Witch Sweat

Dream Weaving and the Liminal Artistry of Nico Wolf

This week we are buh-lessed to have Nico Wolf up in our radio sphere. She is a wizard of the healing arts, oracular arts, group ceremony, Earth wisdom ways, and Dreamwork. She is also herself a dreamboat, like an actual captain-facilitator of the boat that takes you to Dream World, and just a totally fascinating human to talk Spirit shop with.
We discuss working with dreams in a devotional way, exploring group dream work, and understanding the role of dreams in shifting culture during unsettled times.
Nico steeps us in the waters of liminal artistry - as in, becoming more and more literate in the wisdom of the cracks and in-betweens places within the web of known reality.
 
This episode will be a dang HOOT for anyone interested in:
working with the language of Dreams as oracle, solace, and world-building material
animist perspectives and interspecies relating
water as a grief portal, water as a dream portal
feeling like a spiritual or cultural orphan
questioning the role of spiritual lineage when lifted out of land-based context
the big ole tangle of white-bodied people grappling with their own severed indigeneity
and raspberries as dream prophecy
📡 If you loooove this convo, go check out Nico’s gorgeous podcast Living Liminal
👽 Learn more about Nico’s upcoming workshops and how to work 1:1 with her HERE
🕸️ Nico’s IG
🤍 Book 1:1 Creative Coaching time with Melissa
 
Free Resources —
Download Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on getting outta your head and into your body
 
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for hot art memes
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals
🤍📡✨

Tiddies in the Sun

This week we’re talking breast lumps, the doom forecasting that comes with health scares and awaiting *results*, talking to angels, and our very good but mysterious pal SURRENDER. And, like, how to fall dizzyingly in love with the lumpy mess of reality precisely as it is right now. 
Spoiler alert - I gotta clean bill of health, this is about the upgrade in consciousness we get when we let the stunning truth of our mortality have its way with us weeeeee 
 
hey, I love you thanks for being here.
 
Book 1:1 Creative Coaching time with Melissa
 
Free Resources —
Download Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on getting outta your head and into your body
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for hot art memes
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Talk to the Dang Spirit of Your Projects

An episode for the artists, creatives and solo entrepreneurs out there who get bogged down by the idea of having to *do it all* all by your lonesome. 
You've got other unseen forces up in your corner, who have your back, who are gassing you up and have secret lil intel to support your vision and work.
Call them your guides, the angels, God, call them the indwelling consciousness of your projects and your art.
Whoever they are, go talk to them, ok?? Momentum gathers rapidly when you enlist the *whatelseness* of reality as your collaborator.
Enjoy 🤍🦋
 
Does your creative practice or movement practice need a surge of fresh energy?
Get some 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
 
Free Resources —
Download Attention Reset -a digital art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for juicy lil art memes 
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Locked Out of the Love Show // Lil Drips

Oh lookie here, we are BACK baby.
The AI bot that helped me audio engineer this episode thought it would be a good idea to title it "Savoring the Petite Droplets of Life Experiences" and they would be not wrong.
 
Listen to me try to make the parallel between the experience of fomo and an inflammatory yet very magical take on DEATH. Whoops another accidental episode on death stuff. 
Sorry I'm congested here, when the mood strikes to press record, one jumps. The muse cares not for presence of phlegm. 
ENJOY
 
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals and jingle wizardry on the outro
 
Book 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
 
Free Resources —
Go download Attention Reset - my free and fun art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
More —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for hot art memes
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for musings and studio news

Rejection Medicine: Artists, Institutions, and Empire w/Jimmy Joyner

Jimmy and Melissa air some things OUT. We’re talking about the cost of an unexpressed life. We’re talking about the cost of wrangling our true voices to be more palatable to institutions - for clout, visibility, legibility, resource access - and how the curated version of ourselves is like an addiction that must be recovered from, boy howdy! We’re looking at the micro and macro impact of power differentials, and thinking about how so much of our behavior is about avoiding rejection from people and organizations that have more perceived power than us.
Turns out rejection is a secret portal to becoming more of yourself, and improvisation is the medicinal lifeway we’ve all been searching for. OK!!!!
 
