Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Pura vida. Bienvenidos to Lead with Heart. I AM your host, Dr. Jesse Hanson. We are in Uvita, Costa Rica, at the lovely Oxygen Jungle Villas. Holer mano. How are you, Brian. Bueno verte. Come on in, everyone.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Our reception. Tanya, Aaron. Hola.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Hola. And then what's this? Here you've got amazing dining space, like
[00:00:21] Speaker B: a main area at the pool Chill restaurant right here. And this view, of course, National Park Marino Ballena. Right there on the right side, you can see the white sail.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: This resort is for mostly couples, right?
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: And I understand there's a lot of emphasis on wellness here, right?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Exactly. Our spa is in the middle of the forest.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Oh, I want to see that. Let's go check it out. Wow, this space is incredible. So immersed in nature.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: You can hear the river, the waterfall.
[00:00:44] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: I would love to get a massage here.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: You have to right here. The idea is that the people come to the spa also. They have the opportunity to walk.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Oh, so the river is very close. Just walk down. Oxygen Jungle Villas is part of the wellness tourism movement. And as a psychologist and retreat facilitator,
[00:01:00] Speaker C: I know that this is a wild time on the planet.
[00:01:03] Speaker D: People are no longer wanting to just
[00:01:04] Speaker C: sort of go on vacation and check out and maybe get drunk or run
[00:01:08] Speaker A: away from their problems. They're more open to facing them.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: And to me, that's all part of
[00:01:12] Speaker A: why Leave with Heart exists, integrating wellness into their vacation.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: As you see, we are in the middle of the nature. 15 minutes and you are in the Waterfall river in spa. Wow. That kind of experience are unique.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: What an incredible space you guys have created here at Oxygen Jungle Villas with that blend of hospitality and wellness. Thank you so much again for hosting us today. And we're about to dive into some deep, heartfelt conversations, authenticity and vulner ability, our superpowers. So let's see how we can all
[00:01:38] Speaker D: do our part to Lead with Heart.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: Pura vira.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Thanks for watching.
Hello, and welcome to Lead with Heart.
[00:02:06] Speaker D: I'm your host, Dr. Jesse Hansen, and this is the show where strategy meets soul, purpose meets passion and compassion builds connection so we can all do our part to Lead with Heart.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Lead with Heart, the show where strategy meets soul, purpose comes together with passion, and most of all, vulnerability gets honored as a superpower.
I AM your host, Dr. Jesse Hansen, and today my guest is Maria Marshall. She is the founder and CEO of Gaia Goddess Lifestyle, a holistic healing and empowerment platform created to help women reconnect with their power, restore mind, body, and Spirit and rise into deeper self love. As a Reiki master, breathwork facilitator and intuitive energy healer, Maria blends Reiki sound and chromalight therapy, guided breathwork, meditation and women's wellness practices to create transformational spaces for healing and empowerment.
Her path began in service working with women and children at Lotus House, a holistic shelter in Overton, Miami. An experience that shaped her mission to make healing, community and empowerment accessible to women of diverse backgrounds. Today, through Gaia Goddess Lifestyle, Maria offers online content, workshops, retreats, community experiences and spiritual wellness resources that support women in reclaiming wholeness and living fully expressed. Maria Marshall, you're a founder, a healer, a storyteller and a guide, and you're helping women remember that their power was never lost.
[00:03:47] Speaker C: It's just been waiting to be awakened.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: So, wow, you have a lot of accomplishments.
I am very excited to have you on the show today. Maria, thank you so much. Coming down to the jungle to be here.
Welcome.
[00:04:00] Speaker E: Thank you so much for having me. And here in the jungle, you don't have to twist my heart too hard. It's amazing here.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not a bad place.
Not a bad place to visit, right?
[00:04:09] Speaker C: Or live.
[00:04:10] Speaker E: No, I love it.
[00:04:12] Speaker F: Awesome.
[00:04:12] Speaker C: Well, thank you for being on the show. And you know, this show is, is. It has its own energy, it's becoming something of its own. And the idea here today, as you know, it's just fully unscripted. We're just here to be authentic. And the idea is, especially for me as a psychologist and healer, as I've worked with so many great leaders in the most cultural context of corporate execs and different leaders in that way, to me, absolutely, he healers are leaders and we need that on the planet right now so much. So thank you for stepping up. Thank you for being in your power. And before we get into the amazingness of where you are now in your life and everything you're doing, I want to take us back and I want the invitation is for you to be as vulnerable as you feel comfortable here, but as to share what, what has shaped you, what has happened, what are the seeds to Maria? And obviously, you know, I can't resist thinking about childhood dynamics, cultural dynamics, but whatever, you're open. Like what, what has shaped you?
[00:05:10] Speaker E: Yeah, thank you for that question.
Interestingly enough, I, for the first pretty much 50 years of my life had no idea what was shaping me. And as repressed pain, trauma, lack of self worth, imbalance and power dynamics in all my relationships.
And so I think that getting here today is really a culmination of my healing journey. And that started, you know, a little bit about. At about 50, so maybe 10 years ago. So I'm just turning 60 now.
[00:05:51] Speaker G: And it's been.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: We got to pause on that because,
[00:05:54] Speaker C: you know, getting to meet you in
[00:05:55] Speaker A: person by just acknowledging that it's not. It's not just about aesthetic or looking,
[00:06:01] Speaker C: but it's about healthy living. And so I just want to acknowledge, without even knowing any of your story yet, just. Yeah. Your presence, you know, how you show up is amazing. And I would also argue with some of my earliest teachers that really guided me to say, hey, I'm going to be on this path. Like, this is my path was in San Diego, California, and they were in their early 70s, and their skin looked amazing, their bodies were in great shape, and they were doing cartwheels and moving around, and they weren't going to the gym. They were like, no, we don't grow old, we grow inactive. We grow out of touch with ourselves.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: And so I just want to give you that.
