The Femme Cast
Welcome to The Femme Cast—the podcast for women who are truly ready to break free from toxic relationship cycles, choose themselves, and become a magnet for the love they deserve.
I’m Maria Rei, aka The Femme Coach—Master Energy Healer, Radical Self-Love Leader, and Relationship Mentor. I’ve been where you are, stuck in cycles of chasing love, waiting for validation, and abandoning myself in the name of relationships. But I turned my pain into purpose, and now I’m here to help you do the same.
Each week, I share personal stories, actionable insights, and a blend of spiritual and practical tools to help you heal from past wounds, reclaim your self-worth, and rewrite your love story. You’ll hear everything from vulnerable truths about my own journey to breaking toxic patterns to empowering lessons that will guide you toward creating the healthy, loving relationships you crave.
Join me as we say goodbye to self-abandonment, people-pleasing, and unhealthy dynamics, and hello to radical self-love, emotional freedom, and true empowerment.
It’s time to choose yourself and step into the love you were always meant for. Ready?
Let’s do this.
The Femme Cast
Stop People-Pleasing, Start Living | Break the Generational Pattern and Awaken the Life You Didn’t Know You Were Meant For
What if the very behaviors we were praised for—being “nice,” giving endlessly, and putting everyone else first—are the same ones keeping us disconnected from our power, our purpose, and the love we truly deserve?
In this unapologetically honest and soul-stirring episode of The Femme Cast, I go way deeper than just toxic relationships and surface-level healing. We’re pulling back the curtain on generations of conditioning that taught women our worth lies in how well we perform, caretake, overgive—and most of all—please.
Spoiler alert: Operating from overdrive, masculine energy, and constant self-abandonment is not the vibe anymore.
The world doesn’t need more women pretending to be invincible. It needs women who are rooted in their truth, brave enough to do the “unpleasing” thing, and wildly devoted to following the whispers of their heart—even when it means disappointing others.
In this episode, we dive into:
- How generational people-pleasing got embedded in our DNA—and how to break it
- The cultural myths that made “being chosen” feel like life or death
- Why burnout is not a badge of honor but a wake-up call
- The sacred rebellion of saying “no,” honoring your needs, and choosing yourself
- Why embracing your divine feminine energy is the medicine the world is starving for
- What becomes possible when you trust that you were already chosen—just by being born
This episode is a call to every cycle breaker, every woman questioning the old rules, every heart that’s done performing for love and ready to live in alignment with truth. You are not here to be pleasing—you are not here to be pleasing—you are here to break the cycle by doing the unpleasing thing.
If you’re ready to finally stop abandoning yourself in the name of being “enough,” this is your invitation to come home to who you truly are.
🎧 Tune in now and share this with a sister who needs to hear it. Because when one of us heals, we all rise.
PS: Ready to stop chasing and start attracting?
If so, click the link below for instant access to my most powerful freebies + offers — including the Magnetize Love Meditation Series.
https://www.thefemmecast.com/links
Love, clarity, and major breakthroughs start here.
