Rise From The Ashes
"Burnout to Brilliance: Great CEOs, No Burnout"
Leadership is tough. Burnout makes it tougher.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Rise From The Ashes is the ultimate podcast for visionary CEOs and executives who refuse to let burnout rob them of their brilliance, legacy, and impact.
Hosted by Baz Porter, this show isn’t just about surviving leadership it’s about transforming it. Each week, we delve deep into the art and science of thriving at the top, combining actionable strategies, spiritual alignment, and raw truths that reignite your purpose and optimize your energy.
Here’s what you’ll get:
- Bold Frameworks: Learn the exact steps to conquer decision fatigue, streamline your mental energy, and reclaim control of your leadership.
- Spiritual Awakenings: Explore the intersection of purpose, alignment, and success to lead with clarity and connection.
- Transformational Insights: Hear unfiltered stories and practical wisdom from world-class leaders who’ve turned their burnout into brilliance.
This isn’t just a podcast it’s a revolution for leaders ready to rise, inspire, and leave a legacy that outlasts them.
Rise From The Ashes
She Forgave the Unforgivable, Then Built Her Empire
What would happen if you forgave the person who hurt you most?
Most of us think forgiveness means letting them off the hook. We think it makes us weak, that we're giving up our right to be angry. But what if forgiveness isn't about them at all? What if it's the secret weapon that unlocks everything you're meant to build?
April Wyett thought forgiveness was impossible until her journey into energy healing work freed her from the illusion of forgiveness and helped her truly forgive.
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest with a disabled mother and a father who escaped into gambling, April learned early that home wasn't always safe. Nature became her sanctuary the trees, the mountains, the open sky that held her when nothing else could.
But it wasn't until she discovered energy healing - combining Reiki, sound healing, and biodynamic breathwork - that April realized forgiveness wasn't about excusing the inexcusable. It was about freeing herself from the prison of resentment and unlocking the healer she was always meant to be.
Now April creates healing sanctuaries where people feel truly seen and heard, helping them release trauma stored in their bodies and discover the freedom that comes from true forgiveness.
This isn't just about letting go. It's about what becomes possible when you stop carrying other people's pain and start building your own empire of healing.
If You’ve Been Hooked on These Episodes… This Is for You
If this podcast has been landing deep… if each story feels like it’s peeling back something raw and real in you… then don’t ignore that.
Every guest you’ve heard made the same decision: to stop performing and start healing.
Now it’s your turn.
Take the Silent Collapse Diagnostic. It’s not a quiz. It’s a wake-up tool for women who are done pretending they’re fine.
No fluff. No journaling prompts. Just a straight-up mirror into where you’re silently collapsing behind the mask of success.
If you're serious about reclaiming your energy, your clarity, your life start there.
Because breakthrough doesn’t begin with doing more. It begins with finally seeing what’s been stealing your power.
Learn more about Baz Porter at www.bazporter.com
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Rise from the Ashes podcast. I am privileged to be joined by the guest today and April. I won't say your second name because I always mess second names up for some strange reason. I'm dyslexic and I just won't even bother. April, please meet the world, the world listeners. Please meet April. Can you share a bit about what you do and who you are, please?
Speaker 2:Baz, it is amazing, simply amazing, to be here I'm serious about that. It's when you've been working and putting yourself out there and wondering is anybody listening? And then here you show up and say, yes, come, come with me. I have this community I want to introduce you to. So thank you, thank you. I'm very grateful for this opportunity.
Speaker 2:What I do? First, my last name is Wyatt and with an E a lot of people get that confused, so no worries there and I am an energy worker. So I've been connected with nature all of my life. I grew up on the Pacific Northwest, on one of the San Juan Islands there would be island and just immersed myself with nature. That was my first home because my home wasn't safe. With nature, that was my first home because my home wasn't safe. And so running through the woods, learning from the animals, the frogs, the reptiles, love it all, and that's how I'm able to really bring myself back into my center space is through nature. So that's, I'm a nature girl at heart and right now we're full-time RVers soon transitioning and so us exploring and going through different parks and things like that. I just feel like I'm home.
