Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul

In this episode, Riva sits down with Laura Ambrosio, founder of Aspen & Elder, to talk about what it really takes to build community in a culture that often rewards isolation. Laura shares the personal story behind her work, including her own childhood experience of navigating shame and confusion after abuse, and how that search for safety and belonging eventually led her to years of travel an...

The waning moon is here, and your body already knows it. In this final episode of our Cancer season self-care mini series, Riva explores the premenstrual phase through the lens of nervous system science, cyclical wisdom, and honest, practical self-care. If you've ever felt irritable, overstimulated, or just done during this time of the month, this episode will give you the language and the pe...

This week's Healing Her Story episode welcomes a guest whose work lives at the intersection of attachment, parenting, and generational healing. Amanda Hill is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and founder of Connections of Hope. With nearly twenty years of experience as a psychotherapist, she has spent her career helping individuals and families create meaningful, lasting change. But this ca...

This week's Healing Her Story episode tunes into the energy of the full moon , landing on the rare day when the episode airs right alongside the actual peak. As Cancer season continues, the focus for these Monday episodes remains on care. And today's invitations apply just as much to this full moon as they do to your inner summer, your ovulation time. But this carries profound wisdom abo...

This week's Healing Her Story episode opens a new cycle with a focus on care. What it costs. Who provides it. And why so many women are running on empty. Riva revisits a conversation she started on the show last year, this time with a deeper understanding, not just intellectually, but in her own body and nervous system. But this carries profound wisdom about what happens when an entire societ...

This week's Healing Her Story episode tunes into the energy of the waxing moon and the follicular phase, one of the most tender and misunderstood windows of the cycle. This is a transitional energy. Estrogen is rising. The light is returning. And so often, this is exactly where women push too hard too fast, burning out before they even reach ovulation. But this carries profound wisdom about h...

This week's Healing Her Story episode welcomes a guest whose life refuses to fit inside a single box. Dr. Tavina Lynn holds a PhD in Chemistry and teaches at Sacramento City College. She is also a writer, a dancer, a creative visionary. And for years, she believed she had to choose between these parts of herself. But this carries profound wisdom about what becomes possible when we stop choosi...

The new moon is here — and so is a new focus for our Cycle Sync episodes. This week, Riva introduces the themes of Cancer season as a guiding lens for the cycles ahead, with one central question at the heart of it all: how do we actually care for ourselves? This episode is an invitation to move away from rigid, one-size-fits-all self-care and toward something more fluid, personal, and cyclically a...

What happens when you spend your life navigating between worlds? In this Gemini season conversation, I sit down with bestselling author, yoga therapist, and Ayurvedic practitioner Serena Arora to explore the complexities of identity, belonging, family legacy, and self-worth. Drawing from her memoir, UNBOUND: An Immigrant Daughter's Journey of Reckoning, Unraveling Shame, and Reclaiming Her Wo...

This week's Healing Her Story episode attunes to the energy of the waning moon --- one of the most misunderstood transitions in the lunar cycle. Because this phase is not just about slowing down. But this carries profound wisdom about what the waning moon is actually asking for -- and why it looks different for every woman. In this episode, Riva explores the duality of the waning moon and lut...

This week's Healing Her Story episode explores something that doesn't get talked about enough in healing spaces. Curiosity. Not as a personality trait. As a biological necessity. In this solo episode, Riva shares one of the most fundamental shifts she made in her own healing journey -- from relentless self-judgment to genuine curiosity. And why that shift changed everything. Not just emo...

This week's Healing Her Story episode explores one of the most complex and beautiful phases of the lunar cycle: the Full Moon. And the conversation today is not just about releasing what no longer serves you. It is about holding both. But this carries profound wisdom about what the full moon is actually illuminating -- and why we move past the sweetest part too quickly. In this episode, Riva...

This week's Healing Her Story episode dives deep into one of the most empowering truths in healing: Your brain can change. If you have ever felt stuck in the same thought patterns, the same ways of being, the same old stories -- this episode is for you. In this solo episode, Riva explores how all or nothing thinking creates friction in our lives and bodies, and why the female experience is fa...

