NEW EPISODE! The Evolution Of Awakened Empowerment

AND WE ARE BACK!
Welcome back, my beautiful listeners—it's Mary Wagstaff, and I am beyond thrilled to be here with you today. I can hardly contain my excitement as we relaunch Stop Drinking and Start Living - The Feminine Way. This is more than just a podcast; it’s a safe space for exploring sobriety, feminine empowerment, and reclaiming the authentic essence of being a woman. Together, we’re diving into a new version of the show, and I’m so honored you’re here for it.

In this episode:

• Rediscover the feminine way: We’re not just talking about sobriety; we’re embracing life through archetypal wisdom, intuition, and self-trust.
• Let’s explore together: This is a circle of sisters. Bring your curiosity, compassion, and openness to new perspectives.
• Write in to the show: Share your stories and questions using the 'Fan Mail' link in the show notes, or email me at Mary@MaryWagstaffCoach.com. I’ll answer submissions on upcoming episodes!
• Pause and reflect: This week, ask yourself, “What kind of woman do I want to be?” and honor your journey with approval and self-compassion.
• Next week’s topic: We’ll tackle decision fatigue—how it affects you and actionable steps to find clarity and ease.

Thank you for tuning in. Remember, there is no rush; the beautiful life you’re seeking is right in front of you. Take a deep breath, savor the moment, and join me every Wednesday for new episodes.

I love you and can’t wait to connect again next week! ❤️

Subscribe, share, and let’s grow this sisterhood together.

Music by the exquisite talent of Scott Nice

Have a story or question for me? Send a text using the link in the show notes! I will answer it on the show, give you some love and live coaching — Let's create this community together. I'd love to hear from you!

