Episode 1: Why I Had to Start This Podcast (and What It Means for You)

Welcome to My Healing Is Your Healing, a podcast for the woman healing out loud and reclaiming her story. I’m your host, Celeste Case-Ruchala, and this first episode is raw, real, and personal. Before we dive into tools, rituals, and stories of transformation, I’m sharing why this podcast had to be born—and what it means for you.

This episode is a conversation about identity, invisibility, and what happens when we abandon ourselves for the sake of being chosen. I open up about the version of me who had all the accomplishments—the doctorate, the job title, the races, the resume—but who felt like a stranger in her own life. The woman who performed her worth until she couldn’t anymore. Maybe you know that woman too.

We talk about the cost of not expressing ourselves—the silent ache of shape-shifting, smiling through the numbness, and building a life that looks good on paper but feels hollow on the inside. I share the night I hit my emotional rock bottom, staring at a tear-streaked reflection in the mirror and asking the question I’d never dared to before: “Do I even love me?”

This episode explores what it means to begin again—not in a dramatic transformation, but in the quiet, tender shifts. The ones that happen when you start asking different questions. The ones that invite you to tell the truth, even when your voice shakes. The ones that lead you back home to yourself.

You’ll hear about my journey through burnout, performance, and perfectionism—and the slow, sacred work of reclaiming my voice. I talk about the healing that happened in women’s circles, on long solo runs, in journal pages and silent car rides. And I invite you to explore what healing could look like in your own life—not as something you do alone, but as something we do together.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• What it costs us to perform instead of express
• The silent ache of being invisible in your own life
• Why so many high-achieving women feel numb, disconnected, or like something is missing
• My personal breaking point—and what I learned from it
• The truth about healing (hint: it’s not linear or pretty)
• Why this podcast exists and how it’s different
• What “My Healing Is Your Healing” truly means

This is more than a podcast—it’s a space for the woman who is tired of shrinking, pretending, or waiting for p

Transcript

Season 1 Episode 1

[00:00:00] Welcome to My Healing. Is Your Healing a podcast for the woman healing out loud and reclaiming her story. I'm your host, Celeste Case Ruchala, and this first episode, it's personal, it's raw, it's unfiltered it, because before we even dive into the stories, the rituals, the reclamation, I wanna tell you why this podcast even exists, why I [00:01:00] had to start it, and more importantly.

What it means for you. I'm calling it my healing as your healing because it isn't just a project, it is my own becoming. The more I began to reclaim my voice and my story and my truth, the more I realized I wasn't alone. That ache that I was feeling was something so many other women were carrying around too.

And when I started sharing what was real for me, I. And hearing the same things echoed from other women, something sacred happened inside of me. We began to heal together. So we're gonna start with this real discussion of the cost of not expressing yourself. Every time I would introduce myself, and you know, when people ask, who are you?

You pause and you think, Hmm, I don't know. Who am I? What do I even share? I would [00:02:00] always start with my accomplishments. Hi, I'm Celeste. I have a doctorate in clarinet performance. I'm a vp. I've done 10 Ironmans. I run marathons. I would give them the resume reel The success highlights all of the things that would make them think my life was good, at least on paper.

And it was all true. But what was also true and what I wasn't telling them was I felt numb inside. Disconnected like I was performing a version of myself I thought the world would approve of. I had become so good at shape shifting that I forgot who I actually was and I would laugh at jokes that I did not find funny.

And I would say yes when I desperately wanted to say no. And I gave, and I gave and I gave until all that was left was a shell. And even when I checked all of the boxes, the job, the [00:03:00] engagement, the credentials, I still laid in bed at night wondering, is this it? Why do I feel so unfulfilled? Why do I feel so invisible in my own life?

Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever been the woman who has it all together on the outside? But inside you feel like you're fading. These are the moments that began to chip away at my sense of self and my self worth. And slowly I began to abandon the most important person in the room myself. So here was my breaking point for me.

It just wasn't one rock bottom. It was a slow ache that built into a tidal wave. I remember one night very clearly, well, maybe not [00:04:00] sitting on the floor of my old apartment, the lights were off a half empty bottle of wine or whiskey or whatever was on the counter. Westworld probably playing in the background on the TV for the third time through, and I wasn't living.

