Latest / The Priestess Temple Podcast / Ep 15: Embracing Ego Death: How To Navigate Identity Change
Transcript
- Embodied By Jenna: Hello and welcome to the Priestess Temple Podcast. I am your host and guide, Priestess Paradise Rain, helping you embody your dark feminine essence so you can manifest the body and relationship of your dreams. Whether you have just gone through a breakup or you're simply looking to reinvent yourself, this is the podcast for you. Where I share knowledge on womb wisdom, somatics, and identity work to help you do just that. Without further ado, let's get started. Today, I wanted to talk about how to navigate an ego death to allow an old identity to fall away as you embark on a new journey towards becoming the person you have always been destined to be. I know a lot of us can be feeling this right now with the eclipse season, and especially as we leave summer and enter fall, you know, you start to see the leaves change, the old dead ones. Crumble up and eventually they fall off of the trees as we get ready to prepare for winter. And just like in nature, as human beings, we can have this internal experience with our own identity. as I have been entering this new season of my life. I felt that the old name of the podcast no longer fit me. And I also felt that my previous name given at birth didn't fit me anymore. And so this episode is the first episode of the Priestess Temple podcast, formerly Bad Bitch Embodiment Podcast, as well as me coming out in my new name and identity, Priestess Paradise Rain. There has been a lot of grief and processing and moving through the world in a brand new way that I've never done before. And so I feel like I'm truly an expert on this concept of how to navigate an ego death. And I want to share with you a personal story from my own life about moving through this process and coming out on the other side, and then give you specific actionable tips. For how to navigate your own ego death. So you can embody the identity of the person that you know you are destined to be. Whether you have just gone through a breakup or you're simply trying to reinvent yourself, we need to have a tangible action plan to help us get to the place that we want to go. And so through following the steps that I provide to you at the end of this episode, you will be able to do. Just that. So without further ado, let's get started. I have been podcasting for a few months now, and it has been a truly transformative process. I started working with a podcast mentor in April of 2026, and we worked on the podcast behind the scenes for about three months until I birthed. Bad Bitch Embodiment Podcast out into the world at the beginning of June And I am telling you, y'all, this social media journey has been shadow work at its highest degree. You see yourself every single day on camera, and you start to notice a lot of different things about yourself the good, the bad, and the ugly. You get immediate feedback from people who are watching your videos. And that really helps to guide the course as to how you want to move forward with your content and in your life. I have loved podcasting. It's really helped me come home to myself and to find true conviction and passion in my voice. I had originally started off that podcast as a registered dietician, which has been my profession throughout my whole entire life. And the goal of the podcast was to help women break up with diet culture, fall in love with their bodies, and call in their dream relationship. I started making content based off of those topics. And there were ones that I really liked talking about, and there were ones that I didn't. I felt that I was over talking about the food. Like I moved. On from that space in my life. Because back when I was going to school for that profession, I actually had a severe eating disorder. So I was under eating, I was anorexic, and I was greatly restricting my food. And in that process, people congratulated me on my weight loss, which is why I became a dietitian. Well Fast forward to today, I no longer have an eating disorder. I have a truly healthy relationship with food. And what I've found is that I'm not really that passionate about food. I think I was always hyper fixated on it when I had an eating disorder because it was something that I could control and it was something that was predictable. And now that I'm beyond that phase in my life, the food doesn't really interest me. The thing that really interests me is talking about relationships because at the end of 2025, I went through a really bad breakup that altered the course of my life. I saw that breakup as a mirror that showed me all of the ways in which I was falling short in my relationships. And since then, I have worked tirelessly to uncover. The trauma from my past that has affected my relationships. I worked with mentors who taught me about womb energetics and somatics and identity work to help me find myself again after that breakup. and by going through this nine month process of deep self-inquiry, I have come to realize a lot of different things about myself, about what I want and what I don't want, about what I like and what I don't like and who I truly desire to be. I decided that those topics were more useful for me to teach about than the dietitian food stuff. And so what I did to embody this new identity is I held a 30 day fashion challenge group. And in that group, I started talking about these topics. I kind of did it in secret because I wasn't ready to show the world. How I truly think or how I truly feel, especially because some of the things I have to say are really controversial. And so I hid in secret in my 30 day fashion challenge podcast group where I channeled a message for the ladies every single day. And then they were able to ask me questions as we worked on moving through the