Gutsy Chick Podcast

Breaking Up with the Good Girl Narrative

• Amanda Smith • Episode 85

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Ready to talk healing, purpose, and the real reasons sex, death, and money make us squirm? 

In this episode of the Gutsy Chick podcast, I’m joined by the brilliant Marie-Elizabeth Mali—relationship alchemist, coach, and taboo-breaker extraordinaire. We’re diving deep into the wild intersections of healing work, self-discovery, and the three topics most people avoid (but secretly crave more clarity around). 

If you’ve ever felt like you’re here for something more—and you’re ready to reclaim your power, your pleasure, and your voice—this conversation is your permission slip to do just that. 


In this Episode:  

00:00 Introduction to Gutsy Conversations 

02:39 The Evolution of Purpose and Healing Practices 

05:34 Exploring Underwater Photography and Nature's Wonders 

08:33 Breaking Taboos: Sex, Death, and Cash 

11:24 The Good Girl Persona and Personal Transformation 

14:09 Navigating Wealth and Philanthropy 

16:53 The Importance of Agency in Sexuality 

19:50 Living Fully in the Face of Death 

22:28 Conscious Giving and Philanthropic Responsibility 

24:34 The Power of Philanthropy and Humility 

25:53 Living by the Golden Rule 

26:31 Breaking Free from the Good Girl Persona 

28:00 The Trap of Transactional Sex 

30:53 Reigniting Desire in Older Women 

34:43 Confronting Death: A Necessary Conversation 

38:36 Engaging with Death to Live Fully 

39:01 Rethinking Our Relationship with Money 


Here’s how to connect with Marie-Elizabeth Mali: 

Sex, Death & Cash Publication: https://marieelizabethmali.substack.com 

Website: https://marieelizabethmali.com 

Instagram: https://instagram.com/marieelizabethmali 

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/marieelizabethmali 

Watch Gutsy Chick Podcast on YouTube!

Check out more from Amanda:
Website: Body Whisper Healing
Instagram: @Amanda.G.Smith
Facebook: Body Whisper Healing
Pinterest: AmandaGSmithBWH
LinkedIn: Amanda (Ritchie) Smith

Take the Gutsy Chick Quiz to find out how your type A, high achieving mindset might be holding you back from healing your chronic health issue: https://gutsychickquiz.com





