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 — Master Energy Healer, Radical Self-Love Leader, and Relationship Mentor.
I work with the women who are cycle breakers, grid shakers, and truth layers — the brave souls who came here to dismantle the inherited beliefs that told them they had to chase love, prove their worth, and beg to be chosen.
I help them break free from the karmic cycles and generational patterns that keep them stuck in toxic relationships and self-abandonment — so they can unapologetically choose themselves, reclaim their inherent worth, and become magnetic to soul-aligned love, expansive opportunities, and the liberated life they were born to lead.
Without ever shrinking, settling, or self-abandoning again.
I’ve been where you are, stuck in cycles of chasing love, begging to be chosen, and abandoning myself again and again in the name of love. 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 reclaim the version of you who never had to beg to be chosen.
You ready?
Let’s do this.
The Femme Cast
The Emotional Cost of Pretending You’re Okay — Why It’s the Worst Form of Self-Abandonment And Blocking Your Healing & Love
I spent years smiling through heartbreak, betrayal, and depression—convincing everyone (and eventually myself) that I was fine. Behind the façade of the “perfect couple” was a reality I refused to face: infidelity, emotional abandonment, and a deep well of unprocessed pain that I kept buried under toxic positivity and denial.
I didn’t know it then, but this was the most devastating form of self-abandonment. And it came at a cost I could never have imagined.
The rage, grief, and heartbreak I refused to feel didn’t just disappear—they festered. They showed up as digestive issues, chronic pain, insomnia, mood swings, skin rashes, and explosive emotional outbursts over the smallest triggers. Worse, they trapped me in an energetic loop that kept attracting the same toxic dynamics I was desperate to escape.
Here’s the truth no one tells you.
You can repeat affirmations until your voice is hoarse, plaster vision boards across your walls, and meditate for hours—but if you are suppressing the emotions living in your body, those emotions are still creating your reality.
In this raw and unfiltered episode of The Femme Cast, I’m pulling back the curtain on:
🎤 Why pretending to be “okay” is the ultimate betrayal of self
🎤 How suppressed emotions hijack your manifestation and your relationships
🎤 The sneaky ways emotional denial shows up as physical illness and chronic pain
🎤 Why the Universe will always send you “emotional homework” before delivering your desires
🎤 How to process emotions in a way that’s safe, sacred, and shockingly fast
If you’ve ever wondered why you keep attracting emotionally unavailable partners, why the same painful patterns keep replaying in your life, or why your manifestations keep stalling—this episode holds the key.
Because your emotions aren’t inconvenient roadblocks. They are intelligent messengers, designed to guide you into the highest version of yourself.
If you’re willing to feel them.
Loved this episode? Don’t just listen — activate. Grab my FREE 6-part Feminine Awakening Series + Masterclass and unlock the superpowers that make you magnetic AF. Get instant access at → https://thefemmecast.kit.com/femme
Hey you guys, what is up? Welcome back to the show. I'm so excited and grateful to have you guys here. Welcome if you're new.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:We're going to have a serious heart to heart today, and this is a story that is near and dear to my heart because it's something I did for a very long time and it probably caused me the most excruciating pain of my life. On the plus side, you know, that's how I basically stumbled across emotionally. Energetics was a result of this. So had I not gone through this experience, it probably wouldn't have made me the healer and coach that I am today. So for that I guess suppose I'm grateful. I am grateful, actually, but what we're talking about really is the emotional cost of pretending that you're okay when you're not. I did this for years and it is. I can tell you without beyond any doubt that it is the worst form of self-abandonment you can possibly ever do to yourself. And the reason is, you know, we go through an experience. We're going through a time where we're in a great deal of emotional discomfort when we are not okay. Whether that is sadness, hurt, pain, grief, anger, frustration, resentment, whatever the feeling is that we're not okay. Maybe you know for me I was moving through some really intense depression. I was moving through heartbreak. It was I was with my partner for years, who you know. I was coming to terms with the fact that there was, you know, infidelity in our relationship and I was pretending that it wasn't happening. So we talked a lot about this in the betrayal series, right, um, you know where I was pretending it wasn't happening. I was feeling all the hurt, all the pain, all the rage, all the anger that I was feeling and that I was pretending to be okay. In the process I was pretending I was fine, I'm good, there's nothing wrong, nothing's bothering me, I'm fine, I'm perfectly happy, my relationship is as peachy as can be. Yeah, you know, when I look back, I realize now what a big shock it was to everybody.