Riding The Wild Unknown

Nina Powell

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You are invited to join me in Riding the Wild Unknown. Raw and uncut. Inviting Lady death to the table in order to create a life that feels more true to who you are becoming. Pleasure as intelligence. Desire as compass. The body as the messenger of the soul. ninapowell.substack.com

Aug 24

Compromise Was How I Tried to Keep the Love

Show Notes Musings on Compromise Recorded walking along the beach, Nina unpacks something she’s been contemplating hard: that compromise isn’t the relationship virtue we’ve been sold — it’s a form of settling that reduces your aliveness. Using her own nine-year story of moving back to New Zealand — choosing the country while her partner chose the town (Wanaka, over the beach and her family) — she traces what it actually costs to live somewhere, and with someone, that doesn’t support your most alive self. In this episode: * Why Nina believes compromise is “settling” and reduces your life force — and what she thinks should replace it: finding a real “hell yes” for both people * The real story behind her move back to New Zealand — choosing the country, and the compromise of settling in Wanaka instead of the beach and her family in the North Island * Living out of alignment with her Ayurvedic Vata nature — dry, cold, arid Wanaka vs. her need for warmth, humidity, and hot springs to feel alive * What she did to “heal her internal resistance to being me” — years of healing sessions, breakdowns, and a four-year nervous system practitioner training * The pattern she noticed: depression every time she left the Coromandel coast and returned to Wanaka * Redefining compromise vs. true “hell yes” design — radically designing a relationship or life around mutual aliveness instead of settling * What compromise did to the relationship — non-thriving, depression, and what she calls the death of aliveness * The viral clip of a famous soul singer laughing at the idea of compromising for a man — and why Nina says “she’s so f*****g right” * Why holding onto love, safety, or belonging is often the real reason we compromise * No regrets, but real grief — including not having the children she thought she’d have — and what’s opening up now on the other side of it Transcript Musings on Compromise You may hear the sea in the background rolling around behind me as I walk along the beach and contemplate how I am never going to compromise ever again, and how compromise is actually a form of settling and reducing your aliveness, your life force. When I moved to New Zealand, back to New Zealand from the UK about nine years ago, I came over with my partner that I’d met in England. And I, for the first time in my life, felt like I had chosen as well as being chosen. It was this most intense, beautiful love, like the greatest love story of my life, really, really beautiful. So we came out to New Zealand, and before we decided to move, we bought a bus and we travelled around New Zealand and we explored together. And he was like, okay, yeah, let’s do it, let’s move to New Zealand. And I was like, wow, okay, oh my God, do I really want to move back? And then we did it. It felt like the right time, a new cycle of life was beginning. I’d not long left my corporate job and I could feel I was starting to hold workshops around somatic sexology and pleasure and woman and all these things. That was building quite rapidly actually in the UK, quite a lot of magic, but it felt like if we don’t go now, a whole new cycle will begin. So it’s sort of now or not till the next cycle. He wanted to live in a little town called Wanaka, which is the South Island of New Zealand, and has quite a lot of rock climbing nearby, and that for him is what brings him most alive, or at least at that time in his life, and had been for many years. So for him it was, I suppose, a compromise too — he maybe wanted to come to New Zealand because I wanted to. And so he was like, okay, if we’re going to do it, then I want to live in Wanaka. For me, I always imagined moving back to New Zealand was Nina living at the beach. And also my family — a big part of coming back to New Zealand was to be near my family. And they are in the North Island of New Zealand, which is literally like another country. It’s actually like getting up to where they are is a pretty big mission from Wanaka. An hour drive to an airport in the south, a two and a half hour flight, which is actually a flight to Europe from London, and then a four hour drive from the airport to where they are. And that’s also quite tricky — car hire and getting a ride with somebody, all that kind of stuff. Anyway, so it’s quite a big thing. So I thought, no. So the story always was in my mind, I chose New Zealand and he chose Wanaka, so we compromised. And I thought, I can do this. But I literally always had a big internal struggle living in Wanaka. I never felt like I was at home. The environment, the climate, no trees, it’s all this sort of arid mountain landscape. I always felt this heartbreak looking at the mountains with all