Hey you guys, what is up and welcome back to the show. I'm so excited and grateful to have you here. So this message has been coming through really powerfully this week again and again, and it's kind of been mirrored by some of the events that have been going on around me. So bear with me, because this is a slightly different message than I would normally share on this podcast. Yes, it has to do with relationships and a lot of the toxic patterns that we've been conditioned to perpetuate again and again. However, this takes it to a much deeper, much more profound level than just how they impact our relationships, um. So you know fair warning, um.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:If you're somebody who you know, the conversation around women's empowerment, um, makes you uncomfortable. Maybe not the podcast episode for you to listen to, the podcast episode for you to listen to, but although I encourage you to listen to it and maybe think about things differently, we're going to examine some things that you know, whether we thought they were good or bad or right or wrong. We're just going to ask ourselves some powerful questions today that I think is really important when it comes to who we are as women, our worth here in this life and what we are, what it is that how powerful we actually are, and maybe we don't even realize it, even realize it so recently as I was, you know, doom, scrolling through Instagram like many of us do, I came across a post video. It was Will Ferrell. He was speaking at an event and I love Will Ferrell. Ever since I saw Will Ferrell and Step Brothers, he's been like my spirit animal. But I saw Will Ferrell speaking at an event and, you know, putting a humorous spin on, you know, women's position. You know, especially when we talk about, like you know, globally right.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:He basically said you know something and I'm not quoting word for word, verbatim, you'd have to Google the quote to actually get it word for word but basically what he says was something along the lines of you know, men have been running the show since about 10,000 BC and clearly have not done a good job at it, clearly have not done a good job at it, and is basically calling on women to step up to the plate and say, hey, can you please just take over, because we're obviously not doing something right. You know, and it really got me thinking because you know, contrast that right, and you all know that I'm a caregiver for my parents. My sister and I have been caregiving for my parents for years now, you know, and that has taken a toll, and for me I can't speak for everybody, but for me it's really opened my eyes to where I care, give out of, you know, the goodness of my heart because I want to take care of them, versus where I care, take, because I need to be a people pleaser. I need to do everything right, I need to make sure that I'm taking care of everyone else's needs, because that secures that I am not abandoned, that I am loved right, that I'm doing the pleasing thing and that everybody's going to love me and everything's going to be fine and I'm going to be safe and I'm not going to be left out of my tribe to die.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I'm putting humorous spin to this, but this is oftentimes what a lot of us, as women, you know, really do struggle with. And it got me thinking, and we've talked about this before for centuries, centuries, women needed to be chosen by a man in order to survive, let alone like forget happiness and fulfillment, just to survive Her options. You know she didn't come from a rich family where she could have an inheritance to take care of her, which for most wasn't the case. You know, her only options were prostitution and seamstress, which, I mean, if you didn't have the skill to be a seamstress pretty much meant only one career option, right. Only one career option, right. And so, you know, for centuries women needed to be chosen, and so we went down this rabbit hole of basically racing against one another who's going to get chosen first? And often, a lot of times this fell onto who was the prettiest, who was the smartest, who had the biggest dowry, who was the best homemaker, who would breed the best children? And you know, these were the qualities that we were measured against.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Then, you know, that came to a head in the 1950s and, and you know, with the, with the, the whole um, and I don't even know when the whole Stepford wife thing became to be. I was a movie in the eighties or nineties, I remember. But I remember, you know. You remember the fifties. Uh, I remember watching TV shows from the fifties, when I was younger, and seeing these perfect women cooking these perfect meals for their perfect family and their perfect children and their perfect home, always having the perfect hair and the perfect outfit. And you know, it just was not realistic, it wasn't attainable.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And then women just rebelled and you know, the feminist movement and the sexual revolution movement happened. And then suddenly, you know, it was great, because I think it woke a lot of women up and actually made a lot of women, you know, come into their strength and come into a different understanding of who they were and what they were capable of. But then it pushed us so far into our masculine energy that we started doing it all ourselves. You know, now we were caretaking and going to work, we were nurturing our families and bringing home an income. We were, we were doing everything and taking care of everyone else. Maybe not all, but some of us felt like you know, we were pushed into this dynamic where we're constantly working, we're constantly caring, we're constantly giving, we're constantly paying attention to what everybody else needs and ignoring our own and constantly overgiving under receiving, um still terrified to do the unpleasing thing in most cases Right Um, and you know, just going down this rabbit hole of burnout, disconnection to self and constantly looking at who can, who else can we please out there or over, give to to hopefully um have some reassurance that we are going to be loved and cared for and not basically, you know, unloved and unchosen and left alone, right. So, um, the fear of abandonment still there, the fear of rejection for many of us still there. Right, we're still caretaking, we're still people pleasing, we're still tending to and nurturing our loved ones. But now you know, there's also this other layer of well, how, what do we look like? How much do we earn? Can we support ourselves? Can we support our families? You know, and just kind of trying to do it all and listen.