Learning to Listen to What Is Within

Maria Venusa Rodrigues’ work begins with something deeply personal: the relationship a person has with themselves.

Her approach did not emerge from a neat professional plan or a desire to build a particular kind of career. It grew slowly from observing the women around her, navigating her own relationships, experiencing major life transitions, and eventually recognising that the inner world can shape almost everything that happens beyond it.

Growing up in Portugal, Maria saw women in her family encounter difficult transitions and, in many cases, leave their own dreams behind because of duty, responsibility, and hardship. Those experiences stayed with her. When she eventually left her home country and moved to England at the age of 21, she was already carrying a quiet desire to make different choices for herself.

Life would continue to challenge that intention in ways she could not have anticipated.

Moving countries was only the beginning. Maria experienced relationship endings, divorce, periods of starting again, and the uncertainty that comes with having to rebuild a sense of direction more than once. Rather than viewing these experiences simply as obstacles to move past, she began to use them as opportunities to understand herself more honestly.

That process led her toward a deeper exploration of emotional and relational intelligence, particularly the anxious and codependent patterns she recognised within herself. The more she learned, the more she began to understand that relationships are not only shaped by the people around us. They are also influenced by the relationship we have with our own emotions, boundaries, bodies, fears, and sense of safety.

For Maria, this realisation became the foundation for the work she does today.

When Choosing Yourself Means Risking Belonging

One of the most difficult parts of Maria’s journey has been learning what it means to choose herself, particularly when doing so could create the possibility of not belonging.

Speaking honestly in community settings, being misunderstood, navigating family patterns, and experiencing estrangements have all forced her to sit with uncomfortable questions.

Maria does not describe these moments as challenges that must simply be conquered. Her understanding is more nuanced. Difficult experiences, in her view, can become invitations to examine the fears and limitations beneath them.

That perspective has shaped the way she supports others. Rather than encouraging people to push through discomfort at any cost, she invites them to become curious about what the discomfort is revealing.

This has required Maria to develop a form of self parenthood rooted in patience. For her, becoming more emotionally and relationally intelligent means learning to meet the vulnerable parts of ourselves with the same kindness and curiosity we might naturally offer someone we deeply love.

It is a practice rather than a destination.

Her own life has continued to reinforce this understanding. Every transition, ending, beginning, and unexpected turn has given her another opportunity to listen more closely to herself. In that sense, her personal journey and professional work are closely connected. She is not simply teaching a concept from a distance. She is continually exploring it through her own life.

Building InterBeing From the Inside Out

This philosophy eventually became part of the foundation for InterBeing Institute, where Maria guides women and trans women through life transitions and supports them in developing a healthier inner relationship.

Her work is centred on inner authority, emotional awareness, relational intelligence, grief awareness, and mind body practices. Rather than treating these areas as separate pieces, she approaches them as interconnected parts of human experience.

The body, for Maria, is particularly important. It can hold information that the mind has not yet consciously processed. It can communicate discomfort, resistance, fear, or a sense of ease before someone has found the words to describe what is happening.

Her work encourages people to become more attentive to those signals and to develop greater trust in their own internal experience.

The impact she hopes to create extends beyond individual clients. Maria also works alongside grassroots organisations, community leaders, allies, and volunteers who are already contributing positively to their communities. Her role is to help these people sustain their work by developing greater inner resilience and agency.

There is an important distinction in this approach. Maria is not only interested in what people accomplish. She is interested in what allows them to continue doing meaningful work without becoming disconnected from themselves in the process.

She has witnessed people she works with develop more compassionate relationships with their bodies, emotions, and vulnerability. From there, she sees changes begin to appear in their work and communities. Their projects can become more intentional. Their creative energy can return. Their relationships can become more connected. The spaces they influence can feel more alive and cohesive.

For Maria, that is where meaningful impact begins.

A Peace Circle, a Podcast, and the Power of Connection

Some of the most meaningful moments in Maria’s journey have taken place outside the traditional boundaries of coaching.

One example was a Peace Circle she held in her hometown of Southport, where the local Member of Parliament was present. The experience represented something larger than an individual event. It reflected Maria’s belief that creating spaces where people can meet one another with openness, curiosity, and humanity has value in itself.

Other moments are quieter.

