Minds Moving Mountains - A Podcast for High Country Women

Christine Sita Dave had built a career she loved, counseling and advising first-generation college students at App State, when a visit to a girls' school in rural Odisha, India, left something stirring in her that wouldn't settle. She got quiet, spent time listening, and the message that came through surprised even her: she was supposed to be mentoring those girls. Her family asked if she was okay. She trusted it anyway, and in 2017 she founded EDGE, Education for Girls Empowerment, to support the school her father and his co-founder opened in 2011. Behind all of it is her mother, a girl in Trinidad and Tobago who was kept home from school and never learned to read or write. Nine years later, girls from the first class of 40 are becoming teachers, 90 more live and learn on the residential campus, and Christine is heading into EDGE's tenth year believing in these girls more than ever.

In this episode:

• The pull Christine couldn't ignore, and how six months of listening turned a feeling into a calling that took her halfway around the world
• Traveling to India with her father, discovering the boys' school he built with his own hands, and asking the question that started it all: where's the girls' school?
• Her mother's story, and why Christine shares it with every new student who walks through the door
• Girls who biked up to 40 minutes each way, six days a week, even through monsoon season, to get an education no one in their family had before
• A day at the school, from 4 a.m. yoga and Vedic ritual to Sanskrit and four more languages, and why knowing where you come from builds strength from the inside out
• How EDGE decides what to fund by asking the girls first, from extra uniforms to solar panels to a garden
• Five girls from that first class landing guaranteed government teaching jobs, and what one of them said about finally being financially independent

You'll walk away with:

• Permission to trust a pull you can't fully explain yet, even when the people around you don't get it
• A reminder that one person believing in you can be enough to change the course of a life
• A new way to see chores as contribution, and why doing hard things builds capability that carries into everything else
• A simple way to be part of something bigger: $10 a month for EDGE's tenth year, when $95 covers a girl's full month at the residential school

Our Favorite Things This Episode:

• Christine's pick: a piece by her dear friend, local artist Andi Gelsthorpe, on Instagram as of Soul Crafted, featuring Dolly Parton's words, "Find out who you are and do it on purpose." She brought one for Mel and Jenn too, and it's the kind of reminder worth hanging where you'll see it every day.

Learn more or donate at educationforgirlsempowerment.org, and find EDGE on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

📱 Follow us on Instagram: @mindsmovingmountains 📧 Get in touch: [email protected]

Erin found pelvic health the same way most of her patients do — as a patient herself, leaking every time she did double unders in CrossFit. One session in, she had one question: why does nobody know about this? That question is what eventually put her in the same room as Tiffany, a former teacher who found her own way into pelvic floor work after years in a skilled nursing facility, and together they built Wonder Pelvic Therapy to bring this kind of care to the High Country full time.

Mel and Jenn sit down with Erin and Tiffany for the conversation almost nobody has out loud. What "common" actually means versus what's "normal." Why the pelvic floor runs bladder, bowel, sexual health, breathing, and balance — and why men make up about a quarter to a third of their patients. And why the biggest myth in their field isn't about the body at all, it's that people think they don't need this kind of care in the first place.

They also get into what they call the generational silence — the "hush hush" rule so many of us grew up with — and how two years into owning a practice that survived a hurricane in its first year, they're watching patients break that silence one conversation at a time.

In this episode:

• Erin's own path into pelvic health, starting as a patient with a CrossFit injury nobody else could explain
• What a "dyssynergic pelvic floor" actually is, in plain language, and why two people can walk in with the same symptom and need completely different treatment
• The generational silence around pelvic health, and why "common" doesn't mean "normal"
• What percentage of their practice is men, and what actually gets them in the door
• The myth Erin and Tiffany would correct tomorrow if they could fix just one thing everybody believes about the pelvic floor
• Why you don't need symptoms to walk in the door — annual pelvic health checkups are a real thing now

You'll walk away with:

• A clear answer for why leaking, painful sex, or pelvic pain is common, but never something you have to just live with
• A plain-language explanation of what a pelvic floor evaluation actually involves
• Permission to ask for real care instead of "thoughts and prayers" and a pad
• A reason to bring this up at your next GYN visit instead of staying quiet about it

Our Favorite Things This Episode:

Erin's pick — Überlube — a silicone-based lubricant she recommends to patients of every age, self-play or partner play included. Her take: using it doesn't mean something's broken, it means good engineering. (Flagging this one — the recording captured it as "Uber Loop." Please confirm the exact product name/spelling before this goes out.)