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I don't want this to become a politically charged episode, but I will say this. I am not someone who believes that a woman's place is in the home. If this is your belief, you should probably just check out of this episode right now, because this is not for you. Your belief. You should probably just check out of this episode right now, because this is not for you. There's a few things that I don't believe. I don't believe that a woman's place is necessarily has to be in the home. It could be if that is her choice, but it doesn't have to be. I don't think that the only thing that a woman can create in this life is children. I think that there's many things that a woman can create, and if that's not something that you buy into, then by all means, click off Peace and love.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Thank you for joining me up until this point, but I do think that, as women, we have a powerful role to play in how life evolves for so many of us, and for some of us, it could be on a collective scale, right? For some of us, it's our immediate communities. For some of us, it's just our immediate family. But the important thing here is that we have something important to bring to the world. The world needs both masculine and feminine in order to thrive.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:We have been surviving on masculine energy for far too long, and that is what has created most of the imbalances that we see in the world, and it's created what we're seeing today, with imbalances in politics, imbalances in religion, imbalances in financial structures and institutions. Right, we're seeing the toxicity, we're seeing the imbalance, we're seeing that things are just not fucking working. And it's so funny because, instead of moving into a direction that will balance things out, that will create more harmony, that will create more wealth and abundance for everyone collectively, it's almost, like you know and I hate to use this word because it's such, it's such a buzzword like there's so much associated with, but this is a toxic, patriarchal belief system that is literally trying to take 100 steps back and hold on to something that is really ready to be let go right. And instead of giving women a platform to speak and to be in a position of power and leadership, what are we doing? We're starting to see all those opportunities being taken away, which is the exact opposite of what this world actually fucking needs. So, I mean, here's my invitation to everybody who's listening and if you resonate with this message, because I do believe that, yes, we talk about toxic relationship patterns. And how do we please our partners, our families, our friends? How do we take care of everyone else's needs before our own? How do we make sure that we are the chosen woman showing up? You know the way we need to look with what we need to have and what we need to offer a relationship in order to be chosen, to be loved, to live. You know that, happily, ever after that, you know we were all fed to as young girls when we were growing up, right?
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:What if? What if we weren't jumping through those hoops 24, seven? What if we were willing to do the unpleasing thing? What if we weren't completely consumed with what everyone else was going to say, think or do about the choices that we were making and where we were being guided to go, and where no means no, yes means yes, and I'm going to do what feels aligned for me and what feels right for me in my heart, even if it's something that maybe everybody else around doesn't agree with, or maybe it means that you know people that you've counted on, or relationships or partners that you know you were, you were, you were hoping would would stand the test of time, end up falling away because, as a result of the choices that you're making, what if that got to be okay? What if that thing that's in your heart, that is calling to you, took precedence over anything else, any fear that you would be abandoned or rejected or destroyed or left alone to your own defenses? What if that got to take the priority?
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:How powerful would we be if we weren't out there constantly pleasing, constantly overgiving, burning ourselves out, doing the very things we're not supposed to be doing, instead of focusing all our attention and intention on the things that we know in our heart are the things that we're here to do that are calling for our love, our attention, our focus, our creativity. What if we made that the focus? How powerful might we be and how different might this world be? And again, you know, that's not to say that we're all meant to, you know, be world leaders, but sometimes you know, every change, every intention, every time we lead by example, we create a ripple effect of change. So what if the ripple effect of change that this world needs is for us to just take our attention away from all the toxic dynamics and the relationships we're trying to be enough for and the positions we're fighting so hard to earn? That keeps slipping through our fingers the rat race to make the most money, or to have the nicest home, or to have the nicest clothes. What if we let all of that go for a second and just focus internally on what it was that we were meant to create? And create means many things. It's not just children. As women, we have the power to create worlds within us, life within us. So how can we use that energy to create something, something that we are called to create, and maybe that creates a ripple effect of change that this world actually needs? Maybe some of us will grow up to be leaders, or teachers, or guides or healers. There's so many things that we can do in this world that will make a positive impact.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:But it all starts with listening to what's that thing inside of you first, that thing that you keep ignoring. You keep putting it on the back burner because everybody else's needs need to be taken care of before your needs get met. How powerful would you be if you stopped worrying what everybody else thought? How powerful would you be if you stopped giving all your energy to taking care of everyone else and putting yourself last on your to-do list? How powerful would you be if you weren't constantly obsessing over what you need to do to please this person or that person and focusing on pleasing yourself?