[00:06:35] Speaker C: That compliment that you must be doing something right without even knowing the rest of your story yet.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Yeah, just your presence and the quality
[00:06:42] Speaker C: of being you're bringing is powerful. So to hear that it was only 10 years ago that you really started to consciously step into yourself.
[00:06:51] Speaker G: Yeah.
[00:06:51] Speaker E: And I don't even know it was a conscious choice, but it was choice nonetheless.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: It was forced on you a little bit.
[00:06:58] Speaker E: It was forced on me. I'm going to say I had no idea for the first half of my life how out of balance I was, how I knew I had anxiety, how stuck in survival mode I was, how I was operating from lack of self esteem. I didn't have a dream. I mean, I was scared to death of taking a chance to or risk or risking failure because I didn't realize it at the time. But I utterly lacked self worth. I wasn't enough. And those early childhood, you know, trauma shaped that.
But I also, I'm so grateful and I feel so blessed to have had, as I was going through, you know, the dark night of the soul or whatever we want to call it when we start to awaken and unearth what has been living in the unconscious mind for survival, you know, because that's what children will do. They will push it down until they can make sense of it if they ever choose to.
But in. In that process of. Of processing my mother's death and also a really big part of this wasn't just what also came before as the inner child and what I went through which was a big part of it, but also stepping out of the known.
And my known was had a beautiful family, a 26 year marriage, almost 30 years living in Florida. Family, friendships, a whole support network.
And then after my mother died, all of that kind of blew up in a way.
And so I found myself in a new home without a friend for hundreds of miles in a pandemic.
And I started my writing on my book then. And I asked God, show me. I need to see. I need to see what happened. I need to see why I am the way I am today.
And it was crazy because I started remembering and having flashbacks to very, very, very painful moments of childhood.
Yeah.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: And as much as you're comfortable, I'm happy. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:09:23] Speaker E: I'm an open book. Because, you know, honestly, I. I'm proud of where I've been and how I got through it.
[00:09:31] Speaker C: And that's why I'm asking you this. It's not just like gory details, but of. To really give yourself a chance to be proud. For anyone that's listening to realize even when we've had crap happen to us, it doesn't have to define us.
[00:09:42] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: Well, so what did happen to little Maria?
[00:09:46] Speaker E: I'm going to just tell a little interesting sidebar is that at the tail end of my divorce, I heard, you know, I'm a big clairaudience. I heard you're going to need, you know, you're going to need someone for this, like a therapist. I actually ended up going to someone who does past life regressions and also hypnotherapy. Well, hypnotherapy and astrology. And I brought in both charts and she knew exactly why I was where I was at the time. But also I said, you know, every time you, you know this, every time you get a new psychologist or psychiatrist or therapist, you gotta start all the way back.
And I didn't wanna do that again. I had had a marriage counselor and so I said, claudia, I have about a hundred pages on a book.
Can I just give that to you instead? And she was like, sure.
And when I came in the next week, she said I couldn't put it down.
And she said, all of this happened to you?
And I was like, yeah, isn't that normal?
Doesn't that happen to everyone?
She said, no. And it's not. I wanted to say to the audience, it's not content.
Like, honestly, I wish I didn't go through every. Well, I don't want to say I wish I didn't because I know why I did, and I'm grateful for that consciousness. But it's not a contest of who went through more pain and suffering or anything. I believe it was all required to get me here. But, you know, I had a father that died when I was 7. He was from Ireland. His father was a very strict schoolmaster.
And I remember my mother telling me after he had passed that his father would beat them, and if the mother got in the way, she got it.
So what ended up happening is my father would beat us, but from a place of unbridled rage.
And that energy went into my little body, and I became scared of men and all the other things that come out of that sort of trauma. But on top of it, I didn't know at the time.
I became deeply resentful of my mother because she never came.
She never came to my side. She didn't protect. No. And so, like, in the last 10 years of breath work, I would find myself crying out, mommy, Mommy, Mommy. And just knowing that she was crying now because she couldn't back then. Nobody came back then.
[00:12:08] Speaker C: Your adult self is allowing the little one to process.
[00:12:13] Speaker E: Yeah. And I was told by a Reiki master who's very psychic. She's like, good friend of mine, she said, you know, your mother didn't come because she knew it would only make things worse. And like my father's mother, she stood in the way she would get.
Would probably only have infuriated him more.
So then I. You know, having a father doing that to you. And then I realized he was also hitting my mother, and that was happening in the house. Now, none of my brothers and sisters, I think, remember any of that. But my mother before. Before she passed, choose to open up to me, which is interesting, because I'm the middle child, and my name is also. Her name is Maria. My name is Maria.
I believe on some level, she knew that I would need to know.
And so it was pretty intense.
And then my father died, and she checked out even more.
[00:13:08] Speaker C: She was tapped by that point.
[00:13:09] Speaker E: And I also just think it was part of her. She was uncomfortable with physical proximity. She was uncomfortable. I never heard I love you until I was 35.
And for a child, that's traumatizing, because I went through life feeling unloved, too. Yeah.
Throughout my life, like, really feeling unloved.
The one that was not loved, the one that did not receive love. And that was heartbreaking, honestly. And I. So I started processing that.
It was hard to get through that, feeling unloved and also realizing what did I do in my Life to get love, not of it was so healthy with men and, you know, older men, you know, father figures and all this other stuff down.
[00:13:56] Speaker C: I was going to say it's not even just you didn't get the love. It's that you're also getting the violence where that could have been. Hugs. Right.
[00:14:03] Speaker E: And then no boundaries ever get set.
[00:14:07] Speaker C: Yeah. Wow.
[00:14:08] Speaker E: Wow. Yeah.
[00:14:09] Speaker C: Well, now, Maria, thank you so much for just jumping right into the deep end and just being so real and vulnerable and obviously tons of empathy and compassion to little Maria. I know that you're evolving and. And that is okay. And yet. No, that is, that is definitely complex trauma and a lot to work with. So thank you for, you know, just being vulnerable with that. And when we get back from this break, we're going to learn more about how Maria's turning all this crap into fertilizer. So stay tuned here.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: We'll be back soon.
We'll be right back on Lead with
[00:14:46] Speaker D: Heart for more deep conversations and heartfelt stories.
[00:14:53] Speaker C: Foreign.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Welcome to Lead with Heart. I'm your host, Dr. Jesse Hanson, and
[00:15:01] Speaker D: this is the show where strategy meets soul.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: I feel blessed to have been able to create this show because I have
[00:15:07] Speaker D: been wanting a platform to be able to host people, to showcase their superpowers,
[00:15:12] Speaker C: to help people realize that it's not
[00:15:14] Speaker D: just about singing about our successes on the top of the mountain that matters. It's about understanding the vulnerable real truths and the shadows that we have come from and in order to create the amazing growth that comes forth. So if you are a leader, a healer, an innovator or a thought leader, please, I'd love to host you and learn more about your story so you can help all of us on the planet here.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Lead with Heart.
[00:15:41] Speaker D: And we're back on Lead with Heart for more purpose. Meeting passion, strategy meeting soul. Let's dive in.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Welcome back to Lead with Heart. I'm here today with Maria Marshall.
[00:15:55] Speaker C: And Maria, you just kicked us off with a very deep, vulnerable opening of the seed. And wow, just so much that you've been through.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: And I know there's probably more to tell there.
[00:16:07] Speaker C: And yet I want to continue to move this forward, the story forward in the sense of talk to me about the budding meaning. How did you start to grow into adolescence, 20s? Like, what did you start to see yourself doing to compensate for all of this?
[00:16:21] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah, I, you know, I played it really safe and small and I chose time and time again things that I knew I could nail.
But when there was something that maybe involved taking a chance on Me or taking a risk.
I quickly abandoned that. For instance, I was in. I loved performing. And since a child, I would go to musical theater, sing, dance, act, loved it all. And I found myself at Emerson College in the musical theater program. And, you know, I was quite good. But I figured, you've got to want this more than anything because you're going to wait tables.
You don't have a father, mother, who can put you up in apartments. A lot of the kids I was going to school with were children of famous people or very wealthy people. And they were already talking about the deals, the movie deals that they had waiting for them when they got out
[00:17:19] Speaker C: of school by knowing. By the family connection.
[00:17:22] Speaker E: Yeah. Like Bruce Lee's son was one of my friends. He ended up passing away in an accident on set. But so it made me start thinking, I've got nothing to fall back on. I better choose something that is more reliable.
But that was really an abandonment of me.
[00:17:40] Speaker C: You know, it's a recreation of the abandonment.
[00:17:42] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: Of little Maria.
[00:17:44] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: She went through.
[00:17:45] Speaker E: And I didn't believe in myself.
I always wanted to be a mother. I always wanted to be a wife. I think I always wanted to recreate the family I lost.
I wanted to give the love I never received. And I did that in spades. I have three beautiful children and, you know, gave them all the love and all the things. I never got on an emotional.
[00:18:09] Speaker F: Did you.
[00:18:09] Speaker C: Do you remember feeling a vicarious healing for little Maria in that process or.
[00:18:14] Speaker E: I think so, yes. And also receiving unconditional love from your children is, you know, unique. Pretty amazing, as you know.
And later on, when my mother became a grandmother, she was able to. To give to my children what she couldn't give to me.
[00:18:30] Speaker C: That was also cool to watch that.
[00:18:32] Speaker E: That was really cool. But there was so much more to do the trick. It was nice, but I didn't realize how much there was healing. I think worse than what happened with my father was probably what didn't happen with my mother. The bigger piece. Because he passed, like I said when I was seven.
[00:18:49] Speaker C: Not to mention there's just mother child bond is.
[00:18:52] Speaker E: It's so important.
[00:18:54] Speaker G: Right.
[00:18:54] Speaker E: I mean, the mother wound.
[00:18:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:57] Speaker E: So important.
And also just getting a sense as a child that you are worthy or love, like, go for it, you can do anything. Or how was your day today? Or none of that conversation ever occurred,
[00:19:09] Speaker C: which is why you're in the school feeling like, well, I better just keep it small here.
[00:19:14] Speaker E: Yeah. And I. Yeah.
[00:19:15] Speaker C: Bring me forward from.
[00:19:16] Speaker E: Yeah. So I did end up getting Married and, and having three amazing children and building what I thought was a successful life, a happy life. But I never really felt happy.
[00:19:30] Speaker C: Couldn't embody it.
[00:19:31] Speaker E: I couldn't because I think that I just lacked the self esteem. So I existed in a marriage where the power dynamics were off. Of course I attracted that into my life from a lack of self worth. So when you don't have a self worth you don't set boundaries and you're attractive partner.
[00:19:48] Speaker C: You just want to recreate that, make it familiar.
[00:19:50] Speaker E: Yep. And then I had. I remember the fear existed with my husband even though he never physically threatened me. But I remember like you know, we would discuss credit cards and I would have sweat rings the size of dinner plates under my arms because I realized that I was going back to that childhood trauma where I didn't feel safe. Safe. I didn't feel safe when I was talking about these things with my at the time husband.
[00:20:17] Speaker C: Confrontation.
[00:20:18] Speaker E: Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. You know, and having to answer and you know, maybe doing something wrong, spending too much money or you know, what not.
[00:20:30] Speaker C: And so tell me from the professional stance because I know you now very well, embody the healer energies. But what Moving through the 27. Are you in the corporate world? Are you waiting tables?
[00:20:41] Speaker E: Waiting tables, going through school, met my ex husband in the restaurant, you know, worked my way through college, was always good with you know, money and so forth. But then in the marriage I kind of retreated and I wanted someone who would take care of me, I wanted someone to parent me finally. So I gave up my financial autonomy, I gave up lot of my own power to the relationship and I over gave which is very common for us women.
We just give, give, give and we saw our mothers doing that.
And the concept of receiving was so foreign to me. And also loving oneself.
I didn't know how to get there.
