Podcast
Real Love Ready: The Series
Hosted by Real Love Ready · EN
Welcome to Real Love Ready: The Series. After four years and 100+ conversations with relationship experts, Robin Ducharme shares what she's learned about loving well in a world longing for connection.
Real Love Ready is a series exploring why love can feel impossible today and offering a framework to believe in it again. Robin sits down with therapists, coaches, authors, and people from all walks of life who, because of who they are or what they've been through, have something to teach us about love.
New episodes every Tuesday.
Distributed by Realm.
28episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Terry Real – Is It Too Late To Break The Cycle? | Real Love Ready Ep 12
3d ago01:05:20Tap to summarizeThere is a version of love most of us were never shown. Not because it doesn't exist, but because the people who raised us hadn't found it yet either. Terry Real has spent his life showing us what that love looks like. He is a family therapist, the creator of Relational Life Therapy, the founder of the Relational Life Institute, and the bestselling author of four books including Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship. His first book, I Don't Want to Talk About It, published in 1997, was the first book ever written on male depression. Esther Perel has said, ‘When I need advice, I call Terry Real.’ He is also Robin's former therapist. He sat with her through one of the hardest chapters of her life. And this conversation is unlike any other in this series, because today Robin gets to flip the dynamic and ask Terry questions. In this episode, recorded in Boston, they explore what it actually takes to break the cycle of generational trauma and love better than we were taught. They talk about the Adaptive Child and the Wise Adult, why grandiosity feels good and what it costs you, and what it means to be the one person in a generation who turns and faces the flames. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready. IN THIS EPISODE (00:00:00) Introduction (00:01:23) Meet Terry Real (00:02:42) The Work That Saved Robin (00:06:38) Terry's Origin Story (00:12:52) Breaking the Cycle (00:16:14) Something Better Than This (00:26:15) Is It Too Late? The Wounded vs. Adaptive Child (00:33:41) Never Too Late (00:37:42) Men & Masculinity (00:49:10) Grandiosity, Contempt & Empowerment (01:01:33) Myths of Love & Defining It QUOTES “If you treat someone as they are, they will be as they are. If you treat someone as they ought to be, they may become who they ought to be." – Terry Real “The only thing that counts is love, and everything else is just BS” – Terry Real "Family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to their ancestors and spares the children that follow." – Terry Real "The relational answer to the question who's right and who's wrong is 'who cares?'" – Terry Real ABOUT THE GUEST Terry Real is a nationally recognized family therapist and the creator of Relational Life Therapy (RLT). He's the author of four books, including the New York Times bestseller Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship and I Don't Want to Talk About It, the first book ever written about male depression. A former senior faculty member at the Family Institute of Cambridge and Clinical Fellow at the Meadows Institute in Arizona, Terry now trains therapists in his RLT method and leads workshops for couples and individuals through the Relational Life Institute. Instagram: www.instagram.com/realterryreal/ Website: https://terryreal.com/ GET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOK Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart. https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBook Follow Us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Dr. Sunita Puri – What Dying Teaches Us About Love | Real Love Ready Ep 11
1w ago01:22:29Tap to summarizeWhat does love look like when everything else has been stripped away? When there is no more time to perform it, delay it, or get it right later? Dr. Sunita Puri has spent her career in the rooms where that question gets answered. As a palliative care physician, she sits with people who are dying and what she has witnessed again and again in those rooms is something profound about love. About what people reach for at the end. About what they wish they had said. About what it means to stay present when everything in you wants to run. In this episode, Robin sits down with Dr. Sunita Puri, a palliative care physician, literary memoirist, Rhodes Scholar, and Associate Professor of Medicine at UC Irvine. Together they explore why we are so afraid of death, what a terminal diagnosis can give you that nothing else can, and why the conversations we keep avoiding are actually the most loving ones we can have. They talk about what it means to die as you have lived, how to show up for someone who is dying, and what the dying teach us about how to love more fully right now. This episode carries something deeply personal. It was recorded the day before Robin's mother, Glenda Ducharme, passed away on June 2, 2026. We dedicate this episode to her, a woman who lived fully, loved deeply, and left a mark on everyone she touched. