130 ~ Desire-Led Living 101: How to Build a Life That Fits You

What if security isn’t a number in your bank account but the self-trust to meet whatever comes? We open up about living a desire-led life, the paradox of wanting more while craving safety, and why “clean desire” matter and equal responsible choices, braver conversations, and structures that support the soul’s pull without blowing up your life. 

We revisit the bedrock of yes/no clarity and how it reshaped the recent series on boundaries, self-love, sisterhood, and embodiment. From dismantling the myth that more is selfish to reframing security as the practice of backing yourself, we map the difference between reactive moves and intentional ones. Reactive energy can feel thrilling like rage, fear, and adrenaline. But it often leaves debris. Intentional moves create slow power, they compound; small aligned steps toward big desires like retirement wealth or strength through menopause. Responsibility becomes the hinge: you don’t wait to be skilled to claim it; you claim it and then skill, freedom, and real authority grow.

You’ll hear tangible practices—self-holding instead of self-punishment, using “research” to integrate slip-ups, and building calendars, budgets, and rituals that serve the deeper yes. We also share how opposite backgrounds and temperaments became our advantage, making room for both structure and savoring. The aim isn’t perfection; it’s coherence. Not just getting the thing, but becoming the person who can hold it with grace. This is the foundation for sustainability and capacity creation. 

As we reflect on how a desire-led life is built through self-trust, responsibility, and the courage to want more even when culture says “enough.” Although we have opposite styles we meet in one practice: clean desire that favors calm power over reactivity and value who we become more than what we collect.

• origins of the podcast and our polarity as co‑hosts
• yes/no clarity as the foundation of desire
• redefining security through self‑trust not surplus
• clean desire and responsible action
• intentional choices versus reactive choices
• long‑game practices for money and health
• self‑holding as research instead of shame
• becoming over outcome and staying oriented to desire

You can find our handles below. Reach out to us, we'd love to hear from you.

Transcript

Who We Are And Why Desire

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life, motherhood, relationships, and my business. Desire has taken me on quite a ride, and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher, turned coach and guide of the feminine.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married, I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of Tired and Wired, and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker, and a forever student.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners, on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

On the Desire is Medicine podcast, we talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked. Being responsible for our desire. Welcome back. Family, friends, loved ones. Brenda and I are here. It is 2026. And wow, we've had some gorgeous episodes recently. We just really went so deep with yes no. I was surprised. Brenda, clearly, she's genius, brilliant. Did not was not that surprised. She's like, I know we're gonna go that deep on these conversations. I just was not expecting to drop that many episodes on the topic. But it makes sense when I pause and think back or look back. Knowing our no and knowing our yes is just fundamental. Like, how do you move and lean towards your desire without it? It's so important. It got us thinking.

Yes-No Foundations And True Security

SPEAKER_01 2:20

I think you've listened to the podcast. Hopefully, if you haven't, I recommend it. Go check it out on security. Like, what is actual security? We talked about it from the lens of all of us feel that security comes from money. Like if you if you're well off, if you have enough, if you have more than enough, well, of course, if you have more than enough, you feel secure. But what happens when we don't have enough? We don't have more than enough, we don't have a surplus, we have just enough. How do we then touch or feel into our inner security? And we definitely lean on self-trust, like where you can trust that you've got it no matter what's coming, no matter what happened, no matter what's on the horizon, you can meet it, whatever it is, and back yourself. Then it sort of leaned towards how did I get here? Like, how did Brenda and I get to this location on the podcast? To my goodness, 120 plus episodes. Haha. I was thinking back to clubhouse days and thinking, I really want to talk about desire. Desire is so deep, so complex, and yet not deep and not complex. It's just a paradox. It's a paradox, and it's so easy to know on one hand that we want more. Part of the human experience is that the soul constantly wants to experience something different, and or and sometimes it's more, more of something. While at the same time, we could not know what we want. And then sometimes we're so convinced that we know exactly what we want. So it's simple and complex all at the same time. And I remember feeling into, I'm studying this, I'm getting so many aha's in this direction. This is when I was looking at my personal growth through the lens of desire, things became so much easier because there was just so much material to work with, versus when I was looking at my life from the arc of, am I in integrity?