[00:21:25] Speaker C: You said earlier right. Of like for the child so easily suppress things to go into some survival mode. Here in your story I'm seeing where even all the years later there was sort of a trade off. You decided like I'm going to give up all this autonomy, financial etc for again like it was a version of survival. Right.
[00:21:44] Speaker E: And what I thought was safety.
[00:21:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:45] Speaker E: But never was illusion of safety.
[00:21:47] Speaker C: It was an illusion because true safety comes right.
[00:21:51] Speaker E: And thinking that someone's going to give you love as opposed to cultivating it from within.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:57] Speaker E: So I think you know, my mother's death was really my alarm clock to go off because I no longer had to care for her. She was very ill with cancer and that was a full time job just right there.
[00:22:10] Speaker C: So her death was the catalyst really for your true birth, even though you were physically born.
[00:22:14] Speaker E: It's funny, I titled a chapter like Yaya dies and I reborn or I get I birth myself or something like that to that extent. And I thought that was corny and I. But it has something to do with her death.
[00:22:27] Speaker C: There's truth in it.
[00:22:28] Speaker E: Yeah. And so at her, her death shortly thereafter is when I saw my marriage for what it was and not to, you know, we definitely two codependent souls, both playing out their own childhood trauma. I have the utmost, like love and compassion, Compassion and whatever. There's no negativity on that part of the story.
But I will say that it's a very hard, very, very hard process to go through. Especially, like, I just feel he's totally in my soul family. Like there is a strong soul connection. And, and when you divorce, you don't just leave the partner.
[00:23:07] Speaker C: Yeah. But the family, the dynamic, the whole.
[00:23:09] Speaker E: I mean, yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't have my kids for many holidays because I don't have the family homes where they were raised. And it's very different today. I don't, I think it'll change, but that's a huge thing to grieve. Yeah, that's a huge thing to get through. And I don't think there's enough support out there for women going through those kinds of transitions.
[00:23:30] Speaker C: Probably not, no. One other quick, interesting point I want to extract from your story that, you know, I have the saying that when you work, I work, we work, or vice versa. When I work, you work, we work, simply meaning anyone being vulnerable. There's such teachings in it. So thank you for bringing the teachings today. And one of them is you said, yeah, I had a fine life at that point. You had the illusion of safety in your marriage, had the kids, had the financial security, and yet you couldn't feel it. So I just want to highlight that I know that you're not the only one. And I probably have gone through waves of that too. But I know now from my neuropsychology degree that the embodiment of anything, but especially of joy, has to do with safety.
[00:24:12] Speaker F: Right.
[00:24:13] Speaker C: And so it's just a way of realizing, wow, even though you'd sort of traded all for all those things, deep inside, you still didn't feel safe.
And so mom's death is what really is responsible. And the theme of this segment, budding like that was your major bud. And does this mean I'm trying to piece the. The pieces together. Does that mean roughly around age 50 is when your mom died?
[00:24:35] Speaker E: Yeah. Yeah. A little bit before. She'll have been past 12 years this coming September.
[00:24:40] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:24:41] Speaker E: But.
And again, mother's death and then shortly thereafter, the unraveling of the marriage. So it was two identities.
A daughter who was caring for her mother and maybe still hoping for some healing to come through before she passed to the other side.
And then losing the identity of the mother. I mean, I'm still a mother, but different.
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:07] Speaker E: And.
[00:25:08] Speaker C: And was the death of the family.
[00:25:10] Speaker E: The death of the family and who I was in the world.
[00:25:13] Speaker C: Yeah. Right. Yeah.
[00:25:14] Speaker E: Because at that point, my whole identity was that I had no business plans.
I never wanted to start a business before. I never dreamed of. Of. You know, I did pick up my writing before all this happened, which was great. Thank God I had something of my own, you know, that creation. Yes.
[00:25:31] Speaker C: Yeah. So, okay, so talk to me a little more about that part of. As you're awakening. Is it. You mentioned a therapist, but, like, is it? Yeah. How did you get into even your brand, Gaia, Obviously, like, you're not just promoting the normal wellness brand.
[00:25:46] Speaker E: Oh, it's a wild story because. Because I got the name Gaia Goddess before I even knew I was leaving the marriage.
And thank you for the download, but I just.
[00:25:56] Speaker C: For our viewers, what Gaia just.
[00:25:58] Speaker E: Gaia means earth and Greek and I'm half Greek and half Irish, but I was raised more with the Greeks because my father died. So that was the Irish side. And Gaia Goddess is literally the spirit of the earth, which I really connected to upon my, you know, starting my healing journey. So I found myself in Connecticut, in a new home without anybody I knew, in a pandemic, processing wave upon wave. And this went on for years.
[00:26:30] Speaker C: Of course, this had to happen in the same time as the pandemic wave upon.
[00:26:33] Speaker E: Well, I'm grateful because the kids were with dad and they didn't have to see me on my knees every day. Day I would wake up on my knees crying and praying, Crying, maybe less praying, because I had so much rage at the Creator. I had so much rage at God. And that was another thing. I had to heal and understand that God did not do that. God did not take my father, as my mother said he did. And God did not, you know, cause me to be unloved or feel unloved. And God didn't do any of those. That my soul chose all of those experiences. And there's a. There's an empowerment in that taking ownership.
But then there also comes this huge amount of like, anger at the self. Like, what, are you kidding me? I chose all this, like.
And you know, I had to go. I had to go through so many layers of processing.
But in that time, I remember actually step back to when I looked at this house to purchase and it had views much like this and it was a big glass wall and I was looking out of the mountains and the lake and I heard this is a healing center for women. And had no idea what that meant. I had the name Gaia Goddess. I already had the llc.
I thought I was going to do T shirts. Spirit led me to something that I could do easily because remember the old Maria? Yeah, like bang out T shirts easily with conscious slogans on them, like spiritual gangster line. But you know, with all natural material,
[00:28:05] Speaker C: there's a whole different download now of this is actually a human center.
