GRACEPILLED with Hanna Williams

READ THE ZINE ONLINE HERE:www.hannawilliams.com/zine Connect with me, Hanna, your host: Instagram: @grace.pilledhannawilliams.com (human design library, merch, etc)patreon.com/gracepilled(join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101 for free!)In this deeply personal episode of GRACEPILLED, I read aloud from Dementia, Ego Work, and Grief, a zine I wrote between 2019–2021 while navigating my mother's alcohol-induced dementia, our complicated relationship, and the ongoing challenges of caring for an aging parent.Through a collection of essays, journal entries, and reflections, I explore the strange experience of grieving someone who is still alive, particularly when that person has also been a source of tremendous suffering. I reflect on the relationship between grief and attachment, the effects of childhood trauma and gaslighting, intergenerational patterns of suffering, and the difficult process of establishing boundaries without abandoning compassion.At the heart of the writing is a question about spiritual practice: How do we learn to accept what we cannot fix? Drawing from my experiences with yoga, ego work, and surrender, I explore the movement from hypervigilance and codependency toward greater self-knowledge, personal agency, and the capacity to meet reality as it is rather than as we wish it would be.Reading the zine aloud years after writing it, I offer spontaneous commentary, reflect on how my understanding has changed, and find myself unexpectedly moved to tears on several occasions. This episode is an intimate exploration of dementia, anticipatory grief, complicated family relationships, spiritual growth, and the sometimes painful work of learning to let go.

Connect with me, Hanna, your host: Instagram: @grace.pilledhannawilliams.com (human design library, merch, etc)patreon.com/gracepilled(join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101 for free!)Connect with Meredith, our guest: Instagram: @gravesmeredithIn this episode, Meredith Graves returns to Gracepilled for an exploratory conversation about data science for magicians, spiritual practitioners, and anyone interested in understanding the mysterious patterns shaping their lives.What happens when we begin to approach our lived experience as data? Rather than immediately interpreting every coincidence as a sign, every difficulty as a punishment, or every unexpected desire as a divine instruction, what if we learned to observe our experiences with curiosity, discernment, and a willingness to experiment?Drawing from our respective backgrounds in classical Shakta Tantra and Western esotericism, Meredith and I explore the relationship between spiritual practice and the scientific method. We discuss how spiritual traditions themselves can be understood as accumulated bodies of experiential data, how our personal biases influence what we notice, and why asking "What could this mean?" might be far more useful than asking "What does this mean?"Along the way, we talk about identifying recurring patterns, auditing our actual values, learning to trust our strange obsessions, and distinguishing meaningful information from the endless stream of stimuli we encounter every day. We also explore how gathering data over time can help us become less reactive, less attached to our interpretations, and more willing to make creative experiments out of our own lives.This isn't a conversation in which either of us claims to have all the answers. It's an experiment in itself, two spiritual practitioners thinking out loud about an idea we've both found tremendously useful: what if your life is an ongoing experiment, and you're allowed to be curious about the results?

JOIN ME FOR GRACE 102 ON OCTOBER 27TH AT 6PM MST[get the zoom link by joining my patreon as a paid member, unsubscribe at any time]Connect with me, Hanna, your host: Instagram: @grace.pilledhannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)patreon.com/gracepilled[join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101!]What is the most worthwhile thing you can do with your entire life? My answer is simple: cultivate a spiritual disposition that can sustain you through everything life brings, from its greatest pleasures to its inevitable difficulties.In this episode, I explore why making spirituality our primary consideration is not just a good idea, but a practical necessity for anyone who wants to live fully in a world defined by constant change. We examine the cultural obsession with youthfulness, productivity, and avoiding death, and how these attitudes can prevent us from developing a healthy relationship with the realities of human embodiment.I also discuss the difference between relying on perishable things, like our bodies, material circumstances, and external supports, and cultivating something that can sustain us regardless of what happens. What does it mean to develop a spiritual disposition rooted in devotion, surrender, and perseverance? How can we learn to metabolize grief, struggle, and uncertainty rather than spending our lives trying to escape them?But this isn't just a conversation about preparing for hardship or making peace with death. It's also about becoming more deeply available to the beauty of being alive. As we take the spiritual process more seriously, we become increasingly capable of finding joy in ordinary moments, deepening our relationships, and appreciating life exactly as it is.Ultimately, this episode is an invitation to fall in love with the entire spiritual process, rather than constantly chasing its imagined rewards. To stop fighting against the present moment, make friends with the reality of change, and cultivate an approach to life that will serve you for the whole show, from the opening scene to the closing curtain.

