Episode 207 : Desire Is Not A Sin with Deesha Philyaw
In this episode of 'Is My Aura On Straight?', host Aycee Brown opens with astrology updates on Venus retrograde in Scorpio and Pluto stationing direct in Aquarius. She describes a collective reckoning with buried desires, truth-telling, and removing performative versions of self at the center. Then, she briefly maps the transit themes for each rising sign’s house focus because introduces her special guest.
Aycee interviews award-winning author Deesha Philyaw and highlights her second novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, which centers on megachurch “first lady” culture, performance, and Black women’s sexual agency. In their conversation, Deesha recounts her early church experiences, recognizing women as the church’s foundation, encountering a woman pastor/seer, and questioning doctrines like hell and sexual double standards. She details her experiences with fatherlessness patterns, emotional abuse red flags, and growing up in the church as a woman.
Deesha also describes how she left the left church after multiple family deaths, then shed religious and relational performances through decades of divorce, therapy, and boundary-setting. As a writer, she reflects on how creative freedom helped her career accelerate around her 2020 debut during the pandemic.
Deesha re-defines freedom as honesty and letting people not like her, then ends the conversation by exploring writing as ancestral purpose and an evolving spiritual practice, beyond evangelical Christian guilt. Aycee closes this episode by urging listeners, especially those deconstructing religion, to read Deesha’s new book and revisit The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.
Purchase Deesha’s newest book The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman HERE
Connect with Deesha at deeshaphilyaw.com or at @deeshaphilyaw on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and X.
Click To Join Magical Mutha Fucking Mondays
To work with me, hire me, or sponsor the podcast, please reach out to assistant@ayceebrown.com
My Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ayceebrown/
My TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@ayceebrown
