100 ~ Celebrating 100 Episodes: Desire, Self-Love, and Transformation

Celebrating 100 episodes! 

In this milestone episode of Desire as Medicine, we pause to reflect on the extraordinary journey we’ve taken together. What began as tentative conversations has blossomed into a bold exploration of desire, self-love, and transformation, for us, and for you.

Over the past hundred episodes, we've charted a path for women (and the people who love them) to live more authentically. Series like Self-Love, Sisterhood, and Freedom have deepened our understanding that desire is not just a feeling, it's a practice. 

We’ve been deeply moved by your stories. From the woman who stopped straightening her hair to lean into her natural beauty, to the man who felt seen in a world that rarely allows men to express emotion, your feedback affirms the ripple effect of desire-led living.

This podcast has stretched us professionally too. It’s been a path to greater visibility, consistency, and creative expression. And it’s shown us that when you follow desire, everyone around you benefits.

Looking ahead, we’re expanding into video and exploring new frontiers, new topics related to desire. But at our core, one truth remains: desire is medicine, and we will continue to relate to it as medicine. We’re so grateful to walk this path with you.

Want to celebrate with us? Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and let us know how this journey has shaped yours.

Episode Highlights:

• The Self-Love Series (starting at episode 35) shifted our perspective: self-love is built through everyday, consistent actions
• How showing up to your desires and projects consistently grows you as creatives and professionals
• Listener stories reflect profound transformation, shifting relationships to self, body, and emotions
• Men are embracing emotional expression through this work
• Our practical advice is landing, whether it’s keeping phones out of bedrooms or embracing who you are
• Our core message: When you follow your desire, it uplifts everyone around you

We'd love to hear from you! Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and let us know how this show has impacted you.

Chapters

• 1:36 Celebrating 100 Episodes Milestone
• 5:06 Self-Love Series Impact
• 12:46 Listener Reviews and Testimonials
• 21:23 Men and Desire
• 25:24 What's Next for the Podcast
• 30:14 Closing Gratitude and Invitation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

Speaker 2: 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life. Motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 1: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student, even after decades of inner work.

Speaker 2: 1:00

We are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 1: 1:12

On the Desires Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire. Welcome back family, friends, loved ones, listeners. Today we are recording our 100th episode. This is absolutely fantastic and so deserving of what we're about to bring you today. We love all of you, but mostly the ones that tell us what they learned. So I love you more. The ones that send me reviews, the one that give me stars, the one that hit my inbox. You know who you are and I want you to know that I absolutely love you. You feed the fuel, you fire me up. You are what encouraged me to keep going. Most people don't get past, or most people who podcast don't get past 10. Brenda and I are here today with a hundred. This is huge. This is huge for us, but it's also huge for you. You've listened. If you are the ones that are, excuse me as I clear my throat.

Speaker 1: 2:32

You're one of the ones that are listening, and you have been here since the beginning or the middle or sometime just recently, and you're letting me know, or letting Brenda know, or letting us know how it's gone for you. You're literally on this ride with us. We wanted a platform, we wanted to be able to share all the goodies and we're sort of having a conversation with you, with each other as well. So we're celebrating today, we're celebrating the hundred episodes. We're celebrating the behind the scenes. We're celebrating the 100 episodes. We're celebrating the behind the scenes. We are celebrating listeners. We're going to be giving some shout outs. So, if you have sent us some goodies, we're talking to you today and as we celebrate this milestone and we share this journey and we're sharing it with you, I'm going to ask you, brenda, sharing it with you, I'm going to ask you, brenda, what has been your favorite challenge, pivot or your favorite moment?

Speaker 2: 3:34

so far on the podcast. You can pick one or all three. I love this question. I am so excited about this episode. Catherine, A hundred. As I'm listening to you speak, I'm going, wow, we did this. We did 100 episodes. Well, 99. We're doing 100 right now and it is such a testament to desire itself. How, when you feel a stirring in your soul and you have the gumption to follow that stirring and maybe you bring your friends along with you, like when you asked me to talk about desire with you and to do a podcast it changes everything. Changes everything for you, it changes things for the people around you. One of my teachers said and I really found this to be true when we follow our desire, everyone around us has more. This podcast is a perfect example of that, because we have produced something absolutely beautiful that lives and breathes on its own, and people are always coming and talking to us about this podcast. Okay, what was the question again?

