The Sacred We

🌿 𝗪𝗛𝗬 𝗜 𝗕𝗥𝗢𝗨𝗚𝗛𝗧 𝗖𝗘𝗗𝗔𝗥 𝗢𝗡
I wanted to honor our son's gifts, energy, and beautiful essence. Cedar loves the stage, and I wanted to welcome him in. Not keep our work in one room and him outside it. This is us playing, having fun, and sharing life together.

Our almost-five-year-old son joins me for his very first podcast. We dream about his tree house and his own podcast studio. We talk about adventure time, morning walks, gratitude, and kitchen dancing.

He sings Brother Wind and shares what he's learning about putting big breeders back when you're out fishing. Then I ask what he thinks adults need to hear. His answer is simple: "This is a beautiful day. I love you."

Last week, A Little Boy in a Man's Body explored growing up. This week, you get to experience another part of our life. A father and son enjoying each other, with room to play. Near the end, I share what fatherhood has opened in me. Old childhood feelings, more tenderness, and more room for love.

🎬 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦
0:00 Welcome to The Sacred We
0:53 Meet our special guest, Cedar
2:38 A tree house and his own podcast studio
7:15 Papa and Cedar adventure time
8:34 Our morning gratitude practice
10:21 Walks, breakfast, and kitchen dance parties
11:07 Life with Mama and room for every feeling
13:25 Cedar sings Brother Wind
15:45 Spearfishing and putting breeders back
19:45 What adults need to hear from a four-year-old
21:31 Family hugs and slowing down to play
22:23 What being a papa has opened in me
24:45 You're my best Papa
25:39 Thank you for listening

🌱 𝗢𝗨𝗥 𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗜𝗔𝗟 𝗚𝗨𝗘𝗦𝗧
Cedar is Mike and Courtney's almost-five-year-old son. This is his first podcast, and he has plenty to share.

🎧 𝗞𝗘𝗘𝗣 𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚
Last week, A Little Boy in a Man's Body:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/13iuyyZdIo8Tflrzv2po7j

The Sacred We on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/7EqHPtL9DovzPtazag8QO1

💞 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗖𝗧 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 𝗨𝗦
Explore The Sacred We and our free relationship guide:
https://www.thesacredwe.com/thesacredwe

The Sacred We on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@thesacredwepodcast

Email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Instagram: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

👉 What moment stayed with you? Share this with someone you love.
Follow The Sacred We and join us for the next conversation.

"I might get a lot of hate messages after this podcast, and it's okay." In this solo episode of The Sacred We, Mike records the one he waited years to make: a firm, loving call for men to stop hiding and grow up.

Adopted twice in his first year, kicked out on graduation day, a marriage lost to pot, porn, doom scrolling and audiobooks, Mike shares how avoidance cost him the woman he loved and how a decade of men's work turned him into the man he is now.

If you've ever tried to fix her feelings instead of feeling your own, this one is for you. You'll hear why triggers are the parts you haven't learned to love yet, why women need men who can contain without repressing, and what "strong back, soft front" looks like on a car ride home with Courtney.

Chapters:
0:00 Why I might get hate for this episode
1:14 Welcome to The Sacred We
2:18 The most triggering episode I've recorded
3:40 Avoidance is fear of being seen
4:01 Adopted twice in my first year
5:01 Kicked out on graduation day
7:16 Marriage, worthlessness and coping
11:45 If you can't feel, you can't heal
13:44 When she left, I woke up
15:05 Quitting every substance
16:07 A decade of men's work
18:58 This version of man
22:29 Find your soul family
24:09 Men, do your work
26:36 A little boy in man's clothing
29:51 What you get when you do the work
33:45 Learning to let love in
34:45 What my mother needed from men
38:50 Women need men growing up
40:44 Contain her, don't repress her
43:40 Gentle power on the drive home
47:06 Stop running, stop hiding
49:34 Thanks for tuning in

Mentioned in this episode:
Being Man (online men's group):
https://www.beingman.com/

Date with Destiny by Tony Robbins:
https://www.tonyrobbins.com/events/date-with-destiny/

Email Mike:
"My email's down in the description. Shoot me a personal email." Tell him what came up:
[email protected]

Connect With Us:
The Sacred We:
https://thesacredwe.com

Bringing the Oracle to Him:
https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney:
https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

Work with Mike:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Instagram: @courtneywren.relating | @mikeelliott.relating

What if the ache you keep trying to quiet is the very thing that brings him back to you? In this solo episode, Courtney Wren shares why longing isn't something to fix, numb or fire at your partner. It's a sacred practice, and it may be the most magnetic thing a woman can learn to hold.