The Spark: Starting A Desire-Led Podcast

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Or did I accomplish the 12 things that I wanted to accomplish this year? Or did I do my top three things for the day or my top three things for the week? Or we all have different lenses that we can put on top of our personal growth. I remember thinking to myself, I would love to have a podcast on desire so that I can talk about everything that I'm learning. I can share how juicy it feels, how alive you can feel when you're feeling into what you want all the time, how it can really show you where you're growing, where you're not, where you're at your edge, where you're at capacity, where you're well resourced, where you're not well resourced. And as I felt into all the people in my circle, circle of influence, if we want to call it that, I thought of Brenda. And I thought to myself, what a great person to have this conversation, have the conversation of desire with, considering that she's just so good at manifesting. Brenda was so good at manifesting, so good at putting in rituals and doing what she needed to do to enjoy herself as she went towards her desire, versus my makeup is more of I know what I want, and what are all the things that I need to do in order to get there? And Brenda's makeup was more of I know what I desire and how do I have fun, as much fun along as along the way as I go. And I thought, how cool would it be for us to talk about desire, talk about our personal growth path, like the beginners that we are on the mat and share it and hopefully inspire people along the way. And it has just so come to be that we have over 120 plus episodes talking about the topic of desire. And I'm joined by the lovely Brenda. And as I say all these things, I just want to invite her on and see like what comes up for you around this.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

So much gratitude comes up for me around this. I love feeling your heart here, Catherine. And I it touches my heart so deeply to feel your desire, to talk about desire. That's so cool. Our desires are so great. They call us to something much greater, and they don't always make sense. And we don't know the path of if we'll ever have them or what it will look like if we have them. I think in our limited view, we think, oh, I'm gonna be exactly who I am now. I'm just gonna have this thing. It's not really that way. Like I think that the path of desire carves us, it grows us.

Opposites In Practice: Joy And Drive

SPEAKER_00 7:30

So if we want to have a lot of money, we need to know how to work with money. We have to build that skill, just using that as an example. And I just love that you wanted to talk about desire. And we have a sisterhood series somewhere in the 80s. And one of our teachers always said, When a woman has her desire, everyone around them has more. And this is a great example of that because you had this desire. You had the courage and the audacity to admit it to yourself and follow it. And the vulnerability to say to me, and I remember this day very clearly, do you want to talk about desire with me publicly? I was like, say what? I didn't even know what that meant exactly, but it landed in my body very sensationally and also like a thunk. Like, oh yeah, I I think Catherine's the bomb. Catherine's amazing, as you all know, if you're listening to our podcast. She's even more amazing in person, like just as a human. And so, yeah, you damn straight I want to talk about desire with you. Um, so you owning your desire took me along. And here I am, and it's touched me and grown me in so many ways that I really only could have dreamed about. I never even thought about having a podcast. It wasn't even on my radar. I don't think I would have wanted that. I don't think I would have wanted that at all. I'm more of a writer. That's more of my comfort zone. But I do love the topic of desire. I'm just so touched by this story. I'm gonna ask this question. I I know a little bit of the answer because we did talk about this before. But I I want to, I think it's gonna lead into some more of the conversation. But what was it about me that you well, you said it a little bit, but what was it that you wanted in our conversations to learn for yourself, or you thought I would be a good co-host for you? I felt like you were a great opposite.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Like, I feel that the way that you walk through the world and the joy that you have and the speed at which you walk with for the most part was different than mine. And I find that fascinating. I love to be surrounded by people that are different than me. I also like to be around people that are a lot like me, but I think finding somebody that's like you is a lot easier to find because like attracts like, and we just normally lean towards that. So that was one of the many things. Another thing, other than us being very different,

Wanting More Against Cultural Rules

SPEAKER_01 10:30

was how much joy you brought to the process and practice of leaning towards your desire, how wonderful you were at manifesting. And when I say manifests, I mean you were just great at creating what you wanted in your life. And if we look at ourselves from the lens of creator, because we are always creating our lives, like what we have right now, we created, and you were just so good at it. And when I say good at it, what I mean is I often heard of things that you wanted and you created, and how wonderful was that. And I had this felt sense that if I would enjoy it and I knew that the things I was approaching or broaching were not part of everyday conversations, how cool would it be to put it on a platform where it could live forever? And that came later because I think we did it on Clubhouse for a while first. And then I really wanted to have a platform where it could just live and our body of work could live, and we could share it with the world, really. Because I thought back then that it would be something great to share. Like, oh, this would be lovely for other women to see what it looks like to live a life led by desire. You touched on it when you said, Oh, when I, when somebody, when a woman gets to have what she wants, everybody has more. But I think to myself, how great it is to be around a woman who is happy with her life. And women are often the matriarchs of the family. And it feels good to be around people that feel good. And a woman who's following her desire for the most part definitely feels good. And I figured who better to talk to about it than you to bring it towards the world. And now, in hindsight, when I look at what we've created, episodes one through eight that are our whole desire course, then we did the self-love series, we've done the sisterhood series, we've done an embodiment series, we pretty much did a yes-no series not that long ago. We're about to embark upon a completely different series, but all of this in the realm of desire. Like, who knew that it was such a big body of work? Even when my clients say to me, What book can I read? I fall short. I'm like, well, there are many that you would have to kind of put together to get to the place so you could have the kinds of conversations that Brenda and I are having in public. I'm sure there are definitely definitely people that are having these conversations in private. So I hope I answered your question. I think I may have gotten a little.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