the trees that had been burnt down and turned to farmland, the ones that were there. And I just really struggled there. I’m a Vata body type in Ayurveda, so I have dry skin and sort of a tighter frame, I can get quite tight. For me to feel most alive is hanging out in hot springs and being somewhere warm and humid. Even my hair likes the warm humidity, my curly hair. So I did what I could to heal my internal resistance to being me. I actually had quite a few healing sessions and quite a few breakdowns emotionally, to at least not be driving around with this thing in my head saying I don’t belong, I don’t belong, I don’t belong, I don’t belong. Which was just so full on. So I settled in so many ways and I was able to rest into my being there in ways beyond I could ever imagine. I ended up doing a big nervous system training while I was living there — a four year practitioner training — and I realised a lot of my desire to run was more about my nervous system than the actual environment, because I finally landed. But each time I would go back to the Coromandel and the beach and come back, I would be depressed for weeks. It was always like, oh God, I’m back. And then I would sort of readjust. I have realized through this experience, and through really contemplating what compromise means, that I don’t think we should ever compromise. Now, it’s something totally different when you find a way for you both to be most alive. That’s not compromise. That’s inquiry and it’s like juiciness. It’s like, how can we find a hell yes for both of us? Like a real true hell yes for both of us. And we might’ve been able to do that with this lifestyle. It might’ve been that we bought a house at the beach somewhere in the Coromandel and I spent half the year here and then half the year with him down there, or whatever. Like we might’ve actually found some kind of amazing hell yes — he could have come up for visits or something if he really didn’t want to be in the north. We could have totally radically designed a relationship that had like total f*****g hell yes. But what if he actually didn’t really want to come to New Zealand? Because I think that was actually way bigger compromise than he should have done for himself too. He wasn’t happy when we moved here. It took a long time and I don’t know if he ever really thrived in the time of Wanaka. Yes, he had amazing adventures, but I don’t think it was — there was always so much depression and non-thriving, and that f****d up our relationship big time. So that’s the result of compromise. What it does to us, to not be in our aliveness, it just kills everything. You feel dead inside. You have to work so hard to be all right inside of a compromised situation. I had to do so much to just be sensual in that feminine part of me that I’d awakened, while living in a dry and cold environment where it seized me up. It was like — yes, we can do it, but who do we become when we’re in an environment that supports the most wildest, juiciest, freedom part of our expression? Yes, we can do the work and be in places that challenge us and learn how to work with that as a spiritual path. But what happens if we just live in an environment that supports us, and then challenges are always still going to come up. What if we are so deeply resourced and spend most of our time just being, being supported by everything around us, so we don’t have to work? Imagine what capacity you would have in your being for creativity and for a greater expression of who you are, if you’re in an environment that naturally brings you alive. And that, my darlings, is my view on compromise. And I’m going to put a little clip that I found online about — gosh, her name is eluding me right now — but a very famous soul singer. And there’s this brilliant clip of her that has been going around social media. And she’s asked if she would ever compromise for a man. And her response is hilarious. Compromise, compromise. And she’s just cackling away at the thought of it. I was like, she’s so f*****g right. Because when we’re compromising, what we’re doing is trying to hold on to love, safety, or belonging. So I didn’t want to lose the love, so I compromised. Because it was this great love story I’d never had before, and I’d spent so long before that fearful that I’d be alone forever. So I didn’t want to lose it. I was holding on tight. So, yeah, there we go. Let’s live a life of our deepest, wildest aliveness and trust our desires that are leading us to aliveness and the greatest expansion of our being. And no, I’m not someone who holds regrets. I don’t regret that I did that or that I lost time in that place. I’ve definitely got pain that I’ve had to process through this experience of this relationship now ending, and not having the babies I thought I was going to have because he didn’t want to really go for it. All these things. So lots and lots of things. But wow, what a beautiful experience of aliveness that is now coming in through getting to follow what I truly desire. And I wish that for you too. Get full access to Savage at ninapowell.substa
Aug 21