Tiffany's pick — Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski — the book she's handed to more clients, and her own husband, than any other. It's the one that finally gave her language for the hardest thing to talk about: sex.

Wonder Pelvic Therapy — wonderpt.com 

Facebook: Wonder Pelvic 

Instagram: @wonderpelvic

📱 Follow us on Instagram: @mindsmovingmountains

📧 Get in touch: [email protected]

Erin Jarrett spent over fifteen years working inside the traditional healthcare system before she decided to build something different. She ran a hospital pelvic health department, watched the most complicated cases get waved off as "too much," and eventually realized the system just wasn't built for people who needed more than fifteen minutes and one body part at a time. Her own path there started with a college soccer injury that turned into years of chronic hip pain, and it was Pilates, not a standard rehab protocol, that finally gave her body some answers. She opened Root Physical Therapy in Nashville in the middle of COVID and never looked back, and now runs her practice here in Boone, treating the most complex, been-everywhere, tried-everything cases with a whole-body approach that blends orthopedics, pelvic health, Pilates, and dry needling aimed at the nervous system, not just the muscle underneath it. This episode gets into what her patients' bodies are actually holding onto, and why wanting to feel better and being ready to do the work are two very different things.

In this episode:

• Why the hospital system couldn't hold her most complex patients, and what leaving to build Root Physical Therapy from scratch finally let her do differently
• Her own injury story: how a college soccer injury and years of chronic hip pain pointed her toward Pilates as rehab, not just exercise
• Hypermobility and EDS: what it actually is, why it's so often missed or dismissed, and the surprising overlap with ADHD and pelvic floor dysfunction
• Dry needling as more than pain relief: how she uses it to calm an overloaded nervous system, not just release a tight muscle
• Wanting it vs. being ready for it: the difference she's learned to watch for in her patients, and why pushing too hard too soon backfires

You'll walk away with:

• Permission to stop chasing a quick fix and start asking why the same pain keeps circling back
• A better vocabulary for what your own body might already be trying to tell you
• A reason to actually believe healing isn't a straight line, instead of just hearing it as something people say
• A different way to think about the gap between wanting things to change and being ready to do what that takes

Our Favorite Things This Episode:

• Erin's pick: the MOBO Board, her go-to for ankle stability, balance, and proprioception. She demos it live on the episode — toes in the holes, big toe on the board — and shows exactly why it's the tool she actually recommends to patients over the usual wobble board.

Root Physical Therapy — https://www.root-physicaltherapy.com/  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erinjarrett_pilatespt/ 

📱 Follow us on Instagram: @mindsmovingmountains

📧 Get in touch: [email protected]

Mel and Jenn welcome Kara Dodson to the table, executive director of Full Moon Farm Collective, a nonprofit farm just outside Boone built on horse power, hard won land, and a decade of learning how food actually gets from soil to table. Kara traces her path from an environmental nonprofit job she could not sit still for, to an apprenticeship with horses in Creston, to buying raw land with her partner Jacob in 2016 and turning it into a working farm within ten years. She walks through why she eventually converted that farm into a nonprofit, using the wealth that let her buy land in the first place to make food and land access more equitable for the workers and neighbors around her. The conversation moves through the harder history behind American agriculture, from the Cherokee and Tutelo peoples who worked this land first to the forced and underpaid labor still baked into how the country grows and prices food, and lands on the partnership that gets Full Moon's produce into food boxes for families across Watauga County facing food insecurity. Kara closes out with practical advice for anyone who wants to grow their own food, and a look ahead to the High Country Farm Tour on September 12th.