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:You know, when we broke up, because you know we'd been together for a while, obviously, and everybody had kind of gotten to know us and you know we were always like everyone's favorite couple. You know, we were always like. Everybody always thought we always had it together and everything was perfect and we were like this perfect couple. And you know, and no one really knew what was going on behind the scenes. And that was really mostly my fault, because I was pretending that nothing was going on behind the scenes. I was pretending that everything was perfect, you know, and that's all anybody saw, and obviously he wasn't going to be the one to out what was going on in our situationship. So you know he was fine with it. That's what he wanted all along. So why rock the boat right? Why let anybody know any and otherwise? So you know, I did a really good job. I did a really good job of hiding the pain that I was in. I did a really good job of hiding what was going on behind closed doors. I did a really good job of presenting this image of this picture perfect couple when we were anything but you know, and you know, just holding and suppressing so much pain and anger and hurt and heartbreak beneath the surface that it was festering. You know I didn't know what was happening at the time For me, I was just coping with the situation as best as I could, the only way I knew how.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:You know, for me, you know there was. You know I always did have trauma around being able to express myself and expressing my emotion. You know it wasn't always. You know it wasn't always a good thing. You know, I was kind of brought up to believe that. You know, sharing anger bad, sharing sadness bad. You know feeling rage bad, right. And it wasn't because I had, please, like, take this with, take this for what it's worth. It's not because I had bad parents, it's because they were traumatized in their own way and they were just doing the best that they could and they were holding on to their own repressed emotions, and so they kind of passed that belief down to me, right, and to my sister too, right. And so so, coming into this experience, I did the only thing I knew how to do to keep myself feeling safe, which was okay. Well, I'm going to sweep all this anger, all this rage, all this resentment, all this pain. I'm just going to sweep it under the rug and pretend like it's not there. It's not there, it's not happening, everything's fine, everything's fine, we're fine, everything's fine. Look see, I'm big, I'm smiling, everything's great. It wasn't fine.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Oh, like there was so much suppressed and so much being bottled up beneath the surface, and I think at one point, I started to believe my own denial, like at first. I knew I was in denial, I knew I was faking it, but I think I reached a point where I had, like, repeatedly told myself that I was fine. I completely, like, I repeatedly told other people that I was fine for so long that I actually started to mentally believe that I was fine. And I think that's when and this is I shared this in previous episodes I think that's when the night terror started happening. I don't know if you would call them night terrors, but I would basically wake up in the middle of the night screaming with rage, and it wasn't even like screaming, like help me, something's wrong. Screaming it was like a roar, it was like unleashing all this anger and hate that I was, you know, just storing inside me for so long. And I think that's when the dreams started happening, was when I actually started to believe my own denial. Right, I actually put myself in this denial where I started to believe my own shit. I actually started to believe I was gaslighting myself so well. I actually started to believe what I was telling myself, which was I'm fine.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And so a lot of that emotion got buried beneath the surface. A lot of it got stuck in my emotional, spiritual, energetic, even my physical body and it started to come out in so many ways Like I was having, like digestive issues I was having. I was showing symptoms of gluten intolerance. I was having joint pains, skin rashes, digestive problems I think I said that already Depression, mood swings, anxieties, insomnia, headaches, just chronic pain and inflammation and discomfort, like all the time, and not to mention the effect on my mental state, like I remember you know I shared this in another episode as well being so volatile that I could go through my day kind of acting like everything's great, everything's fine. You know, poke me in a grocery store and all hell would break loose.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:You know, because I was just like I was so full of rage and anger that it didn't take much to, like you know, tip the scales and get me to, like you know, spew out everything that I was holding inside, but in a, in a misaligned and, um, you know, kind of like what's the word that I'm looking for? Like projecting it on everything else around me other than actually dealing with what was really going on beneath the surface. So, um, it really delayed my healing in such a powerful way, and it breaks my heart because I still see people do this to this day, where they're struggling with something emotionally and instead of dealing with it and working through it head on. They've gotten stuck into this think positive mentality which, yes, I do believe. Thinking positive yields positive results, but not when you're ignoring what's going on with you emotionally. And this is kind of you know. This is where I want to shake everybody.