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  • The Costa Rica Project:

    The Costa Rica Project:
    Apr 22 2026

    Show Notes

    Host: Sarah Stevenson, Goddess in Training

    Episode type: Solo

    Topics covered: Trusting intuition when outcomes are uncertain · the Costa Rica project · necrotizing fasciitis and the stop that changed everything · sitting in liminal space · what divinely inspired energy is actually for · the energy you spend is never wasted

    🎵 Music credit: Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by ArkawaUsed with permission. More at arkawamusic.com🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online for more tools to support your intuitive journey.

    When Divinely Inspired Things Don’t Work Out

    There’s a foundation being poured in Costa Rica this week.

    Concrete and rebar going into the ground on a piece of land I helped bring to life — a project that arrived the way the best things do: suddenly, fully, like it was always meant to be mine.

    For over two years I poured everything into that vision. Time, money, heart. A romance. A business. Trips every two to three months. The kind of momentum that doesn’t feel like effort because something larger is doing the pulling.

    And then my body stopped me.

    Necrotizing fasciitis. Two weeks in a hospital. Surgery. And somewhere in all of that, the energy I’d carried for that project — the vibration, the life-giving excitement — quietly dissolved.

    I came home and ended the romance. I stopped going back. And I sat with the question I couldn’t shake:

    If it was divinely inspired, why didn’t it work out?

    That’s what this week’s episode is about. Not a tidy answer — but the honest, ongoing work of a transition doula sitting with herself in a liminal space. What does it mean when something that felt so real, so full of divine momentum, shifts? Does it shake your trust in your intuition? Does it make you question the guidance you thought you were receiving?

    I don’t think the energy was wasted. I think it was tuition.

    And I’m beginning to see what it was actually preparing me for.

    If you have your own “Costa Rica” — something that moved you, fueled you, and then stopped — this episode is for you.

    Goddess in Training is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



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    25 Min.
  • He Died Twice and Came Back Louder

    He Died Twice and Came Back Louder
    Apr 15 2026
    Guest: Dorian Slay — pop artist, leukemia survivor, witch Connect with Dorian: Spotify | Apple Music | Instagram | YouTube🎵 New album: In My Villain Era — available May 1, 2026 on all major streaming platformsTopics covered: Surviving acute myeloid leukemia and two near-death experiences, bone marrow transplant from a perfect-match donor in Wales, the ghost of a little girl named Jocelyn, witchcraft as a lifeline, making Ascension as a ritual of return, gaslighting and reclaiming your narrative, embracing your villain era, Beltane as a release date, upcoming music and LA plans🎵 Music credit: Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by ArkawaUsed with permission. More at arkawamusic.com🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online for more tools to support your intuitive journey.THE VILLAIN WHO CAME BACK TO LIFEThere’s a moment in this week’s conversation where Josh — who performs as Dorian Slay — is describing the second time he died. He’s wandering a hospital hallway with a little girl in a Dorothy costume named Jocelyn, annoyed that the floor they’re on is boring and suggesting they check out the mental ward instead. He has an IV pole. He does not yet know he is dead.That is who Josh is. Even in death, he was looking for a better party.I met Josh when I first moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains, when I wandered into a witchcraft class he was teaching — protection spells — and we became fast friends. So when he told me he was recording music, it landed as exactly right. Everything about Josh is a spell.The Road to AscensionJosh was living in Houston when he got sick. What felt like the flu turned out to be acute myeloid leukemia. By the time a neighbor found him, unresponsive on the floor, his hemoglobin was 1.8. He was airlifted, pronounced dead, placed in a medical coma. His soul, by his account and his partner’s, remained very much present in the apartment — crying in front of the mirror, not because he was dead, but because his skin was breaking out.First word out of intubation: Starbucks.The bone marrow transplant that followed brought its own near-death experience, its own ghost (ruby slippers in a cabinet, tags still on, dust an inch thick), and the slow work of relearning to walk. Twice. His debut album Ascension emerged from all of it — ethereal, witchy, released on a full moon in August 2025.Enter the VillainIn My Villain Era, arriving May 1st on Beltane, was forged in the aftermath of a relationship that left him questioning his own perception of reality.“I’m at a point now where I’m okay with being the villain in somebody’s story,” he told me. “They’re a clown in mine.”So many of us navigating midlife, the dissolution of relationships, the slow work of reclaiming our own narrative, have had to find our way to exactly that place — the moment you stop trying to control someone else’s version of you and return to your own knowing. Josh got there and made a dance album about it.The sound has evolved from the atmospheric shimmer of Ascension into something more cinematic — what he describes as what you’d get if Lady Gaga and The Weeknd had a gay baby. The songs include Villain, Spite, Misbehaving, and Peanut Butter and Jelly, which is about being dirty in the kitchen and which his mother has not yet fully heard.Songs Are SpellsWhen I asked whether he’d ever used actual spell language in his lyrics, he laughed and said songs and spells aren’t so different. Both are intentional. Both call something forward. Both carry a frequency that lands in the body before the mind catches up.Ascension was a spell for return. In My Villain Era is a spell for liberation.Near the end of our conversation, he said: “Coming back from the dead twice really changes your outlook. Life is precious. Never take it for granted. Always tell the people you love that you love them.”And then: “I know that doesn’t sound very villain of me.”It doesn’t, Josh. But I think that’s the whole point.If this episode moved you, share it with someone in their own era of reclamation. And if you want to support the work here at Goddess in Training become a paid subscriber as energy exchange. Either way, I’m so glad you’re here.Goddess in Training is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading Goddess in Training! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Goddess in Training at goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe
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    42 Min.
  • The Layer Underneath