I was numbing. I was swiping on dating apps until my thumbs were sore, hoping, that? Somebody would choose me praying someone would love me enough that my life would finally start to make sense. And that night I walked to the mirror, cheeks, tear stained mascara, bleeding down my face, and I looked at the reflection and said, why doesn't anyone love you?

And the silence that followed was brutal. Because I didn't even recognize that woman in the mirror. She was a complete stranger to me. And the truth is, I have never asked myself the deeper question. It had never even [00:05:00] crossed my mind because we are so conditioned in this world to think that we are supposed to make other people love us, that I never asked do I love me.

I had been so focused on being chosen, so desperate to be seen that I abandoned the only person I was supposed to ever come home to, and that was me. I don't wanna say that everything started to shift immediately. There was no single defining moment. Eventually though, I started realizing where I was and what was happening. And that I was and always had been the most important person in my life. And slowly everything started to shift. Not in one big dramatic moment, but in tiny, tiny tender ones. [00:06:00] Healing, they'll tell you it's painful, but they don't tell you how painful. They don't tell you about the parts where you have to sit in the heaviness.

Of the fear, the shame, the question, what will people think of me? You have to really want to change your life to go through what I went through to become someone new. Some of these shifts started in the women's circles that I started, where I finally said the things out loud I'd been too afraid to admit. Or on runs when I thought that I was at my breaking point, but found a second wind and met myself again with every step.

Sometimes it was in late night journaling, in silent car rides and in messy conversations with myself. And yes, my AI best friend Steve. And the question started to change, who am I really? [00:07:00] Why am I showing up this way? What if the script I've been living isn't mine to carry anymore? And who freaking wrote it in the first place?

And what if healing this deep, painful, necessary healing isn't something we're meant to do alone. So what is this podcast and why did I have to start it? I started this podcast because I couldn't not start it because every time I told a truth in one of my women's circles that I created, everyone else would exhale.

Every time I voiced something tender, someone else would say, oh my God, me too. I thought I was alone in this. This work is sacred. It's not pretty, but it's always powerful. And I think as women, we've been conditioned [00:08:00] to fear vulnerability with each other. Afraid of judgment of being outshined or dismissed or made to feel small. But real sisterhood, real connection, it lifts you. It reflects back the parts of you that you thought that you had to hide. That's what this podcast is. It's raw storytelling. You will always hear my truth. And other stories too, from women, from other coaches, friends, strangers who have walked through those same fires. You'll laugh, you might cry, you might feel the shame or energy rise to the surface, feelings that you didn't even know you had to air.

We'll talk about identity, about shame, radiance, boundaries, and self-worth. We'll explore rituals and tools and journal prompts and new ways of coming home to yourself, ways to practice these [00:09:00] ideas, and we'll do it together. So please, if you have a story to share, go to myhealingisyourhealing.com and send it to me.

Let's share our stories. Let's make healing visible. So. You're probably sitting there wondering. So, um, what does this mean for me, Celeste? Well, I will tell you, if you've ever looked in the mirror and not recognized the woman staring back, if you've ever wondered when someone was gonna knock on the door and save you, if you're tired of pretending or performing, or shrinking just to fit in, this is your space.

This podcast is your permission slip to reclaim your voice, to take up space, to live fully, boldly, unapologetically, as the woman you are always meant to be. Because here's what I believe [00:10:00] with my whole heart. Your healing isn't just personal, it's collective. And when you rise, we all rise. When you stand in your own story, you create this kind of light that helps other women remember who they are too.

So here's my invitation to you. Start where you are. Take what resonates inside of this and just leave what doesn't. But stay open and stay curious because sometimes the exact story you need isn't your own. It's someone else's. Maybe you've heard the same truth a hundred times before, but today you're finally ready to hear it in a new way.

So if this episode landed for you, share it with somebody who's ready to heal out loud and tag me on Instagram @myhealingyourhealing, and [00:11:00] let me know what part stayed with you. If you're ready for more, hit subscribe. Follow, come back next week. This is just the beginning, so until next time, keep showing up.

Keep growing. And remember, you were never meant to dim your light.