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
Sacred Rebellion: Finding the Courage to Do the Unpleasing Thing and Finding Yourself In the Process
What if the most selfless act you could take… is the one that disappoints everyone else?
If you’ve been conditioned to believe that love is earned through over-giving, self-sacrifice, and constantly pleasing others—this episode of The Femme Cast might shake something deep within you. I know, because for most of my life, I was the woman who believed that being “good” meant abandoning myself. I gave until I was empty. I performed for approval. I said yes when my soul was screaming no.
And then… I did the unthinkable.
In 2016, I bought a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia. No plan. No approval. Just a whisper from my heart that said: go. That trip cracked open everything I thought I knew about love, worthiness, and what it truly means to live in integrity with yourself.
In this raw and transformational episode, I’m sharing:
- The toxic beliefs women are taught about love, sacrifice, and self-worth
- Why people-pleasing is not love—it’s a survival pattern rooted in fear of rejection
- The truth about being a "good woman" vs. being a sovereign woman
- How to break free from codependent conditioning and reclaim your desires
- The power of doing the "unpleasing thing" and why it’s the most courageous, selfless thing you can do
- How one bold decision changed the entire trajectory of my life
- A daily challenge to help you reclaim your voice, your truth, and your freedom
This episode is your permission slip to disappoint everyone else—so you can finally stop abandoning yourself.
You don’t need a logical reason to follow your heart. You just need to trust that your inner knowing is reason enough.
Let this be the sign you’ve been waiting for.
🎧 Press play. And if this moved something in you, please leave a review or share it with someone who needs to hear this today.
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 guys, what is up and welcome back to the show. I'm so excited and grateful to have you guys here. I wanted to start today with a question and the question is and we touched on this in the last episode, so I really wanted to just take some time just sort of driving this point home. The question is you know, what if our ability to do, or our decision to do, the unpleasing thing could be the most selfless decision we ever make, or the most selfless thing that we could ever do? Because I'll tell you right now, for many of us and I speak for myself included right, if you consider yourself being a people pleaser, somebody who's constantly giving more than she receives, someone who is constantly self-abandoning what she needs to take care of everybody else's needs to earn love, to work hard for love, to believe that if you just love them hard enough, that they will love you back. Right, believe me, I hear you okay, I totally get it. I've been there For many of us.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:We've been taught, whether verbally or because you know it was shown to us by example, or something we absorbed in a story that we heard when we were little. You know, it doesn't matter directly or indirectly, we've all been taught Pleasing others is loving and it earns us love. Pleasing others means we are safe. Pleasing others means we are valued. We associate pleasing people being pleased with being valued, with being valuable, the giving that we do as has value. Um, you know, it's all a a game that we play with ourselves and the world around us and our relationships to make us feel more worthy and therefore more likely to be chosen, to be loved, and less likely to be abandoned or rejection. So it is actually self soothing behavior. Whether or not the world taught you that was right or wrong, you know, and maybe for many of you it did teach. You know, like, as a woman, um, and sometimes men too, but as, as I speak to women's issues, okay, like, this is the part I know, this is the journey. I know, okay, for many of us, we were taught, like, and maybe, like I said indirectly, like you know, that women put their family's needs first. You know, women take care of their families before they take care of themselves. Women take care of their husbands before they take care of themselves. Women constantly put their husband's needs and feelings before their own. You know, women always put good women, good wives, put their needs on the back burner to take care of their husband. You know, women don't do things that their husbands don't like.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:This behavior was behavior I saw around me again and again and again. No one ever told me I needed to behave this way, but it was modeled to me and so that's what I took as truth, right? Um, and so you know it was. It was a unspoken rule that women who are givers over givers, people pleasers and who constantly self-abandoned, are good women. Right, these, these women, these are. This is what it means to be a good, a good woman.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And that women who, you know, didn't do the, that were willing to do the unpleasing thing, that weren't willing to give, and to the point of depletion and self-abandonment and burn themselves out and ignore their own needs or their own desires, their own wants, their own passions and interests in this world. We're selfish women, right, and for many of us, again, spoken or unspoken, these are the rules we've absorbed, because this in itself was kind of the rules that the patriarchy wanted us to absorb. And again, I hate to use that word, but it's true, because what better way to keep us in a disempowered state than to believe these things? However, what if? What if? Doing the unpleasing thing and making the courageous choice to do the unpleasing thing and to listen to the guidance of our heart and do what it is telling us to do, even though we know people around us are going to be really fucking uncomfortable with that decision? What if? That is the most selfless thing, because now you might be facing ridicule, disappointment, rejection, abandonment, but you're doing it anyway and for, maybe, reasons that you can't explain, because other than your heart is guiding you to, that takes some serious fucking courage. And I know because I've been there and I've done that.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:When I took my trip to Asia back in 2016, and I knew that I was going to be there for six months I was terrified to tell my friends, my family, what I was doing, because I knew nobody was going to approve of this. I had very little support in making that decision. People tried to be supportive. Yes, making that decision, people try to be supportive. Yes, um, but for the most part, all my friends and family were like are you sure Like this, like this is really? Are you like you? You're not going to be safe. This is, this is scary. Um, how can you leave at a time like this. You know, what about the other people who need you, um, you know, people seeing it as why are you leaving? Does that mean you don't love us? Like? Is that why you're leaving?