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready. IN THIS EPISODE (00:00:00) Introduction (00:01:18) Meeting Dr. Sunita Puri (00:04:08) Why We're Afraid of Death (00:06:28) What Palliative Care Really Means (00:10:21) Faith, Medicine, and Becoming a Doctor (00:21:34) Fighting, Giving Up, and What "Everything" Means (00:32:29) Delivering Hard News and Finding Your Anchor (00:42:29) End-of-Life Clarity and Dying As We've Lived (01:01:44) A Listener's Question on Losing a Parent (01:04:13) Poems on Love and What Remains (01:10:24) Closing Questions: The Myth and Meaning of Love (01:13:54) Dedication and Credits QUOTES "Embedded within each love is loss. It's the sharp side of loving somebody." – Sunita Puri "What remains is often much bigger than what is taken away." – Sunita Puri "I've talked about my dad and when he passed, and the same thing with my twin brother — I loved them so, so deeply. And now that they're not here in the physical, they're even more with me now that they're in spirit — I've taken on more of them in myself, like their gifts, their talents." – Robin Ducharme "Nothing really ever dies. We don't ever really lose people or their essence." – Sunita Puri ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Sunita Puri is an Associate Professor of Medicine at UC Irvine School of Medicine, where she directs the Inpatient Palliative Care Service. She's the author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, a critically acclaimed memoir on redefining what it means to live and die well in the face of serious illness. A Yale graduate and Rhodes Scholar, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times, and her work has been featured on NPR, the BBC, and in a Guardian mini-documentary viewed over 3.5 million times. Dr. Puri is a sought-after speaker on how compassionate language can help patients and physicians navigate conversations about living and dying. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunitapurimd Website: https://sunitapuri.com/ GET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOK Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart. https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBook Follow Us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Caroline Myss - Why You Can’t Heal | Real Love Ready Ep 10
2w ago01:25:51Tap to summarizeDon't meet your idols, they say, unless your idol is Caroline Myss. For the first interview of our Chicago stop on the East Coast tour, Robin sits down with one of her lifelong idols and one of the women whose writing has shaped the very foundation of her spiritual practice. Robin first encountered Caroline's work as a teenager with the book Anatomy of the Spirit, then Sacred Contracts and nothing about the way she understood love, the soul, or the invisible world has ever been the same since. Caroline Myss is a five-time New York Times bestselling author, a medical intuitive, and a mystic whose work has shaped the way millions of people understand who they are and why they are here. In this episode, they explore what sacred contracts actually are and why the people we love were never accidents. They talk about woundology — the way we use our pain as currency — and why liars don't heal. Caroline breaks down what it means when a relationship loses its life force, how to tell when a contract has reached completion, and why your soulmate may not be the person who loves you most, but the one who recognizes your soul. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready. IN THIS EPISODE (00:01:15) Intro: Love as a Spiritual Force (00:05:42) Medical Intuition and Mysticism (00:12:20) Western Medicine vs. Spiritual Intuition (00:16:36) Intuition: Is it Gendered? (00:21:33) Why Sacred Contracts Exist (00:34:32) Robin's Matchmaker Journey (00:38:08) Why Relationships Are Rocky Right Now (00:42:36) When is a Sacred Contract Complete? (00:50:11) Bringing Your Soul Into a Relationship (00:57:32) Woundology: Why We Hold Onto Wounds (01:03:40) Choice, Grace, and the Power of Words (01:12:16) Why Liars Don't Heal (01:17:34) Debunking Myths About Love QUOTES "Love is what God feels like to us while we are in the human form. We have no other way to experience love except with each other." — Caroline Myss "We are spiritual beings having the human experience, not the other way around." — Robin Ducharme "Your soulmate isn't