NEW WORLD WOMEN: Voices of Wisdom

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NEW WORLD WOMEN: Voices of Wisdom episodes

July 14 Together We Rise: The 42nd Women and Spirituality Conference with Dawn Morningstar and Jo Abbott
Forty-two years. Thousands of women. One sacred gathering that has never stopped calling women home to themselves.
In this luminous episode of Voices of Wisdom, New World Women co-founder Dawn Morningstar sits down with Jo Abbott — Reiki Master Teacher, Certified Shamanic Reiki and Breathwork Practitioner, Transformational Integration Coach, and Steward of the remarkable 42nd Women and Spirituality Conference — to explore what happens when women gather not just to learn, but to remember.
Jo brings a rare and beautiful combination of gifts to her role: two decades as a social worker and firefighter, a deep personal journey of trauma healing through energy medicine and plant medicine, and a heart wide open to the truth that everyone deserves to be healed in a way that feels safe. She holds the lineage of this 42-year-old conference with both reverence for those who came before and electric excitement for where it is going.
This year's theme — Together We Rise — arrives at precisely the moment it is most needed. In a world where division and pain can create powerlessness and despair, the Women and Spirituality Conference creates a living, breathing experience of a different way of being: where every woman who walks through the doors on opening ceremony morning knows within moments — these are my people. Where the newest seeker and the most seasoned practitioner each carry a gift the other needs. Where the feminine rises — not over anyone, not instead of anyone — but in a way that lovingly, deliberately brings everyone along.
Jo and Dawn also explore the numerology of 42 — reducing to the number six, the symbol of unconditional love, harmony, and the cosmic mother — and why this particular gathering feels like a significant threshold in the conference's long and sacred history.
The 42nd Women and Spirituality Conference takes place September 19–20 at Saint Mary's University in Rochester, Minnesota. Space is limited to 180 attendees. Early bird tickets are available now — for women, men, and all gender identities who are open to hearing and honoring the wisdom of the feminine.
Visit womenandspirituality.org to register and learn more.
We honor the divine feminine, rooted in lived experience, by amplifying women's wisdom and cultivating our sacred community.

Women and Spirituality Conference’s website: WomenandSpirituality.org
Dawn Morningstar’s websites: NewWorldWomen.com and RadiantFace18.com

Produced by New World Women
New World Women co-founders Dawn Morningstar (founder of Venerable Women) and Shawn Vougeot (founder of Empowering Women) have created a loving and respectful haven for spiritually-embodied women to remember their power, reclaim their worth and rise together.
Support New World Women’s mission to empower women by shopping at Birdi - an all-women-vendor marketplace.
27 min
June 23 SoulFire Sisters S2-Ep12: The Return of the Wise Woman: Reclaiming Ancient Power in Modern Times with Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar
She has always been here. feared and burned and silenced and dismissed — and she is rising. And she is you.
In this luminous, landmark season finale of SoulFire Sisters, Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar bring twelve episodes of sacred conversation home to their breathtaking conclusion: the return of the Wise Woman. The keeper of plant medicine, the midwife, the death walker, the healer, the one who holds the community's memory. The woman who was not suppressed because she was dangerous in a harmful way — but because she was powerful in a way that could not be controlled.
She didn't need a building to practice in. She didn't need an institution to authorize her. She didn't need anyone to interpret the sacred on her behalf. Her knowledge came from the earth, from lineage, from direct relationship with the unseen world. And that kind of authority — unmediated, ungovernable — was the greatest possible threat to systems built on control.
Mary traces the history with unflinching clarity: the witch trials were never about witchcraft. They were about land, autonomy, and women who knew things and could not be made to unknow them. Millions of healers, midwives, and herbalists — the keepers of community wisdom — were silenced. But here is what Dawn reminds us with absolute certainty: the knowing was never destroyed. It lives in the earth, in the plants and the stones, in the cycles of the moon. It lives in the body of every woman who has ever felt something she couldn't explain — and knew it was real. It was driven underground. And now it is coming back up.
Through SoulFire Sisters. Through you.
Mary and Dawn close the season not with a weekly practice, but with a blessing — a full transmission for the Wise Woman who has been present in every single one of these twelve conversations, whether she was named or not. A woman who guides from her soul rather than a template. Who holds the container when everything falls apart. Who refuses to stop believing that the world can be different.
Remember. Reclaim. Rise.
This season's final SoulFire Spark is not a task. It is a question — one to write somewhere you will see it every single day, in every crossroads moment, in every moment you are tempted to play small or stay quiet or give when you really need to receive:
What would the wise woman in me do?
Ask her. She will answer. She has been waiting to be consulted.
You were not born to play small in somebody else's story. You were born to author a new one. And Season 3 is coming. 🔥