Courtney takes us through the myth of Radha and Krishna. Radha, the goddess of eternal longing, loses her beloved when Krishna is called back to the palace. She doesn't shut her heart. She stays with the grief and devotes herself to the longing, until a messenger Krishna sends to check on her finds her laughing and playing in the village, and she tells him, "Krishna is everywhere."

From there Courtney gets personal: her longing for a daughter, the moments she wasn't met in her pain, and how getting clear inside her own longing has, again and again, drawn Mike to move toward her with the exact words she was aching to hear. She names the three ways we abandon our longing (numbing it, raging at it, or never letting ourselves want at all), the "desireless desire" that can hold it, and the grief that lives in every relationship, even the one you're meant to be in.

The teaching underneath is simple and tender: when a woman learns to stay with her longing instead of silencing it, she stops chasing love and starts magnetizing it. It deepens her relationship with herself, it initiates the masculine, and it changes the whole field between you.

Questions to sit with:
Do I let myself really feel my longing? How do I defend or protect myself from it? Do I let myself feel the grief, despair and loss in it? Can I hold it without getting reactive or needing to do something right away?

Episodes Courtney mentions:
Relationship as Spiritual Practice with Chameli Ardagh:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/78elzlqNaIMlhYPQ06nKj9

Sacred Sexuality: Alchemy of Desire with Justin Patrick Pierce & Londin Angel Winters:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/71kh1nOlAKylCzdIyaBZg2

Connect With Us:
Bringing the Oracle to Him (Courtney's free offering):
https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

Sign up for our couples list:
https://www.thesacredwe.com/thesacredwe

Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney:
https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

Work with Mike:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Instagram: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

If you have a hard time holding space for your partner's emotions, it's because somebody didn't hold space for yours. 💛

In this solo episode of The Sacred We, Mike gets really honest about the road from a sensitive boy who was told to cheer up, to a man who coped with porn, pot, cigarettes, the gym and dating, to the moment at 30 when another man held space for him and he finally cried.

That one experience changed everything: his marriage, his work, and the way he loves. Mike shares why coping only ever brings short relief, why "a man who does not grieve will wreak havoc on the world," and why love has to come from the outside in before you can offer it from the inside out.

If you've ever felt like a little boy in a man's body, or you keep trying to fix your partner's feelings instead of feeling your own, this one is for you. You'll also hear the simple homework that changed Mike's life. You gotta feel the heal.

Mentioned in this episode:
The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren:
https://karlamclaren.com/the-language-of-emotions-book/

Connect With Us:
The Sacred We:
https://thesacredwe.com

Bringing the Oracle to Him:
https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney:
https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

Work with Mike:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Instagram: @courtneywren.relating | @mikeelliott.relating

Free gift from Stan & Tracey: get an excerpt of Stan's book In Each Other's Care, including the introduction and the full "Fighting Dos and Don'ts" chapter:
https://www.thepactinstitute.com/ieoc-giveaway

"If your driving guiding force in a relationship is love only, you're not going to make it." Dr. Stan Tatkin, the developer of PACT, and his wife Dr. Tracey Boldemann-Tatkin, co-founder of the PACT Institute, say love is real, but it rises and falls like the weather. What holds a couple together under stress is something you design on purpose.

Courtney Wren-Mabbutt and Mike Elliott sit down with Stan and Tracey for an honest, funny and deeply practical conversation about secure functioning: a relationship built on shared purpose, clear agreements, fairness and quick repair. They explain why it's not him or her. All of us get difficult under stress, because a lightning-fast threat system takes over before we've chosen anything, and suddenly the person we love looks like the problem.

The invitation: decide together why you're here, plan for your hardest moments, and learn to catch the shift in each other before it runs the show.

Chapters:
0:00 Cold open
2:24 Welcome to The Sacred We
3:21 Welcome Stan and Tracey Tatkin
6:03 It's not him or her
11:43 Mentor couples and pro-relationship teams
15:37 Most couples never design their relationship
16:50 Secure functioning and one crazy at a time
18:32 Shared vision, agreements and purpose
23:11 Return to love
26:45 Protecting each other
30:07 The red wagon: attachment is survival
34:13 Know your partner's nervous system
37:38 Why love alone isn't enough
41:36 Pillow talk after 27 years
45:03 From island to clingy
54:37 Rituals and the touch-toes rule
58:02 Never fight in the car
1:00:40 The "it", the threat loop and catching the shift
1:09:51 Worth it, but hard
1:11:59 Their legacy and the Real Life Report Card

Stan & Tracey resources:
Stan & Tracey (official site):
https://www.stanandtraceytatkin.com/

The PACT Institute:
https://www.thepactinstitute.com/

Wired for Love retreats and workshops:
https://www.thepactinstitute.com/retreats

Stan's books:
https://www.stanandtraceytatkin.com/books

Stan's TEDxKC talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kKTsz0OcuI

Stan on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/drstantatkin/

About Stan & Tracey:
Dr. Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT, is a couple therapist, researcher and the developer of PACT (A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy). His books include Wired for Love, We Do and In Each Other's Care. Dr. Tracey Boldemann-Tatkin, PhD, AMFT, co-founded the PACT Institute with Stan in 2010 and co-leads Wired for Love retreats and workshops with him.

