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What if you could get more of what you want in life? But not through pushing, forcing, or pressure.
You can.
When it comes to money, time, and energy, no one’s gonna turn away more.
And Kate Northrup, Bestselling Author of Money: A Love Story and Do Less and host of Plenty, is here to help you expand your capacity to receive all of the best.
As a Money Empowerment OG who’s been at it for nearly 2 decades, Kate’s the abundance-oriented best friend you may not even know you’ve always needed.
Pull up a chair every week with top thought leaders, luminaries, and adventurers to learn how to have more abundance with ease.
I didn't need to use language anymore. They knew from the look on my face that there was no mirror needed. And what was so powerful in that moment was that I could feel and I knew everything. Like I knew everything I needed to know and I really owned it.
Kate Northrup:One of my best friends in the world is on the podcast today. I have been trying to get her in this freaking studio for years. And though she lives in the same state as me, it is hard to get this woman out of her house. Her name is Megan Waterson. She is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Mary Magdalene Revealed, and her brand new book, The Girl Who Baptized Herself, is out today.
Kate Northrup:I am so proud of Megan and the five years that she devoted of her life to this particular scripture, this particular story, and the relevancy it has for humans, particularly women today. And in this conversation, we went everywhere from Meg's story of getting sober sober to my story of how this book about a girl who baptized herself really helped me to unhook from some really sneaky ways in my life that I was still waiting for permission, still waiting to be chosen. So if there's any part of you that is waiting to have what you want, settling for crumbs, going back over and over and over again to situations or people that you know are just not it, this conversation is for you. Meg is not only trained from Harvard and Columbia in divinity and theology, she's hysterical and one of the most human, real people you will ever meet as well as one of the most brilliant. So enjoy the episode.
Kate Northrup:Welcome to Plenty. I'm your host Kate Northrup and together we are going on a journey to help you have an incredible relationship with money, time, and energy. And to have abundance on every possible level. Every week, we're gonna dive in with experts and insights to help you unlock a life of plenty. Let's go fill our cups.
Speaker 3:Please note that the opinions and perspectives of the guests on the Plenty podcast are not necessarily reflective of the opinions and perspectives of Kate Northrop or anyone who works within the Kate Northrop brand.
Meggan Watterson:Say hi. I love you.
Kate Northrup:I love you too. Thanks for being here. Lady. Okay. Yeah.
Kate Northrup:Wow. So you already crying?
Meggan Watterson:I'm already crying.
Kate Northrup:I just saw that. Okay, so for context.
Meggan Watterson:Yeah.
Kate Northrup:Today I actually I am gonna cry. I'm gonna cry right now. I wanna talk because so many people talk about meeting friends as a grown up.
Meggan Watterson:Yeah.
Kate Northrup:And that that can be a challenge, and it has not been a challenge for me, but I wanted to share the story of how we met, and a little bit about the weaving, just for context of our conversation, but also because I really like the story, and just about how our people are out there, and if we remain plugged in to the signal, it's really obvious.
Meggan Watterson:So
Kate Northrup:I know that you remember how we met, but we met, I was in New York, and you were in New York, and this woman I had known because she had worked with my mom years before Gail Straub, who used to run the empowerment workshops, which is where my mom met Ned Leavitt, became her agent, whatever, she, I don't remember why, but she said to me, I know this woman, Megan Waterson, and I think you should meet her. She's doing this conference, you should go. And then after, it was your very first reveal. Yep. What year was that?
Meggan Watterson:2011, I think. No, '20 It would have been 2010. No, twenty o nine. Think it was o nine. Shay was still because Shay was A baby.
Meggan Watterson:He was like nine months old.
Kate Northrup:And when what year was he born? February?
Meggan Watterson:02/2009.
Kate Northrup:And you just you gave birth to your first baby, and you did Reveal Yeah. The same year?
Meggan Watterson:Same year.
Kate Northrup:What is that do you think?
Meggan Watterson:I
Kate Northrup:know so many women who do really big things in their career the year they have a child.
Meggan Watterson:What was that about for you? I think it's interesting, but I recently was having this conversation with someone online that there's so few rituals to mark the way that we really die when we give birth. Like, we are not the person we were at all. Like, we can't even refer back to that person. There is an actual death and rebirth, and that we need more of that language, the words to really describe what that was like.
Meggan Watterson:Like I can literally pinpoint the moment. It was when the doulas wanted to bring the mirror to look at my vagina, and I was like, I didn't need to use language anymore. They knew from the look on my face that there was no mirror needed. And what was so powerful in that moment was that I could feel and I knew everything. Like, I knew everything I needed to know, and I really owned it.
Meggan Watterson:There was a sense of authority I reclaimed or claimed in that moment where that was the end of the former self, and I began again in that moment because there was no reference. Like a mirror is a reflection. It's a reference. It's a distraction though. It's a once removed.
Meggan Watterson:And in that moment it was like, no. I know exactly where he is. I know exactly how I'm doing, and I know what I'm doing. They wanted me to not scream as loudly, like, to sort of rein in some energy, which I do understand why that's but I was at a point of there's no coming back from where I was, you know? I was ardently and very enthusiastically calling for Christ
Kate Northrup:every time I pushed. Yeah.
Meggan Watterson:And I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I mean, and I knew, I knew physically that's what I needed to do to get And him out of this so it didn't matter what was happening outside of me. I knew, as in directly from within me, what I needed to do. And that's when the old me died and a new and maybe that's the initiation into motherhood. But for me, how is this related to what you asked?
