Today's episode is the story of an autistic Black and Indigenous femme creative powerhouse who wants to help us center rest, pleasure, and abundance in our actual lives. 

Sara Elise (she/her) is a multidisciplinary creative, splitting her time between Brooklyn and The Catskills, New York. She works primarily in the hospitality, well-being, and food industries and is the cofounder and designer of Apogeo Collective, a hospitality experience centering QTPOC, as well as the founder of Harvest & Revel, a sustainable event catering + design company. 

She has been featured in Dazed, Autostraddle, Playboy, Interview Mag, Essence, Afropunk, mindbodygreen, Healthy-ish, Well + Good, Nylon, StyleLikeU, and them, among other publications. And was named one of BK Magazine's 50 Most Fascinating People in 2022.

As an autistic Black & Indigenous femme, she spends much of her thoughtspace contemplating pleasure + pain, collective joy + healing, otherness, embodiment, remembering + reclaiming, self-destruction, and growth— and how inextricably those concepts are linked. To that end, Sara Elise has deep interests in ritualization, BDSM, relationship dynamics, and the development of decolonized personal awareness and well-being. 

With all of her work, she aims to challenge our collective reality by first re­imagining and then creating alternative sys­tems and spaces for Black & Indigenous people of color and LGBTQIA2S+ people to thrive.

In this episode, you'll hear Sara Elise and I discuss

• Creating tools to support us in our most human moments
• Abundance, but not the capitalistic kind
• Building supportive rituals as a late-diagnosed autistic person 
• Hospitality that treats everyone as desired and essential
• And so much more! 

A Recipe for More is available wherever you buy books. Snag a signed copy by DMing Sara Elise on Instagram and mentioning Found Family. You can join Sara Elise's community-making at @SaraElise333 on Instagram, and find more of her writing at saraelise.substack.com. To learn more about Apogeo Collective or book your trip to the guest house, visit apogeocollective.com. 

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