If you’d like to learn more about mental health care by and for fat folks, please check out Tend and Cultivate Counselling.

(Content Note: this episode mentions childhood assault, sexual assault, and incest.)

Mary Lambert (she/her) shares how she uses music and poetry to “make art for the wound” of being made to feel wrong. As someone who is fat, queer, and bipolar, her journey towards joy has been worth all the challenges as she’s now in her “body euphoria” era.

Mary Lambert is a multi-platinum artist, author of the poetry collection Shame is an Ocean I Swim Across, and has performed on the Colbert Show, Ellen, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Tonight Show, and the American Music Awards. Lambert also received the Human Rights Campaign’s Visibility Award, The SAMHSA Special Recognition Award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for her work on destigmatizing mental illness, and was invited to speak at the UN.

Lambert is currently working on a new book and album about body image; co-starring in the Netflix animated musical and series, I ♥️ Arlo and Arlo the Alligator Boy; co-hosting The Manic Episodes, a queer and mental health podcast; and facilitates a virtual workshop on body image called Everybody is a Babe.

Please connect with Mary on Instagram and her website.

Mary reads her own poem to us. It’s called “Jesus Loves My Crop Top” from her book Shame is an Ocean I Swim Across.

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