The Nourished Woman with Keri Marino
A space for women on a growth and healing journey — who want to live. joyfully and feel at home in within themselves body, mind and spirit.
Hosted by Keri Marino, somatic yoga therapist, mentor, and mama, this podcast features soulful stories, embodied wisdom, and truth bombs that land soft but go deep.
Each week, you’ll find short, heartfelt episodes designed for listening on the go — from somatic healing and inner work, to nervous system guidance and the real-life ways yoga philosophy can transform your days. On occassion, Keri welcomes guests who share transformative insights on everything from gut health to psychology.
Whether you’re driving to work, washing the dishes, or taking a quiet walk, these conversations will nourish your mind, body, and spirit — and remind you that your life is a love story you get to live every day.
If you like what you're hearing here, learn more about ways Keri can support you at: www.KeriMarino.com on at instagram @the_nourished_woman
The Nourished Woman with Keri Marino
Ripple Effects: How Growth Changes Relationships
Growth changes everything—especially relationships. Whether it's your partner, close friend, or family member, embarking on a healing journey inevitably shifts the dynamics between you and those you love. Sometimes this creates friction that can be confusing, painful, and even frightening.
As women, we're naturally relationship-oriented. Many of us wake up each morning motivated by the connections in our lives. Yet when we begin to transform through growth work, yoga, or healing practices, we're changing fundamental parts of these precious relationships. Every significant relationship consists of three elements: you, the other person, and the dynamic between you. Your personal evolution inherently changes two of these components, creating natural growing pains that few discuss openly.
Some women avoid growth work altogether, fearing what truths might emerge or how it might threaten relationship stability. Others eagerly pursue transformation, hoping for deeper connections and new possibilities. But when your journey outpaces your partner's readiness or understanding, difficult moments arise. You might feel misunderstood, criticized for changing, or even have your growth thrown back at you: "If you've done so much inner work, why are you getting emotional?" These experiences touch vulnerable parts of ourselves that crave safety and validation in our relationships.
Yet despite these challenges, there's profound freedom waiting on the other side. The women I work with discover resilience, inner resourcefulness, and a sense of being deeply at home in themselves. While we can't control others' reactions or force them to join us on our path, we can embrace the truth that our growth ripples outward in ways that ultimately benefit everyone. Not everyone will understand your journey—and they don't need to. Your healing path will naturally be polarizing, and that's not just okay, it's part of the liberation process. I've never met a woman who wanted to return to who she was before this work. Once you've tasted this kind of freedom within yourself, there's only forward movement into greater authenticity, wholeness, and peace.
Ready to explore these relationship dynamics in a supportive community? Join us in the Nourished Woman Sanctuary, where you'll find the mentorship and holding space to navigate these complex waters with grace and wisdom.
Send me a message on instagram @the_nourished_woman or peruse my website at KeriMarino.com
Welcome to the Nourished Woman podcast, a space for women on a growth and healing journey who want to experience more joy, play and pleasure while feeling deeply rooted within themselves. Body play and pleasure while feeling deeply rooted within themselves body, mind and spirit. I'm your host, keri Marino, somatic yoga therapist, mentor and mama of three. Let's dive in love. If you've ever felt confused, hopeful or worried about how your growth, healing and yoga journey is going to impact your relationships, this episode is for you. And first off, I want to say that, as women, you are very likely oriented towards relationships in your life. These are very important for you. I always say that relationships are what get me out of bed every morning, like it's the, it's the thing that motivates me to do just about anything. Relationships are, as they say, everything, and so I see you in that. I see how important relationships are for you too. I see it in my clients and I see it in those of you that I haven't even met yet. As women, we thrive in community. We need those connections with other people, and you might be a person who needs a lot of connections with a lot of different people, or more of like a small world, deep connection space. So, whoever you are, however you feel about relationships, let's be real and honest with each other that when you embark on a growth, healing and yoga journey that oftentimes there can be some sticking points that come up, and so I want to speak to those sorts of growing pains that can happen in your relationships and for the purpose of this podcast, I want you to think about relationships as being a dynamic between you and a significant person to you Could be your partner, could be your friend, could be your parent, could be anybody else in your world, but this person is significant enough that you care about this relationship and its future. So, obviously, having good relationships is important. Relationships that feel like you're being nourished and you're also being able to nourish the other person are really magnificent. Where you can fully be yourself, you can let yourself speak freely, you can share what's on your heart and mind. That other person will listen, they will sit with you and they won't judge you right Like.