[00:28:09] Speaker E: I literally started the line and they're great, you know, sweatshirts and T shirts and had all the graphics and went to the printer and I was ready to push order before one Christmas and
[00:28:21] Speaker C: everything blew up like, so hold that thought right there.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: When we come back, we're going to go deeper into the next section, the Lotus, which is all about transformation, which is.
[00:28:28] Speaker C: You're right on the seat of it.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: So we'll be right back here on Lead with Heart.
We'll be right back on Lead with
[00:28:39] Speaker D: Heart for more deep conversations and heartfelt stories.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Welcome to Lead with Heart. I'm your host, Dr. Jesse Hanson, and this is the show where strategy meets soul.
I feel blessed to have been able to create this show because I have
[00:29:00] Speaker D: been wanting a platform to be able to host people, to showcase their superpowers,
[00:29:05] Speaker C: to help people realize that it's not
[00:29:07] Speaker D: just about singing about our successes on the top of the mountain that matters. It's about understanding the vulnerable real truths and the shadows that we have come from in order to create the amazing growth that comes forth. So if you are a leader, a healer, an innovator, a or a thought leader, please, I'd love to host you and learn more about your story so you can help all of us on the planet here.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: Lead with Heart.
[00:29:35] Speaker D: And we're back on Lead with Heart for more purpose. Meeting passion, strategy. Meeting soul. Let's dive in.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to Lead with Heart. If you would like more of what you're watching with Lead with Heart and all the now media favorites, please stay tuned. We're on Roku, Apple TV, iHeartRadio podcast, Spotify, you'll Find us. Please stay tuned. We've got you covered. And we're here. Back now with Maria.
[00:30:04] Speaker C: Thank you again so much for being here.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Quick recap from the first few segments.
[00:30:08] Speaker C: We've got a young Maria who has gone through some pretty intense, complex trauma, who didn't even really realize that until much later in her life.
And moving through into your adult years, all the way through, you know, the marriage, the illusion of safety, to this grand awakening. Thank you, Mama. Thank you for. You know, and I. For whatever it's worth, Maria, I can really relate to that. It's actually in. One of my favorite lines of my book is, my father's death was my true birth. So I also. I share that with you, and I know how powerful that can be.
So I'm so curious to hear right where we left off. You have Gaia Goddess brand. You're ready to click go on all the merch. And yet all of a sudden, this download comes, that this is a healing center for women.
[00:30:52] Speaker E: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm sitting in a parking lot out in Long island, and I have from almost the beginning of working on Gaia Goddess, this good friend, Gentleman Kevin is his name. And we're working on these, getting this line out together. And I noticed, like, of the things are. All of the samples are done crooked. Half of the inventory we had on hold is no longer available.
And I'm sitting in the parking lot realizing we can't do this.
And I'm just like. And then I get the download. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're not really going into merchandise. We're going right into wellness.
And I've had these, you know, visions, and I am clairaudient, so I get these loud messages at times, not all the time, but. So I remember calling Kevin. He's like, what? What do you mean? And I'm like, that's just what I heard. And that's what we're doing.
And so we started.
So while I'm processing still Dark Night of the Soul on steroids.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: Still on your knees?
[00:31:51] Speaker E: Still on my knees. But then I get up, I do my breath work, I have a really good cry or whatever, other kind of releases come up. And there are all kinds of releases. And then I'm back at the computer working, and we're filming, filming content, and we're working with practitioners, and we're creating this membership, but we're creating this community.
And more than that, even just like a movement, a movement of change.
And I realize when you think about what's happening in the world and how important is for the divine feminine, for more women led businesses and women to come into their worth and to stop buying into what they should look like.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: All the things I bought into, the old playing small.
[00:32:32] Speaker E: The playing small, the sacrificing everything for Prince Charming, who never is Prince Charming
[00:32:39] Speaker G: because you don't love yourself.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: So you track someone who's exploiting the goddess.
[00:32:43] Speaker E: Prince, not Charming.
Yes, exactly.
And so I didn't know what I was doing, just that I was. There was no business plan. There was no traditional approach to a business. Right. This is the money it's going to require. These are the steps. This is what we're doing. This is the investor deck we're taking Venture. None of that. I just did. I just listened. That's why I love the name of your show, Leave It Heart. I literally tapped into this day after day and allowed it to lead me.
And of course, I'm not gonna say there weren't moments where I was in fear, I was having meltdowns, I was still going through the divorce. I didn't know how I would fund it. All of those things, you know, those worldly things. But then I started, for the first time in my life, really started to have faith.
Faith in what I knew when I was doing and why I was doing it. I now knew the purpose of my pain.
I had reconciled myself to it, made friends with it, and then knew that I would alchemize it and use it. I had already been healing, you know, with Reiki women and children in the shelter. And I loved that.
I loved just giving from the heart. And that was healing, healing for me too, because I realized I had no self worth. But if I could go there and heal and help others, there must be something lovable about me. There must be something to me other than who I thought I was. Mom, wife, what I limit my self concept to. I had no idea the vision would grow as big as it has.
But again, I listened to listening and I'm allowing myself to be led. And I'm doing my best to keep fear in the backseat, which is really not easy if you're a human on planet Earth.
[00:34:47] Speaker D: Yeah, you're paying attention right now.
[00:34:51] Speaker C: Wow. No, Marie, I love, I love. You know, you touched your heart. Lead with heart.
Such a great example. As you're sharing all that, I'm just thinking, and I'm about to make a gross generalization. It's not true universally, however, there are are some cultural truths to it. But of that, you know, so many, at least historically and often we think of, you know, Great leader. It's like a man, you know, and it's often like a man who's leading from his head, who's figuring it all out, who needs to know it all, who's got all the answers. And so I just love that not only like obviously you're in a female body, but that feminine energy where it is more energy, more able to lead with heart, to listen. And I know that even living in a man body, it's been, you know, my own personal work has been being in touch with the feminine. And I acknowledge that's part of what even helped me get clear on this show was no, we need whether or not it's in a female body or not. But the feminine energy of leadership is to listen and to be guided as opposed to think. We know it all right, So I love that you're doing that. I love that you're. As you're sharing that. I was just like picturing your brain going of like all this left brain stuff. I gotta figure it out, the deck, the money, that this. And it's just like, nope, we're not gonna focus on that. We're getting the feeling here and it feels good and that's all that matters.