In this episode:

• How Kara went from an environmental nonprofit desk job to an apprenticeship on a horse powered farm in Creston, and the decade that followed
• The decision to buy raw land with her partner Jacob in 2016, and how that became Full Moon Farm Collective ten years later
• Why Kara converted the farm into a nonprofit, and how she is using land and wealth to make farming more accessible for others
• The history that still shapes American agriculture, from the Cherokee and Tutelo peoples who worked this land first to the forced and underpaid labor behind how food gets grown and priced
• How Full Moon partners with Hunger and Health Coalition to get fresh, local produce into food boxes for families across Watauga County, and why Kara wants to erase the stigma around food assistance
• Practical advice for home gardeners, from picking your why to fencing out deer, plus a preview of the High Country Farm Tour on September 12th

You'll walk away with:

• A clearer picture of why land ownership is the biggest barrier facing new farmers, and one way to work around it
• A better understanding of the history behind our food system, and why that history still matters today
• Real, judgment free information about food assistance in Watauga County, and who it is actually for
• Simple starting advice if you have ever wanted to grow your own food but did not know where to begin

Our Favorite Things This Episode:

• Kara's favorite: the Tao Te Ching, and the line about the valley spirit that reminds her why mysterious femininity and a life close to the land go hand in hand

📱 Follow us on Instagram: @mindsmovingmountains
📧 Get in touch: [email protected]

Mel and Jenn kick off a brand new chapter of the show, the first episode of their Community of Coaches series, spotlighting the local women already doing good work in the High Country. Their guest is Jess Trone, a former attorney who spent a decade practicing law before walking away to build something entirely different, a career born out of her own ten year health journey and the moment she healed herself of three endocrine conditions using nothing but research, trial, and error. Jess now runs Vital Balance with Jess, coaching women through hormone health, and she walks Mel and Jenn through the real hormone hierarchy, why cortisol and insulin usually matter more than the reproductive hormones everyone blames first, and why blood work can look normal while you still feel off. That leads straight into the wellness extremism flooding social media right now, the carnivore only rules, the influencers with a million followers claiming vegetables are poisonous, the all or nothing approaches that leave women more overwhelmed than informed. Jess even owns up to her own recent stumble into extremism after a knee surgery, cutting carbs cold turkey and landing in a mood her husband had to call out, proof that even the expert falls for it sometimes, and that awareness beats rigidity every time.

In this episode:

• Why Jess left a decade of practicing law to become a hormone health coach, and the health crisis that started it all

• The hormone hierarchy nobody talks about, and why cortisol and insulin usually explain more than estrogen or progesterone ever will

• What health extremism actually looks like online right now, and why carnivore diets and gurus with a million followers keep gaining traction

• Why intermittent fasting and skipping meals can backfire on your sleep, energy, and hormones

• Jess's own honest story of overcorrecting after knee surgery, and the moment her husband told her to knock it off

• What to actually ask your doctor for when your blood work comes back normal but you still don't feel like yourself

You'll walk away with:

• A clearer filter for sorting real hormone science from the extremism flooding your feed

• A working understanding of cortisol and insulin, and why they often matter more than the hormones women blame first

• Permission to stop chasing the six pack and start asking what your body actually needs instead

• Specific questions to bring to your next doctor's visit if your blood work says normal but you still don't feel right

Our Favorite Things This Episode:

Jess's favorite thing: Creeksong Farm, a family run CSA in Ash County she's belonged to for years, plus the Watauga County Farmers Market where they set up every Saturday

Learn more about Jess at jessicatrone.com and listen to the Vital Balance with Jess podcast at Vital Balance With Jess

📱 Follow us on Instagram: @mindsmovingmountains

📧 Get in touch: [email protected]

Mel and Jenn open this one by saying the quiet part out loud: they both have competition, other coaches, other massage therapists and wellness practitioners right here in the High Country, and neither one loses a wink of sleep over it. What follows is a real conversation about where that fear of other women even comes from, starting as far back as childhood sports, and how it shows up again in business, in comparison, in that tight feeling when someone else seems to be doing it better. Mel shares a story from her corporate tech days when comparing herself to a colleague consumed her thinking, until she realized she'd built the whole thing herself. Jenn talks through what it looked like to hand her clients off to other therapists during a shoulder surgery and come out the other side more connected to her community, not less. Together they land on something the High Country knows better than most, that a small, tightly wound community doesn't have room for cattiness, it has room for partnership.

