Reality Check My Life | Bonus Snack | E70: Boundary Work for Depth-Holders

Boundaries hit differently when you’re a deep, intuitive,emotionally attuned human.
This Bonus Snack explores the real boundary work depth-holders must master —not the Pinterest version, but the somatic, spiritual, psychological, and energetic framework that keeps your soul intact in a world that constantly pulls on you.

In this episode, we walk through:

• Why depth-holders struggle with boundaries in the firstplace
• The emotional history that made you responsible for everyonebut yourself
• Why your warmth attracts takers, imitators, and over-reliantpeople
• The three essential types of boundaries: energetic,relational, and internal
• How boundary-setting feels in the body (and why it’suncomfortable at first)
• Why the wrong people react badly when you finally say“enough”
• How boundaries protect your depth instead of diminishing it

If you’re tired of being drained, overextended, oremotionally responsible for everyone around you, this Bonus Snack offers theclarity you’ve been missing.

Your depth deserves protection.
Your soul deserves peace.

Reality Check My Life | Bonus Snack | E69: The Difference Between Depth and Identity

Some people live their depth — forged through trauma,initiation, shadow work, and self-resurrection.
Others adopt an identity — a curated mask made of aesthetic spirituality andborrowed language.

They are not the same.

In this Bonus Snack, we explore:

• What “depth” actually is (and why so few people have it)
• The difference between lived experience and adopted identity
• How depth shapes your nervous system, intuition, andworldview
• Why shallow identities imitate deep people
• Why people can copy your language but never your resonance
• The emotional cost of being a depth-holder in a surfaceworld
• How to stop expecting reciprocity from people who have notlived what you’ve lived

If you’ve ever felt copied, minimized, flattened, ormisunderstood — this episode names exactly why.
Your depth was earned.
Their identity was assembled.

Reality Check My Life | Snack Pack | S14E3: When the Sandal Slipped

Some moments don’t announce themselves as sacred.

They feel accidental.
Clumsy.
Inconvenient.

The kind of moments you brush off so you can get on with your day.

And then—months later—you realize:
what you brushed past was the anointing.

In this third episode of The Bend Between What Was and What Will Be, Gin reflects back from the stillness of winter on a quiet summer moment when a sandal slipped at the Threshold Bend—and bare skin met the earth before meaning arrived.

This isn’t a story about spectacle or signs.
It’s a story about contact.
About holy ground that doesn’t wait for ceremony.
About the sacred slipping in through inconvenience, interruption, and small embodied pauses we don’t recognize until later.

Together, we explore:

• Why the sacred rarely arrives through drama

• How interruption often is the initiation

• What it means to remove insulation and feel something directly

• Why hindsight sometimes holds the clearest truth

If you’ve ever looked back at a moment and realized it quietly changed you—
this episode is for you.

🦶🏽 Slow down.
🌿 Listen to what your body remembers.
🔥 And notice where the path may already be touching you.

We leave the Enlightenment on for you…
and the Shadows have snacks.

Reality Check My Life | Shadow Snack | E5: When the Body Responds but the Self Did Not Choose

This Shadow Snack explores one of the most misunderstood aspects of consent:
what happens when the body responds under conditions where capacity, consciousness, or freedom of choice were compromised.

This episode speaks to the spaces where language arrives late —
where harm doesn’t look dramatic,
where nervous systems freeze or comply,
and where many survivors — especially men — don’t feel safe using words like rape or sexual assault, even when something was clearly taken.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why consent is a state, not a slogan

• How impairment (sleep, medication, fear, coercion) removes capacity

• Why physiological arousal is not consent

• Freeze and fawn responses — and why lack of resistance doesn’t equal agreement

• Why many men struggle to name sexual harm

• How the weaponization of moral language silences survivors

• The difference between accountability and annihilation

• What healing actually requires — without pressure, spectacle, or premature clarity

This episode is not anti-woman.
It is not anti-man.
It is pro-consent, pro-truth, and pro-healing.

