Crazy Beautiful Truth

A version of this episode was released in Season 1 and is back by popular demand — because the conversation about women and money is far from over. This is freshly edited and includes closing insights from Sheila.

So many women have told me they feel uneasy around their financial lives. Not incompetent — uneasy. Like there's something they should know, something they should be doing. If that's you, this episode is for you or for the people who love you.

Mikelann Valterra is an author, speaker, financial therapist, and master money coach who has spent twenty-five years as a thought leader in financial psychology. She helps women around the world rise above the money fog, transform their relationship with money, and design their ideal lives. Her book Rise Above the Money Fog is available now.

In this conversation we get into what money fog actually is — and the sneaky ways it shows up in midlife. We talk about the stories and beliefs we inherited around money, why women carry more financial anxiety than men, and what it means to treat your finances as a sacred resource for designing a life you love. We also talk about mimetic desire — the great romantic lie that our desires are actually our own.

This is not a budgeting episode. It's a freedom episode.

What we cover:

• The FOG framework — Fear, Overwhelm, and Guilt — and how to recognize it in yourself
• Why midlife transitions bring money fog roaring back
• Elegant financial simplicity — and why fewer accounts means more peace
• The seeds of possibility that money fog quietly kills
• How to ask better questions of yourself and your advisors
• Where desire actually comes from — and why it matters

Find Mikelann:Website: seattlemoneycoach.comGrab her free money fog quiz at the same linkLinkedIn: Mikelann Valterra

Crazy Beautiful Truth is hosted by Sheila Delaney, executive facilitator and leadership coach, who believes there is always a Crazy Beautiful Truth at play, working for us, guiding us into the life we most want to live. Allowing it is a game changer.

Sheila Delaney is joined by Amar, creator of The Coherence Method and a former healer who works with professionals who are successful on paper and privately exhausted. He helps them stop managing themselves like a problem to fix and start operating from coherence.

Most of us have outsourced our authority without knowing it. To the next healer, the next strategy, the next version of ourselves we are still trying to become. And the nervous system, running on seven-year-kiddo-old code, is perfectly happy to keep us circling the airport, never landing.

This conversation asks the question most practitioners never do: what comes after healing?

Amar and Sheila explore:

• Why driven people get addicted to almost
• What it actually takes to reclaim inner authority
• How to tell the difference between building from pressure and building from presence
• Why the nervous system prefers familiar chaos to unfamiliar peace and what to do about it

Coherence, Amar says, isn't something you build. It's something you return to. You were born with it.

If you have been doing the work, achieving what you set out to, and something still feels unresolved?

This episode is for you.

Find Amar and his programs and one on one work at https://withamar.com/

Instagram @amarenergy

What do you do when grief drops you into the deep end and you can't find the shore?

Sheila Delaney is joined by Laing Rikkers — award-winning author, entrepreneur, and executive coach — whose sister's sudden death sent her searching for a way back to life through nature, poetry, and the simple rituals that hold us together when everything falls apart.

Laing's book Morning Leaves (Red Hen Press, second edition) was born from that journey, written during pandemic lockdown, illustrated by botanical artist Kelly Leahy-Ratting, and offered to the world as an act of radical vulnerability and hard-won courage. The second edition is out now. It's gorgeous.

In this conversation:

• The grief that doesn't go away, but gets integrated
• The rage that lives beneath the even-keeled surface
• The daughter who held up a mirror and asked are you really doing this?
• The moment a reader said it felt like I read your journal
• The crazy beautiful truth Laing carries now — that how we spend our days is a choice, and it takes real elbow grease to choose joy

Find Laing at laingrikkers.com

Instagram @morning_leaves_and_poetry

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/laing-rikkers/

Author Harper Bailey joins Sheila Delaney to talk about what does it can look like to love yourself back into life.

For Harper, it started with a dream she couldn't outrun and a book she didn't want to write.

Harper is a public health leader, the first Black woman to lead a prominent national women's healthcare nonprofit, and the author of It Was Her: A Memoir — a deeply personal account of grief, healing, and the courage it takes to reclaim your own narrative. In this conversation, she talks about nine years in the wilderness of grief, the Reiki session that showed her a little girl hiding in a closet, the psychedelic journey that cracked her open, and the small promises that rebuilt her trust in herself.

This one is rich, honest, and worth every minute.

Find the book wherever you get your books. Order ⁠here⁠.

Find out more about Harper Bailey and follow her writing on her website: ⁠https://www.harperabailey.com/

What if grief isn't just about death — but about every future you imagined and lost?

We open season 3 with Sheila Delaney joined by Dr. Megan Shen, TEDx speaker and social psychologist specializing in grief. She redefines what we're actually carrying, what grief actually is, why we go numb, and what it takes to love yourself back into life.

Dr. Shen has been featured in Forbes, USA Today, Huffington Post, NPR and CBS News. Find and follow her work at:

• Light in the Wound on Substack: meganshen.substack.com
• How to Grow Hope on Psychology Today: psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-to-grow-hope

And please like and follow/ subscribe here to stay up to date as new episodes drop.