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:What you feel emotionally is so much more powerful than anything that you think, say or believe, because there is energy and there's so much energy and emotion. Right, energy, emotion is energy in motion and it is constantly creating on your behalf and you can do all the mindset work, you can say all the affirmations you want, but if there's something that you're feeling on an emotional level that you're not allowing yourself to move through and experience and process fully, that emotion is getting stuck. Experience and process fully. That emotion is getting stuck and it keeps you in this energetic loop of attracting the same thing over and over again. That initially brought you pain to begin with, that initially put that emotion there in the first place. And so that's where I think I accredit to like when I left that relationship, you know, after being, you know, cheated on and lied to manipulate it for so long, and I left that relationship in search of finding the one and I ended up in more toxic dynamics than I even knew what to do with. Right, it was because I hadn't processed all of that emotion on the inside yet.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:The funny thing about emotion is that you know we think it's going to take a long time to move through, but it actually doesn't, not when you let it, like, when you can surrender to it and just allow it to be there and have a good cry and feel it and intensify it and allow it to just become its own thing, like, do its thing right, serve its purpose, which is usually to give you a message on. You know how it's asking you to evolve. Once you can let it kind of do that, it moves through pretty quick and then you can move on to joy or whatever else you want to feel, you know. But the problem is we keep trapping these inside of us and we don't realize how much that is mucking up our energetic signature, not to mention, not to mention the wound that we're creating in ourselves internally by saying I don't care about your pain. Your pain, your anger, your discomfort means nothing to me. I'm going to ignore it and pretend that it's not there, like would you ever say that to a child who was crying. You know, would you ever tell a crying child I don't care that you're crying, I don't care that you're sad, I don't care that you're frustrated, I just want to go and have a good time, and I don't understand why you can't let me do that right now. We would never say that to a child and yet we're saying to that to ourselves constantly, when we ignore our emotional state and try to present a version of ourselves that is seemingly fine when we are not fine. That's not to say that we need to, like you know, verbal spew our dirty laundry onto anybody who will listen, but it does mean that we get to make the space to acknowledge our own pain, our own sadness, our own emotional experience and whatever it is that we're trying to move through Now.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:You know, as I said, you know a lot of this was created in that relationship. But even the relationships after, like even the toxic relationship dynamics that I attracted after that relationship ended, I was still trying to look fine. When I wasn't, I was still trying to look unbothered, I was still trying to look cool, not asking for too much, not letting on how much I actually liked them, trying to pretend I really don't care that much, even though I really did. Trying to pretend that I was okay with situationships when really what I wanted was a real solid relationship. Trying to pretend that I was this what's it called a healthy attachment style, versus the anxious, hot mess attachment style that I actually was on the inside but I was pretending and faking my way to feeling and looking confident and unbothered and this whole like black cat energy bullshit that I hear people talk about all the time.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:All of this is really relevant stuff, but because the reality is, if you want to attract a healthy relationship, you have to be able to embody a healthy attachment style or a secure attachment style. But that's not something that you can fake, that is something that you cultivate, and you cultivate a healthy attachment style by first looking at you know, why is it that I have this anxious or avoidant, or even anxious avoidant attachment style, like what's going on beneath the surface? What is the pain that I'm not acknowledging, that is making me behave and feel this anxious or avoidant type of behavior or response in a relationship, right? So you know, trying to deny our pain, trying to deny what it is that we're feeling, trying to create this inauthentic version of ourselves. You know it's so hurtful, like I said, to our own soul, because it's the worst form of self-rejection.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:We're basically saying I don't care what your emotional experience or what your emotional needs are, I give two flying fucks, I just want to go out here and have a good time and pretend that I'm the cool chick and look like I'm unbothered and uncomplicated and you know, not, not, you know, really just be easy to be around and be easy to love and easy to like, so that I can, you know, find somebody who will actually, like you know, want to be with me. Right, and you know, obviously we're talking specifically about relationship now. But this can happen in so many like we can. We can hide our emotional experience and pretend to be fine in so many ways. And I know sometimes we have to, like you know, we go to work, we kind of have to act like we're okay when we're not. You know nobody's going to come to the Monday morning kickoff call for the week and like bawl all over their teammates that you know, their relationship fell apart on the weekend. You know, relationship fell apart on the weekend, you know.