Wild & Holy:

The Crucible of Motherhood: A Candid Conversation

Host Joan Advent is joined by 3 seasoned Moms in this Mother’s Day roundtable discussion. Katie Fusco, Margaret Jacobson and Jade Orth join Joan in offering a candid and uncensored look at some of the traumas, expectations, unexpected challenges, surprises and profound gifts they each experienced in their transformational journey of motherhood. They come together as four Moms with 8 children (school age to late 20’s) between them. Initiated into motherhood at 18, 40 and in their 30’s they share about the impact of birth trauma, postpartum struggles and inconsolable crying, as well as the weight of expectations, self blame and self abandonment in activating their personal healing, transformation and spiritual awakening. The group names toxic maternal guilt, comparison culture, and “fixing” models of care, emphasizing grief, self-care, finding genuinely supportive community, developing and trusting our intuition, and long-game parenting. They close by celebrating their children as teachers and sharing their work in perinatal and infant mental health, women’s sovereign health and birth integration, and foster/adoption advocacy. Host & Creator Joan Advent, MSW joanadvent.com [https://www.joanadvent.com/] Instagram: Joan Advent [https://substack.com/profile/165315855-joan-advent] You Tube: @joanadvent7171 [https://www.youtube.com/@joanadvent7171] Katie Fusco describes her working life as deeply humbling, for the past twenty years, she has been supporting babies, toddlers, children, teens and families, in the contexts of education, health care, fostering and hospice care. She currently works as a Specialist Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Practitioner for the National Health Service in England, and is also in the process of creating The Crying Clinic, her own private practice as an Aware Parenting Instructor. Katie stands for full, untethered and fierce emotional expression, in response to stress, trauma and grief. Contact Katie on Instagram: @thecryingclinic [https://www.instagram.com/thecryingclinic/] Jade Orth is a heart-centered community builder and creative. She is a wife, mother of 3 and her passion is supporting and advocating for children and families as a foster and adoption specialist. Contact and follow Jade on Instagram at @jade_orth [https://www.instagram.com/jade_orth/] and YouTube at Case notes and Cardigans [https://www.youtube.com/@casenotes.and.cardigans] Margaret Jacobson, MHA, MPA known as The Mother Rising, is a mother of three young adults, a health creation mentor and the host of The Yin-care® Podcast. With a background in Psychobiology and Master’s degrees in Health Services Administration and Public Administration, Margaret spent years inside the medical system integrating other forms of medicine trying to “change” a broken system before transitioning to a path of “sovereign medicine.” Alongside her husband, Dr. Daniel Hudson, she co-stewards a health ecosystem including Yin-care®, YAO Clinic, and YAO Company. She is dedicated to helping women step out of medical indoctrination and reclaim their health through “womb wisdom,” functional medicine, and self-governance. Her most prominent work with women can be found at www.yincare.com [http://www.yincare.com]. You can follow her on social media on IG: @yin_care [https://www.instagram.com/yin_care/], on FB, TikTok, YouTube, Substack and Rumbe: @yincare Get full access to The Crone Codes with Joan Advent at joanadvent.substack.com/subscribe [https://joanadvent.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

From Child Loss to Leadership: A Testament of Faith

It’s hard to imagine a gift coming to a mother through the tragedy of child loss. But when her son, Aksel James died at 6 and a half months my special guest, Alexandra Smith received a powerful and profound activation of faith from him. In our deeply moving conversation Alexandra shares, for the first time publicly, what she lived through following her son’s birth injury and subsequent terminal diagnosis. She shares the stories of the 2 “pits” she lived through - first facing immense pressure on her own during the initial days in the hospital and then 6 and a half months later immediately following Aksel’s death. Alexandra shares her story of hard won resilience through her return to God and Jesus that enabled her to emerge from those pits and alchemize her grief to found The Living Scroll School, a faith-centered community that supports over 200 women in deepening their relationship with God and walking boldly in their purpose. 00:37 Meet Alexandra Smith 04:28 Easter Timing and Testimony 06:03 Hospital Diagnosis and Faith 11:34 Second Pit and Loss of Identity 17:08 One in Four Child Loss 21:11 Between Heaven and Earth 23:59 Jesus Vision and Trinity 26:20 What are our Gifts of Holy Spirit? 30:01 Message to Grieving Mothers 32:09 How to Honor Your Grief 34:27 How to Support Loss Mothers 37:04 Everyday Devotion Matters 39:20 Love After Child Loss 41:49 Easter Reflections on Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene 47:47 Women Obedience and Power 50:30 Living Scroll School 58:09 Alexandra’s Closing Prayer for Listeners Alexandra’s Website: www.thelivingscrollschool.com [http://www.thelivingscrollschool.com] Special Offer for Crone Codes listeners: ~$400 off enrollment in the May 2026 SIGHT cohort Use: https://www.thelivingscrollschool.com/sight [https://www.thelivingscrollschool.com/sight] and include my name Joan from the Crone Codes in the “where did you hear of us” on your application. Living Scroll School Free Membership Access here: https://www.thelivingscrollschool.com/lss [https://www.thelivingscrollschool.com/lss] Transcript Joan: Welcome back to the Crone Codes. I’m Joan Advent the resident, crone, the creator and the host. And I am deeply honored and delighted to invite Alexandra Smith to be with us today. Welcome, Alexandra. Alexandra: Thank you for having me. I feel so honored to, I’m not a crone yet, but I get to sit in your corner for today. Joan: Yes. Well, the way I see it, we really gather the codes of crone hood throughout the whole arc of our journey, and there are many profound codes that you do carry and embody already, which is why I wanted to invite you to be with us today. Yeah. And before I share, the wisdom, the beauty, the, the essence of Alexandra through her bio, I just. I just want to say, dear listener, that, I’ve spent the day preparing for this interview and I know that this will be a powerful and profound experience. And my intent is to, um, be here fully and with an open and undefended heart. And I invite you, dear listener, to do the same. So I wanna share as we do, the essence of who Alexandra is through her bio, and wanna invite you to just receive as you listen, the codes of what she’s bringing and, who she is. So I invite you to close your eyes. And to just let these words wash over you. Let these truths wash over you. So Alexandra Smith is a women’s mentor and she specializes in faith building and spiritual identity. She guides women to remember who they are as daughters of God, while awakening their God-given missions into thriving movements in the world. With over 10 years of experience, Alexandra has supported thousands of women in coming home to God and rediscovering who they are, and what they are called to do. She currently leads the Living Scroll School, which is a faith centered community that supports over 200 women in deepening in their relationship with God and walking boldly in their purpose. Welcome. Alexandra: Thank you. It sounds so special to hear that read back. Joan: Yes. Well, I think it’s really important that we have those moments where reflections are offered. The, the essence of who we are, and in particular, like how far we have come. And I, I know just knowing some of your story how far you have traveled. Alexandra: Thank you. Joan: To be living this mission at this time. Yeah. So this episode is coming out just a few days after Easter, and it’s not quite that time yet. We’re, uh, we’re in the season leading up to that. But it felt particularly important to have you come and join us at this time, in part because of the power of your testimony, the power of your story, and in particular your story, with your son, Aksel. Aksel James. And so I really wanna just invite you to just dive in to whatever extent you want to start. Share your story with us. Alexandra: Yeah, yeah. Thank you. It’s, I’m a big advocate for our stories being used by God, that there’s no coincidence, there’s no mistake that we walk through the fires that we walk through. And my whole mission is, is really centered around my testimony because if I could be a living example of God’s great work, then I’ve, I’ve done enough. And a prayer that I hold close to my heart is God, if I can only see your feet. Then I’ve seen everything that I need to see. Mm-hmm. And, and my story is really a testament to that. In 2023, my son passed away at six and a half months old just before he turned seven months. And he sustained a brain injury at birth when he was born. That was a terminal diagnosis and led me to where I am today. And so where I wanna start with my testimony is in the hospital with my son. At that point in time in my life, I wanna preface that God was not ministering to me the way He is today. I didn’t have that relationship. I, I thought I had a pretty solid relationship with God. But then when you’re put into the pit, you get tested and, and that was a really big ultimate test for me. And so to preface that God was not someone I called on at that point in time in my life. But I found myself in this room. It was three days after my son Aksel was born. We were rushed to the hospital, transferred over the ocean by helicopter, and landed at this brutal pit, uh, in, in Surrey, BC. And the next three days were just a blur. But I found myself in this room filled with 20 doctors, and I was just by myself because my fiance at the time was just trying to get over to the mainland because you have to book a ferry, all these things. So I was in the pit by myself without my son because he was down the hallway that I couldn’t be with him just yet. And these doctors sat me down and they told me the diagnosis. And it was 20 doctors just telling me all these things of he’ll. One, he has terminal diagnosis, so we don’t know how long he’s gonna live, but he’s never going to roll. He’s never gonna crawl, he’s never gonna be able to feed on his own. He’s gonna have respiratory problems. He’s gonna have, um, quadriplegic, cerebral palsy. So essentially no control over his hands or legs. He has trunk abnormalities, meaning he can’t hold himself up properly. All these things. And then they showed me the pictures of the MRI that they did, that showed that every part of his brain was damaged. And then I just remember them saying, can you repeat back what we just told you? And I tried everything in my power to try to put things together, and all of a sudden the Holy Spirit descended over me and the only words that I could say was, you don’t know what my God can do. And these doctors were just dumbfounded. They looked at me like I was a lunatic. And they essentially said, okay, you know, like you can leave now if you’re not gonna take this seriously we can’t do much about it. Which then proceeded into a CPS case of if I’m a unfit mother, due to my faith. I found myself in the pit, I wasn’t just fighting for my son’s life. And when I say fighting, I mean it. I had to yell at doctors that were trying to take him off life support. I had to fight nurses. I was by myself a lot of the time. And not only that, but I then had to fight for the custody of my child where they were trying to prove that I was not fit to care for him. Those days, now looking back on it, it was honestly one of the greatest gifts my son could have given me because I found God in that moment and I didn’t know who He was. I, I had no idea any of these, these forces that I thought were God or I thought could be my Creator, but just weren’t. And it wasn’t until I was put into that hellscape, into that pit that I became a daughter again. And what was so beautiful is after we left the hospital and we were brought to a hospice, we left the hospice, we got home Aksel started doing all these things that the doctors said he would never do. And it was, it was just a testimony to what I said in that room of, you have no idea what my God can do. And in the end, he was having a very hard time. It was very hard for everyone. And, and he did leave this earth with a huge impact. Mm-hmm. And then started the second pit that I was put into. Mm-hmm. And if, and I don’t want anyone to imagine this, but if for a moment, if you can imagine how your child is, your everything, and, and I wasn’t just a mother. I was a 24 7 nurse. I was 24 7, doctor. 