Shows
Belonging to the WildEp: 25: The Long Story of Our Souls & Calling on the Dead with Perdita FinnIn this conversation, Perdita Finn and I talk about the generosity of the long stories of our souls, explore what it means to have meaningful relationship with the dead, and circle around deep questions of belonging and connection.Acknowledging that our species often feels lonely, bereft, and disconnected, Perdita invites us to wonder about what it would be like to live in an “economy of prayer.” She asks this beautiful question: How would we live if we all remembered we have been each others mothers?Her work invites us into a sense of deep...2025-07-231h 04Belonging to the WildEp. 24: Finding Inner Permission with Amy WildingIn this episode, Amy Wilding joins me in this wonderful conversation about finding inner permission, cultivating body sovereignty, and decolonizing our inner landscapes as we walk into more fullness and freedom.Amy shares about how her body led her into a powerful awakening of her wise and wild knowing. We talk about ways patriarchal consciousness uses our disconnection from our bodies as a tool of oppression, emphasizing the importance of body autonomy and cyclical literacy.As we weave our way through this conversation, we explore the significance of finding the voice of our pleasure and...2025-06-1745 minBelonging to the WildEp. 23: Eros, Creative Transgression, & Imaginal Theology with Dr. Thomas MooreIn this conversation, Dr. Thomas Moore and I explore the experience of creative transgression and the relationship between Eros and transgression. Deeply grounded in the archetypal sensibility and perspective, we discuss the role of obedience and disobedience in the soulful life and the importance of being faithful to the creativedaimon.In this intimate conversation, Dr. Moore shares his views on what he calls “imaginal theology” and what it means to live in spiritual sovereignty.Thomas Moore is the author ofCare of the Soul, a bestseller on the New York Time...2025-02-111h 00
Creative MagicWomen Who Run with the WolvesA celebration of Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ iconic book, Women Who Run With the Wolves This episode is a magical weaving of extracts and interviews with women about wolves and the Wild Woman archetype, and the impact this book has had on their lives.Full episode available for $3/ month atwww.patreon.com/lucyhpearceMini interview:Rachel S. Roberts is the author of Lupa. She-Wolf of Rome, Mother of Destiny, as well as Wolf. Embody your Inner Wolf and Pantheon. The Romans. She is also a sacred da...2025-01-2840 min
Creative MagicComing Soon....A quick update on what I'm up to between seasons... and what's coming up next Tuesday!NEW FULL EPISODE IS LIVE NOW FOR ALL $3/MONTH+ PATREON SUBSCRIBERS(subscribe now at www.patreon.com/lucyhpearce to grab it for yourself )A special Creative Magic episode celebrating the most-mentioned book on the podcast over Seasons 1 &2, Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ iconic book, Women Who Run With the Wolves. This between-the-seasons episode weaving extracts from the book with reflections and interviews from former Creative Magic guests - Danielle Dulsky, Clare Jasmine Beloved, Dr Vanya Leilani, Eli...2025-01-2314 min
Sacred Feminine PowerEPISODE 188; Eve & the Power of Creative Transgression with Vanya LeilaniSend us a textYou will love this beautiful, powerful chat with Vanya Leilani, who is a depth psychologist, writer, teacher and storyteller with a PhD in Depth Psychology. Vanya shares about growing up in a conservative, fundamentalist religion and the dichotomy of the often harmful spiritual colonisation and the enchanting mythical aspects that both accompanied it. She challenges the predominant creation myth in the Western world and Eve's role in humanity falling from grace, and its implications for narratives and justifications for sexism, racism, and White Supremacy, as well as the exiling a...2024-12-3141 minBelonging to the WildEp. 22: The Mythic Quest to Find Your Heart with Ben KattIn this conversation, Ben tells us the story of realizing that at some point his heart had snuck out the back door. In that moment he heard these powerful words: “if you don’t have your heart you have nothing.” He tells us about how this experience launched him into a mythic quest to find his heart again, a journey he shares in his book The Way Home.
We talk about his experiences with synchronicities, vision quests, and the power of images to guide us on our mythic journeys. We explore practices that help us find ou...2024-12-1052 min
Turns Out She's a WitchSeason 7- That’s a Wrap!Shannon and Laura weigh in on a great Listener question before sharing some updates for this awesome podcast, and reflecting on Season 7! We’ve had a season full of amazing guests- some feel like familiar friends now that they’ve made (multiple) return visits! Others have been ‘first-timers’, either way, each and every guest has imparted such deep, powerful and healing insights through conversation. Thank You to all of You. To the wonderful listeners that have sent in questions, stories and feedback- Thank You for asking what others were thinking, sharing stories that inspire and build community, and offering kind wor...2024-12-0943 minBelonging to the WildEp. 21: The Revolution of Lying Down with Molly RemerIn this conversation, I am joined by the wonderful Molly Remer, MSW, D.Min. We discuss the dance between effort and ease that our days bring.
