Listening to the Divine Within with Brenda Carey

Brenda Carey joins the Divine Flow Podcast to share the story behind her chapter Listening to the Divine Within from She Who Flows. In this episode, she explores what it means to slow down, listen to the body, and reconnect with your inner wisdom - especially during times when your soul is asking you to pay more attention to it and not your to-do list.

Together, we dive into the difference between self-care and soul care, the hidden guidance that is trying to get your attention through bodily sensations, and how honoring your inner voice can lead you back to alignment, authenticity, and your sacred path.

📖 Read Brenda's full chapter inside the book, She Who Flows: https://amzn.to/3Za5exg

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Follow Brenda elsewhere:

• Email Sign-up: brendacarey.substack.com
• More Links: www.linktr.ee/brendacarey

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to the Divine Flow Podcast and our series of stories of surrendering to the Divine Feminine. I'm Natalie Walstein, and this week our guest is Brenda Carey. She's one of the authors of She Who Flows, a brand new book about slowing down, tuning in, and letting your intuition guide you as you prioritize your energetic alignment above everything and anything else. Brenda Carey supports highly sensitive souls in trusting their inner wisdom and stepping into their sacred calling. Through her writing and Substack podcast, she shares practices that bring balance, open the heart, and reconnect you with your deepest truth. Her work draws from decades of spiritual study, including shamanic practices, yoga, reiki, Ayurveda, somatic healing, astrology, and sacred ceremony. Brenda's intention is to help you see your sensitivity as a source of strength and live with greater authenticity and courage.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

And it's really about what happens when life starts asking you to slow down and listen deeply, especially through the body. I share a moment where I began experiencing symptoms that at first seemed like stress or even burnout, but I had this intuitive sense that something deeper was going on. Almost like my body wasn't breaking down. It was more like communicating. And that became the doorway into the chapter that I wrote. As a highly sensitive person and as someone who has spent years working as a yoga teacher and meditation guide, I've always been attuned to my inner world. But even with all of my training in healing practices, I realized I had absorbed this cultural pressure to keep pushing and producing and striving, even when my soul was quietly asking for something different. And those quiet symptoms became louder and louder. So the chapter is really about that shift from living in constant mental noise and external expectations and validation to returning inward to what I call the divine voice within. And what inspired me to take this approach was realizing that many women, especially in this alchemical transformation that we know as midlife or menopause, are experiencing more than just the physical symptoms or the emotional overwhelm. There's often a deeper invitation underneath it all, a kind of spiritual recalibration. And that's where my concept of soul care comes in. Because we hear this term self-care everywhere now. Even in recently, I saw a YouTube ad, and it had laundry detergent was the main product that they were advertising. And they said, make this laundry detergent a part of your self-care routine. And I thought, what? When did laundry become self-care? Granted, if you love to do laundry and you do it with intention, then by all means, do your laundry with a lot of love. But I feel like the term self-care has been reduced to something very surface level. And soul care to me is different. It's about creating space for truth. It's about listening to what's beneath the symptoms that we're feeling without judgment, without any shame. And it's about tending to the part of you that doesn't need to be fixed, but it does need to be heard. And in my chapter, I share a few specific rituals and practices that helped guide me back into alignment during this season. I still do them now. Um, I won't give them all away here. They're in the book, and they're very simple and grounding and super accessible. This is also deeply connected to the work I do now through my writings on Substack and on my podcast called Awaken Sensitivity, where I explore what it means to live as a sensitive soul in a world that seems to move way too fast. So ultimately, my chapter is an invitation, an invitation to pause, to trust your inner knowing, and to consider that what might feel like a disruption in your life might actually be divine guidance calling you back to yourself.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

