Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Hey friend, welcome back to Even Here, Even Now.

This episode is part of a burnout series I am doing this month, so queue it up and STAY TUNED for the end of the episode where I give you some of the daily practices I use each and every day to tend my own radiant aliveness. 

The big vision is this: the whole holy point of being alive is to live your life as the most radiantly alive version of you possible. Not the most productive. Not the most impressive. The most alive.

And for so many of us, that vision feels completely out of reach because we inherited a lie that says a good life is earned. That we get our aliveness after the to-do list is done, after the kids are grown, after we have somehow proven that we deserve it.

In this episode I get into where that lie comes from, what it actually costs us, and why waiting to love yourself before you start taking care of yourself is a trap I stayed in for a very long time. I share the framework I have been teaching for fifteen years: that radical self-responsibility leads to responsive self-care, which builds self-trust, which blossoms into self-love. In that order. Not the other way around.

I also share the Pleasantville metaphor that I keep coming back to for my own life, what it means to be a living breathing ecosystem rather than a productivity machine, and the one core practice that anchors everything I teach: the daily check-in.

On a scale from parched to drenched, how are you right now? That vital data is exactly where we must start.

xMara

Feeling a little crispy? Join me for WET: Water Yourself First. WET is a virtual retreat weekend August 28 - 30 for the over-givers and everyone-else-first humans who are ready to stop running on empty: part burnout workshop, part slumber party, all for you. Grab your spot for $44 at maraglatzel.com/WET

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Hey friend, welcome back to Even Here, Even Now.

I have been trying to record this episode for months. I kept circling it, flirting with it, putting it down, picking it back up. And I am finally here.

This is a burnout episode, but not the kind where I hand you a list of things to try. This is the real story of how I got so burnt out I could barely be visible online for two years, what happened when my 17-year relationship ended this spring and the bottom dropped out in a way I did not see coming, and what the long, unglamorous, deeply personal process of coming back to life has actually looked like for me.

I share things in this episode that I have not shared publicly before. About what I was doing all those years trying to make myself safe in relationship. About cracking a rib from coughing and spending weeks in the bathtub and asking myself over and over, am I willing to be here? Am I willing to be who I am? Even here? Even now?

I also share what I have come to understand about burnout at its most foundational level. Because underneath the tools and the practices and the saved reels and the books you have read, there are dominant messages running the show. And until you know what yours are, all the tools in the world are only going to get you so far.

This is the episode I needed to make. I hope it is the one you needed to hear.

xMara

Feeling a little crispy? Join me for WET: Water Yourself First. WET is a virtual retreat weekend August 28 - 30 for the over-givers and everyone-else-first humans who are ready to stop running on empty: part burnout workshop, part slumber party, all for you. Grab your spot for $44 at maraglatzel.com/WET

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Welcome back to Even Here, Even Now! 

I have been wanting to have this conversation for a while, and I am so glad Sammie Fleming finally made it onto the podcast. She tuned in from her beachside town in New Zealand, which meant we were on opposite ends of the world, me absolutely dripping sweat and her wrapped up against the cold with multiple coffees. 

Sammie is a coach for devoted space holders who are here to do deeply integrity-filled work in the world and want to do it with their whole heart. Over the past decade she has guided more than 1200 clients and facilitated hundreds of sacred circles, workshops, and retreats around the world. Her work is about helping space holders cultivate grounded confidence and rise into the next evolution of their soul work in full alignment with their values.

Our conversation was organic in the most wonderful way. We began with the very real and unglamorous reality of meeting your needs when you have small children and a full business and broken sleep, and what it looks like when the big stretch is carving out seven minutes to lie on the floor of your office and listen to a song before going back inside to your family.

And then we got into the tension between a big life and a soft life. Can those things can coexist?! What does it means to swap the word "or" for "and" and let both things be true at the same time? Sammie's answer is pancake mornings and big stretchy projects. Long slow Sundays and the call that will not leave you alone.

We also talk what ambition actually is when you strip away what you were taught to want, how finding your thing completely changes your relationship to excellence, divine responsibility and what it means to be brave enough to follow the call even when it makes no logical sense, and what the next five years might look like when there is finally a little more breathing room.

If Sammie's work is calling to you, her program Gather is open right now through July. It is a 12-month journey for devoted space holders who want to build extraordinary space holding practices and become extraordinary practitioners. You can find out more at sammiefleming.com/gather.

xMara

Feeling a little crispy? Join me for WET: Water Yourself First. WET is a virtual retreat weekend August 28 - 30 for the over-givers and everyone-else-first humans who are ready to stop running on empty: part burnout workshop, part slumber party, all for you. Grab your spot for $44 at maraglatzel.com/WET

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

I am thrilled that today Carmen Spagnola is BACK on the podcast.

(If you have not listened to it yet, last time we were talking about how to cultivate a small and delicious life in the face of collapse, how to sit with needs that cannot be met, and how to find hope and feel despair at the same time. It is a good one. Find it here!)

This time we went deeper into the actual mechanics of connection, and specifically into Carmen's new book How to Connect and the framework at the heart of it: Contact nutrition.

