Forgive Yourself

After heartbreak, it’s easy to look back and wonder: Why didn’t I see it sooner? Why did I stay? How did I let this happen? But taking responsibility for your past doesn’t have to mean carrying shame for it.

In this episode, I sit down with somatic coach, educator, and writer Christina Elaine to explore the patterns that keep us stuck in self-blame and why healing isn’t about endlessly analyzing or fixing ourselves. Christina shares how our nervous systems can pull us toward familiar relationship dynamics, why insight alone may not be e...

Sometimes the symptoms we’re trying to silence are actually asking us to pay attention. In this episode, Dr. Jen Hewson, doctor of natural medicine, ordained minister, author, and trauma survivor, explores the connection between our physical health, nervous system, emotions, relationships, and spiritual lives.

Drawing from her own journey, Dr. Jen shares how years spent in survival mode can shape the way we feel, think, respond, and care for ourselves. Together, we discuss learning to recognize the difference between intuition and hypervigilance, quieting the body so we can hear ourselves more clearly, and fi...

Relationships can become much harder to see clearly when our emotions, hopes, fears, and past experiences are involved. Sometimes we recognize the red flags or feel that something isn’t right long before we’re ready to admit it to ourselves.

In this episode, I’m joined by relationship coach and “Is He Worthy?” author Dave McLachlan for a conversation about bringing greater clarity and self-trust into the way we choose and navigate relationships. Dave shares how his own difficult divorce inspired him to create the Worthy Method, an unemotional relationship assessment designed to help women...

For years, Paul Drayton believed his struggles with addiction, relationships, and identity were simply who he was. It wasn't until a life-changing ADHD diagnosis at age 50, the end of his marriage, and the work of looking honestly at his past that he began to understand the deeper story behind his choices and find his way back to himself.

In this heartfelt episode, I talk with the British actor, writer, and author of Ride or Die Trying about addiction, recovery, people-pleasing, late-diagnosed ADHD, and the quiet courage it takes to rebuild your life after losing...

Spiritual healing is about coming home to the divine wisdom that's already within you, not becoming someone new. In this heartfelt conversation, I sit down with author, yoga teacher, and inner life coach Regan Caruthers to explore the connection between forgiveness and spiritual devotion, and the practices that help us remember who we truly are. Regan shares stories from her spiritual upbringing, how those early experiences shaped her life's work, and why she believes so many of us have been conditioned to disconnect from our true nature. We also explore intuition, divine guidance, embodiment, and the daily practices that...

For years, I've heard—and even believed—that acceptance was the answer. But through my own experiences with caregiving, health challenges, and now recovering from hamstring surgery, I've discovered something important: sometimes acceptance feels impossibly far away.

In this episode, I'm sharing the gentler path that has transformed how I approach healing. Instead of forcing ourselves to "just accept" painful realities, what if we first became aware, gave ourselves permission, practiced compassion, and then found our way to acceptance? We'll explore why busyness can become a way of avoiding ourselves, how self-judgment keeps us stuc...

Making the right decision doesn't always feel peaceful. Sometimes it feels lonely. Sometimes it feels uncomfortable. And sometimes it comes with guilt, grief, or the fear of disappointing the people you love.

In this episode, I talk about one of the most important parts of emotional freedom: learning to trust your decisions and stay with yourself after you've made them. Discomfort isn't always a sign you're making the wrong choice, over-explaining often comes from seeking permission instead of communicating, and self-trust grows when you stop abandoning yourself in the face of someone else's reaction.<...

Why does guilt show up the moment you start honoring yourself? If you've ever set a boundary, said no, chosen rest, or spoken your truth only to immediately wonder if you were being selfish, this episode is for you.

In this episode, I explore the difference between healthy guilt, which invites growth and repair, and old pattern guilt, which pulls you back into people-pleasing, self-abandonment, and outdated roles. I share why guilt often intensifies when you're growing, how your nervous system can mistake self-honoring choices for danger, and why someone else's disappointment doesn't automatically...

Emotional freedom doesn't begin with a dramatic life change—it begins with one honest moment. In this episode, I explore what it really means to stop leaving yourself behind. If you've spent years being the dependable one, keeping the peace, saying yes when you mean no, or putting everyone else's needs ahead of your own, it’s time to recognize the hidden ways you've disconnected from yourself.

I share why self-forgiveness is essential to breaking old patterns and reclaiming your voice, and explore how resentment, exhaustion, and even menopause can reveal the places where you...

Healing doesn't mean forgetting the past or pretending it didn't hurt. It means no longer allowing what you didn't receive to define who you are.

