Beyond Mommy Dearest is a podcast for adult daughters navigating the complicated, often painful reality of difficult, emotionally immature, or narcissistic mothers.
Hosted by a trauma-informed leadership coach, this show explores the long-term impact of mother-daughter wounds, boundary setting, grief, identity, and healing beyond blame.
Through honest conversations, education, and lived experience, Beyond Mommy Dearest helps listeners reconnect with themselves, trust their instincts, and move forward with clarity, compassion, and strength.
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In this episode of Beyond Mommy Dearest, host Noelani Pearl Hernandez sits down with Ali and Stefanie Schmahl, the producers behind the powerful upcoming film I Love You, My Narcissist. Together, they explore the emotional complexity of loving someone whose behavior is manipulative, controlling, and deeply harmful.
Allie and Stephanie share what inspired them to create the film and how their research into narcissistic dynamics led them to interview survivors and experts, including Dr. Ramani, one of the leading voices on narcissistic abuse. The film blends documentary insight with fictional storytelling to help audiences understand the patterns, confusion, and emotional impact that narcissistic relationships can create.
During the conversation, they discuss the subtle warning signs of narcissistic abuse, why survivors often struggle to leave, and how manipulation, gaslighting, and power dynamics slowly erode a person’s sense of self. They also highlight why it’s important to challenge the myths surrounding survivors and recognize that narcissistic abuse can happen to anyone.
This episode is a powerful reminder that survivors are not weak, that narcissistic abuse is often misunderstood, and that conversations like these help people finally put language to experiences they may have carried silently for years.
Silence Was Survival. Healing Became Her Voice. | Barbara, Author of Spells for Surviving a Haunted Childhood
What happens when the secrets you've carried your entire life finally find their way onto the page?
In this deeply moving episode of Beyond Mommy Dearest, Noelani sits down with Barbara, author of the powerful trilogy Spells for Surviving a Haunted Childhood. Through a unique blend of memoir, poetry, magical realism, and healing practices, Barbara shares how writing helped her transform childhood trauma into a pathway toward healing.
Together, they discuss childhood neglect, abandonment, emotional wounds, trauma recovery, nervous system healing, parenting after trauma, and the journey from surviving to thriving. Barbara opens up about growing up with a mother who literally left her for the circus, navigating abuse, carrying family secrets, and ultimately discovering that healing doesn't mean forgetting. It means learning how to live alongside your past without letting it define your future.
In This Episode
Why silence becomes a survival strategy for traumatized children
How trauma physically impacts the body and nervous system
The healing power of writing, journaling, art, and storytelling
What a "haunted childhood" really looks like
Growing up feeling unseen, unheard, and alone
The difference between surviving and healing
Learning to identify and name emotions
Parenting after trauma and breaking generational cycles
Why healing is not linear
The impact of childhood abandonment and neglect
How awareness becomes the bridge between the haunted and the healer
The importance of finding safe people
Healing from complex trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)
Why survivors need spaces where they are believed
When Healing Goes Deeper: Understanding Trauma Beyond the Mind with Heather Cypel
When Healing Goes Deeper: Understanding Trauma Beyond the Mind with Heather Cypel
In this episode, we sit down with Heather Cypel, an intuitive psyche specialist, energy body specialist, and sacred union coach. Heather’s work focuses on the connection between the energy body, the psyche, and the physical experience, and how unresolved patterns can shape how we think, feel, and move through the world.
Heather’s journey into this work began through her own healing. After experiencing health challenges that traditional medicine couldn’t resolve, she turned to energy work and became deeply committed to understanding the relationship between human behavior, the psyche, and the energetic body.
With a background in history, anthropology, and a lifelong study of human behavioral patterns, Heather now helps others explore the deeper layers of their experiences and begin shifting patterns at the energetic level.
✨ About Her Work
Heather offers a range of services designed to support emotional, relational, and energetic healing. Her work centers on creating space for clients to understand their patterns, release what feels stuck, and reconnect with themselves in a more intentional way.
Her services include:
Energy sessions focused on the energy body and stored patterns
Exploration sessions and coaching around emotional and behavioral dynamics
Relationship and sacred union coaching
Classes and trainings on energetic and spiritual concepts
Trauma-focused energy recordings to support release and integration
Her approach is rooted in the belief that healing happens when we begin to understand what we’ve been carrying… and allow it to move.