So tell me what happens as you keep going with this.
[00:36:07] Speaker E: Well, I would also say that the need to figure things out is a way to control.
And anybody who's gone through trauma is most people obsessed with control. So that's one of the. The things I had to let go of in my healing and even in my business and really saying, I believe I've been put here for a reason.
I've always wanted to help people. And so I don't need to control it. I just need to listen. I just need to flow, surrender, whatever
[00:36:37] Speaker C: the guidance is, right?
[00:36:38] Speaker E: Yeah. And part of the surrender is letting go of who I was or thought I was and, and allowing who I was becoming to unfold as it would without me consulting 150 psychics.
And what happens in five minutes and what happens?
[00:36:58] Speaker G: You know what I mean?
[00:36:58] Speaker E: It's another way of controlling scary.
Yes, it's another way of control.
[00:37:02] Speaker C: Yeah. And giving our power away, thinking someone else has the answers.
So you were basically just steadily building Gaia Goddess community and center. And there's a physical form at this point, or no, you're mostly just building digital.
[00:37:16] Speaker E: Mostly the digital, the physical come in time, I believe.
But it was build. It's building the membership.
So that took a lot of filming, a lot of building of a website. And we need, you know, we have an app that we should be starting very soon.
[00:37:34] Speaker C: Okay, cool.
[00:37:35] Speaker E: So all of those things take time, and it's not, you know, it's a bigger sort of vision, and with that comes a bigger foundation you have to lay. And there's so many times I was like, when is this going to happen? But I always also had this knowing that there was a divine timing, and a lot of the launch, a lot
[00:38:01] Speaker G: of the visibility, a lot of the
[00:38:03] Speaker E: seeing and the being seen in the world would come when the collective reached a point. There was a point. There's going to be a point. We're all going through it right now, but I feel like there's going to be a massive awakening on the planet in the next few months.
I mean, it's already started.
[00:38:21] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
Amplify.
[00:38:23] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah. And I've just kind of known that all along, so. So not to make timelines based on that sort of awareness, but it's okay. It's okay to sort of trust in that.
[00:38:36] Speaker C: Yeah. You mentioned earlier, one quick other piece I want to touch on with this lotus theme of transformation. You said you were getting very comfortable and good at praying, crying, pray, crying, crying with a little bit of prayer, but also releasing. And again, again, whatever details you're comfortable with. But as a somatic psychologist, that. That is very intriguing content for me.
[00:38:58] Speaker E: Oh, okay.
[00:38:59] Speaker C: Because so many people are thinking, oh, yeah, I journaled it, I thought about it, I talked to somebody about it. But learning how. What's clinically called sequencing, which is learning how to release the trapped energy in the body, sounds like you were getting good at that.
[00:39:11] Speaker E: Oh, my gosh.
[00:39:11] Speaker C: But as a survivor of everything you went through in your childhood, that's. Again, like, what happens is we don't get to see it all gets suppressed. So I'm just wondering, anything else you would like to say, whether it's about your own personal experience, about wisdom around that, but the power of sequencing. The power. The difference between thinking it and letting it happen through your body.
[00:39:30] Speaker E: Yeah. Yeah. I was led to breath work during that pandemic. And although I have done self Reiki and I work with these light tools as well that I had been using, the breathwork came in at the perfect time, and I actually, I even did a little this morning.
But so much.
So much got revealed through the breath work, and so much emotion came up at first, like, really hard. Like, I felt so much pain in my heart, but then there were also times that it was coming up through my intestines. A lot of, like, releasing, burping.
It Was wild. And. And I want to say, though, for any of those out there that perhaps have experienced breath and get uncomfortable when the emotion starts to come up, I would say lean in because one of the. As you remarked, so nice of you to say. You know, I look like I'm taking care of myself, but we're all energy, so the higher. The more we release, the higher our vibration goes. The higher our vibration goes, the more magnetic we become and the lighter we look and the younger we look. So there were times I would have a huge crying release. I call it my wailing wall releases.
[00:40:47] Speaker C: Wailing.
[00:40:47] Speaker E: Wailing wall.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:50] Speaker E: My wailing wall releases. And then I get. And I look in the mirror and I'm like, oh, my God, did I just get 10 years younger? I look amazing. I need to go out tonight.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: I can testify to that.
[00:41:02] Speaker C: Absolutely. And myself and others, having held so
[00:41:04] Speaker A: much space for people, it's.
[00:41:05] Speaker C: It's wild to see, like, wow, you go through this process and all of a sudden you look 10 years younger almost right away. Or even the way we hold our body, we don't realize we're holding it in a certain way that makes us maybe look like we're carrying more weight than we are. And it's like, oh, when I actually stand up and I feel my anger, I feel my boundaries, I'm actually. I look pretty good, you know, so. So I want. I wanted. We do have to take a quick break on this mirror, but, no, this is awesome. This is exactly what is meant by the lotus is the heart of transformation. So when we get back, we're going to go into the harvest, which is to learn more about where Maria really is now and best of all, where she is headed. So stay tuned here.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: We'll be right back on Lead with
[00:41:50] Speaker D: Heart for more deep conversations and heartfelt stories.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Lead with Heart. I'm your host, Dr. Jesse Hanson, and this is the show where strategy meets soul.
I feel blessed to have been able to create this show because I have
[00:42:11] Speaker D: been wanting a platform to be able to host people, to showcase their superpowers,
[00:42:16] Speaker C: to help people realize that it's not
[00:42:18] Speaker D: just about singing about our successes on the top of the mountain that matters. It's about understanding the vulnerable, real truths and the shadows that we have come from in order to create the amazing growth that comes forth. So if you are a leader, a healer, an innovator, or a thought leader, please, I'd love to host you and learn more about your story so you can help all of us on the planet. Here, Lead with Heart.
