In Episode 2 of God I Love You, Meredith and Devany explore the antidote to burnout: watering self. They unpack what “water” means—both literally and as a metaphor for the life-giving essentials that sustain us as women. Desire becomes a compass back to life, guiding us toward true nourishment instead of numbing.

Through personal stories—from hammock naps and garden watering to basement dance parties and high-art resets—they show how tending your “favorites list,” listening to your body, and learning to host yourself can bring you back into flow. Along the way, they name the shame that creeps in when we rest, the danger of “overwatering” ourselves with what drains, and how to trust that what you want, wants you.

• Water is both universal and particular — everyone needs it, but your “water” will be unique to you.
• Desire is a compass — what you truly want points toward what will nourish you.
• Your body is your first brain — listening to it feels like love. 
• Favorites lists save you — they make it easier to resource yourself when you’re stressed or depleted.
• What you want, wants you — your desires are not selfish; they’re part of how you were made.

• “Our bodies innately know how to draw nourishment, metabolize, heal, transform — and do it again.”
• “Water is both universal and particular.”
• “Host yourself with the same pleasure you give to others.”
• “What you want, wants you.”

• Emotional Labor — Rose Hackman (quoted concept: women act on gender roles, not individual characteristics)
• Wild Geese (poem) — Mary Oliver (quote: “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”)
• Sacred Cycle Mentorship — Marisa Guadalupe - A year-long journey into self-compassion and authentic living, blending Indigenous knowledge of the four directions, sacred elements, and the medicine wheel with modern nervous system education, somatic practices, and community support. Through monthly pláticas, integration groups, curated readings, and seasonal rituals, participants learn to live authentically, embody balance, and navigate life’s cycles with compassion and self-trust. 📧 somaticmarisa@gmail.com Instagram: @luminosa_marisa
• Centering Prayer & Inner Awakening — Cynthia Bourgeault- Explores the mystical and psychological dimensions of Centering Prayer and the interplay of body, mind, and heart.

Practices Mentioned

• Favorites List — Tracking simple pleasures that uniquely restore you.
• Front-Loading — Giving yourself grounding and nourishment on the front end, so you meet the moment with more presence, steadiness, and choice.
• Hosting Yourself — Offering yourself the same care and beauty you give others.
• Beauty & Art — Engaging nature, movement, or creativity to move emotions through.
• ​​Pendulum Practice — Using a pendulum (or even something simple like string + weight) to access yes/no clarity when the body feels foggy or disconnected. See how here.

Come Home to Your Center with Illumine Within — If you’re longing for support in stillness, quiet, and returning to deep self, Devany’s Centering Circles offer a guided space to practice. Each gathering includes somatic grounding, Centering Prayer, and reflective conversation and listening. Explore upcoming circles and resources at illuminewithin.com.

Relax into energetic support with Hibernate Healing — Step into a sanctuary where your body, spirit, and heart are met with care. Meredith offers energy healing, shamanic practices, and spiritual guidance to help you release, restore, and reconnect with your deepest self. 

Whether you need deep rest, emotional reset, or spiritual clarity, sessions available in-person (Austin, TX) or online. Visit and book at www.sparklecirclehealing.com until the rebrand is complete!

Why am I so dry?—a phrase that captures burnout and that “dried up” feeling so many women know too well when we’re overextended, under-resourced, and still expected to keep giving. In this episode, Meredith and Devany name how dryness can look like constant overdoing until there’s nothing left… or freezing in overwhelm because the weight of expectations feels crushing.

Devany shares how COVID’s forced stillness revealed her reliance on external validation and the belief that doing more made her lovable. Meredith reflects on her own dryness as a hollow, crispy version of herself—like the cicada shell left behind when you’ve been living in someone else’s story. Together, they explore satisfaction as a compass for self-trust, the red flag of justification, and why love is not transactional. They offer practical ways for women to reconnect with their “us-ness” and remind us that the soul is self-watering when we make space to listen.

burnout, women’s stories, emotional dryness, self-discovery, worthiness, external validation, satisfaction, love vs. transaction, us-ness, self-nourishment, spirituality, motherhood, somatic practices, neurodivergence, authenticity, boundaries, centering prayer, human design

Takeaways

• Emotional dryness often comes from being under-resourced.
• External validation can mask deeper needs.
• Self-worth is shaped by culture, family, and conditioning.
• Satisfaction is a compass for alignment.
• The soul replenishes itself when we slow down.

Sound Bites

• “The way out of dryness is coming back to your body, for your body to say, ‘This is true’ or ‘This isn’t true’—and it’s slow.”
• “The right thing needs no justification.”
• “The soul is self-watering.”
• “Love speaks through desire.”
• “Your us-ness already belongs here.”
• “Our effect on this world depends on the degree of how ‘us’ we are.”

Resources Mentioned

• Centering Prayer — Cynthia Bourgeault (going below the stream of consciousness;
• Christian contemplative teacher) — cynthiabourgeault.org
• The Work on the Three Centers — G.I. Gurdjieff (balancing intellectual, emotional, and moving centers) — gurdjieff.org
• Human Design — System for understanding energy types (e.g., Manifesting Generator, Projector)

• Centering Prayer — Sitting in stillness, resting with the “seed” of your truest self.
• Gathering Yourself In — Pausing to ask, “What matters to me today?” before saying yes.
• Noticing Justification — Recognizing that the right thing needs no justification.

Invitations:

Relax into Energetic Support with Hibernate Healing — Step into a hideaway where your body, spirit, and heart are met with care. Meredith offers energy healing, shamanic practices, and spiritual guidance to help you release, restore, and reconnect with your deepest self. Whether you need deep rest, emotional release, or spiritual clarity, sessions are available in person (Austin, TX) or online. Visit sparklecirclehealing.com until the rebrand is complete.

