At My Big Age… I’m Just Getting Started

Pleasure Has No Expiration Date

Welcome to The Pleasure Series on The Badass Broadcast!

What if everything we’ve been taught about aging and intimacy is wrong?

Somewhere along the way, society convinced us that passion belongs to young people—that after a certain age we’re supposed to become invisible, stop desiring, and quietly settle into routine.

This week’s conversation challenges that narrative.

Lady Tee is joined by host of the Sex Advice for Seniors podcast, for a refreshingly honest discussion about dating, intimacy, communication, confidence, and why our most fulfilling relationships often begin after we’ve finally learned who we are.

Together, they explore how aging can actually deepen intimacy through greater self-awareness, emotional maturity, and authentic communication. They also discuss nontraditional relationships, dating across age differences, and why there is no “right” way to build a loving partnership.

The conversation also touches on an important topic that isn’t discussed nearly enough: men’s sexual health. Suzanne and Lady Tee talk openly about erectile dysfunction, removing shame from the conversation, and why intimacy has never been defined by a single physical act.

Because real intimacy isn’t about perfection.

It’s about presence.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why pleasure has no age limit

• The myth that sexuality belongs to young people

• How confidence grows with age

• Why communication is the ultimate foreplay

• Dating after divorce and emotional healing

• Redefining what successful relationships look like

• Age-gap relationships and challenging societal expectations

• Emotional safety and authentic intimacy

• Men’s sexual health and erectile dysfunction

• Why intimacy is about connection—not performance

Memorable Takeaway

“Age doesn’t close the door on intimacy.
Fear does.
Shame does.
Silence does.
But curiosity, communication, and self-awareness only grow stronger with time.”

Connect with Suzanne Noble,

Bestselling author, podcaster, and sex expert!

Website:

https://sexadviceforseniors.com

Podcast Link:

LinkedIn Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannenoble?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_ios

Facebook Link: https://facebook.com/sexadviceforseniors

Instagram Link: https://instagram.com/sexadviceforseniors

YouTube Channel Link: https://youtube.com/@sexadviceforseniors

Stay Connected with Lady Tee

If this episode resonated with you, follow The Badass Broadcast and share it with someone who needs the reminder that life—and pleasure—doesn’t stop with age.

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🎙️ Questions, Comments, or Want to Be a Guest?-

✨ Explore coaching, workshops, and more -

Everything you need at SacredWildfire.com

🎧 Featured Tracks

“Dreams” — Lamont “True Black” Evans

Contact: lamontevans83@gmail.com

“The Badass Broadcast Theme Song” — Lady Tee Frierson with the help of Suno AI

What the F*ck Happened to Loving Our Bodies?

Welcome to The Pleasure Series

Our bodies tell stories.

Some stories are visible.
Some are hidden.
Some arrive without our permission.

In this heartfelt What the F*ck Wednesday episode of The Badass Broadcast, Lady Tee sits down with Helinka Carr to talk about surviving cancer, adjusting to life with an ostomy, and rebuilding confidence in a body that no longer looks—or functions—the way it once did.

Together they explore what it means to stop fighting your body and start honoring everything it’s carried you through.

This conversation reminds us that pleasure isn’t reserved for perfect bodies.
It’s available to every body willing to come home to itself.

In This Episode

• Living with an ostomy after cancer

• Learning to accept your “new normal”

• Body image and self-worth

• Shame surrounding scars, surgery, and disability

• Reclaiming femininity after illness

• Why confidence is an inside job

• Finding respect for the body that carries you

• The connection between body acceptance and pleasure

About Our Guest

Helinka Carr is a cancer survivor, ostomy advocate, entrepreneur, speaker, and designer dedicated to helping people reclaim confidence after life-changing medical experiences.

Through her work, she empowers others to embrace life beyond diagnosis and reminds people that beauty, confidence, and self-worth don’t disappear because a body changes.

She is also the creator of specialized lingerie designed for people living with ostomies, helping wearers feel comfortable, confident, supported, and beautiful while accommodating their ostomy pouch.

Connect with Helinka

🛍️ Learn more about Helinka’s adaptive lingerie collection:

🌐 Website:
unspokenrosebud.com

📸 Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/unspokenrosebud

📘 Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/serenitypeace

Did You Know?

Living with an ostomy is far more common than many people realize.

• An estimated 725,000 to 1 million people in the United States are living with an ostomy.

• Approximately 100,000 new ostomy surgeries are performed in the U.S. every year.

• People may need an ostomy because of colorectal cancer, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, traumatic injuries, congenital conditions, or other serious medical conditions.

Despite how common they are, ostomies remain one of the least talked-about medical realities—leaving many people feeling isolated when they don’t have to be.

Favorite Quote

“Maybe loving our bodies isn’t about finally deciding they’re perfect.
Maybe it’s about realizing they never needed to be perfect to be worthy of our love in the first place.”

Enjoying The Badass Broadcast?

If this episode resonated with you:

⭐ Follow the show

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⭐ Share this episode with someone who needs the reminder that their body is worthy of love exactly as it is.

Connect with Lady Tee

Instagram: @thequeenladytee

TikTok: @thequeenladytee

🔥 Book a free Connection Call

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🎙️ Questions, Comments, or Want to Be a Guest?

I’d love to hear from you.

The Pleasure Series

on

The Badass Broadcast

What if pleasure isn’t something you have to earn?

For generations, many of us have been taught that pleasure comes after the work is finished, after everyone else is taken care of, after we’ve proven we’re worthy. But what if pleasure was never meant to be a reward? What if it’s part of what makes us feel fully alive?

In this episode, Lady Tee sits down with Amba Jai, an Integrative Somatic Practitioner, for a powerful conversation about shame, embodiment, and reclaiming pleasure as our birthright.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Why pleasure isn’t something you earn

• How shame shapes our relationship with intimacy

• The difference between sensuality and sexuality

• Learning to communicate your desires without shame

• Self-pleasure and getting to know your own body

• Why orgasm isn’t the only measure of fulfilling sex

• The truth about tantra and embodied intimacy

• Why pleasure is one of the body’s pathways back to itself

Memorable Takeaways

“Pleasure isn’t something we achieve. It’s something we allow.”

“The more connected we become to ourselves, the more available we become for intimacy, presence, and genuine connection.”

“Maybe the biggest lie we’ve been told is that pleasure has to be earned.”

About Amba Jai

Amba Jai is an Integrative Somatic Practitioner whose work helps people understand how shame, survival patterns, and nervous system dysregulation shape the way they experience intimacy, pleasure, and connection.

Through somatic practice and non-dual tantra, she supports people in rediscovering that pleasure isn’t something to perform or achieve—it’s something the body naturally allows when it finally feels safe enough.

Work with Amba Jai

Interested in learning more or working with Amba?

Explore her offerings, upcoming programs, workshops, and resources through her website and social media.

Website

www.rebelyogini.love/inhabit

Facebook Link

www.facebook.com/rebelyogini.ambajai

www.facebook.com/inhabitembodiment

Instagram Link

www.instagram.com/inhabitembodiment

YouTube

@InhabitEmbodiment

Other Links:

www.patreon.com/InhabitEmbodiment

Stay Connected with Lady Tee

If this episode resonated with you, follow The Badass Broadcast and share it with someone who needs the reminder that life—and pleasure—doesn’t stop with age.

✨ Book a free Connection Call - https://koalendar.com/e/free-breakthrough-session
✨ Join the Sacred Wildfire Queen Circle - https://www.facebook.com/groups/sacredwildfire
✨ Support the show - https://buymeacoffee.com/thequeenladytee

🎙️ Questions, Comments, or Want to Be a Guest?-

✨ Explore coaching, workshops, and more -

Everything you need at SacredWildfire.com

🎧 Featured Tracks

“Dreams” — Lamont “True Black” Evans

Contact: lamontevans83@gmail.com

“The Badass Broadcast Theme Song” — Lady Tee Frierson with the help of Suno AI

Say the word “hypnosis” and most people picture a stage act like someone clucking like a chicken, forgetting their own name, entertaining a crowd. Dramatic. Fake-feeling. And responsible for basically everything people get wrong about it.

But here’s the boring truth: hypnosis isn’t mind control. Nobody’s handing over the keys. It’s just a naturally occurring state of focused attention. The busy, analytical part of your brain quiets down just enough for your subconscious to become receptive to something new.

You’ve probably been in that state today already without noticing. Ever driven somewhere and realized you don’t remember half the drive? Gotten lost in a movie? Opened TikTok “just for five minutes” and looked up forty-five minutes later? That’s a light trance. Hypnosis isn’t strange. It’s human.

Picture your mind as an iceberg. The tip above the water is your conscious mind — logic, decision-making, the running commentary you’re having with yourself right now. Literally the “tip of the iceberg”. Small. Visible. Not where the real work happens. Underneath is everything else. Your habits, your beliefs, your identity, your automatic emotional reactions. Most people spend their whole lives trying to change the tip while ignoring the mass underneath it. No wonder change feels impossible.