Marie Elizabeth, Mali, thank you so unbelievably much for being on the Gutsy Chick podcast with me and saying yes to this chat where we're diving into being a good girl, breaking those rules and all the taboos around sex, death and cash. I'm so glad to be here. I can't wait for our conversation. I know, right? Okay, so I have known you now for how many years? Three, four years? I think it's three. Yeah, and what I've learned about you is you used to do uh traditional Chinese medicine, so TCM, massage therapy. These have gone by the wayside. You also did color healing and sound healing, which color healing is one I've never heard of and we might have to talk a little bit about that. Sound healing. You and I both know Jeremiah. He's been on the podcast. He's our sound healer now, ah but your sound healing. good. Plus, and I both are doing drum journeying, which is also a form of sound healing. my gosh. Okay. I have to share this with you. My drum broke. So this is the drum that Melissa Seaman gave me. She's been on the podcast. She's our teacher, but the hoop broke. And so I reached out to Maria Elizabeth or excuse me, Maria Yracébûrû, who was just on the podcast a couple of weeks back. And I asked her, what's the protocol because it broke. And she was like, hang it on the wall is art. It is done or bury it. And I was like, Oh, return it to the land. so freaking love that. I know, right? So, you know, for you and for anybody else who's got a drum, if it breaks, now you know the protocol from a Native American because that baby is made out of cedar and elk. I thought it was the elk one, right? Yeah, yeah. that's elk. And then it's got my all the stones on the back are jade. I'm going to show you guys. those of you who are listening can't see this, but I'll try to describe it. So my main middle stone is an aqua jade, and it's an oval, which is feminine. That's that feminine trait, right? And then these are all arrowheads on the four corners, the four directions. And I always hold it so that the directions are the right way. So the black earth goes down and the red goes up and then the water and the air go to the sides. That's my baby right there and it broke. And it's got my native symbols in it too. the tilt it just slightly. You can see those are my native symbols that would get tattooed on my forearm. It broke. You know, that means you've moved through a cycle. That means you're entering a new thing. Exactly. cycle. All right, let's get her to hang again. There we go. She's hung. Yeah. And that was my other question to Maria and Melissa was, did I move through some big thing? Yeah, I did. Yeah. And I got that five years ago. So in five years, I moved through a big ass cycle. so you've been moving through some pretty big ass cycles too, sister. So you let go of the TCM, you let go of the massage therapy, and then you started moving. at it, so the way I look at it, I've had, I've known really what I'm here to do or a sense of my purpose since I was 17. However, the way that purpose expresses itself keeps changing. So the underlying thread is the same, but how it expresses itself keeps changing. And what I realized at 17, I was in this theater program. And we had this final performance and I had a really sad solo in the show. And this other kid came up to me and was like, my God, your song was so sad. It made me cry in front of my mother, you know? And I had this flash of insight that part of my purpose is to take people out of regular space, like ordinary space into an altered space, have them feel things and then return them to their life. Different. changed for the better, more open, more aware like that. So I had this instantaneous realization at 17. Now at that time, I thought it was through music and art and like that. And then after college, I became a body worker. And so I did body, I did it through body work as I worked through my masters in Chinese medicine, I began doing it through Chinese medicine. And I've gotten more and more subtle, right? So massage is the most gross, so to speak, gross meaning physical, you're touching the physical body with acupuncture, I'm now off the body, needling the body. Then with sound and color, I'm off the body in the field. Right. And now with coaching, which I was first trained as a life coach in 2003 to 2004. So that's been my bread and butter for a long time. That is again, in the space that exists between us, but it involves bringing somebody into a not ordinary space of a session, rearranging how they see and feel and think about their lives, and then putting them back into their lives change. and I mean, drum journey, like all writing, the writing that I do, also spent, I also have an MFA in poetry and I spent years primarily as a poet. Same thing, when you read a poet, you enter, altered time, you enter another space. As you're reading the poem, and then you come back to your life, hopefully with more insight and more depth and maybe a more open heart. ah Because the kind of poems I like have depth of feeling, they're not just intellectual exercises, you know, it's not like, intellectual masturbation, it actually has heft, you know, like feeling. So so that's the context. in which, and also I do underwater photography, I'm a very avid underwater photographer, and same thing, like when I bring people into this underwater world that is not our normal world that we live in, hopefully for people to get stopped by this beauty and this weirdness of what lives underwater, and maybe that looks at, has us look at our lives in a new way. Maybe we have a more tolerant or broad understanding. Like there's so much gender switching that goes on under the ocean. In the ocean, there's so many fish and even eels. There are these beautiful little ribbon eels that are blue when they're adults. All of them are born black. They turn blue as adults. They're all born male. When it comes time to reproduce, they turn female. The female is yellow. So you'll see a blue and a yellow one hanging out together sometimes. And then once the female reproduces, she dies. So it's like, that's the life cycle. Not all of them turn female, but just enough that they reproduce. So that's an example of the weirdness that lives under there. So maybe by knowing that, we could become more understanding of gender differences as humans. And, you know, not be so fixated on the binary, right? So that's an example of my entire life is kind of organized around showing or demonstrating or having people directly feel a broader understanding or a different frame than usual that then hopefully wakes them up a bit. Yes. my gosh. Yes. You're a master at this because you've shown me literally an example of everything that you just said. And so my brain's going, Ooh, we could talk about that. Ooh, we could talk about that. Ooh. Okay. So let's start with the underwater photography because you just came back from Bali. You just had an amazing experience. I got to see it from your Facebook and all of the pictures that you posted. I'm going, I don't know what I'm looking at. but this is freaking cool. And then you'll tell the story with it, which you're a phenomenal storyteller. What's the one that I kept on saying, my God, I love this creature. What is this? the nudibranch. New Yes, the nudie, you called it the nudie and I was just like, my God, that's forever. It's. Nudies are amazing. So nudibranchs are sea slugs and they have these gills. So they have these things called rhinophores, which are like their antennas. And then they have these gills in the back that are external and they're like frondy, wavy things. And they're just beautiful. They come in all sizes and colors. I mean, I was shooting some that looked like a grain of sand. ah you know, once they were magnified with the camera, then you see the detail, but like some were just tiny, tiny, and then some were, you know, maybe this big and a couple of inches long. I they really range and they're a fascinating creature because they are hermaphroditic. So we're talking about sex, and cash today. So let's do the sex piece. They are hermaphroditic. So not this time, but in the past, also in Indonesia, like 12 years ago, I shot a pair of of nudibranchs that were having sex. And they have these coiled penises that both were going into each other. So they both were being the male and the female at the same time. And then they lay eggs. And many of them, not all, but many of them lay their eggs. Some of them lay their eggs in a spiral. It just looks like this white spiral on the sand. It's gorgeous. Some of them lay their eggs, pink eggs, in these, it looks like a rose. It looks like roses. It looks like flower petals. They're insane. And it's just like this little slug, you know what saying? But it's so complex and incredibly fascinating. Right, there's an, okay, so a corked spiral penis. Is it like cone shaped? No, there's a sheath and then it sort of coils within the sheath, at least of that particular type of nudibranch. That's the only nudibranch penis I've ever seen. uh And at least of that type, it was like a little blue coil inside this translucent sheath. So I was able to capture both of them going toward each other. was bananas. So yeah, yeah. Holy coolness. mean, okay, so phenomenal example of bringing us into a completely different world that most people don't get to see. And that's like, that's very tangible. We've got pictures of this thing. And then the intangible are the conversations that you and I have had. we'll, I'll bring up a topic and you're like, okay, so let's, do you mind if I help you reframe this? That's how we always start that conversation. And I know she's, she's just gone into coach mode and I love it. I absolutely love it. Cause this is usually right. It's usually on our drive from the airport to Melissa's house and, or on the way back, usually on the way we're done by the time we're on our way back to the airport. Because then we're in Melissa's space and that's a whole Exactly. But those conversations have been so powerful for me because it becomes this like, let's look at it from a completely different perspective and see how it changes how you're thinking about the situation. And as soon as you do that for me, I'm like, Oh yeah, that's solved it. Okay. We're good. It's so brilliant. You're so unbelievably gifted when it comes to that. You are. And that's the transformational work that you help women go through, particularly if they have this good girl persona. Yeah, yeah, so I was very acculturated to be a good girl. grew up, yeah, first of all, I mean, I grew up in New York City. I went to the best all girls school from kindergarten through 12th grade. So 13 years of conditioning in how to be an intellectual, very heady, perfectionist intellectual was my schooling. And then I also grew up with a Swedish mother. who was nobility. She was not royalty. There's a difference between nobility and royalty, but my mother, what grew