Sanctuary for the Misfits of God Podcast

I woke up this morning trying to “show up” for Substack, but the truth is—I woke up bleeding and agitated. I wanted to be the good news in someone’s inbox on a day that many of us don’t even resonate with anymore.

And yet there I was… trying to force myself into momentum, into service, into writing something that made me feel like I mattered. Like I wouldn’t be forgotten amongst all the noise out there.

This is the dance I’m learning to do. A system saturated in survival, always tuned into doing MORE so that it can feel ENOUGH.

But my spirit was having none of it.

No journaling. No investigation into what’s bothering me. No productivity cloaked as care. Just the simplicity of being a human who is cranky today.

As I was jotting down some reflection to do in my journal later (yes, you caught that, still journaling). I glanced at a question I wrote down as a daily reflection.

“What does a life no longer built on survival require of you today?”

It stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see it. I felt something inside of me unlock.

If my life is no longer built on survival, then agitation is not a crisis, it’s a messenger. Discomfort wasn’t something to be solved right now.

So I didn’t force it.I called my girlfriend instead.I let myself be cranky and tender and human.I let connection be imperfect and clumsy.And somehow—it was enough.

When I walked to breakfast, a song came on that always opens my heart toward her. It felt like her arms coming through the music and wrapping me up in a warm hug. And suddenly there was softness where hardness had been.

The morning continued to unfurl in playful banter, sweetness, and ease.

Not forced.Not earned.Just arrived.

After breakfast, I walked along the ocean and something ancient cracked open in me.

There are moments when the waves rush over my ankles and I feel it… that sensation of being swallowed by infinity. A tiny nothing, a sacred everything.

Today, the waves looked like they were dancing for me… wild, mischievous, holy.A choreography of devotion and play.A reminder that the world meets us when we stop performing for it.

And then the grief hit.

The grief of leaving the ocean behind.The grief of leaving a place that has burned me down to bone and rebuilt me in a shape I don’t fully recognize yet.The grief of knowing that this land, with all its chaos, heat,dust, dogs, tuk tuks, eagles, and discomfort, has left me imprinted forever.

Here, beauty and brutality sit at the same table.Here, nothing pretends to be separate from anything else.Here, I learned that wholeness requires letting the sacred and the profane braid together inside your own ribs.

By dinner, I felt the truth… that familiar ache of being thousands of miles from home on a day that once meant gathering, messy togetherness, and the warmth of a body that says “you belong.”

I wasn’t craving gratitude. I was craving connection.I was craving the way a hug from someone who loves you can rearrange your whole inner weather system.

There is a deliciousness in loving something so much it hurts. A holiness in longing that carves you wider. A depth that only reveals itself when your heart is not pretending to be safe.

Pain and love are two sides of the same coin. You can’t separate them without killing the truth.

Before coming to India, I saw how much of my life has been shaped around leaving; the military, relationships, homes, entire worlds.

Intensity has always been my rite of passage.

But in the weeks before this trip, everything felt… alive, aching, true, and sacred

I felt the sweetness of every last moment, the way love becomes crisp and visceral when you know an ending is near.

That’s what I’m hungry for. Not chaos, but aliveness.

A life that is swollen with sensation.A life that breaks and reforms you over and over.A life of aching love and wild laughter and holy mess.A life where community is built on truth, not image.A life where the high comes from connection and courage.

So here I am, in India, writing to you, knowing that if I want this kind of life,I must create it.

And as I write, my heart is split open with gratitude for all of you…the ones who have loved me,held me,challenged me,fed me,housed me,believed in me,and stayed through every death and rebirth.

You are woven into every step I take here.

My heart burns with love and pain.The sting is the proof.This is the sweet sorrow of truth.

As you gather among others, or as you gather with yourself… whatever your journey today may be. Take a moment to ask yourself…

What does a life beyond survival want from you today?

Walking the Sacred Edge,

Saisha Ma

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sanctuaryforthemisfitsofgod.substack.com/subscribe

The truth I have inside is that I’m not sure I have one.

I’m not sure I’m anything more than a bundle of confused and entangled thoughts that spar with each other in an endless loop.

I say I stand for rebellion.I say I don’t fit in.I say I own my autonomy and refuse to bend toward the world of “normal.”

