A football game down the street. The band, the cheering, a voice drifting over the speakers—and me, unexpectedly close to tears.

On a Saturday evening when you can feel the tides changing, I’m thinking about the sounds that settle us and make us ache. About being close to something without being in the middle of it. And about the pieces of our younger selves we hear in places we never thought mattered.

Yes, I’ve been away again. Other episodes are still being edited and produced. This one gets to arrive as it is: no intro or outro music, just me and something I wanted to say while I could still feel it. This is what I can make right now, and I want to let it be enough.

A little glimpse into my psyche. Maybe a familiar corner of yours, too.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Links:

• https://www.youtube.com/@the515podcast
• https://515fitnessinc.com
• https://www.tiktok.com/@515alchemy
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61585497002747
• https://www.talesfromadivebar.com/ (Check out 515 on TFADB)

In this episode of The 515 Podcast, I share the personal story behind my recent TikTok series: how a relationship that began with intensity, promises, and a future I believed in became shaped by emotional invalidation, financial ambiguity, invisible labor, and the exhausting work of keeping the peace.

I talk about patterns of coercive control: comments that cut deeper than they first appear, pressure to doubt your own memory, responsibilities that become yours by default, and the gradual shrinking of your world around someone else’s moods, needs, and reactions.

This is a conversation about emotional labor, weaponized incompetence, financial manipulation, and the moment you realize you have been carrying a relationship alone.

If this episode resonates with you, please know: delayed recognition does not mean you failed. These patterns can be difficult to see while you are living inside them.

Resources

• Coercive Control in Intimate Partner Violence: Relationship with Women’s Experience of Violence, Use of Violence, and Danger
  Power and Control Wheel — The National Domestic Violence Hotline
  The National Domestic Violence Hotline
  Call 800-799-SAFE (7233) | Text START to 88788 | Online chat available

Follow @515Alchemy for episode updates, personal storytelling, and future conversations about relationships, recovery, and reclaiming your life.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Links:

• https://www.youtube.com/@the515podcast
• https://515fitnessinc.com
• https://www.tiktok.com/@515alchemy
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61585497002747
• https://www.talesfromadivebar.com/ (Check out 515 on TFADB)

Ivy Pochoda’s women are not here to be easy to forgive, easy to understand, or easy to root for—and that is exactly the point.

During tornado power outages, I found myself reading through These Women, Sing Her Down, and Ecstasy: three books that linger in violence, survival, rage, womanhood, and the pressure to turn pain into something palatable for everyone else. In this episode, I’m talking about what Pochoda’s work reveals about the “good victim” myth: the expectation that women must be soft, grateful, innocent, and emotionally convenient in order for their hurt to count.

We get into the women society overlooks, the difference between being harmed and being powerless, the fear of female anger, and why a survivor does not need to become sweet, forgiving, or morally uncomplicated in order to deserve belief.

Because you can be hurt and still be angry. You can be healing and still be complicated. And sometimes the most threatening thing about a woman is not her rage—it is the moment she stops asking permission to name what happened to her.

These Women centers the people most affected by violence rather than glamorizing its perpetrator, while Sing Her Down pushes into violence by, against, and within women; Ecstasy reimagines Greek tragedy through female freedom, repression, and horror.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Links:

• https://www.youtube.com/@the515podcast
• https://515fitnessinc.com
• https://www.tiktok.com/@515alchemy
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61585497002747
• https://www.talesfromadivebar.com/ (Check out 515 on TFADB)

After a much-needed pause for mental health, I’m finally back with a new episode — and I’m coming back to a story that’s been grounding me in more ways than one. In this episode, I revisit the Harry Potter series through a deeper psychological and mythic lens, exploring how stories like this help us make sense of suffering, identity, and the process of becoming whole. Drawing loosely from the ideas of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Jordan Peterson, I reflect on why these narratives continue to resonate, especially when life feels heavy, uncertain, or in transition.

This is a conversation about more than magic. It’s about growth, meaning, and the strange way a familiar story can reveal something new when you need it most.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Links:

• https://www.youtube.com/@the515podcast
• https://515fitnessinc.com
• https://www.tiktok.com/@515alchemy
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61585497002747
• https://www.talesfromadivebar.com/ (Check out 515 on TFADB)

In this short solo episode of 515, I sit down after a brutal morning in divorce court and talk about what happens when the systems that are supposed to protect you… rewrite your story instead.

No kids, no house to fight over, no request for money. On paper, it should be a simple divorce. But the petition that was filed in my name says something else entirely: that I’m unemployed, that I’m chasing maintenance and attorney’s fees, that I’m more helpless than I am.

