Wendy Peterson had to earn being around. Watch the kids, do the dishes, be a good girl, cause no static. "I would earn the love. I would be okay."

Wendy is an author, a metaphysical teacher and an intuitive energy healer. She spent twenty years in IT before any of this got named, and she built the Empower Method the way she used to build systems: test what works, keep it, structure it. Her premise is that confidence was never something you built. A three-year-old in a Superman cape already has it, right up until the world gets hold of her.

Lori answers with the chaotic alcoholic house she grew up in, where she made herself as small as she could, and with a meeting room years later in corporate America where saying her own name in front of colleagues made her heart hammer.

The middle of the episode belongs to Lori, and it's about a bag of salad. A food bank shift, two salads left on the shelf, and a man behind her holding a grocery basket with three well-behaved boys and exhaustion all over him. She hands him one. He says, "thank you so much, I'm just trying to make it through the day." The salad is beside the point. A few years ago she'd have walked out of that store without ever seeing him.

The back third is about carrying other people's energy. Wendy pulls the cord out at the source rather than cutting it, sweeps clean, then fills the space. Lori has four words for the same thing and she learned them the hard way. Observe, don't absorb.

Hosted by Tammy Green Mitchell and Lori Walpole. Guest: Wendy Peterson, founder of Radiance Restoration and creator of the Empower Method.

0:00 Cold open

0:36 Welcome to Episode 17

2:20 Meet Wendy Peterson

3:49 Superman cape confidence

6:28 Leaving a 28-year marriage

8:38 It is safe to shine now

15:12 I will never do that again

16:48 Yesterday, at the food bank

17:45 The man with three boys

24:44 The blessing jar

29:28 Lori's father and gratitude

37:04 I taught the world to treat me

37:43 I would earn the love

43:32 Observe, don't absorb

47:32 Pulling the cord at the source

52:24 We walk each other home

Nothing in this episode is medical advice. Wendy, Lori and Tammy speak from their own lives, not as clinicians. Lori's account of stepping back from alcohol and from prescribed medication is her own experience. Talk to your doctor before changing anything, and never stop a prescribed medication on your own.

A note on this episode. It includes discussion of growing up in a home with alcoholism, and of Lori's own drinking and her decision to stop. If any of it lands close to home, reach out to someone you trust. US listeners can call or text 988.

Wendy's book Quantum Leap Into Authentic Confidence for Empaths & Lightworkers is on Amazon, and it contains the full seven-step Empower Method. Her site: https://myradiancerestoration.com

QHHT is Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique. Lori is a certified Level 2 practitioner and sees clients professionally.

Some of the deaths you live through don't come with a funeral.

Lori opens this one by reading a piece she found called The 7 Deaths You Experience Without Physically Dying, by John Roma. Identity. Relationships. A dream. A belief system. The future you had already pictured. Tammy listens, and says she has been through almost all seven in a single day.

What follows is the two of them going through the list honestly. Tammy on questioning everything she was taught growing up Southern Baptist. Lori on being 18, watching her parents divorce, and wanting her mother back badly enough to pay for weekly lunches she could barely afford. Tammy on the boundary she set to stay sober, and on choosing not to attend her mother's funeral after thirteen years of silence.

Near the middle, Tammy describes smelling cigarettes and perfume in a house where nobody smokes, and knowing. Then, for the first time in fifty-seven years, feeling how much her mother loved her.

Tammy works out on tape that she has been through six of the seven and is sitting in the last one, the death of needing to know who she is becoming. She sets that as her intention for the month.

No guest this week. Just the two of them, which is when this show is at its most itself.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open

0:33 Welcome to Episode 16

1:33 The seven deaths, read aloud

7:05 Caterpillar goo, and the in-between

8:50 Lori: if you'd asked me a year ago

12:21 The prayer, and the violinist in Malaga

14:19 The death of a belief system

16:12 The hardest one: relationships

18:19 Adult children and their parents

22:30 Tammy: my mother cut ties, not me

26:10 The boundary that kept her sober

37:23 The funeral she chose not to attend

44:55 Floating in the in-between

59:57 Loving who you were, flaws and all

1:05:01 I'm a badass

LINKS

The United States of Us: https://tammygreenmitchell.com

The seven deaths piece read in this episode is by John Roma, from the Healer page. Used with permission. https://facebook.com/john.roma.31149

A NOTE BEFORE YOU LISTEN

Around 21 minutes, Lori shares something from her childhood that may be hard to hear. If it brings something up for you, talk to someone you trust. In the US you can call or text 988 any time.

What happens when you stop performing the version of yourself that other people approved of?

Angelica Faith joins Tammy and Lori for a conversation about deconditioning: unlearning the shoulds, retiring the strong independent woman hat she has worn so long it fused to her, and getting radically honest about what actually lights her up.

She shares the download that told her to write a musical. She describes the moment on a coaching call when two halves of her life finally clicked into one, and the Broadway dream she had never told her closest friend about. And she says a sentence out loud for the first time in her life: good girls aren't angry.

Lori shares the message that came through in the bath. I am a powerful creator, divinely connected to the universe. She talks about pulling her energy out of frequencies that were feeding something she did not want to feed, and about two days on the floor with her grandbabies with the phone face down.

Tammy gets honest about living the dream she chased for ten years and still fighting guilt for not working. She talks about worthiness that is not earned. She talks about the three years she survived one AA meeting at a time.

It is a conversation about intuition, about receiving, and about the fact that not everything is meant to come with you. Letting go is allowed to be ugly.

Life is meant to be lived together. Your people are already waiting for you.

Content note: this episode includes honest discussion of depression, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. If any of it lands close to home, please reach out to someone you trust or a local line. In the US, call or text 988.

New episodes weekly.

Angelica's contact: @angelicafaithllc

(00:00) Welcome to Episode 15

(01:38) Being honest without a title yet

(06:16) Retiring the strong independent hat

(08:13) Why The United States of Us

(11:07) What deconditioning is teaching her

(13:17) You are going to write a musical

(17:15) Two halves of her come back together

(19:43) I am a powerful creator

(22:32) Tammy's 2024 download: unity

(28:32) Enough room at the table

(34:52) Living the dream and feeling guilty

(37:13) I am not arriving

(44:07) Good girls aren't angry

(49:36) Tammy's three years in the dark

(56:13) Life is meant to be lived together