Hi, hello. Welcome to Mary's Cup of Tea, the self-love podcast for women.

Though, all self-lovers are welcome here. I'm Mary. I write and speak about self-love, and I'm best

known for my book, The Gift of Self-Love, and I also host retreats for women. And this is the podcast

that will inspire you to love yourself. Real quick, before we dive in, I want to make sure you know about my book, The Gift of Self-Love. It's a workbook to help you build confidence, recognize your worth, and learn to love who you are. It's available anywhere books are sold. Thousands of people have it, love it, and have told me that it is greatly benefited their

self-love journey, and I hope it'll do the same for you. And now let's get into the podcast.

So Joy, what's been your proverbial cup of tea lately, something small that's been bringing you

joy? I recently adopted a pair of bonded kittens, and I had a 15-year-old cat that was like my ride

or die pass away like six months ago, and I told myself I wasn't going to get a cat for a long

time, and then I saw these kittens

and brought two of them home. And they had just been wonderful lighting up my life. Amazing.

Where did you find them and what did you name them? They were just a posting for like,

like my cat got out and had kittens and I have all these kittens. Does anyone want them? And I was

like, I'll just go and look. Like I have to start like the grieving process of warming myself up.

I'm going to like not want them. And then I came home with two. And I named them fig and

Ollie. And then I have a third cat named Luna. So it's Luna and the twins, which sounds kind of like

a cool band name. Yeah, it's giving Florence

in the machine, but feline. Right. I love that for you. I'm so inspired to join your writing

community and the enrollment is only open twice a year. I would personally love to know more about it.

Yeah, so I run a writing community called sustenance for poets and essayists who want to fiercely commit to their craft. And it's

called sustenance because it goes back to that idea of creativity as literal survival. And I'm somebody who's experienced a lot of times of hiatus,

have not been able to write, not been able to even interact with my creative brain. But what has

kept me alive is a pulse or a community of other people that are sort of nourishing me when I'm in

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