Root & Flame

A poem about surrendering to the fire. This piece arrived for me as I navigated grief and anger. It has become a lighthouse for me as I dance in the tension of being a soft, deeply loving person who also has a sharp sword and low tolerance for bullsh*t. I'd love to know how it lands for you. Let's Connect 🫂 Instagram: ⁠@zoe.alaine⁠ Substack: ⁠Ecology of Self⁠ Support the pod: ⁠caffeine fu...

No one told me about this part. Before the action. Before the breakthroughs. Before the “new life.” There's the grief. In this episode, I’m talking about the part of bravery that feels neither seductive or productive. And why it's essential in a society that either pathologies or stigmatizes everything that makes us human . We’ll talk about: – Why grief isn’t a problem to fix but a threshold to cr...

You already do hard things. Working long hours is hard. Putting up with being mistreated is hard. Living in a body that can't do what you want is hard. Somewhere along the way, school, church, sports, or work taught us that discipline was a dirty word. It’s time to reclaim our ability to choose hard things. This is how we come alive again. Inspiration can light a fire, but only practicality wi...

A spicy little pep talk from Bravery herself. For when you’re done pretending you don’t feel that ache for more, and you're ready to do something about it. Let's connect: @zoe.alaine

Not everything is a trauma response. And not everything can be fixed by putting your feet on the grass and eating more protein. Our lives are wider than we give ourselves credit for. We’ve built a culture that loves to diagnose and dissect, and to see life as a collection of separate problems to be managed. But what if your anxiety, fatigue, or pain aren’t disorders to fix, but signals from an eco...

Welcome to Root and Flame — the field notes of a woman trying to be more honest, creative, and fully alive. In this first episode, I talk about what it means to wake up inside a culture built to keep us comfortable and numb. I share some of my own story of chasing intensity just to feel alive, and what I’m learning about a truer kind of aliveness: one that’s rooted in the body, in health, in creat...