the person who loves you the most — it's the person who recognizes your soul the most. And that could be the greatest adversary you ever meet." — Caroline Myss "Sacred Contracts was a book that made me understand that the people I loved were not accidents, that my heartbreaks had a purpose. That love, real love, is a spiritual act." — Robin Ducharme ABOUT THE GUEST Caroline Myss is a five-time New York Times bestselling author, medical intuitive, and mystic whose work has shaped the way millions of people understand the soul, healing, and personal power. She is the author of Anatomy of the Spirit, Sacred Contracts, Why People Don't Heal and How They Can, Entering the Castle, and Defy Gravity, among others. She holds graduate degrees in theology and mysticism and has spent decades teaching at the intersection of science, spirituality, and human consciousness. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolinemyss/ Website: https://myss.com/ GET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOK Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart. https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBook Follow Us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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The Angry Therapist | Learning How To Love Well with Robin Ducharme & John Kim
3w ago00:44:55Tap to summarizeNothing activates us quite like love. This week, we’re sharing a special episode from The Angry Therapist podcast, hosted by John Kim, licensed therapist, author, co-founder of Soulprint Media, and Robin’s dear friend. John sits down with Robin to talk about the story behind Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy, and the experiences, losses, lessons, and relationships that shaped her belief that love is something we can learn, practice, and grow in. Robin shares where her lifelong love of love began, what working as a matchmaker taught her about the way people show up in dating and relationships, and how losing her twin brother and her father changed the way she understands grief, purpose, and connection. Together, Robin and John talk about forgiveness, family, spiritual connection, relationship patterns, and the myths that so many of us carry about love. At the heart of this conversation is the question that sits at the centre of Real Love Ready: what would change if we treated love not just as a feeling, but as a practice? We’ll be back next week with a brand new episode of Real Love Ready: The Series! IN THIS EPISODE (00:00) Why Love Is So Hard to Learn (01:01) Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy (02:08) Robin and John on Friendship, Soulprint, and Synchronicity (02:50) Where Robin’s Love for Love Began (06:22) From Matchmaking to Relationship Education (08:25) Losing Her Twin Brother (13:48) How Grief Changed Robin’s Mission (17:48) Forgiveness as an Act of Love (21:49) The Origin of Real Love Ready (22:22) What In Bloom Is Really About (27:00) Joy, Learning, and Walking the Walk (28:59) Why Robin Wrote Real Love Ready (30:24) High-Functioning Codependency, Fawning, and Healing Patterns (00:00) Love Myths, Relationship Skills, and What We Were Never Taught QUOTES “People struggle with love. That’s the thing we struggle with the most. And so, how do we learn how to do it?” — Robin Ducharme “Our loved ones don’t go anywhere, they don’t leave us, they stay with us.” — Robin Ducharme “Forgiveness is one of the greatest gifts of love that we can give ourselves.” — Robin Ducharme “Forgiveness is the way into seeing someone’s wholeness, and all the beauty of who they are.” — John Kim “This stuff should be taught in high school and college. We learn from our hearts being shattered, we learn from divorce, we learn from relationships going sideways. We learn the hard way.” — John Kim GET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOK Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart.https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBook ABOUT JOHN KIM John Kim, also known as The Angry Therapist, is a licensed therapist, author, speaker, podcast host, and co-founder of Soulprint Media. He is the author of I Used to Be a Miserable F***, Single on Purpose, Breakup on Purpose, and It’s Not Me, It’s You, co-authored with Vanessa Bennett. His new book, Love Hard. On Purpose., is available now: https://www.theangrytherapist.com/love-hard Instagram: @theangrytherapistWebsite: theangrytherapist.com FOLLOW US @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Damona Hoffman - The Future of Love | Real Love Ready Ep 09
