Speaker 1
And am I really going to have the freedom that I want to do what I really want to do, which was really the psychology of emotional eating. So I ended up going to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in 2009 and I was raised by two entrepreneurs. So it was not unlikely for me to start my own thing. And I went in and I started a company around emotional eating. And I first started working with brides as they were getting ready for their wedding because I was a bride. And I created a super successful online company around emotional eating. I got married to my college sweetheart, and he was a doctor, and we were moving to San Francisco, and we had a cute apartment, and everything was great on the outside. On the inside, I was completely miserable. And I was going to therapy. And one day I walked into my therapist's office, which was in her home. And she had forgotten to clean up from a gathering she had the night before. And there were these chairs on the floor, and I could smell incense stuck in the upholstery of the couch. And there are these paintings of these beautiful women. And all of a sudden, my entire body erupted in goosebumps. And I started to weep. And I just looked at her and I said, what happened here? And she looked at me like she had seen a ghost because I'm in pearls and a polo shirt and patent leather punts. You know, I am a preppy girl from Boston who had this like successful emotional eating company that I was, you know, really wanting to be liked. And my Instagram was perfect. And like, I was doing all the photo shoots and I was just like, you know, doing all the things. And she said, well, I'll tell you when you're ready. And from that moment, I just thought I need to get in to the secret club. And I really just banged down her door until she let me come into a ceremony with her. And this is my mentor, Elaine Kalila Doughty, who I still work with. And she was, she is an ordained priestess who leads ancient sacred feminine ceremony. And I just remember when I went into ceremony for the first time, I was in a place in my life where I couldn't understand why was it that I felt so unfulfilled and so miserable, even though I had checked all the boxes and I was doing such a great job walking the path that was laid out for me. And I had gone to Tony Robbins. I had done, you know, I was in the personal development industry. I had read all the books. I had cleaned up my emotional eating. I had done so much work and I still felt this way. But when I sat down in ceremony, what happened was I met myself for the first time. And I really understood the difference between my personality and my soul. And I realized that my soul wasn't at the center of my life. And I had spent so much time people pleasing and trying to impress my peers and my parents. And I had only known one way of being. And I came to realize that I was really conditioned and brainwashed to just be who everybody else wanted me to be. And I didn't really know who I was. And it was through ceremony that I started to really understand myself. And I just kept hearing, Sarah, you aren't who you think you are. You aren't who you think you are. And I started following the, the, like the threads, but here's the thing. Like I am a preppy girl from Boston. I am the last person you would ever find in a sacred feminine ceremony. And so I would like set up an altar at home and I would like put it under my bed, you know, after I was done meditating, I didn't tell anybody what I was doing. I kept it a secret from my husband. I just remember I had this one day where I was like, Jonathan, I have to tell you something. Um, turns out I'm like really magical. And he's like, I know Sarah, you're not doing a great job keeping it a secret for me. And then it was this like very slow and extremely painful process of, you know, I call it coming out of the broom closet and revealing to the people in my life that I am actually different and I wasn't who I was presenting myself to be because I didn't even know who I was. And through that process, I was never planning on being a priestess. Like, dear Lord, it was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to create the emotional eating for, you know, like the Weight Watchers for emotional eating. I was like setting off. I had really big dreams in that space. But every time I sat in ceremony, I just heard, Sarah, you're meant to lead this. And that's not true for everybody who comes into ceremony. You know, it's sort of like going to the doctor. Everyone needs to go to the doctor, but not everyone's meant to become a doctor. And so I was wondering if I was just enjoying it and then therefore wanted to become it. But after really like five years of just being like punched by the goddess, I finally decided I was ready. And so I stepped onto the path of ordination and I went into really deep training and how to hold this type of ceremony. And I was ordained two years ago. It was like, I started sort of like weaving it into my work and I was like a little bit subtle about it. And then it was really three years ago when I decided to do my like final year of ordination that I came out publicly owning the fact that then I was a priestess initiate. And then once I was ordained, I stood as a priestess in my work. And I was terrified because I had had, uh, up until that point, a 12 year career and something completely different than what I was doing. I, you know, it's hard. I never counted, but there were a lot of people who were like, this is weird. I'm not into this. You've changed. And when you're evolving and when you're walking the path of authenticity, that really happens all the time. It's super hard. And it was hard because, you know, at the beginning of my career, I was also the primary breadwinner. So when it's attached to supporting your family and you have financial risk on the table, it's a hard thing to be able to really stand on what's true for you and let the chips fall
Speaker 2
where they do. I can't wait to get into all things ceremony because we've obviously done ceremonies together multiple times. I want to get into all of this. I just want to go back to you moved to San Francisco yep and you said everything on the outside looked amazing but on the inside it wasn't feeling amazing can you take me back a little bit more to that point like what was actually going on for you I
Speaker 1
was really in the belief that if I made a certain amount of money and I was well liked on the internet, that I would feel great about myself.
