From the Heart with Rachel Brathen

In today’s episode, Rachel has just gotten back from a night of camping in the forest with her kids. Was it a successful camping trip? Yes and no! Rachel had a hard time winding down and letting go of control, so she didn’t sleep a wink. But it was great to connect with nature with her family. She shares the entire experience and everything that happened. How much of your life do you spend outdoor...

When you really think about it, there are so many parallels between healing trauma and knitting. If you find a hole or a knot in your project, you have to work backwards. It feels like losing a lot of progress - but you’re actually building something more beautiful in the end. In today’s episode, Rachel opens up about the trauma work she’s been doing lately and how it has brought her to a new chap...

It’s time for another episode of Ask Rachel! Today Rachel takes a beautiful and very relatable question from a listener on how to speak more kindly to your body. She shares her history of struggling to speak kindly to herself, and a moment when she was nine years old where she first felt like her body wasn’t good enough. Ultimately, this is a practice! Rachel gives some little things she does in h...

Happy September! Fall has officially arrived in the north of Sweden where Rachel lives. The seasons change quickly here, and Rachel is already finding herself in darker days, wearing heavier clothes (and having wild animal encounters outside!). Things in nature may be slowing down, but are you? In this episode, Rachel shares how important it is to set a fall intention: something to serve as a guid...

So many of us want to live a slower and more deliberate life. But how do we get there? In today’s episode, Rachel shares her path - it’s to practice it! The life she is living right now was once a dream. It involved a lot of learning, trying new things, and making mistakes along the way. But now, quite a few years in, she is noticing that the things that were once hard are coming more naturally. S...

After a long summer, it is finally time to get back to school, back to basics, and back to routine. Rachel has some time now to tackle the chaos and mess that has accumulated over the past couple months, and she shares honestly what the state of her house was like. Her family definitely didn’t start the new school year off on the best foot! How do the perfect Instagram moms keep their houses clean...

In today’s episode, Rachel is fresh off hosting her first-ever retreat in her hometown in Sweden — 58 people from all over the world who came together for a week of yoga, hiking, sauna, campfires, and deep sharing. It felt like a full circle moment: welcoming people into the exact place that shaped her, and stepping fully into what she feels she’s truly meant to do. Underneath all the beautiful mo...

It’s peak harvest season over in Rachel’s life at the moment. In today’s episode, she discusses everything happening in her kitchen thanks to all the deliciousness coming from nature. It’s a long list: kefir, shrubs, fire cider, kombucha, elderberry syrup, elder flower champagne, and St. John’s Wort oil!  Rachel shares a funny story about how she learned to make kefir, the delicious drinks an...

In today’s episode, Rachel is just coming out of two days of indulgent alone time. Her husband took both the kids to Stockholm, and Rachel got to bask in a clean, quiet house for the first time since she can remember. She spent the time walking, reading, going inward, doing retreat prep, and simply allowing herself to enjoy things. Oftentimes, we feel like we have to earn pleasure, joy, rest, and...

Joy isn't the reward you earn after all the work is done. Joy is the work. That's what a new series on For the Love with Jen Hatmaker is all about, the Sacred Yes. It's choosing delight, rest, and pleasure on purpose because saying yes to yourself, that's the thing that finally lets you fill your table with everybody else. Come find your Sacred Yes with Jen. Follow and listen to For the Love with...

This episode brings us another segment of Ask Rachel, where Rachel takes calls from listeners and answers any questions they have. The inquiries today were so beautiful, and all were connected to the theme of returning home to yourself. How can we navigate heartbreak? When life is incredibly overwhelming, how do we settle down and find peace within ourselves? How do we know we are making decisions...

For the past few weeks, Rachel has found herself in a depleted slump. But now, she has slowly crawled out to see the light again. Feeling more rested and energized, she shares the tweaks and changes she made in her life that brought about this change (Hint: one of them may have been Bad Bunny). Sometimes we can get so caught up in trying to make things magical and extraordinary, that we turn somet...

