230 Joyce Manalo, Chloe Caldwell, Sari Botton, and Aileen Weintraub “Health and Uteruses”

Joyce Manalo, founder of Kala Health and Wellness, is a Certified Health Coach who is an advocate for diabetes and mental health awareness. Formerly a Community Health Worker in Dallas, TX, Joyce has an important perspective on health inequities and with the recent Supreme Court’s decision related to women’s health, some important thoughts on the state of women’s health in Texas. Here’s her YouTube channel!

Bad news! The radio station’s mechanism that records all the content failed halfway through the show and I lost the conversation with Chloe, Sari and Aileen about their uteruses, how they’ve impacted their lives and how the medical establishment has failed them. I wanted to share their backgrounds with you so that you can go out and get their memoirs which go into loads more details from what they shared during our conversation. We talked about how women’s stories, now more than ever, are important to ensuring the truth about and support for women’s bodies is shared with others.

Chloe Caldwell is the author of three books: I’ll Tell You in PersonWomen, and Legs Get Led Astray. Her essays have been published in The New York TimesBon AppétitThe CutThe StrategistBuzzFeedNYLONVICELongreads, and many anthologies. Her essay “Hungry Ghost” was listed as Notable in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017. She lives in Hudson, New York, and teaches creative writing online at Writing Workshops, LitReactor, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Find out more at http://www.chloesimonne.com. Her latest, The Red Zone is a searching, galvanizing memoir about blood and love: how learning more about her period, PMS, PMDD, and the effects of hormones on moods transformed her relationships—to a new partner, to family, to non-blood kin, and to her own body.

Sari Botton is a Gen-X writer and editor living in Kingston, NY. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at Catapult, and the former Essays Editor for Longreads. She edited the award-winning, bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She teaches creative nonfiction at Wilkes University, Catapult, and Bay Path University. She publishes the newsletters Oldster Magazine, Memoir Monday, and Adventures in Journalism.

Her new memoir, And You May Find Yourself… is about “finding” yourself later in life—after first getting lost in all the wrong places. As Botton discovers, the wrong places famously include her own self-suppression and misguided efforts to please others (mostly men). In a series of candid, reflective, sometimes humorous essays, Botton describes coming to feminism and self-actualization as an older person, second (and third and fourth) chances—and how maybe it’s never too late to find your way…
assuming you’re lucky enough to live long. Sari was last on the show talking about Oldster Magazine at the end of 2021. In Sari’s memoir she has a chapter, “My Hysterectomy, a Love Story,” which reflects on her journey to conceive and what she learned when she reach the end.

Aileen Weintraub is the author of Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir, a laugh-out-loud story about a commitment-phobic Brooklyn girl who, after a whirlwind romance, finds herself living in a rickety farmhouse, pregnant, and faced with five months of doctor-prescribed bed rest because of unusually large fibroids. Publishers Weekly says, “Love, marriage, and a harrowing pregnancy yield a haunting story of survival in this gripping account.” Aileen has written for  the Washington Post, Glamour, Parents, Al Jazeera, Huff Post,NBC, Lit Hub and AARP among others. She is also the author of the middle-grade social justice books, Never Too Young! 50 Unstoppable Kids Who Made a Difference, which won a Parents Choice Award, and We Got Game! 35 Female Athletes Who Changed the World, A Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year. Aileen was recently chosen as Erma Bombeck’s Humor Writer of the Month for Knocked Down. Find her on Twitter @aileenweintraub or drop her a note at Aileenweintraub.com Aileen was last on the show in February to talk about her book. In light of the recent Supreme Court decision, I am excited to hear her thoughts about the future of women’s health and personal freedom.

Today’s show was engineered by Ian Seda from Radio Kingston.

We also heard music from Shana Falana!

Feel free to email me, say hello: she@iwantwhatshehas.org

Leave me a voicemail with your thoughts or a few words about who has what you want and why! (845) 481-3429

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210 Aileen Weintraub “Knocked Down: A High Risk Memoir”

Inspired by an article written by today’s guest, Aileen Weintraub, I begin the show reading “When Doctor’s Downplay Women’s Health Concerns” from the NY Times, and then on the live show we listen to Jennifer Brea’s Ted Talk. You podcast folks can check out the <- link to her show or listen to the radio archive.

Jennifer Brea was a PhD student at Harvard when, one night, she found she couldn’t write her own name. Over the following months, while doctors insisted her condition was psychosomatic, Brea became bedridden. She started filming herself and the community that she discovered online, collecting the first footage of what would become a feature documentary about myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), often referred to as chronic fatigue syndrome. The film, Unrest, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, tells Jen’s story as well as the stories of four other patients living with ME. She is the founder of #MEAction, an online organizing platform for ME patients around the world, many of whom cannot leave their homes.

