Wild & Waking

I had the easiest, fastest, most magnetic launch of my life, and less than 48 hours later, I was flat on my back with mastitis, unable to lift my head off the pillow. Obviously, I had questions.

In this solo episode of Wild & Waking, I’m taking you inside one of the most bonkers weeks I’ve had in a long time. I decided to relaunch The Coven, abandoned the sales page format that made my insides scream, created the whole thing in a PDF instead, and watched the first group fill almost immediately. Everything felt easy, aligned, and...

In this episode of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by entrepreneur, author, and personal branding expert Colleen Nichols for a candid conversation about mixing business and politics, finding and using your voice online, and why choosing to remain “neutral” is anything but. Colleen has spent years helping entrepreneurs become more human on the internet, but as the political landscape has grown increasingly impossible to ignore, her work has expanded to include what happens when being authentic also means being willing to say what you believe.

We talk about the very real fear that comes with speaking out: losing...

We are living through a time of profound unraveling. The pace and weight of what is happening around us can leave our attention scattered, our nervous systems overwhelmed, and our energy stretched across far more places than we ever consciously chose. We want to remain awake to the wounds of the world and contribute to meaningful change, but we cannot continue showing up if we are constantly depleted, dysregulated, and disconnected from ourselves.

In this episode of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by author, activist, spiritual teacher, racial-equity educator, intuitive healer, and clinical social worker Michelle Cassandra Jo...

Many of us learned that goodness was attached to obedience, obedience to approval, approval to belonging, and belonging to safety. Before long, we became experts at reading the room without ever learning how to read ourselves. Even as grown women, we can find ourselves self-censoring, overexplaining, and organizing our lives around what our parents, friends, communities, or people on the internet might think.

This isn’t a simplified “fuck what they think and do whatever you want” conversation. It is an invitation to notice who is sitting on the imaginary board of directors for your life. Whose approv...

What if your spiritual practice didn’t require another elaborate ritual, expensive collection of crystals, or unchecked box on your already-overwhelming to-do list? In this episode of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by Molly Donlan—author of Mundane Magic: A Lazy Witch’s Guide to Hacking Your Brain, Building a Daily Practice, and Getting Stuff Done and co-host of the Demystify Magic and Science of Reiki podcasts—to explore how we can weave magic into the ordinary tasks we’re already doing every day.

At the heart of Molly’s work is a beautifully simple idea: your spiritual prac...

In this solo episode of Wild & Waking, I’m reflecting on what it means to finally arrive in a version of yourself you are no longer afraid to let other people see. After years of deconstructing inherited beliefs, questioning old identities, moving through grief, and learning to sit with both my light and my darkness, I’m entering a season that feels different: rooted, integrated, and ready to hold the fullness of my voice, my power, my magic, and the mission I know I’m here to carry.

After spending a weekend surrounded by women in agriculture, entrep...

In this episode of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by New York Times bestselling author and historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez to discuss her new book, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. Kristin reveals how the seemingly harmless products, stories, aesthetics, and slogans consumed by generations of women carried deeply embedded ideas about femininity, domesticity, capitalism, race, religion, and political power—and how white Christian women were not merely shaped by this culture, but helped create and sustain it.

Together, we trace the surprising connections between positive thinking, pros...

There comes a point in a woman’s becoming when the identities that once helped her survive begin to limit how fully she can live. Being the good girl, the responsible one, the peacekeeper, or the high achiever may have earned you safety, belonging, and approval, but eventually, those same identities can become the ceilings of your expansion. You may have built a beautiful life filled with people and work you genuinely love, yet still feel an inexplicable ache beneath it all: a restlessness, a tightness, a sense that the woman you have been can no longer carry you wh...

In this episode of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by bestselling author and spiritual teacher Tracee Stanley for a conversation about living ritual, presence, purpose, and what it means to recognize the sacredness already woven into our everyday lives. Tracee’s newest book, Living Ritual: Infuse Each Day with Purpose and Spirit, offers an invitation to move beyond the idea that spiritual practice has to be elaborate, time-consuming, or separate from the rest of our lives, and instead discover the small, meaningful ways we can bring intention and devotion into the moments we’re already living.