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Like, interpreting this in so many different ways other than my heart is calling me to take this trip, and so I'm taking it and I can't explain why, and I tried to come up with all sorts of reasons why I needed to take it, to justify it, and that was probably my lesson in all. This is, you know, wasting my energy, trying to come up with a logical reason, even for my own brain, to comprehend why I was taking this trip. You know, because I felt like I needed a concrete, valid reason for, you know, uprooting my life for six months and moving to Southeast Asia, where I knew no one, um, and I had no idea what I was going to do or how I was going to live. The only thing I had was two tickets, you know, one, one one flight there and a return flight six months later out of Bangkok, and that's all I knew. And I had, I think, one um homestay booked for like the first two or three nights that I was there, and the rest of it.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I was kind of on God's good humor. I had no idea how to explain this to anybody. I had no idea how to explain this to myself, let alone other people, and believe me, I fucking tried. But all I knew is that there was a yearning in my heart to take this trip that was so strong that stronger than any other voice of doubt or fear or judgment that was going on in my head. For the first time, the voice of my heart was louder than all those voices.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:But that's not to say that they weren't there because they were. No one's going to love you. Everyone's going to be mad at you. Everyone's going to hate you. Everyone's going to abandon you. You're going to lose your friends. You're going to lose your family. I didn't think I was going to lose my family, but I figured they would be really upset with me, and you know some of them were and some of them weren't. You know some of them were hurt initially and you know it was very difficult for them to understand why I was making the decision that I was making. And I totally get that, because it wasn't me, it wasn't who I've always been, and to them it probably did seem like I didn't love them anymore, that I could just kind of turn my back on them like that. But it wasn't that at all. It was totally different.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And I think that in that decision to do what I knew was going to be the unpleasing thing and I mean the very unpleasing thing, um, for so many people in my life, um, I think it was that decision that number one really empowered me to, to be here in front of you and and and and talking all the shit that I do today. But number two and I think a far deeper meaning behind all of that was that for the first time, I was able to put my people-pleasing on a shelf for a season and just actually hear what it is that I wanted and who I wanted to be and what I wanted to create in the world. And that was such an important time of my life. I think that, had life not unfolded the way that it did, and had I not gone through all the heartbreak that I had gone through leading up to that moment, you know, starting with the breakdown of my 15-year relationship, to all the toxic relationships that came after, and then, you know, being in a toxic work environment like I just basically blew up my life and left. You know, I was just done with all of it, and I think that if I had not gotten to that point, I would never have taken that trip and had I not taken that trip, I would never have really listened to or heard what it was that my soul was trying to tell me all along, about who I wanted to be and what I wanted to create in this life, you know, and the evolution that I wanted to experience during my lifetime here, you know, and that became, you know, such a monumental shift for me. I always talk about life before Asia and life after Asia, and they were two very different things, and it's not to say that I came back from Asia fully healed and transformed. I didn't. I still had my own demons to deal with and I I still had my own lessons to work through, and I still work through them to this day. You know, it's not I don't think we're ever really done, I just think we just keep evolving, you know. But I do think that there was Maria before the trip and there's Maria after the trip, and the two are very different. And I think that, you know, some of the key takeaways for me are that, are the differences that I can think of? Is that you know, I'm I'm really not afraid to be on my own anymore.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I'm sure it gets lonely sometimes and sure, yeah, you know, like there's there's, there's there's, there's a divine purpose to kind of spending a lot of time alone when you're on this journey and that is, you know, time for self reflection. And you know, listening to yourself, that's not to say that it doesn't get uncomfortable sometimes. It doesn't say that it doesn't get like boring sometimes, or you know you don't want to have, you know, people around you more, but at the same time too, you're okay moving through those times alone because you know that it's serving a higher purpose and you know that you're spending time getting to know yourself and that doesn't feel quite so lonely as it used to, you know, and there's always, there's always, a big revelation or something or wisdom to kind of take away from those moments, you know, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. But at this point, you know, I'm not afraid of pissing people off. I'm really not afraid of, you know, being alone anymore.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Um, for the most part, um, there's still some relationships that you know I, I struggle to, I struggle to always be true to myself and you know, and and that's the God honest truth there's relationships that are easier to be yourself in than others. Um, you know, there's a degree of separation, right, there's some relationships where you feel I can feel fully myself and I'm not afraid. If they don't love who I am, then so be it. And then there's other relationships where you're still kind of not walking on eggshells but you're still having to check in. Am I being really authentic right now, or is this just some old pattern and conditioning coming forward where I'm, you know, self-abandoning to do what I think other people will be pleased with, right?
