Words in the Wilderness

Jacky Power
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Weekly

Words In The Wilderness is a podcast for changemakers, cycle breakers, and anyone tired of flatlining their existence with "fine." Hosted by Jacky Power, the Therapeutic Poet, each episode uses poetry as a foundation for exploring the wobbly, lonely terrain of becoming — of unlearning and unlayering — whether you're leaving a relationship, finding your voice, or simply learning that "I matter" is a truth, not an opinion. Sometimes with guests bringing professional insight or lived experience, sometimes raw and personal, this isn't a podcast about five steps to fix yourself. You're not broken. Your feelings are wisdom to decode. It's about having a cheerleader in your pocket when the path gets lonely and everyone else is questioning your choices. for brave souls who've awakened to their truth and are now navigating the wilderness of transformation

  1. 5d ago

    The Thing No One Wants To Talk About With Sophie Olson

    Content note: this episode discusses childhood sexual abuse, addiction, self-harm, psychiatric systems, and suicide attempts. Please take care of yourself as you listen. What happens when the unspeakable has no language? When every time you try to speak, someone turns away? Sophie Olsen is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, a trainer, and the author of The Flying Child — a book that took a decade of being labelled, medicated and told there was no recovery before it could be written. She was eventually told by a psychiatrist that she would never live without community support and medication. She disagreed. This conversation goes into the territory that most podcasts avoid — not to shock, but because the silence around it is part of the harm. Sophie talks about what it took to finally find words for the unspeakable, the door that was shut on her again and again by the systems meant to help, and the moment a fairy story written on a phone at midnight changed everything. In this episode: How behaviours get labelled as disorders when nobody asks whyTen years in a mental health system that saw the symptoms and never the causeThe door handle moment - advice to her 29-year-old self on what she needed to hearHow images, drawings, and eventually fairy tale writing became the bridge to speech'Society shame not mine' - why the silence around child sexual abuse is a collective shame, not just a personal oneThe writing workshops that are now paying it forward for other survivors  |  | "Was she unstable? Or were you unable to be the anchor? Her rock? One eye on your clock? Was she too complex? Or was it quite simple — if only you cared where to look." — Told You, Sophie Olsen Links:The Flying Child Website: https://www.theflyingchild.com/Link to Book: https://www.theflyingchild.com/book Resources to support those of you affected by this episode due to personal experience:https://enoughabuse.org/get-help/survivor-support/

    1h 6m

  2. Jun 3

    The Wound Isn't The Rupture

    Every parent asks some version of the same question. Am I damaging my child? Have I already damaged them? This episode is Jacky's answer. It's not an answer that reassuringly bypasses the truth, but an answer that holds the truth.  Because the question isn't how do I never hurt my child. The question is: when I do hurt them  - because I will - how do I repair? Ruptures happen in every relationship. They're part of being human. They're even part of healthy relationships - they show that each person has their own separate sense of self. What creates lasting damage isn't the rupture. It's the rupture that goes unrepaired. In this episode: What it means to parent from your wounded child - and why even the best intentions can mean you're parenting the child you were, not the child in front of youThe despair magnet - how shame turns one mistake into a tally of evidence that you're fundamentally flawedThe difference between guilt (I did something bad) and shame (I am bad) What a genuine amend looks like - and why an apology with 'but' on the end isn't oneDan Siegel's four S's: Safe, Seen, Soothed, Secure - and how repair rebuilds all fourThe intergenerational gift: when you repair with your child, you repair with yourself  | "Beneath the stars of destiny, beneath the numbing and defences, beneath the self-doubting censorship, beneath it all... catch a glimpse of precious alchemy. Beneath it all, beneath — is me."

