying.</p><p>I am not here to hand you a blueprint for becoming me, tell you what your life should look like, or position myself as the authority over your knowing. My work is deeply intuitive, initiatory and personal. I listen for what is underneath the story. I challenge you when I can see you negotiating with what you already know. I help you tell the truth about what you want, take radical responsibility for what you are creating, and build the self-trust to make choices that honor the woman you are becoming.</p><p>The goal isn&#8217;t to spend our time endlessly fixing you.</p><p><em>The goal is to help you live.</em></p><p>To create more pleasure. More freedom. More beauty. More self-trust. More adventure. More intimacy. More creativity. More sovereignty. Higher standards. Cleaner decisions. A deeper relationship with yourself. And a life that feels increasingly like your own favorite place to be.</p><p>Apply here: </p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://form.jotform.com/Andrea_Bordeaux/mentorship-with-andrea-bordeaux&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Transformational Mentorship&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://form.jotform.com/Andrea_Bordeaux/mentorship-with-andrea-bordeaux"><span>Transformational Mentorship</span></a></p><div><hr></div><h4>&#10024;RADIANCE&#10024;: Private Ceremonial Retreat in Tulum, Mexico</h4><p>You&#8217;ve done the work.</p><p>You&#8217;ve spent years in therapy.</p><p>You&#8217;ve re-parented your inner child.</p><p>You&#8217;ve taken the courses and masterclasses.</p><p>And yet&#8230;</p><p>You&#8217;re still craving that feeling of childlike joy and playfulness.</p><p>You&#8217;ve decentered men but you haven&#8217;t yet reclaimed your sensuality as something belonging only to you.</p><p>You can name every one of your patterns and triggers, but your throat still tightens when I ask you to tell me what you desire.</p><p>The work brought you here. Now let pleasure take you further.</p><p>Take a moment to pause, close your eyes, and imagine the following:</p><p>Imagine waking up in Tulum with no one to answer to but yourself and an entire day designed around your delight.</p><p>Imagine hearing your desires clearly, and letting yourself have more.</p><p>Imagine laughing until your stomach hurts, swimming in sacred waters, eating incredible food, and remembering that evolution gets to feel fucking good.</p><p>Imagine looking in the mirror at a woman you&#8217;re no longer trying to fix and feeling deeply proud of who you&#8217;ve become.</p><p>Imagine being met with a level of beauty, care, and intention that matches the standards you&#8217;ve cultivated.</p><p>Imagine returning home ready for a life even more pleasurable, expansive, and delicious than the one you left.</p><p>Yum. &#129766;</p><p>This is what I give to you at &#10024;<span>&#120397;&#120380;&#120383;&#120388;&#120380;&#120393;&#120382;&#120384;</span>&#10024;. An immersive pilgrimage back to source, back to you. A custom curated experience tailored specifically to your needs and desires, without you lifting a finger. You book the flight, I handle everything else.</p><p>No more waiting for the girlies in the group chat to join you, when what you really want is to do your own thing anyway.</p><p>Radiance is for the woman who has already transformed herself, and is ready for her life to become a reflection of just how extraordinary she has become.</p><p>I&#8217;m currently inviting the first Founding Women to experience Radiance with me privately in Tulum, Mexico.</p><p>If you read this and felt someone inside you whisper, &#8220;This is for me&#8221; listen to her.</p><p><span>Apply Here:</span></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://form.jotform.com/262197069501156&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Become Radiant&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://form.jotform.com/262197069501156"><span>Become Radiant</span></a></p><p>Both me Mexico are waiting for you, gorgeous. &#127474;&#127485;&#10024;</p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Men's lust exposes the lie of male leadership]]></title><description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m 39, single and child free.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/mens-lust-exposes-the-lie-of-male</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/mens-lust-exposes-the-lie-of-male</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:21:16 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mrG2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed82b8ef-ccff-4854-ab63-394a0e75d179_1080x580.heic" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;m 39, single and child free. I began my celibacy journey 7 years ago.</p><p>In these years of self devotion, I&#8217;ve come to understand even more deeply that men&#8217;s lack of sexual discipline is rooted in self loathing and an inescapable sense of powerlessness.</p><p>Their lack of reverence and connection to the Feminine has them constantly chasing temporary pleasure to fill their void of inadequacy and to feel&#8230;.something&#8230;.</p><p>Anything.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mrG2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed82b8ef-ccff-4854-ab63-394a0e75d179_1080x580.heic" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mrG2!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed82b8ef-ccff-4854-ab63-394a0e75d179_1080x580.heic 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mrG2!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed82b8ef-ccff-4854-ab63-394a0e75d179_1080x580.heic 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mrG2!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed82b8ef-ccff-4854-ab63-394a0e75d179_1080x580.heic 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mrG2!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed82b8ef-ccff-4854-ab63-394a0e75d179_1080x580.heic 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mrG2!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed82b8ef-ccff-4854-ab63-394a0e75d179_1080x580.heic" width="1080" height="580" 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed82b8ef-ccff-4854-ab63-394a0e75d179_1080x580.heic 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mrG2!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed82b8ef-ccff-4854-ab63-394a0e75d179_1080x580.heic 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mrG2!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, 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class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8CIB!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F17b7d84f-e68f-43f2-a58a-6807d59bce47_1080x925.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8CIB!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F17b7d84f-e68f-43f2-a58a-6807d59bce47_1080x925.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8CIB!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F17b7d84f-e68f-43f2-a58a-6807d59bce47_1080x925.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8CIB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F17b7d84f-e68f-43f2-a58a-6807d59bce47_1080x925.jpeg" width="1080" height="925" 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F17b7d84f-e68f-43f2-a58a-6807d59bce47_1080x925.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8CIB!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F17b7d84f-e68f-43f2-a58a-6807d59bce47_1080x925.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8CIB!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F17b7d84f-e68f-43f2-a58a-6807d59bce47_1080x925.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8CIB!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F17b7d84f-e68f-43f2-a58a-6807d59bce47_1080x925.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>For centuries, women and men have been gaslighted into thinking this is a natural consequence of biology&#8212;that it entitles them to spread themselves like parasites&#8212;when it really comes to down poor self worth.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p>A man who loves himself honors his life force and guards it with care and reverence.</p><p>When he chooses to share himself with another, it is grounded in mutual respect, reciprocity, and deep understanding of how sex is more than physical pleasure, it is the exchange of consciousness.</p><p>A man who hates himself wants you to hate yourself because it makes you an easier target for him to dump his own self loathing into, giving him temporary relief from the inner darkness he&#8217;s too afraid to face.</p><p>A man who loves you wouldn&#8217;t dare enter your temple&#8212;your portal of creation&#8212;without providing offerings, consistency, and a desire to worship the Goddess that you embody.</p><p>How do you learn the difference? By turning your focus and energy inward. By getting crystal clear about who you are, who you are becoming, and vision you are meant to weave into reality.</p><p>And saying no to anything that isn&#8217;t that.</p><p><em>You learn by being selfish.</em></p><p>You learn by understanding that men are not the leaders they&#8217;ve been told they are.</p><p>Women are the natural leaders.</p><p>And we lead through deep self love and our devotion to ourselves and our soul&#8217;s mission. We lead through our hearts and wombs. We lead through ferociously rejecting distortion, lies, and forces that wish to claim our power through deception, coercion, and parasitic energy harvesting.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p>Men are not addicted to sex, they are addicted to a woman&#8217;s power and the most fruitful place for them to feed is from her womb. I teach this and how to guard yourself from being drained in my <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-masterclass">Selfish Bitch Masterclass</a> and my 21 day <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course">Selfish Bitch Initiation</a>.</p><p>This is for the woman who is tired of feeling played and deceived and drained in her relationships. It&#8217;s for the woman who is ready to release victimhood and &#8220;good girl&#8221; conditioning, and rise into her sovereign womanhood.</p><p>It&#8217;s for the woman who is ready to stand in the unapologetic ferocity of her power, commanding respect and reverence in every space she enters.</p><p>Get up off your knees and stop begging your creation to lead you.</p><p>The time for relying on, praying for, and being desperate for men to change, to become who we need or desire them to be is over.</p><p>Women stepping into their sovereignty and divine leadership is the era we have entered into.</p><p>As women, we are so fortunate to be able to do the work of seed planting and birthing templates for new realities.</p><p>As the natural leaders of this realm, we must take responsibility for what is to be created moving forward.</p><p>You don&#8217;t know who you are or what impact you&#8217;re truly meant to have in this lifetime because your energy is focused outward.</p><p>You have been trained to monitor men instead of mastering yourself.</p><p>To overextend instead of receive.</p><p>To perform softness while your intuition screams.</p><p>To confuse being chosen with being cherished.</p><p>And the cost of that conditioning is your life force.</p><p>Every woman I know who finally became magnetic, clear, sovereign, powerful, wealthy, deeply desired, and spiritually anchored had this in common:</p><p>She stopped abandoning herself. She stopped negotiating with distortion. Stopped handing access to men who had not earned entry into her body, mind, spirit, or energy. Stopped treating her womb like a public resource.</p><p>And became selfish.</p><p>Devoted to herself.</p><p>Protective of her energy.</p><p>Unavailable for manipulation.</p><p>Unapologetic about her standards.</p><p>Deeply rooted in her purpose.</p><p>That. Is. The. work.</p><p>And that is exactly what I teach inside my <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-masterclass">Selfish Bitch Masterclass</a> and 21-Day <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course">Selfish Bitch Initiation</a>.</p><p>If you are ready to stop feeling drained, confused, addicted to crumbs, emotionally available to men who cannot meet you, and disconnected from your own power&#8230;</p><p>This work is for you.</p><p>The woman you are becoming requires a different level of devotion to yourself.</p><p>And she&#8217;s going to help lead us all into liberation.</p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[So, I live in a school bus. Life is weird and beautiful.]]></title><description><![CDATA[My musings on how getting fired from my dream job actually set me free.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/so-i-live-in-a-school-bus-life-is</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/so-i-live-in-a-school-bus-life-is</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:04:24 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!muPl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f510802-1e50-4bb2-8c31-0603a02fe088_1125x1406.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Five years ago, I was a tv star.</p><p>Sometimes I have to remind myself of the life I lived, the life that I dreamed of living since I was a little kid.</p><p>A couple of weeks back, I had a phone call with my agent and she asked me if I still wanted to be an actress. She&#8217;d reached out to me to gauge whether or not she should still keep me on her talent roster. Despite previously being a rare &#8220;working actor&#8221;, meaning my full lifestyle was supported by my work as an actor, I haven&#8217;t worked in well over a year, and prior to that, I hadn&#8217;t worked in nearly 4 years.</p><p>I took the call at home in my bus, a 2010 Chevy Express 3500 that I had completely renovated into a beautiful tiny home.</p><p>Her name is Miss Lady. She&#8217;s pink.</p><p>A couple days prior, when I read the email my agent sent me, telling me she was going over her roster and wanted to have a check in with me, I felt immediate nervousness in my belly. My first thought was that she was thinking of dropping me as a client.</p><p>I allowed myself to explore the feelings and thoughts with gentle curiosity. For the last few years, I&#8217;ve gone back and forth around whether I still feel like there&#8217;s a place for me in the film and television industry. I&#8217;ve questioned if this is a path I&#8217;m still meant to walk down. </p><p>That feeling of nervousness was very illuminating for me. It meant that I feel some level of investment in the stakes. It meant that I still care, still desire, still feel some level of attachment to my childhood dream, the vision that I spent decades moving toward and even briefly tasting.</p><p>I shared with her that yes, I still very much wish to continue pursuing my dream, but the way in which I am choosing to navigate this journey has shifted dramatically.</p><p>When I still lived in Los Angeles and was a working actress, I was making great money, had wide availability for auditions, and had great relationships with casting directors.</p><p>In December of 2019, I booked a lead role in a tv pilot called &#8216;Run The World&#8217; and my whole life would change from that moment.</p><p>While, on one hand, I had been calling in greater and greater success as an actress, I was also, on a deep spiritual level, being initiated into my soul&#8217;s calling. So much had been shifting in my life the previous three years: my father died, I got divorced, I experienced a deep dark night of the soul ego death, and I&#8217;d just come out the other side of my Saturn&#8217;s return.</p><p>When I booked the lead in a tv series, I thought that I was finally getting my big break, that all of the years of grinding, auditioning, training, and crying bitter tears was ushering me into a new level and era as an actor.</p><p>And for a little while, it did. The pilot we filmed was great and the show got picked up to series. We were set to begin filming in New York City in the Spring of 2020, but we all know what fucked that plan to hell.</p><p>We did eventually shoot the series that fall and the show premiered Summer 2021.</p><p>It was a hit.</p><p>We got picked up for a second season.</p><p>And in January 2022, just two months before filming was set to begin, I was fired from the show.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!muPl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f510802-1e50-4bb2-8c31-0603a02fe088_1125x1406.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!muPl!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, 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class="image-caption">The news article that caused a firestorm</figcaption></figure></div><p>Right around when the show first premiered, I&#8217;d bought my school bus from a dealer in San Deigo, and when everything came crashing down, the build was only halfway finished. The original builder bailed on the rest of the project, and I ended up moving back in with my mom while I finished the bus myself in her driveway.</p><p>What was supposed to be a 3-4 month job when I bought the bus ended up taking a year to finish.</p><p>I&#8217;ve always had a very tumultuous relationship my mom, having grown up being physically and emotionally abused by her, so being back in my childhood home was such a powerful initiation, requiring me to do deep shadow and inner child work all while losing my dream job and building out my home at the same time.</p><p>On top of that, the public backlash that I experienced for choosing not to take the covid-19 shot, and the intensity of a lawsuit that I&#8217;ve never spoken on was deeply traumatizing and had lasting consequences for my nervous system and hormones, both of which I&#8217;m only just recently starting to feel some sense of balance and homeostasis again.</p><p>The insane whiplash of it all was really hard to bear.</p><p>I was still reeling from just having been fired a few days prior. Then on a Friday morning, I woke up to several messages from my agent letting me know that the author of the news article pictured above was going to be releasing said article in just 2 hours, and wanted to know if I had a statement before it was published.</p><p>Naturally, I said &#8220;no comment&#8221; and spent the next couple of hours with a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.</p><p>Once it was published, several other major publications also picked up the story. Shortly after the Deadline article went live, I made my own post on IG and my account was quickly flooded with notifications.</p><p>I spent hours reading the comments on my post and other articles. The amount of negativity and hatred, and even celebration of my &#8220;demise&#8221; was heartbreaking and infuriating. I was posted on The Shade Room&#8212;IYKYK&#8212;for fuck&#8217;s sake and the comments were largely atrocious.</p><p>Thankfully, my own post was full of support. I received dozens of DMs from every day folk, other actors, and celebrities offering me their praise and admiration for standing my ground. My following grew by over 10K in the span of a few days.</p><p>But the influx of energy&#8212;positive or negative&#8212;on top of the grief of my loss, the stress of building a bus, and being at ground zero for all of my childhood trauma nearly took me out.</p><p>I cried. A lot.</p><p>Because I wasn't in the most supportive environment to move through my grief, I'd escape to my still-dusty, half-finished bus and sit on the raw plywood floor, crying until there was nothing left.</p><p>I couldn&#8217;t eat. I was restless and irritable.</p><p>And I was so. fucking. angry. </p><p>Everything that I valued, loved, and felt attached to was stripped away. Some of it by my own doing, of course. I had made the choice to leave Los Angeles and pursue a dreamy idea of bus life. </p><p>Not only was I living at home with my mom, I was going through what many would have probably described as emotional hell. I was removed from my entire network of friends and support, my childhood triggers were constantly being brought to the surface by my mother, and I had just lost not only my dream acting job, but the income that went along with it.</p><p>Most productions at the time were also adhering to vaccine mandates, so finding work as an actress became even more difficult than it already was under normal circumstances. </p><p>And while all of this was happening, I was doing my best to pivot into using my spiritual gifts as a way of creating abundance for myself.</p><p>Prior to this massive rupture, I&#8217;d realized my values were diverging from the direction the industry was moving. Whether that divergence was temporary or permanent, I no longer felt comfortable allowing Hollywood to be the sole source of my livelihood.</p><p>This, combined with other massive spiritual shifts beginning to take place within the collective, I had a clear and distinct sense that I would no longer be able to fully rely on my acting career as a way of sustaining myself financially.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Joqy!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fda600928-0446-4bb6-bf3e-58e52b2c68ab_1120x1802.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Joqy!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, 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class="image-caption">A text exchange from April 2020. My intuition was guiding me onto a new path.</figcaption></figure></div><p>It was then that I started laying the groundwork to move into a space of sovereignty where I would not need to depend on the film and television industry as a means of income. All of the moves that I began making in 2021, including beginning the process of converting a school bus into a mobile home were a part of that plan.</p><p>There were many moments where I felt completely overwhelmed by what felt like an endless barrage of loss, chaos, heartbreak, rage, lack of support, and just plain disappointment.</p><p>It&#8217;s hard for me to think of another time in my life where I&#8217;ve cried more or felt more alone.</p><p>And through it all, I continued to remind myself that I was clearly being stretched, pulled, and expanded because I had asked The Mother to lead me deeper into my purpose. I had been asking Her to guide me toward everything that is meant for me. </p><p>One of the first and most potent lessons that I learned when I began diving more fully into my healing journey in 2018 is that nothing happens *to* you, it happens *for* you. </p><p>So, despite being in near constant pain, feeling like I was in a loop of never ending lessons, humility, and challenge, I kept reminding myself of and leaning into the surrender that accompanies deep trust in the process, deep trust in The Divine.</p><p>As the weeks and months went by, I watched the vision of my beautiful school bus home come to life. I watched myself create my first course as a guide, which ultimately failed&#8212;badly and embarrassingly&#8212;leading me to learn from the failure and begin healing the spiritual blockages that I was able to identify through that failure.</p><p>I watched myself as I grew a more powerful connection to my inner child and realized, painfully, that I was still in longing of acceptance and acknowledgment from my mother. I got to experience the relief of finally letting go and releasing myself and my mother from the weight of that longing.</p><p>But the real homecoming was the opportunity to return to *myself* in ways that I could never have imagined. And that&#8217;s probably because I simply did not have the capacity to before.</p><p>The Divine did not present me with this sacred challenge until I had already grown into the Woman who could carry it, who could allow herself to be expanded in the ways necessary to receive deep medicine, experience, freedom, and ultimately, wisdom that will allow me to better serve others.</p><p>Sometimes what you need is to have everything stripped away so that you learn that you are everything. It recalls to my mind the old saying, &#8220;Wherever you go, there you are.&#8221;</p><p>You are your home.</p><p>This is something I&#8217;m still learning and integrating.</p><p>Becoming the woman who runs a business that&#8217;s centered on guiding women into their own power and sovereignty is so fucking hard. This is the deepest shadow work that I&#8217;ve ever done and I&#8217;ve felt lost, clueless, and scared for 93% of this journey.</p><p>And I keep going because even in the months where I make literally $0, I am free.</p><p>I wake up when I want, go where I want, I never have to ask for time off or worry about how using my voice and autonomy can &#8220;reflect poorly&#8221; on the image of some massive corporation. I decide my prices and raise them when I want, when an offer no longer feels fulfilling, I simply retire it.</p><p>With my starlink, I can make any forest, river, desert, beach, or mountain my office. I can create from anywhere in the country&#8212;in my bus&#8212;or anywhere in the world after a flight.</p><p>What used to be a dusty, half-finished emotional burden, is now my safe space, my most treasured ally.</p><p>My sanctuary.</p><p>And I keep going because the devotion to my women&#8217;s work is changing lives and bringing more peace and harmony into this world. I truly feel connected to my dharma in the most wonderful ways.</p><p>Life is weird and beautiful. </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0ru!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F38a1c92a-48c1-4d33-947f-61e3503f683a_3024x3024.heic" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0ru!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F38a1c92a-48c1-4d33-947f-61e3503f683a_3024x3024.heic 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0ru!, 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class="image-caption">Me and Miss Lady resting in the woods.</figcaption></figure></div><p>Interestingly, it had been quiet since that phone call with my agent, up until a few days ago when a promising audition came through. It&#8217;s for the lead in a film, being cast by Kim Coleman, the same casting director that brought me in for &#8216;Run The World&#8217;. The role is one that I felt excited for, for the first time in a while.</p><p>I sent off the audition tape yesterday and my agent told me it&#8217;s a very strong audition, which, in agent-speak, means I did a great job. And I agree. I was happy with my work, but even moreso, I was happy to, for the first time, re-approach my work as an actor with a balance of devotion and detachment.</p><p>Because I&#8217;m no longer relying on Hollywood to feed me or give me visibility to reach the women who need me, it now gets to be simply an avenue for play and exploration. There&#8217;s a new sense of levity with the work that didn&#8217;t exist before.</p><p>So for a while, I thought I&#8217;d lost my dream, but I was actually being shown that my initial vision was way too small, and way too confining for a soul as expansive as mine.</p><p>I stood for myself and my rights, and for a while, felt like I had lost everything, but I was being redirected into an initiation so much more profound than I had the capacity to see back then.