Contact nutrition is the how of secure attachment. The five physical, mammalian things we do that make another person feel seen and safe: kind eyes, vocal prosody (real emotional warmth in your voice), safe touch, shared rhythm, and ingestion behaviors like eating and drinking together. These are the micro-moments that either connect us or create distance.

During this episode, Carmen and I talk about why these connective behaviors can be difficult to access in a culture shaped by oppression and chronic stress. We talk about how to figure out which of the five your own nervous system is most hungry for. We get into casting a wider net for getting your needs met, including why I love my Zumba crew for weekly contact nutrition!

This powerful thing about the framework of contact nutrition in my experience is that it gave me language for something I had been quietly judging myself for needing.

But, you, like me, are not too needy. You are under-nourished. There is a difference, and this episode is going to help you feel into it.

About Carmen Spagnola

Carmen Spagnola is a somatic practitioner, attachment educator, clinical hypnotherapist, and an outspoken feminist witch. She teaches about attachment, contact nutrition, power dynamics, animism, folk magic, ritual, and ancestral knowledge related to land and seasons. 

Carmen's new book How to Connect: Build Strong Bonds and Deep Connections Through Contact Nutrition comes out November 4th, 2026 from 9th House Press. Pre-order it now at carmenspagnola.com. Pre-orders matter enormously for small independent publishers and this book is worth it!

Feeling a little crispy? Join meWET: Water Yourself First. WET is a virtual retreat weekend August 28 - 30 for the over-givers and everyone-else-first humans who are ready to stop running on empty: part burnout workshop, part slumber party, all for you. Grab your spot for $44 at maraglatzel.com/WET

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Hey friend, welcome back to Even Here, Even Now.

I am absolutely stoked to be joined today by tarot extraordinary and all around fabulous human, Lindsay Mack!

Lindsay Mack (she/they) is an intuitive Tarot teacher, writer, death doula, and founder of Tarot for the Wild Soul, as well as the host of the popular podcast of the same name, which has been downloaded over 11 million times. Through their beloved workshops, retreats, and online Tarot courses, Lindsay has had the profound honor of teaching Soul Tarot to many tens of thousands of students from all around the world. Their first book, Tarot for the Wild Soul, and Tarot deck, The Soul Tarot Deck illustrated by Chelsea Granger will be released by Running Press on May 19th, 2026.

I came to this conversation as someone who has had a complicated relationship with tarot, always reaching for it looking for a way out of the present moment rather than a way to deepen into it, and Lindsay completely cracked that open for me.

We talk about what it actually looks like to use your deck as a tool for being with what is, not escaping it. We get into why so many of us believe we have to be spiritually prepared or emotionally cleaned up before we can access support and why that is not true and where that belief actually comes from. We talk about the nine of wands, bespoke nourishment, Little House on the Prairie reruns as medicine, and the idea that the mess is not something to get through before the real work begins. The mess is the medicine.

Lindsay left us something we can ALL keep coming back to. You do not have to perform to access support. You can show up exactly as you are.

Pre-order Tarot for the Wild Soul and The Soul Tarot Deck here. Find Lindsay's instagram here for book tour dates!

xMara

Feeling a little crispy? Join meWET: Water Yourself First. WET is a virtual retreat weekend August 28 - 30 for the over-givers and everyone-else-first humans who are ready to stop running on empty: part burnout workshop, part slumber party, all for you. Grab your spot for $44 at maraglatzel.com/WET

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Hey friend, welcome back to Even Here, Even Now.

I have been talking to clients all week. I have been hearing from friends. And I know that so many of us are in it right now.

And I also know that when things get hard, most of us decide that our needs are the thing we can most afford to put on hold. We tell ourselves we will get back to ourselves when the to-do list is cleared, when things settle, when it gets easier. We tell ourselves we are fine.

This episode is a little bit of tough love about that pattern and a lot of real, honest support for what it actually looks like to tend to yourself when everything is hard.

I talk about why sitting in uncertainty is a skill we have to practice and how most of us have been using doing as a strategy to avoid feeling. I share the story of telling my nine-year-old she could bring her bad mood to the library, and what that has to do with you. And I get into the actual, practical, human-sized ways to show up for your most foundational needs when you are running on empty.

Not a four course meal. Not a complete overhaul. Scrambled eggs. A glass of water. Putting yourself in the room.

You are allowed to feel everything you are feeling and still show up for yourself. Those two things can be true at the same time. That is what we are talking about today.

I am so glad you are here.

xMara

Episode Timestamps: 

00:00 Why hard times are the exact moment we abandon ourselves most 

02:21 The pattern of putting your needs on the other side of something more important 

04:49 Using doing as a strategy to avoid the discomfort of feeling 

06:58 Burnout, uncertainty, and why this skill matters so much right now 

09:21 What happens in your body when your mental body exits the building 

11:24 Coming back into your body: one step forward, just one 

13:48 You are allowed to make mistakes and not have all the answers 

16:21 Bring your bad mood to the library (a story about my daughter and also about you) 

20:34 What tending to discomfort actually looks like in practice 

25:18 Getting clear on what can be cleared away during a hard time 

27:41 Human-sizing your expectations of yourself when the world is a lot

Feeling a little crispy? Join meWET: Water Yourself First. WET is a virtual retreat weekend August 28 - 30 for the over-givers and everyone-else-first humans who are ready to stop running on empty: part burnout workshop, part slumber party, all for you. Grab your spot for $44 at maraglatzel.com/WET

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Hey friend.