We talk a...

In Episode 213 of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by manifestation coach, former public policy researcher, and speaker Sridaya Srivatsan for a fascinating conversation about identity, influence, and the stories shaping the way we understand ourselves and the world around us. Together, we explore a question most of us rarely stop to ask: Are your beliefs actually yours—or are they inherited ideas you’ve repeated so many times they now feel like truth?

We explore identity repatterning, manifestation, and the disorienting space between who you have been and who you are becoming. Sridaya shares how the identities we inh...

In this solo episode of Wild & Waking, I’m sharing a beginner-friendly introduction to the Wheel of the Year - a seasonal calendar shaped by the solstices, equinoxes, ancient traditions, and natural rhythms of the Earth. After spending the past year learning about and experiencing each seasonal celebration for myself, I’m walking you through all eight sabbats: Mabon, Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, and Lughnasadh.

As a farm wife living in rural Illinois, so much of the Wheel feels deeply familiar: planting, growth, harvest, release, dormancy, and beginning again. It offers a framework for noticing what...

In this episode of Wild & Waking, I’m joined once again by author, energy intuitive, soul guide, and dear friend Kelsey Anderson for a conversation about intuition, self-trust, creative surrender, feminine power, and what it means to let the veil fall between who you have been conditioned to be and who you have always known yourself to be underneath it all.

Kelsey joins me on the heels of releasing her new book, The Signal: Listen to Your Intuition Through the Noise of Modern Life, a grounded and deeply reflective guide for learning how to discern intuition from fe...

Four years, 210 episodes, two more babies, one podcast rebrand, and countless conversations that have changed the way I understand myself, my work, and the world around me. In this four-year anniversary episode of Wild & Waking, I’m looking back at the podcast journey that began with Gather in Growth (back when recording my first episodes felt like standing naked on a street corner) and reflecting on what became possible because I was willing to do it scared.

As I scroll through four years of episodes, I can see my personal growth and identity evolution unfolding in real ti...

In Episode 209 of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by Jack Thomas, a self-taught regenerative farmsteader, food and homesteading educator, printmaker, writer, and founder of ACRE, the Agrarian Co-Learning & Resiliency Exchange. Together, we explore what it means to build a resilient, politically conscious agrarian life beyond the tradwife fantasy - and why growing food, raising animals, baking bread, caring for the land, and creating a softer life do not have to come packaged with right-wing politics, patriarchy, or religious fundamentalism.

Our conversation digs into the tradwife pipeline, political identity in rural America, class consciousness, white privilege, vibes-based voting, an...

In this solo episode of Wild & Waking, I’m sharing honestly about a season of postpartum depression, anxiety, identity loss, and the strange loneliness of feeling like the woman you used to be is suddenly very far away. This is not a story about being unable to function. It is a story about smiling, making memories, singing in the car with your kids, and still feeling crushed beneath the weight of thoughts that no longer feel like your own.

I talk about what it has been like to return to therapy, to recognize high-functioning postpartum depression, and to...

In this episode of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by Paige Christiansen, Co-Founder and CEO of Self(ish), behavioral strategist, entrepreneur, and Human Design expert, for a conversation about raising daughters beyond the good girl script. So many women are actively unraveling people-pleasing, perfectionism, over-functioning, and the belief that being loved requires being agreeable, helpful, easy, or endlessly accommodating. But when we become mothers, an entirely new question emerges: how do we teach our daughters to be kind, thoughtful, and connected without accidentally teaching them to abandon themselves?

Paige introduces the “villain edit”, the fear women carry of bei...

In this episode of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by Lesley Brock, policy analyst, writer, astrologer, and founder of Smartt Takes and Smartt Strategies, for a conversation that brings together astrology, public policy, politics, power, grief, systems change, and collective awakening. With master’s degrees in Public Health from Harvard and Public Policy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, Lesley brings a rare interdisciplinary lens to the question so many of us are asking right now: what the hell is happening in the world, and is there a deeper pattern beneath the chaos?