Speaker 1: 4:49

I love it. I'll give you a different question how has this journey, or what has this journey meant to you, from personally or professionally? Wow, oh wow.

Speaker 2: 5:04

I love our self-love series. First of all, I'm so proud of this entire podcast. I've personally grown along with it in ways that have surprised and delighted me. Our self-love series really lit me up. I think I fell in love with our podcast during our self-love series. I liked it before that and it was fun, but there was something about self-love series which starts at episode 35. If you want to go back and listen, that was mind blowing. We entered into a space that was magical, curious and touched on everything that's possible for ourselves as women. Curious and touched on everything that's possible for ourselves as women. What if you work on your relationship with yourself? And we really came to it with a true curiosity.

Speaker 2: 5:58

What does self-love mean? You know, we hear it all the time. People are self-love coaches, there's self-love books, there's shows. Everyone's talking about self-love coaches. There's self-love books, there's shows, everyone's talking about self-love. But what does it mean and how do you do it? And we really explored that question and it changed me. It really changed me. That, coupled with my own experiences in life where I've learned to have deep compassion and love for myself, and exploring that and my my takeaway from that was that loving yourself is accepting yourself, no matter what, truly. I mean truly accepting yourself in all the places, no matter what. That's a mouthful, that's a mouthful. Maybe that was easier when I was 20 or 30, when things were, you know, maybe going smooth. But you know, I've knocked a few things down in my life since then and had a couple of heartbreaks and disasters and disappointments. And how do you love yourself when you've made a mess and hurt people that you love? And I've learned to do it, and so our self-love series is relevant and important, so I'm really proud of that.

Speaker 1: 7:14

Thank you so much for that. That was such a great journey to yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:21

How about you?

Speaker 1: 7:22

Memory lane. What was yours? I mean, I loved the self-love series. It changed me in so many ways, so many profound ways. My takeaway I mean we did a whole episode on takeaways.

Speaker 2: 7:33

We loved it so much we did three episodes on takeaways. We had so many takeaways from their self-love series. We did takeaways, teachings and takeaways two and three.

Speaker 1: 7:47

I stand corrected. We did three episodes on takeaways. For me I always felt like self-love. Self-love was this lofty thing, even as you say, oh, loving us no matter what, loving ourselves no matter what felt so lofty, like, how do you get there?

Speaker 1: 8:06

And with the self-love series I was like, oh, it's really just one choice at a time, it's one action at a time. That was so mind blowing because the way people talk about it, it's as if you have this romantic relationship with yourself, like, oh my God, I just love myself, I show up for myself in all of these ways. It's like, no, I show up for myself because I'm committed to showing up for myself, and every time I show up for myself and every time I choose myself, I love myself more and more was so mind blowing. And then, if you transfer that thought process to relationship, it's like when you have two people who are in relationship whether friendship, family, romantic, really all it takes is to grow in love together, to show up for each other, one choice after another after another, like to show up for ourselves unapologetically.

Speaker 1: 9:02

And then, when we are this idea of self-love and put it in a different place, for me it was no longer lofty or romantic. It was really grounded in real life action taking. I could really see the impact of that when you look at it from a broader sense. So that's how it grew me personally the self-love series. Professionally, I have seen growth in my desire to show up for the listeners. That know me well. I'm not big on visibility, I'm not big on the internet, I don't have that much gumption to just or courage to be in front of people that I don't know, but I have found the podcast to be a great stepping stone for me. It has really had me stretch my edges, stretch myself to edges that I didn't know were there and also some that I knew were there for sure.

Speaker 2: 10:11

Thank you for sharing that. I want to add that, professionally, it's really grown me as well. This has been something that I have shown up for with you every week I mean more than more than weekly for years. We've been doing this since 2021 in different forms and now we're at episode 100. So I have shown up for this every week. I have committed to myself, to you, to this podcast, to our audience, to desire itself, and that has really shown me what's possible when I commit and I'm devoted to something that I love.

Speaker 2: 10:58

And that's not to say that it's been easy. I don't think we've had really big creative differences, but we've sometimes have different ways or different ideas and we just like, always work it out, and there's something about just coming to it no matter what. And there's been a couple of times where I'm like is this the end? Are we done? No, we just kept showing up and we're committed to following truth. No, we just kept showing up and we're committed to following truth.

