What If Fear Is the Diagnosis?

Goddess in Training | Episode 48

About this episode: One year ago this week, Sarah launched Goddess in Training with three episodes, a brand new set of skills, and a pull she couldn’t explain. This week she marks the anniversary not with a polished retrospective but with something rawer — a solo reflection on what 47 episodes, a new job, a new relationship, and a season of creative resistance have quietly been teaching her. Topics covered include the paradox of flow and structure, love as the connective tissue between all things seen and unseen, what her first three episodes were really about, plant medicine as a portal through emotion, coaching and the realization that we already hold what we’re seeking, and why an unmowed patch of lawn might be the whole point. Episodes referenced: * Episode 1 [https://goddessintraining.substack.com/p/when-you-ignore-what-you-know?r=5jp2q1] — Emmanuel on relationships and intuition * Episode 2 [https://goddessintraining.substack.com/p/intuition-at-work-a-conversation?r=5jp2q1]— Deborah Collins on intuition in the workplace * Episode 3 [https://goddessintraining.substack.com/p/new-podcast-episode-intuition-mediumship?r=5jp2q1] — Mage Marigold on mediumship * Jillie Clark [https://open.substack.com/pub/goddessintraining/p/angelic-activation-and-listening?r=5jp2q1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web×tamp=136.9] — angelic channeler * Prashanthi [https://open.substack.com/pub/goddessintraining/p/embracing-paradox-with-prashanthi?r=5jp2q1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] — on paradox Connect with Sarah: Website [https://www.goddessintraining.online/coaching] | Substack [https://goddessintraining.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips] | Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/goddess_in_training_podcast/] | Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61575310003046] | YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@goddessintrainingpodcast] 🎵 Music credit: Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by ArkawaUsed with permission. More at arkawamusic.com [https://www.arkawamusic.com/]🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online [http://www.goddessintraining.online/] for more tools to support your intuitive journey. If you’re new to this podcast, welcome. Go back into the catalog and find whatever title catches your eye. There’s no order, no required sequence. Just people who wanted the best for each other, sharing what they’ve found. And if you’ve been here from the beginning: you’ve watched me live what I’ve been preaching. Which is messier and more real than I planned. Thank you for being here. Sarah Stevenson is a transition doula, plant medicine facilitator, and host of Goddess in Training. She lives and works in the Blue Ridge Mountains. If this essay moved you, consider becoming a paid subscriber or buying me a cacao [http://buymeacoffee.com/goddessintraining]— it keeps this work alive. Get full access to Goddess in Training at goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe [https://goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

What If Fear Is the Diagnosis?

Show Notes Guest: Leah Reynolds | Functional Nutritional Therapist, Certified EFT & Matrix Reimprinting Practitioner, German New Medicine Practitioner, Root-Cause Health Coach Connect with Leah: Website [https://www.mindyourhealthwellness.com/] | Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/mind_your_health_wellness/] | Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/mindyourhealthwellness/] Topics covered: German New Medicine, fear as the root of disease, Takotsubo (heartbreak) syndrome, the mind-body connection, biological conflict shock, EFT tapping, plant medicine and neural pathway rewiring, reclaiming your power from the medical system 🎵 Music credit: Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by ArkawaUsed with permission. More at arkawamusic.com [https://www.arkawamusic.com/]🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online [http://www.goddessintraining.online/] for more tools to support your intuitive journey. I have spent most of my life being afraid of things I couldn’t name. Not sharp, obvious fear. The other kind. The low hum underneath everything. The fear of not being enough. Of not being taken care of. Of needing someone and discovering, again, that they aren’t really there. I didn’t call it fear. I called it being independent. I called it I’ve got this. But the body keeps score. And mine had been keeping score for a long time. Last summer in Costa Rica, a bug bite became necrotizing fasciitis. Two weeks in a San Jose hospital. Surgery. Doctors drawing circles on my leg. And somewhere in that stillness, I saw clearly: the person beside me was physically present and emotionally absent. I had been pretending that was fine — because I had always been the one who was fine. The body, it turns out, had a different opinion. This week on Goddess in Training, I talked with Leah Reynolds of Mind Your Health Wellness. Leah was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer in 2012 and went through conventional treatment while simultaneously rebuilding her life on a completely different foundation. Then she received a second diagnosis: Takotsubo syndrome. Heartbreak syndrome. An unresolved grief had manifested as literal cardiac failure. That was the moment everything shifted. If I can create this, I can uncreate this. Sit with that sentence. In German New Medicine, developed by Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer, every disease process begins with a biological conflict shock — an unexpected, isolating event for which we have no strategy. The body responds not with malfunction but with a biological program designed to adapt and survive. Where it manifests depends on how you interpret the shock. Two people nearly get hit by a car. One freezes in terror; one flips off the driver. Same event. Different organs potentially affected. Different programs initiated. Leah asked the question I keep turning over: if twenty people live in identical conditions and they all get sick, why do they all get something different? Why breast cancer and not lung cancer? Why the gut and not the skin? There has to be something that tips the scale. And underneath that tipping point, so often, is fear. Anita Moorjani, who survived a near-death experience after late-stage lymphoma, said it directly when Leah asked: fear. Bernie Siegel, the mind-body pioneer and Leah’s dear collaborator at 93, says the same. The unlived life. The marriage you stay in. The self you keep shrinking. These things erode us — not metaphorically. Literally. What plant medicine did for both of us, in different ways, was remove fear long enough to feel what we were without it. Leah describes her joy going from zero to two thousand after San Pedro ceremony. Neural pathways not slowly rewired but directly, viscerally reset. She’s not prescribing it for everyone — the container matters enormously — but for her it was the proof of concept she needed to stop being afraid to live. That’s what this whole conversation kept returning to: the fear of death as the engine underneath so much of what makes us sick. And the radical possibility that when we stop fearing death, we finally remember how to live — and the body, taking its cues from exactly that, begins to follow. We’re all dying every day, Leah reminded me. It’s what you do with the time you’re here. Find Leah at mindyourhealthwellness.com and on Instagram and Facebook. She is currently writing The Little Girl on the Porch, rooted in the belief that childhood emotional experience and adult onset illness are one continuous story. If this landed somewhere in you, please leave a comment — I read every one. With love, Sarah Invocation: Hygieia — goddess not of cure, but of care. Of the daily tending. Of the understanding that healing is not the exception. It is what we are made for. Goddess in Training is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Goddess in Training at goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe [https://goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

