Rambles and Doodles

Rambles and Doodles

By Melinda BarbosaHealth & FitnessMental Health
Download on the App Store

Rambles and Doodles episodes

  • Just the Doodle Minisode 02: Exploring Your Relationship to Journaling

    This is Rambles & Doodles, the research and development podcast about reflection, journaling, and self discovery. In each minisode, Melinda will lead you through  journaling prompt, minus the Ramble. These are a series of her favorites, intended to build the reflection muscle within us all.

    The Relationship to Journaling Prompt: This prompt is a deeper dive. We all have a relationship to journaling. Melinda’s own relationship started when her father found something she wrote and judged her for it. The fear born of that experience is part of her relationship to journaling. Set your timer for 15 minutes and answer what is your relationship to journaling, to writing, to reflecting, adn to writing about your inner self? Dig deep!

    Follow @melinda.barbosa for more prompts, updates and more! 

    Created, Hosted and Edited: by Melinda Barbosa 

    Produced by: Marlees West(IG @_marlees) 

    4 min
  • 03. Slowing Down the Heart(beat)
    Episode Summary:  This is Rambles & Doodles, the research and development podcast about reflection, journaling, and self discovery. This week Melinda explores our relationship to urgency and what it takes to slow down. This week:  Melinda’s computer threw her into urgency with a low storage notification and leading to the deletion of this week’s episode. It was deleted and gone. Melinda chose not to panic - she told a friend and honestly shared her disappointment with others. Through meditation, she acknowledged that urgency led to losing this podcast. Where do we learn Urgency? Melinda comes from a family of rush, of both familial and cultural urgency. Society has an attachment to doing things quickly. Hourly wages are built on time, rather than quality. In school, if you don’t learn on the schedule you miss out on the learning. Because of this we don’t learn at our own pace. We have built an internal reward system based on urgency. But when the time belongs to us, how can we pay attention to ourselves? Pleasure & Joy: Urgency is a response, it’s the need to move fast. It comes from external pressures. Melinda is in a place of still trying to understand what is joy and what is pleasure for her, she hasn’t fully arrived. The way urgency lives within her, she is seeking is how what she wants and looks for can be slowly sought.
    Journal Prompt:Time for a doodle! In this free write, set a timer for five minutes for each prompt. Write and take notice of how you are feeling after you write. Collect data for yourself - notice, no need to solve problems. What is your relationship to speed and urgency? What is your relationship to rest and slowing down? Take note in a feelings box of how you feel writing this.
    Journal Tip: Free write - a lesson from Melinda’s writing coach and the Posse Foundation. A free write can help your thoughts emerge.
    Show Notes: 
    Mexe Mexe, by Bana (song)
    Follow @melinda.barbosa for more prompts, updates and more!
    Created, Hosted and Edited: by Melinda Barbosa Produced by: Marlees West(IG @_marlees) of The Sticky Thoughts Podcast (IG @theStickyThoughtsPodcast)
    26 min
  • Just the Doodle Minisode: I am
    Episode Summary: This is Rambles & Doodles, the research and development podcast about reflection, journaling, and self discovery. In each minisode, Melinda will lead you through  journaling prompt, minus the Ramble. These are a series of her favorites, intended to build the reflection muscle within us all. I return to these prompts over and over again. Some will be easy ones for you to sink your pen into, others will stretch you and you might need need some breathing room after you’ve completed the prompt.
    The “I am” Prompt: Set a timer for 5 to 8 minutes. Write 20 I am statements. If your confidence is low, write 20 affirmative I am statements. If you are ready to dig a little deeper, just write 20 I am statements and let it be whatever it is. 
    Post reflection: Did you get to all 20? What themes emerge? Take notice of your body. 
    Sending love to you and your journal!
    4 min
  • 02. The (over-processing) Mind: What is Gaslighting? And is it happening to me?
    This is Rambles & Doodles, the research and development podcast about reflection, journaling, and self discovery. This week, Melinda asks “what is gaslighting and is it happening to me?”. Starting with storytime, Melinda shares that she is a crier and has been since life began (so middle school because that’s when life starts). 
    At the kitchen table: Melinda tells the story of receiving basketball feedback from her older brother on her crying - he knew they needed to figure it out. It was okay to cry if she could also play! He suggested she try doodling. Crying wasn’t the problem - she needed to be in it and signal to other people she was okay. This week: We are talking about gaslighting and the protective factors that fight against it. In a cafe in Dallas, Melinda read an article on gaslighting from Turn This World Inside Out by Nora Samaran. Realizing she hadn’t fully grasped the definition, she returned to the article during the pandemic. Gaslighting: When someone you trust denies your perception - it is intimacy because trust is thinking that person has your best interests at heart. Being a woman, the daughter of an immigrant, and an American, you have to believe this country is fair. You have to trust: everything you need you can get if you’re good enough. If you are logical enough, and have enough facts, you can be right. Power & oppression: Gaslighting is a mechanism for power and oppression. To deny someone’s reality is to tell them what they feel and sense isn’t real. As women, we don’t need to be stronger, we need someone to believe us. We are socialized to be more in tune with our feelings (and we learn this by necessity). Questioning the systems of oppression sparks gaslighting in the white men who benefit from the system. Capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy are fueled by the lies we believe that uphold them. Doing the Work: Melinda explores how the messages we received from the world about how to do the work of anti-racism  in the wake of racial uprisings in June 2020 led her to question how she knew the work needed to be done - in community, connection, and deep conversation. Being gaslit (gaslighted? gassed?) led to her getting quiet. Intent and IMPACT:  Part of our ability to nurture comes from our ability to weigh intent more heavily than impact. Gaslighting is gaslighting based on the impact, not the intent because it de-centers the survivor. Part of why grasping gaslighting was challenging for Melinda because she was taught to deny that she could ever be denied. Tears on the Court:  Melinda reframes tears as a signal, she is whole and she is here.
    Journal Prompt: What is something you know to be true that you have allowed to be denied? Who has broken your trust? What are the practices you need to put into your life to allow you to trust yourself? What protective factors allow you to trust who you are? What practices protect you from the forces of oppression that want to stop you from questioning them?
    Journal Tip: Doodling as a way to ground yourself.
    Show Notes:
    Keep up with Melinda on Instagram @melinda.barbosa 
    Turn this world Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture by Nora Samaran,  Zentangles
    22 min
  • 01. The (Fat) Body: Finding the right living conditions within your own body