Kate Northrup:Well, this is so perfect. It's just the perfect place to begin. I mean What was the question you would ask me?
Meggan Watterson:I asked you.
Kate Northrup:I have no idea. I asked you, what was it for you about giving birth to Shay in the same
Meggan Watterson:year
Kate Northrup:and giving birth to Reveal?
Meggan Watterson:Okay, so the last sort of tether that I want to say to that is that I don't think it was an accident that I didn't publish until after he was born. Yeah. Because there's a level of self doubt then. Yeah. I still struggle with it to this day as a writer, but it fundamentally shifted because you go through that actual death.
Meggan Watterson:Like I really feel like I felt a death. And I understood physically both how infinite we are, but also that the infinite is terrifying because we only get to be in this physical body.
Kate Northrup:Which is quite finite.
Meggan Watterson:It's so finite. So brief. I mean it's just insane how brief it is. So to feel that and to know that physically in that moment, it allowed me to have, like, this tool, you know, this to use that feeling as a touchstone when I would start to doubt myself as a writer. And I think for me though, it was also that I needed community in order to write.
Meggan Watterson:So I love that with my story, There was reveal first, where I was calling it
Kate Northrup:Right, all was of a community first.
Meggan Watterson:It was a community first. I didn't publish until After.
Kate Northrup:I mean it was amazing. So I show up there because Gail told me to go, and Gail was like, I think you should be friends with Megan, and then we she introduced us, and I had just offered randomly. I was like, hey, you just did a really big thing. Literally, I did not know you. You're a brand new mom, you know, but I was like, if you wanna hop on Skype just for a digestion of this big thing that you just did, I'd be happy to be that person for you.
Kate Northrup:And then we Skyped, which was that's how long ago, because who even what even is that? We Skyped you when you were in Cleveland with Baby Shea visiting your mom that summer.
Meggan Watterson:Yeah.
Kate Northrup:And then that was that.
Meggan Watterson:That was it.
Kate Northrup:That was it. It was love at first sight. It was love at first sight. And you had created this incredible community first, which you had created Red Ladies before that. Right.
Kate Northrup:But Reveal was on a much bigger scale.
Meggan Watterson:Right. Because my apartment was getting too small to hold the Red Ladies, and also I wanted to make a louder call, you know, to to throw the net out wider for all different forms of religions and spiritualities so so that the voices of the women that were coming together I wanted to understand, okay, how do we name and describe the divine? How do we name and experience and describe mystical experiences? Like, what what is ultimate for us? Like, what is really sacred?
Meggan Watterson:Right? Because what's always fascinated me the most is I have equal rage and excitement about so many things that have to do with religion. And one of the things when I was in seminary was just the realization of the way that all of these practices have been fundamentally structured by men and described by men and from the male experience. So to me, there's so much excitement in thinking about creating that that void. Like, there hasn't been that same expression, that that same amount of container for a female body and what it means to to encounter the divine in the female experience.
Meggan Watterson:And so it it excited me because it was sort of like, you know, the monk's experience is really like a typical Tuesday for any woman. I love this word,
Kate Northrup:yeah.
Meggan Watterson:Yeah. I mean it's it's like emotional support, emphasis on self denial and Like emotional repression.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. Really.
Meggan Watterson:And and really the silence, the quiet, all of those spiritual norms that we associate with spirituality, I I loved being able to question is that really spiritual for me, for my experience, when that's already expected of me in culture because I'm female. So what does it mean for me to be spiritual? Maybe it means, you know, saying the thing that's never been said before. Maybe that's so much more spiritual. Maybe it's just something that we haven't quite put words to yet.
Kate Northrup:And that we each get to explore for ourselves. As someone like you who is literally trained in theology the way Sorry,
Meggan Watterson:in theology.
Kate Northrup:Like you went to the school to learn the way it Uh-huh, went to and then while you were there, I believe, although maybe it happened before, you discovered the this is not the correct word, what I'm about to say, but what I wanna say is the lost gospels. What are they actually called?
Meggan Watterson:Well, so typically, when I was at seminary and divinity school, they were referred to as the Gnostic Gospels. Thank you. Yes. And that's both that's been helpful and also problematic.
Kate Northrup:Okay.
Meggan Watterson:The the way that it's helpful is that it it allows us to group them together. They're all the scriptures that were not codified in the New Testament in the fourth century, and there's a reason for that. One is that they focused on gnosticism or the word gnosis in Greek, which means direct knowing. Yeah. So which I love.
Meggan Watterson:And they all that's that's sort of a red thread that runs through them. And also they include so many of the stories of women, like the Gospel of Mary and the Acts of Fall and Thecla, which is what this next book is about. So they were not included, but there were a whole bunch of rebel monks. You know, somebody refused to get rid of them and they buried them in urns in the Egyptian Desert. And some were found at Nag Hammadi, the Gospel of Mary was not, it was found, along the Nile.
Meggan Watterson:So they're grouped together, but the problematic part about them is that they get misunderstood as being a separate religion or a separate separate cult or spirituality. They are actual evidence of the root system of the Christ movement, of the form of Christianity that existed before the fourth century.
