Breaking the Spell: Reclaiming Your Power, Voice, and Sacred Fire

Melanie Mishler (: 00:25

Hello love and welcome back to the podcast. I'm so happy to be here with you today because I ended up skipping last week's episode since honestly, there was a lot happening in our world. If you listen to the last episode, you know, we recently closed one business then right after we flew to Belize, there was a lot of work going on down there. And then I ended up flying back to California unexpectedly.

And honestly, I just needed a little space, not logistically, but just energetically, because summers are usually the season where we slow down and we recalibrate after a busy wedding season. we're usually just in Belize being zen.

But this year down in Belize, it's not chill. There's nothing chill about it this summer because Andy is super busy working on the building project down there for Jungle's Edge. And there's workers there every day. There is just a lot going on. So it was a little hard for me to focus on my writing and my office isn't set up properly down there. So anyway, here I am back in the States, just me and my pup, Cooper. I'm swimming every day, writing and just getting recalibrated.

which feels really, really last week, instead of forcing out a podcast episode among all that stuff, I followed a different nudge because I recently started writing again. Well, actually, I take that back. I've always write, I'm a writer, but not just in my journal. So I started posting publicly on Substack. Now, if you're not familiar with it, which,

I wasn't until about two weeks ago. Substack is this beautiful little corner of the internet for writers. And I'm kind of falling in love with it. It doesn't feel like, ⁓ like a busy social media platform. It feels more like just this quiet, sacred space to say what's really on your heart without worrying about the algorithms or curating the perfect image.

So a friend of mine in my mastermind, she introduced me to it and I'm really glad she did because I love it. If you haven't heard of this or checked it out yet, then I'll put a link for my sub stack in the show notes. I know it's a weird name sub stack, but it's, guess it's kind of like a newsletter or you can call it like my writing corner.

I guess back in the day, it probably would have been called MySpace. know I'm like super dating myself there, but anyway, you can go check it out. So last week, instead of the podcast episode, I published something on Substack a little unexpectedly. It was a piece that I'd written quite a while ago, but I never shared it. Honestly, because I don't really share a lot of my writing.

So it was just sitting in my writing folder and it's one of those pieces that felt really raw, maybe a little too vulnerable. And honestly, I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about sharing it.

because here's something that might surprise you something you probably don't know about me. It's that I'm actually a very, very private and deeply introverted person. Now I know that surprises a lot of people, maybe most people, because I share so many personal stories on the podcast and I'm always out there, but I've kind of learned to extrovert.

It's something that my husband Andy has really helped me grow into over the years because he's a great extrovert. before I met him, I would completely shrink in social settings networking events or just anytime I was out in public. But now I'm really comfortable with extroverting,

but I'm also aware it takes a lot of extra energy for me. So after spending a weekend being really social or after sharing something really personal, I tend to need a lot of space and a lot of stillness so I can kind of recharge my batteries. And even though I do show up publicly and share a lot, I'm actually someone who keeps things, a lot of things really close to the chest, which is probably why I just sat on this piece for so long. But...

Last week, something in me whispered, just kind of nudged me and said, it's time to publish this, to make it public. So I hit publish. And I was kind of blown away by the response. It was immediate. had women I knew, women I've never met writing me, DMing me, saying the same thing, that it resonated so deeply with them that they didn't know they needed to hear this, but they did. And I realized.

Maybe this is not just my truth. Maybe it's ours. So this piece I wrote, it's called Breaking the Spell. And it was born from all those moments in my life where I kind of contorted myself or chameleon. I call it chameleon to myself to being more lovable, more presentable.

And all the times I dimmed my voice to keep the peace and the times I believed other stories about me more than I believed my own knowing. And that's really easy to do, isn't it? because if someone calls you a bitch or if they say you're just too much or you're over the top or whatever it is, our first instinct, like our biological instinct is to defend, explain, to soften.

to prove that we're not who they say we are and to hope that someone or anyone understands us because that's how we're wired. We're wired for connection and community. And we have the tendency to do that instead of seeing the whole truth. And the whole truth is like, wait a second, you don't actually know me and you never did. You don't know who I am. And just because you think something about me or just because you say something about me,

doesn't make it fucking true, right? So why do we hand over our power like that? Why do we shrink ourselves so very quickly to fit into the version of who we're quote, supposed to be? And we doubt our knowing just simply because someone else can't hold it or someone else can't see us. It's complete madness, but it's also a deeply human part of us

because we've all been living under this kind of collective spell. It's a spell of being agreeable, of being nice, of not being too much, of making ourselves smaller to stay safe and be part of that collective. So when the spell starts to break, when we start to wake up to how much of ourselves we've actually abandoned to survive in someone else's story, it can feel like grief, can feel like rage.