Between the two sits what hypnotists call the critical factor. Picture a bouncer at the door of an exclusive club. Every belief, every suggestion, every message gets checked before it’s let inside. But there’s a catch. He's not checking if something is true. He’s checking if it’s familiar.

So if you’ve spent years believing money is a struggle, or love always ends in pain, or you’re not good enough, and someone hands you “you deserve abundance” or “you are worthy”, your bouncer looks at it like, “Nope! Doesn’t match the guest list.” Rejected. Not because it’s false. But it doesn’t fit the programming already running. That’s why affirmations often feel fake to people.

The bouncer isn’t evil. It’s just trying to protect you. The problem is nobody ever trained the bouncer. It learned its job from childhood experiences...

Nobody’s born believing they’re not enough. That belief was built. Repeated by parents, teachers, culture, whatever you heard often enough as a kid before your critical thinking even had a say. Repetition became familiar. Familiarity became “truth.” That’s why two people can hear the exact same compliment and one says “thank you” while the other thinks they’re just being nice. Same words. Different programming underneath.

But what if you became the owner of the club instead of letting the bouncer make all the decisions? Because what should actually bother you is that most people are terrified of hypnosis while letting themselves get quietly rewired every single day by marketing, social media, the news, family, culture.

Repetition shapes belief. Emotion locks it in. Familiarity keeps it running. That’s not a flaw. That’s just how your brain learns. Hypnosis isn’t the exception to that, it’s just doing it on purpose, instead of by accident.

Which brings me to the lemon.

I recently walked people through a simple experiment that I learned in class. No swinging watch, no mind control, just imagination. The moment you feel your own subconscious react to something that isn’t there, it stops being some abstract concept and becomes personal. Observable. Real.

The lemon’s just an example. You’ve got your own. Maybe it’s replaying an embarrassing moment from ten years ago and feeling your stomach drop. Maybe it’s thinking about money and feeling your chest tighten before you’ve even looked at the number. Maybe it’s rehearsing an argument that hasn’t happened yet and your heart’s already racing. Nothing is actually happening. Your body reacts anyway. That’s not something wrong with you, that’s your subconscious doing exactly what it was built to do.

Your subconscious isn’t your enemy. It’s been protecting you the only way it knows how, even when what it’s protecting is a belief that’s no longer serving you. The good news is once you see the pattern, you can change it. Not by forcing it or shaming yourself out of it. By working with your own mind instead of white-knuckling against it.

🍋 Haven’t tried the Lemon Experiment yet? Watch the video short. Don’t worry about whether you’re “hypnotizable”. Just stay curious and notice what your body does. Then ask yourself the real question: what’s your lemon?

What’s one thought, memory, fear, or belief that creates a physical reaction in your body, even when the situation isn’t happening right now? Maybe it’s thinking about money. Public speaking. Rejection. Not feeling enough.

Because once you can name the thought, memory, or belief that’s been running your reactions on autopilot, you’re not on autopilot anymore. You’re intentional. And that’s where the real work starts.

🍋 Watch the Lemon Experiment, then tell me in the comments: What did you notice? Every mind experiences it a little differently, and I'd love to hear yours.

FULL VIDEO:

In Episode 47 of The Badass Broadcast, Lady Tee sits down with creative director and voice actress Kay Rashad for a powerful conversation about body awareness, intuition, pleasure, and learning to listen to your body.

Your body is constantly communicating through tension, pain, discomfort, desire, pleasure, breath, and the sensations you experience around other people. But how do you know when your body is giving you an intuitive warning versus reacting from anxiety, trauma, or conditioning?

We explore what it means to reconnect with your body, recognize its signals, understand the connection between safety and desire, and develop greater body literacy.

Because your body isn’t working against you.

She’s been talking to you all along.

💜 A reminder from today’s conversation:

Your body is always communicating.

The question isn’t whether she’s speaking.

It’s whether you’re listening.

Connect with Kay Rashad

www.thekayrashad.com

Facebook Link

https://www.facebook.com/discoveringkayt

Instagram Link

www.instagram.com/discovering_kay

YouTube Channel Link

www.youtube.com/@iamkaythecreative

Stay Connected with Lady Tee

If this episode resonated with you, follow The Badass Broadcast and share it with someone who needs the reminder that life—and pleasure—doesn’t stop with age.

✨ Book a free Connection Call - https://koalendar.com/e/free-breakthrough-session
✨ Join the Sacred Wildfire Queen Circle - https://www.facebook.com/groups/sacredwildfire
✨ Support the show - https://buymeacoffee.com/thequeenladytee

🎙️ Questions, Comments, or Want to Be a Guest?-

✨ Explore coaching, workshops, and more -

Everything you need at SacredWildfire.com

🎧 Featured Tracks

“Dreams” — Lamont “True Black” Evans

Contact: lamontevans83@gmail.com

“The Badass Broadcast Theme Song” — Lady Tee Frierson with the help of Suno AI

In Episode 46 of The Badass Broadcast, Lady Tee kicks off this powerful new series by exploring why pleasure was never just about sex. Discover how nervous system regulation, emotional safety, intimacy, sensuality, and self-connection shape the way we experience pleasure—in and out of the bedroom.

If you’ve ever struggled with body disconnect, shame around sex, difficulty receiving pleasure, or wondered why emotional safety matters so much in relationships, this episode is for you.

Because before there can be surrender, there must be safety.

Topics include: emotional safety, nervous system regulation, intimacy, sensuality vs. sexuality, body awareness, shame, communication, healthy relationships, pleasure, self-love, and feminine embodiment.

Welcome to The Pleasure Series 🔥💜

And when I say tried, baby, I TRIED.

Bed earlier. Cutting everything off at a certain time. Accountability partners. I joined the damn 5 A.M. Club. I showed up for it, too. Sometimes. Other times I fell asleep listening to it, which I’m pretty sure was not the intended method of participation.

I even changed the story I told myself. Stopped saying “I’m not a morning person.” Started saying “I am a morning person.” We know how powerful our words are, right?

My body did not receive the memo.

I could force myself into bed early and still not sleep. I’d fall asleep and wake up a few hours later, wide awake. I’d stay in bed all night doing everything “right,” only to wake up tired as fuck and sleep half the morning away anyway.

Nothing stuck.

Until I stopped trying.

No grand revelation. No perfect nighttime routine. No magic affirmation I’d been missing.

My daughter asked me to walk with her in the mornings.

I said yes.

That’s it.

I wasn’t trying to become anything

She wanted company. I needed the exercise anyway. So I made the commitment. And because I said I would be there, I got up and walked.

My sleep schedule was still doing whatever the hell it wanted. I’d walk, come home, stay up a while, crash later. Some days I slept half the day and was still awake half the night.

But every morning, I got up and walked.

I got up because I said I would. Nobody told me successful people wake up before sunrise and God hands out bonus points before 6 A.M. I just kept a promise to my daughter.

Then something funny happened. After a week or two, my daughter’s own sleep schedule fell apart and she stopped walking with me.

I kept going.

Her reason for getting me out there became my ritual, and without me trying to make it happen, my sleep started changing. I started going to bed at night. I started getting up in the morning. I still wake up at devil’s hour sometimes, 3 A.M. and I have history, but now I can usually go back to sleep.

I wake up. I walk. I come home. I eat breakfast. I work. My days feel longer, spacious, and productive.

Holy shit. I’m a morning person.

The difference between trying and doing

Mentors have told me some version of this for years. Stop trying. Do. One used to make us throw try, hate, and can’t out of our vocabulary. She said every time you said one of those words, you killed a unicorn. RIP to every unicorn I personally murdered. My bad, y’all.

But I think I finally understand what they were teaching me.

Every time I tried to become a morning person, there was something underneath the effort: I’m not one yet. I need to change myself. I need to fix this. I need to become someone different from who I am right now. Even “I am a morning person” was spoken from a place where I didn’t actually believe it. I was trying to convince myself.

This time, I didn’t convince myself of shit.

I accumulated evidence. I get up. I walk. I eat breakfast. I work during the day. I sleep at night. Eventually “I’m a morning person” stopped being something I was manifesting and just became an accurate description of my life.

Maybe manifestation is more ordinary than we think

Because how many things have I spent years trying to become? More disciplined. More consistent. More productive. More abundant. Healed. The next version of myself.

Trying. Trying. Trying.

And all that trying just built more awareness of the gap. I want to be there. I’m not there. Why am I not there yet. What else do I need to do. Who else do I need to become.

Wanting harder. Affirming louder. Visualizing longer. Convincing yourself you’re already somewhere your whole system knows you’re not. That’s what I thought manifestation was.

Now I think manifestation looks like living your way into the reality. One ordinary decision at a time. No fireworks. No dramatic moment where the universe kicks down your door and announces CONGRATULATIONS, BITCH, YOU HAVE MANIFESTED CIRCADIAN RHYTHM.