Connect With Us:
Sign up for our couples list:
https://www.thesacredwe.com

Bringing the Oracle to Him:
https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney:
https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

Work with Mike:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Instagram: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

Join Harville & Helen's online Getting the Love You Want weekend workshop for couples, Oct 23-25, 2026:
https://harvilleandhelen.com/calendar/

What if there were a tool to end war in your relationship? Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt, the founders of Imago Relationship Therapy, say the answer is not to work harder on yourself. We are wounded in relationship, and we heal in relationship. The healing lives in the space between you, and dialogue is the tool they have taught to couples for decades.

Courtney Wren-Mabbutt and Mike Elliott sit down with Harville and Helen for a warm, wide-ranging conversation on the practice that changed their own marriage: dialogue. Instead of two people talking in parallel monologues, one person sends, the other listens and mirrors back, and something in the nervous system finally relaxes. They explain, in plain language, why hearing is not the same as listening, and why feeling seen and heard is what makes a brain feel safe enough to open.

Along the way they name the fights every couple knows: the grievance that says "why are you doing it that way?", the unconscious wish that your partner would just be you, and the long road from opponents to partners. They share a story of dialogue used to end a border war between countries, in their account. They talk about why the self-love model is really an individual-paradigm answer, what Martin Buber's I-It and I-Thou distinction means at your kitchen table, and how couples who embody this end up changing everything they touch, including schools and workplaces.

There are practical takeaways too: move at the pace of connection rather than the pace of ambition, use curiosity and affirmation in everyday moments, and remember that the space between you is where two whole people grow. If you have ever felt like you were doing all the inner work and still ended up far apart from your partner, this conversation is for you.

Harville & Helen resources:
Official site:
https://harvilleandhelen.com/

Online couples retreat, Oct 23-25, 2026:
https://harvilleandhelen.com/event/getting-the-love-you-want-46/

Getting the Love You Want (book):
https://harvilleandhelen.com/books/getting-the-love-you-want/

Couplehood, on-demand course for couples:
https://harville-and-helen.teachable.com/p/couplehood-a-new-way-to-love

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/harvilleandhelen/

About Harville & Helen:
Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt co-created Imago Relationship Therapy. They are couples therapists and New York Times bestselling authors.

Connect With Us:
Sign up for our couples list:
https://www.thesacredwe.com

Bringing the Oracle to Him:
https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney:
https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

Work with Mike:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Instagram: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

Most couples don’t fight about money. They avoid it until it leaks into resentment, sex, and every little decision. Jenn Pike and Chris Borsellino were in overdraft as a lifestyle — two kids, two businesses, ships passing — until they put every receipt in a basket and made money neutral. This is the conversation that shows how.

In this episode of The Sacred We, Mike Elliott and Courtney Wren-Mabbutt sit with Jenn Pike and Chris Borsellino — partners in life, business, and a decades-long experiment in making money safe to talk about.

They tell the real arc: overdraft as normal, Domino’s totals that shocked them, mason jars and a receipts basket, selling the truck for a Camry when pride said otherwise, and the moment looking at the numbers together changed their course. Along the way they name upper limiting when money finally arrives, pass-the-baton partnership, and the daily walks that became marriage therapy.

The teaching under the stories is simple and hard: avoidance is the fight. Structure creates flow. Money gets neutral when you turn toward it together instead of making each other wrong.

Guest resources:
Jenn Pike / The Simplicity Project:
https://jennpike.com/

Jenn on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/jennpike/

Chris Borsellino on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/chrisborsellino/

Finance discovery with Chris:
https://calendly.com/chrisborsellino/60-finance-meeting

About Jenn & Chris:
Jenn Pike is a functional diagnostic nutritionist, founder of The Simplicity Project, and a longtime voice for women’s health, hormones, and embodied living. Chris Borsellino is a former custom carpenter turned financial advisor who helps families get clear on money without shame. Together they model what it looks like to build health and wealth as a shared practice.

Connect With Us:
The 2:2 Couples Container — private, intensive couples work with Mike & Courtney:
https://www.thesacredwe.com/2-2-container-details

Sign up for our couples list:
https://www.thesacredwe.com

Bringing the Oracle to Him:
https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney:
https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

Work with Mike:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Instagram: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

You know that place where love, pleasure, or success just leveled up — and then some sneaky sabotage pops the bubble? That's upper limiting. Nothing is wrong with you. It's a human condition.

