Gratitude isn’t just something we “should” feel—it’s a practice. In this episode, Rudi explores why gratitude can feel so difficult, how the brain gets wired toward stress or beauty, and what it really means to keep “getting back on the bike” when life knocks us over.

We talk about the difference between authentic gratitude and toxic positivity, how awe helps us feel “small in the best way,” and why remembering our place in the bigger picture brings relief, belonging, and joy.

You’ll also hear one of Rudi’s favorite poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and an invitation to look for the everyday miracles already surrounding you.

Topics include:
• The neuroscience of gratitude
• Why we fall off the “gratitude bike”
• Awe as a healing practice
• Feeling small vs. feeling insignificant
• Belonging, perspective, and slowing down
• Everyday ways to reconnect with wonder

A gentle, grounding reminder that earth is “crammed with heaven”—and that you’re one irreplaceable piece of a much larger story.

Instagram: @thehiddenwaypod
Substack: The Hidden Way

The holidays have a way of exposing the gap between what we wish we could do and what we actually have the capacity for. If you’re moving through this season with low energy, heavy expectations, or the pressure to hold everything together, this episode is for you.

In today’s conversation, Rudi explores the tension so many of us feel this season: wanting to create moments of warmth and meaning while also feeling tired, stretched thin, or emotionally overwhelmed. She shares five gentle, practical ways to navigate the holiday season with more compassion, more wholeness, and more honesty—so you don’t burn yourself out trying to keep up with everyone else’s expectations (or your own).

We talk about acknowledging what matters most, lowering expectations (twice), noticing the grief beneath the surface, honoring real limitations, and practicing surrender in a culture that tells us to keep doing more.

This episode is not a guide for getting everything done—it’s permission to do less, move slower, and show up as a human being instead of a holiday machine.

If you’re carrying a lot this year, you’re not alone. Your humanity has a place at the table too.

In this episode, Rudi sits down with therapists Katie and Ashleigh, hosts of the TheraTay Podcast, for a roundtable conversation on Taylor Swift’s newest album The Life of a Showgirl — and what it reveals about joy, ambition, grief, inner parts, and the cost of being seen.

Together they explore why Taylor’s lyrics resonate so deeply with women in therapy, why joy is sometimes more vulnerable than sadness, how music gives language to emotions we haven’t fully named, and what it means to live with both strength and softness.

Whether you’re a therapist, a Swiftie, or just someone trying to understand your own inner world, this conversation invites you to slow down, feel deeply, and notice the parts of you that are still waiting to be heard.


Topics we explore
- The emotional maturity in The Life of a Showgirl
- Why Taylor’s storytelling feels like therapy
- Dialectics: holding two truths at once
- Why joy can feel dangerous when you’re used to protecting yourself
- The “showgirl” mask and the parts we hide
- How art mirrors our unspoken inner life
- What it looks like to be both ambitious and tender
Guests

Kati & Ashleigh — hosts of the TheraTay Podcast
Instagram: @therataypodcast
Podcast: Listen here

Connect with Rudi

Instagram: @thehiddenwaypod
Substack: Read essays here

Fear isn't always what it seems. Sometimes it's a real, present-moment alarm. Sometimes it's anxiety, our minds racing into the future. And sometimes what we call panic is actually the echo of grief rising to the surface.

In this gentle Halloween episode, Rudi unpacks the three faces of fear and explores how they live in the body. What begins as an informative conversation becomes an invitation to compassion—for the parts of us that brace, worry, and tremble.

This is not an episode about fighting fear. It's about listening to it. Because when we pause long enough to listen, fear often reveals what we most need to tend, release, or remember.

Connect with Rudi and The Hidden Way:
 🌿 Instagram → @thehiddenwaypod
🕊️ Substack → thehiddenway.substack.com

Burnout isn’t just exhaustion; it’s fear disguised as productivity.

In this episode, Rudi explores how our resistance to rest often hides a deeper fear of limitation and unworthiness.

Drawing from The Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdock and a line from poet Rainer Maria Rilke, she invites us to consider where we’re forcing life, pushing through, or performing beyond our capacity—and how courage might mean choosing to be limited.

What does Taylor Swift’s Father Figure have to do with “eldest daughter syndrome”? A lot, actually.

In this reflective episode, Rudi explores how many of us (eldest daughters or not) learn to carry the emotional weight of others, mistaking responsibility for love and control for strength. Through the lens of Taylor’s songs Father Figure and Eldest Daughter, she unpacks power dynamics, perfectionism, and the quiet unraveling that comes when we finally realize we don’t have to hold it all together.
You’ll hear about the hidden cost of over-functioning, why boundaries are a form of stewardship, and how protecting your energy can make space for softness, creativity, and freedom.

For anyone who’s ever been the “capable one,” the peacekeeper, or the one everyone relies on... this one’s for you.

In this episode, I explore the natural cycles we all move through: times of disintegration, when life feels scattered or overwhelming, and times of integration, when the pieces come back together. Using metaphors of puzzles, baking cookies, and renovating a house, I reflect on why disintegration happens, how it connects to trauma as a kind of wound, and why wholeness is different from perfection. My hope is that you’ll leave with a gentler way to locate yourself in these cycles — and a reminder that falling apart is never the end of the story.

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In this short reflection inspired by Rilke’s poem Go to the Limits of Your Longing, I explore what it means to “go to the edge.” Growth asks us to step into the liminal space—where the light is still behind us, but we’ve gone far enough into the dark to feel uncertain. It’s in that place of risk and fear that transformation begins.

This week, I set aside my original plan to talk about something that feels deeply necessary in light of recent events: our ability to hold complexity.

Holding complexity means being able to carry multiple — and often conflicting — emotions, beliefs, and desires at the same time. It’s a mark of maturity, and it’s essential for healing at every level: personal, relational, communal, even global.

In this episode, I explore:
- Why we “contain multitudes” (thank you, Walt Whitman).
- Carl Jung’s idea of the shadow, and why light and dark always come together.
- The parable of the Prodigal Son as a story of holding both/and.
- Dialectics: how two opposite truths can coexist without canceling each other out.
- What happens when we can’t hold complexity: fear, rigidity, stalled growth.
- How curiosity and compassion become the doorway and the key to transformation.

I close with a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke that reminds us to let both beauty and terror shape us, and to keep going.

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Have you ever struggled to put words to what you’re feeling?

In this episode of The Hidden Way, Rudi explores why symbols, metaphors, and stories reach us so deeply—helping us name and navigate the galaxies within.

Along the way, she grounds this in the biology of the nervous system, showing how our bodies and brains are wired to process meaning through image and story as much as through words.

From mermaids and myth to beetles and constellations, discover how the images you’ve always been drawn to hold hidden clues about who you are and what you’re seeking.

This is an invitation to see your inner life not as chaos to control, but as a landscape of meaning waiting to be explored.

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