More about our guest —
Find Jimmy on IG @j_jo
🕯Learn more about Into the Velvet Black ~ Melissa’s 3-week inbox grief retreat starting December 11, 2023!
Book 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
 
Free Resources —
Check out Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for podcast updates
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Not Collapsing When the World’s Heart Breaks Open

In this episode, we look at what’s happening in G@za, specifically through the lens of social media, and the forces that want to keep us skewing towards nervous system collapse and disassociation. Spoiler alert: it’s whiteness! It’s the ‘soothing’ lull of consumerism and capitalism! It’s the unconscious practice of abdicating personal power! It's compulsive information guzzling as a proxy for participation! It’s a habit of helplessness and prioritizing comfort in the face of inconceivable human suffering! 
This episode will be of interest to you if:
you are vacillating between taking in too much information and not enough information, and are trying to find a balance of staying informed and giving space to your grief
you’ve been struggling to feel like you’re ‘doing enough’ for the liberation of P@les ti ne (and all of humanity, in fact)
you’re questioning this idea of enoughness when it comes to impact
you are wrestling with the distinction between what is ‘turning away’ and what is a necessary attention hygiene when logging off the apps or news.
you want a space to think through the messy intricacies of how to be present, wide-awake, and of service to this global moment.
you want to be more EXPRESSED but feel yourself putting the brakes on your voice and ideas and truth.
Mentioned in the episode—
Adrienne Maree Brown live on IG
Book 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
Free Resources —
Check out Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for podcast updates
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Death Stuff, Grief Stuff, and the Gods in the Ground

An episode for people who wanna get into the loving mystery and magic of death, dying and grief work. In this solo show, Melissa shares a story from a recent encounter with a dying person, and some powerful / hard-won lil gemstones of truth that have emerged since.
Don’t be scared! Let’s normalize these convos and make it feel less bewildering and weird. 
Ilysm thank you for being here ⚡️
 
**Join the waitlist for Grief Threads ~ doors opening for our Fall Cohort this Friday October 6, 2023**
LINKS
If you enjoyed the episode, check out —
Your Palatability is a Liability w/ Narinder Bazen
The Ancestral Hot Seat
 
Mentioned in the episode—
Andrea Gibson interviewed by Glennon Doyle
Book 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
Free Resources —
Check out Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for podcast updates
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Intergalactic Masculinity w/ Hez Stalcup

We are in search of more imaginative expressions of masculinity - in ourselves and in the world, who tf is with us?? Let’s get into the energy of the nourishing and life-affirming badassery that is the sacred and dare-we-say intergalactic masculine principle.
We talk Sedona vortexes, performative masculinity as a survival strategy, entity work, erotic power, desire, exhaustion, and MORE!
This episode is a GRAND follow-up to last week’s The Holy Fire of Other People’s Opinions ~ having a relationship with the inner masculine can offer some major healing to our people-pleasing recovery journey…
 
More about our guest —
Email Hez for Erotic Advisory Consults ~ hezstalcup@gmail.com
Book 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
Free Resources —
Check out Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for podcast updates
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

The Holy Fire of Other People’s Opinions : Getting Unpalatable Workshop

This week Mel shares an excerpt from a recent mini-workshop on the cost of prioritizing likeability in the eyes of others. We unravel the tangled knots of codependency, living as if to placate others, and orienting to life as if you’re always on the edge of being in trouble or needing to explain yourself.
She shares a few somatic tools for loosening the grip of some of these learned habits and trauma responses, all in the name of getting more free and having more access to our DANG MAGIC.
 
Join the Getting Unpalatable Dance Class Tuesday, September 19 // 6-8pm est
If you enjoyed the episode, check out —
Your Palatability Is A Liability w/ Narinder Bazen
Getting Cracked Open By the Divine w/ Dajé Aloh
Book 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
Free Resources —
Check out Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for podcast updates
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals

Getting Cracked Open By the Divine w/ Dajé Alōh

This week we are joined by the dazzling Dajé Alōh aka The Story Doula, and DANG do we get blessed by her presence. She takes us all the way to church and to the underworld beneath the church, and has us swinging from the rafters by the end of it. We talk recovery from fundamentalist Christian upbringing, and mining the jewels from the faith for a more creative, more gritty OF THE EARTH AND DIRT kind of spiritual fortitude.
We talk about the patriarchy killing our relationship to worship and awe.
We talk about how everybody can be a land-steward regardless of your location or occupation, and how our relationship to the land we live on has everything to do with our relationship to the Divine.
I got drunk on the magic sauce up in this one. Enjoy enjoy, babies.
LINKS
More about our guest —
Dajé Alōh’s Instagram
Dajé Alōh’s Website
Dajé Alōh’s Podcast
Kinspirit
Mentioned in the episode—
Join me for Getting Unpalatable this Friday 9/8/23 - a free mini workshop and conversation on de-prioritizing being likable to everyone so you can like yourself more. It’s gonna be special and funnnnn
Book 1:1 Creative Guidance time with Melissa
Free Resources —
Check out Attention Reset - my free digital art zine on reviving your road-weary attention
Stay Connected —
Follow Melissa’s Instagram for podcast updates
Join Melissa’s weeklyish newsletter for creative musings and studio news
Big thanks to Ben Coleman for composing our theme music, and Gavin Bernard for vocals. Go listen to everything Ben has made, you won’t be sorry!
I love you, thanks for being here!