Speaker 1:We're all looking for love and safety and acceptance ultimately in relationships, and so many of the women who come through my practice and probably you on some level if you're listening to this podcast care about a certain level of emotional transparency and maturity in a relationship. You want to be able to share emotions, you want to be able to share the experiences that you're having, and you also want to be able to hold those spaces for the other people. You want to hear about what's going on for them, you want to be a friend to them, you want to be a companion, you want to be somebody who can share fun and meaningful experiences together. And so in this ecosystem of a relationship, there are three different parts there's the you part and there's the other person part and there's the dynamic of your relationship as a separate part. And so whenever you're doing growth and healing work and yoga, you're obviously changing the you part of that equation and you're also changing the dynamic part between you and the other person, and so this can really stir up some fears and confusion and hope and change for everybody involved. And so I want to be honest that sometimes fear can actually be a barrier to women doing the growth, healing and yoga, because there is this worry that if I do these things, I might uncover something that I don't actually want to see or deal with. And so if I don't do that work, then I won't have to deal with that thing, I can continue to go through my life and avoid it and pretend that it's not there and just to kind of acknowledge, when I get those intuitive hits, that like, okay, I'm not really going to go there with myself. And there is even in the trauma recovery space. There are people who literally will wait for someone to die, like a parent, before they will deal with the trauma that they've experienced. And so this can be a massive barrier or a medium-sized barrier or a small barrier for you and that ultimately, for the women in my world, that starts to take too large of a toll.
Speaker 1:So not allowing yourself to unearth those truths from inside, and that sort of inner knowing and going into the inner workspace, it begins to take a toll on mental health especially, but physical health too. So it could be things like depression, it could be anxiety, it could be mysterious body things going on, digestive stuff, stuff or pain, any number of things, and so it'll start to take a toll when we're avoiding doing this work out of fear. Out of fear of a relationship changing because perhaps we looked at something and now we can't not see it, out of fear that if we do change ourselves, that it will change the safety that we feel in that relationship. So, for example, I've had women share with me that they were scared to do the work because they didn't want it to change how they saw their husband, for example, or the safety and security that they felt in their marriage. And so I want to just like woof, I want to acknowledge with you that that exists out there and that it may or may not be something that you relate to.
Speaker 1:So there's parts of you, some of you, that may not want your relationship to change, and there are other people listening that want your relationships to change. So maybe you're feeling this inner sense that things could be easier and more in flow between you and your person. You have this vision of the kind of life that you could create together through the growth, healing and yoga, like what doors this could open up inside of you and what new, deepening ways you could connect with each other and have great experiences with each other and explore different aspects of yourself or be more radically honest with one another, or more emotionally expressive with one another, or more sexually expressive with one another, like whatever it is. There are some of you listening that are like I freaking want the change. I am so hopeful about the change. I want to feel this new energy in our relationship. I want to stop fighting over these same things. I want to stop like going into a fawn or freeze when we have a conversation. I want to open new doors inside of this relationship.
Speaker 1:And so I want to acknowledge that here too, there can be some complicated layers, because as you grow and heal, if you remember, and as you're doing your yoga, you're changing the you part and you're changing the dynamic part between the two of you and your relationship. But the other person in the equation they may or may not want to change and grow and heal and do their own, whatever their version of yoga is themselves. And so there's that there can be that sort of resistance or that sort of like coming up against a wall in a way, where you're hoping for this other stuff and you're holding this desire inside of you, but maybe the other person is either not ready to go there with you, like maybe they don't want to do the work for themselves, or maybe they don't understand why you're doing this work, or maybe they want to do it and they are doing it and you guys get to co-create something beautiful and meaningful in a whole new way. That's both of your vision getting born into this new relationship that you're building together, the whole damn spectrum of growth and healing, and the complexities of these significant relationships that we have with people and that in control. Like in reality, you only have control of yourself and the work that you do and how you choose to see things and what you put your energy into. You do not have any control over the other person in the dynamic, and that includes whether or not they grow, heal or do yoga. That also includes if they understand your journey.
Speaker 1:Like for many women, it is very painful to feel misunderstood when you've grown and evolved and you're a new version of you and somebody doesn't see that and they can't acknowledge that with you. Like that can be really painful. But let's also name that in this sort of personal relationship world sometimes growth, healing and yoga become a target on your back and so people can even use this against you. Like, oh, if you've done so much inner work, then why are you getting emotional right now because you're supposed to be calm all of the time? Or why are you being the pot stirrer and stirring up all this old stuff from the past whenever you're supposed to be living in the present moment. And it wasn't even that bad in the first place. So sometimes you will hear the things love. Sometimes people will say things to you that is coming from their own triggered space and can really touch on parts of you that just want your relationships to be intact and to feel safe and secure. And I want you to know that you're not alone. If you've ever felt misunderstood, if you've ever felt like somebody really doesn't understand what it actually means to grow, heal and practice yoga and what the purpose of that is, because clearly you did not go down this path to hurt anyone or damage your relationships. And also true. And also true sometimes, when you go down this path, your relationships will change and people will be triggered by your actions, and sometimes that means that they get hurt, and that is part of the complicated soup of growth and healing work.