Kate Northrup:And in the fourth century, to catch anybody up who is not aware of how the King James Bible as we understand it came to be Right. Can you just let us know what was that actual history and what was actually going on there and what was the point of the Bible at that time? So Or that So version of the
Meggan Watterson:Emperor Constantine wanted to make Christianity the empire's religion. And what's very significant is that up until that point, there's like hundreds of years, right, after Christ's crucifixion before Christianity began. And during that time period, if you were Christian, you were killed. So that's how seditious it was to be Christian because if you were Christian, you were essentially challenging all the power structures of the Roman Empire. You're saying the the love, the power that exists within me exists within you too, whether you're male or female.
Meggan Watterson:And if you were male and female, that was a whole very different reality for you. Yeah. Females had you couldn't vote, you couldn't run for public office, they had next to no rights. So a female was considered less than, literally was not a whole human being, was not a whole only the male body was the full human being. And what's so powerful about the Gospel of Mary is this constant repetition of that Christ had called us to be true human beings.
Meggan Watterson:So all of us, male and female. So the emphasis then is on what exists within us that can't be seen in this physical form, but that is renders us all equal. And that was the part that kind of pissed Constantine off and didn't work with the idea of making Christianity become patriarchal. Right? If you have all this evidence of women being in, you know, girls baptizing themselves and women being in the most prominent positions of power like Mary Magdalene, then that's not gonna work to have Christianity become the empire's religion.
Kate Northrup:Right.
Meggan Watterson:So really what was happening during that process was editing out the scriptures that told that story about Christ and including the scriptures that really told what scholar Karen King refers to as the master story. And it's this idea that it is a male, exclusively male succession of authority, spiritual authority coming down from Christ, and that it's only males. And so that was established at that time. Really what happened was the patriarchy became deified. Got
Kate Northrup:it. Yeah. And that was very much on purpose. And so this idea that we can refer to the Bible, which is the King James version that we see in any hotel room, whatever, along with the Book of Mormon, that that is some sort of end all, be all, as though it was written by God
Meggan Watterson:Right.
Kate Northrup:Him him, her, themselves Right. Is not actually historically accurate. Right. And this is not something that I found out, and it's this Right.
Meggan Watterson:One's ever This is It was
Kate Northrup:common knowledge. Everybody. Everybody who goes through
Meggan Watterson:any kind of even small amount of Totally. I mean, history or or studying theology, but or a religion course. Yeah. I mean, anyone can learn this. This is very accessible.
Meggan Watterson:I think what's hard
Kate Northrup:It's it's accessible, but, like, there's a lot of Amnesia
Meggan Watterson:about Exactly. Exactly. There really is. There's this intractability around the idea that actually, maybe the Christianity before Constantine got his hands on it was far more radical than anything we have ever
Kate Northrup:Okay. So you gave me the girl.
Meggan Watterson:Yes.
Kate Northrup:Your brand new book. Yes. The Girl Who Baptized Herself at the time of publication of this episode. It is out today, And pub I was going through my own thing about needing to choose myself, and I assume I'm like, whatever, I've been at this for a long time, like, I don't have self worth issues, I don't know who to put a I mean, I'm very humble, like, you know I'm always working on my shit. Yeah.
Kate Northrup:But I wasn't aware of some sort of gaping wound where I really needed some kind of empowering female story. I'm lying in bed reading this book, and I was like,
Meggan Watterson:it was
Kate Northrup:like, bomb to my soul. And so I'm happy to share more about that, but I want to know, do you remember the moment when you knew you needed to tell her story in a bigger way? And how did you know this was your next book?
Meggan Watterson:Two moments. The first was when I first ever heard of this story when I was in seminary.
Kate Northrup:Okay. So this has been a long time coming.
Meggan Watterson:Yeah. And I mean, a girl who baptized herself, a girl who's constantly having to save herself, because that's another thread. Like, literally, she physically has to save herself. She spiritually has to save herself. I was like, there cannot be a more relevant message.
Meggan Watterson:Like No.
Kate Northrup:We can't wait for
Meggan Watterson:anyone to save us. Like, we have to save ourselves, but we're not told that ever.
Kate Northrup:You said is demonstrating for us that no one is coming to save us, no one except the one we become by saving ourselves.
Meggan Watterson:So good. And and I just I was again, it's that those two moments, I'm always existing on the extremes, which touch each other. Right? So that works out.
Kate Northrup:But, like A big old horseshoe.
Meggan Watterson:So so irate and angry that I'm I'd never heard of her. Like, how was it possible? Everybody's heard of Paul. Like, everybody's heard well, okay. Maybe not everybody, but most people know of Paul the apostle a little bit.
Meggan Watterson:You know? A little bit. A little bit. But no one has heard of like, even the most devout, I really struggle to there are so few people who have heard about Thekla, and yet she ministered right alongside him. So it's the the anger about that erasure, the anger about, you know, that as a girl, I didn't get to have this example, this model.
Meggan Watterson:I didn't I didn't have this. I didn't have this road map to reclaiming my worth within a spiritual context. But then, it's also the excitement. Like, how Okay, so it was saved. Somebody saved it.
Meggan Watterson:Someone buried it. And we have it. And just also the trust in the timing. So there was that moment when I first encountered it, I absolutely knew my life was about bringing these voices that literally had been buried, like actually buried in the sand, to bring these buried voices to the present moment. But then in 2020 was when because the world was standing still, right, and I was going inward in a way that I mean, of course, you know for me that's my favorite pilgrimage.