And then I sit in a café for hours longing to be inside the easy, breezy conversation next to me. Inside a world where talking about shopping and shoes and bags felt interesting.

I miss easy.I miss the days when I didn’t notice every wound in every thought I had.

But then I remember: this lifetime has never been easy.There was just a time when I could numb, quiet, or ignore the endless stream of comparison, insecurity, doubt, and defensiveness.

I say I don’t stand for war — and then I play out violence endlessly in my own mind.

The truth is:

I hate the image of ego where people talk for hours about makeup, clothes, roles, jobs.I hate sitting next to a table of women discussing jewelry and bags and how their thin bodies feel doing yoga.I hate groups of laughter and lightness when internally a storm is brewing.I hate the mirage of belonging I see everywhere.

And so I perform my role:

Sitting in my corner with my journal, portraying my “highly attuned and spiritual” self.Reading my book with my coffee, presenting the image of calm renunciation — as if I’m so fulfilled with my own company.

But inside?

I’m judging.Judging the femininity I’ll never be.Hating that I can’t fake it anymore.Judging everyone who needs company in public and honoring the rare soul I see sitting alone.

All the while I’m longing for my own friends — longing for a world without so many strangers — longing to feel connected to something other than the ache inside of me.

As much as I resist being “normal,” I hate the parts of myself that make me “abnormal”:the tattoos, the non-binary expression, the weight on my body, the ways I don’t blend in.

I hate just as much as I feel hated.

I have blamed the world for keeping me out.I have blamed systems and societies — the pristine and elitist mentalities where:

fat = lazytattoos = troubledmessy = dangerousraw = too uncomfortable

And I hate that while I detest the spiritual-bro movement with its perfect bodies and bypassing, I am still attracted to the images it creates.I’m awed by the chiseled abs and the world that says, “Now, I’m good enough.”

My only problem is:

I made a vow to THE truth.I married the one thing that will never let me look away.Truth is the only thing I’ve ever committed to fully.The only thing I keep peeling myself open for.

And the only truth I know today is this:

If it stands behind God and love, it cannot be exclusive.

Authenticity cannot remove the human behind it and still call itself authentic.Elitism in any space is exactly what it has always been:

a fear of the unknown,a hatred of wholeness,a denial of the sacred messiness that makes us human.

I am tired.Tired of judging.Tired of hating, shaming, guilting, begging, and pleading.I have no more right to ask the world to be different than it does of me.

So it’s time to shed another layer.To release the fantasy of one day fitting into spaces that don’t actually want the truth of me.To stop being the token when it expands, and the threat when it doesn’t.

I’m no longer asking the world to change for me…because I’m willing to create the change within it.

I am creating spaces that look different:

Spaces where bodies of ALL types and sizes are welcomed without stripping you of sacred worthiness.Spaces where tattoos, scars, and remnants of battles won and survived are honored.Spaces where gender expression is fluid and glorious.Spaces for those whose lives have shouted,“You are worthless. You don’t belong.”to find the light left on and the door open.

I’m creating spaces where abnormal becomes the new norm.Where there are so many expressions of soul present that “belonging” no longer matters.Spaces where the uniqueness of one blends into the beautiful orchestra of the All.Where the many finally remember they are the All… and the All no longer fears the One.

This is my vow.This is my Dharma.

🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥

If this stirred something in you, don’t let it dissolve.

Ask yourself:

What is one tiny way I can make a space… today… where someone like me actually belongs?

Then do that.

Because this isn’t a movement of followers.It’s a movement of makers.

Walking the Sacred Edge,

Saisha Ma

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sanctuaryforthemisfitsofgod.substack.com/subscribe

I came to India knowing I would have to face my deepest wounds.

But knowing something is very different from experiencing it.

There is a vision in my mind of who I am…And my, what a vision she is.

SHE encounters fear with unquestionable faith.SHE moves through challenges with ease, grace, and perfect teachings.SHE somehow feels worthy enough to build stability, and doesn’t apologize for wanting to belong in beautiful spaces with perfectly polished yogis.SHE makes all the best food and lifestyle choices because she is above her cravings, addictions, and desires.SHE loses the weight, perfects her asana, comes home glowing and spiritually refined.SHE returns as the hero, the guide, the saint.SHE is everything I’ve wanted to be.

