Radically Alive Women

What if the thing keeping you small isn’t a lack of courage, but shame you don’t even notice?

In this special episode, Millicent Haughey turns the microphone around and asks Julia Neumann about the upcoming RAW Immersion, Fiercely You: A Togethering in Sovereignty — three days, from Thursday evening 26 November to Sunday evening 29 November, near Motueka.

It opens with a cheeky sketch voicing every reason not to come: the price, the small-town exposure, being “tired of sitting around with women”. Then Millicent remembers her first immersion, when she was told to run until her fear was out of her system.

From there, they go to the core: shame as a prison and the doorway beyond it; why the immersion is not a method; how a mycelium of women keeps growing between immersions; anger as the first door into all feelings; and who we become when we let our “crazy” be seen. Julia also speaks honestly about grief, perimenopause and a quieter, chosen aliveness.

“Why not play full out as women together? Why not be gentle with each other? Why not be fierce with each other?”

Register for Fiercely You

Find out more: radicallyalivewomen.com

Content note: this episode includes mentions of grief and the death of parents.

* Love these conversations? Support our mission with a one-time gift at radicallyalivewomen.com/invest or monthly membership at radicallyalivewomen.com/edgecast/membership-sign-up. Follow + rate us to help others discover them—your support keeps this work alive. Thank you!*

What becomes possible when you burn the schedule and choose the most meaningful way instead of the fastest?

Canadian filmmaker Dianne Whelan set out to walk the Trans Canada Trail in 500 days. It took her 1,862. Walking, cycling and paddling 24,000 kilometres over six years, she became the first person to complete the whole trail over land and water. Her film 500 Days in the Wild is now touring Aotearoa.

With Julia Neumann, Dianne talks about the difference between history, which runs in a line, and herstory, which moves in a circle. She tells the story of an eagle feather that travelled the whole journey before returning home. She shares the two-eyed way of seeing, which brings science and Indigenous knowledge together. And she speaks about fear: how it grows when we feed it, how it fades when we stop, and why panic, not fear, is what puts us in danger. Her practice for the moments when fear rises was given to her by a Mi’kmaq Grand Chief: the water is sacred, the earth is sacred.

It’s a conversation about reverence, kindness and remembering that humans are only 0.01% of life on Earth.

“It isn’t about the fastest way. It’s about finding the most meaningful way.”

Watch 500 Days in the Wild: 500daysinthewild.com. Can’t find a screening near you? Ask your local cinema to show it.

Content note: includes mentions of death in the wilderness and fear of violence.

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What becomes possible when women who have survived sexual abuse are held fully, and invited to go all the way through what they have carried for decades?

Renee Alleyne, psychodramatist and transformational coach, and Patricia McGee, transformational spaceholder, return to the Edgecast to speak about Living Fully: a three-and-a-half-day group for women healing from sexual trauma, inspired by Marion Hammond’s Freedom to Fly groups and now woven together with feelings work from Possibility Management.

With Julia Neumann, they share what they witnessed in their latest group: women breaking decades of silence, rage holds that open into grief, and shame taken apart brick by brick on the stage. They describe a spontaneous “blood transfusion” in which a woman who arrived full of venom received the blood of a queen. They speak about why trust has to come before anger, how dissociation can be met rather than feared, and how psychodrama’s surplus reality lets a weeping willow, a cat or a song bring in what was missing at the moment of harm.

A conversation about courage, women’s love for each other, and the possibility that no trauma is too big to heal.

“If you bring out what is within you, it brings you to life. If you do not bring it out, it will destroy you." Gnostic quote

The team around Renee Alleyne and Patricia McGee includes Ali Watersong, a psychodramatist, co-leader and song bird. Jocie Weka is a gentle but strong Wahine toa, and Ellen Appelton is the newest member of the team who also nurtures the women's physical bodies with delicious food.

Living Fully groups are open to women funded through ACC and to private participants. Upcoming dates: http://reneealleyne.co.nz/

Listen to our first episode with Renee Alleyne and Patricia McGee "A force to be reckoned with" here.

Content note: this episode discusses sexual abuse, violence and trauma.

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What if our darkest experiences are not something to clear away, but medicine waiting to be digested?

In this episode of the RAW Edgecast, Julia Neumann sits with Tia Healey-Jellick, an embodied movement facilitator, somatic dance teacher, rongoā Māori practitioner, mother of four and grandmother of two, to talk about embracing the shadow as a path to feminine power.

Tia is in the fires of midlife change, where every hot flush burns away another story she no longer needs. She shares how years of dancing her rage, grief and despair behind locked doors turned her body into a map of lit pathways, which she now offers to others as medicine. She speaks fiercely against love-and-light spirituality, and just as fiercely against careless shadow work. She talks about why integration takes time, and what it's like to come home as a different-shaped piece of the family jigsaw.

