an Interview with Mary Walker-Golden aka Devi*Mari, Founder of The Worthy Goddess Club
Hello. How do women, healers and caretakers worldwide get support with self-care? They turn to an expert! We recently sat down with self-worth and empowerment expert Mary Walker-Golden to see how she helps others stay committed to their self-care and find out what her new project, The Worthy Goddess Club is all about.
Q: Hi Mary, tell us a little about what inspired you to create The Worthy Goddess Club?
A: I created this club because I wanted to make something that people would recognize they are worthy of committing to and completing in fact when I first started dreaming up bringing my business online I wanted to make a course and I was going to make a course about meta the loving kindness prayer and how to take that into action in your everyday life. I started a Facebook group where we would have live chats and I wrote the entire course out and recorded many parts of it.
But along the way I realized that this dream had the potential of sitting in someone’s inbox even after they paid for it and it may never reach them. So I began to wonder what’s the difference between those who purchase something and use it and those who purchase something and don’t use it and I realized it was based on the alignment of their self-worth.
For example if you believe you’re worth that gorgeous pair of sparkly $250 shoes and you buy them because you need them and they sit in the closet and you never wear them it very well me it very well may be because the shoes hold a value that’s higher than your human feet are ready to step into. Similarly we may in some part of our soul really want the course and the content that it holds for us but in our everyday habitual self we may not have created the space or the time or the commitment or the alignment that is worthy of receiving that content. So I began to focus on the topic of self-worth and wondered why we don’t all have a high sense of self-worth or perhaps even any sense of self-worth and that’s when my mission became clear: To Normalize Self-Worth.
Q: Wow thats a powerful mission. How do you define self-worth and what does normalizing it entail?
A: Self-worth is the value every human being is born with. It’s the value of life. It’s something given to us as a gift by the life force energy of the universe. Another name for this energy is the Divine Goddess or Pure Consciousness or God. When I talking about the worthiness of life, that value is not made clear to all people as they are being brought up. In fact, it may sound a bit strange to hear me talk about and encourage you to think about self-worth at all. This is because it is an overlooked topic that has not been normalized in terms of consciously acknowledging the inherent value of all humans (and beings). Acknowledging, accepting and honoring our self-worth is the key to healing ourselves and our world.
As children grow and learn and are conditioned for their roles in society, they may receive (loud or quiet) messages that make them feel unworthy. They may hear words that describe them as stupid, less than or even worthless.
For example, there may be repeated lessons about how we have to eat all of our food on our plate because there are people less fortunate than us who are going hungry. Or we have to take care of our younger siblings or sick family members or our children because they are valuable and worthy of care.
What’s missing from these lessons is that; number one, we are worthy. We are worthy of eating nourishing food because that supports the life force we were given. We are worthy of self-care because that sustains us so that we can care for one another.
In many ways, we’re being brought up in a backwards system in where there are high expectations of being caring and supporting and having empathy but there’s not enough power there’s not enough gas in the tank to back this up when the system is tested.
We are under constant pressure, we are in a state of disease because of stress and we are moving at a speed that leaves no time for anything other than work hard, play hard. And this has all been normalized and we have all adhered to the social contracts that say:
I am worthy if I have a steady job.
I am worthy if I have a house.
I’m worthy if I have a relationship.
I’m worthy if you fill in the blank… but to normalize self-worth means that we have the right to be worthy of the lives we’ve been given: in our human form, just as we are, having what we have and not having what we don’t have. Whether we are engaging with life skillfully or making tragic mistakes, we’re still Worthy and that’s what needs to be the new normal in our world right now.
Q: Tell us about your self-worth journey and how you got the title empowerment expert?
A: For a long time I had glimpses of sensing into my healthy body feeling at peace in my mind feeling in alignment with my career path or my relationships and yet these were all fleeting. They would come and then some disconnect from those states would unravel my world and my sense of self confidence really.
I would question myself and what I’m doing and if I’m doing it right and what I need to be doing better and it would feel very punitive in a way. So even though I was doing things that were good for me, like eating healthy and exercising and working toward a compassionate way of life, I was still self abandoning by taking the downs and giving them all my power. I was allowing them to turn my whole world upside down.
I think a lot of us are are in this Zone where we’re getting glimpses of what health feels like what happiness feels like. (I have recently seen these called glimmers, which are the opposite of triggers by the way- love this!) We want to go all in and something about that process feels like we need to be better or do better or work harder or get more time or have more patience or be more of something than we are.
And thats where Goddess and Empowerment Energy steps in and says, “you’re already enough as you are right here in this moment”. Empowerment is honoring that when stuff gets tough and when we have doubts and guilt and shame and despair, thats ok, but we still don’t have the right to self-abandon. We don’t have the right to say and do things that promote the mindset, “you’re an idiot, you are a failure, you suck”, which all diminish our self-worth. We may not even really feel this way but the habit of harm continues in the realm of what shapes our lives- the subconscious.