Meggan Watterson:My favorite form of travel is going inward. And all of my book tour for Mary Magdalene Revealed was canceled.
Kate Northrup:Because the pub date of Mary Magdalene Revealed was
Meggan Watterson:Was 2019. Was at the end of twenty nineteen.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. Okay. That was a bit of a wash. Right.
Meggan Watterson:2019. And so we just all everything that I had planned for this spring and this summer, everything was canceled. Yeah. Which, you know, there was quiet celebration in me around that. I'm okay with with that.
Meggan Watterson:If you
Kate Northrup:don't know Megan, she does not like to get on airplanes or really leave home for really any reason.
Meggan Watterson:I am actually I have the constitution of a
Kate Northrup:You do, and just as case in point, we live in the same state, and I mean, a couple hot more seconds. And like, I've been asking you to come on the podcast for, you know, for Eight years. Yeah. For a really long time. And you're a dear friend of mine, and I know you love spending time with me, but it's hard to get you out.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. Yeah. So it's such a I mean, I'm thrilled you're here. And also, it's such a testament to anyway, okay, that's a whole other story. So you were so it's 2020.
Kate Northrup:Everything's canceled. Everything's
Meggan Watterson:And going inward was okay. So
Kate Northrup:it's like
Meggan Watterson:if we all have to be still, and be still for longer than what's normal,
Kate Northrup:then And way longer than what's comfortable.
Meggan Watterson:Right, right, for all of us. I mean was an opportunity for so many of us, and so amidst the death. And I think for me it just became the text I needed to study because of that one line that and the women all cried out in a loud voice as if from one mouth. We had gone through Me Too, we had gone through the women's march, we had, you know, through the the gyms the girls gymnastics. Oh yeah.
Meggan Watterson:Like that revelation. Like we had been through so much of this reclaiming of our voices and putting words to what we had all just put up with
Kate Northrup:Mhmm.
Meggan Watterson:But saying we're not going to anymore. And I felt like I hadn't applied that to my own life. Like I I hadn't gone through that. I had marched, you know, I had done all the things, but I I hadn't really undergone that with myself. That sense of what does it mean because at the end of, and this is a spoiler, but okay at the end of the book, it's like Thekla fighting for her freedom gives permission to all the women in the arena to fight for their freedom as well.
Meggan Watterson:So there's a formula about what happens when we unite. But for me, everything external is also internal. So that union I knew also had to happen within me. Like what does that mean for me to really fight for my life and to fight for something don't make me cry. To fight, like to really ask for more than I even knew how to ask for.
Meggan Watterson:And I was very aware at that time that I had been living off of crumbs when it came to love. And that's really what I see Thekla refusing and the women in the crowd refusing is the crumbs of power. They they refuse to accept that anymore. And so it was just that was one of the gifts that that that really intense period in all of our lives, 2020, was giving to me was like, how can I really find that place within me that believes in me in a way where I've never been able to practice it yet? You know, I haven't really put it into my life directly.
Meggan Watterson:And her scripture is just 45 chapters, but it is so powerful and I couldn't stop studying it. You know, once I it's just I couldn't I became obsessed with it and I just couldn't stop reading it. I read it again and again and again. And I practiced something called Lectio Divina, is basically just a fancy spiritual word for saying you marinate over certain words, certain passages. So I was doing that for a lot of the passages and it was showing me the way that there's a template here in the structure of the way she reaches.
Meggan Watterson:Right? She starts off this teenage girl with no power about to be married off by her family in this little red brick house, to becoming one of the first female followers of Christ and and being given the commission by Paul to to preach, but only after she baptizes herself. So I really wanted to study that Yeah. Transformation. Yeah.
Meggan Watterson:Like, what and for me, because seven is just that's just my number. I mean, that I just can't I and there's like two sevens in this book too because I also go through the seven powers of Mary's gospel. The the seven stages, what was so fascinating for me because I'm someone who studied the Homeric epics. Don't know if you Yeah, knew that about I studied them.
Kate Northrup:I love learning new things Who about does that? Who does that? No one.
Meggan Watterson:But I did study them. And so there were moments where I kept thinking about the differences. I was doing
Kate Northrup:this comparison.
Meggan Watterson:If I was still in college I would have written a paper about it. But I kept doing these comparisons between Odysseus where he starts off. What I found so striking is that his story is one where he starts off on an island, he's already powerful, right? His story starts he already has power and agency. Theklas, she has none when she starts.
Meggan Watterson:And he goes back to his physical home. She starts off home and also comes back home, but she comes home to embodiment. Like, she's fully she says this I am statement to her mother, the mother who, you know, offers to burn her at the stake. Yeah. And she says this I am statement where for me it just felt like there's something unique about this template where it's more about coming home to our physical body?
Meggan Watterson:And how much more difficult is that if your body is the one that's considered less than? Right? There's a different journey that has to happen.
Kate Northrup:And Thekla lived how many years ago?
Meggan Watterson:So her it's some scholars date her scripture to as early as seventy AD. So she would have been first century. Yeah. No. That's considered
Kate Northrup:Really? I don't
Meggan Watterson:know. Second century? Yeah. Don't I have not. Stop.
Meggan Watterson:I hate time. I hate linear time.
Kate Northrup:It's like so long ago.
Meggan Watterson:So long ago.