</p><p>I spent twenty years chasing the life I thought would make me free.</p><p>Freedom was waiting for me inside a pink school bus.</p><p>I&#8217;m grateful.</p><p>And no matter where I go, I&#8217;m always at home.</p><div><hr></div><p>Thank you so much for taking the time to read this piece of me, my story, and what has helped shape me into the woman I am today. If you wish to dive deeper into my world:</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Enter My World&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux"><span>Enter My World</span></a></p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Men won't be able to play in your face if you follow these 3 rules of dating.]]></title><description><![CDATA[Hi beauties!]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/men-wont-be-able-to-play-in-your</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/men-wont-be-able-to-play-in-your</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:38:37 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/youtube/w_728,c_limit/9bIICV2h4qs" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hi beauties! I&#8217;m working on some lovely written essays for y&#8217;all, but this video that I uploaded to my YouTube channel&#8212;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@AndreaBordeaux">subscribe if you haven&#8217;t yet</a>&#8212;is begging to be shared here:</p><div id="youtube2-9bIICV2h4qs" class="youtube-wrap" data-attrs="{&quot;videoId&quot;:&quot;9bIICV2h4qs&quot;,&quot;startTime&quot;:null,&quot;endTime&quot;:null}" data-component-name="Youtube2ToDOM"><div class="youtube-inner"><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/9bIICV2h4qs?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409"></iframe></div></div><p>I don&#8217;t typically give dating advice in my content because the primary focus of my work is to teach women how to be selfish, sovereign, and powerful on the merit of their own existence.</p><p>A man is neither needed nor required.</p><p>However, I know that many of you still crave connection and relationships with men.</p><p>There&#8217;s nothing wrong with that, but the majority of women weren&#8217;t taught how to identify dangerous men. We were taught how to accommodate them.</p><p>These three guidelines won&#8217;t guarantee that you&#8217;ll never meet a narcissist, abuser, or user.</p><p>But they make it much harder for those types of men to manipulate you and siphon your precious life force because they require you to stop outsourcing your discernment and start trusting your own.</p><p>I break each one down in this video, going much deeper into the psychology behind them.</p><p>And if watching the video and reading this letter made you realize you&#8217;ve been abandoning yourself or making it easier for a man to use you in order to keep a relationship, <span>&#120398;&#120410;&#120417;&#120411;&#120414;&#120424;&#120413;</span> <span>&#120381;&#120414;&#120425;&#120408;&#120413;</span> was created for you, queen.</p><p>Selfish Bitch isn&#8217;t about becoming cold, bitter, or unavailable.</p><p>It&#8217;s about becoming the woman who no longer betrays herself to be chosen.</p><p>The woman who trusts herself.</p><p>Who honors her standards.</p><p>Who knows when to walk away.</p><p>Who stops giving her power to people who haven&#8217;t earned it.</p><p><span>&#120398;&#120410;&#120417;&#120411;&#120414;&#120424;&#120413;</span> <span>&#120381;&#120414;&#120425;&#120408;&#120413;</span> gets women results and helps them create powerful transformations in their embodiment.</p><p>This is how you become exactly who you say you want to be.</p><p>I have both a masterclass and a potent 21 day initiation for the woman who is done playing games and ready to take her power back. If you invest in the Initiation, you will receive the masterclass for free.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-masterclass&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Selfish Bitch Masterclass&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-masterclass"><span>Selfish Bitch Masterclass</span></a></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Selfish Bitch Initiation&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course"><span>Selfish Bitch Initiation</span></a></p><p>Now tell me the comments, which rule landed the hardest for you? Which one have you struggled with the most?</p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[The hidden force shaping women's lives]]></title><description><![CDATA[Understanding the mother wound and the path to liberation]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/the-hidden-force-shaping-womens-lives</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/the-hidden-force-shaping-womens-lives</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:54:38 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8hqc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61c1efcb-df78-474c-9cae-65f7e612948c_501x700.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>Most women greatly underestimate how deeply their relationship with their mother has shaped their lives.</em></p><p><em>It becomes the blueprint through which many women learn what love feels like, what they are worth, and how much of themselves they are allowed to express.</em></p><p><em>This essay explores the hidden force of the mother wound and the first steps toward healing it.</em></p><p><em>For women who feel ready to go deeper, I&#8217;m guiding a group of women through this work inside <strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter">Sovereign Daughte</a>r</strong>, where we dismantle the unconscious contracts that keep daughters emotionally bound to their mothers and reclaim true sovereignty.</em></p><p><em>You can learn more about <strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter">Sovereign Daughter</a></strong> here:</em></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Sovereign Daughter&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter"><span>Sovereign Daughter</span></a></p><div><hr></div><p>The distortion caused by the mother wound is so profoundly damaging and confusing, that I would say it is probably the greatest origin of pain and suffering in our current reality. This is true for women and men, but for women, it is even more damaging, as the woman is the source of creation and life.</p><p>If the mother&#8212;our blueprint for womanhood and motherhood and The Goddess herself&#8212;is deeply wounded and distorted, the harm that she causes to the individual and the greater collective of humanity is incalculable. </p><p>When it comes to healing the deep and painful mother wound, I&#8217;m going to share with you the 5 steps that if you follow them, not only will you experience potent healing, you will transform your relationship with yourself, your relationships with everyone else in your life, and thus, the entire collective.</p><p>That is how powerful you are.</p><h4><em>Naming the Mother Wound</em></h4><p>So many of us have mothers who, due to their own wounding, mothered us in ways that were neglectful, restrictive, or downright abusive, whether that abuse was physical, emotional, financial, or all of them combined.</p><p>As children, this leaves us with a tremendous amount of pain and confusion, and we often develop into young women who lack boundaries, allow ourselves to be disrespected or abused, we constantly over-give and deplete our life force for the benefit of others, and we become disconnected from who we truly are as women and unique individuals with our own path, desires, and sense of purpose.</p><p>When we try to defend ourselves from this treatment, very often as children, but sometimes not until adulthood, we are met with swift and fierce pushback or deeper abuse from our mothers. We are gaslit about the experiences that we are having or have had, treated as the enemy for asking for mutual respect, and accused of betrayal for choosing or simply desiring to walk our own path.</p><p>We constantly ask ourselves: How is it that the woman who birthed me, who literally created me with her own body and power of manifestation, could hold such contempt and hatred for me? What did I do to deserve this? And no matter how much time passes, why the fuck does it <em>still</em> hurt so much?</p><p>We look at our life and the woman we have become, and we feel anger at having been so let down by the woman who was supposed to be the example who would set us up for success, love, peace, joy, and a deep sense of worthiness.</p><p>Why didn&#8217;t she teach me how to handle the world? Why have I never experienced genuine love? How do I not know the most basic things of what it means to be a healthy and happy woman?</p><p>I cannot fully express just how well I understand your feelings&#8212;your pain, your confusion, and your anger. As someone with a very deeply wounded and toxic mother, and therefore, my own deep wounding and toxic expressions that I have worked diligently to heal, I have run the gamut of emotions&#8212;especially anger&#8212;over the cards that I was dealt. I have experienced heartbreaking physical, emotional, and financial abuse by my mother and, to this day, I am still gaslit about my experiences.</p><p>Throughout my powerful and often challenging healing journey, what has served me the most was <em>learning that I have the power to transform how I feel about my mother and the treatment I experienced at her hands</em>. I have learned to release the anger, resentment, and pain, so that I can maintain a healthy and open heart center through which magical blessings can be received.</p><p>It is these lessons that I teach my clients to assist them in reclaiming their own power and I am going to share them with you as well. I&#8217;d like to note that this process of healing is not linear. So while I&#8217;m going to detail 5 steps, you don&#8217;t necessarily need to practice them in the exact order. Some of these steps will be focused on one by one, or multiple at the same time.</p><p>As you begin or deepen your journey, what&#8217;s best for you will become more clear.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8hqc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61c1efcb-df78-474c-9cae-65f7e612948c_501x700.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8hqc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61c1efcb-df78-474c-9cae-65f7e612948c_501x700.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8hqc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61c1efcb-df78-474c-9cae-65f7e612948c_501x700.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8hqc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61c1efcb-df78-474c-9cae-65f7e612948c_501x700.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8hqc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61c1efcb-df78-474c-9cae-65f7e612948c_501x700.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8hqc!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61c1efcb-df78-474c-9cae-65f7e612948c_501x700.jpeg" width="501" height="700" 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61c1efcb-df78-474c-9cae-65f7e612948c_501x700.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8hqc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61c1efcb-df78-474c-9cae-65f7e612948c_501x700.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8hqc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61c1efcb-df78-474c-9cae-65f7e612948c_501x700.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8hqc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61c1efcb-df78-474c-9cae-65f7e612948c_501x700.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" 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style="text-align: center;"><em>&#8216;The mother wound&#8217; by Amani Haydar</em></h6><h4><em>Have Gratitude For Your Mother</em></h4><p>I know that this concept can seem downright triggering and I get it. Let me explain.</p><p> Every single one of us is a powerful, divine being with a limitless power of conscious creation. Meaning, our thoughts and feelings create our world. Gratitude is one of the most powerful emotions aside from Love in that it is purely heart centered and creates a wealth of space for receptivity, which is one of the main functions of Feminine energy.</p><p>So many of us women have closed, blocked, or distorted heart centers due to our upbringing, directly related to the treatment we experienced from our mothers.</p><p>Every single one of us serves a brilliant, divine purpose in this realm or we simply would not exist. Your mother is the vessel through which your soul was brought from the etheric plane into the physical. For that alone, you get to feel gratitude.</p><p>The gratitude is not meant to be expressed directly to her, although for some, that may eventually be a part of the journey. The gratitude is meant to be felt by you as a means of opening your heart center and allowing the many blessings of healing and abundance to pour in.</p><p>Your mother may have given you absolute hell, but she gave you life, and because of that, you are now getting to unravel the mystery of your life&#8217;s purpose so that you can embody the highest expressions of your potential.</p><p>A former teacher of mine would refer to the mother and father as The Mothership and The Fathership. Their main job is to put you on the planet, everything else is up to you once you reach maturity.</p><h4><em>Accept Her Humanity</em></h4><p>We often place our parents on pedestals and even deify them, especially as children. Women raised in religious households are especially susceptible to this conditioning. And while, yes, your mother is your blueprint for womanhood, motherhood, and the Goddess, just like you, she is a human being who has dealt with her own pain, abuses, and unfortunate conditioning.</p><p>Some of our mothers came of age in an era where women had little to no options for self-expression, autonomy, or opportunity to achieve their own dreams. While she had a great responsibility to you as your mother, she is still a human who is flawed and very likely had no outlets to traverse the trauma that she has experienced.</p><p>This is where empathy and compassion will serve as your most powerful weapons.</p><p>We often don&#8217;t want to give our empathy and compassion or even forgiveness to our mothers because we think it absolves them of their wrongdoing. What you are doing by choosing to have empathy is acknowledging the human aspect of her and removing the burden of perfection that she would never have been able to live up to in the first place.</p><h4><em>Grieve the Loss of Who You Wish She Was</em></h4><p>It&#8217;s very easy to create an idealized version of our mother and fantasize about the type of relationship we <em>wish</em> we had with them. Perhaps your mother used to be kind and loving, and you long for the days when you experienced this version of her. Or perhaps you think that if only x or y or z happened, you two could be best friends.</p><p>This is a recipe for more pain and suffering because we live in neither the past nor the future, the only moment that is real is the present moment, and each day, the people in our lives show us who they <strong>are</strong>. Who they can be is up to them and completely out of our control.</p><p>By recognizing that the version of her that you desire does not exist, and having radical honesty around this truth, you can give yourself the grace and space to grieve and let go of the idea. It doesn&#8217;t mean that it can never become reality, but to heal, your focus should be on taking action based on what is presently happening.</p><h4><em>Set Boundaries and Enforce Them</em></h4><p>Have you ever heard the phrase, &#8220;You teach people how to treat you&#8221;? That&#8217;s what this step is all about. This is probably the most difficult but ultimately most rewarding step in this process, and it could be helpful for this step to come <em><strong>after</strong></em> or <em><strong>during</strong></em> the acceptance and grief stage.</p><p>Because once your mind is clear on who and what you are really dealing with, you get to decide the ways in which that behavior fits into your life, if at all. This is the time to get clear on what level of contact, treatment, or conversation is acceptable to you. For many of you, the most powerful and effective boundary you can have is low or no-contact.</p><p>Then, you communicate those boundaries, and initiate consequences if/when those boundaries are violated. It is very very likely that the boundaries you set will be violated so it is paramount that you enforce them. If you feel any fear or resistance to setting and enforcing those boundaries, it is possible that you have not yet adequately grieved the &#8220;ideal&#8221; version of her so give yourself space to explore that.</p><p>It&#8217;s important to push through that fear or resistance by reminding yourself that you are responsible for your healing and that you deserve to set boundaries that protect you from harm.</p><h4><em>Connect With Your Inner Child and Re-parent Yourself</em></h4><p>While all of previous steps deliver magic in their own, this is where the magical experiences really begin to show up in profound ways.</p><p>Who is your inner child? Your inner child is you. She&#8217;s the version of you who is frozen in time as a result of trauma, neglect, or abuse you experienced at a young age. The majority of our core beliefs about ourselves and the world are generally firmly established by the age of 7.</p><p>This is why the first 7 years of a child&#8217;s life are referred to as the &#8216;formative years&#8217;. If you suffer from feelings of unworthiness, or shame, or never being good enough, there is the young version of you that first experienced those devastating emotions that is truly running your life, despite you now being an adult.</p><p>The process of reparenting your inner child is about going inward through meditation, coaching, somatic healing, energy work, therapy, or whatever medium feels right for you, in order for yo to take the reigns as not only the authority figure, but the person who creates safety for your inner child to be fully expressed, heard, nurtured, loved, supported, and anything else you feel that you missed as a child.</p><p>It&#8217;s during these connections that you allow her/him to say what&#8217;s on their heart regarding their fears, pain, hurt, anger, or unworthiness. You, as the new parent figure, provide your inner child with everything that they missed, filling in those gaps, and allowing them to feel safe enough to rest.</p><p>When your inner child feels nurtured and as if her needs are being met, she will no longer try to get those needs met through the unaligned behaviors that you&#8217;ve adopted such as people pleasing, lashing out in anger, avoidance of attachments, sexual promiscuity, or any other manifestation of neglect and imbalance.</p><p>Essentially, you become the mother that you never had and restore your power to yourself, instead of constantly trying to give it away to the woman who didn&#8217;t understand the impact of her power and thus, misused it.</p><div><hr></div><p>If you&#8217;ve been reading this and recognizing yourself in these patterns&#8212;the confusion, the anger, the longing for a mother you never truly had, the feeling that something inside you was shaped by this wound in ways you&#8217;re still unraveling&#8212;then you are not imagining it.</p><p><em>You are recognizing the mother wound in your own life.</em></p><p>As I said before, once you begin implementing these steps and really doing the deep work to heal yourself from this corrosive wound, so much magic will begin to show up in your life.</p><p>Yes, you will possibly trigger your mother in ways that can be staggering, but even greater, you will see the power you really hold over your own life.</p><p>Opening your heart, setting boundaries, and giving yourself the love that you&#8217;ve searched for outside of yourself will create a vortex of positivity and rapid growth. These mechanisms don&#8217;t just apply to our mothers, they are valuable in all of our relationships and as you see your relationship with your mother transform (or end for some of you), you will see this reflected in other relationships.</p><p>Standing up to our mother and releasing her grip on our lives will reverberate through all relationships and teach you in beautiful ways that you deserve the best from everyone and that only those who can truly show up for you deserve to hold space in your world.</p><p>And for many of you, even if your mother never admits it, she will be witnessing this transformation. She will have no choice but to witness it because you will be showing up so differently than before that she will have no choice but to get on board or get left behind.</p><p>Perhaps your shift will inspire her to give herself the healing that she never knew was possible, or she will understand that her connection with you is now dependent on mutual respect instead of biologically forced loyalty.</p><p>Or her pain is so deep that she will never be able to recognize the new and improved you.</p><p>Either way, you will not be dependent on her approval or love or acceptance because you will have learned how to give it yourself. That is the freedom that you&#8217;re craving and you have the power to give it to yourself whenever you desire.</p><h4><em>The Next Step: Becoming a Sovereign Daughter</em></h4><p>Understanding the mother wound is one thing. Healing it deeply enough that it no longer runs your life is another.</p><p>Most women intellectually recognize the patterns I described above. They can see the people-pleasing, the lack of boundaries, the feeling of being responsible for everyone else&#8217;s emotions, the confusion around their identity as a woman.</p><p>But insight alone does not dissolve a wound that was formed over decades.</p><p>The mother wound is not simply about your relationship with your mother. It becomes the blueprint through which you experience <strong>every relationship</strong>&#8212;with partners, with authority, with your own voice, with your purpose, and even with your own body.</p><p>It determines whether you move through life seeking permission, or standing firmly in your sovereignty.</p><p>That is why I created <strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter">Sovereign Daughter</a></strong>.</p><p>Sovereign Daughter is a transformational container for women who are ready to step out of the unconscious contract that keeps them emotionally bound to their mothers and finally reclaim ownership of their lives.</p><p>Inside this experience, we go far deeper than what can be covered in an essay. Together we unpack the hidden loyalties, the identity patterns, and the emotional conditioning that keep so many women unconsciously shrinking themselves in order to maintain attachment.</p><p>This is where we do the real work of:</p><p>&#8226; Releasing the unconscious guilt many daughters carry<br>&#8226; Learning how to set and enforce powerful boundaries<br>&#8226; Reclaiming your identity as a woman separate from your mother&#8217;s expectations<br>&#8226; Reparenting the parts of you that were never properly protected or nurtured<br>&#8226; And stepping into the grounded, self-trusting woman you were always meant to be</p><p>Because healing the mother wound is not about blaming your mother.</p><p>It&#8217;s about <strong>ending the cycle of unconscious suffering</strong> so that your life is no longer shaped by it.</p><p>It&#8217;s about becoming the woman who can look at the past with compassion, stand firmly in the present, and create a future that is fully her own.</p><p>That woman is who I call a <strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter">Sovereign Daughter</a></strong>.</p><p>If you feel something stirring in you as you read this, if you recognize yourself in these patterns and know you&#8217;re ready to finally move beyond them, I invite you to step inside this container with us.</p><p>This work changes everything.</p><p>It begins as soon as you decide that the story you inherited is not the story that will define the rest of your life.</p><p>And the moment a woman stops seeking permission from the past is the moment she begins the journey of becoming a <strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter">Sovereign Daughter</a></strong>.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Join Sovereign Daughter&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter"><span>Join Sovereign Daughter</span></a></p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Raise your hand if your mother was your first bully]]></title><description><![CDATA[For many girls, the first place we learned fear and shame was not from the world.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/raise-your-hand-if-your-mother-was</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/raise-your-hand-if-your-mother-was</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 09 Mar 2026 21:05:18 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J2-a!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a8657b9-0936-4fe6-a3cf-9111a660fbc0_1920x1080.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>For many girls, the first place we learned fear and shame was not from the world.</p><p>It was from the woman who gave us life.</p><p>The criticism. The yelling. The silent treatment. The jealousy. The control.</p><p>And the most confusing part is that you were still expected to love her.</p><p>To respect her. To be grateful.</p><p>How many of us were constantly told, &#8220;You only have one mother"?</p><p>You grew up holding an impossible tension between recognizing and loving her as as your mother, but also as the person who hurts you the most.</p><p>That inner conflict doesn&#8217;t stay in childhood. You carry it your entire life, shaping how you:</p><ul><li><p>Trust women</p></li><li><p>Trust yourself</p></li><li><p>Engage with men</p></li><li><p>Set boundaries</p></li><li><p>Receive love</p></li><li><p>Claim your voice</p></li></ul><p>And for many women, the deepest wound isn&#8217;t even the abuse itself.</p><p>It&#8217;s the silence around it, and the expectation that you should just move on because she&#8217;s your mother.</p><p>I understand this <em>intimately</em>.</p><p>Just a few weeks ago, my own mother told me she was glad she beat me as a child and teen.</p><p>Moments like that force you to confront a truth many daughters are carrying:</p><p>The woman who brought you into this world may never fully see the harm she caused.</p><p>But your healing does not require her awareness.</p><p><em><strong>Your sovereignty does not require her approval or apology.</strong></em></p><p>Over the past several years, I&#8217;ve worked with many women navigating the mother wound.</p><p>And I&#8217;ve walked through this terrain myself.</p><p>I don&#8217;t speak very often about my childhood and the hell I experienced being raised by an angry, violent mother.</p><p>When I tell my story in my 1:1 sessions and classes, my clients are usually shocked. They can&#8217;t imagine that a woman with my power, grace, kindness, and sense of humor could have gone through such darkness.