She Gathers Beauty | Living Your Wildly Naked Truth

Daily ritual sets the tone for how we experience life. It increases pleasure, trust, and clarity while also helping us live with grace, feeling held and supported. Setting everything else down so that we can have a moment or two of sacred reflection and intention opens us to the blessings of this precious life.

 

We all know what it’s like to move through chaos, challenge, and the unknown. The truth is, we can stay connected to what means the most to us, lifts us, and anchors us no matter what’s happening. 

I share a few daily rituals of my own and the importance of letting them be imperfect, messy, and real.

I also share a few of my favorite blessing poems by John O’Donohue.

 

Are you ready to be honored and celebrated for all you’ve moved through? Would you like to embrace the coming days, weeks, and years from a place of voluptuous vitality and meaning? Join me for an expansive and transformative three-month series of your own sacred retreats. Find out more https://www.shegathersbeauty.com/current-offerings.

Thank you for listening! Have a beautiful week!

Today we explore how the heart loves, love as currency, and its true unlimited nature. 

The wisdom of an ornamental cherry tree and the message she shared.

We don’t have to be small with our love. The story that there’s a limited supply of love can and wants to be rewritten.  

What beliefs about “not enough” might hold you back from your truth and the joy waiting for you?

How can you unlock the doors of your love and let it be a blessing for the world?

The truth about the throbbing ache of love and how our longing is meant to reveal what we already have. 

Prayer as a way to move closer to the unlimited resource of love.

Why Tai and I created The Longing Project. https://www.shegathersbeauty.com/longing-project

——Send a postcard to P.O. Box 6112, Asheville, N.C., 28816.

Ways to understand what you really long for and why it’s important.

How to get your life back and remember/uncover why you’re here. 

The Signature Soul Bath Experience: A rite of passage that honors you, your life, and escorts you through the river of light that encompasses your soul’s signature. https://www.shegathersbeauty.com/booking/signature-soul-bath-experience-with-wendy-an-exclusive-offering

A short guided meditation to invite you into your own exquisite nature for relaxation and replenishment.

I share the poems Boundless & Chalice.

Chalice can be found in my first book, The Reach Is (W)holy. https://www.amazon.com/Reach-holy-poetry-inspired-sacred/dp/1979257876/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1517199876&sr=1-1&keywords=the+reach+is+holy

Thank you so much for joining me in this sacred space. I’m always honored and delighted to be with you in this way. 

If you’d like to support this podcast, you can offer a one-time donation or become a patron https://www.shegathersbeauty.com/patreon

Big love & deep gratitude,

Wendy

This is such a juicy episode!

I share a very sacred message for you from the Great Cosmic Grandmother Tree. 

It is time to take up space, receive, be drenched in delight. 

You are meant to experience being honored, celebrated, and receive all that is meant for your rooted, sweet, expansion.

You are possibility wanted by Possibility.

Why ritual and rites of passage are so very necessary and why your soul wants them.

Welcome to the Signature Soul Bath Experience! This is my new one-on-one offering—a rite of passage, created for the celebration of you and the honoring of where you are along the winding path of your life. I discuss what these soul retreats are, what you will receive, and the empowering blessings and tools you will walk away with at the end of our journey together.

Current offerings will be phased out soon—please do take advantage of these! Special bundles and exquisite rates are currently available. Stock up while you can!

 

Visit my website https://www.shegathersbeauty.com/booking to learn more.

Diving into the poem “Be Wide.” Belonging, expansion, replenishment.

A guided meditation.

A ritual suggestion for the upcoming New Moon in Aries.

As always, thank you for being here. Your presence means everything! May you know every boundless blessing this New Moon is ready to offer you. May it be so.

Today Wendy explores the importance of connection, discovering, knowing, engaging with being touched both literally and figuratively by life, by living, and by nature and what is being shown to us daily.

Enjoy the poem “She Aches.”

Guided imagery and meditations are sprinkled throughout this episode. 

Letting your heart fire expand luminosity throughout and around your entire being.

How is Nature asking you to engage with your inner experience? 

What is longing to wake up within you? What wants to be born? What is blooming? What is ready for a “re-set?”

How is this awakening revealing old beliefs that are ready to be transmuted into a new way of being and living?

What do you desire to receive? In what ways can you create space to do so? 

In the Northern Hemisphere, Spring is displaying all the ways life aches for life. To ache truly is a wild and holy thing.

In fact, it’s very good news.

We were encoded with this truth—at the center of it all, longing leads us to connection. 

You were built to receive. You are worthy of being invested in, in every way. You are meant to be celebrated, honored, seen, supported. 

The importance of rites of passage, the ways we have lost this incredibly sacred way of honoring, and how I will soon be sharing this practice in a way that is profoundly essential to the individual and the collective. 

A few ways COVID has been a rite of passage.

Longing to touch, be touched, hold and be held—this is a wisdom to pay attention to and invite in curiosity to help support this deep aching. 

Discerning and gathering sovereignty, self trust, choice, and capacity.