24 7 caretaker. 24 7 wife. 24 7 mother. I had to be so much more than just a mom, which that’s all I wanted to be. But then when all that ends in a day. And it’s all taken away from you. Who am I? Because everything that I thought I was, was gone. Hence the second pit of hell that I had to walk through. And this is why I do identity work today. Mm-hmm. Of who are you? Everything stripped away just as a daughter of God. And in my grief, I had to remember that it was the first pit of the hospital and the hospice and fighting CPS that I discovered the power and the authority that God truly has over all of us. In the most glorious way. It’s not in an imprisonment way. And then the second pit was now this testimony of who I am as a daughter and, and discovering that and how I managed to get through that was pouring all the love that I wanted to pour into my son, into my work, into my clients, into my offerings, and, and so it, it was a command from God. It was, my son passed away in November, 2023, and it was June of 2024. I went back to work. How many months is that? Six or something? It, it was not planned and it was not forced in any way, but it was a call from God that if you don’t do something with this testimony, if you, if you don’t share this story of how you got out of these pits, your son died for nothing, then. It was just this remembrance of our stories hold so much more power than what we could ever imagine. And that’s where my work restarted at. Yeah. Joan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that’s just been a little over two years ago. Alexandra: Yeah. Aksel would be three in May. Joan: Wow. Yeah. And I’m assuming that when you were pregnant, you were having a normal pregnancy and you were just anticipating being a mom. Like there were no red flags or no concerns, or, Alexandra: Yeah, it was an easy pregnancy. No red flags, no concerns. Everything was great. It was the final minutes of labor that threw us into that pit. Yeah. Joan: Wow. You are not the first mother that I have sat with who has lost a child, and I just wanna acknowledge that. Mm-hmm. Because, um not, not everyone faces that, but in the, in the journey to Crone Hood, some of us do. I mean, some of us face the journey of motherhood and some of us face the journey of losing a child. Yeah. And to use that experience and, or I don’t even know if that’s the right word. It’s, um, to honor that experience and not have it be in vain or not have it be a beginning of the end, you know, to use it as we’ll, say ultimately like a resurrection moment, um, is a very powerful code. And it, you know, it is a code that you fought for that you stepped into, I, I know that God, or I understand that God came to you and began to work through you, but it, but it was you also putting in like an equal measure, or to whatever extent we can do equal measure of showing up and putting one foot in front of the other or being, you know, being willing or saying yes to what was being asked of you. Alexandra: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, do you know the statistic for child loss? Joan: No. Alexandra: It’s so one in four women will either experience a miscarriage, an infant loss, or a child loss in their life. That’s one in four. That means we place four women in a room. One, one of them is gonna have a story regarding the, the loss of a child, whether it was in womb, on earth, in adulthood. Yes. And it’s, it’s such a taboo topic that a lot of people don’t wanna talk about, but when it’s one in four, we need to bring conversation to it. And not only that, but if I’m, if I’m the one in the four, I need to be able to represent my testimony. I was raised by parents that they said, if you do anything, make sure it’s purposeful and that was my son. My son was my whole purpose. And so when that purpose changed, and I think a lot of women, whether you’ve lost a child or, or a loved one of any kind, when you lose that person, you’re all of a sudden living for them as well. And, and so I thought, well, if my son can’t live, I gotta live for him and I’m not going to live a mediocre, quiet life. You know, you get to know their personality. So well, just in six and a half months, like he was the goofiest, silliest, like such a humor. But he was also the one that if we were out on a walk or, or walking through the market or anything, like he was stopping people dead in their tracks. Like he was such a magnet. Like he was center stage all the time. Every like hospital visit or appointment, like the whole room would light up. And, and he’s going through the hardest time of his life and he’s giggling and, and he’s smiling. Like he’s just the goofiest little guy that I’ve ever met. And so when he left this earth, I was like, okay, I need to, I need to be that, I need to, I need to light up the rooms. I, I need to bring purpose and passion and, and presence to these spaces because he can’t do that anymore. I need to do it for him. Mm-hmm. And our testimonies really do that in our missions. Mm-hmm. When, when we step into that identity of what it means to be a daughter, you are that, that presence that moves those mountains for people. Joan: Hmm. Yeah. So that is, it’s quite an invitation to, to step into that essence of daughter. Alexandra: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Joan: And it, it seems that, , it has taken you deeper and deeper and deeper into what I would, I use the word devotion, but to your devotion. Uh, to your, just your, yes to being a presence and a, a force mm-hmm. For that. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. And as I understand it, because I have heard, parts of your story previously that, that in many ways you just described the ways that your son was, that was a presence, was a force in, in body when he was here. But that, as I understand it, you also had a sense of connection and just sense of that even bigger essence of who he was once he died. Is is that true? Alexandra: Yeah. Yeah. It’s so, I, I was trained to know the biology of children. I, I’ve worked with children for years and Mm-hmm knowing the spiritual biology was something so important, so. In my motherhood, I understood that my son would share a nervous system with me for the first seven years of his life. Mm-hmm. And I think any mom who’s ever lost a child, no matter what stage, when that child dies and leaves this earth, you go there to, and the best way I can describe this, and I think a lot of people shy away from the mysticism of death, but the best way I describe this is I have one foot in heaven or one piece of my heart in heaven at all times. And one foot or one piece of my heart on earth and the, the windows open. And I don’t know how to describe that better spiritually, but. It’s, it doesn’t take much for me to just be where my son is. To be here. And, and it feels like you’re just walking in between worlds for a very long time. And it’s taken a very long time for me to remember that I’m here on Earth, I’m not in heaven. I don’t wanna be in heaven just yet. God willing. Mm-hmm. Um, but to be sharing a nervous system and to be sharing that spiritual connection with your child who’s no longer here, you really do have that open psyche. You have that open doorway into those heavenly realms that, for me, I didn’t have. Really before my son, I was definitely gifted in different ways. Like my mom says, you don’t just lick it off a rock. We are gifted in many ways, but it was my son who really initiated me into the true like, gifts of God’s Holy Spirit. And it, it was just like having a part of me in heaven at all times. Joan: Hmm. And can you tell us what those gifts of the Holy Spirit are, as your experience of them? Alexandra: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like we need to start at the night my son passed. This might be edgy for a few people, but I always believed in Jesus. I saw Jesus as a man who embodied the Christ. Mm-hmm. So Christ and Jesus were separate in my mind for a really long time. Hmm. And when I look back to my son’s death, the very first thing that I saw when he passed was Jesus holding him. And the only command that I heard in that was, you won’t be able to get through this alone. I need you to lean on me. And it was just this call from the pit of, I need you to follow me. And it was, and then I ran away from that for a year. I’m not gonna pretend, it just like radically changed my life and everything was different. I ran away from that call. I taught and shared about God separate from Christ. I taught and shared about God separate from Jesus. And then it got to a point where I just couldn’t do that anymore because I was denying what my son showed me through his death. Was that their one? They’re Trinity, they’re not separate. And it was in that discovery of honoring that vision of what I saw. And what’s so interesting is in the moment of us discovering that Aksel had left, ‘cause it was like in the middle of the night, I just woke up to do his like 3:00 AM or 2:00 AM feed. Um, and he was gone. And the very first thing that my fiancé and I did was we just yelled and screamed to Jesus. Just this wave just comes over you, that when you’re in the pit, your identity knows who to call on. And that was where we found ourself was in the pit of despair, of hell, of death, of grief, depression, PTSD. All those things. And somehow spirit knew who to call on. Hmm. And it was, well then the sanctification process begins when you’re called by God. You just get thrown into the sanctification process. And this is where our gifts come to life. And the best way I could describe, we all have so many different gifts that the Holy Spirit gives us. And, and when I say Holy Spirit, I mean the connection of our spirit to God’s spirit is through the Holy Spirit. So it’s, it’s an unending connection. It’s not something outside of you that you need to do X, Y, Z to possess. It is this unending, undying. Unrelenting connection, our spirit to God’s spirit. And the Holy Spirit is where God streams our gifts into us. Because they’re gifts, they’re not birthrights. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I teach a lot about birth rights, but these are gifts. And anything with a gift, you can return it, you can denounce it, you can, if you’re not using it well, when we think of like a child, you know, they’re hitting their sibling with the gift that you just gave them, you’re gonna take it away. You’re not gonna let them continue to misuse their gift. That’s like our gifts. And so God really streams our gifts into our spirit through the Holy Spirit. And for me, the way that looks like is, is using my voice of sharing my testimony. Sharing Aksel’s story. ‘Cause he’s not here to do that himself. Uh, writing. Some people would call that like content creation or email marketing. But for me it’s the gifts of the Holy Spirit that I get to write, I get to share, I get to teach, I get to talk, I get to pray. So the gift of the voice is a really big part of what I’ve received from God in this. And, and the gifts of a platform. We all, you can look at all your different gifts, but all through this, this grief journey, God keeps giving me platforms to speak on. Like you inviting me to this podcast that is a gift from God that you’re allowing me to have this platform to share. Um, and, and my son being like the celebrity. My one friend, my one friend calls him the celebrity ‘cause I guess the way, I guess the way that she sees like him was that he’s now, he’s like famous. That just like everyone knows about him. And the story behind that is I was walking in a farmer’s market and this lady came up to me, she was like, oh my gosh, are you Aksel’s mom? And, and we all start kind of giggling because of course my son is like known like, I don’t know who this woman is, but she she heard my son’s story through someone else who knew my son, all these things. So we call him the little celebrity. And he’s had articles written in the biggest papers around the world, like The Guardian on him there. There’s this gift of platform is something that I can’t deny is that God will deliver us the stages to speak on. Um, and yeah, those are just my main gifts right now, the way that I can describe moving through grief and, and allowing God’s gifts to bless our life. Joan: Hmm. So if you could speak to the women who may be listening who have lost a child, whether recently, or, or in the long distance past, that are still feeling kind of stuck partly in that pit, uh, because we know sometimes that can happen. Is there anything in particular that, that you would share? Alexandra: Yeah, it’s, well, my biggest thing is, I kind of already mentioned it a little bit, but it’s, it’s, don’t let them die in vain. It, it’s, and I wanna say that with love, because it’s so much easier to stay in the pit. I wanna honor that it’s easier to let the grief consume you. It’s easier to let the depression happen. It’s easier to let the PTSD control your life and your movements and what you do every day. It’s easier to live in fear. But there’s this conviction that comes when you remember the one in four that out of four women, God chose you to be the one to bear this. And it’s not out of punishment. It’s not out of you did something wrong and you deserve to bear this. It’s out of reverence. And I used to hate this saying so much. My mom used to say it all the time, is God will only give you what you can handle. I used to hate it because I was like, God gave me a really awful deck of cards, You know. That I don’t love it. But my son taught me very quickly that this isn’t out of punishment. You’re not, you’re not someone who deserves to bear this. Mm-hmm. But you’ve been chosen to bear this. Hmm. And I would really just encourage anyone moving through loss of any kind to bear it with honor, because God wants to do something in your life through that grief. I don’t know what it is. And sometimes we don’t know what it is for decades, and then we, we enter the mission, the assignment. But to wear it with honor because out of the four women, you were the chosen one. And it’s not an egoic thing because we, anyone would agree with me. We don’t want to be the chosen one. No. But we’re with that, we’re invited to now step into something greater. And the other piece of advice I would also give is, is find a power verse in your pit to really find a prayer, a piece of scripture. For me, it’s scripture. But to really find a, something that roots you in that power. Joan: Yes. And what’s also coming to mind that that is, brilliant and helpful and to the three of the four Mm-hmm. You are embodying our worst fear. Absolutely. And so what do you say to the three in terms of Yeah. how to be with a beloved sister who might be in grief or loss. You know, how, how, how, ‘cause this it is, it’s like the, the, there is no worse loss. Alexandra: Yeah. Yeah, it’s people fear, people fear death in general. Mm-hmm. And, and with that, when you’re called to witness a mother in grief, you’re also being given an assignment that is very great. And I’ve lived through what it felt like for many people to abandon me in that, because people with death, the, the fear underneath death is, is people fear God. Hmm Because when you, when you are a mother who has lost their whole life due to child loss, you are also, it says that God is closest to the brokenhearted. And Christ says this all the time, is I’m closest to the brokenhearted. You, you become this vessel that is now closest to God that is triggering for so many people. That is upsetting. That is a mirror that we don’t wanna look in. That is a reflection that we don’t wanna have. All these things. So I understand with pure compassion why people choose to leave. It’s the easier route. And, and I’ve done it, even post grief. I found myself leaning out of spaces that God was calling me into regarding that one in four. And they’re such humbling moments because just like the one is the chosen one, the three are equally chosen and loved. And I wish I could interview my best friend right now on how she, on how she did it. ‘cause I don’t know how she did it. I don’t know how she supported me so well other than just leaning on God and knowing that it is devotion again. So the three you are being called to devote, to supporting mothers, to supporting women, to supporting God’s plan. And one of the questions I get all the time, well what, what does that look like? And I can’t tell you exactly what it looks like, but. The everyday just becomes so hard and, and to know. I think especially, I think a lot of women who listen here are pretty gifted and spiritual in many ways. So we think of like the big things of, well, like how can I do a grand gesture? How can I do something big for these women? How can I be in the highest embodiment of devotion in this grief? God builds movements from subtleties and, and small assignments. So when it comes to devotion, whether you’re the one, whether you’re the three, it’s the everyday devotion that counts the most. That’s what adds to the incredible long-term success of a mother surviving it or a mother building a platform on it, or a mother. Uh, I see. I connect with loss moms all around the world. There’s mothers changing the whole medical system through their grief. Mm-hmm. There’s women doing powerful, life changing, world altering things through their grief. And behind that one are the three supporting them to get there. But it’s the every day of cook her meals, bring her flowers, change her sheets, do her laundry. I remember my sister flew in and she spent a whole week just cleaning my house and just doing everything she possibly could that I didn’t have energy for. I had friends that were dropping off like full cakes of just like, you need a cake right now. Eat it. All these things. And then when I amount my mission success today of what it means to be successful in my grief all I can see is all those women that were folding my laundry, cleaning my toilets, bringing me cakes, praying over me, writing cards, making art, all the things that really counted. Anytime I look back to those three, I just think of the everyday devotion that we, we usually don’t lean into ‘cause we think it’s not enough. And I wanna say it is enough. Uh, it’s actually what you will remember the most. Joan: Thank you. And I’m, I’m pulled in two directions because I, I do wanna talk with you about, Jesus and his mother, his mother Mary. But before we get into that, I, I am inclined to just ask. Just based on your experience and having a partner, you’re, you were walking through that with I, I know that that can be the end of a lot of partnerships and relationships, the loss of a child. So is there anything that you wanna name regarding the partners of the chosen ones? ‘cause they have been chosen in their own way. Alexandra: Absolutely. I, yeah, I, I always cry in reverence to the men that have to go through this because it’s so different from what the women go through as like the protector and the provider. And the biggest thing that changed my life was, my best friend told me one day, you are gonna want to pour everything into Aksel God’s asking you to pour everything into your man. And when it comes to love in loss, it really is a choice. Because it’s hard and you, you really do need to make more effort in that devotion ‘cause you’re not gonna wanna do it. Or you’re gonna wanna be mad at each other or you’re, you know, you’re gonna wanna not talk about things. People also grieve so differently. The way I grieve is very different to the way that my partner grieves and, in, in his fatherhood after loss. But I always share regarding union, it’s such, it’s a choice to love someone. Mm-hmm. And, and that choice is a devotional act in itself. And, and God says when, when you get married to become one. So. That one, that one flesh and that one spirit. His grief is yours, his pain is yours. His hurts are yours. His habits that you might not agree with in, in his grief, they’re yours as well. And to, to not run from that ‘cause I think that’s a really easy thing to run from, but to lean into it. Joan: Hmm. Yeah. Thank you. So, as I said, in part when I reached out to you, just the inspiration that you were meant, your episode was meant to come out at this time of Easter. And just knowing what I know of Aksel’s story and your story and having a connection to Mother Mary and her being the one in four. just whether, just hearing your reflections about that, welcoming you to share your reflections or if that has felt like a source of support for you or anything you wanna share. Alexandra: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’m really excited for this Easter ‘cause it will be my first Easter that I’ve been baptized in Christ. Mm-hmm. So that is just all new territory for me. But what I wanna speak on this with, with Jesus and Mother Mary is there, there is always someone who comes before us. So before we walk through everything, before you walk through trial loss, before you walk through marriage, there’s always someone who has walked before you in that. And I call them forerunners. Mm-hmm. So there’s someone who has prepared the way already. And when we look to the life of Jesus, John the Baptist, prepared the way for his ministry Mm-hmm. by baptizing Jesus. That was like the jumpstart of his ministry and, and his public ministry and his work on earth. And then when we look to Mother Mary, she’s the forerunner of child loss because I can’t even imagine, what it would be like to love someone for 33 years and lose them. I wanna honor that’s different than loving someone for seven months and losing them. They’re. Not only that, but the weight of what she must have felt being the mother to the son of God. Like that’s not it. Not just a casual task, but there’s something that is so devotional in the story of Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene. Mm-hmm. Regarding Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension is they did not leave his side. They devoted themselves, and this is how Mary Magdalene specifically became the first apostle is all the men. They left when Jesus died. They were like, okay, so he wasn’t the son of God, like he was just lying. Oh, like he, he was a phony. They left. They go on their merry way. They’re probably grieving and very upset. But the women did not leave his side at all. And, and Mary Magdalene became the first apostle for that, her obedience. And so when we talk about Mother, Mary, and Jesus and Easter, there is this thread of obedience in our devotion that is unmatched. It’s Mother Mary’s ability to be obedient to God. Like when you think about when Jesus was conceived, this was a no-no, she wasn’t married yet, like they were spitting on their names, but, and it, it was also a free willed choice of God’s. God said, this is what I’m gonna do. Your thoughts? She, she said yes, and she praises God for what he wants to do for her. And her yes, we were talking about like our yeses. It was Mother Mary’s obedience in her yes that brought God in the flesh to this earth to change us from where we were in this awful descension of, I don’t even wanna name the ungodly things that we were doing at that time. But we were devoting ourselves to false deities and false gods and false prophets. And we were doing things that you see coming to light today was exactly where we were 2000, over 2000 years ago. So, but Mother Mary’s Yes, was the perfect opportunity for God to work in her, to bring us from a descension to an ascension again. Joan: Right. On behalf of all of humanity. Alexandra: Absolutely. Yeah. Joan: Yeah. So that’s quite a, a big yes. And I was struck by, you describing Mary Magdalene and Mother Mary being there with the body, and I’m remembering that they were, you know, they were tending the body. They were anointing the body. And I, I think that there is something in particular about us as