I have been drawn to Jeffrey's messages and approaches ever since I stumbled upon them on social media. Their message, that, "there is nothing wrong with you" stuck at something I was having a hard time dealing with. I have felt for most of my life that there is something wrong with me, and therapy and self-help were going to fix it. Except it didn't. It just perpetuated the idea that there is something wrong with me, and it can't be fixed. And Jeffrey's message cut through the BS to offer perspective and lived experience that made sense to what I was going through. After several rounds of coaching with Jeffrey and reading both of their books, I invited Jeffrey on the podcast to speak about their life and our time working together. We get into conversations about lived experiences of feeling alone and isolated as queer and non-binary people, things to look out for to not use self-hate in your process of self-understanding and explore why people see the combination of kindness and queerness to be so dangerous. I feel like shared experiences can help each other feel less alone and hearing about Jeffrey's life and their experiences has helped me feel less alone and make sense of mine. Jeffrey Marsh's TikToks and compassionate short-form videos have over one billion views. Jeffrey is a bestselling author, viral TikTok and Instagram star, nonbinary activist, and LGBTQ keynote speaker. They were the first nonbinary public figure to appear on national television, being interviewed on Newsmax in 2016, and they were the first celebrity activist to use they/them pronouns.

Dips, Death drops, and duck walks. In the fall of 2022, I started learning vogue dance taught by Damon Green at his studio in Chicago. I had just come out as non-binary and wanted to reclaim my feminine energy. While Madonna's Vogue song made the art form more mainstream, the dance art form itself was started by BIPOC Queer and Trans people as a celebration of their identities and an empowering and rebellious act of rejecting the hate society tried to place on them. On this episode, I invite "mother" Damon Green onto the podcast to talk about his/her/their journey of finding Vogue and how it helped them, as well as what led them to teach Vogue to students in Chicago.

Damon D. Green is a Chicago-based dance artist and founder of TEXTUREDance Studio, an Urban Styles and Forms dance and wellness facility where he spreads his passion for movement education. Green is an avid Vogue aesthetic practitioner, exploring, performing and teaching this form in its fusion with other movement disciplines. Green has collaborated with local choreographers and companies including Red Clay Dance, Paige Cunningham-Calderella, Darrell Jones, J'sun Howard, Philip Elson, Kristina Isabelle, Cecil Johnson Jr., Lional Freeman, Jane Beachy, Mauren Sledge (House of Avant-Garde), Bob Eisen, Molly Shanahan, Sadie Woods, as well as visual artist Faheem Majeed. Green teaches and attends workshops and master classes throughout Chicago as well as abroad. Damon joined The Seldoms in 2007, and has contributed to fourteen major projects. texturedance.com

Sam and I know each other from meeting in Belize in the summer of 2021. We instantly connected after we meet in a van while I was picking up groceries and have kept in touch ever since then. Sam recently got her life coach certification and she opens up in the episode about what caused her to switch directions after leading a successful marketing company that she started. Plus, we talk about our own experience of how we are caring for ourselves and the fun topic of intergenerational trauma. 

Sam's Insta: @samadams7

If you wanna work with Sam, visit her site: www.thesunflowercollective.co 

CuriousStroyteller pod Insta: @curiousstorytellerpod

On this episode, I sit down with my friend Rebecca who is also from the same small town area of the Illinois/Iowa border. We start by reminiscing on meeting in high school and the benefits of having a friend that you've known so long, that they already understand the backstory. We then shift to Rebecca's initial apprehension of my interest in astrology, Rebecca's use of Astrology in the courtroom, and board game drama. Next, Rebecca shares her experience of what it’s like to be a public defender in Family Court, why the courtroom isn't like what you see on TV, and why she often has to play therapist. We shift to talking about the cult camp classic movie, M3gan. Finally, Rebecca shares about her two children Eliot and Reese, and the challenges of being a parent while Reese needed two open heart surgeries within the first year of her life.

Last summer, I traveled down to a nomad community in Belize and one of the wonderful people I met there was Sandy Oceguera. We reminisce about what brought us there, feeling a sense of care free play, before diving into the inner work Sandy and I have been doing as a result of both of us having cPTSD. Later in the episode, we talk about revolution and what it means to each of us to thrive in the hellscape that is capitalism. 

On the debut episode, I sit down with my friend Rachel Rothenberg and we talk about feeling queer joy, making friends as an adult, WASPs, and building inner worlds when we were kids. My favorite quote from Rachel in this episode was, "When you're in a liberated space, you do liberated things."