Her Mother Tongue

This episode traces how want eclipses love, why our nervous systems cling to the status quo, and what it looks like to re-center care—personally, politically, and on the block where we actually live.

In this episode

The “want machine” vs. the memory of love

Need as interruption—and why that’s the point

Motherwork as a political ethic (remembering, soothing, staying)

Homeostasis/allostasis 101: why change feels impossible

From dominance to care: reframing “strength”

Micro-rituals for turning your sight inward (bath, breath, boundaries)

Neighborhood resilience: co-ops, block pantries, bees & barter

Five takeaways

Want is loud; need is quiet. Train your attention toward the quiet.

Biology isn’t destiny. Stability bias (homeostasis) explains the resistance—and invites patient, repeated, embodied reps.

Motherwork is governance. Remembering and soothing are political acts.

Care scales locally first. Start with neighbors; build small systems that keep people sane and fed.

Strength ≠ dominance. Try courage with compassion.

If you prefer to read ….

I watched a show last night…

A tiny superhero girl crawls through a man’s brain. I can see the relief.

But isn’t it connected? You’re like, whoa, that is MORBID. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s perfectly normal. That feeling, I mean.

Bear with my ramblings. Normally they churn into something productive. I must have some audacity to think people want to hear anything I say. Is that at the heart of our suffering? Do we deem ourselves unworthy by default? Is that why we seek a God—validation outside of ourselves?

Just questions. That’s what my brain is full of. I won’t ever answer them all, will I? So… do I just chill?

Do people just chill? I shouldn’t even have a phone. I wake up every day expecting to save the whole world from my kitchen table—with the last of my food in the fridge, unsure how I’ll feed my babies next month. I see babies across the world starving, girls walking the streets of LA selling their souls, the man on the corner outside the concert venue. Our position to the right of him—leaving the joy of a concert with full bellies, hand in hand with a lover, laughing with friends—our position is temporary. Life can remind us of our equality in a split second.

A world revolving around power.

A world revolving around money.

A world often devoid of love, full of souls that require it.

So it’s no wonder that when religion is used as escape, it haunts our world. It promises an exit from this pain-body, somewhere to end up when we blow this world to hell.

The world is frustrated.

The women are frustrated.

We’ve been ignored so long.

But we are lovers. We smile at rainbows and the sun shining through the crowds. Lovers trying to love a world that bypasses love because it bypasses feeling. Because a bomb can end it all. Because physical life “doesn’t matter,” because we’re going to Heaven.

When religion forgets embodiment, it becomes isolated, forgetful. Religion is isolated. Religion is forgetful. Religion is not embodied.

And what of non-dualism? It can also become an escape hatch: “We’re all one,” so pain becomes abstract. Any path, Christian, secular, mystical, can drift into bypassing when it refuses to feel. A chance to escape reality. To know that we are all one. So pain is numb. Pain in the body becomes irrelevant. We will POOF into the cosmos. . . ENLIGHTNMENT NOW. Mmmmm, I am cosmic now that these mushrooms have shown me the way out of myself.

Have you ever held an infant in your arms after they ripped through your womb, as your labia pulsed from the pressure, blood clots oozing like jellyfish from your open core? God, cosmos, forever and this moment in your arms? Have you ever held the hand of the dying? Promised them comfort you knew nothing of. That you loved them? Have you lost someone too soon? Your brain repeating the last moment you saw them on loop, psycho torture device.

Our true understanding lies in our blood, our heart, our love (feminine) … “God”, cosmos, intellect (masculine) illuminates this work. So though the pain of facing this world threatens to destroy me I seek to illuminate it.

I will not push aside the pain of this existence. I will not deny the truth of our birth, blood covered and helpless, dead unless for love. Love the body, the milk of a human mother, the pulse of her body sustaining my existence. An offering. One made against wills, against abilities, against desire. We are nothing without The Mother and we have forgotten her.

We have followed a half truth of our existence. We KILL AND FIGHT in the name of a God who is trying to illuminate love. God sent his Son, through woman … God sent us to feel. He gave us this weak body to experience pain. We age and die to show us we are limited. To teach us to give, to offer the dregs of ourselves to another. In small consistent ways we are taught to mute our bodies.

As I woke to the sensations of my living body truth flooded me. I crashed into despair and confusion. Waking up felt like “ruining a good thing,” but my body was screaming a truth I couldn’t come to with my mind, so conditioned I was. Aliveness is messy and merciful; it breaks false order. It forces us into alignment if we choose to listen instead of ignore ourselves.

