Episode Transcript
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Mary Wagstaff (00:02):
Music. Welcome to
stop drinking and start living
the feminine way. I'm yourhostess. Mary Wagstaff, holistic
alcohol coach and feminineembodiment guide here to help
you effortlessly release alcoholby reclaiming your feminine
essence. Sobriety isn't justabout quitting drinking, it's
about removing the distortionsthat keep you disconnected,
(00:26):
overwhelmed and stuck in cyclesof numbing. Each week, I'll
share powerful tools, newperspectives that transform and
deeply relatable stories to helpyou step into the power pleasure
and purpose that it is to be awoman. This is your next
evolution of awakenedempowerment. Welcome to the
(00:47):
feminine way.
Welcome back. Is anyone havingspring fever? So I feel like a
kid. I feel so innocent andplayful, and I feel like my
worries have just melted off ofme. And I shared a few weeks ago
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about my morning devotionalpractice, and I have to tell
you, it's been a practice ofsurrender. I'm just surrendering
all my worries, because when hisworrying ever created a positive
outcome, it never has. There'sworries literally just aren't
even real. They're all ahypothetical situation. So I
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feel like it's just been a giantexhale. Flowers are growing,
Spring has sprung, birds arechirping, and it's just going to
be such a magical season, butI'm intentionally looking for
it. I'm intentionally softeningevery day. And I'm so thrilled
that you're here for the ride,and I hope that you are tapping
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into, literally, the most of allof the most feminine season of
them all. This is this energy ofthe maiden springtime. The
flowers are in bloom, the birdsare buzzing, right? Is the
energy of innocence? How can youtap into your innocence? And so
before I get into our third, thethird and final pillar of the
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feminine way, which I'm going tobring to you next week. I had
touched a little bit on thisidea of relaxation resistance
last week, and I didn't get toodeep into it. I was talking more
about luxurious space. But youknow, it's important to
understand why, and you know whywe have relaxation resistance,
which the first episode offeminine sobriety about creating
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safety. This is really whythere's this underlying belief
that we aren't very conscious ofmost of the time as women, that
if I relax and I let go, that itwill all fall apart, right? If I
let go, everything will crumble.
And so we just try to hold itall together while we crumble,
right? And so it's notproductive. And we come back to
(03:06):
the same question that I had afew weeks ago, which is, what's
the worst case scenario? And wehave to be willing to feel that,
because for some people, thatwouldn't the what you believe is
the worst case scenario isn'talways going to be the worst
case scenario for someone else.
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So really, the worst casescenario is that you have to
feel the emotion. And what Iknow about you, my sister
friend, is that you can handleit. Because I know this to be
true for so many women when whenshit really hits the fan, like
when there's a real crisis, Iwould say 98% of the women I
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know do not crumble. They showup. They know exactly how to
delegate they know how to keepcalm. That's when they stay the
most calm. That's when I staythe most calm. That's when my
nervous system is actually themost relaxed, when there is
something that really needs tobe attended to. And, you know,
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like Matthew has had accidentsbefore, or he's broken down, or,
you know, something like this,that feels like a little scary
or a little shattering. Mostwomen that I know that's when
they are online, they are alertand they there is a groundedness
in them. So everything else iskind of superficial. And the
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reason I believe that we haverelaxation resistance is because
of a few things, one, what we'remaking it mean about us and that
we've had to use our action toclaim our worth. So if you are
relaxing, then that could beequated to too lazy, and you
wouldn't want anyone to thinkthat about you, right? Which is
(04:56):
why we use the term busy a lot.
I'm so busy. I, I do not usethat term ever, mostly just
because the connotation with itand what does it even mean,
like, busyness. I don't love theenergy of busyness that feels
heightened. It feels frantic.
It's like, Oh, I'm so busy. I'mso important. And it's okay if
you use that. I always use theword full, because busy feels
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like, it's like, I'm not evenengaged with it for me. So I use
the word Oh, my schedule isreally full, and it feels
abundant, and it feels full, andit feels luscious, and I feel so
privileged to get to do it,because words are spells. So if
our schedule isn't full, like,what like, imagine if you're, if
you're, if you said, you know,we talked about luxurious space.
