The Joyful Rebel Podcast

Send us Fan Mail You can name everyone else's favorites — your kid's, your husband's, your best friend's. But when someone asks you? You go blank. This week we fix that. If you've been feeling lost in midlife — foggy about who you even are anymore after years of taking care of everyone else — this episode is the fastest, most joyful map back to yourself I know. It starts w...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I get honest about the rules we’re all living by — the ones nobody ever said out loud, that we never agreed to, that somehow still run our whole lives. I take you into my closet (the skirt-and-makeup rule I obeyed for thirty years without knowing it), into a bathroom in Houston where my dad re-caulked my tub before our move (and the completely wrong story my brain...

Send us Fan Mail Identifying your core values at midlife is one of the first steps toward creating a life that is YOURS -- not someone else's. Stop chasing goals that don't fit your life! In this episode, I get honest about something a little embarrassing: for most of my life I could tell you exactly what everyone around me valued — my kids, my husband, my closest friends — and then go c...

Send us Fan Mail There's that moment. You know the one — and your body knows it even better. Someone asks, and before you've decided anything, you feel it: the drop in your stomach, your shoulders tightening a half-inch. Your body tells the truth… and your mouth says "sure, of course, it's fine, no worries." Smooth. Warm. A little too fast. I called it being easygoing for...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I get honest about the way I used to talk to myself in front of the bathroom mirror — and what I finally noticed the day I slowed down enough to actually hear it. We’re talking about the Integrity Gap: that quiet space between what I say I value and how I actually treat myself. It’s where most of us disappear, not in one dramatic moment, but in a thousand tiny, so...

Send us Fan Mail You've taken the assessments. You know your type. But what if the personality you've built your whole life around isn't really you — it's the version you learned to survive as? In this episode, Rachel gets honest about the day she found out she'd been ghosting herself: confusing a survival strategy for her identity for four decades, and calling it personal...

Send us Fan Mail What if the thing standing between you and the life you want isn’t fear — it’s the belief that you have to be good before you get to be seen? Most of us don’t avoid visibility because we’re lazy. We avoid it because somewhere along the way, being seen without excellence started to feel unsafe. So we wait. Until we know more, lose the weight, heal enough, have the degree. Until we...

Send us Fan Mail What does it actually mean to become UNHIDDEN ? Not loud.  Not performative.  Not “look at me” visibility. In this episode, Rachel opens a new podcast arc around what it means to stop disappearing in private first—in your mirror, your self-talk, your tiny promises, your choices, and the places where you’ve learned to override what you know. She unpacks how self-trust erodes throug...

Send us Fan Mail What if your version of surrender has actually been self-silencing? In this episode, Rachel explores one of the most socially rewarded forms of self-abandonment: staying quiet in the name of peace, goodness, faith, or “being easy.” Through deeply personal stories—including the sacred “War Room” she and her husband created for honest conversations—Rachel unpacks the difference betw...

Send us Fan Mail Who are you learning from… even unintentionally? In this episode of The Joyful Rebel Podcast, Rachel explores the surprising power of role models—not as people we copy, but as mirrors that can reveal forgotten parts of ourselves. From childhood heroes to literary characters, spiritual mentors, public figures, and even everyday people we admire, the people who deeply resonate with...

Send us Fan Mail What if courage isn’t loud, dramatic, or obvious…  but quiet, simple, and deeply internal? In this episode, I’m sharing a real-life moment that changed the way I understand courage—not because it was big, but because it was honest . For years, I was the “hype girl.” The one who said yes, showed up, and kept the energy going—even when I was completely depleted. But this time? Somet...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever caught yourself reacting in a way that feels bigger than the moment—and wondered, “Why am I like this?” In this episode, we’re diving into something that changes everything once you understand it: Your Nervous System. Because here’s the truth: - You’re not overreacting. - You’re responding exactly the way your body was wired to survive. We’re talking about how your p...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when you stop trying to manage your life… and start listening to it instead? In this deeply personal episode, I’m sharing the story of the year I stepped away from constant doing, producing, and striving—and into what I now call my “Joyride” season. It wasn’t a dramatic sabbatical. I was still a mom, still a wife, still living real life. But internally? Everything shi...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever realized that you might be trusting spiritual advice more than God Himself? In this episode of the Joyful Rebel Podcast , Rachel Harris explores the subtle but powerful way we sometimes outsource our discernment —handing authority over our spiritual decisions to mentors, leaders, or voices that sound wise. Through the story of Hagar in Genesis and a deeply personal m...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a version of “faith” many of us were quietly taught. Be smaller.  Be quieter.  Be easier to love.  Call it humility. But what if some of what we’ve labeled obedience… is actually shrinking? In this episode, we explore the subtle but powerful difference between true obedience and self-erasure. Because they feel similar on the surface — both can look gentle, compliant, even...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever felt exhausted in a way rest doesn’t fix?  Restless, even when life looks “good”?  Or quietly wondered, Is this really it? You’re not lost. You’re not ungrateful.  You might just be done shrinking. In this opening episode of The Joyful Rebel Podcast , host Rachel Harris—New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and fellow work-in-progress—shares the heart behind th...

Send us Fan Mail Who Were You Before the World Told You Who to Be? Before expectations.  Before comparison.  Before learning which parts of you were “too much.” Who were you? In this episode of The Joyful Rebel Podcast , Rachel explores identity through memory, story, and what she calls the Wonder Window —the part of you that existed before performance, pressure, or self-editing took over. In this...

Send us Fan Mail You can look completely fine on paper — capable, kind, the one everyone counts on — and still be quietly disappearing from your own life. The Joyful Rebel Podcast is for the woman who's done ghosting herself. Hosted by New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Rachel Harris — the woman who named Good Girl Ghosting™ — this is honest, funny, faith-woven conversation about...