You just wake up one day and realize: oh. I live here now.

What if we stopped forcing her?

This has been sitting with me beyond mornings.

I’ve spent a lot of my life pushing. Forcing. Trying to make things happen, figure everything out, get ahead, become. And I’m tired of treating my life like something that needs to be wrestled into submission.

I’m learning to be present. To listen. To honor what I actually have capacity for. To let a quiet day be a quiet day without deciding I’ve failed because I didn’t squeeze enough productivity out of it.

Even this piece is proof. I didn’t have an article in me to write yesterday. Instead of sitting at my computer wringing inspiration out of my brain because I’d decided something needed to go out, I said okay. Nothing today. And I lived my day. I chilled. I stayed present.

The thing I wasn’t willing to force found me anyway.

Because this isn’t about productivity for me anymore. There’s a cost to constantly living in force, and I’m no longer willing to pay for everything with my own nervous system. I cannot build a life that feels like freedom while demanding my body operate like it’s under threat. I cannot keep looking outside myself for someone to regulate me, motivate me, hold me together, or make me feel safe enough to live my own life.

I’m learning to become a safe place for myself.

Maybe part of that is realizing I don’t have to force every next version of me into existence.

Maybe I can live. Choose. Show up. Rest. Move when it’s time to move. Be still when it’s time to be still. Keep the promises that matter. And let repetition do what force never could.

You don’t need to become her today

Maybe there’s a version of you you’ve been trying desperately to become. The disciplined you. The healed you. The confident you. The abundant you. The woman who finally has her shit together.

What if you stopped trying to become her?

You’re not giving up on her. She isn’t standing in the future, waiting for you to fix enough things to deserve her life. She’s being built in the tiny decisions you’re making right now.

You don’t need to wake up tomorrow completely transformed.

You need another morning. Another choice. Another opportunity to move in alignment with what you say you want.

And eventually you’ll look around and realize the thing you spent years trying to become just became the way you live.

Maybe that’s one of the quietest forms of manifestation there is.

Maybe manifestation isn’t getting what you want. Maybe it’s ending the waiting period between wanting something and becoming an active participant in creating it.

You stop forcing the next version of yourself into existence, and you live until you realize you’ve already become her.

I’ve noticed something I can’t stop thinking about. There is someone in my life whose presence noticeably regulates my nervous system. Like my whole body shifts the moment he’s around. And I don’t mean that in a soft, romantic *he’s my peace* kind of way. I mean it physically.

I have high blood pressure. I take medication. I do all the “right” things. I walk, hydrate, eat well, manage stress. And still, I’ve seen a pattern I can’t ignore. When I spend time with him regularly, my blood pressure is steady. Beautiful, even. When I don’t? It rises.

I even mentioned it to my doctor once after a near-perfect reading, telling her I'd recently spent time with someone I don't see often and wondering if that mattered. She nodded, said relaxation can help, and we moved on. But I didn't move on. Because I kept paying attention. And over time, especially with more distance between us, I started to understand something deeper. It's not just him affecting my system. It's what my nervous system becomes in his presence. And even more than that, it's who I get to be when I'm with him.

My Body Gets to Put the Bags Down

When I’m with him, I’m not on my phone much. I’m not thinking about my next business move. I’m not mentally rearranging my life. I’m not creating content in my head while simultaneously thinking about bills, responsibilities, tomorrow, next month, and whatever else my brain has decided needs my immediate fucking attention. I’m not trying to accomplish anything.

Most of the time, we’re not doing anything extraordinary. We talk. We laugh. We watch something. We exist in the same space. And I’m present. That sounds ridiculously simple until you realize how rarely you actually experience it. My goodness! The power of now.

I’m somebody who carries a lot. I’m used to being needed. I’m used to figuring shit out. Even when my body is technically resting, my mind can still be clocked in like somebody forgot to tell that bitch the shift ended three hours ago. But around him, something shuts off. I don’t have to hold the moment together. I don’t have to perform. I don’t have to produce. I don’t have to anticipate what comes next. I can just be.

And apparently, my body has been keeping receipts. Because when that space disappears for a while, my body notices. That realization has changed the way I think about certain relationships, especially the ones that don’t make a damn bit of sense on paper.

Sometimes It Isn’t the Person You’re Struggling to Leave

I recently talked to someone who had a person like this. He wasn’t even a particularly good partner. He lied. He cheated. There were enough red flags to decorate the whole damn neighborhood. And still, there was something about him she struggled to let go of, because he gave her something she had rarely experienced. Calm. He could hold space for her. He was present with her. She felt seen. Something about being with him allowed her to soften in a way she hadn’t been able to before.

And suddenly, I understood something I don’t think we talk about enough. Sometimes we aren’t only attached to the person. We’re attached to who our body gets to be around them. That’s a whole different kind of attachment.

Because logic can identify a red flag. Your friends can identify a red flag. Hell, you can identify the red flag. But if that same person is one of the only people around whom your body has ever felt safe enough to unclench, logic has some serious competition. You start explaining things away. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe they’ll change. Maybe this part makes up for that part. Maybe nobody is perfect. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

It’s not because you’re stupid or because you can’t see what’s happening. But somewhere underneath all that logic is a body saying:* Please don’t take away the only place I know how to rest.*

Fuck. That hit me… That hit me hard.

Feeling Safe With Someone Doesn’t Make Everything They Do Safe

This is where the distinction matters. Someone can feel incredibly calming to your nervous system and still not be good for your life. Someone can hold space beautifully and still betray you. Someone can see parts of you nobody else has seen and still be incapable of loving you in the way you deserve. Someone can offer genuine safety in one area while creating chaos in another. Both can exist in the same person, unfortunately.

Understanding why we stay attached doesn’t mean turning red flags green. It just gives us another way to understand why walking away can feel so much harder than “well, he lied, so leave.” Because relationships don’t happen on spreadsheets. And when you’ve spent years being the strong one, the responsible one, the one everybody comes to, being around someone who allows you to stop carrying everything can feel like water after walking through the damn desert. Of course you’re thirsty. The problem comes when there’s only one well.

And That’s Where This Got Personal

The person who does this for me isn’t as available as he once was. Life changes. Work changes. Schedules change. People change. And I found myself sitting with the possibility that this person who has unknowingly become such a safe place for my nervous system may simply not be around very much, eventually maybe not at all.

That made me sad. Not because I believe I can’t survive without him. I know I can. I’ve survived plenty. But I’m tired of measuring my strength by how much I can survive. What made me sad was realizing how few other places I have where I get to feel that way. Where I get to put everything down. Where I’m not responsible for anybody. Where I’m not thinking ten moves ahead. Where I’m not holding space. Where someone is simply present with me.

And I had to admit something I don't particularly enjoy admitting. I need more people. Not followers. Not clients. Not people who need guidance. Not another community where I'm the one responsible for holding the room. I need people in my actual life. Friends. Connection. People I can laugh with and sit around doing absolutely nothing with. People who know me when I’m not teaching, creating, coaching, healing, mothering, fixing, planning, or building something. People I don’t have to be anything for.

And that realization hurt more than the blood pressure readings ever did. Because it made me confront how much of my life I’ve learned to carry without enough places to land.

I Don’t Want to Become Better at Needing Nobody

I could take this realization and turn it into another self-improvement project. Learn to regulate better. Become more independent. Figure out how to give myself everything I receive from another person. Make sure I never need anybody enough for their absence to affect me.

But I don’t want that. I’ve done enough carrying shit by myself. I don’t think healing means becoming so self-sufficient that nobody’s presence matters. We are built for connection. Sometimes another human being makes us feel safe. Sometimes a conversation settles something in us that journaling couldn’t touch. Sometimes sitting beside someone who sees us is exactly what we needed. Sometimes our bodies exhale because, for once, we’re not alone in the room with everything we’re carrying.

I don’t want to eliminate that from my life. I want more of it. And that’s the difference.

I Need More Places to Land

This isn’t my cue to figure out how to stop needing him. It’s my cue to expand my world. To build friendships. To find my people. To allow myself to be supported instead of always being the one creating support for everybody else. To have enough connection in my life that one person’s schedule changing doesn’t mean an entire source of safety disappears with it.

Because putting the responsibility for my regulation entirely on another person wouldn’t be fair to either of us. And putting it all on one person is a hell of a lot of power to hand one human being.

I don’t want one person to be my only doorway into softness. I want a whole damn house full of doors. I want people I can call because something hilarious happened. People who can sit on my couch without us needing an itinerary. People who can witness the messy parts without immediately trying to fix them. People who aren’t asking me what I’m building next. People I can simply exist beside. I want connection that doesn’t require me to earn it by being useful.

