Igniting Your Inner Fire: Welcome to SoulFire Sisters
Hi, I’m Doctor Mary Newstrom.
Speaker 2
And I’m Dawn Morningstar, welcome to Soul Fire Sisters, a sacred space where we ignite women’s inner fire, awaken their truth, and share soulful conversations that inspire, heal, and empower.
Speaker 1
Each episode we dive deep into themes of self discovery, intuition, feminine wisdom, and spiritual growth, guided by raw stories, fierce honesty, and a shared desire to live boldly and authentically.
Speaker 2
Whether you’re on a healing journey, seeking deeper connection, or ready to rise in your power, you are not alone.
Speaker 1
Dawn Morningstar, which is her given name, has been a Women’s Self Empowerment Coach for 37 years, is the award-winning author of Venerable Women, Transform Ourself.
Transform the World is a former radio talk show host, a podcast host, Ted X Speaker, the creator of Radiant Face 18 and Co founder of New World Women.
Speaker 2
Doctor Mary Newstrom is an internationally known shamanic teacher, a spiritual minister, and a keynote speaker.
She founded Zenith High LLC and created Spirit Flower, a shamanic study program for women.
She’s committed to helping women and men develop a strong sense of purpose as they examine and understand how to stand clearly in their power.
Speaker 1
Welcome to the sisterhood.
Your soul showed up for a reason.
Welcome everyone.
We’re so excited that you’re here.
Unpacking Your Religious Upbringing: Blessings, Burdens, and Healing
Today’s topic, How did your religious upbringing help you or F you up?
I’ve loved.
Speaker 2
That title so much.
Speaker 1
Today we’re exploring an important topic, and I love that too.
I’d love that We’re really diving deeper into this, how our religious upbringing shaped us.
And remember, we’re talking religious, not spirituality, and we’ll get into that a little bit deeper.
We’re going to look at the beautiful parts, the painful parts, and the parts we’re still working through.
This episode’s about healing, reclaiming, and understanding.
And of course, sometimes those old rules based really in patriarchy messed us up more than we realized.
Or maybe you realize that and you’re here to heal.
So let’s talk about it with honesty and a little laughter, a little levity, so that we can heal together.
Speaker 2
Yes, absolutely.
It’s all about healing and coming into our own and feeling whole.
And I am very grateful that we are talking about this because over the years I’ve seen so much impact from religion.
And as you said, Mary, it’s not spirituality that we’re talking about here.
It’s, you know, formalized, human created.
Well, I will say man made religions because they’re all man made.
And you know, even people who were not raised in any with any kind of religion are impacted.
Everyone is impacted by religion in one way or another.
And you’ll see that as we go through.
We’re here with love and curiosity and permission to tell the truth.
I mean, even the funny truth of religion.
And it’s funny to me that I have been so programmed, as many people I’ve talked to over the years from early, early on that you don’t, you don’t question any of this, of that’s a sin in and of itself to question it.
And so I am asking that we grant to ourselves the grace and the power to question everything, including religion.
So how did your religious upbringing help you?
Or how did it fork you up as one of the shows on TV uses that word for instead of the F word?
And how can you unhook from what no longer serves you?
And so even though these things may not be exactly personal to you, you’ve definitely been impacted.
So what’s religion given us and what has it taken away?
How Religion Disconnects Us from Self, Nature, and the Feminine
We’re going to speak to both gratitude and grief.
Religion can give community, which is fabulous.
It can give ritual, which I remember as a kid.
Mary, you might remember this too.
Ritual is was so important to me.
I thought it was beautiful.
I thought it was weird, like when the priest was going around with benediction.
I’d never smelled that smell before.
And comfort, it can, you know, we can feel comforted sitting in church because we’re told, you know, or again, I’m going to say all of this in the past tense because I don’t attend to any churches anymore except Lake Harriot Spiritual Center, which is not technically a church, but a very cool liberal thinking community.
But you know, so we had all of those things, but sometimes those things that were offered sitting in those churches or in those Sunday school classes or religious instruction, whatever it might be, could have come at the cost of our own inner knowing.
And sadly, I am a full believer that that was by design.
So maybe be thinking as we’re going through this, like, what did your upbringing teach you to fear?
Your religious upbringing teach you to fear.
And what parts of yourself were you told to shrink?
Or even worse, not trust?
Like not trust your own intuition.
Speaker 1
Yeah, and that’s the truth.