Speaker 2:Wherever I go, what I support people with is just that right, bringing it back to ourselves, to our safe space, to our home, to our essence. And so I work with a variety of modalities, and it starts with awareness, right With where are we at, where's our mind and how are we connecting to our bodies, because our bodies are our most precious resource. And yet we tend to forget, because the world is very distracting and the thoughts right key into that. I'm a firm believer of subconscious and I call it the stone soup of collective consciousness and how people are intermixing, whether they realize it or not, with the subconscious of the world that's happening, world that's happening. And so making that choice to bring it back to ourselves, asking where am I at in this moment, and just simply taking a breath.
Speaker 2:As you said before we started this call it's just too much bullshit happening here, let's bring it down, let's just be real. Yeah, so I do that with mindfulness, I do that with Reiki and sound healing, and also the cornerstone is the biodynamic breathwork and trauma release system, and that is what really allows people to be in that space, witness what's happening in their bodies and their minds, and knowing that we can have tension and a resource, a safe space, but choosing which one we're going to follow, and then that helps to dissipate that through our nervous system organically and we can feel lighter and freer. Because that's what everybody wants, right? It's more freedom and lightness in their lives.
Speaker 1:What about Sam one? You did say I got married in Orcas Island.
Speaker 2:Oh a neighboring island.
Speaker 1:yes, Beautiful, funny story. I got invited to a healing retreat at the Rosario Hotel for a weekend, a long weekend, and gifted completely out of the blue. So myself and my then-fiancé decided to say, oh, we'll get married. And I was like what we're going to do? We're going to, okay, we're getting married. Now, it wasn't planned. It was literally planned within eight days that's how long we had to plan this and Rob Worgen, who was holding the event he was one of the masterminds behind Heal, the documentary Heal with Joe.
Speaker 2:Dispenza and others.
Speaker 1:He was on there, invited us up. Gerard Butler came to our wedding.
Speaker 2:He just turned up, just moseyed in, just showed up. Gerard Butler came to our wedding.
Speaker 1:He just turned up, just moseyed in, just showed up and I was like ten minutes before my wedding I was having a cup of coffee with Gerard Butler over a bar. I'd stopped drinking by then and I was just like this is cool, wow. But what we didn't know we had. There were friends of ours who is my wife, friends of hers flew in leis from Hawaii. The cake that was all vegan, organic, fancy dancing, was flown in from the mainland because there is no cake maker on the island. It was everything on her vision board was the wedding.
Speaker 2:Ah, love it. You just can't make that up.
Speaker 1:And I was like I wish I had it here, I'd show you. That was her vision board. But it was everything on the vision board and I was like wow, and I didn't know that until afterwards. And I was like wow, and I didn't know that until afterwards. So I had no conception of what she was doing, well, before she met me. So when I say that we're living with intention, she was living with intention. What happened before you started RVing and traveling around and doing all of this? You mentioned something very poignant you didn't grow up in a safe. Now I find that very. That's a common thing that I come across with a lot of people, especially women, believe it or not. Men, yes, but more women are more vocal about it. Can you just if you will go through that journey and what happened? Obviously the surface level stuff and whatever you're willing to share.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm open. I've done a lot of sitting within those uncomfortable spaces. I don't want to say healing, because it's all the layers, right, Baz. It's just being aware of what's bubbling up and how we're sitting with it and acknowledging it and accepting those parts of ourselves. Because, wherever we go, there we are, you know. So that's what makes us who we are today.
Speaker 2:And so, through my childhood, my mother was disabled. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis back in the 1960s, when she was 19. And that was almost unheard of. And before she got married, it was a shotgun wedding. She was pregnant with my sister and my father was forced to do the right thing to save face for the family. And she didn't know really who my father was. He was the charismatic, the playful, the drama guy. He was in the drama club and it was a small town and he was a star football player, all the things right. So she really set her sights on him and she was the valedictorian, she was the smart, she was the ginger, right, there's not many redheads there, you can appreciate that. And so together, right, they look like the part, but inside they each had their own traumas of not being worthy. That's what it came down to right the fear. And I was born when she had the rheumatoid arthritis and I believe through my experiences, many experiences and deep reflections, that when I was in utero I was experiencing what she was experiencing with her nervous system, with everything that was happening with her. So when I was born I was automatically right in that fight-flight freeze and I did not have the support, the emotional support, that I needed.