And maybe that’s what this whole experience has been trying to show me. Not that I’ve become too dependent on one person or that I need to toughen up. Not that I need another regulation technique to add to my fucking morning routine (eye roll). Maybe I’ve simply been under-supported. Maybe my body experienced one place where it could finally stop bracing and said: *more of this, please.* And I’ve been interpreting that message as being about one person when maybe it’s been about something much bigger. Belonging. Connection. Community. Being seen. Being held. Having somewhere to land.

So yes, I will continue learning how to create safety within myself. But I refuse to turn healing into another version of hyper-independence. I don’t want to need people less. I want a life where I am supported more.

And maybe the person my nervous system learned to exhale around wasn’t meant to become responsible for my peace. Maybe he simply showed me what peace feels like. Now I know what I’m looking for. Not another version of him. More places where I get to be me and still be held.

This is exactly what we're getting into next week on my podcast, The Badass Broadcast

Safety isn't just a nervous system concept. It's the whole foundation of intimacy and pleasure. But the part that trips people up is that your body doesn't always know the difference between what's *safe* and what's just *familiar*. Sometimes what calms your system down isn't safety at all; it's a pattern you've been in so long your body stopped questioning it. We're kicking off the Pleasure Series of The Badass Broadcast with Lady Tee and unpacking exactly how to tell the difference. Subscribe now so you don't miss it.

Don’t suppress it.
Don’t run from it.
Sit with it.
Let yourself feel it.

And yeah. Absolutely.

But what the fuck are you supposed to do when feeling your feelings makes your body feel like you’re in danger? For some people, sadness isn’t just sadness. Rejection isn’t just rejection. Conflict isn’t just conflict. A breakup isn’t just heartbreak. A hard conversation isn’t just uncomfortable.

Sometimes an emotion hits a button connected to years of shit that came before it, and suddenly you aren’t just feeling what happened today. You’re feeling everything that feeling has ever meant to you. And that changes the conversation.

The feeling isn’t always the problem. Sometimes it’s everything attached to it.

Imagine sadness has spent years hanging out with abandonment. Every time you felt deeply hurt, you were alone. Every time you needed comfort, nobody came. Every time you expressed pain, you were dismissed, ignored, punished, told you were too sensitive, or expected to suck it up and keep moving.

Eventually sadness stops meaning I’m sad and starts meaning I’m alone. And I’m alone becomes nobody is coming. And nobody is coming becomes I’m not safe. So now you’re sitting on your couch at 44 years old (not telling on myself at all) trying to “feel your feelings,” and your body is responding like the fucking building is on fire.

Of course, sitting with the sadness feels unbearable. You’re not only sitting with sadness. You’re sitting with the entire story you’ve built around what sadness means. And you’ve had years to practice that story.

Feelings are real, but the story attached to them isn’t automatically true.

You can honor what you’re feeling without handing it the microphone, the car keys, and full authority over your life. Feelings are information, not always facts. Fear can be present without danger being present. You can feel rejected without being unwanted. You can feel abandoned without actually being abandoned. You can feel like everything is falling apart while nothing is actually falling apart.

The feeling is real. That doesn’t mean every conclusion your mind makes from the feeling is true. And when you’ve repeated the same emotional pattern enough times, the feeling and the story can happen so quickly that they feel like one thing.

Something happens. You feel rejected. Before you even know what the hell happened, your mind has already pulled up the entire file: See? Nobody chooses me. And now you’re not experiencing one shitty moment. You’re reliving every moment you’ve ever used as evidence for that belief. That’s momentum.

Feeling your feelings without becoming your feelings

There is a difference between:

I feel afraid. and I am in danger.

There is a difference between:

I feel unwanted. and Nobody wants me.

There is a difference between:

This hurts. and This pain is going to consume me.

Learning to feel your feelings also means learning to separate yourself from them.

Not disconnect from, suppress them, or slap an affirmation over them and pretend everything is sunshine and unicorn ass.

Separate.

This is something I am experiencing. It is not who I am.

That little bit of space matters. Because if you can observe what you’re feeling, you don’t have to drown in it.

Sometimes regulation comes before processing

If touching an emotion immediately sends you into survival mode, you may not need to dig deeper into the emotion right then. You may need safety first. And I don’t mean convincing yourself that nothing hurts. I mean reminding your body that hurt is not the same thing as danger.

Maybe you feel the sadness for ten seconds. Maybe you cry and then get up and walk around. Maybe you put your feet on the floor and notice where the hell you actually are. Maybe you breathe, shake, or step outside. Maybe you put your hand on your chest and remind yourself:

This hurts. And I am still here.

You don’t get extra healing points for throwing yourself into the emotional deep end and nearly drowning. Sometimes you put one damn toe in the water. Then another. Then another. Until your body learns something new:

I can feel this and still be safe.

Regulation doesn’t mean calm

Read that again.

We have turned nervous system regulation into this idea that a regulated person is calm, peaceful, unbothered, breathing deeply while life is actively life-ing the fuck out of them.

No.

Regulation isn’t never getting activated. It isn’t never crying or making anger disappear. It isn’t being so “healed” that nothing hurts anymore. Sometimes regulation is crying your fucking eyes out and still knowing who you are. Sometimes it’s being pissed off without burning your whole life down. Maybe it’s feeling rejection without immediately turning it into proof that you’re unlovable. Feeling scared while knowing fear doesn’t automatically mean danger or grief moving through your body while you stay connected to yourself through it.

Regulation isn’t the absence of emotion. It’s being able to experience your emotions without completely losing access to yourself. So yes, feel your fucking feelings. But if feeling them feels dangerous, don’t force yourself deeper just because somebody on the internet told you that’s what healing looks like.

Build safety around the feeling. Question the story attached to it. Give yourself room to experience it without becoming it. And teach your body, one experience at a time:

I am allowed to feel this without abandoning myself.

So if “feel your feelings” has never felt as simple as people make it sound, maybe the better question is…

What does my body believe will happen if I do?

Sometimes the next layer of healing isn’t learning how to feel more. It’s learning that you can feel deeply without disappearing inside the feeling.

You can hurt without abandoning yourself. Grieve without becoming your grief. Be afraid without handing fear the fucking steering wheel. And you can slowly teach your body that feeling something uncomfortable doesn’t mean you’re unsafe.

I’d love to hear from you: Is there an emotion that feels bigger than the actual moment when it shows up? What does that feeling seem to mean to you?

Drop it in the comments. Somebody else might read your words and realize, holy shit, me too.

I am NOT a morning person. Never have been. School was a struggle. College was struggle. Anything requiring me to willingly leave my bed at an ungodly hour was a huge “nope.”

I’ve always been the person who could stay up half the night without a problem, but ask me to function at 6:30 in the morning, and suddenly life is unreasonable.

I’ve even tried changing it. I’ve forced myself to go to bed earlier. Tried fixing my sleep schedule. Told myself I was going to become one of those magical people who wake up with the sun, drink something warm, journal, stretch, and have apparently lived an entire life before I’ve located my left slipper. Didn’t work. Even when I went to bed early, morning Tee remained deeply committed to sleeping.

Then summer happened. It’s hot. It’s humid. And my 14-year-old decided she wanted to start walking around 6:30 in the morning, before the sun turned Tennessee into Satan’s armpit. And apparently motherhood can accomplish what decades of personal ambition could not.

I said yes. So we started getting up around sunrise and walking together. Then, about a week later, her sleep schedule got thrown off, and my walking buddy started cutting out on me. Now THIS was my moment. The old me had been handed a perfectly respectable excuse.

Welp. Guess we’re done with that. Back to bed. Except… I kept getting up. I started walking without her. And somewhere over the last few weeks, something absolutely ridiculous has happened:

I think I’ve become a morning person.

I know. I’m disturbed too. But I actually love it. There’s something about being outside before the day gets loud. Before everybody needs something. Before the heat settles in. Before the world starts pulling at me from twelve directions.

It’s just me, the morning, and whatever is moving through my mind. Sure, sometimes I end up sleepy later and take a nap. Sometimes I go to bed embarrassingly early. I’m not suddenly auditioning for the 5 A.M. Club. But I’m getting up. I’m walking. I’m getting things done. And more importantly, I’m realizing that something I had accepted as part of my identity for 44 years wasn’t necessarily permanent.

Then one morning, this tiny shift gave us something none of us expected. My daughter wasn’t planning to walk that morning, but the littles were already awake, so we all headed to the park. They went to skate while we walked. As we came around the track, we noticed what looked like a kitten sleeping on top of one of the tables.

Of course, we immediately went over. We are cat people. A random kitten is basically a family emergency. As we got closer, another tiny head popped up. It wasn’t one medium-sized kitten. It was two tiny kittens curled around each other. Babies. Maybe five or six weeks old. Just over a pound each. Still growing into their fur, their eyes, their little bodies. And they were shivering.

There was no way they had climbed onto that table themselves. Maybe someone found them and put them there to keep them safe. Maybe someone left them there hoping somebody would come along. We’ll probably never know. We only know that we did. And the timing still gets me.