Orienting to Beauty to Come Into the Body

One of the hardest things about being in an in-between phase of life is that feeling of groundlessness — not knowing what you want, not knowing what you don’t want, everything up for question. In this episode, Nina explores why the way through isn’t the mind, it’s the body — and introduces the practice that’s been changing her own life lately: orienting to beauty. In this episode: * Why the in-between phase — midlife, transition, the space between endings and beginnings — can’t be avoided, and why surrendering to it (not solving it) is the medicine * The difference between working with the mind (”monkey minds,” 60,000 thoughts a day) and working with the body * Orienting to beauty as a nervous system practice — and the new science of awe as medicine for chronic pain * A simple beauty practice you can try today: soften your eyes, let go of naming and categorising, and see what happens in your body * Pleasure, arousal, and the difference between outside-in stimulation and inside-out life force * Fragments of self, completion work, and what Nina learned training as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner * Reclaiming beauty from commercialisation — beauty as nature in its prime, not not-enoughness * Radiance, dancing all night in Auckland, and betrayal as a portal * The river under the river — finding the red thread of your life again Get full access to Savage at ninapowell.substack.com/subscribe
Jul 28

Sometimes the best gifts come in s****y packages

Sometimes the universe — actually, often — seems to provide the best things in the shittiest packages. It says: if you don’t get the f**k on with living your life in the most expansive way possible, I will deliver you a message you cannot ignore. An opportunity then arises. Are you going to turn this into gold, or are you going to let it destroy you? There are always two options with these s****y packages, and it’s really interesting to notice who does what with what, or when. I see the betrayal ending of my last relationship as one of those gold gifts now. But I certainly didn’t see it that way initially. It came in a s****y package, and it made me wake the f**k up and get on with my life — stop settling, stop burying my deepest heart longings. I was settling in ways that had got sneaky. There was a death-by-a-thousand-cuts happening, and I couldn’t see it. For whatever reason, inside that relationship, we weren’t brave enough, weren’t wild enough, to call the rebirth in. Maybe the end was always right. Who knows. So there are these things that get delivered in the shittiest packages, and you get to be the one who turns it into gold. I’m not saying every traumatic thing that happens to you is a gift. But I am saying every s****y thing that happens to you, you can extract the gold from it. I’ve noticed that sometimes the universe delivers because, truthfully, we need things sped up a bit. We’re wasting time, right — we’re going to die one day. So the universe delivers this s****y thing so we can get the hell on with all the things we’re ignoring, or dimming our light on, making how we’re living “enough” when actually there’s so much more within us. A story about theft, virality, and the lie of staying calm There’s a woman I follow online who does marketing. A few days ago, someone stole her intellectual property — watched one of her workshops, took all of the language, all of the system, created their own workshop and sold it as their own IP. She bravely shared it. She shared her anger, her sadness, all the things you should feel when something like that happens. And then she got destroyed in the comments by certain people — her post got shared around specifically so people could tear her apart on other people’s Facebook walls. She was judged for caring about the theft and for her emotions. She got taken down in a way she’d never experienced. And at the same time, she went completely viral — 200,000-odd views. So the people trying to take her down actually ended up bringing her clients. So many people want this workshop now. It’s given her a wake-up around protecting her intellectual property, and valuing it too. Two things stand out to me here. One is something we need to keep saying, again and again — this piece around women and emotions. We’ve been sold this complete lie that a healed nervous system means being calm all the time. It’s really not. Nervous system work is so you can embrace all of who you are, live fully alive. If you were calm all the time, you’d be flatlining. Life would be so f*****g boring if you were just the same, calm and regulated, all the time. We’re meant to live with fiery passion and aliveness, able to feel our emotions without collapsing or freezing. That’s the real flex. Our emotions are fuel for alchemising into more life energy and power. When something happens that triggers you, it brings up the well within you of so much history, and you start to be able to clear it — from your body, your energy channels, your muscles, your bones, your nervous system. Life is meant to be felt. When you meet it in a somatic way — feeling the sensation, noticing the impulse, describing