women and as mothers. Mm-hmm. Where, because we in many ways are the primary caregivers for the bodies Yeah. Of our children in those formative years. And there’s something, that feels very precious and meaningful about that, that they chose to do that. That we as women absolutely choose to do that are tasked with that, the blessing of that. Alexandra: Yeah, there’s, there’s something so special about being a woman because our devotion is so different to men that it’s like, we are not the same. I am, I am against all movements that try to make us the same as men. We are not. And, and with that, what’s so beautiful is God could have come in any form. God could have just snapped fingers and appeared for the whole world to then be instructed. Mm-hmm. But God chose to arrive and change the world through a womb because of her obedience and devotion. And that is something that I find we, we brush over a lot of the times. Is God could have done anything to change this world from a descension to ascension, but chose to utilize a womb of all things to deliver that to this earth. And not only that, but chose the women to care for the body to be the first witnesses of the resurrection. And, and to become the first apostle, like the very first apostle was a woman like there. I believe that men and women, we are elevated in different ways. And, and one of the ways that we are elevated as women is through our devotion and, and our obedience. It is a lot easier for women to obey God than it is for men. Men are a bit typically stubborn and hardheaded. Like, I don’t want another man ruling over me, whatever it is. They get territorial. Joan: You’re not the boss of me. Alexandra: Yeah. And of course, I mean, I’ve been like that as a woman as well, but, there’s this beautiful nature that we have in our devotion through our obedience. Joan: Mm-hmm. So there’s so much more I would love to unpack with you. Yeah. And I just related to the ways that we’re wired, I know I, I wanna give you the opportunity to share about the work you do and Just, it’s, this seems like the natural segue of your speaking about the ways that we’re wired as women and the gifts that we bring and when we are on a, a God led mission, what that can look like. So would you like to share about your school and your programs? Alexandra: I would love that. Yeah. I, I am here to serve the women with those missions on fire. We all have them. And, and speaking about our obedience and our devotion, God has bestowed assignments on us that are gonna change this world. Like the mothers I see changing the medical field, changing, um, the way that we tend to miscarriages, the way that we tend to death, and then becoming moms or becoming wives, building schools, writing books. I get to see it all happen, which is a great part of my service is to see these women in those fields doing this assignment of God. But the one thing that is so important is that we’re not meant to walk the assignments alone. We’re not meant to try to make it all happen ourselves. And one of the biggest questions we have as women is, who am I and what am I here to do? Hmm. Those are the two biggest questions that we have. And those questions change every chapter of your life. Mm-hmm. That question, that answer to that question is different in your twenties than it is your forties. In your forties as it is your sixties. And this is what the Living Scroll school is. It’s to tend and hold and devote to these women of being successful in your mission. But in order to be successful in our missions, we have to remember who gave us that mission in the first place, and it was our Creator. So, The school, the Living Scroll School, we partner with God in everything that we do. And there’s women from all different backgrounds and faith and teachings that come here because we remember that at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is when we die, are we gonna hear the words, “my good and faithful servant”? Or are we gonna hear the words, “turn from me for I do not know you”? And death, like losing my son that put everything in perspective. And something I just wanna share for women as I speak about these offerings too, is that God didn’t say my good and faithful, CEO or my good and faithful mother, or my good and faithful astronaut, God says, my good and faithful servant, period. The way that we are called to serve is in so many different capacities. You may be called to serve in marriage. You may be called to serve in children. You may be called to serve in spiritual based offerings. You may be called to serve as a world renowned chef or a bestselling author. But this school is here to build that relationship with your creator, to partner with your creator in your mission, and then to bring you along those thresholds with God at the center so that you can see the success that God has written in your mission. And we do that through two different avenues, we have the membership at the school and there’s different tiers in the membership. We have a free membership that I’d love to invite all the women into. $0. We, we come together monthly and, and we kind of sprinkle in some webinars here and there. But there’s different tiers in the membership that just support the level, of support that you need. And then the other avenue is through my signature offer called Sight, which is a 17 week intimate journey. No more than 25 to 30 women where we walk through the thresholds that God has for us in our missions together, where we remember who we are as a daughter of God, where we remember how to pray. We remember how to purify our vessel. We, we learn how to heal the access points or the hurts, the hangups, the habits that are keeping us from that success and, and all the things in between. Um, and there’s, yeah, there’s just a lot of miracles that happen in that space that I can’t, I can’t even put words to. But it is, it’s an intimate path with God. Joan: Hmm And you have a very generous offer for our listeners, a discounted offer for Sight. So all of those pieces I’ll put into the show notes as well as your social media, because you are, you’re active on Instagram. Alexandra: Yes. Yeah. You can find that you on Instagram. Instagram mostly. And then the free membership is, is where I’m able to do all the unfiltered videos, content, and things that the Metaverse doesn’t love. Joan: Yeah. So to close I heard you say that the school, the Living Scroll School and Sight are not exclusive to women who are perhaps grounded in Christianity or grounded in a scriptural path. And I know sometimes because there have been wounds related to different words being used, so I want to give you the chance to reiterate or clarify that Alexandra: I would love that. Joan: all paths to God are welcome. Alexandra: Yes, absolutely. I always say as soon as I say Jesus, I’m usually automatically misrepresented in so many ways by the things that fallible humans have done in that name. Yes. And, and yeah, our school, our like faith disclaimer is that we are centered on God through Christ, but that doesn’t take away if you have any different views, beliefs, and versions. At the end of the day, we all go to, we all have to die. We all have to, we all have to go to the final destination. And we are all daughters of the most high. And, and this is our school. There’s so many different people that, that have different faith and belief and views, but they understand that I’m a daughter of God and in order to find the success that I have, that God has placed on my heart to find, I need to partner. I, I need to, to place him at the center. So we welcome all faith, all background, all the things. The only, the only prerequisite is that this whole school is it’s for women only. Yes. Yeah. So you’re a woman. That’s your check. Joan: Yeah. So one of the things that I have always appreciated about you, Alexandra, is the resonance and the power of your prayer. Yeah. Thank you. So I wanted to offer you, if you’re willing Yeah. An opportunity, a space to just share a prayer for our listeners. Alexandra: I would love that. Yeah. Yeah. So if you’re able to, we can gently close the eyes, just taking a few breaths into the belly. God, I pray. May you bestow a hedge of holy fire around every single listener, around every single woman that tunes into this episode today. That you can just hold her in your loving arms and your loving embrace that this hedge of holy fire is your protector. That anything that wants to get to these women have to go through you first God. And in that God, I just pray that may you reveal yourself to these women. God may you show who you are as their Creator. And through that, I also pray, God, may you deliver them the gifts of your Holy Spirit to deliver them, the voice, the platform, the abilities, the masteries. Everything that you have awaiting them, God, may you bring those, bring them through these thresholds that you are calling them upon. And God, I just pray that each and every woman today can know that they are never forgotten nor forsaken, that even if they walked through the pit of despair, grief, addiction, divorce, infidelity, et cetera, whatever pit you’ve placed us in, God, I pray that you deliver each woman the strength, the obedience, the devotion, to know that there is far more left in life than just sitting in that pit that you can help each and every one of these women out of whatever pit they find themselves in. That God, I just pray that you can descend your hand to their hand and lift them up. Lift them out that you can minister to them, God that speak to their heart. Let yourself be known to each and every woman here, that you God, are the ultimate sovereign authority that you, God, are our protector, our healer, our provider, our nurturer, that you God, hold such paternal and maternal instincts, and that we can all today begin to receive those gifts, those blessings, those anointings, and through that God may you deliver us our assignments and so we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Joan: Amen. Okay, thank you. And thank you for being here with us today and sharing generously your testimony. Yeah, thank you. Your story. Alexandra: Oh, that’s such a, it’s such a gift and, and it felt important that your podcast gets to be the first to hold that. So I really, really appreciate that. Joan: Hmm. Thank you. I didn’t realize that. It’s my honor. Yeah. So I also wanna thank you, our dear listeners for joining us today. So delighted to have you, and I wanna offer you the reminder. Whether you are making ripples in your life or big ass waves, that you are love and you are loved. Mm-hmm. Until next time. Get full access to The Crone Codes with Joan Advent at joanadvent.substack.com/subscribe [https://joanadvent.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Water Code: Magic, Memory & Healing