like freedom and fear all tangled up into the same I know for me, felt like I was underwater for a long time and kind of just that like, and I finally came up for air. And so it's all those things tied together. And that's what this piece I wrote is about. It's about that moment where you stop asking for permission to be whole and start remembering who you are, that you are whole. You stop trying to be easier to hold.

and nicer and you decide to be real instead. about reclaiming that part of us that we were told is too much remembering that you were never too much. There's never too much of you and what's interesting about this is while I wrote this piece a while ago,

after sharing it, things really started to move deeply in me and...

but started off as just this single piece has now become the seed of a book. So the last four days while I've been in California, I've just been writing and writing has been pouring out of me. I've barely left the house because I've just, leave the house. go swim and I'll come back and I'll get back to writing. It's been an all day thing and not just journaling, but really working on this piece of the book.

So today I wanted to read this out loud to you, not because you can't read it yourself. Obviously you can, but because some truth, they're kind of meant to be heard and spoken and felt. And sometimes hearing things out loud, it kind of lands on a different level. So if you're multitasking, maybe take a pause, come back to your breath and let this just land in your body.

Alright, so take a breath and here we go.

Breaking the spell. Reclaiming power, voice, and the sacred fire inside of you.

You are not who they said you are. Maybe it was a father, a partner, a lover, an ex-spouse, the mean girl in middle school, the mother who never did her own healing, the church that called your power a sin, the boss who saw you as a threat, a man who couldn't hold his own pain or his own potential. So he crushed yours to feel safe and made you the problem. Maybe he called you difficult.

A bitch. Too much. Not enough. Too emotional. Crazy. Too needy. Unlovable. Selfish. Broken. The reason he failed. The reason he lashed out. Hard to love. Replaceable. The problem. And maybe some part of you believed him and all the others who echoed the lie. Not because you were weak, but because you're wired for love.

So you try to become whatever they told you you weren't. You bent, you broke, you buried the truth of who you are. I get it because I've lived it.

I've let the names of broken men become my own reflection. I've tried to prove them wrong instead of seeing the whole wide truth. They were never right. They never really knew me. They didn't see me. They saw a mirror, a powerful woman, a threat. They saw their own shadows, their own fear, and they called it my name. But here's the truth. Here's who I really fucking am.

and who you are too. I am power wrapped in kindness, source energy and human skin, a healer, a channel, the still point in the chaos, the storm and the calm. I'm sacred ancient rage and holy softness all coiled inside the same breath. I see it all, feel it all, carry it all, and I still show up. I hold the grief

and the love, the ache and the knowing. I don't run from pain. I sit with it. Let it teach me and alchemize it into power. I don't shrink to be liked. I expand to be free. And if these words are cracking something open deep inside of you, if they feel like a mirror or a familiar ache in your bones, a memory or a fire rising in your belly,

then I know you belong here. You're one of us, a soul sister, a fire sister, because you are power. You are light.

You've walked through your own fire and you didn't just survive it. You rose like a goddamn phoenix, smoke in your lungs, ash tangled in your hair, dirt beneath your nails, heart pounding, exhausted, but holy, powerful as fuck and rising. Sister, I see you and I can walk with you through the shadows, not to fix you, not to save you, but to remind you who...

You are. You are the light. You have always been the light. And I will hold the torch through the long night, through the forgetting until you remember and until you can hold it for yourself and for others, for the women who don't yet know it's safe to rise,

for the daughters, the sisters, the soul friends still waiting for permission. I know that place of darkness. There was a time I couldn't carry the torch for anyone, not even myself. I forgot who I was. I silenced myself to stay safe, swallowed my knowing to feel loved. I laid down my power like a peace offering on someone else's altar. But I never forgot my power, not fully.

Because deep in my bones, something ancient was always stirring. A whisper beneath the noise, a pulse in my gut, an ache to remember who I was before I ever got small. I could feel it like fire under my ribs, the knowing in my belly, the energy in my throat that

Speak. Rise. Even when my voice shook. Especially when it shook.