We also have the responsibility as autonomous beings to respect and value ourselves, our bodies, our time. Unconsciously or consciously giving it all away is a form of avoidance or a habit of victimhood mindset or a trauma response that will not serve us long term.
In 2019, I realized I was spending a a lot of time and energy on giving to others. Sometimes it was bringing three dishes to a family party or going to the local animal shelter even though I was exhausted to stuff envelopes with a 1-year-old. As I became more aware of this habit, I began to recreate a new boundary around not giving anything away. This formed as my New Year’s resolution for 2020.
It was also incredibly challenging for me to keep because I had to say no a lot more and find graceful ways to honor my new self-worth system; which was allowing that time and space to be open so that I could explore my own needs. As I got to know them better, I had the power to fulfill them.
This was is a scary place that many of us don’t want to go into alone. So that’s where The Worthy Goddess Club can be so valuable, to give members a powerful group of supporters around them. One of the things you will hear and type and say a lot in this club is Build Her Up and another is, of course, You are worthy.
Q: Will the Worthy Goddess Club address things like negative self-talk? What would that look like?
A: Negative self-talk is an issue for many of us. In fact, a lot of us don’t even realize it’s happening because what’s normalized is self-deprecating humor (which is actually really hilarious a lot of the time). But it can be misinterpreted as a joke, when it may actually be the way we look at ourselves. Words like, “Yeah, I’d like to but I’m too fat and lazy” or “I’m so competitive that I literally can’t figure out what to do when I lose” or “Yes, I am a control freak that won’t let my kid out of my sight even for a minute”. Does this align with who we really want to be in our lives?
This is why the pillars of The Worthy Goddess Club are awareness, confidence, courage and compassion. We have to start to invite ourselves to the table of awareness noticing what’s going on in our thoughts in our feelings. Then, here’s the fun part that is uniques from many other approaches. When we begin to notice what the self-talk; rather than manually trying to change it, we can simply take notice that it’s not serving us and it needs to be changed. This entails working on the energy of the system of thoughts rather than working on the manual shifting of thought patterns.
The energy system is greater than the thought. It produces the thought and it’s more malleable. It’s less technical and more more powerful in terms that it can be dropped into felt into. Reestablishing feelings that are positive about ourselves, feelings of worthiness, of care, of self-love and of tenderness will bring in more goodness. My mom always says, “If you want to change something, bring in more of the good and then the negative stuff just fall away naturally”. We don’t have to shame it away or beat it down or change it manually. It’s just going to no longer be needed.
Every Worthy Goddess (woman who is ready to take an unapologetic look in the mirror) has confidence and has courage because she is unafraid to let go of what’s not for her. And the compassion she starts to bring to her own life begins to color and animate all of her relationships all of her home all of the world around her in such a beautiful way.
Q: So who’s invited to the club and how does it work?
A: The club just opened and I invited several amazing women in because I’ve already been working with them and they’ve already had interest in this goddess energy and self-worth and empowerment. And so, of course, if that speaks to you, this is for You. Even if some of these terms I am using or language of self-worth that I’m speaking is new to you. Another way to describe it is that this is for you if you have been struggling to maintain a Self-Care Routine that feels good and enjoyable and authentic. Maybe you’ve been in the world of Health and Wellness for years or decades but you’re not necessarily practicing what you preach in terms of your own self-care.
We know we need to take care of ourselves and yet it can be a real challenge to look in the mirror and admit, “I’m not doing this with integrity. It’s time to get the support I need to learn what I don’t yet know and gear-shift my life”. If there feels like there’s a disconnect between where you’re at and where you want to be, that would be an indicator that this club is for you.
Maybe you’re having difficulty aligning your life and your actions with your purpose or with your integrity or with your truth with your highest. The energy of the Goddess is all about connecting to your highest-self, your inner guide – really it’s your intuition. And when you make a solid connection with that part of yourself and bond with that part of yourself and commit to honoring her, you are whole. You become unbreakable and unstoppable. You’re empowered. You are radiant. You are more than you could ever imagine prior to being there because; again, we’re trying to shift and change things about ourselves rather than trust and honor things that are already divinely aligned within us and waiting to be noticed and illuminated.
The way the club works is it’s a monthly membership club for those who feel compelled by the themes of self-worth and empowerment and goddess energy. We have around 10 virtual “Live” meetups per month where we practice self-care together in a safe and supportive space. I encourage members to be unapologetically real and vulnerable and joyful. We will work out, we will work-in, we will dance, we will laugh, we’ll meditate.
And once a month, there will be an invitation-only Goddess Circle where members meet to share our self-care with one another and the world through the practice of Metta. There will also be safe space for one another to share and be heard through the practices of feminine wisdom and compassion.
Right now the course is $33 a month it can be billed regularly late to your PayPal account or your credit card. I’m offering a free month for this audience so that you can give the club a try and make sure it feels in alignment with your wellness and self-care goals. You can join now by clicking the link below! Thank you for taking this amazing journey with me and supporting my mission To Normalize Self-Worth.