When the Parachute Explodes, That's the Magic

Guest: Maritza Schäfer, Founder of Bruja School & Creator of the Liberation Magic Method Connect with Maritza: Website [https://brujaschool.com/] | Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/maritza.a.schafer/] | Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/maritza.a.schafer] | Newsletter [https://brujaschool.com/start/] In this episode we explore: * Why manifestation culture is incomplete — and what’s actually missing * Magic as the craft of transforming reality, not wishful thinking * The three axioms of liberation magic * Why witches have been vilified throughout history, and why that’s not a coincidence * The connection between personal transformation and systemic change * Liberation as an inside job — but never a solo path * How paradox is the organizing principle of life, not just a feature of it 🎵 Music credit: Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by Arkawa. Used with permission. More at arkawamusic.com [https://www.arkawamusic.com/]🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online [http://www.goddessintraining.online/] for more tools to support your intuitive journey. I have a confession. I use the word magic all the time. I always have. But for a long time, I said it a little quietly. Like it was something I believed in the way you believe in a dream you’re not quite ready to say out loud — hedging it with manifestation or intention or energy when I was in certain company. Using the safer words. The ones that come with a neuroscientific footnote attached. My conversation with Maritza Schäfer shifted something in me. Maritza grew up in Chile in a family of witches. Her grandmother initiated her into brujería. Magic wasn’t a belief system she adopted or a practice she found later in life during some searching season — it was simply the air she breathed. The sky-is-blue fact of her childhood. And when she moved to the United States at 18, she encountered something she genuinely hadn’t anticipated: a world that had forgotten how to work with the unseen. She told me she looked around and thought, oh, you poor babies. I laughed when she said it. And then I felt it land somewhere true. Because here’s what I’ve been sitting with since our conversation ended: we have not been taught to work magic. We’ve been taught to produce. To optimize. To measure outcomes and justify every expenditure of energy with a legible result. And somewhere inside that system, we learned to distrust anything we couldn’t explain — including ourselves. Get full access to Goddess in Training at goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe [https://goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Costa Rica Project:

Show Notes Host: Sarah Stevenson, Goddess in Training Episode type: Solo Topics covered: Trusting intuition when outcomes are uncertain · the Costa Rica project · necrotizing fasciitis and the stop that changed everything · sitting in liminal space · what divinely inspired energy is actually for · the energy you spend is never wasted 🎵 Music credit: Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by ArkawaUsed with permission. More at arkawamusic.com [https://www.arkawamusic.com/]🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online [http://www.goddessintraining.online/] for more tools to support your intuitive journey. When Divinely Inspired Things Don’t Work Out There’s a foundation being poured in Costa Rica this week. Concrete and rebar going into the ground on a piece of land I helped bring to life — a project that arrived the way the best things do: suddenly, fully, like it was always meant to be mine. For over two years I poured everything into that vision. Time, money, heart. A romance. A business. Trips every two to three months. The kind of momentum that doesn’t feel like effort because something larger is doing the pulling. And then my body stopped me. Necrotizing fasciitis. Two weeks in a hospital. Surgery. And somewhere in all of that, the energy I’d carried for that project — the vibration, the life-giving excitement — quietly dissolved. I came home and ended the romance. I stopped going back. And I sat with the question I couldn’t shake: If it was divinely inspired, why didn’t it work out? That’s what this week’s episode is about. Not a tidy answer — but the honest, ongoing work of a transition doula sitting with herself in a liminal space. What does it mean when something that felt so real, so full of divine momentum, shifts? Does it shake your trust in your intuition? Does it make you question the guidance you thought you were receiving? I don’t think the energy was wasted. I think it was tuition. And I’m beginning to see what it was actually preparing me for. If you have your own “Costa Rica” — something that moved you, fueled you, and then stopped — this episode is for you. Goddess in Training is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Goddess in Training at goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe [https://goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

