Welcome to 'Heart and Soul,' the podcast where we empower and inspire women to lead their best lives, harnessing the power of their hearts and souls.
In each episode, we'll dive deep into topics that matter most to you, from self-love and confidence to career development, relationships, and everything in between. We believe that every woman has a unique strength and inner wisdom waiting to be unleashed.
Bucket Lists, Big Trips, and the Announcement We’ve Been Keeping Secret!
Travel is not a background detail in Mariah and Monique's lives. It is woven into who they are, how they grow, and what they keep coming back to in conversation. In this episode, they turn the mic on themselves and share the destinations that have left the deepest marks on them, from ancient ruins in Turkey to glacier lakes in Iceland to the sun-drenched hillside villages of Tuscany. There is also a big announcement at the end that loyal listeners will not want to miss.
Episode Highlights
Turkey: Old World Architecture, Living History, and a Country Too Few Americans Put on Their List
Bali: Beauty, Challenge, and the Transformation That Comes from Both
Thailand: Kindness, $4 Meals, and a Chance Encounter with Hmong Heritage
Tuscany: Where the Soil Gets Into Your Soul
Iceland: Another Planet, Entirely Accessible
Mexico City: The Destination That Changed Both of Their Minds
The Big Announcement: A Heart and Soul Group Trip Is Coming in Fall 2027
Turkey: Old World Architecture, Living History, and a Country Too Few Americans Put on Their List
Monique opens with Turkey, a destination she says not enough people consider, particularly Americans, and one that immediately rewired her sense of what travel could feel like. The ancient city of Ephesus, where you can stand in a partially reconstructed colosseum and read in the New Testament about what happened there, offered the rare sensation of walking inside a history book. Istanbul added another layer entirely: a city where the Blue Mosque and secular everyday life exist side by side, where the call to prayer sounds five times a day, and where the food, the people, and the landscape feel genuinely unlike anywhere else. Monique's verdict is unequivocal: it belongs on more bucket lists, and a cruise stop makes it completely accessible for first-timers who want to ease in.
Bali: Beauty, Challenge, and the Transformation That Comes from Both
Mariah's first pick is Bali, a trip that began with her husband raising a paddle at a charity auction and ended with her having a fundamentally different relationship with adventure. The island is stunning, but it is also genuinely challenging: traffic that turns a five-mile journey into two hours, infrastructure strained by an overdevelopment boom, and an environmental reality that she sat with honestly rather than overlooking. What made the trip extraordinary was their driver, a local who narrated the entire island through the window of their van with the kind of unscripted cultural depth no tour guide script could replicate. She swam with a manta ray, moved through the Balinese countryside, and came home with the conviction that the trips requiring something from you are the ones that actually change you.
Thailand: Kindness, $4 Meals, and a Chance Encounter with Hmong Heritage
Monique's second highlight is Thailand, where she spent two weeks across four cities and found what she describes as the kindest people she has ever encountered anywhere in the world. The food was extraordinary and remarkably affordable, the temples and shrines were everywhere and deeply moving, and the landscape ranged from searing island heat to the lush hill country near the borders of Cambodia and Laos. That border region is where she stumbled into a Hmong community, a moment that took on unexpected personal weight given that her daughter-in-law's family traces their roots to that exact cultural group. She also highlights the role AI tools like ChatGPT have played in her recent trip planning, building custom itineraries based on pace, interests, and travel companions in a way that has changed how she prepares for a trip.
Tuscany: Where the Soil Gets Into Your Soul
Mariah has been to multiple regions of Italy over the years, but her most recent visit to Florence and the village of Cortona in Tuscany has moved Italy firmly into her personal top tier. The people in Tuscany were warmer and more physically welcoming than anywhere else she has been in the country. She and her mother planned the trip largely using ChatGPT to build an itinerary and Instagram to map specific restaurants and shops onto Google Maps in real time, a combination that led them to places that were genuinely memorable rather than just algorithmically popular. The trip produced one of the episode's most touching moments: riding through the Tuscan countryside with their driver, her mother spontaneously suggesting they get matching tattoos, and both of them walking into a local shop to get "tutto bene," the Italian phrase their driver Enzo used constantly, inked in each other's handwriting. A cooking class inside an Italian family's home on a Sunday rounded out a trip that Mariah says already has her planning her return.
Mexico City: The Destination That Changed Both of Their Minds
The hosts close with a shared highlight: a group trip to Mexico City that neither had originally put on their radar, brought to them by a mastermind member whose enthusiasm was simply too contagious to say no to. Mexico City is not Cancun. It is a massive, cosmopolitan, deeply historical city of 20 million people sitting on a highland plateau surrounded by mountains. The food was extraordinary, the jacaranda trees were in bloom and painting entire streets purple, the Anthropology Museum was staggering, and the pyramids outside the city are larger than anything in Egypt. They rented an Airbnb with a chef who made breakfast every morning, hired a driver through their host, and experienced the kind of bonding that only happens when a group of women figures out how to navigate something genuinely unfamiliar together.
The Big Announcement: A Heart and Soul Group Trip Is Coming in Fall 2027
Mariah and Monique are opening up a curated group travel experience to Heart and Soul listeners for the first time. Past trips have been exclusively for mastermind members, but they are ready to bring the heart and soul way of traveling to a wider group of women. The destination will be one of the countries mentioned in this episode, trip length will be roughly 7 to 10 days, and spaces will be intentionally limited. If you feel called to travel with them, they want to hear from you now so they can begin building their list. Reach out through their social media or email in the show notes and tell them you're interested.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What Nobody Tells You About Selling the Business You Built
Most entrepreneurs spend enormous energy building their businesses and almost no time thinking about how they will eventually leave them. Andrea Black, business advisor with Transworld Business Advisors and a longtime member of Mariah and Monique's mastermind community, has made that gap her specialty. In this episode, she joins the hosts for a conversation that is equal parts practical and personal, covering everything from how to price a business to what it really feels like to hand over something you have poured yourself into. If you have ever wondered what it would take to buy or sell a business, this one is worth a close listen.
Episode Highlights
From Family Business to Burnout to Finding Her Calling
What a Business Advisor Actually Does (and Why You Need One)
Understanding Seller's Discretionary Earnings and What Your Business Is Actually Worth
The Key Things to Do Before You Are Ready to Sell
Creative Financing Options for Buyers Who Think They Cannot Afford It
Why Passion Matters, and Why It Is Not the Whole Picture
How to Reach Andrea and Get Started
From Family Business to Burnout to Finding Her Calling
Andrea's path to business advising was not a straight line. She grew up in Duluth, spent her twenties living elsewhere, and was eventually convinced by her father to return and help run the family insurance business alongside her brothers. That experience taught her a great deal, including how emotionally complicated it is to transition a business within a family. She eventually stepped away, moved into a W2 role, and ultimately found herself so burnt out she could barely take the next step. That is when she joined the mastermind, took the space she needed, and began to get clear on what she actually wanted. What emerged was a role in business advising, something both Mariah and Monique had quietly seen as her natural fit long before she got there herself.
Understanding Seller's Discretionary Earnings and What Your Business Is Actually Worth
One of the most useful segments in this episode is Andrea's plain-language breakdown of how a business gets valued. The core number most buyers will evaluate is called seller's discretionary earnings: the business's profit, adjusted to add back personal expenses the owner runs through the company, like a vehicle or an above-market salary. If that number is $100,000, a rough starting point for the sale price might be two to three times that figure, though the specifics vary significantly by industry, growth trajectory, and whether the business holds intellectual property or other assets. The point is not to arrive at an exact number in this conversation but to understand that clean books, documented processes, and a business that can run without the owner being present at every moment will always attract better buyers and better offers.
The Key Things to Do Before You Are Ready to Sell
Andrea's top advice for sellers is to start thinking about the exit long before you are actually ready for one. Life happens fast, and the reasons people end up selling, whether retirement, health, divorce, relocation, or simple burnout, are not always ones you can plan for in advance. She recommends cleaning up your financial records, systematizing your processes, and asking yourself honestly whether a buyer could step in and run this business without you. Mariah adds from her own experience selling her cleaning company that thinking like a buyer is one of the best things you can do early, anticipating their concerns about what happens when an employee does not show up or what the path forward looks like when you are no longer in the building. The businesses that sell well are the ones where the answer to those questions is already documented.
Creative Financing Options for Buyers Who Think They Cannot Afford It
For prospective buyers, one of the most encouraging parts of this conversation is Andrea's point about creative financing. Many people assume that buying a business requires substantial personal capital, but seller financing is a common and often advantageous structure where the seller carries a portion of the deal. This can make a business accessible to a buyer who cannot get full bank financing, while giving the seller a higher total return through interest and demonstrating that both sides are committed to the business's continued success. For buyers who have the business acumen and passion but not yet the track record to impress a traditional lender, this kind of arrangement can be the bridge that makes the whole thing possible.
Why Passion Matters, and Why It Is Not the Whole Picture
One of the more nuanced conversations in this episode involves what actually makes someone a good fit to buy a particular business. Passion helps, especially in the hard early years when the learning curve is steep and the wins are not yet consistent. But passion does not have to mean loving the product or service itself. It might mean loving operations, or systems, or the specific challenge of building a customer base in a particular market. Mariah points out that a car wash is not exactly glamorous, but plenty of people make excellent money running them because they love the operational puzzle behind it. Andrea's role as an advisor includes helping buyers figure out what actually lights them up about a business, not just whether the numbers on paper look right, because those first few years are going to require everything they have.
