This episode is a conversation on why you’re not doomed by your past relationships, with my friend and Alchemical Divorce Coach & Transformational Guide Kimberly FiNix. It’s relevant to all sorts of relationships which have ended, from short flings to divorces.

I asked Kimberly to cover this topic with me because we’re both divorced, have lived this wisdom in our own lives, and both get all excited talking about shame. She is also the empress of guiding womxn through the end of a relationship and its aftermath.

You’ll hear us explain why we don’t like to call them “failed” relationships, even if the challenges associated with them were spectacular. We also share some of our own personal experiences.

We talk about:

. The pattern of ignoring and suppressing your own needs

. Having compassion instead of shaming yourself for what happened in your relationships

. Learning to trust yourself again to make solid choices

. Non-negotiables vs. normal compromises

. How understanding trauma patterns can help you have compassion for yourself or a partner

. How previous experiences with a partner could impact on your sense of worthiness

This conversation is full of permission and space to be imperfect, to not have it all figured out, to be learning through trial and error.

For context, we don’t talk in depth about abusive relationships. Some of our conversation is relevant, but it’s not my personal specialty, and there’s a lot more to be said about abuse which we haven’t covered here.

Kimberly FiNix is an Alchemical Divorce Coach & Transformational Guide for womxn. Her mission is to help womxn navigate the portals of divorce & relationship transition with strength, confidence, and a clear vision for their next stage of life. Kimberly's holistic approach combines modern coaching & mindset work with body-based practices and somatic trauma resolution techniques. Her work bridges the mind and body, resulting in transformation that's both healing and sustainable.

Kimberly's professional training spans the realms of embodiment work, somatic trauma resolution & integration, neuroscience & female sexuality. She brings the benefits of both formal training and the experiences of a long personal journey of healing mind, body, and spirit. Kimberly is a certified VITA Sex, Love, & Relationship Coach. Her studies include Tantric & Taoist techniques for emotional freedom and sexual healing with Layla Martin, she's a long-time mentee of EMPATH*ology founder Lola Pickett, and she's currently studying the ReBloom method of trauma resolution with Rachael Maddox.

Kimberly's offerings are designed to enable womxn experiencing divorce & relationship transition to use their connection with their own bodies as a source of wisdom, strength, and emotional resilience in times of transition. She provides one-on-one coaching to womxn who are ready to rise on their unique Phoenix Path.  Future offerings will include group courses and retreats.

Kimberly lives in Indonesia with her beloved partner & globe-trotting dog.

You can download Kimberly's free Worthiness meditation and learn more at her website: https://www.phoenix-path.com

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/phoenixpath

Facebook Group: Navigating the Divorce Portal  https://www.facebook.com/groups/435199533995784/

To book a free Clarity Call with me, visit https://www.carolanne.com.au/work-with-me.

My friend Ellen May and I talk about life seasons and cycles, how to recognise them, and how to navigate them for more ease and richness. We both live in Australia, where the weather is transitioning into autumn and the descent into winter, but we also talk about how autumn and winter apply to societal changes we’re experiencing right now with isolation measures and staying at home.

Our conversation includes:

Ellen May is an art therapist, a coach trained to work with sexuality, love and relationships, and is trained in somatic experiencing.

Recently she asked Facebook for three words to describe her, and the top result was overwhelmingly ‘creative’, closely followed by variations on ‘kind/ compassionate/ gentle’, and variations of ‘magical/ adventurous and wise’. She brings creativity, kindness, magic and wisdom to everything she does in this grand adventure called life.

She runs workshops and works 1:1 with clients, helping them to draw their own maps to have their dreams be made real in this world. She holds gentle, permissive and highly trauma aware space for seekers who know deep in their bones that there’s more to life than what they’re experiencing, and she helps them find it.

She’s on her own grand adventure to find out what it means to be human, and how to have her life feel like a magical fairy tale of wonder and delight in the deep dark woods.

You can find Ellen in her Facebook group called The Grand Adventure:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/thegrandmagicaladventure

That’s also where you can join her online Embodied Seasonal Alchemy workshop, which is taking place on Saturday 18 April or Friday 17 April 2020, depending on your time zone and where you are in the world. I'll be there!

Bee River and I have a conversation about emotional alchemy for challenging times. Right now as the pandemic is unfolding across the world, lots of emotions are surfacing for people, including uncomfortable ones, and it’s not always easy to know how to deal with them. Bee and I talk about how to relate to your emotions in a way that feels empowering and helpful.

Our conversation covers the spectrum of emotions and ways of relating to them, including:

We also cover how to approach these practices in ways that are safer, more supportive, and trauma aware. We offer lots of permission to take things slowly and go step by step. We also describe how you can recognise when you’re at your edge so that you don’t push past your own limits.

Bee River thrives on integrating shadow and light, and harnessing the meeting points between them into their sweet dance of pleasure, play, and harmony, while savoring all colors of the palette as sacred, and perfect parts of the humxn experience.

From Trauma, Tantra, to Taboo, Bee’s work can be described as radical alchemy; coaching humxns into being their full spectrum authentic selves, and having pleasure based lives of Conscious Sex, Radical Love, and Evolutionary Relationships.

