In this powerful episode of Transformational Times, Dewi Maile Lim takes us on a deeply honest journey through the cave she feared to enter: the path of fully owning her brilliance. Together, we explore what it means to move from the “gifted child” identity into embodied leadership… to stop performing, shrinking, and seeking validation, and instead step into the sacred responsibility of being seen. This is a conversation about resilience in transformational times. About the initiations that shape us. The moments that break us open. The tension between visibility and belonging. The fear of being too much… while simultaneously knowing you came here for something bigger. Through stories of awakening, leadership, entrepreneurship, identity, and self-reclamation, Dewi shares her evolution into what she calls her “CEO Priestess” energy: a grounded fusion of intuition, strategy, feminine leadership, and embodied power. Together, Rachael and Dewi reflect on: the Heroine’s Journey and the cave we fear to enter the collective transformation humanity is moving through, the resilience required to lead during times of great change, the difference between performance and embodiment, and the calling many transformational leaders feel to help birth a new paradigm. This episode is a rally cry for the visionaries, guides, creatives, healers, and way-showers who know they are here to lead in these times — not from perfection, but from truth. If you’ve ever felt the pull toward something greater while simultaneously fearing your own magnitude… this conversation is for you.
Dewi Maile Lim is an Evolutionary Strategist to Paradigm-Shifting Transformational Leaders who are on a Mission to Architect New Earth Ways of Being, Seeing, Relating and Thriving on Planet Earth. Since 2010 Dewi has collaborated with, advised and coached some of the world’s most prolific Agents of Change with their online movements. Dewi's flavor of Liberation is midwifed through the Magic of Creativity and Soulful Exploration of the Arts. She welcomes you to join New Earth Luminary, her platform Way-showing Luminary Guides, Medicine Carriers and Creative Visionaries from around the world.
DEWI MAILE LIM LINKS
https://instagram.com/alohadev
https://youtube.com/@dewimailelim
https://newearthluminary.substack.com
https://dewimailelim.com/crewoptin
Speaker 1 (Rachael)
(00:00)
These are the Transformational Times, and this is the Transformational Times Podcast. I'm Rachael, your guide on this unfolding quest.
Through storytelling and soul-stirring conversations, we're going to journey with leaders who have faced the caves they once feared… and now offer their medicine, their sacred elixir, to help transform the world.
Speaker 1 (Rachael)
(00:36)
There was a little girl in Hilo, Hawai‘i, and she knew something the adults around her didn’t know.
She knew she was watching a movie. Her movie.
And everyone else? They were just characters in it.
The year was 1985.
Dewi Maile Lim was seven years old, walking through what anyone would call a charmed life.
Her parents, both drawn to Hawai‘i from somewhere else, had created this beautiful world for her. Leadership programs. Creative arts. Recognition. Awards.
But even then, even as a little girl, she was watching herself… almost like she was directing the entire thing from somewhere outside her own eyes.
Here’s what nobody tells you about gifted children:
They see things.
Dewi was placed into what they called the “gifted program.” To this day, she says she has no idea what that even meant.
But maybe it meant this:
The ability to step outside your own story and see it for what it really is.
Fast forward to Hilo High School.
The good girl.
Excelling at everything. Student leadership. Arts. Perfect grades.
She had figured out the game:
Perform well.
Get recognition.
Make everyone proud.
But underneath it all, something else was happening.
Family secrets.
The kind that never get spoken aloud, but everyone knows are there… lurking beneath the surface of a picture-perfect Hawaiian childhood.
Speaker 1 (Rachael)
(02:54)
A communications classroom somewhere on the mainland.
Dewi is now a young woman who has left paradise for college.
She wants to study intercultural communication.
Makes sense, right?
A mixed-race girl from the ultimate melting pot wanting to understand how different cultures connect.
But that’s not what they’re teaching.
Picture the moment:
She’s sitting there, probably doodling in the margins of her notebook, when her professor starts explaining how media works.
Not how it informs people.
How it programs them.
Every music video she loved on MTV.
Every commercial that made her want something.
Every story that shaped how she saw herself.
None of it was accidental.