</p><p>But the snapshots of the woman you see&#8212;because it&#8217;s impossible to know the totality of me through social media&#8212;is a woman who has lived through tremendous pain and darkness, and has transmuted it into fire to fuel my brilliant life and creations.</p><p>I wish I were lying when I share what my mother said to me a few weeks ago, that she was glad she beat me.</p><p>And I was beaten, a lot.</p><p>I was beaten despite being what most would consider a golden child. Straight A student, popular with classmates, beloved by teachers, varsity athlete, no interest in boys.</p><p>I had unshakable confidence, a strong, clear voice and was fearless about using it.</p><p>I was around 14 years old when I realized that she was trying to break my spirit. The only thing that kept me from ending my life was my dream of moving to New York City. I knew my hell was temporary.</p><p>I share this because when she said&#8212;screamed it, really&#8212;I was able to stand calm, composed, and emotionally detached. I long ago learned to stop taking my mother&#8217;s volatility and desire to hurt me personally.</p><p>And in some ways, I feel that there&#8217;s truth to her words. Because of the fire I walked through, I am able to guide women out of their own hell.</p><p>It&#8217;s been an honor to help women reclaim their authority, to finally silence the voice of their first bully.</p><p>I know many women are still searching for a way out.</p><p>I haven&#8217;t taught a mother wound class in a few years, but my own recent experiences with my mother and my clients are evidence that it&#8217;s time.</p><p>When I taught <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course">Selfish Bitch Initiation</a> in January, the majority of the women in the space were aching from their own mother wound, one woman in particular bravely allowed me to guide her into reclaiming her authority with her overbearing mother.</p><p>I&#8217;ve been hearing whispers from The Divine to bring forth a new offering around this deeply complex relationship dynamic and as we enter into Spring and the true new year, this feels like the perfect time.</p><p>I speak a lot in my work about sovereignty, and the process of deconstructing from the conditioning of our mothers is fundamental work in learning to stand as sovereign women. </p><p>So, I&#8217;d like to introduce you to <strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter">Sovereign Daughter</a></strong>.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J2-a!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a8657b9-0936-4fe6-a3cf-9111a660fbc0_1920x1080.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J2-a!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a8657b9-0936-4fe6-a3cf-9111a660fbc0_1920x1080.png 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J2-a!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a8657b9-0936-4fe6-a3cf-9111a660fbc0_1920x1080.png 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J2-a!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a8657b9-0936-4fe6-a3cf-9111a660fbc0_1920x1080.png 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J2-a!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a8657b9-0936-4fe6-a3cf-9111a660fbc0_1920x1080.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J2-a!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a8657b9-0936-4fe6-a3cf-9111a660fbc0_1920x1080.png" width="1456" height="819" 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a8657b9-0936-4fe6-a3cf-9111a660fbc0_1920x1080.png 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J2-a!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a8657b9-0936-4fe6-a3cf-9111a660fbc0_1920x1080.png 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J2-a!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a8657b9-0936-4fe6-a3cf-9111a660fbc0_1920x1080.png 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!J2-a!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7a8657b9-0936-4fe6-a3cf-9111a660fbc0_1920x1080.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Join Sovereign Daughter&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter"><span>Join Sovereign Daughter</span></a></p><p>The Sovereign Daughter is not about blaming mothers&#8212;even though you may desperately want to.</p><p>It is about ending unconscious loyalty, and creating nervous system sovereignty and identity separation.</p><p>It is about rising as the <em>only woman of authority in your life.</em></p><p><strong>THIS IS FOR THE WOMAN WHO</strong></p><ul><li><p>Feels 7 years old in her mother&#8217;s presence</p></li><li><p>Still craves validation she never receives</p></li><li><p>Gets emotionally reactive in conversations</p></li><li><p>Spirals after disapproval from others</p></li><li><p>Constantly overexplains herself</p></li><li><p>Shuts down emotionally or explodes unexpectedly</p></li><li><p>Is tired of feeling destabilized</p></li><li><p>Has chosen partners who mirror her mother&#8217;s emotional unavailability and coldness</p></li><li><p>Is an eldest daughter or was parentified at a young age</p></li><li><p>Is enduring womb disorders such as fibroids, PCOS, infertility, etc.</p></li><li><p>Is done trying to prove herself</p></li></ul><p><strong>THIS IS NOT FOR:</strong></p><ul><li><p>Women looking to fix their mother</p></li><li><p>Women wanting reconciliation guarantees</p></li><li><p>Women who want to vent without responsibility</p></li><li><p>Women unwilling to examine their own patterns</p></li></ul><p>This is for women ready for self-authority.</p><p>I invite you to visit the link to peruse the full offering and why this experience will re-write all of your relationships, not just the one you have with your mother. </p><p>Something unique that I have never done before is I am offering this 3-Day event with an affiliate option. I speak about the care of women, building community, and re-birthing matriarchy. Part of that work is distributing resources and making sure that we are all being nourished. </p><p>Every women who signs up will receive her own affiliate link that she can share with her community. For each woman who signs up using your link, you will receive 40% commission paid directly back to you.</p><p>All of the details for <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter">Sovereign Daughter</a> are in the link, including dates, structure, investment tiers, and affiliate information.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Join Sovereign Daughter&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-sovereign-daughter"><span>Join Sovereign Daughter</span></a></p><p>I soft launched over the weekend and women are already signing up, choosing to finally center themselves and their own voices in their story.</p><p>You already know in your bones whether or not this is the right medicine for where you are in your life.</p><p>The goal is not to fix your mother, but to stop living your life through her voice and lens.</p><p>Some mothers will never understand you.</p><p>Some will never apologize.</p><p>Some will never see you clearly.</p><p><strong>Your freedom cannot depend on that.</strong></p><p>The kind of freedom where you can look at the woman who hurt you, the woman who shaped you&#8212;good or bad&#8212;the woman who gave you life, and feel compassion without needing anything from her.</p><p>Because you are whole.</p><p>If you are ready for that shift, I will see you there.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Your womb is the source of your wisdom, intuition and power]]></title><description><![CDATA[A woman who constantly seeks wisdom, truth, and guidance outside of herself is a woman who will constantly feel insecure, disempowered, and be vulnerable to manipulation and abuse.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/your-womb-is-the-source-of-your-wisdom</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/your-womb-is-the-source-of-your-wisdom</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 18:57:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOwg!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1ae42eb-efba-4ea0-a988-8339797a87d0_2317x3000.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>A woman who constantly seeks wisdom, truth, and guidance outside of herself is a woman who will constantly feel insecure, disempowered, and be vulnerable to manipulation and abuse.</p><p>A woman who feels the grief of child loss or infertility will struggle to find restoration if she is unable or unwilling to communicate with her portal of creation.</p><p>A woman who lays with a man without first communing with her womb about his worthiness opens herself up to the most vicious and insidious forms of energetic attack, life force siphoning, and destiny swapping.</p><p>Your womb carries the memories and knowledge of countless lifetimes, but you not knowing this is part of the design of this false system that most people are enslaved by.</p><p>Your womb represents a unique aspect of primordial intelligence, The Great Mother.</p><p>She speaks to you through your womb, through the cycles of birth and death that your body experiences every month.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOwg!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1ae42eb-efba-4ea0-a988-8339797a87d0_2317x3000.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOwg!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1ae42eb-efba-4ea0-a988-8339797a87d0_2317x3000.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOwg!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1ae42eb-efba-4ea0-a988-8339797a87d0_2317x3000.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOwg!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1ae42eb-efba-4ea0-a988-8339797a87d0_2317x3000.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOwg!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1ae42eb-efba-4ea0-a988-8339797a87d0_2317x3000.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOwg!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1ae42eb-efba-4ea0-a988-8339797a87d0_2317x3000.jpeg" width="1456" height="1885" 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1ae42eb-efba-4ea0-a988-8339797a87d0_2317x3000.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOwg!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1ae42eb-efba-4ea0-a988-8339797a87d0_2317x3000.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOwg!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1ae42eb-efba-4ea0-a988-8339797a87d0_2317x3000.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tOwg!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1ae42eb-efba-4ea0-a988-8339797a87d0_2317x3000.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>When is the last time you asked your womb for guidance?</p><p>When is the last time you asked your womb for permission?</p><p>When is the last time you offered your womb gratitude?</p><p>The deeper you know yourself, the deeper you trust yourself.</p><p>The deeper you know yourself, the deeper you love yourself.</p><p>Watch the following 17 minute video where I dive into the depths of the power of your womb:</p><div id="youtube2-iTsJrPD3uDw" class="youtube-wrap" data-attrs="{&quot;videoId&quot;:&quot;iTsJrPD3uDw&quot;,&quot;startTime&quot;:null,&quot;endTime&quot;:null}" data-component-name="Youtube2ToDOM"><div class="youtube-inner"><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/iTsJrPD3uDw?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409"></iframe></div></div><p>When you finish watching, I&#8217;d love for you to leave a comment on the video letting me know how this teaching landed for you. So many women have no idea how much sacred power they carry within and it&#8217;s my passion and mission to help you remember.</p><p><strong>Important Note:</strong> If you are woman who no longer has a physical womb or a partial womb due to surgery or development challenges, everything that I shared in this essay and in the video still applies to you. Whether the physical aspects remain or not, you still possess a powerful womb space and have access to your portal of power! :)</p><div><hr></div><p>If you&#8217;re looking for 1:1 guidance into creating a powerful connection with your portal of creation, healing past womb traumas, and loving your body more fully, then my <strong><a href="https://goddessvibes.as.me/womb-restoration">Womb Alchemy + Restoration Session</a></strong> is perfect for you.</p><p>Here are some of the incredible transformations my clients have experienced after just one session with me:</p><div class="pullquote"><p>&#8220;Since our session I&#8217;m more grounded but I&#8217;m soaring to higher heights. My meditations have been more powerful, I feel power surging from crown to pinky toe. I&#8217;m breathing deeper down past my cervix since the distance healing. I feel more connected and in alignment with myself. I&#8217;m truly committed to my wellness journey. I&#8217;m listening to my body more and have release 6lbs since our session. I&#8217;ve been eating more fruits and veggies, plus I&#8217;ve been resting more.&#8221;</p><div><hr></div><p>&#8220;Immediately after it my menstruation came in very heavily. For about 24h I was not in pain but felt a bit strange as I was passing clots and so much blood, but then it calmed down on the second day, and by the end of the third I was clean again. That's unusual as my periods tend to be very painful and last 5-7 days... I used this to in my mindfulness practice, and connected with my womb with my hands and intention, the way you taught me. I felt a release of grief and sadness after the heavy bleeding and then took care of myself with lots of delicious home cooked food, mainly lentils, eggs and lots of broccoli.&#8221;</p><div><hr></div><p>&#8220;I had a Womb Alchemy session at the end of December 2025, just as I was due my period (I have endometriosis and suffer from chronic pain).</p><p>It was a powerful experience where Andrea taught me how to connect with my womb as the higher source of my female wisdom. I continue to practice what I learned pretty much every day since, and I have been experiencing a sharpening of my intuition and the sense of personal calm that is coming from trusting and loving myself completely.&#8221;</p><div><hr></div><p><em>&#8220;I have no reservations in recommending Andrea&#8217;s Womb Alchemy. Andrea is wise, compassionate, genuinely caring, and fun! From the very beginning, she made me feel safe and at ease. I felt I could trust her.</em></p><p><em>I shared very challenging experiences with her, and she held the space with exceptional presence, care, power and integrity.</em></p><p><em>Through the session, Andrea helped me reconnect with the centre of our wild power &#8212; the womb &#8212; and supported me in speaking my truth from that place of inner authority. This was exactly the medicine I needed to enter this new stage of my life.</em></p><p><em>After the session, I felt empowered, grounded, anchored, and even more connected to my intuition. I&#8217;m deeply grateful for this work and look forward to discovering what continues to unfold from it.&#8221;</em></p></div><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://goddessvibes.as.me/womb-restoration&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Womb Alchemy + Restoration&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://goddessvibes.as.me/womb-restoration"><span>Womb Alchemy + Restoration</span></a></p><p></p><p>If you desire a full immersion into all things related to Feminine power, including womb work, then my <strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course">Selfish Bitch Initiation</a></strong> is a comprehensive portal that guides you out of the people pleasing &#8216;good girl&#8217; into Sovereign Womanhood over the course of 7 powerful sessions. Upon signup, you will have immediate access to the entire portal so that you can move through the teachings at your own pace. As a bonus, you receive free access to my original <strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass">Selfish Bitch Masterclass</a></strong>, which is the essential primer for the Initation.</p><p>Here are some powerful shares from women who have been initated. You can tell by the depth of their testimonials that they have been forever changed by this offering:</p><div class="pullquote"><p>&#8220;The Selfish Bitch Initiation is a comfortable place to get uncomfortable! Andrea&#8217;s guidance shocks you out of what you have normalized, and catapults you into a new/ancient way of being. You cannot be both a victim and a Goddess, and she creates an environment where she guides you down a new path, if that is what you truly desire and are ready for. SBI is a portal on the other side of which is a holistic view of self, seeing your true power as the Divine Feminine. She is going to say things you&#8217;ve likely never heard before, and challenge you in ways society has deemed taboo.</p><p>I LOVE the knowing that I am not a victim. That I must be unapologetic as an honoring to my womb.</p><p>I am so excited about letting my comfort make people uncomfortable as an honoring to the world.</p><p>P.S. Situationship has remained blocked! And I interact with men so differently now. I didn&#8217;t think I&#8217;d ever stop being a pick-me. I&#8217;m so proud of myself!&#8221;</p><div><hr></div><p>&#8220;Selfish Bitch Initiation was the tough love wake up call I needed to move forward from years of people pleasing and misaligned relationships with men. After finding Andrea on Instagram, I knew there was a lot to learn from the radical ideas she was presenting. </p><p>Upon entering the container, I instantly felt at home. The space she cultivated was unparalleled to anything I have ever experienced and can only be described as sacred. (I have invested thousands on retreats, training programs, and workshops and none of them compared to the potency of this container.) All of the women in the group were there to dive DEEP into their healing. It was a sigh of relief to know that I wasn't alone in carrying the weight of maternal narcissistic abuse as other group members shared their stories. </p><p>I felt fully seen and held in my pain, while simultaneously being inspired and motivated to confront some hard truths that I had been avoiding. I look at Selfish Bitch as my guidebook for how to be a sovereign woman in a world where the feminine collective has been oppressed. This experience gave me permission to stand in my power and speak my truth, even if my voice shakes.</p><p>Thank you Andrea for walking me through the fire to bring me out on the other side of transformation!&#8221;</p><div><hr></div><p>&#8220;The Selfish Bitch Initiation has been absolutely life changing for me!</p><p>Andrea held such a beautiful safe space of intuitive wisdom, and deep knowledge of her craft.</p><p>I am personally grateful that I had the opportunity to realize where I lost my esteem through the mirror of Andrea showing me myself. I am now able to go back to reclaim myself as the powerful vessel that I am and walk in my fullness and my power once again. I am grateful for the vulnerability of each of the women who participated because they all brought a part of my healing. This is a continuous journey for me but thankfully because of this workshop I am well on my way.&#8221;</p></div><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Selfish Bitch Initiation&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course"><span>Selfish Bitch Initiation</span></a></p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[If you wait until you're ready, you'll be waiting forever]]></title><description><![CDATA[A couple of weeks ago, I received a beautiful and fascinating voice note from one of my long term clients.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/if-you-wait-until-youre-ready-youll</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/if-you-wait-until-youre-ready-youll</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 16:38:55 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X4T4!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc198949-d00a-4e8d-8b3e-be297e224a75_1536x2048.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>A couple of weeks ago, I received a beautiful and fascinating voice note from one of my long term clients. </p><p>It had been some months since we worked together, and in the voice note she shared that she had been feeling some resistance to reaching back out and diving into deeper work together.</p><p>We met a couple of years ago at <a href="https://spiritweaversgathering.com">Spirit Weavers</a>, a fantastic annual women&#8217;s gathering in Southern Oregon, and after sitting in on my <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass">Selfish Bitch Masterclass</a>, she starting booking <a href="https://goddessvibes.as.me/SpiritualAlignment">1:1 Spiritual Alignment Sessions</a> with me. </p><p>She&#8217;d book one or two sessions a month, and we dove into her issues around people pleasing, settling in her marriage, and being sorely underpaid and undervalued at her job.</p><p>Within months of working together, she&#8217;d experienced tremendous growth in setting boundaries and speaking up for herself, coming to terms with the possibility of divorce, and found the courage to upgrade to a new job, receiving a $40k pay raise in the process.</p><p>So with all of this incredible progress, why had she been hesitant to reach out?</p><p>She vulnerably confessed that when we saw each other again at Spirit Weavers this past year, she had felt unworthy of being in my presence and taking up my time.</p><p>Y&#8217;all. :(</p><p>Even through all of this, she shared that she has found our work to be so profound, that she has tremendous admiration and appreciation for my offers, and that she thinks of me and my teachings at least once a week. </p><p>One of the loveliest&#8212;and most revealing&#8212;things she said in her voice note is that she sees me as an amazing and powerful force and that she has so much joy watching me be and do what I am meant to is this world. It made her emotional because there&#8217;s a part of her that <em>knows she&#8217;s meant to be doing the same work, specifically with teens</em>. </p><p>But she&#8217;s waiting until she feels ready, until she feels worthy, that she&#8217;s peeling back the layers so that she can find the bravery to do what I&#8217;m offering.</p><p>And this, my friends, is the mental trap that many people never escape.</p><p>Waiting.</p><p>For one, this client is a Splenic Authority in Human Design. Her spleen has already told her what to do, she even said it herself when she referred to the part of her that knows what she&#8217;s meant to be doing. </p><p><em>Now, I do want to clarify that if you&#8217;re like me and have an Emotional Authority, you will have <strong>some</strong> waiting to do. What I&#8217;m referring to is the choice to continue waiting&#8212;even after you have clarity in your inner authority&#8212;due to fear or feeling unworthy.</em></p><p>When I responded to her voice note with my own, I told her as much. I also shared that the unworthiness that she feels is triggered by all of the things that she admires within me. What she admires is mirroring back the part of her that she&#8217;s not allowing to be fully expressed.</p><p>She doesn&#8217;t feel worthy to stand big, to share her gifts wide, despite the powerful transformations that she has experienced. And it&#8217;s because while she has experienced wonderful upgrades in her life, she&#8217;s been able to do so while still holding the parts of herself she&#8217;s afraid to fully let go of.</p><p>The deeper work would require her to cross a threshold where her old identity is simply not welcome.</p><p>I couple of months ago, <a href="/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/i-crossed-a-threshold-i-cant-come">I shared this post where I talked about the threshold that I crossed</a> by going to Egypt for the first time. I felt the same resistance that my client is feeling, not because I am unworthy&#8212;which is just the story my client tells herself so she can stay the same&#8212;but because I could not walk through that portal and come out as the same woman.</p><p>I would have to leave behind the parts of me who still feared expansion and greatness, who still feared persecution for speaking my truth, who had great desires but feared they could never materialize.</p><p>My resistance was not because I wasn&#8217;t ready or needed more time to peel back layers, my resistance was because I was looking for an out, a reason to stay the same. I didn&#8217;t even buy my plane ticket until 2 weeks before the trip, despite knowing for months that I was going.</p><p>My resistance was because I knew that when I went there, I would be irrevocably changed. The woman who stepped onto the plane would not be the woman returning home.</p><p>Here&#8217;s a snippet of the voice note I left her:</p><div class="native-audio-embed" data-component-name="AudioPlaceholder" data-attrs="{&quot;label&quot;:null,&quot;mediaUploadId&quot;:&quot;f2883415-6c42-46cd-8b7f-7d404186991e&quot;,&quot;duration&quot;:125.17878,&quot;downloadable&quot;:false,&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}"></div><p>If I had waited to feel ready, I never would have gotten on that plane. I never would&#8217;ve bought the plane ticket. I had butterflies for days leading up to my flight, I had butterflies at the airport, and while in a the air.</p><p>I didn&#8217;t feel &#8220;ready&#8221; when I walked into The Great Pyramid and saw how far I had to climb the reach the inner chamber. I didn&#8217;t feel ready when I first stepped into the Nile River to swim naked and pray at the Gate of Isis&#8217; Temple.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X4T4!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc198949-d00a-4e8d-8b3e-be297e224a75_1536x2048.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X4T4!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc198949-d00a-4e8d-8b3e-be297e224a75_1536x2048.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X4T4!, 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc198949-d00a-4e8d-8b3e-be297e224a75_1536x2048.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X4T4!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc198949-d00a-4e8d-8b3e-be297e224a75_1536x2048.jpeg" width="1456" height="1941" 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc198949-d00a-4e8d-8b3e-be297e224a75_1536x2048.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X4T4!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc198949-d00a-4e8d-8b3e-be297e224a75_1536x2048.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X4T4!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc198949-d00a-4e8d-8b3e-be297e224a75_1536x2048.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X4T4!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc198949-d00a-4e8d-8b3e-be297e224a75_1536x2048.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>If I had waited until I was ready, I never would have come home and had my most successful launch to date with my <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course">Selfish Bitch Initation</a>. I never would have committed to 30 consecutive days of posting long-form videos to my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@AndreaBordeaux">Youtube channel</a>.