🎙️ Season 2: Where the Roots Have Room · Episode 4

Season 2: Tea Table Confessionals

Some wounds don’t announce themselves. They just quietly shape everything — the reaching, the searching, the particular ache of feeling like you were never quite enough to keep. This week at the Tea Table, I’m sharing something I’ve held close for a long time. A fairy-lit basement in Beaverton. A healer named Trisha Michaels — Reiki master, sager, channeler of Archangel Michael — who walked me home to myself over the course of twenty years and still does. And Burdock Root, the plant that goes down before it goes out, tending the dark, mineral-rich soil of things without needing to announce itself. This episode moves through adoption, divorce, inherited narratives, ancestral memory, and the quiet, devastating belief that we are not quite lovable — and what happens when someone finally holds the lantern long enough for you to look. This one is tender. Make something warm before you press play. In this episode: Burdock Root as a guide for interior healing — the TCM teaching on dis-ease as mirror — what it means to carry a root wound — adopted children and the soil of origin — ancestral inheritance and pattern recognition — Archangel Michael and energetic clearing — the difference between a character flaw and an inheritance — and what was found on the other side of all that looking. This week’s steep: Burdock Root Steeped in intention — offered with care. — The Gilded Leaf 🌿 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe [https://thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

🎙️ Season 2: Where the Roots Have Room · Episode 4

What Grows in the Dark There is a kind of work that doesn’t look like work from the outside. It doesn’t show up on your face or in your calendar. It happens in the quiet — in the unlit rooms of your interior landscape — in the places most of us have been too afraid to look. This week, Burdock Root is my teacher. In this episode, we sit with shadow work, the body as mirror, and the ancient principle that runs through Traditional Chinese Medicine and Hermetic philosophy alike: as above, so below. We talk about what it means when the body starts speaking what the mind has been carrying in silence — and why healing, in every tradition I have trained in, always begins the same way. By finding the root. I’ll also walk you through the energetics of Ground — the first blend in The Gilded Leaf Foundational Collection — and why Burdock anchors that formula the way it anchors everything: quietly, deeply, from beneath the surface. Make yourself a cup before you press play. This one goes down slow. and don’t forget the honey for it makes life all the more sweet. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe [https://thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

🎙️ Tea Table Confessionals: Learning to Hold Without Disappearing.

In this Sunday Tea Table Confessional, I’m sitting with the tender, complicated work of loving someone without disappearing inside the relationship. I share about a past partnership where I found myself carrying the invisible emotional labor of the home — managing schedules, tending my daughter’s inner world, holding his healing, and keeping the household running — all while slowly losing my own softness. I talk honestly about what it felt like to be “in partnership” but still feel alone in the daily holding, and how my boundaries blurred as I made excuses for patterns that left me depleted and small. Through the lens of plant energetics, I invite you into a conversation with a little “heart council” of herbs — motherwort’s lion‑hearted courage, linden’s soft nervous‑system canopy, and rose’s fierce self‑regard — as companions for exploring boundaries, self‑abandonment, and the moment you finally decide to set the load down. This episode is a love letter to anyone who has ever over‑functioned in relationship, shrunk themselves to avoid conflict, or wondered if they were asking for too much just by wanting to be met. If you’ve ever held it all and quietly wondered who is holding you, this one is for you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe [https://thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

🎙️ Season 2: The Weight of Being the One Who Holds It All

There is a kind of exhaustion that has very little to do with sleep. This episode is for the woman who keeps the day moving even when her own inner world is asking to be sat beside for a while. The one who loves deeply, tends faithfully — and has slowly, quietly, begun to disappear inside the doing. This week we carried Yarrow’s medicine from Wednesday’s Weekly Steep into a more tender place: what happens when devotion goes unbounded. When care becomes erasure. And what it might look like to keep your shape while still loving fully. Brew something warm before you press play. This one asks you to stay close to yourself. This week’s herb: Yarrow (introduced in Wednesday’s Weekly Steep) Subscribe to The Weekly Steep below Steeped in intention — offered with care. — The Gilded Leaf 🌿 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe [https://thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

🎙️ Season 2: Tea Table Confessional

Tea Table Confessionals is where I bring the things that don’t quite fit anywhere else. The unfinished truths. The questions still finding their shape. The quiet overwhelm of seasons that are full and hard and meaningful all at once. Every Sunday I pull up a chair, pour something warm, and say the thing I have been carrying all week. No performance. No polish. Just an honest conversation between two people who are both, in their own way, figuring it out. This is the quieter room inside The Gilded Leaf — and the table always has a seat for you. Season 2 opens with a confession that begins with a sniffle. A cold that will not quite resolve. A chest heavier than the season warrants. And the slow, honest recognition — sitting here with nowhere left to hide — that the body is always keeping a record of what the mind has been too busy to name. Pull up a chair. 🫖 The kettle is on. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe [https://thegildedleaf.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]