Impossible Beauty

When it comes to societal messages around beauty, we’ve all been swimming in toxic waters. On today’s episode, Christie Dondero Bettwy, helps us name some of the toxic beliefs and messages that we are being fed, so we might be freed from them.

Christie is the Executive Director of Rock Recovery in Arlington, Virginia. Rock Recovery is a Christian eating disorder therapy nonprofit where clients can access low-cost therapy and support groups. In our time together, Christie talks about her own recovery from a decades-long eating disorder, how her recovery story connects with her faith journey, and her passion for working at Rock Recovery. We also talk about how struggles with food, body image, and exercise may go unnoticed or undiagnosed because of how normalized disordered messages around food and body image are. Christie and I also name how such societal messages around food and our bodies impact all of us to varying degrees and she shares some fresh insights about body image. My hope is that as you listen today, Christie’s hard-won wisdom will ground you in truth, reminding you of the authentic beauty that is innate within you.

Catherine Claire Larson invites us to see beyond the surface of things; reminding us that each life is a miracle, and that parenting is actually soul formation.

Catherine is an author and the mother of six boys. Her most recent book is called, Watching in Wonder: Growing in Faith During Your Baby's First Year. Catherine has her masters in biblical studies and spent seven years writing with Chuck Colson for BreakPoint radio, Christianity Today, and Newsweek online. These days she writes to encourage moms, reminding them of the importance of their sacred role and work. Her devotional series invites moms and moms-to-be to see the wonder of new life and into a deeper relationship with God.

In my time with Catherine, we talk about wonder; what opened her up to embracing wonder in the world and how we might do the same. She also offers us fresh and life-giving perspectives on pregnancy and parenting and the importance of living with curiosity and in the present moment. If you are needing a shift in perspective, I invite you to this conversation that reminds us of the wonder of life itself.

“Whole,” “natural,” and “clean” are just some of wellness culture’s buzzwords. On the surface, wellness culture can be so enticing, perhaps seen as the pathway to optimal health and wellbeing.
In today’s episode, however, Christy Harrison unpacks some of the dynamics and potential dangers of wellness culture; helping us see why we should think twice before investing in a product or plan that seems too good to be true.

Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, CEDS is a journalist, registered dietitian, and certified intuitive eating counselor. She’s the author of Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating and her most recent book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being. Christy is the producer and host of two podcasts, Rethinking Wellness and Food Psych, which help listeners think critically about diet and wellness culture and develop more peaceful relationships with food. Christy has written for publications including The New York Times, SELF, The Food Network, and many others. Her work has been covered in numerous outlets including The Washington Post, Health, and TODAY.

In our time together, Christy describes wellness culture as “a set of values that equates wellness with moral goodness and holds up certain behaviors and a certain type of body as the path to achieving that supposed goodness.” Along with describing wellness culture, Christy helps us see how wellness culture is the new guise of diet culture and how it differs from true wellbeing; including leading some people to disordered eating, unhelpful fixations, and potentially harmful behaviors. She also explains how “beauty” is used to sell wellness and gives us some ideas on how we can think critically about the ploys and products associated with wellness culture.

Elena Rossini noticed a disturbing trend; she observed a cross-generation epidemic of body dissatisfaction. Not only was the trend across generations but it was manifested in similarly distressing ways across diverse cultures.

Elena Rossini is an Italian film director, producer, editor and public speaker. Her work focuses on issues of social justice, media representation, and the empowerment of women and girls. Elena’s most notable film is the documentary The Illusionists, about the globalization of beauty ideals and the dark side of advertising. Rossini shot the film in eight countries, across four continents. The documentary has been featured in Vogue Italy, New York Magazine, NPR, FOX and NBC Baltimore, amongst others. Rossini has taken the documentary on tour, including some of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley (Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter) and at dozens of schools in the United States and Europe (most recently: Harvard University, University of Chicago, USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley).

In today’s episode, I have the honor of talking with Elena about themes from The Illusionists and her upcoming film The Realists. In our time together, we talk about the globalization and saturation of unrealistic beauty ideals and how such inundation is impacting us. She also discusses the connection she sees between the rise of social media and the current teen mental health crisis. Elena’s voice and message are pivotal in our media saturated world. She helps us pull off the blinders to see the agenda and dangers of popular beauty ideals, so we can direct our life and energies toward more meaningful, lasting endeavors.

Shame is that all-encompassing, embodied, sinking feeling that we are wrong or bad. It’s not just a sense of guilt over something we did, but the wrongness of who we are. And shame has all kinds of occasions to creep in; the perceived wrongness of our body, our relationships status, our parenting, our career, and the list goes on.

In today’s episode, Jasmine Holmes invites us to consider the influence shame has on our lives. Jasmine Holmes is a teacher and author, committed to centering black stories in history. She has written books such as Carved in Ebony: Lessons from the Black Women Who Shape Us and Mother to Son: Letters to A Black Boy on Identity and Hope. Jasmine’s latest book is called, Never Cast Out: How the Gospel Puts an End to the Story of Shame.

In my time with Jasmine, we talk about how scripts of perfectionism in Christian and popular culture can lead to shame. Jasmine also shares about her own journey of shame’s influence in her life and the transformation that took place when she opened space for Jesus to speak into those places where shame dwelled. Jasmine also gives us important ideas on how to notice and combat shame in our lives; ultimately reminding us that grace is stronger than shame. My hope is that this conversation might bring some light into our own corners of shame. And in those places, may the voice of grace speak loudest.