Speaker 2
Oh, can relate. Okay. So
Speaker 1
I have, I have a core wound of wanting to be loved and accepted by other people in order to feel accepted and worthy within myself. And this is relatively typical, but like I had it bad, you know, because I grew up as an unpopular chubby girl who was bullied a lot growing up. And so I was wired to believe that sameness and fitting in meant that I would be safe. And so I was constantly looking outside of myself in order to believe that I was right and okay and safe and could love myself. So what was happening was I was putting all of my energy and attention on my exterior self and how I was being viewed and not tending to my inner life and everything that was happening when I put my camera phone down or I turned off the, you know, we didn't even have Zoom back then. What did we even use? Like some sort of, I can't remember some like webinar software, you know, Facebook lives. Yeah. It was And also my marriage was terrible at that point. And Jonathan was in residency and we talk about this publicly all the time. Like he was just a dick. Like he came home and he was really threatened by my growth because he was worried he was going to outgrow me. And so he would subtly try to take me down and like just poke little holes in my balloon. And then I also got pregnant when I was 28, unplanned. And I was not really like ready to dive into motherhood. And Jonathan was in the hardest year of his residency. And so then I had to go through the whole thing around being a new mom. And in that moment, I also had all this like internalized conditioning come up around. I needed to really overdo it. And the house needed to be clean. And the baby couldn't be crying when Jonathan got home. And I was just looking at myself like, who am I? It was like some sort of crazy 1950s housewife alien took over my body. And, but it really had me look at if everything outside is great and everything inside feels so terrible, like what am I missing?
Speaker 2
Was it when you were in the kind of trenches of postpartum that this started to really show itself? Yes. Cause I feel like, I mean, I can speak for myself when I was putting on an identity without even realizing
Speaker 1
it, postpartum took it away. And it was totally, it's like I had no choice. Yeah. I mean, cause it really, motherhood is a sacred portal, you know? And when we have a baby, we really become the slip and slide from the divine to earth. You know, we're bringing a sacred being through our bodies earth side. And so whether we're aware of it or not, it is an opportunity to go through an awakening process. And so we're either going to face it consciously and spiritually, or we're going to wall up even more and like dig our heels and even more and get dragged through and go harder into the conditioning around being a traditional mom. And I was sort of in this like push pull, this fight. And I hadn't done a lot of learning around conditioning. And that's when I went hard into like the history of the sacred feminine and the erasure of it and how that impacts our psychology and how that was impacting me as a mom and my beliefs about myself. And it was rough. And then I got pregnant when Marshall was nine months old. So just like imagine. I can't imagine. I was still drowning in postpartum. Yeah, so was I. It was wild. Wow. Again, not planned. My kids are just, they're on their own path. Nothing to do with me. And I'm so happy to be mom. Like I was always planning on having kids. You know, Jonathan and I were married, but it was, it was just a
Speaker 2
shock. It was a shock to my system. Yeah. And it's hard when you're not, it's hard when, when you plan the timing, nevermind when you don't. No kidding. Yeah. And so you also mentioned that both your parents were entrepreneurs yeah do you think especially your mother do you think what she was doing for work or how she showed up impacted how you felt you should be showing up oh yeah how
Speaker 1
did that look well so my mom you know she was raising us in the eighties and nineties and it wasn't okay for women to have balance. You know, I think the models back then were you either work full time and you're pretty absent or you're a stay at home mom. And what was so beautiful was there were chapters in my mom's life where she really, you know, wanted to do both. And what was hard is that like society wasn't always set up for women to do that. And so she was still holding the responsibility of being a stay-at mom while also trying to run businesses. And she didn't have internet. You know, she didn't, there wasn't flexibility in childcare. And there was a lot of times where it was just like way too much for her. But for me, witnessing her try was so impactful for me. But the thing that was hard was because that was my model. I sort of wanted my