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I have so much space in myschedule right now. It feels so
good, like think about how whatyou would make that mean, or
maybe how you even judge otherpeople. If someone was to say
that I was so much space in myschedule right now to to do what
I want right now, I work formyself. So when I say that I'm
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there's a lot of judgment, like,girl get to work. Well, the
thing is, is, if I decide tosleep in for an extra hour and
then go for a walk, I get to dothat. And the last time that
that happened, recently, Ilooked around, it was a
beautiful day, and thisbeautiful place that we live,
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and I thought this was just sucha gift from God. Look at what
God just gave me, right? Insteadof, I'm lazy, I shouldn't be.
And then I just softened and Ireceived and I allowed myself to
be in that pleasure. And thenthe thing that I thought I was
going to get on the other sideof honoring my schedule and
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doing this and doing that, andthe busyness and like is always
an emotion of satisfaction, butI could have that right here,
right now. So we have relaxationresistance because of what we
think it will mean. The otherthing is, is that we are
addicted to being in fight orflight. We are addicted to being
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kind of like in a traumaresponse. And so much of the so
much of this episode could be 20episodes, right? That there are
actual chemicals that getreleased cortisol. You can get
addicted to cortisol. You canget addicted to adrenaline. You
can get addicted to thesechemicals in your body, where in
your body, where you kind oflook for them, and so something
that's relaxed and calm, andthere's no problem, it's like,
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oh, this doesn't feel familiar.
This doesn't feel safe. So wehave to practice it, and you
have to intentionally tellyourself, of course, this is
safe. Let's just find out whathappens, right? The other thing
is, is because of the way thatsocial media functions, and I
read you all that post a fewweeks ago about I'm 43 and I'm
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not afraid to admit they got somuch, you know, response to it,
which blew my mind. So if I wasa person that wanted external
validation, I would write postslike that all the time, right? I
would write posts about being ina victim consciousness instead
of my pleasure consciousness,but both could get me probably
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just as much feedback. Butbecause we don't live in that
world, there is more judgmentand resistance around that,
right? So you want to notice inyour life, where do you judge
other people, other women, forliving a life to themselves that
feels really pleasurable andreally luxurious. People used to
say this to me all the time whenI was younger, it must be nice,
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as if I didn't make choices toget me right where I was, like,
It must be nice. What that I hadfood stamps when I was growing
up and like a broken house in anidentity crisis, like, what must
be nice? Because I would work asa waitress, mind you, and save
up a bunch of money and gotravel. Oh, it must be nice.
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Well, girl, I made thosedecisions, and I still do that,
and I'm a married mother, right?
So what are you choosing? Howare you choosing to spend your
time? What are the choices thatyou're making? And this is where
you have to be really honestwith yourself. So when we're
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getting attention for the thingwe say we don't want that's
going to create. It's just likekids getting negative attention,
right? We want the attention. Wewant the validation. Well, what
if we stepped into our ownpleasure? You stepped into your
own pleasure as a woman and gaveyourself the attention.
Unknown (09:37):
Wow. What then? And
Mary Wagstaff (09:40):
how does that
change the way other people show
up for you, I know the more Itake care of myself, it is so
much more attractive to Matthewthan anything else. He's told
me, like he's told me it'sextremely unattractive for me to
put myself down. He's like, II've chosen to be here with you
because I think you're beautifuland I. I think you're amazing.
So what does it say about mewhen you're treating yourself
(10:03):
like shit right now? Of course,he knows that I'm not feeling
good or whatever, but that alonehas really shifted something for
me, because I don't want to takethat choice for granted, like he
could be hanging out withanyone, right? And oftentimes
the things that are right infront of us just to support us
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we neglect. So we have to takethis inventory of our resources.
Why we do what we do? Does itfeel? What does it feel like in
our body to just find out likeit's nothing's gonna go wrong?