Transcript

0:02

Music. Welcome to stop drinking and start living the feminine way. I'm your hostess. Mary Wagstaff, holistic alcohol coach and feminine embodiment guide here to help you effortlessly release alcohol by reclaiming your feminine essence. Sobriety isn't just about quitting drinking, it's about removing the distortions that keep you disconnected, overwhelmed and stuck in cycles of numbing. Each week, I'll share powerful tools, new perspectives that transform and deeply relatable stories to help you step into the power pleasure and purpose that it is to be a woman. This is your next evolution of awakened empowerment. Welcome to the feminine way. Welcome back to the show, my beautiful listeners, it's Mary Wagstaff. I couldn't be more thrilled to be with you here today. I am almost in tears. Welcome to stop drinking and start living the feminine way. We have had a break. I have had a lot of thoughts about the show. I have thought of you so much I could have recorded 10 times the podcasts that it would have taken me during this break that I took, and I won't get too much into it now, really, this episode is just about welcoming you to a slightly new version of the show. So as you may have heard in the intro, we will be exploring the topic of sobriety, but we will also be exploring the topic of sobriety in other areas, right? This idea of sobering up to the distortions that may be clouding our view and our perception of what's possible for us as women so the feminine way, it's the approach we take to solving problems that aligns with the most authentic version of self. Now, when we have alcohol in the way and so much information, so much content, so much of an influence vying for our attention, not to mention all of the conditioning and beliefs that we had from just growing up through the institutions that you know were more or less required to be part of our families, our communities, educational institutions, health care systems. So there may be some stuff that I explore that feels triggering for you, right, that feels like there's some resistance that might bump up against your beliefs. But if you've been with me for a while, and if you haven't welcome I'm so glad that you're here. I My intention is to explore everything that I've gone through on a personal level, the the shifts that I've been taking over the last six months as I settled into a new community. What I've been really doing is asking myself, What kind of woman do I want to be? So we are going to explore this hand in hand, like we are sisters in a circle. This is a woman's group, and you are invited in. So invite your sisters here, come along for the ride. And I want to you to know that you are in good hands, right? And if something does come up for you that feels triggering, that like you feel like there's resistance to that really pushes an edge for you, that might really push a button for you. I want you to take a pause and breathe into it and and approach it from the place of curiosity and compassion, which has always been the foundation of our of our work here together, I want you to really be in this practice of what don't I know. Because I know over the last six months of really holding sweet space for myself and exploring what path is in front of me, I came back to the one that I was on. I never really left it, but from a new perspective, from the perspective of the feminine way. And so I don't have all the answers, and we will be exploring together, but I do have some embodied Gnosis, and Gnosis is first hand experience. And what I. Really want to offer, as well is we can take in all of the content we want. We can take in the doctrine of of all the self help gurus and, you know, religious figures and spiritual figures and teachers and influencers and politicians and teachers and all of the people, right and me, but until you have a first hand embodied experience, how do you know the truth? How do you really know the truth? And I'm reading this book right now while rather listening to it, and it's so good, it's probably the best self help book that I've read all year, as far as the impact that it's had on my life. And it's by a preacher. He's a Christian, Christian pastor. Rather, his name is John Mark comer, and it's called the ruthless elimination of hurry. And you know, his solution is God and Jesus, but he comes. He really invites the reader into this, this inquiry into our rush for achievement, our rush for acquiring new things. And so my motto for this year, 2025 I'm coming at you just after the beginning of the year is, there's no rush. There is no rush. Where are we rushing to? We are rushing to get to the place that is right in front of us. And he poses the question that I love so much is, whose spirituality are you living? And so from a feminine perspective, we're going to explore different archetypal energies that have been exploited, that have been buried and that have been shamed as we have journeyed through through feminist empowerment. Right? So along the way to gaining empowerment, to gaining a seat at the table with men, we have lost something as well, right? We've had to, we had to sacrifice. And I think so much of this sacrifice is what is leaving so many women, completely confused, exhausted, disconnected, numbed out and teeter tottering in between. And I was just talking to a sweet sister friend of mine, and she said, between depression and anxiety, there's a very narrow path, and I'm not there very often. And where does this leave us, except looking for potentially SSRIs, looking for ways to escape, looking for alcohol. And you know you, I want you to know that I come to you with so much love and compassion, and none of this is judgment. This is all an invitation to, let's explore the coping mechanisms that we're using, and to know that there's another way, and it's the feminine way. And I wrestled with the title I had like a whole new rebrand, and I went back and forth, and I just seriously thought about the podcast literally more than it would have ever taken me to record it. And it just sat so deep in my heart, and there was this new message, or at least a new twist on the message, that I wanted to bring to you. So if you are here for sobriety, we will talk about that. But what I want you to know is that you're answering the question for yourself, what kind of woman do I want to be and really reclaiming this feminine, the feminine essence that I do believe we have lost, but we're actually at a new place in evolution. So it's not like we're going back to where we