Resident Crone, Joan Advent brings listeners into vivid memories of being held by the crystalline waters of Bimini and within the vast, indigo depths off the Caymans. Using these experiences she reveals water as a means back to our innocence, wholeness and true nature. Sharing excerpts of scientist, Masaru Emoto’s foundational research on how words and intentions influence water’s crystalline structure she explores the concepts of water as an imprintable, memory keeper, healing agent and reflection of the waters within us. She highlights researcher Veda Austin’s crystallography experiments using her “Collective Molecular Photography” freezing technique, to explore the consciousness of water and its ability to express create recurring “hydroglyphs,” and express plant “potential”. Joan then turns to practical hydration, health and the importance of consuming structured water as described by Dana Cohen, MD in her 2021 book, Quench. She closes with reflections on Lourdes, the healing property of water and a prayerful blessing for listeners’ inner waters. 00:52 Bahamas Water Memory 03:16 Water Code Theme 04:43 Masaru Emoto Water Imprints 09:01 Veda Austin & Hydroglyphs 14:11 Ocean Depths and immersed in Blue 20:05 Hydration and Structured Water 26:21 Springs, Lourdes, Healings 30:22 Blessing and Closing Water Resources Mentioned in this Episode The Hidden Messages of Water by Masaru Emoto [https://a.co/d/05KHsJOj] The Living Language of Water by Veda Austin [https://www.vedaaustin.com/vedas-book] Quench: Beat Fatigue, Drop Weight, and Heal your Body Through the New Science of Optimum Hydration by Dana Cohen, MD and Gina Bria [https://a.co/d/0i2GmthI] Down to Earth with Zac Efron Season 1 Episode 2 [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/down_to_earth_with_zac_efron/s01/e02] Additional Resources: Find A Spring Near You [https://findaspring.org/] Veda Austin [https://www.vedaaustin.com/] Transcript Welcome to the Crone Codes. I am your host, the Creator and resident crone, Joan Advent, and I don’t know about you, but today I could use a little lightning up, a little lightness of being. So I just wanna, I wanna circle back to a memory from a few years ago when I was in The Bahamas. I had created a dolphin retreat and it was a warm, sunny morning and I was at the beach with a few of the women who were on the retreat and we were in the water. And the thing about the Bahamian waters is oh, they are so crystalline blue, and white powdery sand, and the clarity and the color of the water is spectacular. And I remember lying back and it was still, it’s still early in the day and there is just this iridescent quality to the water. It’s got shimmery gold and silver and pinkish hues along with the blue. And I’m just lying back, letting this warm salt water hold me and buoy me up. Perhaps you can even feel the sensation. As I describe the memory. The sun was beaming down. Mm, the air was fresh. There was a jubilant energy between us as we were there gathered together. Just remembering that play, like the capacity to play, just feeling that young one within that just loves being in the water, being on the water’s edge, just all the things about water. And so today we’re gonna talk about the crone code that is the water code. We are gonna touch on it in many different ways. So, I’m so glad you’re here with me today. And I’m so delighted to share one of my favorite things with you. Which as you approach the crone years, and certainly I invite you to do so before then. One of the gifts is that we get to reclaim the joy, reclaim the, uh, we’ll say innocence of those things that light us up, as quirky as they may be, as odd as they may be. We get to own it. We get to share it with others. I don’t know about you, but one of my favorite things is sharing really cool stuff. And the cool thing I want to share with you today is some of the mysteries and the magic of water. Hmm. So you may or you may not be familiar with the work of Dr. Emoto and his research from the nineties. Dr. Emoto was a Japanese researcher who began to explore water through a type of crystallography, and he was looking at the influence that words have on water. And he discovered that when water is placed in a vessel with, we’ll say, a positive or uplifting word. The crystals that are created are these beautiful structures, and in contrast, if a word that is heavier or we’ll say, uh, just discordant like a word, like hate or something like that, that the forms that the water crystals make are, they’re malformed, they are not, they’re not balanced. They’re not pure. They, they are distorted. And part of what we’ve learned coming out of Dr. Emoto’s research. Is that water is imprintable, that we can imprint the waters we consume, the waters that we see in the, the rivers, the lakes, the waterfalls, the ocean that we can express our intentions, our words, our prayers, we certainly all know about holy water. I grew up in a tradition where water was blessed and we would bless ourselves with that holy water when we attended church. And the truth is, is that water we have discovered is actually that water is a memory keeper. That everything that water touches is imprinted in the water. So whether it’s the stones that the stream is bubbling over, or the sunlight or the thunderstorm that those experiences are imprinted in the water. And similarly words, prayers, intentions are imprinted in water as well. And that goes for the waters within us because we are ultimately a body of water. We are a watershed, as they say. And a big piece of Dr. Emoto’s work was how to interact with our own waters. So whether it was being conscious of the words that we say to ourselves, knowing that the waters within within us will be imprinted or specifically imprinting, as I said, whether through written words or spoken words, blessings over the waters that we consume and ingesting our prayers, our intentions, certain frequencies such as love or gratitude or empowerment through the waters that we drink. And fast forward to modern day and there’s new research happening. There is an incredible researcher, a woman named Veda Austin, who has written a book, it’s The Living Language of Water. And there are a couple of things that she has discovered in her research. She also explores crystallography, she puts an influence into a Petri dish with a small amount of water in it, and then freezes it in her freezer for a few minutes and then brings it out, photographs it, and has come to discover a couple of things through that. She has been at the leading edge of discussing the consciousness of water in a couple of ways. One, she describes that water can read potential and how she has demonstrated that is using her unique freezing technique. Which is something we can all learn and experiment with. I have done some of that myself. It’s quite fun. But what she has discovered is if she takes a seed, for example, the seed of a sunflower, and she places it into the water for 30 seconds and then removes it, puts the water into the freezer. What the water has, expressed through the ice, through the crystallography is the image of a sunflower blossom. She also has done this with flax seeds and discovered the images of flax plants, flax flowers, so that’s just one piece. But her research has begun to uncover that there are certain symbols or images that water appears to be using to communicate, and she calls these hydro glyphs. And they are particular symbols or images that have been replicated 50 times. So the same symbol has appeared 50 different times in order for her to confirm that water is indeed using that symbol as a means [00:12:00] of expression. So if you’re, if you’re interested in this kind of thing, I strongly encourage you to follow her on Instagram, she may also be on Facebook, and she has a documentary coming out soon. But so many amazing and fascinating things that this water that is a substance we take for granted, which it truly is like the building block of life. Like we couldn’t, we couldn’t exist. We wouldn’t be here on the planet, were it not for water. I, I just wanna invite you to remember, or to discover that it is this sacred substance. It is this sacred substance that actually has consciousness, that holds consciousness. And as I said, for me, that gives me hope. There’s so many intense things going on these days in the world, but remembering, remembering the presence of the natural world and the consciousness it holds. In particular this element of water for me, it just gives me hope. It gives me hope that that we can come back to the essential nature of who we are just by coming back to the simplicity, To the beauty, to the magic of this powerful element. I think about being, I remember being in Iceland and watching the waterfall and the way that it just keeps flowing and flowing and flowing. I remember floating in the vastness of the blue of the Caribbean, both on my recent dolphin trip as well as as a scuba diver. And on one particular day, a diving along a wall off the coast of the Cayman Islands. And descending down the side of the wall and looking at all the, the coral and the fans and these little cracks and crevices where these creatures were hiding out. These lobster and little shrimp and tropical fish, and then the bigger fish is just so colorful and beautiful. But the thing about it is that the deeper you go into the sea, the shorter light rays, the reds, the yellows, the oranges, they, they dissipate, they disappear, which is why the water is blue. And at depth. I remember being at 60, perhaps 60 feet, 70 feet, and for a moment I turned around and looked at the vast blue where the wall and the ocean floor dropped off, and I just swam straight into that blue vastness. This deep indigo blue. I was suspended in it. I was surrounded by it. I was bathed in these blue waters. It was the most magical experience. And I didn’t, I didn’t wanna turn around while I, I knew that right behind me were my fellow divers and the wall. And of course, my way back to the surface was all behind me. But for those few moments, I dwelled in this magic, this magical blue womb. This magical blue cocoon just filled my spirit and my soul. And actually I was inspired to purchase a ring, a tanzanite ring. Which was the remembrance of that experience. Because the color of the tanzanite, which I believe I probably saw in some stores while we were there back on the, on the Cayman Islands, was precisely the color of that water. And of course. Water holds vibration, it holds resonance and it holds color frequency. So there was something medicinal in that frequency for me, and as I return to that memory, it comes back to me. So I invite you to consider your own memories with the water perhaps. Watching the waves playing on the shore with the, the frilly fluffy sea foam or the creeks or the lakes, whether it’s the color of the water, the texture. Maybe it’s slipping into a warm bath. Just wanna invite you, or maybe it’s being in a warm summer rainstorm. Just wanna invite you back to your own memory with the waters that you can appreciate. Maybe it’s standing and just looking at the waters from afar. You may not be as into getting into the waters as I am, so whether it’s observing or it may be a beautiful snowstorm, the crystalline nature of water, just take a moment to consider the beauty of water. And how that can touch you today. Hmm. So the other piece I want to share with you and talk with you about is the concept of hydration, which is a very practical subject because the fact of the matter is, is that the aging process is really a dehydration process and that we as humans in this day and age with our lifestyles are naturally dehydrating. So one of the things I have been exploring these last few years, because I have been really on a, uh, passionate quest to open to the wisdom and the mysteries of water. And what I have discovered in part through reading a book called Quench, that teaches about hydration from a health standpoint. It, illuminated something I had heard about previously, which is this concept of the fourth phase of water or structured water, it’s known as structured water. And again, there has been research done where water can inhabit a state. Its molecular state can go from the traditional H2O to H 3 0 2. Which is this form of water. So we know about the three phases of water, water as liquid, water as solid, water as vapor, but there is this other phase of water, the fourth phase called the structured phase, which which has a different molecular composition. And they have discovered that the waters within us are actually structured waters, the waters that optimally hydrate us, the waters that can be absorbed and received most readily are structured waters. And I have learned and discovered through this book that it’s not about the eight glasses of water that we’ve been taught, uh, to optimize our hydration. There are so many other facets. There are the facets of, is the water structured? Does it have mineral content? Of course there is the issue of the purity of the water. But so much of what has been done to our waters, including the bottling of them, takes the living nature, the living quality out of the water. It turns it into bulk water, or even distilled water is something that’s known as dead water, meaning that it has no mineral content. Left within it. And while it may have nothing else within it, it’s not something that will optimally hydrate us. And the fact of the matter is, is that hydration can be optimized through foods we eat. They have discovered that fruits and vegetables contain structured water. So if we drink eight ounces of water in the morning and we consume something