In this episode:

• Why Mel and Jenn name their own competitors out loud and what changed for each of them
• Where the belief that other women are a threat actually comes from, and when it starts
• Mel's story of comparison taking over her mind in her previous career, and the moment it stopped
• How Jenn handled her business, and her competition, during two injuries and a surgery
• What it looks like to turn a "competitor" into a genuine partner in a town this small
• What to do with a flicker of jealousy or threat when it shows up, because it will

You'll walk away with:

• A different lens for the other coach, therapist, or practitioner down the street from you
• Permission to feel a tinge of comparison without letting it run the show
• A simple first move for turning competition into collaboration, starting with a cup of coffee
• The reminder that a shared vision means there's enough room for everyone

Our Favorite Things This Episode:

• Mel's favorite: the Zen Shin quote, "A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms."
• Jenn's favorite: the roller derby after-party, proof you can compete hard and still walk off the track as friends

📱 Follow us on Instagram: @mindsmovingmountains
📧 Get in touch: [email protected]

Nelle Lawrence built FA Fitness in Blowing Rock on a simple belief: your body is built to work, not to be looked at. After years of watching women chase the scale instead of their own strength, she started coaching them into something different, lifting heavy, eating enough, and measuring progress by what their bodies could actually do. This episode, Mel and Jenn sit down with Nelle to talk about why strength training changes everything as women move through their thirties, forties, and fifties, and why the goal was never supposed to be smaller.

In this episode:

• The real reason women rarely get "bulky" from lifting weights, and what's actually behind it when it happens
• Why muscle mass gets harder to build with every passing decade, and why now is the time to start
• The disconnect between how women eat and how much their bodies actually need to get stronger
• Nelle's own path out of restrictive dieting and into lifting, and what shifted when she stopped optimizing for smaller
• Why bone density, balance, and independence later in life start with what you do in the gym today

You'll walk away with:

• A different way to think about calories, muscle, and metabolism if you've spent years under-eating and over-exercising
• The real reason "toning" isn't actually a thing, and what to focus on instead
• Permission to stop chasing a body that was never really the point
• A reason to walk into the weight room instead of straight to the treadmill

Our Favorite Things This Episode:

Nelle's pick — An ice-cold Diet Coke. Has to be a can or bottle, never a fountain, and never from Chick-fil-A.

📱 Follow FA Fitness on Instagram: @fafitnessstudio
📱 Follow us on Instagram: @mindsmovingmountains
📧 Get in touch: [email protected]

Episode 4: Get Out of Your Own Head | How Understanding Your Mind Can Change Everything Else

Mel has spent most of her life as a self-described recovering overthinker — the 2 a.m. spiraling, the replaying conversations, the mind that will not quit. She's also spent almost twenty years in leadership, the last thirteen in tech, before Hurricane Helene cracked something open and she walked away to build Wisdom & Worth full time. This episode, Jenn flips the mic and gets Mel to explain how she went from spending decades stuck in her head to actually believing a thought can just be a thought.

In this episode:

• The 2 a.m. spiral — what it actually feels like to live with a mind that won't turn off, and why you don't fully notice it happening all day
• Mind, thought, consciousness — the three things Mel says everything about how we experience life comes down to
• Why therapy, journaling, and positive affirmations only got her so far — and what was different about this
• The Hurricane Helene moment that made her stand up in front of her company and say she was done
• Giving it back — the pro bono coaching, the nonprofit work, and her seat on the board of the Women's Fund of the Blue Ridge

You'll walk away with:

• A real explanation of why a thought doesn't have to become your reality — not a technique, an understanding
• Permission to stop working so hard at managing what's in your head
• A different way to think about what's actually happening the next time you can't let something go
• Something to sit with at 2 a.m. besides your to-do list

Our Favorite Things This Episode:

• Jenn's pick — "Get out of your own head." Mel's phrase, and apparently the antidote to a solid chunk of human suffering. Get into your life while you're at it.
• Mel's pick — "Here Comes the Thought," a song from the kids' cartoon Steven Universe that a college student told her about after a talk. She had no idea it existed. Now it's in the show notes.