TODAY’S PRACTICE

Practice (today): Put a hand on your sternum. Inhale for 4, hold 2, exhale for 6—three rounds.

Whisper: be here.

Question: Where am I buying “peace” with self-abandonment? Name one micro-course-correct you’ll make today. I choose presence every second. Some seconds, minutes, hours slip away in mindlessness; and I recorrect.

Blessing: May your honesty gather the right people and release the wrong rooms. Go gently, not quietly.

Until tomorrow, keep your throat chakra open.

A raw meditation on divorce, identity, and learning to meet life without anesthesia. Felicia traces the mapless terrain of choosing herself—moving from control to consent, from dissociation to the honeyed present, and from inherited scripts to a voice that won’t whisper anymore.

Listen for

“The journey home does not have a map”—why control promises safety but charges anxiety

Body-led navigation: letting sensation guide when sight can’t

Radical sobriety as telling the truth without numbing

Thich Nhat Hanh’s sink-and-tea teaching made practical in motherhood

Timestamps

00:00 Intro + HMT ethos

00:21 “Radical Sobriety” begins

01:27 The gut-wrench / dissociation / choosing trust

03:25 Off-grid decision: divorce and walking without GPS

05:27 Clean pain vs. control; consent as freedom

06:08 Thich Nhat Hanh on dishes & presence

07:21 The vow: choosing the next honest inch

07:52 Sign-off

A taste...

“It is the state of radical sobriety to meet life without anesthesia… letting truth turn down the volume on pain.”

“Control says, ‘If I can predict it, I can survive it.’ Consent says, ‘If I can feel it, I can be free.’”

“If home is anywhere, it’s here—in the unguarded now.”

Mentioned

Thich Nhat Hanh on mindful dishwashing (from The Miracle of Mindfulness)

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** Audio quality is not up to par but I had to share this! **

For years I practiced small, beautiful habits; sunlight on my face, moving my body, writing my thoughts, creating each day. I thought they were just ways to cope, but looking back I see they were the map.

In this episode I talk about the undoing, the ripping away of my old life, and the unexpected truth waiting underneath: I wasn’t lost. I had been building myself all along.

This is a story of alignment, daily rituals, and the surprising way we find ourselves; not in grand transformations, but in the quiet consistency of living.

Promised links

Belonging is a deep instinctual need we have as a societal based species, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many of us as children (and adults) choose approval of other humans over authenticity and self trust inside of ourselves.

Once we are aware of this instinct, analysis of our behavior choices become incredible interesting. We have now brought subconscious motives to the surface and can make decisions from a place of intention and consciousness, and this can prove to create beautiful moments of unconditional love and empowerment.

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Authoritative Parenting / Arguably the MOST Effective Parenting Style

Thank you for the kind reviews! We appreciate them so much. Here is how to leave a review for us  on iTunes:⁠⁠⁠Open Find the Magic in the podcast app  ⁠⁠⁠Scroll to the bottom of the page

Have you ever had the experience of when your toddler begins to say “no” to your request? It can be a puzzling experience, if not downright annoying. In this episode we share tips and tools for how to handle these situations in an unruffled way. 

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We hope you enjoy!

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Self-care seems to be a buzzword that gets swept up in consumerism and consequently the real meaning and purpose of self-care gets blurry. In today’s episode, we talk about what self-care really is and how intentionality, mindfulness, and boundaries can help us connect better to ourselves and others.

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We all have times in our lives when we are apprehensive for what will come or even what's happening here and now, maybe we even dread it. In this episode, Katelin talks about the lessons she learned from a meaningful experience she had that can help us all as we encounter welcome and not-so-welcome events in our lives. 

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It seems there is an epidemic of disrespect, whining, tantrums, talking back and in general, less respect than we saw in previous generations of kids. We are burned out as parents and we don't see a way out. This ends in being ultra strict or ultra passive because we just feel burnt out.

In this episode Felica talks with Joe Newman about mutual recognition. This is the practice of back and forth respect that we should see to establish in our homes for a peaceful environment. Oftentimes the balance is shifted in favor of respecting our children but is not returned. There is a place in the middle where we can create a mutually respectful relationship with our kids.

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Remember to sign up here for our weekly newsletter where we send our favorite books, resources & parenting tips each week! 

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