</p><p>Looking back throughout my life and all of the big decisions that I&#8217;ve made, not once have I ever felt &#8220;ready&#8221;, even with clarity from my solar plexus.</p><p>Not when I left my tiny town in Texas and moved to New York City at 18 years old to become an actress, when I booked my first tv role, when I fired my first talent manager, <a href="/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/the-best-sex-of-my-life-led-me-to">when I divorced my ex-husband or broke up with my divine love</a>. I didn&#8217;t feel ready the first time I drove my newly converted school bus to venture out on the road for the first time.</p><p>I didn&#8217;t feel ready when I began teaching women how to empower themselves through my masterclasses and courses and mentorship. I never feel ready before I post something&#8212;especially if I know it will ruffle feathers&#8212;on Substack, Youtube, or Instagram.</p><p>I don&#8217;t move because I&#8217;m ready, I move because something in my body knows. My womb, my inner authority, that ever-present voice of Divine guidance.</p><p>I move because I have desire.</p><p><em>Your desire is the indicator of your readiness.</em></p><p>It&#8217;s the old version of you that wants to stay safe and the same and not confront those big questions of:</p><p><em>Who will I be when I cross this threshold?</em></p><p><em>What kind of woman will I be?</em></p><p><em>What kind of mother will I be?</em></p><p><em>What kind of wife will I be? Will I even want to be a wife after this?</em></p><p><em>What will my business look like?</em></p><p><em>What will my relationships and community look like?</em></p><p><em>What are the ways in which all of these things are going to change? </em></p><p>Because if you change, then of course, all of those things are going to change. That&#8217;s just inevitable.</p><p>And yet, these questions will not be answered while you&#8217;re waiting, they will be answered in the unfolding of your life, which can only happen when you move on your desires, when you listen to the inner knowing that tells you which step to take.</p><p>You don&#8217;t get to know how it will all unfold, but you do get to trust that it is all serving your highest and best good. </p><p>So the next time you feel that sense of knowing, that desire to move, to act, to shake some shit up in your life, don&#8217;t ask if you&#8217;re ready.</p><p>Readiness is not the prerequisite.</p><p>Desire is.</p><p>What will it cost you to keep waiting?</p><div><hr></div><p><em>Thank you for taking the time to read this essay. If my worked cracked something open within you, and you realized that you&#8217;ve been holding yourself back from your desires, waiting for readiness that will never come, I would love to invite you into 1:1 work with me.</em></p><p><em>I have a number of powerful and transformative offerings to help you become a woman who moves form authority rather than fear. A woman who doesn&#8217;t wait for permission, but accesses it internally.</em></p><p><em><strong>Womb Alchemy</strong></em></p><p><em>A powerful 90 minute somatic experience where I bring you back into union with your womb space, which is your portal of creation and manifestation.<br><br>Through womb alchemy, I will teach how to connect to your womb, listen to what she is speaking to you, and breathe new life into your body.<br><br>This will help you begin the process of healing reproductive dis-orders, clear the energy of past intimate partners, and find a sense of restoration with your Divine power.</em></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://goddessvibes.as.me/womb-restoration&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Womb Alchemy&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://goddessvibes.as.me/womb-restoration"><span>Womb Alchemy</span></a></p><p><em><strong>Spiritual Alignment Session</strong></em></p><p><em>This session is designed to serve as a powerful re-direction in your healing journey. By the end of our session, you will have awareness and clarity around what has been preventing you from experiencing your life in the highness state of spiritual alignment. </em></p><p><em>I will show you ways to deepen your awareness, strengthen your intuition, &amp; anchor into your Divine Power. This will allow you to begin creating from a place of grounded sovereignty, playfulness, &amp; joy.</em></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://goddessvibes.as.me/SpiritualAlignment&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Spiritual Alignment Session&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://goddessvibes.as.me/SpiritualAlignment"><span>Spiritual Alignment Session</span></a></p><p><em><strong>Devotional + Transformational Mentorship</strong></em></p><p><em>This is a high-level, intimate container for women who are ready to stop circling the same patterns and step into sovereign embodiment. Through deep psychological excavation, energetic recalibration, and ruthless self-responsibility, we dismantle inherited conditioning and rebuild from truth.</em></p><p><em>This work is not about surface-level motivation. It is about identity shift. Expect clarity, emotional mastery, boundary power, and a life that reflects your actual standards.</em></p><p><em>Application required.</em></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://form.jotform.com/240435011445141&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Apply For Mentorship&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://form.jotform.com/240435011445141"><span>Apply For Mentorship</span></a></p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p><p></p><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[The best sex of my life led me to celibacy]]></title><description><![CDATA[My story of devotion, discernment, and the three great loves that shaped me]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/the-best-sex-of-my-life-led-me-to</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/the-best-sex-of-my-life-led-me-to</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2026 17:43:04 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pfzq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7264ed5d-5abd-47af-9c9a-7d30a2045b97_2738x1825.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I have been single for nearly 7 years.</p><p>My last relationship&#8212;I&#8217;ve only had 2 as an adult&#8212;ended the summer of 2019 and the heartbreak was the most devastating pain that I had ever experienced. I had divorced my former husband a couple couple years prior, and that pain was a pale comparison to the soul splitting agony I experienced after I walked away from the man who was the catalyst for a transformation that I am still integrating all of these years later.</p><p>The contrast between my former husband and former partner was stark in many ways. My husband had handsome, dark features&#8212;prominent nose, angular jaw, a real &#8220;mans man&#8221; kind of face&#8212;a stoic temperament, and a rigid adherence to black and white thinking.</p><p>His favorite phrase was &#8220;It is what it is.&#8221;</p><p>He&#8217;d immigrated to the US from a country steeped in &#8220;tradition&#8221; aka traditional patriarchy. While I enjoyed his ability and willingness to be a financial provider, I often felt lonely and unsupported due to his disconnection from genuine empathy and tenderness.</p><p>He was the type who would say something unkind and then when I&#8217;d get upset, claim that it was just a joke, or would tell me that I was being too sensitive. I would &#8220;jokingly&#8221; call him an asshole, but the truth is he was simply mean.</p><p>He claimed that I lacked emotional intelligence because I was so emotionally expressive, but I realized years later that the accusation was really a confession. He thought that emotional intelligence was to be in control of his emotions, but in reality, he was just emotionally repressed.</p><p>I was 23 years old when we married, and I had been with him since I was 18 years old. </p><p>He was my first love. My first lover. My first real relationship.</p><p>When I married him, I had genuinely decided that he was the one for me and I was prepared to spend the rest of my life with him. As I continued to grow and evolve&#8212;having &#8220;awakened&#8221; after my first psychedelic experience when I was 29&#8212;I began to crave more depth, more tenderness, more connection.</p><p>I had always been a big dreamer who had an unshakable belief in myself. I moved to NYC right after high school to pursue an acting career. I was often described by friends as fearless. Yet when I thought of leaving my husband, I felt incredible fear. Who would I be without him? Would I ever find someone who&#8217;d love me as deeply, who&#8217;d love me <em>even more deeply</em>? </p><p>Spoiler alert: <em><strong>Fuck yes.</strong></em></p><p>A few months after my first mushroom trip blew my consciousness wide open, I went to my first Burning Man, solo. I&#8217;d asked my husband if he wanted to go, but he thought it was a stupid and pointless experience, so he gave his blessing to for me to go alone and have a great time. I remember being secretly relieved, because this was something I wanted just for me.</p><p><em>And when I tell you I had the fucking time of my life?!</em></p><p>I&#8217;ll have to write about that another time, but for now you can watch this video I made on my Youtube channel where I detail the experience.</p><div id="youtube2-b99UhP7Tt6w" class="youtube-wrap" data-attrs="{&quot;videoId&quot;:&quot;b99UhP7Tt6w&quot;,&quot;startTime&quot;:null,&quot;endTime&quot;:null}" data-component-name="Youtube2ToDOM"><div class="youtube-inner"><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/b99UhP7Tt6w?rel=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;showinfo=0&amp;enablejsapi=0" frameborder="0" loading="lazy" gesture="media" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowautoplay="true" allowfullscreen="true" width="728" height="409"></iframe></div></div><p>When I got back, I knew I was done with my marriage.</p><p>My experience on the playa helped me see just how powerful I am, and how completely supported I am by The Divine. I was still scared, but just as I had every other time of my life, I didn&#8217;t let the fear of moving forward with what my soul was calling for hold me back.</p><p>A couple of months later he moved out.</p><p>By the time he&#8217;d moved out, I&#8217;d already spent so much time grieving our relationship that I was ready to be free. I had still been basically a child when we met and I was now a woman, a completely different person. While I&#8217;d wanted to grow and evolve with him, he had shown me over an over again that he was content being exactly who he was, in the exact same place.</p><p>About 6 months after we decided to go our own way, my new love walked into my life. Well, I swiped him into my life. Because, Tinder.</p><p>I&#8217;ll never forget the moment when I saw his face appear on my screen. I felt a wave of energy pulse through my body and it froze me in place. I distinctly remember having the thought that if I met him, my life would change.</p><p>Up until that moment, Tinder had just been fun for me. A way to explore men and dating in a way I&#8217;d never gotten to since I&#8217;d settled down with the first man I&#8217;d ever been intimate with. But when I saw <em>his</em> face and felt what I later realized was profound resonance and remembrance flood my cells, I closed the app. I knew the algorithm would bring him back and it would give me to time to think on the decision.</p><p>Did I really want my life to change?</p><p>Of course I did.</p><p>When his profile eventually showed back up I paused, breathed, and took my time looking at his face. Whereas my husband had those darker East European features, this man was what people in the past would have referred to as &#8220;classic American&#8221;&#8212;blond hair, blue eyes, a light spray of freckles. His energy had a softness that I found alluring.</p><p>I swiped right and it was an instant match. I still remember how my heart fluttered.</p><p>He messaged me right away and we chatted for around a week before we made plans to meet. I invited him over to my apartment&#8212;something I had never done before and would never recommend or do at this point in my life&#8212;but it just <em>felt right</em> and I trusted my intuition.</p><p>He came over, brought weed of course. We sat on my couch, smoked and talked for hours. My late cat Nubia couldn&#8217;t get enough of him, crawling all over him and nesting in his lap while we talked.</p><p>We shared our dreams with each other, I loved how passionate he was about his goals and how devoted and disciplined he was in pursuing them. He got teary eyed talking about how much he loved his mama and wanted to give her the world.</p><p>He caught my gaze and told me I was beautiful. The way he looked at me when he said it, opened something in my heart. I closed my eyes and smiled, giving the moment space to breathe, for me to feel the yumminess of my heart opening.</p><p>I knew I wanted him in my bed. Hours before he&#8217;d arrived, as I showered&#8212;lit only by candlelight&#8212;I saw him making love to me. It wasn&#8217;t a fantasy, but a vision. A premonition of my immediate future, our future. So, after talking into the early hours of morning and he finally kissed me, I let the waves of desire and trust carry me. Carry us.</p><p>When we made love, I noted how every kiss, every touch, every breath from him was imbued with deep intention and care. He held my gaze and even in those moments when my eyes fluttered and rolled back in ecstasy, when I came back, there he was, holding me with his gentle eyes and his steady presence.</p><p>My first sexual experiences had been shaped by porn and performance.</p><p>But this. This was magic. This was the depth and tenderness I&#8217;d been craving. I barely knew this man but I knew I was safe. My body was safe. My heart was safe.</p><p>A few days later, I went to have dinner with my still-husband. I hadn&#8217;t seen him in months as he'd made it clear that he wanted limited communication with me. But the previous week, he&#8217;d reached out and invited me to dinner. So I went. I wanted to see who he was becoming, how he&#8217;d grown in our time apart.</p><p>The dinner was lame to say the least.</p><p>I&#8217;d asked him questions about his life, how we was doing, what had shifted for him, and he arrogantly declared that he was happy with his &#8220;black and white&#8221; life. When we were together, I would often tell him that his black and white thinking was rigid and that there was so much grey area that he refused to consider, that his black and white thinking is why he was so unhappy and too scared to truly live out his dreams.</p><p>Sitting there listening to him, I felt annoyed, and there was no denying that I was right to move on, that he had no desire to evolve and I had already outgrown him in profound ways. If there had been any lingering doubt, it vanished at that restaurant.</p><p>I got home and posted this on Instagram:</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ucdH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bc2b579-067e-4d64-8325-aa92f076f8be_1290x2103.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ucdH!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bc2b579-067e-4d64-8325-aa92f076f8be_1290x2103.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ucdH!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bc2b579-067e-4d64-8325-aa92f076f8be_1290x2103.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ucdH!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bc2b579-067e-4d64-8325-aa92f076f8be_1290x2103.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ucdH!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bc2b579-067e-4d64-8325-aa92f076f8be_1290x2103.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ucdH!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bc2b579-067e-4d64-8325-aa92f076f8be_1290x2103.jpeg" width="1290" height="2103" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/5bc2b579-067e-4d64-8325-aa92f076f8be_1290x2103.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:2103,&quot;width&quot;:1290,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:462543,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:true,&quot;topImage&quot;:false,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/i/186992164?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a49b81c-0892-40ea-b14e-9da4ae709e26_1290x2166.jpeg&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ucdH!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bc2b579-067e-4d64-8325-aa92f076f8be_1290x2103.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ucdH!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bc2b579-067e-4d64-8325-aa92f076f8be_1290x2103.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ucdH!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bc2b579-067e-4d64-8325-aa92f076f8be_1290x2103.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ucdH!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bc2b579-067e-4d64-8325-aa92f076f8be_1290x2103.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>My new lover texted me shortly after and told me he was down the street at a bar with friends and asked me to come meet him. I did.</p><p>After that night, we were inseparable for just over 2 years.</p><p>We committed to each other and started building a beautiful relationship together. What I experienced with him was a man willing to show genuine kindness and care for my feelings. He never negged me or said mean things to me, even when he was angry. When we had disagreements, he listened intently to my perspectives and didn&#8217;t struggle to admit when he&#8217;d misstepped.</p><p>He loved my rambling contemplations&#8212;never making me feel like I talked too much&#8212;and showed curiosity about my world view and allowed me to expand his own. He wasn&#8217;t afraid to cry in front of me when he was deeply moved by art or old painful memories.</p><p>He was proud of how intelligent I am and never tried to humble me.</p><p><em>And the sex.</em></p><p>I used to refer to it&#8212;still do&#8212; as cosmic sex. It was truly otherworldly. When we came together, it was ritualistic, ceremonial. We relished each other, worshipped each other. There were countless moments where I became temporarily blinded by pleasure, losing my vision, my mind melting into a pre-verbal state, my body disintegrating into pure energy and consciousness.</p><p>It was primal, primordial, and divine.</p><p>On top of all of this, we had so much fun together. We would book a luxurious house in Joshua Tree so we could drop acid and star gaze, dance our faces off at music festivals, have movie nights and play video games, we&#8217;d spend long dreamy days painting art, I&#8217;d share my opinions on his writing and he&#8217;d help with my auditions, we&#8217;d spend hours and hours talking and eye gazing and loving on each other. We didn&#8217;t just love each other, we believed in each other. His dreams mattered to me and mine to him.</p><p>I felt like he was my soulmate, my divine counterpart.</p><p>The love that I felt I had previously was eclipsed by what I got to experience with him.</p><p>Ultimately, we still had differences that caused us to begin to grow separately. I was continuing to deepen in my spirituality, seeking more knowledge and gaining more awareness. While we were together, I experienced a massive ego death and had to finally face many of the deep shadows that I had been running from. As I continued to awaken and evolve, I had to start acknowledging hard truths about our future.</p><p>He wants to be a father. I don&#8217;t want to be a mother. Well, I it&#8217;s not that I don&#8217;t want to be, I just knew that I had a lot of healing around my mother wound to do, and have since done that deep work, although it never really ends, right? While I am open to motherhood, I&#8217;m very clear about what that would need to look like in order for me to embark on that journey. And I&#8217;m perfectly okay if I never become a mother. Anyway&#8230;</p><p>I knew he wanted kids and was not willing to compromise on that&#8212;to be fair, he never pushed or pressured me. But I was afraid that a time would eventually come when he&#8217;d start questioning me about it. And because I love him so much, I wanted him to be able to realize his dream of being a father. I truly think he&#8217;d be an amazing dad.</p><p>In addition to this, we started having more frequent disagreements and the distance between us began to grow, making it harder and harder to meet each other in the center.</p><p>I was feeling a powerful pull into service and wanted to focus on helping women deprogram from the spell of patriarchy. I began to hear Spirit telling me that I needed to be on my own, that my path required me to walk alone. I had much more shadow work to do and I needed the space and freedom to explore and release those wounds.</p><p>I was heartbroken to realize that our path together was coming to an end and I resisted it for months. We finally broke up&#8212;well, he broke up with me&#8212;and then we reconciled a month later. The brief time apart gave me space to find more clarity and remove any rose colored perspectives I was allowing to cloud my vision. When we got back together, I couldn&#8217;t deny that I needed to be alone.</p><p>It didn&#8217;t make sense to me and it didn&#8217;t feel fair, but my intuition has never misguided me and I had to trust where I was being led.</p><p>When we had the conversation where our relationship ended for good, I felt like I was being split in two. When we hugged goodbye, I didn&#8217;t want to let go, the finality of it felt like a death.</p><p>I cried for months.</p><p>I missed him desperately and he moved on quickly, entering a new relationship within a couple of months. This confirmed my intuition that he hadn&#8217;t been willing to face himself at the depth I&#8217;d needed. But this is what most men do. Even the &#8220;good&#8221; ones. They can&#8217;t be alone with themselves and need to replace the supply of feminine energy.</p><p>But to be honest, I attempted to fill the void at one point, too. Shortly after we broke up I reached out to another lover I&#8217;d had before we met and told him I wanted to see him. He was trustworthy, respectful, and great in bed. It wasn&#8217;t cosmic sex, but had still been pretty phenomenal.</p><p>He came down to LA from San Francisco and took me out. We had a great time catching up, but I knew while sitting with him at dinner that I wasn&#8217;t into it. Unlike my lost love, I couldn&#8217;t quickly move on and the thought of sharing my body with anyone turned me completely off. So, I told him that I didn&#8217;t want to sleep with him, and he was respectful and gracious as always.</p><p>I decided that night that I was going to be celibate. I&#8217;d realized that since I&#8217;d first started having sex with my now ex-husband, I had never had a period in my life where I wasn&#8217;t sexually available to someone.</p><p>Spirit had made it clear to me that I was on a solo path, and that included sex.</p><p>In the following months, despite often feeling overwhelmed with grief, I felt the deep presence of gratitude. The gratitude that I had for my lost love and the expansion that he helped activate within me was a soothing balm for the ache in my heart.</p><p>He had awakened a standard in me that I knew was the basis of what I deserved in a lover and partner. The resistance I&#8217;d felt over leaving my husband out of fear of never being loved so deeply again had evolved into a deep knowing that my capacity to give and receive love is something that can only grow and widen.</p><p>At the same time this knowing began to concretize into my being, my life accelerated rapidly.</p><p>Within a couple of months of the breakup, I signed up for my first international healing retreat with a powerful spiritual teacher. My devotion to my growth and path was quickly rewarded when I booked my first starring role in a tv series, a monumental accomplishment I had been working towards for 15 years.</p><p>A month after returning from the retreat, I was in New York City, on set as a tv star.</p><p>Two months later the show was picked up to series and then a month later, the world shut down. It was 2020, after all.</p><p>The day after LA went into &#8220;lockdown&#8221; I flew to Bali for another healing retreat and received the most powerful healing from a woman in a rural area that I can&#8217;t even remember the location of. She cleared deep ancestral wounds from my energy field and did a lot of work around my breasts and womb, where so much of my grief had been carried.</p><p>I returned home and while most people were spiraling from the events of that spring and summer, I stayed devoted to my daily spiritual practices, stopped drinking alcohol and stopped consuming animal flesh. I was grateful for this period of quiet and solitude, leaning into &#8220;lockdown&#8221;&#8212;even though I spent nearly every day outside basking in the sunshine and receiving cosmic downloads.</p><p>Even if I&#8217;d wanted to date during this time period, Spirit had completely taken it off the table as an option. Again, I was grateful. My heart broke reading the stories of women and children who were stuck in their houses with men who abused them, or who were realizing for the first time, just how little their &#8220;partners&#8221; actually contributed to the daily running of the household.</p><p>These stories fueled me and my passion.</p><p>My consciousness upgraded rapidly and I was able to see and discern the mechanisms of the systems I speak of in my work.</p><p>I went live on instagram often, teaching people about the spiritual meaning of the global events, helping to pull them out of depression and despondency.</p><p>I upgraded my home, moving out of my rent controlled apartment that I&#8217;d lived in in Hollywood for 7 years and moving into a beautiful little cottage on a quiet block in Sherman Oaks.</p><p>Every day, I&#8217;d wake up, make fresh pressed fruit juice, cut a bowl of fruit and spend the day lying naked in my backyard under the sun. I&#8217;d smoke blunts while journaling, listening to music, dancing and daydreaming.</p><p>When I craved pleasure, I&#8217;d make love to myself. My lazy naked afternoons were my foreplay, basking in the sensuality of nature, sunlight, and sweet fruit. Letting my body rest and ground into the Earth.</p><p>At night, I&#8217;d light candles all around my apartment, turn on sexy tantric music and touch myself for hours. Bringing myself to the edge over and over again, before retreating. As my pleasure rose, I&#8217;d envision my dreams and speak affirmations to myself, claiming what was already mine, trusting that all would arrive in perfect timing.</p><p>In the coming years, many things shifted for me. I left LA to finish building my school bus that I have now been living and traveling in full time for the past 4 years.