Shortly after we found them, workers showed up to do yard work around the park. Loud equipment. People moving around. Who knows what would have happened to those babies if we’d arrived later? Who knows who would have found them? Instead, a family that had been missing having kittens around happened to walk by. And two little kittens who needed warmth, food, and somewhere safe happened to be there.

We’d lost several of the outdoor cats we’d grown attached to over the past year. Some we successfully rehomed. Some disappeared. Two were hit by cars on the same day. Another little guy had been sick for a long time and eventually died. The kids had experienced a lot of loss around these animals. And we’d missed having little ones around.

Then there they were. Two tiny babies wrapped around each other on a park table at sunrise. I don’t know exactly how things line up the way they do sometimes. Maybe you call it coincidence. I personally don’t believe in coincidences. Maybe you call it divine timing. Maybe life simply has a funny way of making meaning out of a thousand tiny choices.

I just know I almost didn’t become the woman walking around that track at 6:30 in the morning. For 44 years, I would’ve told you that wasn’t me. Then my daughter asked me to walk with her. I said yes. She stopped. I kept going. And one morning, two little lives were waiting along the path of a life I almost didn’t choose.

That’s what gets me. We tend to look for life’s turning points in the big decisions. The move. The divorce. The career change. The relationship. The leap. But sometimes a completely ordinary choice quietly changes your path.

Get out of bed. Take the walk. Go anyway. Keep the habit after the person who inspired it stops. You have no idea what might exist in the version of your life you haven’t walked into yet. Sometimes it’s growth. Sometimes it’s peace.

And apparently… sometimes it’s kittens.

We named the Twinkie and Twix.

Who the fuck am I to be interviewing these people?

They’re certified in things I don’t know shit about. They’ve studied subjects I’ve barely scratched the surface of. They have businesses, books, specialized areas of expertise, and professional language that sometimes has me sitting there like… Girl. Explain that shit to me like I’m ten.

And for a minute, I felt insecure. I’ve noticed I do this sometimes when I meet someone who is really established in a particular area. I look at everything they know, everything they’ve accomplished, everything they’ve studied and somehow compare all of it to everything I haven’t done. Which makes absolutely no fucking sense. Because I can’t do all the things. And more importantly, I don’t need to.

Maybe I don’t need to know. Maybe I need to ask.

One of my guests specializes in women’s health, perimenopause, menopause, pelvic health, trauma, and pleasure. Of course she knows more about those subjects than I do. That’s why I invited her on the damn podcast. Her experiences led her into those areas of study. Mine led me somewhere else.

And sitting across from someone who knows something I don’t isn’t evidence that I’m behind. It’s an opportunity to learn. That’s something I’m beginning to really appreciate about having guests on my podcast. For most of my life, I wasn’t surrounded by people I could really pick apart ideas with. And sometimes when I did encounter people who knew more, knowledge wasn’t offered as an invitation.

It felt more like a flex.

“You don’t know that?”

“I learned that years ago.”

“You should already be doing this.”

And I hate that shit. If I’m coming to you because you know something I don’t, why would I already know what you know? Teach me. I love learning from people who love teaching. And apparently, podcasting has given me an excuse to sit down with fascinating people and say:

Tell me what you know.

And I’ve learned some shit.

One guest taught me about paying attention to patterns in the body. Noticing when something feels different. Becoming curious about what was happening around you, what you were experiencing, and whether similar circumstances keep showing up alongside that feeling.

Not as a way of diagnosing yourself or assuming every ache has some deeper meaning– sometimes a pain is medical and needs medical attention, but as a practice of becoming more aware of yourself. Your body is constantly giving you information. Are you paying attention?

Then another guest taught me about reconnecting with the body after trauma, pain, injury, or years of disconnection. Sometimes reconnecting isn’t immediately about pleasure. Maybe it’s simply becoming comfortable touching your own body. Looking at yourself. Learning your anatomy. Being present with yourself without judgment or expectation.

And I sat there thinking… Damn. Because these women weren’t simply giving my audience something. They were teaching me, too.

Maybe that’s what I was missing.

I’ve spent most of my podcasting journey alone behind a microphone. And I love that. Give me a microphone and let me cook. I can build an entire episode from one question that pissed me off in the grocery store.

But solo podcasting also means I control everything. I know where we’re starting. I know where we’re going. I know the point I’m making. And eventually, I’m bringing that bitch home.

Guests don’t work like that. They take detours. They say something that makes me throw my notes out the window. They introduce ideas I hadn’t considered. Sometimes I ask a question I didn’t even know I had until they finish the sentence before it.

And I’m learning that maybe the conversation doesn’t need to be perfectly contained. Maybe it needs room to breathe. Maybe my job isn’t always to have the answer. Sometimes my job is to ask the question that gets us somewhere neither of us expected to go.

I think I’m learning to enjoy being the student.

That’s new for me. Not learning. I have always loved learning. But being challenged by someone else’s knowledge without interpreting their brilliance as evidence of my inadequacy hits different.

Someone else’s expertise doesn’t take anything away from mine. Someone being further along doesn’t mean I’m behind. Someone having knowledge I don’t possess doesn’t mean I’m sitting at the wrong table. Maybe it means I’m sitting at exactly the right one. Because I don’t want to spend my life surrounded exclusively by people who already know everything I know. I want people who make me say:

Wait. What the fuck does THAT mean?

Tell me more.

Teach me something.

Challenge what I thought I knew.

Give me a perspective I’ve never considered.

And if I don’t understand your fancy professional terminology, I’m probably going to ask you to explain it to me like we’re ten. Not because I’m stupid, but knowledge isn’t very useful if nobody can understand what the hell you’re saying.

And maybe that’s something I bring to these conversations too. I don’t need to become the pelvic health expert. I can bring the expert into the room and ask the questions the rest of us want answered.

Maybe that’s what a good host does.

I’m still figuring that part out. But I’m realizing The Badass Broadcast doesn’t have to be a platform where I demonstrate everything I know. It can also be a place where I get curious about everything I don’t.

And damn… I think I like that even better. Because maybe I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room. I just need to be curious enough to keep the conversation going.

Speaking of curiosity…

The Pleasure Series is coming to The Badass Broadcast, and we’re having some grown-ass conversations about bodies, intimacy, sex, safety, desire, shame, connection, and pleasure.

So I want to know…

What’s something you’ve always wondered about pleasure or intimacy but have been too embarrassed, uncomfortable, or afraid of judgment to ask out loud?

No shame, stupid questions, or pearl clutching. Let’s talk about the shit we were never taught how to talk about.

“Why is she like this?”

“Why didn’t she love me the way I needed?”

“Why won’t she change?”

If you’ve been on a healing journey for any length of time, you’ve probably asked one or all of those questions. I know I have.

We spend years trying to understand the people who hurt us, abandoned us, disappointed us, or simply couldn’t meet us where we needed to be. Somewhere along the way, many of us become detectives in our own stories. We search for answers that might finally make our pain make sense.

And sometimes, we find them.

Sometimes, we don’t.

But I’ve been wondering lately if we’ve been asking the wrong questions altogether.

One of the most profound parts of healing is meeting our inner child. We learn to sit with her. We learn her fears, her needs, and her wounds. We stop calling her dramatic or needy and begin calling her by her rightful name—human.

We offer her what she should have received all along: understanding.

We don’t ask her why she’s so emotional. We ask what happened.  We don’t ask why she’s difficult to love. We ask where she learned she wasn’t lovable.  We don’t ask why she became who she is. We become curious about how she got here.

And then it occurred to me that mothers have an inner child too.  Before she was your mother, she was somebody’s little girl.  Before she disappointed you, she was being shaped by disappointments of her own.  Before she failed you, she was learning what love looked like from people who may have failed her too.

That doesn’t excuse the harm. Understanding has never required the absence of accountability.

Two things can be true at once.

Your pain is real.

And so is hers.

There is something fascinating to me about being human. None of us arrive here as finished products. From the moment we are born, we are shaped, molded, conditioned, and handed stories about who we are long before we’re old enough to question them. Someone else decides what name we’ll answer to. Someone else teaches us what is safe, what is shameful, what is worthy, and what love is supposed to feel like.

Then we spend decades deciding which pieces belong to us and which ones need to be returned.  No one escapes being shaped by their experiences.

No one.

Which means there was never a world where our mothers were exempt from becoming who they are.  At some point, they were daughters becoming women too.

I think one of the greatest gifts of learning to understand ourselves is that it teaches us how to understand others. Not because we become doormats. Nor because we tolerate what should not be tolerated. But because we become less interested in judgment and more interested in truth.

When I understand how fear lives in my body, I can recognize fear living in someone else’s.  When I understand my own patterns, I can recognize generational patterns playing themselves out in my family.  When I understand my own wounds, I stop being surprised that other people are bleeding too.