Kate Northrup:What what's so striking about her story
Meggan Watterson:I
Kate Northrup:is how deeply relevant it is today, and then the way you wove in your own story, which is so brilliant, and and I know that, you know, whatever, people think that you're supposed to be a scholar and never put yourself in. Yes. I'm like, that's so dumb, and also terminally boring because I'm so not interested in reading something that doesn't come from a human. Like, there's no such thing as the objective truth, so can't we all just stop pretending Right. That we don't all have strong opinions that are shaped by our own reality?
Kate Northrup:Right.
Meggan Watterson:I I think it's really important to name Yeah. The fact that my metaphysical beliefs are affected by my physical reality. Exactly. And okay. So it's so you know that I work at
Kate Northrup:the intersection of our own personal worth, money, the nervous system, and the body. You and I ultimately, we are so wildly different, and we are
Meggan Watterson:It's the same.
Kate Northrup:Doing the exact same work. And so there was a piece that you said here, and so I'm so struck by that journey of coming into full embodiment in a body as the full journey home, like the arrival, trickier, probably, you know, we would imagine, when it's in a body that has not been lauded as the right kind of body.
Meggan Watterson:And And doesn't have a model And doesn't of a spiritual Exactly. Authority that is That looks like The same.
Kate Northrup:Feels, you know, whatever. And so I just am so struck by it's like, oh, wow. It's 2025, and this is freaking relevant. So you wrote, for many of us with trauma I'm like, oh, that's not a funny sentence. Okay.
Kate Northrup:Hold on. Let me readjust. Adjust. Okay. Let me readjust.
Meggan Watterson:Change
Kate Northrup:time. For many of us with trauma, that path to reclaiming a sense of our innate worthiness can be treacherous and hard won. It's elusive because we often imagine it will be given to us by someone else, that it will be accrued through acts of service or through external achievements, but our worthiness in being human is deeper and more hidden than anything we can actually point to, earn, or prove, and anything that could, in the end, be taken from
Meggan Watterson:us. Exactly.
Kate Northrup:For you, since you became obsessed with this scripture in 2020 when the world stood still, now it's 2025. You've been on quite a journey. We've all been on quite a journey. But that piece for you with your personal story living in your body in this lifetime, what has changed for you as a result of you journeying with her and writing this book and being a total hermit? Like you just went so fucking deep for
Meggan Watterson:Full hermit.
Kate Northrup:Five years.
Meggan Watterson:Yeah. That's so wonderful.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. Yeah. And how are you different now?
Meggan Watterson:I think the way I like to describe this is that I'm only ever more me. So it's not so much different, it's more being the one I've always been. And it's just not having to apologize or explain myself. It's just being fully who I've always been with so much less effort. So there's that.
Kate Northrup:No small thing.
Meggan Watterson:The worst part though, and how that's changed my life, is that I really couldn't see the way that my attraction to my ex husband was so tethered to my sense of self worth. I could not see that. And that took some serious I mean, that did take me stopping life and and really, really going inward in a way where I met with a memory of my dad driving with me drunk, which was not something I had ever repressed. Yeah. It wasn't it was always there.
Kate Northrup:Like, you knew.
Meggan Watterson:I couldn't feel it. Right. I couldn't feel what that did. To go through that, I couldn't feel it. And finally, it was like being with Theckelo for this long, like what she gave me was like this sense of mercy and love for myself.
Meggan Watterson:Like, where I was able to be in that moment with, you know, little nine year old me and the way that I just went silent, you know. And I didn't want to upset him. And but he was I mean, I'm very lucky to have survived that drive. And I left my body in a way it's taken me most of my life to return. And it's like I didn't know that I had that that sense of a lack of self worth from that moment because he cared more about drinking than he did about my safety.
Meggan Watterson:And I think because I'm so protective and loyal, I love him so much and he got sober. So it's like I I didn't wanna go back to that moment too for that reason because that was one of his lowest moments in life. And so to be able to feel that moment, it fundamentally shifted, finally, my relationship to really accepting the crumbs I was only ever getting in that even at the best moments. It was it was not what I who I am and and what I I am. It's it didn't match my
Kate Northrup:Totally.
Meggan Watterson:You know, it's just it there's so much love. There's so much it's it's it's not about it's not about him. It's it's about me. And all that time I had been waiting him to to finally choose me. You know?
Meggan Watterson:Like and I've read I've seen those Hallmark movies. Like, I've read those books. I knew I was supposed to choose me. I I But it's like, how do you do it? What Okay.
Meggan Watterson:So
Kate Northrup:I I told you I didn't need your book because I was like, well, it's not like I'm gonna sit here quoting it. Turns out I actually am. So you also wrote in here, you quoted Ruby who Oh, yeah. Juices. Juices.
Kate Northrup:Thank you. I live I in I Miami, so I wanna call her Ruby who says. Juices. Yeah, anyway, okay, so anything that is familiar to the brain is seen as safe. Right.
Kate Northrup:Even if it is harmful or not what we want. Our brain is capable of learning the habit of pain.
Meggan Watterson:Exactly, and that's what I had done. I was hardwired for pain. And I didn't know how to want more for myself until her story. I didn't I and I think to a certain extent, we get very comfortable. Like, that's where
Kate Northrup:she It's starts very comfortable.