Together, Julia and Tia explore what it means to stop pushing in a culture that only values women who are visible, productive and "big". They close with one simple truth to let settle into your body.

In this conversation

About Tia

🔗 www.nativehealingherbals.co.nz

Mentioned

Content note

Love these conversations? Support our mission with a one-time gift at radicallyalivewomen.com/invest or monthly membership at radicallyalivewomen.com/edgecast-membership-sign-up. Follow + rate us to help others discover them—your support keeps this work alive. Thank you!

www.radicallyalivewomen.com

In this RAW Voices episode, Debra Hall reads her poem "Sheela Na Gig Speaks" — an invocation of the ancient carved figure found across old church walls, and what she represents for women reclaiming their wildness after 5,000 years of being shaped into someone smaller.

Debra traces Sheela Na Gig as storm, mountain, and threshold all at once — a figure who "speaks" without words, stirring something ancestral back to life. It's a call to step past shame and perfectionism, and into the raw, unclaimed edge of yourself.

For more information:

Moon Time is a poem by Debra Hall.

Debra Hall is an artist-poet with a degree in English and Inter-Arts, specialising in using creative and expressive arts therapeutically. She has taught creative writing and Batik making as a community arts tutor and completed facilitator’s training with Survivor’s Poetry Scotland.

Debra lives in a beautiful glen in South West Scotland.

Find Radically Alive Women - our November Immersion, other Togetherings and events here: www.radicallyalivewomen.com/events

Iona Conner was 79 at the time of this conversation. Today she counts almost 81 years, and she is nowhere near done. Iona’s life long mission is consumer liberation. An environmental activist for more than 58 years — air pollution inspector, former nurse, nonprofit founder, and publisher of her own climate change newspaper reaching readers across America and Africa — Iona joins this Edgecast after letting her dragon speak in a RAW workshop with Julia: "I'm an elder, and I want to share what I've got with younger women.”

What unfolds is a conversation about what it actually means to become an elder, not just grow old. Iona talks about her love for trees ("it's the trees who hold my heart most tenderly"), her motto — "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" — and her slow, deliberate leaving of patriarchy after a lifetime of being, in her words, a rebel who couldn't be raised easy.

* Love these conversations? Support our mission with a one-time gift at radicallyalivewomen.com/invest or monthly membership at radicallyalivewomen.com/edgecast-membership-sign-up/.

Iona will be offering a workshop on 3rd October 2026:

E-Mail Iona: [email protected]

Julia will be holding a Radically Alive Women Immersion in Aotearoa, New Zealand, from 26-29th November 2026.

Clare Dubois is the founder of ⁠⁠treesisters.org, a global women's organisation for reforestation which as of June 2024 had planted more than 28 million trees. Clare left Treesisters in October 2022 with burnout and has since focused on her Healing journey.

In this interview, she shared her personal experience with her recovery and trauma work, and also its relevance for the "bigger picture". With immense Clarity, she shares about the limitations of working with feminine principles in a patriarchal world, the damming of our internal rivers as women, internalised patriarchal values, and the necessity to dismantle our own obstructions to our power. She also speaks of being at source, and of turning towards yourself, of epigenetics, the importance of shadow work, and more.

This Radically Alive Women episode is rich with story through which Clare's Clarity comes through, and packed with her refreshingly clear observations and distinctions.

If you would like to stay connected with Clare's journey, sign up here: https://mailchi.mp/b87605a4ae43/staying-connected

www.radicallyalivewomen.com

In this mystery guest episode, Julia sits down with someone she knows nothing about beforehand, not even the name — and it turns out to be Lindsey Lockett, trauma integration coach, relationship coach, and founder of the women's community Rooted Web.

What unfolds is a conversation about what happens when you stop performing safety and start living from inner truth. Lindsey traces her path from a strict evangelical upbringing in the Texas Bible Belt through a mental health crisis in 2019 that became the doorway into her healing work, to the woman she is now: unapologetically loud, boundaried, and building a women’s community on principles based on the pre-capitalist village commons.

In this episode:

A moment worth sitting with:

About Lindsey:

Lindsey is offering a 10-day audio immersion starting on 8/8/2026 called SOUL BODY. It includes a private podcast of one episode per day for 10 days, a private community Discord server for shared witnessing and language, and 2 live calls. All for US$17: https://lindseylockett.com/soul/

radicallyalivewomen.com

Join this conversation between Stacia Beazley, Sónia Gonçalves, Annika Korsten & Julia Neumann on Radically Alive Women Edgecast to explore what it means to be a mother beyond physical birth, and how mothering energy can flow into people, community, animals, and the planet.

More information: