Un-Numbing & Coming Back to Center with Monica Everett

This week on the Generative Bodies Podcast, I spoke with my friend and colleague Monica Everett. In this episode we hear Monica’s story of coming from a pretty disembodied place, then swinging far into what she’s called the ‘woo-sphere’ in an attempt to reclaim her body and blood, then realizing some aspects of that world being pretty problematic and finding herself back in this more middle, grounded space.

Monica Everett lives near the Missouri river, in the unceded territories of the Osage and Missoura people. She attends births as a doula and student midwife, teaches fertility awareness and body literacy to people of all identities and ages, and spends a couple days a week knitting and crocheting with kids at an outdoor elementary school in the forest. She is ever in the process of restoring the urban plot where she lives to be a tended-wild garden and food forest for the current inhabitants, human and otherwise. She’s passionate about increasing body literacy for all as a form of empowerment and informed choice making in this beautiful and terrifying world.

I want to share that in this episode we talk about disordered eating, emotional and sexual abuse, please take care of yourself when listening.

Brush Your Teeth & Other Grandma Principles with Hannah Maynard

Hannah Maynard is a certified herbalist living in the lush mountains of southern Appalachia with her sidekick, Bella the cat. She tends to her gardens, cooking delicious meals (eating lots of soup & cookies) and is endlessly trying to figure out how to have a joyful and relaxing life under the reigns of late stage capitalism.

Hannah makes custom tincture & tea blends which you can find through her website. She shares her daily wisdom with the world on instagram. Knowing Hannah is one of the greatest joys & is truly such a treat. I have learned so much from her about life and herbs, but most importantly how to show up for myself and the people I care about. A day with Hannah is a day of full-belly laughs & snacks & being in awe of the magic of the earth. 

In this episode we talk about 'grandma principles' & how to get back to the very basics of understanding & tending to our needs. We talk about our gut & learning how to trust our guts. How living our weird lives is so important & powerful because life is meant to be lived & tried at & maybe sometimes a little messy, but it's all beautiful. Hannah and I often wax poetic about being depressed people constantly trying to find our joy & I learn so much from her friendship every damn day. In this episode we do discuss histories of disordered eating, but we do not discuss weight or numbers or behaviors at all. 

Enjoy this episode and as always, reach out with feedback.

You can listen to this episode on spotify and apple podcasts.

Self Preservation & The Cosmic Horn with Justine Belle Lambright

In this first episode of the Generative Bodies podcast, I found it quite special to be speaking with my longest friend, Justine Belle Lambright. Justine uses they/them pronouns and is co-founder of the Kalche Wine Co., based in Vermont. They are building a new model in the wine industry that's actively decolonizing an industry that's previously hardly been questioned. They aim to create a professional ecosystem wherein the wine industry isn't dictated by elitist figureheads who are only in it to maintain white supremacy, chauvinism, power, and profit. They've recently been on several podcasts talking about their work with Kalche and have been making some educational videos on social media which you should be checking out to learn more.

 Justine and I have walked with each other through endless moves, changes, and life shake ups and been witness to endless growth and transformation. In this episode, we talk about how it was growing up in small-town Cape Cod, MA; navigating otherness; self-preservation; prioritizing kindness and gentleness with a hefty dose of humility and apology; understanding queerness later in life; and how seeking to live a life of growth  & vulnerability is the priority. Justine is constantly evolving and pushing themselves and those around them to do better, to show up more, and to love their people fiercely. I'm so honored to be in their orbit.

You can find more from Justine here.

You can listen to this episode on spotify and apple podcasts.

Generative Bodies Podcast

This is a stories podcast about how we care for our bodies. It’s about embodiment and how we come home to ourselves.

I used to have a podcast project a couple years ago called the wild womb podcast, which mostly focused on birth and those who work in the birth world. At the time, it felt really relevant to me as I was working as a birth doula but things have changed a lot for me in the past few years and my work has shifted quite a lot alongside those changes. What brought me to birth work in the first place was the understanding that we don’t really know our bodies, we’re not encouraged or taught how to be embodied and how to care for ourselves in a deep way.

We are collectively disembodied and of course, that effects how we move through life, how we give birth, how we work, how we rest, have sex, how we tend to our bodies and minds and each other. It’s everything~~ I saw birth outcomes being effected and wanted to be a part of disrupting that.

I’ve moved more towards body literacy education which to me encompasses all the parts of learning our bodies- from existing, birthing, grieving, releasing. I support folks avoiding pregnancy, trying to conceive, who are pregnant, postpartum, having abortions and miscarriages. I’m here for it all and want to hear about it all so i created this new project. We’ll talk about how we each show up and exist in these bodies. I’ve found it so hard to be a person in a body, and the more i talk about it the more i see that this is such a shared experience. I want to create more spaces for us to get real about how we are each learning to be more embodied, that’s what this is all about. We can learn from each other to show up for ourselves and our communities and i’m so glad you’re here.

You can listen to the podcast here. Please reach out if you have any feedback or interest in speaking on the podcast.