How to Reach Andrea and Get Started
Andrea Black works with both buyers and sellers in the Duluth area and beyond through her affiliation with Transworld Business Advisors. Whether you are years away from an exit and want to start building toward one, actively ready to sell, or simply curious about what it might look like to buy a business, she is the kind of advisor worth having a conversation with early. Contact information for Andrea is linked in the show notes.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What Your Body Already Knows About Giving Birth with Marie Berwald
There is a particular kind of calling that does not announce itself in advance. For Marie Berwald, founder of Birth Bliss and Empowering Wellness, it arrived through nausea on a yoga mat, a desperate phone call from her sister, and two decades of quietly falling in love with one of the most overlooked chapters of a woman's life. In this episode, she joins Mariah and Monique to talk about holistic pregnancy support, the surprising tools that help women move through morning sickness, and why the most powerful thing she can give any client is the ability to trust their own body again.
Episode Highlights
How a Prenatal Yoga Class Became a 22-Year Career
The Phone Call That Led Marie to Energy Work
What Energy Work Actually Is and How It Applies to Pregnancy
The Sway Test: A Simple Way to Start Listening to Your Body
Why Collaborative Care Beats the Expert-Knows-Best Model
The One Thing Marie Recommends for Every Pregnant Woman
How a Prenatal Yoga Class Became a 22-Year Career
Marie did not set out to specialize in pregnancy. She was a yoga teacher, specifically the kind that taught power yoga, until her first trimester arrived and left her teaching from the floor. She switched into a prenatal class at her studio and, as she describes it, felt immediately like she had come home. When the instructor moved away and no one else was available to teach, the studio owner pointed out that Marie had a whole summer off as a teacher and suggested she get trained. She did, thinking it would be a temporary detour. That was 22 years ago, and she has never stopped teaching prenatal since. What kept her there was not just the yoga but the whole terrain of pregnancy itself: the intensity, the magic, the challenge, and the near-total absence of truly holistic support for women moving through it.
The Phone Call That Led Marie to Energy Work
Three years ago, Marie received a call from her youngest sister, who was eight weeks pregnant and vomiting six to seven times a day. The nausea was severe enough that her sister told Marie she did not want to abort the pregnancy but also did not want to be alive. Those words, Marie says, pressed something deep in her. She told her sister she did not know how they were going to fix it, but that they would. That search led her to the Emotion Code and Body Code, frameworks for identifying and releasing stored emotional energy from the body using muscle testing. She had previously assumed energy work was for people born with special gifts. What she found instead was that it gave a structure to intuition she already had. Her sister improved. Then a woman in her prenatal class improved. Then another. And the work expanded from there.
What Energy Work Actually Is and How It Applies to Pregnancy
For anyone unfamiliar, Marie situates this work within a broader family of modalities that includes Body Talk and the Alignment Code. The underlying idea is that unprocessed emotional experiences leave residual energy stored in the body, which is part of why a small stimulus can trigger a disproportionately large reaction. That overreaction is not irrational: it is the body responding to every unresolved instance of that emotion, not just the one in front of you. The framework uses muscle testing to identify what the body needs, whether that is releasing stored emotional energy, supporting specific organ systems, adjusting energy meridians, or something as practical as adding apple cider vinegar to water for blood sugar balance. The point is that the answer is different for every person, and the body already holds it.
The Sway Test: A Simple Way to Start Listening to Your Body
One of the most immediately usable tools Marie shares is the sway test, a basic form of muscle testing that anyone can try at home. You hold an item against your chest, ask whether it would be helpful for you right now, and then wait. Within a few seconds, your body will sway forward toward a yes or backward toward a no. Marie shares an example of a client in her morning sickness program who was not sure whether watermelon would stay down. She held it against her chest, her body swayed forward immediately, she ate it, and it worked. Marie also uses muscle testing with her own supplements, particularly vitamin D during the long Saskatchewan winters when sunlight is essentially unavailable for months at a time. The idea is not to replace medical guidance but to add a layer of bodily intelligence to decisions that are often made by guesswork anyway.
Why Collaborative Care Beats the Expert-Knows-Best Model
A thread running through Marie's whole approach is her conviction that no one external authority has the full picture of what a woman needs during pregnancy. She references a medical researcher she once heard speak on what she called family-centered care, whose core point was that neither the patient nor the physician holds all the answers alone: the physician knows the treatment options, but the patient knows herself. The best outcomes, that researcher argued, come from genuine collaboration between those two kinds of knowing. Marie has carried that framing with her ever since, especially when coaching clients who need to advocate for themselves in medical settings where a one-size-fits-all approach is still very much the norm.
The One Thing Marie Recommends for Every Pregnant Woman
When asked what single practice would make the most difference for a pregnant woman, Marie does not hesitate: give yourself permission to lie down every day and listen to a guided meditation. She grounds this in the science of the ultradian rhythm, a cycle that repeats roughly every two hours and signals the body's need for rest. During pregnancy, when internal demands are dramatically higher, pushing through that cycle rather than honoring it costs women more than they realize. A ten to twenty minute rest with a guided meditation is not laziness. It triggers the same recovery processes that happen during sleep, supports the nervous system, helps process emotional residue, and changes your state of being in a way that shifts everything that flows from it. Marie's YouTube channel, where she is easiest to find, is full of free guided meditations and holistic support resources for every stage of pregnancy, including early anxiety, morning sickness, and healing after miscarriage.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
How Do You Rebuild Your Life After Losing Everything in One Day? with Dr. Carolyn Colleen
There are guests who share information, and then there are guests who share themselves. Dr. Carolyn Colleen is the latter. A keynote speaker, delegate for the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and creator of the FIERCE Method, she joins Mariah and Monique with a story that begins in a driveway, shaking, and ends at a podium at the United Nations. What happened in between is not a highlight reel. It is a methodical, hard-won, five-minutes-at-a-time climb out of the darkest kind of uncertainty, and she has turned every lesson from it into a practical framework that women around the world are using to reclaim their capacity, their direction, and themselves.
Episode Highlights
Storms Do Not End, but You Can Learn to Navigate Them
The Driveway Moment That Changed Everything
What the FIERCE Method Actually Is: BFF, Your New Best Friend
How to Use the Five-Minute Window When You Are Triggered
Thinking in 100-Year Goals to Make Today's Decisions Easier
Where to Find Dr. Carolyn Colleen and Her Free Resources
Storms Do Not End, but You Can Learn to Navigate Them
One of the most honest reframes in this episode comes early, when Carolyn describes her view of life's hardships not as exceptions to be survived but as a permanent feature of the human experience. Her framing: at any given moment, you are either in a storm, just coming out of one, or heading into one. The goal is not to make the storms stop. The goal is to get better at navigating them. She traces this understanding back to experiences of abuse she survived at a young age, through a divorce she did not want but ultimately chose, through reinvention after loss, and finally through a 20-year goal she accomplished in less than three years. Each storm, she reflects, gave her the capacity to dream bigger than she had been able to before.
The Driveway Moment That Changed Everything
Carolyn shares the scene that anchors this episode: sitting in her car in the driveway of the house that held her marriage, her children, and the future she had planned, unable to move. Her body was shaking, her heart was racing, and she was in the middle of a panic attack she did not yet have a name for. What she did have, in that moment, was a decision. She could walk through that door ragged and reactive, or she could choose who she was going to be before she touched the handle. She took a breath, focused on that future version of herself, and went in five minutes at a time to begin discussing the terms of a divorce she did not want but needed. That moment became the foundation of the FIERCE Method.
What the FIERCE Method Actually Is: BFF, Your New Best Friend
The FIERCE Method centers on a three-part practice Carolyn calls BFF: Breathe, Focus, Fierce Action. It is designed to be used in real time, in the middle of difficulty, not after the fact in a journal. The breathe step is exactly what it sounds like: getting present enough to interrupt the automatic response. Focus means future-visioning, asking yourself how you want to show up and who you are choosing to be in this specific moment. Fierce action is the third step, and the word fierce is deliberate. It is not passive action or reluctant action. It is harnessing the emotion that has come up, whether that is anxiety, anger, grief, or even the pull of late-night impulse shopping, and using it as fuel to move in a direction that serves you rather than one that self-sabotages. The whole thing happens five minutes at a time, because five minutes is always doable.
How to Use the Five-Minute Window When You Are Triggered
One of the most useful parts of this conversation is Carolyn walking through what the BFF framework looks like in ordinary, everyday moments, not just crises. When a provocative email lands in your inbox and you feel the pull to respond immediately, that is a BFF moment. When you are scrolling at 11pm and see a sale on something you do not need, that is a BFF moment. Take a breath. Focus on what you actually want, the beach trip in November, the version of yourself who responds rather than reacts. Harness the emotion of that trigger and use it as fuel to put the phone down, take a walk, give it 24 hours. Five minutes becomes ten, becomes twenty, and by the end of it the email does not feel as urgent and the impulse has passed. What you have done in that window is chosen yourself.