were, right, where we didn't, maybe have all the rights we want, like, No, we can. We can. And it's not about having it all, having the motherhood and having the career, it's not that at all. It's about being able to receive being in the place of receptivity of the life that you've created, and the willingness to surrender to that, the willingness to stop trying to control everything around you and instead learn to support your own nervous system, because I know what it's like firsthand to try to micromanage my life to find a sense of safety. So everything we are going to explore here is how to be in your feminine from a place that feels really safe. And this is the first step. The first step is finding a solution or a conversation that can maybe start to open up and answer some questions for you, some that you might not have even known you had. So when I was exploring the feminine mysteries. Um, and what I mean by feminine mysteries are just the ways of the the woman, right? The ways that our cycle links up with the phases of the moon and our deep, deep intuition with the this way that we run in these 28 day cycles, and that we can meet our own needs that are reflected back to us really through the qualities of the phases of the moon, and this is what we have available to us right now. You may not be bleeding. You may be past your bleeding years, but there's this opportunity to step into the power that it is to be a woman, and this is by no means to shame men, to to discredit the masculine. In fact, we want to really establish a deep, deep, healed masculine presence inside of you and for you around you. This is an invitation to really step into the feminine life that you want, because from my experience, firsthand and from the women that I've coached, we want to be held in safety and and be able to be in our creative power. The feminine cannot create if she does not feel safe. And this is really why I took a break from the podcast, because I didn't know that I my nervous system had been really shaken, not because anything really went wrong. Life just happened. And sometimes our life needs to recalibrate. We need often, time, longer time for transitions. We habituate easy, but the nervous system doesn't always catch up as quickly as we would want it to, and so it's really important to learn to honor this for you, that sometimes transitions can take a while. And I just knew I needed to recalibrate myself. And as many of you know, we bought this farm in beautiful Eastern Oregon and the Dalles on the Columbia River, and it was all gung ho. And I'm, you know, I love creating. I love being outside. I love communing with nature. It very much. Met my tourist nature. Met this part of my my priestess self, my my Taurus nature, my ability to want to be self sustainable, as well as a beautiful opportunity to create a deep connection with my family, something that Emmett can grow up doing a new relationship in collaboration with Matthew. But it went way too quick, at least just in my mind. And it wasn't, it wasn't, I wouldn't say it wasn't a well thought out process, like we have a home and we're It's beautiful here where we are, and there's so much appreciation for that. But it's really not so much what you're doing, but it's how you're doing it. So I wanted to pop in and say hi and let you know that there is an opportunity for you here to choose womanhood rather than wait for someone to give you permission to be a pleasure woman, and this is where we get to honor the masculine counterparts in our life. We get to honor the masculine energy, which could be your nine to five job that really keeps you safe and really supports you and knowing that you have this sense of security and safety there so that you can step out of that and then go create and be in the pleasure of being a mother, being a lover, being connected to your friends and your community. But it does have to make take an intentional choice and an intentional step back and the way that this connects to alcohol and really any other problem you have in your life, or you know, any, any salute, any situation that needs a solution. Maybe we'll step away from the word problem. A situation that needs a solution is because you will find the way to meet your needs. You will ask yourself the question, what do I need? And really understand them. Because no one else can meet our needs if we don't even know what we want, right? And so this has been something I've been deeply exploring in my own relationship and my personal committed relationship with my partner, and so a lot of that is going to come to the forefront. And I've been exploring this a lot with my mothering, and a lot with my business and my entrepreneurship, and how do I want to show up as a woman? And there has been such a strong push, at least in, you know, and I'm only speaking for myself here, but I do believe that it relates to many women, there's this. Kind of righteous indignation to prove what we are, not to prove that we are not these stereotypes, right? But along the way, we lost what we were. So we had to trade, and I've probably talked about this on the show, I'm sure we had to trade out some of our innate archetypal energies and power to prove that the stereotypes were wrong. And I've just found that what has been lacking most is a deeper connection to the question of what does it mean to be a woman, and finding the answer from deep inside of a place that's not only that's not guided by the conditioning of fear, but from our innate truth, and that takes time, right? So we are creating one, the container of safety here, and that is what I believe my coaching practice offers. And really, if we're talking about big change or sobriety, safety is the number one thing that needs to be created. You need to be in a, in a at least, examining what are my resources and finding how a sense of safety for yourself. And I can teach you how to do that. I can teach you how to relax your nervous system and find a sense of safety, but I want you to find that here. I know that's something that I create in my container, so there's no rush, so that you can give yourself the luxurious space that you deserve to really explore what is so important. It's like, yes, things might be creating undesired results for you, but to find a solution to a situation that goes so much deeper than just what's in your glass, right, the dissatisfaction that you have with your life. And so what my intention here is to help you find a satisfying life, and that is a life that you approve of, and you can do that right