In this episode, I also share ways to engage with #longingproject, what’s at the heart of it, what does longing really mean and why does it matter?

Send a postcard to longing c/o Wendy Havlir Cherry, PO Box 6112, Asheville, NC 28816

Share it on social media using #longingproject and #shegathersbeauty

Leave it as an offering in a public place

Build an altar with it

Give it to someone you love

Or whatever feels most resonant for you!

You can also visit https://www.shegathersbeauty.com/longing-project

I’ll be announcing my new signature offering soon! Stay tuned to the next episode to learn more about that, as well as ways to enjoy my current offerings before they’re no longer available.

Thank you for listening. I am so honored and delighted to share this space with you. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review. This helps this podcast be found, heard and received all over the world, continuing to build a sacred movement of passionate bone knowing and living our wild naked truth!

Today Wendy explores her thoughts about shared suffering after difficult and challenging events over the last week.

Moving from a place of love, together.

“I want to know what you ache for but do not say,” from the poem, Rose Petals.

Now is the time to move ever deeper into what longing is. I share more on that and announce a new passion project my beautiful partner and I felt inspired to create #longingproject.

What does longing mean to you? Is it needy? Is needing okay? Is it naval gazing? Selfish?

What if what you long for will save you? And not just you—all of us?

Longing as a primary need—a navigational tool for alignment with soul—a deep, directive, inner ache. 

How knowing and understanding our own longings can be an embodiment of healer—an uprising that makes love and compassion and evolution possible. 

What is it that you long to help heal within yourself and in the world?

Longing is the soul’s aspiration. 

Are you willing to let your aching come out of the darkness and be seen? Write down your longing (anonymously if you choose)—share it with me—with someone you love—use #longingproject on social media or share with me @shegathersbeauty, www.shegathersbeauty.com, or via email at [email protected].

LET'S BRING HEALING AND AWARENESS TO THAT WHICH WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT TO HIDE OR DISCONNECT FROM.

What you care about matters deeply—what your soul is trying to point you to, it matters more than you know. 

Everyone’s longing should have a safe and sacred space to be seen, acknowledged, and held so that we can connect to each other in new, revolutionary ways.

What will you rise up for? That is a longing. Let us share this aspiration together. Let us create an uprising of love, as a community devoted to healing and soulful evolution.

I share a short presence meditation to bring some ease and comfort into your day. 

I have some exciting announcements coming soon about ways to work with me. Sign up for my newsletter to be the first to know at https://www.shegathersbeauty.com/.

May you know deep peace. Please reach out for support or drop a comment below and let me know what you long for. 

Sending vast love and gratitude. Thank you for listening.

Today we explore the topic of belonging to what feels true in the most liberating way. 

What has it felt like in your life when you have set the weight down and let yourself be with the truth of you, at this moment?

The gift of body and how it can show you what you believe in at this moment. Are you tense? How is your jaw? What might be able to soften simply by bringing awareness to it.

“I am the unfolding of desire, soft opening.” Words from the Mistress of Longing. What is the truth about your relationship to desire?

To long is the pure essence of who we are and what brought us here in the first place. Why do we incessantly fight against it? Against whatever we are feeling?

We can “set down the weight” as the poem “Wings” invites. 

Life longs for life and always will. This is a very natural truth. What if we let ourselves soften into remembering this in some way.

What have you learned about longing? Does shame come to visit when you dare to long?

What part of your story wants to be rewritten? What do you believe is true about your worth and your ability to receive and to long? 

The example of diet culture—how has it numbed us to what we are truly hungry for and how to understand the life-giving essence of appetite?

Letting ourselves unlearn the things that prevent us from remembering/knowing/feeling when we are hungry and what we are really hungry for. 

How do you know when you trust yourself? The importance of the journey away from what we believe home is—being “off course,” getting lost, and the return.

We are meant to long for connection. For True Self. For the home that never goes away.

The earthquake of your life—what is it trying to shake loose within you?

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche wrote:

”In the garden of gentle sanity,

May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.” From his poem “Timely Rain.”

What is waking up within?

You have wings. Let them help you move closer to that which you long for. 

How will you remember to check in with your bones and set yourself free?

You are being breathed. Just let it happen. Place your gaze on the divine orchestration of your inhale and exhale.

You actually already know how to belong to your bone knowing. You do. 

Ritual prompt for the art of bone knowing: build an altar to what might be hidden and longs to be seen.

Today I share ways you can create your own whole-hearted toolkit. 

We begin with letting the container be your truth and this poem:

Feather & Bone

“Do not let your winged spirit be caged~

trust

your

wild.”

Exploring and practicing what we love and feel drawn to.

The power of words and a disembodied voice.

What beauty means to me, connection and making meaning, locating what is sacred.

What have you been gathering over the years? What would you like to gather to yourself—for the heartbeat of your life?

I share why She Gathers Beauty is a container for who I am and who and what I devote myself to.

Altar building.

The ways our dreams can reveal homecoming and embracing ourselves.

Suggestions for how you can build a whole-hearted toolkit in alignment with who you are and what you long for and love now.