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:So there's still checkpoints that happen and there's still self-reflections that need to take place, but, for the most part, not afraid to piss people off, not afraid to be somebody that people aren't going to approve of or they're going to have to leave or vacate, I'm not afraid to walk away from relationships that aren't working and I'm certainly not afraid for spending time on my own and being my own best self, because I know that that's what's going to attract the right relationships into my life, and it has. It totally has. It has attracted the type of relationships that fully support me, that fully see me, that value my gifts, that value my perspective, where I don't feel like I need to constantly be like a circus performance monkey for that. I can literally just show up as myself and be myself and trust that I will be loved and accepted just as I am. As I say this, one of them is messaging me right now. But you know, and it just it's such a liberating and freeing feeling.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:But it all starts with number one not being afraid to lose the people that require you to please them all the time, and then finding the courage to do the unpleasing thing and do the thing that maybe some people might not really appreciate or value or see the beauty in or see the opportunity in or be able to justify logically why you're doing it. You know we have to let that go and this is why doing the unpleasing thing can be the most selfless thing to do and that is, you know, when we're doing the pleasing thing, it's not as selfless as we think, because we think we're giving and loving and nurturing and self-sacrificing. And, oh God, do so many of us take some sort of what's it called Like? We make that, we make self-sacrifice. Be this noble quality and, believe me, it's not for me what I've learned, because this is something that I used to do all the time. It's actually the one of the most toxic traits, because what you're actually doing is trying all these different ways to cultivate self-worth other than just trusting that you're enough, doing in your heart and giving and doing from your heart was feels right, what feels aligned, and saying no to what doesn't, and trusting that that gets to be enough, instead of constantly overgiving and people pleasing and self-abandoning and taking care of everyone else's needs in the hope that people will love and approve of you, and then getting bitter and resentful when they don't, or when they don't see your or they don't see all that you do, or they don't appreciate everything that you've sacrificed. You know Huge, huge, huge learning for me and, honestly, a lot of it I've learned from you know being caregiver to my parents. So thank them for that lesson, because that's been a huge lesson, and it's not to say that I would ever do anything different. I still, to this day, will always say like I'm so blessed and grateful that I get to do this for them, but it has been a very healing experience and eye opening as to what I felt I had to do versus what was in my heart to do, and this was a conversation I had with a friend today.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:But what if the selfless thing was doing? The unpleasing thing was facing the rejection, the judgment, the abandonment, in many cases, the retaliation for doing things that people maybe didn't agree with or was inconvenient to them or felt hurtful to them or uncomfortable to them in some way, and they couldn't. They couldn't understand why you're making the decision to do the thing or say the thing that, for them, is so unpleasing. What if that is the selfless thing? Because that is guided by a higher purpose. That is actually what you were created to do and you know your challenge is in doing the thing, even though it's scary as fuck to do it, and it hits you to the very core of your biggest fear, which is the fear of being abandoned or rejected. Which is more selfless? Is it doing the pleasing thing or the unpleasing thing?