And she is the ever-present reminder that I am not enough.That I have so far to go.That I will never be worthy of what I long for until I meet HER impossible standard.

🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥

The Reality: I Am Being Tenderized

In reality, I am being tenderized, battered, and tested at every turn.

I am barely holding it together.

Every power outage, every cold bath, every street dog, every small financial stressor sends my entire nervous system into panic overdrive. I daydream of a savior who will rescue me from this landscape of desolation that feels endless.

For every day I find flow and expansion, there are three days that completely destabilize me.

And as I speak about guiding others toward deep inner acceptance and graceful transition… I am being asked to live the teaching.

To see every cracked, trembling, unstable board in my own foundation.

To reground.To reconnect.To trust — somehow — that this is not punishment.It is initiation.

🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥

The Void, the Anger, and the Dance

Power outages bring me into a primal fear of the void — the place where emptiness howls from within and threatens to consume me.

So I dance in my room.

I feel the anger.The reaching.The grasping for God in every direction except the one that leads inward.

Up, out, down…In people.In Gurus.In bottles.In endless ayahuasca ceremonies.In the arms of partners.Anywhere but inside myself.

I feel my fury toward a God who asks for devotion so total that one must abandon every comfort, every mask, every illusion.

I howl.

And I dance more.

And then something shifts.

A glimmer of raw, mystical light moves my hands from reaching outward… to reaching inward. My left hand guides my right to my solar plexus — my power, my Shakti.

There is resistance.There is trembling.There is disbelief that power could live here, in me.

And there is grief — for the many selves I abandoned.For the lineage of women who were never allowed to matter.

I cry for them.I cry for me.

🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥

This Is the Me That’s Being Met in Varkala

A me that is trembling but still takes one more step.A me that has no idea how she will build stability but refuses to back down.A me learning how to breathe when safety and love feel withdrawn.A me devoted to a God who no longer lives in the shadows of my lineage, but in the root of my spine.

A God who amplifies.A God who empowers.

A God who stays.

She dances with me, teaches me, reminds me:Love isn’t always tender, but it is always present.

🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥🔱🔥

I Now See Why I’m Here

I am in Varkala to die.

To mourn and grieve the idea of ME that was built on debt.

A story where SHE had to prove her worth, because she came into this world indebted just to exist.

SHE is the shadow of my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother.SHE is the pain of generations of women who never had a chance.

And her story ends with me.

No more deprivation.No more proving.No more asking for permission — to belong, to be loved, to be abundant, to worship, to walk this world as the sacred being I am.

I am Saisha Ma.

Ruler of the inner Goddess.Daughter of Shiva and Shakti.Sister to all.Slave to none.

It’s nice to meet you.

The Living Rhythm begins with this exact death — the dissolving of the idealized self and the meeting of the trembling one.

This journey isn’t about becoming the perfected version of yourself.It’s about meeting the self who’s already here — tender, shaking, honest, and holy.

If you’re in your own initiation right now, you’re not alone.

Walking the Sacred Edge,

Saisha Ma

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sanctuaryforthemisfitsofgod.substack.com/subscribe

How does one create freedom while only knowing imprisonment? What does community look like for those of us who have learned to embrace misfit, rebel, and queer in this world? Can connection cohabitate with freedom? Can a group of souls who never feel like they belong, create a space where they don’t have to in order to come home? Let’s find out shall we!

Beloved Misfit,

I’m writing to you from the thick of my own unraveling. I had planned to share something else today, but what’s alive in me is the truth of how intensely I’ve been seeing my own self-imprisonment. The small rooms I still keep myself in. The hesitations. The fears. The places where I still don’t let myself breathe fully into the life I say I want.

It hit me today how much I still struggle to create in the presence of others. Not when it’s finished—finished is easy—but in the becoming, in that raw space where you can hear every sound around me and every tremble inside me. Creation exposes me in ways that feel both holy and unbearable.

And yet, this is exactly where the medicine is.Where I see the programming and the blueprinting, the bars of the cage:how my work is “supposed” to look,how polished or spiritual or fierce it should be,whether to use tools or avoid them,all the ways I try to perfect myself before simply speaking from my heart.

