Our final episode of Season One is inspired by Lily Allen's West End Girl. This is not a pop-psych analysis or an attempt to interpret the artist's life or relationship. I'm bringing this album into our space as a mirror for the work we have been doing here.

As I listened to West End Girl, I noticed how much it stirred in my own healing work. The linear and direct way she shares her experience feels potent, and the record spread so widely because it's deeply relatable. When we approach another person's experience with awareness, it can reveal something essential about our own.

Inside this episode, we move into the heart of some of the most painful and often misunderstood patterns in relational healing:

• saying yes when we mean no

• staying in situations that hurt because we're afraid to lose connection

• suppressing our truth to stay safe

• rumination as an attempt to feel in control

• and the quiet self-abuse that shows up as shame, self-hate, and self-abandonment

More than anything, this episode is about recognizing how we relate to ourselves inside relational pain — how quickly we blame ourselves, disappear, or try to control the outcome through self-abandonement — and how awareness becomes the turning point. Not by fixing the pattern, but by noticing and interrupting the moment we begin abandon ourselves to keep ourselves safe.

This is an invitation into awareness, compassion, and embodied self-honesty. Not to rush change or force resolution, but to stay present long enough for something deeper to shift — and to begin healing your relationship to self from that place.

As we close this season, I invite you to practice one thing: stay. Stay with your truth. Stay with your body. Stay with the moment you want to disappear or attack yourself. That choice — again and again — is where the healing begins.

If you are new here-go back to episde one. I invite you on a linear journey to come into a deeper relationship to yourself.

If you are ready to stop circling the same patterns and start living differently book a Free Connection Call with me to see how a 12-week guided 1:1 journey can help you rebuild trust with yourself and step into the life of radial self-acceptance and embodied love.

Book your connection call here

Learn more about me at www.healwithalchemy.com

Join our next women's retreat here

Meditate with me on Insight Timer Here

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See you again in Season 2

Today I have someone incredibly special with me. Not just a renowned Toltec Master of Transformation, not just a teacher or an author, but a dear friend to me and to everyone he meets.

don José Ruiz is a Toltec Master, a storyteller, the author of The Fifth Agreement, Ripples of Wisdom, and My Good Friend the Rattlesnake. He's a speaker, a devoted vegan, a coffee lover, and someone who has dedicated his life to translating ancient Toltec wisdom into practical teachings that bring more truth, love, and personal freedom into the world.

But beyond all of that... José is someone who embodies unconditional love. He walks through the world in a way that makes people light up when they see him. His presence softens defenses. His humor and humility make the teachings feel accessible. And the way he loves openly, generously, and without condition is medicine this world desperately needs more of.

José shares his own personal story, the obstacles he has worked to overcome, his journey inside of relationships and addiction. He will inspire you to remember you are more than your human experience. You are infinite, and you have the power to create the life of your dreams. You have the power and courage to love yourself and soften to love others and the world around you, even if you do not agree with their personal dream.

This conversation is unscripted and straight from the heart. No planned questions. No performance. Just two friends sharing truth, laughing, exploring, and letting the moment guide us.

I'm so honored to share this space with him, and I hope you feel the love, the freedom, and the permission that José naturally awakens in everyone he meets.

*Content note: This episode includes a brief reference to sexual abuse. Please prioritize your emotional well-being as you listen.

Let's dive in.

Learn more about Jose here

Meet him in person on December 6th in LA. Get your tickets here

You can learn more about me and my offerings here

If you are craving a real shift, a deep return to yourself, explore my 12-Week Soul Return

This is my most intimate 1:1 container.
Twelve weeks of guided healing, honest reflection, emotional processing, and spiritual integration, all designed to help you come home to the parts of you that have been lost, silenced, or abandoned.

This journey is for you if you are ready to:

• break lifelong patterns that keep pulling you back
• stop betraying yourself in relationships
• release survival-mode living
• soften old defenses and open your heart again
• reconnect with your intuition and your inner authority
• step into a life that feels aligned, grounded, and true

Together we work inside the real layers, the stories you were shaped by, the beliefs you absorbed, the patterns that once protected you but now keep you small. You will learn how to meet yourself with compassion, build emotional resilience, and shift from fear to truth.

This is not passive coaching. It is a partnership, a sacred container, and a transformational commitment to your divine unfolding.

If you are ready for big shifts, deep healing, and a return to your soul's clarity, the 12-Week Soul Return may be for you. Learn more here

Yes — there are many people in this world you could be in a relationship with. There is no shortage of potential partners. But when you are struggling inside your relationship, when there is fear, insecurity, reactivity, shutting down, chasing, or any kind of trauma response, the idea that there's "someone better out there" doesn't empower you. It actually pulls you further away from yourself. It keeps you externally focused instead of internally connected.

For someone who is living inside anxiety, attachment wounds, people-pleasing, avoidance, perfectionism, or the pattern of running every time things get hard…
the message "you deserve better, go find it" becomes another way to disconnect from yourself. It reinforces the belief that your healing lives outside of you. That someone else will come along and soothe everything you haven't yet learned how to hold within yourself.

And that is where this narrative becomes harmful.

Because it pushes people into the next relationship without ever stopping to understand:

• why they choose who they choose

• what part of them gets activated, frightened, or shut down

• what version of themselves takes over when things feel threatening

• what need in them keeps going unmet, and why

• what patterns they are replaying from their childhood or past

• what agreements or beliefs about love they are still living inside of

Without that awareness, leaving doesn't create clarity, it creates repetition.

If someone leaves without doing their inner work, they don't "find better."
They find a new person to run the same patterns with.

They carry the same wound into the next connection.
They carry the same fear into the next dynamic.
They bring the same unspoken needs, the same unhealed parts, the same survival strategies — and eventually, those patterns show up again, no matter how different the new partner seems at first.

And because the beginning of a relationship feels exciting, hopeful, intoxicating…
people mistake that dopamine rush for healing.
They mistake the quiet of a new connection for safety.
They mistake difference for evolution.

But when the high wears off, when the nervous system settles, the same wounds come forward.
And the cycle repeats.

So when I say that "go find better" is harmful, this is what I mean: it seduces you into believing that your healing is waiting for you in someone else, instead of waiting for you in you.
It distracts you from the work that actually changes your patterns.
And it prevents you from looking at the version of yourself that keeps showing up in your relationships, over and over again.

You don't break the cycle by finding someone new.
You break the cycle by coming home to yourself.

Learn More About Me and My Offerings at www.healwithalchemy.com

Book a free 30 minute connection call to learn more about Awakening Woman: A 12-Week Soul Return. A sacred 12-week journey for the woman who is ready to turn inward, meet herself with honesty, and remember the truth of who she is.