Come Home to Your Center with Illumine Within — Step into a quiet, spacious circle where your embodied self is met with care. Centering Circles weave somatic grounding, Centering Prayer, and reflective listening, all held in compassionate presence. Whether you seek stillness, self-trust, or nourishing community, these circles offer sanctuary for your inner life. Gatherings are on Zoom or in person, with seasonal sessions and resources at illuminewithin.com.

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What is this podcast—besides a voice memo to your bestie and the universe? It’s a place to be seen, a home for soul friendship, and a landing spot for that thing you couldn’t quite name until now. It's for the woman who left the rules but kept the reverence. If that's you, listen along if you feel a tug. God we love each other. And God we love you too.

Episode 3 — The One On Selfish

In Episode 3 of God I Love You, Meredith and Devany reframe the old “selfish woman” trope by exploring what it means to live self-full. They reflect on how women’s needs have long been mislabeled as “preferences,” and how meeting those needs with dignity changes the quality of our love, creativity, and presence.

Through the metaphors of plants and water, they explore thriving as creating the right conditions rather than chasing external checklists. Along the way, they wrestle with how cultural patterns shape our relationship with needs, how fear can act like a contraceptive to our becoming, and how hunger offers a compass back to true choice and aliveness.

This conversation is tender, grounding, and at times disruptive — a permission slip to stop performing love and begin listening inward with kindness.

Gentle Note - We use strong language at times—listen with care if little ears are around.

• People-pleasing often comes from fear and cultural conditioning, not love.
• Women’s needs have been mislabeled as “preferences” for far too long.
• Thriving isn’t about chasing external checklists — it’s about creating the right conditions for growth.
• Living self-full changes the quality of your love, creativity, and presence.
• Hunger can be a compass back to choice and aliveness.

• “A woman who becomes self-full — who honors her needs, who listens inward — she does not disappear, she disrupts.”
• “Other people’s fear is a contraceptive. It blocks the birth of your own becoming.”
• “Women’s needs have been called preferences for far too long.”
• “When we feed ourselves, we are able to feed others.”
• “If I take my own needs seriously, I’m declaring that I matter.”

Sovereign When we talk about being sovereign, we think about the small, everyday moments where we’ve learned to honor ourselves. Saying no when our bodies whisper “not now.” Saying yes to something that feels deeply right, even if it surprises people. For us, sovereignty isn’t about dominance or standing apart — it’s when body, heart, and spirit move in the same direction. Our understanding of sovereignty has been deeply shaped by decolonial teachers who remind us that honoring our needs and voices resists the systems that taught us to override them.

Self-Full We use the word self-full as a reframe of “selfish.” To live self-full is to honor and meet our own needs, tending to ourselves with dignity and care. When we choose to be self-full, we don’t disappear — we disrupt.

Our reflections on sovereignty and needs are shaped by the wisdom of teachers who’ve gone before us:

• Marisa Guadalupe (Sacred Cycle Mentorship) —A year-long journey in self-compassion, weaving Indigenous wisdom, somatic practice, and community support to embody balance and deepen self-trust.  📧 somaticmarisa@gmail.com Instagram: @luminosa_marisa
• Christine Gutierrez, I Am Diosa — reclaiming sovereignty as sacred power.
• Dra. Rocío Rosales Meza — naming and honoring needs as a decolonial act.
• Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands — embodied practices for healing trauma.
• Kelsey Blackwell, Decolonizing the Body — where we explore what it means for white bodies to join a narrative greater than our own, recognizing the harm, violence, and oppression we’ve inherited, divesting from dominance, and stepping into collective healing through embodied repair.
• Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater
• Thomas Keating — Teachings on Centering Prayer and the “programs for happiness”
• Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer & Inner Awakening
• The Wild & Sacred Feminine Deck

🔖 Note: What we share here are our reflections and learnings in process. We encourage you to engage directly with the work of teachers like Marisa Guadalupe, Kelsey Blackwell, Dra. Rocío Rosales Meza, Resmaa Menakem, and Christine Gutierrez for their full wisdom and guidance.

• Centering Prayer — Sitting in silence and returning to Presence.
• Ask “What do I need right now?” — A quick body check-in (cold → sweater, hungry → snack) as a way of staying present and resourced.
• Host Yourself — Tend to your own body and spirit as part of the care you offer others, not as something separate or secondary.
• Discern Desire vs. Numbing (from Kelsey Blackwell’s Decolonizing the Body) — Asking, “Am I choosing this, or is it choosing me?” around alcohol, food, media, or habits—reclaiming true desire instead of numbing.

What we share here comes from our own stories, experiences, and spiritual practices. It isn’t medical, mental health, or legal advice — please use your own discernment and seek professional support if you need it. Some episodes may touch on tender topics; take care of yourself as you listen. Take what resonates, and leave the rest.

Come Home to Your Center with Illumine Within — If you’re longing for support in stillness, quiet, and returning to deep self, Devany’s Centering Circles offer a guided space to practice. Each gathering includes somatic grounding, Centering Prayer, and reflective listening. Explore upcoming circles and resources at illuminewithin.com.

Relax into energetic support with Hibernate Healing — Step into a sanctuary where your body, spirit, and heart are met with care. Meredith offers energy healing, shamanic practices, and spiritual guidance to help you release, restore, and reconnect with your deepest self. Sessions available in-person (Austin, TX) or online. Visit sparklecirclehealing.com until the rebrand is complete.