🔗 Connect with Heather
Narcissistic Abuse & the Nervous System: Why Healing Feels So Hard (and Why You’re Not the Problem) | With Alea Coburn
Narcissistic Abuse & the Nervous System: Why Healing Feels So Hard (and Why You’re Not the Problem) | With Alea Coburn
🎧 Show Notes What is the real cost of healing after narcissistic abuse?
In this deeply honest and emotional episode of Beyond Mommy Dearest, Noelani sits down with Alea Coburn to talk about what it actually feels like to heal after growing up with a narcissistic and emotionally neglectful mother. We explore the concept of choosing peace at the cost of aloneness, and why for many survivors, being alone can feel safer than being unseen, dismissed, or emotionally erased.
Alea shares her personal story of survival, including the physical impact of trauma on her body, experiences with performative care, and the moment she realized she could no longer stay in relationships that compromised her well-being.
Together, we unpack: Why narcissistic abuse is so difficult to name How shame gets internalized in daughters of narcissistic mothers What “social invisibility” does to your nervous system The difference between real care and performative care How trauma shows up physically in the body Why anger is not toxic, but a source of wisdom Red flags in relationships that survivors often miss The emotional cost of staying vs. the courage it takes to leave This episode is raw, validating, and at times intense, but it is also deeply empowering.
If you’ve ever felt like you were “too much,” “too sensitive,” or responsible for your own pain, this conversation will help you begin to untangle what was never yours to carry.
💬 Key Takeaways You are not too much. You were unmet. Your body is not broken. It is responding to what you lived through. Anger is not the problem. It is information. Being alone is sometimes the first step to no longer being invisible.Healing may feel isolating, but it is also where you begin to come home to yourself🧠 What We Talk AboutNarcissistic mothers and emotional neglectNervous system dysregulation and trauma responsesShame, identity, and overcompensationPerformative care vs. real supportPhysical symptoms of emotional abuseRed flags in relationshipsBoundaries, anger, and self-trustChoosing aloneness as a path to healing🔗 Work With Alea + Learn MoreAlea Coburn is a truth-teller, pattern seer, abuse survivor, and advocate who helps women rebuild trust, intuition, and health after narcissistic abuse, gaslighting, and systemic trauma.Her work is for women who feel unmet, unseen, and ready to reclaim themselves.✨ Connect + Explore:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rusticpeach/Website: aleatamar.comSubstack: aleacoburn.substack.comYouTube: youtube.com/@aleacoburnSelf-Reprogramming Toolkit + Offerings: Available via her websiteLive Event: Building Attunement For Her (2nd Run – April 3)🔗 Resources + LinksFollow the podcast: Beyond Mommy DearestWork with Noelani: www.beyondmommydearest.comFollow the instagrm: https://www.instagram.com/beyondmommydearest/
Too Sensitive or Trauma Alert? Intuition, Narcissistic Abuse, and Healing with Spiritbird Holton
🎙️ Too Sensitive or Trauma Alert? Intuition, Narcissistic Abuse, and Healing with Spiritbird Holton
✨ Episode Summary
In this powerful and grounding conversation, I sit down with Spiritbird Holten, a shaman and intuitive guide who has spent over two decades helping people navigate emotional pressure, relational dynamics, and major life transitions.
We explore what it really means to reconnect with your intuition after growing up in environments that taught you not to trust yourself. If you were conditioned to put others first, question your instincts, or believe everything was your fault, this episode will hit deep.
Spiritbird breaks down how emotional patterns are formed, why so many of us feel disconnected from our inner knowing, and what it actually looks like to begin coming back home to yourself in a way that is real, grounded, and sustainable.
🔑 What We Talk About
What a shaman is in real, everyday language
How trauma and conditioning disconnect us from intuition
Why you were taught to doubt yourself and how to undo it
The difference between fear and inner knowing
Emotional patterns that keep you stuck in overwhelm and confusion
Reclaiming your voice, your truth, and your sense of self
What it looks like to move through life with more clarity, peace, and trust
🧠 Key Takeaways
You are not broken, you were conditioned
Your intuition did not disappear, it was overridden
Healing is not about becoming someone new, it is about returning to who you were
You can learn to trust yourself again, even if it feels unfamiliar
🌿 Connect with Spiritbird Holton
🔗 Explore her work and offerings:
Healing from a Narcissistic Mother While Raising Your Own Children
🎙 Healing from a Narcissistic Mother While Raising Your Own Children
What does it really look like to break generational trauma while raising children of your own?
In this episode of Beyond Mommy Dearest, I sit down with Isabel Lopez, host of Parenting Without Permission, to talk about healing from a narcissistic mother while actively parenting in real time.
We explore what happens when you grow up in survival mode, become the “invisible child,” and then have to figure out motherhood without a blueprint.
From immigrant family dynamics to being put in anger management instead of being heard, to consciously raising empathetic sons in a culture shaped by machismo, this conversation is raw, honest, and deeply validating.
Breaking the cycle is not easy. It is intentional. It is exhausting. It is brave.
If you are parenting while healing childhood trauma, this episode is for you.
In this episode, we discuss:
Growing up as the invisible child in emotionally unsafe homes
Moving from Colombia to the U.S. and navigating immigrant family trauma
Emotional neglect vs. physical survival
Being put in anger management instead of being listened to
Why many survivors of narcissistic parenting don’t remember large parts of childhood
How trauma affects the nervous system and conflict responses
Shutting down, freezing, or exploding after being pushed too far
Breaking machismo and raising emotionally aware sons
Letting your children fully express themselves
Reparenting yourself while raising your kids
Why “breaking the cycle” is much harder than people think
Finding joy while still healing
Wire Moms and Attachment Trauma: It’s Not Your Fault: Punch the Monkey's Mom is a Narcissist Too
In this episode of Beyond Mommy Dearest, Noelani Pearl Hernandez sits down with trauma-informed therapist and neuropsychology specialist Dr. Victoria Liu-Johnson to explore the deep attachment wounds created by narcissistic mothers.
Using the famous Harlow monkey experiments, real-world examples like Punch the baby monkey, and decades of trauma research, this conversation unpacks:
Why daughters of narcissistic mothers still long for their mothers
How attachment trauma rewires the brain and nervous system
The difference between having a parent who provides and a parent who feels safe
How culture, colonization, and family hierarchy complicate narcissistic abuse
Why self-blame is a trauma response, not a truth
What healing looks like through a biopsychosocial and liberation-oriented lens
This episode is for anyone navigating the mother wound, complex trauma, emotional neglect, and the lifelong impact of growing up with a narcissistic or emotionally unsafe parent.
You are not broken. You were wired for connection. And healing is possible.
Breaking Free: Healing Narcissistic Wounds and Rebuilding Self-Trust
🎙️ Episode Show Notes
Guest: Andressa S. Lopes
In this episode of Beyond Mommy Dearest, Noelani Pearl Hernandez sits down with author and healing guide Andressa S. Lopes to explore what it truly means to recover from a narcissistic mother. Together, they talk about naming abuse, releasing lifelong guilt, and learning how to choose yourself without shame.
Andressa shares her personal journey of growing up with conditional love, emotional neglect, and chronic self-doubt, and how therapy became a turning point in recognizing the pattern. Noelani and Andressa also discuss how cultural expectations, family pressure, and generational trauma can make distance or no contact feel impossible, and why chosen family and community are often essential to healing.
This conversation centers survivors and reminds listeners that they are not broken. They adapted to survive, and healing is possible.
✨ What You’ll Hear in This Episode
Why acknowledging pain is the first step toward healing
How conditional love shapes people pleasing, guilt, and low self-worth
The role of therapy in waking up to narcissistic abuse
Why many narcissistic parents do not seek real accountability
Guilt, grief, and fear around low contact and no contact
How narcissistic parents use power, money, and third parties to control
Cultural and immigrant family dynamics that intensify silence
How abuse impacts adult relationships and boundaries
Breaking generational cycles and protecting future children
The power of chosen family and supportive community
Why healing is nonlinear and happens one step at a time
🔥 Key Themes
Leading Without Self Abandonment: Emotional Load, Workplace Gaslighting, and Recalibration
In this episode of Beyond Mommy Dearest, host Noelani Pearl Hernandez, trauma-informed executive coach, sits down with Brittanni Hendricks, MBA, ACC (ICF Associate Certified Coach), ICF-certified Leadership Alignment Coach, speaker, author, and creator of the Playful Power Method.
Together, Noelani and Brittanni unpack why workplace dynamics can feel eerily familiar for adult daughters of narcissistic, emotionally immature, or unsafe mothers. They name how survival mode follows us into leadership, why gaslighting at work is so destabilizing, and how high performers often confuse self-abandonment with resilience.
