[DAWN GABRIEL]
Hi, I’m Dawn Gabriel, host of Faith Fringes podcast, recording live from Castle Rock Colorado. I am a licensed professional counselor, owner of a counseling center and a sacred space holder for fellow therapists. This podcast is for those who want to explore more than the traditional norms of the Christian culture. I create intentional space to explore your own spiritual path, a space that allows doubt, questions and curiosity without the judgment or shame, a place to hear another story and dive deeper into how to have a genuine connection with God.

For my fellow therapists listening, I will often pull back the curtain of our layered inner world that comes with our profession. I bring an authentic and experienced way to engage your spiritual journey in order to connect you with your deepest values for true renewal and soul-care. But really this podcast is for anyone listening who’s desiring a deeper and genuine connection with God. For those of you wanting to engage your spirituality in new ways, Faith Fringes is for you. Welcome to the podcast.

Hello, welcome back to 2022. I have missed all of my listeners. I’ve missed recording but I definitely needed to take a couple months off in between last year and this year, but I am back and I’m super excited. I’m recharged and refueled and excited to jump into this new year of podcasting and recording episodes and just really bringing what I hope is companion to your spiritual growth and exploration. I am just so excited about this year. I wanted to talk about yes, what my vision is and what I’m hoping for but first of all I can’t go on without mentioning I launched my dream, which was Soul-Care for Therapist Retreat.

I launched it and we had it in January 14th or 16th. It was amazing. I’m not going to say too much about it because I have a bunch of episodes about it, where I interview people who went and you will get to hear way more about it but I just wanted to mentioned that that has really formed some of what I’m going to be talking about in this new year. So yes, I really feel like this year is going to be about spiritual formation and soul-care. What do I mean about that? With spiritual formation, a lot of times when you’re talking about that, there’s many different ways at looking at that, but for me, spiritual formation is looking at whether there’s some disciplines.

I hate using the word disciplines so let’s use the word rhythms and things that you do like rituals and rhythms that you do to really help form your spirituality and form your faith and dive deeper into it. It’s not so much like, you know me, and I’ve said this many times, it’s not a checklist. It’s not a to do list. It’s really about how do I want to form my spiritual connection? So we’re going to talk a lot about that in different ways. I’m still going to talk about my love of hiking, love of nature and how just being outdoors really connects to my spiritual formation. I’m also going to try to get some different spiritual directors on here. Some people who have done it longer than me and just hear their story and hear what they see when they sit with people and journey alongside people.

Also soul-care, I have done a ton on soul-care before, but we’re going to keep diving into soul-care because I think it’s going to be ongoing. I think things come up within my own self, things come up within you where you have to keep coming back to what does my soul need? Is my soul exhausted? Is my soul numb? Is my soul irritable? Like where are you at? Where’s my soul? Really learning how to take a temperature on that and knowing how to maybe get ahead of that. Sometimes it’s like extensive soul-care because we’re burned out. We’re going to look at that. Or it’s just preventative soul-care. We’re going to look at all that and we’re just going to keep diving deep.

Again, I just am so excited to journey alongside you. I look at this podcast and hope that it’s a blessing to you of just getting you curious and helping you ask questions about your spirituality and diving deeper. It just, as you hear stories of people and how they do it, maybe it’ll help you think of a new way to connect with God and a new way to explore your faith and deepen your faith.

We are still going to do a lot of stories. We’re going to hear how maybe someone has overcome their hurt and their doubt and their pain to deepen their faith. We are still going to talk about authentic community and how that companionship is so needed in our own spiritual growth as well. Then I’m also going to do some exponential activities with you where I will lead some guided meditations. I will lead you guys in some Lectio Divina and I’ll explain what all those are. We’ll do some more where you can really slow down and get more present with yourself. I’m going to do that on the podcast. So that’s where I’m looking for, the direction that I’m going.