You know, the one thing, Don, that you brought up already was the fact that fortunately I missed the lesson on it was a sin to question because that helped me really decide Catholicism wasn’t for me when I started questioning, actually just questioning the, the, the how congruent or incongruent things were and unfair and so on.
But many religions disconnect us from our body, nature, the feminine, and they do that deliberately because they want to keep people not grounded, not connected to source.
It really takes away with shamanism.
One of the key things is direct revelation, and that means you’re directly connected to source.
You’re getting the answers for yourself.
And students that study with me know that.
They hear that over and over.
That allows a person to build that connection, build their own sovereignty, and not have to necessarily rely on anyone else.
Maybe a teacher for a little bit of guidance, but not for the message of what the divine higher power, whatever people want to call it.
And it helps you own your own path as well.
So when we obey rules that betray our truth, our souls contract, it really screws us up and it screws us up.
It help and it helps others hold power over us.
Remember this, the earth never judges, it just holds you.
Speaker 2
I love that.
I love that.
Yes.
And before you get on to talking about the good girl conditioning or revisiting it, I should say, since we had that discussion in a prior episode, I want to visit the word power for a second because in New World women, in my own coaching practice in my life, I believe in a new definition of the word power.
I don’t believe in power over, which is what we’re talking about here.
This is power over our own intuition, power over our own thoughts, power over our own eternity.
You know, I mean, a lot of these religions, we’re talking about eternal this and eternal that.
So when I’m talking about power, I’m talking about the power within and the power with one another.
That’s a different.
It’s a softer, I believe more helpful understanding of power.
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely, totally.
In our last episode we talked about or good girls, what it means to be a good girl and how that holds us back.
And, and I chuckle thinking about shit.
Let that girl let that shit go.
Like let it go, let it go.
Stop being a good girl.
So you know, but religion has trained us to be a good girl.
That’s a big one.
That is a huge one.
Obedient, quiet, self sacrificing, listening to men or your man for advice, not tapping into your own knowing.
What has happened is the power has been taken away from the divine feminine.
Paganism, shamanism, Wicca, we’re all based on that feminine power.
And what’s happened is it really has led to women and particularly having shame and guilt, maybe lowering the vibration because of that and really helping keep the patriarchy in charge over over us as well.
Speaker 2
And many people today still protect that patriarchy.
They still protect.
I’m shocked when I think about the evils that certain churches have committed.
Some of these mega churches stealing and you know, the pedophilia in the Catholic Church and the distortion of sexuality preached by the Catholic Church that, you know, sexual desire is a sin and you know, all of those kinds of things.
They, they tend to have us have distorted views of ourselves and our own humanity.
And there are so many people who still protect all of that today.
And it’s shocking to me.
But yet I guess it shouldn’t be because it is.
It requires courage to step back and take a look at something that you’ve been told over and over or you’ve been shown in your society.
And so, you know, from an empowerment lens, which I’m always thinking about, that women’s self empowerment.
Many of us learned that pleasing others was safer and better than trusting ourselves.
And that’s a wound.
But it’s a wound that we are healing, you know, and authenticity is a spiritual path.
It’s not a rebellion.
It’s something that goes deeper within us.
It when we embrace our own authenticity.
Some people are saying that authenticity is the highest form of spirituality, and I believe that being authentic to trusting our own intuition, being authentic to knowing that love is great power, knowing that collaboration is better than competition.
You know all of those kinds of knowings.
And you know, some of the rules were created to maintain control, not connection.
Direct Connection to Source: Reclaiming Your Authentic Spiritual Power
Yeah, right.
Speaker 1
Oh yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2
And guess who benefits when women stay small and do not have their own trusted experience of the divine?
Yeah, Who benefits?
And that’s the question to always ask, you know, if you’re faced with this, who’s benefiting from this?
Right.
And if those old rules were a product on a shelf today, they’d be marked outdated.
Do not use because we are in entering into, we are already in, but fully entering into a new paradigm and a new realm as we enter into this new year of 2026.
Speaker 1
You know, I actually think those paradigms are already on the shelf, marked out date, not used, and many can tapped into that energy and putting them back and as a a lesson that maybe we’ve learned or something that we can use.
If you know that your history, it’s not going to repeat itself.
So hopefully we can go that way.
But spiritual power comes from your direct connection to source, your inner guidance, your intuition you’re using your third eye, connecting to your spirit guides, spirit animals, guardian angels.
It’s really interesting how conveniently these these religious systems eliminated really the nature based spirituality of paganism and Wicca and shamanism.
