Sacred Conversations

In this episode, we conclude season 1 and share that we’ll be taking a break from Sacred Conversations, as we open into some other directions calling to us. For Nicole, this includes The Purple Couch, an upcoming podcast she’s creating for therapists and, in her own words, “anyone on their journey doing the deeper work.” She’ll also remain engaged with her book, The Art of Chaos, as it moves closer to publication. For Robin, this includes her writing, and a growing desire to help build more loving, nourishing local community. As we talk about these next horizons, we also touch on more of what has been meeting us in this moment—our sense of something having been completed, as something too still waits to be born. Through the last year, we’ve loved sharing these conversations with you, and in this pause, we’d also love to keep in touch. If you’d like to reach out, you can send us a message on Instagram, email Robin at [email protected], or email Nicole through her website at https://drnicoledolan.com. You can also continue to find Robin on her podcasts Voice Note Me and Imagine + Flow, and on Substack at https://substack.com/@robinbethel.Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we reflect on this notion, and reality, of being seen, in a variety of ways. It’s been about one year since we recorded our first episode of Sacred Conversations, which is one new way we are experiencing being seen. And so this seemed like a well-timed moment for reflection. In our conversation, we focus on this podcast, though we also hold a larger context in our minds and hearts (and some of those notes are mentioned in the episode's introduction). Robin also talks of something that isn’t directly connected to this podcast journey or even necessarily being seen in a more public-facing way, but simply touches into being seen at its most basic level: appearance, and her shifting relationship to her own. If you would like to join the conversation and share your own journey in any of these areas, please get in touch! You can send us a message on Instagram—our accounts are listed below—or if you prefer, feel free to send an email to [email protected]. And if you'd like to listen to the guided meditative imagining that Robin mentions in this episode, on seeing yourself truly and letting yourself be seen, you can find it on Spotify here or on Apple Podcasts here. (You can also search for Imagine + Flow wherever you listen to your podcasts, then play "Vignette of Seeing.") Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we’re joined by Josh Booton, an award-winning poet, singer/songwriter with the band Mercy Giant, and speech language pathologist. In a rich, ranging conversation, we open into Josh’s process creating poetry and making music, his drive to empathetically connect, and how he finds moments of transcendence lit largest through contrast. This takes us, too, into a wider discussion of making art, feeling the sacred, and tapping into the unseen world. Threaded through it all: a sense of holding together all the things. And also, the gift of Josh’s poetry, subtle, lush, glorious.We hope this episode is a balm of soft creative flame and joy in these dark weeks. To connect with Josh further, you can find him on Instagram here and find Mercy Giant here. Look for Josh's books at your favorite indie and used books stores, or at Barnes & Noble or Amazon. Discover Mercy Giant's music on Apple Music, Spotify, and other streaming services. (Also, if you haven't yet collided with Jeff Buckley, and after this episode you want to, here's a start, with "Hallelujah." To read "blessing the boats" by Lucille Clifton {please do}, visit here. And to explore Larry Levis, you can find a selection of his poems here.)Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we return to our energetic sense of being at a precipice, still moving, intricately, in the dark; yet now in the loudest and quietest notes of completion, and beginning.We talk of trust, and the knowing and unknowing moving us. We talk of the intensity of change we feel around the corner, and one destined threshold this long journey is taking so many of us across, preparing us to give our deepest gifts. We also talk of upcoming new projects we’re each excited about—for Robin, creating more Imagine + Flow guided meditative imaginings and bringing them to YouTube, and for Nicole, launching a new solo podcast where she’ll be teaching depth psychology and more in a singularly beautiful way. We’ll share more about these as they find their form. :)In this beautiful solstice month, where so much hangs silent and radiant in the air, we wish you well in your own precipice-ing, and celebrating. If you’d like to share any of how this moment in time is meeting you, we’d love to hear from you. Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we begin in lightness then move to intensity: talking of how in this moment of time, we’ve come to stand at a precipice, with gathering crescendo, in what feels like last (and beginning) notes of wild and deep stories. Nicole shares pieces of where this multi-year period has ultimately led her, into a new embodied nervous-system-level okayness, that grounds her in herself even through chaos. And also, into a knowing that she’s meant to help others build an inner architecture that lets them do the same. For Robin, this period has brought with it two deep mystical stories defined by trust and devotion, which have each led her to step so deeply into her intuitive power it feels like a living in magic. In this episode, she opens into one of these, a story around money, and listening, and moving with the invisible world as much as what is seen. (She shares more about this, with deeper nuance, in an episode of her other podcast, Voice Note Me, which is linked below.)We know we’re not the only ones living through these initiations, in this moment, that build upon all the rest we’ve experienced to carry us forward into a new way of being humans on this earth together. It’s a powerful piece of time. And we really enjoyed this conversation that touched into the current energies as we feel them. We hope it meets you well. {If you feel drawn to hear more about this story Robin shares, you can find the Voice Note Me episode—Marrow and Pixie Dust: A Love Letter in Vignette, from Robin—on Apple Podcasts here or on Spotify here. You can also find the Voice Note Me podcast on YouTube and the other usual platforms.}Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we speak with Anniston Riekstins, a master numerologist, a transformational mentor to women, and someone who, beautifully, believes we all carry codes of remembrance for each other. Anniston shares how her life has been radically, radiantly defined by following an inner knowing that has, again and again, pushed her beyond the limits of her logical mind into a life she loves—and she brings forward one story in particular, of the life-changing choice that ultimately led her into deep, sacred, soulmate union. We talk about this relationship and others, too, that have the power to act as mirrors and catalysts in our lives, reflecting back what we need to see and feel. We also touch on the power of women in community, the sacred marriage of divine feminine and divine masculine within that we’re each called to, and the swirling, transformational astrology and numerology of this time. Each of us had so much fun recording this conversation, and we hope you enjoy listening!You can learn more about Anniston at annistonriekstins.com and connect with her on Instagram here. Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we speak with Gwyneth Flack, a warm, wise intuitive guide who dedicates much of her work in the world to helping people connect to their intuitive and creative powers. We talk of sacred stories and thresholds she experienced in her own relationship with energy, intuition, and awareness—including one near-death experience she had at four years old—and we also touch on some of the tools she uses to help others develop these spaces in their lives. Gwyneth brought beautiful groundedness, openness, and laughter to our conversation, and we hope you enjoy listening!You can learn more about Gwyneth and her work here, and connect with her on Instagram here. Her book Limitless: Transform Your Life with Intuition and Creativity is available here.Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we touch on some of what has been meeting us in the last months, with Robin briefly sharing a few broad notes before we turn to a profound gift Nicole has recently experienced: stepping into deep, soulful community with a group of women at a retreat for mothers of kids with autism. This life-changing experience offered a homecoming, allowing Nicole to be seen and held in all her fullness and all her sacred wild. And as she felt her own belonging with these remarkable women, she saw reflected back to her the luminous beauty of belonging to this particular tribe. Her story speaks to the sacred power of community, of being fully met. It speaks to the gifts we and our children have to give, and receive, when allowed our fullest expression. And in a number of ways, for Nicole, this marks the completion of a circle. So much in this time is simultaneously crescendoing, and falling away, being remembered, and being reborn. As you move through your own circles and thresholds, we send you so much love. And we hope you enjoy listening! Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we revisit our earlier conversation on wholeness and paths of transformation, to add a few thoughts we felt were initially missing! Robin returns to language we hear so often in psycho-spiritual spaces: “doing the inner work,” a phrase often used to generally describe moving through difficult inner places in ways that lead to transformation. To Robin, this phrase often feels fitting, like when people seek more structured containers or deliberate processes to help them heal and grow, but for many other paths of inner transformation, such as the less defined path she’s mostly traveled, it feels off center and not quite right. Nicole brings her own perspective here, with notes of harmony and contrast, which then brings us into what she wanted to add to our original conversation, on wholeness, and what is richly alive for her right now: moving from healing in fragmentation to healing in wholeness; with wholeness as a psycho-spiritual nervous system field that that speaks to our capacity to hold all the things, together. We were glad to return to these ideas of wholeness and transformation once more—albeit again imperfectly. :) We hope you enjoy listening!Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we speak with Andrew Monroe Rice, a novelist, a poet, and a spiritual mentor. Andrew has moved through addiction and recovery, sacred life passages and descents, and experiences within men’s work that broke him wide open—and through this, he discovered an inner gold he has poured into art and the life around him. In our conversation, he shares notes from his journey, including his time first opening into, and later helping facilitate, men’s rites of passage: a sacred container of community that changed his life. Andrew’s wisdom weaves through his presence, his poetry—some of which he shares here—and his work in the world. It was lovely for us to speak with him, and we hope you enjoy listening. You can learn more about Andrew's books, retreat offerings, and spiritual companionship work at https://resentmentville.com.And you can read the poem he references in this episode—The Journey by Mary Oliver—here: https://static.oprah.com/images/201104/omag/the-journey.pdfThank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we greet the Solstice with conversation around the energies of the moment. We talk of our lives, and a once-every-twelve-years astrological movement that radiates care: the planet of growth and abundance, Jupiter, entering the nourishing sign of Cancer, where it will remain for the next year. During a time of turbulence, breakdown, and release, we welcome the notes of warmth both this transit and the growing sunshine suggest, and hope you feel them too, in waves of Solstice blessings. We hope you enjoy listening. Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we’re joined by Leah Ray Rupp, a soul-centered astrological coach who helps people learn to connect the movements of the skies to the cycles of energy in their own lives. Our conversation began by looking at Leah’s own journey into astrology and human design, which brought us to how astrology can specifically support parents, and especially parents of neurodivergent kids. We then zoomed out to touch on some energies of this unfolding moment, and take a Leah-guided trip round the full zodiac wheel. It was a gift to share this space with Leah, and we hope you enjoy listening!You can connect with Leah and learn more about her offerings at her home on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leahray.rupp/Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we celebrate Nicole’s completion of the draft for her book, currently titled The Art of Chaos: A Memoir of Motherhood, Trauma, and Transformation. In our conversation, we explore the path she traveled in writing the story—and living it out—as what began as an integrated tale of the Maiden archetype moved into a messy, still-evolving tale of the Mother. In Nicole’s case, a mother of neurodivergent children who was caught in difficult, complex currents of marriage, family, and loss. No longer tied up in a well-processed bow, this reimagined book shifted heartbeat, which reflected Nicole’s own opening into another kind of journey—this time not the more linear Hero’s Journey she was so familiar with as an individual and a therapist, but the wild labyrinth of something new: the Heroine’s Journey. Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we speak with depth psychologist Dr. John Beradino, who shares a sacred story touching forward and backward in time—from his family and the dreams they lived and ached for, to where he felt called to walk forward on his own, following a call he couldn't yet see. Our conversation moves from here to also explore notes of depth psychology, the container of story, the sacred posture of faith, and our lives as a possibility of homecoming, remembrance, a returning to the fullness of who we are. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.  You can learn more about John and his therapeutic practice at https://www.johnberadino.com/.Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we look at some of the language and ideas we often center on: notions of wholeness and paths of inner transformation. We share—imperfectly—how we each hold wholeness, which is more shape than definition. And we wind our way through various paths of transformation, which can sometimes involve intentionally seeking containers and guides that invite and support inner alchemy, and can sometimes reflect more a way of being, an opening into life and the depth of feelings we need to feel, that brings its own transmutation. These paths—which at least in part embody various energies of the hero’s journey and the heroine’s journey—share many notes and overlap too. And they all belong. Because we each later felt there was more to express, more clearly, we’re going to return to these ideas in a part 2 conversation, soon. Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this episode, we are joined by June Syndesi Kramer, a United Nations-honored generational trauma researcher, wellness counselor, and doctoral student in somatic psychology, who in addition to helping others heal, lives in rigorous devotion to clearing the blocks within herself to greater love. Our conversation spans this work, this devotion, as well as other sacred calls and threads within June’s life and soul—all of which: are art.Learn more about June and her work at syndesiwellness.com and connect with her on Instagram here. Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨ 

In this first episode, we—Nicole and Robin—introduce ourselves and how we move through the world, by each sharing one sacred story from our lives. Robin shares a story from a world ago, sixteen years past, and Nicole shares a story that she's living in now. Yet both hold notes of descent, death, and rebirth; notes of wholeness, gift, and beauty.Thank you for joining us! We hope you follow the podcast, and if you'd like to connect further, you can:Follow Sacred Conversations on InstagramSubscribe to Sacred Conversations on Youtube Connect with Nicole on Instagram Connect with Robin on Instagram✨✨