We explore what she calls, “the revolution of lying down” and the importance of recognizing when we are on the edge of too-muchness.
We talk about honoring our limitations and finding places of restoration. Molly also shares her beautiful insights on cultivating the sacred experience in everyday life and on the magic of power spots.
To connect more with Molly and her work:
Etsy...2024-12-031h 02
Sacred RememberingEp 169 Remembering Eve & the Power of Creative Transgression with Dr. Vanya Leilani
Vanya Leilani, PhD is a depth psychologist, writer, teacher and storyteller. She has completed a certificate training with Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes and has served as adjunct professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Vanya was born and raised in southeastern Brazil and currently lives in the woods of the Pacific Northwest of the United States, where she tends to the land and many animals.
Summary
In this episode, Sarah & Vanya delve into the themes of creative transgression, the myth of salvation, and the archetypal figure of Eve.
2024-12-022h 07Turns Out She's a WitchEve's Archetype, The Flesh and The Fruit, with Dr. Vanya Leilani.This is an episode that you will most likely want to listen to more than once. Dr. Vanya Lelani received her Ph.D. in Depth Psychology, where her research focused on the archetypal Eve and the power of creative transgression. Published by Womancraft, The Flesh and the Fruit: Remembering Eve and the Power of Creative Transgression is part mythological exploration, part cultural commentary, and part personal memoir, an accessible, deep and thought-provoking read. Shannon and Laura enjoy an honest and reflective chat about religious influence, the ‘role’ of Eve, leaving ‘good’, ‘should’ and expectations behind in place of journeying towards empow...2024-10-211h 12
Creative Magic21: Dr Vanya Leilani - Creative TransgressionFollow us www.instagram.com/creativemagicpodcast Access extended episodes and bonus content for just $3 on www.patreon.com/lucyhpearceVanya Leilani is a depth psychologist, writer, teacher and storyteller.Her first book, The Flesh and the Fruit: Remembering Eve and the Power of Creative Transgression is out this week from Womancraft Publishing. She has spent decades exploring the threshold where the external “shoulds” in our lives Vanya holds a PhD in Depth Psychology with emphasis in Jungian and Archetypal Studies.n She has also completed a certificate training intensive with Dr Cla...2024-10-151h 02
Be MythicalThe true Eve: How to 'transgress' into your power - Vanya LeilaniThis week’s show is with Vanya Leilani. Vanya is a depth psychologist, writer, teacher and storyteller. She has spent decades exploring the threshold where the external “shoulds” in our lives encounter our own wild knowing and un-knowing. She is passionate about helping us cultivate deeper friendship with our own lives as we learn to live from nature, rather than from obedience to the status quo. She devotes herself to this work through individual accompaniment, sacred gatherings, storytelling, teaching, and writing. Vanya holds a PhD in Depth Psychology with emphasis in Jungian and Archetypal Studies. She has also comp...2024-09-241h 03Belonging to the WildEp. 20: Following the Ways of Water with Erin ChalfantIn this conversation, Erin and I explore what it means to follow the ways of water. She shares the significance of her lifelong relationship with water, and we talk about how water remembers where we come from and where we belong. We also talk about desire as a key to our belonging and the power to create and re-create worlds by following what we want.
As we follow the ways of water, Erin helps us re-member ourselves as part of Nature and invites us into re-membering our belonging here in these bodies and on this Ea...2024-06-2559 minBelonging to the WildEp. 19: Bluebeard and the Power of DisobedienceIn this episode, I tell the story of Bluebeard and explore this archetypal figure. Bluebeard exposes the nuances of a kind of archetypal experience where we may be charmed into believing that what keeps us too small is beautiful, and that what offers us favor is also keeping us safe when in fact, it is plotting our disappearance.
Bluebeard forbids knowing and demands unquestioned obedience. In this story we find a powerful example of how disobedience can propel us out of harm and falseness and into safety and freedom.
Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes wrote that...2024-06-0435 minBelonging to the WildEp. 18: Creativity as Sacred, Spiritual, & Magical Act with Lucy H. PearceIn this episode, Lucy H. Pearce shares her thoughts, experiences, and deep wisdom with us as we explore creativity and the creative life. We talk about the threshold where the urgent creative force meets daily life, and the treasures and tensions we might meet there. Our conversation includes questions and reflections on the nature of creativity, recognizing its call, and the importance of knowing when things are just too much. We talk about the importance of claiming our own time and of being meaning-makers rather than only consumers.
As we circle around creativity and the creative life...2024-05-161h 08Belonging to the WildEp. 17: The Kore Goddess with Dr. Safron RossiIn this episode, I talk with Dr. Safron Rossi about the Kore Goddess, an archetypal pattern that is deeply linked with sovereignty, self-belonging, and psychological integrity.
The Kore has to do with our ability to know where we stand, to be grounded in our deep essential nature, and to be in vital relationship with our own emotional reality and vision. The Kore sanctifies the inner life.
Focusing on Persephone as a primary example of a Kore goddess, Dr. Rossi explores the complexity of this pattern and the ways in which we can return to the...2024-05-0754 minBelonging to the WildEp. 16: Five Aspects of BelongingAs we begin the next season of the podcast, I explore five significant aspects of archetypal belonging: the complexity of belonging, false belonging, sacred un-belonging, self-belonging, and wild belonging.
These are five faces of belonging that we will encounter as we dance with this archetypal experience. I hope you enjoy this episode!
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2024-04-3027 minBelonging to the WildEp. 15: Reflections on the Winter Solstice and the Holidays with Kaitlyn WildareIn this episode, Kaitlyn Wildare returns to the podcast for a conversation about Winter Solstice and the Holidays. We explore the meaning of Winter Solstice, especially in the midst of all the holiday festivities. We ask the question: Does the Winter Solstice offer us another way to move through this time of the year?
The Winter Solstice invites us into quiet, slowness, and inwardness. It reminds us of the necessity of the dark and the value of dormant seasons. We discuss ways that we can stay rooted in our nature, even while playing with...2023-12-1934 minBelonging to the Wild"Is the Way We Are Living Making Us Sick?" with Dr Vaughan WilkinsIn this episode, I am joined by ecopsychologist Dr Vaughan Wilkins and we ask this very important question: Is the way we are living making us sick?
We explore what Dr Wilkins calls “enculturated captivity” and the invisible bars that may be holding us captive to a way of living that causes suffering, isolation, and personal and collective trauma. We talk about the “offness” many of us feel living in a culture that is unhealthy.
We explore our longing for deep connection to our world and wonder together what it really means to be wild. Dr Wilki...2023-11-231h 05Belonging to the WildSexuality, Spirituality, and Self-Belonging with Cherie KattIn this episode, I am joined by Cherie Katt, a licensed mental health counselor and a certified sex therapist. We discuss the connection and kinship between our spiritual selves and our sexual selves.
Exploring the personal and collective stories that serve to sever our sense of connection between our sexuality and spirituality, we also explore topics like silence and shame, claiming our pain and our desire, and the importance of play and of learning to be at home in ourselves.
During this episode, we return again and again to the heartbeat of this conversation: the...2023-11-081h 11Belonging to the WildEp. 12: Finding Spiritual Home After Deconstruction with Dr. Lacy Clark EllmanIn this episode of Belonging to the Wild, Dr. Ellman and I explore the question of finding a new spiritual home after loss of spiritual home and identity, or what some refer to as deconstruction.
Is it possible to find a home by another way? Her research focuses on this question. By exploring the experience of folks who found a new sense of spiritual home and identity after this loss, Dr. Ellman identified 5 shifts that happened as they followed their own knowing into new spiritual homes, identities, and practices.
...2023-10-241h 08Belonging to the WildEp. 11: Ritual Making with Heather StringerIn this episode of Belonging to the Wild, I am joined by artist, therapist, and ritual maker Heather Stringer. We discuss what makes something a ritual, different kinds of rituals, the importance of the body and the senses in ritual making, and the gift of being witnessed by loving community.
We explore ritual as homecoming, as portal, as disruption and interruption. We explore ritual as a powerful way of communion with our lives and with the mysteries we inhabit.
For more about Heather and her work you can visit her website at...2023-10-1056 minBelonging to the WildEp. 10: Wild Belonging and the Ugly DucklingWhat does it mean to belong to the wild? What does our exile and our sacred unbelonging have to do with our self-belonging? How to we face the loss that comes with moving out of false and old belonging into wild belonging?
These are some of the questions I explore in this episode. Wandering around the humble little story of the Ugly Duckling, this episode explores the complexities of true belonging, as well as the shadow side of belonging when it is used as weapon. We explore questions of exile, sacred unbelonging, self-belonging, and...2023-08-0833 minBelonging to the WildEp. 9: The Myths Living Through Us; Patriarchal Consciousness Part Two with Kaitlyn TurnerIn this episode, Kaitlyn Turner and I sit down to continue our conversation on patriarchal consciousness. We explore questions like: Are there other ways besides the patriarchal way? When and how did the shift to patriarchal consciousness happens, and what are some of the reasons? What was cast away at the birth of patriarchal consciousness that we want to remember? What mythic images can help us remember those ways of knowing and being?