Jun 1601:24:47Tap to summarizeWhat does the future of love actually look like? Not the version we inherited, like the relationship escalator, the fairytale, the prince who saves you, the outdated rules about who texts first and who pays. But love as it's really evolving: in a world of dating apps, hot-take profiles, AI technology, and a communication crisis that's reshaping how we connect. In Episode 9 of Real Love Ready, Robin sits down with Damona Hoffman, a relationship futurist, dating coach, and love expert on The Drew Barrymore Show. She's the author of F the Fairy Tale, host of the award-winning Dates & Mates podcast, and has spent nearly two decades advising the world's biggest dating apps behind the scenes. Together they unpack how dating has changed, why intentionality matters more than volume, what AI is doing to the way we relate, and how we get to write our own love stories instead of the ones we were handed. Whether you're single, married, divorced, or somewhere in between, you'll walk away with real, practical ways to bring more love into your life, by being more intentional, more honest, and more loving. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready. Get the Real Love Ready book: https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBook IN THIS EPISODE (00:00:00) Episode Overview: The Future of Love (00:01:12) Meet Damona Hoffman (00:05:59) How Dating Has Evolved (00:09:27) The Communication Crisis (00:13:18) Dating Burnout (00:15:02) Robin's Story: Getting Ready for Love (00:20:09) Intentionality, Hot Takes & Clear Coding (00:26:32) Are Dating Apps Working? (00:32:51) Non-Monogamy & the Sex Recession (00:38:02) Money, Shame & Who Pays (00:43:40) Writing Your Own Rules & Choosing Each Other (00:50:32) Vulnerability, Safety & Single Shame (00:56:10) How the Generations Love Differently (01:01:46) The Future of Dating & AI (01:15:40) Myths of Love & Damona's Definition QUOTES "We need to feel empowered enough to write our own love stories, and to live our own love stories every day." - Damona Hoffman "When you come from love, intending to do the most loving thing, you're going to create more love." - Robin Ducharme "The best relationships will illuminate the areas where you can grow, and elevate you in the areas where you're already strong." - Damona Hoffman "Your time is your most nonrenewable resource. Don't give it to someone who doesn't align with what you want." - Damona Hoffman ABOUT THE GUEST Damona Hoffman is a certified dating coach, relationship futurist, and the resident love expert on The Drew Barrymore Show. She is the author of F the Fairy Tale and host of the award-winning Dates & Mates podcast, and has advised many of the world's leading dating apps behind the scenes. Her next book, The Communication Code, explores how we identify and share our most comfortable methods of communication with the people we love. Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/damonahoffman/ Website: https://damonahoffman.com/ GET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOK Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart. https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBook Follow us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Shaka Senghor - The Practice of Forgiveness | Real Love Ready Ep 08
Jun 901:11:10Tap to summarizeWhat does it actually mean to forgive? Not the version we were taught like turning the other cheek, being the bigger person, letting it go. But real forgiveness. The kind that doesn't require you to go back, nor erases what happened. In Episode 8 of Real Love Ready, Robin sits down with Shaka Senghor, bestselling author, speaker, and an incredibly powerful voice on personal transformation and healing. Shaka spent 19 years in prison for second-degree murder, seven of them in solitary confinement. In that darkness he looked at himself deeply and honestly and wrote his way through rage, shame, grief, and the long process of forgiving himself. What came out the other side wasn't just survival. It was a profound understanding that forgiveness, at its deepest level, is love in action. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready. IN THIS EPISODE (00:00:00) Episode Overview (00:03:40) What Forgiveness Really Means (00:05:13) Shaka's Story (00:10:38) Growing Up in Trauma (00:19:34) The Road to Forgiveness (00:20:48) The Letter That Changed Everything (00:28:54) Solitary Confinement (00:34:17) Mentoring Forgiveness & The Power of Writing (00:41:50) Forgiving Those Who Hurt Him (00:55:19) Breaking the Cycle for His Children (01:01:20) Collective Forgiveness & Truth Telling (01:04:34) Myths of Love & Shaka’s Definition QUOTES "The gift of forgiveness had already been given to me. I just wasn't able to receive it." - Shaka Senghor "Forgiveness is like one of the most powerful acts of love. It's love in action. Giving love to yourself and giving love to others." - Robin Ducharme "The inability to forgive is one of our greatest hidden prisons, because somehow we think that we're punishing the