Five Lemons Laughing

You're out doing the chores again. He's somewhere that is very much not out here helping. And the running commentary in your head has already started: he never notices, he always leaves it for you, and if he would just change this one thing, your life would be so much easier.

You know the spiritual answer. Whatever bothers you out there is showing you something in here. You've read it. You might even believe it. So why does trying to figure out what it's showing you so often end with you judging him AND yourself?

Penny is off enjoying her life, so Amanda, Drusilla, Melissa, and Morgan are getting honest about the people who irritate them most. Mostly the men they love. The ones they share a car, a two-year road trip, and a barn full of horses with.

If you've been trying to stop judging your partner with A Course in Miracles in one hand and a list of his faults in the other, you're in very good company here.

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🍋 LISTEN FOR

🔹 The one word Melissa has been circling around her marriage for months 🔹 Jennifer Hadley's morbid little question that Amanda now asks herself on chore day 🔹 What Morgan realized in the car with her husband 🔹 Why Drusilla says the optimist in the relationship isn't as innocent as she looks 🔹 A children's story that has everyone looking at the person who drives them crazy a little differently 🔹 A yellow fever shot, a blood pressure cuff, and two very long hours 🔹 Morgan's question for every spiritual love bug: when does wishing someone well cross over into trying to fix them?

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🍋 RESOURCES MENTIONED

🔹 A Course in Miracles 🔹 Jennifer Hadley: https://jenniferhadley.com 🔹 The Little Soul and the Sun by Neale Donald Walsch 🔹 Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch 🔹 The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer 🔹 Abraham Hicks 🔹 The Enneagram 🔹 The Buddhist teaching of the two arrows

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🍋 JOIN THE CONVERSATION

🔹 Thinking of sending this to someone who could really use it? Drusilla has one question for you first. 🔹 Tell us in the comments: who's your little light right now? (No names necessary. We know.) 🔹 Subscribe so you never miss a conversation with the Lemonettes

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🍋 Real conversations for women who are exhausted from holding everything together.

🍋 WORK WITH THE LEMONETTES

💛 Amanda (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Drusilla (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Melissa (Business & Marketing Coaching): [email protected] 💛 Morgan (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Penny (Performance Coaching): [email protected]

Your transformation is our greatest joy. 🍋

You did something completely harmless. Wore your hat indoors. Put the trash somewhere that made perfect sense to you. Told the truth instead of smoothing it over. And someone you love reacted like you'd slapped them across the face.

So whose fault is that?

If you can't possibly know every unspoken rule the people around you are living by, how can breaking one be on you? And if it isn't on you, why does it still sting so much?

Amanda, Drusilla, Morgan, and Penny take on one of the stickiest questions on the spiritual path. When you start questioning everything and living by your own agreements, is that sovereignty, or is it just selfishness? There's a husband who turned 50 shades of purple over a bag of trash, a bouquet of flowers that finally got called out after 20 years, and a reality check about who even the most open-hearted among us would actually let into our circle.

If you're a recovering people pleaser, or you've ever wondered where healthy spiritual boundaries end and stubbornness begins, this conversation is for you.

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🍋 RESOURCES MENTIONED

🔹 The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz 🔹 The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton 🔹 The Prayer of St. Francis 🔹 Martin Luther King Jr. on why only light can drive out darkness 🔹 The Al-Anon slogan Penny lives by (you'll hear it)

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🍋 JOIN THE CONVERSATION

What's a rule you were handed as a kid that you've quietly stopped following? And who in your life still lives by it? Come tell us over on YouTube. We read every comment.

🔹 Subscribe so you never miss an episode 🔹 Share this with the friend who's always apologizing for things that aren't her fault

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🍋 WORK WITH THE LEMONETTES

💛 Amanda (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Drusilla (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Melissa (Business & Marketing Coaching): [email protected] 💛 Morgan (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Penny (Performance Coaching): [email protected]

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🍋 Five Lemons Laughing is a podcast about spirituality, personal growth, and authentic storytelling for women who are done playing small.

You keep telling yourself you'll relax once this part is over.

Once the pain eases. Once the house sells. Once the money settles. Once the uncertainty finally lifts and life goes back to normal.

But what if it never does? And what if that's not the problem?

This week, the Lemonettes skip the obstacles they overcame a decade ago and wrapped up in a pretty bow. They talk about the ones they're living in right now. A hip surgery canceled one week out. A young horse who looked straight into Amanda's eyes and asked, "Is this okay?" A life on the road that started out feeling like freedom and slowly began to feel like a cage. A longing for financial freedom that keeps showing up in new disguises.

Inspired by Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle Is the Way and the ancient wisdom of Stoic philosophy, this conversation sits right in the middle of the Serenity Prayer. What can you change, what are you being asked to accept, and how do you tell the difference while it's still happening to you?