And we're back on Lead With Heart for more purpose. Meeting passion, strategy meeting soul. Let's dive in.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to Lead with Heart.
[00:42:58] Speaker F: I'm your host, Dr. Jesse Hanson, and I'm here today with Maria Marshall. And in this final segment about the harvest, we're going to be looking at
[00:43:06] Speaker A: everything you're doing now and what you're moving forward with.
[00:43:08] Speaker F: And I wanted to start off this segment by just acknowledging that I genuinely see it in my role as psychologists, as well as just witnessing the world.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: It's a time in history where people really are getting tired of call, like
[00:43:23] Speaker F: the facade leader, where it's like, oh, yeah, everything's great. I've got it all held together and everything's perfect. And just don't look behind that door, don't watch my home life.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: And so that was part of my vision with this.
[00:43:35] Speaker F: And I feel like you're stepping into this so beautifully, Maria. But this notion of, yeah, I want to actually know the humidity of leaders.
[00:43:42] Speaker C: I want to know the humanness of
[00:43:43] Speaker F: the people that I'm looking up to.
[00:43:46] Speaker C: And I know I do my best
[00:43:47] Speaker F: to lead with heart and be humble and get that reflection of just like, wow, it's so nice that you're not trying to pretend you're perfect.
Absolutely not.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: You know, so you're where we left off.
[00:44:00] Speaker F: You were just saying how, you know. Yeah, you've gotten good at sequencing.
[00:44:03] Speaker C: You said some very powerful wisdom lines
[00:44:05] Speaker F: that we are energy, despite what our egos want to think we are our bank accounts and our imagery and all
[00:44:11] Speaker C: that of what we look like online.
[00:44:13] Speaker F: But we're actually energy.
[00:44:14] Speaker C: And I know that to be true in my own healing life.
[00:44:16] Speaker F: I know that from my PhD in quantum physics as well.
It's like, wow, the more we sequence the. It's very simple. It's like holding, constricting, contracting, guarding. It suppresses energy, opening, freeing, releasing, letting it come, learning how to do it in safe and sacred ways.
It opens up everything. And we literally do from the scientific perspective. We raise our frequency, we become more magnetic, and we are able to create call in manifest dream awake what we really want and who we really are. So speak to what you know about this. Tell me more about where you're at now, what you. What you want to call in next.
[00:44:58] Speaker G: Yeah, well, aho to that. Yes. And I think that I couldn't. I could not hold the vision of Gaia Goddess had I not done all the work that I did to get here in terms of the releasing the trauma And I want to also say humility. Yeah, just like cracked open, you know. And I. I also wanted to say that I think many people are afraid to go in and feel, but you really way better out than in because it's going to rear its head in one way or another, whether you actively release it or not. So I think I dove head in when I knew what I had to do.
And, you know, as a result, I saw that this was needed for, you know, men and women. But I kind of knew to start with divine feminine, I knew I had to start with women. I felt like they need a little leg up because of a few factors, you know, just the imbalance
[00:46:01] Speaker F: a little bit.
[00:46:02] Speaker G: But I do want to honor the masculine on the planet and say they need healing just as much. I just feel like the focus right now, and I will be working gyagots will be working men and women, but, you know, creating this safe space, space for women to come together and be vulnerable, for women to feel the support to, you know, to, you know, to come into healing spaces, to learn together, to recon. And a big part of Gaia Goddess Earth medicine, because in the end of the day, the Earth is probably the biggest healer. I mean, grounding and walking from nature and, you know, regulating your nervous system and working with some of the herbal plant allies are out there, not to mention plant medicine, which is also kind of renders you wide open to go very deep. May not be for everybody, but the Earth gives us what we need.
And I had no, I had very little connection to that knowledge until, you know, I went through my own awakening. And so I feel like by connecting women with the earth and her wisdom and her cycles, they get connected to themselves. Their cycles were all one, you know, and really leaning on the earth and coming into communion with her because she has so much to give, she has so much wisdom to impart, but there's so much stillness and presence and being with nature, you know, you know, you listen to all the animals and you see these beautiful lush forests.
[00:47:37] Speaker C: And part why I made a leap
[00:47:38] Speaker F: of faith come down here was I just wanted to be closer to nature and live with a culture that honors nature.
[00:47:44] Speaker G: So I think, you know, I think for sure Gaia Goddess is eventually funding projects, sustainability projects, educating.
I also have done retreats. I'm very interested in strategic partnerships with women around the world. And so I've already created a sizzle for TV series pitching Gaia Goddess traveling around the world and visiting healers from different cultures and different indigenous, you know, lands and I think it'll be kind of like a more spiritual version of Gula kind of thing.
And, you know, I also have a background in fashion, so definitely want a retreat line of clothes.
[00:48:31] Speaker A: Here's the merchandise coming full circle.
[00:48:32] Speaker G: Back to gangster. Well, listen, everything does come. Nothing is wasted. That's what I've learned in one of my spiritual teachers, that nothing is wasted. Everything, like compost, gets used. High, low, and in between, pain and joy, and everything gets used. Yeah, it's. It's. Yeah, so.
So there's that.
I started a book. The very interesting thing is, before I even knew, before my mother died, I started writing a musical called Perils of Awakening. And I have a background in musical theater, too. So, of course, I love musicals and to perform and all that. And I also, at the same time, started writing a book. And I was told in a reading that my mother's death was my alarm clock going off. So I was about to unleash a whole new awakening into my life. And so the book title is Maria Unleashed. And it's still in the editing, but I'm loving it.
[00:49:27] Speaker F: That's awesome.
[00:49:27] Speaker G: Loving it. I'm loving writing it. I'm a writer at heart, so really coming alive there.
But I think what's interesting about the book is it becomes a lens that other people can see through, and it refrains, inspires. It gives hope to all those out there that don't think that they're enough and then don't think they can do it or, you know, haven't even started on their path. Yeah.
[00:49:54] Speaker F: And I think books, too, are almost
[00:49:55] Speaker C: becoming a lost art, as we were all.