Connect with me, Hanna, your host: Instagram: @grace.pilledhannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)patreon.com/gracepilled(join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101!)In this episode, I’m talking about Saturn as the force in our lives that teaches us discipline, responsibility, delayed gratification, and ultimately, real satisfaction. Saturn gets a bad reputation because its lessons often arrive through limitation, pressure, hard work, and the things we would really rather avoid, but there’s another way to understand this energy: as the force that helps us build a life we can actually feel good about having lived.I talk about my own Saturn return and the ways it completely reoriented my life, why instant gratification can keep us from discovering what we actually want and need, and why structure and discipline can ultimately create more freedom rather than less. We’ll also get into impulse control, the satisfaction of doing difficult things, the inconvenient things you know you need, and the responsibilities and dreams that will probably keep haunting you until you finally rise to meet them.Toward the end, I also explore Saturn through the lens of karma yoga and selfless service, including a simple question to consider: what would it look like to do the necessary work no one wants to do, for people who cannot repay you, without seeking recognition?Maybe Saturn isn’t here to punish you. Maybe Saturn is trying to help you get your shit together so you can actually live your life.

Connect with my guest, Fiona:instagram.com/fionanodarfionanodar.comConnect with me, Hanna, your host: Art store: distantplanetdesign.etsy.comInstagram: @grace.pilledhannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)patreon.com/gracepilled(join as a free member to get access to a collection of talks!)What if tension isn’t a problem to solve, but an essential part of what makes us feel alive?In this conversation, I’m joined by writer, mediator, and growth companion Fiona Nodar to explore tension as a spiritual, creative, and relational force. We talk about what happens when we stop organizing our lives around comfort and certainty and instead become more willing to meet the mystery, friction, and resistance inherent in being alive.We explore tension as the place where we come into contact with reality: in conflict, creativity, sexuality, relationships, change, and the uncomfortable freedom of having choices. We talk about why avoiding tension doesn’t actually make it disappear, the relationship between tension and transformation, and what it might mean to develop a greater capacity for the unknown rather than constantly trying to resolve it.Our conversation also wanders into love and projection, the humiliation of genuinely pursuing what we desire, free will versus determinism, duality and nonduality, and my perennial spiritual question: Can I have both? Ultimately, we consider the possibility that God may not only be found in moments of peace, unity, and transcendence—but in the charged space between opposing forces, where something new is always trying to emerge.

Connect with me, Hanna, your host: Instagram: @grace.pilledhannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)patreon.com/gracepilled(join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101!)What does it actually take to stay on the spiritual path for the long haul? In this episode, we explore perseverance as one of the most essential, and perhaps least glamorous, ingredients of genuine spiritual transformation.The path is not always filled with profound insights, mystical experiences, or obvious signs that something is working. Much of it is ordinary. You practice, you forget, you come back. You lose the thread and pick it up again. Sometimes nothing seems to be happening at all. And yet, this willingness to continue is precisely what allows the path to deepen over time.Through reflections on devotion, discipline, death, liberation, and the long arc of spiritual practice, this episode explores what it means to keep choosing the path without demanding constant evidence that you are getting somewhere. Perseverance becomes less about forcing yourself forward and more about developing a relationship with practice that can survive boredom, difficulty, disappointment, and the inevitable seasons when your inspiration disappears.Ultimately, the spiritual path may have much less to do with becoming a perfect practitioner and much more to do with becoming someone who simply keeps returning.

Connect with me, Hanna, your host:  Instagram: @grace.pilledhannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)patreon.com/gracepilled (join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101!) What does it mean to take responsibility for your inner state when the world gives you plenty of legitimate reasons to feel terrible? In this episode, I explore the spiritual assumption underneath the question, “How can I be happy when there’s so much suffering in the world?” and why I don’t believe our happiness is meant to be entirely dependent on external circumstances. We get into the difference between actually processing difficult emotions and becoming committed to misery, why unresolved grief, resentment, and conflict are like a room full of crying babies making presence nearly impossible, and why tending to those feelings is part of learning to consciously shift your state. I also talk about the strange idea that our suffering somehow helps other people who are suffering, and make the case that choosing to enjoy your life, do meaningful work, love God, and become a little harder for the world to knock over might actually be a greater contribution to the collective than remaining perpetually disempowered by everything that’s wrong.