There is a reason so many spiritual teachings point us back to our shared humanity. Strip away our names, our titles, our trauma, our accomplishments, and our masks, and we find the same things living underneath. We find love, fear, grief, joy, longing, and the desire to belong.

We are far more alike than we are different.

Perhaps understanding our mothers isn’t the final stage of becoming a woman. I don’t believe there is a final stage of becoming anything while we’re still breathing.

But I do believe it’s one of the sacred invitations waiting for many of us on this journey.  Not an invitation to excuse or even to reconcile if reconciliation isn’t safe.  Definitely not an invitation to make yourself smaller once again.

An invitation to see more clearly.

Because sometimes understanding doesn’t lead us back to our mothers. Sometimes it leads us back to ourselves.  And sometimes, after years of asking, “Why didn’t she?” we finally find ourselves asking a different question altogether.

“What happened to her?”

That question changed something in me.

It didn’t erase my story, but it allowed me to hold more than one truth at a time…

I am still worthy of grieving what I didn’t receive. And she is still human.

Maybe that’s what healing is, not choosing whose humanity matters more, but learning to make room for both.

And maybe the strongest thing we can do with that truth isn’t to carry it quietly, but to let it change how we show up in the world.  Let it change how we love, how we listen, and how we choose to break what was never ours to keep.

Because healing isn’t just about understanding where we came from.

It’s about deciding what ends with us.

Know more.
Learn more.
Read more.
Consume more.
Have an opinion about everything.

The more you know, the wiser you become… right?

Lately, I’ve been questioning that.

I was listening to Eckhart Tolle talk about awakening, and he said something that snatched my attention:

The more awakened you become, the less you know.

Of course I’m thinking shouldn’t  awakening lead to more understanding?  But I’m not about to argue with Eckhart Tolle.

Then I remembered a lyric from an Erykah Badu song from the 90s that I used to sing without ever really understanding it:

“The man that knows something knows that he knows nothing at all.”

As a kid, I thought it sounded deep.  As an adult… I finally understand it.

Awakening isn’t about collecting more beliefs.  It’s about loosening your grip on needing to be right.

The ego desperately wants certainty. It wants labels, explanations, and neat little boxes to place the entire universe inside. It wants to know who’s right, who’s wrong, what happens after death, which spiritual path is “the one,” and why everything happens the way it does.

It constantly searches for one more answer that will finally quiet the questions.  But the funny thing is…  Every answer creates five more questions.

I’ve watched people spend years chasing certainty. One podcast leads to another. One teacher contradicts the last. One book opens the door to twenty more. They become spiritual collectors, gathering information while feeling less grounded than ever.  (Yes, Im people)I’ve been there.

These days, though?  If something genuinely calls to me, I’ll explore it.  If it doesn’t, I’m okay not knowing.

And there’s so much freedom in that.

I don’t need to have an opinion about every headline.  I don’t need to debate every spiritual theory.  I don’t need to consume endless content because someone else says I should care.  There’s enough happening in this one life… this one body… this one sacred human experience… to keep me fully present.

The deeper I’ve gone into my own awakening, the less interested I’ve become in proving that I know something.  Instead, I’ve become more interested in living what I already know.

Love people.  Take responsibility for your healing.  Listen more than you speak.  Regulate your nervous system.  Come back to the present moment.  Choose compassion over certainty.  That’s enough work for a lifetime.

Here’s the paradox..  When you stop pretending to know everything, you become available to see more.

“I don’t know” isn’t weakness.

It’s humility, openness, and curiosity.  It’s the willingness to let life reveal itself instead of forcing it to fit inside your existing beliefs.

Maybe wisdom isn’t measured by how many answers you’ve collected.  Maybe it’s measured by how comfortable you’ve become sitting in the mystery.  Some truths can’t be learned.  They can only be lived.

So today, I’m releasing the pressure to figure it all out.  I’m making peace with the unknown.

And maybe…

“I don’t know” isn’t the absence of wisdom after all.

Maybe it’s exactly where wisdom begins.

What about you?

When was the last time you gave yourself permission to simply say, “I don’t know”?

Not as a sign of defeat… but as an act of trust.

Drop a comment and tell me: What’s one thing you’ve stopped needing to have all the answers about?

Maybe, together, we can discover that the unknown isn’t something to fear…

It’s where wisdom quietly waits. 💜

Scroll through the comments on just about any post that mentions love, happiness, soulmates, healthy relationships, or marriage. You don’t find hope. You find war. Mention love, and suddenly everyone’s got a horror story.

“Love isn’t real.”

“Soulmates are a scam.”

“Wait until they leave.”

“Everyone cheats.”

“They’re all narcissists.”

“Protect your peace.”

“It’s all trauma bonding.”

It’s like the word love has become a fucking alarm bell.

And honestly? I get it. I’ve been hurt too. Most of us have. But at some point, something dangerous happened. We stopped separating love from the people who failed to embody it. Those aren’t the same thing.

Love didn’t betray you. A person did. Love didn’t manipulate you. A person did. Love didn’t lie. A person did. Love didn’t abandon you. A person made that choice.

Yet somehow we’ve put love itself on trial. We’ve sentenced the very thing we’re starving for. That’s the part that breaks my heart. We’re walking around saying we desperately want love while simultaneously holding a grudge against it. How the fuck is that supposed to work?

You cannot spend your life arguing with love while praying it finally finds you. That’s like locking every door in your house and wondering why no one ever comes in.

Here’s where I think we got it wrong from the very beginning. We were taught that love is something you do. I don’t believe that anymore.

Love isn’t an action word. Love is a state of being. It’s the essence underneath all the bullshit.

Actions express love…But they are not love itself. When someone lies to you…. That wasn’t love. When someone manipulates you… That wasn’t love. When someone abuses you…. That wasn’t love.

Those were choices made by someone disconnected from love. Stop handing love the punishment for someone else’s behavior. Because every time you do, you’re also punishing yourself.

If the word “love” instantly makes you angry… That’s information. Not about love. About the wound that’s still asking to be seen. Your triggers aren’t proof that love is fake. They’re proof that healing still has somewhere to go.

That’s awareness. And awareness gives you something resentment never will… A choice.

Maybe love isn’t the enemy. Maybe the stories you’ve been carrying about love are. Maybe the conditioning is. Maybe it’s every movie that taught you someone else completes you. Maybe it’s every relationship that convinced you your worth depended on whether someone stayed. Maybe it’s every betrayal you quietly turned into a belief about humanity.

Those stories? Those can change. But they won’t change while you’re searching for someone else to rewrite them. The answer has never been outside of you. It never was. As I’ve said 1000 times, self-love isn’t about bubble baths, affirmations, or pretending everything is fine. Self-love is having the courage to sit in front of the mirror and ask…

“What have I decided love means?”

“Is that actually true?”

“Who would I be if I stopped carrying that story?”

Healing isn’t convincing yourself to trust everyone. It’s learning to trust yourself enough that another person’s choices no longer define what love means to you.

Love was never the problem. The stories were. The conditioning, fear, and shame were. The wounds were. Love has been patiently waiting underneath all of it. Maybe it’s time we stop fighting the very thing we’ve been praying for. Maybe it’s time to remember that love isn’t something you chase. It’s something you become.

Here’s the wildfire…

You don’t heal by declaring love is dead. You heal by refusing to let pain have the final fucking word. Love isn’t weak. It isn’t naïve. And it sure as hell isn’t some fairy tale designed to keep you chasing people who can’t meet you where you stand.

Love is your birthright. It always has been.

So stop asking whether love is real. Start asking whether you’ve been taught to recognize it. Because once you remember what love actually is… You stop searching for it. You become it. Real love doesn’t ask you to disappear. It asks you to remember who the fuck you are. And maybe that’s why self-love isn’t selfish…

It’s where the fire starts.

Dating.
A relationship.
A label.
Forever.

Now, at 44, I’m discovering something I never expected…

A crush can simply be a crush.

It doesn’t have to become a commitment to be meaningful.

It doesn’t have to come with expectations to be real.

It doesn’t have to end in “happily ever after” to have made your heart feel a little more alive.

I started realizing recently I’d been treating my feelings like problems to solve. If I liked someone, I felt like I needed to figure out what it meant, where it was going, or whether I was “wasting my time.”

But feelings aren’t always assignments.

Sometimes they’re invitations.

This season has been teaching me that I can enjoy the warmth of connection without abandoning myself. I can care deeply about someone without trying to possess them. I can leave room for whatever the future holds while still fully appreciating what’s true today.

And maybe that’s what surprised me most.

Not that I have a crush…

But that it feels so light.

So playful.

So wonderfully innocent.

It reminds me that beneath all the healing, all the lessons, all the responsibilities of adulthood, there’s still a part of me that blushes when he smiles, giggles at his laugh, and gets butterflies for absolutely no practical reason.