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:It's a big thing when you're not used to it. It's a big thing when you've been taught and modeled your entire life that it's a loving thing to do to people, please, to self-abandon, to prioritize everyone else's needs over your own. Otherwise, you're a bad person or you're a selfish person. And I get that. I totally get that. And it's not that anybody ever told me that. Nobody ever told me, nobody tells you these things, but it's modeled. It is modeled in the relationships around you, in the stories that were told. It is constantly modeled right, and so for many of us who do believe that people pleasing, overgiving and caretaking is the loving thing to do, to our own detriment. You know, this is the unlearning. This is where we need to unlearn all that shit and be ready and willing to accept a different truth, that maybe, maybe that's the selfish thing, because that's what's meeting our immediate need to be loved and approved of, rather than focusing on, maybe, a higher purpose or a higher calling or something else we're meant to be or create in this world. This is a huge.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:This type of this reframe in belief requires an unwavering faith in a higher power, in a higher power. I am not a religious person by any means, but I do believe that there is a powerful creator source God, energy that is responsible for life on earth, and I firmly believe that I'm a very spiritual person. I am not a religious person meaning that, you know, I do believe in God, I believe in, you know, christ consciousness, and I believe in our call to be higher spiritual beings. I don't subscribe to any religious belief or denomination that's not what this is about but I do believe that we are all created by a higher power and I do believe that because we are created by a higher, because everything was created by a higher power. Everything has a purpose, everything is by divine design. There's no accidents, there's no freak occurrences. We are exactly who we needed to be in order to come into this life and fulfill a purpose right and create a be part of, be that little part of a bigger, well-oiled machine. If you will right and that's kind of a weird way to put it, but I do believe that when we all do the part that we were sent here to do and sent here to be, we operate as part of a well-oiled machine.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:The problem is is that there's so many beliefs and distractions and fears and and and rules that will keep pulling us from that thing that it is that we're meant to do and be here in this world in this lifetime. So what if the most loving, noble, respectful thing that you could do is to do that very thing that you've been put on this earth to do, or be that? Or maybe you have to let go of some of these beliefs that have been handed down to us from generation to generation to generation and actually start to put yourself first and put what it is that your heart desires first, above everything else. Wouldn't that be the most selfless thing, right, knowing that. You know, maybe people, maybe some people, might be upset with you. Some people would support you and cheer you on and have your back and fully believe in you. And maybe some people might be upset with you. Some people would support you and cheer you on and have your back and fully believe in you, and maybe some people won't.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Maybe some people might get frustrated at first, because you've always been a people pleaser and an over giver and they've kind of gotten used to that and cushy with that and they're good with that, and so when you start to pull back a little bit, they might take it as a oh my God, she doesn't love me, because I know she loves by giving and people pleasing, and if she's not doing that for me right now, maybe she doesn't love me, which we know is not true. Okay, but I am inviting you all to look at if you are a people pleaser and overgiver that you know. You've been kind of in this mindset your entire life, and especially those of us who are, you know, generational cycle breakers, right, people who have. You know, not only you've done this, but you've seen everybody in your lineage do this too, and you know that this has been kind of a way of life and love. You know, for so many. It's scary to think of that differently. Um, it's scary to think of that differently. It's scary to do the unpleasing thing and to do the thing that you know maybe was not presented as the ideal for you, maybe it was not what got you love, maybe it wasn't what got you the accolades and the of the people around you, but maybe that is the thing that needs to be done in order to make the difference that we need to make.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I really do believe that everything that we're seeing in the world today, and all of everything that is just absolutely in fucking upheaval right now, even Mother Nature is screaming at us for crying out loud. Please, if you think global warming is a hoax, please just click off. I think the best argument I have for that and I'm going off on a tangent right now, you know, we see storms getting more powerful, we see weather systems shifting, we see climate changing, we see fires happening all over the world, and we just saw the most destructive fire take place in Los Angeles, where my friend lives. And you know what do people say, oh, it's because you know the forest rangers aren't taking care of and cleaning up the these green spaces so that they aren't such a fire hazard. So my question to you is so is that also the case that? So if their forest rangers suck, and they're the reason why this happened, is that also the case in Canada, where we just had massive fires in both BC and Quebec in the last couple of years? Was it also the case in Australia, where they had a massive fire just a few years ago? Like we have to stop.