like an apple, for example, which has quite a bit of structured water in it, that we will be more hydrated then if we drink two glasses of water. There is something about the, the structuring of it and the way that we ingest it that optimizes our hydration and enables us to carry that through the day. And so much disease is rooted in dehydration, whether it’s inflammatory issues or diseases or other diseases, that if we are optimally hydrated. Because it is our system’s way in part of flushing out our system, purifying our system, those things can resolve themselves. So I do wanna recommend if you’re interested in learning more about hydration, either reading or listening to the book, Quench. The other piece that I love that was illuminated in this book is that movement and in particular organic fluid movements of our joints help with the hydration process within us. So in a way, we’re being invited to move like water to flow, like water, to optimize our hydration. And the waters within us were being invited to commune with our waters. Hmm. Water for me has felt like a teacher. Joan: So the final piece I want to share with you is an epiphany I had when I was watching a series that Zac Efron had done. I think, Down to Earth or something like that. They did a whole episode on water. And for part of that episode they were looking at springs, which I do wanna give a big shout out for Natural Spring Water because it is naturally structured water and there are, so many things about springs that are being uncovered. So if you can access a spring or spring water, I highly recommend it. We are fortunate enough to have a spring here locally, and so I do collect water there regularly to consume, and as I said, it is naturally structured water. But one of the things they were talking about in the show was, looking at the different mineral content of different kinds of, spring water. But part of what they did is they went to Lourdes in France, they did the whole episode in France and the French, they are on top of it with water. Apparently in Paris, they have these amazing water fountains that are, that would put a traditional, like you can go and fill your water bottle. And the way they purify their water is, is just above and beyond there, in Paris. But anyway, I digress. They were in Lourdes. And they were exploring the healings that have taken place in Lourdes over the past century or centuries. And I realized, I realized that that is in part the nature of water. That it’s not just the waters that happen to be in Lourdes, although they certainly are imprinted with that healing capacity or that matrix just by virtue of all that has occurred there, all the, the faith and belief and, the presence of of Mother Mary there at Lourdes. But that all water has that same capacity, all water in its optimal state. Has that potential, has that capacity. Just like us, just like us as humans, like water can be such a reflection of that. We can be distorted and you know, in a, a lower vibration in our lives and what we’re pursuing and how we are expressing who we are as beings and what we are creating in our life. Or we, there’s the whole spectrum, and then we have this amazing capacity to be our most full expression of who we are in, in our sacred expression of the divine blueprint of who we are in our essence. And water shows us that. And as I said, we are a body of water. We are a unique watershed. Oh. So as we bring this to a close today, I am imagining that I am blowing a breath of prayers across the waters to you. Just like the wind moves the waters, I am blowing a breath of prayers to your waters. May your waters be blessed today. May you remember the beauty and the mystery that dwells within you as it is reflected in the waters around you. And may you take some time to connect with water and perhaps increase your experiences with healing waters, hydrating waters, blessing waters. And as we close, I remind you as always, That whether you yourself are making ripples or grand great waves that you beloved are love and you are loved. Thank you for joining us today on The Crone Codes podcast. If you appreciated what was shared, please rate, review, subscribe and comment wherever you get your podcasts. Get full access to The Crone Codes with Joan Advent at joanadvent.substack.com/subscribe [https://joanadvent.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Wild & Holy:

Resident Crone Joan Advent welcomes poet, shaman, and founder of the School of Wild and Holy, Wendy Havlir to explore the importance of our rewilding. Wendy shares the roots of her own rewilding: including studies of Contemplative Psychotherapy at Naropa; a decade-long deep dive with Women Who Run with Wolves author, Clarissa Pinkola Estés PhD.; comprehensive Shamanic training; and finally coming home to herself as a poet. Wendy shares 2 poems chosen for our listeners, “Walk with Me” and “Dress Me in Wild Love.” The author of The Mistress of Longing and The Reach is Holy, she describes our longing and desire as an ancient navigational system and return to love. And offers an in depth explanation of shamanic soul retrieval and its place in returning to our wholeness. Wendy reveals the origin story for her upcoming offering “A House Where Love Lives,” which is rooted in her younger self’s dream, and is a medicine for these times focused on heart-led living, reclamation, and coming home to ourselves. 01:17 Meet Wendy Havlir 05:03 Wild and Holy Origins 10:28 Wendy’s Rewilding Journey 14:09 Clarissa Pinkola Estés 16:34 Lineages and Poetry 19:24 Poem Walk with Me 25:57 House Where Love Lives 32:56 Soul Retrieval Explained 38:21 Longing as Compass 45:22 Offerings and Invitation 50:14 Poem Dress Me in Love 52:32 Books and Farewell Wendy C. Havlir, MA3 Website: shegathersbeauty.com [https://www.shegathersbeauty.com/] “A House Where Love Lives” Listener Discount $250 off Threshold Keeper is coupon code CRONE$250 off Soul Weaver is coupon code CRONECODES Transcript Welcome back to the Crone Codes. I am your host, the creator and the resident Crone, Joan Advent. And I am so delighted and honored to welcome my friend, my soul sister, mentor Wendy Havlir to join us today. Welcome, Wendy. Wendy: Thank you, Joan. I’m so overjoyed to be here Joan: I know. It’s so going to be so good. There is so much depth and richness that Wendy brings, and I am excited to share the wonder of Wendy with you. So let’s just start with the essence of who Wendy is. So as we do on The Crone Codes, I want to invite you, our listener, to take a moment, close your eyes if you’re able to, to just receive and let wash over you. The essence of who Wendy is and all the medicine she brings, the codes she brings, and all that she has accomplished in order to be here with us today with these codes. So Wendy Havlir is a poet, shaman, and the founder of the School of Wild and Holy. It’s a place where women are guided through sacred initiation. Ancient wisdom, teachings and practices, rewilding and remembrance, rooted in ancestral lineages of seers and mystic poets. Her work weaves shamanism, poetry and lived experience to open thresholds into deep liberation, embodied spirituality, and profound partnership with love itself. She’s the author of The Mistress of Longing, a very powerful book about the deep call of the Divine Feminine, and the power of desire. She also has a book of poetry, The Reach is Holy and is currently working on her next compilation. Welcome. Wendy: Thank you, Joan. I feel like I just had a ceremony, having you read that. That was really beautiful. Joan: Yeah, ceremony is also, I would say just having worked with you in the past and what I know of you, like ceremony is a key, aspect of your medicine as I’ve experienced it. Wendy: Mm, thank you. Joan: Yeah, you’re welcome. So there, there are so many pieces of, what I just shared that, that feel so important when we consider the crone codes that we gather throughout the course of our life. Particularly as we sit here in 2026 with the collective landscape that we’re all navigating and living. But I really want to start with wild and holy and this, this sense of like rewilding. And remembrance, which I’m assuming that, that those all go together. That wild and holding rewilding and remembrance. Wendy: Mm-hmm. Hmm. Well, I love so, so of course the words wild and holy are the name of my school, the School of Wild and Holy, which was actually given to me by my helping spirits. And as a shamanic practitioner and someone who, as one of the many facets of who I am and someone who, has cultivated really deep partnerships, with my helping spirits, um, and being in that kind of holy communication with them. Hmm. Daily and all day long. I’m so honored that they, provided me with the sort of marching orders, if you will, the directive in 2020 in the early days of the pandemic, that it was time to open my school. And they gave me the name of the school And I would say that, it is very much about rewilding and the holiness of that and the remembering of who we really are. And so what I have found so much in my own life and in the work that I do, there’s this powerful shedding and sort of stripping away of all of these layers that have grown over us through the years by simply being human. And the sacred process of realizing that there are these like extra layers and so this beautiful sort of falling away so that we can remember who we really are and. I think to be human is to be both wild and holy already. I don’t think that there’s anything that we have to do or become to that is our essence. We are wild because we are in this skin and we have blood and organs and feelings and flesh and you know, all of these things and desire. Desire, all of all of these things that are deeply human and grief and ways of being and moving that only humans can do. And what also is true in the cosmology that I walk with and in the teachings that I provide by way of the school of wild and holy. Is that we came Holy. And our soul is untouchable. It is unmarked. Yeah. So no matter what we’re experiencing in this realm of activity, there is also a truth that stands by us. For the duration of our time in this human body. And so there’s this way that remembering that we are both wild and holy at the same time is becoming more and more and more essential for us to be here in this life as we know it right now, not to escape it. Yes, but to be able to be better grounded and supported in that. And on a personal note, I would just say that my own personal life has been this remembrance of being untamed and, and rewilding myself. Joan: And how long has that journey been happening? Consciously. Wendy: Consciously? Yeah. ‘cause I was gonna say from the moment I popped out of the womb, but um hmm. I would say really since probably consciously around 2007 or 2008. And there have been many initiations since that time. Joan: Yes. Yes. And I know that you have studied, uh, with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and was, was that a seminal aspect of that journey? Wendy: I would say it would be even before the date that I gave actually corresponds to my time at Naropa University where I was studying Contemplative psychotherapy and there was a sort of magical way that things were. And, and really it goes even way beyond that, but we don’t have that much time. So I’m gonna start here where I sort of was inner, was guided. There was a way that. It was really magical because all of a sudden I realized that I could, I already had quite a lot of academic experience, and while I was at Naropa, I was realizing that I could begin to open myself up to bridging the worlds of spirituality with applied practicality, and there was so much, you know, deep contemplative. Practice with a mindful awareness practice while also learning how to be a psychotherapist. And so really learning so much about the mind. And how powerful the mind is. Not necessarily always in a good way and often all of the ways we get hooked into really believing something by way of our mind. I would say that that was kind of an opening to realizing that there was something more that, that I was beginning to actually experience. In my body and with others and helping people in that way. And then it was, was with Dr. E