the feeling with metaphor, really, really listening — it moves through you. And then you feel more like yourself. This is how you reclaim lost fragments of your being and your power, from this lifetime and all the others before. The conditioning around “calm the f**k down” for women has seeped into our whole society’s consciousness. I think part of us always knows we don’t believe it. But maybe we feel safer around calm humans who don’t show any emotion. So that’s our edge too — to be able to sit with somebody in their emotion, and not lose ourselves. There are people who don’t know how to be in their own emotions and vomit them all over everyone else, completely un-contained — that’s destructive. I’m not saying if you have an angry partner you need to feel safe while their anger is taking over the room. There’s something about when anger gets transformed into wisdom, versus when you’re really, really in it. My own dysregulation, and what it taught me This post has bonus content for paid subscribers. Upgrade to get full access. When my relationship split up, I got so anxious I couldn’t sleep. I started to wonder if I was an imposter, doing this work with others — here I was, someone who’d done transformational nervous-system-based work for eleven years, and I was completely and utterly dysregulated. I let it seep in that my dysregulation was bad and wrong, instead of it just being normal, given the situation. The year that followed, I got really used to processing huge amounts of charge through my system. I got so much life energy through that process, more power. It was the most blissful year — ridiculous. The most grief and anger of my life, and the most expansive bliss, because I had to do something with all those emotions. I had to feel them. And when I felt them, in this somatic way — playing with it, feeling it, embracing it — I would grow ten feet tall in my energy field. Become this beast of energy, so much power. Then a day later I’d be standing in my kitchen making a cup of tea, and this bliss would start coming into my body. I’d make myself pause and breathe my way into it. I could’ve ignored it and moved on with my day, but when I really started to notice it, I was like, pause here, Nina. This is the other end of the scale. This is what happens when you alchemise emotions. It got very spiritual — sometimes I’d see golden light pouring in through my crown, my body streaming golden energy through its channels. Crazy wild. Honestly, if I didn’t have a friend going through the same thing, I might not have made the connection between my emotional processing and my bliss. So the thing is, sometimes the rug gets pulled out to wake you the hell up. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a fast way. The universe is like, hey, I’ll deliver you something to get the f**k on with it, get on with your life. You’ve probably been ignoring other messages — they were likely packaged more nicely, and you didn’t notice, or were able to ignore them. And then it’s like, nope, you can’t ignore this one. I want to send you this message today: everything in your life can be transformed into gold. All of the shittiest things are a way for you to reclaim fragments of your being — things you’ve been relegating to the sidelines, burying, fragmented off. There are many examples in my own life. My sexual trauma healing journey brought me into a really deeply spiritual, high-sensation experience of pleasure in my body. Then it became work I could offer to other women, with full knowing of that path — you have to know it to be able to do it in the deepest way. Heartbreak — oh my God, the amount of worthiness I’ve reclaimed through that experience. My standards for what I do and don’t want have woken up, and not only that, I’ve been met there by an incredible man. I completely transformed heartbreak into worthiness. Do I still want to run away sometimes, fear of rejection? Sure. But my capacity has expanded. So yeah, I really feel that with this woman online — she’s turned a s****y experience into gold, and the universe supported her. She has this opportunity now with her work. Everyone wants this workshop, everyone wants to watch it now — it must be so amazing for other people to be stealing it. It’s got her so much more publicity. Almost a perfect storm — the same as when people release a sex tape on purpose. I must say, I’m not looking forward to having that kind of experience — same as I wasn’t looking forward to heartbreak. It does feel like it will destroy you, these things. But I guess the truth is, it’s only a destruction of the ego. A perfect destruction, where you get to put yourself back together better than ever. This is where the term post-traumatic growth comes from — you become more yourself than ever before when you reclaim the lost fragments of your soul and your power, doing the work after the rupture. If you choose to work with the material. Otherwise, some people will stay stuck, in the trauma of it. Doing the inner alchemy shortens the time between incident and your expansion. Bye for now. I love you. Nina Get full access to Savage at ninapowell.substack.com/subscribe
Jul 24

