We started this season asking who we are. We're ending it asking whether we're ready to be known.

This one is us at our most honest: nervous, courageous, and hungry to be seen for who we actually are. Not brave exactly (brave is doing it without fear), but courageous, which comes from the heart. You feel the fear and you go anyway.

We get into the difference between being seen and being watched, being heard and being known. We talk about why the scariest part of putting yourself out there isn't strangers. It's the people who already love you. We share what it's taken to let go of relationships without an agenda, to stop performing "normal," and to love people freely instead of clinging to being accepted.

And we talk about the body of all this: regulating your nervous system before you try to grow, giving an emotion 90 seconds instead of resisting it for years, naming pain so you can finally let it go, and why "what you resist persists" turned out to be true for both of us. There's a swim lesson, a Despacito, a tree metaphor, a spatula confession, and a book pull at the end that we swear we did not plan.

This is the last episode of the season. We're not sure yet exactly when we'll be back, but we will be back. Thank you for embracing us as we are.

• Courageous vs. brave, and why the difference matters
• Being ready to be known (and why maybe you never have to be "ready")
• The fear that hits hardest: being seen by the people who love you
• Loving people freely: letting go of relationships without an agenda
• Protecting your nervous system, and why regulation comes before growth
• Emotions as "energy in motion": the 90-second rule for feeling and releasing
• "What you resist persists": feeling pain all the way through instead of outrunning it
• Being seen vs. being watched; being heard vs. being known
• Where we still hide, even after all the work
• Hiding in the dark: the seed and the darkroom, when darkness grows you and when it just keeps you small
• Identity work as taking full responsibility, not camping in the past
• Yemi's God-given identity: the everlasting blooming flower
• A completely unplanned book pull that landed too perfectly

"You don't have to be ready to be known. You just have to go."

"My emotions are not going to kill me. They're going to heal me."

"You reveal a photo in the dark, but it can only be seen in the light."

"There's a difference between being watched and being seen. I'm not just watching your life, I'm seeing you."

"If I chose the hard things, that means I can handle them. That means I can overcome them."

"Once you know the truth of who you are, the garden of your life starts flourishing, because you'll no longer accept what's false."

• The Gift of Being Yourself by David G. Benner (the page-44 pull: "End your time by thanking God for gifts received during this process.")
• Jamie Winship, identity work
• Zero Frequency / Ho'oponopono, Mabel Katz
• Christine Caine, teaching on darkness and growth

If anything today resonated, join the conversation on Instagram: @embracingpodcast.

If you loved this episode, the best thing you can do is share it. Follow us wherever you listen and leave a five-star review. It helps more people find the show.

Thank you for being here. This is the end of the season, but not the end. We'll see you again.

Moving isn't just packing boxes and changing your zip code. It's every version of it: moving cities, moving on, moving away from a self you've been performing for years, moving toward something you can't quite name yet. This week we talk about what moving strips away, what it reveals, and what becomes possible when you stop trying to recreate who you were and let yourself become someone new.

Here's what we kept circling back to. You think you're leaving something behind, but instead you find the things that were never yours to carry in the first place. The roles. The patterns. The versions of yourself built for a season, that you then had to survive without.

We get into the first moves we didn't choose (immigrating as kids, no real goodbyes, and the beliefs about home and safety we picked up), and the moves we chose as adults. One of us moved to Austin to escape family enmeshment, sure she was leaving the people-pleasing role behind, and packed it right along with her. The other lived in Atlanta for exactly 24 hours before driving back to Miami, which turned out to be the catalyst for the real work. A later 20-minute move triggered a panic attack in a grocery store, and she calls it a success, because that's the moment she realized she had anxious attachment.

We also talk about the moves that aren't geographic at all: spiritual ones, relational ones, and the move of deciding you're worth investing in. Plus the luggage you actually have to sort (some things rot, some are jewels), the tree that flowers early to signal it needs its community, and what self-compassion looks like in the middle of a move: sit with where you are, then take one small step.

Your practice this week: think about one thing you've been carrying across every chapter of your life, a belief, a role, a story about who you are. Ask where it came from. Then ask, does this still serve the person I'm becoming? If the answer is no, give yourself permission to set it down. Not all at once. Just a little. Just today.

Books, tools and references mentioned:Atomic Habits by James ClearMinimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things (The Minimalists, Netflix)Living Fearless by Jamie Winship (Identity Exchange)"We are spiritual beings having a human experience" (shared via Bob Hamp)The Feelings WheelUsing AI (ChatGPT) as a reflection tool for naming feelings

Come say hi on Instagram, we're @embracingpodcast. If this stirred something in you, share it with someone in the middle of their own move, follow wherever you listen, and leave a five-star review. It takes thirty seconds and helps more people find the show. Remember, you don't have to arrive anywhere to be whole. Stay curious, stay compassionate, and stay unapologetically you.

