What if grief isn't something we need to get over—but something we need to learn how to tend?

In this episode of Breaking Patterns, Skye talks with Alyssa Rose, a Portland-based grief tender and ritualist whose work bridges earth-based ritual practices with modern, trauma-informed somatic approaches.

Skye and Alyssa met at the National Wellness Summit, where conversations around creativity and spirituality opened the door to a larger question: What parts of being human have we left out of our modern definition of wellness?

Together, they explore the ways Western culture often asks us to privatize grief, move through it quickly, or save it for a therapist's office—and what becomes possible when grief is instead witnessed, embodied, ritualized, and held in community.

One of the most personal moments in the conversation comes when Skye recognizes a connection she hadn't fully made before: that some of her own problematic alcohol use may have been an attempt to numb grief she didn't yet know how to name or tend. Looking back at divorce, lost identities, and the life she once imagined for herself raises a different question about addiction: What if some of the things we reach for to numb ourselves are helping us avoid grief that has never been given somewhere to go?

CHAPTERS

0:00 — Meet Alyssa Rose: Grief Tender & Ritualist
1:00 — Grief Is Connected to Love
2:23 — Have We Forgotten How to Grieve?
4:54 — Why Grief Needs Community & Witnessing
11:02 — What Does a Grief Tender Actually Do?
12:01 — Grief Beyond Death: Addiction, Anxiety & Life Transitions
13:05 — Grief Lives in the Body: Somatic Healing
15:40 — Ritual, Community & Creating a Container for Grief
17:14 — My Aha: Untended Grief, Identity & Alcohol
19:45 — When Grief Comes Out Sideways
27:30 — Grief, Burnout & the Workplace
32:44 — What Grief Teaches Us About Resilience

This conversation continues a theme we've been exploring on Breaking Patterns: spiritual wellness doesn't have to mean religion. Sometimes it looks like ritual. Sometimes it looks like making art, gathering around a fire, being witnessed by a community, or creating enough space to feel what our busy lives have asked us to suppress.

And perhaps that is part of Creative Health, too: maintaining access to the full range of our humanity—our grief, longing, curiosity, imagination, connection, and capacity to begin again.

About Alyssa Rose
Alyssa Rose is a grief tender and ritualist in Portland, Oregon. Her work bridges ancient, earth-based ritual practices with modern, trauma-informed somatic modalities to hold sacred space for those navigating loss, mortality, and deep life changes.

Learn more about Alyssa and her grief circles, retreats, individual work, and practitioner training:

Website: https://www.alyssarosehealingarts.com/

November Retreat:  https://www.alyssarosehealingarts.com/grief-ritual-retreat-2026

Women and femmes retreat:  https://events.humanitix.com/womens-grief-ritual

Instagram: @alyssarosehealing 

What if wellness includes more than caring for your body and managing your stress? What if it also includes meaning, belonging, awe, ritual—and even the places we choose to travel?

This week, Skye sits down with Bobby Ansari, Certified Wellness Professional, spiritual travel specialist, and founder of Rose of Jericho Wellness. Skye and Bobby met serendipitously while they were both presenting at the National Wellness Summit in Nashville, and quickly discovered just how much overlap exists between Bobby’s work in spiritual wellness and sacred travel and Skye’s work with poetry, creative health, and retreat experiences.

Together, they explore why spirituality and religion are not the same thing, what spiritual wellness can look like for people from many different belief systems, and why meaning, hope, connection, and belonging deserve a place in the broader wellness conversation.

Bobby shares stories from her own remarkable path—from studying spiritual care in trauma settings to learning from teachers and sacred traditions across Turkey, Ireland, Indigenous communities, and beyond. She also introduces the idea behind her Travel Prescription™: thoughtfully using place, ritual, ancestral connection, and meaningful travel as catalysts for healing and transformation.

The conversation also goes into some important territory around safety and integrity in the wellness and retreat world: cultural appropriation, poorly trained practitioners, “plastic shamans,” and why holding sacred or transformational space comes with real responsibility.

And somewhere along the way, Skye and Bobby discover a shared fascination with creativity as spiritual practice—including the idea that perhaps artists aren’t simply “channels” for inspiration, but prisms, allowing something larger to move through the lens of their own lived experience.

They talk about:

• Spiritual wellness beyond religion
• Travel as a catalyst for transformation
• Sacred landscapes, ritual, and the energy of place
• Being a witness instead of trying to “fix” someone
• Why safety and cultural integrity matter in retreat spaces
• Awe, wonder, and spiritual experiences in everyday life
• Poetry and creativity as forms of reverence
• What it means to create spaces where people can rediscover parts of themselves that have gone quiet

This one goes beautifully deep—and may leave you looking at your next journey, your creative life, and even the places that make you feel most alive a little differently.

Learn more about Bobby and Rose of Jericho Wellness at roseofjerichowellness.com.