</p><p>Just over three years into my celibacy journey, I went to live in Costa Rica for 6 months. While I was there, I had been feeling the pull to experience intimacy with a lover. The land is so lush and wet and intoxicating, it was hard not to want to fuck. I&#8217;d also been questioning if I&#8217;d been being too dogmatic about my commitment to my sexual abstinence. So I did what anyone in my situation would do&#8230;</p><p>I went to a local tantra retreat.</p><p>Over the course of the weekend, I connected with a lovely man who I experienced instant, fiery attraction with and throwing everything that I&#8217;d been committed to out the window, I slept with him. Despite our chemistry, the sex was..<em>meh</em>. On top of that&#8212;as is common in the Caribbean&#8212;that spark fizzled out very quickly, leaving me feeling bitterly disappointed in myself. </p><p>I was angry at myself for not taking my time, to make sure he was truly worthy of me, as I had promised I would. I knew that I deserved better and I felt the bitter taste of self betrayal. I felt like I was tainted and felt sad that over 3 years of devotion had been so easily cast aside.</p><p>It took a few weeks for me to return to a space of grace, where I could fully remember that I am a human. That there was nothing wrong with me craving that level of closeness with another human, but was a hard lesson that I had to accept in honoring my inner authority&#8212;I&#8217;m an Emotional Projector in Human Design&#8212;and that decisions of this magnitude require significant time for me to experience full clarity on.</p><p>Ultimately, I had a deep question that could only truly be answered through the experience, and my answer was clear&#8212;I would stay devoted to my practice of celibacy.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pfzq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7264ed5d-5abd-47af-9c9a-7d30a2045b97_2738x1825.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pfzq!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7264ed5d-5abd-47af-9c9a-7d30a2045b97_2738x1825.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pfzq!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7264ed5d-5abd-47af-9c9a-7d30a2045b97_2738x1825.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pfzq!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7264ed5d-5abd-47af-9c9a-7d30a2045b97_2738x1825.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pfzq!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7264ed5d-5abd-47af-9c9a-7d30a2045b97_2738x1825.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pfzq!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7264ed5d-5abd-47af-9c9a-7d30a2045b97_2738x1825.jpeg" width="1456" height="970" 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7264ed5d-5abd-47af-9c9a-7d30a2045b97_2738x1825.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pfzq!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7264ed5d-5abd-47af-9c9a-7d30a2045b97_2738x1825.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pfzq!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7264ed5d-5abd-47af-9c9a-7d30a2045b97_2738x1825.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pfzq!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7264ed5d-5abd-47af-9c9a-7d30a2045b97_2738x1825.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>As a woman, I carry the portal of consciousness within me, my womb. Sex is the most powerful expression of consciousness. The way a woman engages with sex is largely dependent on her perception of herself, her worth, and her place within the greater fabric of humanity.</p><p>The way I viewed and engaged with sex as a young woman is light years from how I view and engage with it now.</p><p>With my husband, my connection to sex was heavily influenced by porn&#8212;something I was exposed to as a young child&#8212;and there was an undercurrent of disconnect, degradation, and performance in the way we experienced sexual intimacy. Yes, I experienced pleasure, but it lacked reverence and genuine depth.</p><p>With my cosmic lover, we shared ritual devotion, ceremony, worship, and a level of depth that was powerful enough to blast my consciousness into the stratosphere. The pleasure of our lovemaking was rooted in remembrance and truth, which dissolved pretense and performance.</p><p>What I&#8217;ve learned over these 7 years of being single&#8212;and <em>almost</em> completely celibate&#8212;is that celibacy isn&#8217;t the absence of sex, it is a choice, a declaration of devotion to and deep reverence for the power of sex.</p><p>When it comes to sex, there are many levels ranging from&#8230;meh&#8230;to profoundly extraordiary.</p><p>I will not pretend I don&#8217;t know what extraordinary feels like.</p><p><em>Because I do.</em></p><p>And when you&#8217;ve experienced the extraordinary and the magic and awakening and cellular rearranging that accompanies the endless waves of pure cosmic bliss, you simply don&#8217;t settle.</p><p>Because when you do settle&#8212;as I experienced with the tantra dude in Costa Rica&#8212;the agony of denying yourself cosmic bliss is all the more painful and bitter.</p><p>So, in my title, I said that this was a story of my three great loves, but I&#8217;ve only outright named two. My former husband and cosmic love are the two men who helped me remember that <em>I am my first true love</em>.</p><p>My husband&#8212;while he gave me so much and I loved him deeply&#8212;taught me to crave more, that I deserved more. My cosmic love showed me what it meant to be met&#8212;emotionally, erotically, spiritually. Through the way he loved me, my body remembered what reverence feels like. And once that remembering occurred, celibacy became inevitable&#8212;not as deprivation, but as devotion to the truth my body had revealed.</p><p>In order for me to remember this, it had to have already existed within me. These men helped me remember and reclaim what was already mine to begin with.</p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p><h3></h3>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Return of Feminine Power]]></title><description><![CDATA[This is where you reclaim what was stolen...]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/the-return-of-feminine-power</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/the-return-of-feminine-power</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 03 Feb 2026 22:36:40 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_cBR!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc2c83ec-c830-4c08-88cf-2ee7da862892_1280x800.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>There is absolutely no question that The Divine Feminine has risen.</p><p>You feel Her in every single cell of your being.</p><p>All living beings on this planet are responding to the frequency shift that is coursing through our physical realm with unapologetic ferocity.</p><p>Oppressive systems are collapsing.</p><p>The depth of shadow that has been long hidden is finally being revealed, demanding attention and action.</p><p>Truth reigns once again.</p><p>Earth is breathing beneath your feet, oxygenating your blood and silently weaving new neural pathways within your consciousness.</p><p>Your body is buzzing with sensation, rage, and a passionate fire that feels all consuming in its breadth, and absolutely intoxicating in its sheer undeniable power.</p><p>It scares you a bit&#8212;let&#8217;s be honest, &#120414;&#120425; &#120424;&#120408;&#120406;&#120423;&#120410;&#120424; &#120430;&#120420;&#120426; &#120406; &#120417;&#120420;&#120425;&#8212;but you know that you can never go back to who you were. Impossible.</p><p>You want to surrender to Her intensity but you don&#8217;t know how. You&#8217;re still operating under the patriarchal spell that you have to DO something.</p><p>What if it was as simple is whispering to yourself&#8230;</p><p><em><strong>&#8220;It&#8217;s already mine.&#8221;</strong></em></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_cBR!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc2c83ec-c830-4c08-88cf-2ee7da862892_1280x800.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_cBR!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc2c83ec-c830-4c08-88cf-2ee7da862892_1280x800.png 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_cBR!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc2c83ec-c830-4c08-88cf-2ee7da862892_1280x800.png 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_cBR!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc2c83ec-c830-4c08-88cf-2ee7da862892_1280x800.png 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_cBR!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc2c83ec-c830-4c08-88cf-2ee7da862892_1280x800.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_cBR!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc2c83ec-c830-4c08-88cf-2ee7da862892_1280x800.png" width="1280" height="800" 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc2c83ec-c830-4c08-88cf-2ee7da862892_1280x800.png 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_cBR!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc2c83ec-c830-4c08-88cf-2ee7da862892_1280x800.png 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_cBR!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc2c83ec-c830-4c08-88cf-2ee7da862892_1280x800.png 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_cBR!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbc2c83ec-c830-4c08-88cf-2ee7da862892_1280x800.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Reclamation is not about asking for permission or proving yourself.</p><p>It is a decision to stand in the truth of your inner magnitude.</p><p>To selfishly take back what was stolen from you.</p><p>The veil of smallness, waiting for permission, and fear of persecution no longer clouds your vision because you&#8217;ve finally awoken to the truth that your power is your birthright.</p><p>The systems you&#8217;ve feared collapse under the weight of your unapologetic gaze because you remember who you descend from.</p><p>Do you think our ancient Mothers who manifested the great monuments of Khemet were &#120413;&#120426;&#120418;&#120407;&#120417;&#120410;?</p><p>They knew who the fuck they were and they made sure the world would always remember their power.</p><p>In <a href="https://www.andreabordeaux.com">&#120397;&#120410;&#120408;&#120417;&#120406;&#120418;&#120406;&#120425;&#120414;&#120420;&#120419;: &#120399;&#120413;&#120410; &#120397;&#120410;&#120425;&#120426;&#120423;&#120419; &#120420;&#120411; &#120385;&#120410;&#120418;&#120414;&#120419;&#120414;&#120419;&#120410; &#120395;&#120420;&#120428;&#120410;&#120423;</a>, I guide you through 6 weeks of remembrance, embodiment, and deep self trust as grounded and unshakeable as ancient stone.</p><p>We cross the threshold on February 18th and re-emerge, renewed and fully devoted to our calling just after the Spring Equinox--the true new year. Early bird pricing for now.</p><p>If you&#8217;re done asking for permission and are ready to reclaim your birthright, enter here:</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.andreabordeaux.com&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Reclaim Feminine Power&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.andreabordeaux.com"><span>Reclaim Feminine Power</span></a></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D3DZ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F05b1cd3a-a324-489f-aaf2-ad019fb1dee8_1080x1350.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D3DZ!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F05b1cd3a-a324-489f-aaf2-ad019fb1dee8_1080x1350.png 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D3DZ!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F05b1cd3a-a324-489f-aaf2-ad019fb1dee8_1080x1350.png 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D3DZ!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F05b1cd3a-a324-489f-aaf2-ad019fb1dee8_1080x1350.png 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D3DZ!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F05b1cd3a-a324-489f-aaf2-ad019fb1dee8_1080x1350.png 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D3DZ!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F05b1cd3a-a324-489f-aaf2-ad019fb1dee8_1080x1350.png 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D3DZ!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F05b1cd3a-a324-489f-aaf2-ad019fb1dee8_1080x1350.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[saturn in aries and the return of my fire]]></title><description><![CDATA[How I&#8217;ve been feeling lately]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/saturn-in-aries-and-the-return-of</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/saturn-in-aries-and-the-return-of</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:18:15 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Ch8y!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffde3d36d-a902-4efe-bd90-011aef139da3_1728x1728.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Ch8y!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffde3d36d-a902-4efe-bd90-011aef139da3_1728x1728.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Ch8y!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffde3d36d-a902-4efe-bd90-011aef139da3_1728x1728.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Ch8y!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffde3d36d-a902-4efe-bd90-011aef139da3_1728x1728.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" 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y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><h5>How I&#8217;ve been feeling lately</h5><div><hr></div><p>These past two months have been a portal of such deep transformation and alchemy for me.</p><p>For the first time in about 4 years, I&#8217;m feeling genuinely connected to myself, more rooted in my power, and crazy excited about what it set to unfold for me this year.</p><p>There&#8217;s so much talk about how 2026 is the year of Aries. Apparently Saturn is moving into Aries, and Saturn and Neptune will conjunction at 0&#186; in Aries next month.</p><p>As an Aries who has been absolutely dragged by her edges these past several years&#8212;with many incredible moments in between&#8212;I&#8217;m finally feeling like I can fucking breathe!!</p><p>My <a href="/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/a-quiet-knowing-i-can-no-longer-ignore">last post was about my experience in Egypt</a>, and how it rocked me to my core, bringing forth a deep knowing that I could no longer ignore. I was overwhelmed with emotions, deep processing and release of stagnant energies and thought forms, some of which I had been carrying for many lifetimes.</p><p>I came home renewed, lit up, absolutely on fire for my passions and purpose in a way that was exhilarating and intoxicating. </p><p>I immediately began shifting into power mode, deciding that I was stepping forward in a way that would completely rewrite the trajectory of my life. Or maybe I wasn&#8217;t rewriting anything but finally aligning with what has already been promised to me.</p><p>Either way, it&#8217;s been a beautiful reclamation. (<em>Spoiler Alert: you&#8217;re going to be hearing the word reclamation from me a lot in the coming weeks.)</em></p><p>I decided to expand on my popular and wildly loved masterclass, <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass">Selfish Bitch</a>, and turned it into a 21 day portal of deeper initiation that I very aptly decided to call, <em><strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course">Selfish Bitch Initiation</a></strong></em>.</p><p>This ended up being my most successful launch to date and I was blown away by the reception of this offering, and my ability to expand in massive and meaningful ways, by simply choosing to embody presence and a sense of trust that sometimes made me cry with gratitude.</p><p>As I write this, I&#8217;m 40 minutes away from my last call with the women who chose to follow me through this portal of initiation, and the call is a celebration.</p><p>I&#8217;ve gotten to steward so many powerful transformations and wins for the women in this space, each call, women signing on, bursting at the seams to share how they blocked men who were wasting their time, setting powerful boundaries with controlling or abusive parents, learning what it means to say &#8220;no&#8221; and watch everyone in their auric field rearrange themselves to accommodate her new sense of sovereignty.</p><p>It&#8217;s taken my breath away.</p><p>This letter isn&#8217;t all about <em><strong>Selfish Bitch Initiation</strong></em>, but I want to share with you in case you&#8217;re needing a space where you can learn just how powerful you are and how your life can shift in just a few weeks.</p><p>This offering is now available as a self paced course, and a payment plan is available upon checkout, if needed.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Begin Your Initiation&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initation--self-paced-course"><span>Begin Your Initiation</span></a></p><p>In addition to this powerful launch, I&#8217;ve been deeply committed to creating more often on socials&#8212;although I&#8217;ve been honoring my luteal phase recently with more rest.</p><p>Last month, I gave myself a challenge to post a long form video to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@AndreaBordeaux">my YouTube channel</a> for 30 days, and not only did I do it, I really enjoyed the process and learned so much from it.</p><p>I&#8217;ve received incredible feedback from viewers, have attracted over 600 new subscribers, and am so close to being monetized!!</p><p>Part of my goal in my work and in being in service to my soul community is to build a free database where people can learn, receive wisdom, and feel seen and heard in the messages that I share. If you want to dive into everything I&#8217;ve been sharing, head on over and enjoy a YouTube binge!</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://www.youtube.com/@AndreaBordeaux&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;My YouTube Channel&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://www.youtube.com/@AndreaBordeaux"><span>My YouTube Channel</span></a></p><p>As I mentioned before, with 2026 being the year for Aries, I have been moving through each day with a sense of calm and confidence. I knew last year that this year was going to be *<em>my*</em> year and I can&#8217;t wait to see and experience all of the magic that is waiting to unfold for me.</p><p>And one of the reasons why I&#8217;m so excited is that the magic that I get to experience will allow me to show up and create even more for you. I have so many wonderful things on the horizon and I&#8217;m truly grateful for you being here.</p><p>Watch this space, because while I have been quiet on Substack as of late&#8212;supporting the wave of expansion I just moved through&#8212;Spirit has been telling me that my writing needs to be a greater focus in the coming months and that feels so so so right.</p><p>So, to all of my readers, I&#8217;m back and better than ever! I love you and I&#8217;ll be here with more soon.</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[A quiet knowing I can no longer ignore]]></title><description><![CDATA[Yesterday I shared something with you, that every woman reaches a moment where she realizes she cannot return to who she used to be.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/a-quiet-knowing-i-can-no-longer-ignore</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/a-quiet-knowing-i-can-no-longer-ignore</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2025 21:19:05 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea411222-17ae-4c3e-a2ce-f45a6f1df780_1920x1080.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Yesterday I shared something with you, that every woman reaches a moment where she realizes she cannot return to who she used to be.</p><p>My moment arrived in Egypt.</p><p>Standing inside the temples of my Mothers&#8230; their bodies, stories, and prayers carved into stone with a precision that humbles the mind&#8230; I felt myself split open.</p><p>These were monuments built by Goddess Matriarchs who understood creation on a cosmic level&#8212;architecture made of <em>frozen music,</em> still standing in their boldness, grace, and mathematical perfection.</p><p>And there I was, breathing the same desert air, touching the same stone, sensing the same power that moved through their hands&#8230;</p><p>And all I could think was:</p><p><strong>I&#8217;m living my life way too fucking small.</strong></p><p>Not because I haven&#8217;t done brave things.<br>Not because I haven&#8217;t spoken up or taken risks.<br>But because my voice is massive, my vision is massive, and my devotion to helping women rise burns hotter than what I&#8217;ve allowed myself to show.</p><p>In those temples, I remembered something I have always known:</p><p>I am not meant to be understood.<br>I am here to be <strong>felt.</strong></p><p>I am not here to <em>speak.</em><br>I am here to <strong>transmit.</strong></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p>Here&#8217;s what I know:</p><p>I help women remember the ancient self the world tried to strip from them.<br>I help them meet the shadow they&#8217;ve been taught to fear.<br>And I show them how to turn their truth into a force that rearranges their entire lives.</p><p>So in knowing this, I have <strong>no business</strong> playing small.<br>No business pretending I am not here on assignment.<br>No business diluting what comes through me.</p><p>How could I stand inside those temples&#8212;feeling the same lineage, the same fire, the same current&#8212;and believe I am anything less than great?</p><p>This is why I&#8217;m taking <strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initiation">Selfish Bitch</a></strong> even deeper.</p><p>Her energy is ruthless devotion to your vision, to your voice, to your soul mission.<br>She is the woman who refuses to betray herself.<br>She is the woman who trusts her bigness more than her fear.</p><p>And here&#8217;s the truth I didn&#8217;t realize until Egypt:</p><p>This offering isn&#8217;t just an initiation for you.<br>It&#8217;s an initiation for <strong>me</strong> as well.</p><p>I feel that in my body.<br>I feel it in my womb.<br>I feel it in the way my life has been rearranging itself since I returned home.</p><p>You are in my world because something in you recognizes something in me.<br>But what you&#8217;re actually feeling&#8230; is <strong>your own potential waking up.</strong><br>The parts of you that will not tolerate being denied anymore.</p><p>If you&#8217;re ready to rise into your own bigness&#8212;your voice, your purpose, your uncompromising truth&#8212;then this journey is for you.</p><p>For 21 days, we will journey to the depths, uncover the lies you&#8217;ve lived by, and unearth the truth that will rerrange your life.</p><p>This is nothing short of an identity recalibration.</p><p><strong>Early bird access is officially open.</strong><br>Prices will rise without notice.<br><em>Be the woman who doesn&#8217;t hesitate on her desires.</em></p><p><strong>Introducing: </strong></p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!u34S!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbfd463d1-ddc9-4b24-9566-bf55bc1c7412_400x400.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!u34S!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbfd463d1-ddc9-4b24-9566-bf55bc1c7412_400x400.png 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!u34S!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, 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xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p><em><strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initiation">Selfish Bitch: Initiation</a></strong></em></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initiation&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Join The Initiation&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initiation"><span>Join The Initiation</span></a></p><p>&#8212;</p><p>I want to tell you something I didn&#8217;t say on Instagram.</p><p>When I was standing in those temples, there was a moment&#8212;a very quiet one &#8212;where I felt my entire life shift. Not in a dramatic, cinematic way. But in a deep, cellular way. A knowing.</p><p>It felt like:</p><p><strong>&#8220;You are not coming back to the woman you were before this trip.&#8221;</strong></p><p>I have never been someone who plays small on purpose. But I realized that I&#8217;ve still been holding a part of myself back&#8230; just enough to feel familiar. Just enough to feel safe.</p><p>And I don&#8217;t want to live at that frequency anymore.</p><p>You are the ones who&#8217;ve been with me through so many iterations. You&#8217;ve watched me burn down old versions of myself, build new ones, and step back into my power again and again. You&#8217;ve witnessed the behind-the-scenes of my evolution.</p><p>So I want you to know:</p><p>This launch marks the beginning of a new era for me.<br>More truth.<br>More transmission.<br>More sovereignty.<br>More of the magic I&#8217;ve been withholding.</p><p>Thank you for being here through every chapter.<br>Thank you for feeling me before I fully felt myself.<br>Thank you for walking with me as I rise into the woman I actually came here to be.</p><p>I&#8217;m grateful for you&#8212;deeply.</p><p>With devotion,</p><p><br>Andrea</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initiation&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Join The Initiation&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch-initiation"><span>Join The Initiation</span></a></p><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[I crossed a threshold I can't come back from...]]></title><description><![CDATA[I haven&#8217;t written here in just over two months.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/i-crossed-a-threshold-i-cant-come</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/i-crossed-a-threshold-i-cant-come</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 07 Dec 2025 20:16:01 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!um7M!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>I haven&#8217;t written here in just over two months.</strong></p><p>Not because I didn&#8217;t have anything to say, but because the words I would have written then are not the woman I am now.</p><p>These past weeks have been a quiet initiation&#8212;one I didn&#8217;t choose consciously, but one I felt coming for a long time. A kind of internal pressure, a whisper I kept trying to outrun, a knowing that something in me was preparing to crack.</p><p>And then <a href="http://takemetoegyptretreat.com">Egypt appeared in my life</a>.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!um7M!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!um7M!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!um7M!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!um7M!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!um7M!