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Because I challenge you to believe that what we've been taught to believe is selfless is actually selfish, and the selfless thing, the selfless thing, would actually be just doing what your heart is guiding you to do, trusting what's a yes and trusting what's a no, and trusting what feels aligned, and trusting what feels what doesn't feel aligned, and following that guidance, regardless of you know how abandoned or rejection we might feel on the other side of that, and trusting that that gets to be okay Because we're honoring, we're in integrity with what it is that we truly want and what our soul wants for us, and we're making that the North Star versus what everyone else thinks, because we need to make sure that we aren't abandoned or rejected. See, the key to all of it comes back to being okay if we get abandoned or rejected, and trusting that we are enough and that we're not going to be left alone, that we are going to be taken care of. And again, for me, that came back to healing my relationship with source. And, you know, trusting that when I follow these urges and yearnings of my heart, these, these, these inspirations, these hits of intuition that guide me to do things that don't always make sense in my reality, trusting that you know, maybe if I, even if I can't see it, there's a deeper meaning or a deeper reason why I'm being called to these things and just to go with it, even though some people might question it, even though some people might be uncomfortable with it, you know, and has my family ever disagreed with choices that I've made? Abso-fucking-lutely they have. But they're still here, they still love me, they still support me. You know, we still have a relationship.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Did some friends fall by the wayside? Yeah, yeah, they did, and that's okay, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that because I was in integrity with who I was and what I wanted, and I was not. You know, maybe there was a time in my life when I was okay being a performance monkey, but not now, not at this point in my life, and I'm okay with that and so. But one of the beauties of all of that is it's opened the door to so many like loving and supportive relationships to come into my life that weren't there before, and in some cases they came in like this, you know, and it's all because I believe it's all because I walked away from the ones that weren't working. I got really clear on who I was and what I wanted for myself and for my relationships, and then I opened myself up to the possibility of receiving those and they showed up. You know, and you know it's one of the things that you know, it's one of those big lessons again when you're willing to do the unpleasing thing.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Yes, it may hurt a little at first, right, you may get abandoned and rejected in the process, and that's okay. But you can trust that when you're following your heart, when you're following your intuition, when you're letting them guide you and you're in alignment with your yeses, your no's, your wants, your don't wants. The people that fall away were never meant to be there, or at least maybe they were meant to be there for a season, but they weren't meant to stay. The ones that are meant to stay are the ones that align with who. It was that you were created to be, not the circus monkey. So, yeah, it hurts a little bit at first, but it's so much better on the other side.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Um, but it is a selfless thing because it is uncomfortable and we do have to face our worst fear, which is abandonment and rejection. Often right, maybe it doesn't happen, but we have to face the fear of it happening, and that in itself is uncomfortable, even if it doesn't happen. But once you move through that fear and you realize which relationships stick around and which ones don't, you learn a thing or two about who you can count on in the world. You also learn how strong you are. You also start to rewire your brain that it is safe to do the unpleasing thing, that I will be okay in the end because I will be surrounded by relationships that truly, truly love me and see me for who I am, and not the ones that expect me to be the circus monkey. So, um. So I challenge you to do the selfless thing today.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Do the unpleasing thing, do that thing on your heart that maybe makes no sense, that maybe you've been putting off, that maybe you're afraid to do because you think everyone else around you is going to abandon you and reject you. If you do honor that a little bit today, put five minutes on your to-do list every day to spend some time with that, to reflect on that, to see what might want to come forward from that, you might be surprised. This is how you create a life of purpose. You know. So many people ask me is how, how do I find my life purpose?
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Your life purpose is never something that you find.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:It's something that is revealed to you over time and it only comes through when you drown out all the should have, should want, should be's and listen to what actually wants to come forward, come through you and spend time with that and explore that and take action steps towards tiny little action, steps towards tiny little action, steps towards that each day, even if it is the unpleasing thing, even if it's the thing that you can't explain, but for some reason it's on your heart to do.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I challenge you to do that and sometimes even just doing the unpleasing thing, even if it's not and I know people are going to challenge me on this, but sometimes just doing the unpleasing thing, even if it doesn't have a higher purpose other than to be unpleasing, is healing in itself, because every time you find the courage to do the unpleasing thing, you break the tie or the chains of codependency and people-pleasing that have kept you stuck in a hamster wheel, burnt out, uninspired, feeling unloved, undervalued and unappreciated for so long. It started to come back into your own sense of self and sovereignty. So that I challenge everybody to do every single day you know how they say do the one thing that scares you most every day, do one unpleasing thing every day and see how powerful and strong and confident that you get in yourself, even if sometimes you fuck it up. It's fine, all right. That is it for today. You guys, if you love this episode, please leave a like, a positive rating or a review wherever you're seeing this, and until next time, you guys, massive love.
