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Some stories don’t explain the world…
 but they help us stay in it.

Today’s episode centers around the story of Anthony Ray Hinton, a man who spent nearly 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit. 💔

This isn’t an episode about justice systems or timelines. It’s about what kept him alive in a place designed to strip everything away.

Friendship that showed up consistently.
 Love that reached where hate once lived.
 And a mind that refused to stay imprisoned.

If you’ve been feeling the weight of what’s happening in the world lately… this episode can help you feel grounded. 

Referenced in this episode or similar Episodes:

• 📖 The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton
• 🎧 SuperSoul Conversations interview with Oprah Winfrey featuring Anthony Ray Hinton 
• 🎙️ Earth Tones Podcast Episode 5 – Faith Behind Bars: 16 Years of Unshakable Strength
• 📜 Psalms 52–53

Themes

Love
 Friendship
 A strong mind

Connect with Host, Ella

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This episode came from a really simple but honest realization I had recently…

I’m not single.
 I’m ALIIIVE! 

The word “single” has been carrying a lot of weight that doesn’t actually belong to it.

For some people, it means something is missing.
 It turns into questions like:

Why are you single?
 Why aren’t you married?
 What’s wrong?

And then on the other side, it swings into this hyper-independent, anti-love energy.. I don’t fully resonate with either.

I wanted to sit down and talk through what this season has actually looked like for me.

After almost 7 years of being a single mom, I’ve had time to really observe life-  my own patterns, relationships around me, and what actually creates stability… especially when kids are involved.

This episode is about:

• redefining what “single” actually means
• the pressure women feel to explain their relationship status
• why I stopped saying I’m single… and started saying I’m alive
• what it means to build a life that already feels full
• how time gives you clarity in what you actually need in a partner
• my ideal man “list” (to God)
• and why I’m willing to wait for alignment instead of settling for “decent”

I also share some perspective around:

• single-parent households in the U.S.
• how common this actually is
• and why bringing someone into your life (and your kids’ life) isn’t something I take lightly

This isn’t about being anti-love, I do want love. I do want marriage. I would love to have more children.

But I’m not living from a place where something is missing while I wait for that. 🫶🏼

Connect with Host, Ella

🎞️ Earth Tones Podcast Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/earthtones.podcast

🎞️ Personal Instagram https://www.instagram.com/earthmamaella

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https://www.tiktok.com/@earthtones.podcast

🎥 YouTube:

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How often do patterns show up before the problem ever does?

Not just online… but in how we move through our lives. What we share. What we normalize. What we stop questioning.

In a digital world, those patterns don’t just stay personal… they become visible and sometimes even traceable.

We’re not called to live in fear but we are called to be aware.

“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise.”
— Ephesians 5:15

“Watch your life and doctrine closely…”
— 1 Timothy 4:16

“The prudent see danger and take refuge…”
— Proverbs 22:3

There’s wisdom in noticing.
 There’s protection in awareness.

In this episode, I talk through:

• the subtle patterns we tend to overlook
• how repetition can quietly reveal more than we realize
• why awareness is not fear—it’s protection
• and how to move with more intention in what we share and how we show up online

I also touch on something I think matters to say out loud-  there’s a difference between sharing meaningful, consented moments (especially in global work or storytelling)…
 and unintentionally creating patterns in everyday life that make us more visible than we realize.

Especially when it comes to our children. Our routines. Our homes.

We don’t need to disappear.
 But we do need to be mindful.

Because what we miss… someone else might not.

🧭 Helpful Resources

If this stirred something in you and you want to go deeper, here are a few places to start:

For digital awareness + safety:

• National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) — resources on online safety for families
• Common Sense Media — guides for social media, kids, and digital boundaries
• Stop.Think.Connect. — simple digital safety practices

Practical things to consider:

• Turn off location tagging on posts (or delay posting)
• Avoid sharing consistent routines in real-time
• Check privacy settings across platforms
• Be mindful of what backgrounds reveal (schools, streets, landmarks)

For spiritual grounding + discernment:

• Revisit Proverbs (wisdom + awareness)
• Sit with Psalm 119 (guidance + alignment)
• Reflect on James 1:5 (asking for wisdom)

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Thank you for your patience with last weeks tech issues! Back with last weeks episode. 

This Easter, we’re not skipping to the celebration. This episode is about the burial.

The grief we avoid. The parts of ourselves we try to move past too quickly.

The resurrection of Jesus wasn’t just a miracle we remember… it’s something we get to experience over and over again. 

What if renewal doesn’t come from escaping the hard parts of our lives… but from facing them honestly?