If you take a week and youdecide you know, whatever's not
done at six o'clock at night,I'm going to leave it, or I'm
going to ask for support, orwhatever it is, and I'm going to
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go read a book. I'm going to putmy feet up. I'm going to go for
a walk, an evening walk with thedog, whatever it needs to be for
you. Because when we tellourselves we've tried
everything, we've just shutourselves down to possibility
and the creative life force. Sothis is so important for you to
ask yourself, Where am I inrelaxation, resistance? And
(11:09):
like, on the flip side of it,maybe there's apathy, and
there's you're not engaging inpleasure, in in things that are
really like lighting you up,right? So there's, there's kind
of the both end, like I'm theextreme, where my buffering goes
to action base, like, do, do, domore, do more. And there are
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some people that go toretreating, and I won't, you
know, from a place of where theydon't have the energy, where
maybe it feels like they want toshut down and they don't want to
engage, but they're still notreceiving pleasure, and that
could be just finding out whathappens. You know, it's like the
thing I always say, the reasonyou think you can't is the
(11:53):
reason you need to. So I'mtrying to offer more and more in
person gatherings, because Ireally believe that, especially
women, we need an opportunity toconnect, to just have fun. Go do
something that sounds really funto you, but that maybe you're a
little bit scared of, right? Andwhat is the objection that tells
you you can't go do that thing,because I need to do this. So
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something else I do, and I thinkthis is really important, is to
tell the truth. Tell yourselfthe truth when you say I don't
have time or I can't afford it.
What does that mean? And I didthis recently with someone where
a friend had asked me to comeinto Portland, OR said, Can you
come? You know, you can stay atthe house or whatever. And I
said, No. I said, I don't havetime. I said, You know what?
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That's not true. I do the timeis there I have it, but I I'm
choosing to do something elsewith it, right? I'm choosing to
do something different with mytime. I'm choosing to do
something different with myresources. So when it comes to
relaxation, resistance, we haveto be willing to find out, and
you can find out by setting youknow, you know to just throw
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yourself into wild abandon,which you know I like to do that
that gives me a thrill. But wehave to be willing to find out
by creating safety, asking,what's the worst thing that can
happen, and trusting that we canfigure it out, because you
always do. How do you figure itout, even in in real, worst case
scenarios, and that you are theone that's showing up to kind of
(13:23):
create order, right? And what isit feel like to be held not by a
person, not by a circumstance,but just by life. And this is
where we have to go into, thatplace of silence, that place of
solitude, and why this is soimportant to be in the living of
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life. And you can be held byyour senses. You can be held by
the present moment. You can beheld by the elements. You can be
held by the the changing of theseasons. And what that how that
delights inside of you. Sonotice the resistance, and let
the resistance be there and andyou can even say to it, I see
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you. I'm here for you, but let'sjust soften. And then you
intentionally soften your body,just like you would in a yoga
pose, just like you would if youwere giving birth to a baby,
right? Just like you would meltinto someone's arms giving
yourself a hug.
Unknown (14:26):
Let me know what your
method
Mary Wagstaff (14:32):
for overcoming
relaxation resistance, what
really landed for you? I wouldlove for you to slip into my DMs
on Instagram. That's probablythe easiest way for us to
connect. But you can alsoschedule a one on one call with
me where we can talk more aboutyour specific story and how we
can continue to cultivate
Unknown (14:52):
this opportunity for
relaxation,
Mary Wagstaff (14:57):
for surrender,
for pleasure. Here right for
living the feminine way. Have anamazing week. If something in
today's episode spoke to youdeeply you are ready for your
next level of awakening, and Iwant to invite you to book a
sober glow up activation sessionwith me where we can rewrite
your alcohol story. Right now,we'll remove the energetic
(15:21):
blocks that are keeping youstuck and stagnant to activated
and alive, to book a session andto learn more, just follow the
link right here in the shownotes, or head on over to my
website. Mary Wagstaff,coach.com and find out what it
means to truly live life fromyour most authentic self. I will
See you over there. You