Judging Meghan

Sitting With the Hard Stuff: Trauma, Healing, and Finding Peace with Author and Activist Oneika Mays

Judging Meghan

Show Notes

This episode I’m joined by meditation and yoga teacher, activist, and author of ‘Sit with Me : A No BS Journey to Mindfulness and Meditation’ Oneika Mays for a powerful, unfiltered conversation about trauma, anger, justice, burnout, and what it really means to find peace in a world that often feels overwhelming and unjust. Together, we explore emotional exhaustion, resilience, mental health, and the toll of witnessing injustice in real time, while searching for ways to stay grounded, present, and human.

Onika shares her journey through sexual trauma, suicidal ideation, hospitalization, and the long road toward self-compassion and healing, as well as her work teaching mindfulness inside Rikers Island. We talk about incarceration, systemic harm, moral conflict, and why safety sometimes has to be built internally when external safety does not exist. We also challenge toxic positivity and the idea that healing should look the same for everyone, reminding ourselves that meditation is not about quieting the mind, but about making peace with the one we already have.

This episode is an invitation to slow down, breathe, and remember that your feelings make sense. If you are exhausted, overwhelmed, grieving, angry, or struggling to hold onto hope, you are not alone. Healing does not require perfection or calm. You are allowed to be human, complicated, and still worthy of care, compassion, rest, and connection.

Found out more about Oneika and purchase her book on her website: https://www.oneikamays.com/

Follow Oneika here: https://www.instagram.com/oneikamays/?hl=en

This podcast is a place for trauma survivors as well as their friends and family. This is a safe environment to be vulnerable but it's also a place for celebration and moving forward. Let's all start to embrace who we are becoming by #mentalhealth #selfcare #self #judgingothers #judgingmeghan #suicideawareness #suicideprevention #survivor #TraumaHealing #ComplexPTSD #MentalHealthMatters #HealingJourney #Mindfulness #Meditation #YogaLife #EmotionalHealing #SelfCompassion #InnerWork #TraumaRecovery #GriefAndHealing #AngerAndGrowth #FindingPeace #Resilience #EmotionalWellbeing #HealingTogether #YouAreNotAlone #SlowHealing #HumanFirst #GentleHealing #HealingInProgress #MentalHealthAwareness #OneikaMays

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More from Judging Meghan

Oct 20, 2026

This episode discusses consent, sexual assault, drugs, and other difficult topics that may be triggering for some listeners.

Oct 13, 2026

In this episode I’m joined by mental health advocate and speaker Heidi Ambrose for an honest conversation about suicide, grief, and finding hope after loss. Heidi and I first met when I was a speaker at a women's event, there we connected over our shared experiences with loss. She opens up about growing up in New York City with emotionally distant parents and feeling lonely despite having financial privilege. At just 17, Heidi lost her mother to suicide following her parents’ divorce, an experience that changed her life forever.

Oct 6, 2026

Today, you’re going to hear a revisited conversation from 2022 between my Mom and me. We talk about her experience being attacked as a young girl and how it forever impacted her life. She has experienced unimaginable loss, including losing both a child and a husband, and has had to learn how to live again after these traumatic experiences.

Sep 29, 2026

In this episode, I sit down with Lizzie Semmer, a former pre K teacher who left the classroom and started a new chapter of her life in Portugal. Lizzie shares what it was like growing up between Chicago and Manhattan Beach with a father who worked in Hollywood, and how she eventually began her own career in entertainment, working with her father. After years in the industry, she followed a calling into teaching and spent a decade working with young children before the demands and exhaustion of the post COVID classroom led her to make the difficult decision to walk away.

Sep 24, 2026

Two-time Emmy-nominated director/producer of TV and Broadway, Riaz Patel isn’t here because of his credentials. He’s here because of his unusual perspective: a man who has spent virtually his entire life in female-dominated worlds. He grew up surrounded by women — two sisters, countless female cousins — then spent years making television about women, for female-led networks, on female-majority teams, for female audiences. And now, as a gay dad raising two kids, he finds himself once again in a world largely populated by moms.

See all episodes →