For most students, this would have just been another lecture to endure.
But remember—
This is the girl who’s been watching her own movie since she was seven.
The girl who somehow already sensed that the stories we tell ourselves might not actually be the truth.
So when someone tells her that reality itself might be manufactured…
Something breaks open.
Here’s the thing about awakening:
It’s never just about the moment it happens.
It’s about everything that led up to it.
All those years of being the perfect good girl.
Collecting awards and applause.
All those family secrets humming beneath the surface.
All those moments of stepping outside herself and wondering:
Is this real?
And suddenly, in a college classroom, she has her answer.
No.
It’s not.
Speaker 1 (Rachael)
(04:52)
So Dewi does what any newly awakened person does.
She goes looking for the truth.
First stop:
New York City.
Revolution Books.
Then the streets.
Protests. Rallies. Cannabis liberation. Police brutality demonstrations.
Then Washington, D.C.
Picture it:
Helicopters overhead. Riot cops in formation. The closest thing to a war zone she had ever seen.
Dewi is running with this radical crew.
Their ideals don’t fully match hers, but she’s there anyway.
Face-to-face with a young police officer.
Her enemy.
At least, that’s the story she’s telling herself.
She’s screaming at him.
All her anger about injustice… everything she’s learned pouring out of her.
And then this cop—
Young, like her—
He just stands there.
And then…
He winks.
Like maybe, in another reality, this could have been boy-meets-girl instead of enemy-meets-enemy.
And Dewi loses it.
How dare he be human?
How dare he be cute?
How dare he shatter her entire narrative about who he is, who she is, and what this whole thing is supposed to mean?
But that wink stayed with her for years.
Until she finally understood what the universe had been trying to tell her:
The story she was telling herself about him being her enemy…
Was just that.
A story.
But here’s the thing about learning to see through lies:
Once you start questioning the stories the world tells you…
You have to start questioning the stories you tell yourself.
And for Dewi—
The good girl who spent her whole life collecting recognition and applause…
Who’d been told she was gifted but never understood what that truly meant…
Who learned how to perform brilliance instead of owning it…
Those internal stories were about to become the hardest cave she would ever enter.
Speaker 2 (Dewi Maile Lim)
(07:43)
The cave I feared to enter…
This has been a multidimensional experience for me.
And it’s come through the vehicle and vessel of this idea and concept of having a business.
For many, many years, it was only an idea and concept for me, even though I’ve been present and helping clients since 2010 in this capacity as a creative evolutionary business coach and guide.
I’ve called circles and held events in the online space for many years. I advised people on their events.
But I was like the shoemaker without her own shoes.
I was not “pro” in my business, even though I was helping pros.
There was this disconnect for me for so long where I was watching other people with less experience and less time in the game than I had… and they were excelling.
They were becoming more sustainable, more generative, and more profitable in their businesses than I was.
And so there was shame around not having my own business fully together… even while helping six-, seven-, and eight-figure business owners with theirs.
There was also this deeper piece around valuing my skills, gifts, and talents.
I think many creatives deal with this.
Healers too.
Artists.
Anyone who carries a gift or genius-level medicine.
There can be a disconnect between expressing your gift… and positioning that gift in a way that can truly be received at a high level by people who genuinely value it.
And that ultimately comes down to an inner alignment piece.
The way I hold myself.
I’m now choosing to step into the full frequency of CEO Priestess energy.
And honestly, this energetic shift has only really arrived in the last few months.
This has been a fifteen-year journey.
A complete identity shift around my entrepreneurial story—
From hobbyist…
to dabbler…
to “Jill of all trades”…
To someone who is truly specialized.
Someone who carries a very specific medicine and frequency to bring.
Even though I’ve helped people with branding, positioning, and messaging for years…
I didn’t have a solid core foundation for myself.
People would ask me what I do, and honestly, even my friends didn’t really know because I hadn’t been succinct and clear in my own ownership of it.
So embodying this CEO Priestess energy has shown me how many shadow aspects around money, value, worth, leadership, people pleasing, and wanting to be liked… have all been wrapped up in this entrepreneurial journey.
