274 Kristin Kessler “Working Motherhood”

Today on the show I am joined by Kristin Kessler, a registered dietitian, yoga teacher, and advocate for equitable access to nutritious food and opportunities to live a healthful lifestyle. She has worked across multiple sectors of the field of nutrition for the past 12 years, including at PR agencies and in community nutrition, like at Food Bank For New York City. She also has a long-held passion for women’s rights and equitable opportunities in all aspects of life, particularly the workforce, something she credits to watching her mom work hard and excel in her career while raising her as a single mother after her parents divorced. Herself a new mother of an infant who works outside of the home, she is seeing the world through new eyes and experiencing how much of it isn’t set up for the success of birthing people, from prenatal to perinatal to postnatal and beyond.

Originally from New Orleans with a good, long stint in Dallas and Austin, Texas before making her way up to Brooklyn, she now resides in Woodstock, where she lives with her husband, infant son, and dog. She works for the City of Kingston’s Health and Wellness Department, where she creates policy, system, and environmental changes to help make healthy choices an easier choice in Kingston for everyone.

How do we move from surviving to thriving in motherhood? Today is an honest conversation on the practical challenges of motherhood from navigating the emotions and personal and public expectations on returning to work to the practical aspects of juggling nursing, pumping, childcare and costs with a work schedule. Kristin shares personal stories that perfectly illustrate why we need better systems in place to support working mothers and parents. So much of this comes down to our value system which practically speaking is largely based upon productivity and finance in a patriarchal system. It’s time for a change!

Here is the article I mentioned related to expenditure for child care in the US compared with other wealthy countries, and here’s the previous episode where I discussed child care operations with a former daycare provider.

Ahhhh, and then I end the show with a little moon reporting from Tanaaz in honor of Friday’s New Moon!

You can get your tickets to The Goddess Party here!

Today’s show was engineered by Ian Seda from Radiokingston.org.

Our show music is from Shana Falana!

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

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251 Adrianne Theetge “Returning to and Taking Care of Self”

Adrianne Theetge moved to the Hudson Valley from Georgia after doing disaster relief in NYC for 9/11 in the AmeriCorps NCCC program. After several years working and serving our elections and our political system, she just recently went back to graduate school to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher. She loves her new career as an ENL teacher serving students who are learning the English language. Experiencing grief after the loss of her brother and father she shares with us some of what has helped her through that process. She is a proud mother of two daughters. One of which, Aliza, has been a guest on the show in the past.She enjoys being outside running on the beautiful trails in the Hudson Valley, playing soccer, reading, thrift store shopping, exploring new places, and meditating (a new found invaluable tool).

I loved our talk today that actually took place at my house over tea. Adrianne is so warm and thoughtful and shares deeply from her heart space about grief, talking through the hard bits, career change, overcoming fears, letting people in, saying yes or no when that’s her truth, being a mom, and the secrets to her happy marriage.

Today’s bonus conversation with Warren is about brain health.

Today’s show was engineered by Ian Seda from Radiokingston.org.

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

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212 Suz Slezak “Our Wings May Be Featherless”

Today I welcome Suz Slezak, mother and musician, to the show. For Suz harmonizing with another human being is a sacred act of sharing breath. This lifelong love of harmony is how she, as if by accident, fell into music as a career. Suz grew up TV-free on her family’s Virginia homestead, in an endless loop of fiddle-playing and singing led by her father, a Catholic seminary dropout, as she, her brothers and a gaggle of fellow homeschoolers traversed gravel roads in their beat-up station wagon en route to choir rehearsals and music lessons.

While not on a path to pursue music, it seemed to be following her. Convinced by her now-husband to join his band, the two eventually fell in love and for the past fifteen years have co-fronted David Wax Museum – earning accolades from the New York Times to NPR, performing on CBS Saturday Morning, and even playing Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s wedding.

After years touring and co-fronting the band, Suz’s debut solo album, Our Wings May Be Featherless, comes out March 4th. It is a breathtaking journey through some of her life’s most painful and poignant moments – losing a best friend to suicide, her public struggle with bipolar disorder, and a traumatic childbirth. Today we listen to a few of the new songs and hear about the stories behind them.