We also explore what it might look like if the story of Jesus happened today.. how quickly we question, dissect, and dismiss what we don’t understand… and what that reveals about us.

This is an invitation to slow down. A confrontation to look into today’s world. To question and feel. To lay something down. And to begin again! 

Stay until the end for a guided resurrection meditation. ✨ 

Connect with Host, Ella

🎞️ Earth Tones Podcast Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/earthtones.podcast

🎞️ Personal Instagram https://www.instagram.com/earthmamaella

🎬 TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@earthtones.podcast

🎥 YouTube:

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In this 10-minute episode, we gently step into the heart of four sacred traditions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism- not to compare, but to listen.

Through story, reflection, and stillness, this episode explores the shared threads that quietly weave these paths together: devotion, surrender, compassion, and the search for something greater than ourselves.

This is not about agreement.

It’s about presence.

At the end, you’ll be guided into a short meditation.. an invitation to pause, breathe, and sit in the sacred space that exists between us all.

In this episode:

• A gentle introduction to four major faith traditions
• The common threads that unite them
• A reflection on what it means to seek, to surrender, to belong
• A closing inner Garden meditation to ground and connect

🎧 Take a breath.

🤍 Stay for the stillness.

🌍 Share this moment with someone who needs it.

Connect with Host, Ella

🎞️ Earth Tones Podcast Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/earthtones.podcast

🎞️ Personal Instagram https://www.instagram.com/earthmamaella

🎬 TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@earthtones.podcast

🎥 YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@earthtones-podcast

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In this episode, we step back into the early centuries of Christianity, long before institutions, long before polished theology and into the raw, quiet lives of the Egyptian monks known as the Desert Fathers.

After the death of Jesus and the scattering of early believers, faith spread primarily through oral tradition- shared in homes, over meals, and in small, intimate communities. But as Christianity began to grow and shift within society, some believers felt called not toward influence, but toward withdrawal.

Beginning in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD (around 250–400 AD), men and women fled into the deserts of Egypt seeking a deeper, more undistracted relationship with God. These individuals later called the Desert Fathers and Mothers- lived lives marked by silence, prayer, simplicity, and inner transformation.

Figures like Anthony the Great and Pachomius helped shape what would become the foundation of Christian monasticism. Their teachings were not written as formal theology, but passed down through short sayings, stories, and lived example.

This episode explores:

• The historical moment that gave rise to the Desert Fathers
• Why early Christians walked away from society into the wilderness
• The role of silence, solitude, and spiritual discipline
• How their wisdom was preserved through oral tradition
• What their lives reveal about the earliest expressions of the Christian faith
• An invitation to meditate 

This is not just history, it’s an invitation to reconsider what it means to live a quiet, grounded, and intentional spiritual life in a world that is often anything but.

📚 Sources & Further Reading

If you want listeners to go deeper, these are beautiful, credible, and widely respected:

• The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (also called Apophthegmata Patrum)
  → Short, powerful wisdom sayings directly from the Desert Fathers
• The Life of Anthony by Athanasius of Alexandria
  → One of the earliest and most influential accounts of desert monastic life
• The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
  → A very accessible modern translation
• The Lives of the Desert Fathers
  → Narrative-style stories of their lives and practices
• The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers
  → A reflective, modern lens on their wisdom

Connect with Host, Ella

🎞️ Earth Tones Podcast Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/earthtones.podcast

🎞️ Personal Instagram https://www.instagram.com/earthmamaella

🎬 TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@earthtones.podcast

🎥 YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@earthtones-podcast

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In today’s episode, I spend a little more time exploring The Interior Castle by Teresa of Ávila and her beautiful image of the soul as a castle with many rooms. Each room represents a different stage of the spiritual journey, inviting us to move deeper inward toward God.

I gently walk through Teresa’s seven rooms of the castle and pause for reflection, asking where you might see yourself within them right now. Along the way, I also lightly reference the writings of John of the Cross and his idea of the Dark Night of the Soul, exploring how seasons of spiritual dryness may actually be some of the most meaningful parts of the journey.

One image I return to is that our spiritual life is a lot like a landscape. Beautiful landscapes aren’t made only of sunshine. They include storms, fog, quiet valleys, and long seasons of shaping. In the same way, faith often grows through both clarity and mystery.

I also share a personal reflection on how this metaphor can change the way we see others. Instead of closing doors when we don’t see eye to eye, perhaps we can remember that we are all moving through different rooms of the same castle, each on our own path inward.

Toward the end of the episode, I briefly touch on the wisdom of the desert seekers who embraced silence and solitude as part of their spiritual life, reminding us that the journey inward has always been part of the human search for God.