Clarissa Pinkola Estés. And I mean I think that I studied with her for eight, nine, maybe 10 years. And that really blew the doors open. Yeah. Into realizing this instinctual nature, everything really became more embodied. More about being more wolf like and understanding what that meant and moving into storytelling. Joan: Yeah. So if anyone does not know who Dr. Pinkola Estes is, she is the author of Women Who Run with Wolves and a powerful, voice, not only for Cronehood. But for that instinctual nature within all of us as women. And she really goes in through story, and you can correct me if I’m wrong or flesh out more. Um, she goes in through story to those common, universal aspects of our journey as women and the, the rewilding and the what are the, the layers that we’re meant to shed. Wendy: Yeah. And you know, one of the things that I think is so remarkable about her work is she’s a Jungian analyst, so she’s working with all of the archetypes that are common to, you know, all of us at different parts of our lives and so on and so forth. But that she actually, and she is a Curandera, she is a traditional storyteller and she comes from a long line of storytellers and the ways that she can. Bring life to the story and to our own lives and bodies through her particular unique way of storytelling is just profound. I mean, I think that she, and this work is, you know, as, as big or bigger than like, you know, the work of many, I’ll just say. And also she spent time with wolves, like researching them. Wow. And understanding, yeah. And understanding what it meant. I mean, to the extent that she could, what it meant to be wolf like, and that part was really important to her. Um, so yeah. Yeah. Wow, I didn’t know that. Mm-hmm. Joan: Wow. And so for you, because I hadn’t planned on discussing her or talking about her, but, but my sense is that for many of us who have been on a conscious journey of rewilding remembering who we are, that we often have, uh, mentors, teachers, or lineages that we are… You know, we are kind of the next generation of, or one of the generations of. And so you are, I would say in, in her lineage you are in many different lineages. The shamanic lineages, the poetic lineages. When I first read your poetry, I really felt, as if I were reading a poem by Rumi or Hafiz or you know, any of the mystic poets. And so it just feels important to name that sense of lineage. because we certainly have our, our biological ancestral lineages, but then we have our, whether it’s teaching or spiritual lineages, that each of us. On a conscious journey will be drawn to, or mentored or guided by. Wendy: Mm-hmm. Indeed. So many lineages that converge within each of us. And I think that, through all of the lineages that I’m aware of thus far in my life, you know, poetry is really the river that moves through all of them for me. And that is something that I’ve been rewilding all my life to some degree, is permissioning myself to be the poet. And to understand the relevance of the poet and poetry. The archetype of the poet and poetry and, even still today, I can sometimes get, you know it, it’s a practice of mine to remember that there are many things that I can do, but really there’s, there’s something that I must do. And it must show up and be like the primary thing of whatever I’m doing, and that is poetry. Joan: Hmm. So speaking of that, I had asked you if you share a poem or poems with us. And I think this would be a beautiful time for that. I, I don’t know what, what you’ve chosen. So we’ll all get to enjoy this together. Wendy: Mm-hmm. Well, I’ll tell you a quick little interesting story. One of my most, most, one of my, I love all my students, but one of my beloved students, I think she’ll be okay with me saying her name. Mafalda is helping me compile all of my poetry since I think we’ve gone all the way back to, 2019. And, I’m so close to my poetry, I often don’t know. Like I just don’t know. And I actually asked her, Mafalda, are there like some poems that you really love that you think would be beneficial for me to share right now? So the ones that I’m reading for you are two that she actually picked out. And so I just love that. And she is quite the poet herself. So I want to bring sort of all of the poets that I love and so many of my students are poets. And, um, Joan: You bring it out in people. I dare say that you. I know you are, um, I don’t want to say coaxing, but you are inviting and creating the space for, because there are pieces I have written with you that I, I really don’t think I would’ve had access to certainly on my own, but mm-hmm. Perhaps with any other teacher, so. Yes. Wendy: You’ve written beautiful things that I’ve had the great, good fortune to witness, so thank you. Thank you. Joan: And Mafalda actually shared two of her pieces in December in a couple. Wendy: I know. I listened. They were gorgeous. Joan: So it’s the, the circle keeps coming around. Wendy: It’s the circle, and that just feels so yummy, like. To bring all of the poets into the room right now as we’re speaking. Joan: Yes, and before you dive in, I just keep feeling compelled to share. I’ve been doing some studying with a Hawaiian indigenous elder (Ke’Oni Hanalei), and he shares that his grandmother, who was his kind of primary teacher, Initiator into the traditions would say to him that through that lens, that indigenous Hawaiian lens, you must learn. I’m not going to quote it exactly right, but the essence is, is you must learn or understand poetry before you can speak. [The actual quote is, “Before you learn how to speak you must first learn how to be a poet.”] Wendy: Oh my goodness. Joan: Because there is this essence of the mystical and the, the ways that we are so deeply connected and the mystery. And so to understand that before you even begin to speak. Wendy: Oh, thank you for sharing that. What a beautiful teaching. Yes, because there are, there’s so much in the poetry that isn’t being said, that is yet known and felt and is a whole language in and of itself. So that’s, that is beautiful. Hmm. Okay. Well, okay, let’s dive into this one. This is called Walk with Me. I won’t pretend to know how it will all turn out. I leap anyway, I came to do it this way. I want my whole heart, not just parts. Wearing the mantle that is mine. Embodying the unknown. My promise to our collective bones. I am an expander, rule breaker here in a meeting place imbued with mystery. The wild frontier of this moment. Fire lives in my heart. Yours too. Potential is alive and well in the empty portals of what belongs with you. This living, Is an act of making holy, there is nothing about my love that is wrong. There is nothing about your love that is wrong. Joan: Ooh.Yes. I just feel that washing over me. Mmm. There’s, there are so many threads. It’s, it really is like something I would love to just wrap myself up in. Mm-hmm. The words, the essence. The… And what a poem for this time. Mm-hmm. Yeah. For this time, I know you have an offering that is coming out and that it speaks to not just an offering, but that the essence of who you are. A House Where Love Lives. Is that right? Wendy: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. The name is multi-layered, but the way it actually came to me was by way of, my younger self. And, at the time I had, I had the course laid out and, it’s always co-created with my helping spirits, but I couldn’t, the name wasn’t there and they weren’t giving me a name, and it was like a name is. So important for me because it also helps me understand more and flushes out more about what the offering is and who’s going to come. Mm-hmm. , And so I was doing a something completely separate that had nothing to do with the offering and I was just simply doing a meditation, with a younger part of me. And, and I had asked her, and I think that this is important because it will correlate to those who are called to participate in this. I had asked her, what is your original dream? Like, what is your dream for your life? And like, she didn’t miss a beat, she simply said a house, where love lives. Hmm. And it was so moving, I still get a little emotional, my heart kind of bursts open and so I knew instantly, oh, that’s what we’re doing here. That’s what we’re going to be doing here. A house where love lives and, there’s a real focus, in this offering that has to do with living from the heart and seeing from the heart and an aspect of reclamation and a form of soul retrieval. Right now so that we can be together, we can be connected in a way that is palpable and real, and resourced. And, the school itself is essentially a house where love lives. And there is a council that lives there who call themselves a Council of Love, the Council of Love. And they take the students into their homes. Hmm. And they really enliven them with love. Hmm. And the strength of that and the power of that and the reclamation of that. And so, yes. Joan: Hmm. And it, it seems to me there’s, there’s something with the starting out with your younger self and her longing. Wendy: Yes. Joan: That. You know, that tells me that all, like all of me is welcome or all of us is welcome. Mm-hmm. And I can feel like there’s some bitter sweetness to that of, you know, some grief perhaps from those places that don’t always feel welcome. As well as that. Could this be true? Like could it, Wendy: Right, Joan: could it be true that there is a house where loved dwells, where, where all, all of us is welcome. Wendy: That’s right. Including the exiled parts, the parts that we’ve learned to put away somewhere and certainly not bring out into the open. Um, yeah. And so it’s that it’s a very tender, vulnerable place. A place of those younger parts I think often when we are permissioning ourselves to turn our gaze toward them that innocence. And remembering what did this innocent part of me long for? Yes. And how can I use my own personal agency to tend to that now? Joan: Hmm. Yeah, that is a powerful question and I, I hope that our listeners will take that to heart mm-hmm. And, and really commit to finding some time to sit with that. Wendy: Mm-hmm. Yes. And really taking it to heart indeed, right? Like, Joan: Yes, literally. Wendy: In shamanism and the lineage that I belong to really the heart is where spirit moves. Spirit moves through our heart. The, the highest, the truest, gritty, get down, dirty, perfection, loving truth, it comes through the heart. Not here. because we’re rewilding. Yes. We’re not gonna rewild through this. No. We’re gonna rewild through our heart, through our hands, through writing, through listening, through receiving and being resourced. Joan: Mm-hmm. Yes, so I would like to get into longing and desire and that reach. But before we do, just for anyone who’s not familiar with the term soul retrieval Hmm. Can you just speak to that. Wendy: Of course, of course. Thank you. Thank you. Well, shamanically speaking. Shamanically speaking, there is, a belief that we as humans experience soul loss. We experience soul loss at different times of our lives. In Curanderismo this would be called susto, A time when our soul leaps out of our body because some kind of danger or trauma is happening. And this is why we say that the soul is unmarked. The soul knows how to be whole. And so a soul retrieval will, will happen when, for whatever reason, and it’s nobody’s fault or there’s no blame or anything, there’s actually a Divine intelligence, really a wild intelligence that, Will occur for deep protection that a part of our soul will leave. Mm-hmm. And go find safety and what is also true is that it can sometimes wreak havoc for us because we have a part of us that is missing. So there could be an emotional distress, physical distress, energetic distress. And so a shamanic practitioner, a trained shamanic practitioner, I’m very clear about that. It’s so necessary that someone has good training who can provide you with this, but a shamanic practitioner who understands through their helping spirits that a soul retrieval is necessary, they go with their helping spirits to locate that part of the soul, and they bring it back. They bring it back to the individual. And, it’s remarkable what happens for a person when they have a soul retrieval. They feel life force