You got a little

Safety Versus Soul: Risk And Aliveness

SPEAKER_00 13:20

in the best of ways. I love it. Thank you so much for all of that. You you dropped so many great things. And I just want to say how different we really are. And we talked about this in the past, but we are so different. And I think that's what our listeners say really works. I think we often want someone who's like very similar to us, but I love this value that you're sharing. Oh, I want, I want to be around people who are different than me. That really speaks to your desire for growth and to be different. And I don't know that everyone really thinks that way. I don't even always think that way. Um, but we are so different. We have different cultural backgrounds. I've been married and have children. You haven't. I love the intro where you say, where I say I was a teacher and you were like, well, I worked in some down and low shady spaces. She has some good stories about that, folks. Our styles are completely different. I have emotional authority, you're sacral. Like, I think there's a lot of juice in the polarity of what we bring. And Catherine and I recently did an episode in person together, not a pr an episode, an event in person together in New York City. And we were talking to the crowd and we realized, because we're always talking here from our living rooms to the audience, but in person, we have a really great dynamic when we could just give us a microphone. And we were we we only had 10 minutes, but we could have gone on and on. But Catherine says, because I'm 5'10, and so when we stand next to each other, we just physically look different. I love when you say, Well, I'm pint size. You have the best sense of humor. So this has been an incredible journey, and you're totally right when you say that people want, people want more. And I don't think that it's socially acceptable most of the time to have more or to want more. There's different schools of thought. A lot of times people are like, it depends how you grew up. You have enough. And we've done an episode on that. When is enough enough? You already have your desires, now you want more. It's very selfish to want more. You have enough. But I don't really think that we're built that way. And to your point, women who are happy with their life and who are who are having their desires or following their desires, there's an aliveness there that those women feel. It's juicy, it's magnetic,

Clean Desire: Responsibility And Power

SPEAKER_00 16:00

and we want to be around those people. And the problem with being out in the world sometimes, I find this very difficult, is that most people are oriented to problems. People aren't really oriented to desire. And I think that's what we're talking about in all of these episodes. How do you have your desires? Because that's all we're talking about. For 120-something episodes, how do you have your desires? And I can I'm shocked at how many branches of desire there are. And I'm going to tell this little story. When I was learning to be a coach, I was in my coaching program and I was called on to talk about desire. I had nothing to say. Like I didn't know what to say. It's not that I wasn't following my desires at that time, but I didn't have any language or real experience with it. I think back to that moment when I had to be coached on what to say about desire. And now here I am with you a hundred and something episodes in, and all we talk about is how to have your desires. That's pretty amazing to me.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

I hadn't really thought about that, but I can't even picture you somebody asking you something about desire and you're not having a response. I'm like, what version of Brenda was that? I don't can't imagine it. But I guess we all start somewhere, right? And I think I see this for our listeners. I'm sure that our listeners, when they started with Desire the Basics, episode one. And if you've come across or followed along, yes, there's all different branches of desire. I think a different way of looking at it as well is we are, and we've talked about this in other episodes. We are a society that, and not just society, as humans, we are built to be safe. Recently we did an episode on security. We're built to be safe, and safety, the best way to stay safe is to not have any risk. Which means not to want anything that you haven't had before, not to go for more, not to have more. Because the risk of having more is that you don't get it, and then you'll be heartbroken, or you'll feel potentially air quotes like you failed. And that's tough on the system that wants to stay alive and wants everything to be status quo. As humans, we want to be safe, but I believe our souls want to have experiences. Like our souls want to do things, whether it's skydive, bungee jump, I don't know, go to Bali, go to France, like travel. I'm thinking of traveling the world or jumping out of helicopters, but maybe it's your soul wants to go for a hike, or you want to go into the jungle, or you want to go, I want to talk pet a tiger. I don't know, not necessarily my desire, but I'm sure it lives there for others. How do we live a more full life? Our