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Yes, I think we can all do a better job. Of course, of course there's people who could have done a better job and you know, at the end of the day, you know maybe things could have been better controlled, but at the end of the day, these things are happening because of global warming. Because of global warming, we wouldn't have so much dry grass and vegetation to clean up if we weren't, if so many regions weren't starving for rain like they are. You know what I mean. Like we have to acknowledge that that is a real thing and I think you know we're in this position right now where mother nature is screaming at us to basically do better, and we're seeing where, you know, political structures, religious structures, financial governments, financial structures and institutions all falling apart because we have not done a good job. Yes, we've had some women in leadership, but not nearly enough women in leadership, and I do believe that this is trying to show us where we are in balance and we have been as a society, and this goes for men and women. Okay, because let me tell you, when you're a people pleaser and a caregiver and somebody who overgives and is basically trying to control everything and everyone so that everyone else is safe and taken care of, guess what? You're very much in your masculine that is not feminine energy, and I think we've all been guilty of being hyper-masculine, men and women alike. And so I think the healing happens when we can let go and trust in a higher power, when we can trust our intuition and we can trust of what's on our heart to give and to create in the world and trust that that gets to be enough and that we'll be taken care of. Now, this has been a huge lesson for me and I'm still working through it and I'm not there yet, and that is me being fully transparent.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:You know, growing up I didn't feel. I mean, my dad was a provider, yes, but we went through when I was younger, you know, always the provider, always working hard to take care of his family, but we hit financial hardship. Now, a lot of it wasn't his fault, a lot of it was just really bad timing in terms of how things kind of fell apart. But I was still pretty young and when it happened my dad, he took it very personally as a failure on his part and he had a really hard time processing that emotionally and I can see that now. But as a child I felt like he couldn't be there for me. I felt like he couldn't take care of me. I felt like he couldn't, you know, sue the fear and the anxiety that I was going through as a result of all of our financial struggle growing up, you know.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And then add to that, you know, I, you know I started going to work at a very young age and really quickly I developed this mindset of, well, I need to take care of myself because no one's going to take care of me. And then, as I got older, you know, relationships kept disappointing me. I kept going to workplaces and you know things like harassment would happen or, you know, in one case, when I was younger, you know where I was actually assaulted by one of my bosses, right, and I didn't even come clean with that until months later. And then you know he was finally, you know, let go and I think he was charged with that and I didn't need to get any more involved in that than you know telling one of my other bosses that I actually felt really close to. But that was really hard and you know. So there was this development of I need to take care of myself, I need to provide for myself. No man is going to protect me. Men aren't safe, men aren't, you know. They can't be counted on to be there for me.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And so for me that translated to and I remember having a moment when my, my 15 year relationship ended, um, who you know was someone that I loved tremendously, would always, always, always had nothing but trust and faith, and completely betrayed me, um, and cheated on me, and this was somebody who was also, you know, I was very religious at the time, they were even more religious than I was, and you know, maybe this is where my breakdown with religion kind of happened, because I kind of felt like, you know, god abandoned me. In that moment, like here, I was this good, loving person who gave her heart to who she thought was a loving man, only to be heartbroken and disappointed and let down again. So it kind of I'm not going to lie it kind of damaged my relationship with God and who I see and feel as a creator. And a big part of this journey for me has been building and healing that relationship again and learning that it is safe for me to relax, learning that it is safe for me to let go feeling the fear of not having it all under control, not having the answers, not having a five-year plan in place, and moments of losing homes and losing savings and not having enough to in the bank to make it through the you know the next couple of months. Security and just learn to trust the sort of like, the little yearnings of my heart or the little glimmers of inspiration and ideals or dreams that come to me, and trust that when I follow through on those I will be taken care of. And that has been the biggest thing for me and that is something that I still work on today. So I don't know what to tell you when it comes to that.