The conversation leads us to a discussion about the myths living through us and shaping the way we imagine our lives...2023-06-1350 minBelonging to the WildEpisode 8: Belonging to Ourselves First with Dr. Christy BaumanIn this conversation, Dr. Christy Bauman (she/her) and I continue the series on leaving the obedient life. Christy talks about different palettes of shoulds in her life, as well as the call she feels now to disobey the systems and narratives that constrict our freedom to exist fully. Christy describes the grief that she has experienced as a result of being excluded from the places where she is not fully welcome, and the joyous gift of invitation for her to be fully present in other places.
Christy and I discuss what it means...2023-05-2355 minBelonging to the WildEpisode 7: The Power of Naming Yourself with Jaye C WattsIn this episode, Jaye C. Watts joins me as we continue to explore experiences around leaving the obedient life. Jaye shares their experiences with the shoulds and how they were enforced, particularly around gender expectations and constrictive educational systems.
In our conversation, Jaye beautifully describes the power of naming yourself, especially for the trans community, and of following the sense of aliveness and levity that comes as we learn to step beyond the shoulds. We talk about questions of belonging, taking risks, and finding calm in living our truest lives.
Jaye’s website: www...2023-05-1658 minBelonging to the WildEpisode 6: On Being Good, Returning to Our Bodies, and Finding Our "Inner Yes" with Jenny WadeIn this episode we continue our series on leaving the obedient life with therapist and yoga instructor Jenny Wade. In this conversation, Jenny shares with us that the greatest should in her life has been the mandate to be a “good girl.” She describes how being a “good girl” for her meant being as disassociated from her body as possible in order to be favorable to her religious community. She speaks honestly about the deep grief that has come with the loss of favor from that community, as she has learned to inhabit her body and live from the knowing...2023-05-0942 minBelonging to the WildEpisode 5: My Experiences Moving Beyond the Bounds of Obedience, i.e., My Greatest TransgressionsWe are beginning a short series on leaving the obedient life. For the next few episodes, my co-hosts and I
will be exploring questions about what our shoulds have been, what it
looked like for us to step across, or transgress, those well-worn paths into
our own wildness, and what living from our own knowing and nature looks like
for us now.
In this episode I answer some of these questions about my
own life. Before I invite my guests to share so bravely about their stories, I
thought I would share with you some of the pla...2023-04-2521 minBelonging to the WildEpisode 4: What Are We Even Talking About When We Talk About Patriarchy?In this episode Vanya is joined by Kaitlyn Turner who helps guide the conversation with questions around the tired word, patriarchy. We discuss how patriarchal consciousness is embedded within the Western world and how this system of “power over” exists within our day to day lives. We ask the question of what is another way, or other ways and explore some of the ways of being we’re looking for and how we can find and remember these ways in the natural world, within our dreams, our bodies, in science, and our mythologies. We hope to continue this conversation by ask...2023-04-1828 minBelonging to the WildEpisode 3: Five Elements of a Life Lived from Your Own KnowingIn this episode, Vanya offers us 5 elements of the knowing life. She talks about learning how to live into our questions and be faithful to them rather than to the prescribed answers we’ve been given. She also discusses the powerful magic of curiosity, the work of transformation as the work of becoming, and how to embrace the unknowing within us (that lives at the heart of the knowing life). In all of this, Vanya explores learning how to befriend the wild life that we’ve been given and how to welcome ourselves home everyday a little bit more.
2023-04-1131 minBelonging to the WildEpisode 2: Toward Wildness and SovereigntyIn this episode, author, poet, and activist Natalie Bryant joins Vanya for an in-depth conversation on leaving the obedient life and moving toward wildness and sovereignty.
We discuss the unwritten contracts— the shoulds and external expectations —that we were devoted to when we met in our late teens. Our conversation includes topics like the work of discerning between external expectations for our lives and what we really want, the sorrow and joy of leaving the known for the unknown over and over again, and the idea of safety within and without the approved paths in our lives.
I...2023-04-0545 minBelonging to the WildEpisode 1: The Seeds Buried in Our LivesThis episode is about seeds. It is about what has been buried in our lives and what awakening right now.
Seeds are a humble magic. Inside their tiny walls they hold the potentialities for a whole life. Seeds show us a burial that is for preservation and safe keeping until the time is right, until the conditions are favorable for new life to grow. And then, when the air and wind and sun and soil reach their tenuous agreement, the walls of the seed break open and new life pushes through the dark and into the l...2023-03-2824 min
Belonging to the WildTrailerThe first episode of Belonging to the Wild is coming soon!
For more info on Vanya & her offerings go to www.drvanyaleilani.com2023-03-2000 min