Together, we explore astr...

In this solo episode of Wild & Waking, Emily is coming to you from the very real, very human middle of summer with four kids, four months postpartum, big feelings, low capacity, and a whole lot of “everything is fine, I’m fine… but also what is happening?” This listener-inspired Q&A came from questions and reflections shared by clients and women inside Emily’s group programs around support, community, ritual, purpose, deconstruction, and what it means to keep waking up in the middle of everyday life.

Together, we explore the tension of wanting more without losing gratitude for the li...

In this episode of Wild & Waking, I’m joined by Nadine Donselaar, Human Rights lawyer, Reiki and Kriya Yoga teacher, women’s mentor, and author of Your Journey to Consent: A Practical Guide to Understand, Prevent, and Heal from Sexual Violence. This conversation moves through the tender, layered intersections of consent, sexual violence, gender-based violence, holistic healing, human rights, privilege, and the everyday practice of being fully alive. Nadine brings such a unique lens to this work, blending her background in law and human rights with embodied healing practices like Reiki, womb work, meditation, ritual, and energy healing.

To...

In this solo episode of Wild & Waking, I’m sharing what it feels like to finally experience identity integration after a long season of uncertainty, darkness, and personal unraveling. After months of navigating postpartum life, spiritual deconstruction, motherhood, business shifts, and the messy middle of becoming, I’m reflecting on the quiet but powerful “wins” that show us we are no longer just intellectually understanding our growth, but we are actually embodying it. This episode is a call forward for anyone who feels like they’re still in the cave, still questioning everything, or still wondering if the hard season wil...

In this episode, I’m joined by Serena Arora, international bestselling author of Unbound: An Immigrant Daughter’s Journey of Reckoning, Unraveling Shame, and Reclaiming Her Worth, Ayurvedic health practitioner, yoga therapist of over 25 years, and retreat leader in Costa Rica. Serena’s work bridges ancient Ayurvedic wisdom, therapeutic yoga, nervous system resilience, and her own lived experience as the daughter of an Indian father and Chinese mother navigating cultural conditioning, belonging, shame, and self-worth.

Together, we explore what it means to become truly unbound from generational expectations, good daughter conditioning, immigrant guilt, and the deeply internalized belief...

In this episode, Rebuilding Self-Trust: Why Mindset Isn’t Enough–and What Actually Creates Change, we sit down with Self-Trust Coach, IFS Practitioner, and author Andrea Tessier to explore what it really takes to trust yourself again, especially when you’ve done all the mindset work and still find yourself second-guessing your decisions.

Together, we unpack the real reason self-trust feels so hard for so many high-capacity women, leaders, and entrepreneurs. From chronic self-doubt and people-pleasing to fear of making the wrong decision, Andrea explains how protective parts develop over time and how meeting those parts with curios...

Episode 200 is here, and I can’t think of a more fitting person to join me than my husband, Andrew. When the podcast hit 100 episodes back in 2024, Andrew came on for a conversation about marriage, parenting, personal growth, and the life we were building together. Now, 100 episodes later, we’re revisiting that conversation through the lens of everything that has changed since then: a whole new baby, a new podcast name, a much more colorful house, a lot more trees planted, and a wild amount of personal, spiritual, and identity-level evolution.

In this episode, Andrew and I talk...

In this episode, Reclaiming the Wisdom of the Womb: Cycles, Conception, and Coming Back to Your Body, we dive into a conversation that so many women are quietly craving—how to reconnect with your body, understand your menstrual cycle, and trust the wisdom that lives within you. For generations, women have been taught to manage symptoms, push through pain, and outsource their health decisions without ever learning how their bodies actually work. But a shift is happening. More women are beginning to question traditional approaches to menstrual health, fertility, and hormone balance and are searching for deeper, root-cause healing th...