Learn more about Skye's upcoming retreats at https://www.wellbeingworkshops.co/womens-retreats-indiana

While Beth is away for the summer, Skye welcomes two special guests whose friendship and shared healing journey inspired the creation of a powerful new retreat experience.

Abby McHale, an Oregon-based practitioner specializing in womb and pelvic somatics, and Ruby Shah, M.D., a Houston-based board-certified physician, poet, and author of Night Song For My Sisters: Endometriosis, Infertility, Loss, and Healing, join Skye to share the story behind Rooted In: Making Peace with Your Fertility Journey—a trauma-informed retreat designed for women navigating infertility, endometriosis, pregnancy loss, hysterectomy, and other fertility-related experiences.

Together, they explore the hidden grief that often accompanies fertility challenges, the healing power of being witnessed in community, and the importance of reclaiming identity beyond diagnoses and outcomes. Abby and Ruby also discuss how somatic healing, flower essences, creativity, and meaningful connection helped transform their own experiences and ultimately inspired them to create the retreat they wish had existed when they needed it most.

Whether you have personally walked a fertility journey or simply know what it feels like to carry grief, loss, or uncertainty in your body, this conversation offers a compassionate look at healing, resilience, and the patterns we can break when we stop carrying our stories alone.

In this episode:

00:00 – Meet Abby and Ruby
03:18 – The overlap between pelvic health and emotional healing
05:04 – Why somatic practices are central to the retreat experience
06:18 – Healing beyond the goal of pregnancy
12:38 – Who this retreat is designed to serve
15:43 – Moving from isolation and grief toward pleasure and presence
20:31 – How Abby and Ruby's collaboration began
24:37 – Ruby's healing journey after infertility and hysterectomy
27:53 – Abby's flower essences and the role they play in healing
31:21 – Why retreat experiences can be so transformative
35:37 – Building community, waitlists, and what's next
36:58 – Closing reflections

To learn more about the retreat or join the waitlist, visit https://www.leoraintegrative.com/retreatinquiry

To bring your own retreat vision to life through Skye's Retreat Guide Mentorships, visit https://www.wellbeingworkshops.co/retreat-guide-mentorship

In this episode of Breaking Patterns, Skye and Beth unpack a quote that completely stopped them in their tracks:

“We should only be giving 40–60% of ourselves at work.”

At first, it sounds almost wrong — especially for women raised on hustle culture, perfectionism, productivity, people-pleasing, and the belief that our worth is tied to our output.

But what if reserving part of yourself isn’t laziness… it’s survival?

This conversation spirals (in the best way) through:

• work culture and burnout
• validation vs appreciation
• invisible labor and emotional exhaustion
• parenting anxious kids in a productivity-driven world
• gratitude as an antidote to shame and anxiety
• Alan Watts, Kroger meltdowns, motorcycles, and “one wild and precious life”
• learning to stop taking everything so seriously

If you’ve ever felt completely drained by work, constantly “on,” or unsure who you are outside of productivity, this episode is for you.

Maybe the goal isn’t to give everything away.
Maybe the goal is to reserve some of yourself for your actual life.

✨ Come join us at the Reawaken Retreat this July: https://www.wellbeingworkshops.co/womens-retreats-indiana
🎧 Subscribe, share, and send this episode to someone who needs permission to breathe a little.

In this episode of Breaking Patterns, Skye and Beth explore creativity as a healing practice — one that can interrupt anxiety, stress spirals, overthinking, and even “victimhood.”

Beth shares the inspiration behind her mixed-media art piece Unshoulding, created for a local arts council exhibition centered around identity, belonging, democracy, and expectation. The conversation unfolds into a deeper reflection on the “shoulds” we inherit from culture, family, perfectionism, and productivity-driven validation.

Together they discuss:

• Why creativity doesn’t have to look like traditional art
• How creative practices regulate the nervous system
• The concept of “downloads” and inspired ideas
• Product-focused validation and fear of rejection
• Letting go of the need to monetize every gift
• Skye’s experience helping students reconnect with poetry
• Creating simply because it makes you feel alive

In this episode, we reference:"The Creative Act: A Way of Being" by Rick Rubin"Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert
✨ Learn more about retreats, workshops & events:

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Warm Drinks and Banter00:41 Why Creativity Helps02:26 Everyday Creativity Counts03:06 Big Magic and Ideas04:46 Beth’s Art Deadline06:27 Unshoulding Explained08:39 Creating Over Victimhood09:50 Poetry Not Product11:38 Rejection and Motives16:04 Live Show and Retreat17:00 Validation and Farewell

In this episode of Breaking Patterns, Skye and Beth pull the word “Grace”—and follow where it leads.

What unfolds is a layered, honest conversation about self-compassion, judgment, and the quiet ways we create stress through our own thinking.

They explore how assumptions shape our reactions, how the inner critic thrives on “shoulds,” and why extending grace to others often begins with learning how to offer it to ourselves.