#TheEmbracingPodcast #MovingOn #ComingHome #StartingOver #LettingGo #SelfCompassion #Identity #PersonalGrowth #AnxiousAttachment #EmotionalHealing

Last week we sat with the tension between the acrobat and the farmer — the ache of living a life that doesn't fit who you are. But realizing you're the acrobat doesn't drop you back in the circus overnight. There's a real, active, sometimes uncomfortable process of unlearning the farmer's habits. This week, we move from the what to the how: the slow, freeing work of actually shedding the false identities you've worn for years.

Here's the reframe we kept coming back to: letting go of an identity doesn't have to be hard. We've all shed identities already, most of them without noticing — the child who depended on their parents, the student chasing the grade. Some we ran toward. Some just quietly fell away. The belief that it always has to be a struggle is itself a false belief.

The false identities we named — and the gift each one secretly gave us:

• Unworthiness (Yemi) — the mask most intertwined with her life.
• The professional / climbing the ladder (Eiry) — the identity that gave her significance and financial safety, until it stopped fitting. The denial, the bargaining, the freak-out of who am I without this, and then the surrender. The day she handed in her resignation, she couldn't stop smiling.
• The fear of being seen (both of us) — from "debilitating fear" to "resistance," shifted through small, repeated action and a daily check-in: where did I hide today, and where did I let myself be seen?
• The fear of failure (Yemi) — and the childhood memory underneath it: the summer tutor, the multiplication table of nine, the walk home crying, and a door that opened to laughter instead of the comfort she needed.
• Perfectionism, the victim, "what do I have to do?" — the questions we ask ourselves for a lifetime, and how to rephrase them by assuming you already have the thing you think you're missing.

The framework for unlearning:

1. Awareness — you can't unlearn what you can't see. The moment you notice yourself performing the old identity, you're already the one observing it.
2. Alignment — is this actually you, or a false belief? It's easier to walk away from something when you know what you're walking toward.
3. Action — small, repeated, exposure-therapy-sized steps. Trust is built by doing, not before it.
4. Trust / surrender — the more you trust, the less you resist. What you resist persists.
5. Gratitude — thank the mask. It protected you once.

The 444 moment: Near the end we did something unplanned. Yemi picked a "random" page from Miranda Hart's I Haven't Been Entirely Honest with You — page 44, line 4. It read: "Being seen and accepted without judgment is a fundamental human need." We'd just spent the whole episode on exactly that. No coincidences.

Your practice this week: Choose one false identity you've identified. What is one tiny, practical step you can take this week to begin unlearning it? Then write a compassion letter to yourself — honoring the version of you that needed that mask to survive, and giving gratitude for what it gave you.

Books & resources mentioned:

• Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself — Dr. Joe Dispenza
• Conversations with God — Neale Donald Walsch
• Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation — Dr. James Doty
• I Haven't Been Entirely Honest with You — Miranda Hart
• Jamie & Donna Winship — identity work. The prompt we use: "God, what do you want me to know? What do you want me to do?"
• Tony Robbins — the lifelong "question" exercise

Come say hi on Instagram — we're @embracingpodcast. If this episode helped you feel a little lighter, share it with a friend in the middle of their own unlearning, and leave a five-star review — it takes thirty seconds and helps more people find the show. This is a journey home to yourself. Be gentle in the process.

What if the life you were raised for isn't the one you're actually built for? Eiry and Yemi open on a parable — a child born to acrobats but raised by farmers, aching to fly while being taught to keep his feet on the ground — and turn it into an honest conversation about the gap between your true self and the roles you inherited.

They get personal fast. Eiry walks through leaving a stable corporate career for the uncertainty of building her own thing; Yemi shares how a failure in her twenties hardened into a "failure" identity she's only now unlearning as she goes back to school. Along the way they name the four signs you're living as the farmer — burnout, resentment, depression, and a lack of fulfillment — and pull apart what "pushing through" really means: not gritting your teeth for someone else's dream, but having the faith to jump before you're sure you'll catch the bar.

The back half turns practical and gentle. How do you tell your acrobat self from the mask? What role do meditation, prayer, and stillness play in hearing your own voice? And the question they leave you with: who would you be if you had no fear? It's tender, it runs deep, and it meets you wherever you are. Come with an open heart. We listen, and we don't judge.