No neat answers. No spiritual bypass. Just five women being honest about what's in front of them and asking a different question.

THIS WEEK'S REFLECTION

Instead of asking how quickly you can get past what's in front of you, try sitting with this:

What might this obstacle be asking me to become?

RESOURCES MENTIONED

- The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday - Also by Ryan Holiday: Ego Is the Enemy, Stillness Is the Key, The Daily Stoic - The Serenity Prayer - A Course in Miracles - Abraham Hicks, on learning through contrast - The Two Arrows teaching (the first arrow and the second arrow of suffering) - Wayne Dyer and the Tao Te Ching

WORK WITH THE LEMONETTES

💛 Amanda (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Drusilla (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Melissa (Business & Marketing Coaching): [email protected] 💛 Morgan (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Penny (Performance Coaching): [email protected]

Please consider supporting us by subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing this episode with a friend.

Your transformation is our greatest joy. 🍋💛

You've got a group text you love. A couple of good friends you'd call in a crisis. And you still feel like something's missing.

That's not a flaw in your friendships. It's just that they were never built to hold everything.

Why "having people" and "having your people" aren't the same thing. What changes when you finally stop performing wellness and start being witnessed. And why the hosts built an entire cooperative around one simple idea: come as you are.

This week the Lemonettes get real about spiritual community — what it's actually done for them, what's been missing even in good friend groups, and why they're launching something new to close that gap.

Plus: the first look at She Rises Cooperative, opening September 20th.

JOIN THE WAITLIST SheRisesCooperative.com — get notified the moment doors open Want to facilitate? Email [email protected]

WORK WITH THE LEMONETTES Amanda (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] Drusilla (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] Melissa (Business & Marketing Coaching): [email protected] Morgan (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] Penny (Performance Coaching): [email protected]

Ever done something you knew wasn't totally above board, told yourself it was no big deal, and then gotten the message that said, "can we talk?"

That drop in your stomach. The explanation you start rehearsing before anyone's even asked. The little voice insisting you're a fraud.

Nobody planned this episode. No topic, no outline, no script. Just one of the Lemonettes walking in, sitting down, and coming clean about something she got caught doing… out loud, on the record.

What spills out is the stuff most of us keep swept under the rug. The little secrets that aren't so little. The corner we cut so we don't have to have the uncomfortable conversation. The workaround we build instead of walking straight through the thing that scares us.

And the question none of us is in a hurry to answer: when you feel that terrible, is it because you did something wrong? Or because you got caught?

Believe us, we've all been here. This is the messy, unscripted side of spiritual growth, the part where coming clean turns out to be the whole point.

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🔹 The difference between the thing you did and the way you keep punishing yourself for it 🔹 Why the obstacle you tiptoe around always shows back up, waiting 🔹 What actually happens in your body when you'd rather cut a corner than sit in the discomfort 🔹 How to walk into the hard conversation with no attack, no defense, no shame

We're not handing you the tidy bow on this one. You'll have to press play to find out how it plays out for Penny… and probably for you too.

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And if you see yourself somewhere in this one, that's exactly the point. Come sit with us. Subscribe, take a listen, and if it moves you, pass it to the friend you already call for precisely this kind of conversation.

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ABOUT FIVE LEMONS LAUGHING Five women, zero pretending, a whole lot of laughing. We're the Lemonettes, and we come together every week to look honestly at the stuff most people bury: spirituality, personal growth, and real life, held with warmth and a good chuckle. No spiritual bypass. No easy answers. Just the truth, out loud.

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MENTIONED WITH LOVE IN THIS EPISODE 🔹 A Course in Miracles 🔹 Al-Anon and the 12 steps 🔹 The first arrow and the second arrow 🔹 "Here Comes the Sun" and Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds"

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💛 WORK WITH THE LEMONETTES 💛 Amanda (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Drusilla (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Melissa (Business & Marketing Coaching): [email protected] 💛 Morgan (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Penny (Performance Coaching): [email protected]

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🔹 New episodes weekly. Subscribe so you don't miss the next confession. 🔹 Already listening? Leave us a comment and tell us the corner you've cut. We won't tell.

You didn't plan to shop tonight.

Then an ad for your favorite brand showed up, a sale you didn't know about, and now you're on their website filling a cart that was empty twenty minutes ago.

In 1955, an economist named Victor Lebow wrote a few sentences that read less like economics and more like a confession. Amanda heard the quote on a podcast and it stopped her cold. It's the whole reason this conversation exists.

The Lemonettes get into the quiet swap so many of us have made without noticing. Reaching for something to buy, to eat, to scroll, to consume, every time that unnamed feeling shows up. The one that keeps you awake some nights. The one you keep trying to fill from the outside.

This gets into retail therapy, the mall parking lot packed on a Sunday morning, the dopamine hit at checkout, and the stranger truth underneath all of it: even spirituality can quietly become one more thing we consume instead of live.

