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This week's Cracking Open Podcast episode with Shaka Senghor is so effing good!

(I actually wanted to write the F word, but I still feel a bit scared doing it – hello old Catholic schoolgirl guilt!)

There are so many gems in this episode but one of my biggest takeaways was the importance of standing in your truth.

Shaka shares his story with us about his own reckoning and realization that he initially wasn’t living his truth. Instead, he was living out an interpretation of his life rooted in his trauma. This trauma-informed life eventually led him into a 19-year imprisonment for 2nd-degree murder, seven of those years which were in solitary confinement.

Ashton Whitmoyer-Ober is a community psychologist, speaker, and certified Enneagram educator. She is also the author of Enneagram for Relationships, The Two of Us: A Three-Year Couples Journal and The Enneagram Made Simple.

With a desire to see relationships strengthened and people empowered, she created Enneagram Ashton in early 2019.

You may be asking yourself – what is the Enneagram?

Ashton shares with us this incredible ancient system that will not only help you strengthen your relationships but also help you not take things so personally in life.

I will never forget one cold and dark February morning getting chills from head to toe while listening to Krista Tippet interview Trabian Shorters on her podcast On Being.

Trabian was describing his visionary concept of asset framing. From social media to journalism, academics, and policy-making, asset framing is about seeing others’ assets before you witness their deficits.

How many of you look at your legs and bellies, and curse them for their shapes and sizes?

Do you feel shame about your body in any way, or restrict what you do or don't eat?

Do you worry about eating dairy, gluten, sugar, or meat, and wonder if you should be on a vegan, vegetarian, or keto diet?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are not alone. An estimated 45 million people go on diets yearly, and 33 billion dollars are spent on weight loss and wellness products.

What a way to launch Season 3’s Cracking Open Podcast! Get ready for a deep and honest conversation about meditation, psychedelics, and how to obtain a positive mindset.

Dr. Dan Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute which focuses on the development of mindsight and teaches insight, empathy, and integration in individuals, families, and communities.

I will never forget sitting next to my mother's bedside as she was taking her last breaths. It was an out-of-body, shocking, and life-altering experience. I felt honored to hold space for my mom with deep love and respect as she passed on.

If you could ask yourself one question every morning that would allow you to tap into a heightened awareness of the world around you and your place in it, wouldn’t you?

What do Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and the Grammys have in common? Tehillah Alphonso.

I met Gina Muñoz 20 years ago at the wedding of one of my husband’s college friends on Martha’s Vineyard. As a Midwesterner who went to a state college, I remember feeling a bit intellectually insecure with these, albeit incredibly kind, Williams college grads.

I will never forget the day I was in my therapist’s office sharing about how my anxiety was through the roof. I was grieving the death of my father, saddened by my mother’s cancer diagnosis, and fearful that my husband’s business would have to close its doors. I was the epitome of “down and out” in my life and marriage.

My therapist had the ability to show deep compassion but also called me out on my denial when necessary. She said, “Molly, you need help and I think you should begin with the book Fierce Intimacy by Terry Real."