The HERE.together Podcast

Why should you make a bucket list?  Our guest, The Bucket List Guy, Travis Bell, would suggest that making and realizing your own true list of desires - no matter how small or how odd, will bring energy and purpose flooding into your life.

Do we have to say what a bucket list is?  I assume most people know, but just in case you don’t, it’s a list of things you need to do before you die so you can kick the bucket without regret.

Travis Bell had early success in business, growing his fitness coaching company into an enterprise with 10s of thousands of clients across Australia. Then his business and life hit some bumps, but Travis was determined to rise above the disappointment and depression. He “became his own experiment” and started signing up for workshops, retreats and empowering experiences. After a few years of this self-healing work, he realized he had discovered something he could offer others.

Trav and his Bucket List team now work with thousands of people a year, using the Bucket List concept as a tool to get at the truth of what people really want and what we all can achieve when we get out of our own way. He just published a book called The Bucket List Blueprint that is a manifesto and instructional guide for living a more fulfilling life.

If you need to get your groove back, come with us on this journey with Travis Bell to spark the connections of our own creativity and power using the Bucket List tool.  We get pretty excited to realize and remember some of the badass things we’ve already done and we feel the energy rise up to help fuel the ride to our next stop.

For full show notes including Travis's TEDx talk and your hosts' bucket list examples go to www.here-together.us/pod/how-to-be-purposeful-and-fulfilled

Happy and consequential Martin Luther King/Civil Rights Day to you. After the 2020 we had, I can’t think of an MLK day more poised between worlds than this one. So much of the racism and white supremacy that had long been conveniently ignorable to us white folks finally became completely un-ignorable. Thank god!

Today feels like a day to mourn all the losses and pain and separation that became inescapable to almost all of us. AND it feels like a day to hope for much, much better times ahead. For all Americans.

In honor of the day we were going to re-release the HERE.together episode we recorded right after the murder of George Floyd. In that episode from May, Kelly and I struggled with coming to terms with our own ingrained racism, our new understanding of anti-racist thought and action, and called on our whole community to do the hard work of acknowledging, grieving and moving forward - individually and together. Seemed like an appropriate convo to re-visit.

But our friend, pod guest and super H.ttie Laura Fitton reminded us this morning that today is a day for white folks to pass the mic and make way for the voices of people of color. Today cannot just be a day about white folks grappling with racism or anything that looks like virtue signaling.

So, instead… we’re releasing this micro episode to help you find other listening, reading and viewing experiences... Awesome content that was not made by a couple of white folks. Enjoy our curated recommendations. 

If you think publicists are just for celebs and big business, you haven’t met today’s guest.  In the middle of a 20-year campaign to free an innocent man from death row, she woke up to the value of using media for causes like justice and civil rights.  She also realized she was really good at it, as you’ll hear, and went on to make a career of cultivating media exposure for her diverse client list.

Tracy Lamourie is the Founder and Managing Director of Lamourie Media and the author of the upcoming book GET REPPED - Build Your Brand With Effective Public and Media Relations. In addition to helping her clients succeed in their chosen fields and endeavors, Tracy has used her considerable PR skills to advocate for human rights, anti racism, and criminal justice reform. Tracy has won all sorts of awards for her work and thought leadership and today she’s here to share some of what she’s learned.

She’s also Canadian, so this marks our first international podcast.

Follow this link to the full episode and complete shownotes.  

We can’t even imagine cooking a moose - why would we want to do that?  If that’s what you’re thinking, don’t worry, today’s episode is all about writing and being human and the ongoing struggle to live in community.  A moose does get cooked in our guest Kate Christensen’s second memoir of the same name, but we will save that for you to discover on your own. 

I can’t even imagine cooking a moose - why would I want to do that?  If that’s what you’re thinking, don’t worry, today’s episode is all about writing and being human and the ongoing struggle to live in community.  A moose does get cooked in our guest Kate Christensen’s second memoir of the same name, but we will save that for you to discover on your own.

Guest Bio:

Kate Christensen is an award-winning author of 7 novels and 2 memoirs that have a lot to do with the glory of food, coping with being human, finding community, and the tenuous beauty of life.  Her characters, including the character of herself in the memoirs, are broken and beautiful, they are finding their way home to themselves and uncovering their places in this world.  They are messy and real and we love them.

We talk with Kate about the writer’s life, about growing up in our shared home town of Jerome, Arizona, about the difference between NYC and rural Maine/NH.

This conversation is full of laughter and discovery. It also contains references to the physical abuse Kate witnessed growing up and the ongoing sexual assault she suffered as a minor. We don’t go into the details but we wanted you to know in case it’s not healthy for you to hear those kinds of stories. We are grateful to Kate for her vulnerability and openness… we think these kinds of stories are a way forward and out of the dark for us all.

Before we go any further…

We want to let you know that you get to choose which version of this podcast to listen to. This version is the highly edited version that leaves out 25 minutes of Kate’s recollections of her high school life and Charles’s very different version of Kate’s high school life. Also in the extended version are Kelly’s passionate thoughts about community and the story of Dingo the Dog. For those of you who want the longer, fuller, more complete version, you can find it right now as the episode How to Cook a BIG Moose.

Link to full description and relevant Show Notes

What would you change if you had your very own coach?  Someone who would tell you honestly and clearly how to meet your goals? What would you work on?  Your business?  Your health?  Your relationship? Personal growth - along with healthy relationships and community engagement is part of the troika we promote here all.the.time!

That’s what you get to hear Kelly and me work on together in real time pretty much every week on this podcast. If you’re listening to this, we’re pretty sure you’re interested in creating a fuller, more authentic life… or maybe you just like listening to us as we muddle around and through the process.