    The Layer Underneath
    Apr 8 2026
    Guest: Juliana Sloane — hypnotherapist, depth hypnosis practitioner, shamanic counselor, and Buddhist meditation teacherConnect with Juliana: Website | Meditation Classes & Retreats | Guided Meditations on Insight Timer | Instagram🌿 April 30–May 3 — Women's Glamping Retreat in Northern California: Deep Rest RetreatTopics covered: Depth hypnosis, shamanic journey work, plant medicine integration, Buddhist practice, silent retreat, anxiety, trance states, evidence-based healing, spiritual emergence🎵 Music credit: Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by ArkawaUsed with permission. More at arkawamusic.com🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online for more tools to support your intuitive journey.There is a version of healing most of us know well. You talk. You trace the thread. You gain insight into why you are the way you are. And the insight is real — it matters. But sometimes you get back in the car, drive home, and the pattern is still there. You understand it now. But understanding hasn’t moved it.This is exactly where my conversation with Juliana Sloane begins.Juliana works in the space beneath conscious thought — through depth hypnosis, shamanic journey work, and Buddhist meditation. She calls her approach evidence-based magic, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that phrase. These are ancient practices now being studied in fMRI machines and controlled trials, and researchers keep finding what the lineages have always known: they reach something talk-based approaches often circle around without ever quite touching.It’s said that 95% of our habits and beliefs are subconscious. We wouldn’t build a house with only 5% of our tools. But that’s more or less how most of us approach healing.What struck me most in this conversation was how Juliana described the role of silence — of actually stopping. She referenced a 2009 study showing Americans were already consuming the equivalent of a quarter of War and Peace daily in information, before smartphones, before the scroll. Her teacher once told her before a two-month retreat: you don’t know what will happen in your life. This may be the only time you can sit like this. She took that advice. It changed everything.So many of us are running fast precisely because stopping feels dangerous. But as Juliana said so gently — the pause isn’t standing between you and your healing. The pause is the healing.We also ended somewhere unexpected: a real conversation about the world right now. Juliana brought in the Buddhist understanding that this human realm needs just the right balance of suffering and joy — enough friction to keep us motivated to wake up. And then she said quietly: I wonder if the balance has tipped. She’s not someone who traffics in despair. But she’s not someone who looks away either. Her answer kept returning to the personal — our own healing, our own practice, our own commitment to being a compassionate presence from wherever we stand.We are on a ride right now, she said. This is serious business. And also: there is still hope.Both things are true. That is, perhaps, its own kind of evidence-based magic.You can find Juliana at julianasloane.com. Her meditation classes are largely donation-based and available online. And if a few days of silence in nature is calling you, her April 30–May 3 Women’s Glamping Retreat in Northern California might be exactly what your nervous system needs. Find her guided meditations on Insight Timer and follow her on Instagram.If this conversation moved something in you, I’d love to know. And if you’ve been finding value in this space, consider becoming a paid subscriber or leaving a one-time cacao offering as energy exchange. It keeps this work alive.With love, SarahGoddess in Training is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Goddess in Training at goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe
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    47 Min.
  • When the Coherence Is Gone, You Know