I don’t think that’s childish.  Okay maybe a little childish, but that’s okay.

I think it’s a sign that my heart still knows how to play.

Maybe we don’t talk enough about that.

Maybe we don’t outgrow crushes.

Maybe we just forget we’re allowed to enjoy them without turning them into a destination.

So here’s to the butterflies.

Here’s to laughing a little harder.

Smiling a little longer.

And allowing your heart to delight in another human being…without rushing to define what comes next.

Sometimes that’s enough.

Sometimes that’s everything.

✦ The Queen’s Got a Crush ✦

I have a crush on you.

I forgot what a crush could do

the blush, the buzz,

the grin that sneaks up out of the blue.

I’ve written about love.

I’ve buried it,

blessed it,

burned it down.

I’ve built kingdoms from the ashes,

paid tribute to my crown.

But no…

this is different,

and somehow feels bigger than it appears.

Not the happiness I’ve cultivated,

but a childlike joy with familiar cheers.

The kind that steals

my grown-up thoughts,

and the girl in me

takes the microphone.

She squeals every time you text

and replays your laugh

like it’s the chorus

to our favorite song.

I have a crush on you.

It’s ridiculous.

You smile,

and my whole nervous system

forgets it’s been at war.

You hold me,

and for one impossible moment,

the weight of the world

isn’t mine anymore.

I have a crush on you,

and it rings true

across timelines and dimensions.

Notice the spark inside my eyes

whenever I catch your attention.

Somewhere between

healing and heartbreak,

between becoming

and surviving,

it snuck up out of nowhere

not new,

but still surprising.

Our souls rearrange galaxies

while my heart forgets its age.

One kiss is all it ever takes

to stir the butterflies

that flutter through these pages.

So if you catch me giggling

for no apparent reason,

or smiling just a little too much…

Don’t worry.

Just roll with it.

The Queen’s got a crush.

Have you ever allowed yourself to enjoy a feeling without rushing to define it?

I’d love to hear what that looked like for you.

“Love yourself.”

And if you’re rolling your eyes right now, trust me, you’re not the first. 😆

People hear self-love and immediately think bubble baths, spa days, affirmations in the mirror, and inspirational quotes floating around social media.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

When I talk about self-love, I’m talking about the kind that changes your entire damn life.

The kind that changes what you’ll tolerate.  The kind that changes who gets access to you.  The kind that changes how you speak to yourself when nobody else is around.

The kind that changes your relationships, your boundaries, your confidence, your business, your parenting, and the way you move through the world.

I wasn’t born teaching self-love.  I was dragged here.  Dragged through heartbreak, disappointment, and self-abandonment.

Dragged through years of looking outside myself for things that were sitting inside me the whole time.

For a long time, I thought I needed something outside of me.  The relationship.  The validation.  The approval.  The success.  The proof.

I kept looking for something that would finally make me feel whole.  The problem was that I already was.

I just didn’t know it.

That’s the thing about self-love.  Most people don’t hate themselves.  They just don’t love themselves enough.

They love themselves enough to survive.  Enough to get up and go to work, to pay the bills, or to simply to keep going.

But unconditional self-love?

That’s a different beast entirely.

Unconditional self-love doesn’t just make you feel better.  It changes your standards.

When you truly love yourself, you stop negotiating your worth.  You stop begging people to choose you.  You stop settling for crumbs while convincing yourself it’s a feast.

You stop abandoning yourself to maintain relationships that require you to shrink.  You stop looking for someone else to complete you because you realize you were never incomplete to begin with.

That’s why self-love sits at the center of everything I teach.

Mindset.

Reiki.

Nervous system regulation.

Boundaries.

Healing.

Relationships.

Confidence.

Every road somehow leads back to the same place.

The relationship you have with yourself.

I’ve watched people spend years trying to fix their relationships while ignoring the relationship in the mirror.

I’ve watched people chase confidence without ever addressing self-worth.

I’ve watched people search for purpose while carrying the belief that they aren’t enough.

You can’t build a thriving life on a foundation of self-rejection.

Eventually, the cracks show.

Self-love isn’t selfish.  It’s foundational.  And contrary to popular belief, self-love isn’t about thinking you’re better than anyone else.

It’s about recognizing that your worth isn’t up for debate.  It’s about knowing that your value exists before you achieve anything.

Before the money, the followers, the relationship, the title, or the validation.

You are worthy because you exist.

Period.

People sometimes ask me why I’m so passionate about this topic.

Honestly?

I would’ve preferred an easier assignment.  Teach dance or music or art. Literally anything else.

Instead, life handed me one of humanity’s hardest lessons:

Remembering that we are already love.

And once you remember that, everything changes.

Not overnight or magically. But permanently.

The moment you stop looking for your worth outside yourself is the moment you begin reclaiming your power.

Because I’ve seen what happens when people forget who they are.

And I’ve seen what happens when they remember.

The countdown to Chapter 44 continues…

🔥👑

Ready to stop settling, shrinking, and second-guessing yourself?

🔥 Book a Badass Breakthrough Session.

Book a Free Call

We’ll cut through the noise, uncover what’s keeping you stuck, and help you reconnect with the version of yourself that’s been buried under conditioning, people-pleasing, and everyone else’s expectations.

You don’t need fixing.

You need remembering.

#

I don’t wish my kids were little again.

Not that I didn’t love those years.  But I’ve grown to innerstand that our culture started treating motherhood like its highest achievement is keeping children small for as long as possible. 

We romanticize the hard seasons once they’re over, mourn every milestone, and act as though the best days are behind us.

I disagree.

As a mom of six, I’ve changed enough diapers to last several lifetimes. At one point, I had three children in diapers at the same time.

Three.

Those years were beautiful, exhausting, messy, and all-consuming. Much of my life revolved around making sure everyone else’s needs were met, and I understand how easy it is for children to become the center of a parent’s identity.

But I’ve learned that my children are not my purpose.  They are people.  People I have the privilege of loving, guiding, teaching, and walking beside. But they do not belong to me.

They were never meant to stay little.  They were never meant to need me forever.  The goal was always growth.  The goal was always for them to become fully themselves.

And seriously, watching that happen is one of the greatest joys of my life.

These days, I get to see the results of all those years in ways that matter far more than perfect parenting ever could.

My son is serving a mission and following a path that matters deeply to him. My daughters are growing into thoughtful, compassionate, hilarious humans who amaze me every day.

People love to tell homeschool parents their children won’t socialize, that they’ll be awkward, that they’ll miss out.

Meanwhile, my kids are making friends with everybody.  Especially the kid sitting alone.  They notice when someone feels left out and walk over to start a conversation.

Every time I see that, I smile.  Because that’s who I hoped they would become.  Not perfect, dependent followers, but kind, capable thinkers.

One of the greatest gifts I’ve tried to give my children is the confidence to live without me someday.

That isn’t fear.  It’s reality.  I tell them all the time...

Be a problem solver.  Learn how to trust yourselves.  Learn how to support each other.  Learn how to stand on your own two feet.

Because one day you’ll have to.

And that’s okay.  In fact, that’s the point.  My job isn’t to make my children need me forever.  My job is to prepare them for the day they don’t.

That belief has shaped more than my parenting. It has influenced how I live my own life.

I’ve continued building businesses, writing books, creating podcasts, making music, learning, growing, healing, and pursuing things that light me up.

I love them enough to show them that motherhood doesn’t require self-abandonment.

Women are allowed to have dreams.  Mothers are allowed to have passions.  Parents are allowed to remain whole human beings.

You can love your children fiercely and still have a life that belongs to you.  I believe that’s healthy.  Because one day every child leaves the nest.  And when that day comes, I don’t want to wonder who I am.

I want my children to see a woman who loved them wholeheartedly while also honoring her own life. A woman who showed them what self-love looks like and taught them they never have to abandon themselves to love someone else.

And if I’ve done that, then I’ve done my job.

The countdown to Chapter 44 continues…

👑 🔥

And honestly, I wasn’t even looking for Reiki when it found me.  I was going through one of the hardest seasons of my life.

My husband was in the hospital for months fighting COVID and the devastating effects that followed. For the first time in a very long time, I found myself completely alone.

Scared.  Overwhelmed.  Trying to hold everything together.  Trying to be strong.  Trying to survive.  And in the middle of that season, I heard something.

Not with my ears.  With my soul.  

A clear inner voice said:

“Balance your chakras.”

The problem was, I had absolutely no idea what that meant.  But the message was too clear to ignore.  So I started reading.  I gathered books.  I learned about chakras.  I explored crystal healing.  And over and over again, I kept running into something called Reiki.

At first, I wasn’t interested.  More accurately, I was skeptical.  I didn’t really believe it was real.  And I definitely didn’t believe it was something I could do.

But curiosity has a funny way of opening doors.  So eventually I signed up for my first Reiki class.  And like many people, I felt absolutely nothing.  No fireworks.  No angels singing.  No magical experience.  Nothing.