Slow Power Over Reactive Moves

SPEAKER_01 19:20

souls want different experiences. The soul wants to have an experience that it hasn't had before. The soul doesn't want to go around the merry-go-round. We want to go around the merry-go-round, but the soul not so much. And so our souls want to live. Ultimately, what I'm trying to point to is our human anatomy wants to stay safe. Our soul's anatomy wants to go and have bigger and badder experiences. And our culture lets us know whether we should feel good or bad about it. Like, is it right or wrong that you want something or don't want something? In doing this work, I do feel like Brenda and I have done a great job at bringing this topic forward and hopefully touching women and letting them know that you should go after what you want in the cleanest way possible, the most responsible way possible. Ultimately, you will be happier and so will the people around you. And let's be honest, there may be some people that don't like it. Because sometimes people like the version of us that isn't getting what she wants. And it's okay. Like the world will rearrange, they'll make it, they'll survive.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Hopefully, they'll learn some lessons along the way. You bring up a really great point, how we want to be safe. It's hard to make a mess. It's hard to follow your desire when there's no guarantee, and you might not have skill on the thing that you're doing, or it might bring up all of your patterns or your addictions, and you might make a mess. Ask me how I know. I've followed desires and I've made some messes. I've made some pretty big messes that I've spent years cleaning up. And I recently am closing up a lot of those cycles, finally ready to take the lessons. And it was hard to fail and falter and have some of the experiences that I had because I spent a lot of time beating myself up, because it didn't go the way I wanted. I hit my addictions, I hit my spending patterns, I spent all my money. That was very hard to live with. And so I appreciate when you say doing things as cleanly as possible. And I thought I was doing things cleanly. And this is not an advertisement for not following your desire. This is an advertisement for follow it with as much consciousness as you have and trust the process. And I think that's why it is important.

Long Games: Wealth And Menopause Strength

SPEAKER_00 22:00

To take baby steps along the way sometimes. And it's also really a paradox because sometimes you just have to jump.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

I think that we tend to jump or make bigger messes when we don't know of another way. Maybe we haven't seen it done differently. We don't know a way out, other than the phrase that's used often is without blowing it up, just basically telling, letting everybody know, F yourself, F all of you, and I'm doing what I want to do, right? As if we can't have both. I don't think we know a world where we can have both. And this is, I think, one of the objectives of this podcast. It's like, how do we as women talk about what it is to have what we want, live as honest of a life as possible while still feeling safe inside of it? It's very tricky to walk that line. And when we're going after what we want, how do we do it cleanly? And cleanly would be how do we take responsibility for what's ours? How do we let the people that need to know know the things that they need to know at the time that they need to know it? And sometimes we don't have courage to do that, to have the uncomfortable conversations, to take the steps that are necessary. And sometimes the only way we know how is to jump. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

It takes power to move towards your desires slowly, as opposed to you feel angry, you feel upset, you feel scared, you feel inspired, you saw a movie and you're like, let's go get that divorce. All right. That is reactive energy. And it's not that that's wrong, it's just that it's a little messier. There's going to be things that you have to clean up down the pike. It takes a lot of power internally to be with yourself and go slow and consciously take the steps to have your desire because there's no guarantee. It's scary as hell. The adrenaline of some of those emotions of anger or fear, the adrenaline of that that might make you move forward and do the thing is easier to conjure up than the calm grounded embodied power.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

That's a great point. Calm, grounded, embodied power versus the reactive power. I mean, the crazy thing is that I think power comes from responsibility. We think to ourselves, I would be responsible for that, or I would

