What if being needed has become part of your identity?

Not loved. Not valued. Needed.

The woman who handles everything. Solves everything. Shows up for everyone. The woman who rarely asks for help because somewhere along the way, doing it herself became proof she could be trusted, capable, worthy.

Alyssa Kalebota knows her well.

She spent years living in the go-go-go mentality, building a business, becoming a mother, chasing goals, and carrying more than she needed to. Then life started forcing her to slow down.

A divorce at 27 blew apart one version of her life. Pregnancy challenged another. Motherhood exposed the uncomfortable truth underneath her independence: sometimes “I can handle it” isn't strength. Sometimes it's an identity you don't know how to put down.

So Michelle asks the question sitting underneath the entire conversation:

Who are you if you stop being the woman everyone needs?

Michelle and Alyssa get into independence, mom guilt, achievement, self-worth, asking for support, expectations, relationships, and the strange discomfort of discovering being needed can feel like safety.

Because being capable isn't the same as being responsible for everything.

And being needed isn't the same as being alive.

• When “I can handle it” becomes an identity
• Why slowing down can feel wildly uncomfortable
• The hidden cost of extreme independence
• How divorce can expose a version of yourself you buried
• Mom guilt, asking for support, and letting someone else carry part of the load
• What happens when your goals collide with real life
• The pressure to achieve and the expectations we place on ourselves
• Being needed versus actually being present
• The woman Alyssa is ready to retire, and the parts of her she refuses to lose

THE QUESTION

Follow Hot Mess Magic

Join the Hot Mess Magic Community

https://www.skool.com/hot-mess-magic-1323

Connect with Michelle

IG - @michelleaburke

Connect with Alyssa

IG @personalassistantgrp

Resources Mentioned

THIS EPISODE WAS POWERED BY

Riverside

Hot Mess Magic’s online recording studio

https://riverside.sjv.io/hotmessmagic

Gloci

Glow and Debloat.

https://getgloci.com/MICHELLE-BURKE

Micro Journey

Live Life Vividly

Use code MBURKE for 20% off

https://themicrojourney.com/?ref=mburke

Some links may be affiliate links, meaning HMM may earn a commission if you purchase through them.

What if the breakup isn't what hurts most?

What if the hardest part is realizing how much of yourself disappeared while you were trying to make someone stay?

Jess Hendrick knows the pattern. Confuse chemistry with compatibility. Mistake chaos for connection. Give too much. Become more perfect, more accommodating, more desirable, hoping love will finally feel secure.

Until you have to face an uncomfortable question:

Who did you become trying to be loved?

Jess and Michelle get into the relationship patterns we learn long before dating enters the picture. Childhood dynamics. Perfectionism. Fantasy. Self-abandonment. The familiar pull toward people who activate old wounds.

Because sometimes chemistry feels like fireworks when your nervous system is simply recognizing home.

And sometimes the person pulling away isn't the real problem. The deeper question is why their withdrawal suddenly becomes evidence you aren't enough.

This conversation goes into what happens when you stop looking outside yourself for safety, start recognizing your own patterns, and realize healthy relationships can feel surprisingly unfamiliar.

• Why chemistry can feel powerful while compatibility is nowhere in sight
• How childhood patterns can shape who feels familiar in love
• The connection between perfectionism and trying to earn love
• Why fantasy can make you attached before you truly know someone
• What happens when someone pulls away and your first instinct is to blame yourself
• Why a calmer relationship can initially feel boring
• The uncomfortable moment when you realize you're the common denominator

1:23 The part of heartbreak most people don't talk about

5:23 Chemistry vs. compatibility

12:19 The version of Jess who thought perfection could earn love

18:35 Becoming the common denominator

31:14 When you outsource your safety to a relationship

39:28 Fantasy, dating, and ignoring what your body knows

46:55 Are you afraid of being alone, or meeting yourself?