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!um7M!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic" width="1456" height="2588" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:2588,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:1034886,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/heic&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/i/180980514?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!um7M!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!um7M!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!um7M!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!um7M!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4cf4466-995e-4bd4-a150-89a05feb907d_1728x3072.heic 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>When the opportunity first came, I felt more fear than excitement. I knew that if I went, something would be activated in me that I could never undo. Something ancient. Something demanding. Something that had been circling me for years, waiting for me to stop pretending I couldn&#8217;t hear it.</p><p>The fear wasn&#8217;t a red flag.<br>It was recognition.</p><p>It was the tenderness of meeting a part of myself I had abandoned.<br>It was the resistance that rises when the soul says, &#8220;We&#8217;re going deeper now.&#8221;<br>It was irritability, tension, a kind of emotional static&#8212;my nervous system bracing for transformation.</p><p>I&#8217;ve learned to pay attention to that.<br>The discomfort before the expansion is often the initiation itself.</p><p>And so, even with all the fear, I said yes.</p><p>Because something in me knew that Egypt wasn&#8217;t just a trip&#8212;it was a summons. A threshold. A mirror. A reminder of a lineage I had cut myself off from, and a version of myself I was finally ready to meet.</p><p>And I was right.</p><p>From the moment I arrived, it felt like the land stripped something from me. Not harshly, but with utter clarity. Every hour revealed another layer of myself that had grown too small. The ways I had been shrinking. The ways I had been playing safe. The ways I had been holding back the fullness of my voice, my power, my fire.</p><p>I realized that while my work has always been potent, I hadn&#8217;t yet allowed it to be <strong>deep enough</strong>. Not because I couldn&#8217;t&#8212;but because going deeper would require me to become a woman who could hold that depth.</p><p>Egypt made that woman surface.</p><p>It showed me the places where I was still accommodating, still tempering myself, still performing a version of leadership that felt easier to digest. It showed me the places where I had been lingering at the threshold of my own brilliance, peering in but not stepping all the way through.</p><p>And in that unraveling, something became unmistakably clear:</p><p><strong>I can&#8217;t be who I was anymore.<br>And I can&#8217;t teach from the edges of my power.<br>Not if I&#8217;m meant to touch the women I&#8217;m here to serve.<br>Not if I&#8217;m meant to deliver the medicine I carry.<br>Not if I&#8217;m meant to embody the truth I&#8217;ve been circling for years.</strong></p><p>The woman I&#8217;ve become is not interested in playing small.<br>She&#8217;s not interested in palatable spirituality.<br>She&#8217;s not interested in staying at the surface when the real work demands depth, devotion, and a willingness to burn.</p><p>This is the expansion that&#8217;s been unraveling inside me, shaping me, demanding that I rise into the next iteration of my voice, my leadership, and my calling.</p><p>And tomorrow&#8230;<br>I&#8217;m sharing the first creation born from this new place.</p><p>It&#8217;s not a course.<br>It&#8217;s not content.<br>It&#8217;s an opening.<br>A threshold.<br>An invitation into the work I&#8217;ve been too afraid to offer until now.</p><p>Everything I&#8217;ve lived through these last weeks has been preparing me for this next phase&#8212;this next layer of truth, embodiment, and impact.</p><p>And I can&#8217;t wait to show you what&#8217;s coming.</p><p>If your body has been buzzing, tightening, or whispering to you lately&#8230;<br>you might already feel it, too.</p><p>I&#8217;ll meet you tomorrow.<br>In a new era.<br>In a deeper place.<br>In the initiation that&#8217;s been waiting for both of us.</p><p>With devotion,</p><p>Andrea</p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Saying 'NO' is the cheat code to leveling up]]></title><description><![CDATA[People pleaser? Scarcity mindset? This is for you.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/saying-no-is-the-cheat-code-to-leveling</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/saying-no-is-the-cheat-code-to-leveling</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 04 Oct 2025 20:43:05 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wM1-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F13ea1b39-cce9-4360-90f2-a8e286707943_1024x682.heic" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In 2013, I moved from New York City to Los Angeles in order to take my acting career to the next level.</p><p>At that time, television opportunities in NYC were scarce and I was stuck at the co-star level, booking small one episode roles that weren&#8217;t really moving the needle for me career wise. </p><p>The hardest jump for actors to make is the jump from co-star to guest star. Having a guest star role gives you a more fleshed out character, more screen time, opening credit billing, and a significant jump in pay.</p><p>I had been grinding in NYC for 8 years and was tired. So after 8 miserable East Coast winters, I decided to abandon my favorite city for sunnier skies, perpetually warm weather, and greater opportunity on the West Coast.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p>Thankfully, I had excellent representation and by the time I landed in LA, I already had a few auditions lined up, including some guest star auditions.</p><p>One of my first auditions was for &#8216;Rizzoli &amp; Isles&#8217; a popular crime drama on TNT. I don&#8217;t recall what the role was, but after my initial audition with the casting directors, I was moved up to audition for the producers. I didn&#8217;t get the role, which was such a bummer, but I was grateful that I nailed my first audition for the casting office and made fans of the producers.</p><p>A couple of months later, the casting directors brought me back for a recurring 2 episode role playing a beat cop, and skipped me straight to audition for the producers. </p><p>A couple of days after the audition, my manager called me and said that the producers loved my audition, but decided to offer the role to someone else. They really wanted to work with me so they were offering me a co-star role playing a coffee barista who was known in the script as &#8216;Barista&#8217;. The character would appear in one scene and had around 5 or 6 lines.</p><p>To be honest, I was offended and cried out of frustration. They had already seen me for two different guest star roles, claimed to be fans, but were offering me what felt like a consolation prize. My goal was to get our of the co-star category so this offer felt like it would be a step backwards. </p><p><em>The challenge was that money was tight.</em></p><p>My husband at the time had recently graduated from college after serving in the military and hadn&#8217;t yet landed a job so we were subsisting mostly on his GI bill and I was picking up the slack with my serving job at a restaurant.</p><p>The $1300 that I would have been paid for that role was extremely enticing and would have gone a long way to ease some financial stress.</p><p>Despite this, I couldn&#8217;t shake the feeling that I would be betraying my self worth if I took that job. I felt like I deserved better. I worked really hard, had made a cross country move to upgrade in my career, and didn&#8217;t want to go backwards.</p><p>So, for the first time in my professional career, I told my manager to thank the producers, but to tell them I would not be accepting their offer.</p><p>After I hung up the phone, I felt shaky and relieved. I trusted in my talent, and knew that if I stayed focused on my goal, I would get there.</p><p><em>And then&#8230;</em></p><p>A couple of hours later, my manager called me back and said that he had just gotten off the phone with the casting office. They&#8217;d shared with him that the producers were disappointed that I&#8217;d turned down their offer and because they were fans of mine, they were coming back with a new offer.</p><p>This time, they were upgrading the role from a co-star to a guest star role, giving the character a name (she would be called Neda), and were making me the new love interest of their male star, played by the late and beautiful soul <a href="https://www.ltyfoundation.org">Lee Thompson Young</a>. They also promised that the role would be recurring.</p><p>And just like that, I went from being stuck at the co-star level of my television career to being not only a guest star, but a recurring guest star, putting me that much closer to the coveted series regular.</p><p>I ended up filming 3 episodes of the show, earning around $3500 per episode, and got to work with incredible actors, especially Lee, whom I still think of and cherish in my heart.</p><p>All of this, because I said &#8216;No.&#8217;</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p>Had I not trusted in myself, had I caved into fear and a scarcity mentality, I would have done that little scene in the coffee shop, pocketed about $600, which is what I would have netted after taxes and commission to my agent and manager. Instead, between the 3 episodes I filmed, I earned over $10,000.</p><p>I upgraded my resume with a new billing category and pay scale, setting the standard for future work, and got wonderful and invaluable on-set experience getting to play a more developed character.</p><p>That one little word changed the course of my career and strengthened my self worth and confidence in myself as an actor. In knowing that I deserved more, I was able to call it in. </p><p>That &#8220;no&#8221; made me more magnetic to my desires.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wM1-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F13ea1b39-cce9-4360-90f2-a8e286707943_1024x682.heic" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wM1-!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F13ea1b39-cce9-4360-90f2-a8e286707943_1024x682.heic 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wM1-!, 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F13ea1b39-cce9-4360-90f2-a8e286707943_1024x682.heic 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wM1-!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F13ea1b39-cce9-4360-90f2-a8e286707943_1024x682.heic 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><h6>Photo from my first episode on Rizzoli &amp; Isles &#8220;Somebody&#8217;s Watching Me&#8221;. Peep the fro.</h6><p></p><p>I share this story because so many you are selling yourselves short, accepting breadcrumbs in multiple areas of your life, and fearing that what you&#8217;re being offered is as good as it can get.</p><p>You are capable of calling in a job that properly compensates you for the time you&#8217;ve invested in your education, your skill set, and the value that you bring to your position and team.</p><p>You deserve a partner who keeps his word, respects your boundaries, and worships the ground you walk on.</p><p>You are worthy of a tribe, a community of people who support one another, show up in the good times and bad, and make you feel like you&#8217;ve reunited with your soul family.</p><p>As long as you continue to say yes to the things that are antithetical to your dreams and desires, your dreams and desires will elude you.</p><p>As long you accept poor treatment or abuse because you don&#8217;t believe that better exists for you, you will suffer.</p><p>So many women are trained out of their connecting to their sacred &#8216;no&#8217; because we are taught that we are a resource for others to extract from, and when you say &#8216;no&#8217;, people lose access to your magic.</p><p>So, if you are someone who:</p><ul><li><p>Struggles to say &#8216;no&#8217;</p></li><li><p>Feels beholden to the needs and desires of others while being disconnect from your own</p></li><li><p>Have a tendency to people please or overgive</p></li><li><p>Are an eldest daughter&#8230;</p></li></ul><p>I have a powerful workshop that teaches you how to become magnetic to your desires through the art of <em><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass">selfishness</a></em>.</p><p>In this empowering and transformative workshop, I teach you how to embrace the archetype of the <em>Selfish Bitch</em>&#8212;not as an insult, but as a revolutionary act of self-love and boundary-setting.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Become Selfish&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass"><span>Become Selfish</span></a></p><p>You&#8217;ll learn to:</p><p>*Heal the wounds of rejection, self-abandonment, and resentment tied to putting others first.</p><p>*Tap into the ancient power behind why others seek your energy and how to reclaim it.</p><p>*Say &#8220;no&#8221; with confidence and empowered and graceful self-advocacy, radiating magnetism and commanding respect, all while staying aligned with your kind and compassionate heart.</p><p>*Be introduced to powerful and effective embodiment practices that you can turn to in your day to day life, that will assist you in utilizing the knowledge gained in this class, in real time.</p><p>*PLUS: <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass">A bonus lesson on why MEN DESERVE LESS!</a></p><p>You&#8217;ll discover how to own your desires unapologetically and show up for yourself in ways that feel deliciously liberating.</p><p>This workshop is for the woman who&#8217;s tired of shrinking herself to keep others comfortable. If the name &#8220;Selfish Bitch&#8221; triggers you&#8212;good. It&#8217;s time to rewrite that story and step into your full power.</p><p>Come prepared to challenge your perspective, embrace your badassery, and become the magnetic, empowered woman you were always meant to be.</p><p>This workshop is pre-recorded and available for instant access.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Become Selfish&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass"><span>Become Selfish</span></a></p><p>To become magnetic to your desires, to call in the upgrades and up-levels that are meant to make your life more full, expansive, magical, and to keep you grounded in your soul&#8217;s mission, you must have a clear vision and say &#8216;no&#8217; to anything that does not serve that vision.</p><p>When you have the courage to be willing to walk away, to call their bluff, to say &#8216;no&#8217;&#8230;</p><p><em>It can mean the difference between staying small in the background, or becoming the star of your own movie.</em></p><div><hr></div><p>Thank you for reading. If this letter resonated with you and you&#8217;re looking for deeper support, <a href="https://goddessvibes.as.me/">I&#8217;d love to invite you to take advantage of my 1:1 offerings</a>.</p><p>I have limited availability for the Fall, but if you don&#8217;t see an appointment time or date that works for you, email me at andrea@goddessvibes.com.</p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Are you an empath or do you just have poor spiritual hygiene?]]></title><description><![CDATA[So many of the Women that I meet in my work refer to themselves as an empath.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/are-you-an-empath-or-do-you-just</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/are-you-an-empath-or-do-you-just</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 18 Aug 2025 23:18:48 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zflG!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F208ca63d-ef8d-40c4-b3bd-4e61c714349a_736x736.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>So many of the Women that I meet in my work refer to themselves as an empath. And very shortly after telling me about their nature as an empath, they describe a series of abuses and harm that they have endured for most of their lives.</p><ul><li><p>Being parentified as children</p></li><li><p>Often being approached by strangers and co-workers for advice or emotional dumping</p></li><li><p>Emotional and physical abuse by the men in their lives</p></li><li><p>Being financially exploited by family members</p></li><li><p>Being told that they have a &#8220;light&#8221; around them, but are always feeling energetically drained or tired</p></li></ul><p>Women quietly accept that this is their role to play, by virtue of being an &#8220;empath&#8221;. They feel that their purpose is to be in service to others&#8217; needs and desires, and they cope by gaslighting themselves into believing that they are doing good by helping others. And while they feel drained, exhausted, resentful, and confused by the lack of reciprocity, they don&#8217;t see how their circumstances could change.</p><p>If we start getting down to the cold truth of it, many Women in this position don&#8217;t desire change, because while they feel depleted and neglected, they also feel deeply needed and have translated the need of others to siphon from them as a form of love.</p><p>And because this is the way that they experience love, they fear changing the way that they show up in their own lives because to not overextend themselves for others, triggers a deep fear that they will not receive love.</p><p>It doesn&#8217;t matter that they aren&#8217;t experiencing true love, this is what they know love to be and, in their minds, <em>to not have it is to have nothing</em>.</p><p>Many of these Women are so disconnected from themselves and their own desires that they have no sense of identity outside of their usefulness to others. These are the Women who reach their later years in life, after having raised their kids, taken care of the whole family, overworked themselves in jobs they never loved or were passionate about, suddenly look up and have no idea who they are, or where their lives went.</p><p>This realization causes deep grief, anger, and regret, and can often manifest in debilitating illness or dis-ease from having spent their life force so diverged from their true path and purpose.</p><div><hr></div><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><div><hr></div><h4>So, how does an empath course correct?</h4><p>First, let&#8217;s get clear on what it means to be an empath. To put it simply, an empath is a person who is hyper attuned to the emotions and feelings of others.</p><p>This is an absolutely beautiful gift to have and gives you the ability to connect with people on a deep, healing, and intimate level. And as I&#8217;ve already noted, without proper understanding, self-esteem, and purpose, you can be a target for manipulators, abusers, and users.</p><p>Where empaths find themselves in trouble is that, largely due to childhood trauma, they feel that it&#8217;s their job to fix or heal the feelings and emotions of the people they come in contact with in order to experience acceptance, purpose, and love, which leaves them wide open to people with nefarious, selfish, or unconscious intentions.</p><p> Anyone with powerful gifts needs to learn how to protect their energy, their aura, and their peace in order to not be taken advantage of, abused, or preyed upon.</p><p>If you see yourself as an empath and can relate to anything that I&#8217;ve spoken on so far, I&#8217;m going to give you some fundamental and practical ways to shift the trajectory of your life from that of a victim who is treated like a human battery, to that of an empowered, deeply gifted being who is able to use their gifts to honor their divine purpose with intention and self-love.</p><h4>Take Responsibility For How You Got Here</h4><p>Yesterday, I was invited as a guest speaker to pour wisdom and empowerment into a cohort of new doulas. One of the women shared that she was looking for guidance to properly manage her time and passively mentioned that she was an empath, which immediately let me know what was really going on.</p><p>I told her, &#8220;You don&#8217;t need to manage your time, you need to manage your energy output for others. You are committing yourself to too many things that don&#8217;t serve you because you&#8217;re afraid of disappointing people. When you learn to say &#8216;no&#8217; you&#8217;ll realize that you actually have a lot more time for yourself.&#8221;</p><p>We&#8217;re not responsible for the pain and chaos that we experienced as a child, but we are responsible for what we allow to continue well into adulthood. Once you gain any level of awareness of the incongruence in how you show up for others vs what is reciprocated, and you continue to deplete yourself for the sake of others, you are making a choice to do so.</p><p>When you recognize that you are creating your misery, you can be free to create something else that is empowering and honors your sovereignty. </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zflG!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F208ca63d-ef8d-40c4-b3bd-4e61c714349a_736x736.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zflG!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F208ca63d-ef8d-40c4-b3bd-4e61c714349a_736x736.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zflG!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F208ca63d-ef8d-40c4-b3bd-4e61c714349a_736x736.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zflG!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F208ca63d-ef8d-40c4-b3bd-4e61c714349a_736x736.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zflG!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F208ca63d-ef8d-40c4-b3bd-4e61c714349a_736x736.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" 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y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><h4>Learn to Embrace and Experience Your Own Feelings</h4><p>Every super hero is initially overwhelmed by their powers until they learn to harness them with control and purpose.</p><p>Learning to embrace and experience your own deep feelings and emotions will require you to journey into the depths of your shadows and wounds. When you begin facing the aspects of yourself that you&#8217;ve been hiding from because it&#8217;s too painful to bear, you will learn that facing that pain and allowing it to process through your body, will strengthen your capacity to hold your own intensity and the intensity of others in a way that is conscious, and deliberate.</p><h4>Give People Space to Feel What Belongs To Them</h4><p>As you continue to take responsibility for the life circumstances you create and you learn to hold the capacity of your own feelings and emotions, you also begin the process of releasing what does not belong to you. You will learn to recognize that what other people are radiating does not belong to you and you don&#8217;t have to take it on as if it does.</p><p>As you get more comfortable with being uncomfortable or triggering discomfort and disappointment in others, you will no longer give in to the energy of others that is designed to take from you without care or reciprocity.</p><h4>Learn to Reset Your Aura and Protect Your Energy</h4><p>In the vein of understanding exactly what energy belongs to you and what doesn&#8217;t, auric self-care for empaths is a non-negotiable. Many empaths become reclusive as a means of protecting themselves from the onslaught of energy they deal with out in the world, but great energetic clearing and protection can alleviate much of that if you stay consistent and vigilant about showing yourself higher levels of care and maintenance.</p><p>Here are a few examples:</p><ul><li><p>Herbal and floral baths</p></li><li><p>Grounding in nature&#8212;go touch grass, sis</p></li><li><p>Cord cutting visualizations</p></li><li><p>Black walnut baths for especially potent, dark, or parasitic energies</p></li><li><p>Visualizing a sphere of protection around your aura</p></li><li><p>Mantras to bind or rebuke outside energies</p></li></ul><h4>The Empowered Empath</h4><p>Yes, you do have a powerful light and it attracts all types of beings, even the ones who mean you harm, but it is your responsibility to create the parameters to protect your gift so that you can operate in love and devotion, without being drained and depleted.</p><p>The world needs you, otherwise, you wouldn&#8217;t be here with the the beautiful and impactful gift that you possess.</p><p>If you choose to step into your power in a way that is grounded, intentional, and rooted in love for yourself *first*, you will be unstoppable and also help show the world how to love more fully and deeply.</p><p><em>This is the ultimate gift of the empath.</em></p><div><hr></div><p><em>If you read this and felt yourself in every word, I created <strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-harem">The Harem</a></strong> for you.</em></p><p><em><strong>The Harem is my monthly membership</strong> &#8212; a living temple and sanctuary for women who are done over-giving, done confusing depletion with love, and ready to reclaim their power, sovereignty, and mythic feminine essence.</em></p><p><em>Inside this membership, you&#8217;ll receive structure, depth, and sisterhood every single month:</em></p><p><em><strong>The Rhythm of The Harem:</strong><br><strong>Call 1: Teaching + Ritual</strong> &#8211; a deep dive on feminine embodiment, sovereignty, and mythic living with a guided practice to anchor the teaching.<br><strong>Call 2: Q&amp;A + Sister Circle</strong> &#8211; a space for your questions, reflections, and breakthroughs, held in sacred sisterhood.</em></p><p><em>Each call is 60 minutes. Replays + reflection prompts are emailed after every session so you can move at your own pace.</em></p><p><em>Alongside our gatherings, you&#8217;ll be part of a private WhatsApp community, a space where women connect, share, and support each other between calls. This is your circle, your mirror, your reminder that you are not alone in this work.</em></p><p><em>The Harem is not a course. It&#8217;s not a program. It&#8217;s a sacred membership&#8212;an ongoing space designed to nourish you month after month, so you never have to do this journey of reclamation in isolation.</em></p><p><em>This is where your empathy becomes power.</em></p><p><em><br>Your boundaries become devotion.</em></p><p><em><br>Your light is nourished instead of siphoned.</em></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-harem&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Join The Harem&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-harem"><span>Join The Harem</span></a></p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[An Invitation To Love Your Womanhood]]></title><description><![CDATA[There is nothing that I love more than being a woman.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/an-invitation-to-love-your-womanhood</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/an-invitation-to-love-your-womanhood</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 20:53:32 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rMjw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>There is nothing that I love more than being a woman.