Felicia explores the everyday altar of motherhood—where care becomes love when it’s shared, not hoarded. Through a Dark Goddess lens (Dancing in the Flames), she reframes “self-sacrifice” as a broken cauldron and argues for boundaries, shared labor, and the courage to receive as prerequisites for giving. Pop-culture moments (a “Gatsby gala,” The Hunger Games, and “They were careless people”) help teach our kids what not to emulate—and what to build instead.

What you’ll hear:

Children as initiations, not nuisances

The altar vs. the martyr: why love requires reciprocity

Grief, regret, and the tenderness of shared care

The Dark Goddess as a guide to wholeness (laundry-room altars, Baba Yaga questions)

Why boundaries, rest, and pleasure keep the “cauldron” from cracking

Teaching discernment in a spectacle-driven culture

References & resources:

Marion Woodman & Elinor Dickson, Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (“They were careless people…”)

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (the Capitol as spectacle)

Takeaways:

Caring is love’s teacher—but only when it’s shared.

You can’t pour from an empty body; you also can’t pour if you never receive.

Ordinary rooms can be altars; ordinary tasks can be rituals.

Our magic isn’t gone—it’s waiting for a stronger pot.

If this moved you, share it with one friend who’s carrying too much—and subscribe on Substack for essays, early drops, and members-only conversations.

Felicia reflects on the question, “Why did you get divorced?” and traces an answer through embodied pleasure, the deadness she refused, and the ways women’s sexuality is outsourced and commodified. An intimate meditation on erotic aliveness, consent, and coming home to the Divinity inside our cells.

Key Takeaways

Self-pleasure can be a practice of presence, not performance.

Women’s sexuality is often commodified and policed; liberation must be self-owned, not traded.

Erotic aliveness counters numbness and “deadness,” reconnecting imagination, emotion, and sensation.

Safety is the precondition for opening; the body tells the truth first.

Halloween, divorce, and the everyday test of wills. In this tender solo, Felicia invites us into the messy middle—the school parade you weren’t ready for, the “you’re so strong” comments that land sideways, and the private moments where the storm threatens to rip you to pieces. This is an episode about soul-holding: tiny acts that keep us human when the to-do list stretches to infinity. Not a bypass. Not grit theatre. Practice.

We talk about: letting pain move so it doesn’t poison you; why one small action unlocks big ones; how to “do what I can and let go of what I can’t”; and the quiet grace of being held—by a brother’s “I got you, sis,” by a hug, by your own steady breath.

If you’re walking through something hard today, come sit with this one.

Felicia traces a lineage of women who never rested grandmother, mother, herself—and the moment she burned down a “perfect” life to make space for truth. This is a tender, feral meditation on rest, eros, and the inner girl who only appears when she’s loved. A rebel’s theology of transformation, usable, embodied, a little dangerous.

Episode Highlights

The women who never sat down: inherited hustle, tender pride, and the cost of being “good.”

The pedestal and the cage: how “perfect wife/mother” scripts sanctify our exhaustion.

On virgin myths and hidden bodies: why purity culture tries to sterilize the erotic.

The fire moment: choosing truth over optics and watching the old house burn.

Meeting the inner fairy: rescuing the malnourished self from the cave.

Rest as resistance: moving from self-betrayal to self-belonging.

Boundaries as mercy; desire as compass; devotion as daily, embodied practice.

Mary Magdalene’s subversive gospel: the treasure is within; rules without love are cages.

Learning to be seen without apologizing—and the holy art of posting, deleting, and trying again.

What it means to mother four souls while re-mothering yourself.

Who this episode is for

Women who are tired of being the exhibit of “having it all,” mothers who feel guilty for wanting more, ex-good girls, and anyone ready to trade performance for presence.

Listener Takeaways

A simple reframe: “I don’t need to be better; I need to belong to myself.”

A mini-practice for rest you’ll actually do (bath, sun, nap, movement, kiss, post, delete, try again).

One permission slip: Your desire isn’t the problem, it’s the map.

Today’s devotional wrestles with where—or if—God lives, and why the body was my first church. I talk about hiding from “knowing” with busy perfection, getting brought to my knees, and the strange alchemy where the pain of alignment expands our capacity for joy. If “up-there God” never worked for you, this one’s for you.

Timestamps

Coffee + confession: “I don’t believe in an up-there God.”

The gendered God problem; why a half-God can’t hold a whole life

The body as the beginning: tight, trapped, spinning wheels

How I hid from knowing (babies, birthdays, busy)

Letting myself out: color floods back, but so does shadow

Pain as teacher: brought to my knees until I listened

The equation: capacity to hold pain = capacity to receive joy

If prayer never fit, try presence: “God as the love I house”

This episode traces how want eclipses love, why our nervous systems cling to the status quo, and what it looks like to re-center care—personally, politically, and on the block where we actually live.

In this episode

The “want machine” vs. the memory of love

Need as interruption—and why that’s the point

Motherwork as a political ethic (remembering, soothing, staying)

Homeostasis/allostasis 101: why change feels impossible

From dominance to care: reframing “strength”

Micro-rituals for turning your sight inward (bath, breath, boundaries)

Neighborhood resilience: co-ops, block pantries, bees & barter

Five takeaways

Want is loud; need is quiet. Train your attention toward the quiet.

Biology isn’t destiny. Stability bias (homeostasis) explains the resistance—and invites patient, repeated, embodied reps.

Motherwork is governance. Remembering and soothing are political acts.

Care scales locally first. Start with neighbors; build small systems that keep people sane and fed.

Strength ≠ dominance. Try courage with compassion.

A raw meditation on divorce, identity, and learning to meet life without anesthesia. Felicia traces the mapless terrain of choosing herself—moving from control to consent, from dissociation to the honeyed present, and from inherited scripts to a voice that won’t whisper anymore.

Listen for

“The journey home does not have a map”—why control promises safety but charges anxiety

Body-led navigation: letting sensation guide when sight can’t

Radical sobriety as telling the truth without numbing

Thich Nhat Hanh’s sink-and-tea teaching made practical in motherhood

Timestamps

00:00 Intro + HMT ethos

00:21 “Radical Sobriety” begins

01:27 The gut-wrench / dissociation / choosing trust

03:25 Off-grid decision: divorce and walking without GPS

05:27 Clean pain vs. control; consent as freedom

06:08 Thich Nhat Hanh on dishes & presence

07:21 The vow: choosing the next honest inch

07:52 Sign-off

A taste...

“It is the state of radical sobriety to meet life without anesthesia… letting truth turn down the volume on pain.”

“Control says, ‘If I can predict it, I can survive it.’ Consent says, ‘If I can feel it, I can be free.’”

“If home is anywhere, it’s here—in the unguarded now.”

Mentioned

Thich Nhat Hanh on mindful dishwashing (from The Miracle of Mindfulness)

Join the Substack for essays, early drops, and members-only chaos → Subscribe.Follow on Spotify• Apple Podcasts • IG → @hermothertongue