50:14 The moment Jess stopped pretending

Where have you abandoned yourself in an attempt to make someone stay?

Join the Hot Mess Magic Community

https://www.skool.com/hot-mess-magic-1323

Connect with Michelle

IG - @michelleaburke

Connect with Jess

IG @jesshendrickcoaching/

Resources Mentioned

Jess' Free Relationship Quiz - https://www.jesshendrick.com/

Danielle Laporte's White Hot Truth

THIS EPISODE WAS POWERED BY

Riverside

Hot Mess Magic’s online recording studio

https://riverside.sjv.io/hotmessmagic

Gloci

Glow and Debloat.

https://getgloci.com/MICHELLE-BURKE

Micro Journey

Live Life Vividly

Use code MBURKE for 20% off

https://themicrojourney.com/?ref=mburke

Some links may be affiliate links, meaning HMM may earn a commission if you purchase through them.

What happens when you hand someone else the power to decide what your life looks like?

Trish Ramirez knows money and dragsters.

This drag car racer has spent more than 35 years in the financial industry, helping women understand money, build wealth, and change the way they think about their finances.

But there was a time when Trish knew what she wanted and didn't trust herself enough to fight for it.

She wanted to buy a house.

Someone she trusted told her everything would be fine.

It wasn't.

And years later, she found herself rebuilding her life after divorce and asking a much bigger question than what happened to the house:

Why didn't I trust myself?

In this conversation, Trish and Michelle talk about money, financial independence, relationships, divorce, power, and the stories we're handed about who should manage the money.

Because money isn't just numbers.

It can become tied to your identity.

Your confidence.

Your relationships.

Your sense of safety.

And sometimes, the hardest financial decision isn't deciding what to do with your money.

It's admitting you've been handing your power to someone else.

We also get into the money stories we inherit as children, why even a financial professional can still feel anxious looking at her own numbers, and what happens when losing a job or relationship forces you to question who you thought you were.

And then Trish reveals a part of herself you probably wouldn't expect.

Because the financial advisor sitting across from Michelle isn't the whole story.

Neither of us is.

We're not our job titles. We're not our bank accounts. And we're sure as hell not the roles we've been handed.

So what happens when you finally trust yourself enough to take your power back?

Listen to the conversation.

If something in this episode made you see your own relationship with money differently, share it with someone who needs the conversation.

Follow Hot Mess Magic wherever you listen to podcasts, and join the Hot Mess Magic Community to keep the conversation going.

Because sometimes the money conversation isn't really about money.

It's about who gets to decide.

Connect

Michelle Burke

IG - @michelleaburke

Trish Ramirez

IG - @patricialynnramirez

Website - Ramirez Wealth Management

What happens when the thing you've been using to survive starts becoming the thing that's destroying you?

Joanne Kminsky knows what it means to keep functioning while everything underneath you is falling apart.

She lost her father young. She struggled with grief she didn't know how to process. She found ways to numb it. She kept working. Kept parenting. Kept moving.

From the outside, she was functioning.

Inside, something was very different.

Then one night, something happened with her daughter that forced Joanne to see what she could no longer look away from.

That moment changed the direction of her life.

In this conversation, Joanne and Michelle talk about grief, addiction, parenting, asking for help, and the identities we build around being the person who can handle everything.

They also go somewhere unexpected: into the classroom, the education system, and what happens when the work you once loved becomes a place where you can no longer recognize yourself.

Because sometimes the hardest part isn't knowing that something has to change.

It's admitting that you can't keep doing it this way.

This conversation is for anyone who's functioning on the outside while quietly knowing something has to give.

You don't have to know what comes next to know that this isn't working anymore.

If this conversation hit somewhere a little too close to home, don't just scroll past it join the Hot Mess Magic Community and keep the convo going.

Follow Hot Mess Magic wherever you listen to podcasts, and send this episode to the person who needs to hear it.

Because sometimes the conversation we need most is the one we keep avoiding.