Dr. Mary Newstrom’s website: ZenithHigh.com
Dawn Morningstar’s websites: NewWorldWomen.com and RadiantFace18.com
Produced by New World Women
New World Women co-founders Dawn Morningstar (founder of Venerable Women) and Shawn Vougeot (founder of Empowering Women) have created a global sisterhood and sanctuary for women to remember their power, reclaim their worth and rise up… together.
Support New World Women’s mission to empower women around the world by shopping at Birdi - an all-women-vendor marketplace.
23 min
June 16 SoulFire Sisters S2-Ep11: The Sacred Art of Receiving: Why Women Are Better at Giving Than Getting with Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar
You cannot pour from an empty vessel. But a woman who knows how to receive? She is never empty. She is part of the flow — and the flow never runs out.
In this luminous, gently revolutionary episode of SoulFire Sisters, Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar turn their attention to one of the most quietly painful patterns in women's lives: the wound of not receiving. Women are extraordinary givers — generous, devoted, tireless. And when the universe tries to give back? We deflect. We minimize. We say oh, it was nothing and don't worry about me and this old thing? — and then wonder, exhausted and depleted, why the flow has stopped.
Here is what Mary and Dawn want you to understand: receiving is not selfish. It is not weakness. It is not indulgence. In earth-based shamanic tradition, reciprocity is sacred law — the universe operates in give and receive, death and rebirth, exhale and inhale. When one side of that exchange is broken, the whole system goes out of sync. Every compliment deflected, every offer of help declined, every gift minimized is a message to the universe: I don't trust the return. I'd rather stay in control.
They trace the receiving wound to its roots — the centuries of cultural conditioning that made giving a woman's identity and receiving feel dangerous, even shameful — and offer both the why and the how of healing it. Mary shares the particular heartbreak she witnesses in talented healers who still hesitate to charge for their gifts. Dawn shares how New World Women made itself vulnerable by asking for help — and how everything shifted when they did.
And they close with the African proverb that says it all: The hand outstretched in giving is also open to receive.
This week's SoulFire Spark is a three-part receiving practice. First: the next time someone offers you a compliment, a gift, or help — just say thank you. That's it. Let it land before you deflect. Second: each morning this week, ask yourself what is already moving toward me? and write down every piece of evidence that you are being supported. Third: do one thing this week that lets someone give to you. Ask for help. Accept an invitation. Let someone pay. And notice what it feels like to say yes.
You were made for both directions. Giving and receiving. Go big.

Dr. Mary Newstrom’s website: ZenithHigh.com
Dawn Morningstar’s websites: NewWorldWomen.com and RadiantFace18.com
Produced by New World Women
New World Women co-founders Dawn Morningstar (founder of Venerable Women) and Shawn Vougeot (founder of Empowering Women) have created a global sisterhood and sanctuary for women to remember their power, reclaim their worth and rise up… together.
Support New World Women’s mission to empower women around the world by shopping at Birdi - an all-women-vendor marketplace.
20 min
June 09 SoulFire Sisters S2-Ep10: Women’s Worth: Letting Go of the Appearance Trap with Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar
Not 10 pounds from now. Not when you finally look the way you think you should. Right now, exactly as you are — you are enough.
In this courageous, tender, and ultimately liberating episode of SoulFire Sisters, Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar go somewhere most podcasts won't: into the heart of the system that has been quietly stealing women's power for generations. They call it the appearance trap — the relentless, culturally engineered message that a woman's worth is tied to the shape of her body, the age of her face, and the degree to which she meets a standard she never got to choose.
And they want to be clear from the start: this is not a beauty episode. This is a spiritual one.
Drawing from earth-based wisdom traditions where elder women and their wrinkles are considered sacred, Mary reframes aging as power — not diminishment. Dawn shares one of the most surprising and personal stories of the season: her time working as a Playboy Bunny at 18, how she earned more than her father at the height of her tenure, and what she said — without hesitation — when a manager told her she was getting too wide in the hips. Mary shares the childhood memory that was seared into her from a Sunday in church — a mother's misguided comment about weight that wasn't even accurate — and how it illuminates exactly how early and how arbitrarily the trap is set.
Together they explore the insidious cost of the appearance trap: the mental energy, the time, the creative power diverted away from building a vision and toward standing in front of a mirror wondering if we're enough. They offer tools for unhooking — energetic cord-cutting, ancestral healing, reclaiming the inner gaze — and close with one of the most tender and radical invitations of the season.
This week's SoulFire Spark: Stand in front of a mirror — just once this week. Instead of looking for what needs to be fixed, say thank you out loud to your body. Your hands, for what they make and hold. Your feet, for carrying you through every day. Your heart, for feeling as deeply as it does. One thing. Out loud. And mean it.
You are not your reflection. You are the life living inside it. And that life is worthy — fully, already, as it is.