In the final episode of this three-part series on the father wound, forgiveness, and healing, we explore what it truly means to move beyond awareness and begin rebuilding your relationship with yourself. I share how childhood experiences with an emotionally unavailable, critical, or inconsistent father can shape the way we love, trust, set boundaries, and view our own worth—and why healing isn't about waiting for someone else to fi...

The father wound isn’t just about your father. It’s about the beliefs you formed about yourself when you didn’t feel fully seen, safe, protected, chosen, or emotionally met. In this second episode of my When Father’s Day Feels Complicated series, we’re exploring how those beliefs can quietly shape the way you love, trust, and choose long after childhood.

I’ll share some of my own experiences with people-pleasing, self-doubt, and trying to earn love, while helping you recognize the patterns that may still be influencing your relationships today. We’ll talk about...

Father’s Day can bring up more than celebration. It can stir grief, longing, anger, confusion, gratitude, or the ache of something that was never fully there. In the first episode of this three-part series, I explore the father wound and the impact of growing up with a father who may have been physically present but emotionally unavailable, absent, critical, inconsistent, or simply unable to give you what you needed.

I share parts of my own story and invite you to consider the difference between the father you had and the father you needed. To...

Better conversations don’t begin with perfect words—they begin with a more honest relationship with yourself.

In this final episode of the self-trust series, I bring everything we've explored together and focus on what self-trust looks like in real life, especially in the conversations, decisions, and boundaries that feel the hardest. Too often, we overexplain, people-please, or abandon our own needs in an effort to keep the peace. But what if there was another way?

I share a simple self-trust practice you can use before difficult conversations, major deci...

Why do some decisions feel impossible to make? Why do certain conversations leave you overthinking for days? And why do you keep finding yourself people-pleasing, seeking reassurance, or ignoring what you know is true?

Beneath avoidance, over-explaining, and self-doubt, there is often an unmet need asking for attention. In this episode, I continue our three-part series on self-trust by exploring the five hidden needs that shape our choices, conversations, and relationships. You’ll hear how needs for safety, belonging, validation, autonomy, and rest can quietly influence the way we show up in our lives. In...

Self-trust is not about having all the answers or never feeling afraid. It’s about learning to stay connected to yourself while taking the next honest step forward.

In this first episode of a special three-part series on self-trust, I explore why so many of us keep searching for more advice, more reassurance, and more opinions when deep down, we already know what feels true. I unpack the patterns of overthinking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and self-doubt that pull us away from our own inner knowing. Old survival patterns can make even small decisions feel overwhelming, bu...

There are some wounds that change the course of a life, and some healing journeys that change it again. In this deeply vulnerable conversation, I sit down with author and memoirist Heather Conn to talk about surviving childhood incest, the long and layered process of healing, and the unexpected path that eventually led her toward forgiveness. Heather shares how years of therapy, body-based healing, creativity, meditation, writing, and spiritual practice helped her reconnect with herself after trauma disconnected her from her body, emotions, and relationships.

Together, we talk about the difference between forgiveness and...

So many women carry a quiet promise inside themselves: ‘I will be different from my mother.’ Maybe you grew up feeling unseen, emotionally alone, criticized, or responsible for everyone else’s feelings. And when you became a mother yourself, you vowed your children would never feel what you felt. But what happens when that promise turns into pressure?

In this episode, I talk about the emotional weight of trying to be the mom you didn’t have and the exhaustion that comes from believing you have to get motherhood “right” in order to break the cycle. I...

Mother guilt is something so many women carry, but rarely say out loud. In this episode, I talk about the kind of guilt that shows up in everyday moments. The guilt of not being present enough, patient enough, or doing enough. The guilt that lingers from the past and the pressure we place on ourselves in the present.

But this conversation is not about judging yourself or trying to “just let it go.” It’s about understanding where that guilt comes from, separating it from shame, and beginning to meet yourself with more compassion.

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There are losses we talk about, and then there are the ones we carry quietly. In this episode, I sit down with pregnancy loss coach Shruti Trivedi to talk about a kind of grief that so often goes unspoken. Pregnancy loss is something many experience, but few feel safe enough to fully process. What gets left behind is not just sadness, but guilt, shame, and the constant loop of “what if.”

Shruti shares her own story of multiple losses and what it looked like to carry that grief silently for years. We talk about the...

Giving comes naturally. Receiving does not.

In this episode, I’m diving into why receiving can feel so uncomfortable, especially for high-achieving, high-functioning women who are used to being the ones who give, support, and hold everything together.

This isn’t just about brushing off compliments. It shows up in your relationships, your work, your business, and even your ability to receive success, opportunities, and financial growth. Receiving requires vulnerability, and if your nervous system learned that it wasn’t safe to be seen, supported, or open, then of course...