There was always a truth whispering inside of me. You were made for more. You deserve more. more. And now that knowing in my body, it's not a whisper anymore. It's a roar, a full body yes, that can't be ignored. And I won't unhear it. Not now, not ever again. And I won't let you forget it either.

because we rise not just for ourselves, but for every woman who was told you're too much, too loud, too sensitive, too broken. We are not here to disappear, not here to be easier to hold. We're here to take up space, big, bold, unapologetic space, to be the whole damn wildfire, burn it down in a blaze they never saw coming and then build it back up on our terms in

our truth as the women they spent centuries trying to silence. If no one's ever told you this, then love, let me be the first. You are not crazy. You are clear. You are not dramatic. You are deeply attuned. You are not unstable. You are highly calibrated, emotionally intelligent and divinely sensitive. You are not too much. You are exactly enough.

to break chains and burn down broken systems. You are not here to carry pain that isn't yours. You are not here to argue for your worth. You are not here to be tolerated. You are here to lead, to speak, to shine, to say the thing that no one else will say, to live the life your mother and her mother and her mother.

weren't allowed to live. So I invite you, grab my hand and let's go.

It's time to take your power back. Reject every name they use to try and break you. Reclaim every part of you they told you was wrong. Take it. All of it. Alchemize it. Stop being afraid of being misunderstood. Be real instead of worrying about being liked. Be free instead of silent. You are a fucking revolution in motion. You are a priestess.

a a mother, witness. You are the doorway to something so holy. Every last shred of your dignity, take it.

Let this be the day you stop believing them and start remembering you, because you are not who they said you were. You are pure light. And from this moment forward, it's time to break the spell and step the fuck back into your power.

Hmm. that's a piece. Wow. That is actually the first time I have read that through aloud. And ⁓ if that ⁓ stirred something in you, then that's good because that's a remembering. It's kind of like the resonance in your cell. I always call it this knowing in my bones. And that's what it feels like when the spell starts to break. And this is really where manifestation begins. It doesn't begin with vision boards and trying to be more

positive and saying positive affirmations. ⁓ well underneath that we're still believing this fucking lie, right?

it starts with reclaiming our voice and reclaiming our truth and stepping into the version of ourselves that is fully aligned and fully in our power without having to ask for permission or needing to be liked and quiet enough, you know? So anyway, if you enjoyed this, it resonated at all with you, if it stirred something in you, then I would love to invite you to a couple of things. One,

Please go follow me on sub stack. will put the link in the show notes and I've written some other pieces there. I'm going to keep writing there at least weekly. So we're all should be sharing all the juicy, juicy stuff. And more importantly, send me a message or a DM and let me know that it resonated with you. Let me know what stirred in you

or what part you felt. And then I would really love if you would share this with a friend, share it with another woman who needs to hear this. this is work that we do collectively. It's not something that one woman can come out from under the spell and just live alone. It's something we all do together. It's a rising that happens.

collectively as women. please, please, please share this with someone who needs to hear it. And until next week, wait, before I go, I want to tell I want to share a couple of exciting things that are happening. So the first one is, if you saw my video the other day, I was kind of dogging on AI. But I want you to know I'm not against AI. In fact, next week, I have something really exciting coming out. It's my own custom GPT, which is called the vision clarifier. And

I'm so excited about this because I've been working really hard on it. trained this GPT to take you through a vision clarifying exercise that takes about 10 minutes. And in it, we're going to just distill down what you want and why. And it helps to get really, really crystal clear. It's a fun process because you don't have to ask it questions. It's going to ask you questions because it's been trained with what I put in there.

Anyway, so that's a really fun thing coming out next week. Look for that. And then I also have my mind body manifestation journal that's now available. So right now it's available as a digital download and you can print it yourself. In August, it will be on Amazon for those of you who don't want to print it, who just want it delivered to your door. So I'm still working on that formatting and it will be ready soon. But this is a process that I do every morning.

It's a 10 minute process that I take you through and kind of adapted it from many of my teachers and mentors and adapted it into a really powerful practice. And I promise you, if you do this practice for 90 days, if you give yourself that space for 90 days, stuff will start moving. It's really, really profound. So.

Anyway, that's the mind body manifestation journal. You can find that in show notes or again on my website. And I think that's all for right now. There's a lot more happening, but I'll share that maybe next week. Anyway, until then love, thank you again for being here with me and keep manifesting an epic life.