The New Year is when most of us take some time to evaluate how we’re doing and resolve to do better.  If you’re like us, you’ve designed your own life-change program over and over again and tried to gut it out until at least mid-February before backsliding or giving up outright.  (and it’s so friggin painful and disheartening) Sometimes we beat the odds and make major changes.  But is there a key, a trick to making meaningful change? Maybe a coach can be part of the process?

This week we not only talk with, but get counseled by two professional coaches.  Friend of the pod Tom Check is back with us and our new friend Ken Kilday joins us to help unpack what coaching is and isn’t, and we explore together the nature of change.

Follow this link to full show notes with guest bios, helpful links, and online resources. 

This week, we bring you Laird Christensen, someone who has thought deeply about how we can move ourselves and our communities forward through overlapping crises. This episode covers a LOT of ground: Anarchy, literature, activism, guitar playing, fatherhood, hope, despair, and potlucks as activism. Most importantly, Laird reminded us to ask “What if?”

Laird Christensen, is the Director, MS in Resilient and Sustainable Communities at Prescott College. Laird grew up in timber country in Oregon, amidst the clear cuts and lumber mills and developed a deep-seated need to connect to wild spaces.  Part of Laird’s intriguing story, though, includes his conscious decision to separate himself from the wilderness and the forests - and to leave the protest lines - to work upstream. To go from protecting one forest to transforming the culture that endangers the forests in the first place.

We talked about how our culture and economy is based on the idea of scarcity and how the opposite of scarcity is not abundance but sufficiency… can we take what we need and leave enough for others and future generations.

We have such huge challenges in front of us. Getting through covid, repairing our economy, rebuilding our communities. Laird points out, though, that these kinds of crises are the new normal and that we have to work together to build in resilience. Fortunately, he and others have been thinking about how to do just that. Even better, building resilience is something we can do as individuals, neighborhoods, and towns. Listen to the whole episode and see if you don’t get some inspiration and ideas that will help keep you hopeful and engage.

Click this link to see the full shownotes with reading recommendations, resources for taking action, and helpful references. 

What’s it like combating an entrenched problem like homelessness during a pandemic?  What skills and mindset make the difference in good times and bad? How does one get selected Prescott Woman of the Year?

Find out from Coalition for Compassion and Justice Executive Director, Jessi Hans.  In 2018, Jessi and her team set the bold (Crazy?) intention to end homelessness in Prescott.  Since Covid, they have redoubled their efforts to house every member of the Prescott community and connect their clients to the services that will help get them back on their feet and back to their lives.  We talk with Jessi about the Housing First philosophy, leading her team with authenticity and transparency, the value of partnerships, and how to stay human when things get tough.

This week we are sharing an episode from another podcast we produce - The Prescott Woman Podcast. In this interview, we talk to Jessi Hans, a nonprofit director who lives a bold and dedicated life. We talked with Jessi a few hundred years ago when we were just starting out and this interview is just as full of community, leadership, and her bold, crazy mission to end homelessness.  It was great catching up with Jessi and if you missed her the first time, go back and check out episode 8.

Guest Bio:

After 16 years in the human services field, Jessi Hans has an understanding of how addiction, trauma, mental illness, and systemic barriers can put people out on the street.

Jessi takes a collaborative approach to problem-solving, bringing together people and organizations with the gifts and skillsets to make meaningful progress on difficult problems.  She also works consciously to shift the narrative around people experiencing homelessness to help everyone see what she sees: human beings, citizens, neighbors, members of the community.

Born and raised in Iowa, Jessi earned her B.F.A. at Northwest Missouri State University and she’s lived in Arizona since 2005. She has a wife and three young children. Jessi enjoys quality time with her family, traveling, reading, creating art, and singing.

Jessi was recently named Women of the Year by Prescott Area Leadership.

When we asked her the uncomfortable question of why she was chosen for this honor, she told us she thought the award honored her role more than her actions. We think she might be being too humble, but we’ll let you decide why you think Jessi deserves the win.

Stay tuned to find out what it’s like to have the audacity to take on the big problems with love, humor, and vulnerability as we talk with CCJ’s Jessi Hans.

This is also a perfect episode for this difficult season. In it, we talk about what it means to serve those less fortunate, what it means to have a safe place to live, and how we can make a difference not just by writing checks, but by extending compassion. Anyone else feeling more of the holiday spirit, just hearing those words? Not yet? Keep listening. 

Whether you are an obsessed Pandemic Watcher like Charles or just want to know how to stay un-infected until the vaccines arrive, this episode is for you.  We bring you interviews with two people who have unique knowledge about the Covid pandemic. Find out what’s going on with vaccine trials, what numbers to look for, and how to make your plan to stay safe through what will undoubtedly be a long, tough winter.  Despite the grim statistics and stories of anti-mask pushback, our conversations this week left us feeling hopeful knowing science is on the case and that human creativity, resilience, and love will, indeed, triumph.

This week we talk with our favorite epidemiologist Christine Stewart, a professor at UC Davis, who helps us make sense of the vaccine trials & rollout. She also explains how her family gets its social and emotional needs met while staying safe and virus-free.

It turns out that Christine is not only a distinguished scientist, she’s a brave research subject. Christine was one of thousands of volunteers in the Stage 3 vaccine trials. You’ll get to hear about her experience with the Moderna vaccine and why I’m really excited to get a sore arm and a fever.

We also talk with our local Health Department’s Information Officer, Terri Farneti, who makes us appreciate the courage and commitment all the hard-working people in our health infrastructures have demonstrated in the face of a massive health crisis combined with incontheivable blowback.

Link to the full show notes.

Welcome to the HERE.together Podcast