    33 min

  3. May 27

    What Our Kids Are Actually Telling Us with Nicole Runyon

    Wait! Before you read another article about screen time, before you spiral about whether you're doing enough, before you outsource your child to a therapist and hope they come back fixed Jacky and Nicole Runyon want you to hear something first. You are more powerfully positioned to help your child than any professional will ever be. That's what Nicole - a therapist who has 23 years of clinical experience with children and families - wants you to know. Nicole is a psychotherapist and author of Free to Fly - a book that traces what happened to children's mental health when we started pathologising feelings, outsourcing connection, and handing over authority to devices. What she found wasn't a disorder. It was a disconnection. In this episode: Why 90% of children start school highly intelligent,  what happens to that number, and whyThe lie we've been sold about technology and child development - and what crawling has to do with itFeelings reverence vs feelings reference Why Nicole shifted her entire practice from treating children to coaching parentsThe guilt that gets in the way of trusting your instincts -  and how to move through it, not around it  | "I'm sitting here and wondering how those amends would have helped to change our now. But I know those amends would bring different struggles to bear... So I sit here beside you for when you need me by your side." — Parental Reflections Links for Nicole:Website: https://nicolerunyon.com/Book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/free-to-fly-the-secret-to-fostering-independence-in-the-next-generation-nicole-runyon/31948c37916814dd?ean=9781637633779&next=t&next=tInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/igenerationmentalhealth

    52 min

  4. May 13

    The Way Out Of Self Shame And Upping Your Game

    The standards expected in motherhood are impossible. And most of us don't even notice we've signed up to it until we feel burned out and miserable. . This episode starts with a poem Jacky wrote called 'Yummy Mummy' - all the ways in which we can try to show we have 'got out shit together' as mothers, whilst nothing goes according to plan.  Because that's what it's like when you deal with frustration by 'upping your game'. YOu keep trying. It looks like effort. It looks like caring. And underneath it is one quiet, relentless message: if I can just do enough, I'll feel okay. Jacky introduces the frustration triangle - the three places we go when frustration hits. The blamer. The self-shamer. The up-your-gamer. And explores the one she lived in for years. The one that motherhood is particularly good at triggering. Because nobody gives you feedback in motherhood. Nobody tells you you've cracked it, and that lack of validation can trigger old 'not enough' wounds.  In this episode: What the up-your-gamer actually is The moment Jacky realised she was doing everything 'right' and connecting with nothing Why motherhood is such a perfect mirror, showing you every wound you thought you'd dealt with The despair magnet - how one rupture can pull in every previous failure until you're not just feeling bad about today, you're tallying evidence against yourself going back years The shift from perfect to present.  What the up-your-gamer is really asking for underneath all that effort - and the four things worth getting honest about.

    22 min

  5. Apr 29

    The Becoming of a Mother with Lucy Wylde

    'Matrescence' is a word that has been around since 1973. It only made it into the dictionary in 2022. That gap tells you almost everything you need to know about how well we've been holding the experience of becoming a mother. Lucy Wylde is a matrescence activist and coach who works with women navigating the identity shift of motherhood - before, during and long after. She's also a poet. And in this conversation, she and Jacky go deep into the places most parenting content never reaches: birth trauma, the inner split of wanting to be two people at once, feeling unseen in the experience that changed everything. This is an episode for anyone who has ever felt like they were supposed to be grateful - and found something more complicated underneath. In this episode: What matrescence actually is How poetry became Lucy’s way of telling her truth about the traumatic birth of her daughter Matilda, the loss of the woman she was and the parts of motherhood that no one validatesThe ‘inner split’ - wanting to be fully present as a mother and fully yourself as a person, at the same timeHow ‘premenstrual tension’ is actually ‘premenstrual truth’ - what surfaces when hormones that act as a buffer shift and change Why “you matter” isn’t a platitude - and what it actually takes to feel it  | "My scar is amazing. My stretch marks are too. They remind me of growing and welcoming you... well done, strong mama. Please know you'll recover. Birth trauma is real and we must help each other." — Lucy Wylde Website: https://www.lucywyldecoaching.com

    44 min

  6. Apr 15

    From Hulp To Hope

    Do you ever feel the urge to cry out, but swallow it back down instead? That specific, lonely feeling when you want to howl but it feels pointless, so you gulp it down instead — and there's no one to reason out your sadness, your guilt, your fear with. This episode maps the journey from that swallowed feeling all the way through to hope using the unexpected power of poetry to witness, name, and navigate what we're really going through. In this episode: Why we need our own vocabulary,  and how making up words can be the first act of self-understandingThe Frustration Triangle: the three places we instinctively go when change gets hard: blamer, self-shamer, or up-you-gamerWhat's really underneath blame How writing your s****y first draft of emotions can unlock the vulnerable wound hiding behind the vitriolWhat happens when someone who harmed you never takes accountability  and how we end up turning that inwardWhy the blank page is the perfect therapist: it doesn't answer back, doesn't charge you anything, and never fails to witness