Speaker 2:My father did all the fatherly duties from the 1950s era right. He was a school teacher. He was the one that made the money. My mother was shut down literally in bed on prescription medication and took everything. She had to get out of bed to do normal family things. And then my father started gambling. He was looking for that quick fix to make the money to compensate for that emotional disconnect and for that pressure that he had. That he felt Right and I remember clearly and it was very disconnected Our family was and my father had.
Speaker 2:He was a rare coin dealer so it was very common for him to have gold coins, silver, all these things on the dining room table. The table was just shuffled with papers and coins and grading papers from school and all the things and I would ask for something and he would say we don't have money. We don't have enough money for that. And here I'm looking at all these coins and the money and him talking on the phone about these big gold deals and things on the phone, and then on Wednesday nights and Friday, Saturday, he would go gamble. And so that was the. Then it started for me of how, what do I need to do? To hustle. I need to hustle in order to show, prove my worth or to receive the love that I was desperately craving, the love that I was desperately craving my mother, for what she was capable of doing. She just was at the bare minimal.
Speaker 1:And then my father was in that survival mode. I'm listening to you now, april, and there's a lot of similarities, for what not just myself but a lot of other people grew up with and my nan had rheumatoid arthritis in her elderly years. She passed away 15 years ago now. But there's one thing that strikes me with you there's a lot of compassion and a lot of forgiveness within your voice and tonality, and that I find a very rare thing, especially in a world that has been made to blame or understand. And what I really like about you and is very present for me personally, is there's a lot of forgiveness. There's a lot of acceptance as well, and you've done a lot of forgiveness. There's a lot of acceptance as well, and you've done a lot of. I know you have not because I know from what I've seen online, because this is the first time we've actually had a conversation, but I know because of the way you show up and the way you care about other people. You've done a lot of personal, deep work, but that's a rare thing. People say they have, but actually the truth is they haven't. They're putting on this persona for everybody else and they're trying to bury it. True authenticity, true awareness comes with forgiveness and complete acceptance, and the tonality in your voice has it, and I know when I hear it I'm not there. Certainly I've got a long way to go, but we're all a work in progress.
Speaker 1:What I find about you and I hope the listeners excuse me, I hope the listeners are in tune with this and what I was speaking into here, because back in before the 80s, 70s and beyond, before that, there was this there was this conception of what light, especially american and western life should be like, and you spoke into it earlier. The man was the breadwinner, he went to work, he was the alpha male, the one that wore the suit and controlled finances, where we went, and the woman was staying at home, raising the kids. And what's happened is not so much a role reversal in the last 30 or 40 years, but women like yourself have stood up and said that's not who we are, which I love, by the way. But there's also been contention with that in many different forms corporate sector, private sectors and also in the public, where your voices have been silenced. How has that shown up for you, not just in your journey through private life, in your home, your personal life, but in your work?
Speaker 2:Yes, I want to bring it back just a tad though, baz, when you said forgiveness that I found forgiveness. Just a tad, though, baz, when you said forgiveness that I found forgiveness, and I want to make it perfectly clear for everyone that it's about forgiving ourselves first, right? Yeah, I agree with that, because I was a child and I was neglected and not eating moldy bread, having rotten food in the refrigerator that's food scarcity. People don't realize that's also an ace right. The adverse childhood experiences that compound the trauma. Adverse childhood experiences that compound the trauma. So by me forgiving myself and understanding the dynamics, I'm able to step back, watch it like a movie and go oh, that's why he behaved that way. That's why my sister always judged me and ridiculed me because she was made to take care of me a seven-year-old taking care of a two-year-old. No wonder she shut me in the closet. No wonder she always. It wasn't a loving sister relationship until we got older and now it's vastly different. But she was in survival mode too, right? Her mother that cared for her, that was able to run and play, no longer did that, and I never even knew that mother either. So, fast forwarding this to, how has this developed and shifted for me in my work is by me creating that sanctuary for people to be seen and heard and witnessed, creating that space for people to share and know that they are being held in that sanctuary of support. That's where the healing happens, because not just holistically, but our bodies are tuning in. We have this resonance with each other and we can tell when somebody is genuine in showing up and being open to hearing, and that's how I help my clients to unpack it for themselves. It's not talk therapy, it's more of embodiment what's happening for you, what's showing up? Where are you feeling that in your body? What would happen if we just step back a little bit and took a breath? Where do you feel that ease in your body and moving, releasing, because we're holding Our bodies, hold everything for us, everything. We're in a material world. We showed up here to have this experience and this is what helps us engage in this material world. I overcame, also with my voice. Thank you for noticing that too, baz. I realized that I wanted more for myself and I wrote about it actually in an anthology with CJ and Susanna, moving Beyond Boxes, and it was called the Lion's Roar. And it was called the lion's roar because I followed.
