MeaningMaker Podcast

We prepare to return to the small town we left in 2020 to speak at a church exploring same sex marriage and what it means to be an affirming congregation - openly welcoming and supportive of 2SLGBTQ+ people. If feels complicated. But why we agreed to do it isn't. It's an act of faith.

If it's true that creative ideas come to us because they're begging to be brought into the world, then maybe it's also true that our lives - and the ideas and dreams we have about them and the next version of ourselves - are also begging to be brought into the world. In this episode, we talk about our own creativity and what it's teaching us - that similar to life, it's about surrendering to the process.

In a continuation of the failure discussion from S2/E2, we talk about shame - which touches all of our lives at some point. It's about what happens when shame is deeply internalized and allowed to become the narrator of a life story. It's about the inability to set boundaries, the acceptance of a story told by others as your own, and the belief that who you are at your core - and who you are becoming - is your biggest failure.

More and more, we’re each learning that the podcast has been a journey to owning for ourselves both the hard and beautiful aspects of our story. One year after taking a one-year break from podcasting, we’re “beginning again” after experiencing a profound moment of closure. In this first episode of the new season, we talk about that moment, why we’re back, what has changed over the last year, our regrets from the first season, and what it is that we don’t want to talk about anymore.

Over these 23 episodes, we’ve chronicled our coming out story — and our life in the decade after that. We’ve honoured and loved and struggled to make meaning of all that came before — and so much of what has followed. These real and raw conversations every other week have healed and changed us both. And recently, they’ve left us with another unexpected gift. The realization that as much as the podcast has been about telling the story — it has also been about letting go of it.

The past is gone but, so often, it defines the present. After reliving this many-faceted coming out story over more than 20 episodes, we talk about why it’s been important to make meaning of what happened in those initial coming out years. How we needed to find a truth about those events which is true for each of us, individually. How we discovered that our understanding of the truth continues to evolve and change over time. And, how all of this has pushed us to re-examine faith, flaws and even how we imagine the future.

We’ve all felt like outsiders at one time or another. In those times, we don’t feel seen or witnessed in some way. Because of who we believe we are, what we dream about, what we do or do not believe in, who or how we love, what we do for a living – and a whole string of other reasons. In this episode, we talk about how so many of us stay closeted and unseen about the things we feel might cause disconnection or rejection in our social circles – and the price attached to those choices.

We’re back at it after a month-long break to talk about the future of the podcast, vulnerability hangovers, making mistakes on the air, what reliving this story for you through these episodes has revealed for us, and the unexpected grief that healing brings. It’s almost like we’re not the same people who started doing this podcast nine months ago.