The Other Side

Brittany Gordon is back! And we're talking food, peptides, cravings, and why women are not just "tiny men" so maybe we should stop working out and eating as if we were <3

Brittany is a registered holistic nutritionist, and, like a lot of people in her field, she found her way to this work through her own body. Anaphylactic allergies. Gut issues. Eczema that spread across her face so badly she barely wanted to leave the house for almost a year. When the only answer she got was “take the drugs and live with it,” she went looking for a better one.

We talk about: why your chocolate cravings might have nothing to do with willpower; how much protein women actually need (more than most of us eat, less than the protein-maxers want); why so much of the nutrition research we’ve been handed was built on men’s bodies; the ’90s BMI change that made people “overfat” overnight; GLP-1s, peptides and the supplement cupboard - collagen, creatine, adaptogenic mushrooms, the lot; why weigh-ins in front of a group are shame dressed up as support; and Brittany’s advice for perimenopause: fibre, protein, sleep.

Nadine showed up with her own cupboard of “tinctures,” and Brittany didn’t let her off easy about the protein in her 6am coffee (she’s keeping her collagen though :P). It’s an honest, no-judgement conversation about topics that can be polarizing online. 

If you’ve ever wondered why you keep craving a particular food, the answer might be in this chat. And if you’re in perimenopause, or love someone who is, listen, download, take notes, share!

You can find Brittany and her practice, Healing Ginger, here. 

And if you'd like more from me - my coaching or my writing - you'll find both over on my website, or catch the more personal stuff on my Substack. 

See you next week, on The Other Side x

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Before Mandie Vossenberg was diagnosed with OCD at 31, she’d already googled it and decided it wasn’t her; OCD was for good people with a problem they couldn’t control. She was sure she was just a bad person.

If you’ve ever been stuck in a thought you couldn’t get out of, or watched someone you love get stuck there, this conversation will feel familiar. Back for her fourth time on the pod, Mandie talks about her OCD publicly for the first time. Not the “I’m so OCD, my spice rack is organized” version, the real lived experience. 

We talk about: the stuffed animals she rotated every night as a kid so none of them would feel left out; walking to the studio at 1am to check a door she’d already locked; the first therapy appointment of her life, and the diagnosis she tried to argue her way out of; why the treatment that actually worked felt mean, for her and for her husband; and the two words he says now instead of “don’t worry, I saw you lock it.”

Mandie was my very first guest on this podcast, and I’ll be forever grateful for her candor, vulnerability and generosity. I've often talked to Mandie about needing to double check the stove or waking up at 3am wondering if Theo ate poison (for no reason...) but this conversation showed me just how big the difference is between my moments of anxiety and what she lives with. Mandie, thank you for trusting me with this one <3

If this episode resonates with you, or sounds like someone you love, please pass it along. The thing Mandie most needed to hear when she was diagnosed was that she wasn’t alone. Another great support that Mandie recommends is the International OCD Foundation - you’ll find them here. 

And if you want to sweat it out with Mandie at Collective Movement, find her, and her incredible team, here. 

If you'd like more from me - my coaching or my writing - you'll find both over on my website, or catch the more personal stuff on my Substack. 

See you next week, on The Other Side x

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Dorsa Babaei grew up in Iran wearing clothes made by her mom, aunt, and grandma, three women in a friendly, never-ending competition over who had the best patterns. While neither of those women made it their living, it's because of them that Dorsa did - they are, essentially, the inspiration behind the Montreal based brand, dorsaLi.

From Iran to India to Dubai to Montreal, Dorsa has built dorsaLi on patience. She lets a piece that didn't sell find its people years later, and after 146 styles in five years she's learning that restraint may be the hardest design skill of all. She also opens up about launching a collection this year while her home country was in crisis, and why, for her, the work is always personal.

We talk about: the top I wore for our chat, which barely sold when it launched in 2022, and what changed this year; our shared habit of living in the same five things while the pieces we love sit in the closet; Montreal's no-gatekeeping fashion scene, where another designer helped her find her seamstresses; why she's narrowing everything down to a "dictionary of pieces"; and the one wish in her wish jar that still hasn't come true.

Know someone with a closet full of beautiful things they're saving for someday? Send them this one, and tell them to wear the good dress to the grocery store.

Better yet, send them the link to the Delicia top or the yellow dress I can't stop talking about - they'll thank you for it. 

And if you'd like more from me - my coaching or my writing - you'll find both over on my website, or catch the more personal stuff on my Substack. 

See you next week, on The Other Side x

@the_otherside_pod

If you’ve ever googled “Is this perimenopause or just me?” then this episode is for you.

My sister Danielle was diagnosed with adenomyosis in 2018. Nobody told her. She found out five years later, by accident, reading her own medical chart, after my diagnosis turned up the same thing.

My mom, Lorraine, didn't even know she was anemic until a lab tech tested her blood almost by chance. Her hemoglobin was under nine - about a quarter of what it should've been. She'd been bleeding heavily for years and had just quietly adjusted, because that's what you did.

Three women, three decades, same fight, and the Hogans have never once sugar coated any of it.

We talk about: the gynecologist who wouldn't even prescribe my mom the pill; six years of Danielle asking for a hysterectomy and hearing no, including a doctor who told her to "think it over" in case she met a man who wanted kids; the symptoms nobody warns you about, like smelling cigarette smoke that isn't there or losing a word mid-sentence; and why so many of us spend years thinking a symptom is just our personality instead of what it actually is.

My sister went through the worst of this without a map. Because of her, I didn't have to. Now we're handing you the map too.

If this has you thinking about your mom, your sister, or a friend who's been calling a symptom "just stress" for way too long, send them this one.