She speaks about the joy she experiences when someone in a workshop or one to one session begins to connect with themselves differently. Seeing people approach their own emotions with greater curiosity and compassion is deeply meaningful to her. She describes the experience as humbling because the transformation belongs to the person doing the inner work.

Her work has also found a playful and accessible expression through The Relational Thread, the podcast she hosts alongside Dylan, her co host and beloved puppet.

Together, they explore emotional and relational intelligence in relation to ourselves, other people, and the systems we collectively create. Dylan brings humour and lightness into conversations that could otherwise feel heavy or overly serious.

For Maria, this matters because healing and self understanding do not have to exist without joy.

She believes laughter has a place alongside grief, reflection, vulnerability, and difficult conversations. The podcast gives her another way to explore the same ideas that shape her coaching practice while making space for curiosity, community, and play.

Redefining What Success Looks Like

Maria’s relationship with success has changed significantly over time.

She does not see success as something that can be measured primarily through recognition, status, or external achievements. Her experience has taught her that those forms of validation can be meaningful while still being temporary.

Instead, she finds a deeper sense of success in the everyday decisions that bring her closer to herself.

• Resting when rest is needed.
• Spending time in nature.
• Saying no when something does not feel aligned.
• Staying connected to people who enrich her life.
• Looking up and noticing beauty.
• Allowing joy to exist without needing a major reason for it.

These choices may appear ordinary, but for Maria they represent something much more significant. They reflect a life built around conscious participation rather than constant striving.

She describes integrity, joy, transparency, discipline, curiosity, inner compassion, community, and belonging as values that guide her. They are not simply words attached to her professional identity. They are principles she continues to test through her own decisions.

Her understanding of leadership follows a similar path.

Rather than looking toward a fixed list of role models, Maria focuses on becoming a more embodied and wholesome version of herself. Still, she finds inspiration in women around her who are unafraid to be controversial, who embrace their femininity and sensuality while remaining grounded in their own sense of self.

These women remind her of what it can look like to live with both softness and strength.

Maria calls thisthe lioness within.

Creating Communities That Feel Safer

The next chapter of Maria’s work is already taking shape.

She is developing a space for women who are positively contributing to their communities and want to deepen that work by developing a greater sense of inner safety. From there, she envisions a larger community growing around shared values of connection, resilience, emotional awareness, and relational intelligence.

The Relational Thread will continue as another important part of that vision. Maria plans to keep sharing practical tools while expanding the playful world surrounding Dylan and inviting members of the podcast community into those experiences.

Beyond the podcast and coaching, she sees further projects emerging both online and within the communities around her. Helping people develop a more secure relationship with themselves remains central to those plans.

Her vision is not built around creating distance between the individual and the wider world. It is almost the opposite. She believes that when people become more grounded within themselves, they can engage with others and their communities from a more stable place.

That can change how people work, communicate, lead, create, and care.

It can also change what communities feel like from the inside.

The Wisdom That Lives in the Body

At the heart of Maria’s philosophy is a belief that people often search too far outside themselves for answers that their own bodies have been quietly communicating for a long time.

She encourages people to become still enough to hear what is there.

Her message is not that difficult experiences disappear once someone becomes more self aware. Rather, self awareness can change the way a person meets those experiences. Fear can become information. Uncertainty can become an invitation. Vulnerability can become a doorway into greater self trust.

This is also where Maria’s personal practices support her work. She often turns toward her connection with spirit or her higher self, mind body practices, nature, and the people in her community. These sources of grounding help her return to herself when life becomes noisy.

Her Embody Toolkit extends this philosophy to others, offering a practical starting point for people who want to explore inner compassion, trust, and a deeper relationship with themselves.

Maria’s own words capture the centre of her work:

Holding the Thread

There is something fitting about the name The Relational Thread.

Maria’s life has been shaped by threads between places, people, endings, beginnings, emotions, bodies, communities, and the quiet inner voice that can become easier to hear when everything else becomes still.

She has learned that choosing herself can sometimes mean facing uncertainty. She has learned that belonging cannot always come at the cost of authenticity. She has learned that difficult seasons can carry information, and that compassion can make space for truths that are painful to acknowledge.

Most importantly, she has built her work around the belief that inner safety is not an isolated personal concern. It can influence how people show up in relationships, how they contribute to communities, and how they create the spaces around them.

Her definition of success reflects that understanding.