In this episode, Making It Without Losing It: Holding Ambition, Success, Motherhood, Joy, and the Pressure to Do It All, I sit down with bestselling author and entrepreneur Jess Ekstrom to talk about what success really looks like in a world that never seems to slow down. Together, we unpack the tension so many women feel between ambition and inner peace, and why hustle culture often convinces us to delay joy until we’ve finally “made it.” Jess shares the inspiration behind her new book, Making It Without Losing It, and invites us to challenge the idea that productivity, perfor...

In this episode, Raising Kids Who Can Think for Themselves: How We Teach Discernment, Belief, and Self-Trust, I’m sharing a conversation that has been coming up again and again inside my Coven, and likely in your home too. What does it look like to raise children while your own beliefs are evolving? When you’re asking bigger questions, challenging old assumptions, and learning to trust yourself in new ways, how do you guide your kids through those same conversations without handing them a rigid set of answers?

We’re raising kids in a world where information is con...

In this episode, Let It Be Easy: Healing Money Splinters, Self-Worth, and the Fear of Going First, I sit down with money mentor and author Dr. Ezzie Spencer for a powerful conversation about what happens when success stops responding to effort, and starts asking for something deeper. Together, we explore the hidden patterns that shape our relationship with money, work, and worth, and why so many capable, driven women still feel stuck, burned out, or afraid to take their next big step in business or life.

Ezzie introduces the concept of money splinters, small but deeply embedded...

In this behind-the-scenes solo episode of Wild & Waking, I’m inviting you into a very real moment in my life — the night before stepping onto a stage to deliver a keynote to hundreds of women in agriculture. Instead of standing in front of a mirror or typing out a perfectly polished speech, I did what felt most natural to me, I hit record. What started as a way to practice turned into a powerful reflection on the message I feel called to share — not just from the stage, but in every space where women are ready to rise into deeper...

In this episode of Wild & Waking, I sit down with productivity coach and creator of the Cosmic Productivity Method, Chelsey Newmyer, for a conversation about what it really means to build routines that support your real life. Together, we explore the idea that productivity is personal—and why so many traditional productivity and time management systems fall short when they ignore our energy, responsibilities, and season of life. If you’ve ever felt like you were doing all the “right” things but still felt burned out or behind, this conversation offers a refreshing and deeply practical perspective.

Chelsey...

In this powerful and thought-provoking episode of Wild & Waking, I sit down with Beatriz Victoria Albina, NP, MPH, SEP—UCSF-trained Nurse Practitioner, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Master Certified Life Coach, and author of the groundbreaking book End Emotional Outsourcing: How to Overcome Your Codependent, Perfectionist, People-Pleasing Habits and Reclaim Your Life. Together, we explore the deeper roots of people-pleasing, perfectionism, anxiety, and over-responsibility—not as personality flaws, but as intelligent survival strategies shaped by culture, relationships, and nervous system conditioning. This conversation is an invitation to move beyond surface-level self-help and into a more sophisticated understanding of healing, self-trust, and rela...

In this special reverse interview episode, the tables turn as Emily Reuschel, host of the Wild & Waking podcast, sits in the guest seat for a powerful conversation with Master Life Coach and Internal Family Systems practitioner, Andrea Tessier. Together, they explore the deeper forces shaping women’s leadership today; from the rise of self-trust and inner authority to the collective awakening many women are experiencing in a rapidly changing world.

This episode explores what it means to live and lead during a time of collective awakening, when many women are questioning the systems, expectations, and narratives they we...

In this solo episode of Wild & Waking, Emily explores the many conversations happening right now around the divine feminine, and why so many of them feel incomplete. From “trad wife” narratives circulating in rural and online spaces to aestheticized versions of feminine energy centered on softness and passivity, the concept of the feminine has often been reduced to a narrow role. But what if the divine feminine is something much bigger, wilder, and more powerful than that?

At the heart of this conversation is a powerful idea: the divine feminine is a paradox. It is both softness and...

In this episode of Wild & Waking, Emily sits down with Hope Pedraza, a functional wellness practitioner who works at the intersection of science, energetics, and embodied healing. Together, they explore why burnout isn’t a personal failure or a productivity problem, it’s a signal that old paradigms of success, worth, and wellness are no longer sustainable. This conversation is a powerful invitation to reimagine healing through the lens of worthiness, nervous system regulation, and inner authority.