world in alignment with those ideas to embody our dark feminine energy. And through that process, I found total passion. Every single day I woke up so excited to teach the ladies, to see them in the group chat, to answer their questions and to make the podcasts on these topics that I deeply cared about. And then that challenge ended about two weeks ago in the middle of July. And after challenge ended, I became severely depressed. I started going back into old coping mechanisms again, like smoking cigarettes and avoiding tasks that I needed to do for my business that I didn't want to do. And so I saw myself slipping. The current identity that I was embodying of the registered dietitian no longer fit. And I knew I had to move forward into. This new identity of Priestess Paradise Reign. But there was just this two-week moment of time where I was really scared and I was really unsure. And I was really fighting with myself as to what to do and how to move forward. And so I went to a spiritual gathering with my friend in Kingston, New York, at a place called the Spiral Mirror, I am going to link the spiral mirror in the description of this podcast. The message that Dan channeled for us was absolutely beautiful because someone was talking about having a shift in their identity. And he stated that. Our identity is simply a series of objects that we pick up and put down all throughout our lives. He said, imagine yourself picking up a baseball and you study and you examine the baseball. Well, that baseball eventually becomes juxtaposed on your identity, and you see yourself as a baseball player. And you start going to baseball games as a fan, and then you start practicing baseball. Eventually, you're on a travel team and you're going all over the country to play baseball. But eventually, baseball season ends, and you start to get kind of bored with going to all these games, and they're just not as exciting as they used to be. You're not having as much fun in practice as you used to. And so you move on from baseball and decide to take up another sport. Now it's basketball, and you're on to the next identity, right? And he was talking about how when we change our identity, we have a couple of options. Well, we can either choose to simply put the baseball down and pick up the basketball, or we can grip. Onto the baseball with a stranglehold until it becomes ripped out of our hands. And I felt that so strong. I am a tourist, y'all. So I am known for being incredibly stubborn. And over this past two weeks, I have been hanging on to the baseball for dear life. Well, you may or may not know that we are in eclipse season right now, and eclipses have a funny way of ripping those objects that you don't want to let go of right out of your hands. And I knew that I had to change the direction of my brand and my podcast. I knew that deep down inside I was meant to share information about womb energetics, somatics, and identity work with the world. And so I had made the decision in my mind that I was going to come out publicly as Priestess Paradise Reign and to change the name of the podcast to the Priestess Temple Podcast so I can help women call in their dream body and relationship. This identity feels so fucking Good for me. And as I was thinking about it, I became so excited. And when I made the choice in my mind, y'all, the craziest thing happened. You're not gonna believe this. Okay. So I shared that story about identity and picking objects up and putting them down on my Facebook story. And I had a woman reach out to me who really resonated with that story and asked if I could send her the video. And so as I was looking for the video of that teaching that I had recorded earlier in the week, I get a notification from Facebook of a friend request from a man named Donald S. Paradise. Yes, his last name was the same name as the new identity that I had chosen for myself. I was shocked. I was like, okay, let me go look at this Facebook profile. his profile picture is a painting that had eight boxes on it. And in each box was a different painting of a queen. There were all different women who were juxtaposed in different identities that all embodied a On this profile picture. And I was shocked because the teaching that I was looking up for this woman to send to her was literally about changing identities and trying on new versions of yourself throughout your entire life. And that was the confirmation I needed. I knew that this was the right time to come out as Paradise Rain, even though I am scared and it is new and it is different. I'm ready, y'all, because gripping on to that old identity of Jenna, the dietician who hosts Bad Bitch Embodiment Podcast was slowly suffocating me and killing me. And so I want to teach you how to navigate a situation such as this. When you are going through an ego death, so you can move through it in a way that honors your past. And empowers your presence so you can embody that version of you that you so desire to be. All right, step one of navigating an ego death is you have to die. Okay, y'all. I'm sorry. It's called an ego death for a reason. And so there's a lot of grief that comes up, and you need to process the grief, okay? Letting go of that old identity that once kept you safe is a very sad process. Because even though that identity no longer fits you anymore, it was still there to serve you when you needed it most. And so the first thing you have to do is allow yourself to grieve the death of that old identity. I told you that I had some depression. That set in when I realized my old identity wasn't fitting anymore. I also had some not so great habits pop up, like smoking cigarettes and avoiding my work. These habits were defenses that were helping me to avoid the pain of my grief. Okay. And so through putting those habits down and taking some time to