Let’s Have The Conversation

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit desireebstephens.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit desireebstephens.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit desireebstephens.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit desireebstephens.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com You Were Never Separate Before we begin… Take a breath. Not to center yourself. Not to “get grounded.”Not to do it right. Just notice that your body is already breathing for you. That rhythm? That pulse? That quiet, steady inhale and exhale? You didn’t create that. You are being lived. And that is where we...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com What I shared in the live wasn’t just about March 25th. It was about orientation. It was about telling the truth about where you actually are in your life… not where the calendar tells you you should be. Because the truth is… what you’ve been taught about time, about “new year,” about when you’re supposed t...

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit desireebstephens.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com The Unfolding. Not the outcome. Not the clarity. Not the resolution. But the space where relationships are still becoming. And if we’re honest, this is the space many of us struggle to stay inside of. Because we have been conditioned to believe that relationships should make sense quickly. That we should kn...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com This morning during Friday with Friends , we sat with a phrase that has been unfolding throughout the conversations this week: Orienting toward someone’s good. Not the idealized version of love. Not the sentimental version. But the version that shows up when relationships are complicated. When communities h...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com During today’s conversation we explored something many people say they want, but few of us are actually taught how to practice. Community. Not the idealized version. The real version. The version that includes repair, tension, growth, and people learning how to stay in relationship with one another while th...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com Some conversations are not meant to be summarized. They are meant to be sat with. The live gathering this week began simply. No guest scheduled. Just a moment to pause together, reflect, and let the threads of recent conversations come into relationship with each other. What emerged was something deeper tha...

Before you read further, pause. Notice your breath without changing it. Notice your jaw. Notice your shoulders. Notice your seat beneath you. If anything in this piece feels activating, you are welcome to stop. You are welcome to skip. You are welcome to return later. You are not behind. Your body is not wrong. Your pace is intelligent. This month, we are working with staying . Not enduring. Not f...

A Reflection on Naming, Erasure, and the Refusal to Disappear This conversation was never meant to be comfortable. If you listened and felt your chest tighten, your jaw clench, your impulse to defend rise— good. That is not punishment. That is information. As I said in the live: critique is not punishment, and conflict is not harm . Conflict is how truth reaches the surface when systems depend on...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com There is a particular kind of disappearance that happens to mothers under capitalism. Not dramatic. Not sudden. Quiet. Incremental. Socially rewarded. In this Friday with Friends conversation, Deidre Keller and I traced that disappearance, not as a personal failure, but as a structural demand rooted in capi...

The Longest Night, and the Work of Staying Before you read further, I want to offer you choice. You are welcome to pause. You are welcome to skim. You are welcome to come back later… or not at all. Nothing here requires urgency. Nothing here demands resolution. If it’s available, take a moment to notice your body: * where you’re seated or resting * the temperature around you * one place you feel c...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com Most of us were taught that faith lives in the mind. Belief. Doctrine. Theology. But long before Christianity told you what to think, it told you how to move .How to dress. How to sit. How to desire. How to discipline your body into obedience. This piece isn’t about taking anyone’s faith away. It’s about te...

It’s All Shadow Work: Grief, Colonial Christianity, and the End of the World as We Were Taught to Know It Before Christianity became empire,before it became doctrine,before it became justification for conquest,it began as a story of liberation. Bethlehem was not a seat of power. It was a small village under Roman occupation. A people longing not for heaven later, but justice now. Somatic pause: Ta...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com Some conversations don’t follow an outline… they follow truth. This week’s Friday with Friends episode with Chaneé Jackson Kendall is one of those. No rigid questions. No forced structure. Just two people who trust each other enough — and know the work deeply enough — to let the conversation go exactly wher...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com Every season asks something different of us. And winter, Season of Self — this sacred descent inward — asks us to tell the truth about what we’ve been carrying, what we’ve been giving, and what it has been costing us. Today’s podcast episode walked us straight into that truth: a reckoning with the ways givi...

Every December like clockwork, the same patterns crawl back to the surface. Not because they’re new — but because dominant culture keeps repeating them, choosing comfort over accountability, performance over transformation, and the “lesser evil” over liberation. Today’s piece is the companion article to my live session, and it’s also the bridge between last year’s series and what we’re navigating...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com We Are the Furlings: Alignment, Inner Knowing, and Liberation with Leah TThere are some friendships that don’t just witness your evolution — they midwife it. Today’s Friday with Friends on Let’s Have the Conversation was one of those sacred full-circle moments. I brought my framly, Leah, back on the podcast...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com Before we step into Bethlehem, I want you to sit with this: Most of what you’ve been told about this story wasn’t a lie. It was the truth, flattened. Just like the McDonald’s “ hot coffee lady ” (a story we all thought we knew, until we learned the truth behind the propaganda.) Bethlehem is the same. Jesus...

If time doesn’t feel real right now, you’re not malfunctioning. Between school breaks, end-of-year work parties, sales drowning your socials, and systems demanding cheer while your body is demanding truth , we’re all suspended in that weird week/month where the calendar looks like a suggestion, not structure. So before we talk about consumption and giving, I need you to do one thing for yourself f...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit desireebstephens.substack.com Whiteness handed you a script on how to belong, lead, and stay comfortable — but somewhere between the lessons and the living, that script started to feel small, thin, and suffocating. It didn’t give you culture. It didn’t give you community. And it definitely didn’t give you permission to be a full human w...