person that we choose not to forgive without really deeply understanding how much we punish ourselves." - Shaka Senghor ABOUT THE GUEST Shaka Senghor is a bestselling author, speaker, and advocate for personal transformation and criminal justice reform. After spending 19 years in prison, seven of them in solitary confinement, he emerged as one of the most compelling voices on redemption, forgiveness, and what it means to truly change. He is the author of Writing My Wrongs, Letters to the Sons of Society, and How to Be Free. Social media: @shakasenghor Website: shakasenghor.com GET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOK Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart. https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBook Follow us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Sabrina Zohar - Opening to Love Again | Real Love Ready Ep 07
Jun 200:58:02Tap to summarizeAre you ready to love again? After six episodes exploring love from every angle — what it is, where we learned it, why we hurt the people closest to us, and where it goes when it ends — we arrive at the question that follows all of that work: how do you open yourself back up? In Episode 7 of Real Love Ready, Robin sits down with Sabrina Zohar, dating coach, author, entrepreneur, and host of The Sabrina Zohar Show. Sabrina is known for her no-BS approach to anxious attachment and for giving people the exact tools to stop letting it run their love life. In this conversation they talk about why we keep chasing the spark, how to tell the difference between a relationship that feels calm because it is healthy and one that just feels boring, and why sitting in discomfort might be the most important skill you can bring into love. Sabrina shares what it took to stop being the girl having panic attacks over a text. Robin opens up about what it finally felt like when love felt calm. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready.IN THIS EPISODE (00:00:00) Episode Overview: Opening to Love Again (00:03:11) From Fashion to Dating Coach: Sabrina's Evolution (00:05:02) Being Your Own Worst Enemy: Anxiety & Self-Sabotage (00:06:12) Sabrina's Framework: State, Story, Strategy (00:15:41) The Spark Myth: Chemistry vs. Calm (00:18:30) The Moment Everything Changed: Choosing Yourself (00:23:48) Navigating Texting While Dating (00:29:29) What a Real Red Flag Actually Looks Like (00:32:51) Calm vs. Boring: How to Tell the Difference (00:34:53) Love Bombing: What It Is & Why It Happens (00:47:15) Knowing When You're Ready to Love Again (00:51:15) Myths of Love & Sabrina's Definition QUOTES "What parts of yourself do you not think anyone is ever going to love? Because that is driving the car." - Sabrina Zohar “It's not about if he likes you. Do you like him?” - Robin Ducharme "Love to me is that I can be here with you, but I can also let you go. If I really love you, I have to be okay if this doesn't work and let you free." - Sabrina Zohar "The one myth that drives me insane is that relationships and love should be easy. I don't know who told us that, but relationships take two people that choose each other every single day." - Sabrina Zohar ABOUT THE GUEST Sabrina Zohar is a dating coach, entrepreneur, and host of The Sabrina Zohar Show. Known for her honest, no-BS approach to modern dating and anxious attachment, she has built one of the most trusted voices in the relationship space. Her new book Why Am I Like This? is available for preorder now. https://sabrinazohar.com/book Instagram: @sabrina.zohar Podcast: @thesabrinazoharshow GET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOK Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart. https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBook Follow us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Bob Dalton - Home: Where Love Lives | Real Love Ready Ep 06
May 2600:56:56Tap to summarizeWhat does home really mean? When Bob Dalton asks people that question, the most common answer he hears is safety. Not a place. Not four walls. Safety. In Episode 6 of Real Love Ready, Robin sits down with Bob Dalton, social entrepreneur, community builder, and founder of LOCL and Sackcloth and Ashes, a blanket company that supports homeless shelters across the country. Bob has spent his life asking what it means to truly belong somewhere. What he has found is that home is not strictly defined by where you live but also by how you love and are loved. This conversation explores why safety is so foundational, not just in the buildings we live in but in our relationships and our ability to love well. Robin and Bob talk about the power of building community locally, why every single one of us has the ability to be a community builder, and how the most powerful displays of love are often the ones we receive in the seasons where we least expect them. We get to create the future we want to see. And more often than not, it starts right where we are, in our communities, with the people closest to us. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready. IN THIS EPISODE (00:00:01) Introduction (00:02:00) Meet Bob (00:04:17) How Community Raised Him (00:08:39) When Bob's Mom Became Homeless (00:10:01) How Sackcloth and Ashes Was Born (00:17:11) The Three Things That Actually Help Homelessness (00:20:16) Why Local Action Is More Effective (00:22:53) Breaking Generational Patterns (00:25:22) Being Good with the Person in the Mirror (00:27:21) What Is Home? (00:29:16) Having a Roof Over Your Head Changes How You Love (00:31:15) The LOCL App: Building Micro-Communities (00:33:18) Community Builders Are the New Influencers (00:42:02) Creating the Future We Want to See (00:44:51) The Myth About Home and Defining Love (00:46:56) Bob's Definition of Love QUOTES "The most common answer I get when I ask people what is home to you? It's safety." — Bob Dalton “To give with no strings attached. The most powerful displays of love is something that was given to me despite me deserving it. When you experience love, grace, mercy in a season where you don't deserve it — that is what truly has the opportunity to change a person." — Bob Dalton “The only antidote to addiction is community." — Bob Dalton "Intentional time spent with somebody is one of the most powerful things that we can do. We're spending a lot of time together but we're not having intentional time with people." — Bob Dalton "The people that are going to rock with you no matter what. The people that you can call when you're at rock bottom and you know they're going to be there for you. The people that show you grace in the midst of your own fuck-ups — that is about as home as you can get." — Bob Dalton ABOUT THE GUEST Bob Dalton is a social entrepreneur, community architect, and founder of Sackcloth and Ashes, a blanket company that has donated over 200,000 blankets to homeless shelters across the United States. He is also the creator of LOCL, an app designed to help people find and build micro-communities within a 50-mile radius of where they live. Bob's work is rooted in the belief that community is the antidote to disconnection and that everyone has the power to build belonging right where they are. Download the LOCL app: https://home.locl.com/ Sackcloth and Ashes: https://sackclothandashes.com GET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOK Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart. https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBookFollow us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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John Kim - Where Does Love Go When It Ends? | Real Love Ready Ep 05
May 1901:14:01Tap to summarizeDoes love ever really end?One thing about love is that it rarely prepares you for its own ending. It doesn't give you a manual for what to do when the marriage ends, when the house burns down, when the person you built your life around is suddenly gone. And you're left asking: where does love go when it ends?In Episode 5 of Real Love Ready, Robin sits down with her dear friend John Kim, known as The Angry Therapist, a licensed therapist, author, and co-founder of Soulprint Media, who has lived this question in every possible form. His first marriage ended at 35, and instead of hiding the wreckage, he blogged the whole breakdown in real time. His honesty became a movement. Last year, he lost his home in the Altadena fires and everything he had built was gone in a single night.This conversation is deeply personal. John opens up about loss, the grief, the guilt of moving on too fast, and what it looks like to model vulnerability as a pathway to healing. Together, Robin and John challenge the myth that endings mean failure. Relationships transform. And in that transformation, if we are willing to look, there is gold.This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready.Next week, Robin sits down with Bob Dalton to explore what it means to build belonging and why community holds us through the hardest chapters of our lives. Episode 6: Home: Where Love Lives.IN THIS EPISODE(00:00:00) Introduction(00:04:00) Does Love Actually End?