I didn’t lose myself all at once. It happened slowly, quietly, in ways I didn’t recognize until my body started speaking louder than I could ignore.

In this episode, I’m sharing something I’m not just teaching, I’m living. We’re talking about what it really looks like to lose yourself while taking care of everyone else, and how patterns like people-pleasing and codependency can feel loving on the outside, but are actually forms of self-abandonment on the inside.

I open up about my own journey thro...

When we hear the word dementia, most of us think of loss. Decline. Goodbye. But what if that’s not the full story?

In this conversation, I sit down with Marilyn Raichle, who gently challenges everything we think we know about dementia. After being told her whole life to "walk away" when Alzheimer's came, Marilyn, Marilyn did the opposite. She stayed. And what she discovered changed everything.

What began as resistance and obligation became something deeply meaningful. Through art, presence, and an unexpected partnership with her mother, Marilyn found co...

So many of us have spent our lives outsourcing our authority, worth, and wisdom to expectations, roles, and other people. In this episode, we explore how to bring it back to yourself.

In this conversation, I sit down with the deeply insightful Sheila Delaney to talk about what it really means to come back home to yourself, especially after burnout, chronic stress, or years of putting everyone else first. Sheila shares her powerful story of navigating a full-body shutdown, chronic illness, and the moment that changed everything. 

She also s...

One of the most complicated relationships we have is the relationship with our own body. When chronic illness, pain, injury, or unexpected physical changes show up, many of us quietly begin blaming ourselves or believing our bodies have betrayed us.

In this episode, I share how the journey through nerve-damage and chronic pain forced me to confront the harsh inner voices that judged, blamed, and tried to “fix” what felt broken. What I discovered instead was a powerful shift: healing isn’t about fighting your body, it’s about learning to work in partnership with it...

What if the real healing begins the moment we stop fighting our bodies?

In this compassionate conversation, I sit down with Tami Stackelhouse—health coach, founder of the International Fibromyalgia Coaching Institute, and host of the Fibromyalgia Podcast—to talk about self-forgiveness in the face of chronic illness. Tami shares her personal journey with lifelong health challenges and fibromyalgia, and we explore what it really means to move from war to partnership with your body. We talk about perfectionism, lost capacity, relationship shame, asking for help, and how learning who you truly are, instead of w...

“I thought I’d be further along by now.”

That’s a sentence I hear all the time, and if I’m honest, it’s one I’ve said to myself, too.

In this episode, I’m talking about the quiet ache so many women carry: the feeling of being behind in life. Behind in our careers. Behind in healing. Behind in love, confidence, health, or fulfillment. On the outside, we may look capable and responsible—often the ones everyone else relies on. But inside, there’s a voice whispering I should...

You don’t have to fix yourself first to deserve your own kindness.

So many high-achieving women I work with don’t hate themselves…but they don’t really like themselves, either. They tolerate themselves. They manage themselves. They critique themselves. And often, they live in a quiet, ongoing relationship with judgment.

Self-judgment doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it sounds reasonable. Motivating even. It can sound like: “Why am I like this?” “I should be further along by now.” “I know better than this.”

But underneath that vo...

When we think about forgiveness, we usually think about other people. But some of the deepest resentment we carry is self-directed, and it often hides as guilt, self-criticism, exhaustion, regret, or a constant feeling that something just isn’t quite right.

In this episode, I walk through the 10 most common things we struggle to forgive ourselves for, especially as women in midlife: how we showed up (or didn’t), staying too long or leaving too soon, health and caregiving decisions, repeating old patterns, choosing others over ourselves, and grieving the life we thought we’d have...

When we think about forgiveness, we usually think about other people. But some of the deepest resentment we carry is self-directed, and it often hides as guilt, self-criticism, exhaustion, regret, or a constant feeling that something just isn’t quite right.

In this episode, I walk through the 10 most common things we struggle to forgive ourselves for, especially as women in midlife: how we showed up (or didn’t), staying too long or leaving too soon, health and caregiving decisions, repeating old patterns, choosing others over ourselves, and grieving the life we thought we’d have...

In a world that feels increasingly uncertain, overwhelming, and emotionally charged, how do we stay rooted without bypassing what’s real?

In this episode, I explore what it truly means to hold two truths at the same time: acknowledging fear, grief, and instability while also choosing presence, agency, and inner steadiness. Drawing from my personal caregiving journey, recent moments of self-doubt, and a powerful realization sparked by therapy, I reflect on how easily our nervous systems get hijacked and how quickly my inner critic can drown out my wise voice.

...