Thinking in 100-Year Goals to Make Today's Decisions Easier
One of the more striking ideas Carolyn introduces is the 100-year goal: not a plan you will live to execute, but a legacy question. What do you want people to still be saying about you after you are gone? She references the belief held in some cultures that a person does not truly pass on until the last person speaks their name, and uses it as a prompt for reverse engineering how to live. When you get clear on what you want your 100-year legacy to look like, you can work backward to your 20-year vision, your five-year direction, your next year's priorities, and finally to the next five minutes. Decision fatigue, she says, lessens dramatically when every small choice is being filtered through a clear sense of who you are choosing to be. It turns out that most of the things crowding your calendar and your attention stop mattering as much when you hold them up against that bigger frame.
Where to Find Dr. Carolyn Colleen and Her Free Resources
Dr. Carolyn Colleen's work is available across multiple platforms, including her website and school community, where she offers free daily reset tools and a resourcefulness lab with grant resources specifically for women business owners. Her TEDx talk is also available online and gives a fuller picture of her journey and methodology. She can be found on Facebook and Instagram, and as she puts it with characteristic directness: Google her name and she will be at the top of all of it. Links to her resources will be in the show notes.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Writing Your Own Job Description with Dr. Emily Langdon
Not every guest arrives with a polished elevator pitch. Some arrive with a story, a sense of humor, a California accent, and a very clear sense of what they believe in. Dr. Emily Langdon, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth and partner of UMD Chancellor Charles Langdon, is that kind of guest. In this episode, she joins Mariah and Monique for a conversation that moves from her unexpected path to Duluth to her deep conviction that leadership is not a personality trait you are born with. It is something that can and should be taught, practiced, and claimed, especially by women.
Episode Highlights
How a California Girl Ended Up Putting Down Roots in Duluth
What It Means to Be the Partner of a University Chancellor
Why Leadership Should Be Taught, Not Just Modeled
The Co-Curricular Experience and Why It Matters More Than the Major
What Women in Leadership Rooms Already Know
The Book Emily Recommends and Where to Learn More
How a California Girl Ended Up Putting Down Roots in Duluth
Emily grew up in Northern California, earned her undergraduate degree at UC Davis and her PhD at UCLA, and spent years working in higher education in California and Ohio before landing in Duluth. The move was not entirely a surprise: her husband Charles is a Minnesotan, and she had been quietly watching for the right opportunity to bring him home for years. When a chancellor position opened at UMD, she was the one who spotted it, drafted thoughts for the cover letter, and, by her own cheerful admission, checked the deadline when he thought he had missed it. What she did not anticipate was arriving in a new city with no formal job description of her own, having left a student affairs career in California to support a role the university did not have a clear template for.
What It Means to Be the Partner of a University Chancellor
Emily speaks candidly about the unusual position she occupies at UMD: deeply connected to the institution through her husband's role, yet navigating that connection with constant awareness of how it might be perceived. She disclosed her relationship to colleagues proactively and early, not wanting anyone to feel surprised or manipulated. She also draws a gentle parallel to the first ladies of the United States, noting that being adjacent to a decision-maker does not have to mean being sidelined. It can mean carving out meaningful, independent work in an area you genuinely care about. For Emily, that area is leadership, and she has been finding her way into conversations, classrooms, student organizations, and community events to do exactly that.
Why Leadership Should Be Taught, Not Just Modeled
One of the most substantive threads in this episode is Emily's argument that leadership is a learnable skill, not an inherited trait, and that universities are one of the best places to develop it. She uses a biology lab metaphor that lands cleanly: reading the textbook gives you intellectual knowledge, and dissecting the frog gives you real-world experience, but you need both to truly understand what you are looking at. Leadership works the same way. Gaining knowledge about what good leadership looks like, then actually practicing it in clubs, sports teams, student organizations, and collaborative projects, is what builds the kind of grounded confidence that holds up in the real world. Her concern is that too many students move through college without anyone deliberately teaching them this, even though virtually every university mission statement includes something about developing future leaders.
The Role of Mentorship and Community in Getting Through the Fire
Becky is emphatic that healing of this depth is not something anyone does alone, and her own experience makes the case plainly. Her 12-step sponsor, a meditation and yoga teacher named Holly, introduced her to a frequency of healing she had not known existed, and Becky credits that relationship as foundational to everything that followed. She describes healing as something you absorb by proximity, a collective and tribal process where being in the presence of someone who has already walked through the fire levels you up in a way no amount of personal research or self-reflection can replicate. The mentorship model she experienced is now at the center of how she works with her own clients and students.
The Co-Curricular Experience and Why It Matters More Than the Major
Emily makes a strong case for what higher education calls the co-curriculum: everything that happens outside the classroom. The marketing club where students run a real project. The sorority that, when led well, is actually a women's leadership organization. The percussion ensemble where sub-teams have to coordinate without a faculty member directing every beat. These are the spaces, she says, where students are cutting up the frogs, learning collaboration, accountability, and how to get things done in a group when the stakes are real but the consequences of failure are still manageable. She sees this as the particular gift of college that cannot be replicated anywhere else, and it is part of why she and her husband are investing in their twin daughters' university experiences without hesitation.
What Women in Leadership Rooms Already Know
Some of the most energizing moments in this episode come when Emily talks about women and leadership in the same breath. She describes looking around boardroom tables and committee rooms and immediately clocking which women are going to be the ones who actually move things forward, regardless of their title. She talks about the vice president who is clearly running the meeting while someone else holds the formal authority. And she names something that resonates: when you have been taught what good leadership actually looks like, you cannot be fooled by bad leadership dressed up as confidence. That knowledge is its own form of protection and power.
The Book Emily Recommends and Where to Learn More
When asked for a leadership resource, Emily points to the work of Amy Edmondson, a researcher and author whose latest book explores the value of making mistakes and learning from them rather than treating failure as evidence of inadequacy. The core idea: there is a right way to be wrong, and it involves treating every misstep as data, adjusting, and moving forward rather than getting stuck in self-blame. Emily notes this is particularly resonant for women, who she observes tend to be harder on themselves than the situation warrants. You can find Dr. Emily Langdon through the University of Minnesota Duluth, and Mariah and Monique are already planning to have her back on the podcast for round two.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Hardwired to Belong: A Conversation on Betrayal, Presence, and Coming Home to Yourself with Becky Moller
Some guests arrive on a podcast with credentials. Others arrive with a story. Becky brings both, and the combination is striking. A mindfulness teacher, author, and mentor based in Utah, she has spent the last ten years building a life and a body of work out of what most people would consider a breaking point. In this episode, she joins Mariah and Monique to talk about betrayal trauma, the unexpected role the body plays in healing, and why the most powerful thing she has ever offered the world is also the most human: her pain.
Episode Highlights
How Betrayal Trauma Became the Doorway to Healing
Why the Body Is Not Optional in Trauma Recovery
The Mind, Body, Spirit Triangle and Why All Three Must Work Together
The Role of Mentorship and Community in Getting Through the Fire
What the Conditioning We Never Chose Has to Do with Our Pain
Becky's Book, Programs, and Where to Find Her
How Betrayal Trauma Became the Doorway to Healing
In 2014, Becky's husband disclosed an online relationship, the culmination of years of cycling addiction that had quietly been escalating. What happened next surprised even her. Someone who had always been high-functioning and capable of managing everything suddenly could not function at all. Rather than framing it as a collapse, Becky now sees that moment as the thing that finally forced her to look at pain she had been carrying long before her husband's disclosure. What he did, she explains, did not create the wound. It exposed what was already there, and the healing she had to do had far less to do with him than it did with learning to fully love and accept every part of herself.
Why the Body Is Not Optional in Trauma Recovery
One of the most powerful threads running through this conversation is Becky's understanding of the body as an active participant in healing, not just a bystander. As a longtime group fitness instructor at two universities, she noticed that getting up to teach each day was moving her trauma through her in a way that journaling and thinking simply could not replicate. This eventually led her to pursue a two-year mindfulness teacher certification with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, as well as a 300-hour yoga certification. The insight she kept returning to: the body wants to close down and protect itself when we are hurting, and real healing requires working with the nervous system to soften rather than contract, creating space for something new rather than trying to return to who you were before.
The Mind, Body, Spirit Triangle and Why All Three Must Work Together
Becky is clear that no single part of the mind-body-spirit triad can carry the full weight of healing alone. Her program, Undone Academy, pairs mindfulness principles with embodiment practices specifically because she has seen how people open differently after movement than they do after sitting with a concept intellectually. When breath is paired with physical movement, people access presence in a way that is not reachable through thinking alone, and presence, she says, is the portal to the deeper self that already knows how to heal. Her role as a teacher and mentor is largely about helping people get out of their own way long enough for that inner intelligence to come through.
The Role of Mentorship and Community in Getting Through the Fire
Becky is emphatic that healing of this depth is not something anyone does alone, and her own experience makes the case plainly. Her 12-step sponsor, a meditation and yoga teacher named Holly, introduced her to a frequency of healing she had not known existed, and Becky credits that relationship as foundational to everything that followed. She describes healing as something you absorb by proximity, a collective and tribal process where being in the presence of someone who has already walked through the fire levels you up in a way no amount of personal research or self-reflection can replicate. The mentorship model she experienced is now at the center of how she works with her own clients and students.