Guest Kara Kalin was an elite athlete, a national coach, and is a licensed clinical counsellor in British Columbia, Canada. She is the CEO and Founder of Shift Change. Kara and Sheila explore how high performers learn to leave their bodies — and how reclaiming presence takes life, relationships, and leadership to the next level. We talk EMDR, shock in the body, trauma, the return to wholeness, and loving ourselves back into life when we have lost track of why it’s worth it.Find more of Kara:https://www.linkedin.com/in/karakalinhttps://linktr.ee/karakalinhttps://www.shiftchange.life/TakeawaysThe journey of self-discovery is ongoing and requires constant unfolding.Embracing fear and vulnerability is essential for personal growth.Loving ourselves back into life means reconnecting with our essence.Performance can lead to dissociation and disconnection from our bodies.Understanding trauma helps us navigate our emotional responses.Creating a felt sense of safety is crucial for healing.Community plays a vital role in supporting our healing journeys.Navigating grief requires compassion and understanding.Self-compassion allows us to heal from past wounds.Unlocking our inner wisdom is key to personal transformation.Keywordsself-discovery, vulnerability, trauma, healing, community, EMDR, mental health, self-compassion, feminine energy, personal growth

What if the most powerful thing you’ve never seen is yourself? In this episode of Crazy Beautiful Truth, Ushi Patel and host Sheila Delaney explore what happens when we see ourselves clearly reflected back to us in a creative brief. We talk about why design cracks us open and lets us see ourselves afresh, why masks fall away, and why seeing ourselvs through the lens of design moves and activates us more than praise ever could.

Find more of Ushi at ushi-ink.com.

Get her book, Dare to Design the Real You to show you how to define your irreplaceable value-add and remain relevant, the obvious choice regardless of the changing world around you. It is not about doing more—it is about seeing differently. It’s not about what you’ve achieved. It’s about who you are—the source of your distinction.

Responsibility.

We’ve been taught it means duty, obligation, self-erasure.

But what if we’ve had it wrong all along?

In this episode, Sheila Delaney flips the script: responsibility as freedom. As power. As your ability to respond.

From graduation speeches praising “selfless moms,” to a law firm dinner where loyalty was measured in debt, Sheila shows what radical self-responsibility isn’t. It is agency. It is the doorway to vitality, clarity, and leadership that engages.

Without it? We collapse into martyrdom, deflection, or collapse.

This is the reframe you didn’t know you needed.

Encore episode with Brenda Reiss, Forgiveness Coach, and a throw back to season 1. This is an episode that I received such lovely responses to. And forgiveness is up in so many places.Our style and approach have changed a little, but this content is gold.Forgiveness isn’t about letting anyone off the hook—it’s about setting yourself free.In this raw and soulful conversation, forgiveness and grief coach Brenda Reiss joins Sheila to explore what it really takes to release resentment, shame, and self-blame. From bathroom floor moments to radical self-trust, they unpack how healing begins not with perfection—but with willingness.💔 Why self-forgiveness feels impossible (and how to shift it)🧠 What your body knows before your brain does🔥 The moment you realize: “This pain is mine—and so is the power to transform it”If you’ve ever felt stuck in your story, this episode is your permission to start again—with grace, grit, and a whole lot of truth.👉 Subscribe and drop a comment: What are you ready to let go of?#Forgiveness #GriefHealing #SelfTrust #CrazyBeautifulTruth #SheilaDelaney #BrendaReiss #Podcast

Mario Lanzarotti gets honest about the spiral he lived through: chasing success while drowning in vices, and the effect of taking radical responsibility for his choices and discovering forgiveness as a doorway back to peace.

We dig into:

🔸 Why numbness is contagious in our culture — and especially dangerous for leaders

🔸 The cost of living in survival mode and “figuring it out” thinking

🔸 How self-doubt can shift from being saboteur to a teacher

🔸 The terrifying but necessary void between old identities and new ones

🔸 Why forgiveness is not about giving someone a pass — it’s a power move

If you’ve ever wondered, Is this all there is? — this episode is for you.

Find Mario, active on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lanzarottimario/

Chapters00:00 Loving Ourselves Back to Life02:30 The Role of Consciousness in Problem Solving05:30 The Shift from Intellect to Presence07:56 Fear vs. Faith-Based Consciousness11:02 The Symptoms of Losing Aliveness13:27 Understanding Self-Doubt16:02 The Journey of Forgiveness19:11 Self-Responsibility and Personal Growth21:40 The Importance of Leadership in Self-Doubt24:24 Navigating the Void of Change27:10 The Process of Scaling a Business30:06 Finding Peace in the JourneyKeywordsself-love, consciousness, problem-solving, personal growth, self-doubt, forgiveness, leadership, business coaching, emotional intelligence, aliveness