Mike Elliott and Courtney Wren-Mabbutt sit down with Gay and Katie Hendricks — pioneers of conscious loving and body intelligence, authors of 40+ books including The Big Leap and Conscious Loving — for a deep dive into how couples upper limit their love the moment it expands. Gay and Katie share how three days of ease used to flip into criticism, victim loops, and weeks of repair… until they learned to see the pattern and recommit to expanding their capacity to give and receive love.

You'll hear the origin of the upper limit (Gay's ice cream sundae story), why unconscious intentions ride shotgun with your conscious vows, how deeper love reveals where you're stuck, and why trading every content fight for "oh — upper limit" changes the whole game. They go into body literacy (the Big Three: anger, grief, fear), spiritual bypassing vs. befriending the animal body, play instead of "working on" the relationship, and what 25+ years without criticism actually feels like.

This episode is packed with lived wisdom for conscious couples who want more love without the sabotage loop — and a clear invitation to recommit, expand, and enjoy the we-space.

Guest resources:

Hendricks Institute seminars (incl. Katie's Nov 2026 Art of Showing Up):
https://hendricks.com/

Art of Showing Up (Nov 6–8, 2026 · Ojai):
https://hendricks.com/seminar/the-art-of-showing-up-in-person-seminar-ojai-ca/

Foundation for Conscious Living (dozens of practice videos):
https://foundationforconsciousliving.org/

About Gay & Katie Hendricks:
Gay and Katie (Kathlyn) Hendricks are pioneers of conscious loving and body intelligence. Through the Hendricks Institute and the Foundation for Conscious Living, they have supported hundreds of thousands of couples, written 40+ books (including The Big Leap, Conscious Loving, and The Conscious Heart), and taught that relationship is a laboratory for expanding your capacity to give and receive love — one recommitment at a time.

Connect With Us:

The Initiated Man — Mike's men's community for doing this work in brotherhood, not alone:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/TIM

The 2:2 Couples Container — private, intensive couples work with Mike & Courtney:
https://www.thesacredwe.com/2-2-container-details

Sign up for our couples list:
https://www.thesacredwe.com

Bringing the Oracle to Him:
https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney:
https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

Work with Mike:
https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Instagram: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

Trigger alert: it's not him — it's you. (Well… not entirely you.). If you're aching for him to do the work and finally meet you emotionally — and you know what you've been doing isn't helping — Courtney and Mike go into the feminine's role in sacred relating.

They name the "if he changes, everything will be fine" shadow, the wall women yell over, and why mothering him kills polarity.

The invitation is a different seat: land in Me, know the little girl who's hyper-vigilantly managing him, and embody desire so he can actually feel it — consent before hard talks, fierce love, and delivery from the oracle (not accusation). This isn't another layer of self-blame. It's radical responsibility and freedom: do your part of the dance so the alchemy can come online.

Connect with us:

• Free: Bringing Your Oracle to Him → https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

• The Initiated Man: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/TIM

• The 2:2 Couples Container: https://www.thesacredwe.com/2-2-container-details

• Couples list: https://www.thesacredwe.com

• Courtney 1:1: https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

• Mike coaching: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email:

[email protected] | [email protected]

IG: @mikeelliott.relating | @courtneywren.relating

3 Somatic Practices for Deeper Connection

👉Sign up for a FREE guide here: https://www.sacredrelating.com/deeperconnection

When you feel disconnected from your partner, it’s rarely just about them. In this episode of The Sacred We, Mike and Courtney share why the disconnection so many couples feel isn’t ultimately about the relationship — it’s a disconnection from God.

Mike and Courtney open up about what it means to build a God-led relationship: the different names they each use for the divine, how spirit guided them to each other and into the very home where this podcast was born, and the daily practices — prayer, gratitude, communion — that keep them connected to something bigger than themselves and to each other.

They also unpack two often-misunderstood spiritual concepts, communion and matrimony, not as church rituals but as spiritual initiations every soul moves through — the ongoing practice of staying intimate with spirit and keeping the heart open, again and again, no matter what arises. If you’re ready to understand your relationship as sacred ground for your own awakening, this conversation will meet you there.

Connect With Us:

• The Initiated Man — Mike’s men’s community for doing this work in brotherhood, not alone: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/TIM

• The 2:2 Couples Container — private, intensive couples work with Mike & Courtney: https://www.thesacredwe.com/2-2-container-details

• Sign up for our couples list: https://www.thesacredwe.com

• Bringing the Oracle to Him: https://www.courtneywren.com/bring-your-oracle-to-him

• Rebirth 1:1 with Courtney: https://www.courtneywren.com/containers

• Work with Mike: https://www.itsmikeelliott.com/coaching

Email:

[email protected] | [email protected]

Instagram:

@mikeelliott.relating  |  @courtneywren.relating