What the Conditioning We Never Chose Has to Do with Our Pain
One of the quieter but more resonant ideas in this episode is Becky's observation that much of the pressure and dissonance people carry comes from beliefs and rules they absorbed rather than consciously chose. Who told you life had to look this way? Who decided that is who you are supposed to be? Breaking through that conditioning layer, she suggests, is what creates the open space needed to say yes when a synchronicity appears, to let life lead rather than constantly trying to control it. Eckhart Tolle's framework comes up here: when something feels light and easy, you are aligned. When it feels heavy and hard, something is worth examining.
Becky's Book, Programs, and Where to Find Her
Becky's book, Undone: Unafraid, is available on Amazon and offers an intimate, honest account of moving through a rock bottom and finding the way home to yourself, not the way around the pain, but through it. Her year-long Undone Academy program offers a mindfulness lifestyle framework built from what she learned through 12-step recovery and her years of teaching. She also offers a couples retreat and, launching June 1st, a 60-day Mindful Summer Challenge that combines movement, conscious eating, and daily body-based presence practices in about 30 minutes a day. Free content is available every Monday on her YouTube channel, and she is also active on Instagram. Her website, where you can find all of her offerings and her full story, is simply her name: Becky's website is linked in the show notes.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What Your Bloodwork Isn’t Telling You /w Dafna Chazin
If you have ever left a doctor's appointment feeling dismissed, handed a prescription you did not fully understand, or told your labs were "normal" while still feeling terrible, you are not alone. In this episode, Mariah and Monique sit down with registered dietitian Dafna Chazin, who has spent over 15 years in women's health and now specializes in helping women with PCOS regulate their cycles and improve fertility through food and lifestyle changes. Her path to this work was personal, and that is exactly what makes her perspective so worth listening to
Episode Highlights
What Is PCOS and Why Was the Name Just Changed?
Why "Normal" Blood Work Does Not Always Mean You Are Healthy
How Dafna's Program Works: Personalized Plans, Real-Time Feedback, and Learning to Eat for Life
Four Practical Nutrition Habits That Work for Most Women
Why Eating Too Perfectly Can Actually Work Against You
How to Find Dafna and Get Support
What Is PCOS and Why Was the Name Just Changed?
PCOS, long known as polycystic ovary syndrome, was recently renamed to PMOS, which stands for poly endocrine metabolic ovary syndrome. The new name better reflects what the condition actually is: not just a reproductive issue, but a metabolic one that can affect weight, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular health. Dafna explains that many women with PCOS are not getting adequate care because the medical system tends to manage symptoms rather than address root causes. Her work focuses on getting to the source of hormonal imbalance through nutrition, which, she emphasizes, is backed by solid research and produces real, lasting results.
Why "Normal" Blood Work Does Not Always Mean You Are Healthy
One of the most validating parts of this episode is Dafna's explanation of how standard lab ranges often fail women. Most reference ranges were built using a bell curve of mixed populations, and in some cases, data skewed toward male physiology. A result can fall within the "normal" range while still sitting at the edge of optimal function, and if your body happens to be sensitive to that marker, you will feel it. Dafna approaches lab work from a functional medicine perspective, looking not just at whether something flags high or low, but whether it is in the range where your body can actually thrive. Her message: if your doctor says everything looks fine but you still feel like something is off, keep asking questions.
How Dafna's Program Works: Personalized Plans, Real-Time Feedback, and Learning to Eat for Life
Dafna's coaching program combines group support with individual guidance, starting with a comprehensive blood panel to understand each woman's hormonal picture before anything else. From there, every client receives a customized food and supplement plan tailored to their specific results, rather than a generic protocol that may miss the mark entirely. One of the standout features of her program is a meal photo journal where clients upload pictures of what they eat and receive real-time feedback, turning everyday meals into a learning opportunity rather than a pass-fail test. Her larger goal is not perfection but fluency: she wants her clients to understand their own bodies well enough that they never have to start over from scratch again.
Four Practical Nutrition Habits That Work for Most Women
Rather than overhauling everything at once, Dafna shares four evidence-based habits she returns to again and again with clients. First, eat on a consistent schedule with three meals and one to two snacks rather than grazing throughout the day, which can keep insulin elevated for too long. Second, prioritize protein at breakfast, aiming for at least 20 to 30 grams, whether that comes from eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, or a protein shake. Third, choose high-fiber carbohydrates like beans, legumes, sweet potatoes, and quinoa to keep blood sugar and energy steady throughout the day and reduce the afternoon crash many women experience. Fourth, take a 10 to 15 minute walk after meals when possible, since even brief movement helps cells draw sugar from the bloodstream, lowering blood sugar and insulin more effectively than a single longer workout session might.
Why Eating Too Perfectly Can Actually Work Against You
In one of the more surprising moments of the episode, Dafna talks about nudging clients to loosen up when their meal journals look too spotless. Rigid, all-or-nothing eating is a setup for the exact cycle she is trying to help women escape: follow the plan perfectly, hit one hard moment, abandon everything, and start over. Her approach actively builds in flexibility from the beginning, because a person who knows how to eat a slice of birthday cake and keep going is far more resilient than someone who has only ever practiced perfection. The GPS analogy she uses is worth keeping in mind: a wrong turn does not erase your destination. You just recalculate and keep going.
How to Find Dafna and Get Support
Dafna works with women dealing with PCOS, irregular cycles, and fertility challenges through her online coaching program, which is available regardless of where you live. She can be found on Instagram at @pcosnutritionistdafna, and her website includes information on her program as well as a way to reach out directly. Whether you are deep in a fertility journey or simply feel like something in your body is off and no one has given you a satisfying answer, she encourages you to get in touch and start a conversation about your goals.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Why You Actually Get People Wrong (and What Generations Have to Do With It)
Right now, for the first time in history, five distinct generations are alive and interacting with each other every single day, at work, at home, at the dinner table, and everywhere in between. In this episode, Mariah and Monique break down each generation, who they are, what shaped them, and how to connect with them more meaningfully. The goal is not to label or stereotype but to extend the kind of grace that comes from understanding: everyone was formed by the world they were born into, and knowing that context changes everything.
Episode Highlights
Baby Boomers: Loyalty, Hard Work, and the Weight of Unspoken Emotions
Gen X: Independent, Skeptical, and Built to Figure Things Out Alone
Millennials: Purpose-Driven, Growth-Oriented, and Changing the Conversation Around Mental Health
Gen Z: Digitally Native, Radically Inclusive, and Quietly Overwhelmed
Gen Alpha: The Most Tech-Integrated Generation Yet
How to Connect Across Generations: Empathy Over Judgment
Baby Boomers (Born 1946 to 1964): Loyalty, Hard Work, and the Weight of Unspoken Emotions
Baby Boomers are defined by their work ethic, their loyalty, and a deep respect for authority and hierarchy. Many of them grew up in households shaped by parents who had lived through the Depression or served in war, which created a culture of getting through things rather than talking about them. Emotional expression was not exactly modeled or encouraged, which means that if a Boomer in your life struggles to go deep, it is worth remembering they may simply never have been taught how. To connect well with this generation, show genuine respect for their experience, be clear and direct, and acknowledge their contributions rather than dismissing what they have built.
Gen X (Born 1965 to 1980): Independent, Skeptical, and Built to Figure Things Out Alone
Gen X grew up in the era of dual-income households, latchkey afternoons, and the earliest days of personal technology. They became resourceful and self-reliant by necessity, and as a result they tend to be skeptical of authority, fiercely protective of their autonomy, and deeply allergic to anything that feels performative or inauthentic. Trust with this generation is built through consistency over time, not promises. They also value work-life balance in a way their parents did not, which Mariah and Monique connect to why so many Gen Xers have gravitated toward entrepreneurship: they want to do meaningful work on their own terms.
Millennials (Born 1981 to 1996): Purpose-Driven, Growth-Oriented, and Changing the Conversation Around Mental Health
Millennials are the generation that brought emotional intelligence and personal development into mainstream culture, and that contribution deserves more credit than it typically gets. They came of age during a recession, with mounting student debt and the full arrival of social media, which wired them for both collaboration and comparison. They thrive when they understand the deeper why behind what they are doing, and they respond well to feedback and encouragement for growth. The flip side is that their introspective nature can tip into overthinking and burnout, so the most helpful thing you can offer a Millennial is validation without over-coddling and a sense that what they are doing actually matters.
Gen Z (Born 1997 to 2012): Digitally Native, Radically Inclusive, and Quietly Overwhelmed
Gen Z never knew a world without the internet, and that has shaped them into some of the most globally aware, authentically inclusive, and mentally health-conscious young people in history. They are also, understandably, among the most anxious, carrying the weight of constant connectivity, social media comparison, and an awareness of global issues that previous generations simply did not have access to at the same age. They value realness above almost everything else and can detect inauthenticity instantly, which is why they are among the loudest voices pushing back against AI-generated content in academic settings. To connect with Gen Z, be concise, be genuine, and create psychological safety so they feel free to show up without performing.
