Episodes
Welcome to the episode gallery, where every conversation is an invitation to slow down, reflect, and explore what it truly means to be human. Step in, listen with an open heart, and see what unfolds for you.
Introduction
The first three episodes of Don’t Trip on Your Cape are all about getting to know us. In Episode 1, we share how the podcast came to life and what we hope to create through it. In Episode 2, Leslie interviews Alex so listeners can hear more of their story, their heart, and the mission behind their life. And in Episode 3, Alex interviews Leslie so you can meet the wisdom, grounding, and magic she brings to everything she does. These episodes set the foundation for the journey we’re all taking together.
Episode 1: The Moment Everything Changes
Every journey has a point of no return, the moment when life stops letting you pretend. In this opening episode, Leslie and Alex share the experiences that cracked them open and set this entire podcast in motion. It is honest, raw, and grounding. You will hear how the heaviest moments often reveal the strengths you never knew you had.
Episode 2: The Truth Under the Ashes
Leslie sits down with Alex for a conversation that pulls back every layer of who they have become. There are stories of heartbreak, identity, and the fire that reshapes a life. Alex opens up about loss, reclamation, and the quiet courage required to rebuild from nothing but ash. It is vulnerable, powerful, and a reminder that truth often rises only after everything else falls away.
Episode 3: The Power That Pulls You Forward
This time, Alex turns the questions on Leslie. Together, they explore the defining moments that pushed her into purpose, leadership, and alignment. This episode reveals the internal shifts, the initiations, and the choices that shaped her work and her life. It is a deep look at what it means to outgrow old versions of yourself and step into the life calling you.
Foundation
These next four episodes are the foundation we’re building on together. They dive into the things that matter most to us, the beliefs, practices, and perspectives that continue to guide how we show up in the world, for ourselves and for others. We’ll be talking openly about mindset, self-trust, growth, and what it really means to live with intention in a world that often pulls us in the opposite direction. Our hope is that these conversations help you reconnect with what matters to you, wear your cape with a little more confidence, and maybe even feel bold enough to fly a little higher as you continue on your own journey.
Episode 4: The Inner World Revealed
Leslie and Alex introduce listeners to two transformative tools that change the way people understand themselves: mushrooms and human design. They break down the science, the purpose, the myths, and the real benefits of both paths. This episode gives you a grounded way to explore your inner landscape and understand the systems guiding your growth.
Episode 5: Beyond the Basics: The Architecture of Your Energy
In this deeper dive into human design, Leslie and Alex go far beyond the surface. They explore the origin story, the centers, the archetypes, and the energetic mechanics that shape how you move through life. Expect clarity, perspective, and practical guidance. This is where the pieces of your inner blueprint start to come alive.
Episode 6:
The Mycelial Path Within
In this episode, Leslie and Alex take a deeper dive into the world of mushrooms, not just as medicine, but as teachers. Alex shares how growing mushrooms became a personal initiation, rooted in patience, curiosity, and deep listening. Together, they explore different strains and species, the subtle differences in their energies, and the way mushrooms meet each person where they are. This conversation weaves science, lived experience, and reverence for the intelligence of the mycelium. It is an invitation to understand mushrooms not as an escape, but as a relationship, one that helps you reconnect with yourself and the world around you.
Episode 7:
When Life Clicks Into Place
Alignment is not a destination, it is a felt sense. In this episode, Leslie and Alex explore what alignment actually looks like in real life, beyond the buzzword. They talk about the moments when things stop forcing and start flowing, the internal signals that tell you something is right, and the courage it takes to listen when your life begins asking for change. This conversation brings together intuition, lived experience, and practical awareness to help you recognize alignment not as perfection, but as honesty. It is an invitation to notice where your life is already in sync, and where it may be asking you to realign.
JANUARY 2026
During January, we will be exploring the theme of strength, and what it truly means when we slow down enough to feel it. Throughout the month, we invite you into conversations that challenge the idea that strength is about pushing, enduring, or surviving at all costs. Instead, we explore strength as presence, discernment, self compassion, and the courage to choose alignment over obligation. These episodes are an invitation to listen inward, honor your nervous system, and recognize that real strength may not be what carried you through your hardest seasons, but what now allows you to soften, realign, and live with intention.