Speaker 2: 11:28

Showing up, there is something so magical when you put it in your calendar and you commit and you show up for it. It's beautiful. It's shown me what's possible there and I'm so excited that the things that we talk about here on our podcast overlap with things that I'm talking to my clients about. I feel like it's converging even more maybe as I get more dropped in to this whole thing. It's just converging together and that's so exciting because all it means is that I'm doing my life's work and amen. That is absolutely beautiful, and I also want to give a shout out to our sisterhood series, which starts at 82. And then we did a freedom series in the somewhere in the 90s, which those were really good too.

Speaker 1: 12:17

Thank you for shouting out the podcast and the episodes. I love that, and we could go into how we were changed or impacted by the podcast, or into the different series that we have had and the impact that they have had. I think we could probably do it. Listeners, I'm not even playing with each and every record, with each and every record, and would that be helpful? I'm not sure, but it would take a long time. So I'm going to have us sort of pivot here so we can start shouting out more than just the podcast, because we love you so, so, so, so much, and I especially love and I'm not being shy about this those of you that have reviewed the podcast. So I just want to say, alyssa, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. And she writes with her five stars. For anyone trying to tune into yourself and learning how to know the answer to air quotes what do I want will have stumbled upon A Goldmine with Catherine and Brenda. They pack an amazing amount into short, digestible episodes. Whether you've been working with your desire for decades or are just learning desire for the first time, desire doesn't just mean sex. This podcast is for you. Thank you so so much. A drum roll for Alyssa Next. Winnie, I love you so much. She says. Brenda and Catherine break down concepts that may seem complex into easily digestible bites. Their podcast definitely helped me put things in perspective and reflect on how desire shows up in different places in my life. If you're a woman who wants to be attuned to her desire at all levels, this podcast is for you. Thank you, winnie, deb. Thank you Deb. We will potentially be having Deb in the future. She writes really enjoyed the discussion of boundaries and all the nuances related to saying yes and saying no. Christina, thank you.

Speaker 1: 14:44

With her five stars she says desire as medicine podcast, hosted by Brenda and Catherine, is a breath of fresh air in the world of self-improvement and personal growth. With every episode, brenda and Catherine deliver a powerful mix of wisdom, vulnerability and inspiration that truly resonates. What sets this podcast apart is the genuine and heartfelt approach to discussing topics related to desire, self-discovery and personal development. Their conversations are not just informative but deeply relatable. Brenda and Catherine's authenticity shines through, making you feel like you're chatting with friends who genuinely care about your growth and well-being. They have a knack for addressing the real, sometimes messy, aspects of personal growth, which is incredibly refreshing in a world often filled with polished and superficial advice. The chemistry oh, we get this a lot. The chemistry between Brenda and we get this a lot. The chemistry between Venda and Catherine is undeniable. They compliment each other's perspectives beautifully and their dynamic creates engaging, thought-provoking discussion.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Desire as Medicine podcast is not just a source of information but a source of empowerment. Listening to it feels like a transformative journey and I find myself eagerly awaiting each new episode. If you're seeking genuine guidance on your path to personal growth and fulfillment, this podcast is a must listen. They have created a safe and welcoming space for everyone and their wisdom truly is medicine for the soul. Thank you so much, christina, patricia. Five stars, I love.

Speaker 1: 16:19

Desire is Medicine. It's so cool to hear two very different women I get that a lot too. We get that a lot too have real raw conversations about desire, self-discovery and stepping into your power. They keep it honest, insightful and super relatable. Every episode makes me think in new ways and reminds me how important it is to own what I truly want without guilt or hesitation. If you're looking for a podcast that'll challenge you, that sounds more like us, inspire you and maybe even change the way you see yourself, this is it Highly recommend Goddess Charmaine, even change the way you see yourself. This is it Highly recommend Goddess Charmaine.

Speaker 1: 16:56

Listening with her five stars to the two of you was like a big, a great big hug. Truly. It felt like being held, loved it so much. Thank you, florence. Listening to this episode with the five stars helped me to put down judgment so that I can truly see the different types of friendships in my life. She's clearly relating to the friendship series for what they are. It has put me in a place of gratitude for those in my life as well as what place they get held in my life. I guess what place they get to hold in my life. Thank you so much, and with that, I would love to be reading your episode review. Listener, I want to encourage you to go to Apple, click the little five stars, click review and give us your nuggets. I love receiving your DMs too. I love receiving your emails, your voice notes. I love them all. We've even gotten a video, a testimonial, which I love you too. It was Emily, right, it was.

