Settle and Source Sourel
Welcome to Settle and Source Sourel, a sacred listening space for women who are ready to rise from the heaviness they have carried and return to the wisdom within.
Each episode is a Sourel, a short voiced transmission set to sound, created from the work of Angela M. Carter, founder of Trauma Release Centre. A Sourel is a bridge between the nervous system and the soul, between survival and source, between the woman who has been holding everything together and the deeper feminine wisdom that has been waiting beneath the noise.
These reflections are created for the woman who may have felt buried beneath old patterns, silenced by fear, dimmed by exhaustion, or held back by energies that were never truly hers to carry. Through words, sound and sacred presence, each Sourel offers an invitation to soften, awaken and begin moving out of the darkness that has kept her disconnected from her own light.
The divine feminine is woven through every Sourel as nurture, protection, intuition, truth, creation and inner knowing. These are feminine light codes for the woman who is ready to remember herself. Not as something to force. Not as something to perform. But as something that may begin to rise from within when the system feels safe enough to listen.
Every Sourel carries Angela’s words, Angela’s message and Angela’s thirty years of clinical and spiritual practice. Her work brings together trauma-informed therapy, Internal Family Systems, nervous system wisdom, somatic awareness and the sacred understanding that healing is not only about recovery. It is also about return.
The voice is delivered by an assistant on Angela’s behalf, allowing her work to reach more women while honouring the very message she teaches, that women do not need to burn themselves out in order to serve, create, love or lead.
A Sourel does not tell a woman who she is. It does not tell her what she must become. It opens a doorway. It offers a frequency. It creates a bridge back to the source within her.
Settle in. Let the sound meet you gently. Let the light find what has been hidden. This is where the remembering begins.
Find out more about creating a Sourel at www.traumareleasecentre.com
Settle and Source Sourel
Permission to Be Here
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Permission to Be Here
This episode addresses something that rarely gets said honestly in conversations about a month like this one: the discomfort of feeling behind.
Perhaps an intention was set at the start of the month, and somewhere along the way, that intention met the actual complexity of an actual life. A stressful day. A celebration. An evening that simply got away. This episode speaks directly to anyone who might be feeling sheepish about that, as though something has been failed at, even though nobody asked for perfection in the first place.
This episode explains why changes in long-held habits rarely occur through a single decision sustained by willpower alone. It is closer to an ongoing negotiation between an old pattern and a newer awareness, with the old pattern winning some rounds and the newer awareness winning others. This is not a flaw in character or commitment. It is simply what behaviour change looks like in real human lives.
For some listeners, nothing about the drinking itself may have changed yet, and this episode holds that as equally valid, naming that internal shifts, the quiet noticing, the slow questioning, often precede external ones by quite some time.
Rather than instruction, this episode offers permission to be exactly where someone actually is, whatever that looks like. It also offers a small physical practice, a hand placed flat against the chest, a way of acknowledging, through touch, that something is working hard right now, even on days that do not look like progress from the outside.
If you find yourself wanting something to return to between these reflections, in the actual moment a habit like this one takes hold, I also built an app called Settle and Source. It offers a ninety-second guided practice for exactly the kind of moment this essay has been describing, the gap between noticing an urge and knowing what to do with it. It is not a replacement for anything here, simply another door, in case it is the right one for you. https://settleandsource.com
Settle and Source: The Podcast is created by Angela M. Carter, founder of Trauma Release Centre and a trained IFS therapist with over thirty years of clinical experience.
Each episode is a Sourel: a short voiced reflection set to sound. Designed for the small pauses of a full life.
Find Angela and more of her work at www.traumareleasecentre.com.
If today’s reflection landed for you, share it with someone who needs it. That’s how a quiet message travels in a loud world.
Welcome. I'm glad you're here. This is the clearing. A special month-long companion for anyone choosing to put alcohol down this July, even just for a little while, to see what is on the other side of the habit. You don't have to have this figured out. You don't have to do dry July perfectly. You simply have to be curious about what might shift if you let your body and your mind have a little more space this month. Each week, we'll walk through something different together. What it feels like to break a pattern. What happens as the fog begins to lift? What it means to maintain something you have started to value. Settle in. This one is for you. Week two. Acknowledgement. I want to talk today about something that rarely gets said honestly in conversations about a process like this one. The discomfort of feeling behind. Perhaps you set out at the start of this month with a clear intention. And somewhere along the way that intention met the actual complexity of your actual life. A stressful day. A celebration. An evening that simply got away from you. Perhaps you are sitting with the sow right now feeling slightly sheepish about that. As though you have somehow failed at something. Even though nobody here ever asked you to be perfect. I want to address that directly, because the shame that can creep in around this is, in its own way, more costly than anything that happened with the actual drink. Here is something true about how change and long-held habits actually unfold, almost always. It is not a single decision made once and then simply maintained through willpower alone. It is closer to a conversation, an ongoing negotiation between an old pattern and a newer awareness, with the old pattern winning some rounds and the newer awareness winning others. This is not a flaw in your character or in your commitment. It is simply what behavior change looks like in real human lives. As opposed to the simplified version, we tend to tell ourselves it should look like. For some of you, nothing about the drinking itself has changed yet. And that is also completely fine. The work happening for you right now might be entirely internal. A quiet noticing, a slow questioning, a relationship with the habit that is shifting even while the behavior has not yet followed. Internal shifts often precede external ones by quite some time. And there is no failure in being somewhere in that earlier stage. What I want to offer you today is something different from instruction. It is permission, permission to be exactly where you actually are. Whether that is sometime alcohol free, or some time of noticing without much behavioral change at all, or anywhere in the wide ordinary territory between those two points. The nervous system does not respond well to shame as a motivator. It tends to respond slowly and reliably to curiosity and warmth instead. So if today you are feeling discouraged about where you have landed compared to where you hope to be, I would like to offer you a different question entirely. Not why have I not done this perfectly, but simply, what have I learned so far? Regardless of what my evenings have actually looked like. I want to offer you something to actually hold on to today as well. The way we did on Tuesday with the object in your hand. Tonight, whenever the discouragement next shows up, try placing one hand flat against your chest just for a moment. Not to fix anything, simply to acknowledge, through touch, that something in you is working hard right now. Even on the days it does not look like progress from the outside. On Sunday, we will sit with something gentler still. An invitation that meets you exactly where you are, without asking you to be anywhere else first. Until then, be kind to yourself about whatever this process has actually looked like for you so far. Kindness tends to move things forward far more reliably than judgment ever has. Whatever shifted, whatever didn't, let it be there. You don't have to understand it yet. You are exactly where you need to be in this process. The clearing continues three times a week throughout July. If this found you at the right moment, share it with another woman who might be doing this with you. Even quietly, even on her own. Until the next one. Take good care of yourself.