The Love Blessing I Almost Ran From

Oh my God, I have had the most outrageously divine, exquisite, sensationally awakening love affair the last nine months with a man who is 14 years younger than me and absolutely gorgeous, with a hunger to match my own. The fact that he was 14 years younger was such a big deal for me in the beginning. The first thing I would say to anyone about this new man in my life was his age. “And he’s 14 years younger” — I was so uncomfortable, is this weird, everybody should know this fact about him. Then one day my mum said to me, “Nina, you don’t need to introduce him like that.” And I was like, oh my god, I am making this weird excuse, this story that is completely unnecessary — no one gives a shit, apart from people who might be excited by it. Weirdly, in a lot of photos we look very similar in age. Other times he’ll go to the supermarket or a pub and get ID’d — he’s 32 and getting ID’d. He’s got that baby face. I think it’s funny. But the age really doesn’t matter, other than the blessing of being with a younger man in terms of having your hunger matched. When you’re going through this midlife awakening, you’re longing for the touch, for hours of wildly primal lovemaking, swept off your feet, devoured through and through. What a blessing. Every time I came up to bed, if he was already there, lying with his arms above his head, his beautiful Viking self on full display, I would think, holy moly, what the hell happened to me? How did I get so lucky? And he felt the same way. I said “felt” — because the truth is, he’s back in Sweden now. I would adore it if he wasn’t. But he is, and we’ll just have to see what happens with this love affair. It’s wild, all the ways we can run away from the biggest blessing, the biggest gift. I could have run away so easily — his age, the fact that he was always going to leave the country (one year, traveling around New Zealand, he was always going to be leaving) — so many reasons to say no to a gift. Heartbreak. I don’t want that again. But there was something so freeing, so precious, in knowing the whole time that it had a finiteness — a date when it would be over. That made the celebration, the appreciation of the whole experience, so alive. Every moment could be the last, and it made it very, very alive. And absolutely heartbreaking the day he left. We were both in a state. We’d become so intimate — emotionally, physically, in every way. I still can’t quite believe something so profound could happen just like that. “The art of surrender” has been my motto this last year, because I had to keep surrendering, again and again — to carry on regardless of being petrified he would reject me because of my age, or whatever else. When your last relationship ends in betrayal, that fear sits right there: I just couldn’t survive another rejection, is what I felt. I would turn into a million pieces on the floor and never be put back together if that happened again. I had to face my fear, or run away reject the gift in front of me - shadow work in action. Though betrayal isn’t really about rejection — it’s about the person betraying themselves first. You can’t betray someone and still feel like a powerful, in integrity human. I lost all respect for my ex after that. I know a lot of people do it, but it changes things. It really does. So I had to keep surrendering, again and again, to this total unknown. We met at a friend’s house — completely spontaneous. So many moving parts fell into place: him meeting this guy in a club in Auckland who happened to be the cousin of my friend, him ending up back at my friends house doing WOOFing. He was asleep when I arrived. We were having a bit of a party they woke him up at midnight. What if he hadn’t gotten up? What if he’d said, “nah, screw it, I’m sleeping through”? I would have just gone home the next day. Instead we met, we had this connection, this wild night — and it gave me such huge confirmation of my own bigness, my wildness, that it’s appreciated, that it’s the biggest gift. He loves my crazy. I feel exciting to him. And he’s the calm, peaceful one. I never knew a relationship could be this peaceful, this frictionless. It’s been such a f*****g gift, but it’s taken so much surrender — introducing him to my friends, a little judginess from a couple of guys his age or older (probably jealousy that they didn’t get invited into my bed instead — what’s he got that I haven’t?). We have such deep connection. Joyful, lustful, divine. We never knew when we’d see each other next, because he was traveling and working, traveling and working. It was always an unknown, and then something would magically fall into place and we’d have a whole other weekend together — incredible, and then wild voice notes in between, passionate, alive, true, getting to know each other through messages and calls. And then surrendering again, and again, and again. So here I am, in the next phase of the unknown and surrender. As if I needed more unknowns in my life — I’d already ended a relationship, sold the house, left the town I’d lived in for nine years. I only have what fitted in my car. Everything else in storage. Work-wise, everything’s in creation, in flux, in-between. And now I’ve added another unknown to the pile: wise Nina has fallen in love with a man who’s leaving the country. Well. It is what it is. There’s nothing I can do about it. It was such a blessing, and I wouldn’t take it away, even knowing the layers of pain — even if him leaving felt like part of my soul had been torn apart. I’d gotten so used to being with him every day, hours and hours in bed, talking, laughing, making love. Connected. Deeply nourishing — especially after barely being touched for a year following the end of my last relationship. It was heaven. Total heaven. So yeah, I’m glad I said yes. And now it’s just another wild card of unknowns. Let’s see what happens next. On one hand, it could be a forever relationship — which probably sounds nuts to anyone else but us. On the other hand, this could be it. It will all come down to timing. Will the timing fall into place for us to reunite? Will we be brave enough to make that happen, and what would it even look like? Or was it simply this amazing blessing we’ll always remember — a love affair we both grew through and carry forward into the next phase of our lives? Who knows. I’ll keep you posted. It’s juicy, that’s for sure. Get full access to Savage at ninapowell.substack.com/subscribe
Jul 24

Groundlessness, so what?!