Episode 8:
The Shape of Strength
To open Strength Month, Leslie and Alex begin by reflecting on what strength has meant in their own lives and how that understanding has evolved over time. Together, they explore the difference between surviving and truly living, and how pain, misalignment, and struggle can become teachers rather than definitions.
Moving through nervous system awareness, human design, and lived experience, this conversation reframes strength as discernment, self compassion, and the courage to choose differently, one step at a time. This episode is an invitation to pause, listen inward, and consider that strength may not be what carried you through your hardest moments, but what now allows you to soften, realign, and choose joy.
Episode 9:
Strength After Survival
In this Strength Month conversation, Leslie and Alex sit down with Emily Cochran Stiff to explore what strength really looks like after survival. Emily shares her journey through childhood trauma and years shaped by addiction in different forms, including time spent in sex work, and how those experiences influenced the way she learned to protect herself. She speaks openly about recovery, the unraveling of labels that once defined her, and the courage it took to choose healing over self destruction.
Now deeply engaged in spiritual and integration work, Emily reflects on forgiveness, accountability, and learning to meet herself with compassion. This episode is a powerful reminder that true strength is not about fighting or enduring more, but about choosing softness, rest, and peace as an act of self trust.
Episode 10: The Strength of Staying
In this Strength Month conversation, Leslie and Alex sit down with Nick Bell to explore the quiet strength it takes to keep showing up after loss and addiction. Nick shares his journey through grief, years of substance dependence, and the long road of rebuilding a life rooted in balance and responsibility.
He speaks honestly about recovery, accountability, and the daily persistence required to choose stability over escape. Mushrooms played a meaningful role in helping Nick reconnect with awareness, reflection, and a more sustainable way of living. This episode is a grounded reminder that strength is not always loud or dramatic, but often lives in consistency, humility, and the decision to keep trying even when it’s hard.
Episode 11: When Strength Is a Conversation
In this Strength Month Q&A episode, Leslie and Alex respond to questions from the community about labels, addiction, forgiveness, conflict, shame, and what it really means to live in alignment. Drawing from lived experience, past guest conversations, and their own evolving relationship with strength, they explore how healing unfolds through inquiry, compassion, and conscious choice.
This episode reflects on how strength is built not in isolation, but through dialogue, reflection, and the willingness to grok ourselves more deeply. A reminder that you do not have to have it all figured out to be strong, and that sometimes the most powerful growth begins with a question.
FEBRUARY 2026
During February, we explore the theme of heartbreak and heart-forward living. This month’s conversations invite a slower, more honest look at the places where love has hurt, changed us, or cracked us open, not as failures to move past, but as moments asking for understanding. Rather than closing our hearts in response to pain, we explore how heartbreak can become feedback, how boundaries and discernment protect what matters, and how choosing to live heart-forward is an ongoing practice rooted in self-trust, compassion, and alignment.
Episode 12: Heartbreak Isn’t the Opposite of Love
In this episode of Don’t Trip on Your Cape, Alex Embry and Leslie Arboleda open a heart-forward conversation about heartbreak, love, boundaries, and the choices that shape who we become. Kicking off a new monthly theme centered on heartbreak and heart forward living, they explore why heartbreak is not a failure of love, but proof that love mattered.
Through personal stories, lived experience, and deep reflection, this episode unpacks how heartbreak often reveals where we lost ourselves, how fear and love shape our decisions, and why healing is an intentional process rather than a single moment. Alex and Leslie discuss discernment versus tolerance, boundaries versus people-pleasing, and how responsibility differs from blame in relationships.
This conversation is an invitation to reframe pain as feedback, to examine the ingredients we use to build our lives, and to choose love as a conscious practice. A powerful reminder that strength, healing, and alignment are built not in isolation, but through honest reflection, courageous choice, and connection.
Episode 13: Presence Is the Medicine
In this heart-forward conversation of Don’t Trip on Your Cape, Alex Embry and Leslie Arboleda sit down with Elana Feldman to explore what it means to live, serve, and heal through presence. Continuing the monthly theme of heartbreak and heart-forward living, the conversation expands heartbreak beyond relationships into the quieter griefs we carry… body disruption, ancestral silence, self-abandonment, and the pressure to keep moving when life is asking us to slow down.
After surviving three major car accidents, Elana found herself on an unexpected path of deep listening, generational healing, and rebuilding trust with herself. Through stories of working with elders, reclaiming her voice, and learning to serve without self-sacrifice, this episode reminds us that healing does not come from perfection or performance… but from presence.
