Back to the Word: An Unexpected Spiritual Journey Home

Welcome to What’s the Word!

Join me as we dive deep into faith, self-care, and the beautiful, messy journey of parenthood. This podcast is a space where spirituality meets real life — no judgment, no perfection, just honest conversations and heartfelt stories.

Originally born from my love of themed workouts and words of the day, What’s the Word has evolved into something much bigger than I ever expected. Along the way, I’ve explored wellness, motherhood, and the many twists and turns of my spiritual path — all while interviewing some of the most inspiring people I know.

In this season and beyond, I’ll share my personal testimony, the powerful dreams that led me back to scripture, and the lessons I’m learning as I grow deeper in faith. Whether you’re just beginning your spiritual journey or looking to reconnect, you’re invited to come along with me, imperfect, curious, and open to whatever comes next.

There will be candid chats, inspiring guests, practical self-care tips, and heartfelt stories about finding light in the everyday. This isn’t about telling you what to believe; it’s about exploring faith together and supporting each other along the way.

So if you’re ready to say “yes” to your own spiritual journey — whatever that looks like for you  hit subscribe, share with a friend, and let’s grow together on What’s the Word.

Welcome back. Welcome home. Welcome to What’s the Word. Be sure to subscribe and be a part of the community as we rise TOGETHER and remember to have FAITH!