again. Things start working better again in their lives. They have more energy or they understand things better and in new ways it’s like they have themselves back again. So that’s soul retrieval. Joan: Yes. And it, and it is, I would say the journey of remembrance, but it’s also the bringing all parts of us back home to ourselves. Yes. And so that is a specific intervention or way to bring components of us back that maybe we, we haven’t even been aware of or Exactly. Or, or known what medicine they hold or what power they hold or what wisdom or truth. Wendy: Yeah, and I want to also clarify that in a group scenario, in the class that I’m doing, I’m not necessarily performing a soul retrieval in the way that I just described it for each person. But there are ways, I believe personally that in group work there is a force, a grace of retrieval and remembering that can happen. And in fact, I had a student recently say that they felt like the entire course, of The Heart of the Matter was in and of itself a soul retrieval. So there are a couple of different ways that I’m talking about this and I just want to be clear about that and hopefully that’s not confusing. Joan: Well, I think it just points to some, someone could get more information if they needed it and if they’re Wendy: Absolutely. Joan: If they’re interested in your work they can absolutely reach out to you, ask you. Yeah. In engaging with it., I feel like we have, you have sufficiently answered the question. Wendy: Okay. Excellent. Joan: But I do want to circle back to this topic of longing and desire, because I do think it is a hallmark of what you bring and certainly your book. [The Mistress of Longing.] You’re beautiful. It’s a small book. It’s a potent book, but it’s, there’s so much that comes through The Mistress of Longing. And I have to say, as someone who was disconnected from that in my own life, like learned very early on, it was not, was not a good idea to want things or to long for things or to let my heart really deeply desire to remember, uh, the sacredness of that and the importance of that to being here and to being human. And have been one of my primary teachers about that. Mm-hmm. And your transmission has been a primary medicine for that. So. What can you tell us about longing and our heart’s desire? Our soul’s desire? Wendy: Hmm. Well there’s so much there and I think that you pointed to something that’s so necessary to understand about ourselves is that often, more often than not, we can be really disconnected from our longing and our desire for multiple reasons. Each person is different and has had their own life experience that has in some way shown them, taught them, or they’ve learned to tuck that away because it isn’t safe. But I actually think to really be embodied we must feel, we must feel things. And I think something that I’ve learned even over the last. Five, six years is that there’s a way even that a deep feeling, like a deep grief, a deep fear and deep joy is also a longing. Longing really opens us. And it’s like Dr. E or Clarissa Pinkola Estés often talks about the river, beneath the river. Rio abajo rio. And, that’s what longing is. And, and that always feels so important for me to clarify. Like, we’re not talking about when we’re talking about longing in this way. It’s not, you know, It’s not something out there. Hmm. It’s something deep in us. It’s a hunger, like a way that part of us has actually been starved. Hmm. And The Mistress of Longing says that longing is the most exquisite navigational system that we have. And that we came with longing. The reason why we’re even here in a body in this incarnation was from longing, was from desire to come and be here, for whatever particular purpose that is for each of us. And of course, well, I would imagine anyone who’s listening to us right now probably, probably has some kind of cosmology that is open to other lifetimes and, and soul and having a sense that we, you know, we come for specific reasons. I don’t ever want to assume that I know what anyone holds as true for them. That’s not for me to do, but when something is deeply missing in our lives, not because we’re not already whole, but because we don’t remember our wholeness, our wildness, and what we need to be here to feel enlivened in our body and our heart longing will tell us yes, if we’re listening, it will tell us the precise next steps for what we need to have a full belly and to return the radiance to ourselves to return our deep sense of meaning of being here. So it is quite, an ancient technology, that is actually love. Hmm. It is actually a return to love. Hmm. Is what longing is. Hmm. It’s a return home. Joan: Yes. And there are some cosmologies or beliefs systems that might even express that it is, it is the Divine or the sacred within us, like the, the aspect of the Divine. Mm-hmm. or God, whatever name you might choose, that is exploring life through us and through our longing. That it is that mm-hmm. Yes. The, the, the sacredness to explore itself, to dance with itself in, in all these different, um, dimensions or all these different forms. Wendy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Joan: So we’re gonig start to bring this to a close, but I wanna see first if, , if there’s more you want to share about “A House Where Love Lives”, in terms of, because this is something that’s coming up, or if there are ways that if people are interested in you, your poetry, your books. We’ll have all that listed in the show notes, how to access those things. But is there anything further you want to share about that? Wendy: Yes, and I would love to share a poem too. Yes. As we wrap up, if there’s time for that. I think that I would love to invite people, that if they feel called or interested in working with me, that I would be really honored and would love to have a call with them, a free call a clarity call where they can ask me anything and we can just spend some time together. Because I certainly offer a few, I have a few spots for one-on-one work and I love that to really go deeply with someone. Um. And of course, A House Where Love Lives is going to be an incredible offering. It is a call home. It is, um, the people that come to together in my offerings and collective are extraordinary women. Joan, of course, knows that well because she has been one of them, and I feel so lucky to be a part of these weavings, and so this offering will be extraordinary. Remarkable because it is being created for this precise moment for what we are all sort of reckoning with outside of ourselves and within, within ourselves. We are in such a huge change right now, and so there will be poetry and writing and there will be channeling and there will be this incredible nervous system that you get to plug into, um, that is the School of Wild and Holy and the Council of Love. And so I’ll stop there because I could go on and on forever. Joan: Yes. So I know. I always experience you and your medicine in such a visceral way. Like in, in, in such a, like dark chocolate, velvety rose petals. Mm-hmm. You know, just the, depth of heart way. And I trust our listeners are finding that as well, and your poetry is one of those transmissions. So I would, be a vote of confidence for anyone who is feeling drawn or curious to check out Wendy’s work. Check out her as well as like her, your Instagram, where you do share both your poetry and videos from time to time. And I would love to have you gift us with another poem before we close. Wendy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, thank you. I’ll do that. And I, I forgot to say that for, your listeners, if anyone is interested in A House Where Love Lives and, and joins that cohort, by way of this podcast, I’m offering a discount. So, just make sure when you reach out to me that you mention, this podcast episode. Joan: So generous. Thank you. Wendy: Mm-hmm. It’s my pleasure. Okay. Well this poem is called Dress Me in Wild Love. I choose wild love flowing freely from my lips. I choose unspoken trust and passion from our hips, communion and softness, bathing and moonlight, numinous doorways, and breathtaking insights. I choose pleasure gathered in my arms. Promises made with kisses and long walks, Ravens dark feathers. Fire in our bones. I choose prayers spoken revelations out in the open, her hands laced in mine. We are canopies of light sounds of devotion in the middle of the night. Making altars in the river from a rounded feast, I am a willing temptress spreading my wings, living naked as a wild flower, taking in the sun. I am heart pressed poetry dressed in wild love. Joan: That’s a good one. It is. Will these poems be in your new compilation? Wendy: They will. They will. I’m very much hoping to release this book later in the year, if not first thing next year. Mm-hmm. It’s quite a big compilation. Joan: Yay. I’m looking forward to it. And I would give a shout out both to, The Reach is Holy and the Mistress of Longing. I know The Reach is Holy I’m sure you can get both on Amazon, but I also want to give a shout out that The Mistress of Longing was published by the wonderful Lucy Pearce. Wendy: Yeah, if you’d like to purchase, there might even be a few signed copies left of The Mistress of Longing, through Womancraft Publishing, which is in Cork, Ireland. And you can also find that book anywhere, that you can purchase books online. So, yeah, Joan: okay. So I want to thank you again, Wendy, for taking this time to join us for, for, for bathing us in the beauty of your words and your wisdom and your heart. Wendy: Thank you. It’s been such an honor. I have loved getting to be with you again. Joan: I know. Wendy: That’s so awesome. Yeah. Joan: Yes. And we want to thank you, our dear listener, for being with us today. And I want to remind you that whether you are making ripples in your life or big ass waves that you are love. And you are loved. Until next time. Get full access to The Crone Codes with Joan Advent at joanadvent.substack.com/subscribe [https://joanadvent.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Return to Your Body:

Resident crone, Joan Advent invites women of all ages to return to the wisdom of the body as an antidote to what former guest Marion Rose PhD., calls “Disconnected Domination Culture.” From her chaise lounge beside her dog, Molly, Joan reflects on the body as a wise elder, the foundation of our humanity, and a sanctuary that reconnects us to our sacred nature. Drawing on Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese, she reframes healing as allowing “the soft animal” of the body to love what it loves—not through numbing out, but through becoming more alive, connected, and oriented to a deeper truth. Joan invites the listener to unplug from stimulation and come home to breath, heartbeat, and simple sensations, sharing practices like stillness, slow stretching, micro-movements, and observing animals as teachers of comfort and ease. She also highlights the body’s innate wisdom, the heart’s steady miracle, and a few mysteries of human biology—offering the body as a compass for navigating collective chaos and the unknown. 00:00 Welcome to The Crone Codes + Today’s Theme: Coming Back to the Body 01:27 The Body as Wise Elder (and the Cost of Disconnection) 03:12 Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”: Let the Soft Animal Love What It Loves 05:53 Disconnected Domination Culture: How We Lose Our Yes/No and Our Power 08:00 Return to Sanity: Unplug, Breathe, and Rejoin Life’s Natural Rhythms 09:58 A Sacred Heartbeat: Remembering the Miracle of Being Alive 13:31 Simple Practices: Stillness, Stretching, and Micro-Movements 16:44 Go Out of Your Mind, Return to Your Senses (Daily Body Reverence) 18:25 Body Mysteries: Heart-Brain Cells & Fetal Microchimerism 20:55 Learn from Animals + Closing Blessing From Wild Geese by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your bodylove what it loves. Love & Will with Marion Rose PhD. Episode 6 [https://open.substack.com/pub/joanadvent/p/love-and-will-our-true-nature?r=2qfaj3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] Get full access to The Crone Codes with Joan Advent at joanadvent.substack.com/subscribe [https://joanadvent.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]