up, her family was knighted, so to speak, like in the 1700s, 1732. So I grew up with a lot of that kind of social conditioning around appropriateness and decorum and, you know, comilfo, like just being, yeah, appropriate. And so I... With all of that, I had a lot to overcome to figure out who am I and what makes me tick and what do I really like and what do I enjoy? And I always kind of went against the grain. uh My father would, my father was an MD, he was a doctor and every single step I took, he pushed back on. So when I went to massage school, he pushed back and was like, why don't you go to physical therapy school? It's more respected. And I said, because I don't want to be a physical therapist. I want to be a massage therapist. When I went to Chinese medicine school, it was, why don't you go to medical medical school, know, Western medical school, because it's more respected now, because I don't want to work in a hospital because I want to be an acupuncturist. So every single thing I've had to push back on to be myself, to be my own person. And so I know what it is to be deeply steeped in proper, you know, let's say class based appropriate culture and how difficult I know how hard it is to break free of that. If you are a person who's meant to break free of that, I think there are people who are genuinely happy in that system, but not all of us are. And so I'm here for those who are like, wow, I care about the planet. I want to do good with my life. I want to make a difference. I'm not just here to go to the country club and like wear pearls, you know, nothing against those who love to go to the country club and wear pearls. It's all good. Right. And for those who want to do something more meaningful and make a difference and raise the love, like expand the consciousness on the planet, I'm here for that. Yeah, yeah. All right, so you have the sex, death and cash sub stack, which this is my favorite sub stack of all the sub stacks that I read. That's the one that I'm like, that's what I need to be reading. And it's because the way that you tell the stories, we can all relate. Even if we're the type clutching our pearls going, she said fuck. She did what? Right. my pearls. But it's so relatable. Across the board, relatable. But you do have to get to a certain point where you're no longer this clutching your pearls good girl to be able to read about these three taboos. Sex, death, and cash. And I chose them for a reason. And I want to say something about this three, the three taboos, because I'm so glad you named them like that. These are three areas. The reason I chose these three areas as my focus, I mean, aside from like, I've had a lot of all three in my life, through all of them a lot, is that they are three areas that in polite society, we avoid talking about. And is the other one. ON religion, that's right. Avoid, avoid. avoid her instead, it cancels we. So, but sex, death and cash are so central to our lives. They so affect how we experience our lives on a daily basis. And we avoid talking about them. we, know, God forbid we talk about it. any of this stuff with our family members. So then you have these people who are not in their power with relation to their sex. don't, especially women, we tend to not, the way I put it is own our sex. don't have, I don't wanna say control is not the word. We don't have agency, a lot of us around our sexuality. We sit in a passive. waiting to be chosen, waiting to be desired, laying back, so to speak. And one of the saddest conversations I ever had was with a total stranger at a hotel bar at a conference. He was at a different conference, but at the same hotel. And I ended up at a table with his people, because there was never no other seats. And it goes around, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? And at that time, I was still a relationship coach. And so I was like, oh, I'm a relationship and sexuality coach. And this total stranger, a man, which was surprising to me, but so beautiful, just opened up to me and the whole table about, he said, know, the women that I have slept with, I wish they would tell me what they like. They just lie there silently. And I have to try to figure it out. Right? I have to try to figure it out. And like, it would be such a gift if they would tell me what they like and what they want. And when you ask women, well, what do you like and what you want? So many cannot tell you because they haven't explored or they haven't given themselves permission to really understand their own desire. Ugh. Ugh. Doesn't that break your heart? in person because it's not appropriate, right? And so it comes back to that good girl thing. And the good girl thing also keeps us powerless in a certain way, keeps us compliant, it keeps us malleable, it keeps us controllable, which benefited society for a really long time. But the time has come on this planet where we need to wake the fuck up because up. because we have lost the plot, you know, and we have gone, right, in terms of compassion, we're going sideways. And so that's really what I mean about the sexuality piece and the death piece, like many of us live so afraid of dying that we don't actually live. And so, you know, there, I sat with both my parents as they were dying. And that's very different than, uh you know, obviously not all deaths are beautiful. Like some deaths are horrifying and traumatic and ugly. And we're seeing a lot of those right now on our planet. ah And