I’m realizing that the more I try to control the image, the farther I drift from the simplicity of being human with you.

I’ve been watching my mind do what it does. How it searches for the places I don’t belong, the reasons I’m different, the excuses to stay small. I see the ego’s vigilance, the protection, the endless stories that keep intimacy and life at a distance. I see how easy it is to call these stories “boundaries” when really they’re fear dressed up as wisdom.

It makes sense to me, suddenly, why I’ve reached for substances, why I’ve soothed myself with food, why I’ve numbed or distracted. When life is lived inside a tiny box, it’s not very alive.

And right now, on this pilgrimage to India, I’m sitting among the death and decay of who I was, while trying to birth who I’m becoming. I am in a state of purgatory, in between both death and life, feeling the grasp of both of them. And I’m still, somehow, being asked to create, to lead, to believe in something greater than what I’ve known.

The vulnerability of this is enormous.But this is the magic.This is the alchemy.This is what I’m asking of myself and what I’m asking of all of us here in this Sanctuary.

I want to know where you feel imprisoned.Where you hold on to your story so tightly that openness feels impossible.Where you over-explain.Where you hide.Where you long for more life but stay in the smallness out of fear.

I’m learning that sometimes we do the brave things not for ourselves, but for the reflections of love we hold in our hearts. When I take a surf lesson, it’s for my mother. When I dance, it’s for my friend. When I open, it’s for anyone who needs permission to open, too. I am sitting here among the beaches in India because of the many wanderers, Saints, and brave souls I’ve been touched and inspired by.

There is so much magic available to us.But we are the ones who have to bring it to life.

So I’m walking one foot deeper today. I’m diving a little more. I’m choosing aliveness over the safety of my prison. And I hope you’ll walk with me, in whatever way you can.

Thank you for being here.Thank you for listening.Thank you for meeting me in the rawness.

With love,Saisha Ma

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sanctuaryforthemisfitsofgod.substack.com/subscribe

I recorded this message on a quiet morning, heart open and trembling. It’s raw — not polished, not planned — but it felt like the right way to begin.

This is the seed of the Sanctuary for the Misfits of God — a space for those of us who’ve felt like we had to apologize for existing. For those who have been both the learner and the guide at once.

🎧 Listen to the full 8-minute audio above

The Apology for Existing

For much of my life, I’ve lived with a quiet sense of indebtedness — as if I needed to apologize for taking up space.

Sometimes I’ve thought this feeling came from being adopted as a baby, but lately, I sense it’s something deeper.Maybe some of us — especially those walking wild, unorthodox paths — carry this ache of feeling like we must earn our right to belong.

Even as I sat down to record this message, the world around me got loud — people talking outside, sounds at the window — and that old fear rose up: what if someone hears me?It’s a familiar tension between wanting to share and wanting to stay unseen.

Teaching While Still Being Formed

This is where I begin.I’ve always held my guides to a high standard — maybe too high — and I’ve mirrored that by holding myself to impossible expectations.

I’ve thought I needed to be complete before offering anything.That I had to be the mastered one before my medicine could be valid.

But the truth is, I’m still being formed. Still walking. Still remembering.And I don’t want that to stop me anymore.

A Sanctuary Where No One Gets Abandoned

This space — the Sanctuary for the Misfits of God — is born from one simple prayer: that no one be abandoned.Not ourselves. Not each other.

It’s not a place of codependence or perfection.It’s a home for truth, messiness, communication, and unconditional return — where love includes accountability, and presence includes imperfection.

This kind of love has been my deepest teacher — the love that sits with me through both the ache and the awe, and says:You can come home here, again and again.

Belonging Without Permission

As we begin this journey together, I want to explore what it means to walk the world from belonging —not the kind we earn, but the kind we claim.The kind that’s already here, waiting under the layers of “not enough.”

What if belonging didn’t depend on anyone else’s permission?What if your existence was already an offering?

Reflection for the Sanctuary

I’d love to hear from you in the comments:

✨ What is your story of belonging or non-belonging?✨ What helps you remember that you belong, even when you feel unseen or misunderstood?✨ What questions or themes would you like to explore together in this Sanctuary?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sanctuaryforthemisfitsofgod.substack.com/subscribe