Ep 20: Blood of the Coven, Tankless Water Heaters, and Reclaiming Her Power with Dalyss Saari

Timestamps:

1. Intro — Meet Dalyss, Episode Number Chaos — 0:00

2. One of Twelve Kids and Never Getting the Attention — 10:38

3. We Turn Childhood Trauma Into Art Now — 11:22

4. Leaving the US — The Lightness of Getting Out — 12:44

5. The Restraining Order at Fifteen — 18:22

6. Becoming a Tattoo Artist — 41:39

7. Ethical Non-Monogamy, Defined — 46:36

8. The Husband Moves Back to the US — 49:35

9. Worshipping the Female Body Through Art — 51:49

10. The Insecurities Painting Challenge — 52:20

11. Southern Baptist Roots — 1:03:18

12. "Are You Two Lesbians?" — 1:04:50

13. Leaving the Church — 1:07:54

14. Becoming Witchy and Reading Tarot — 1:09:24

15. Reclaiming Her Power — 1:13:11

16. Tongue First — The Last Question — 1:17:05

Blood of the Coven, Tankless Water Heaters, and Reclaiming Her Power with Dalyss Saari

Twenty episodes in, and this one might be the most quietly powerful yet. Dalyss Saari — artist, mother, and American expat currently living in Birmingham, England — sits down with Siren and Wendy for a conversation that moves seamlessly between real trauma and real joy, sometimes in the same sentence.

One of Twelve

Dalyss grew up as one of twelve kids split between two parents, the oldest, and, by her own account, never really the one to get attention. Art became the outlet — quietly at first, then as something closer to survival. As she puts it now, looking back: "We turn the childhood trauma into art now. So that's what we're doing."

That childhood included abuse from her father that led to a restraining order when she was just fifteen, and a mother whose narcissism kept Dalyss sheltered from understanding what was happening to her for years. It took a high school teacher — who happened to be her father's old football coach — telling stories about helping kids get out of situations like hers, for Dalyss to finally realize what she was living through wasn't normal.

Coming Out at Fourteen, the Hard Way

Long before any of that unraveled fully, there was a moment at a family lake house when Dalyss was fourteen — hugging a close friend in the water, nothing more, when her mother shouted across the lake in front of everyone: "Are you two lesbians?" Dalyss backed away immediately. That was the moment the door closed, she says — years before she'd ever get the chance to open it on her own terms.

She grew up Southern Baptist, in a household that was, in her words, "holier than thou" behind closed doors and performatively pious in public. When she eventually did come out — after nearly a decade married to a man — the same family that shamed her at fourteen asked why she hadn't just told them sooner. She calls it exactly what it is: hypochristian.

Art as Worship

Somewhere in the middle of raising kids and building a marriage, Dalyss found her way to painting seriously — first as a tattoo artist starting at nineteen, and now through an ongoing, prolific series of paintings exploring bodies, insecurity, and desire. Her fruit-and-flower pieces, which incorporate the female form in bold, unmistakable ways, come from a simple, deeply held belief: "I find extreme beauty in women in general. I think the woman species, for lack of a better word, is just something to be worshipped."

Her July project pushed that further — a painting a day, every day, exploring insecurities people sent in about their own bodies. She painted her own stomach, her own body after two kids, and found something unexpected on the other side of it: "It made me feel like a piece of art."

Marriage, Distance, and Finding Her Voice

Dalyss met her husband in middle school — the only boy, she says, who never grabbed at her or made her feel unsafe. They married at nineteen, built a life, and eventually opened their relationship into what she describes as ethical non-monogamy: dating separately, fully consensual, built on communication rather than secrecy. "I had finally realized I was like, hey, women are pretty fucking pretty fucking pretty," she says of the moment things shifted for her.

Now, with her husband temporarily back in the US for work while she stays in England with their kids, Dalyss describes the distance almost like an unexpected gift: space to find her voice entirely on her own terms, without a man's input shaping it first.

Building Her Own Coven

Dalyss left the church behind entirely, moving instead toward something more expansive and self-directed — tarot, curiosity, exploration of every belief system she can get her hands on. Her closest family connection now isn't blood at all: an aunt, related only by remarriage, who took her to her first Pride and became, in every way that matters, the mother she never had.

The Rest of It

Because it's still Tongue First: dolphin rape cave conspiracy theories, an extended debate about British baked beans, banana pudding logistics across an ocean, and a woman who describes her upbringing so vividly that "Amish in Memphis" becomes an actual bit.

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Tongue First is a sapphic and queer podcast hosted by Aubrey "Siren" Jones and Wendy Reeves. New episodes every Monday. Find us at tonguefirstpodcast.com and support the show on Patreon at Tongue First: After Hours.

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Until next time — stay curious, stay queer, and don't forget to lick responsibly.

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