Skye shares a moment of trying to control everything before leaving for a retreat—and the resentment that followed—opening up a conversation about boundaries, caretaking, and the emotional weight we carry when we don’t allow others (or ourselves) to just be.

Together, they reflect on simple but powerful shifts:
– Questioning stressful thoughts
– Letting go of the need to manage everything
– Recognizing that emotions aren’t always facts
– Remembering that “no” is a complete sentence

This episode is an invitation to soften—to meet yourself (and others) with a little more curiosity, a little less judgment, and a lot more grace.

🌿
Reawaken Retreat: July 24–27

00:40 Pulling the “Grace” Card01:19 What Does Grace Actually Mean?02:01 Assumptions + Judgment02:55 The Inner Critic + “Shoulds”04:26 Byron Katie’s Four Questions06:18 Control, Micromanaging & Resentment10:19 Boundaries Around Breakfast13:22 “Spot It, You Got It”18:37 “No” Is a Complete Sentence19:27 What’s Next + Retreat Details

In this episode of Breaking Patterns, we pull a card from Beth's grandmother’s box and land on a word that feels both simple and surprisingly confronting: patience.

What unfolds is a real, unfiltered conversation about rushing, urgency, and the nervous system patterns that keep us in a constant state of “go.” We talk about the tension between getting out the door on time and creating a calm, grounded start to the day (especially with kids), and how impatience can quietly shape our relationships, our work, and even how we see ourselves.

If you’ve been feeling rushed, behind, or like you’re forcing things to happen… this episode is a gentle invitation to soften, breathe, and trust a different pace.

✨ Our upcoming Reawaken Retreat (July 24–27)—a space to step out of urgency and reconnect with yourself. Early bird pricing is available through May 15.

🌿 Learn more about retreats + offerings: https://www.wellbeingworkshops.co/womens-retreats-indiana

—

00:00 Welcome to Breaking Patterns

00:41 The Improv Topic Box
01:41 Patience, rushing, and the nervous system
03:19 Morning chaos, kids, and being “on time”
05:06 Poem on presence and fleeting beauty
06:52 Savoring small, everyday moments
08:16 Life is finite—why this matters
09:08 Patience in personal growth
11:06 Midlife and the “second act”
14:18 Trusting yourself and your timing
16:00 Choosing simplicity over more “stuff”
18:48 From scarcity → to flow
20:08 Relationships, triggers, and reactivity
21:18 Listener question + wrap

We’re back.

After a year-long pause, this episode is exactly what it needed to be—real, a little uncomfortable, and rooted in the truth of where we’ve actually been.

In this conversation, we’re unpacking what it really means to live by “if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no”…and how that idea starts to crack when life gets messy, responsibilities pile up, and you’re no longer sure what’s a “no” versus what just feels hard.

We talk about being stuck—the kind you don’t want to admit out loud. The kind you try to push through, numb out, or overthink your way around. And how the shift doesn’t happen until you actually say it:

I’m stuck. I need help.

Because sunlight is the best disinfectant. And the truth—spoken out loud—is where things start to move again.

We also get into:

• why asking for help feels so hard (especially when you’re used to being the strong one)
• how cognitive dissonance shows up when your life and your truth don’t match
• the subtle shift from bitterness to perspective
• what it looks like to “act opposite” when anxiety is running the show
• and how showing up—imperfectly, vulnerably—can change your energy in real time

This episode is a reminder that getting unstuck isn’t about having it all figured out.

It’s about telling the truth. Letting yourself be seen. And choosing to show up anyway.

And honestly? Hitting record again took us from “eh” to “yay.”

We’re really glad you’re here!!

🦋 If you want more Skye + Beth in person, join us in July for our 4th annual Reawaken Retreat for Women.

Details and tickets here 👉 https://www.wellbeingworkshops.co/event-list

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This week, join Skye and Beth for a rollicking conversation inspired by Jay Shetty's bestselling book "Think Like a Monk." We get curious about what motivates us to start something or make decisions. Are we seeking the promise of a desired outcome or can we appreciate the experience of the process?

Pop open your favorite seltzer, and please pardon our potty humor this week as we meander through unfinished art projects, childhood 4-H failures, fear of judgement... (and step in a little doody on the way)!

Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty: https://thinklikeamonkbook.com/

Stress Management Workshops with Skye

https://www.soulstruthcoaching.com/services

This week, Skye and Beth talk to guest Claire Olson about the ability to hold both fear and joy concurrently while navigating life's surprises and adversities. Claire is the "Be You Family Doula," located in central Indiana, and founder of Piper's Purpose, a non-profit organization centered on nurturing connection and supporting professionals in the pregnancy and infant loss community.

Connect with Claire on Facebook at Be You Family Doula, LLC:

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090917352535

Piper's Purpose: https://www.piperspurpose.org

Join us at the Reawaken Retreat July 25-27: https://www.soulstruthcoaching.com/event-list

Jay Shetty's book Think Like a Monk: https://thinklikeamonkbook.com/