Episode 14:
Choosing Life After Loss
In this deeply moving episode of Don’t Trip on Your Cape, Alex Embry and Leslie Arboleda sit down with Raven Clemente, a mother, teacher, and guide whose life changed forever after the tragic loss of her husband in June 2024.
Continuing the theme of heartbreak and heart-forward living, Raven shares her journey through layered grief… navigating loss, parenting through trauma, and facing truths within her marriage that surfaced after his passing. What followed was not only devastation, but initiation.
Through resilience, accountability, and spiritual awakening, Raven reveals how loss stripped away illusion and returned her to herself… a powerful reminder that tragedy may change your life, but it does not have to end it.
Episode 15: From Heartbreak to Heart-Forward Living
In this February Wrap-Up episode of Don’t Trip on Your Cape, Alex Embry and Leslie Arboleda reflect on the conversations that shaped this month’s theme: Heartbreak & Heart-Forward Living.
Through thoughtful listener questions, they explore the deeper layers beneath heartbreak, from authenticity and codependency to grief, surrender, self-trust, and staying open to love after loss.
Together, they unpack the difference between kindness and niceness, how to untangle relational patterns, what surrender really means when life collapses, and how heartbreak can become one of life’s greatest integration points rather than something to simply “move past.”
Blending personal stories, nervous system awareness, and grounded spiritual insight, this episode offers a compassionate space to reflect on your own healing journey.
March 2026
During March, we explore the theme of opening up. If February invited us to sit with heartbreak, this month asks what happens next. Where have we built armor? Where have we protected ourselves so well that we’ve also blocked connection, softness, or possibility?
These conversations are an invitation to gently loosen what no longer serves us. Not to overshare or abandon discernment, but to open in ways that feel aligned and alive. Opening up becomes a practice of courage, of trust, and of allowing ourselves to be seen without performance. It is not about exposure. It is about expansion.
Episode 16: Opening Up —
An Invitation to Live Beyond
the Armor
In this episode of Don’t Trip on Your Cape, Alex Embry and Leslie Arboleda explore what it truly means to open up… not in a performative way, and not by exposing your wounds to the world, but by loosening the armor just enough to let real connection in.
Through stories about leadership, apologizing without losing authority, parenting with integrity, living on the cutting edge of authenticity, and trusting unconventional inner guidance, they unpack how strength and softness are not opposites. They are part of our wholeness.
They reflect on breaking generational patterns, disarming inherited trauma, and how one person choosing to show up vulnerably can shift an entire system.
This episode closes with two powerful questions:
Where are you ready to be seen?
And who might feel safer because you went first?
Opening up is not about tearing down everything at once. It is about living beyond the armor in small, courageous ways that ripple outward into workplaces, families, and communities.
Episode 17: Opening Up- Loving People Without Losing Yourself
In this episode of Don’t Trip on Your Cape, Alex Embry and Leslie Arboleda sit down with Lyrik as part of the show’s Opening Up theme for a conversation about love, boundaries, and the courage it takes to stay authentic in a world that often asks us to give more than we have.
What does it mean to love people deeply without losing yourself?
Lyrik shares reflections from a life shaped by resilience, parenting, and the slow process of learning how to loosen the armor built through experience. Together, the conversation explores the difference between resilience and balance, and why being strong for everyone else isn’t always the healthiest measure of success.
Sometimes the real work is learning when to draw boundaries, ask for help, and give yourself the same compassion you offer others.
The conversation also moves through parenting, identity, chosen family, and the responsibility of raising children who feel safe being fully themselves. Lyrik speaks openly about creating environments where authenticity is welcomed and protected.
Because opening up doesn’t mean abandoning strength.
It means learning how to love others while still protecting the parts of yourself that need care too.
Episode 18: Opening Up: Truth, Healing, and the Courage to Be Seen
In this episode of Don’t Trip on Your Cape, Alex Embry and Leslie Arboleda welcome Dr. Lida Fatemi for a thoughtful conversation about truth, healing, and what it really means to open up in a world that often encourages us to hide parts of ourselves.
Dr. Lida brings a unique perspective to the conversation, blending her professional experience as a physician with her lived experience navigating identity, growth, and the deeply human process of learning to be seen.