Speaker 1:Healing work. If you got into this growth, healing and yoga and you were like I didn't want anything to change in my relationships, here's your wake up call love. Of course it was going to change, like it should change, because the old way it was not working for you any more. Oh, my goodness, that's why you're here. You didn't like the way that you were feeling before. You didn't like knowing that there was more available for you and not living into that.
Speaker 1:I have seen women crawl their way out of depression because they said yes to doing this work, even if it made their relationships uncomfortable. I have seen women, after years and years of therapy, come into this kind of work that we do here in the nourished woman and move themselves forward to where they feel more free in their bodies and they feel more at home in themselves and rooted and spacious within themselves. And that's part of what I want to bring your attention to is why excuse me, why you're doing this work in the first place. And then the difference that you see inside of yourself, because I venture to guess that as you continue to grow, heal and practice your yoga, that you are seeing yourself respond differently to things that come up in your life. You might feel yourself being more resourced inside when life triggers you, or more resilient, which means that you can sort of ride the waves without having as big of a spiral or the highs and lows. You get to be the sort of sturdy leader of your own life, and then that is good for your relationship with you and it is my belief, and it may not be yours that is also good for the people in your life.
Speaker 1:You growing, healing and practicing yoga is not just about you although that would be more than enough of a reason but it is also this sort of sacred ripple effect that moves out and sometimes in your relationships you have to give people time to adjust to those changes within you and within your dynamic. You cannot force them to accept it, you cannot force them to see the validity of it and you also cannot force them to take this path with you, with you. And sometimes that means doing the loving work of just giving somebody the freedom to be whoever it is that they're choosing to be and to walk away or to take a pause in that relationship and say you know what? This is what you want for yourself, and here I am and this is what I want for myself. And maybe our paths don't meet right now.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it can mean that your relationship will go through ruptures and repairs, so things will reach a point where they sort of break and then you can come together and build a new way. Together. You can meet each other, come together and build a new way together. You can meet each other, and sometimes we choose to keep people in our lives who cannot see us, understand us or even recognize their role in the growth, healing and yoga that we've done like and why we got to a place where we needed that in the first place, and we choose to have those people in our lives in a way that actually feels healthy for us, because if you're ever looking for other people to be exactly what you need them to be in a relationship, it's really probably a mirror reflecting back to you some tender parts within that need more love, care and support from you.
Speaker 1:All right, my love, growth, healing yoga it's definitely going to impact your relationship. It is radically going to improve how you feel within yourself and there may be some growing pains in your relationships and rather than trying to pretend that that's not there or avoid it or get confused about it or hold on to hope that ends up being like control in disguise, I want to encourage you to just embrace it, because you are down for the ride if you're doing this work and this is part of the ride, this is part of the show, if you will. So it's going to be things that come up for you and that's natural and it's actually good and it's part of your evolution, and the only person that you really have control over is yourself in this dynamic. So what would it be like for you to say you know what? Like I am the nourished woman in this equation. I love how far I've come. I've never met a woman in my practice who wants to go back to where she was before. Like it just doesn't work like that.
Speaker 1:Once you've tasted this kind of freedom inside yourself and and like I'm not saying that we have radical permission to just go out and burn down all the bridges Like we still want to have inner discernment and keep doing the inner work, keep looking within, keep asking yourself the hard questions, but also just this deeply resourced sense of trust in yourself and trust in the journey and not letting yourself get entangled in somebody else's shit so that you lose sight of what you know within you and, lastly, just this surrender to the process. You don't have to be understood, people don't have to get it. The average person on the planet does not understand what it truly means to grow, heal and evolve and your healing journey, your yoga practice. Your growth will be polarizing, and that is okay and that is also part of the freedom that's available for you inside of it, just for you to keep doing it anyways and for you to be the good heart led person that you know that you are and to embrace that.
Speaker 1:Not everybody has to get me.
Speaker 1:I get me more than I ever have. Not everybody has to feel like what I'm doing is okay. I feel more whole inside. Sometimes I have to walk away from that person or shift a relationship dynamic, and that doesn't make that person bad or me better. It just means this isn't working the way that it has been for me and now I need something different. So the space of neutrality around your relationships, you can get to a place where they're just doing what they're doing. You're doing what you're doing and those dynamics between you are what y'all get to decide on. If this podcast episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear about it. Send me a message on instagram at the nourished woman, or through my website, kerrymarinocom, and if you're looking for a space for deeper support, mentorship or simply a space to feel held, I'd love to have you join us inside the Nourished Woman Sanctuary. The beautiful music you're hearing is from Shawn Johnson and the Wild Lotus Band, and you can find them on all streaming platforms. I just know I can't survive without mystery.