By the Fire with Faye - Conscious Leadership for Awakened Women

Every true initiation ends in return.

In this episode of By the Fire with Faye, we explore what happens when a woman doesn’t just awaken, but roots her power, claims her place, and returns carrying medicine rather than survival.

Because awakening changes how you see the world.

Many women walk through healing, descent, and deep personal transformation… only to find themselves unsure how to translate who they’ve become into their work, leadership, and business.

This episode explores the Heroine’s Return , as the stage where soul embodiment must meet real-world structure, service, and sustainability.

We explore:

This is a conversation about translating transformation into tangible leadership — understanding which services, business models, and ecosystems truly support your medicine, your livelihood, and your long-term legacy.

Because not every awakened woman is meant to scale through volume or constant launching.

Some are here to lead through depth.

This episode is the final one of Season 1 and completes the arc of awakening, descent, and rooting… and opens the doorway into embodied return.

🔥 When your work is rooted in who you have become, growth stops feeling forced.

It begins to feel inevitable.

If you would like to explore working together as part of your own Heroine's Return then see which journey is right for you on my website: https://www.fayeoftheforest.co.uk

Or reach out and let's have a chat on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/fayeoftheforest_businessmentor

In nature, no being competes to belong.

In this episode of By the Fire with Faye, we explore eco-niche, not as a marketing concept, but as the living ecosystem your medicine requires to thrive.

This conversation moves beyond ideal client avatars, surface alignment, and extractive business models that collapse under depth.

Because high-transformation work doesn’t fit inside formulas.

We explore why the “ideal client avatar” breaks down when your work involves embodiment, identity shifts, nervous system regulation, and initiation, and why fewer clients, deeper containers, and higher integrity create both sustainability and financial stability.

This episode also offers practical entry points for beginning to map your own eco-niche, understanding where your work belongs, who it is for now, and how your awakening translates into clarity, direction, and a business that can actually hold your depth.

Eco-niche is not about narrowing yourself.

When your work knows where it belongs, it stops chasing.

In the next episode, we complete the arc: the return.

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The most expensive place to live is not the wrong path.

In this episode of By the Fire with Faye, we explore the hidden cost of living in the In-Between, the space after awakening, after descent, after awareness… but before embodiment and enactment.

This is not the space of ignorance.

And it is quietly, steadily draining far more than most women realise.

Awakened women don’t burn out from doing too much.

We explore what the In-Between actually is and what it is not.

We look at the unseen costs of staying here:

We revisit the energies of ice and fire, stalling and rushing, and why they’re driven by the same fear:

"What if I fully commit to who I’m becoming… and it fails?"

This episode also explores why this phase is so hard to navigate alone, how fear disguises itself as intuition, protection masquerades as alignment, and why self-diagnosis fails inside the cocoon.

And finally, we turn toward what actually allows women to leave the In-Between.

Not force.

But place.

To leave the In-Between is to root, into your medicine, your identity, your people, and the ecosystem that can hold both your depth and your livelihood.

This episode is for the woman who feels suspended, hovering, restless, or quietly exhausted and knows that staying halfway is costing her more than she can afford.

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Some conversations take us down into the ashes, the quiet places, the seasons we were never taught how to honour or how to walk through...

In this episode of By the Fire with Faye, I sit with Jen Maxwell, international empowerment coach, speaker, sacred space holder, and fierce hearted warrior of the Divine Feminine, to speak about her personal descent, not as failure or collapse, but as a sacred initiation that many women experience after awakening, burnout, or deep soul change.

We explore what happens when the old identities, strategies, and ways of being no longer fit… but the new ones haven’t fully formed yet.

The space where striving feels impossible.

Jen shares her lived experience of descent, devotion, and what it means to stay present in the ashes to really find your Eco-Niche, rather than rushing forward and risk missing it and how being witnessed in Council really helped her to understand her medicine and the next steps within her business.

This episode is for the woman who senses she’s in an in-between, after the fire of metamorphasis but before the rebirth and alignment within her business.

Because some seasons aren’t about rising. They’re about rooting.