Xo

J

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, welcome to What's the Word. I'm your host, Jamie McFadden. I'm so excited to have you here. This podcast is all about faith, self-care, and the journey of parenthood. I will be interviewing some of the most inspirational people I know. So join me and let's grow together on What's the Word. Welcome back to What's the Word. I am your host, Jamie McFadden, and I am honored to be here on this journey with you. And I'm so thankful that you said yes to being a part of this journey with me. So today we are going to talk about faith and we are going to talk about my personal testimony and how I ended up right back here, right back where we started. So a little backstory. In 2020, during the Wild West pandemic, I decided it was a great opportunity with a friend of mine, Louie, who is the producer, to create a podcast. And the intention was, let's find a way to inspire people in a different way that I haven't done before. I've done the fitness, I've done the yoga and the mindfulness and all that, but I thought, no, I really wanted to dive into the podcast space. Having no clue what I was doing, I also did. So hear me out on this. I've always created and crafted workouts with a theme and word specific of the day. So every workout I've ever done, I've always, in hundreds and hundreds of classes, always had a word of the day that I would do the workout about, right? So maybe the word's energy, maybe the word is joy, whatever it is. And so when we launched the podcast, it seemed very fitting to create the podcast, What's the Word? Being the word of the day. So that's what we did. And we started interviewing some of the most inspirational people that I'd ever interacted with, people I've worked with, people that I've just loved following along their journey, all sorts of things. And all of a sudden, our podcast started getting a little bit of traction, which was awesome and exciting to see that it was actually supporting and inspiring others to go out and do things that they wanted to do or whatever it may be. But what I didn't expect that happened was I started getting people brands that were reaching out to me saying, hey, we would love to team up with you. And we've heard about what's the word and we want to see if we can team up and either send you some Bibles or, and immediately I was like, nah, I don't think this is the right podcast. Like, I don't think that this is the podcast that you think it is and you're reaching out to. So then I started doing some research and I recognized that when someone said, what's the word? Now, mind you, this is someone who grew up. I grew up Greek Orthodox, going to Catholic school, reading the word. But also not necessarily understanding that that is what I was speaking about in this podcast or the way that people took it. So fast forward, I decided pretty much immediately knowing that and immediately I felt a little bit of guilt and shame because I thought, oh, gosh, I didn't intend. It's not a faith driven podcast, so I didn't intend to necessarily call that audience. Right. and at the same time i just wanted to be as authentic as possible so where i was at was launching all of the wave systems self-care my book all the things so i thought okay well let's rename the podcast and relaunch it with a different name and we'll make sure that we're really tailoring to the moms and the people who follow along with my journey of self-care and how i can provide tips and tricks of kind of things people aren't necessarily thinking about when it comes to self-care so we did that There was something about it, though, that just didn't resonate with me. It was like, you know, that time in life, there's got to be a time that you can probably think about where you go and you do something because you feel like that's what you're supposed to do. You should do it like I should. It was like a should thing. And at the same time, I felt deep down like I don't know if this is how what this is supposed to be. Just didn't just didn't hit right. So anyways, we did a few episodes just kind of. flopped fizzled whatever and I was in the middle of just having a baby newborn land the fog all of it and recognize you know what I think I need space from this I think it's not the podcast it's me it's not you it's me so I took some space and during that space interestingly enough I oh no this is pregnancy now I'm going back so I'm like wait timeline timeline I started having very deep, wild dreams that these dreams, when I say these dreams, these dreams were so powerful, potent. It was almost disturbing to the point of I wasn't sure why I was having these dreams, but they definitely felt like it was very symbolic. So it started where I had dreams that there were things like medieval times and then it became biblical and then it became scripture and in one I even felt as though God was saying go get your Bible and it was about 3 a.m. and I didn't know where my Bible was to go get so fast forward I did find a Bible it had been about 20 something years since it had been opened and I opened the Bible and just you know opened it up and I opened it to Corinthians and a very specific passage in the Corinthians that was all about those who unfortunately worship false idols and how important it is to set ourselves in god's way and listen to the word of god and anyways This was one of many dreams like this. And all of a sudden they started clicking and I started having dreams. I had a dream with what I believed to be Jesus. I had a dream with Mary, but I remember she was wearing red. And I'm like, why is Mary wearing red? I don't remember Mary wearing red. And then all of a sudden it turned out that it was Mary Magdalene. I didn't even remember who Mary Magdalene was. So I'm sharing all of this with you because I want you to understand this is not something that I had planned, which is the funny part. So all of a sudden, fast forward. Life's life and have a kid, have very difficult pregnancy, had peripheral neuropathy, which they thought was fibromyalgia. And that's a whole nother, we'll talk about that a whole nother time. And I sat with this, like it was really bothering me that the podcast had been in this holding pattern for so long. And I just knew, I was like, it's not self-care secrets. I don't know what it is, but something about it. Had conversations with people, was praying on it, was really like meditating, thinking about what could it be journaling. And all of a sudden, dawned on me. Like as if a huge frying pan energetically hits me over the head, like, and I knew in that moment, the podcast in fact has always and will always be what's the word, but what's the word I wasn't ready for what it initially was. And in fact, the reason that we've decided to relaunch this podcast is because as much as I've been a health and wellness expert and someone who has studied extensively all these different ways to be physically healthy, to be mentally sound, to understand all sorts of somatics and all these different practices and all these different ways to take care of ourselves, self-care and all that. One area of my life where I am certainly no expert and I'm also ambitiously intrigued and know forever I'll be a student is in spirituality and specifically in this journey and with what's the word this podcast i hope that you will enjoy coming along this journey with me once again i'm not the expert but i'm going to be here to hopefully shine light on some of the things that maybe you have questions about as well i'm going to be doing some solo episodes i'll be doing some podcasts where i'm going to be interviewing people who really inspire me in the spiritual realm i am not here to tell you you need to be doing once again i'm not the expert so i'm not going to sit here and say this is exactly what you need to believe because i had that shovel down my throat my entire childhood and i remember that's what pushed me away from any kind of organized religion so what to expect from this podcast going forward is absolutely inspiration that's something without a doubt i mean i think being the light, bringing the light, shining the light, understanding the realness and rawness of the world and where we are at on our own journeys is so important. I think the village, the support, the community building that I think is incredibly important. And most of all, most important for me is that I hope this podcast, I hope what's the word, round two, resurrected, whatever we wanna call it, I hope that this podcast will... support and invite anyone that listens to dive deeper into what it means to have faith, into what it means to be the light, into what it means on your spiritual journey, wherever you are, to start to say yes and see where that leads us. Because I can say right now, the minute that I said yes, the moment that I started having those dreams and started reading scripture again, all of a sudden, the word really did start to come to life. And the conversations, the prayers, the spiritual journey that I am experiencing right now is something I've never, ever experienced in my entire life. And we're gonna talk about a lot, because guess what? For those of you that remember, I have been through a lot of different things in my life. I've had a lot of different phases and chapters, and I'm never gonna sit here and say that I know it all and I'm perfect, because I certainly don't. But what I am here to do is to share with you some of my story and some of other people's stories that will hopefully inspire you to know, A, you're not alone. B, faith is something that in my life has kept me going, always and ever. Anytime I've been through things, at the end of the day, it's faith that has gotten me through. And So if that is something that you're listening to this podcast and you're like, I don't know about this, Jamie, are you gonna be talking about these things that make me feel uncomfortable or that I'm not into or interested in? Maybe not, I don't know. But that's what I also realized is this is about my healing journey, my vulnerability and being on this journey with you and you with me. So I hope you enjoy this. I'm so excited. to dive deep and deep and deep and have fun and see where it takes us. So welcome again to What's the Word. Be sure, please, if you enjoy what you're hearing so far and you're like, ooh, like for me, I know I'm also going to say this. This last two years has helped me and supported me rediscovering and deepening my faith in a way that I had never actually been aware of before. Like I look back now and I'm like, oh, that was God. Oh. That was faith. Okay, that was God too. And that's part of the reason why it's so important that I do this. Because I think so often in this world, we feel like we're alone. We feel like we're taking on so many burdens or there's so many things in our life that it's hard to handle. And I think part of what I've learned in health is the number one thing we need to do is practice self-care. But the biggest part of self-care we need to practice is our spiritual self-care. And I think that goes... We'll call it misdiagnosed. We'll go, you know, not getting to the root of things. And so I hope this will inspire you in that way. All right. Well, that was just a little something, something. So you know what you're getting yourself into. And I look forward to seeing you soon. Make sure that you subscribe. Share this with a friend. If you know somebody that's like maybe wanting to dive into their spiritual journey and they're not sure where to start, they can come along this journey with me. It's going to be candid and fun. So let's go for it. All righty. See you soon.

UNKNOWN: 12:01

Bye.

SPEAKER_00: 12:01

See you next time on What's the Word.