Holy f**k, so yesterday I started to feel so f*****g insecure about this in-between phase. I started to become aware that in a few months time, This beautiful cabin situation I have right now. This, you know, temporary three months experience of feeling settled will be over. And what the f**k am I going to do then? My mind future projecting. Going forward into this unknown future, which could look like who knows what! Literally, what I do know is that life always changes in an instant. You go from being single to boom, you meet someone, right? It's not like you meet just a fragment of their being and then finally all the fragments turn up. It always changes in an instant. You go from there being no house in your price range that you really, really love available to buy and then boom, in an instant something shows up. Life always changes in an instant. So the future is completely unknown, but maybe in a good way because anything could change in an instant. I don't know what it was. I don't know if it's because I'm on day four of my menstrual cycle and low energy. Just totally overdid it on the two days of my bleed because of a project I was helping my dad with and I didn't want to let him down. I was literally pouring concrete and building a cabin with him. It was amazing, it was exhilarating, it was great in lots of ways, and it whacked me, my energy. And I don't know, what is it, where has this feeling come from? You know, as soon as you're feeling a bit shit, a bit low, my mind decides, oh, that's a good time to evaluate your life. And of course, the evaluation is a disaster. When I'm not feeling very good, of course, my evaluation is going to be through a pretty damn poor lens. I started to feel desperately like nesting. Wanting my nest. I wanted something, anything, anything at all. From, I was thinking about buying a campervan, a four-wheel drive one so I can go anywhere, that's the dream. I was thinking about buying a caravan to tow with my car, but it has to be super small because my car is a hybrid little Kia Niro, which I love. I don't feel like selling it right now. Or, you know, even a trailer with a tent on the back started to feel like some kind of secure, like one of those pop-up trailer tents. Oh my God, anything that's mine. I even feel sad saying that out loud. Right now, this wild unknown is bringing up a lot. That sense of insecurity. It's uncomfortable. I was with it this morning and then of course if I'm feeling insecure, guaranteed my mum is also having a bad day and gets into her own fear for me and my life. I'm around my parents at the moment, their house is literally a minute walk from mine. Hello to healing the wounds of the past. It's like she speaks out loud the thing that I'm feeling, the deepest fear, and then it's even worse. So yeah, this, it's uncomfortable, it's uncomfortable. And I also don't want to fix the problem. As in, I don't think the external situation is going to completely fix the problem. I mean, it might make me feel better in terms of an out-breath, right? It might be like, ah, I've got my home, whatever, yay. But then, you know what I know, and I do actually know this, is that the inner sense of safety and security actually comes from within. And the idea that chasing an external thing to bring that or to create that isn't actually going to solve the deeper problem. I know that because right now I have the most money in the bank right than I've ever had in my life. Ever. Ever. I mean, it's crazy. Kind of can't quite believe it. The result of property, sale, separation and inheritance all at once. And so my story I've carried with me forever is as soon as I've got more money, I'll feel more secure. So now I actually have all the money. I really don't need to worry about money right now. There is no excuse to worry about it. I still worry about it. I just worry about it in a different way. I worry that I'm going to lose it all. I worry that this is my only chance to have it. Having the money did’t completely solve that sense of not feeling safe and secure. So I know that this place of this uncomfortableness is an opportunity to transmute this idea of lack and that everything isn't okay. And get even more rooted into loving and accepting right where I am right now. The more I can drop, let go of all the ideas about the things that would make it alright. All the normal security things, like a home, a salaried job, a partner, you know, the support of somebody else who can hold up one of the ends of the seesaw. It is an opportunity right now. What I'm experiencing is, it's like a mirror, a light, shining into all the dark caverns, all the places in which I have been making my sense of self dependent on certain external factors that ultimately can always have the rug ripped out for you. You never know when things are going to change. All the spiritual teachings say it's fearing groundlessness is the human condition. They speak the power in no longer fearing it. If we can just learn how to breathe. So here I am doom scrolling, trying to solve it. I'll just buy a house. Anywhere. It doesn't matter where. Stop trying to find the perfect place. Let go of your dream and anywhere will do. Just to escape the feeling I have. This is the wake up to a place where my fear lives. I was having dinner with a friend last night. A couple of awesome friends. Amazing ladies that I grew up with. We've known each other since we were kids. I was sharing about some of my day in terms of this insecurity, and she said something which was just so funny to me, she was like, so? So what? She's said, “what is the problem?” It made me laugh because it’s all about perception and the wounds and shadows we carry. So much of that is conditioning from my mother. She wants me to be more and do more. Making where I am now into a story that I am not living my potential. I love the idea of untapped potential. Knowing that there's more. When I started to explore sexuality, not long after meditation and yoga, the next thing for me was around sexuality and really learning to play my body. I studied something called Sexological Bodywork, which is a whole other story. I actually ended up selling my engagement ring to pay for it. I was in one of those what the hell am I doing with my life phases. I've been in these transition points before! I may have pivoted many times in my life. So there's ways that we can play our body and we can unlock this potential or this orgasmic potential, this ability to surrender in our bodies and experience the most amazing pleasure. And so I do love this idea of this potential, right? But there's a point where potential becomes toxic, where somebody is looking at you and instead of loving where you are right now and just being like, oh my god, you're so powerful, look at you go, look at how you're navigating this and look at how alive you are, look at all the amazing things that are in your life right now or just even just seeing you and just being like, oh my god, I love how you can just collapse on the floor and Feel your grief, whatever it is. Instead, to be looking at somebody with this idea of how much more they could be. Now, that is something different in terms of potential. It’s straight away saying that where you are now is not enough. Maybe not for everyone, but for those of us with a core wound of unworthiness, it's right in there, right? So how do we dance that line between meeting life where it's at and also expanding into more of what's possible all at the same time? I think the key is to really, really make where we are now enough. It makes me think of a client session recently where I was asking her what it is that she's calling in next. What's some of the dreams and visions? As we were talking, she shared that basically she's in this shedding phase, a winter phase of life. I was like, well, is that it? Her desire right now, is it to surrender into the dissolution and the shedding? That was a big yes to her. There are times when what is actually required is less, and shedding off of things as opposed to the rebirth. I think we're very obsessed with growth in our society and the idea of more. And of course, that's also a natural part of us, like a tree or, it's either growing or dying, right? It's either growing or shedding and shrinking. And we do know that. And I just think there's something about growth might naturally happen when we stop trying to make something different than what it is now. A sex analogy just came in then. Because it made me think about being with a partner and when they say to you, come for me. And straight away, I feel, my whole body shuts off. And the orgasm that was building has just completely and utterly disappeared. I feel all this pressure. If they just were just really, really loving and appreciating and completely being with me in that moment, the orgasm would come of its own accord. I have a funny feeling it's like that with everything in our life. That the key, the magic key to our growth, to our growth being unlocked, to the next expression of, your work coming through or for the right house to turn up or whatever, is to love where you are now and stop trying to force anything. Straight away what comes to mind is, people always say they met their partner when they stopped looking. We have to trust that loving where we're at is the key to all the things we want rather than always focusing on the growth and trying to force our way there. So yeah, there's something there. Get full access to Savage at ninapowell.substack.com/subscribe
Jul 24

