Time to reclaim desire, permission, and personal authority.

Press play and listen to me I explore why so many of us have been conditioned to seek external permission. I call out how culture teaches us to rationalize and soften our desires. Let's name the connection between desire, self-trust, and embodied choice.

Cause there's a reason your longings are not random. They are 100% legitimate

This Hot Flash episode is an invitation to stop filtering your desires through other people’s expectations and start building a relationship with what feels alive inside of you.

Because desire doesn’t originate in logic.

It comes from your aliveness.

You do not need permission to want what you want.

This episode is a real-time, behind-the-scenes look at what it actually means to live the what I teach.

Recently I had a moment where, in the past, that’s exactly where I would have disappeared. But this time I didn’t.

Listen to l what's changed

• How desire can meet internal “scaffolding” and create friction
• Why that friction is often the moment we abandon ourselves
• The nervous system experience of anxiety, shutdown, and self-doubt
• How external permission quietly shapes our sense of what we’re “allowed” to want
• The role of curiosity in interrupting survival patterns
• And the real, messy process of staying in relationship with what matters

I also explore:

• Why desire is not random (and why it deserves your attention)
• How fear shows up when you expand into something meaningful
• The difference between slowing down and disappearing
• The importance of self-devotion over self-abandonment
• And what it looks like to build trust with yourself in real time

This isn’t a polished teaching. It’s a lived experience.

An honest look at what it takes to keep showing up when your body is telling you to retreat.

Because, you don’t need to eliminate fear to move forward.

What you need is to build a relationship with yourself that is strong enough that you don’t abandon what you desire when your nervous system spins you out.

This episode started as a check-in.

A reflection on where I've been spending my energy. Why the podcast slowed down a little. What’s been shifting behind the scenes.

But very quickly it became something else.

Underneath everything I’m building right now, the podcast, my new publication on Substack, and the work I’m doing with my clients. There is one question that continues to sit at the center of it all.

Do you love yourself?

I'm not asking about the surface-level, “treat yourself” kind of way. My inquiry concerns the deeper, more confronting, more transformational.

What does it actually mean to be in relationship with yourself?

This episode is about.

• The evolution of my visibility and why it no longer feels the same
• Why I’m expanding my work onto Substack and what’s calling me there
• What “intimacy-based living” really means (and why it’s becoming the umbrella for everything I do)
• The moment that changed everything for me. When I realized I had never truly asked if I loved myself
• Why self-love is not a feeling, but a practice, a devotion, a way of relating
• How self-love shapes our relationships with others, our communities, and even how we show up in the world politically
• The difference between surface-level self-care and deep, intimate self-relationship
• The real, ongoing work of examining the stories we tell ourselves
• And, the question I am actively sitting with right now: where am I still giving my permission away?

This is not a polished teaching.

It’s a real-time exploration.

A living, breathing look at what it means to build a relationship with yourself… while you’re still in the process of becoming.

If you take anything from this episode, let it be this:

What does it mean to actually be in relationship with myself?

Because everything changes from there.

Find me on Substack: Intimacy-Based Living