Dr. Mary Newstrom’s website: ZenithHigh.com

Dawn Morningstar’s websites: NewWorldWomen.com and RadiantFace18.com

Produced by New World Women
New World Women co-founders Dawn Morningstar (founder of Venerable Women) and Shawn Vougeot (founder of Empowering Women) have created a global sisterhood and sanctuary for women to remember their power, reclaim their worth and rise up… together.
Support New World Women’s mission to empower women around the world by shopping at Birdi - an all-women-vendor marketplace.
27 min
June 02 SoulFire Sisters S2-Ep9: Joy as a Spiritual Practice: Why Fun Is Not Frivolous with Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar
This is your permission slip. Consider it signed, sealed, and delivered.
In this luminous, laughter-filled episode of SoulFire Sisters, Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar make the case — explicitly, joyfully, and without apology — that joy is not a reward you earn after the suffering is done. Joy is not a break from spiritual practice. Joy is spiritual practice. And the sooner we stop treating delight as something frivolous, the sooner we remember what we were actually made for.
Drawing from shamanic wisdom, Dawn's 21 days of silent study with enlightened monks in India (who turned out to be hilariously funny), Dr. Sue Morter's teaching that a beautiful life comes down to being loving, joyful, and playful, and the healing science of laughter — this episode is part permission slip, part love letter, and part gentle revolution.
They get a little righteous about it too, because they should: the conditioning that keeps women from joy is not accidental. A woman full of her own joy is not available to manage everyone else's discomfort. Which means reclaiming joy isn't just good for you — it's a radical act.
Mary reminds us that our spirit guides have a sense of humor. Dawn reminds us that joy is a frequency, not a feeling — something you can cultivate and return to even on the hard days. And together they remind us that chronic seriousness is not depth. It's a stuck frequency. And joy moves stuck energy faster than just about anything else.
This week's SoulFire Spark: Do one thing this week purely because it delights you. Blow bubbles. Dance in your kitchen. Call the friend who makes you snort-laugh. Watch a ridiculous movie. And when that voice shows up — the one that says you should be doing something more productive — say this out loud:
My joy is my medicine.
Because it is.

Dr. Mary Newstrom’s website: ZenithHigh.com
Dawn Morningstar’s websites: NewWorldWomen.com and RadiantFace18.com
Produced by New World Women
New World Women co-founders Dawn Morningstar (founder of Venerable Women) and Shawn Vougeot (founder of Empowering Women) have created a global sisterhood and sanctuary for women to remember their power, reclaim their worth and rise up… together.
Support New World Women’s mission to empower women around the world by shopping at Birdi - an all-women-vendor marketplace.
21 min
May 26 SoulFire Sisters S2-Ep8: Crystals, Stones & Earth Medicine: Why These Ancient Tools Still Work with Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar
You don't need a special collection. You don't need to spend a lot of money. You just need a stone, a little curiosity, and a willingness to remember something your ancestors never forgot.
In this warm, grounding, and genuinely fascinating episode of SoulFire Sisters, Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar explore one of humanity's oldest relationships — the one between us and the living earth beneath our feet. Crystals, stones, and earth medicine aren't fringe practices or "woo-woo" novelties. They're ancient technologies that have persisted through every culture and every attempt to dismiss them, for one very simple reason: they work.
Drawing from Mary's shamanic and animist worldview — in which everything, including stones, carries consciousness and frequency — and Dawn's personal practice of weaving crystals into her home, her work, and even the making of Radiant Face 18, this episode offers both the why and the how of working with earth medicine. They explore the science hiding in plain sight (your phone runs on quartz crystal — think about that), the difference between a tool and a talisman, and why placing a sacred stone on your desk isn't superstition. It's intentional design of your energetic space. It's power within.
They also address the two extremes with characteristic honesty and care: the skeptic who needs proof before feeling, and the believer who thinks a crystal will fix everything. The truth, as always, lives in relationship — the willingness to simply pick up a stone, hold it with curiosity, and begin to notice.
This week's SoulFire Spark: Go outside, or look around wherever you are. Find one stone — ordinary is perfectly fine — that catches your attention. Hold it. Feel it. Ask it, silently or aloud, what it has to offer you. Then notice. Carry it for a few days. Journal what shifts.
You don't need to understand it fully to begin. You just need to be willing to go ancient.