so I'm not minimizing or, you know, negating the existence of like really painful and ugly deaths. And at the same time, if you have the opportunity to sit with a dying person, it will change your life. Like it has the power to really reveal what truly matters and what's real beyond what we think is real. And uh that's where I come from with death is with the death piece of sex, death and cash is allowing death to be something that motivates you to live more fully, to live your life because you could go tomorrow and that's the truth. You could go today. We don't know. Right. And then uh also to not be as afraid of this transition that we all go through, because we're in and out of bodies all the time, from my perspective. physically, mentally, emotionally, in and out of bodies all the time. all the time. And then the cash piece, you know, our world runs on transactions, it runs on currency, it runs on how we, yeah, how we transact. And many of us how we exchange exactly and many of us, especially those of us who either have inherited money or we've married into money, but maybe we don't come for money and suddenly we have money. There's a discomfort often and a guilt and a, you know, it's tricky to be a person who has money in a world where so many people have very little and often not enough. And that is uh a very tricky space to navigate. Like how do I... How do I actually enjoy what I have? How do I also make a difference with what I have and be a person of conscience in the world while not being constrained or constricted or embarrassed or afraid because I am in this fortunate position? And so that's a lot of the work I've had to do over the last 20 something years since I first inherited. you know, here I am, this like little healer hippie girl, and all of a sudden I inherited money from my great grandmother in Venezuela that I had no idea existed. And it just like rejiggered, you know, overnight my position in the world. And it's like, oh, wow, what do I do now? You know, and I immediately started giving away as much as possible because I just was so uncomfortable with it. And then it was like, okay, that's not sustainable. or wise. And so I've had to learn over the last 25 years, sorry, I had to count there. I had to learn over the last 25 years, how to really steward what I've been given with grace and skill and agency. Mm-hmm, and you're teaching those of us who want to be philanthropists how to do it the right way because you've learned the wrong way, you've learned the right way, you've learned tricks that those of us who are just getting into that world are going, we need to know that. Yeah, I can't wait to find out more. dynamics. Yeah, and understanding some of the weird dynamics that can arise, you know, when you when you are moving in in circles of people who have differing amounts of money. How do you be you and not hide but also like support people and not not get into weird power dynamics and like dumb shit that philanthropists tend to do. Yeah, so the ego-ing. all the egoing and right, all the posturing or like, you need to give me, you you need to report every sentence. I'm like, I'll just, like, I'm a fan of giving people unrestricted giving because I trust them to know what their organization needs, for example. And, m you know, of course an annual report would be great. I'd love to see what the money's doing. And I don't need you to report back every 15 minutes because I'm afraid you're going to like waste it. Like that's stupid. Do the thing you're here to do. Don't spend all your time trying to report to me. It takes people off the mission. Anyway, I could go on about that, but that's just an example of what I'm talking about where philanthropists just get very self-important and need a lot of attention in ways that are Yeah, the opposite of what they're trying to do. The posturing really is the thing that we see the most. Like that's the outward expression of what's really going on is them going, well, I did this, right? And I am important now. And it's like, no, you made a difference in someone else's life. That's important. Not you. m Right. Exactly. Like you enabled someone to do their mission at a bigger and more successful level. How that's great. Like, and the work that's being done is the thing that matters. You know, you're the scaffolding. yeah. And I'm cool with that. Like I'm cool with being the scaffolding. Like I don't need, yeah. We don't need labels on buildings with your name. I still do not. So that always cracks me up. The first time that I experienced that in my life was actually in college. So Illinois, Chicago is where I went to school first. And one of the players on the baseball team became a phenomenal pro baseball player. And they named the field after him. And he is one of the most humble people. And I was like that right there. That's a good way to get a name on a on a field in this case, but a building or, you know, on something, doing it from that beautiful space of giving and giving back and doing it in just this beautiful way. He was, he's still to this day is the most, most honored for all of the work that he does for other people in Major League Baseball. Yeah. So, so amazing. Curtis Granderson, just throwing that out there. I, or you. Right? Thank you for being who you are, Curtis. CJ is what we knew him as in college, but yeah. That's how philanthropists should show up. That's how respecting cash, and it really, to me, it comes down to the