Candi’d Convo's Podcast

From the outside, my life looked beautiful. Travel, adventure, romance—a marriage I wanted so deeply to believe in. Behind that picture was a reality I kept private for years.

In this deeply personal episode of Candi’d Convos, I speak openly about domestic violence within my marriage, the shame and silence that surrounded it, and the parts of myself I lost while trying to hold everything together.

I share the impact of betrayal, gaslighting and control; the perfectionism and coping strategies I hid behind; and why leaving was only the beginning of finding my way back to myself.

We explore the messy aftermath, the patterns that followed me into other relationships, and the support, faith and honest inner work that helped me rebuild my confidence, reconnect with my body and learn to trust myself again.

This conversation is raw, unpolished and deeply human. For the woman who has stayed, left, struggled in silence or is still making sense of what happened—you are not alone. You deserve safety, support and a life where you can feel fully yourself.

If this episode speaks to you, share it with someone who might need it. A little bit of love goes a long way.

Content note: This episode includes explicit language and graphic accounts of domestic violence, including strangulation and physical assault, alongside discussions of emotional abuse, infidelity and disordered eating. Please listen with care and pause whenever you need.

Grief and Gold: A Conversation, Grief and the Gold Found in the In Between

Pregnancy loss is one of the most profound yet least understood forms of grief. It can leave women feeling isolated, unseen, and questioning everything they thought they knew about themselves, their bodies, and their future.

In this deeply honest conversation, Candi May sits down with her lifelong friend and mentor, Angela Tonkin, to explore the heartbreak of miscarriage, the invisible weight of grief, and the unexpected transformation that can emerge when we allow ourselves to truly feel.

Together, they share their own experiences of pregnancy loss, the shame and silence so many women carry, and why healing isn't about "moving on"—it's about learning to carry love, loss, and hope together.

This episode is a gentle reminder that grief doesn't have to be walked alone.

• The emotional reality of miscarriage and pregnancy loss
• Why grief is not something to fix or rush through
• Breaking the silence and stigma surrounding miscarriage
• The importance of being witnessed in your pain
• How loss can reshape your identity and open new paths
• Finding hope, meaning and beauty after heartbreak
• Creating space for healing, self-compassion and new beginnings

Whether you've experienced pregnancy loss yourself, love someone who has, or simply want to better understand the journey of grief, this conversation offers compassion, hope and a reminder that healing is possible.

"Sometimes the deepest losses become the places where the greatest love, wisdom and purpose are born."

Connect with Candi:
Instagram: @thisiscandimay
Website: www.candimay.net

Connect with Ange:

Instagram: @villageformammas

If this episode touched your heart, we'd love for you to follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with someone who may need this conversation today. Because no woman should have to walk through grief alone.

Most women wait for permission—she chose her own path. In this profoundly inspiring episode, Sophia shares how traveling solo, embracing vulnerability, and making daring choices transformed her into a confident, resilient woman who lives life on her own terms. Discover how she navigates love, loss, caregiving, and the quest for happiness with courage and grace.

Sophia's journey starts with her shy, approval-seeking childhood marked by her parents' separation and cultural complexities. She reveals how these early experiences fueled her desire to explore beyond limitations and how her travels—covering 44 countries and counting—became her ultimate freedom. From hiking the Balkans to jumping out of planes, her adventures are a testament to the power of stepping outside comfort zones to find herself.

You'll learn concrete insights: the mindset shifts that turned her into self-assured traveler and woman; the importance of embracing solitude and how it shapes confidence; real stories of confronting fear—whether eating alone, doing high rocks competitions solo, or running a marathon with her mother. Sophia shares her unique approach to dating in her 40s, navigating superficiality and expectation with authenticity, and her honest truths about love, loss, and hope.

We delve into her inspiring commitment to her mother living with MS—balancing caregiving, personal dreams, and the courage to pursue a half marathon while pushing a wheelchair. Her story highlights the strength in vulnerability, the importance of community, and redefining what it means to lead a meaningful life despite life's hurdles.