Until one day I did.  The best way I can describe it is like a lightning strike.  A flash of light.  Then a sensation in my hands that felt almost electric.

A current.  An awareness.  A knowing.  And once I felt it, I couldn’t unfeel it.

That experience sent me deeper down the path.  I became an Usui Reiki Master.  Then I studied Quantum Reiki.  Karuna Ki.  Divine Fire.  And eventually Kundalini Reiki, which turned out to be my favorite of them all.

But here’s what’s funny.  Even after all of that…

I still didn’t believe I could make much of a difference with Reiki.

My goal was never to heal the world.  I was simply following the original instruction:

Balance your chakras.

One of the most beautiful parts of that journey was sharing Reiki with my daughters.

I found a Mommy and Me Reiki course and began teaching them.  We started using Reiki as part of our homeschool routine.  

Before lessons.  Before the chaos of the day.  Before life started pulling us in a hundred directions.  We would practice.  Recite the Reiki principles. Breathe. Connect.

And I watched how much it helped them regulate their emotions.

In fact, there were days when my own children would remind me to recite my Reiki principles when I was the one struggling.

Life has a sense of humor like that.  But as the years passed, life started doing what it does.  Responsibilities piled up.  I got a full time job.  Filed for divorced. 

And slowly, Reiki moved into the background.  I stopped doing my daily self-treatments.  Stopped making time for my practice.  Stopped tending to the very thing that had helped me so much.

Then one day, I crashed.  My nervous system was completely depleted.  I was still showing up for my business.  Still showing up for my children.  Still doing what needed to be done.

But internally, I felt like I was hanging on by a thread.  I didn’t know how to get myself back.  And then I heard that familiar voice again.

“Remember Reiki.”

Not “learn something new.”, “find another coach.”, or “buy another course.”

“Remember Reiki.”

Remember what already works.

So I pulled out my old Kundalini Reiki manual. The one that had been sitting untouched for years stuffed in an old backpack.  And I started again.  Just a few minutes a day.  Nothing dramatic or complicated.

But slowly, something started happening.  Life began returning to me.  Not all at once, but steadily.

I could feel my energy shifting.  My nervous system softening.  My spirit coming back online.

I could feel life force energy lifting me from the inside out.  And in that process, I realized something profound.

I had spent years looking for “the thing.”  The strategy.  The answer.  The next certification.  The next mentor.  The next breakthrough.  When the thing that had helped me most had been with me all along.

And it’s time to share it…

Reiki didn’t just become part of my work.  It became part of my life.  Part of my healing, my self-care, and my nervous system regulation.  A non-negotiable.

Today, I don’t make time for Reiki.  I have time for Reiki.  Because I’ve experienced firsthand what happens when I forget it.  And what happens when I remember.

I don’t claim to heal anyone.  That’s not my job.  My job is to be an open channel.  To create space and share what has helped me.

And to trust that Reiki will always work for the highest good of the person receiving it.

Sometimes in ways that make perfect sense.  Sometimes in ways that completely bypass logic.

All I know is this, Reiki changed my life.  In many ways, it saved my life. And one day, what began as a simple whisper…

“Balance your chakras.”

…became one of the fires that built Sacred Wildfire.

🔥👑

I certainly didn’t imagine I’d grow up to speak on stages, record podcasts, coach people, create content, or share my opinions with thousands of strangers on the internet.  Although, I fantasized about many of those things.

Back then, I was too busy comparing myself to everyone around me.

I never felt as pretty as the other girls.  Never felt as thin.  Never felt as smart.  Never felt like my clothes were as nice or that my family had what other families seemed to have. I spent a lot of time believing I was somehow “less than.” 

Around age twelve, I attended modeling school.  In my mind, this was going to be the thing that fixed everything.

After all, models were confident, right?  Models were beautiful.  Models were admired.  Surely if I learned how to be one, I’d finally feel good about myself.

Instead, I walked into rooms filled with girls who seemed to have everything I thought I lacked.

They were thinner.  Prettier.  Fancier.  More polished.  Many of them came from families with money.

And there I was… dreaming.  Hoping.  Comparing.  Trying to measure up.

The funny thing is, I graduated.  And absolutely nothing changed.  The certificate didn’t create confidence.  The classes didn’t create self-worth.

Because confidence was never hiding in a modeling school.  The problem wasn’t that I needed to become more impressive. The problem was that I didn’t know how to be myself.

For years after that, I chased versions of who I thought I was supposed to be.

I tried to look the part.  Dress the part.  Act the part.  Believe the “right” things.  Say the “right” things.  Be what other people wanted me to be.

Because like many people, I believed acceptance was something I earned by fitting in.

Even as an adult, even as I stepped into leadership, even as I started building a business, I still carried a lot of those old masks.

The masks just became more sophisticated.  I hear coaches and mentors say “be authentic.”

Then immediately tell me how I should talk.  How I should market. What I should believe.  How I should show up online.

Be yourself…. But not like that. Be authentic…. But only if it looks the way we approve of.

What I eventually realized is that confidence isn’t about becoming the most polished person in the room.

It’s not about having the perfect body.  The perfect brand.  The perfect makeup.  The perfect life.  And it definitely isn’t about being fearless.

Some of the loudest, flashiest, most “confident” people on social media are terrified underneath the surface.  They’re just really good at performing confidence for the camera.

Confidence isn’t an aesthetic.  It’s an internal relationship.

Real confidence is trusting yourself.  Real confidence is speaking when your voice shakes. It’s standing in your truth even when it costs you approval.  Real confidence is being willing to disappoint people rather than abandon yourself.

And one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned is this…

What other people think about me is none of me business.

Happy people don’t spend their days tearing others down.

Joyful people don’t sit around obsessing over who they can criticize next.

People project.  People judge.  People misunderstand.  People tell stories about you that have nothing to do with who you actually are.

Let them!

Cause most of the time, those stories say far more about them than they ever will about you.

The moment I stopped trying to manage everyone else’s perception of me was the moment I started becoming free.

Confidence wasn’t something I found.  It wasn’t something I bought.  It wasn’t something another person gave me.

It was something I built.

One truth.  One boundary.  One brave ass decision at a time.

I found a whole new freedom when accepted that people who didn’t like me were never going to like me.

The people who misunderstood me were committed to misunderstanding me.

The people who needed me smaller were always going to be uncomfortable when I grew.

So I stopped negotiating with opinions that were never mine to carry.  I stopped auditioning for acceptance.  I stopped asking permission to be who I am.

Because confidence isn’t walking into a room believing everyone will love you.

Confidence is walking into a room knowing you’ll be okay even if they don’t.

These days, I don’t need everyone to understand me.  I don’t need everyone to agree with me.  I don’t need everyone to approve of me.

I approve of me.

And after spending most of my life searching for confidence…I discovered what I was actually looking for all along.

Freedom to be me.  

The countdown to Chapter 44 continues… 🎂

It was choosing myself.

For a long time, I believed what many people believe: when you get married, you stay. You figure it out. You work harder. You communicate better. You pray more. You sacrifice. You keep your vows.

So that’s what I did.

I wasn’t looking for a way out. I was looking for a way to make it work. Or at least a way to tolerate it.

I spent years trying to become the version of myself that could save the relationship. A better wife. A better communicator. More patient. More understanding. More forgiving.

Every time something felt off, I took the blame.

What do I need to fix?  What do I need to do differently?  How can I love harder?

And my favorite that I learned in church “how can I love my spouse more than he loves me.”

But somewhere along the way, I started noticing something.

The more I fought to keep the relationship alive, the more disconnected I became from myself.

My needs got quieter.  My voice got smaller.  My dreams got pushed further and further down the list.

I wasn’t being abused.  I wasn’t living some dramatic movie scene.  I was simply becoming a stranger to myself.

And slowly it started to click.  Something that changed everything.

Love should challenge you.  It should stretch you.  It should invite growth.  But love should never require you to abandon yourself.

That realization didn’t arrive with fireworks and theme music. It arrived quietly.  As a knowing.  As a truth I couldn’t unsee.

Leaving wasn’t easy.  It hurt.  It affected people I loved.  It came with opinions, judgments, and plenty of unsolicited advice. It meant starting over.

And of course there were the comments.

“But the kids…”

The kids are more than okay.

In fact, one of the greatest gifts I can give my daughters is the example that they are allowed to honor themselves.

They are allowed to evolve, to leave situations that no longer align with who they are becoming.  They are allowed to choose themselves.

Not every relationship is meant to last forever.  Not every chapter is meant to become the entire book.  Some chapters exist to teach us who we are.  Others exist to teach us who we are not.

Leaving wasn’t the moment I gave up on my marriage.  Leaving was the moment I stopped giving up on myself.

And looking back now, I can see it clearly.  That wasn’t the end of my story.

That was the fire that started it.

Continue the countdown with me to the beginning of my Chapter 44…