golden rule, right? That's the only rule that should ever need to exist ever. Respect yourself, respect each other, respect the environment. That's it! Those are the rules, and that's the golden rule. Exactly. And living from that space... It's interesting though, living from that space as a good girl becomes super difficult. more. So if we're in this good girl persona, we can't show up as the person who goes, yes, I want to give this money to this person, or, oh, want to do something in the bedroom this way. Like, those things can't show up. And it's across all three of these. You can't show up for death. You can't show up in cash, in money, in transactional. situations, which is also what sex is. That's a, it can be a transactional situation. Yeah. Yeah. So if good girls released that persona, in your opinion, how do they show up? can we unpack the sex transactional thing? Because that's actually the thing. Yeah, because this is one of the things that good girls, uh one of the traps good girls fall into around sex is transactional. And it's like this tit for tat, you you did this, so I have to do this. You know, like you... I'm gonna get explicit note to your listeners. You've been going down on me for last 20 minutes. I'd better, first of all, A, I'd better have an orgasm so I can go do something to you next, or B, I'd better reciprocate in some way whether or not I have an orgasm, because not everybody, orgasms work. Yeah. And so, This transactional thing kills sex. It kills the orgasm. Like if you're so worried about, my God, this is taking so long and what, they're gonna want me to do, because they've done this for me, I better do this for them. When you're doing A, you're in your head. B, are, uh everything is being measured in this transactional way. and you're not actually receiving. And the most beautiful sex happens when you can be really fully receptive. And it's that receptivity that actually makes a beautiful experience for everybody involved. And that's how flow naturally happens. When you're in your body, when you're not overthinking it. when you're allowing yourself to receive, it all comes out in the wash. Like you'll do something some other time if you didn't do something this time. And sometimes to break women of this habit, I have had them uh deliberately set a timer with their partner and like decide in advance, okay, we're gonna have oral sex for 10 minutes and. the partner goes down on them for 10 minutes. When the timer goes off, you stop and walk away. Like, that's it. And we're done. And this one, what we call one-way touch in the field helps to break us of this habit of this tit for tat transactional thing. And you learn to flex your receiving muscle. And that is a beautiful thing. for everybody and then vice versa. You can set a timer and go down on your partner or give a foot massage or whatever is desired. The what is less important than the act of learning to simply receive or simply give and then not feel the need to immediately reciprocate so that you break this good girl thing of like, be, to deserve pleasure, I have to give pleasure. That is what kills our libido for a lot of us over time. Oh yeah, oh absolutely. It's interesting to watch too when it comes to sex and women of a certain age, they decide or it just, not spontaneously, but just develops over time that sex is no longer a part of something I need. How do we get women of a certain age above 55? Let's just, we'll put the marker there. Above 55, sometimes we see this at 52. But how do we get them out of that, this is my new good girl phase. I'm gonna be a good girl and not ask my husband for sex anymore, or not ask my partner for sex anymore. It well and there's the beginning, right? There's the beginning. How do we break this of them? Because for some women at this age, it becomes painful, right? There's the physicality of it and that. awful. to be cared for with a doctor and healers like us. But if there's no physical ramifications of having sex and they just have decided this is no longer a part of my life, how do we help them break back in? I think the first thing is to understand that our sex is deeply entwined with our life force. So when we decide that, we are basically deciding to erode our vitality. Buh-hah! to have me in the heart. Yeah. if you look at it like that, then all of a sudden, keeping your sexual energy alive becomes more important. It's very, very, very deeply linked to our vitality, to our magnetism, to our uh radiance. Mm-hmm. And so maybe there's no desire. I have certainly gone through periods where there's no desire. And still, I would start with self-pleasuring before bringing anything to a partner. Even just gently touching yourself, and especially if intercourse is painful, like really get to know your external, your vulva, your external genitalia, get to know it. Get to know your clit. Like what part, what side of the clit is the most sensitive? What type of stroke feels good? Once you get to know yourself in that way, then you can share that with a partner. But most of all, and also it's beyond genitalia. Like what does your skin, yeah, what does your skin want? Buy oils that feel delicious on your skin. You know. Adorn yourself. Yes. in oils or scents or clothes or anything that has you feel connected to your body and sensuous. The other thing I would do is also dance. think dance is another doorway in. So you could put on a sexy song and just move. You don't even have to like