This episode is essential listening for women craving validation, purpose, and the courage to forge their own path. Whether you're contemplating a solo adventure, facing caregiving challenges, or seeking motivation to embrace your true self, Sophia’s story invites you to live with authenticity, love bravely, and always choose yourself.

Perfect for anyone feeling small or stuck, ready to make bold moves, or seeking stories of genuine courage, this episode reminds us all: your story is your strength, and it’s never too late to start living it fully.

Sophia is a travel enthusiast known for inspiring women to find strength through adventure and self-discovery. Her journey showcases resilience, humor, and unshakable optimism—a true testament to her namesake, wisdom.

That voice in your head?
The one that’s never satisfied.
The one that tells you you’re too much… or not enough… or wrong somehow.

That’s not truth.
That’s body dysmorphia.

And it doesn’t care how many compliments you get.
How “fit” you are.
How much approval the world reflects back.

Because when your worth is outsourced…
it will always keep moving the goalposts.

For years, I chased being desired.
Approved of.
Chosen.

But I never once stopped to ask:
Do I desire me?

This clip is a small window into a much bigger, more honest conversation about how body dysmorphia shaped my relationships, my self-worth, my relationship with food—and how I’m now actively healing and coming home to my body.

If this resonates…
If you know this voice…
If you’re tired of fighting your body instead of living inside it…

✨ Watch the full episode
✨ Like, share & subscribe
✨ And join me in this ongoing journey of healing, reconciliation, and radical self-love

And if you’re feeling the call to come home to yourself and truly reconcile the relationship you have with your body, food, and self — I have 2 spots opening for 1:1 coaching.
DM me for more information or simply to have a chat.

You are not broken.
You are not alone.
And you are worthy of loving the body you live your life through. 🤍

🎧 Full episode now live — link in bio

#BodyDysmorphia #HealingJourney #ComingHomeToMyBody #SelfLoveIsTheWork #NervousSystemHealing #Embodiment #HERStory #CandidConvos #UnlearningShame #ThisIsHealing

HER Story — Episode Two: The Body I’m Coming Home To

In this deeply vulnerable episode of Candi’d Convos, Candi May shares the truth of her lifelong relationship with her body — a story shaped by body dysmorphia, perfectionism, generational conditioning, control, shame, and the quiet internal war so many women live with.

This episode explores how body dysmorphia doesn’t just impact how we look — it impacts how safe we feel to exist, to take up space, to experience pleasure, intimacy, joy, and presence. Candi speaks candidly about food, control, binge–purge cycles, self-worth, relationships, breast implants, chronic stress, nervous system dysregulation, and the moment everything began to change.

This is a conversation about reconciliation.
About learning to soften.
About coming home to your body — not by changing it, but by learning to feel safe within it.

If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your body…
If shame has kept you from fully living…
If you’ve spent years trying to be “enough” for someone else…

This episode is for you.

✨ You are not broken
✨ You are not alone
✨ And healing is possible

Candi offers gentle reflection prompts and there's a link in her bio for a grounding embodied practice to support your own journey toward self-acceptance and presence.

Leah Hansen — Choosing Yourself Isn’t Selfish, It’s World-Changing (I LOVE THIS WOMAN)....

In this super fun episode of Candi’d Convos: HER Story, I sit down with Leah Hansen — a woman who has lived a full-spectrum human life and refuses to live anything less than her truth.

Leah’s story is raw, layered, and deeply human.

We explore what it means to choose yourself when it costs you everything — relationships, identity, certainty, safety — and how doing so can become the most loving, expansive act not just for you, but for the world around you.

In this conversation, Leah shares:

• Growing up adopted and feeling like the outsider

• Fame at 18 and the wounds that followed

• Betrayal, grief, pregnancy loss, and deep emotional reckoning

• Divorce, coming out later in life, and burning her world down to rebuild it truthfully

• Breathwork, nervous system healing, and reclaiming joy

• Why “selfishness” is often just a woman finally listening to herself

This episode is about crumbling what no longer fits.
About letting the old self fall away.
About trusting that the woman you are becoming knows the way.

If you are standing at the edge of change…
If you feel the quiet knowing that your life is meant to be bigger, truer, freer…

This conversation is for you.

