Even Here, Even Now: A Needy Podcast with Mara Glatzel

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

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

I get asked some version of how do you do it all pretty regularly, and I want to pull back the curtain on that today. The honest answer is I don’t. But I do do a lot, and I have spent decades figuring out how to do it without extracting from myself in the process.

Just so you have the full picture: I am co-parenting a seven and ten year old, navigating the end of my 18 year relationship about seven months ago, running my coaching business, serving as a select board member in my town, and wrapping up my tenure as PTA president at the school. It is a full season. And I am doing pretty well, most days, because of a set of micro decisions and practices I want to share with you here.

This episode is for the ambitious humans, the multi-passionate people, the ones who want to be in the mix and who have spent years either burning themselves out doing it or waiting until the conditions are perfect before doing it at all. It is also for the people who have been told the answer is just do less, which has never once felt like a real answer to me either.

We talk about knowing your wheelhouse and why applying yourself to your actual gifts changes everything, prioritizing by desire and necessity instead of by should, the tandem commitment rule and what it means to think about what you need in order to do a thing well before you say yes to it, why tiny joys belong in your life even when you are busy, and the endpoint practice that I am personally recommitting to right now on this very podcast episode.

I also talk about why I do not post podcasts more regularly, what I am doing about it, and why showing up imperfectly is the only way I am going to be in the room for this work long term :)

I am so glad you are here.

xMara

My BEST tools, matched to exactly what you need. Take the [free] needs quiz: needsquiz.com

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Today I have such a treat for us! I am interviewing Tend Alum, Beth Cook, about what it was really like to sign-up for Tend and how her life has shifted this year after deepening her relationship with her needs last fall. 

Beth is the school nurse, a mother of four, and one of my actual real life friends. She said yes to Tend last fall in one of the most tender and broken moments of her life, and she came on the podcast to tell you about it honestly. Not the highlight reel version. The real one.

Her dad died unexpectedly in the summer of 2025. She flew to Ohio to handle his things and came home consumed with grief, panic attacks, and a bone deep feeling of being broken that she did not know how to come out of. She was doing all the motions, showing up for everyone, and completely completely invisible on the inside.

And then she joined Tend.

In this conversation we talk about what it felt like to say yes when she had no idea what Tend could really do for her, but knew she needed something. We talk about how she treated the calls like medical appointments, showed up to early QA sessions not understanding a single question, and kept going anyway. We talk about the moment something clicked. And we talk about what life looks like on the other side: A broken dryer that is not an emergency, a chair by a window with rainbows from a disco ball, and a relationship with her own body that surprised her in ways she never expected.

She ended the conversation with: Don't wait. I would have done this ten years ago if I'd known.

I think you should listen to this one.

If Tend is calling to you, we begin September 27th. Join us here: https://maraglatzel.com/tend/

xMara

My BEST tools, matched to exactly what you need. Take the [free] needs quiz: needsquiz.com

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

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

This is the fifth episode in my burnout series and it is the one where we get to the question I have been building toward.

Okay. So I see myself in the burnout. I see myself in the symptoms. I understand that I have needs that are not being met. Now what?

This is the moment so many of us peter off. Not because we do not care, but because we carry a belief that this is just what life is supposed to look like. That there is a better time coming, a blank page in the calendar, a moment when it will somehow be easier and more convenient to start taking care of ourselves.

I am here to tell you that time is not coming. And waiting for it is its own kind of self-abandonment.

In this episode I talk about what it actually looks like to weave care into the life you have now, not the one you are waiting for. I share a completely ordinary day I had this week, full of select board meetings and couch moving and a movie I had to skip, and what the inner workings of being in right relationship with myself looked like in real time. Not glamorous. Completely real.

I also get into readiness, specifically the kind most of us are waiting for, the hell yes, the whole body yes, the 100% all in. And why in fifteen years of working with humans I have basically never seen that. What I have seen is people who were 51% ready and took the step anyway. Who brought the pouty resistant part of themselves along for the ride and handed her a snack and kept going.

That is what this episode is about. And if you are 51% into doing this work, that is enough.

xMara

My BEST tools, matched to exactly what you need. Take the [free] needs quiz: needsquiz.com

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Here is the hard truth I want to start with: You cannot ask for what you do not understand, and you will not get what you do not ask for. 

So many of us have been trying to get our needs met without knowing what we need or how to ask for it. We treat other people the way we want to be treated and hope they reciprocate. We work harder and hope someone notices. We outsource and hint and wait.

And then we wonder why we are still aching.

In this episode I break down the difference between needs and wants in a way that I hope finally makes it click. A need is the what, the requirement for living well. A want is the how, the preferred strategy for getting that need met. And both are vitally important. We are not putting them in a hierarchy. We are mapping them side by side.

I use scrambled eggs as an example. (And WOEFULLY missed the opportunity to weave in my favorite Runaway Bride moment where Julia Roberts is trying all of the eggs, but you'll get the idea.) Every time we turn toward ourselves in a micro decision, we are gathering data about who we are and what we want. And that data is what eventually gives us the confidence to stay by our own side in the bigger moments.

I also talk about what to do when your preferred strategy is not available, why litigating whether something is really a need is itself a coping mechanism, and why the skill of attuning to other people's needs that so many of us already have is completely transferable to ourselves.

This is where it starts. Not with a big grand plan. With your favorite mug. With sending back the wrong order at a restaurant. With asking yourself once a day what you need and just letting yourself know.

My BEST tools, matched to exactly what you need. Take the [free] needs quiz: needsquiz.com

Send Mara a quick text love note here!

Today want to start with something I need you to hear: Your burnout is not a moral failing. It is not a sign that you should be working harder or that something is fundamentally broken about you. It is what happens when you pour out more energy than you have for long enough that your body starts sending you signals that it is in dire need of tending. And for most of us, when those signals arrive, our first instinct is to hide them and work even harder to cover them up.

That is the cycle I want to break today.

In this episode I get into what burnout actually is at its most basic level, the overextension of your personal resources, and why that definition matters so much. I dive into the wide range of symptoms that might be showing up for you, from snapping at your kids and doom scrolling to forgetfulness and emotional fragility, and why these are not problems to fix but messages to listen to.

I also share one of the most useful tools I have been teaching for a decade: mapping your own personal burnout scale from zero to ten. Because your burn out tells are not the same as mine or anyone else's, and having them written down before you get to a seven or eight can be *exactly* what saves you from GETTING to a seven or an eight in the future. 

The truth is, it is not just doing of things that burns us out. It is also the being with things. The phone call to your doctor that you have been dreading for months. The daily intake of geopolitics and grief streaming through your phone. All of it has an energetic price tag, and yours is different from everyone else's.

You cannot work your way to deserving care. Your worth is inherent and you need tending right now, in this body, in this season. That is what this episode is about.

xMara

My BEST tools, matched to exactly what you need. Take the [free] needs quiz: needsquiz.com

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

My BEST tools, matched to exactly what you need. Take the [free] needs quiz: needsquiz.com

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

My BEST tools, matched to exactly what you need. Take the [free] needs quiz: needsquiz.com

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

My BEST tools, matched to exactly what you need. Take the [free] needs quiz: needsquiz.com

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!

My BEST tools, matched to exactly what you need. Take the [free] needs quiz: needsquiz.com

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

My BEST tools, matched to exactly what you need. Take the [free] needs quiz: needsquiz.com