When Will You Reclaim the Radio Channel Your Body Silenced to Survive?
“We chain ourselves to free ourselves.” — The Wanderer
This week’s blog is shorter, more intimate — and a little love note to a group whose folky, dreamy music has been speaking directly to my heart.
A Rare Evening
Last week, John and I went to a concert.
That may sound ordinary to some, but for us, it isn’t. Life with three teenage boys is full and busy. And these past few years have held tidal waves of change. In early 2024, I moved from France to the Netherlands with the kids, found our home, shipped our belongings from Canada to the Netherlands, settled into our community, and then in the Fall I met John… life has been full of surprises in every possible way.
This year too brought many new adventures: our spiritual vows to each other on a dreamy beach in Puerto Vallarta; me stepping out of my comfort zone to host three in-person workshops with my friend Toshi and then three on my own, in the Netherlands and in Morelia, Mexico; John and Jonah moving from Canada to the Netherlands; two families blending; new routines, and all the extra layers that come with supporting my bonus-son Jonah who is blind — every step bringing humbleness, and requiring patience, attunement, and care.
And not to forget the bureaucracy: permanent residence applications for John, Jonah, and the kids’ father, Danny. Rejections, an appeal process and Plan Bs. We sold our home in Canada. My ex and I filed for divorce early this year after being separated for 7 years. And through it all, Danny and I are co-parenting with increasing love, respect, and support.
So being able to slip away for an evening of music felt like a small miracle.
The Wanderer
The Wanderer — led by singer-songwriters Nikos Frangiskatos and Victor Driest — has been on my Spotify playlist for years. Their music is dreamy and folky and always reaches something deep inside me.
I also admit that for a while I have felt mixed feelings. I loved their music, and I felt it symbolized something Jeff Brown calls the New Cage Movement — a form of spirituality that bypasses depth through positive vibes only, premature forgiveness, avoidance of “low-frequency” emotions (hello, anger), and inadvertently glorifying dissociation as awakening.
Take a song like You’re More Than Enough. This song stirred my Soul at its core when I first heard it in 2021. While this is an ultimate Truth (Capital T), I also know that no amount of affirming “I am enough” will create lasting transformation if the survival mechanism in the body — the one that creates the belief “I’m not good enough” — stays untouched.
It’s just so easy to use beautiful lyrics as a bypass.
To swap one belief for another instead of meeting what the body actually holds.
That’s what the “new cage” warns about: beautiful truths unintentionally becoming a cage instead of a doorway. I’ve seen it in myself and my clients: the reactions soften, coping improves, but the inner activation remains alive and continues to create suffering in other ways.
A Wanderer Session — they don’t call them concerts for a reason — invites the opposite. A turning inward. A permission to feel what’s moving, to listen deeply, and attune to what wants attention. Music becomes the guide for an inner journey.
And we had front seats in the theatre!!!
We Hurt Ourselves To Heal Ourselves
From Aren’t You Meant to Fly by The Wanderer:
We chain ourselves
To free ourselves
We drown ourselves
To crown ourselves
We lose ourselves
To find ourselves
We chase ourselves
To catch ourselves
We hurt ourselves
To heal ourselves
Accept ourselves
Ignore ourselves
We blind ourselves
To see ourselves
I have seen this in myself and in clients … again and again. Inquiry invites us to consciously, and most of all fully meet the drive to chain, drown, lose, chase, hurt, and blind ourselves. These patterns were survival strategies — safer than feeling the emotions we buried as children.
Suffering As a Doorway
Last week, from our front seats, I felt the depth of their songs. The words weren’t just “truths” living in my head — I felt them somatically, viscerally, in my body. Emotional Repression Inquiry has given me the tools to communicate with my unconscious, to hear what my body holds beyond words, logic, and even spiritual truths.
Replacing a limiting belief with an empowering one doesn’t free us; it just upgrades the identity that keeps us confined.
Inquiry has taught me to trust my suffering.
And by suffering, I don’t mean sadness or anger. I mean resistance: the moments when I want life, others, or myself to be different. Those moments have become doorways.
And at the same time, the pressure to use these doorways has lessened. Less urgency. Even when triggers arise, gentleness is available. Things unfold in their own time.
Listening to The Song That’s Playing On Your Own Soul’s Radio
As I’m learning to feel and express all of who I am, there’s less and less to clutch when everything is allowed.
And without those layers of repression, a quiet voice has become audible — I can listen to the song that’s playing on my own soul’s radio again. The one The Wanderer sings about in We’re All Going Home.
The one that’s been playing all along.
Are you interested in tuning into your Soul’s radio channel? Untethered helps you unravel the survival programs of your emotional repression mechanism that is throwing interference with your ability to listen to your Soul’s songs.
And in case you’re curious, some of my favourite songs from The Wanderer are: You’re More Than Enough, Aren’t You Meant to Fly, Walls, Love Your Mirror, and The Giant.
John’s top favourite: We’re All Going Home.
If you would like to listen to these songs, you can check them out below:
