This time im in yet another part of the world. I’m sat in a wee pub in Leitrim village in Ireland for this one with Gemma Gibbons. Thirty eight years later, Gemma and I have grown up together back home. 

If you'd told us when we were younger that by our thirties one of us would be getting divorced and the other would be a widow, we'd have told you you were away with the fairies. Still, we decided to do a slàinte, cheers, to the state of it, and how far we've come. As Gemma says, our family survived a famine, so you can survive this.

Gemma lost her husband suddenly on a morning she will never forget, the week of Christmas, three and a half years ago now. And I've had my own life come apart in a completely different way, a different form of loss entirely, and between the two of us we've learned just how non linear grief actually is.

Sometimes I think the best way for people to actually resonate with something is just hearing someone else talk honestly about what happened to them. How it shaped them. And the good that comes out of some of the worst nightmares you'll ever face, because weirdly, there is good that comes from grief. None of us are strangers to grief. None of us will escape it.

You can be happy in your new life, and hurt at the same time. It can coexist.

So that's what we're talking about today. That light switch moment where the entire life you built changes completely, the future you thought you had, gone, on some idle, insignificant Tuesday you never saw coming. Fair warning, we get into some heavy stuff around loss in this one, but there's always a sprinkle of our Irish humour in there too.

Seoul - South Korea. I went looking for Yoon Kim Myung-woo, who has run Lesvos, South Korea's first lesbian bar, since 1996. She was the first person in Korea to come out publicly in the media, and she is a queer rights activist and a drag king theatre actor who has kept that bar open through stigma, police raids and a pandemic. There is a documentary about her, ;Home Ground', which is the first film to archive the history of Korean lesbian spaces at all.

Then I found a red neon sign on a roof, climbed the outside stairs, and went through a door saying members only. That is Horn Seoul, nine months old, run by Jang.

Running a lesbian bar in South Korea means no name on the map app, no way to tell people you exist. Customers cannot risk being seen walking in. So you build something almost nobody can find, in a country with no anti-discrimination law and no same sex marriage, and you try to keep it alive anyway.

Somehow I talked Jang and three of her friends into coming up to the roof with me to talk about it. Women who had known me an hour, handing that much trust to a stranger with a phone.

One phone, five people, two languages, one translator. It is messy but in the best way. I kept some of the the Korean in and left the mess where it was, because that is what it actually sounded like.

They talk about gaydar in a country where everyone holds hands, their sheer lack of rights, and why lesbians in Seoul go to the familiar place instead of the fancy one.

Lesvos and Horn are a five minute walk apart in Hongdae.

Horn Seoul - www.instagram.com/horn_seoul

Lesvos Bar - www.instagram.com/lesvos_sangsu/

Jang Salon - www.instagram.com/jangsalon2011

JangSalon Reserve (Wine Bar) www.instagram.com/jangsalon_reserve

Rangrarii Korean Webtoon Illustrations

www.instagram.com/rangrarii

Kate was married for 50 years. She raised a family, built a life, did everything the world told her a life was supposed to look like. And at 70 years old, she woke up one morning and finally asked herself who she actually was underneath all of it. The answer changed everything.

In this episode of the Ginger's Podcast, Lisa and Nat sit down with Kate, the woman who stole the whole Bush Camp's heart the moment she arrived, earlier this year in April.

From a farming village in Derbyshire, England, to six weeks at sea on the way to New Zealand in 1974, to a lifetime lived for everyone but herself, right through to the moment she finally had the courage to come out.

This isn't just a coming out story. It's a story about what it costs to live authentically after seven decades of not, and what it gives back once you do. Lisa and Nat had tears through most of it. You probably will too.

Kate's message for anyone listening: it is never, ever too late to find yourself.

What does it look like to find your people after you've already been through it?

In this episode, Lisa is joined by Angelah Rose, Sophie Parker and Natalie Hird - three humans who all found each other in under six months, in the middle of a Pinot Noir tasting in the Gibbston Valley in New Zealand, on a Monday afternoon with the sun out. As you do.

But underneath the laughs and the wine, this conversation goes deep. These are friendships that were built on the other side of grief, loss, and life falling apart. The kind of connections that happen when you've been stripped back enough to finally know who you are - and you're done pretending otherwise.

They talk about friendship in your thirties and beyond. The speed and the depth of it. The way certain people show up and just get the whole of you without needing it explained. And boundaries - the hard-won, sometimes painful, absolutely necessary ones - and what it really takes to honour them while still letting people in.

