Feathermane Soul Wisdom Show

For our final episode of pride month, I’m talking abut how we can take up space and claim membership in communities even when we don’t feel welcome, and how self-abandonment relates to that. Without getting technical or into psychology jargon, the first step is to stop abandoning ourselves. I begin by defining and talking about self-abandonment, then discuss more broadly how to take up space or make space for yourself, even when you’re a community of one. I hope that this episode helps you feel less alone and perhaps helps you to see that you matter, you are not alone, and you are a member of the community. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

In this week’s horse wisdom blog, I think about how the horses really enjoyed treats when the farrier came and how too often we don’t make time in our own lives to enjoy the good things. You can read the blog here. Sometimes when we’re grieving or because we’ve internalized stories that we’ve been told, we don’t think we deserve good things and this is very far from the truth. We all deserve good things, and we all deserve time to slow down and enjoy them. What are you going to enjoy today? Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

In this week’s body theology blog I talk about when your body doesn’t feel sacred. If you’re dealing with a chronic illness, disability, food allergy, burnout, or just don’t feel “good”, then there’s a chance you don’t see just how sacred your body is. I offer you powerful tips to start seeing every aspect of your body, even the unpleasant ones, as sacred and discuss just how powerful accepting your body however it is at the moment can be. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

In last week’s show I talked about the grief of feeling like you’re excluded from the communities that you are a part of and how that especially feels for neurodivergent and disabled individuals. This week I’m speaking to the communities themselves and talking about what they can do to help people feel more included. Disabilities aren’t always visible, and the vast spectrum of neurodifferent brains also means that you can’t tell by looking at someone whether they are neurodivergent or not. This means the responsibility is on community leaders, on groups, and on each individual community member to look around them and say “Who isn’t at this table? Who isn’t giving their views and who are we excluding?” In this week’s episode, I invite you to look around your communities, find out who isn’t there or who is being excluded, and change that. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

If you’re queer and neurodivergent you can feel separated from your community this pride month. If you do not outwardly look like your gender, then you can feel separated from your community this pride month. These two things are not separate. They are part of the larger ways in which we might feel separated from our community during pride and why we might be grieving. In this episode, I discuss the grief of community separation, some reasons why it happens, especially to neurodivergent LGBTQIA2s+ individuals, and some ways to face it so that we can begin to journey with our grief, not just ignore it and hope it goes away. If you’d like to join our monthly neurodivergent grief circle, please visit https://feathermanesoul.com/events and find out when the next one will be. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

In this blogcast, I share this week’s horse wisdom blog talking about forgiveness. Radical acceptance can help us to forgive ourselves, which can help our rejection sensitive dysphoria and can help us learn from the horses and from the world around us. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

Bhakti is the practice of loving devotion designed to bring you closer to the divine. Spirituality is the connection to something larger than yourself, something outside of yourself, and doesn’t necessarily have to do with religion or divinity. What do these two things have in common? Because when you put them together with tools for nervous system regulation like yoga and mindfulness, you can cultivate a devotion to the parts of yourself that are worthy of support, of care, and of nurturing, and those parts which are connected to the wider global community of humanity and the universe itself. In this episode I examine the idea that spirituality is completely divorced from meditation and mindfulness as they’re often used today, and talk about how bhakti can help us create radical acceptance and radical self-love with the belief that we are worthy of care. I also discuss what nervous system regulation means to me, and how all of this is combined. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

This Horse Wisdom blogcast talks about how horses don’t mind when it rains and how we can apply that to when “rain” happens in our own lives. Learn the one question to ask when you’re not sure what you need in the moment and learn from the sacred herd. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

This is a blogcast episode, an audio recording of the latest Body Theology blog posted on Feathermane Soul. Now you can listen on the go, and this also makes the blog more accessible. Meditation is a great way for me to tune into my body. When I start to feel anxious, I focus on my breath, usually for no more than five minutes, and this helps me understand where the anxiety is coming from. Once I have this knowledge, I can move forward. The problem is too many people think they’re meditating wrong when they can’t quiet the mind. So in this short blog, I discuss why those “returning to the practice” moments are really the heart of meditation and why if you’re doing this, you’re meditating exactly right. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

I recently came across the term “hyperverbal autism” and it described me perfectly. When I shared the post on social media, many people I knew (who were also neurodivergent) said that explained them too, and the curious thing was, until now, no one had heard the term before. What did we have in common? That we were all very much into books, reading, and language. We were all former gifted kids, and now that we were older, we had or are facing burnout, exhaustion, and frustration with our lack of support. There was also something else underneath that: grief. We mourned for the younger version of ourselves who didn’t have this knowledge, but thought we were “bad” at making friends or having conversations. We mourned for the lack of support and understanding we experience. And we grieved for ourselves, that we had lived so long without knowing. That’s why I’ve started the Neurodivergent Grief Circles. Find out when the next one is, and join, by visiting our events page Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

This is a blogcast episode, an audio recording of the latest blog posted on Feathermane Soul. Now you can listen on the go, and this also makes the blog more accessible. This week’s horse wisdom has me turning to the sacred herd to learn how to trust myself. Horses don’t question whether they do the right thing. They do what they feel they need to do for survival. They obey herd dynamics, but most of all they live in the now and learn from what they do. When we look to horses, or trust in something larger than ourselves, literally in this case, we can see the patterns in nature and know that we, too, can trust our own actions. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.

This is a blogcast episode, an audio recording of the latest blog posted on Feathermane Soul. Now you can listen on the go, and this also makes the blog more accessible. My work involves Wild Spirit Storytelling^TM^. What is it? How does the process look? And when you come up against the realization that you, or something about you, has fundamentally changed, how does the process help you to reveal and rediscover your core self? This blog begins to answer those questions. Want to learn more about this show? Visit Feathermane Soul to learn about the podcast, see how you can support it and become a guest.