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

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205 Nancy Graham and Louisa Finn “Love and Mohonk Consultations”

Nancy Graham serves on the board of Mohonk Consultations and the arts council of The Lace Mill, where they live in Midtown Kingston. They have worked or volunteered for numerous nonprofits related to social justice, alternative media, theatre, film, and writing. Poet/writer/visual artist under the name Nancy O. Graham; actor under the name Noa Graham. Her most recent theatre project was Orchid Receipt Service, starring Asia Kate Dillon, at Theater MITU580 in Brooklyn, pre-pandemic. Most recent film project is a short called Elegy for a Glacier, about an environmental activist and her glaciologist daughter forced to face off about the construction of a ski resort in the Rockies.

Louisa Finn is a  Hudson Valley native, whose mother was a member of the Quaker Smiley family of Mohonk Mountain House, and father a Russian Jewish pianist from the Bronx.  She has spent her life thus far actively engaged in learning what it is to be human and to be herself.  She works as a Speech/Language Pathologist and Reading Tutor, and clinical instructor at SUNY New Paltz.  She is on the Board of Mohonk Consultations, where she serves as Administrative Coordinator, and Sky Lake Shambhala Center Buddhist Retreat.  She writes poetry, and is creating a forest garden in her front yard.

Today we’re talking about Love and a myriad of related and thought provoking subjects. Nancy and Louisa share about their first memories of love and how they relate to the word which takes us into the realm of spiritual materialism, caring for others, and being a mother.  The show is inspired by bell hooks and her writings on love and self love/self worth so we dive into self-love as Louisa and Nancy share their own process to love themselves better as well as how self-love relates to caring for others and being a woman. We then leave the personal towards the end of the show to talk about the public and how the work of Mohonk Consultations is cultivating love in its own way, bringing folks together to collaborate, lifting voices, and caring for land and others. We leave you with a call for your own definition or thoughts on Love.  bell hooks herself seemed to have a few, “love is the action we take on behalf of our own or another’s spiritual growth…” “love is a combination of trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge and responsibility…” So, what say you?

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

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#191 Therese Shechter “My So-Called Selfish Life”

On today’s show I share my conversation with Therese Shechter, award-winning filmmaker and writer, and the founder of the feminist production company Trixie Films.  Her work fuses humor, activism, and personal storytelling to disrupt what’s considered most sacred about womanhood. She is a Canada Council for the Arts grantee for her documentary My So-Called Selfish Life which is having its World Premier this week at the Woodstock Film Festival. The film examines what it means to say no to motherhood in a society that assumes all women want children, and exposes what’s at stake when women are denied the right to control their own reproductive lives. It is the third part of a trilogy which includes her films “How To Lose Your Virginity” (2013) and “I Was A Teenage Feminist” (2005). These documentaries have screened from Rio de Janeiro to Istanbul to Seoul, and her work is in the collections of over 300 universities, non-profits, and libraries. I had the opportunity of a sneak peak at her film and it’s fascinating, thought provoking, informative and entertaining… and this is coming from someone who has struggled to have children yet is STILL trying!

Woodstock Film Festival Showtimes and Locations:

World Premiere: Thursday, September 30 [4:45] PM at Bearsville Theater, Woodstock, NY

Encore Screening: Friday, October 1 [11:00] AM at Orpheum Theatre, Saugerties NY

Virtual Screenings: September 29-Oct 10 streaming online

Tickets: https://bit.ly/SelfishLifeWoodstock

Trailer: https://myselfishlife.com/

I played songs by Miss Eaves, and Fanny, but I don’t have the rights to them so you only get a sample here. BUT you can listen on my playlist instead! Check out the film, Fanny, the Right to Rock which you can stream via the Woodstock Film Festival.

And links to some of the work that Therese references in our conversation: Scarleteen and Hanne Blank’s Virgin, The Untouched History.

AND info about the “Bans Off Our Bodies: Rally in Defense of Abortion Rights” can be found here.

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

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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