Connect

Michelle - IG @michelleaburke

Joanne - FB @skypereadingtutor

This episode includes discussion of suicide, addiction, grief, and mental health struggles. If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction or mental health, please reach out to a qualified mental health or addiction professional or a local crisis/support service. You don't have to figure it out alone.

You are not the same person you were at 10.

So why are you still wearing the mask you put on back then?

We’re in an eclipse window between the August 12 solar eclipse in Leo and the August 27–28 lunar eclipse in Pisces. And this episode came together while I was walking on the beach, completely different from what I planned to record.

Because maybe that’s the point.

We evolve. We change our minds. We outgrow things. And sometimes the identity that once protected us becomes the identity we can no longer live inside.

The good girl.

The strong one.

The successful one.

The easy one.

The one who keeps it together.

Which one are you still being?

And which one are you done wearing?

This is a beach walk and talk about identity, masks, evolution, and what happens when you finally see the parts of yourself you’ve been hiding.

Drop the facade. Own the mess. Remember who the fuck you are.

Hot Mess Magic is a podcast about the identities we build, the masks we wear, and what happens when we stop pretending.

New episodes every Friday.

The woman you judge might be the woman you understand.

We are quick to decide who someone is based on the role they play.

The stripper.

The executive.

The entrepreneur.

The woman who seems to have it all together.

The woman whose choices don't make sense to us.

But what if the story we've been told isn't the whole story?

In this conversation, Michelle sits down with Morgan Barkus, a former stripper who spent 13 years in the adult entertainment industry before becoming a confidence coach and entrepreneur.

What unfolds is not a conversation about stripping.

It's a conversation about identity, perception, confidence, and the masks we all learn to wear to survive.

Morgan shares what the industry taught her about boundaries, self-worth, rejection, sales, and the power of being seen for more than the role someone assumes you play.

Together, Michelle and Morgan challenge the beliefs we carry about empowerment, judgment, success, and what it means to truly own who you are.

Because sometimes the person we are quickest to judge is the person who has something important to teach us.

• Why the common narrative about women in the adult entertainment industry misses the deeper truth
• What 13 years as a stripper taught Morgan about confidence and resilience
• The surprising connection between stripping, entrepreneurship, and sales
• Why confidence has less to do with appearance and more to do with knowing your worth
• How rejection can become one of your greatest strengths
• Why being seen, heard, and understood is something everyone craves
• The difference between empowerment and simply adapting to survive
• How the roles we play can become mistaken for who we are

This conversation will challenge the assumptions you hold about other people—and maybe the assumptions you've been carrying about yourself.

Because the masks we judge in others are often the same masks we wear ourselves.

Connect

Michelle Burke

• IG - https://www.instagram.com/michelleaburke
• What Identity did you create to survive? - Find out here --> michelle-a-burke.kit.com/themask

Morgan Barkus

• IG - https://www.instagram.com/morganbarkus/
• Join the Club - https://www.morganbarkus.com/confidence-club

If this conversation made you stop and think, subscribe to Hot Mess Magic for honest conversations about identity, authenticity, and the hidden cost of the masks we wear to survive.

Share this episode with someone who's ready to question the stories they've been taught about confidence, success, and what it really means to be seen.

What happens when you stop trusting a part of yourself you once knew was powerful?

In this episode of Hot Mess Magic, Michelle Burke shares a deeply personal story about identity, self-trust, and what happens when we silence a part of ourselves because we’re afraid of how it will be perceived.

Michelle opens up about a chapter of her life she hasn’t talked about publicly in this way before — a time when she questioned herself, walked away from something that had been a major part of her identity, and had to confront what it meant to truly remember who she was.

Because sometimes the hardest thing to reclaim isn’t a dream, a goal, or a relationship.

It’s the parts of ourselves we decided weren’t safe to show.