IN THIS EPISODE 🔹 The 1955 quote that reads like a confession 🔹 Why the mall fills up on the Lord's Day 🔹 The illusion of choice, and what Morgan found in "Quit Like a Woman" 🔹 When "checking in with Spirit" quietly becomes checking in with your phone 🔹 The question Drusilla leaves you sitting with at the end

We're not here to tell you to stop buying things (and believe us, we've all tried). This is a conversation about noticing, held between four women who are right in it with you.

So here's the invitation to carry into your week: notice, and gently ask yourself, what am I truly hungry for?

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE 🔹 Victor Lebow's 1955 writing on consumption 🔹 "Quit Like a Woman" by Holly Whitaker 🔹 "Dopamine Nation" by Dr. Anna Lembke 🔹 A Course in Miracles 🔹 Our earlier episode, "The Finger or the Moon"

WORK WITH THE LEMONETTES 💛 Amanda (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Drusilla (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Melissa (Business & Marketing Coaching): [email protected] 💛 Morgan (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Penny (Performance Coaching): [email protected]

CONNECT 🔹 Subscribe so the next conversation finds you 🔹 Share this with the friend who's been quietly filling the same hole

There's a moment you know something isn't working. A conversation that keeps going sideways. A tiredness no amount of coffee touches. A gut feeling you keep talking yourself out of because you've already decided you're right.

Then life stops whispering.

Amanda had been going back and forth with Loki, her horse, for weeks. The pinned ears. The stepping in. The not-so-subtle "no." She noticed all of it (she's good at staying present) and she pushed anyway. Then he bit her. Hard enough to leave a bruise that's still healing.

But the bite isn't the story. It's the punctuation.

This week Amanda, Melissa, and Penny sit with the question underneath the bruise: what if life isn't happening to you, but trying to talk to you? What if the power struggle in your marriage, the exhaustion in your body, the tension with the one you love most are the same quiet nudges Amanda kept overriding in the arena?

They get into the fantasy we project onto the people (and animals) in front of us instead of seeing who's actually there. The fear of connecting hard again after a loss. Knowing when to stand your ground and when to pause. And one line from Melissa that stopped the whole conversation cold: "It should have happened if it did."

If something in your life has been whispering lately, this one's for you.

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IN THIS EPISODE

🔹 Life happening TO you vs. life communicating WITH you 🔹 Why "you're not the boss of me" shows up in marriage, parenting, and a 1,000-pound horse 🔹 The fantasy we project onto our closest relationships instead of seeing what's real 🔹 What the Serenity Prayer has to do with when to speak up and when to be still 🔹 Coming to the people you love with an "empty bucket," and the rabbi's shoes that explain it 🔹 Practicing listening to your intuition when you can't tell the whisper from the ego

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MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

🔹 Wu Wei (the Taoist art of moving with life instead of against it) 🔹 The Serenity Prayer 🔹 The Telepathy Tapes podcast

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WORK WITH THE LEMONETTES

💛 Amanda (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Drusilla (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Melissa (Business & Marketing Coaching): [email protected] 💛 Morgan (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Penny (Performance Coaching): [email protected]

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STAY CONNECTED

If any of this feels familiar, share it with someone who's been ignoring their own whispers. Subscribe so the next conversation finds you, and tell us in the comments: what's been whispering to you lately?

Like • Subscribe • Share

Someone leaves your life, and it feels like they walked out with a piece of you.

A friend drifts. A parent passes. A six-year friendship you always knew wasn't quite right finally comes to an end.

And underneath the missing them, there's a quieter question that's harder to say out loud. Was any of it random? Or was every one of those people always going to find their way to you?

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In Episode 189, all five Lemonettes sit with a single line: nothing is a coincidence. Every soul you meet is written in your destiny to teach you, to heal you, or to love you.

Amanda, Drusilla, Melissa, Morgan, and Penny hold it up against their own lives. The people who stayed. The ones who left. The ones who still take up space in their heads long after the relationship ended. Grief. Estrangement. The friend you keep answering out of guilt. The neighbor you're learning to love while she's suing you.

They lean on A Course in Miracles, Jennifer Hadley's forgiveness work, twelve-step wisdom, and Human Design to ask what a relationship is actually for, and how you know when it's finished with you, or you with it.

🔹 What we tell ourselves someone "gave" us 🔹 Why some people are pure oil and water, on purpose 🔹 The difference between letting go and giving up too soon 🔹 What "there's no getting it wrong" really means for the people you've lost

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If you've ever wondered why someone came into your life, or why they left, this is the conversation for it.

Someone probably just came to mind. Come sit with them for a while, right here alongside us.