Sometimes healing doesn’t come from pushing harder, but from allowing ourselves to receive. In this episode, I share my experience at Miraval Resort in Arizona and the unexpected insights that emerged after a season of caregiving, grief, betrayal, and deep self-awareness. Through equine therapy and the art of Kintsugi, I reflect on perception, self-trust, and what it means to love ourselves deeply without needing external validation. Along the way, I offer gentle practices to help you integrate your own awareness and “aha” moments.

What You’ll Learn

Two years ago, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life: moving my husband into memory care. Last year, I shared the raw shock, grief, and guilt of that first year. This episode is about what the second year has taught me.

I thought year two would feel easier. More settled. Instead, it brought new crises, a nervous system stuck on high alert, and an unexpected moment that finally cracked my grief wide open. What followed was a deeper reckoning with loss, with old patterns of over-responsibility, and with the belief that...

What happens when we stop outsourcing our knowledge and begin listening to the wisdom that’s been living inside us all along?

Brenda is joined by somatic and expressive arts therapist Cathy Williams to explore what it truly means to come home to your body after trauma, burnout, and self-abandonment. Cathy shares her personal healing journey, from living in her head and overriding her intuition, to reconnecting with her body as a source of safety, guidance, and truth.

Together, they unpack how psychological abuse, people-pleasing, and over-intellectualizing can disconnect us...

In this deeply vulnerable episode, Brenda opens up about a powerful and unexpected moment in her caregiving journey with her husband, who lives in memory care due to dementia. What began as shock and heartbreak became a profound awakening, revealing a pattern so many high-achieving, caring women carry quietly into adulthood: the Good Girl Syndrome.

Brenda explores how early conditioning to be “good” evolves into people-pleasing, over-functioning, emotional suppression, resentment, burnout, and the slow abandonment of our own needs. Through raw storytelling and compassionate reflection, she shares how this pattern showed up for her in r...

Edit B. Kiss, a holistic mentor, success habit coach, and humanitarian award-winning author is joining me to share her story of transformation, which is as grounded as it is spiritual. After 15 years as a petroleum engineer, Edit followed a deep inner calling that led her from spreadsheets to source energy, from panic attacks to peace. Together, we talk about trauma, triggers, forgiveness, and why mindfulness is not the first step in healing. Edit shares how she learned to recognize synchronicities, how the body reveals unresolved emotional patterns, and why true change requires tending to the mind, body, and soul...

I sat down with author and executive coach Laing Rikkers to explore how quiet rituals, creativity, and the natural world can become anchors during our deepest seasons of loss. When Laing’s younger sister died suddenly just months before the world shut down, she found herself searching for a way through overwhelming grief. What began as simple morning walks and unfiltered “morning pages” soon unfolded into Morning Leaves, her beautiful collection of plant-inspired poems and reflections.

Laing shares how slowing down helped her reconnect with herself, how creativity became a lifeline, and how she gently...

Ever wonder how the roles you played growing up impact your life and relationships today? In this episode, I break down the six most common family dynamics and the archetypal roles we fall into. I share how self-awareness is the game changer that lets you set healthy boundaries and choose who you want to be moving forward. Remember, your family story doesn’t have to define your future. You have the power to give yourself permission to change, grow, and find more peace. 

Resources:

Your FREE Forgive Yourself resources: https://bre...

In this episode, I talk with the luminous Harper A. Bailey, whose debut memoir It Was Her poured straight into my heart. We talk about the dream that sparked her writing, the spiritual co-creation behind her pen name, and the moment she realized her story wasn’t just hers, it was meant to unlock stories in others. Harper shares how grief became both her wilderness and her teacher, and how processing isn’t about doing, but about learning to be with ourselves again. This conversation is all about reclaiming the wholeness we’ve always carried but sometimes forget. If you’ve...

If you’re the one who holds it all together—for your family, your friends, your business—but quietly struggles to ask for help yourself, this episode is for you. I know that story well. For years, I prided myself on being the strong one, the fixer, the problem solver. Until my body and spirit finally broke down.

In this conversation, I’m exploring why asking for help feels unsafe for so many high-achieving women, and how that belief was formed long before adulthood. I talk about how childhood conditioning creates the “I should be able to...

I’ve always believed that forgiveness is the bridge between who we’ve been and who we’re becoming, and today’s conversation is proof of that. I’m joined by Riana Malia, a board-certified neurosomatic practitioner and creator of the Clear to Create method, who helps high-achieving women break free from painful relationship patterns and finally claim the love that matches the life they’ve built.

Riana shares her powerful story of betrayal, loss, and rebuilding from the ground up, and how learning to release stored trauma at the cellular level opened the door to deep...