Cleere Cherry Reaves had an experience that changed how she viewed everything. When Cleere’s son was born three months prematurely, Cleere and her husband watched as their child fought for his life, developed, and began to thrive. In today’s episode, Cleere tells us the lessons she learned from that experience, how her faith was transformed, and why it inspired her to write the children’s book, The Miracle of You.

Cleere Cherry Reaves is the owner and creator of Cleerely Stated, an online boutique whose inspirational products can be found in retail stores all over the United States. She is also the author of three devotionals and the host of the growing podcast, Let's Be Cleere. Cleere’s mission is to help others see themselves and the world around them through the eyes of Jesus.

In our time together, Cleere reminds us to not miss the life we have, that the God of miracles is for us, and that his fingerprints are everywhere. As Cleere so helpfully puts it, what would it mean to live life looking for those miracles?

Amanda Held Opelt got a lesson in grief she never wanted. After a series of miscarriages, the loss of her grandma, and then her beloved sister, Amanda found solace in an unexpected place, in exploring ancient grief rituals in practices. In her first book, A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing, Amanda explores how such ancient grief rituals and practices can be a vessel for honest expression, communal connection, and even healing.

Amanda is an author, speaker, and songwriter. She writes about faith, grief, and creativity. She has spent 15 years serving in the non-profit and humanitarian aid sectors and lives in the mountains of Boone, North Carolina. This July, Amanda is releasing her second book, Holy Unhappiness: God, Goodness, and the Myth of the Blessed Life.

In my time with Amanda, we talk about the complexity of living in a world that can be both stunningly beautiful and so very broken. She helps us see the beauty of ritual and community and how loss has the potential to deepen our capacity for love, faith, and healing. She also helps us see how reading the Biblical narrative through the lens of grief, can open us to seeing God in new and transformational ways. Overall, Amanda bravely and authentically wades into the human experience, offering us so much compassion, hope, and hard-won wisdom.

In today’s episode, K.J. Ramsey reminds me that “We are held by this web of love,” the love of God and the love of others. Those words and others like it shifted something in me. Instead of having to nervously earn or find God’s love, it is a reality that always surrounds me. A reality I can rest in. A reality we can rest in.

K.J. Ramsey is a trauma-informed licensed professional counselor and is the author of three books, including her latest title, The Book of Common Courage: Prayers and Poems to Find Strength in Small Moments. K.J. writes at the intersection of theology, psychology, and spiritual formation to guide us in recovering the rhythm of resilience through nervous system regulation and the wonder of communion with God.

In my time with K.J. she talks about her most recent book and the communal nature of courage; how “we need the presence and words of others to bring us from confusion to hope and faith.” She also discusses how being disabled and encountering various physical struggles have formed her faith and her prayer life. In authentic and profound ways, K.J. reminds us of hard-won realities about the heart of God and beauty itself. My hope and prayer is that this conversation and K.J.’s words might shift something within you as well. May her words bring healing and may they bring hope.

The Sunday Herald calls today’s guest, Jessica DeFino, “the woman the beauty industry fears.” That’s because Jessica, a beauty reporter and beauty culture critic, has seen the inner workings of the beauty industry and didn’t like it. More than that, Jessica now spends her time dismantling beauty standards, debunking marketing myths, and exploring how beauty culture impacts people — physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

Jessica has written for outlets such as The New York Times, Vogue, Teen Vogue, Harper’s BAZAAR, Allure, New York Magazine’s The Cut, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Glamour, SELF, and many others. She now writes her own beauty newsletter called The Unpublishable.

In today’s episode, Jessica talks about her own experience in the beauty industry and why she decided to opt out, the psychological and spiritual impacts of beauty standards, why beauty standards are so powerful, why she sees today’s standard of beauty as dehumanizing, and what the beauty industry doesn’t want you to know. Jessica’s insights are so needed, speaking powerfully to the media-saturated culture we find ourselves in. This is truly a must-listen episode.

How do we live life fully alive? For Sandhya Oaks, living fully alive entails being courageous enough to go to places of brokenness and shame, so we might find healing. While trauma or hurt stunts our capacity for fullness of life, healing leads to an increased ability to love and live abundantly.

Sandhya Oaks is a Ministry Leader, Spiritual Director, leads Kintsugi workshops, and does Story Work. Born in India and adopted as a Transracial Adoptee in the Midwest, Sandhya now walks with others through identity reclamation and creating experiences that restore shalom within the human heart.

She is the Co-Founder of The Adoption Triad, a group that provides community and resources to those connected to Adoption and Foster Care. Sandhya holds two Certificates in Narrative Focused Trauma Care from The Allender Center and a Certificate in Resilient Leadership from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. Additionally, she recently completed her Trauma Care Group Training Certificate through The Art of Living Counseling Center.

In today’s episode, I talk with Sandhya about the power and freedom that can come from finding healing in our own stories, how she stays grounded in God’s goodness and beauty amidst life’s brokenness, and how she’s come to see beauty in unexpected places. Sometimes finding beauty in a broken world can be feel like grueling work. I’m so grateful for brave leaders like Sandhya Oaks, who graciously show us the way forward.