Meaning, for example, with with Christmas landing on December 25th, it’s just interesting that that was such a, a huge celebration of the solstice for paganism.
And I don’t think that’s a a coincidence.
It was to siphon off that power and to really tell the masses you know what’s right, what’s wrong and so on.
But nature really looks at truth.
They look at being authentic.
When you’re in the flow, if you’re your your authentic self, if you’re living an authentic life, you’re going to be in the flow and you’ll be old, older and wiser than human made rules.
You’ll be really able to tap into that.
Speaker 2
Yeah, So important, Mary, what you said.
And it is the great power that we have when we are connected directly to source that is fearful to these powers that be.
They don’t want people, particularly women, because women are very, very powerful.
They don’t want that.
They don’t want that because then they can’t be, you know, in charge.
But where, you know, women and feminine wisdom tells us nobody needs to be in charge.
We can be in charge of our own lives.
We don’t need an overlord kind of looking down and telling us what to do.
And so it’s, I think it, I believe with all my heart that it’s the very fact that women are so powerful that religion, you know, came along and stole women’s customs.
Like when you said, like, you’re right, by many accounts, historical Jesus was probably born in April, April, but that didn’t fit the narrative that the Catholic Church wanted to steal.
So they took solstice because everybody was already celebrating that.
And they were like, Oh, I know, let’s, let’s just take, take that and call it something else and say, Oh, this is when Jesus was born.
So it’s distortion after distortion after distortion.
And, you know, again, I don’t feel any need to have vengeance or anger anymore.
I mean, I’ve really worked through this.
I’m just being courageous enough to say I think it’s time that we really examine things like the Did y’all know that the Bible was not always one fixed book?
In the early centuries of Christianity, there were many writings and gospels circulating and then over time the church becomes more institutionalized and church leaders decided which books would be included and more importantly, which ones would be left out.
The Gospel of Thomas was very loving, the Gnostic gospels and the one that I’m particularly interested in, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene because that’s as a matter of fact in New World women, that’s what we will be.
That’s our next book study that we’ll be doing in early January or excuse me, in mid January.
Is Mary Magdalene revealed by Megan Watterson Because like for example, what Mary Magdalene says right up front is there is no sin.
You were not born as a Sinner.
That is antithetical to everything that most of these major religions are teaching.
And boy, what a breath of fresh air, right?
To think, Oh my God, I’m not this horrid center at age 3 or 4 or 5 or whenever I’m being taught this stuff, right?
Yes, yes.
And so some of the texts that didn’t make it into it emphasized inner wisdom, like you were talking about Mary, and direct experience of the divine like you also just talked about, and a much more compassionate view of human nature.
They suggested that the sacred wasn’t something outside of us that we had to learn or earn, but something already alive inside of us.
And then when those voices and earlier texts got excluded, what became dominant was a version of faith focused more on obedience.
Tada, right?
Get that sin and authority.
And for a lot of people, that’s where religion stopped feeling like love and started feeling like shame.
And that’s where it still remains for many people.
So when we talk about how religion has helped us or really messed us up, it’s worth remembering what we inherited was a curated version of spirituality.
And maybe the healing now isn’t about rejecting the sacred, but reclaiming the parts that were left out.
From Red Socks to Outdoor Weddings: Personal Stories of Questioning Religious Rules
Totally.
And you know it.
It really is that dogma from the religious systems that creates that energetic constriction.
What why people feel like they don’t know what their life purpose is.
That’s one of the number one things I hear is what’s my life’s purpose?
And it’s coming from the fact that they, their energy has been shut down, their creativity and they, they don’t know their truth, their soul contract.
It is because the fact that the religious systems, religious aspects want the control everything.
And when you’re controlled, your energy’s not expansive.
And so let’s take a few minutes, just a moment, actually just a moment to really feel in your body.
When you think about expansiveness of living your dream, how does your body feel compared to when you’re feeling constricted, in fear, lost?
I think you can all feel the difference that when you’re in alignment, when you’re in the flow, you’re naturally going to be feeling more grounded, feeling more connected to the divine.
Speaker 2
And a wonderful question to continue to ask ourselves is what are we going to trust?
What are we choosing to trust?
And it’s, you know, something where we have the courage to ask ourselves, am I willing to trust myself?
Or do I still feel a need to have someone tell me what is right and wrong in regard to my own connection with the divine?
And you know.
What became most dominant in religion was more about obedience and authority, and for a lot of us, that’s where religion stopped feeling like love.
Speaker 1
You know, it’s interesting.