This week's Healing Her Story episode explores one of the most misunderstood phases of the lunar and menstrual cycle: the waxing moon and inner spring. Online, this phase gets painted as go-go-go. Maximum productivity. Intense workouts. Non-stop socializing. But every time Riva pushed hard through her inner spring, she burned out before ovulation. In this episode, she shares what a year of tr...

What if the products we use every single day are quietly impacting our hormones, fertility, nervous systems, and the health of our planet? In this grounded and eye-opening conversation, Riva sits down with Alisha, founder of Sacramento-based Nudge Eco Store, to explore the hidden impact of plastics, the realities of low-tox living, and why sustainable living doesn’t have to mean perfection. Alisha...

In this week's Cycle Sync, Riva guides you into the tender, layered energy of the new moon in Taurus as we close the chapter of Taurus season and cross the threshold into Gemini season. Drawing on cyclical wisdom, menstrual cycle awareness, and the both/and philosophy at the heart of Gemini's dual nature, this episode invites you to honor what's beginning and what's ending — at...

The waning moon is here, and with it comes the medicine of the metal element — the energy of refining, releasing, and returning to what truly matters. In this final episode of the elements miniseries, we explore the premenstrual or luteal phase of the cycle as a time of sacred clarity, honest reassessment, and yes — grief. If you've ever felt like your premenstrual self wants to "burn it...

This week's Healing Her Story episode welcomes a guest whose work lives at the intersection of the body, pleasure, and reclamation. Wren Morrow is a boudoir and erotic adventure photographer based in the Pacific Northwest. And her path to this work is anything but linear. But this carries profound wisdom about what happens when we are taught from a young age that our bodies are the problem. W...

This week we're attuning to the Earth element — the brief, easy-to-miss phase that arrives just after the full moon and just after ovulation. Its medicine is grounding. In this episode, I explore the science of earthing, how grounding may help shift your nervous system out of fight-or-flight and into rest and repair, and how to create real stability in your body and your life through groundin...

This week's Healing Her Story episode is a bonus episode, arriving at just the right moment. The full moon lands on a Friday. Aries energy is still moving through the collective. And before we step into the quieter, more hidden phase ahead, this is our moment to honor the fire. This is the third episode in Riva's mini-series on the elements. But this carries profound wisdom about what fi...

This week, we are tuning into the waxing moon. A phase of expansion, momentum, and rising energy. And while this can feel exciting and motivating… it’s also where many of us unconsciously override our bodies. We feel the energy building. We want to do more, create more, move faster. And without grounding, we can easily slip out of alignment. This is also the second episode in our Taurus season min...

If you’ve been trying to think your way into feeling safe in your body… this episode invites you somewhere else. Because safety doesn’t live in thought. It lives in the body. Through the senses. Through what you are actually experiencing right now. And for many of us, the healing journey begins here: realizing we cannot outthink biology. In this episode, Riva explores how the nervous system is con...

If you’ve been trying to think your way into feeling safe in your body…  this episode will gently shift something for you. Because safety is not created in the mind. It is created through the senses. Through what your body is actually experiencing in real time. And in Taurus season— a season of slowness, embodiment, and the senses— this becomes even more important. We are not here to override the...

If you’ve been doing the work—therapy, coaching, courses, podcasts… and still find yourself repeating the same patterns— this episode is for you. Because the issue isn’t that you’re not trying hard enough… it’s that you may be missing the most essential step in the healing process: integration. We live in a world that constantly invites us to consume— information, content, experiences, even healin...

This week, we’re tuning into the waning phase of the cycle—one of the most overlooked, yet most powerful phases for healing, reflection, and release. If you’ve ever struggled to slow down, let go, or sit in the unknown… this episode will help you understand why. Through the lens of the nervous system, feminine cycles, and the natural rhythm of life and death, we explore why endings feel so uncomfo...