This conversation is for the overachievers, the emotional regulators, and the leaders who carry the invisible load.
🧠 Topics We Cover in this Episode
Why narcissistic family dynamics show up so clearly in workplaces and leadership environments
What workplace gaslighting sounds like and why it destabilizes survivors
Overfunctioning, people pleasing, and “masking” as professional survival strategies
Why high performers burn out from responsibility without alignment
Emotional load: what it is, how it builds, and why it compounds over time
Conflict cycles at work: overexplaining, self-editing, avoiding hard conversations
The hidden cost of silence: the price of not having the conversation
Body signals of misalignment (brain fog, sleep disruption, tension, numbness, stomach aches)
Why peace can feel unfamiliar after chronic chaos
Recalibration vs pushing through: how to rebuild self-trust
The Playful Power Method: reclaiming joy, playfulness, and agency without force
You are not broken. You adapted. Alignment is available.
Healing After Narcissistic Abuse: Trauma Bonds, Gaslighting, and Rebuilding Self Trust
Laura Richards shares her personal recovery journey after a 32-year marriage to a narcissistic partner and names the patterns many survivors live inside for years without having language for. Together, Noelani and Laura explore how narcissistic relationships form, how they escalate, why they are so difficult to leave, and what healing actually requires on a nervous system level.
This conversation addresses love bombing, future faking, mirroring, boundary violations, intermittent reinforcement, trauma bonding, and the long-term effects of gaslighting. They also talk about shame, grief, rebuilding self-trust, setting boundaries, and how survivors can begin creating a life that feels safe, steady, and their own.'
🧠 Topics We Cover in this episode
Early signs of narcissistic relationships
Trauma bonding and intermittent reinforcement
Why survivors struggle with decision-making after abuse
Nervous system dysregulation and hypervigilance
Boundaries and self-love as protection
Grieving the life you thought you would have
Breaking generational cycles
This episode is for anyone who has questioned their reality, blamed themselves for staying, or wondered if it was “really that bad.”
Trigger Warning
This episode includes discussions of:
Childhood abuse
Sexual abuse
Emotional abuse
Childhood neglect
Suicide attempts
Trauma and PTSD/C-PTSD
Mental health challenges
Please listen at your own pace and prioritize your well-being.
Spiritbird’s work focuses on helping people release emotional patterns, reconnect with their intuition, and move through life with more clarity, confidence, and peace.
🎧 Listen + Watch
Make sure to subscribe, follow, and turn on notifications so you don’t miss conversations like this.
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💬 Share + Connect
If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs it.
Follow Beyond Mommy Dearest for more conversations on healing, identity, boundaries, and coming home to yourself.
🖤 Your Reminder
You were never too sensitive. You were responding to something real. And you can learn to trust yourself again.
Andressa S. Lopes is the author of Rising from the Ashes and creator of a healing guide for daughters of narcissistic mothers. Her work helps survivors move from confusion and emotional dependence into self-trust, self-worth, and freedom. She creates educational content across social platforms to raise awareness about narcissistic abuse and recovery.
🔗 Connect with Andressa
Find Andressa on Instagram, TikTok, and access her books and resources through the link in her bio.
Monthly Support and Trauma-Informed Small Support Groups Support that is steady, not overwhelming. Community without chaos. Structure without judgment.
Brittanni Hendricks, MBA, ACC (ICF Associate Certified Coach), ICF-certified Leadership Alignment Coach, is a speaker, author, and creator of the Playful Power Method. With more than 15 years of leadership experience in talent development and organizational effectiveness, Brittany supports leaders and working parents carrying a high emotional load. Her work centers high performing humans who are not lazy, broken, or unmotivated. They are often misaligned, and ready to stop compensating and start leading from clarity, peace, and power.
Brittanni is the author of It’s My Turn, a part memoir, part manifesto for people who have performed perfection long enough and are choosing alignment over approval.
Laura Richards is an international podcaster, #1 bestselling author, and speaker dedicated to empowering women. Through her global podcast, That’s Where I’m At, and her bestselling book Married To A “Nice” Guy: Getting Over Narcissistic Abuse, Laura shares her personal journey of recovery from a 32-year marriage to a narcissist.
Laura’s mission is to shine a light on narcissistic abuse and remind women they are never alone and healing is always possible.
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