This is the last public Daily Touch. After today these recordings are moving inside Tend, my 12-week group coaching program, where they will be waiting for you every week alongside calls, community, and my full support.

But I wanted to go out with something real.

Because here is what I notice. So many of us go around all day saying we want things. We want to feel different. We want to feel better. We want this to be easier. And then we talk about it with our friends, we listen to podcasts about it, we think about it into oblivion. And we tell ourselves that counts. That we are doing something.

I love you and it does not count.

Thinking about something is not the same as doing something. And I know that feels harsh but I also know that you already know this, which is probably why you are here.

This Daily Touch is a tough love conversation about the gap between the life you say you want and the one tiny, unsexy, undramatic step you are actually willing to take in that direction today. Not a 37 point plan. Not a complete overhaul. One thing. Something small and doable and real.

You are going to spend the energy either way. What if just a tiny dose of it went somewhere different?

If you want to keep going, come inside Tend. The Spring cohort is enrolling now and doors close Sunday March 29th. I would love to have you: maraglatzel.com/tend

See you on the other side.

xMara

Feeling a little crispy? Join meWET: Water Yourself First. WET is a virtual retreat weekend August 28 - 30 for the over-givers and everyone-else-first humans who are ready to stop running on empty: part burnout workshop, part slumber party, all for you. Grab your spot for $44 at maraglatzel.com/WET

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Welcome back to the Daily Touch.

I am going to tell you something that most people in my position would not say.

When you start saying the true things, when you stop micromanaging everyone's perception of you, when you stop making yourself as easy as possible to love, things might fall apart. Some of them might... and I am not going to shellac over that.

But here is what I know. If you have been routinely abandoning yourself in order to keep the peace and hold it all together, you do not have a steady foundation to fall back on when life gets hard. And life will get hard.

The relationship you have with yourself is the only one you take with you everywhere, into every conversation, every board meeting, every relationship, from the day you are born until the day you die. It is your most longstanding relationship. And most of us are taking it completely for granted.

That is what this Daily Touch is about. Building something inside yourself that nobody can take away. Even when the walls come down.

If you want help building that, that is exactly what we do inside Tend. Doors close Sunday March 29th: maraglatzel.com/tend

Feeling a little crispy? Join meWET: Water Yourself First. WET is a virtual retreat weekend August 28 - 30 for the over-givers and everyone-else-first humans who are ready to stop running on empty: part burnout workshop, part slumber party, all for you. Grab your spot for $44 at maraglatzel.com/WET

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Hey friend, welcome back to the Daily Touch.

Today we are talking about readiness.

Specifically, the version of readiness most of us are waiting for. The hell yes. The moment when every single part of you is on board, confident, prepared, and certain. The moment when you finally feel ready.

Here is what I know after fifteen years of working with clients through every kind of transition imaginable. That moment does not exist. I have never once seen it. What I have seen is people who are scared and uncertain and still take the step anyway.

So if you have been hovering, waiting for the perfect sign that you are ready, this one is for you.

51% is enough. An ounce more in the camp of yes than no. That is workable. That is enough to begin.

If this is landing and you are sitting at 51% wondering about Tend, doors close Sunday March 29th. Join us here!

xMara

Feeling a little crispy? Join meWET: Water Yourself First. WET is a virtual retreat weekend August 28 - 30 for the over-givers and everyone-else-first humans who are ready to stop running on empty: part burnout workshop, part slumber party, all for you. Grab your spot for $44 at maraglatzel.com/WET

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Hey friend, welcome to something new.

The Daily Touch is a short audio transmission I created for Tend, my 12-week group coaching program, and I am sharing it here because I think you need it too.

If you are so burnt out that you cannot even ask yourself what you need, this one is for you. If you have been telling yourself you are too far gone, too exhausted, too behind to start, this one is for you. If you have been waiting for the perfect moment to finally get back to yourself, this one is especially for you.

Because here is what I know. There will always be something to put your care on the other side of. The road to your radiant aliveness is not paved by one massive overhaul. It is paved by one small, doable thing. And then another. And then another.

So that is your dare today. One thing. Under ten minutes. That is it.

If this resonates and you want more of this kind of support, the doors to Tend are open through March 29th. Come do this work with me: maraglatzel.com/tend

xxMara

Feeling a little crispy? Join meWET: Water Yourself First. WET is a virtual retreat weekend August 28 - 30 for the over-givers and everyone-else-first humans who are ready to stop running on empty: part burnout workshop, part slumber party, all for you. Grab your spot for $44 at maraglatzel.com/WET