A new year is always a good time to reflect on the state of your current relationships. As I considered which past guests could bring the most value to you as you kick off 2024, I immediately thought of Kat Vellos, who specializes in helping people develop meaningful friendships in adulthood. Sometimes it can feel like a dirty little secret in adulthood, “I don’t have many friends.” So, we keep it to ourselves. This Best Of conversation is an invitation to openly and proudly pursue the friendships you have long been craving in 2024. 

Kat Vellos is a trusted expert on the power of cultivating healthy teams and meaningful friendships in adulthood. Formerly a UX designer at Slack, Pandora, and multiple startups, her work today focuses on helping people design belonging into their lives and workplaces. She is the author of We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, TED Talks, Forbes, Real Simple, Communication Arts, SF Design Week, Lesbians Who Tech, and many more.

Listen in to hear Kat share:

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When I was considering which episodes of the SMA I wanted to bring back for you this week, I went to see what my most downloaded episodes of the last couple of years have been. This interview with Aubrey Gordon was my most downloaded episode of this year. I think (and hope!) this is because you are all huge Aubrey fans AND I hope this episode's popularity is a reflection of this community’s openness and eagerness to have conversations around bodies, size, anti-fat bias, and fat activism. Sizeism, the discrimination toward a person or group of people based on their size or weight, remains the only socially acceptable form of discrimination and oppression - and it’s rampant. Since this interview, Aubrey has gone on to release her very own documentary, Your Fat Friend, which has received an abundance of awards and critical acclaim, packing theaters at film festivals and selling out theater after theater across the US and various other countries. As you consider your relationship within your body as you enter 2024, I invite you to listen and learn from Aubrey. She may be able to bring you peace and ease with your current body that you have never found before.

Aubrey Gordon writes under the pseudonym of “Your Fat Friend,” illuminating the experiences of fat people and urging greater compassion for people of all sizes. She is the author of What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat and her newest book, You Just Need to Lose Weight and 19 Other Myths About Fat People. Her work has reached millions of readers and has been translated into 19 languages. She is co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast, a top-rated podcast since its launch in 2021, and a columnist with SELF magazine. Her work has also been featured in Health magazine, Vox, and Gay Mag, among others. She lives in the Northwest, where she works as a writer and organizer. 

Listen in to hear Aubrey share: 

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Are you rethinking your relationship with alcohol as you approach 2024? Casey McGuire Davidson has been a guest on the SMA multiple times and she is my go-to referral partner when it comes to connecting women who are sober curious to sober coaches and communities. I chose Casey for this Best Of episode because I see so many women reevaluating their relationships with alcohol and I want you to make sure you don’t have to go it alone. 

If you want to participate in Dry January with a fabulous group of women or are sober-curious and want to know what all the hype is about, you’ll want to go grab Casey’s Sobriety Kit (linked in the SN) so you can join her Dry January community! 

Casey is a leader in the modern sober curious movement of women who are gray-area drinkers going alcohol-free. An ex-red wine girl turned Life and Sobriety Coach, Casey is passionate about helping women change their relationship with alcohol. She specializes in working with busy women with full calendars and overflowing to-do lists, who are doing all the things and then coming home and drinking to forget about all the things. Casey has helped thousands of women turn the decision to stop drinking from their worst-case scenario to the best decision of their lives.  

Casey is the creator of The Free 30-Day Guide To Quitting Drinking and The Sobriety Starter Kit, and the host of The Hello Someday Podcast for sober curious women and gray area drinkers, ranked in the top 1% of all global podcasts.

Listen in to hear Casey share:

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Tanmeet Sethi is one of my favorite people I met in 2023. We immediately hit it off and found the sweetest friendship that feels like we have known each other forever. I have had the opportunity to listen to my dear friend Tanmeet talk about joy as a form of resistance multiple times this year. Every time my capacity for joy - especially in hard seasons - expands exponentially. I chose this episode to share as a Best Of episode as an invitation to you. I invite you to let joy in the new year- as your birthright and as a form of resistance. This interview will guide you on how to do that. 

Tanmeet Sethi, MD, is the author of Joy Is My Justice: Reclaim What Is Yours. She is also a board-certified Integrative Family Medicine physician who has spent the last 25 years on the frontlines locally and globally practicing primary care and trauma work with the most marginalized communities. As a mother, she has received the impossible news that her youngest son has a fatal degenerative disease. She weaves together the expertise of both acquired knowledge with lived experience and translates them accessibly through the blend of ancient spiritual traditions and modern neuroscience. She is trained in Psychedelic Medicine, Integrative and Functional Medicine, and is a clinical researcher of psilocybin at the University of Washington.

Listen in to hear Tanmeet share:

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Chantal is a mom, physical therapist, and author of SETTLED: How to Find Calm in a Stress-Inducing World. She is also the founder of the wellness company Body Insight Inc. She holds degrees in psychology and kinesiology from Occidental College and a master’s in physical therapy from Mount Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles. Chantal is certified in Pilates, a practitioner of the Safe and Sound Protocol, and writer, producer, and star of the exercise and rehabilitation videos Strong Knees and Pain-Free at Work. Chantal helps people find relief from stress using a body-focused approach. She believes that stress fluency can make the world a better place.

Listen in to hear Chantal share:

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Giving yourself permission to release a few unconventional things might just make motherhood more manageable in 2024.  And, when one area of your life is more manageable, all areas of your life start to feel more manageable.  