Speaker 2: 18:09

Emily and Leilani, who were driving down to Asheville from Florida and they were listening to our sisterhood episodes. And there they are in the car together, going to visit other sisters one of which happens to be my daughter and they were so inspired. They said they had the best conversation about it in the car and they recorded a video for us and then posted it on Instagram, which was absolutely amazing. We love that. We love that. We love that. I love the part when you said the review where they said it changes. It changes how you see yourself, that our podcast helped someone changed how they saw themselves. That's quite beautiful.

Speaker 2: 18:55

I want to share this one from mindy. This just came in through a text a while back. This was in regard to our self-love series. She said I want you to know that today I decided not to blow out my hair. I realize that I'm constantly trying to get as close to perfection as possible, including having pin straight hair and no flyaways. I also realized that I'm pushing these ideals onto my daughter and even my sons, and I just don't want to do that anymore. That playbook is old and played out. Thank you for the inspiration to embrace me, for me as is. That's really beautiful.

Speaker 1: 19:37

It really is.

Speaker 2: 19:39

And I've received a message from a friend who told me that she loves to listen to our podcast when she has her period. She just like because she doesn't want to do much, she doesn't want to engage with much, but she lays on the ground and she bleeds and she listens to us talk about desire because she just wants to be in the vibes of women and inspiration.

Speaker 2: 20:04

that's really beautiful so good, I know right, and then we've also had men listening. We have my partner always listens he listens to all the episodes and I love discussing it with him and that that led to an interesting conversation with Catherine and I about men. You know, we really do gear towards women Our coaching is with women but we also both have had private clients as men and some men do listen to the podcast and we've had men guests on. Inspired by that, actually, we really wanted to ask well, how do we add men to the conversation? And I was recently talking to a man who we were talking about desire and I encouraged him to listen to the Ian Wood episode and then he came back and he said Can we talk about it? I want to sit down and talk to you about this episode and desire, and he really enjoyed it. It was really important for him to hear from another man about desire and emotions, and we had Ian on and Peter Sweeney during our self-love series.

Speaker 2: 21:04

What does self-love look like for men? And one of our takeaways for that one of mine was that loving themselves is giving themselves permission to feel at all, because we live in a world where men aren't supposed to feel, they're supposed to produce, but men want to feel. They do feel, and so giving themselves permission to be all of themselves is very loving. And I've had so many people just even say desire, wait, goal, do you mean goal or desire? And I've had so many people just even say desire, wait, goal. Do you mean goal or desire? Like, what's the difference between a desire and a goal? Right, those are really different. So we have a full range of listeners, people who are just at the very beginning Wait, what's a desire? How is it different than a goal? And wait, I could follow my desires. I can listen to these voices and just take one step at a time to follow them. I don't have to do it all at once. I don't have to sit in my life and be miserable. I don't have to stay at that job all the time. No, you can change jobs. You can do a lot of different things.

Speaker 2: 22:15

We have people who are quite advanced I'll say quite advanced in quotes in desire, meaning they've been practicing and studying desire, and I'll put you and I in that category as well. I still get worked by desire. I still get that pang of oh my God when a new desire comes in. And I do want to say a few more things. We've had people message us thanking us for our practical advice, and we have all those toolbox episodes that are 10 to 20 minutes giving you ways to play with desire, practical advice. So if you don't know how to do the whole big thing, it's okay, just grab a toolbox, and we really appreciate hearing that. We've had people say that our episodes are priceless.

Speaker 2: 23:04

I love this one. This episode came in clutch for me. I love that. And we get multiple messages of people saying, oh, I listened to this one two times and a lot of people saying they have permission to feel, permission to pause and permission to love themselves, no matter what. These are huge things. Oh. And people who are saying I want to put my phone in the other room because we've talked a lot about that as well in different episodes. People who are like oh, my phone is now in the other room, it's not next to my head when I sleep, calling me.

Speaker 1: 23:48

I know right, sometimes the phone is next to us. It's like binge oh yes, we did an episode on that one too. Us it's like binge oh yes, we did an episode on that one too. I can't say enough about what it feels like to be on this path with Brenda and to be at episode 100 recording. It has truly been like soul food. Yes, to have found something that I truly enjoy personally and professionally has really been a gift, and I'm sure I speak for Brenda and I'm sure it's the same, because otherwise I don't think we would have made it to 100.

