This week I'm joined by author Lyndsey Medford, who tells us the story of when an autoimmune condition opened her eyes fully to the limitation of being in our bodies within the systems we live in. 

Lyndsey talks about how learning to be comfortable in her body with its limitations impacted how she sees and interacts with the world. She also shares how it showed her how to heal and be free from the limitations of the systems we live in, and find a healthy, sustainable life for herself.

In this episode, my friend, ace advocate and writer Elle Rose, joins me to hear me tell my story of how I discovered I'm demisexual and on the asexual spectrum.

Firstly, I talk about how I discovered what demisexaulity is and began to resonate with this label.

I then discuss how once I acknowledged my demisexuality, and looked back at my life and my relationship to my sexuality, how it explained a lot of my experiences, lack of sexual attraction and why I was so different from my peers - and how what I thought was 'usual' wasn't the experience of others.

Then I move to explain how this discovery has changed my life, helped my relationships, plutonic and romantic, and helped me find peace with myself. 

I'm honoured to welcome back my friend, author Marla Taviano today. In this episode we talk about her recent book of poetry, 'Jaded'.

We talk about the messiness of deconstruction, the parts of the journey where we need to get things of our chest, release the grief, anger and trauma we carry, and learn to speak truth to ourselves and of ourselves. 

Marla shares her own journey and how this is reflected in the poems and how writing the book helped that process. She talks about her experience of the anger and grief of discovering oppressive systems we've been a part of and damage we could have done, coming to terms with that, and the healing process. 

This week my friend Amanda Held Opelt returns, and we discuss grief rituals, why they were popular in the reign of Queen Victoria, and the impact of the first world war on our cultural grief rituals and how we process grief & loss.

We also explore how the trauma and grief culturally felt and experienced in the first World War, had an impact on the allied nations initial response to Hitler's tyranny and how this could have inadvertently contributed to WWII. 

We then discuss how defeat and having to face up to their actions as a nation, and do the work of healing and transformation, impacted Germany and their culture, and how victory contributed indirectly too many of the problems we now see in the UK and Germany.

This week my friend Douglas Humphreys returns to the show, and we discuss the show 'Obi Wan Kenobi', and the dynamic of the relationship between him and Anakin Skywalker (AKA Darth Vader) in the context of their respective journeys of grief and trauma.

We discuss their experiences of grief, including in their own relationship, and the circumstances which contributed to the stories and outcomes of their lives.

We talk about how unresolved grief and anger can consume and control us, and harm both ourselves and others - and how this story shows the contrast between this and healthy ways of processing grief, and how it transforms us.

This week Amanda Held Opelt returns to continue our exploration of grief and transformation in pop culture.

Today we talk about the contrasting experiences of Loki, brother of Thor and Wanda Maximoff, and how we see this ultimately play out in their respective MCU shows. 

We explore how Loki's confrontation with his own trauma, grief, and his actions, ultimately transforms and heals him. In contrast we discuss how Wanda's unhealthy response to trauma and grief causes harm to others, and herself.

We then touch on what lessons we can learn from their respective journeys. 

I'm honoured to be joined today on my podcast by anti-racist activist, educator and speaker Tori Williams Douglass.  Tori runs 'White Homework', a resource educating people on anti-racism and whiteness.

Today Tori tells us a bit of her story and journey into activism. She then discusses the concept of whiteness, where it originated, where we see it, and the harm it does, individually and societally.

Tori also explores where we can see whiteness in ourselves and in the system we live in, and how we can begin to unlearn it and create a more equal, just world.

TW: Stories of acephobia

Today Marshall Blount (@AceGentle on twitter) joins me today to share his story of discovering his identity as an asexaul (ace) and his journey into ace & LGBTQI activism. 

We talk about the challenges he faced in discovering going public about his ace-ness and how others reacted, how it impacted his mental health, as well as his experiences of acephobia. 

We also talk in depth about the activism he's been involved in, including how he obtained a proclamation for Ace Week 2020 from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the difference his work is making to ace awareness and equality - as well as words of encouragement for those still exploring their aceness. 

This week, in our 350th episode, Amanda Held Opelt joins me again for the second part of our series on superheroes, grief and modern mythology. 

This week we explore the character and story of Superman, in particularly the one we see in the Christopher Reeve movies. He's a character who loses his adoptive father as a teenager, an event which drives him into a life trying to save people, never expressing his emotions, until another event finally unlocks his buried grief.

We explore how Superman is a more hopeful character, and how his processing of grief doesn't dilute this, but rather makes him more hopeful, more kind, and more inspirational.

We explore what lessons we can learn from his processing of grief, and his character, and why the world needs more people of sincerity and hope.

This week I begin a new series with my friend Amanda Held Opelt to discuss how grief is explored in superhero stories, and how they have become our modern mythology. 

Today we focus mainly on Batman, exploring his story sand how his grief transforms and initially controls him, with Batman an expression of his raw grief. We discuss some of the stories in prominent Batman movies, as Bruce Wayne processes his grief and eventually Batman becomes a symbol of hope. 

This episode explores how grief can control us if we let it, but if we allow ourselves to process it, it can transform us.