Society rewards moms for aiming high, hustling hard, and achieving at every turn. I’m going to invite you to get a little unconventional in 2024. Allow yourself to be average.  An average mom.  An average employee. An average volunteer.  If you are a lifelong high achiever, I probably just lost you. You know you were not made for mediocrity. I get it.  I’m not either. But, you also weren’t made to meet the extremely high demands that the world puts on mothers and women day after day after day - for eternity. 

You were made to bend without breaking. My hope is that this episode helps you check yourself so you can see the ways you might be able to bend in 2024 so you don’t ultimately break.  I’ve been bending a lot more over the last couple of years - sometimes by choice and sometimes by unchosen circumstances. Releasing constant high expectations, rigidity, and other people’s needs & norms has been a game changer.  

In this episode, I invite you to release 4 things you maybe haven’t considered before.  You might raise an eyebrow at first, but I’m pretty sure you’ll thank me later.  

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Megan Flatt is a business growth strategist on a mission to make entrepreneurship easier. She believes you can have a thriving business, a community, and a life — and you don’t need more time, you need more focus. She’s the founder of Focus Sessions and the author of Focused: Reclaim Your Time, Ditch Overwhelm, and Do Less Better.  Besides helping women and business owners focus, Megan is obsessed with lattes, post-it notes, and romance novels. Outside of work, you will find her focus turned to her husband and two kids, probably near the water, in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Megan and I met when we were in a business coaching group together years ago.  You know when you meet someone who is annoyed by the same things as you and loves the same things as you - magic, right?!  That’s Megan and me.  We don’t talk often enough.  But, whenever we have the chance to reconnect it’s gold.  You’ll hear that in this conversation today!

Listen in to hear Megan share:

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Are you the kind of mother who keeps adding more and more things to your plate without giving any consideration to moving certain things OFF the plate to make space for the new stuff?  Do you just keep piling and piling and piling until things start to fall off the plate, causing you great anxiety, or the entire plate breaks from the pressure and weight of too many things?

Ahhh, the overwhelm of motherhood. 

Something I’ve noticed - especially among super driven, perfectionistic, people pleasing moms - is that we really struggle to deprioritize anything when certain things need to be prioritized.  Instead, we just keep prioritizing alllll the things.  Like, we want to prove we can handle all the pressure.  We want that gold star for holding it all together - even in times of crisis.  We want the extra credit.  110%.  A++.  

“I’m fine”, you tell yourself and everyone around you.  

But you’re not. 

And that’s ok.

When moms are going through something tough, a tough day or week or season, you have the opportunity to do things differently.  You don’t have to keep doing all the things.  In fact, the universe may be screaming at you to STOP DOING ALL THE THINGS.  

In this episode, I talk through how to shift your mindset and your action steps in order to keep going without drowning in tough times.  If you feel like you need permission to shift your expectations, say no, hold boundaries, take space, and let yourself laugh in the face of adversity, this episode is for you.

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Laura has been involved in the entertainment industry for over 30 years as a writer, Producer, and entrepreneur.  She is the author of over 60 books and a staggering 21 New York Times bestsellers.  Most recently, Laura co-directed, produced, and wrote the award-winning documentary, Anxious Nation, her first feature, focused on the crisis of anxiety in America, especially its impact on our youth and their families.

Anxious Nation is a deep dive into the hidden crises burdening our youth. Inspired by her own daughter’s battle with anxiety, Laura recognized the broader, global implications of this emotional turmoil, and Anxious Nation was born. The film unravels the rise in anxiety rates among our nation’s youth, especially post-pandemic, emphasizing the undeniable link between mental health and academic commitment. The documentary provides parents not just insight into this alarming trend but also equips them with practical strategies to tackle these unprecedented challenges.

Listen in to hear Laura share:

• Her journey to becoming a single mom by choice

• How she recognized that her daughter needed support for her anxiety

• How we treat medical conditions in children with urgency but not mental health conditions

• The stark data around girls and mental health and the massive shift in data pointing to teen girls' mental health struggles, consistent sadness, hopelessness, and suicidality - that we absolutely cannot ignore

• The importance of sharing diverse stories around anxiety - culturally, socioeconomically, at all ages and developmental stages

• What you can do right now to support your child’s mental health even if you’re on a waitlist to access services

• How to help your child channel their anxious energy

Links mentioned:

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I’ve been very aware over the last few years how tempting it is to dub each year as a “dumpster fire”. I definitely don’t want to negate or bypass all the incredibly difficult things we have all been through collectively and individually over the last few years. But, I do think we do ourselves a disservice when we embrace an entire year as being awful.  

In our house, it has been one of our most trying years as my husband has been laid off for over 6 months. But, it’s also been a year of many unexpected gifts as so many people have been incredibly thoughtful and generous to our family.  

For the rest of my life, when I think back on 2023, I will never forget how awful his previous employer was AND how many sweet moments came as we navigated this wildly uncertain time as a family.

Both/and.  

Always.

One of the most powerful things you can do as you close out one year and prepare to embark upon another is to take a few intentional steps to reflect back before you plan ahead.  In this episode, I walk you through the system I have used over the years as I have coached tons of Shameless Moms, business coaching clients, and more recently, corporate teams through this process.  

This year was probably pretty messy for you at times.  That seems to be how the world works anymore.  Just constantly PRETTY MESSY.  And, I know in that mess you grew, maybe even thrived at times.  I’m willing to bet you also did more, learned more, and developed your skills and mindset more than you’ve given yourself credit for, which perfectly positions you to go after every single thing you want in 2024.

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