Speaker 1: 24:26

I think one of us would have quit by now if that wasn't the case. I do think that's why people do end up quitting. It's just a lot to show up constantly. And let's not even talk about how many people have difficulty showing up as a duo, as two, because showing up you yourself for 10 is one thing, showing up as a duo, well, that's different, because there's a completely different dynamic. We have to work on our sisterhood and our connection and our yeah, connection.

Speaker 1: 24:55

There's a word I'm looking for our exchange like how connected we are, so that we can speak about these topics and have it be smooth versus not smooth. We've had other people talk about that Like it's just not smooth, it's clunky, and you're just not on the same page or not jiving, and so we could talk about like to infinitum about this, but what's more fun is let's talk about what's next. What's next? Are there new themes, guests, shifts. I can say that one of the goals I had for 2025, which will probably be in 2026, or maybe not, maybe no-transcript that's on the back burner for me. That's something that I've personally been studying with a different lens, so that's something that we'd like to do. For sure, we may go a little deeper into freedom. We're definitely still be looking at desire from, and talking about that from, different places. What comes up for you when you think about what's next?

Speaker 2: 26:03

You know something that we've just touched on in the last week, which is video. We have talked a lot about this and we have very much owned that we are not ready for video. Well, guess what folks? We're starting with video, so look for that on our Instagram.

Speaker 2: 26:20

I would like us to have more reach with our podcast. I see some of our numbers going up when I look at the stats because I like to look at the stats and I'm going to own it that I want our podcast, desires Medicine, to be wildly popular. I want people to be listening far and wide. I want to hear from people. How is this impacting you? What are you learning about yourself? What are you learning about desire? What's changing or shifting in your internal landscape or maybe in your life? I want people to live their best lives, and I think that we are giving them a roadmap for that. So, yes, I want it to be popular. I want to monetize our podcast. I would like to for both of us to receive clients from this podcast. I would love more inquiries of what Catherine and I do and to have it start to get really juicy in here, or even juicier Cause. Then it gets even more fun.

Speaker 1: 27:34

Thank you for all the teases that you're dropping here, especially the video one. We have not been ready, but that is probably going to be rolled out soon. I can't say when we were thinking by the hundredth, but as you'll be hearing this, you'll know, there is no video accompanied to this one, so we'll have to wait and see when that comes. But it's, it's a testament to how we have grown with the podcast and we can feel the edge. Oh, it's time for video, and we're also honoring where we are and what we're willing to do and what we're willing not to do. And I think that, with desire, that's really important. That's one of the tenants, like one of our shared values, in desire and with the podcast, that we show up for what we can do, not pushing us pushing ourselves into something that we're just not ready for. Not pushing us pushing ourselves into something that we're just not ready for. So definitely we have things in the hopper as far as what's next and we want to grow for sure. I would add into I'll put this in the ring that if you are a listener and you're hearing us and you have a podcast, we would love to be interviewed by you. So send us a message. Let us know you want us on. That's going to be one of our stretches. I would love for us to be interviewed as a duo that have a podcast. I've definitely been interviewed alone and I'm sure she's been interviewed alone. I think being interviewed by a duo or, you know, as a duo, is something that would really stretch us and have us feel different sensations of anxiety, which I'm sure would be in a good way. And with that you have it, guys. Thank you so much for being part of the 100th.

Speaker 1: 29:17

We've been able to share some reflections about what we've learned. We've been talking about our gorgeous listeners, new and old. We've talked about what we've learned. We've been talking about our gorgeous listeners, new and old. We've talked about what's coming, and so, really, we want to say thank you, thank you so much for being here, thank you so much for listening, thank you so much for your contribution to the stats. Brenda really loves those and so thank you. She gets to see the little tickets, the tickers of the globe and where people are listening from. We want to verbally raise a glass to desire, to evolution, to the mess and the magic and Brenda said this earlier, but I'm going to say it again, it's not ours, but it's definitely from one of our very beloved teachers when you follow your desire, not only do you get to have more, but so does everybody else. Thank you so much for listening. If this touched you in any way, please go to Apple, click the stars, click, write a review. Write a review and send us a screenshot. Thanks so much, until next time.

Speaker 2: 30:34

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 1: 30:37

Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.