Dr. Mary Newstrom’s website: ZenithHigh.com

Dawn Morningstar’s websites: NewWorldWomen.com and RadiantFace18.com

Produced by New World Women
New World Women co-founders Dawn Morningstar (founder of Venerable Women) and Shawn Vougeot (founder of Empowering Women) have created a global sisterhood and sanctuary for women to remember their power, reclaim their worth and rise up… together.
Support New World Women’s mission to empower women around the world by shopping at Birdi - an all-women-vendor marketplace.
21 min
May 19 SoulFire Sisters S2-Ep7: Rewriting Your Story: Breaking the Spells You Didn’t Know You Were Under with Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar
That voice inside your head — the one that's been with you your whole life — whose voice is it, really?
In this crackle-with-electricity episode of SoulFire Sisters, Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar venture into the invisible architecture that shapes everything: the stories, spells, and self-curses that were handed to us long before we were old enough to question them. And the radical, liberating truth at the heart of this conversation? Most of what you believe about yourself — what you deserve, what's possible for you, who you are — was never really yours to begin with.
Drawing from shamanic wisdom, ancestral healing, and the kind of practical spiritual clarity that actually moves things, Mary and Dawn unpack what a spell really is: words repeated so many times, and absorbed so deeply, that they stop being descriptions and become declarations. You're too sensitive. Women like us don't do things like that. I'm not enough. I'm too much. Said by others first, then handed off to the inner critic to carry forward — becoming load-bearing walls in the architecture of identity.
They go further, tracing how these spells travel through generational lineage, how the very calendar we live inside was designed as an instrument of power, and why some of the most binding stories we carry were never about us at all — they were just the pan that was too short for the loaf.
And then, with characteristic warmth and no-nonsense shamanic wisdom, they offer a way out: a five-minute fire ceremony ritual — something your nervous system can actually feel — to name the spell, speak it aloud, release it to the elements, and plant one true sentence of a new story in its place.
This week's SoulFire Spark: Write down one story that has been binding you. Speak these words out loud: "This was never mine to carry. I release it now. I choose a new story." Then burn it, bury it, dissolve it. Give it back to the earth. And write one sentence — just one — of who you actually are.
Your story was never finished. It was just waiting for you to pick up the pen.

Dr. Mary Newstrom’s website: ZenithHigh.com
Dawn Morningstar’s websites: NewWorldWomen.com and RadiantFace18.com
Produced by New World Women
New World Women co-founders Dawn Morningstar (founder of Venerable Women) and Shawn Vougeot (founder of Empowering Women) have created a global sisterhood and sanctuary for women to remember their power, reclaim their worth and rise up… together.
Support New World Women’s mission to empower women around the world by shopping at Birdi - an all-women-vendor marketplace.
28 min
May 12 SoulFire Sisters S2-Ep6: Into the Shadow: Meeting Your Whole Self with Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar
What if the parts of you that you've spent a lifetime hiding are actually the doorway to your greatest power?
In this tender, brave, and ultimately liberating episode of SoulFire Sisters, Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar venture somewhere most of us have been taught to avoid: the shadow. Not the darkness — the wholeness waiting to be integrated.
Drawing from Carl Jung's foundational concept of the shadow self, Mary's shamanic wisdom, and Dr. Sue Morter's work on the protective personality, the sisters demystify what the shadow actually is — the anger we were told wasn't ladylike, the ambition we learned to shrink, the grief we swallowed, the light we dimmed because shining felt unsafe. These aren't the worst parts of us. They're the hidden parts of us, and there's a profound difference.
They explore the shadow's sneaky ways of showing up — in our triggers, our projections, and in the qualities we admire or resent in others — and why the most irritating person in the room might just be holding up a mirror. They also introduce the concept of the golden shadow: the gifts we've projected onto others because we haven't yet dared to claim them in ourselves.
Dawn shares a deeply vulnerable personal story of a time she used alcohol to manage emotions she couldn't yet face — and the healing that came when she finally let herself feel them. Mary reflects on her own lifelong dance with impatience, and the grace she's learned to offer herself when the shadow shows up uninvited.
This week's SoulFire Spark: write a letter to one quality you've judged or hidden — and end it with four words that could change everything: I'm ready to know you.
Your shadow isn't your enemy. It's the part of you that's still waiting to come home.

