Fierce Love
Fierce Love is a podcast about intimacy and being human in relationship. Through honest, unscripted conversation, it explores how we connect, where we get stuck, and how old patterns quietly shape the way we love. Hosted by Mandy Straight and Michael O’Rourke, the show looks at intimacy as a lived practice - learning how to relate with more presence especially when things feel uncomfortable or unclear.
If you’re interested in being more human in your relationships and learning how to do intimacy with more clarity, care, and courage - this podcast is an invitation to practice.
Come curious.
Leave more connected.
Episodes
12 episodes
Ep.13 Questions Over Answers: Authenticity, Alienation, and the Meaning of Being Human
In this reflective season finale, Mandy and Michael revisit the question that started it all: What does it mean to be human? Through honest conversation, they explore feeling like outsiders in an achievement-driven world, the power of ...
Ep.12 Holding Space Without Fixing - Tell Me More
In this episode, Mandy and Michael return to the question they left hanging: What’s the point?What happens when you’re not okay — and you don’t want to be rescued out of it? When depression feels less like drama and more like an...
Ep.11 Are We Getting Somewhere?
Are we actually getting anywhere? In life. In relationships. In growth. Or are we just moving in loops and calling it progress?In this raw, mid-process conversation, Mandy and Michael explore what happens when the life you thought was so...
Ep.10 The Focal Point Practice
In this follow-up to Episode 9, Mandy and Michael go deeper into focal point — not as a concept, as a practice. The moment you notice where your attention is hooked (approval, fear, fixing, proving), you get a choice: keep chasing evid...
Ep.9 The Focal Point Shift
What if anxiety is just your attention aimed at a future you invented… and resignation is what happens when you aim it the wrong way?In Episode 9, Mandy and Michael play with a deceptively simple idea: focal point—not in photograp...
Ep.8 The Opposite is Still the Pattern
Ever notice how you “grow”… and still feel stuck?In this episode, Mandy and Michael unpack the pendulum effect: how we build coping strategies early in life, then swing hard to the opposite extreme and call it change. The rebel isn’t alw...
Ep.7 Love Doesn't Have to Be Hard
Are relationships really “hard work”? Or is that a story we inherited without questioning it?In this episode, Mandy and Michael unpack the difference between effort and exhaustion. They explore how shame, image-management, and old progra...
Ep.6 Life Isn't Happening to You
In this episode, Mandy and Michael look at the early stories that shaped how they moved through the world — depression, shame, secrecy, survival strategies — and how those stories quietly created a belief that life was something happening t...
Ep.3/4 The Courage to Not Fix It (Double Episode)
In this extended episode, we explore one essential distinction: feelings are not the same as actions.Through a real, vulnerable scenario, we unpack what happens when discomfort arises between people — and how quickly we try to solve it, ...
Ep.5 Boundaries Create Freedom
In this unscripted conversation, we explore the difference between intuition and old stories, the discomfort of self-awareness, and why boundaries aren’t about control — they’re about clarity.From business dynamics to romantic expectatio...
Ep.2 Freedom, Intimacy and the Discomfort Between Them
Most of us believe closeness costs us our freedom — or that independence means giving up deep connection. In this episode, we challenge that story. We explore how discomfort, not commitment, is what we’re really avoiding — and how learning to s...
Ep.1 You Don't Get What You Want, You Get What You Are
In our very first Fierce Love episode, we begin at the root: the relationship you have with yourself. We question the romantic blueprints we were handed, examine why “normal” relationships can feel so hard, and explore how authenticity, n...