Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Embody Radio. I am your host Emily Duncan. I know it has been a few weeks since we had our last episode.

Truthfully, I just took a bit of a much-needed, mental, energetic, emotional break at the end of November and into early December here. I'll be honest.

November was a really, really intense month for me. It was a really fun month. There was a lot of just wonderful friend time, wonderful family time, all that could happy stuff, but November was a lot for me.

And without going into a ton of detail, I just... I faced a lot of dark stuff in November and the last kind of six months of my life.

Well, I guess it's five. Since since about June, I've been doing a lot of just psychological work on facing past traumas, on just kind of confronting some of my deepest fears, and it sounds very like spiritual community, which is totally fine.

I'm supportive of that, but I don't just toss this term around, I guess is what I'm trying to say. It's been a time of a lot of shadow work, and holding the candle up to the shadows that I have, and that I deal with, and that I have maybe tried to bury and not face in however long.

And that's coming from somebody that I consider myself to be, and I say this is humbly as possible, like a very self-aware person, and I try to be really aware of my shortcomings and my pitfalls and things like that.

But shadow work is way more than just like, oh, what are my weaknesses? What are my weak points? What are my shortcomings? Those kind of things, your shadow is typically the stuff that you don't want to face than that you avoid facing.

And so I've been doing a lot of that work the last six months, and November particularly was kind of like the crowning jewel of that, if you will. And so November was really challenging for me, and I have needed to be a bit quieter, and be a bit less present on social media, and really focus on not even being with myself, but being with people that I love.

And that's something, you know, you guys know me, I'm really independent, I have historically really enjoyed my alone time, and spent the majority of my time by myself, but I'm finding myself in a position, and this is like a really vulnerable share, I'm finding myself in a position where I, at present, cannot be alone as much and maintain my mental well-being.

And so I am making the concerted effort to spend more time with my friends and my family, whether that's spending time with friends in real life, or doing things like having face times, or resumes, and then obviously going to spend more time with family, whether that's going home to visit my parents, whether that's spending time at my sister's house, etc.

But just being more intentional about not just like sequestering myself away in my little bubble, because that little bubble is not as conducive to my well-being as it used to be, and I think I will get to a point one day where my alone time is one of my favorite things again.

But for now, I just need my community a little bit more, and so with that has also come the necessary realization that I've needed to kind of, instead of, in the past, if I was, you know, like dealing with something, I would just be like, okay, well, like let me do more creative things, like booking more podcasts and interviews, or booking more photo shoots, or like things like that, and that was actually genuinely helpful for me at the time.

But now, instead, I need to take that time, or I have needed to take that time, and really divert it to, like I said, spending time with just people that I love in low-stress environments.

So, all of that to say, we are back with some more regular podcasts, and I appreciate the continued love for the show.

Like, so many of you shared with me your Spotify wrapped, and had Embodied Radio as one of your top podcasts for the year, you all don't know how much that means to me.

I know that this show has been kind of back and forth up and down in terms of, like, topic matter, or consistency over the years, you know, this show has been on since 2017, so four years now.

But I still have a lot of loyal writer dies, and with that, really just humble request, a lot of these people that, a lot of you that were sharing your Spotify wrapped with me about the show, I had no idea that you listened.

Like, I'll be really honest. Back when I first started creating the show, people were really avid shares of the show, like posting other Instagram stories, tagging me and stuff.

And, like, that let me know, along with things like iTunes reviews, but that let me know, oh, people are really loving the show. Amazing.

And now that's not been happening quite as much, and I think part of that might also be, like, more people are listening on Spotify, which Spotify does not have a way to formally review a podcast, like iTunes does.

So, with that said, and so, like, I guess what I'm saying, sorry, before I get into that, is when I was seeing all these people, like, sharing the show as part of their top five listened to podcasts of the year, I'm like, I had no idea you were listening at all, much less this much.

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