Entrepreneurship, to me, is one of the greatest paths of personal and spiritual development.
Creating services, products, and experiences that uplift people and fulfill your sacred mission while creating beautiful win-win exchanges…
That’s the journey.
There were many years where I relied on others.
I was blessed to have a father who supported my creative pursuits far beyond college.
I invested in so many experiences, trainings, certifications, workshops, conferences…
And now I choose to bring all of that into my own movement.
Into my own offerings.
The clients I support now…
I feel like I’m fulfilling my mission through helping them as well.
Because we’re all here in this agreement:
To serve humanity’s evolution through the vehicle of our businesses.
Through the exchange of monetary value for the gifts we’ve come here to bring.
And all of it is in service to bridging humanity out of the old paradigm—
Separation.
Lack.
Limitation.
Enslavement mentality.
That matrix overlay of separation.
I bought into that world too.
And that became part of the deeper subconscious reasons why I resisted success in business.
So ultimately, it was really a fear of success.
A fear of fully stepping into my power as this CEO Priestess version of myself.
And I’m still choosing it.
Still stepping into it.
But I believe this identity shift is going to serve me deeply.
Because entrepreneurship teaches you to pivot.
To trust.
To create from spirit.
To take what Source is showing you and put it into motion.
And that requires deep trust in yourself.
Especially in those moments where the numbers don’t make sense…
Where you’re in the red…
Where it feels almost impossible to reach the next level.
As creators of our lives, we get to come to the canvas with a blank slate.
We get to wield the paintbrush.
To paint the picture we choose.
And that’s also the calling of the priestess energy—
To work with the unseen realms in service to more benevolent and beautiful realities for ourselves, our planet, and the people we touch.
Speaker 1 (Rachael)
(16:02)
Here’s what most people don’t understand about the quest:
You don’t go through hell just for yourself.
You go through it so you can come back with the medicine.
That college professor who shattered Dewi’s illusions.
The activists with their ego feuds.
The riot cop who winked at her in what felt like a war zone.
Master guides.
Each trial was shaping something:
A woman who could see through the stories.
All of them.
But here’s what happens when you survive enough teachers:
You stop needing their lessons.
You become the lesson.
The medicine Dewi carries now has been alchemized from her own bones.
From every moment she chose questioning over conformity.
From every time she stopped performing brilliance… and started owning it.
This is what the CEO Priestess frequency looks like.
Not someone who’s never been broken.
Someone who has been shattered so completely that when they put themselves back together…
They are no longer afraid of their own power.
She is the medicine.
Speaker 2 (Dewi Maile Lim)
(17:28)
And that’s…
Speaker 1 (Rachael)
(17:29)
…what the quest was always about.
Not just awakening.
But awakening—and then returning to awaken others.
Speaker 1 (Rachael)
(17:46)
Dewi Maile Lim is an evolutionary strategist for paradigm-shifting transformational leaders who are here to architect New Earth ways of being, seeing, relating, and thriving on Planet Earth.
Since 2010, Dewi has collaborated with, advised, and coached some of the world’s most prolific agents of change and online movement builders.
Her flavor of liberation is midwifed through creativity, soulful exploration, and the arts.
She welcomes you to join New Earth Luminary, her platform for way-showing guides, medicine carriers, and visionary creatives around the world.
Speaker 1 (Rachael)
(18:53)
Hey love—
If you’re a leader…
Someone who’s done the work but still feels the pull for something more—
More adventure.
More success.
More sacred connection.
Like your soul is ready to lead in a bigger way, but you’re not fully where you know you could be yet…
That’s exactly why I created the Sacred Success Synthesizer.
It’s like a divine download to help you get clear on what’s next in your life, leadership, and business.
Click the link in the show notes.
The future is waiting to be revealed.
And your soul already knows the way.
Speaker 1 (Rachael)
(19:31)
You’ve been listening to Transformational Times, where sacred journeys unfold and leaders rise to meet their calling—and the destiny of our entire planet.
If this episode spoke to you, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone walking their own path.
I’m Rachael.
Thank you for walking with me.
Embrace the quest…
…and become the way.