Meggan Watterson:We she starts off in her little brick house and like in this, you know, set cultural norm of you get married and you go I think it's really hard to want more for ourselves, you know, to to to really start to desire something new, a new story. Because actually,
Kate Northrup:you know, for our survival brain, wanting more is perceived as a threat to our literal survival. So it makes sense. We are wired this way, and also we can do that deeper work of going deep within to find the truth of who we are. Now the other part of your story that I did not know, but I really loved reading about it, was really bold and courageous, was about your journey of getting sober, sober. Yeah.
Kate Northrup:Because, you know, I've known you for a really freaking long I met you the year your son was born, he's now nearly 16. I know. I held him when he was a ginormo baby.
Meggan Watterson:I know.
Kate Northrup:And you've never really been a drinker. That wasn't part of my awareness of you. I mean, you know, red wine here and there, but nothing. That's not a huge part of your identity by any stretch. So I'm so curious because any time that I talk about sobriety with our community, it's a really hot topic.
Kate Northrup:Folks love learning about it. Mike and I have talked a lot about it with his sobriety journey. As you know, I don't drink, so I wanna know more about that and how it was related to choosing yourself.
Meggan Watterson:Yes. Very it was really critical. And I really didn't want it to be because I don't like the hard and fast traditional ways of someone being spiritual is like, you know, they wear white, don't drink, eat certain foods, like, all of that. I I've never wanted to be someone who, like, adheres to those types of things. So I resisted and I resisted it for so long.
Meggan Watterson:I knew there was a problem there. I actually knew way back, like, when we were first, like, hanging out. And I would say things actually to Gabby sometimes. And just sort of, you know, put and it would surprise me when I put it out there. It's not that I was ever I never got drunk.
Meggan Watterson:No. I never got drunk. So I think this is a nuanced sobriety story. That's why I like it.
Kate Northrup:Or or whatever. Any sobriety story is beautiful, but I think it's interesting.
Meggan Watterson:Yeah. Because I really didn't think I needed to get sober because I was never drunk, but what I didn't understand is that I had a problem with drinking because I was using it as a blanket. I was using it as a way to sort of keep me in that place of just staying in the pain. Like it let me wallow in it. It let me sort of feel like actually what I would hear sometimes when I would go, I had this tiny little snifter.
Meggan Watterson:I talk about it in the book.
Kate Northrup:It's really
Meggan Watterson:It was so tiny. It was so cute. It was just a tiny little snifter.
Kate Northrup:It's like a doll cup.
Meggan Watterson:It was so cute. And so it never made me feel like, oh, can't how can you have a problem if you're like
Kate Northrup:No. It's like me, you know, back in the day having like like taking a knife and cutting off a piece of cake that was like literally a half a millimeter, and then Doesn't But by the time I had 25 of Not those that you had.
Meggan Watterson:No. No, I do that. I still am a lightweight. No, but so I would have these little, you know Just a whiff. Sips.
Meggan Watterson:And it it definitely started getting more intense when I was living in Cleveland. Right? That's where all everything bad that's ever happened to me in my life happened there. So it was like returning there was really a deep deep healing. Going back and really being able to own and claim and heal all of that.
Meggan Watterson:But it was also hard. And so sometimes I would say I get to have this. Was like because I saw it as medicinal. It's like no, I get to have this. I've been through so much.
Meggan Watterson:I've handled so much. There's so many things I do that are lady boss, that are, you know I travel by myself, I do so many things, I'm like, I get to have this. I get to have this. I get to go a little numb. But it was keeping me from that connection to that memory.
Meggan Watterson:It was keeping me from ultimately healing all the way back and all the way through. And I knew it, actually when I was doing the Lectio Divina with one of the passages, which was, And Thekla did not turn back. Thekla did not turn back. That is described of her sitting for three days and three nights, The scripture says, and Thekla did not turn back. And that for me lit up.
Meggan Watterson:It was
Kate Northrup:is at the beginning when she's at her house and they keep calling to her
Meggan Watterson:and her she won't mother turn is so pissed because she's starting to exist with the unconditional realm. Right? Unconditional love accessible within her.
Kate Northrup:Mhmm.
Meggan Watterson:She's not dealing with the conditional love that they were offering her. She was like, those were crumbs. I'm ready for the cake. Like, I'm going inward. And so they're all upset and trying to pull her outward, but the scripture says, Aunt Thekla did not turn back.
Meggan Watterson:And I was like, I've been turning back periodically, you know, like, anyone knowing. Yeah. We would get back together again, never for long enough usually to tell other people to to others. But then also not talking about it because I felt ashamed. You know?
Meggan Watterson:I felt like, didn't I already learn this, like, 15 times? Like, didn't I already learn this? And how can I tell people that, like, people who look up to me that I'm doing this? Like, I'm I'm trying to make this work even though it's shattering me every time I try and it's ending in the exact same way. And so I kept hearing that and Thekla did not turn back.
Meggan Watterson:So I kept asking, and this is inwardly, how do I not turn back? Like how do I not? I literally felt, I actually felt like I had more control over the red wine than I did over getting back together with him. I felt powerless. Felt out of control and I felt powerless.
Meggan Watterson:But I so for me I refer to it as getting sober sober because it was like I had to get rid of the the blanket, the red wine. Like I had to rip off that comforter and I had to get really naked and I had to look that in the eye and figure out why why did I keep choosing this? And that's what it took. It took really just never. And I've, you know, I feel like since healing, you know, maybe in some people's sobriety journey, they would feel okay at this point.