The parable we retold (Bob Hamp's "A Kingdom Parable"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti6eJosPOtk

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What remains of you when the titles, the roles, and the achievements are all stripped away? Eiry and Yemi open this one on Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning — his idea that the last human freedom is choosing who you are no matter what's done to you — and turn it into an honest conversation about finding your core self underneath everything the world handed you.

The first half is a guided walk through naming your non-negotiable values: the handful of things — connection, growth, freedom, abundance, self-love — that don't move no matter what's expected of you. Then it goes deeper and heavier. They sit with what happens when life goes fully out of control: grief, losing a parent, the things you never chose. Drawing on Edith Eger's The Choice, they land on a redefinition of freedom that's bigger than feeling good — freedom isn't the absence of the hard thing, it's no longer living inside it.

It's tender, it runs deep, and it leaves you with a question to carry into your week. Come with an open heart and an open mind. We listen, and we don't judge.

Before you ever get a say, the world starts handing you roles. Be this kind of woman. Be the good girl. Be the strong one. Be the daughter who holds it all together. In this episode, Eiry and Yemi pull apart external identity — the version of you built out of culture, family, and expectation — and ask the question underneath all of it: which parts of who I am did I actually choose, and which parts were handed to me?

They walk through the roles one at a time. Being Latina in and out of the U.S. and what gets lost in translation. What "a woman" is supposed to be. The eldest-daughter, good-girl mask so many of us know in our bones. Then the identities you pick up by moving through the world — the immigrant outsider, the career you never stopped to question — and the real work at the center of it all: noticing where you're running on autopilot, and telling an inherited belief apart from your own truth.

It's tender, it runs deep, and it leaves you with a question to sit with. Come with an open heart and an open mind. We listen, and we don't judge.

• Where external identity comes from, and why so much of it gets installed before we can consent to it
• Being Latina in and out of the U.S. — culture as a gift and as a set of expectations
• What the world tells us "a woman" is supposed to be
• The eldest-daughter / good-girl mask — the cost of being the responsible, agreeable one
• The reframe: what you can take from each role — the soul-contract / radical-forgiveness lens for the hard parts
• The outsider / immigrant identity — what it means to leave the familiar and land where you're not on the same footing
• The career you never questioned, and inherited definitions of success
• The real work: spotting where you live on autopilot, and the tools that help — therapy, journaling, meditation, morning pages
• A closing question to carry into your week

Most of who you think you are arrived before you could agree to it — handed down by culture, family, and gender. That's not a failure; it's just the starting point.

A role can be a gift and a weight at the same time. The goal isn't to throw all of it out — it's to figure out which parts are actually yours.

The hard roles still gave you something. Looking at what each one taught you (the soul-contract / radical-forgiveness reframe) turns resentment into something you can actually use.

The work isn't dramatic. It's noticing. Where are you running on autopilot — and is this really mine, or did I just inherit it?

You don't have to fix anything in one sitting. Just seeing it clearly is the work.

"We're trying to put light into each other's lives."

"Is this really mine, or did I just inherit it?"

"You don't have to fix anything. Just noticing is the work."

• Soul contracts / radical forgiveness (reframing the hard roles)
• Morning pages
• Journaling, therapy, and meditation as tools for spotting the autopilot

Think of one role you've carried your whole life — daughter, woman, the strong one, the good one. Did you choose it, or was it handed to you? Which parts actually feel like you? Then the harder one: where in your life are you running on autopilot — something you've never stopped to question — and is it really yours, or did you just inherit it? Write whatever comes. No editing.

• Instagram: @embracingpodcast
• Substack: theembracingpodcast.substack.com
• Links: linktr.ee/theembracingpodcast

If this resonated, follow on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and a five-star review takes thirty seconds and genuinely helps more people find the show. Come say hi — we're @theembracingpodcast. Stay unapologetically you.

Short version (Instagram / Substack)In this episodeChaptersKey takeawaysPull quotesMentioned in this episodeThis week's journal promptConnect

We didn't start this podcast because we have everything figured out. We started it because we don't — and we think that's exactly the point.

In this first episode, Eiry and Yemi introduce themselves, explain why two friends of 20+ years decided to get on a mic and figure things out in public, and unpack what the word "embracing" actually means to them. This isn't a show about having arrived. It's about what happens when you choose to show up before you feel ready.

In this episode: why they started the podcast and why fear was involved, what "embracing" actually means, the difference between performing wellness and actually living it, and why now.

Find us on Instagram: @embracingpodcast

Substack: https://substack.com/@theembracingpodcast

We didn't start this podcast because we have it all figured out. We started it because we don't — and we think that's exactly the point. The Embracing Podcast is two friends of 20+ years getting honest about identity, authenticity, and what it actually looks like to show up as yourself. New episodes every Thursday.