The Beautifull Project

Trigger Warning: In this episode, Tiffany talks about surviving sexual assault and other forms of violence. She also references suicidal ideations and other substantial impacts of trauma. If any of these topics could be harmful to you, please exercise caution if you choose to listen.

In this episode, we talk with Jenna. Jenna is a woman with a story about awakening. She gently weaves her narrative through a childhood marked a body that was too much, around an adolescence tightly wrapped up by insecurity, and then directly toward a place of healing and transformation. She talks about starving and binging and obsession over every ounce of food that passed her lips. She unpacks her belief that the size of her body was directly proportionate to the amount of love she was worthy of receiving. She details the events that led to her healing with such crystal clear vision that it could make even the most cynical person believe that healing could be in their reach too.

In this episode, we interview Ashley, a mama, a wife, and a woman who has spent a lifetime trying to compensate for feeling like she was taking up too much space in the world. She tenderly shared a story from her childhood about understanding that she just didn’t fit, and went on to reveal the ways that she has worked to develop a personality that distracts people from the size of her body. We talked about people pleasing and the inevitable loss of self that we discover when we are constantly hustling for acceptance. We talked about raising daughters and the fact that we absolutely MUST unpack our own pain in order to be present to our girls. We talked about fear and pain and loss… and we talked about courage and hope and joy.

In this episode, Sarah sits down with her mom to understand how generations of body stories help to shape our own body story. Her mama opens up about being a "chubby" kid, an adolescent who would do anything to be thin, and a woman who is working toward finding joy. Truth telling at it's finest and a true gift on Mother's Day.

In this episode, Jessica dives deep into the cultural narrative surrounding the pregnant body, the endless expectations placed on a pregnant woman, and the need for a new dialogue around what it means to be in a body that can grow another body.

In this episode, we interview Delia, a woman who has demonstrated seemingly endless supplies of resilience throughout her life. Delia grew up with a white mom and a black dad in the 80’s. She lost her dad when she was in 4th grade, and had to discover a way to navigate a world of always feeling like she was in between. She was in between a black identity and a white identity, in between belonging to either world completely. She talks about finding a way to belong in her peer group as one of only three people of color in her grade school, and she is brutally honest about her relationship with her body, about how far she’s come and about how far she has to go before she can find a place of peace. Which is actually the perfect way to describe this interview.. Brutally honest

In part four, Courtney Courtney dives deep into a conversation about the crippling impact of expectations. From our families, from our culture, from our communities. She tells a few incredible stories about the lengths she’s gone to in order to change her body. And most importantly, she demonstrates a ton of wisdom when she opens about what it means to just stop. Stop pleasing, stop performing, stop delivering on everyone’s expectations. Just stop.

This is the third part of a four part series with the models from The Beautifull Project. In this episode, Rumaisa talks about the intersection of culture, religion, and belonging. She opens about the vulnerability required to stand in your own truth in spite of what everyone might think about you. To find out more about The Beautifull Project, go to www.thebeautifullproject.com

The Danielle Interview by Beauti: The Interviews

This is the first of a four part interview with the models for The Beautifull Project. They share their body stories and expose all of the ways that they've attempted to shrink in order to fit. Find out more about The Beautifull Project at www.thebeautifullproject.com