And with that, let's hear a little bit from Brenda's chapter.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Listening to the Divine Within by Brenda Carey, Helena Montana, USA. Read by Brenda Carey. The sharp heartbeat knocking in my head rattled my once steady concentration. My forehead tensed, my eyebrows furrowed. This sensation startled me out of the mental drone of thoughts I had grown accustomed to. The overplayed song of to-do lists and future planning was an attempt to keep my life safe and manageable. Or so I thought. Yet I intuitively knew that this pounding echo wasn't only physical. I sat between the kitchen table and the family room couch, my makeshift office, my temples throbbed in rhythm with my heart, and a faint high-pitched ringing in my ears was the quiet alarm I often dismissed. I was a self-employed mother of two girls, determined to quote, be successful and quote, have it all together. I had learned to push through and ignore the subtle signs. But sometimes what seems like a hindrance is actually an urgent message. Have you ever sensed a symptom with something more? The vibrant Ayurvedic health coaching business I'd once envisioned no longer felt aligned. Something deeper was stirring. I saw in myself striving to follow the unspoken rules of success laid out by the entrepreneurial mastermind I belonged to. A never-ending checklist of social posting, email marketing, and constant visibility. These tactics drained my energy, leaving me scattered and questioning the very meaning of, quote, success in my life. Underlying all the noise, the heartbeat knocking returned louder than ever, and I could no longer ignore it. It intensified with every mental push that was counterproductive to my highly sensitive nervous system. My once solid sleep became restless, yet I continued scheduling my days against the current of my intuitive flow. As my energy waned, I realized my crowded weekly planner, filled to the edges, needed breathing room. It mirrored how I felt, constricted and overwhelmed. It was a symbol of my unconscious, inherited belief from my maternal line. I am not enough, so I must do more. I had marched on ahead long enough to accomplish the next goal, and then the next, building a momentum I didn't know how to change. That rapid momentum pushed me forward until the knocking inside my head became fierce. So I stopped and took a much-needed break. I closed my planner and laptop and put them away for the entire summer. Honestly, I was terrified and often second-guessed my decision. I knew I needed a reflective pause to do my inner work. I went for daily medicine walks in the sun-kissed mountain sky of my home in Montana. As I walked, I sang melodies that would pop into my head, earth medicine songs and yogic chants that felt like healing gifts. As my voice opened up, I realized a generational stronghold that imprinted the belief that my worth depended on being helpful and gaining others' approval. And this belief had sneakily woven itself into my coaching business. I began receiving messages from what could only be described as my soul, patiently waiting for me to come home to my creative self.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

I love this reminder that when your body is speaking to you and your soul is speaking to you, it's not less important than what's on your to-do list. It's not something that you need to just like hustle through or take a painkiller and forget about so that you can do more important things. That is the most important thing, those subtle nudges. And I don't know why we consider them to be so subtle. I mean, it's right there with you in your body or in your feelings. But somehow the external world has become more important for us. So I love this reminder to recalibrate where your awareness is sitting and to reprioritize those impulses, those feelings, those emotions, those bodily pings that are calling you inward. So how does it feel to have your words published in this book, Brenda?

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Honestly, I see my words in print and an anthology alongside other women writers was such a potent energetic shift for me. It was one of those first moments where I truly allowed myself to say, I am a writer. And now I am an author. Because for the past couple of years, I've known deep down that I wanted to write a book. And if I'm being brutally honest, I would get overwhelmed really easily. I'm an avid reader and I've admired so many authors who have genuinely changed my life. And because of that, I would put so much pressure on myself. Writing a whole book felt enormous. So I would start and then stop and then start and stop again. And I never quite trusted myself to follow through. I've loved books since I was a child. And this experience gave me permission to return to that creative part of myself that I had put on the back burner for a really long time. So being a part of this book became a pivotal point for me. It helped me shift my identity in this gentle way. I remember thinking, okay, I can write one chapter. I can, I can definitely do that. And completing this one chapter gave me the confidence and the momentum. From there, it led to taking a creative writing course, joining a poetry group, and slowly building the courage to follow what I really feel is my soul's calling is to write from a contemplative point of view. And I have faith that my writing will hopefully deeply touch someone who reads it and sees a piece of themselves in my words and know that they're not alone. So it feels incredibly meaningful to me. It feels complete and like a stepping stone into what's next in my creative pursuits.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Amazing. What is next for you? And where can everyone listening find out more about you?

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Writing my chapter for She Who Flows was the catalyst that helped me build momentum and trust myself as a writer. That experience inspired me to take the next step. And now I'm enrolled in your self-publishing program called Book Magic, which is helping me bring my own book to life. It's a nature-inspired spiritual book for highly sensitive souls centered around inner wisdom, the sacred rhythm of cycles and seasons, and learning to live in deeper alignment. Right now, the best place to connect with me is on Substack, where I share monthly reflections as I develop my voice and ideas as an author. You can also listen to my podcast I mentioned earlier called Awaken Sensitivity, where I offer gentle guidance and meditations. So I'd love to stay connected. Substack and my podcast are the easiest places to start. And thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of this creative project. It feels deeply meaningful. And I am so grateful to contribute my story.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Thank you so much for your beautiful chapter and just including your energy in this, in all of this, the audiobook, the podcast, everything. I'm so looking forward to your solo book. I think it's something that so many of us need. And I'm really excited for more episodes in this series. Every Friday, we'll have a new author on the show sharing what it means to them to surrender to the to the divine feminine and how downshifting has allowed them to hear themselves more strongly, like their true selves and what they really need and what they really want. So thank you so much for listening to this episode and talk to you next time on the next episode of Divine Flow.