do some crazy dance. You just kind of gently sway your body and move your hips a bit and start to just feel yourself in your hips and legs because That is so important for us as we grow older in terms of balance, terms of, yeah, longevity, yeah. And so that's really what I would suggest. And if intercourse is painful, there's uh like a medical-ish, I mean, it's like, there's a vibrator that was developed by doctors that has red light. and heat that helps to regenerate vaginal tissue and like really, right. And so it's called the V-Fit. It's made by Joy Lux. And you can go get that and use that three days a week. And you might start to A, have less pain and B, feel more desire as, uh you know, juiciness returns. I know I'm juicy. oh the ways the juiciness returns. yeah, yeah. So that's, mean, that's, I have lots more suggestions, but that's, that's the, that's where I'd start is really touch yourself, connect with yourself. And then, you know, there's so many reasons why we stopped wanting sex with our partners. And, you you probably have to deal with some of those before you'll let them touch you. ah And so, you know, there might need to be some conversations. There might need to be some, maybe even couples therapy, but, but just like, to connect in ways that are non-sexual first. Maybe cuddling, holding hands, like just recognizing, oh, I have a body and this body wants connection with another body. That's a great place to start after you've done this work with yourself. I love that. All right, let's jump to death. How do we get people on board with death? How do we get people to really be okay with the fact that everyone is going to die? None of us get out of this alive. How do we get them comfortable with that so that we can actually have those conversations around death? Yeah. I mean, are we ever comfortable with it? I'm not 100 % sure. think part of it is... I mean, we have to address the worldview, whether you believe that this is it, like this one life is it, and we die and we go on the ground and that's over. That's going to create a very different relationship to death than if you believe that we reincarnate, for example, or if you believe that we have souls that go on or that we go to heaven or that we go to hell, whatever the belief systems are. create a very different relationship to death. In some religions, death is actually the liberation into a beautiful place and people die on purpose, right? What's that? It can't be for some people. ah And so I don't know, getting people comfortable with death. feels hard to me. Like, that feels difficult to me. What feels more doable is to interrogate our relationship to it and look at where is my fear of death keeping me from life. No. That's for me the question. And what am I holding back on? If I weren't afraid of death, would I be doing something differently? That I do now. Yeah. Those kind of questions. The other question is, which has been so overplayed in the coaching world, but it's a valid question. If I had 24 hours left to live, would I live? Would I do what I'm doing now? Because I feel like death has the potential to be this great clarifier. of our values and of what really matters. So facing death and engaging with death and interrogating our relationship to death and by that to life. Mm-hmm. That's where we can live a life that's more true than the life that we're currently living. Because when we start to engage with our life from that perspective of, if I'm dying tomorrow, would I still, would I wanna be at this job? Would I wanna be with this person? Would I wanna be living where I live? Would I wanna be eating Doritos? like whatever level, right? We'll be sitting on the couch three hours at night, right? And so in that way, relating to death can really help us distill and clarify what's most important in life and give us the courage and the motivation to actually turn our life in the direction of truth. Because ultimately it's really about being true to the depth of who you are, not the surface you, but like the deep you. And I think the prospect of depth is one of the most potent clarifies we have. Like when people get a terminal diagnosis, that's when the shit hits the fan and they shift. They shift, but why wait for that? Why don't wait for the terminal diagnosis? Fucking do it now. That's my perspective. And if life is not how you want it now, you don't have to throw the whole thing out, but what one little thing could you change to start moving in the direction of truth for you? That's what I feel like engaging with death gives us. Yes. What is one thing that you wish people would dive deeper into when it comes to cash? Yeah, I wish they would dive deeper. it's become. There's so much charge on, I mean, there's a phrase in the zeitgeist now, eat the rich, right? And it's so weird to me. Yes, there are the uber rich that are just doing stupid shit and destroying the planet and people. And I'm not for that. I'm much more for everybody having sufficiency and being able to live the lives they want to live. That's more where I come from. And so. I wish people would interrogate the beliefs around money that they grew up with, because chances are they grew up with some version of, at least in the West, money is the root of all evil. ah You know, some version of that. And if you are a person that's struggling to make ends meet or feels guilty about what you have, It's worth picking apart how you relate to that phrase, money is the