Returning to Yourself: A Conversation with Maribeth Swan

The final interview in the Self-Led Leadership series

There is a particular kind of reconnection that happens when we stop running and striving.

Not necessarily a dramatic transformation or a sudden awakening. Rather, a quiet, steady return — to our body, to nature, to the truth we always carried but somehow learned to distrust.

That is the heart of my final conversation in the Self-Led Leadership interview series. And I couldn't have asked for a more fitting place to close.

Maribeth Swan is an intuitive counsellor, flower essence guide and educator whose work centers on nervous system healing and helping people reconnect with their deeper essence. She brings lived experience, intuitive awareness, and trauma-informed care to her work — supporting people through grief, loss, and the kind of emotional unravelling that quietly precedes real growth.

What drew me to Maribeth, and what I think will stay with you long after you watch this interview, is the quality of gentleness she brings. A reminder that the return to ourselves doesn't have to be hard.

Sensitivity as a Superpower

Maribeth grew up on Cape Cod, deeply attuned to the rhythm of tides and seasons. She asked for a diary as soon as she could write because she wanted to record her inner world privately and carefully. From a young age, she was more sensitive than those around her seemed to be. And like so many of us, she was told that was a problem.

"I remember being told I was too sensitive," she shared. "I'm sure there was a judgment about it."

What she discovered, over decades of living, grieving, working, and healing, is that sensitivity is not a flaw to be managed. It is a superpower, but only once we stop apologizing for it.

This is something I understand deeply. So many accomplished women have spent years in quiet self-doubt, made to feel that their emotional awareness is a liability rather than a gift. One of the most liberating shifts we can make is learning to trust that sensitivity — to let it guide us rather than diminish us.

What Trauma Teaches Us

In 2018, Maribeth was in a serious accident. She sustained significant injuries to her spine and her pelvis. What followed — the medications, the court case, the doctors whose assessments didn't match what she knew in her own body — forced something profound.

She had to learn to trust herself.

"It became really evident to me that the person who knew me the best was me," she said.

Out of that experience, and after having to come off pharmaceutical pain medication, she found herself dreaming about flowers. Borage (whose vibrational message is courage) appeared first. And from there, a whole new path opened. She began growing her own flowers, making her own essences, and eventually, her work with clients began entirely organically, through word of mouth from other practitioners.

This is exactly the kind of story I created this series to explore. It is not the story we plan. It is the story that unfolds when we stop forcing and start listening.

What We Get Wrong About Grief and Healing

One of the most powerful moments in our conversation was Maribeth's reflection on grief, and the dangerous myth that time heals all wounds.

"My belief system now is that the wound doesn't go away. The wound stays the wound. And we grow around it."

She shared the story of a Nigerian village shaman, Malidoma Somé, whose community understood something we have largely forgotten: grief must be expressed. It must be witnessed. In his village, communal mourning (sound, ceremony, presence) was how the soul was honored and sent onward. Not silence. Not stoicism. Not moving on.

The idea that we should keep grief private, contain it, force our way through it — this, Maribeth believes, is where so much of our disconnection begins.

When we push emotion down, it doesn't disappear. It builds. It shapes us from the inside. And it stays there, waiting for the space to finally be felt.

The Nervous System as Conductor

Maribeth describes the nervous system as the conductor of body, mind, and spirit — our electrical current, connecting earth and light. When it is well-supported, we can show up fully: in our relationships, in our work, in our lives.

When it is dysregulated, nothing else functions the way it should.

She recommends simple things offered with conviction: daily walks in nature (without earbuds) nutrition, water, light, connection with community. And she asks her clients to listen. To the birds. To the wind. To the sound of their own inner world.

"Just tuning into that is medicinal in and of itself," she said.

The Return to Ritual

Something Maribeth said near the end of our conversation has stayed with me.

We have lost our rituals.

In tribal communities, there were ceremonies for planting and harvesting. For the moon and the sun. For releasing and beginning again. In 2007, Maribeth joined a circle of women gathering to mark equinoxes and solstices and full moons — to honor, release, and be witnessed by one another.

"I think we've gotten too far away from that," she said simply.

She is right. The pace of modern life expects us to produce, perform, optimize. There is little room for ceremony. For stillness. For the kind of intentional pausing that actually restores us.

What would it mean to bring that back?

What Self-Led Leadership Means to Maribeth

I asked Maribeth the same question I have asked every woman in this series: What does it mean to lead yourself?

Her answer was beautiful in its quiet authority.

"I feel like I've partnered with Earth. And so to honor that connection is to lead with the deepest truth and forthcoming honesty and reverence for the journey that someone is coming to me to support."

She spoke of Mother Earth leading her. Of compassionate listening as a practice of truth and trust. Of conducting her sessions by phone because, she believes, our voice is our truest essence.

This is what self-led leadership looks like when it is lived from the inside out. Not performance. Not strategy. Just deep listening, and the courage to follow what you hear.

Watch the Full Interview

This conversation deserves to be heard in full. Maribeth's warmth, her groundedness, the way she holds space — it comes through in the silences as much as the words.

Watch the full interview here.

If her work resonates with you, you can find Maribeth at swanessence.com, where she offers free discovery calls and a monthly New Moon newsletter. She works as both an intuitive counsellor and a flower essence guide — creating personalized essences that support your nervous system, held in a crystal grid until they are ready to reach you.

Ready to Know Yourself at a Deeper Level?

The theme running through every conversation in this series — across six remarkable women, and six very different journeys — is the same: the most important relationship you will ever build is the one with yourself.

And yet, so many of us are operating with an incomplete picture of who we actually are. We know what we do, what we've achieved, what roles we play. But we are less clear on how we are wired — how we make decisions, where our energy comes from, what success actually looks and feels like for us.

That is exactly what my Personal Energy Blueprint is designed to explore.

Through a deep and personalized process, we look at how you are uniquely designed: how you make decisions in a way that honors your own truth, how you create and connect in ways that feel authentic, and what it looks like to build success that doesn't cost you yourself.

Because, as this series has shown again and again — returning to yourself is not a luxury. It is the work.

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Thank you to every woman who said yes to being part of this series. And thank you to everyone who has listened, watched, and shared. Your willingness to explore these questions — honestly and openly — is what makes this kind of work matter.