Growing Pains Podcast

This week we are joined by Sarah Welch! Sarah is a Certified Holistic Health Coach, Birth Doula, Certified Postnatal Fitness Instructor, wife, and mother, among many other things. Sarah shares with us about why health is important to her, what real self-care is (beyond the occasional night out), and the necessity of self-awareness and community for self-care. We talk about the challenges women face after the life-altering event of giving birth, and Sarah shares about how her body has changed (upgraded!) after giving birth to her two children. Sarah teaches us some new terms (B-HAGs and N-HAGs) and breaks down for us how to make a self-care plan. She explains the Goldilocks Principle and its relationship to resilience.

Connect with Sarah on Instagram (@wellnesswithsarahjean), through clean cosmetics retailer Beauty Counter, or through the weight loss program Better Way to Fat Loss.

Today we are joined by Will Halsey! Will is a licensed mental health therapist and is passionate about helping men discover and live into a reimagined, redemptive masculinity. Will shares about his own path of embracing his masculinity, including the unknown aspects, and he offers insights from his practice as a therapist working with men. We talk about rites of passage, cultural narratives, male emotions, anxiety in intimacy, and the epidemic of male depression. Will talks about what becoming a father to a baby boy has meant to him, and he leaves us with a reading list (see below).

The Will to Change (Hooks) - https://amzn.to/3rgGPDv

Men and The Water of Life (Meade) - https://amzn.to/384x3wU

I Don’t Want to Talk About It (Real) - https://amzn.to/3bdbrQT

Please rate and review, and follow us on Instagram (@growing.pains.pod)! We look forward to hearing from you this season!

DISCLAIMER: We are not financial advisors, and our insights should not be considered professional financial advice. Seek advice from your financial advisor or professional. 

We are joined today by the proud holder of an official Boater Safety Card, Burton Miller. Burt is a licensed social worker, non-profit worker, livejournaler from 2004 - 2011, and recently, a homeowner! Burton shares with us about his journey into homeownership, starting with his a lot of personal growth in therapy, and down a long road of discipline and sacrifice to build equity and financial security. We discuss resilience, several key steps for millennials to take if they want to own a home someday, and five-second funerals. Find Burton on Instagram (@burtola).

Please rate and review, and follow us on Instagram (@growing.pains.pod)! We look forward to hearing from you this season!

TRIGGER WARNING: SEXUAL ASSAULT

In this episode, Anne and Muoki talk about Ravi Zacharias’s sexually exploitative and violent behavior, and how we should be processing this news. We talk about systemic vs. moral failures, and how they need to be approached differently. We also discuss the importance in centering the victims instead of the perpetrators in these discussions, and why questions of individual formation are secondary to questions about the theology and practices that shape communities.

In this episode, we discuss dog sightings, dog names, and podcasting for free. More importantly, we get into what we’ll be talking about in Season 2: lived experience. This will always relate back to the theme of Season 1 (identity), but rather than focusing on identity formation, we will attempt to explore the ways we live our identities and how that impacts the world around us. We tease a few topics we hope to cover this season: health & fitness, goal setting, pop-psychology and genuine psychology, entrepreneurship, and work-life balance. The Dunning-Kruger Effect makes an appearance (again), and Kwame Christian gets a shout-out.

Please rate and review, and follow us on Instagram (@growing.pains.pod)! We look forward to hearing from you this season!

Today we have the privilege of talking with Muoki’s friend and former colleague, Klamesha Richards. Klamesha is a former educator, resident director, and currently works as the Assistant Director of Intercultural and International Life at Carleton College. Klamesha is passionate about equity, hospitality, and people.

We get into femininity and talk about how womanhood is assumed, perceived, and responded to in the workplace and in society at large, about the development of feminine identity, including challenges Klamesha has faced, things that have helped her on this journey, and how she understands her femininity today. 

We end by talking about the pay gap and the factors that contribute to it, and Muoki discloses that he would like to take paternity leave again.

In this episode, we talk more about the origins of GPP, from its inception in Muoki’s mind to earlier iterations, to its current form. We talk about several moments that stand out from our episodes thus far, and talk more about relativity, perspective, and grounding (collective) truth. We reflect on our personal challenges and growth in 2020, and on its impact on our generation. We discuss failing well, mindsets that lead to perseverance, and Charles Barkley’s golf game.

[DISCLAIMER] We mention suicide and some statistics about men and women respective to that phenomenon. If this is something you have difficulty listening to, it's okay to stop, or take a pause and ground yourself. 

We continue our conversation with Marcus about millennial masculinity. We attempt to define masculinity and talk about why millennial men seem to feel like they’re not measuring up. We talk about the challenge of living out a positive, more versatile masculinity, and how this plays out in fatherhood and in the church community. We talk about how the world would be different if more men attempted to live out redemptive masculinity.