sit with myself. I had to cry and I had to process my grief before I could move forward. A way you can do this is by writing a letter to your old self, thanking them for all of the good times and how they helped you move through the world in a way that was safe Writing that letter can really help you to process that grief that lives in your body so you can cry and let it out in a way that suits you so you can move forward. Think about the changing seasons. Think about fall and how the leaves start to change and eventually they shrivel up and they crumble and they fall off of the tree. When you don't process your grief. It is like you are a tree that's just holding on to all of those dead leaves. In order for you to create something new, you have to let those leaves go, right? Because even though you're gonna be a little bit bare and a little bit awkward and a little bit exposed for a while, eventually, after you get through that hard winter, you're gonna come out in the spring able to grow new bright. beautiful leaves. So the second step towards navigating an ego death is you have to get really fucking clear on what you want. so now that you've processed the grief of your old identity, you have to get super fucking clear on who you are going to be moving forward. This is where that journal continues to help, right? Because you can look at those qualities that you were embodying before and the old identity, and you can think about how you want to proceed as you move through the world in a new way. So you have to think about the qualities that you are looking to embody. How does that version of you dress? How do they talk? How do they act? What values do they possess? Write it down. Get really fucking clear and really fucking specific. When I went through my breakup in 2025, I joined a dance team and we worked on developing our alter ego. And so Priestess Paradise Reign is an identity that I have been thinking about in my head for nine months, y'all. Nine months. I have been. Thinking about who I wanted to be coming out on the other side of this breakup. And so I was very fucking clear on the person that I was going to become when I let go of that old identity. And so really take some time and think about this because the more specific you are, the easier it is for you to call in that new version of you. And then finally, step three. Once you are super fucking clear on what you want, you need to move. You need to act. The thing about values, which I think is very interesting, is that we can think we value something in our mind, but if we don't actually embody those values and move through the world in a way that's in alignment with those values, you don't actually value that. thing. And so you need to take a small little action step every single day towards the version of you that you desire to be on the other side of this ego death. For me, I started going to dance classes and I really thought about the type of movement that Priestess Paradise Rain would display when she was on stage. I also thought about what she would wear, and I worked on embodying that characteristic through my 30-day fashion challenge, where I got dressed every single day and moved through the world. I also thought about how Priestess Paradise Rain would talk. And I talked through making a daily podcast every single day in that 30-day fashion challenge group. You see, this wasn't an overnight transformation, even though it might seem like it was, because I'm very abruptly changing my name and my identity on the internet. I want you to know that this was a slow and steady process that took Place on and off over nine months. Because the thing is, if you try and change everything all at once, your nervous system is going to collapse. Your nervous system's job is to keep you safe. It's not to help you embody a new identity. And so things that are unfamiliar trigger a response in the nervous system that tries to pull you back. And so you're going to have to be Triggered as you move through the world in accordance with the values that you determined you wanted after you processed the grief of the old identity. You see, you have to let go of the old, think about what the fuck you want, and then move through the world in a way that is in alignment with the new values that you have chosen. If you Do this on a daily basis over and over and over again. The things that were once unfamiliar become incredibly familiar. And all of a sudden, you've put down the baseball and picked up the basketball without even realizing it. All of a sudden, you are that person that you desired to be when you decide and commit and move. It's just that you have. Have to allow yourself to process the grief of the old identity first. It is so important to show yourself love and compassion and understanding as you work through the transition of letting go of that old object and picking up the new object that you desire to have juxtaposed on your identity. I'm telling you, when you do this in a slow, steady, and controlled way, eventually you are just going to be that new person. And one day you're gonna wake up and be like, holy shit, I am that bitch. So just know that if you are in that awkward in between and you're looking to reinvent yourself, You can do it through following these three simple steps. When you process your grief, decide what the fuck you want, and move in alignment with your new values and desires. One day you will wake up and all of a sudden realize that you are that person that you desired to be. thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Priestess Temple Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please share with members of your community comment and subscribe so we can continue to have these amazing conversations every week. I will see you next Thursday. And remember, you are the goddess.