As a queer, kinky, polyamorous, gender diverse, BIPOC, immigrant, parent, and performing artist, Bee loves serving folx in these communities, and is also deeply passionate about working with men, anyone dating, and couples.

You can follow Bee on Instagram at www.instagram.com/itsbeeriver. Follow her there to look out for her up and coming offerings, including her virtual workshop The Sacred Brat, her 1:1 program The Labyrinth, and her website and Facebook group The Temple, where all of you is welcome.

I’m in conversation with three of my dear friends Addy, Belinda, and Sara about the what and the how of cultivating authentic connection. The four of us have been in a deep dive together, supporting each other in life, relationships, and business. Our friendship has been mostly virtual - I live in NSW Australia, Belinda lives on the North Island of New Zealand, Sara lives in British Columbia Canada, and Addy lives in Tasmania Australia - so we reach for each other across the Pacific Ocean. We call ourselves the Virtual Pussy Coven!

Right now while we humans are physical distancing and things are uncertain and scary, we need honest resilient relationships with each other more than ever. What we share can be applied to friendships, family relationships, as well as romantic relationships.

We talk about:

- how we deal with jealousy and feelings of not belonging

- how to create relationships where you can talk candidly about sex, relationships, fears, struggles, and celebrations

- our favourite tips on cultivating supportive relationships where all of you is welcome

Addy Cobcroft is a Somatic Relationship Therapist, find her on her website at www.adrienecobcroft.com.

Belinda Wiley is a Sex and Relationship Coach, find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BelindaWileyCoaching.

Sara Deanne is a Love, Sex, and Relationship Coach, find her on Instagram at www.instagram.com/lovesaradeanne.

After chemo and early menopause, she is on a journey of reconnecting sexually with herself and her husband. She has tools and practices to work with, but is finding herself stuck behind a brick wall of resistance and frustrated. She wants so dearly to reconnect intimately with her husband but her body freezes up and she finds herself going into hiding.

We follow the trail of resistance to grief and sadness, to a sense of barrenness in her pelvis, and into an embodied conversation with her womb and her yoni.

It’s a beautiful privilege to listen in as she explores what happens when she brings her focus into her pelvis, and what her womb and yoni have to say to her!

She’s going through some big life changes and is feeling a deep pull to rest and integrate. There’s a yearning to slow down and be at the pace of nature. Yet somehow, it doesn’t feel completely safe to slow down. She often finds herself in the mode of “Quick! Get centered!” and an energy of madly trying to keep it together. She also has a realisation that it hasn’t really been safe to be herself.

We explore how to cultivate a sense of safety within herself so that she can listen to the messages her body is urgently trying to tell her, without getting overwhelmed by it. Within this container, she experiences what it's like to let her body lead with sound and movement to shift the energy from the physical level. We also play with how to be with the body to let the centeredness organically unfold, rather than making it happen.

You may notice some background noise in this episode, providing the real life circumstances to explore what it is to find genuine calm and centeredness amidst the chaos of life.

In this session, we delve into her desire to feel confident, safe, and empowered to speak her truth in relationships and to maintain strong boundaries. Our exploration begins around all kinds of relationships in which she recognises a pattern of giving everything away, and saying yes even when it doesn’t feel good. We then hone in on a specific situation with a family member, and how to cultivate a strong boundary around how she is spoken to.

This episode contains brief mention of going along with things sexually when you don’t really want to, but we do not go into detail about specific situations in this respect. With this and every episode, please choose to listen with respect to what your body is telling you and what feels right for you today.

After being single for four years and a history of relationships that have felt like hard work, she is opening up to the possibility of finding a new partner. She envisions what it would feel like and be like to be in a relationship the way she desires, and we talk about what matters most to her, including respect, self-accountability, fun, and her infectious playfulness.

We explore the ways she can trust herself to choose differently than before, and to stay committed to her power and her truth. She moves from a cautious opening of the door to full excitement, with lightness and laughter along the way.

Something different this week: an audio to guide you through a practice of digesting your emotions related to climate change. 

This is for you if you've been feeling overwhelmed by the bushfires in Australia, if you feel deep grief and sorrow for the loss of wildlife and bushland and homes and livelihoods, if you feel anger and anxiety and fear around climate change in general.

This practice is designed to help you digest your emotions around climate change so that you aren't ruled by them, either in feeling overtaken by them or in trying to manage your life tightly to avoid activating them. It helps to create emotional resilience, so that you can harness the energy and wisdom of your emotions and use that energy in devotion to whatever you choose.

Please do this at your own pace and listen to the level your body and your nervous system are ready to go to today. Prioritise staying connected to the sensations in your body and maintaining care for yourself over anything else. The audio also guides you through finding a supportive place in your body or your surroundings where you can rest if the practice starts to feel overwhelming.

She wants to feel like she’s not the only one who hates her body and feels like her body is disgusting and gross. She wants to feel confident and happy in her body, and break the link between what her scales say every morning and her happiness for the day. We explore how much energy is consumed by thinking about her body and food, and what other people might think, as well as camel toe in yoga pants. This conversation covers some painful topics, but there are also moments of laughter. She begins to cultivate more love and tenderness for her younger self who received harmful messages about her body.

This episode contains mention of eating disorders and brief mention of suicide. If these topics hit home for you, please discern with your own wisdom whether it’s in service to you to listen.