Gen Alpha (Born 2013 to Present): The Most Tech-Integrated Generation Yet
Gen Alpha has never known a world without AI, Instacart, or a screen within arm's reach, and they are learning and processing information at a pace no previous generation has matched. They are visually oriented, fast learners, and growing up with more emotionally aware parenting than any generation before them, which is genuinely hopeful. The challenge is that without intentional guidance, they risk developing shortened attention spans, low frustration tolerance, and a dependence on external stimulation that makes stillness and critical thinking hard to access. Supporting this generation well means encouraging creativity and independent thought, balancing technology with real-world experience, and teaching emotional regulation as an active, practiced skill rather than something they will simply absorb on their own.
How to Connect Across Generations: Empathy Over Judgment
The most useful takeaway from this episode is also the simplest: when you are struggling to understand someone from a different generation, stop asking your peers and go ask someone from that generation instead. Mariah shares a story about watching her mother offer relationship advice to her Gen X friends about navigating their own Boomer mothers, and the room shifted the moment a voice from inside that experience spoke. Generational friction is almost never about anyone being wrong. It is about people starting from completely different places shaped by completely different worlds, and judgment is the fastest way to close that door. Curiosity, context, and a willingness to ask the right people the right questions can open it back up.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Clutter You Can’t See: a Conversation on Spiritual Decluttering with Monique
In the final installment of their decluttering series, Mariah and Monique turn their attention to the kind of clutter you cannot see, photograph, or drop off at Goodwill. Spiritual decluttering, as Monique explains it, is not about becoming someone new. It is about removing what is outdated, borrowed, or simply no longer yours so that your truest self can come through more clearly. If physical clutter fills your car and emotional clutter fills your chest, spiritual clutter fills the space between who you actually are and the stories you have been carrying about who you are supposed to be.
Episode Highlights
What Spiritual Decluttering Actually Means (It Is Not What You Think)
How Stored Emotions Create Spiritual Stagnation
Practical Ways to Spiritually Declutter Every Day
A Simple Practice for Identifying What You Are Ready to Release
Why You Do Not Have to Do This Alone
The Bigger Picture: Letting Go as a Lifelong Practice
How Stored Emotions Create Spiritual Stagnation
One of the more grounding threads in this episode is the connection between unprocessed emotion and spiritual stuckness. When something hard happens and we do not have the tools or the space to move through it, that emotional weight does not disappear. It gets stored, and over time it can create a kind of heaviness that colors how we see ourselves and what we believe is possible. Monique describes working with clients who feel stuck or directionless, and often what they are carrying is not even theirs to begin with. The stuckness itself is a signal, the same way a cluttered car is a signal, that something needs tending to.
Practical Ways to Spiritually Declutter Every Day
The good news is that spiritual decluttering does not require a retreat or a dramatic life overhaul. Monique shares that the practices she returns to most consistently are meditation and journaling, both of which create space to observe the mental chatter rather than get swept up in it. Other approaches that came up in conversation include prayer, time in nature, rest, worship within community, podcasts and books that ask meaningful questions, and even energy work like chakra balancing. The common thread across all of them is the act of pausing long enough to hear yourself, which is harder than it sounds and more essential than most of us realize.
A Simple Practice for Identifying What You Are Ready to Release
Monique walks Mariah through a brief but powerful exercise that anyone can use: take a breath, arrive in your body, and ask yourself where you feel heavy. It might be a physical sensation, a nagging thought, or a low hum of dread you have been ignoring. From there, the key question is simply this: is this mine to carry? If the answer is no, or even maybe not, you can make the conscious choice to set it down. As Monique puts it, you do not always have to work hard to release something. Sometimes you can just decide it is released and mean it.
Why You Do Not Have to Do This Alone
A recurring theme in this episode is the value of having at least one person in your life who is willing to go deeper than surface-level conversation. Monique describes the friendship between her and Mariah as a form of mutual spiritual accountability, the kind of relationship where "how are you" actually means something. For those who do not have that naturally, she encourages seeking out an energy worker, a spiritual coach, a therapist, a faith community, or even a curated book group where these conversations can happen in a held, intentional space. Decluttering of any kind, she notes, is almost always easier when you are not doing it alone.
The Bigger Picture: Letting Go as a Lifelong Practice
The episode closes with a perspective that gives the whole series its deepest roots: letting go is not a one-time event. It is the rhythm of being alive. Monique reflects on how we are wired to accumulate, whether it is stuff, beliefs, grief, or old stories about ourselves, and that the real work is learning to release with as much intentionality as we hold on. Mariah connects this to her own experience of empty nesting, unexpected loss, and the way every ending eventually makes room for something new. The prompt they leave listeners with is simple: every day, ask yourself what one thing you can let go of. Then choose again. And again.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Does a Cluttered Home Really Affect Your Mental Health?
There is a reason that pile in your office has been sitting there for three months. It is not laziness, and it is not a lack of time. In this episode, Mariah and Monique get honest about the surprisingly emotional weight of physical clutter and why so many of us are paralyzed by it even when we know exactly what needs to be done. From cars full of winter clothes to closets packed with memories we are not ready to release, this conversation meets you right where you are and offers a practical, compassionate path forward.
Episode Highlights
Why Physical Clutter and Mental Clutter Are the Same Problem
How to Start Decluttering Without Getting Overwhelmed
The Power of Habit Stacking and Rewarding Yourself Along the Way
When Clutter Is Emotional: Clothes, Papers, and the Things We Cannot Let Go
Using the WAVE Method to Move Through Decluttering Resistance
Where to Start and What Resources Can Help
Why Physical Clutter and Mental Clutter Are the Same Problem
Clutter does not stay in the corners where you leave it. Mariah points out that for people with ADHD tendencies or busy, layered lives, a cluttered environment directly feeds a cluttered inner state, and the two keep feeding each other in a loop. What makes it even harder is that we live in a deeply materialist culture where stuff accumulates faster than we can process it. Fast fashion, trinkets, sentimental items from every chapter of life: it all adds up, and most of us were never taught what to do with it. Recognizing that your exterior environment often reflects your interior one is not a judgment. It is the first honest step.
Why Running from Emotions Makes Them Bigger
Clutter does not stay in the corners where you leave it. Mariah points out that for people with ADHD tendencies or busy, layered lives, a cluttered environment directly feeds a cluttered inner state, and the two keep feeding each other in a loop. What makes it even harder is that we live in a deeply materialist culture where stuff accumulates faster than we can process it. Fast fashion, trinkets, sentimental items from every chapter of life: it all adds up, and most of us were never taught what to do with it. Recognizing that your exterior environment often reflects your interior one is not a judgment. It is the first honest step.
How to Start Decluttering Without Getting Overwhelmed
The key to breaking through the paralysis is not motivation. It is structure. Mariah walks through her own plan in real time, starting with the most emotionally neutral space she has: her car. The approach is straightforward: divide what is in the space into categories (put away, trash, donate), then complete each task from start to finish without putting things down halfway. What makes this method work is the insistence on small, sequenced steps rather than trying to overhaul everything at once. One completed loop creates the momentum for the next one, and that momentum is what carries you further than willpower ever could.
The Power of Habit Stacking and Rewarding Yourself Along the Way
One of the most practical ideas in this episode is pairing a dreaded task with something genuinely appealing. If you are heading across town to drop off donations, what other errand could you fold in? A coffee stop, a car wash, a visit to a friend? Monique calls this habit stacking: lining up tasks so that the act of doing one makes the next one easier or more appealing. The dopamine hit of completing something, especially when paired with a small reward, is not a trick. It is how human brains actually work, and using it intentionally is a form of self-kindness.
When Clutter Is Emotional: Clothes, Papers, and the Things We Cannot Let Go
Not all clutter is created equal, and Mariah is candid about the difference between spaces that feel logistically messy and spaces that carry real emotional weight. Her car: not emotional. Her stack of office paperwork: oddly charged in a way she has not fully unpacked. Her closet: a full archive of past selves, past relationships, past chapters of life that she is not entirely ready to close. Monique shares her own experience of recruiting a radically honest friend to help sort through clothes, only to find herself in tears over things she had not worn in years. The insight here is worth sitting with: sometimes the clutter you cannot touch is telling you something that deserves your attention before you reach for a trash bag.
Using the WAVE Method to Move Through Decluttering Resistance
Toward the end of the episode, Mariah connects the decluttering conversation back to the WAVE acronym introduced in a previous episode: Witness, Allow, Validate, Explore. Applied to physical clutter, it looks like this: witness what is actually in front of you without judgment, allow yourself to feel however you feel about it, validate that letting go is genuinely hard and that you were never really taught how, and then explore what the possibilities are on the other side of releasing it. This reframe transforms decluttering from a chore into something closer to an act of self-respect, and it makes the hard moments in the process feel far more navigable.
Where to Start and What Resources Can Help
Mariah's honest suggestion is to begin with whatever feels least emotionally loaded, get a win, celebrate it, and build from there. For the spaces that carry more weight, enlisting a trusted, honest friend can make a real difference. Two shows worth looking up for inspiration are The Home Edit and Marie Kondo's Netflix series, both of which offer practical frameworks alongside the emotional side of letting go. And if things have gotten truly overwhelming, even the show Hoarders, as Mariah jokes, serves as a reminder of where avoidance ultimately leads. The point is simply to start somewhere, with one thing, and trust that the next step will reveal itself.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
WAVE: A Simple Tool for Riding Life’s Emotional Intensities
Some of the most useful things we ever learn come from a friend over coffee, not a textbook. In this episode, Mariah shares a powerful emotional processing tool she learned from her close friend Amy Fogarty, a nurse and yoga teacher based out of Santa Fe. The acronym is WAVE, and while it is simple enough to remember in the middle of a hard moment, its implications run deep. Mariah and Monique unpack it together, weaving in personal stories and a broader conversation about why so many of us were never taught to sit with our emotions in the first place.