(00:07:45) The Angry Therapist Origin Story(00:12:32) What Emotional Unavailability Really Looks Like(00:14:38) How John Became Emotionally Aware(00:17:36) Why Not All Breakups Are the Same(00:20:12) The Day John Lost Everything(00:27:16) Navigating Different Grief(00:32:30) The Power of Grieving Together(00:37:00) Why Heartbreak Lives in Your Body(00:42:28) How John Got Into Men's Work(00:48:31) How a House Fire started a Publishing Company(01:03:44) Divorce as the Greatest Catalyst(01:06:05) Myths of Heartbreak & Defining LoveQUOTES"My divorce was the hardest thing I've ever gone through. But the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. That repositioning has given me so much.” - John Kim“Just because I was the one that made the decision doesn't mean that I wasn't completely heartbroken." - Robin Ducharme"I don't think love ends. I think if you look at love like energy, it changes form.” - John KimABOUT THE GUESTJohn Kim is a licensed therapist, author, co-founder of Soulprint Media, and founder of The Angry Therapist. He is the author of I Used to Be a Miserable Fck*, Single on Purpose, Breakup on Purpose, and It's Not Me, It's You, co-authored with his wife Vanessa Bennett. His new book Love Hard is available June 6th. He also hosts The Angry Therapist podcast.Instagram: @theangrytherapist Website: theangrytherapist.comGET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOKReal Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart.https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBookFollow us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Vanessa Bennett - Why We Hurt the Ones We Love | Real Love Ready Ep 04
May 1201:03:47Tap to summarizeWhy do love and hurt travel together?In Episode 4 of Real Love Ready, Robin sits down with Vanessa Bennett, author, licensed holistic psychotherapist, codependency coach, and depth psychologist. She is the author of The Motherhood Myth, and co-author of It's Not Me, It's You (with her husband, therapist John Kim).Her work is built on a belief that most of us are not ready to hear: that the people hurting us in our relationships are often holding up a mirror. And that the most powerful thing we can do is look into it.We have a whole cultural vocabulary around toxic relationships, red flags, and narcissism. What we don't have is enough honest conversation about our part in the patterns we keep repeating. That's what this episode is for.Honest, direct, and genuinely compassionate, this conversation covers shadow work, codependency, projection, and how understanding why we hurt and how we heal, is how we learn to love better.This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready.QUOTES"Everywhere you go, there you are. You're going to continue to show up and entertain these toxic relationships. So, until we really say, okay, they acted in narcissistic ways. How did I act in narcissistic ways? They were toxic because of this. How was I toxic too? Those are the conversations that actually start to turn the needle in behavior change." — Vanessa Bennett"I do think that deep, intimate love can be difficult. If you really want to go there, it's going to take work…mostly because we are confronted with ourselves. That's the hard work. Having to see ourselves and having to actually decide if we're going to do the work on ourselves that's required to have real, intimate love." — Vanessa Bennett“Love to me feels like a mirror. A compassionate mirror, but a mirror nonetheless. And love to me, a lot of times, means accountability. It's accountability to myself. It's accountability to others. It's accountability to that part of me that's striving to be the best version of myself." — Vanessa Bennett"I don't think it's possible for somebody else to build that sense of safety in us. We need to build our own internal safety…Because ultimately, what that means is, it actually doesn't matter what he's doing. Because I'm safe, I've got me." — Vanessa BennettABOUT THE GUESTVanessa Bennett, LMFT, is a licensed depth psychotherapist, author, and facilitator known for her no-nonsense yet compassionate approach to healing. She is the author of The Motherhood Myth and coauthor of It’s Not Me, It’s You.A former New Yorker turned Angelino now practicing internationally, Vanessa leads transformational retreats and workshops rooted in Jungian and depth-oriented psychology. She is the founder of Inner Compass Academy, a depth-based training and coaching program, and hosts the Inner Compass Podcast. Through her writing and teaching, she supports both personal and collective healing—helping people break generational patterns and awaken to the ways harmful social systems shape their lives, so they can reclaim agency and live less from conditioning, and more from choice.Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/vanessasbennett/Website: https://vanessabennett.comSubstack: https://substack.com/@itsvanessabennettInner Compass Academy: https://www.vanessabennett.com/inner-compass-academyGET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOKReal Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart.https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBookFollow us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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