I walk through how that language ended up in my paperwork over my objections, how it felt to be confronted by a judge reading a version of me I don’t recognize, and what it means to push back—by filing complaints and reclaiming my narrative—while still protecting my bandwidth as a survivor of intimate partner abuse.

This is an episode about trust, professional gaslighting, money as a second abuser, and why “being exhausted” is not the same thing as giving consent. It’s also a reminder that paper can lie about you, systems can misquote you, and you still get to decide who you are.

Audio note: I recorded this on the fly and couldn’t find my lapel mics, so the sound is a little rough around the edges. Think of it as a voice memo from the trenches, right before we head back to the golf course for “Fairways & Battlefields: Ladies of the Garden Club” in the next episode.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Links:

• https://www.youtube.com/@the515podcast
• https://515fitnessinc.com
• https://www.tiktok.com/@515alchemy
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61585497002747
• https://www.talesfromadivebar.com/ (Check out 515 on TFADB)

Today’s episode of 515 takes you out onto the golf course for a charity outing with Mission 22, an organization created to confront the heartbreaking reality that veterans are dying by suicide at alarming rates, even as overall numbers have begun to shift in recent years.

Raven sits down with Mission 22 Senior Ambassador Red Earles IV to talk about life after deployment, the war within, and how programs like working ranches and equine therapy are giving veterans and their families a chance to reset without the barrier of cost.

Out on the fairway, we also meet Angelo, a 95-year-old Korean War veteran and course ranger, who shares how he’s wrestled with faith, moral injury, and staying active in a world that kept moving long after the ceasefire.

This episode holds space for veterans while also recognizing that trauma and complex PTSD don’t only belong to the battlefield, but that all forms of pain deserve acknowledgment, support, and community.

If you or someone you love is struggling, you can call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or visit 988lifeline.org for immediate support. Veterans and service members can reach the Veterans Crisis Line by dialing 988 and pressing 1, or by texting 838255 any time, day or night.

Stay tuned as we continue our adventure across the course, meeting more people and uncovering the stories tucked between the tees and the greens.

Support Mission 22: https://mission22.org

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Links:

• https://www.youtube.com/@the515podcast
• https://515fitnessinc.com
• https://www.tiktok.com/@515alchemy
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61585497002747
• https://www.talesfromadivebar.com/ (Check out 515 on TFADB)

In the first-ever Surface Tension session, Raven sits down with Jason (aka Chad from Episode 9) for a late‑night, red‑envelope conversation that goes wherever the questions take them.

They start with music and inner teenagers, then spill into hallucinogenic grief rituals, anxiety, and what it means when your body reacts before your mind can catch up. Along the way, they unpack men’s objectification, external validation, and why the “not all men” conversation so often misses the point when the reality for many women is “a man.”

Expect stories about mushrooms and grandmothers, Snapchat creeps, the weirdness of modern dating, and the ways patriarchy and trauma shape how we relate to ourselves and each other. It’s raw, imperfect, and honest—exactly what Surface Tension is meant to hold.

~ If you want a great convo between Jason and Raven on toxic relationships, visit Jason's podcast Tales From A Dive Bar: https://www.talesfromadivebar.com/raven-and-jd-talk-about-toxic-relationships/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Links:

• https://www.youtube.com/@the515podcast
• https://515fitnessinc.com
• https://www.tiktok.com/@515alchemy
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61585497002747
• https://www.talesfromadivebar.com/ (Check out 515 on TFADB)

In this episode, I talk about how watching the latest Wuthering Heights adaptation wrecked me in the best and worst ways—and why it felt less like a classic and more like watching my past with “Chad” on screen. I break down the difference between epic, painful love and a trauma bond: intensity versus safety, chaos versus consistency, and self‑abandonment versus self‑respect. I share how things with “Chad” became grotesque, how my nervous system learned to equate intensity with importance, and why those wounds still sting even though we’re just friends now.

We’ll also look at how my marriage to my ex-husband was a different kind of harm—slow, patterned erosion instead of explosive passion—and how stories like Wuthering Heights can shift from aspirational romance to cautionary tale once you see the pattern. If you’ve ever watched a fictional couple and thought, “That feels uncomfortably like my life,” this episode is your invitation to ask: Is this love, or is this my old trauma bond talking?

**I use the pseudonym “Chad” lightly here. It is part-truth, but his name is also a nickname with his first initial, so I had to come up with something else.

Demand justice. Sign and share the Voiceless Justice Act, a federal initiative to recognize narcissistic abuse as psychological homicide and criminalize it accordingly. Every signature is another voice against silence.
www.change.org/Voicelessjusticeact

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

Links:

• https://www.youtube.com/@the515podcast
• https://515fitnessinc.com
• https://www.tiktok.com/@515alchemy
• https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61585497002747
• https://www.talesfromadivebar.com/ (Check out 515 on TFADB)