    When the Coherence Is Gone, You Know
    Apr 1 2026

    Guest: Mage Marigold, Psychic Medium, Music Therapist & Spiritual Mentor

    Connect with Mage: Website | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok

    Topics covered: Divine partnership, love and relationships, travel as transformation, embodiment, spiritual bypassing, new relationship energy, intuition, Costa Rica retreat

    🎵 Music credit: Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by Arkawa Used with permission. More at arkawamusic.com 🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online for more tools to support your intuitive journey.

    When We’re Together, Something Always Alchemizes

    There’s something that happens when Mage and I are in the same room. Every time we come together, something in our lives moves. Something that had been waiting just beneath the surface finally breaks through.

    Costa Rica: Mage finds love in an airport coffee stand four hours after writing in her journal that she’s done looking. I realize, somewhere between the humidity and the hospital, that my own relationship has quietly come to an end. Halloween: we’re together again, and her relationship hits a real turning point. The very next day, someone new walks into my life.

    I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think that’s what happens when two people committed to their own becoming keep showing up for each other.

    This episode is really about love. How our understanding of it keeps evolving — and how the body always knows before the mind catches up.

    I used to think divine connection meant the one. I hold that much more loosely now. What I’ve landed on instead is this: every person we love intimately is a mirror. Some mirrors show us what needs to heal. Some show us what we’re capable of becoming. And some grow alongside us into something neither person could have reached alone.

    The gift of my last relationship was learning what safety actually feels like in my body. Not as a concept — as a physical, unmistakable sense of coherence. And once I knew that, I could also feel clearly when it was gone. That’s what ended it. No fight, no betrayal. Just a quiet body-level knowing. And because I could generate that feeling from the inside, I didn’t need to chase it from the outside anymore.

    Mage’s journey has been its own kind of beautiful — a long-distance relationship built slowly across countries and insecurities, without the intoxicating rush of new relationship energy. Something more rooted. And she’d tell you that distinction turned out to matter more than she expected.

    We also get into new relationship energy itself — what role it actually plays, whether a relationship can succeed without it, and why it can be as dangerous as it is delicious. And we talk about the difference between real integration and spiritual bypassing: using our tools to skip the part where we actually feel what happened.

    You can’t think your way out of it. You can only feel your way through.

    If Costa Rica has been calling you, Mage and I have a retreat in the works. It’s all planned — we just need you. Reach out if you’re curious.

    Goddess in Training publishes every Wednesday. Essays drop on Mondays and Fridays. If this resonated, share it with someone in the middle of her own becoming.