Connect with me, Hanna, your host:  Instagram: @grace.pilledhannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)patreon.com/gracepilled (join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101!) In this Q&A episode, I’m answering your questions about fear, shame, rejection, victimhood, chronic illness, creativity, desire, manifestation, and what it actually means to work with the hand life deals you. We talk about becoming the author of your life, how fear can point you toward your highest potential, why you might not know the “lesson” of a difficult experience until years later, and how to let old parts of yourself stay at the table without letting them run the show. I also get into the yoga of wanting things: pursuing what you desire, working to change your circumstances, and participating fully in your life without making your peace dependent on getting the outcome you wanted. We talk about accepting the reality of illness without giving up on improving it, making art as a devotional practice, the slippery slope of manifestation and reality creation, and remembering the difference between the side quests of this life and the main quest. Here is the book list I shared: • My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization by Chellis Glendinning • Tantra Illuminated by Christopher D. Wallis • The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford • Ritual: Power, Healing and Community by Malidoma Patrice Somé • High Magick by Damien Echols • Six Ways by Aidan Wachter • Living from the Heart by Puran Bair • Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation by Bruce Tift • In Praise of the Goddess: The Devimahatmya and Its Meaning by Devadatta Kali • Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith • Still Here by Ram Dass • Crooked Cucumber, the biography of Shunryu Suzuki Basically, this is an episode about how to want things, fear things, lose things, change things, and still keep your eye on the main quest.

Connect with me, Hanna, your host:  Instagram: @grace.pilledhannawilliams.com (bookings, conflict school, etc)patreon.com/gracepilled (join as a free member to listen to GRACE 101!) Kundalini has become one of the most sensationalized—and misunderstood—concepts in modern spirituality. In this episode, I share an essay exploring the classical tantric understanding of Kundalini as it has been taught in my lineage over the last eleven years. Rather than treating Kundalini as a rare energetic event or dramatic spiritual experience, we explore Her as the very power of Grace: the evolutionary force of consciousness that purifies the mind, awakens the heart, and ultimately reveals God. Along the way, we discuss why Kundalini is synonymous with Grace and prana, the difference between chit kundalini and prana kundalini, why intense "kundalini experiences" are not necessarily signs of advanced spiritual development, and why surrender—not striving—is the essence of authentic Kundalini Yoga. We also examine the emotional side of spiritual purification, the role of a teacher, and how the deepest work of awakening often unfolds far more subtly than the internet would have you believe.

SIGN UP FOR CONFLICT SCHOOL: www.hannawilliams.com/conflictschool Connect with Monika Alanna  Instagram: @rooted.relating (coaching/grief counseling)@magicksalt (handmade jewelry, art, writing)www.magicksalt.com Connect with me, Hanna, your host:  Instagram: @grace.pilledhannawilliams.com (bookings, human design, etc)patreon.com/gracepilled (join as a free member to get access to a collection of talks!) What if the hardest conflict you'll ever face isn't with another person—but with yourself? In this conversation, Monika Alanna and I explore the subtle ways we avoid truth in order to avoid conflict. We talk about self-betrayal, people-pleasing, desire, compromise, relationships, nervous system regulation, and why so many of us sacrifice our own authenticity in the pursuit of belonging, love, or peace. Along the way, we ask questions like: What makes someone a good compromise partner? How do you know the difference between compromise and self-sacrifice? Why do the things we love most about someone often become the very things that frustrate us? And what happens when we finally stop trying to avoid conflict altogether? More than anything, this episode is an invitation to rethink conflict. Conflict is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is an inevitable and even transformative part of being alive. The goal isn't to eliminate conflict. The goal is to develop the skills, awareness, and courage to meet it well. Whether you're navigating romantic relationships, friendships, family dynamics, or your own inner world, I hope this conversation leaves you feeling a little more equipped to tell the truth, stay present through discomfort, and choose relationships that make both people more free.