The problem with us humans is that we always want to know our destination

The problem with us humans is that we always want to know our destination. And we find it very, very hard to go putting one foot in front of the other without knowing exactly where we’re supposed to end up. And why that’s a problem is because you actually can’t. You don’t know all the steps until you’re taking them, right? So it’s absolutely awesome to have an end dream in mind, but to try and get everything controlled and locked up neat and tight before taking a first step is where we lose energy and we don’t actually let magic unfold. I am living inside of that right now. Ended an 11 year relationship, sold my house, and then I was in the town that I had been living in, house was sold. I thought, well, before I leave town, I’m just going to get my energy back. I was exhausted after packing up. The whole house, putting it all into storage, going through the process of separation. I mean, freaking, oh my God, exhausted. So I was like, okay, I’ll spend a few days to recoup my energy. I’m going to stay with some friends before leaving town and just enjoy being down here before leaving. And at first that was all good. And then what I started to notice is that I didn’t really want to leave town because I didn’t know how everything would unfold over the next couple of months. All of my stuff is in storage. I know ultimately that I’m going to live in the Coromandel area of New Zealand, which is moving from the South Island to the North. And I know that I need somewhere to land before I buy a house. I need to be somewhere. So those are my desires, right? So if I’m tuning into what I want... And I know what I want in that time. I don’t just want any old place. I need to be somewhere where I feel this beautiful creative energy and I can start to get back into who the hell I am and be deep in my spiritual self and let my next evolution of my work unfold as well because that’s super important to me. And it’s also in a transition point. Life has a lot of transition points for me right now, a lot of endings, which is also the bardo of the in-between and then the new beginnings. But right now there’s a lot of bardo in-between and learning to rest in the in-between and surrender to the unknown has been a beautiful and scary and challenging process for me of the past year. And so much f*****g magic, which is why I want to talk about it. So I finally was like, okay, I’m ready to leave town. I booked the ferry and then I got sick. Then I got the flu for four days and ended up not being able to change the ferry because it was just all booked out. So I had to drive, which meant I had to just leave Wanaka. I had to just leave the comfort zone. Leaving the comfort and the security of my friend’s house where she had given me my own bedroom and was super welcoming and just like stay, stay, stay. You know, no pressure from her to leave and I had to sail off into the unknown and I just had so much fear coming up, so much fear and worries, so much overthinking and Trying desperately to feel secure as to know where I’m going. Wanting an amazing house already to buy. I just wanted to buy right now so I could just move it. Or somewhere to rent but not really wanting to spend a lot of money on rent in between. I don’t want to spend all my house money to buy a house on renting. So a house sit, but then I was like, wow, I’ve got a dog, no one’s going to let me house sit. So many things. I finally just got more clarity around the fact that it was my fears and worries getting in the way and actually everything is going to turn out beautifully as long as I just f*****g got on with it. So I did. I launched myself out to the unknown. Me, my dog, in my car. My car ram jammed with everything that I might need for the next six months or hopefully what I can make do with for the next six months before I own a house and can get all my belongings delivered out of storage. So yeah, I launched into the unknown and then it’s real interesting. So what happened first is I had a call with my sister. I was talking to her about the fact I’m about to leave Wanaka, and also that my new beautiful partner that is going to come with me, He has got one six weeks left in New Zealand. I really want to spend it with him before he takes off back to Sweden. Another surrender story coming your way at a later date. I shared with her that he’s coming with me and we need somewhere to stay. A place that feels good. And sure, I can go to my mum and dad’s house, but that just doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel sexy. It doesn’t feel free. Just not right. Like every part of my body is like, oh no, that’s just not right. It’s not the space to be in. It’s not an empowering space for me and him. And yeah, it’s just too crammed with my mum and dad. Even though they have a little cabin off to the side of their house, it’s not self-contained. It’s just a bedroom. So yeah, everything in me was just screaming no to that. But I also don’t want to push him away, which is my other option. Pushing him away and saying, you go do you, I’ll do me. I don’t have a f*****g clue. I haven’t got my shit together. I can’t do this together. This is too hard. Just looking after me is hard enough. All of these things screaming out at me. Then through this conversation with my sister she offered up this option. So I grew up in a community in New Zealand. And on this big bit of land, there’s a cabin down by the river. It’s called the Almond Hut. It’s super beautiful. And there’s probably nobody there because it’s going into winter or autumn, autumn-winter time. I was like, that’s amazing. What a f*****g good idea. So my plan was to start inquiring about that. Then another day later, through surrendering to that, another idea came to my mind. I have an even better option. And speaking with my mum this morning, the couple whose names popped into my mind yesterday, they are going away for six months, she tells me. So, yeah, our intuition, this instinctual and intuitive hits we get towards things let one thing unfold at a time. Let’s see what happens. But it looks like everything is falling into place, in a better than you could ever imagine way. And all it took was me to launch myself off into the unknown. It’s scary. There’s no doubt about it. When things end, I’m the sort of person who wants to hold on and stay longer than I should with a relationship. I like the security. I like the familiar. It’s just who I am to be dependable in that way, to really work things out, which I do feel sad that my ex wasn’t that person. But at the same time, I now really feel like my life is going to be better than ever before. So I can both grieve the old and lean into the new without having a sense of regret, thinking if only it had been different. This is the way it was. This is the way it is. This is what happened. This is what’s happening now. And I do feel this real sense of my life is going to be better than ever before. I’m going to keep tracking and talking and sharing about this process, about being in the in-between and surrendering into the unknown and all that it takes in order to do that. Nina Riding the Wild Unknown on 14th April 2026, Nina the day she left her town of 9-years and flew off into the next phase of the unknown Get full access to Savage at ninapowell.substack.com/subscribe
Jul 24