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    45 Min.
  • Unlearn, Redefine, Nourish

    Unlearn, Redefine, Nourish
    Mar 25 2026
    Guest: Mihaela Telecan, Functional Nutritionist & Author of Make Peace with FatConnect with Mihaela: Website | Substack | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeBook: Make Peace with FatVideo: Lymphatic tappingTopics covered: Ancestral & traditional nutrition, functional aging, metabolic health, glucose monitoring, adrenal health, fasting, intuitive eating, mindset, the C.U.R.E. framework🎵 Music credit: Madre Ayahuasca by ArkawaUsed with permission. More at arkawamusic.com🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online for more tools to support your intuitive journey.What Your Body Already Knew Before the Food Industry Told You OtherwiseThere’s a particular kind of disorientation that comes from living in a world of infinite food choices and still not knowing how to eat.We have more nutrition information available than any generation before us. Studies, podcasts, books, apps that track our macros to the decimal. And yet — chronic disease is rising. Fatigue is epidemic. More women than ever feel disconnected from their bodies, unsure what to eat, swinging between protocols, afraid of the wrong ingredient.What if the information isn’t the answer? What if, underneath all of it, there’s something quieter we’ve stopped being able to hear?That’s the thread that ran through my entire conversation with Mihaela Telecan — functional nutritionist, author, and someone who has spent decades asking what it actually means to nourish a human body.Mihaela grew up in communist Romania, where the absence of a food industry turned out to be — nutritionally speaking — an accidental gift. Everything was local. Everything was seasonal. Fermented foods, bone broth, organ meats, sourdough — these weren’t wellness trends. They were just how her family ate. Nutrition wasn’t outsourced to a government agency or a cereal box. It was passed down through the hands of mothers and grandmothers who simply knew.When she moved to the United States at 28, she watched almost anthropologically as a culture of convenience unfolded around her. She went on to study nutrition, earn her dietetics credentials, and deepen her training in functional and integrative medicine — all while holding onto a thread of ancestral knowing that the curriculum kept trying to cut.Her book is called Make Peace with Fat. That title alone tells you something about the work she’s doing — and the fear she’s asking us to examine.What struck me most in our conversation was how consistently she traced everything — the weight struggles, the hormonal chaos, the exhaustion, the disconnection from hunger cues — back to the same root: fear. Fear of fat. Fear of hunger. Fear of aging. Fear of stepping outside what the system has told us is safe.And underneath that fear, a deeper disconnection. From our bodies. From our instincts. From the accumulated wisdom of the women who came before us.Mihaela talks about the way we’ve been trained to see our bodies as problems to be solved. A number on the scale to be corrected. A hormone panel to be optimized. A symptom to be eliminated. And she’s gentle about it — she understands why we got here — but she’s also clear: that framing keeps us stuck. Because when we’re in problem-solving mode, we’re in resistance. And resistance is its own kind of stress.What she offers instead is curiosity. Observation. The willingness to become, as she puts it, the observer of your own life.We talked about what food actually is — and what most of what lines our grocery store shelves actually isn’t. About fasting, and how the hunger signal we treat as an emergency is often just a pattern the body learned because we taught it to. About the way our ancestors moved between feast and famine without catastrophe, and what that tells us about our own metabolic flexibility.We talked about aging — not as a slow decline to be managed, but as something she calls functional aging. Keeping your vitality, your mobility, your aliveness, right up until the end. A plateau, then a swift transition. Not decades of diagnoses and dependency.And we talked about her C.U.R.E. framework — the method she uses with clients that, I’ll be honest, applies to a lot more than nutrition. Connect to where you actually are. Unlearn the fear and the false information running on autopilot. Redefine what health means, what food means, what this season of life means. Experiment, and elevate from there.I keep returning to something she said near the end of our conversation — that we are drowning in information and starving for wisdom. That the overload itself might be part of what makes it so hard to hear our own bodies.I think she’s right. And I think the antidote isn’t another protocol.It’s the pause. The moment before you reach for something — food, an answer, a fix — where you ask: is this what I actually need right now? It’s learning, slowly and imperfectly, to trust the knowing that was there long before any of the noise.Your ...
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    55 Min.
  • Your Body Already Knows with Erika Hewlett