Hope shares her integrative approach to functional wellness, weaving together mineral balancing, nervous system healing, Human Design, subconscious work, and freq...

This episode marks the powerful finale of the four-part Wild & Waking Journey series — and we are closing with the phase that changes everything: The Rise

Throughout this identity evolution series, we’ve walked through The Unraveling, The Remembering, and The Reclamation; the sacred undoing, the return to intuition, the courageous choosing. Now, in this final installment, Emily brings language to what happens next. The Rise is not a finish line or a glow-up. It’s embodied leadership. It’s self-trust in action. It’s the moment your inner transformation begins to ripple outward into your voice, your relationsh...

In this episode of Wild & Waking, Emily sits down with business coach Sara Dann for a bold, honest conversation about what happens when the “good girl” way of succeeding stops working. Inspired by Sara’s viral reflection on why good girl behavior won’t be rewarded in 2026, this conversation explores the deep unraveling many women experience when overfunctioning, overachieving, and self-abandonment no longer deliver fulfillment — even when the business looks successful on paper.

Together, Emily and Sara unpack what Sara calls the “good girl conditioning” so many women have been socialized into: proving worth through productivity, staying humble, avoidi...

The Wild & Waking Journey: Reclamation is Part 3 of a four-part solo series exploring the Wild & Waking Framework—a cyclical, soul-deep map for identity evolution, embodied leadership, and aligned living. In this episode, Emily guides the listener into The Reclamation, the phase where everything begins to click. After Unraveling what no longer fits and Remembering your deeper truth, Reclamation is where you consciously choose to live differently, and begin embodying who you are becoming in real time.

The Reclamation is the sacred middle. It is the integration phase where clarity turns into courage and insight becomes action. Like ea...

What if the challenges you face today didn’t begin in this lifetime? What if the patterns, wounds, and fears that keep resurfacing are echoes of your soul’s past? In this fascinating and deeply healing conversation, Emily sits down with Leyla Bavi — also known as Leyla the Healer — a licensed therapist, hypnotherapist, Reiki master, and global intuitive who bridges psychology, spirituality, and ancient energetic modalities. Together, they explore the profound world of Akashic Records, past life regression, ancestral healing, and the collective awakening that’s unfolding across humanity.

Emily and Leyla also dive into the intersections between me...

The Remembering is the second chapter in a four-part solo series exploring the Wild & Waking Framework — a cyclical, soul-deep map for personal growth, identity evolution, and embodied leadership. Unlike linear self-help models or rigid step-by-step systems, the Wild & Waking journey is a living spiral. It’s a rhythm you move through again and again, learning to recognize where you are right now and honor that place as sacred.

In this episode, Emily dives into The Remembering — the phase defined by the question, “Who was I before the world told me who to be?” This is the water phase of t...

Change is the one constant we can’t escape, and as author, poet, and speaker Arielle Estoria reminds us, it’s not something to fear, but to honor. In this soulful and deeply resonant conversation, Emily and Arielle explore what it truly means to come home to yourself through the ongoing process of unfolding. Together, they reflect on the courage it takes to shed old identities, question inherited beliefs, and step into the woman you’ve always been beneath the layers of conditioning.

Drawing from Arielle’s acclaimed book, The Unfolding: An Invitation to Come Home to Yourself...

The Wild & Waking Journey: Unraveling marks the beginning of a four-part solo series exploring the Wild & Waking Framework — a cyclical, soul-deep map for personal growth, identity evolution, and embodied leadership. Unlike linear self-help models or rigid step-by-step systems, the Wild & Waking journey is a living spiral. It’s a rhythm you move through again and again, learning to recognize where you are right now and honor that place as sacred. Across this series, Emily guides you through the four phases of this framework — The Unraveling, The Remembering, The Reclamation, and The Rise — offering language, reflection, and deep context for the kind...