business to be invisible for a long time. I didn't want my kids to even know that I had a job. I didn't want anyone like my friends or my family or Jonathan to be aware that I had a job. And so because of that, I wasn't, I was exhausted because I was trying to do too many things and I was holding a lot at work and I was holding a lot at home and no one was getting what they really needed from me. And the truth is, is that my work in the world is my soul's purpose. Like I love it so much. And so what happened was I was really cutting off a part of me that was important. And I had to go through this period of learning how to give my work more space and be okay with that. Because the truth is, is like what I see a lot is like, okay, how do you work less and spend more time with your kids? And for me, it was like, honestly, the opposite. I had to really teach myself how to be okay spending less time you know with my children and but also deepening it and having that be age appropriate but um it was it was like that was a big initiation for me and what you've just said to
Speaker 2
give me chills about you want wanted your work to be invisible because you were breadwinner too right yeah and I hear that all the time. And isn't that so fascinating? It's so fascinating, but this is the
Speaker 1
conditioning. So a big part of my work is the brainwashing that women get that our most important role is to be a mother and a wife. And so we have like internal alarms that go off that have been brainwashed into us over the past few thousand years, you know by a predominantly you know oppressive patriarchal christian system that really have rewired the way we see ourselves and it's fucked up it is really fucked
Speaker 2
up and i want to go into some of the stuff you learned around the erasure of women when i can't remember where i first heard you talk about this i think inside your membership I joined your membership after meeting you and I was hooked on the core curriculum while you're teaching this because I grew up and I am Roman Catholic yeah and so so much of what you were talking about was I think a lot of the teachings I had was the new Roman teachings yeah and a lot of it was erased and it was actually it has been really beautiful because my grandma's a very strict uh practicing Roman Catholic and I mean I grew up as an altar girl like just was so involved in it and I loved that but it opened up some beautiful conversations that I got to have my grandma around hey how do you feel women are presented in the Bible or and she was so open-minded to all of this and she was she was saying I'm so glad that Mary Magdalene's being talked about more because at school we kind of didn't believe that she was who she was painted to be right and it's been really eye-opening for me and I've loved it so for anyone that's listening and it totally doesn't even resonate with being religious I just think this is a really beautiful lesson in maybe the feminine hasn't been as so like not suppressed but as quiet and as unpowerful
Speaker 1
as we've potentially been led to believe totally so can we get into that yeah let's get into it okay so when you know, archaeologists, as they've been, you know, doing digging and like really looking for how humans lived, one of the first things that they found from 30,000 BC is this little statue called the Venus of Willendorf. And she's one of the first artifacts that we've ever found. And she's the goddess. And then as they've done more and more digging, and especially they've seen this more as women have become archaeologists, because, you know, it's like point of view is so important. The ancient structures and buildings that they found are temples that are shaped like women's bodies. There's this amazing temple in Malta that they found like deep, deep, deep under the ground where the entrance to the temple is the woman's yoni. And on the summer solstice, the sun shines right through this temple and then hits her crown. And it's just this beautiful, um, like meeting of the masculine sun and the feminine temple. And so we can surmise that humans have had a relationship with the divine for at least 30,000 years. And if you go back and you look at history, the goddess, the sacred feminine, the great mother has been the primary, if not in balance with the sacred masculine. And it wasn't really until, you know, around Jesus's time that, you know, back then the ancient rabbis started to go through the process of erasing the sacred feminine in the ancient Hebrew texts, you know, in, you know, ancient Palestine. And I believe in many people, you know, and I've, I believe this from all the readings and historical digging that I've done, Jesus showed up and he was raised by a priestess. Mother Mary was a priestess. And he said, you know what, this isn't great what