    Your Body Already Knows with Erika Hewlett
    Mar 18 2026

    Guest: Erika Hewlett, Nutritional Therapist Practitioner & Yoga Teacher at Compassion, Nutrition & Wellness

    Connect with Erika Hewlett: Website | Instagram | Facebook

    Topics covered: Perimenopause & menopause, adrenal health, HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis), blood sugar regulation, cortisol & stress hormones, intuitive eating, fasting, peptides, circadian rhythm, nervous system regulation, ceremonial cacao

    Resources mentioned:

    * The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk

    * Rushing Woman’s Syndrome — Dr. Libby Weaver

    * Cacao Source (ceremonial cacao)

    * HTMA testing (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis)

    * Sachin Patel (breathwork, nervous system, circadian rhythm)

    Erika’s upcoming program: Fatigue to Flourish — a three-month program covering minerals, HTMA, nervous system work, and nutrition.

    🎵 Music credit:

    Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by ArkawaUsed with permission. More at arkawamusic.com

    🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online for more tools to support your intuitive journey.



    Get full access to Goddess in Training at goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe
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    59 Min.
  • When One Heals, We All Heal

    When One Heals, We All Heal
    Mar 11 2026

    Guest: Yvette LeFlore — Reiki Master Teacher, Light Language Practitioner, and Grief Recovery Method Specialist

    Where to find Yvette: Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

    We cover:

    * How a tarot card reader changed the trajectory of Yvette’s life with one question

    * Light language: what it is, how it works, and why your 3D self doesn’t need to understand it

    * Anticipatory grief — and the message Yvette received two years before her husband died

    * The Craigslist ad that brought her the love of her life

    * Walter in Costa Rica (have tissues ready)

    * What we get devastatingly wrong about supporting grieving people

    * The 40 different forms of grief most of us have never named

    * Finding your place in a world that feels like it’s on fire

    About Yvette: Yvette LeFlore has spent decades in service — first in direct sales and education, and now as a healer, teacher, and grief recovery specialist. She holds a master’s degree in education and brings that gift for teaching into every level of her work, from attuning Reiki students to facilitating the Grief Recovery Method with people navigating profound loss. Her business name, Healing with Yvette, is intentional: she is not a healer who has arrived. She is one who keeps evolving. Her tagline says it all: When one heals, we all heal.

    🎵 Music credit:

    Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by ArkawaUsed with permission. More at arkawamusic.com

    🌐 Visit www.goddessintraining.online for more tools to support your intuitive journey.



    Get full access to Goddess in Training at goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe
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    46 Min.
  • The Midlife Body Awakens with Sarah Nelson

    The Midlife Body Awakens with Sarah Nelson
    Mar 4 2026

    Guest: Sarah Nelson — writer of Sexual Empowerment in Midlife, Somatica®-trained sex & relationship coach

    Where to find Sarah: Website | Substack | Instagram

    We cover:

    * The question Sarah asked 50+ women: “How did you take control of your sexuality?”

    * Why midlife can be a turning point for desire, agency, and embodiment

    * Squirting: what research actually says

    * “Good girl” conditioning and the illusion of control

    * Consent, BDSM, porn, jealousy, and nonmonogamy

    * Sex as healing and sex as transcendence

    * The nervous system’s role in intimacy

    About Sarah:Sarah brings 30 years of personal and professional experience to her work. She is trained in the Somatica® method of sex and relationship coaching and integrates Positive Intelligence tools to help clients strengthen resilience, reduce triggered responses, and show up with presence and clarity. Before becoming a full-time coach, she led global research programs for mission-driven organizations.

    🎵 Music credit:Intro and outro music: Madre Ayahuasca by ArkawaUsed with permission. More at arkawamusic.com

    🌐 And as always, visit www.goddessintraining.online for more tools to support your intuitive journey.



    Get full access to Goddess in Training at goddessintraining.substack.com/subscribe
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    46 Min.