In this episode of Feminist Founders, Becky Mollenkamp and Faith Clarke reflect on The Weight We Carry — a focus group conversation about invisible labor and how it shows up in our personal and professional lives.

They share insights and takeaways from the powerful session, where participants told stories, named the unseen work they carry, and began exploring ways to release it. What emerged was both deeply personal and profoundly collective — a recognition that the exhaustion so many of us feel isn’t personal failure, it’s systemic.

Discussed in this conversation:
• How storytelling reveals the collective wisdom we already hold
• Why invisible labor is both embodied and systemic
• What it means to refuse to participate in your own sacrifice
• How trust, accountability, and community intersect in the work of release
• Why simple “one-two-three” solutions don’t work — and what does
• How shame, guilt, and perfectionism keep us in patterns of overwork
• The power of community in reprogramming the conditioning that makes us overfunction
• What medicine looks like when it’s rooted in collective care and belonging

Becky and Faith also share details about their upcoming small-group program—Releasing the Weight—a community container designed to help you identify, name, and release the invisible labor weighing you down — just in time for the holidays.

✨ Join the group experience: feministfounders.co/group

📰 Subscribe on Substack: feministfounders.substack.com

Business owners can contribute to the white paper

🎤 PROUD MEMBERS OF THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE

This week looks a little different. Becky’s out sick, so we’re sharing a powerful conversation from Assigned Reading where Becky and Faith dive into Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s essay and TED Talk We Should All Be Feminists.

It’s a wide-ranging and deeply personal discussion about feminism across cultures, the intersections of race and gender, and how we carry both the weight of oppression and the responsibility of shaping culture ourselves.

👉 Don’t miss our upcoming free event, The Weight We Carry on invisible labor, happening October 9, 2025. Sign up here: https://evt.to/eoieheisw

Discussed in this episode:
• How Adichie’s centering of Nigerian culture resonates with Afro-Caribbean experiences
• Why feminism often defaults to “white feminism” in the U.S.—and the harm in that invisibility
• Chimamanda’s 2017 comments on trans women, her clarification, and what it says about growth and accountability
• How women are held to perfectionist standards under white supremacy
• The challenge (and necessity) of contextualizing feminism through race, culture, and personal story
• Why “people shape culture” is both a call to action and a permission slip
• Owning our own stories of privilege and oppression—and how whiteness itself can be a prison
• Shame as one of the sharpest tools of oppression and how it maintains systems of power
• The many ways activism can look: rest, storytelling, parenting, teaching, healing, and beyond

🎤 PROUD MEMBERS OF THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE

In this solo episode of Feminist Founders, Faith Clarke reflects on the invisible labor women carry, the stories that connect us, and the power of collective truth-telling. Drawing from Desmond Tutu’s teaching on Ubuntu—“a person is a person through other persons”—Faith invites listeners to consider how our common humanity can be honored through deep listening, shared storytelling, and co-creation of solutions.

Faith shares her background in qualitative research, her belief that human stories are data, and how the Feminist Founders community is engaging in collective storytelling to explore invisible labor. This episode is both a personal reflection and an invitation: to join a larger conversation, contribute your story, and help co-create liberatory solutions for founders and communities.

💡 Discussed in this episode:

• The wisdom of Ubuntu and how it calls us into shared humanity
• Why listening to stories is a spiritual practice
• How invisible labor impacts women’s health and lives
• The limitations of traditional research methods and the power of lived experience
• Why collective truth-telling is essential for creating solutions
• The Feminist Founders initiative to document and share a white paper on invisible labor

🎤 Proud members of the Feminist Podcasters Collective