Speaker 2:I was married young, which is my mother, although I was more mature for my age. I had to grow up fast. My husband and I gelled really well together because he did too, and so he Navy, young, navy man. We moved to San Diego. I followed him around and left countless jobs that I loved, and we moved to Japan, lived there for four years Absolutely love that and then moved back to the States. I had my son. I was doing everything for him, everything, sacrifice, all the States. I had my son, I was doing everything for him, everything, sacrifice, all the things. And then he was forced into retirement and I thought what now?
Speaker 2:I started my Reiki training and I asked for the great intention, the highest good for my family. That's all I said, that's all I prayed about, that's all the intentions I sent out there. And then, when I received, oh, you're moving back to Iowa, and that was back in 2009. It's like you're moving back to Iowa. It's like Iowa. Why Iowa? I don't want to be there.
Speaker 2:The ice storms are horrible and all the things, and I was very mad in the beginning and then it just took me 30 seconds and then, all of a sudden, it was like a knife, cut through all of that noise and it was like remember what you asked for great, the highest good for your family.
Speaker 2:And as soon as I accepted there's that word, again accepted it and thought, okay, there must be more here than I can see. I'm going to trust in this process. That's what my life has been about trusting in the process and wonderful, amazing things transpired. I had a full ride at Drake University because I opened an email, a September 11th GI Bill email, that my husband would have never looked at and he transferred his benefits from that to me so I was able to go back to school and, yeah, just, I could go on and on. So when I like to say when we're curious and open to how things are unfolding, not having the judgment, and as I shared with Baz before the show, it's like how can it get better than this? That's my secret sauce.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:And things just drop in, keep dropping in, and it's been a fun ride, and more to come. There's always more. There's always more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I think your story is very incredible, april, for many reasons, but something keeps coming back to me and it's the acceptance. So, if you're listening to this and you're wondering what the hell is going on in your life right now because most of us do, because that's a natural thing take a leaf out of april's book. Accept what's going on, regardless of how it seems and I'm not going to put good or bad out there, but, whatever it seems like, just accept what's going on Because, as April's journey is proving and many others have proved, acceptance is key to that journey and the aspects of what you're going through right now. The fact you're going through it, it means it's not the end, and if you're not happy, it means it's not the end. So keep going. Is there any final words or thoughts? You would have to leave us with this episode for the audience, april.
Speaker 2:Yes, I would like to invite everyone to remember that when you focus on you and what you're wanting, focus on what I want more of, not what I don't want, not what I don't want Realign your intentions, revisit you know where is my attention right now, where's my attention on my intention, and then you'll have to realign throughout the day. And that's fine, that's fine. Don't beat yourself up. Just hold ease and grace for yourself, as you are worthy of everything that you're wanting.
Speaker 1:I love that. I think that's great advice for anybody who's listening. April, thank you very much for joining me on part one. I'm looking forward to part two, when we go deeper into your, what you do and how you help other people and how you show up in these places. But for myself, my listeners, thank you very much for joining me. Please share the episode, embrace the change in your life and share the message of April, who can facilitate the change and she is the living embodiment of that change and provides a safe space for you to go and have a conversation, which I do highly encourage. The links are below share the message, go and have a conversation. From myself, I'm Baz Porter. From April Wyatt, we'll see you on part two. Take care.
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