Episode Highlights
What the WAVE Acronym Means and How to Use It
Why Running from Emotions Makes Them Bigger
How This Tool Applies to Parenting and Raising Emotionally Intelligent Kids
The Cultural Weight Women Carry Around Emotional Expression
Why Emotional Waves Are Also Where Growth Happens
A Challenge to Try WAVE the Next Time You Feel Flooded
What the WAVE Acronym Means and How to Use It
WAVE stands for Witness, Allow, Validate, and Explore, and it is designed to walk you through an emotionally charged moment rather than around it. You begin by simply witnessing the emotion: stepping outside of it just enough to observe that it is happening without being fully consumed by it. From there, you allow the emotion to exist without trying to push it down or rush it along. Then you validate it with genuine compassion, acknowledging that what you are feeling is real and that being human is hard. Finally, you explore: noticing where the emotion lives in your body, what it might need, and whether gentle movement, breath, or stillness could help it pass through.
Why Running from Emotions Makes Them Bigger
One of the most honest exchanges in the episode is when Mariah and Monique both admit that avoiding an emotion tends to amplify it. Mariah describes it as trying to swim past a massive wave only to get caught in the spin cycle, and references a friend who visualizes intense emotions as a dragon growing in the corner that only gets smaller once you walk over and befriend it. The episode draws a direct line between unprocessed emotion and the very real harm it causes, noting that people carrying unacknowledged pain tend to express it sideways, in relationships, in behavior, in their bodies.
How This Tool Applies to Parenting and Raising Emotionally Intelligent Kids
Monique brings up one of the episode's most resonant applications: using WAVE as a parenting framework. Rather than reflexively telling children not to cry or that something is not a big deal, the approach invites parents to let kids ride their own emotional waves. Monique reflects that by resisting the urge to stuff her children's emotions away, she raised kids who can now navigate their own intensity with maturity. Mariah echoes this by sharing how she handled her daughter's college rejection in real time, validating the disappointment fully before helping her look toward what might be a better fit.
The Cultural Weight Women Carry Around Emotional Expression
The conversation takes a candid turn when both hosts acknowledge the pressure women face to hold it all together. From media portrayals to professional settings where being "too emotional" is used as a criticism, women are conditioned to suppress rather than process. Mariah is quick to extend this observation to men as well, noting that boys are equally taught to stuff their feelings, which only compounds the problem across generations. The point is not that everyone should be emotionally demonstrative all the time, but that having a healthy tool for when intensity arrives is not weakness. It is wisdom.
Why Emotional Waves Are Also Where Growth Happens
In one of the episode's most encouraging moments, both women reflect on the relationship between hard emotional seasons and personal expansion. Mariah observes that looking back on her life, the periods of greatest growth almost always followed the most intense waves, not the calm stretches. The calm, she says, is necessary for gathering the energy you will need when the next wave arrives. Mariah also connects this to her work in weddings, noting that the most memorable moments in any experience tend to live in the highs and lows, not the perfectly uneventful middle.
A Challenge to Try WAVE the Next Time You Feel Flooded
Mariah closes the episode with a direct invitation: the next time an emotional wave catches you off guard, try working through WAVE before reaching for a distraction or a way out. A link to the full acronym breakdown will be available in the show notes so you can save it for a moment when you actually need it. The hosts encourage listeners to share how the tool lands for them, whether it helped them ride out something hard or gave them a new way to talk about emotions with their kids or partners. As Monique puts it, the time to learn to surf is before the big wave hits.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Rejection, Redirection & Radical Honesty: the LEAP Story Continues
When Mariah and Monique first introduced the women's networking group LEAP back in episode 23, it was a fresh idea built on a simple but powerful belief: that crossing networks could create something greater than any one circle alone. What they could not have predicted was how beautifully that story would continue. In this episode, they welcome Krista and Kristine, the two women who took LEAP's torch and are carrying it forward with fresh energy and a shared sense of purpose. The conversation is equal parts origin story, business wisdom, and a genuine love letter to what happens when women show up for each other.
Episode Highlights
How Career Pivots Can Redirect You Toward Your Calling
What Makes Women's Networking Different When It Is Done Right
Why Paying to Be in the Room Actually Matters
How to Make a Referral That Actually Lands
The Role of Radical Honesty in Strong Partnerships
How to Find LEAP and What to Expect When You Attend
How Career Pivots Can Redirect You Toward Your Calling
Both Krista and Kristine arrived at their current paths through unexpected professional transitions, and neither story is short on meaning. Krista lost a retail leadership position post-Covid, a role she had poured her identity into for years, only to be nudged by a financial advisor to consider the very industry she least expected. That conversation led her to become a licensed financial advisor and eventually VP of Retirement Solutions at North Shore Bank of Commerce in Duluth. Kristine's path ran parallel in spirit: after being let go from a company she had invested deeply in, including going back to earn her MBA, she launched Reinvent Your Hustle, built a national women's mastermind, hosted retreats, and later transitioned into real estate. For both women, what looked like a closed door opened into something far more aligned with who they actually are.
What Makes Women's Networking Different When It Is Done Right
A recurring theme in this episode is the difference between networking the way it has traditionally been done and networking in a way that actually fits how women connect. The hosts and guests all push back on the business-card-passing, competitive, transactional model that dominates many professional spaces. LEAP is designed around something different: a moveable format that rotates venues across Duluth, a curated sensory experience, and a structure that moves from community building into a signature "ask" segment at the end of each gathering. As Kristine puts it, you are one conversation away from your next opportunity, but you have to put yourself in the room first.
Why Paying to Be in the Room Actually Matters
One of the more candid moments in the episode comes when Kristine and Krista talk openly about the financial model behind LEAP. The annual membership is $347, individual events are $45, and the majority of that money flows back into the events themselves, with 10% going to charitable giving. Their point is not about the dollar amount but about the psychology of investment: when you pay to be somewhere, you show up. That skin-in-the-game principle is what keeps LEAP's membership engaged rather than a revolving door of faces who never return. The hosts also reflect on the original group's journey from founding to successfully selling the business, noting that abundance shows up in more ways than a revenue line.
How to Make a Referral That Actually Lands
Kristine walks through one of LEAP's most practical teaching moments: a step-by-step framework for making referrals that follow through. The process starts with understanding what someone needs and ends with a warm introduction that borrows your personal trust and bridges the gap between two strangers. Key steps include asking how the person prefers to be contacted, finding a genuine point of similarity to anchor the introduction, and following up within 24 hours before life gets in the way. The insight that every woman is already in sales, whether she knows it or not, reframes the discomfort many women feel around asking or advocating as something that just needs a clearer blueprint.
The Role of Radical Honesty in Strong Partnerships
What makes the Krista and Kristine partnership work, by their own description, is a mutual commitment to saying the hard thing with care. They did not come into this as lifelong best friends, which paradoxically gave them the freedom to be honest with each other from the start. Mariah connects this to what she calls "radical honesty," the practice of leading with truth while protecting the intention behind it. The conversation touches on how women are often socialized to manage other people's emotions at the expense of clear communication, and how releasing that habit, with the right partner, can become a genuine superpower in both business and friendship.
How to Find LEAP and What to Expect When You Attend
LEAP, which stands for Leaders, Entrepreneurs and Professionals, hosts approximately eight events per year in rotating Duluth-area venues. Upcoming events include a gathering at Salida's Mansion, courtesy of Heirloom Properties. The next event in May 2026 is free for first-time attendees, and the annual membership runs $347 for those who decide to commit. Each event blends open networking, a facilitated topic or speaker, small group reflection, and the signature ask segment. You can find current event details at leapduluth.com, and first-timers are encouraged to bring a friend or simply show up solo, because the format is designed to make you feel welcome either way.
All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
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Building Community in the North with Sara Zeleznikar of Odyssey Resorts
This week, we got to do something that always feels extra special—we had a guest in the studio. And not just any guest. We had Sara Zeleznikar, Director of Sales for Odyssey Resorts, and someone I had very intentionally “found” because I knew there was something aligned between us before we had even officially met.
What unfolded was one of those conversations that reminded us how much beauty there is in following a hunch, reaching out, and trusting that the right people really do end up in your orbit.
Sara shared about her work with Odyssey Resorts, the joy of creating meaningful guest experiences, and the heart behind 218 Days - a celebration of Northern Minnesota built around the 218 area code and all the hardy, creative, community-driven people who call this place home.
And honestly? The more we talked, the more it became clear that this wasn’t just a conversation about tourism or events. It was a conversation about identity, belonging, memory-making, and building something that helps people love where they live even more.
“Community doesn’t just happen. It gets built.”
In this episode, we cover:
02:21 — How Sara and Monique really connected
05:25 — What Sara does at Odyssey Resorts
08:41 — What is 218 Days?