[00:49:57] Speaker F: You know, we've all agreed to be addicted to screens and videos and all that, and obviously it's compelling. But I also realized, like, books also hold that beauty where it's like, I can go at my pace, you can go back and you can see it.
[00:50:11] Speaker C: Whereas, you know, video.
[00:50:12] Speaker F: Yes, you can pause it, but you don't just sit and pause or watch video.
[00:50:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:50:16] Speaker G: Like, it's.
[00:50:17] Speaker F: There's something beautiful that we're still using in books.
I also just want to acknowledge, too, as I watch you share just about
[00:50:24] Speaker C: what you are doing now, what you're
[00:50:25] Speaker F: dreaming, awake, obviously, like, reflecting on everything you've shared. And I know you only touched on the tip of the iceberg of how much trauma you've gone through. And I am clinically trained.
[00:50:35] Speaker C: I know the language.
[00:50:36] Speaker F: Ptsd, Post Traumatic Stress disorder.
[00:50:38] Speaker C: I like to play with those words.
[00:50:40] Speaker F: Those are just symptom clusters. So what matches my reference of healing is trauma residue rather than ptsd. It's to realize we all have some
[00:50:50] Speaker C: kind of residue left over in our
[00:50:53] Speaker F: nervous system, in our psyche from things that have happened.
And furthermore, it's like I'm looking at you instead of saying ptsd, say post traumatic growth syndrome.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: It's like you just cannot stop growing.
[00:51:05] Speaker F: You went through so much trauma that now you're just on this, like, insane growth development level.
[00:51:09] Speaker A: And that's a beautiful thing, Maria.
And so, yeah, just as our.
[00:51:14] Speaker F: As our audience is listening to the
[00:51:15] Speaker A: story today, to just really realize that,
[00:51:17] Speaker C: you know, even when you come out of it, even if you didn't realize
[00:51:22] Speaker F: it at the time, it is pretty crappy scenario to be. To be raised in. Right. In terms of how a child ought to be treated. Only when you do the work, when you awaken, become a lotus farmer, is all of a sudden you realize, wow, maybe that wasn't so crappy.
[00:51:37] Speaker C: It's definitely not what I want for my kids.
[00:51:38] Speaker F: But look at what you're building out of all of this. So, so proud of you. And also acknowledge, especially as you started about the book and the Earth, I felt like I actually could see, feel sense little Maria coming through you. Even though you're now in this adult woman body.
[00:51:53] Speaker G: She's having fun.
[00:51:54] Speaker F: She's having fun, right? And that's so beautiful to realize, like,
[00:51:57] Speaker A: even though she couldn't get everything she
[00:51:59] Speaker C: needed back then, now you are giving
[00:52:01] Speaker F: that to her through your life that you're living.
[00:52:04] Speaker E: Yeah, Yeah.
[00:52:07] Speaker G: I think the thing that's most remarkable to me is to go from the girl who quit her musical theater career because of fear of failure to who I am today and all of the things I'm doing, from a TV series pitch to writing a book to including being here today. Being here today is like, that's a total metamorphosis.
And you don't necessarily know that's coming, but what you can expect on the other side of your healing is the true you. That knows she's not limited, that knows she doesn't have anything to fear, that knows she's worthy and lovable and what she has to bring to the world is just as valuable as what I
[00:52:51] Speaker E: have to bring and what you have
[00:52:52] Speaker G: to bring and anybody else, because we are all one. So even though something might look bigger, there's no better in the eyes of, you know, the creator and source and universe, whatever. We're all here on the same train,
[00:53:08] Speaker E: going to the same destination.
[00:53:10] Speaker F: Right? And also appreciate the one you said, this, this, this. But I was also realizing you're not trying to do it within the outcome
[00:53:17] Speaker C: or you know, like the way I like to say. It's like I want to, I want
[00:53:20] Speaker F: to have influence and intention and yet I'm not going to get stuck in the illusion thinking I'm controlling.
[00:53:25] Speaker G: Right.
[00:53:26] Speaker C: And the outcome here.
[00:53:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:53:27] Speaker G: Yeah.
[00:53:28] Speaker E: Wow.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: Maria.
[00:53:28] Speaker F: No, you, you have brought so much beauty and wisdom to the show today. Such a lovely human being and I want to make sure our audience knows how to keep in touch with you.
[00:53:36] Speaker C: So how do we find you out
[00:53:37] Speaker F: there in the digiverse?
[00:53:39] Speaker G: Yes, thank you. Well, our YouTube channel is almost up, but I'll give you the Instagram Sky Goddess Lifestyle at Gaia Goddess Lifestyle. The website is Gaia Goddess Lifestyle. You can go onto the website, you can try out the membership for free. What I would really recommend is come to one of our my virtual healing. So I do a very unique breath work with Reiki through lights and sacred geometry and that's a lot of fun. I love, I love doing that and people really noticing the support they're getting through those sessions and so you can experience that for free.
And there's, you know, retreats, there are events. We have a rapey training coming up in Connecticut. So go onto the website, you see what's coming up. We have workshops for our members and you know, all lots to say there.
And of course we have Facebook guy
[00:54:32] Speaker E: about his lifestyle and I think they'll
[00:54:35] Speaker G: be in the show notes as well. Right.
Everything that we've got going on all of our social media channels.
[00:54:41] Speaker F: Well, just inviting you to take a breath with that and just feel like wow on the other side of all this, all that you are creating, all that you're calling in. Thank you so much for who you are. Thanks for what you're bringing. Thanks for being here today.
And we are going to pause for now. Thank you so much, Maria.
[00:54:56] Speaker E: Thank you, thank you.
[00:54:57] Speaker F: And thank you so much to all of our viewers. We appreciate you.
[00:55:01] Speaker A: Please stay tuned here for more wonderful stories coming up of heart centered leadership, vulnerability as superpowers and creating the realities
[00:55:10] Speaker C: that we want to create.
[00:55:12] Speaker F: So thank you and stay tuned. Pura Vida and peace.
