Shaped by Us, by Tanja Smeets

I used to be able to manifest easily — money out of seemingly nothing, just by wanting it. Then I lost it. For years. This is the honest version of getting it back: not a technique, not a thirty-day protocol, but a land sale in Spain that had been stuck for three years, a phone that buzzed within seconds of something shifting in me, and the uncomfortable discovery of exactly what had been blocking it the whole time. Including the part where I tested it again the next day, on something I wanted even more — and immediately proved I hadn’t actually learned the lesson yet.

Want to support the work: https://ko-fi.com/shapedbyus

Shaped by Us — returning to who you actually are, underneath everything installed on top.

A bottle of dishwashing liquid, stretched past empty instead of refilled. A bucket, taken from under me with “you can have it in fifteen minutes.” Small things — and I was disproportionately furious. I’d already done this work, a year ago. I’d consciously stopped picking up what other people leave behind. So why was I this angry again? In this episode: what actually gets harder once you’ve made the decision — and why deciding to stop was never the same thing as knowing how to stand in what’s left.

Want to support the work: https://ko-fi.com/shapedbyus

Shaped by Us — returning to who you actually are, underneath everything installed on top.

Every morning, the phones come out one by one, and I’m left speaking into empty space. I finally sat my family down to ask why — and found something I wasn’t looking for. Not their disconnection. My own, chosen, underneath all of it. In this episode: what I discovered about why I keep creating the very loneliness I say I don’t want, and why closeness alone was never going to fix it.

All the work at www.shapedbyus.com. Want to support the work: https://ko-fi.com/shapedbyus

Shaped by Us — returning to who you actually are, underneath everything installed on top.

A woman talks about the sacred role of motherhood, and how she makes sure her sons understand it. A father shares a clever trick for getting his teenage son to comply. Both of them are reaching for something. Both of them are missing it completely. In this episode: what I watched happen in my own parents' marriage underneath all the right beliefs, and why the thing you actually teach your children was never in the words you used.All the work at www.shapedbyus.com. Want to support the work: https://ko-fi.com/shapedbyus

Shaped by Us — returning to who you actually are, underneath everything installed on top.

I asked myself a simple question this morning: where in the world would I actually fit? I've lived in six countries chasing an answer to that. But the real thing I found wasn't a place — it was something missing everywhere. The forests feel emptied. The mountains feel unwatched. And I think that emptiness isn't just out there. In this episode: what I've noticed disappearing from the land in every country I've lived, why I don't think moving again will fix it, and the one, almost boringly small thing I think actually will.

All the work at www.shapedbyus.com

Want to support the work: https://ko-fi.com/shapedbyus

Shaped by Us — returning to who you actually are, underneath everything installed on top.

Victimhood is not a feeling. It’s a position — one that offers moral authority, attention, connection, relief from accountability. I see it everywhere, including in myself and my own family.

This episode traces what victimhood actually gives people, and why it’s so hard to put down once you’re in it: one family member uses it to be seen, another for a warped kind of connection, another as a bid for recognition dressed as grievance. It looks at the same pattern playing out at scale — across nearly every group that’s ever claimed to be wronged — and why none of the usual fixes, new laws, new language, new camps, ever actually resolve it.

The stance was never built to end anything. It was built to be right. And being right isn’t the same as being free.

All the work at www.shapedbyus.com

Want to support the work: https://ko-fi.com/shapedbyus

Shaped by Us — returning to who you actually are, underneath everything installed on top.

In 2016, I was taken to court because of my work as an autonomous midwife. I had a real case I could have pushed back with. I chose not to. I walked away from the proceedings entirely and let them make their verdict.

It didn’t feel like winning. It felt like release.

What I didn’t expect was how far that decision would reach — into friendships, into my marriage, into a pattern of quietly measuring myself against the people closest to me, even in love. This episode traces that thread all the way back, further than I expected it to go, to something I saw in meditation I still don’t fully have words for.

I dropped the war. Not because I won it. Because I no longer needed it.

Shaped by Us — returning to who you actually are, underneath everything installed on top.

Someone close to me asked if I could help them connect with their guides. I said yes — not as a channel, not stepping aside from my own body, but staying fully present and translating what came through.

I had never done this before.

What actually came wasn’t what I expected. Two very different sessions, two completely different presences, and by the end of both, I couldn’t find the edge of myself anymore.

This episode is about what happened, and what it taught me about connection I didn’t see coming.

Shaped by Us — returning to who you actually are, underneath everything installed on top.

My father died in 2021. I wasn’t with him when he went, and for a long time I turned that choice over, looking for a version where I could have done it differently.

Three months after his death, he visited me at night. Not as himself — as something else entirely, unrecognizable, and yet unmistakably him. He told me what dying had actually been like.

Years later, he came again. This time he asked for something specific — something I’d been carrying since I can remember, something he was responsible for putting there in the first place. He wanted it back, for what comes next for him.

This episode is about that visit, what he asked, and why I said yes.If this landed for you, you can support the work here: https://ko-fi.com/shapedbyus

Shaped by Us — returning to who you actually are, underneath everything installed on top.

In the dream, the sea was taking every landmass on earth. Everyone around us was panicking. We were calm — because somehow I knew where we had to go. Islands that wouldn’t be submerged. Islands no map showed.

We spent the last of our money on the closest flight I could find. Arrived with no plan. And what happened next — who we met, what we found, and why I woke up feeling something I almost never feel — is what this episode is about.

It’s not a piece about prophecy, or about the dream coming true. It’s about what “ground” actually is, when it isn’t a belief you defend or a position you stake yourself on.If this landed for you, you can support the work here: https://ko-fi.com/shapedbyus

Shaped by Us — returning to who you actually are, underneath everything installed on top.