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:What I will say is I have been leaning into prayer with that, into prayer with that, and you know, basically saying I am not under man's law, I am under divine grace and I know that when I trust and follow the guidance of my heart, that I am taken care of and I am provided for. And there's also something in there about you know being chosen, you know being the chosen woman. You know we were chosen the day that we were brought into this life. We, we were chosen the day that we were born. And you know, and this is what I believe again, if you don't believe in God, by all means, you know, take what resonates and leave the rest. But I do believe that we were chosen. I do believe that you know, every molecule in our body was chosen by a divine creator and I do believe that everything that we were meant to do here, be and create, um, is divinely guided. And learning to accept that that is enough has also been a huge undertaking for me, um, because the world bombards us with images of what it means to be enough. You know what it means to be a chosen woman? Well, you were chosen the day that you were born and that is my. That that is. That is. That is the wisdom I want to. I want you to take away from this episode right, you were chosen the day you were born. You were enough the day that you were born.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Sure, we all have work to do. We're all here to evolve as spiritual beings. None of us are fucking perfect, but that's not to say that, yes, we can evolve, we can grow and we can heal, but we don't need to be changing ourselves and we don't need to be something that we're not. You know, and we definitely don't need to be hiding who we are, because who we are is exactly who we were created to be. So, if we can have faith that we were created to be exactly who that you were, if you can have faith that you were, you are exactly who you were created to be in this moment, if you can believe that a higher power has got your back when you follow your intuition, the yearnings in your heart to do what it is that you came here to do and unapologetically be the person that you came here to be and trust that, and trust that you're enough and trust that you'll be taken care of and devote time to an energy and intention to creating the things that you're called to create or just be.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Sometimes it's just being being you, sometimes it's just being that generational cycle breaker that this world needs so that we don't continue these cycles with the next generation. Right, if you can just trust what your heart is telling you that you need to be doing and focusing on right now and leave the rest, what could we be possible, what could we be capable of as women If we started to do that? And men, you know, having them lean more into their feminine a little bit. Right, and just trusting that you know we're safe in doing so, that we are supported in doing so, that we are supported in doing that is what the world wants to do most, so it will absolutely support us. That is a huge mindset shift to make and that's how I've been kind of working through.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Making it is trusting that you know my creator created me the way that I am, and so that gets to be enough, and that he put these yearnings and I do associate God with he, and you know, maybe that's something I need to look at, um, but maybe you know he put these yearnings in my heart, um, for a reason. And what would it look like if I just trusted that, that got to be enough. And that's kind of what inspired me to share this message with you today, because I would normally not share this kind of message with you guys, but this is kind of what was in my heart to share. And so this is me trusting that and seeing what happens. Who knows right, maybe it'll land with some of you, maybe it won't, maybe it'll create a movement, maybe it'll flop, I don't know.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:The important thing is that this is me trusting the thing that maybe doesn't seem like the logical thing to do, but that seems like the aligned thing for me to do and what's in my heart to do right now, and trusting that it'll serve a higher purpose and that I'll be supported in the process.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:So this, right here, is me living by example. So, invitation for you to do the same how can you recognize that you're enough today, exactly the way that you are, that you are a divine creation? That source literally put each and every little piece of you together, exactly the way you are right now to be, exactly who you right now to be, who, exactly who you needed you to be, fully and unapologetically owning your gifts and sharing them with the world, even if that means just being a generational cycle breaker within your family, or maybe it's something bigger than that. That's for you to figure out and spend time with and reflect on. But trust the urges of your heart to guide you, trust your intuition to guide you and trust that you will be taken care of in the process and just see what unfolds. And that's my invitation for you today, you guys. So until next time, massive love.