Meggan Watterson:Like, it's been four years now. You know, maybe they would feel okay with integrating some alcohol or you know? It has never felt right for me again. And it's not a struggle, but either is the other thing. And I feel like they're tethered together.
Meggan Watterson:I just That's wild. Yeah. I feel good being sober, sober.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. Yeah. And the pattern in your romantic life, you said it also has not been a struggle.
Meggan Watterson:Right. Oh no. I Yeah. Mean,
Kate Northrup:That a is freaking revelation. I just like, I don't want anyone hearing around anything that we feel we're powerless about, whether it's overspending, some kind of drug. Honestly, addiction to anything, right? And you may not label it that way, and I think we don't need to, but things that we feel compelled
Meggan Watterson:around that we think like maybe
Kate Northrup:this is going to be hard forever, and I'll have to be in this tug of war with myself, and it's gonna be a fight forever. I just want people to
Meggan Watterson:hear Yes, thank you.
Kate Northrup:Four years. It's not a struggle because you healed all the way in and all the way through. And that peace that Ruby, Jesus, whatever name, it's so powerful that, you know, I talk about this all the time, that we will go back to what it doesn't feel good, but it feels like home until we change the thermostat setting. And changing the thermostat setting requires feeling a bunch of things that we did not previously have, the infrastructure, the support, the emotional turgor, to feel. It's not bad.
Kate Northrup:I don't think that emotional avoidance or repression or whatever, I don't think it's anything to feel guilt or shame about. It's just you have to build enough of a foundation to have the ability to do that. I like to describe healing as
Meggan Watterson:a nautilus for that reason, because I think it's really important we don't shame ourselves for not having healed by a certain linear timeline because that's not the way works. The soul is in kairos time. It's not in chronological time. And for me, it was that I had to become enough love that could reach all the way back there. Had to accrue it.
Meggan Watterson:Yes. Yes. Exactly. So it was that timing, not linear time. Yeah.
Kate Northrup:And when you tell that story about that moment for you with your dad, one of the things that you do so brilliantly, and I use you as an example about this all the time actually, when people are asking about how do I write about what happened to me without throwing the people I love under the bus. Right. And you do that in the most elegant, you did it in Reveal, you did it in Mary Magdalene Revealed, you did it again, and I'm like, damn, how does she do that? The overflowing love you have and your ability to take responsibility for your own side of the street without making anyone wrong, but while at the same time telling the truth, that is some alchemy. Like, it's incredible.
Kate Northrup:How do you do that?
Meggan Watterson:So I owe it all to meditation. That's meditation. That's going inward. That's And I wanted to say with that piece that I'm so grateful that you brought up about, you know, that there is a way through. Because I think if there was one formula that's in this book, it's that the only way out is is within.
Meggan Watterson:It's the only way out is within. And I think that's probably the least popular formula.
Kate Northrup:Totally.
Meggan Watterson:I think it's I think it's what we all
Kate Northrup:Can it be a cream?
Meggan Watterson:Can it be anything other than that? Like, anything other than that, you know?
Kate Northrup:Yes. It's so true.
Meggan Watterson:It just is It's the last place
Kate Northrup:we ever wanna go in. It's last place we look.
Meggan Watterson:We look. And it's it's it's where real transformation has to happen. I know. It really does. Okay, I
Kate Northrup:have a silly story about that because I think you're gonna like I haven't told you this story, don't So remember, I don't know if I told you that I really messed up with my digestion in a variety of ways, we don't need to get into the details. And then up I got a fever every month for eighteen months.
Meggan Watterson:Wow.
Kate Northrup:I ended up losing my hearing. It was a whole thing. And I finally, you know, I had gone to every single holistic doctor, I'm looking all over the internet for who's e, what are and then I also started gaining weight. And I'm really healthy, so just sudden weight gain was like, I'm not gonna buy new pants?
Meggan Watterson:I'm gonna buy new pants, I like
Kate Northrup:my pants. And so all of that, eighteen months of that, okay, know, short, I know all the best holistic who's y, what's I'm having sessions with them, and I'm like, are you my mother? Are you my know, the little duck, right? Gonna fix me?
Meggan Watterson:Who's gonna
Kate Northrup:heal me? Nobody. I go to these people, and they're lovely, but I'm like, you know, this is this is come on. Really? This is child's play, what you're giving me right now.
Kate Northrup:So I finally I'm in a hotel room in Orange County by myself going to bed at When I'm on the West Coast for a short period of time, I stay on East Coast time, so I go to bed when the sun is setting out there, so I'm by myself, sun setting, I'm trying to go to bed, it's like, you know, 06:30
Meggan Watterson:in California,
Kate Northrup:and I go into a meditation because I'm like, Mother effer, how can I be this sick for this long? It's ridiculous. And I go inside, and I just asked my body, hey, what do you need? And it was like, and I heard the word peptides. And I was like, I don't even know what peptides are.
Kate Northrup:So I start to Google what peptides are. I end up taking this course for practitioners on microdosing peptides. I learn the whole thing. I get my practitioners, I become the CEO of my own health, hello, obviously. I know how to do this.
Kate Northrup:And it's like one month on this ripe peptide cocktail, whatever, fix it completely, and my body gave me a word I don't even know.
Meggan Watterson:The body never lies. Isn't that incredible? Body
Kate Northrup:never It's the last place we look, And this is, you know, and it's like embarrassing because it's like the last place we look even when this is what we freaking do.
