Episode 6: Healing Begins Where the Wound Was Made
What happens when the thing that activates you is also something you consciously choose?
In this episode of Buried Alive, Rachel sits down with Maeve McBride, a kink educator and clinical sexological herbalist whose work moves through trauma, embodiment, sex, birth, education and nervous-system awareness.
Maeve lives with CPTSD and still chooses to engage with kink, including forms of play that can brush against old wounds. Not because pain automatically heals pain. Not because kink is therapy. But because choice changes the equation.
Together, they explore what happens when a body shaped by trauma is given new information: I chose this. I can stop. I can continue. I can change my mind. I am here now.
This is a conversation about intensity without recklessness. About the strange overlap between birth and masochism. About safe words, triggers, herbalism, accessibility and the slow work of trusting yourself again.
What We Talk About
What Maeve means when she says healing can begin where the wound was made
Using kink as a somatic practice rather than automatically avoiding difficult sensations
The unexpected relationship between childbirth, hypnobirthing, pain and kink
Why trauma triggers can still appear even after years of therapy and self-awareness
Maeve’s “data points” theory and how new experiences of choice can change our relationship with old sensations
Safe words as a reminder that the present is not the past
What informed consent looks like when trauma could enter a scene
Interoception and learning to recognise what the body is actually communicating
Rebuilding self-trust after trauma
Sexological herbalism and Maeve’s relationship with plant allies
Accessibility, boundaries and designing safer community spaces
Big Takeaways
Agency changes the experience. A similar sensation can mean something profoundly different when you have chosen it, negotiated it and know you have the power to stop.
You cannot plan for every trigger. Trauma-aware play is not about predicting everything. It is about having tools available when something unexpected happens.
Safe words can do more than stop a scene. For Maeve, they also provide evidence that she is in a different situation now: one where her choices matter.
The body speaks before we always understand the language. Interoception is about noticing the sensation before rushing to label it fear, excitement, danger or desire.
Self-trust can be rebuilt. Not necessarily through one huge breakthrough, but through hundreds of moments in which we notice, choose and respond.
Consent belongs to everyone in the scene. Sharing enough information for everyone to make an informed choice matters, while nobody is obliged to disclose every detail of their trauma.
Safety is structural too. Community organisers can design systems that make boundaries easier to hold rather than relying entirely on individuals to manage difficult situations themselves.
Listen If You’re Into...
Trauma-aware kink without pretending kink is therapy
Consensual non-consent and edge play
Somatics and nervous-system awareness
Masochism, pain and altered states
The relationship between fear, excitement and intensity
Consent beyond the basic yes/no conversation
Birth, hypnobirthing and embodied approaches to pain
Sexological herbalism
The psychology of boundaries, trust and choice
Maeve on the Mic
“Safe words are the biggest tool that we have that reminds us that we are not in the same situation.”
“What’s it really about?”
“Every time I receive a hit of impact and I decide to keep going, that is a choice. And that is healing.”
“No is a complete sentence in our community.”
Meet Your Guest
Maeve McBride is a kink educator and clinical sexological herbalist whose work brings together trauma awareness, somatics, birth work, sexuality and embodied education.
Her approach is rooted in lived experience rather than hierarchy. She teaches people to become informed consumers of their own kink and sexuality: take what works, question what doesn’t, and remember that nobody else lives inside your body.
Maeve is also Executive Director of KinkFest in Portland, Oregon, where she helps shape systems around accessibility, consent and community safety.
Follow Maeve McBride
Website: https://www.maevemcbride.com
FetLife: MaeveMcBride
Instagram: @MaeveMcBridePDX
Chapters
01:00 — Healing Where the Wound Was Made
Trauma patterns, somatic awareness and what it means to move towards sensation rather than automatically away from it.
03:10 — Birth, Pain & Hypnobirthing
How childbirth changed Rachel’s relationship with pain, and why Maeve sees so much overlap between birth work and kink.
06:14 — Can You Prepare for a Trigger?
Body scans, hypervigilance and planning for the things you cannot necessarily predict.
08:34 — The Data Points Theory
How consent, choice and safe words can give the nervous system new information.
13:23 — Trauma & Informed Consent
What play partners need to know, what can remain private and why consent runs in both directions.
15:53 — Triggered, But Not Necessarily Finished
The word Maeve uses when she has been activated but does not automatically want the scene to stop.
18:09 — Healing or Harmful Re-Enactment?
The questions Maeve asks before moving towards trauma-adjacent or edge play.
19:01 — Interoception: What Is Your Body Actually Saying?
The difference between a sensation and the story we immediately attach to it.
21:07 — “What’s It Really About?”
The question Maeve inherited from her grandmother and uses to interrupt panic and listen more closely to herself.
24:23 — Giving Suffering Somewhere to Go
How becoming an educator helped Maeve turn lived experience into something useful for others.
26:10 — Sexological Herbalism
Looking at sexual wellbeing as one window into the nervous system, stress and the rest of the body.
31:51 — Maeve’s Plant Allies
Damiana, dandelion, cramp bark and motherwort, and the roles they play in Maeve’s personal practice.
36:09 — Education Without Dogma
Why learning should introduce possibilities rather than tell people what is universally right for their bodies.
40:16 — Play, Choice & Healing
Why play matters — and how repeatedly choosing to continue can itself carry meaning.
41:01 — Making Kink More Accessible
Why accessibility is not just about physical access and what safer environments can make possible.
43:04 — Boundaries Without Exile
Inside the KinkFest no-contact system and why a boundary does not automatically require removing somebody from the wider community.
45:09 — Where to Find Maeve
Maeve’s classes, website and social channels.