Dr. Mary Newstrom’s website: ZenithHigh.com
Dawn Morningstar’s websites: NewWorldWomen.com and RadiantFace18.com
Produced by New World Women
New World Women co-founders Dawn Morningstar (founder of Venerable Women) and Shawn Vougeot (founder of Empowering Women) have created a global sisterhood and sanctuary for women to remember their power, reclaim their worth and rise up… together.
Support New World Women’s mission to empower women around the world by shopping at Birdi - an all-women-vendor marketplace.
31 min
April 28 SoulFire Sisters S2-Ep5: Living In Rhythm: Honoring Your Feminine Cycles with Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar
What if letting go isn't a loss — but the most creative act there is?
In this tender and transformative episode of SoulFire Sisters, Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar explore the sacred, often misunderstood practice of releasing — the old stories, the draining relationships, the version of yourself you've quietly outgrown, the job you've stayed in too long, the wound you've carried so far it started to feel like identity.
And they want you to know right from the start: this is not about pretending things didn't matter. It's not about bypassing grief or rushing your healing. Letting go is holy work. It deserves real attention — and real ceremony.
Drawing from Mary's shamanic wisdom and earth-based spiritual traditions, and Dawn's deeply personal stories of releasing a beloved home, a cherished friendship, and a business identity that no longer fit, this episode offers both the why and the how of release. They explore what gets stuck in the body when we hold on too long, how nature's cycles mirror our own need to shed and renew, and why releasing the old is the very thing that creates space for the new.
This week's SoulFire Spark: a Release Letter — a simple, ten-minute practice of writing to what you're ready to let go of, thanking it for what it taught you, and telling it, gently but clearly: it's time.
You are always in the process of becoming. Trust the letting go. It knows the way.

Dr. Mary Newstrom’s website: ZenithHigh.com
Dawn Morningstar’s websites: NewWorldWomen.com and RadiantFace18.com

Produced by New World Women
New World Women co-founders Dawn Morningstar (founder of Venerable Women) and Shawn Vougeot (founder of Empowering Women) have created a global sisterhood and sanctuary for women to remember their power, reclaim their worth and rise up… together.
Support New World Women’s mission to empower women around the world by shopping at Birdi - an all-women-vendor marketplace.
26 min
April 21 SoulFire Sisters S2-Ep4: The Art of Letting Go: Releasing What No Longer Serves Your Soul with Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar
What if letting go isn't a loss — but the most creative act there is?
In this tender and transformative episode of SoulFire Sisters, Dr. Mary Newstrom and Dawn Morningstar explore the sacred, often misunderstood practice of releasing — the old stories, the draining relationships, the version of yourself you've quietly outgrown, the job you've stayed in too long, the wound you've carried so far it started to feel like identity.
And they want you to know right from the start: this is not about pretending things didn't matter. It's not about bypassing grief or rushing your healing. Letting go is holy work. It deserves real attention — and real ceremony.
Drawing from Mary's shamanic wisdom and earth-based spiritual traditions, and Dawn's deeply personal stories of releasing a beloved home, a cherished friendship, and a business identity that no longer fit, this episode offers both the why and the how of release. They explore what gets stuck in the body when we hold on too long, how nature's cycles mirror our own need to shed and renew, and why releasing the old is the very thing that creates space for the new.
This week's SoulFire Spark: a Release Letter — a simple, ten-minute practice of writing to what you're ready to let go of, thanking it for what it taught you, and telling it, gently but clearly: it's time.
You are always in the process of becoming. Trust the letting go. It knows the way.

Dr. Mary Newstrom’s website: ZenithHigh.com
Dawn Morningstar’s websites: NewWorldWomen.com and RadiantFace18.com

Produced by New World Women
New World Women co-founders Dawn Morningstar (founder of Venerable Women) and Shawn Vougeot (founder of Empowering Women) have created a global sisterhood and sanctuary for women to remember their power, reclaim their worth and rise up… together.
Support New World Women’s mission to empower women around the world by shopping at Birdi - an all-women-vendor marketplace.
30 min