You are exactly where you are meant to be

You are exactly where you need to be. Exactly. There's nothing at all that needs to be different right now. You don't need to be further ahead. You don't need to know what you're doing next. You don't need to have your life anymore together now. In fact, it's quite possible that That anywhere that you're still holding on and gripping on to your lack-based, unworthy thinking is going to come up right now. Your fear of needing to be further ahead. Your, oh my god, I'm a failure. Wherever that is coming up right now, it is coming up for exactly the right reason. The reason being that you can transmute it. It's happening for you, not to you. The ways in which your mother, or whoever the hell in your life that triggers you into fear and lack, and shouldn't you be doing better, further, have your life together-ness. All of that is perfect right now. In fact, let it sting you to the core so that you can consume it like f*****g... God, I feel like it's like this Dakini that eats the fear for breakfast. Let it come, let it tear you apart, let it bring you to your knees so that you can see the truth of who and what you are and feel your power like never before. You are exactly where you are, exactly where you need to be. And the more, the more that you can send your root down into that earth and that belief right now, that is the lesson for this moment. To let life rip the ground out from underneath you and know that you are exactly where you're meant to be, riding that wild unknown, riding it bitches. Everything is coming up to tear you apart so that you can Put yourself back together like never before. The cracks are where the light comes in. The cracks are where the gold are. You are exactly where you need to be. You are right here, right now. Share with me all the ways in which you are judging yourself. This is the path of worth, wild worth, wild wisdom, wild love. I love you, Nina. Get full access to Savage at ninapowell.substack.com/subscribe

7 Episodes

You are invited to join me in Riding the Wild Unknown. Raw and uncut. Inviting Lady death to the table in order to create a life that feels more true to who you are becoming. Pleasure as intelligence. Desire as compass. The body as the messenger of the soul. ninapowell.substack.com

Creator

Nina Powell
Years Active

2026
Episodes

7
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© Nina Powell
Show Website

Riding The Wild Unknown