What you feel drawn to is a prayer for coming closer to your true self. 

You matter. What you love matters. Let your whole heart be gathered and adored.

Today Wendy addresses the raw truth of grief and navigating the unknown during a year anniversary marking when Covid-19 hit.

All the “rallying” and requests to keep showing up—the exhaustion, the desire for hope and goodness, and the gift of bird’s song and the repetitive sacred cycles of nature that comes when we least expect it. 

What is nourishing you at this time? What can you keep choosing in order to devote yourself to this kind of heart, mind, and body salve?

You are being received, seen, honored, loved, even when you can’t see it or feel it. 

Immense and intense challenge now—let’s normalize this. We are all moving through this—you are not alone. Please let this be a comfort. Please be gentle with yourself.

Let your breath be your anchor. Just breathe love. 

Letting the light in—it can be uncomfortable. And that’s okay, too. It really isn’t a problem. It’s information. For our tenderness. We must hold our sweet tenderness like the most beautiful call from soul.

The pericardium—letting the heart have what she wants.

Locating home. Finding ground. Practicing stabilization. 

Resistance to connection. This too, is (w)holy. All of it. Whole & holy.

Descansos—marking a significant and sacred transition. Honoring life. And death. 

The intersection of the inner and outer journey—where we locate ourselves in this crossroads—that, too, can be homecoming.

What is home for you right now? In what ways are your longings bringing some sense of direction to your life’s course?

To be wildly close to love—what does that mean for you? 

The frontier of heart I am learning about. I wonder how your heart is a frontier asking for your devotion and sense of adventure?

The rules we place upon ourselves and the myriad ways our hearts can teach us a deeper, more boundless truth.

What if fear is an invitation to trust yourself?

Consider all the times in your life that you have trusted yourself. Can you build an altar of Descansos for those times, let that visual, that map, be a sacred and strengthening reminder for yourself? 

Trust is a practice.

And it comes from the heart.

What do you long to say yes to?

Today we explore the topic of choosing freedom and love and the ways in which we can devote ourselves to what we bump up against along the way.

Embracing and accepting the unraveling we feel inside discomfort. 

We can’t pick and choose what we feel if we really want to feel anything at all. I share my poem, “Great Dark Wing,” from The Reach Is (W)holy.

Will you find a way to choose yourself when intensity and discomfort arrive? How will you stand at the edge of yourself? 

I share a personal experience—a time when I was trying to abandon myself and my emotions wouldn’t let me. 

TO LONG IS TO FEEL AND OUR FEELINGS ARE ALWAYS LONGING FOR US.

Fleshing out the idea that those we love and are in relationship with need us to need to want ourselves first. 

Ways we can bring in some extra support while feeling our longing and embracing our whole hearts.

Creating a whole heart “toolkit”

The medicine of essential oils and how they truly can shift and open us body, heart, mind, nervous system, and spirit. Of course, this is not a substitute for psychotherapy or medical attention. It is an example of a powerful way I have personally been supported. Having a whole heart toolkit helps provide our whole selves with an opportunity to heal and come into balance. How do you call in extra support? Friends, moving your body, meditation, play, rest? How do you nourish yourself with “food for the soul?”

Make a list of what you truly long for—this is a way to build relationship with the “bumps” and edge of your life. This list can include anything at all...your vision, a passion project, a grief calling you, a loss, an anger, an interruption—all of these are examples of what longs for us and how we can come into a state of belonging. Making contact with these things, that we might tend to turn away from, can bring the whole self, the whole heart, into balance. 

Inviting it all in (even the willingness to do so) is freedom and a fierce act of love. 

Each “bump” can lead us closer to love or further away from it. Curiosity about it can create a healing story.

May you know that you are sacred. This moment is ceremony. And you get to live your wildly naked truth.

Today we explore the role of devotion in daily living, especially during challenging times. 

Honoring the feast of our lives & celebrating you and all you have experienced in your life thus far. 

Planting love notes in your life, especially where fear lives.

An invitation for a sacred contemplation: what is your reverence point?

Building a circle of sacred for you.

YOU are made of DIVINITY. 

How are you devoting yourself to your life? To your divinity? Where would you like to place your gaze?

Write new devotions—a ritual. 

The importance of being seen and witnessed —by others, by something greater, & in your own eyes. 

Ceremony and ritual as rites of passage and the necessity of this kind of intention and attention. 

The power of asking to be shown when we don’t know how—“help me steep myself and know myself in my own divinity.”

Creating pleasure letters—placing pleasure more in the forefront of our consciousness. Pleasure can save us from the depths of challenge. We can hold the grief and fear and discomfort AND invite in pleasure—even the smallest doses can raise lifeforce, hope, and a place of grounded possibility.

I would love to learn more about you, your devotion, what you long for, and what is bringing you pleasure now. Please feel free to share in the comments wherever you listen to this podcast or email me at [email protected].  You can find me @shegathersbeauty, as well. 

Thank you for listening.

Sending vast love and gratitude,

Wendy