here right now, because really the dissatisfaction or lack of contentment or that pushing, pushing, pushing to the next thing that has you worrying and hurrying is simply you not approving of what is in front of you right here, right now, and the need for alcohol becomes a fruitless endeavor, blocking your ability to understand your body's wisdom and to meet your own needs in a way that creates a lasting impact on you, Your life, your community and the people you love. And really, when we create more peace in our bodies, we create more peace in the world. And so the feminine way of sobriety is for all women, because every single woman, and this is so wild, I never, ever ever thought about this until about two months ago, when I was on a coaching call with a woman and she said, Mary, every woman has a relationship with alcohol. Every woman has had to decide for herself what she wants her relationship to alcohol to be like, consciously or unconsciously, because alcohol exists as a big part of our world, and whether or not you drink, you are choosing that. It is a choice that people are faced with. Now for some it may have never been, you know, too many thoughts, but they still are making a choice to engage with it or not to engage with it. So the feminine way of living is really for all women who have found themselves trapped by the dissatisfaction of their own life and endlessly searching for the next program, the next pay scale for another person to finally validate their worth, until they can decide with confidence and trust that they are worthy of Receiving pleasure from the life that is right in front of you right now. So my beautiful, beautiful friends, welcome back. Tell your friends. There is going to be so much exploration here, and something I didn't do a lot on the, you know, in our previous round of show was I didn't have a lot of, you know, women, kind of outside of the realm of alcohol, or really, any other experts. And I really, really, really want this to be a write in show. I want you to send me your stories, your inquiries, of course, all confidential, and I want to be able to answer these questions for you, so I'm calling submissions in you can email me, Mary at Mary Wagstaff, Coach. Dot com, and I will personally answer your show every single episode. We are going to have a writer submission segment, and if it gets to be a lot, which it will be, we may just have to do separate episodes for that. We shall see, the feminine way is a way to choose to stop trying to fix what isn't here, right? And I know that I was doing this. It's like, how do I solve for these things that aren't even here yet, like the farm growing my business, you know, Emmet being a teenager, and you get to choose the beautiful life that's right in front of you by learning to meet your own needs rather than relying on external circumstances. And I want to invite you to look for the beauty of the life that's right in front of you right here, right now, and ask how that's true. There is so much, and this is as you know, this is not about bypassing your emotions. This is about learning to really hold space for yourself, stop self abandoning, and come into a deeper relationship to yourself and to the Great Mother honoring your process, honoring that at every step of the way we are evolving, right? We're coming back to that same point in the spiral, but on the next level, the next year, and so as you're awakening to your own evolution, it's important to take a step back and examine what are my values now? What do I know now? And change is hard, but if we keep trying to solve for a situation with an old version of ourself, it might not land. I know that micromanaging my spouse wasn't working anymore for me, and I didn't even think I was doing it. I just thought it was the right way. And the more I lean into sovereignty, for myself, for him, for my son, for all sentient beings. First, it has to start with me. The more I receive, the more I can enjoy the fruits of my labor, the more I can allow myself to be in my feminine and it's not easy, right, but it's simple. It is the way. And I know that my creativity for all of the pursuits that I want, whether or not they have any substantial outcome, like I get to just be in the frivolousness of pleasure for fun that I get to color or dance or make a mess or read or do any of it, and I find that instead of giving ourselves permission to just do there always needs to be some sort of outcome. This week, look for this satisfaction that's right in front of you in your life. By approving of everything that you have, you get to decide whether or not it's good, not some fleeting post on social media. It's we. We end up in these echo chambers, right because of of the way that the algorithms work, and it creates this really, really, really strong sense of conditioning and manipulation. We have to be very, very on to our minds. And we can be on to our minds by really spending some time in solitude with our heart. Solitude isn't loneliness. It's honoring your relationship to yourself. Final note, I went away last week for a writer's retreat. It was a artist in Resident retreat. It was completely self guided, and I absolutely loved it. And I don't know if I could have done it even a month ago and got set a really beautiful intention. I'll probably talk more about it, because there was a really beautiful process of what came through in the creative process of what I wanted my outcome to be, in my intention versus expectation. But I had said I had messaged Matthew at some point while I was there and I said, I'm so glad that I quit drinking so I can really enjoy my own company. I will leave you with that. I will see you next week, same time Wednesdays. Be here. Make sure you re subscribe if you haven't, if you for some reason, unsubscribe because we weren't. Doing new shows on next week's show, we are going to talk about decision fatigue, how you know you have it, and how to solve for it. Have an amazing week. I love you. I cannot wait to talk to you next week, if you are ready to embrace the feminine way in your life and release alcohol effortlessly, I want to teach you how to talk to yourself when you are alone. This is the hardest yet most impactful piece of the process. Download my free guide, the six cheap phrases to calm the urge to drink and end the inner battle. You'll discover how to find relief for any urge or emotion without deprivation. Visit Mary Wagstaff coach.com/urge tracking to get your free guide today or follow the link right here in the show notes. You