In this episode, Michelle explores:

• The identities we build and what happens when they become who we are

• Why being judged or misunderstood can cause us to hide parts of ourselves

• The difference between protecting yourself and abandoning yourself

• How your nervous system can keep you safe while also keeping you stuck

• What it means to come back to yourself after losing your way

The question Michelle wants you to sit with:

What part of yourself have you abandoned because somewhere along the way it stopped feeling safe to be seen?

Because maybe the thing you’ve been hiding isn’t the thing that needs to disappear.

Maybe it’s the thing you’re meant to remember.

Join Michelle inside The Remembering — a space to drop the facade and reconnect with who you are underneath the identities, expectations, and stories you’ve carried.

Let’s remember who the fuck we are together. Join Here

There's a specific kind of person who gets hit by a car at 74 miles an hour, breaks most of their body, and thinks — okay, now I can shower and get back to the office.

Not because they're reckless. Because stillness started to feel like failure somewhere along the way. And producing became the only proof they were worth anything.

That's Jess Robbins.

Sixteen surgeries. Divorce. Bankruptcy. Addiction. All of it shoved into a box labeled deal with this later. Then she rebuilt. Got back to the top of a corporate career. Got the supplements and the water bottle and the genuine commitment to do it right this time.

Then she found herself on a cold basement floor, hating everything she'd built.

This is what burnout looks like in high achievers who never learned to stop — not a dramatic collapse, but a quiet, efficient rebuilding of the exact same thing that broke them. Same perfectionism. Same patterns. Same proof-of-worth machinery running in the background, unexamined.

Jess didn't just burn out. She healed like a hustler. And then she burned out again.

If you've ever survived something, rebuilt something, and had a quiet suspicion you rebuilt it wrong, this conversation will name what you already know.

In This Episode You'll Explore

• Why high achievers often rebuild the same cycle after hitting rock bottom
• What it looks like when someone heals with the same energy that burned them out
• Why stillness and rest feel like failure to people wired for production
• How a childhood moment of perfectionism can quietly run an entire adult life
• Why the people who are best at seeing patterns in others are often the last to see their own

Listener CTA

If this episode named something you've been carrying around without a word for it — follow the show so you don't miss what comes next. And if someone in your life would recognize themselves in this conversation, send it to them. Sometimes the most useful thing isn't advice. It's someone finally saying the thing out loud.

Connect with Michelle

Website: https://hotmessmagicemedia.com

Instagram: @michelleaburke

Speaking & Media Inquiries: CLICK HERE

Connect with Jess Robbins

Instagram:

Newsletter CTA

The newsletter is where this conversation keeps going between episodes — the stuff that doesn't fit in a caption and shouldn't. No tips. No hacks. No five steps to anything. Just more of the things people are thinking privately and pretending they're not. If that's your kind of mailing list, get on it at : https://michelle-a-burke.kit.com/hotmessmagic

Questions Answered In This Episode

Why does achieving more not make the feeling of not-enoughness stop?

Why do some people keep rebuilding the same patterns after their lives fall apart?

What does it feel like to be unable to stop even when your body is demanding it?

Why do high-functioning people struggle so much to ask for help?

What is the connection between perfectionism in childhood and burnout in adulthood?

It's the strongest because it does two jobs at once without compromising either. It matches the exact phrasing a person uses when they search this feeling at 11pm, so it's discoverable. And it sounds like Michelle — flat, direct, naming the thing instead of dressing it up. It promises recognition rather than a fix, which is the whole point. The original episode title, The Milestone Felt Like Nothing, is beautiful as the in-show line and works well as a subtitle, but "milestone" is a softer search term than "goal," and leading with the question pulls more curiosity and more search traffic.

You hit the thing. The number, the date, the title, the year you swore would feel like something. And then it came — and you felt almost nothing. A flat, confusing is that it? you didn't dare say out loud, because who feels empty at the thing they wanted?