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rMjw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rMjw!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rMjw!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rMjw!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rMjw!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rMjw!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg" width="1080" height="1920" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:1920,&quot;width&quot;:1080,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:568329,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/i/166953257?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rMjw!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rMjw!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rMjw!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rMjw!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa721e609-cac9-46b7-b68e-109ca2452726_1080x1920.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>My love for myself, my womanhood, and the collective of women and girls around the world is what fuels my passionate work.</p><p>In recent years, I&#8217;ve realized that what underpins so much of the sadness and lack of self worth that women carry throughout their lives is a deep rejection and distrust of being a woman, largely due to the vicious and unrelenting consequences of living in the inverted system of patriarchy.</p><p>Far too many girls are raised to view themselves and each other as resources to be mined by boys and men, and as the inheritors of their mothers&#8217; powerlessness and misery.</p><p>From a young age, seeing what is forecasted as their future of thankless servitude, sexual exploitation, and stifled expression, it&#8217;s no wonder so many girls and young women are attempting to &#8220;identify&#8221; as anything but a woman.</p><p>The Patriarchy has lied to you and will always lie to you because ignorance of your power, rejection of your Divine nature, and your resignation to dim your light and shrink yourself into something tamed and palatable and controllable is the buffet from which it insatiably feasts.</p><p>I&#8217;m here to wake you from the illusion, to pierce through the veil of distortion, and help you remember what your body screams every time you betray yourself, silence your voice, or shrink in fear of the potential consequences of not giving a fuck what anyone thinks of you.</p><p>Haven&#8217;t you had enough!?</p><p>Aren&#8217;t you tired of hiding?</p><p>How much more are you willing to burden yourself with before you collapse from the weight of other people&#8217;s desires and expectations projected onto your precious life?</p><p>You don&#8217;t love being a woman because you don&#8217;t fully understand who the woman is. </p><p><em>Who you are.</em></p><p>Invite me to teach you.</p><p>What I embody is an unapologetic, soft yet ferocious expression of womanhood and Divine Femininity that serves as a lighthouse, calling other women home into their own sovereignty, grace, and power.</p><p>The most powerful way to fall in love with yourself, with your womanhood, with the precious entirety of you, is to commune with women who are open and willing to lovingly hold and witness you in the fullness and depth of your expression.</p><p>And in being held and witnessed, you get to return this precious gift, see yourself reflected in the eyes and faces of your sisters, and recognize that you are not alone in remembering who you are and how to show up in this big beautiful world, to shift the paradigms of scarcity and lack and repression and self rejection, so that you can stand big, tall, and fully expressed in who you have always been.</p><p>Gather with me in <strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-harem">The Harem</a></strong>, my private monthly women&#8217;s membership, where we reclaim what has been stolen, and honor each other as unique reflections of The Great Mother, who lovingly created us in these beautiful bodies so that we can bring Heaven to Earth.</p><p>Our next virtual gathering is this Sunday, June 29th. We meet twice a month and have a private group chat to stay connected between gatherings.</p><p>See you there.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-harem&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Enter The Harem&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-harem"><span>Enter The Harem</span></a></p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Harem]]></title><description><![CDATA[A reclamation of an ancient, sacred space]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/the-harem</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/the-harem</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 03 Jun 2025 15:02:44 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xHT7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F085e9934-3610-4ddc-9027-b848b923dd0e_1260x710.heic" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>A Little Bit of Loose History</strong></p><p>When you journey through the tales of history and religion, the recounts of &#8220;great&#8221; men, powerful rulers and prophets, what you will consistently find in the background of these tales is the presence of countless women, who served only to raise and reflect the status of these men.</p><p>King Soloman and his 700 wives.</p><p>Emperor Akbar with 300 wives.</p><p>Ramses II attaining more than 200 wives.</p><p>Genghis Khan collecting numerous wives and concubines as he conquered and pillaged massive territories.</p><p>The stories of these women, whose feminine energy was harvested in order to satisfy the egos of these powerful men, who&#8217;s abundant feminine presence made these men seem God-like to the lesser men who served under them in the hierarchy of male dominance, are largely lost to the records of history.</p><p>Of the women we do know of, they often met with tragic and violent ends, serving as scapegoats for the failures of their wealthy and powerful captors.</p><p>I&#8217;ve always been fascinated by the concept and depictions of harems. I will note that many depictions of harems are historically inaccurate, reducing these spaces down to sex dungeons for the pitiable women who were forced to inhabit them.</p><p>The reality is that many harems, especially during the Ottoman Empire, were essentially dorms for the many female servants&#8212;domestic and sexual&#8212;of the house. The concubines were often ranked&#8212;keeping in line with the hierarchal nature of patriarchy&#8212;based on their favor with the Sultan or Emperor or high status male, and may have had some dealings in politics, especially if they came from a region that served their owner politically.</p><p>What truly fascinates me about the harems of the past is how they were the inverse reflection of the great sacred temples of our Matriarchal ancestresses. If you don&#8217;t know by now, patriarchy is the anti life-inversion of natural order and ceremony.</p><p>During the existence of Matriarchal/matrifocal societies, these sacred spaces inhabited by women were temples of spiritual education, initiation, healing, autonomous pleasure, and ritual.</p><p>The presence of men was forbidden.</p><p>As the patriarchal parasites of the past slowly spread their disease across the land, they colonized and bastardized women&#8217;s spaces and practices, claiming them as their own, and reconfiguring the rituals and structure to suit their own egoic desires.</p><p>Sacred spaces that once belonged solely to women, were now cages for women that belonged solely to men.</p><p>So these spaces, harems as they become known as, which means forbidden or sacred, were reduced to in-house communities, where each woman&#8212;and the eunuchs who guarded them&#8212;were educated in the ways of lifelong servitude, whether through domestic labor or sexual exploitation. Or both.</p><p>When I think of these spaces and all of the women who experienced the confines of those walls, I think of how much wisdom was lost, voices stifled, Divine Feminine rituals abandoned, and dreams that dissipated to nothing.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xHT7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F085e9934-3610-4ddc-9027-b848b923dd0e_1260x710.heic" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xHT7!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F085e9934-3610-4ddc-9027-b848b923dd0e_1260x710.heic 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xHT7!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F085e9934-3610-4ddc-9027-b848b923dd0e_1260x710.heic 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xHT7!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F085e9934-3610-4ddc-9027-b848b923dd0e_1260x710.heic 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xHT7!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F085e9934-3610-4ddc-9027-b848b923dd0e_1260x710.heic 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xHT7!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F085e9934-3610-4ddc-9027-b848b923dd0e_1260x710.heic" width="1260" height="710" 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F085e9934-3610-4ddc-9027-b848b923dd0e_1260x710.heic 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xHT7!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F085e9934-3610-4ddc-9027-b848b923dd0e_1260x710.heic 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xHT7!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F085e9934-3610-4ddc-9027-b848b923dd0e_1260x710.heic 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xHT7!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F085e9934-3610-4ddc-9027-b848b923dd0e_1260x710.heic 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p><strong>An Invitation of Reclamation</strong></p><p>So much of my work in serving the rise of The Divine Feminine, our Great Mother, is about reclamation of what was stolen. I honor this in language as much as I can. So many words have been flipped and inverted in their meaning and expression, causing us to lose sight of what once was before it was stolen from the original stewardesses of this planet, women.</p><p>I&#8217;ve been in the process of gestating a new offering, a space where women can gather to reclaim what is ours.</p><p>To sit in community and sisterhood.</p><p>To serve ourselves and each other, rather than men.</p><p>To be witnessed as we rise more fully into our power.</p><p>So many of you have been asking me for this, craving it in your soul without consciously understanding that you have existed in such a sacred space before, lifetimes ago when the world spoke with deep reverence for and worship of The Mother.</p><p>As I contemplated the name, I originally wanted to call the space The Red Tent, which is a reference to one of my <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Red-Tent-Anita-Diamant/dp/0312195516/ref=asc_df_0312195516?mcid=7be38f799d10348e8fda229cbcce6c58&amp;tag=hyprod-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=693033695454&amp;hvpos=&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=5380441779764830506&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=9032674&amp;hvtargid=pla-487327325182&amp;psc=1&amp;hvocijid=5380441779764830506-0312195516-&amp;hvexpln=0">favorite novels of the same name</a>, which details the fictionalized story of the minor Biblical character, Dinah, who was raised in a village where the girls and women spent their time of menstruation bleeding inside of an opulent red tent, in which entry was forbidden to men.</p><p>But I could not stop thinking of harems and the powerful significance they hold in my heart and mind, especially the grief and sadness that lives within me as I remember the unspoken and unwritten stories of the countless women who were caged within their walls.</p><p>I&#8217;m sure, by now, you can guess the name of my offering.</p><p>Today, I&#8217;m inviting you into something new that honors the old.</p><p><strong>Welcome to </strong><em><strong>The Harem</strong></em></p><p>A modern-day sacred space for women who are no longer available for diluted sisterhood, watered-down wisdom, or playing small.</p><p>A private sanctum for sovereign women reclaiming their sacred power, sensual wisdom, and divine authority.</p><p>This is <em>not</em> a course.<br>It&#8217;s <em>not</em> another Zoom support group.<br>It&#8217;s a living, breathing sanctuary.<br>A private circle.<br>A portal.<br>A reclamation.</p><p><strong><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-harem">The Harem</a></strong> is where we gather to unlearn, to remember, and to rise&#8212;in our pleasure, our power, our truth, our <s>history</s> herstory.</p><p>It&#8217;s the most accessible and affordable way to work with me consistently, and it&#8217;s designed for women who are ready to be witnessed, stirred, nourished, and initiated into deeper devotion to themselves.</p><p>Inside The Harem, you&#8217;ll receive:</p><p>&#128770; Bi-Monthly live gatherings where we go <em>deep</em> into the real work&#8212;healing, embodiment, sovereignty</p><p>&#128770; Provocative teachings and transmissions that don&#8217;t tiptoe around truth</p><p>&#128770; Community with women who don&#8217;t flinch at your power or your softness</p><p>&#128770; Member-only discounts on 1:1 work and future retreats/events</p><p>&#128770; And a private space where you can show up exactly as you are&#8212;no masks, no shame, no performance</p><p>Whether you were in my <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass">Selfish Bitch masterclass</a>, have read <em><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/wild--sovereign">Wild &amp; Sovereign</a></em>, or simply followed my words for a while, <em>you already know what I&#8217;m about.</em></p><p>And if you&#8217;ve been wanting more&#8212;more access, more depth, more proximity&#8212;this is it.</p><p><strong>Doors are open now. We begin on June 8th.</strong><br>The investment is $33 per month, as I want this space to be accessible to women from all walks of life. Founding members receive a special discounted rate on my <a href="https://goddessvibes.as.me/SpiritualAlignment">Spiritual Alignment Session</a> if you're among the first to join.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-harem&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Join The Harem&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/the-harem"><span>Join The Harem</span></a></p><p>This is for the woman who leads herself.</p><p><br>The one who doesn&#8217;t need to be convinced.</p><p><br>The one who already knows that her magic multiplies in the presence of other women who <em>see her</em>.</p><p>The one who wants to honor and remember her sisters of the past.</p><p>You&#8217;re not too much here.<br>You&#8217;re not too late.<br>And you don&#8217;t have to walk alone anymore.</p><p>Come. Take your seat.</p><p>With love, reverence, and wild devotion,</p><p><br>Andrea</p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Myth of Regression]]></title><description><![CDATA[There is no going backwards, only forward]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-regression</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-regression</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 21 May 2025 15:16:42 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ujPi!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc05c0b6-5409-4abb-84ea-654d93b6fc35_1000x1044.heic" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>During a <a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass">recent workshop</a>, I was guiding a client who is going through the challenge of having moved back home with her parents in order to provide a better role model and protection for her tween sister and to save money for some of her shorter term goals.</p><p>What makes her current circumstances so challenging is that she has served as the financial buffer of her family since she was in her early 20s. This is a role that she finds highly distressing, and the financial expectations that she endures, along with other factors that contribute to a tumultuous relationship with her parents, has left her feeling raw, tender, and easily triggered as of late.</p><p>While tearfully sharing her story, she shared, &#8220;I feel like I&#8217;m regressing. How did I end up back here again?&#8221;</p><p>She has done so much deep work to heal her inner child wounds, strengthen her emotional intelligence, regulate her nervous system, and show up as a woman who embodies her power and autonomy. She was heartbroken to look at her current circumstances and feel confused and disappointed that in her early 30s, she&#8217;s back at home, reliving the same patterns that she worked so hard to deconstruct.</p><p>Not only could I fully understand how she could feel so displaced and disappointed, especially because the socially imposed ideas that we internalize around age and the supposed milestones or accomplishments we should have met by a certain point, but I had damn near gone through the exact same scenario in my own life just a couple of years ago.</p><p>More on that later.</p><p>For now, I want to focus on the core feelings of failure, unworthiness, and shame associated with the perception of not being where you feel you should be in life.</p><p>From a young age we are instilled with very powerful ideas of what life is supposed to look like for each person in order to be considered a successful, self-reliant, and socially acceptable adult. We are told that we will graduate from high school at 18 years old, already having a firm grasp on what we want to do with the rest of our lives, study that field in college, get a job in that field, marry and have children before our eggs dry up, spend our lives working and, as women, also shoulder the massive burden of caring for everyone around us.</p><p>When we don&#8217;t live up to these expectations, or worse, do live up to those expectations, but experience a setback such as job loss or divorce or environmental catastrophe which brings us back to what we feel is square one, it creates a tremendous amount of distress in our hearts and minds.</p><p>In the context of a spiritual healing journey, that sense of failure can be quite depressing. Spending years in therapy, facing your shadows, healing your wounds, taking responsibility for your life, only to be sent into a rage after one triggering phrase from your mother is maddening and can bring about feelings of powerlessness and frustration.</p><p>But all of these feelings of failure and shame originate in our perception of our circumstances, rather than the divine reality, which is&#8230;</p><p><em>Wherever you are is exactly where you are supposed to be.</em></p><h4><strong>Re-Opening My Mother Wound</strong></h4><p>When I purchased my school bus in 2021 and found someone to help me build it, I was given a 3-4 month timeline for it&#8217;s completion. It was supposed to be ready by October of that year and I chose not to extend the lease on my house that was set to end November 1st. But what actually happened(italicize) is that the contractor started giving me issues after a couple of months of work, and then chose not to finish the build, essentially leaving me homeless.</p><p>I had to drive all of my things to Texas, put it in storage, and then come back to California to retrieve my half finished bus so that I could finish the build myself at my mom&#8217;s house in Texas. The contractor had told me that I should be able to finish in a few weeks, but there was so much work to do, and with my limited experience, it took me almost 7 months.</p><p>Within a few weeks of parking the bus on my mom&#8217;s driveway, I knew that the purpose of me being there had nothing to do with the bus.</p><p>I won&#8217;t be diving too deep into the details of my relationship with my mother in this letter, but what I will share with you is that I experienced tremendous abuse at her hands, literally and figuratively, and vowed to myself when I moved out at 18 years old, that I would never go back.</p><p>At 35 years old, I was humbled by God and spent 7 months sleeping in the same bedroom where I used to contemplate slitting my wrists before crying myself to sleep.</p><p>I won&#8217;t lie and say that I didn&#8217;t have moments of pure &#8216;what the fuck?!&#8217; confusion and anger over my circumstances, but thankfully, due to my deep spiritual work over the past several years, I had the grounding awareness that my soul had called me back to the origin point of some of my worst trauma because, regardless of the deep work I had done to heal my mother wound, reparent myself, and stand in my sovereignty, I had much more healing to do.</p><p>I realized in those first couple of months how much a part of me still deeply craved her acceptance and acknowledgment of me as a person, not her projections of me, but who I truly am. I sat with the version of me that was still begging her to listen to me, to hear me, to see me.</p><p>I cried a lot.</p><p>I cried for the little version of me that was still hurting.</p><p>I cried for the big, grown version of me that was hurting.</p><p>It was so hard to keep my nervous system regulated during this time, and I&#8217;m not convinced that I was successful at it. On top of being back at my childhood home, I became jobless when I was fired from my tv show, and then I had to worry about how I would make money when my entire industry decided that people like me&#8212;not vaxxed&#8212;weren&#8217;t worthy of work for nearly 18 months.</p><p>And through it all, I remained connected to the knowledge that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. That knowing is what pulled me out of the darkest feelings that arose during that era of my life. And <s>despite</s> because of the painful growth of that experience, not only did my bus get finished, I learned to show up even more grounded, with greater grace and tolerance for my mom&#8217;s bullshit, having strengthened my inner pillar, allowing me to be even more connected and attuned to myself in those triggering moments.</p><h4><strong>The Spiral of Growth &amp; Healing</strong></h4><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ujPi!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc05c0b6-5409-4abb-84ea-654d93b6fc35_1000x1044.heic" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ujPi!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc05c0b6-5409-4abb-84ea-654d93b6fc35_1000x1044.heic 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ujPi!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc05c0b6-5409-4abb-84ea-654d93b6fc35_1000x1044.heic 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ujPi!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc05c0b6-5409-4abb-84ea-654d93b6fc35_1000x1044.heic" width="1000" height="1044" 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc05c0b6-5409-4abb-84ea-654d93b6fc35_1000x1044.heic 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ujPi!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc05c0b6-5409-4abb-84ea-654d93b6fc35_1000x1044.heic 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ujPi!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc05c0b6-5409-4abb-84ea-654d93b6fc35_1000x1044.heic 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ujPi!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc05c0b6-5409-4abb-84ea-654d93b6fc35_1000x1044.heic 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><h6><a href="https://www.artisbasic.com/2023/09/watercolor-spirals.html">Image credit</a></h6><p></p><p>If you have the most basic understanding of time as a construct, then you&#8217;re likely aware that time does not operate in a linear fashion, as we are conditioned to believe. We&#8217;re given a 24 hour clock, 12 months, and 365 days per year, with each second, each minute, each day occurring in succession, one after another. In broader terms, we understand time as existing as either the past, the present, or the future.</p><p>Most people spend the majority of their time living in either the past&#8212;experienced as trauma triggers, regret, and depression&#8212;or living in the future&#8212;often experienced as anxiety or a general sense of unease or urgency to get somewhere or accomplish something.</p><p>Very rarely are we attuned to the present moment.</p><p>This is why when we experience &#8220;setbacks&#8221; or feel as if we&#8217;re repeating a cycle, we have such a difficult time coping. We are seeing the experience through the lens of our previous self, or wanting it to be something different than what it is.</p><p>It&#8217;s from seeing through this disconnected lens that causes us to miss the gift and wisdom that is being presented to us in the present.</p><p>As I shared before, time is not linear, nor is growth and healing.</p><p>Our existence and the energy that fuels it operates in a spiral, a vortex of power and transformation that moves upwards and downwards, but always forward.</p><p>This is how I knew, despite how tender and raw I felt when I landed back at my mom&#8217;s house, that I was there to deepen my healing. I wasn&#8217;t being punished by God, I wasn&#8217;t moving backwards. I was ready to unearth new layers of wounding and trauma that I didn&#8217;t previously have the capacity to excavate.</p><p>It was exactly because of my growth, devotion to radical responsibility, and depth of awareness that I was able to not only occupy a space that carried such tremendous grief for me, but I was able to do so with grace, compassion, and love. For both myself and my mother.</p><p>When I first began doing the work to reparent my inner child and heal my mother wound, I did not have the capacity to be in the same space as her. I needed distance, boundaries of low contact, and the ability to quickly extricate myself if need be. When I returned to my childhood home a few years ago, I had developed a powerful sense of grounding, awareness, and the ability to stay calm (for the most part) in triggering moments.</p><p>To witness myself in that energy was not only heartening, it was liberating and made me feel joyful and incredibly proud of myself. I felt as though I had leveled up in a tremendous way, but I would not have been able to recognize that within myself had I not had the experience of &#8220;moving backwards&#8221;.</p><h4><strong>Get Curious</strong></h4><p>When you find yourself faced with familiar patterns or triggers, it&#8217;s easy to shame yourself for regressing, or returning to an old energy that you were so certain you&#8217;d shifted away from.</p><p>Instead of directing judgement towards yourself, try getting curious.</p><p>Ask yourself, &#8220;What is this experience offering me as a gift? As a lesson? As an opportunity for deeper remembrance?</p><p>When we allow ourself to become curious, it grounds us into the present. It&#8217;s incredibly easy to revert to our old narratives and stories around the circumstances of our lives, and it&#8217;s the willingness to consider broader possibilities that anchors us into the now and opens doorways to deeper healing.