Together they explore how vulnerability can become a source of strength, why authenticity is often the doorway to healing, and what it means to move through life with curiosity rather than judgment.
The conversation touches on identity, personal transformation, emotional resilience, and the ways we can create environments where people feel safe enough to show up as their full selves.
Because sometimes the most powerful step in healing is simply allowing ourselves to be seen.
Episode 19 - Opening Up: From Performance to Truth
This month’s wrap-up felt different… in the best way.
What started as a reflection on Opening Up became something deeper. Not just about vulnerability, but about the difference between talking and truly being seen.
We explore what it really means to open up… how to tell when you’re being honest vs performing, and how to navigate the tension between wanting to be seen while still feeling safe.
The conversation touches on identity, boundaries, and the patterns we repeat, along with reflections from this month’s guests.
Some of it is soft.
Some of it is confronting.
Some of it might feel familiar.
Because opening up isn’t always big or dramatic… sometimes it’s quiet, messy, and simply choosing something more honest.
April 2026
During April, we explore the theme of igniting the fire. If March invited us to open, this month asks what we’re ready to do with what’s been revealed. Where have we been waiting? Where have we been holding back, dimming, or circling the same patterns instead of stepping forward?
These conversations are an invitation to activate what’s already within you. Not through force or urgency, but through clarity, ownership, and aligned action. Igniting the fire is not about becoming someone new. It is about choosing to move, to respond, and to create from the truth you’ve already uncovered. It is not about pressure. It is about power.
Episode 20: Igniting the Fire: Remember Who You Are
There comes a moment when you realize you’re not tired because life is demanding…
You’re tired because you’re disconnected.
Disconnected from what excites you.
Disconnected from what moves you.
Disconnected from the version of you that knows exactly what it wants.
In Episode 20 of Don’t Trip on Your Cape, we kick off April’s theme, Igniting the Fire, with a powerful reminder:
Your fire was never gone.
Through personal stories and honest reflection, they explore how conditioning pulls you away from your truth, why numbing is easier than healing, and what it costs to stay there.
This isn’t about waiting until you feel ready.
It’s about choosing to move… even when you don’t have all the answers.
Because your fire isn’t gone.
It’s still there… waiting for you to remember who you are.
Episode 21: Igniting the Fire: From Triggers to Transformation
This episode didn’t go the way we expected… and somehow, it went exactly the way it needed to.
We sat down with Jillian Kinsman, energy healer and intuitive guide, and the conversation went far beyond surface-level healing. It became a deeper look at the patterns we carry, the triggers that bring them to the surface, and what it actually takes to change them.
Jillian shares how growing up in a volatile environment shaped her nervous system, her reactions, and her sense of safety in the world. But more than the story itself, we explore what it looks like to begin shifting those patterns in real, practical ways.
We talk about triggers as signals, why patterns repeat until we see them, and the difference between reacting and responding in the moment.
This episode is part of our Igniting the Fire series, and it gets to something deeper.
Because sometimes the fire isn’t about doing more…
Sometimes it’s the moment you realize:
this is mine to change.
Episode 22: Igniting the Fire: Who Are You When Everything Is Taken From You?
There are moments in life that don’t just challenge you… they take everything.
In this episode of Don’t Trip On Your Cape, we sit down with Shanella Harris, whose life shifted overnight, leading to incarceration, loss of identity, and the kind of experience that forces you to confront who you are at your core.
This conversation explores what it means to rebuild your identity when everything familiar is gone, how to keep going when you feel unseen, and the difference between surviving and choosing who you are.
This episode is part of our Igniting the Fire series.
Because sometimes the fire isn’t loud…
Sometimes it’s the quiet decision to keep choosing yourself.
Episode 23: Igniting the Fire: The Way Back Is Within You
What does it actually mean to come back to yourself?
In this Q&A episode of Don’t Trip On Your Cape, we continue April’s Igniting the Fire theme by exploring self-trust, alignment, and inner knowing through your questions.
We move through things like when to ask for support versus trusting yourself, what it feels like when your fire is buried but not gone, and how to rebuild self-trust after misalignment or difficult decisions.
This conversation doesn’t try to give you answers.
It keeps returning to one place:
Your inner knowing.
Because feeling lost, disconnected, or uncertain isn’t failure… it’s feedback.
And when you start listening instead of avoiding it, something shifts.
You begin to trust yourself again… and find your way back to who you’ve always been.