Forgiveness is often spoken about as the only way to truly move on. But is it? What is forgiveness anyway? Is it coming to peace and acceptance? Is it taking someone else off the hook for what they did? Does it mean we must continuously expose ourselves to the scene of the crime or situations and people that wound us repeatedly? Is turning the other cheek really a virtue? Where do boundaries fit in? And what do we do when forgiving prematurely actually leads us into self-abandonment, thus blocking us from healing and our aggressors from feeling true remorse?

I came to the pod to talk about forgiveness but ended up giving an update on my online dating exploits. Lol! I’ve met an interesting guy who’s bringing such different energy into my world that I think he might be the pattern breaker, should I choose to progress with him. I’ve always gone for a certain type of guy and it never works out. This feels like an opportunity to pick something different. Therapy has helped me to see and value guys like this, and to show up with more of the type of energy that can have a create a great experience. It’s been so valuable to engage with lots of different guys so I can see how much I’ve grown and can actively choose what I don’t want.

Life is real. And hard. So hard for so many of us. Yet we survive the moments that will pull us into the void and come back willing to be here, to keep trying, to keep living and angling ourselves towards life and the gift of being alive.

This podcast is about what it means to be ALIVE and to live well. But what happens when it’s hard to keep ourselves alive?

I’m a suicide survivor – that’s what I call myself as someone who has considered suicide at different points of my life. I’m choosing not to carry shame in it any more. I’m opting into life in such a powerful way and choosing to build my strength and resourcefulness so that I live with intentionality and humility at the very real proximity of death that we all live with.

I am wise, powerful, smart, vibrant, full of love AND prone to not wanting to be here or feeling incapable of being here any longer.

Suicidality isn’t a wilful state. It isn’t something that happens to “weak” people or those who have “chemical imbalances” or who have survived unspeakable traumas. You can be a badass B, like me, and still experience it.

So journey with me as I share my story. And what I’ve learned about how to cope and rescue myself when I’m in the valley of the shadow of death. And how I’m learning to face the full reality of life – which is partly what I’ve been trying to escape. And how I’m discovering that when you save your life and heal you have to learn how to use the parts that you’ve healed and that is just as hard as saving your life was – if not harder!

As I advance on my spiritual path, I’m discovering more about consciousness i.e., our awareness of what is. There’s more than just the mind, which is what we typically refer to as conscious or subconscious awareness.

There are 5 more levels of consciousness, in fact. The 3 individual ones are: somatic (body), spiritual (soul) and non-mind (a mysterious beauty I recently discovered that is hugely powerful). The 2 collective ones are: the collective mind (what we call collective consciousness) and what I call the universe (all that is, including and beyond Earth and this dimension).

It’s fascinating and fun and has helped me to feel 1) more grounded in my experience of being alive on Earth; 2) more mature in my spiritual practice; and 3) wiser and considerate of the bigger picture, complexities and interdependencies as I do my healing work and personal growth and development.

Sometimes my mind wants to make one choice but I consider the impact on my soul’s intention for this life and I reconsider, or I think something is going to kill me but my body’s wisdom tells me it’s got this, it knows how to live and I can lean into its wisdom and mystical strength…

I’m talking about it all –

How respectability politics set us up to fail in our marriages.

How single sexually-active women are villains.

How men want ladies in the streets but freaks in the sheets yet they marry sexually inexperienced women.

How women’s vagina’s belong to their fathers then to Jesus, then to their husbands and then to the grave when their husbands die - but never to themselves (a farce!).

And how hard it is to own your sexuality when you’ve received so much shame-filled conditioning from society and the church.

Give us free!

This is an ode to my parents – my late father, Dr Kombo James Moyana, and my living mother, Marcia Petricia Moyana.

Our souls choose our parents. It blew my mind when I discovered this because my parents were both my first loves (I idolised them) and my greatest heartbreak (they broke my spirit).

They’ve left me with so many gifts of character, values, support and rich experience, but they also left me with a legacy of trauma, insecurity, feelings of unworthiness and deep wounds to heal.

But this is what my soul intended – my soul wanted me to expand and that could only happen if my parents parented me the way that they did. Let’s explore this concept. I discovered it in Michael Newton’s book, “Journey of Souls” and it instantly resonated

I was raised believing that hard work = success, that we earn everything we have, that we can get what we need but wants are another story, that life is generally hard and nothing good comes easy, that at any moment we can lose everything we have so we have to be austere and humble…

It’s led me to distrust flow, to settle for less sometimes, to horde resources or be quick to downgrade so that I make sure I don’t run out…

But more than this, it has made me distrust ease, to struggle to connect with my wants and desires – not just my needs, and to reach out from life for good things with a healthy dose of entitlement.

It's exhausting and I’ve finally run out of runway with this limiting belief because life is inviting me to expand into more - because more is actually my birth right.

Guys. Patriarchy has us in a choke hold. All of us. Men and women. I hate seeing what it does to men – how much they suffer because of it. But the feminist movement is coming for them too and asking them if they’re coping being as disconnected from their feminine energy as we were from our masculine energy.

There’s a beautiful invitation for men to find healing and more freedom if they can let go of the stigma that patriarchy has placed on feminine energy and open up their hearts to acknowledge their own suffering.

And there’s an invitation for women to heal their own relationship with feminine energy so that they can create space for men to be vulnerable and go on this journey with their support and encouragement.

But I’m a woman talking about men’s experiences which is a bold thing to attempt to do. But I have eyes and I know pain when I see it. Men, let’s talk.

Your girl is on Bumble and LOVING it. This is the best online dating run I’ve ever had. Hot men, smart men, sparkly bantery connections, down to earth people. It’s so nice. But I’ve also been on a date with a guy who refused to take off his sunglasses during the entire date! And the other guy who called my spirituality pagan LOL. That went nowhere. I’m experiencing a lot and seeing the fruits of all the work I’ve put into my growth coming to bear in how I show up and who I match with.

Part 1 is about the SA online dating market, my approach to Bumble this time around and my worst dates.

Part 2 is about the awesome connections, how Bumble is both triggering my insecurities and revealing how much I’ve grown.