</p><p>The client that I referenced in the beginning hadn&#8217;t considered the beautiful possibilities of her circumstances, because she was keeping herself stuck in narratives that had been constructed by her younger, wounded self. In her desperation to not feel what she was feeling, she was missing the opportunity to recognize just how far she has come.</p><p>We do ourselves a great disservice when we act as though healing is a destination, rather than a lifelong journey of discovery, excavation, and remembrance.</p><p>Yes, it&#8217;s very true that oftentimes we are repeating painful loops due to our unwillingness to recognize our patterns and make the necessary changes, but for those of us that are deepening our awareness, committed to our growth, and devoted to the visions of our future selves, sometimes we have to experience the sensation of moving backward, of regressing, in order to recognize that we are not only further along than we could have imagined, but that life will continue to get better and better.</p><div><hr></div><p>Thank you for reading. If this letter resonated with you and you&#8217;re looking for deeper support, <a href="https://goddessvibes.as.me/">I&#8217;d love to invite you to take advantage of my offerings</a>.</p><p>I have limited availability for the summer, but if you don&#8217;t see an appointment time or date that works for you, email me at andrea@goddessvibes.com.</p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Selfish Women Always Win]]></title><description><![CDATA[And why you secretly want to be selfish, too.]]></description><link>https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/selfish-women-always-win</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/p/selfish-women-always-win</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrea Bordeaux]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 18:12:49 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0uc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97b24613-8ec4-415d-91b4-faa881027109_2000x3000.heic" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>How old were you the first time you were coerced or outright forced into giving up a part of yourself in sacrifice to the needs or desires of someone else?</p><p>Do you remember the first time you were told you had to share your precious snack, or let your little sister play with your favorite doll?</p><p>What about the first time you were told that if you didn&#8217;t hug your male relative, it would make him sad and that wouldn&#8217;t be very &#8216;nice&#8217; of you.</p><p>Even if the word &#8220;selfish&#8221; wasn&#8217;t explicitly used in order to corral you into self-abandoning behaviors, the threat of being seen as such was heavily implicit.</p><p>And very effective, because&#8230;</p><p>To be selfish is to be bad.</p><p>To be selfish is to be unkind.</p><p>To be selfish is to be&#8212;worst of all&#8212;<em>unlikeable</em>.</p><p>To be viewed as unlikeable is threatening to our most basic survival needs. When one is not liked&#8212;meaning, not accepted by their social group&#8212;then one is often ostracized, isolated, or outright abandoned.</p><p>As a small child in the most vulnerable and developmentally formative era of her entire life, it is remarkably easy to instill a sense of dependency on and anxiousness around the opinions and perceptions that others have of her.</p><p>It is easy to teach a small child that in order for her to be liked, to be accepted, then she must quiet the voice that speaks up when she feels mistreated, and outright obliterate her boundaries and sense of sovereignty when it comes into conflict with the desires that others impose upon her.</p><p>This ideological framework then becomes the foundation from which her whole sense of identity is constructed and in a slow death by 1000 paper cuts, her true identity, self worth, and courage to stand for herself and her soul&#8217;s mission is whittled away.</p><p>This is the origin of the people pleasers, over givers, and the sacrificial eldest daughters, as well as the origin of male identified women who are taught that their ultimate value rests in the countless ways that they can provider labor for the men they were born to serve.</p><p>This is the woman who was taught that the primary role of women is to be selfless in her actions and behavior, otherwise she is selfish and a failure as a woman.</p><p>This is the woman who follows the rules, does what she&#8217;s told, gives of herself over and over, even when it&#8217;s not reciprocated&#8212;it usually isn&#8217;t&#8212;only to continually find herself depleted and exhausted, resentful, stressed, and lonely despite being surrounded by people.</p><p>This the woman who wakes up one day as she begins entering into mid-life, having birthed the babies, managed the home, taken care of the man, always showed up for family no matter what and&#8230;</p><p><em>She is</em> <em>fucking</em> <em>angry</em>.</p><p>She&#8217;s angry because as she takes survey of her life, she is not at all connected to the vision and passion that she has always carried within her, but is constantly superseded by the expectations placed upon her.</p><p>Her soul&#8217;s mission has been slowly dying and she along with it.</p><p>She has anger for the people who are constantly placing demands on her, convincing her that what <em>she</em> wants or needs doesn&#8217;t hold the same importance, but she&#8217;s mostly angry at herself because she knows, deep in her heart, that she&#8217;s allowed it.</p><p>This is when the grief begins to rise, boiling over in her heart, flooding her entire being with it&#8217;s shocking ferocity.</p><p>To me, outside of the death of a loved one, there is no deeper grief than that of self betrayal. Ultimately, we can&#8217;t control the actions of others, but we are in control of ourselves. To go against yourself, what you know is right in your heart, and push aside your own intuitive power simply hurts.</p><p>I&#8217;ve already begun to lay the foundation in explaining why self betrayal comes so easy for many women, and will dive deeper as this letter progresses, but the truth is that we can&#8217;t do better until we know better. As I&#8217;ve outlined, girls are heavily socialized from a young age to give up their own dreams and desires in sacrifice to others.</p><p>But why is it so important for women and girls to be selfless, sacrificial, and primed for a lifetime of servitude?</p><p>Why is being seen as selfish one of the most feared descriptors for a woman? Especially when we have ample evidence around us of what happens to the girls and women who play by the rules and allow themselves to become objectified for the various ways in which the people in their lives wish to use them.</p><h3>My Own Selfish Origins</h3><p>I can&#8217;t remember the first time I was called selfish, but I can remember multiple occasions relating to money.</p><p>As a kid, I always had money. I would receive allowances for getting straight A&#8217;s in school or doing chores. While I had no issues spending my money on things that I wanted&#8212;candy, notebooks, gel pens&#8212;I never let my well run dry. I would save and budget, because the reality of not having any money made me feel powerless.</p><p>I remember my sisters would ask me if they could borrow or outright have money, usually just a few dollars, but it always felt like such a big ask to me. We all received roughly the same amount&#8212;my older sisters would get more due to their ages&#8212;but days after receiving our allowance, I was often the only one with a few dollars left.</p><p>It bothered me that they felt that they could spend their money on whatever they wanted, and then think it was okay to come to me and ask me to hand over what I had saved up for my future use. When I would say &#8216;no&#8217;, I would be met with frustration and the accusation of being selfish.</p><p>Well, it&#8217;s my money, why can&#8217;t I be selfish with it? It hurt to be called names because I didn&#8217;t want to &#8220;share&#8221;, but I also knew that if I gave away my resources to others, then I would have nothing left for myself.</p><p>I loved to share, but I had also previously learned that people will take advantage of your giving nature, even when they didn&#8217;t like you.</p><p>When I was in the 5th grade, there were three kids&#8212;two boys and one girl&#8212;in my homeroom class that would be so mean to me. I was teased for having cheap clothes and shoes from Family Dollar, for being favored by teachers, and for the high crime of simply not being cool enough.</p><p>They would call me names, make snide remarks when I would raise my hand to answer the teacher&#8217;s questions, or laugh hysterically if I tried to clap back at them, which was never really effective because it wasn&#8217;t in my nature to be unkind. I would cry a lot and then would get made fun of for crying.</p><p>I began to notice that on the days that I brought candy to school&#8212;usually a bag of tropical flavored Starbursts&#8212;they would suddenly be nice to me. I knew that they were only being nice long enough to ask me for candy, and the first couple of times, I really appreciated not being mistreated, being treated like a &#8220;friend&#8221;. So, I would give in. When one of them would inevitably ask for some of my Starbursts, I would share.</p><p>But it made me feel like shit afterwards.</p><p>This was my first conscious experience with self betrayal and I did not enjoy the feeling one bit. I didn&#8217;t resonate with the false energy of the exchange and I didn&#8217;t like how the next day, when I didn&#8217;t have any candy, the abuse would resume.</p><p>So, one day, I worked up the courage to say &#8220;no&#8221;. While my voice shook as they got upset with me, I held my ground, quietly reclaiming my self respect and igniting a new sense of power around not giving in to the wants or needs of others in order to appease or be liked, which wasn&#8217;t real anyway.</p><p>And while it was deeply uncomfortable, and often still is despite me literally teaching the art of selfishness to my clients, it was never more painful or uncomfortable than the sensations I felt when I went against my own desires, or gave up parts of myself&#8212;or my precious Starbursts&#8212;in order to be liked.</p><p>I&#8217;m often asked by clients if I&#8217;ve always been this grounded in my power. As I just shared, no. However, I discovered at a young age that I&#8217;d much rather experience the frustration and disappointment of others than disappointment in myself.</p><p>I share these small tidbits of my story to help you better understand that the messaging is effective, even on the most strong willed girls.</p><p>As I grew into a teen and then young woman, I became more ruthless about honoring my boundaries and needs, refusing to cave into the pressure that so many girls were succumbing to. I learned a lot by observing the outcomes of my peers and family members, especially when it came to dealing with boys/men.</p><p>I gave very little energy to boys and focused on my goal of graduating with honors so I could get into a good university in New York City.</p><p>Which I did.</p><p>When, right after graduating high school,  I met the man who would become my husband, I made it clear that my dreams were non-negotiable and that if he wanted to be with me, he would have to come along for the ride.</p><p>And 12 years later, when I was not being treated with the tenderness and respect that I knew I deserved, I walked away from him, ending our marriage.</p><p>In all of the years in between and since, I have focused on my dreams and goals, amassing success as an actress, starring in tv shows, and accomplishing more than most aspiring actors can ever hope to dream of.</p><p>When I refused to take the covid shot, <a href="https://deadline.com/2022/02/andrea-bordeaux-exits-run-the-world-covid-vaccine-mandate-starz-1234926586/">costing me my dream job on tv</a>, I was attacked across multiple news platforms and social media, the most common criticism against me being my &#8216;selfishness&#8217; over not taking the shot that has since cost countless people their lives, good health, and quality of life.</p><p>Had I not been well practiced in honoring myself and my own needs, I might have succumbed to the pressure, only to be left with tremendous regret at having betrayed myself.</p><p>Throughout my life, my selfishness has protected me from harmful relationships, helped me fulfill my dreams, earned me tons of money, and constantly reminds me of my own importance and value.</p><p>Ultimately, what I&#8217;ve come to understand with great clarity is that selfish women are a threat to the misogynistic structures that were erected in order to seize creative power from The Feminine.</p><p>When women are controlled, depleted, and poorly resourced, then they have no energy, self worth, and passion to rise up and use their power to affect change in their lives and everyone around them.</p><p>The selfish woman is not only subversive, she&#8217;s highly attuned to natural law, and her stunning divinity through which miracles are created.</p><p>Before I unveil more of who she is and why she will always be the happiest, most abundant woman in the room, let&#8217;s breakdown the three things that she understands so deeply, even if only subconsciously, which is what empowers her to eschew the norms and pressures of this broken society in order to birth a life that is meaningful and inspirational to women of all walks of life.</p><p>She knows that&#8230;</p><h3><strong>The Woman Is The Most Abundant Resource</strong></h3><p>The Woman is the physical embodiment of The Divine Feminine Frequency, and as such, represents Creation.</p><p>All creative imaginings and their subsequent manifestations originate with HER.</p><p>Which means they manifest through YOU.</p><p>The entire purpose of Patriarchy was to gain and maintain control of this realm&#8217;s most treasured resource, because not only does the Woman produce all higher consciousness life, She, through her womb, possesses a direct connection to The Divine.</p><p>By controlling The Woman and her generative capacity, you control the ability to create anyone and anything.</p><p>For the past few thousand years, control of the Woman has been maintained through a constant onslaught of violence, psychological conditioning, and programming that is designed to make her pliable, easily manipulated, and thus, ripe for energy harvesting.</p><p>While this tactic was primarily designed to benefit men, because the Woman has, as a result of this longterm conditioning, been turned against herself, Women will also view and use other Women as a resource to fulfil their own needs and desires as well.</p><p>Because men and Women alike have been conditioned to view the Woman as a resource that is primarily designed for the use of others, it is important (in this system) that individual Women are trained to see their own needs as secondary or even inconsequential.</p><p>This is why terms such as &#8220;selfish&#8221; and &#8220;bitch&#8221; exist. To inject fear into Women that they will be punished if they don&#8217;t serve the needs of others before themselves.</p><p>Similarly, Women are taught that we are only meant to be caregivers, nurturers, and provide mothering energy to the people in our lives.</p><p>To fail in this regard, to be selfish, is to be a failure as a Woman.</p><h3><strong>Your Life Is A Reflection of What You Say &#8216;YES&#8217; To</strong></h3><p>The Divine Feminine is MAGNETIC ENERGY, meaning, she pulls to her that which she desires. She is open and receptive.</p><p>If you are experiencing something, it is because you desire it.</p><p>Confusion and chaos come into your life when you are not clear on your vision and desires and remain open and receptive to anything.</p><p>You keep having experiences where you feel like people just take and take and take. The reason they do so is because you have maintained the conditions that allow them to.</p><p>Because of your fear of being disliked, unloved, or lonely, you allow people to use and abuse you, which is why you continually magnetize experiences that make you feel depleted and unappreciated.</p><p>By creating a clear vision of who you want to be and what you want to experience in life, and only saying &#8216;YES&#8217; to the experiences that serve that vision, you will become magnetic to your desires. </p><p>This is why Selfish Bitch energy is ESSENTIAL. Embodying this energy will give you the courage to unapologetically reject everything and everyone that is not in service to your vision.</p><h3><strong>Men Are Largely A Hindrance To Your Growth</strong></h3><p>The biggest hindrance to a Woman realizing her limitless potential and magnetizing her greatest desires is men.</p><p>Who a Woman partners with, and even more importantly, creates children with, has the power to dramatically alter the entire trajectory of her life.</p><p>So much emphasis is placed on men because the Woman has been conditioned to view herself as incomplete without a man, so she will often betray her own needs and desires, simply for the sake of having one.</p><p>The Woman is already born whole. Remember, she is the physical manifestation of The Divine Feminine, and the Masculine was birthed by the Feminine.</p><p><em>He is Her creation.</em></p><p>It is the Masculine that needs the Feminine for survival and creative purposes, not the other way around, which distorted patriarchal ideology would have you believe.</p><p>As I have explained, patriarchy was created as a means of stripping the Feminine of her power and usurping it for it&#8217;s own  inverted purposes. In order for society to operate this way, the Woman must believe that her importance lies in her connection and inferiority or subservience to a man.</p><p>This is why the Matriarchal civilizations were destroyed through centuries of violence, rape, abuse, and manipulation. To create a rift in the Woman&#8217;s psyche and to destroy her connection to other Women, giving men unearned access to her Divine power.</p><p>The foundation of a man&#8217;s desire for you is to access your portal of creation in order to realize his own dreams. He cannot create without you. He needs you. But because he does not have to earn access to you, he does not value you.</p><p>Men do not value what is easily given as it goes against their nature to prove themselves worthy.</p><p>Women have inherent value, men must prove theirs.</p><p>As is reflected in Nature, the vast majority of males are not worthy of access to the female. Those who do not prove themselves worthy, die without ever passing along their genes.</p><p>Because men the world over have taken control of the Woman&#8217;s generative powers, they have misued it to create chaos and destruction.</p><p>For centuries, men who did not earn the right to be given immortality through the womb of a Woman, have been able to pass along their faulty and subpar genetics, creating more chaos and dis-ease. </p><p>For the Woman to regain control, she must learn to see herself as a powerful being solely on the merit of her own existence and be SELFISH AS HELL with the energy that she gives to men.</p><h3>The Selfish Bitch &amp; Why You Want To Be Her</h3><p>The Selfish Bitch is the Woman who fully understands, first and foremost, that her life is meant to be lived to the <em>fullest extent possible</em>.</p><p>She knows that she was born with a deep purpose, a soul mission, and a hunger that requires her to have the focus and determination to see her massive vision come to life.</p><p>She knows that she is of <em>divine origin</em>, and that there are many people who are so disconnected from their own power and purpose that will be drawn to her unique radiance and will try to take from her that which they do not have access to within themselves.</p><p>She KNOWS that the labels projected onto her are a result of her deep self-love and a willingness to honor her truest path despite the anger it elicits in other people.</p><p>She doesn&#8217;t mind being seen as selfish because she knows that <em>her-self</em> is her most prized and priceless possession because it is through <em>her-self</em> that she can birth entire civilizations and infinite possibility.</p><p>She loves being called a bitch because she stands for herself and her Divine calling with the simultaneous ferocity and grace of a lioness.</p><p>She <em>refuses</em> to enable mediocrity and playing small. </p><p>She stands as a powerful example that calls other Women forward into their power.</p><p>By her being unapologetic in her BIGNESS, the Women who see her get a clear view of what is also possible for them.</p><p>Finally, she trusts that in time, those who choose to project their frustrations onto her will eventually fall out of her frequency, or will learn to treat her with the respect that she now commands.</p><p>And she will always have the love and devotion of those who have recognized and valued the powerhouse that she is because...</p><p>When she is devoted first, to herself, she is able to fill her cup to overflowing, creating a surplus, an abundance that she gets to pour into everyone who <em>has earned the right</em> to access her magic.</p><h3>Get With The Winning Team</h3><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0uc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97b24613-8ec4-415d-91b4-faa881027109_2000x3000.heic" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0uc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_424, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97b24613-8ec4-415d-91b4-faa881027109_2000x3000.heic 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0uc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97b24613-8ec4-415d-91b4-faa881027109_2000x3000.heic 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0uc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97b24613-8ec4-415d-91b4-faa881027109_2000x3000.heic 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0uc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97b24613-8ec4-415d-91b4-faa881027109_2000x3000.heic 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0uc!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97b24613-8ec4-415d-91b4-faa881027109_2000x3000.heic" width="1456" height="2184" 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/__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97b24613-8ec4-415d-91b4-faa881027109_2000x3000.heic 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0uc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_848, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97b24613-8ec4-415d-91b4-faa881027109_2000x3000.heic 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0uc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97b24613-8ec4-415d-91b4-faa881027109_2000x3000.heic 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!c0uc!, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/andreabordeaux.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F97b24613-8ec4-415d-91b4-faa881027109_2000x3000.heic 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Many women struggle with the concept of selfishness because we are naturally loving, giving people, who have so much to share from our hearts. As I have outlined, that natural kindness and generosity has been weaponized against women in service to the distorted system that is constantly fighting and adapting in order to maintain primacy.</p><p>You will notice that nowhere in this letter, have I spoken of selfishness from the lens of taking from others, causing harm, or moving through life with a lack of care or regard for others.</p><p>Let me repeat this important point:</p><div><hr></div><p><em>&#8220;When she is devoted first, to herself, she is able to fill her cup to overflowing, creating a surplus, an abundance that she gets to pour into everyone who has earned the right to access her magic.&#8221;</em></p><div><hr></div><p>The world needs women to maintain their gentle hearts, beautiful compassion, and loving nature, but no one is being served by you martyring yourself from the misguided notion that your worth is attached to your usefulness for others.</p><p>Your worth is inherent in your existence, and being grounded in your genuine authenticity and self love is how you allow yourself to be expressed from a place of truth and devotion to your soul&#8217;s mission.</p><p>You cannot be who you are meant to be if your actions and self perception are driven by the wants and opinions of anyone outside of you.</p><p>Truthfully, the people pleasers and over givers secretly envy selfish women. The women who are deepest in their pain body will project resentment and jealousy onto selfish women, demonizing them for the very thing that they desperately desire for themselves. The more honest women will express admiration for selfish women but often will express that they don&#8217;t have ability to show up in their lives with the same unapologetic ferocity.</p><p>I&#8217;m here to tell you that you absolutely have the ability and capacity to shift out of the role of lifetime martyr into the role of the peaceful baddie who commands respect and gets what she wants without hurting others.</p><p>As more and more women wake up and release themselves from the distortions of patriarchy and male centeredness, embodiment of genuine self love through prioritizing one&#8217;s needs and desires is how we will continue to shift the paradigm from one of scarcity and blame, to one of surplus and responsibility, which is the root of power.</p><p>You cannot be in full service to others until you understand how to be in service to yourself.</p><p>If you&#8217;re finally ready to take responsibility for yourself and thus, your power, then join me this Sunday for my workshop&#8212;Selfish Bitch&#8212;where we dive deeper into the themes that I&#8217;ve discussed here in this letter and you will learn to put yourself first, fearlessly, unapologetically, and most of all&#8230;<em>lovingly</em>.</p><p>After this class you will begin to glance at your reflection with delight and awe at the multitude of ways that God has chosen to express Herself through you.</p><p>Remember, when you abandon yourself, you are abandoning God and all of the people who need your unique medicine that is delivered through unencumbered expression.</p><p>You have a responsibility to be who you are meant to be in the world. The women who selfishly own this truth will always win.</p><div><hr></div><p><a href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish-bitch--online-workshop">Click here to sign up for Selfish Bitch</a>, taking place via Zoom on Sunday April 13th at 2pm CST. The replay will be made available by April 16th for anyone who cannot make it to the live class.</p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Selfish Bitch Replay&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://stan.store/andreabordeaux/p/selfish--masterclass"><span>Selfish Bitch Replay</span></a></p><p></p><p>Love,</p><p>Andrea</p><div><hr></div><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://andreabordeaux.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading The Dark Rose! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item></channel></rss>