"What matters most is how we walk through the fire." - Charles Bukowski

+ Trigger Warning+ Sexual assault, PTSD

In this episode, we welcomed Maggie to the mic to tell her survival story. Maggie is a semi-retired pageant girl and a two-time survivor of sexual assault. She transformed her pain into purpose by founding Trauma Queens, a nonprofit dedicated to helping other survivors of sexual assault - a bad ass, Beautifull move for sure.

But do you know what else Maggie is? She is tired. She is recovering from a major loss last year - a loss she describes as the death of a lifelong dream - and she is tired. Tired of the rigidity, the obsessive pursuit of greatness, the endless expectation she be more. She is right in the middle of letting parts of her life come undone... and that is just as bad ass and Beautifull a thing as all of her other work that came before this part. 

Maggie is grace and grit, full of healing wisdom and hope for the future.

Resources for survivors of sexual assault:

Local Resources: Family Resources

National Resources: RAINN

Resource for people with PTSD: NAMI

"There is beauty in terror. No feeling is final. Just keep going."

 +Tigger warning: Sexual assault, suicidal ideations, chronic pain, breast cancer +

The episode kicks off the Survivor Series with a powerful interview with Laura, a survivor of sexual assault, 6 years of unimaginable chronic pain, and breast cancer. Laura is a force, but a gentle force - she offers the audience a new perspective on suffering, one that turns the listener toward hope. She has words of wisdom for transforming pain into purpose, a transformation she has allowed herself to undergo as a result of learning to survive. Join this chorus of courage by subscribing to Beauti: The Interviews and check out more about The Beautifull Project.

Local resources for sexual assault survivors:

Family Resources: http://www.famres.org/services/survivor-services

National Resouces: www.rainn.org

Resources for people surviving central pain:

America Stroke Association

Resources for breast cancer survivors:

Local: Gilda's Club

National: Susan G. Komen

Prepare to be filled, friends... Season Two is HERE! In this episode, Sarah spends just a few minutes prepping you for what you can expect from Beauti: The Interviews during this Season of Survivors. She talks trigger warnings, trauma, and big ass triumphs in this short intro.

Surprise! A bonus episode with Mikhayla Hughes-Shaw, Miss Iowa 2018. Mikhayla opened up about growing up in a body that she felt she needed to hide, about her decision to believe that she had more to offer the world than her body, about her commitment to helping other women know the same thing. Find out more about Mikhayla and her platform - How About Hope - at her website. www.mikhaylahughesshaw.com. Enjoy this special episode and be sure to subscribe to the podcast before the January 24th release of season two - the Season of Survivors.

In this episode, the Founder of the Beautifull Project tells her body story. She shares her earliest memories about being a little kid in a fat body, about a lifetime of disordered eating and body dysmorphia, about finding freedom in a chorus of courage that refuses to shrink in order to fit. This episode is the final episode in Season One: Taking Up Space, and she discusses the plans for Season Two: The Season of Survivors. You don't want to miss this one.

In this episode, we sat down with Ann, a woman who struggled to find her truth, but now speaks with a voice so clear and articulate that it's hard to hear anything but wisdom in her story. We made space in this interview for her story of living in a thin body. She laid out some great structure for the connection between weight and health, making way for a new understanding... one that is defined by the way our body FUNCTIONS as opposed to the way our bodies appear. We also talked about roller derby and burlesque and how we can only find our body by literally FINDING OUR BODY. She's a courageous genius, this one.

She's baaaack! Jessica joins us again, a happy, healthy, postpartum mama with some good stuff to share about the birth of her second child, about releasing herself from parent guilt, about beginning to accept the limits of her control.

In this episode, we make space for Nicole, an entrepreneur, an artist, a light to the people who are privileged enough to be near her. She helps us understand her experience as a child caught between her feuding parents. She sheds some light on the way access to food influences our relationship with food. She wants all of us to understand that fat is something she has, not something she is. This woman, and her words, are a gift.

In this episode, we sit down with Teri, a woman who weaves truth and humor together into a story that invites the audience to lean in. She survived an abusive childhood, an experience that she’s allowed to galvanize her into a force that unapologetically takes up space in the world.

In this episode, Kim talks about her own body story, one marked by her experience as an adopted child in a family with whom she shared no physical characteristics. Kim talks about searching for her people for the ones to whom she could belong and she ultimately channeled this sense of disconnection in a way that propelled her to discover the healing power of touch. As a massage therapist and body worker, Kim offers compassionate touch to her clients, accessing their healing by way of her own.