🔥 For more information about our guest today visit:

https://jenmaxwell.com

https://lakelandwellbeing.co.uk

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After awakening, many women try to build their business the same way they always have, only to find that what once worked now drains them, confuses them, or collapses under the weight of their depth.

In this episode of By the Fire with Faye, we explore Sacred Strategy — a way of creating work that grows from soul rather than survival.

We look at the difference between Shadow Strategy (driven by self-protection, old wounds, and nervous system fear) and Sacred Strategy (rooted in embodiment, alignment, and devotion), and why the two can feel deceptively similar from the inside.

This episode is for the woman who knows her work is meant to be medicine but senses that without the right structure, clarity, and guidance, her depth is costing her more than it gives.

Sacred Strategy doesn’t rush.

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No one talks about this part of the awakening!

The space after the fire, where the old life is gone but the new one hasn’t fully formed yet.

The Threshold. The in-between.

The place where many Wild Women either freeze… or rush forward too fast.

In this episode, I explore the two common energies that dominate this phase — ice (stalling, procrastination, staying with old clients and services) and fire (frantic action, rebrands, rushed offers, forcing momentum) — and why both are driven by the same fear:

What if I fully commit to who I’m becoming… and it fails?

You’ll learn why this phase isn’t a problem to fix, but a sacred initiation and why the real way through isn’t forward or frozen, but spiral.

A deeper descent into embodiment, eco-niche, and fully mapping your medicine before trying to enact it in the world.

If you’re feeling stuck, restless, or confused after awakening then this episode will help you understand where you are, why surface-level strategies no longer work, and how to move through the threshold without burning out or abandoning your truth.

🔥 Remember some things can only grow in the dark.

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After awakening, it’s not clarity that usually blocks your next evolution, it’s the Shadow quietly taking the lead.

In this episode of By the Fire with Faye, we meet the Trickster: the part of you that calls control “strategy,” fear “alignment,” and self-protection “intuition.”

We explore how Shadow Strategy shows up in modern business and leadership, including:

Avoiding visibility while telling yourself you’re “waiting for the right time”

Procrastinating on the work that actually matters

Launching too many services to avoid full exposure

Resisting goals in the name of freedom

Holding onto offers and identities you’ve outgrown

Through a Jungian lens, we unpack the archetypes at play: the Innocent, Orphan, Caregiver, Rebel, Sage, and Magician, and reveal how these self-protection strategies were once necessary, but now quietly keep you small.

This episode is an invitation to move from Shadow Strategy to Sacred Strategy — not by bypassing fear, but by understanding it.

As Carl Jung reminds us: “Where your fear is, there is your task.”

If you’ve been busy but not moving…

Pull up a chair. The fire is warm.

🔥 Next episode: The In-Between — the liminal space after awakening where so many women lose their footing.

For more information about Faye visit: https://www.fayeoftheforest.co.uk

Awakening rarely arrives gently.

It comes as a crack in the life you built — a panic attack, a grief you can’t explain, a body that refuses to carry the old identity any longer. In this opening episode of By the Fire with Faye, we begin at that moment.

Not as failure.

This episode reframes breakdown as a sacred summons and introduces the Descent as the first true step on the feminine path of awakening. Drawing on myth, depth psychology, and soul-based traditions, we explore why the Wild Woman awakens by falling apart — and why the body often knows long before the mind can make sense of what’s happening.

You’ll be guided through:

Awakening as initiation, not collapse

Why the body speaks before the mind understands

The Descent as the beginning of becoming — not the end

The five phases of descent: Preparation, Dissolution, Soul Encounter, Metamorphosis, and Enactment

How the feminine path differs from the hero’s journey — an inward pilgrimage rather than a conquest

If you’ve ever wondered why your awakening didn’t look like clarity, light, or ease — but instead felt like losing everything you thought you were — this episode offers language, context, and deep validation.

You are not broken.

Pull up a chair.

🔥 In the next episode, we meet the one who often takes over after awakening — the Trickster — and explore how the Shadow quietly shapes our lives and businesses in the name of safety.

For more information about Faye visit: https://www.fayeoftheforest.co.uk