📱 Follow us on Instagram: @mindsmovingmountains 

📧 Get in touch: [email protected]

Episode 3: How Reinventing Yourself at Any Stage Can Be the Best Decision You Ever Make

Amy Crabbe has been a healthcare executive, a COO navigating a global pandemic, a general contractor, and is now the Executive Director of the Women's Fund of the Blue Ridge. Not in that order. Not on a straight line. And not without a few people telling her she couldn't. Mel and Jenn sit down with Amy for a conversation about what it actually looks like to walk away from a career you were great at and build something entirely new — more than once.

In this episode:

• The COO moment — Amy said yes to a role she'd never done before, right before COVID hit. What she learned about herself in that chaos shaped everything that came after.
• The value sort that changed everything — a simple exercise with her executive coach helped Amy realize the job she was supposed to want wasn't actually the one she wanted. That realization started it all.
• From healthcare exec to general contractor — Amy failed the GC licensing exam by one question, bought the Carhartt overalls anyway, and came back to pass it. That is the whole story.
• What believing in yourself actually looks like — not a pep talk, a practice. Amy shares what she did every day to keep going when people told her she couldn't.
• The Women's Fund of the Blue Ridge — what it is, who it serves, and why the work matters more than most people realize.

You'll walk away with:

• A real picture of what it looks like to reinvent yourself without a plan
• A different way to think about values — and why getting honest about them changes your next move
• Permission to want something different, even when everyone around you thinks you're crazy
• Details on Power of the Purse and Bourbon Under the Blue Ridge if you're in the High Country

Our Favorite Things This Episode:

• Amy's pick — Chick-fil-A Frosted Coffee — not a milkshake. Do not call it a milkshake. It has coffee in the name, which means you can absolutely justify it for breakfast. Find your nearest Chick-fil-A and thank Amy later.

📱 Follow us on Instagram: @mindsmovingmountains
📧 Get in touch: [email protected]

Mel and Jenn get real about what the GLP-1 journey actually looks like from the inside — the wins, the confusion, the identity shifts, and the mental side that most people aren't prepared for. This is the honest conversation about why the medicine alone isn't the whole story.

In this episode:

• Shame is still a barrier — a lot of people on GLP-1s aren't talking about it, and that silence is costing them. Mel and Jenn make the case for why openness changes the outcome.
• Food noise vs. overthinking — Jenn's three and a half years on GLP-1s meets Mel's work with overthinkers, and the overlap is more than you'd expect.
• The scale is lying to you — why a traditional scale isn't the data you need, what a body composition scale actually tells you, and why that number matters more than the one on the floor.
• Identity and weight loss — losing weight doesn't automatically change how you see yourself. Mel breaks down why the identity piece is the one most people skip, and what happens when they do.
• It takes all three — medicine, movement, mindset. Why all three belong in the same conversation, and what you're leaving on the table if you only focus on one.

You'll walk away with:

• A more honest picture of what to expect mentally and emotionally on a GLP-1
• A different way to think about food noise and the thoughts that come with it
• Two tangible resources Mel and Jenn both stand behind for this journey
• Permission to stop measuring your progress with just one number

Our Favorite Things This Episode:

• Jenn's pick — Body Composition Scale — forget the number on a regular scale. A body composition scale gives you the actual data: body fat percentage, lean muscle mass, and a real picture of what's happening inside. Find an affordable one online or visit FA Fitness in Blowing Rock to try the Styku scan.
• Mel's pick — The Missing Link by Sydney Banks — the book that put into words what Mel has spent years practicing and teaching. If you want to understand how your mind actually works and why that changes everything, this is where to start. Find it here!

📱 Follow us on Instagram: @mindsmovingmountains

📧 Get in touch: [email protected]