Later, (13 minutes into the show) Aileen Weintraub joins me live, an award-winning author, journalist, and editor. She has written for the Washington Post, Glamour, NBC, and AARP, among others. She has also published several children’s books, including Never Too Young! 50 Unstoppable Kids Who Made a Difference and We Got Game! 35 Female Athletes Who Changed the World.  Her forthcoming essay in the New York Times, is about her interfaith marriage and being disowned by her Brooklyn Jewish community. You can find out more about her at http://www.aileenweintraub.com and on Twitter @aileenweintraub.

Her soon to be released book, Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir (March 1, 2022; University of Nebraska Press) explores what it meant to check out of life for so long and how it affected both her mental and physical health, her marriage, and her relationship with her family. At four months pregnant she was walking around New York City with her new husband, when she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her lower belly. An emergency sonogram showed that she had unusually large fibroids growing in her uterus, right alongside the baby. One of them was pressing directly on her cervix, causing early effacement. The prognosis: Go to bed, and don’t get up until the baby starts to crown. She spent the next five months on strict bed rest in an old Hudson Valley farmhouse trying to save the life of her unborn child.

Today on the show, we talk about the memoir, about bedrest, women’s health, talking publicly about your family, losing friends, and writing about inspiring kids and women athletes. You can order the book NOW, even though it officially releases March 1st. She’ll be doing a book signing at Rough Draft in Kingston on March 5th from 11-1pm. 

Thanks to Ian Seda from Radio Kingston for engineering today’s show!

Our show music is from Shana Falana !!! 

Feel free to email me, say hello: she@iwantwhatshehas.org

** Please: SUBSCRIBE to the pod and leave a REVIEW wherever you are listening, it helps other users FIND IT

http://iwantwhatshehas.org/podcast

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#210 Aileen Weintraub “Knocked Down: A High Risk Memoir”

Inspired by an article written by today’s guest, Aileen Weintraub, I begin the show reading “When Doctor’s Downplay Women’s Health Concerns” from the NY Times, and then on the live show we listen to Jennifer Brea’s Ted Talk. You podcast folks can check out the <- link to her show or listen to the radio archive.

Jennifer Brea was a PhD student at Harvard when, one night, she found she couldn’t write her own name. Over the following months, while doctors insisted her condition was psychosomatic, Brea became bedridden. She started filming herself and the community that she discovered online, collecting the first footage of what would become a feature documentary about myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), often referred to as chronic fatigue syndrome. The film, Unrest, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, tells Jen’s story as well as the stories of four other patients living with ME. She is the founder of #MEAction, an online organizing platform for ME patients around the world, many of whom cannot leave their homes.

Later, (13 minutes into the show) Aileen Weintraub joins me live, an award-winning author, journalist, and editor. She has written for the Washington Post, Glamour, NBC, and AARP, among others. She has also published several children’s books, including Never Too Young! 50 Unstoppable Kids Who Made a Difference and We Got Game! 35 Female Athletes Who Changed the World.  Her forthcoming essay in the New York Times, is about her interfaith marriage and being disowned by her Brooklyn Jewish community. You can find out more about her at http://www.aileenweintraub.com and on Twitter @aileenweintraub.

Her soon to be released book, Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir (March 1, 2022; University of Nebraska Press) explores what it meant to check out of life for so long and how it affected both her mental and physical health, her marriage, and her relationship with her family. At four months pregnant she was walking around New York City with her new husband, when she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her lower belly. An emergency sonogram showed that she had unusually large fibroids growing in her uterus, right alongside the baby. One of them was pressing directly on her cervix, causing early effacement. The prognosis: Go to bed, and don’t get up until the baby starts to crown. She spent the next five months on strict bed rest in an old Hudson Valley farmhouse trying to save the life of her unborn child.

Today on the show, we talk about the memoir, about bedrest, women’s health, talking publicly about your family, losing friends, and writing about inspiring kids and women athletes. You can order the book NOW, even though it officially releases March 1st. She’ll be doing a book signing at Rough Draft in Kingston on March 5th from 11-1pm. 

Thanks to Ian Seda from Radio Kingston for engineering today’s show!

Our show music is from Shana Falana !!! 

Feel free to email me, say hello: she@iwantwhatshehas.org

** Please: SUBSCRIBE to the pod and leave a REVIEW wherever you are listening, it helps other users FIND IT

http://iwantwhatshehas.org/podcast

ITUNES | SPOTIFY | STITCHER

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SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/77pmJwS2q9vTywz7Uhiyff?si=G2eYCjLjT3KltgdfA6XXCA

STITCHER: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/she-wants/i-want-what-she-has?refid=stpr

Follow:

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TWITTER * https://twitter.com/wantwhatshehas