13:28 — From 30 partners to 130+
16:17 — Why there’s no catch
22:34 — Building the team behind the vision
27:01 — Who Sara is outside of work
32:33 — Why rest is not wasted
Hey Heart and Soul Collective!
This episode was such a fun one for us because we got to have a guest back in the studio — and not just any guest. We sat down with Sara Zeleznikar, Director of Sales for Odyssey Resorts, and the conversation felt like one of those beautiful reminders that the right people really do find each other at the right time.
Of course, in true Monique fashion, this connection began with what we lovingly call “secret stalking.” She saw someone doing meaningful work, knew there was alignment, and decided to reach out. And honestly? We love that energy. Sara shared her side of the story too, and what came through so clearly was that this wasn’t just networking. It was one of those universe-level connections that turns into something meaningful.
What unfolded in this conversation was bigger than business. We talked about hospitality, memory-making, winter in the North, loving where you live, and what it looks like to build something that could one day become part of a region’s identity. Sara also shared the heart behind 218 Days, a growing northern Minnesota celebration centered around the 218 area code and all the magic, resilience, creativity, and community this region has to offer.
And honestly, by the end of this conversation, we were not only inspired by Sara — we were ready to start dreaming bigger right alongside her.
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All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
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The Emotional Backpack: What Are You Carrying That Isn’t Yours?
What if the thing you keep asking for can’t arrive because your hands are already full?
Sometimes the deepest decluttering we’ll ever do has nothing to do with a closet—and everything to do with what we’re still carrying inside.
This conversation started with something that sounds simple on paper: decluttering. But the more we sat with it, the more obvious it became that this isn’t just about cleaning out a drawer or finally dealing with the pile of papers on your desk.
This is about letting go. Of attachments. Of identities. Of pain that became familiar. Of roles we’ve outgrown. Of versions of ourselves that helped us survive, but may not be meant to lead us anymore.
What unfolded between us was less of a neat conversation about “getting organized” and more of an honest one about grief, safety, stuckness, and the courage it takes to open your hand.
“You can’t receive what you’re asking for without letting go and creating space for something new.”
In this episode, we cover:
00:00 Birthday energy + why this topic matters right now
01:05 Decluttering beyond the closet: identity, energy, attachments
06:04 The “five-minute pile” and what we’re really resisting
10:31 Emotional clutter: resentments, scripts, guilt, and the need to be right
12:10 The key question: what’s holding on to me?
16:18 Trauma in the body, grief as release, and the “backpacks” we carry
36:32 The clenched fist metaphor: release → receive → move forward
Hey Heart and Soul Collective!
What if the thing you’re asking for can’t fully arrive… because your hands are still full? Decluttering isn’t just about closets—it’s about letting go of what you’re clenching so you can actually receive what’s next.
Today on Heart & Soul, Monique and I went somewhere tender and real: decluttering your life—not just the physical stuff, but the emotional baggage, the spiritual noise, the energetic tethers, and even the identities we’ve outgrown.
We started by naming the obvious truth: letting go sounds simple in theory, but it’s messy under the hood. Because sometimes what we’re holding on to isn’t just “a thing”… it’s a story. A version of ourselves built in survival. A pain that’s become familiar. A should we’ve carried so long it feels like a personality trait.
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All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
From Stuck to Expansive: The People Who Change Your World
What if the reason you feel stuck isn’t because you’re doing it wrong… but because you’re surrounded by the same size thinking? Sometimes the fastest way forward is simply getting close to someone who reminds you what’s possible.
Today we’re talking about something we’ve both been swirling in lately, and honestly—it’s such a simple concept, but it can change everything: expanders.
Not the kind you put on your jeans (although… we did laugh about that). We mean expanders as in people—the ones who come into your life and stretch your worldview, your confidence, your curiosity, your goals… your whole sense of what’s available to you.
And the reason we love the word expansion is because growth almost implies you already know where you’re going. Expansion is different. Expansion is that “whoa, I didn’t even know this existed” feeling. It’s next level. It’s quantum. It’s like your life suddenly has more doors than you thought were even in the building.
“Growth implies you know where you’re going. Expansion is quantum.”
In this episode, we cover:
00:00 – What Are Expanders, Really?
04:05 – Manifestation & Proximity
07:38 – Signs You’re Near an Expander
12:11 – Friendship, Partnership & Expansion
16:40 – The Restaurant Story (Magic Happens Here)
19:19 – Impact & Becoming an Expander
22:26 – Introducing The Expansion Circle
26:42 – The Practical Exercise
Hey Heart and Soul Collective!
Lately, we’ve been talking a lot about manifestation, growth, and what it actually takes to move beyond feeling stuck. And one word kept surfacing for me: expanders.
Not just mentors. Not just teachers. Not just friends. But people—sometimes temporary, sometimes lifelong—who stretch your vision of what’s possible.
From the moment I met Monique years ago, I knew she was one for me. I didn’t have the word for it then. I just knew: I want her in my life. And over time, we’ve expanded each other in ways we couldn’t have predicted.
And recently, as we’ve launched our new Expansion Circle inside the Heart & Soul community, this concept has felt more alive than ever.
Because here’s what we’re realizing: Expansion isn’t accidental. It’s intentional.
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All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Wealth Consciousness: Money, Scarcity, and the Freedom to Choose
What if wealth isn’t something you chase… but something you become?
What if the shift you’ve been waiting for is less about “more money” and more about more consciousness?
The start of this year has felt… aggressive. Like the world has been loud, intense, and honestly a little wild. And yet—we’ve also felt this flicker of optimism, because we’ve been laying down plans, putting structure in place, and coming back to the work that always brings me home: reprogramming the way we think.
So today, we’re doing something a little different. We’re talking about a book that has been foundational for me—like, truly mind-pattern changing. It’s called A Happy Pocket Full of Money, and yes… the title sounds cute. But don’t let that fool you. This book is dense in the best way. It’s one of those “read two pages and sit with it for a week” kind of books. And we both have a history of returning to the books that actually change us—again and again—until we embody them.
“You don’t force abundance. You align with it.”
In this episode, we cover:
00:00 — A wild start to the year
02:36 — The book that keeps coming back
05:59 — Why abundance still feels hard, even when you ‘know better’
07:24 — Wealth consciousness vs. scarcity thinking
11:39 — Why community makes abundance easier
15:24 — How desire, belief, and reality actually work together
19:34 — Money as a tool for choice and freedom
22:25 — Why wealth can be the difference between staying and leaving
26:10 — Gratitude, giving, and remembering we live in an abundant universe
Hey Heart and Soul Collective!
Money has a way of quietly holding our fears, our stories, and our sense of safety — even when we don’t want it to. This episode isn’t about chasing money… it’s about reclaiming our relationship with abundance.
This conversation came from a place that feels very real for us right now. The start of the year has felt aggressive — heavy in ways we didn’t fully anticipate — and yet, underneath it, there’s this quiet optimism stirring. A sense that something is shifting.
We found ourselves returning to a book that has shaped our thinking before: A Happy Pocket Full of Money. Not because it’s trendy or flashy, but because it keeps meeting us where we are — especially when scarcity creeps in. We wanted to slow down, reread it together, and talk honestly about what wealth consciousness actually looks like in real life, especially as women navigating fear, systems, and responsibility.
This episode is part book talk, part personal reckoning, and part invitation — to stop playing small and start embodying abundance as a state of being.
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All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
2026 is the Year of Alignment: What to Release, What to Plant, What to Move Forward
This week, with my scratchy “sultry sick-day voice” (as Monique called it), we dove into something I’ve been swirling in lately: decision-making. Not the big glamorous kind—marriage, jobs, cities—but the quieter ones that shape our internal landscape. The ones we postpone because they feel too tangled, too emotional, or too easy to get wrong.
And as we sat together, I realized how much of my own life has been shaped by the moments I avoided choosing. The four years I stayed in a relationship I couldn’t fully commit to. The way clarity finally met me the moment I decided to let go. And the way, on the other side of every choice, there’s this incredible lightness—like opening the door that was waiting for me the whole time.
Monique echoed it beautifully: decision-making isn’t just a moment. It’s a skill. A process. A relationship with your intuition. And sometimes, the most powerful thing we can do is say out loud, “I decide.”
“Design your own life instead of letting your life be designed for you.”
In this episode, we cover:
00:00 - Happy New Year + “Hello, future you”
02:24 - Numerology: 9-year cycles + why 2026 is a “Year One”
04:12 - Snake → Horse energy: shedding, then movement and alignment
05:52 - Mariah’s ChatGPT birth chart deep dive (and why it felt so seen)
11:54 - The pressure of New Year’s + the practice of “begin again”
15:32 - Why quarterly reflections (90 days) actually work
26:19 - Intentions: “I want to feel juicy” + less scarcity, less drama
37:00 - Co-creation + getting back in the driver’s seat
Hey Heart and Soul Collective!
Have you ever felt that weird pressure at the start of a new year—like you’re supposed to wake up on January 1st and suddenly be a brand-new person? Because Monique and I are here at the very beginning of 2026 to lovingly call BS on that… and to offer a way better option: choose again.