New episodes of Earth Tones release every Earth Tone Tuesday. 🌿

Connect with Host, Ella

🎞️ Earth Tones Podcast Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/earthtones.podcast

🎞️ Personal Instagram https://www.instagram.com/earthmamaella

🎬 TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@earthtones.podcast

🎥 YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@earthtones-podcast

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Many of us know the feeling of spiritual dryness.

We pray, we search, we scroll, we listen to podcasts… and still feel strangely disconnected from ourselves, from our relationships, and from God.

In this episode of Earth Tones, I reflect on a heavy start to the year and the quiet realization that sometimes the problem isn’t that God has gone silent. Sometimes it’s that our world has become too loud.

Looking back nearly 500 years, a Spanish mystic named Teresa of Ávila wrote about the soul’s journey toward God in her book The Interior Castle. Her reflections on prayer, stillness, and the inner life feel surprisingly relevant in a generation shaped by constant digital noise.

Digital boundaries this week have opened unexpected space for reading, reflection, and creativity. 

In this conversation, we explore:

• What spiritual dryness can look like in the modern world

• Why prophets and spiritual leaders often withdrew into wilderness and solitude

• The Physical and Spiritual preparation I’m currently working on

• A gentle visualization of your own interior castle

• Why spiritual growth is like tending a garden 

Sometimes the wisdom we need most was written long before we were born. More on the development of my reading on next weeks episode!

Connect with Host, Ella

🎞️ Earth Tones Podcast Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/earthtones.podcast

🎞️ Personal Instagram https://www.instagram.com/earthmamaella

🎬 TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@earthtones.podcast

🎥 YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@earthtones-podcast

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What do we do when evil looks like it’s flourishing?

Psalm 37 doesn’t ignore that tension. It names it. David admits he has seen the wicked “spreading like a green tree.” Strong. Rooted. Untouchable.

And yet… not permanent.

In this episode, we step into the courtroom of heaven and wrestle with what God’s justice actually means in a world where corruption, deception, and injustice can appear to thrive.

We talk about:

• Why God’s justice makes us uneasy

• The danger of minimizing God’s wrath

• How downplaying sin empties the cross of its meaning

• Why Calvary was necessary, not symbolic

• What this means for believers navigating cultural and spiritual anxiety

If we soften judgment, we soften the seriousness of sin. And if sin is not serious, the cross becomes decorative instead of decisive.

Justice is not loud. It is not rushed. And is not absent.

This is a 13-minute grounding for anyone who has felt unsettled watching the world and quietly wondering where God is in it all. 🤲🏽

📖 Scriptures referenced:

Psalm 37

Micah 6:8

Matthew 25:35–40

📓Book referenced: 

In His Image- Jen Wilkin

Listen. Reflect. And remember.. what flourishes is not always what endures.

Connect with Host, Ella

🎞️ Earth Tones Podcast Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/earthtones.podcast

🎞️ Personal Instagram https://www.instagram.com/earthmamaella

🎬 TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@earthtones.podcast

🎥 YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@earthtones-podcast

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In this episode, I share a personal reflection on how I’ve been encountering God not only through prayer, scripture, or tradition, but through people.

As Ramadan and Lent unfold side by side, I’ve found myself paying attention to the quiet ways faith shows up in conversations, friendships, hospitality, and even moments of discomfort. These sacred seasons invite us to slow down, to notice, and to remember that God often meets us through one another.

This is a story about connection across traditions, about spiritual curiosity, and about learning that sometimes the clearest glimpse of the divine is reflected back through the humanity around us.

Whether you’re observing Ramadan, walking through Lent, exploring your faith, or simply feeling drawn toward something deeper, this conversation is an invitation to look for God in the ordinary moments and the people who cross your path.

In this episode, we explore:

• What Ramadan and Lent have taught me about presence and humility
• How God can reveal Himself through relationships and shared experiences
• Letting go of rigid expectations of faith and embracing curiosity
• Finding sacred meaning in everyday encounters
• The beauty of spiritual rhythms across different traditions
• Learning to see connection as a form of worship

Scriptures referenced: 

Deuteronomy 8: 2-3, 7-10 & Matthew 25: 34-40

Take a breath, settle in, and join me in reflecting on where God might be meeting you right now.

Connect with Host, Ella

🎞️ Earth Tones Podcast Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/earthtones.podcast

🎞️ Personal Instagram https://www.instagram.com/earthmamaella

🎬 TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@earthtones.podcast

🎥 YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@earthtones-podcast