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:But you do get to prioritize carving out that time, making that time for yourself to feel whatever is coming up for you emotionally and allow space for that to evolve, to move through you and to help you evolve through the process. You know, pain, discomfort, any kind of emotion, is always helping us in our evolution. And so when we make space for it and we make time for it and we allow it to be there and just surrender to it and not try and force anything and just let it do its thing, we move through it much more quickly and then we can get on to feeling the things that we actually do want to feel and that actually feel good, to feel right, and we can integrate the lessons that those experiences and those emotions were trying to teach us. But when we avoid to do those things, it is so hurtful to us at a soul level we end up getting that emotional pain stuck in our body, in our emotional body, in our spiritual body, in our physical body, in our mental body. It completely distorts your energetic signature.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And now what you're manifesting? You're not manifesting anything that you want. You're manifesting everything that you don't want, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many affirmations you repeat, no matter how many times you write in your fucking journal vision boards you create, you keep attracting more of what you don't want, and that's because you're literally ignoring your path to healing. Whenever we manifest and this is a hard lesson I've had to learn whenever we manifest or set our intention to something, the universe is like okay, great, I can make that happen for you, but first I would like you to move through all of these reasons and beliefs and traumas that are keeping you from really aligning with what it is that you want energetically. So that's when the work really begins.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:But we avoid the work and we just keep saying affirmations and we wonder why the thing isn't coming into fruition. It's because all of the challenges that are being presented to us, all of the triggers that we're avoiding, all of the heartbreak that we're not moving through and processing, all of the patterns that we're refusing to look at, those are the keys to getting us to where we want to be. The universe is saying here's your homework If you want that relationship, if you want that job, if you want that income, if you want that home, if you want that lifestyle, if you want that whatever, whatever it is, this is your homework to get there. And yet we keep trying to bypass it and ignore it and avoid it by more affirmations, more meditations, more vision boards. That is only just the tip of the iceberg. There is a whole massive chunk of ice below all of that. That needs to be addressed first before we can get to that.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And so, you know, when you know we delay our healing, we delay bringing in what it is that we truly want, what we truly desire, what would truly bring us joy, we get stuck in this energy sorry, I hit my mic we get stuck in this crazy energetic limbo that you can be stuck in for quite a long time. It's like a spiritual tug of war is happening, where there's this emotional side of you that's saying, hey, look at me, look at me, look at me, I need you to tend to me. And then there's others like no, I don't want to look at you, I don't want to look at you, I just want to manifest good shit. You know they're like constantly fighting. And so you end up being stuck in the middle between these two competing energies.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And this is why, oftentimes, life just does not move. You know, life just does not move when we end up stuck and at the stalemate where we can't move forward, we can't go back, we're just in limbo, and the key to breaking out of this pattern is to look at the pain that we've been avoiding and to actually sit with the maybe I'm not okay, maybe there's something that I need to look at here and I, you know, I do believe that we need to change the conversation, like I remember, you know, I do believe that we need to change the conversation Like I remember, you know, there's always this expectation of you know, when somebody asks you, hey, how you doing Right, you always have to be polite and say I'm good, how are you? And I, I'm guilty, I'm guilty of this, I'm guilty of this all the fucking time. But how great would it be to be able to say, you know what, I'm not having my best day today, and here's why. But also not emotionally burden everybody around us, you know, just to be able to be honest, to share about what we're going through and what we're experiencing and what we're moving through without, you know, emotionally burdening the other person, but also not hiding what it is we're truly feeling or moving through, and just letting our human side shine and be seen like. How amazing would that be Like if we could actually do that as a culture and not see that as a bad thing or a toxic thing or a negative thing, or, you know, just to acknowledge what might be going on for us on the inside right and not making it mean anything about us or mean anything about what it is that we're capable of, just being able to like, hey, you know I'm not having one of my best days. Here's why. Or you know what? I am feeling a little down or depressed today, or I am moving something that's really difficult right now. So, taking the time and space to do that, I know I've tried to do that more consciously with my relationships, um, in the last few years.