Do mom brains just work differently than dad brains? This is obviously not the case in every family, but in a lot of families - the mother bears the brunt of the mental load. The mother is the one making sure the kids have everything for school, they do all the groceries and list making, they note the things that need fixing and mending and cleaning. So why is that? Do their brains just work diffe...

In today’s episode, Rachel is the type of tired that you feel in your soul, in your bones, and in your identity itself. It’s a feeling that stems from the roles and responsibilities she has in her life right now, but it goes even deeper and older than that - into the trauma she felt as a child and the burdens placed on her back then. Rachel attempts to unpack this experience by sharing specific ex...

When you reflect on your personality, why do you think you are the way you are? Is it due to your nature or your experiences? In today’s episode, Rachel reflects on this question with her own personality - much of which she thinks is the result of her childhood. She opens up about codependency and a sense of internal stress and urgency that never seems to leave, no matter how little there is on he...

There’s a lot happening in Rachel’s life at the moment! You probably feel it too. This weekend has so much momentum and high energy. It’s the peak of the season, summer solstice, and the midsummer celebration in Sweden. All of the events happening sent Rachel into a sickness spiral where she realized something important: this was her first felt experience of aging. With the high highs of summer we...

Today’s episode is about going back to basics, full circle moments, and a new chapter intertwining with the old. Rachel has just launched a summer retreat after some serendipitous circumstances. It has her reminiscing back to her twenties when her and Dennis first launched retreats together from their kitchen table. She shares some old stories and why she’s feeling so nostalgic: she now feels inte...

This episode of From the Heart is all about AI and how it is infiltrating every corner of our lives. After a few upsetting encounters with AI, Rachel was left wondering: do the bad parts of the internet outweigh the good? Where are we headed as a society? And is it even our fault if there’s no way to stop it?  It can be so hard to balance the desire to live without the internet while our lives hav...

In today’s episode, it’s the end of May, Rachel’s energy is buzzing, and things are happening all around! Rachel talks about the momentum that this month brings to the Scandinavians, and just how that momentum has met her: it’s come bearing so many ideas and epiphanies. Rachel has been initiating a million things lately, and she talks about different projects she has going on the farm, how her day...

If you are a mother, you probably know the feeling of fear well. In today’s episode, Rachel talks about the biggest trauma her nervous system is still experiencing today - the fear of something happening to her children. Lea had surgery this week which was a huge experience for their entire family. Rachel shares the entire story from start to finish, and beautifully puts the terror moms can feel i...

Family Lore is a weekly narrative podcast that celebrates and investigates ancestral mystique. Each episode begins with a guest sharing a fascinating family legend, followed by a historical deep-dive to uncover the truth and meaning behind the tale. Available now: link.pscrb.fm/f0281/FLFD To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Le...

Can we build confidence in our children? Or is confidence something they have to figure out for themselves? This episode brings us another segment of Ask Rachel, where Rachel answers questions from listeners that have called in. She shares her future vision and dreams for the store at Ala Farms and how to deal with roosters so they don’t ruin your life. Then she answers a really beautiful question...

In today’s episode of From the Heart, Rachel shares her process of getting things done and how she stays productive in her daily life. It looks a lot like this: manifesting with the energy of a thousand suns, side questing on the way to another side quest, and then falling apart on the couch with a tub of ice cream once all is said and done.  We all have different ways that we generate and create....

In today’s episode, Rachel shares many opposing thoughts that we are all thinking right now: the world is absurd, crazy and scary - but the world is also full of so many beautiful things. Everywhere we look there is war, genocide, starvation, and terrifying men in positions of power. But there are also children laughing, flowers blooming, and ducks in Rachel’s house! How can these polarities exist...

In today’s episode, Rachel answers a very specific question: does she hate men? The answer to this is… no, not all men. But the truth is, the male population as a whole is not giving women a lot to feel confident in right now. From charlatans in the healing space preying on the vulnerable, to the lack of prosecutions resulting from the Epstein files, and the shocking rape academy online, we live i...