I have a kind of a funny story of that’ll tack on to that obedience is I went to a Catholic grade school and that it really bothered.
We were in uniform, but it bothered the sisters and probably more the priests, the men that sometimes the girls would wear colorful like socks, you know, actually knee high socks.
And we were told, hey, you, you can’t do this anymore.
I don’t.
I think they said they had to be white.
I’m not really sure what black color they had to be.
I don’t remember that piece because I tell you, I think most people will go, yeah, that sounds like Mary.
The fact that, OK, so we’re told, hey, you can’t wear colorful knee high socks anymore because we don’t like it, because by the way, that that showed our creativity, that showed our individual that and they, I organized some of the the young women, girls, hey, tomorrow, let’s still wear our colorful socks.
And so I put on my red little socks.
They were red.
I remember that.
I remember that.
So I wore my red little knee high with my my Catholic uniform.
If anybody went to a Catholic school, you know what I’m talking about.
And I kid you, not everyone.
I was the only one, the only one.
All the other young women girls caved and they were all wearing whatever they were supposed to.
Yes, that was pretty.
I I think it yes, it, but it it I think it set me up for a much being much stronger and who I am and my personality and my conviction.
I want to say that not necessarily on my personality, my understanding that there was something really off with that religion and that it didn’t fit my spirituality.
Spirituality has no dogma.
That’s the biggest difference is with the spirituality.
There aren’t these set rules and so that it helped me form an idea that I wanted to follow spirituality, not a religion.
And and it’s OK if you follow religion if that resonates with you.
But for me, for me, these all were helpful decision milestones and decision making.
That was one of them.
It was like, no, I’m not going to stay where I’m told for no reason.
There was no reason I couldn’t wear red socks.
No reason.
Speaker 2
Absolutely.
Well, it goes back to that idea of conditioning and control, and that’s what religion does.
And one of the things we didn’t mention earlier on when we were talking about the books that got left out of the Bible and ones that were put in was religion and government control are always very much in tandem.
And we’re seeing that in the United States right now with the rise of the religious right, you know, and you know, the over the years, the, the different ways that religion has controlled people and doesn’t want them to think outside the box because you can’t control like if you’re, if you’re wearing red socks and that means you’re not complying.
And they don’t like that.
They don’t want that, No, because you might not comply with other things too.
Speaker 1
And I do.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I’m sure.
Yeah, I know you well enough to know that.
That’s very true.
That’s very true.
Speaker 1
That wasn’t the beginning and certainly is not the end.
Speaker 2
I would have to say the same thing for myself.
And you know, for example, when I was getting married in my 20s, I was in my mid 20s and got married.
I’m divorced now and have been for many years.
But when I got to married, it was very important to me to get married outside.
I really wanted the experience of being in nature when I got married.
And I could not find any Catholic Church because I was raised Catholic and I, I really wasn’t feeling very Catholic in those days, but my family all was.
And I knew for my mother and father and for my former husband’s mother and father that Catholic racism would be like having a priest marry us would be really, really important to them.
So we kind of caved.
But I was not caving on getting married outside.
That was going to happen one way or another.
So we looked and looked, couldn’t find anybody.
And so finally I found a Unitarian minister who said, oh, I’d be happy to marry you outside.
And I told him our dilemma about the parents and the Catholicism.
And he said, well, I, I have a Catholic priest caller.
I was in seminary and he said, do you want me to wear it?
I said, you know, just wear it.
So he did.
And we got married outside.
He didn’t pretend to be Catholic, but nobody questioned it, questioned it until afterwards, because my father said something like, well, what church is he the priest in?
And I said, well, dad, he’s a minister and the Unitarian Church, but he’s not a priest.
So that was the big joke.
And but I, I, I and, and the reasoning, this is the most important part of this whole story is the reasoning that these different priests that I went to told me we couldn’t get married outside is because it had to be inside of a church, because that’s that would be sanctified.
And I said, so God isn’t out in nature.
I said, please help me understand this.
And even in those early years, I was questioning like you’re saying that God is only in a church and God is not in the flowers and the trees and the birds and the little pond, you know, nearby where I want to get married.
And they said, no, it’s this way or the highway kind of was the message.
So.
Speaker 1
Wow, crazy.
Speaker 2
Crazy, but true.
I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1
Crazy but true, but I think also for for those listening in on Don and I’s conversation, and we hope you enjoy listening in because this is really what we’re trying to bring to you is this is the conversations we have all the time Is these are though important milestones reflect on because they help you make the decisions of when you’re going to break free, when you’re going to, you know, live in your own truth.