This one is for anyone who's ever felt like they were finding their people a little late. You're not late. You're exactly where you need to be,

We ride at dawn. 🧡

Lisa is beginning a month of campervanning the South Island for a run of Ginger's events, and her friend Jo has pulled up alongside her in her own wee camper in Picton for the first week. Jo is a nurse, a single mum of three, and a late-diagnosed AuDHD legend who somehow said yes to a week away with about two days' notice. With a whiskey poured and the kids safely at home, they get into it - nervous system burnout, the Safe and Sound Protocol, inner child work, what it actually feels like to find your people after years of not quite fitting anywhere, and what life looks like when you finally come up for air after a really hard stretch in life. Welcome to Season 3 of the Ginger's Podcast.

For Insight Timer that Jo referenced in the podcast, you can visit : http://insig.ht/qjmbWItLD36

Amy Simon’s is a queer police officer based in Invercargill - which is, as she'll tell you, about as far south as New Zealand goes.

In this episode we get into what life on the frontline actually looks like: the shift work, the heavy jobs, the moments that stay with you, and the quiet art of not bringing it all home. We also talk about being out and queer in both a small city and a traditionally tough industry and the dating pool situation in Southland (spoiler: small).

Funny, honest, and genuinely one of those conversations that goes places you don't expect. Lisa also confesses to a minor traffic violation. In front of a police officer. With a bag of (0%) alcohol.

This week Lisa sits down with Ting Zhang - former Global Product Lead at Google, aerial acrobat, and self-described "ting of all trades" - who walked away from her dream life in New York City and never looked back.

Ting brings the Google philosophy of failing fast to the conversation and honestly, it's a game changer. The idea is simple but powerful - stop waiting for the perfect plan, start before you're ready, and treat every stumble as information rather than defeat. It's the mindset that got Ting from a corporate burnout in Brooklyn to building conservation trusts and businesses in Aotearoa, New Zealand and it's the same philosophy Lisa has unknowingly been applying to Ginger's from the very beginning.

They also get into the very real cost of human disconnection in a world that's online all the time, why chosen family hits different when you've moved to the other side of the world, and what it means to build something with genuine purpose rather than just what looks good on paper.

You can find Ting on Instagram at @ting.in.air

This episode is proudly sponsored by Extreme Edge Hamilton.

You wanted animals, and not the fluffy version.

This week I’m joined by Sian Liversage and Michelle Lindson, two former zookeepers from the UK now working in conservation in New Zealand. We get into what zoo life is really like, the shift into conservation, and the parts of the job that aren’t easy to sit with.

We talk big cats, hyenas (wildly misrepresented), and what it actually takes to protect native wildlife, including predator control and the tough decisions behind it all.

It’s honest, at times confronting and these are the realities of the world animals are living in, and worth understanding.

Disclaimer: When mentioned that it is hard to see how wild the big cats at the zoo still are, this was meant in terms of behaviour. None of the animals at the zoo had been taken from the wild - they had all been born in captivity.

A room full of lesbians, politicians and activists fresh off the Wellington Pride Parade… and a live conversation that got very real, very quickly.

This episode of the Ginger’s Podcast was recorded live at Zealandia Ecosanctuary during the official afterparty for the historic Wellington Pride Parade. Our Leading with Resilience panel brings together three powerful voices to talk about what it actually takes to lead - and fight for rainbow communities in Aotearoa right now.

Hosted by More FM’s amazing host Lana Searle, the panel features:

Dr Ayesha Verrall - Labour Party Minister of Health and one of Parliament’s most senior lesbian MPs.
Tamatha Paul - Green Party MP, scrappy legend and Wellington Central electorate MP.
Joanna McLeod - founder of House of Boom, fat girl advocate and Chair of the Wellington Pride Festival.

The kōrero covers growing up queer, navigating politics and representation, the culture wars hitting rainbow communities right now, and what these leaders say they’ll push for if they return to government in this year's election.

Quick note: this was recorded live in a packed room and I tried hard to keep one huge reaction to our Honorary Ally sharing some personal gems, but Riverside’s Magic Audio decided the cheering was less important than the talking. So you cant hear the applause... but it was DEAFENING!

In this episode of Ginger’s Podcast, Lisa is joined by Dr. Mallory Kremer, a board-certified OB-GYN who taught at the University of Washington, previously lived in Seattle, and now lives the quiet surf life, practicing in Tairāwhiti / Gisborne in Aotearoa New Zealand.

They work through a series of anonymous listener questions covering the things many people wonder about but don’t always feel comfortable asking - cervical screening and HPV, PCOS, PMDD, perimenopause, libido changes, STI testing, gender-affirming care, abortion access, and navigating healthcare as a queer person. The conversation moves across practical health advice, common myths, and the small details that can make a big difference when it comes to looking after your body.

Disclaimer: Dr. Mallory Kramer is a board-certified OB-GYN. The opinions expressed in this episode are her own and do not represent the views of her employers or affiliated institutions.