🎧 Listen now.
✨ Share with a woman who needs permission.
🤍 Subscribe for more candid, embodied stories.

In this episode of Candi’d Convos: HER Story, I sit down with a woman I’ve known for nearly 30 years – Ange – whose path has been anything but linear.

Together we walk through grief, loss, addiction, awakening, rebirth, and the sacred initiation of motherhood… not as a highlight reel, but as a deeply lived, raw, human story.

Ange shares what it was like growing up as a highly sensitive, intuitive little girl who saw spirits and “knew things” in a family that didn’t understand her gifts… and how that led to shutting down, people thinking she was “crazy,” and a lifelong pattern of suppressing her truth.

We dive into:

• Navigating early grief, multiple deaths, and the way loss can shut your heart… or crack it wide open

• Addiction as a coping mechanism – exercise, alcohol, drugs, control – and what finally brought her to her knees

• The moment she called her mum and said she didn’t want to be here anymore… and the ultimatum that changed everything

• Learning to trust her psychic gifts again and the fear of being seen as “too much” or “not normal”

• Conscious partnership, doing the work, and growing in love (not just falling into it)

• Her deeply activating pregnancy, ecstatic homebirth-turned-ambulance-birth, and how birth became a portal for healing sexual trauma and control

• Motherhood as initiation, learning to receive, and choosing a different story than the one she witnessed growing up

• The birth of her work: Village for Mothers and Birthing in the Feminine – supporting women to create, mother, love and lead in a deeply feminine, resourced way

This conversation is for the woman who has walked through her own underworld… who has used addiction, control, or perfection to outrun her pain… and who is ready to remember who the f*ck she really is.

🔥 Reflection for you:
Where are you still suppressing your gifts, your grief, or your desire… because you’re afraid people will think you’re “too much” or “crazy”?

If Ange’s story lands in your body, please rate, review, share, and send this to a woman you love and anyone you think would enjoy and receive something from tuning in.

Connect with us:

• Ange: @angelalouisetonkin

• Candi: @candidconvos.podcast | www.candimay.net

  
  

This podcast was born from the moments that break you open.

From the days I couldn’t breathe through grief… to the mornings I woke up in foreign mountains and didn’t recognize the woman I was becoming.

Candi’d Convos is my living diary.
And an altar for women’s stories.

It’s where we speak the unspeakable.
It’s where we unravel identities.
It’s where we admit we don’t have it all figured out.

Sometimes I’ll share while walking through Albanian valleys.
Sometimes from the floor in my feelings.
Sometimes from the stillness that comes after a storm.

And sometimes I’ll just sit there and say…
“Seriously… what the actual f*ck was that?”

If you’ve ever felt lost, cracked open, reborn, or on the edge of something new —
this space is for you.

Love Candi xx

Summary

In this introductory episode of Candid Convos, host Candi May shares her vision for the podcast, emphasizing the importance of women's stories and the power of vulnerability. She reflects on her personal journey, including challenges and self-discovery, and invites listeners to embrace their own narratives. The podcast aims to create a space for open conversations about the messy and magnificent aspects of womanhood, encouraging women to share their experiences and connect with one another.

Takeaways

• Her Story is a space for real women to share their stories.
• Vulnerability is key to healing and connection.
• Every woman has wisdom to share through her experiences.
• Courage can be a quiet whisper, not just a roar.
• Coming home to yourself is a daily practice.
• Candi's journey includes divorce, loss, and self-reflection.
• The podcast will cover a wide range of topics related to womanhood.
• Nothing is off limits in these conversations.
• Your story and voice are important and deserve to be heard.
• Candi is excited to introduce diverse conversations in future episodes.

Sound Bites

"This is the very first intro episode."

"Courage doesn't always roar."

"Nothing is off topic."

Chapters

00:00 Welcome to Candid Combos

01:21 The Purpose of Her Story

03:50 The Power of Vulnerability

05:03 Personal Journey and Transformation

08:13 Exploring Diverse Women's Stories

10:02 Invitation to Share Your Story

10:58 NEWCHAPTER_2