The Phoenix Perspective
Panties in My Pants, Cult Recovery, and Why Your Cycle is Literally a Superpower
What’s up, my beautiful squad? Welcome back to the blog.
Alright, I need to start this post with a quick public service announcement: the next time you are getting dressed and grabbing clothes straight out of the dryer, please check your pant legs. Because if you don’t, you might find yourself in the middle of a video call with a total stranger, wondering why there is a massive, mysterious lump right against your thigh, only to reach down and pull out a stray pair of underwear.
Yes. That actually happened to me.
The gorgeous Kori Rae Kovacs—nurse, body intuitive, and host of The Phoenix Perspective podcast—came on the show for Episode 4, and that was our literal icebreaker. I had essentially internet-stalked her on social media because I saw her profile and my brain went, "I need her in my life immediately." I slid into her DMs, asked her to be my friend, and during our very first call, I pulled a lacy thong out of my jeans.
Honestly? If you can pull laundry out of your pants leg five minutes into meeting someone and they don’t even blink, you know you’ve found your soul sister.
Once we stopped laughing, we rolled our sleeves up and got into the real meat and potatoes of how our internal worlds completely dictate our physical health. Kori Rae has this stunning painting behind her of a fiery phoenix with a vulva on its chest, and she explained that she painted it with her bare hands using gold thread over a single menstrual cycle to heal the energetic trauma of her C-section scar.
That immediately opened the door to a huge conversation about what it actually means to live a cyclical life.
If you've been around here for a minute, you know we just had a sex coach on the show talking about cycle syncing. But Kori Rae takes it to a whole different level. She dropped a line that gave me literal, full-body goosebumps: Every single month, vagina owners live through an entire year of seasons in 28 days.
Winter is your period (rest, boundaries, reflection).
Spring is your follicular phase (playful, creative, planting seeds).
Summer is ovulation (magnetic, expressive, hitting launch).
Fall is your luteal phase (discernment, fierce boundaries... and yes, a little luteal rage).
But Kori Rae doesn't look at this as just a calendar tracker. She looks at it as a practical blueprint for personal growth. If you want to work on being a more patient mom or partner, your luteal phase is your ultimate proving ground—because that's the week your patience is naturally running on empty! If you can practice breathing through the irritation then, you can do it anytime.
Then, we got into the heavy science and soul stuff, and my logical, boxy brain was on fire. Kori Rae shared her personal journey with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). If you look at it purely under a microscope, PCOS is a metabolic hormone issue—essentially diabetes of the ovaries. But when Kori Rae started documenting her cycle and looking at the energetic root cause, everything clicked.
As a kid, adults loved her when she was bubbly, happy, and outgoing (first-half-of-the-cycle energy). But when she was direct, opinionated, and asked hard questions (second-half-of-the-cycle energy), adults shut her down. So, her subconscious mind spent decades trying to force her to stay in that bubbly "maiden" phase. Her ovaries literally stopped wanting to ovulate because her system was terrified of crossing over to that powerful, boundary-setting second half.
Once she started tracking her patterns, gave herself permission to be all of herself, and integrated both sides, her body healed. At 41 years old, she has healthier, more regular cycles than she did in her 20s.
It made me think so much about my own journey with functional seizures. For years, my logical brain stonewalled my emotions. I rejected anything that didn't make "sense," living in a constant wall of survival mode without even realizing it. And just like Kori Rae’s PCOS, my body eventually kept score and shut down physically because my internal signals were getting completely interrupted.
We live in a society that only looks for mechanical, physical root causes. But pioneers like Louise Hay and Dr. Joe Dispenza have proven for decades that our physical ailments are deeply intertwined with our emotional blocks.
When you stop trying to live a rigid, linear life and actually look at your body with curiosity instead of criticism, miracles happen. Kori Rae uses a tool called the Cycles Journal to document her daily shifts, because if you don't document your path, you forget how far you've actually come.
We don't need to know the exact destination before we start walking, squad. Sometimes we just need to hit the "I believe" button, turn the camera on with zero notes, and let the energy flow. When we plan every single second of our lives, we leave absolutely no room for wonder, spontaneity, or miracles.
So, drop the heavy logic for a second. Go hug a tree (yes, Kori Rae taught me how to telepathically talk to them, and it is magical). Give yourself some grace this week, no matter what inner season you are sitting in.
If you haven't caught the episode yet, grab your iced coffee, head over to Spotify or Apple, and go listen to us go from static-cling underwear to quantum-level healing.
Until next week... skirts up, but keep your panties on!
With so much love,
Samantha Mandell