He Died Twice and Came Back Louder

Guest: Dorian Slay — pop artist, leukemia survivor, witch Connect with Dorian: Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/artist/0dkYVtLbSWJeRx1NaizLnS] | Apple Music [https://music.apple.com/us/artist/dorian-slay/1796147626] | Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/officialdorianslay/] | YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBeg6Be2X5ZEYh4KKcIvqMg] 🎵 New album: In My Villain Era — available May 1, 2026 on all major streaming platforms Topics covered: Surviving acute myeloid leukemia and two near-death experiences, bone marrow transplant from a perfect-match donor in Wales, the ghost of a little girl named Jocelyn, witchcraft as a lifeline, making Ascension as a ritual of return, gaslighting and reclaiming your narrative, embracing your villain era, Beltane as a release date, upcoming music and LA plans 🎵 Music credit: Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by ArkawaUsed with permission. More at arkawamusic.com [https://www.arkawamusic.com/]🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online [http://www.goddessintraining.online/] for more tools to support your intuitive journey. THE VILLAIN WHO CAME BACK TO LIFE There’s a moment in this week’s conversation where Josh — who performs as Dorian Slay — is describing the second time he died. He’s wandering a hospital hallway with a little girl in a Dorothy costume named Jocelyn, annoyed that the floor they’re on is boring and suggesting they check out the mental ward instead. He has an IV pole. He does not yet know he is dead. That is who Josh is. Even in death, he was looking for a better party. I met Josh when I first moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains, when I wandered into a witchcraft class he was teaching — protection spells — and we became fast friends. So when he told me he was recording music, it landed as exactly right. Everything about Josh is a spell. The Road to Ascension Josh was living in Houston when he got sick. What felt like the flu turned out to be acute myeloid leukemia. By the time a neighbor found him, unresponsive on the floor, his hemoglobin was 1.8. He was airlifted, pronounced dead, placed in a medical coma. His soul, by his account and his partner’s, remained very much present in the apartment — crying in front of the mirror, not because he was dead, but because his skin was breaking out. First word out of intubation: Starbucks. The bone marrow transplant that followed brought its own near-death experience, its own ghost (ruby slippers in a cabinet, tags still on, dust an inch thick), and the slow work of relearning to walk. Twice. His debut album Ascension emerged from all of it — ethereal, witchy, released on a full moon in August 2025. Enter the Villain In My Villain Era, arriving May 1st on Beltane, was forged in the aftermath of a relationship that left him questioning his own perception of reality. “I’m at a point now where I’m okay with being the villain in somebody’s story,” he told me. “They’re a clown in mine.” So many of us navigating midlife, the dissolution of relationships, the slow work of reclaiming our own narrative, have had to find our way to exactly that place — the moment you stop trying to control someone else’s version of you and return to your own knowing. Josh got there and made a dance album about it. The sound has evolved from the atmospheric shimmer of Ascension into something more cinematic — what he describes as what you’d get if Lady Gaga and The Weeknd had a gay baby. The songs include Villain, Spite, Misbehaving, and Peanut Butter and Jelly, which is about being dirty in the kitchen and which his mother has not yet fully heard. Songs Are Spells When I asked whether he’d ever used actual spell language in his lyrics, he laughed and said songs and spells aren’t so different. Both are intentional. Both call something forward. Both carry a frequency that lands in the body before the mind catches up. Ascension was a spell for return. In My Villain Era is a spell for liberation. Near the end of our conversation, he said: “Coming back from the dead twice really changes your outlook. Life is precious. Never take it for granted. Always tell the people you love that you love them.” And then: “I know that doesn’t sound very villain of me.” It doesn’t, Josh. But I think that’s the whole point. If this episode moved you, share it with someone in their own era of reclamation. And if you want to support the work here at Goddess in Training become a paid subscriber as energy exchange. Either way, I’m so glad you’re here. Goddess in Training is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks for reading Goddess in Training! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Goddess in Training at goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe [https://goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]