we're doing. We need to bring women back into the story. And he studied in Egypt where the sacred feminine was alive and well. You had Greece right next door that had a lot of goddesses as part of their practices. And so he was surrounded by the feminine and came in and said, we need to elevate women back into our religious practices. And many believe that Mary Magdalene, who was also a really powerful priestess, they did that together, that she wasn't even just his favorite disciple. She was the feminine Christ and that they came to teach together. They were two halves of a whole. And or another way to say is they were two wholes who came into Harris Gamos together to really teach us about love. And I say that because so many people often will misunderstand the way I talk about Christianity as not loving Jesus. And that is like really not what's real and true for me. If you fast forward to around the year 1300, there was this book that was written about how the devil lives in women. This book was written by one of the members of the Roman Catholic Church, and it was used as fuel for the Crusades. And if they had this religious text that said, you can only be Christian, that Jesus is the son of God. Mary Magdalene is a whore. Mother Mary never had sex and was like super quiet and never said anything, which both of those things are really not true. And they took that book and they paraded it around all of Europe. And they said, anyone who is not Christian is going to be killed. And at that time, the women were herbalists. They were healers in the community. They were able to own land. They were leaders. And what was really happening was a desire to take control. And any time the crusaders went into a community, the first thing they did was burn the temple and kill the witches and the priestesses and the female shamans. And you also see this in the enslavement of people in Africa. You saw this in the genocide of Native Americans in North America. You saw this in the colonization of Asia. It just went everywhere. But the first thing they did always was take the sacred feminine away. And when I learned that, I just really asked myself, wow, if they knew that the way to control all people was to erase the sacred feminine, what would happen if we put it back? Because I really believe that like in the practice, hearing the stories, having a sacred feminine practice, connecting with the great mother, there's a seed of remembrance in that of our true power and our sovereignty, not just as women, but as all people. Because the men are impacted differently, but are impacted by an oppressive patriarchal culture. I really have seen its impact in just hearing a story about Mary Magdalene and hearing stories about Kuan Yin, the goddess of compassion. You know, our brains are actually wired for story and it's how we create belief systems. And I believe that like somewhere in there on a soul, it just like turns on a light switch in us. And all of a sudden we're like, we just have access to so much more and I just love
Speaker 2
that you're talking about it too because I agree and it also feels way better to believe that you know back then women weren't suppressed in this way right and that we actually were stepping into our power and we were equals and thank goodness we live in a society now where we have so many more rights but it is still patriarchal yeah and there are still so many things that affect women that don't affect men and so we're still not fully back but it feels good to know that there was a
Speaker 1
reference point totally and I think that's really important and it's so important to understand this is something that I didn't really get for a while, but the erasure of the sacred feminine and the oppression of women was deliberate. It didn't just fall out of fashion. It didn't, you know, we're not like coming into power for like the first time ever on the planet. You know what I mean? And of course there's always been oppression. There's always been inequality. And we have gone through a really, really dark time in our human history over the past few thousand years that I do believe we are coming out of. And I think the thing that's really important for people to understand is that there, there are still so many external oppressive things that are here in our lives that affect people differently based off of our upbringing and the color of our skin and who, where we live in this country. And there are also a lot of internal oppressive brainwashing conditioning that we have. And I just think it's super important to start there and to look at where am I holding myself back because of this conditioning that's been put on me and how can I first work on my internal liberation so that I can then work on my external liberation not only for myself but for everybody else I