root of all evil, because as long as that's running your life, your relationship to money, abundance, flow, ease is going to be trouble. And you may literally not have enough money in your life, or you may have enough money, but not be able to enjoy it or feel bad about it or shrink yourself in certain ways and hide because you have it. And so I think that's really the key is not glorifying money as the be all end all of what's great about life and not. seeing money is the root of all evil either. There's an in-between space where you deeply understand that money is the energy of exchange that we have chosen to use on this planet. We are constantly exchanging things for what we want. Exchange is how we live and it's necessary. I mean, it's as necessary as breathing. We exchange air. and carbon dioxide with the planet, you know, to live. I know we're not bummed about that. We're not pissed at the trees because they produce oxygen, like for us to breathe. Like we're not mad about that. You know, we're not mad that the ocean absorbs is a sink, you know, whatever you call it. Yeah, for carbon dioxide. Like we're not mad about that, but we're mad about money. Yep, there's a lot of that. I think cleaning that up and understanding that it's a necessary part of modern life and how do we relate to it skillfully so it doesn't control us, but it also doesn't, we're also not afraid or hating it or any of those things. I think it would help a lot of us. relate a lot better to what we have, to what we don't have, to people who have more than us, to people who have less than us. It would help that get smoother and cleaner. And I know that sounds like a utopia, I think, you know, but I do think it's necessary because it's part of what has always existed. And I think it's greed and capitalism and accumulation and... you know, all these things that have distorted and messed up how we relate to money and those of us who have it and have more than we need. I think it's on us to do some rebalancing and it's on us to be judicious about how we spend, you know? um Because... We don't like, the planet is, the planet is in some ways infinite and in many ways not. Like when we cut down the last tree, that's the last tree. And life will end. When we fish out of the ocean, that's the end of our food supply. Like, right? Like we can't just go on in this consumptive way. uh We have to start. understanding, and this is where Indigenous folks really had it right. We have to understand the interchange and the respectful. transactional nature of exchange. Yep. Yeah. Getting back to the root of what, what is it actually for? Why do we actually have this as our, I, I love having that conversation with my husband. go into circles about like, how did it become money? Like this thing that we have now on cards or it's just in the ether. How did it, how did we get here? And it started with, you know, exchanging furs. uh and animals and eventually gold and a version of a rock that came out of the ground. Like, how did we get there? And now it's just fictitious. It's in the ether and we exchange it all the time. Right? So it's a fun conversation to have with someone who has a healthy relationship with their money. Yeah, and I think it's important to acknowledge like many of us don't. Many of us don't have a healthy relationship to it. We either want it too much or we hate it or we fear it or, you know, there's just like, we're desperate for it. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, and that's one of the things I like to say about sex, death and cash. Like each of those things has the capacity to really hook us and make us go completely unconscious and into our reactive patterns. And they each have the capacity to free us and have us expand into the truest version of ourselves that we can. And so, but it's through facing and engaging with each of them that we can do that. Recognizing that it's super easy to get hooked and go down a path of fear, go down a path of unconscious. uh repetition of patterns, which is, it's not our fault. It's very natural for that to happen, but it takes effort to turn our relationship with all three of those taboos towards something liberating, which I think is what the planet needs. Not the planet, but the world, the people world needs. Those of us existing with conscious brains and efforting all the time to just live. yeah, I love that. they really each of them is liberatory. Mm hmm. Potentially, if you can get past the fear. Yeah, I love that. Marie Elizabeth, are my people. You are my sister in this effort to wake people up and show them like there are other ways to go about this and try this one or try this one and see which one's going to liberate you. So thank you. Thank you for being on the podcast with me. Thank you for being who you are in the world and you guys go check out Sex, Death and Cash on Substack. It is so good. And I can't wait for your book to come out. I am dropping that in here. That is coming. Yes. Right? It's a book. It's in process, people. Pay attention to Sex, Death and Cash and you'll know when the book comes out. Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I've loved our conversation. Me too. This is, you know, it goes back to like living in the moment and, and, know, are you doing the thing that you want to do if this was your last 24 hours? Absolutely. Yes. Yep. Talking to you would be on the list. Exactly.

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