No identifying details are shared.
No accusations are made.
This is a trauma-informed, reflective conversation meant to be entered slowly and metabolized gently.

Listener discretion advised.
If you are a survivor of sexual trauma, you are invited to listen at your own pace.

Healing does not begin with the right word.
It begins when the body is finally listened to.

Reality Check My Life | Bonus Snack | E68: When Others Want Your Fire but Not Your Burn

Some people love your fire — your confidence, clarity,intuition, and strength — but they want absolutely nothing to do with the partsof your life that forged it.
They want the glow, but not the origin story.They want the flame, but not the burn.In this Bonus Snack, we explore:Why people are drawn to your energy but avoid the work it took to create it

• The difference between admiring your fire and respecting your history
• Why imitators copy your actions but can’t replicate yourdepth
• The psychology behind fire-takers and emotional extraction
• How your nervous system reacts to people who minimize your lived experience
• How to guard your fire without dimming your light
• Why your burn is sacred — and why not everyone deserves access to it

If you’ve ever felt used, copied, minimized, orenergetically drained by people who want your essence but not your effort… thisepisode is your clarity.

Your fire is earned.
Your burn is holy.

Reality Check My Life | Bonus Snack | E67: The Initiator’s Loneliness

In this Bonus Snack, we explore the unique, often unspoken loneliness of the Initiator — the one who always goes first. The one who steps into truth before the room is ready, who breaks cycles before others see the pattern, who senses what’s coming long before anyone else understands.

Together we unpack:

• The three layers of loneliness: intellectual, emotional, andspiritual
• The burden of seeing and knowing too early
• Why you’ve always felt “ahead” of the people around you
• What makes this loneliness so somatically heavy
• How being the first shapes your relationships, identity, andnervous system
• And the truth that eases the ache: you are not lonelybecause you are unworthy — you are lonely because you are early

If you’ve ever carried the weight of being the one who leads, heals, senses, or transforms before anyone else is ready… this episode will feel like a deep exhale.

You’re not alone — you’re ahead.

Reality Check My Life | Snack Pack | S14E2: Bear at the Bend

Animals appear in sacred stories for a reason.

They sense what we overlook.
They register what we’re not ready to name.
And sometimes, they stand at the threshold long before we realize we’ve arrived.

In this episode of The Bend Between What Was and What Will Be, I’m reflecting back on a moment from last summer—when my dog Bear stopped mid-walk, barked upward into an unseen presence, and held his ground with unmistakable clarity.

This isn’t a story about superstition or projection.
It’s a story about embodied discernment.
About the quiet intelligence of animals.
And about what happens when a non-human witness sees something before we do—and waits for us to catch up.

Bear wasn’t scared.
He wasn’t reactive.
He was instructing.

If you’ve ever felt a dog pause at nothing…
A cat stare into empty space…
A horse refuse someone’s touch…
Then you already understand.

This episode is an invitation to remember that creation still speaks—just not always in words—and that sometimes the clearest guidance comes through a body that doesn’t doubt itself.

Trusting what you feel doesn’t always come easily.

Bear did.
I’m still learning.

We leave the Enlightenment on for you…
and the Shadows have snacks.

Reality Check My Life | Bonus Snack | E66: The Emotional Cost of Being First

In this Bonus Snack, we explore the truth behind what it reallymeans to be the one who always goes first — in your family, in your friendships, in crisis, in healing, in life. Being first isn’t glamorous. It isn’t a motivational quote. It carries an emotional cost that most people never see.

In this episode, we dive into:

• Why being “the first” is rarely a choice
• The invisible emotional labor carried by trailblazers
• The loneliness and pressure of being the one who clears thepath
• Why others minimize your journey once it becomes safe
• The nervous system effects of always leading and neverresting
• The internal collapse that comes from carrying too much fortoo long
• How to begin receiving support instead of always providingit

If you’ve ever felt exhausted, unseen, resentful, ormisunderstood because you were the one who had to walk into the unknown first —this episode will speak straight to your bones.

You weren’t built to carry it all forever.
You were just built to begin.