And sometimes we all know this.
Sometimes negative or challenging situations help us really kind of lead lean into the the right way that we want to live.
Speaker 2
Absolutely, absolutely.
And Mary, you bring up such a good point because we heal not just ourselves, but our whole lineage when we do this work, like when we raise our frequency through love, self-care, beauty, and embodied truth, we’re actually doing spiritual liberation work is what we’re doing.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
So we’ve shared a few stories with you about our childhood experiences or young adult experiences.
Maybe think of some ways that you have been impacted.
Think of maybe a story or two of your own where you were being told something that just did not feel right in your bones.
Maybe just take a minute to to think about that Because and then if it’s a funny story, and I hope, I hope that if you had an experience that was not a funny experience, but was a serious experience, that you are healing from that and we hold you in that space of love.
And if it is a funny story like Mary Socks and me finding out that God is an outside, but only in a church.
Humor can help us release trauma.
If we can laugh, we can heal.
Guided Healing: Reclaiming Your Divine Light and Sacred Truth
I also want to add, take note where you’re feeling that in your body because as we go through these conversations and future episodes, where you’ll be knowing where to tap into and where you get your connection and where you feel your connection to spirit that.
Speaker 2
Is the key.
That is the key, Mary, Really.
Speaker 1
And, and everybody feels it differently.
And that’s one of the reasons why sometimes we have a teacher for a while that’s teaching us how to connect.
It’s mostly, how do you connect and how are you interpreting the divine?
And some people see things and we usually hear about those because they tell you, I just saw the face of God.
But a lot of times people’s colors.
That’s another very popular way to to see energy or feel energy interpret energy from the divine.
But sometimes it’s tingling too.
So that’s the other thing when we, when we take you through these exercises, and I’m going to take you through one in just a second here, where, where do you register to divine?
And it might seem like a funny question, but you’ll understand more once you start practicing it.
So let’s let’s go ahead and do a little bit of grounding and just taking us deeper into this topic.
Speaker 2
But.
Speaker 1
Go ahead and take some deep breaths, maybe 3 deep breaths.
Then just in and exhaling and just grounding, feeling very solid, solid in your body, solid with Mother Gaia.
And as you’re doing that, visualize a younger version of yourself shaped by religious expectations.
And we’re holding you.
Now, some of that might be painful, some of it you may have worked through.
But as you are visualizing, if you can do it with a neutrality, place your hand onto your heart.
You were never wrong.
You were never separate.
Your light has always been divine, always been yours.
Speaker 2
Imagine golden light dissolving guilt, shame, and limitation of any kind.
Breathe in freedom.
Breathe out old rules.
Return to your own wisdom.
Return to your own connection and oneness.
Return to your own light.
Speaker 1
Yes, reclaim that light.
May the wounds of your past become the wisdom of your soul.
Speaker 2
That bears repeating, Mary.
May the wounds of your past become the wisdom of your soul, and may you walk forward in your own sacred truth, unburdened, free, and fully alive.
Your Soul Fire Knows the Way: A Call to Live Authentically
Your soul fire knows the way.
Speaker 2
Thank you everyone, dear Soul Fire Sisters for sharing this episode.
Excuse me, sharing the sacred space in this episode with us today.
Soul Fire Sisters is lovingly created and produced by me, Don Morningstar and Doctor Mary Newstrom, with editing and publishing by Sean Vujo.
This podcast is brought to you by Zenith Spirit, Zenith High and Spirit Flow, New World Women and Radiant Face 18 and is featured on the New World Women Voices of Wisdom podcast.
You can find all the ways to connect with us in the show notes.
And if you’re not sure what show notes are, go back and click on the icon or the cover of this podcast.
And if you go to show, you’ll see all or go to episode.
You’ll see all of the different links or things that we are talking about.
Very easy for you to find.
Farewell for now and remember your soul fire knows the way.
Speaker 1
Thank you everyone for listening.
Please follow this podcast and review and like, thank you so much.
Many blessings.
Hey Soul Fire Sisters, we hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.
Please share Soul Fire Sisters with your friends.
Speaker 2
Until we meet again, reflect on the changes you want to make, feel the fire in your soul, and live from that fire.
Speaker 1
Our world needs your passion, your gifts, your heart.
Don’t wait, do it now.
Whatever your it is, do it now.
Speaker 2
Let’s use our power to create a world we actually want to live in, a loving new world for ourselves and for future generations.
We’ve got this.