    Episode Summary:  This is Rambles & Doodles, the research and development podcast about reflection, journaling, and self discovery. Melinda tells a story about Mr. T and shooting free throws. She then asks: What are the living conditions I need to grow? How does that live in my body? Through Sonya Renee Taylor’s text “The Body Is Not An Apology”, she explores the “your body is not good enough” message that fat bodies and other marginalized bodies receive and how that creates distance between ourselves and our bodies. Paying attention to her body led her to realize she needed to shift Sleep, Food, & People to take care of her body the way she would someone else. Food - focus not on changing her body but on taking care of it. Sleep - accepting natural sleep patterns, embracing naps, not thinking of herself as a good or bad sleeper. People - it is easy to prioritize helping others and help heal them to make our relationship better. Instead, she started to think about how the people around her made her feel in her body.

    This week's journaling prompt: In the center, draw yourself or an image of yourself. Write all the things you need - professional, physical, emotional all of them. On the outside, write all the conditions you need to grow in a lush, full, glorious way. Set your timer for 10 minutes. Check in with your body. How does it feel?

    Journal Tip: Use what you love - choose materials that make you happy!

    Syllabus for the week: Enneagram test , The Body Is Not An Apology 

    Follow @melinda.barbosa for more prompts, updates and more!

    Created, Hosted and Edited: by Melinda Barbosa Produced by: Marlees West(IG @_marlees) of The Sticky Thoughts Podcast (IG @theStickyThoughtsPodcast)

    19 min
  • Introducing Rambles and Doodles and the Winter Reflection Series!

    Welcome to Rambles and Doodles, a research and development podcast about reflection, journaling, and self discovery. Melinda is a Youth Worker,  Facilitator and believer of all things magic who has spent over 20 years wandering through life with her journal and a deep curiosity about all things human.

    In this weekly podcast, Melinda will ramble about a question she has been exploring through the texts she has been reading and consuming. Then, for listeners, she will guide you through a journal prompt. 

    In the introductory episode, Melinda shares her story about losing her confidence and developing a fear of talking in public spaces and how she hopes this podcast can help her understand what happened in the past two years that made her feel this way. Speaking with vulnerability and honesty, this episode sets the stage for a 4 week journaling series to prepare us for a deeper dive into self-reflection.

    This week's journaling prompt:  Write a kind and compassionate letter to a person, place, or thing you need release to make space for your self-reflection.

    Follow @melinda.barbosa for more prompts, updates and more!

    Created, Hosted and Edited by Melinda Barbosa

    Produced by: Marlees West(IG @_marlees) of The Sticky Thoughts Podcast (IG @theStickyThoughtsPodcast)

    7 min

About Rambles and Doodles

From the publisher's feed

Join youth worker, facilitator and believer of all things magic, Melinda Barbosa, as she hosts Rambles & Doodles, the research and development podcast about reflection, journaling, and self…