I’m also going to have a lot more episodes that are focused for therapists. I have just over the past year have seen how much therapists are really in need of someone pouring into them, someone holding sacred space for them and I get really passionate about that. I love therapists. I just love all the layers that we have. So I really like to create that sacred space for them as they are creating sacred space for others. So with that yes, I do retreats, but I’d love to have some podcast episodes around that as well. So I’m going to have people coming in who are experts in the field of therapists, experts in burnout for therapists, experts in soul-care, experts in spirituality, and just helping us become better healers, better helpers and as well as better people. We’re going to explore that and I’m so excited about that.

I’m also going to explore the therapist matrix. I’m developing this theory. I’ve been talking with a few of my colleagues about it and we’ve been diving deep into it. So I will unfold and talk about that more as we go. But the main thing with this therapist matrix is just the again, it’s more like layers of how we do life, internal, external as therapists, as group practice owners and as humans. Sometimes it’s not congruent and how we have to look at all the layers and really get deep and real with ourselves. For me, that has been engaging my own soul-care and my own spirituality and that is what I’m going to bring to you as my listener as well.

So again, not every episode is going to be just for therapists. Even if you aren’t a therapist listening, you could probably still get stuff out of the therapist episode. I’ll probably mark it with SCT, which is soul-care for therapists when I do it so you can either pass it or go back to it or a therapist can quickly go to it. I’ll probably mark it with that, just to show you when you’re going through what to listen to or not. But I think if you’re not a therapist and you want to listen to those episodes, it’d be great to hear what all goes in the head of your therapist. Maybe it’s not a good thing, I don’t know.

But again, I will continue to create intentional space to understand the stories behind others’ faith journeys or others’ doubt journeys. We will just listen in on how others either deconstruct or reconstruct their own path and their own faith journey and how they connect or don’t connect with God, how they experience or don’t experience God. I just feel like all of this can help us on our own journey. So again, I am so grateful to have you back listening with me.

I do actually have a favorite ask. I would love for my podcast to be able to be shared with others. If you can go to Apple Podcasts and review, right now I think I’m sitting at 40 reviews. I’d like to get to 100. Once it gets up there, what happens is apple connects it with other podcasts that maybe be have similar topics. That is the way it gets moved. Just like anything, I’m sure, you know, it pops up, oh, you might like this. You might like this one. This one is very similar. So that is how I’m able to grow podcast. So I’d love for you to review. It would mean a lot to me, if you are liking this. That is a way you could give back, is just go on and review.

Another way is to just connect with me on social media. I am on Instagram and Facebook at Faith Fringes. If you could go on there and join or like, and share the page with someone you think might do it, I’m going to have some fun, probably the end of February, beginning of March, I’m going to have some fun giveaways for people who sign up and share it. I would just love for you to get on and see, I put a lot of thought into the content and it talks about all the stuff we’re talking about on the podcast. I also try to do some lives. I’m not as good as I usually go back and forth on doing lives but the content usually is right alongside what we do on the episodes.

Again, if you could rate and review me on Apple Podcasts, that’d be great. Or if you want to also go on my social media, Instagram, and Facebook and follow me and like me and share it with others, I would love it. Thank you so much. I can’t wait to hear what you guys are wanting to hear more of. Email me, dawn@faithfringes.com. I’m excited for this year, and can’t wait to explore and get curious about our spirituality together. Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening today to the Faith Fringes podcast. For those of you wanting to take a deeper dive into your own faith journey, you can grab my free email course, Spiritual Reflections on my website, faithfringes.com. If you’re a therapist and would want to work with me, I offer sacred space holding for you through my consulting, as well as my soul-care retreats. To find out more, go to my website or email me at dawn@faithfringes.com.

I love hearing from all my listeners. Drop me an email now to tell me what’s on your mind. You can also connect with me on social media. I’m on Facebook and Instagram at Faith Fringes. As always, if you’re enjoying this podcast, I would love it if you could show it by your reviews. Go to Apple Podcasts and leave your review so that others can find this podcast and get curious about their own spiritual journey.

Thanks again for listening.

Faith Fringes is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith in Practice, Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic or Impact Driven Leader, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.