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:You know really being mindful about when they ask me how you doing, and, and you, and, and you know I say you know what, um, not the best of days, kind of you know moving through this, that and what the other, but, um, you know moving through it. Okay, you know, um, it's teaching me something, or giving, giving, giving a, a positive perspective on it, because I do believe. I do believe whenever we move through difficult emotions, there is a positive takeaway from it, even though it doesn't feel like it in the moment, there's always a positive takeaway, and so trying to see it from that perspective can sometimes be very helpful too, but not to give you an excuse to go and rush out of it. Like, experience the feeling, experience what it is that's coming up. Like, experience the feeling, experience what it is that's coming up. So, going back to the example that I was sharing before I went on that tangent right. So I was.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:You know, I didn't want to deal with the pain, I just wanted to have a good time. I just wanted to find that next person. I was trying to look really cool and unbothered you know this whole like blackhead, energy, right, showing up and being very uncomplicated and as easy to be with as possible, just because I wanted to find my person. Right, I wanted to find the person who would want to be there for me and who would want to be with the hot mess that was going on, like just like the flailing ball of anxiety that I was really hiding on the inside, Like who would want to be with that. So I you know it almost stepped into character, right, I'm cool, I'm calm, I'm, you know, cool as a cucumber.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Very uncomplicated, don't worry, I'm good with friends, with benefits. I'm good with situationships, but deep down inside, knowing that there was a part of me that's like maybe this is going to be the day that you know, he actually just says that he just wants to be with me and we can just like let this whole situationship thing like go away. Right? Um, total lie, never happened, by the way. Never, never, never happened. Make sure that when you're in a relationship, you're both in it for the same thing, otherwise it's not going to work. Um, so you know, obviously, you know, I kept you know. Um, you know I kept holding on to all this emotional discomfort. I would never. Um, you know, I kept attracting these toxic relationships and I realized that all of the relationships that I was attracting were emotionally available because they were mirroring back to me how emotionally available I was for myself. Available because they were mirroring back to me how emotionally available I was for myself.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:So if you're in a cycle of holding on to a lot of negative emotion that you know won't go away, it just kind of sits there and festers beneath the surface constantly, where you feel like the minute somebody bumps into you in a grocery store, that is a cry of war, right, or you know you're constantly having to bite your tongue in relationship and show up as an inauthentic version of yourself, pretending to be cool when you're not, to pretend to be okay with situations when you really not pretending that you know their bread crumbs don't really bother you all that much because you're cool and uncomplicated and you're easy to be with when it's all fucking bullshit. And then wondering why you keep attracting all these emotionally unavailable partners. Stop, stop and ask yourself what am I feeling right now that I'm avoiding, and what would it look like to give that emotion some space to be and to breathe, be and to breathe? And what advice or healing or transformation might that emotion be trying to be the catalyst for in my life? And how can I apply what it's trying to teach me or show me? Because that really is the magic, and when you can move through, layer by layer, all the emotions that you've been holding onto and heal all those parts of you that feel like you've completely rejected and abandoned them because you didn't want to deal with what was going on on the inside, that's when life starts to flow in your direction and that's when things start to move. And this is a process and it does happen one layer at a time. And, of course, of course, of course, of course, I'm always here to support you. Please go ahead and book an intensive.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:The link for all that is down below, but you know, but this is, this is the process is moving through all these little abandoned parts of you that are just screaming and vying for your attention, allowing them to be seen and heard and felt and acknowledged and validated and to really offer a new perspective on who you're meant to be in the world and how you're being called to evolve, because that's ultimately, like I said, what our emotions are trying to do. So, instead of resisting your emotions, surrender to them. Instead of pretending that you're okay all the time, just be honest that you're not okay. You know, at least with yourself, at least if you can be honest with yourself first and somebody, maybe somebody that you feel close to you know if you can at least do that, just do that part. You know you're on your way, because now you've stopped shaming yourself, you stop rejecting yourself and you're ready to listen to yourself, and that is often the hardest part. So take that for what it's worth.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Let me know if this resonates wherever you're seeing this in the comments below or reply to me in an email, whatever floats your boat. You can also just DM me at TheFemCast on Instagram. I always love to get DMs from you guys, so let me know how this resonated. And, of course, please, please, please. If you love this episode, please leave a positive rating or review on Spotify or iTunes or wherever you're seeing this. Until next time, you guys.