    21 min

  7. Apr 1

    Why Words Help with Dr. Stephanie Aspin

    You were probably taught that poetry has a meaning, and your job is to find it. That's exactly why so many of us decided it wasn't for us. In this episode, Jacky is joined by Dr. Stephanie Aspin  - poet, therapist, academic, and author of Poetry and Therapy: Why Words Help  - for a conversation that might just change how you think about language, feeling, and what it means to be witnessed. Stephanie describes a poem not as a text to be decoded but as a little machine  -  a kinetic object where meaning shifts and moves. And in that movement, something therapeutic happens: language speaks back. It holds what we can't say directly. It gives us agency over a story we thought was fixed. In this episode: Why poetry has a bad rap  The poem as container: how an image can hold fear, grief, rage at arm's lengthWhat it means when language "speaks back"  - and why writing can reveal what we didn't know we knewHow to take your very first tentative steps with therapeutic poetry (even if you're completely resistant)Why all poetry is therapeutic  - whether it was written to be or not  | Quote from the episode: "The me in my poems is the articulate me that's okay  - and says I'm okay. And the world, if it thinks I'm not okay, it's wrong." About Dr. Stephanie Aspin:Websites: https://stephanieaspin.com/https://a-typicats.com/ Link to her book: https://www.pccs-books.co.uk/products/poetry-and-therapy-why-words-help Poem Links:https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/the-masque-of-anarchy/https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101581/poems-of-protest-resistance-and-empowermenthttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/found-poemhttps://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Revolution-in-Poetic-Language-by-Julia-Kristeva-author-Margaret-Waller-translator/9780231214599?srsltid=AfmBOopuTEDNlgFqEEJYiqZHR4r7ZQN-FLs-RjDCnnQvMNvl2349pMrd

    41 min

  8. Mar 18

    The Heap Of Hulps

    You know that moment when something rises in your throat - a howl, a truth, a need - and you just... swallow it back down? Jacky has a word for that. Hulp. A howl and a gulp combined. And this episode begins there; right in that frozen, swallowed place, because that's exactly where Jacky found herself when she sat down to record! This is an episode about what it actually feels like to start something. A behind the scenes look at the recording and deleting, the shame that crawls up when old wounds surface, the "here we go again" of it... Jacky takes you through the process she used to move from freeze to finally pressing record: writing a letter from her fear, sitting with the grief of it, reaching out - and what happened when she did. In this episode: The HULP poem - and what it means to have a pile of swallowed truthsWhy the antidote to shame is love, not self-improvementThe gap between your ideal self and your actual self - and why staying with the actual is where the richness livesWhy feeling like you don't fit in might mean you're a leader, not a misfitLink to the Youtube video Jacky refers to in the epsiode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0872fKNtIw

    20 min
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About

Words In The Wilderness is a podcast for changemakers, cycle breakers, and anyone tired of flatlining their existence with "fine." Hosted by Jacky Power, the Therapeutic Poet, each episode uses poetry as a foundation for exploring the wobbly, lonely terrain of becoming — of unlearning and unlayering — whether you're leaving a relationship, finding your voice, or simply learning that "I matter" is a truth, not an opinion. Sometimes with guests bringing professional insight or lived experience, sometimes raw and personal, this isn't a podcast about five steps to fix yourself. You're not broken. Your feelings are wisdom to decode. It's about having a cheerleader in your pocket when the path gets lonely and everyone else is questioning your choices. for brave souls who've awakened to their truth and are now navigating the wilderness of transformation

Information

  • Creator
    Jacky Power
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    48
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 All poetry performed is subject to copyright and may not be broadcast or shared without consent.
  • Show Website
    Words in the Wilderness