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🔹 MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE 🔹 A Course in Miracles (the Manual for Teachers) 🔹 Jennifer Hadley's forgiveness work 🔹 Al-Anon and the twelve steps 🔹 Human Design 🔹 Archangel Michael and cord-cutting

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🍋 THIS WEEK'S INVITATION Think of one person who helped shape your journey. Maybe they taught you something, maybe they healed you, maybe they simply loved you when you needed it most. And maybe, without realizing it, you've been that person for someone else. Tell us who came to mind in the comments.

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🍋 WORK WITH THE LEMONETTES 💛 Amanda (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Drusilla (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Melissa (Business & Marketing Coaching): [email protected] 💛 Morgan (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Penny (Performance Coaching): [email protected]

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🍋 If this one meets you where you are, follow Five Lemons Laughing on YouTube and wherever you listen, and share it with the person who came to mind. Your transformation is our greatest joy.

Back in January, you chose a word.

Maybe you wrote it on a sticky note. Maybe you said it out loud to someone you love. An intention. A promise to yourself about who you meant to become this year.

We're halfway through now. Do you still remember what it was?

And underneath that question is a quieter one: do you remember what it was pointing you toward?

This week the Lemonettes check in on their words of the year, surrender, acceptance, love, empty, and find themselves circling an old Zen story about a finger pointing at the moon. The finger shows you where to look. But the finger is not the moon. And most of us, if we're honest, end up studying the finger. Judging it. Trying to follow it perfectly. Never lifting our eyes to the thing it was pointing at all along.

So what happens when the practice meant to free you becomes one more item on the list? When "I should meditate, I should journal, I should be further along by now" becomes the very thing standing between you and the peace you were reaching for?

We don't tie this one up neatly. But we go somewhere honest about the difference between practicing your life and actually living it.

In this episode:

• A Zen parable about a finger, a moon, and everything we miss
• Why your word of the year keeps chasing you, even when you forget it
• The moment you stop practicing and realize you're already in the game
• Emptiness, zero point, and the awareness underneath every spiritual tool
• Carrying all of it into a busy 9-to-5 life, no monastery required

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Zen parable of the finger pointing to the moon
• A Course in Miracles
• The Bhagavad Gita
• Ho'oponopono and the zero point
• Awareness Watching Awareness by Michael Langford
• Insight Timer

WORK WITH THE LEMONETTES 💛 Amanda (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Drusilla (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Melissa (Business & Marketing Coaching): [email protected] 💛 Morgan (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Penny (Performance Coaching): [email protected]

If this conversation found you at the right time, subscribe and stay close. New episodes every week.

And remember, your transformation is our greatest joy. 💛

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You're halfway through the dishes, or driving a road you've driven a thousand times, and your mind is already three steps ahead. Planning. Solving. Waiting for the part of life that finally feels good.

And while you're waiting, an ordinary morning slips right by, unnoticed.

This week the Lemonettes get into a question that sounds simple until you actually try to live it: what if the extraordinary life you keep chasing was never the point, and the extraordinary presence you bring to an ordinary one is?

It starts light. A sunset on a dog walk. Wind moving through the trees. A hard phone call taken while shuffling through pain. Then it gets honest, when one of the Lemonettes admits she can't relax in her own home. Too big, too many stairs, too much weight. A husband who wants one thing, a wife who wants another, and two years of feeling stuck in the middle.

What follows is a real, unscripted look at what being present actually asks of us, and whether you can long for change and love exactly where you are at the very same time.

You'll hear what it sounds like when "we don't have a choice" quietly turns into "this is what we're choosing."

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🍋 A few things we get into:

🔹 Extraordinary experience vs. extraordinary presence, and why the difference changes everything 🔹 Why "I'll be happy when…" keeps the good life one step out of reach 🔹 What a real estate agent discovers when her hardest client is her own husband 🔹 How being present and still longing for change can live in the same body 🔹 Whether the extraordinary is available even to people with no way out

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🍋 Something to carry with you:

Think back to yesterday. Who were you with? Was there a moment that didn't seem like much at the time, but looking back, you're so glad you didn't let it pass you by?

Let that one linger. That's where this episode lives.

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🍋 If this resonates:

🔹 Subscribe so you don't miss what's next 🔹 Share this with someone who's been holding out for "someday" 🔹 Drop a comment: where did you find the extraordinary hiding in your ordinary this week?

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🍋 WORK WITH THE LEMONETTES

We're all coaches and spiritual counselors, and if you're moving through something tender, you don't have to do it alone.

💛 Amanda (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Drusilla (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Melissa (Business & Marketing Coaching): [email protected] 💛 Morgan (Spiritual Counseling): [email protected] 💛 Penny (Performance Coaching): [email protected]

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🍋 Five Lemons Laughing is a weekly conversation about spirituality, personal growth, and finding the funny in being gloriously human. Pull up a chair. You belong here. 💛