In this solo episode, Michelle Burke sits inside that exact nothing. One year of Hot Mess Magic — a milestone she assumed would land like fireworks and instead landed like a Tuesday. What she found underneath wasn't gratitude or regret. It was a pattern. The wedding. The house. The job. The number on the scale. Every finish line you were promised would fix something, and quietly didn't.

This isn't about feeling more grateful. It's about the arrival fallacy nobody admits to, the gratitude we all perform for each other in the photo, and the question hiding under every milestone: what were you actually expecting it to fix?

You're not broken. You just believed the story. So did everyone smiling next to you.

Key Topics Covered

The arrival fallacy — why a milestone you ran toward for years can land like an ordinary Tuesday

The shame attached to anticlimax, and why "I felt nothing" gets quietly filed under ungrateful

Performing gratitude you don't actually feel, and the photo-smile everyone keeps up for everyone else

A year reframed as "the residue of not quitting" rather than a triumph — fifty-two arguments with yourself, won by a slim margin

The flatness at the finish line as information: the thing you quietly hired a goal to fix that a goal was never going to fix

CTA

If this put words to something you've been carrying around and not saying — that's the whole reason it exists. Follow Hot Mess Magic so you don't lose the thread. If you've got something real to say, leave a review; the honest ones are the ones worth reading. And if someone in your life smiled in the photo and felt the nothing too, send it to them. They'll know exactly what it's about.

Connect with Michelle

Website: https://hotmessmagicemedia.com

Instagram: @michelleaburke

Speaking & Media Inquiries: CLICK HERE

Newsletter CTA

The newsletter is where this conversation keeps going between episodes — the stuff that doesn't fit in a caption and shouldn't. No tips. No hacks. No five steps to anything. Just more of the things people are thinking privately and pretending they're not. If that's your kind of mailing list, get on it at : https://michelle-a-burke.kit.com/hotmessmagic

Surviving the thing isn't the end of the story. It's the start of a stranger one.

Soodabeh Mokry lived through what most people don't: a brutal attack at a student protest in Iran at nineteen, a coma, war, the loss of her brother, immigration, the discovery that her marriage was over the moment she landed in a new country, and a stretch dark enough that she questioned whether she wanted to keep going at all. Two kids. No map. No language for any of it.

But this conversation isn't really about the things she survived. It's about the question that showed up once she had — the one survivors aren't supposed to say out loud: why am I still here.

Because here's the part nobody warns you about. You make it through. You're supposed to feel saved. Instead you feel confused, flat, alone in a way that doesn't match how dramatic the story sounds when other people tell it back to you. Everyone wants the inspiring version. You're stuck with the actual one — the disorientation of being alive on the other side of something that should have ended you, and having no idea who you're supposed to be now.

You don't need a war to recognize this. Anyone who's come out the far side of a divorce, a loss, a year that took everything, knows the specific loneliness of carrying a story too big for the people around you to hold. Knows what it's like to be called strong when you feel like a stranger to yourself.

Soodabeh and Michelle get into the part the highlight reel skips. The numbness. The guilt of surviving when you're not even sure you wanted to. The exhausting pressure to perform gratitude. And the slow, unglamorous business of being a person again when the person you were is gone.

If you've felt broken, lost, abandoned, or stuck somewhere you can't see your way out of — or if you made it through the worst of it and quietly wondered why you don't feel rescued — this one will sit close.

No advice. No silver lining on a schedule. Just two people naming what's actually there.

Connect

Michelle: @michelleaburke

Show: @hotmessmagic

Soodabeh: @soodabehmokry

Join the Hot Mess Magic community: https://michelle-a-burke.kit.com/hotmessmagic

A 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify is the simplest way to help the right person find this.

This episode includes discussion of suicidal despair and trauma. It's based on personal experience and conversation and is not a substitute for therapy, diagnosis, or professional care. If you're struggling with your mental health or thoughts of self-harm, please reach out to a licensed professional or your local crisis line.