Self-Holding: Choosing Bread Or Becoming

SPEAKER_01 25:00

make myself responsible for that thing if I knew how or I had the skill. But in actuality, we take the responsibility, we gain the skill, and now we have the power. And the power usually comes in the form of freedom. It's the gift on the other side of being responsible for something. So, for example, we become responsible for our calendar, the gift is time. We become responsible with our money. The gift, hopefully, is we have better access and management of our finances. We become responsible for our fitness. Then the freedom or the reward is to be more fit, to be more able-bodied. But it all comes from places where we're willing to be responsible. And then the other places where we don't, we're not as willing to be responsible. We want to blame that the gym is too far away or we don't know how to budget, or we're not good cooks if it, and then we just don't have as much freedom there. And there isn't as much as you call it, calm, grounded power. We sort of have to be reactive from that location.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Totally. And the other way takes longer. The calm, grounded, empowered power takes longer. I think back to one of the episodes that we did in maybe November, December of 2025 about our desire check-in. And we both checked in on the desires that we have. You were talking about your desire for retirement, like to build wealth for yourself and your retirement. And I was talking about my desire to build strength as I enter menopause. Both of those things are not quick fixes. I see both of us showing up every day, doing something in the direction of those desires. That takes a solid grounded nervous system to hold. And in mine, I will say, now that we're post-holiday season, I've been eating well, I've been juicing, I've talked about my juicer, I've been lifting weights and walking. But I didn't do that so much over Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas and New Year's. That wasn't happening so much. And I am so okay with that. I've grown to a place where I ate half the stuffing on Thanksgiving, and I do not regret one bite of that. Oh my God, it was so good. But in the past, I would see that as a failure. I would see that I messed it up. I would see, oh, I have to start all over again. And instead, I look at it all as research. It's all research. I was in a restaurant yesterday, and I'm currently not eating bread, but the bread was on the table. I was out to lunch with friends at an Italian

Becoming Over Outcome

SPEAKER_00 28:00

restaurant, and the bread was on the table, and my friends are partaking and they're spreading butter on the bread. And it was so hard to not eat the bread. And I was also really hungry. And I, the conversation's going, and I'm talking, I'm like, I hear my parts talking to each other. Don't eat the bread, Brenda. You're gonna feel so much better. And the other part of me is like, have some bread, have some bread. And I'm so curious which one you think I chose. But I did have the bread. I just was like, fuck it, we're gonna have the bread. And I knew it as I I'm like, all right, this is my choice today. This is where we're going. And I had the bread, I spread the butter. It was so delicious. And I don't look at it as a failure anymore. I look at it as, okay, I researched that. How does it feel when I make this choice? And can I just be with myself? Yes, I can. And then there's also a little bit of self-holding that I realized that I don't actually need to research this anymore right now, where I am right now, 2026. I don't need to research this. Next time I'm gonna hold myself a little bit more and not have the bread. Not because it's right or wrong, but because I'm gonna feel better moving forward because I'm backing myself in what I really want for myself and what feels right for my body. Why do you call it self-holding? Oh, I'm gonna hold myself a little better there. Because the part of the part of myself that has the deeper desire to build strength, to be healthy. I'm in this whole regeneration of my body phase that holding myself to that deeper desire requires the deeper part of me that wants to live a long, healthy, vibrant life and play with my grandchildren that don't even exist yet, versus the shorter gain of spreading the butter on the bread. It requires more holding of myself, more self-responsibility. Does that answer the question?

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Yes, I love your description of it. When you say holding myself better there, you're talking about being more responsible for your desire and being willing to back yourself, being willing to become the woman that gets to have the ability to play with her grandchildren that aren't here yet. Like I completely hear you there. I love the description of that. Thank you. It's very well thought out. I find it fascinating, all the places where we can drop what we want. And we have over 120-something episodes, and we've talked about like how we got here and why I wanted to do this with you and do it with you specifically. And we've definitely talked about it on the podcast before. This is not the first time. And at the same time, we did a check-in recently as well.

From Problem Orientation To Desire Orientation

SPEAKER_01 31:00

And I still feel as though there's just so much to say on the topic of desire for ourselves, for our listeners. It is just so easy to let go of something that you want because we don't know how to have it or it's not convenient. And I'm hoping that this podcast reminds everyone that it's worth it to feel the discomfort while you go for what you want. Because ultimately, whether you gain it or don't gain it, that's not the prize. The prize is who you become along the way.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

It is uncomfortable to move towards your desires. It's super uncomfortable. And this is why we have so many episodes on slowing down and breathing and checking in with your body and having a support system and a calendar that that supports you in your desire because it is uncomfortable. And this is why we're talking about this, because we want you to have your desire. And going back to what we said at the beginning, our world is generally not oriented to desire, it's oriented to problems. And we're offering something different here because we all want things. And how do we get it? We do, we want things. Even people who say, there's no freaking way I'm ever having this thing, and they're resentful as shit, they still want something. They just don't believe it's possible. But they still want it. We have desires. So how do you get out from underneath your conditioning, our culture, the voices in your head, the fear, the perfection and move towards your desire. So yeah, it's uncomfortable. But do it. Do it.

Closing: Choose Desire, Tell Us Yours

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Desire invites us to be honest, loving, and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.