Meggan Watterson:I think surrender is hardwired in us to only arrive at via exhaustion. Yeah. You
Kate Northrup:know? I know.
Meggan Watterson:It's like why we just don't immediately go there. But I also think sometimes it takes a level of being comfortable with the fact that it's really that easier, like it's really that easy. Actually so And that it's really that we're that powerful. Think that's hard. I think that all we need to do is go inward for answers that we're seeking outward, you know, to find.
Meggan Watterson:It's very Dorothy, wizard It's of the freaking Red. It's freaking Dorothy I know. The whole My God, it's so
Kate Northrup:Okay, one thing we haven't talked about is that the massive through line in this book, like this is a book about worth. And at the time of Thekla's life, women were property. And that is true in some cases today as well, like there are places where that hasn't changed. And I was so struck by the reclamation of that deep well of worth, and for myself, reading the book again, I've been thinking about my next body of work and how I'm gonna get out into the world, and I was feeling so and I would never have articulated like, oh, I'm having a self worth issue, right? But I was feeling beholden to the fancy powers that be, you know, without getting into the details, but like feeling like I was waiting for someone outside to choose me.
Kate Northrup:Is fundamentally Such Right. A the It's such a default. And reading her story right at that time when I was making some bold decisions about choosing myself was really medicinal. I'm so glad you wrote this book. And you are different.
Kate Northrup:More yourself.
Meggan Watterson:Yeah.
Kate Northrup:Right? Like, you are more yourself. I can I can see it, I can feel it, and even the way that this particular book, you need to share any details that aren't relevant or don't feel like you want to, but can you talk about the way that the publishing contract even happened and some of the magic in that? Because one of the things I love about you to just kind of weave this conversation home is you do not have a marketing bone in your body. Right.
Kate Northrup:Your business and your work has a life of its own because it's so potent and so needed, and the way that it's like the worth of you shines through in these works, that you don't have to have a campaign to get that, right? God is handling that. So can you talk about what it was like for you to get this book deal and any of that feels relevant? It was Around the worth piece?
Meggan Watterson:I So because I spent so much time with Thekla during that quiet, you know, insular time, I had this very strong sense that, you know, for every book, it we have to become the woman who finishes it, you know. And so it's when you sign a contract, you're also signing up to to do the work. This is how it's been for me. This is the truth for me. And there was this knowing.
Meggan Watterson:I don't know how else to describe it, just that Thekla was gonna be at a different publishing house. I just always knew that. Mhmm. And it felt more like it was a part of the story I was gonna have to go through, the experiences I was gonna have to hold in terms of my own sense of claiming my worth as a writer, understanding the worth of what I've already created, which I hadn't. I hadn't really fully acknowledged or understood.
Meggan Watterson:And part of moving to a different publishing house brought that along for me. And then there's just this unspeakable part which is inestival and it's a part of, you know, alignment, abundance from a place that can't be described in earthly material form, which was in the form of my editor, Jamia, who I'd known since Reveal days and Red Lady days, and that she was at the publishing house that I went to. And it it just we met at Omega, and it just all the way that it unfolded just had that air of meant to be and the ease of of that alignment that I know. You know, it's it's like it has a certain tenor to But then also the timing of when this book comes out, is really phenomenal because it ended up being 2025, the summer of twenty twenty five, which is the jubilee year according to the Vatican. And this year is celebrating the codification, the beginning of the process of the codification of the New Testament when the Acts of Paul and Thekla was edited out.
Meggan Watterson:She Woah. And I purposely, like, held to when during the editing process, and Jamia was very supportive of everything that I felt really convicted about, keeping the passages of the Acts and Palin Thekla in it. Even though it made it maybe more spiritual or religious than it ultimately is, I wanted her, her voice, her actual scripture to be in print.
Kate Northrup:So it comes out. Wow.
Meggan Watterson:This is geeky theological I am. But it's being published the year the Vatican is celebrating when it was ultimately Erased. Erased. Buried. So to me, moments like that are so profound and they make me feel so relieved because I feel so tiny.
Meggan Watterson:I feel like just one little part of it is It's not just on I'm showing up and I'm doing what I'm meant to do but there's this tapestry that's so much greater than this one little red thread that I am. And for me it's good.
Kate Northrup:We don't have to push to make what's meant to happen.
Meggan Watterson:Yes. Yes. I am You are that. I am the lighthouse version of, you know, I mean, it's never been in me. It just, you know, and I did think about that though once.
Meggan Watterson:I was like, why are you not ambitious? Like, why do you lack any of You are ambitious. It's in a very different direction.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. I would never not call you ambitious. Really? I would never call you a marketer. Okay.
Kate Northrup:But you are freaking ambitious. Mean, are taking on Christianity as we know it. Okay. So Hello? Alright.
Kate Northrup:That's freaking ambitious.
Meggan Watterson:I guess guess I because that's so much who I am, it doesn't feel ambitious. What I was gonna say is my ambition is inward. Like, I wanna feel love at all times in all places. To me, that's ambitious. You know?
Meggan Watterson:That's ambitious. You
Kate Northrup:know? Mean, is there really anything else? Like, I think we're gonna get to the end and be like, oh, turns out that was it. That was the whole point. I love you.
Meggan Watterson:I love you too. I'm so proud
Kate Northrup:of you.
Meggan Watterson:I love you.
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