This is our first episode of 2026, and honestly, it felt so good to be back in the studio together after the holiday swirl. We’ve been doing this podcast for almost three years now (wild), and every time we sit down, it feels like coming home—to ourselves, to each other, and to the bigger conversations we know women need.
So today, we wanted to kick off the year by sharing a handful of rituals and reflection tools that we actually use—things that help us lift our heads up, look around, and ask: Am I awake at the wheel of my own life… or am I running on autopilot?
We talk numerology (hello, nine-year cycles), astrology (Year of the Snake → Year of the Horse energy), and the surprisingly deep way ChatGPT can help you reflect when you prompt it with intention. But mostly? We talk about what it means to actively participate in your life—not just react to it.
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All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
How to Make Decisions When You Feel Stuck
There’s something deceptively “basic” about decisions—until you’re in the swirl, stuck between options, and suddenly your brain feels like a browser with 47 tabs open. In this episode, we talk about why not deciding is still a decision, and how limbo quietly drains your energy, your clarity, and your forward momentum. We share real stories (from relationships to Facebook Marketplace “manifesting portals”) that show how powerful it can be to simply choose—because a decision opens the next door.
We also break decision-making down into a six-part process you can actually use: identify what you’re truly deciding, gather data, consider alternatives, weigh both logic and emotion, choose and act, then review what happened so you can learn. Along the way, we name the real stuff that influences our choices—fear, old patterns, external voices “chirping” in our ears, authority figures, and the difference between intuition and avoidance. If you’ve been stuck, overthinking, or waiting for certainty before you move, let this be your reminder: the magic isn’t in knowing everything—it’s in choosing a direction and letting clarity meet you on the other side.
“Limbo is the real purgatory—your heart can’t move if your feet are in two different timelines.”
In this episode, we cover:
00:00 — The swirl of indecision Mariah shares her personal story of staying in limbo for years.
04:09 — The energy of choosing Why a single decision can open the next right door.
05:51 — Monique’s split-second marriage decision Following intuition without hesitation.
07:55 — What are you not deciding? How mental clutter forms when decisions are avoided.
15:55 — The role of emotions, biases, and group dynamics Wedding planning, family influence, and how external voices cloud intuition.
27:44 — Fear vs. intuition Learning to distinguish survival instinct from inner knowing.
34:12 — Real-time processing Monique vulnerably works through a business decision she’s been avoiding.
41:41 — The six components of a healthy decision A practical framework anyone can use.
43:49 — The beauty of making mistakes Why imperfect choices teach us exactly what we need to know.
Learn More about Heather
Website: HezzieMae.com
Podcast: Startin’ Some Ripples
Hey Heart and Soul Collective!
This week, with my scratchy “sultry sick-day voice” (as Monique called it), we dove into something I’ve been swirling in lately: decision-making. Not the big glamorous kind—marriage, jobs, cities—but the quieter ones that shape our internal landscape. The ones we postpone because they feel too tangled, too emotional, or too easy to get wrong.
And as we sat together, I realized how much of my own life has been shaped by the moments I avoided choosing. The four years I stayed in a relationship I couldn’t fully commit to. The way clarity finally met me the moment I decided to let go. And the way, on the other side of every choice, there’s this incredible lightness—like opening the door that was waiting for me the whole time.
Monique echoed it beautifully: decision-making isn’t just a moment. It’s a skill. A process. A relationship with your intuition. And sometimes, the most powerful thing we can do is say out loud, “I decide.”
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All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Choosing Joy Over Chaos: The Art of Becoming with Heather Wilde
Have you ever had someone show up in your life so many times in one week that you just know the universe is up to something? That’s how Heather Wilde arrived for both of us—first as a name we kept hearing, then as a woman whose presence felt like she’d always been in our circle. In this episode, we talk with Heather about the big, holy leap she took from a stable teaching career into the vulnerable world of memoir, boutique publishing, and soul-led art… all guided by intuition, spirit, and a deep desire to help others tell their stories.
Heather shares how a hospice patient’s final wish to become a published author quietly launched Hesi Mae, her publishing house, and how her work has grown to include a monthly art club, a heart-centered podcast, and an upcoming book connected to George Floyd’s legacy. We explore what it means to follow the breadcrumbs, to regulate our nervous systems instead of living on chaos and cortisol, and to embrace a season of “wintering” before the next big chapter unfolds. This conversation is an invitation to trust your timing, honor your story, and believe that joy—and creative work that feels like you—isn’t just possible, it’s your birthright.
“I realized I could be all the parts of myself—and the world wouldn’t fall apart.”
In this episode, we cover:
00:00 – Meeting Heather, the human who arrived like a ripple
02:28 – The moment her name kept showing up everywhere
06:10 – Leaving teaching + the intuitive cliff dive
08:58 – The hospice book that changed everything
13:21 – Claiming the Hesi May identity
22:18 – Scarcity, abundance, and the courage to expand
31:23 – Regulating the nervous system + the power of doing nothing
48:29 – The birth of the Monthly Art Club
56:09 – The George Floyd book: a friendship, a legacy
01:04:22 – Wintering and the season of rest
01:07:03 – Why her podcast, Starting Some Ripples, matters
Learn More about Heather
Website: HezzieMae.com
Podcast: Startin’ Some Ripples
Hey Heart and Soul Collective!
There are people who slip quietly into your life, and then there are the ones who arrive like a ripple you didn’t see coming—soft at first, but undeniable. A name you hear once, then twice, then suddenly ten times in a single week. A person who makes you wonder, how the heck did I not know you before now!
We met Heather Wilde through different portals—art, board work, book conversations, spirit nudges—but the moment she stepped into our orbit, she never stepped back out. And honestly? We wouldn’t have it any other way.
Heather isn’t just a publisher. She isn’t just an artist. She isn’t just a creator or a healer or a woman building something brave from scratch. She’s all those things PLUS is the kind of human who brings both storm and stillness. Ferocity and softness. “Female badass energy,” as we said in the episode… times ten.
And in this conversation, she let us into the season she’s in right now: the wintering, the unraveling, the rebuilding, the quiet rebellion of choosing joy and nervous system peace over the dopamine chaos we all know too well.
Her story is a reminder of what happens when you leap before the net appears—and how sometimes the leap is the first moment you realize you even deserved a net at all.
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All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Becoming the Woman My Inner Child Always Imagined
There are moments in life when everything suddenly comes into focus—when you realize the thing you’re doing right now was quietly choosing you long before you ever chose it. Sitting in the hot seat this week, I (Mariah) felt that truth settle into my bones. Josephine’s Bridal wasn’t just a business idea; it was the adult expression of the girl who once spent hours dressing her Barbies and dreaming in color. Somehow, without force or striving, I stepped into a life that feels like home.
But this season has also invited a new kind of surrender—the kind where the medicine isn’t hustle or clarity or even confidence, but spaciousness. I’m learning to embrace the “open door” era of motherhood, where the girls are becoming themselves and I’m becoming someone new too. I’m learning to rest without an agenda, to trust the timing of my life, and to let joy—not pressure—be the compass. And maybe that’s the real heart of it all: the dream wasn’t just the business… it was the ease that finally found me.
“It wasn’t the wrong timing. This business came together exactly when I was ready.”
In this episode, we cover:
00:00 — Sitting in the Hot Seat
02:00 — One Year of Josephine’s Bridal
04:50 — Week-by-Week Living vs. Wedding Industry Timelines
07:15 — The Power of Experience Over Sales
11:00 — Multigenerational Moments & Unreasonable Hospitality
13:40 — The Barbie Dreamhouse Revelation
16:00 — Finding the Zone of Genius
20:10 — What’s Next for the Business
22:35 — The Full-Circle Manifestation of Hayley Paige
26:10 — The Open Door Phase
32:00 — The Opposite Is the Medicine
37:00 — Allowing Spacious Rest
41:40 — What I Need from My People
Hey Heart and Soul Collective!
Have you ever had a moment where your entire life suddenly makes sense—like every detour, every heartbreak, every risk, every strange childhood obsession finally clicks into place? That’s what happened to me this year… and it caught me completely off guard.
This episode was my turn in the hot seat—something we make all our Heart & Soul Mastermind women do every single month. And honestly? It felt both vulnerable and energizing to share what’s been unfolding in my world.
This year has been one of the biggest shifts I’ve experienced in a long time. I hit the one-year anniversary of Josephine’s Bridal—my latest business venture—and what started as a whisper of a dream has become one of the most aligned, ease-filled experiences of my life. I’ve never felt so sure about something, and that alone has been both grounding and exhilarating.
But the past year hasn’t just been about dresses and business. It’s been about identity, motherhood transitions, rediscovery, and the wildly unexpected realization that… I am literally living out my childhood Barbie Dreamhouse fantasy. Yep. That happened.
And because nothing in my life unfolds in one tidy little theme, I’ve also been sitting with a deeper lesson—the idea that sometimes the medicine for your burnout, overwhelm, or stress is hidden in its opposite. And for me? That opposite looks like doing absolutely nothing. No timeframes. No expectations. Just open space.
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All Heart & Soul's Details:
Website: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com
Join the mastermind program: www.heartandsoulmastermind.com/heartsoul
Say hi to Mariah on Instagram: @mariahmckechnie
Say hi to Monique on Instagram: @moniqueforcier
Leave a review on the Apple Podcast app and the Spotify app: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️