And if you'd like more from me - my coaching or my writing - you'll find both over on my website or catch the more personal stuff on my Substack. 

See you next week, on The Other Side x

@the_otherside_pod

Two hours after giving birth at home, Sammi Dreiling passed out and lost her pulse. That's the day that started her hardest year - the one where losing her dad a month later and watching a decade of business work collapse pushed her and her husband, Dylan, to finally ask what they'd actually do if they were following their bliss. Sammi calls it her cocoon year: everything she'd built had to fall apart before Ananda Elixirs could exist at all.

We talk about: the line Dylan keeps repeating - "the harder you grip it, the sooner it flows through your fingertips" - and what actually letting go looked like for them; the Fantastic Fungi documentary that had them both in tears, and how the conversation after it turned into a cream soda recipe cooked up on their own stove; a friend named Emily who watched their kids for 6 hours every weekend so they could sell at farmers markets, and ended up with equity in the company for it; how $14,000/mth in sales their first month after moving back to Canada turned into $100,000/mth in sales just five months later; and walking onto the Dragons' Den set Sammi had been watching since she was 14 - and the very deliberate reason they turned the deal down.

I loved this chat with Sammi; we connected on many levels (losing our dads, watching our businesses crumble with the Pandemic) so when she said, "learn to listen to the whispers before they become a scream," I just knew we were destined to meet and remind each other of this. 

If you know someone white-knuckling their way through a plan that stopped working a while ago, send them this one - sometimes letting go is the whole point.

To try the sodas yourself (the cream soda in my coffee has my heart forever more), you can find them here. 

And if you'd like more from me - my coaching or my writing - you'll find both over on my website, or catch the more personal stuff on my Substack. 

See you next week, on The Other Side x

@the_otherside_pod

Clarissa Arthur spent her early teenage years angry. The skipping school, running away, in and out of trouble with the police kind of angry. Then 3 weeks after she turned 17, standing in the bathroom at her high school, she found out she was pregnant. This is when she made the decision to change.

This instinct - to keep moving forward even in a situation that could easily have derailed her - is what propelled Clarissa in each stage of her life. Now the executive director of Nelson House, a first-stage shelter for women and children fleeing violence, she clearly, and thoughtfully, traces a straight line from her hardest years to the work she does today - continually reminding herself that you have two choices, give up or show up.

We talk about: losing her dad to a sudden heart attack three weeks after she'd finally gotten her life back on track; surviving domestic violence herself, and what it's like to run one of Ottawa's five shelters for women fleeing exactly that; the job interview where she cried in front of six strangers and got hired anyway, and why she still tells her staff "I'm Clarissa before I'm the executive director"; and her actual, zero-apologies way of shutting her brain off after a shift (a sleep mask with built-in speakers and the Real Housewives, in case you were wondering).

If you know anyone who could use a little Clarissa magic in their life, please share this one.

For more information on Nelson House, whether that's becoming a monthly donor or just knowing the number is there when someone needs it, visit their website.

If you'd like The Gratitude Effect Journal by Clarissa Arthur and Karen Jolicoeur, find it here. 

And if you'd like more from me - my coaching or my writing - you'll find both over on my website, or catch the more personal stuff on my Substack. 

See you next week, on The Other Side x

@the_otherside_pod

Dr. Sam Hetz cold-emailed three Ottawa clinics that were offering Botox, asking for ten minutes of their time. One doctor graciously said yes, changing the direction of Sam's life. A decade later he's a partner of a 70-clinic, L'Oréal backed medical group, as well as the co-founder of Ottawa's first personalized, private, longevity-focused clinic, LifespanMD. 

What makes this conversation worth the hour isn't his resume, though, it's his attitude. Sam isn't afraid of change, accepting that nothing is permanent and using tools he's learned to remind himself (and his patients) that whatever you're catastrophizing about almost never actually happens.

We talk about: leaving a full-time family medicine practice to bet on a cosmetic clinic he learned about by shadowing a mentor on vacation days and post-call mornings; why he says "no decision is finite" and the worst-case-scenario exercise his business coach taught him; building LifespanMD from a business plan on a napkin; the one health intervention Sam says beats every drug and why almost nobody does enough of it; and his real diagnostic question before burnout hits - are you good busy, or bad busy?

Sam and I have known each other for years, and this was the first time I got to sit him down and ask him everything. I walked away with insights that I will apply to my own business (and my health!). 

Send this to the friend who's always busy, as a reminder that taking time, especially for a conversation like this, is good for them.

And if you'd like more from me - my coaching or my writing - you'll find both over on my website, or catch the more personal stuff on my Substack. 

See you next week, on The Other Side x

@the_otherside_pod

Michelle Weger fell asleep at a microscope in her first year of university and woke up with two black eyes. It took five years before anyone figured out why.

As Michelle talks about living with narcolepsy we speak about the tendency to hide the parts of us that aren't so polished, and what can happen when we let our guard down.

What you'll hear about: the 5 years of dead-end doctor visits and the friend, Rebecca, who changed her life for the better; what it actually felt like to sleep 20 hours a day and never once feel rested; the 4-month trip to Africa that turned into an accidental blogging career, and how the desire to share elephant photos with her grandparents became a website development and SEO business that has generated millions of dollars; a service dog named Quinn who has her own piece of internet fame now; and the exact moment Michelle decided to stop hiding her diagnosis, and what happened right after.

Know someone quietly managing something they're sure would change how people see them - a diagnosis, a body that doesn't cooperate, a business they're scared to be honest about? Do me a favour and send them this one.

If you'd like more from Michelle - her book, her talks, or her service dog Quinn's Instagram - find her website, her instagram and Quinn's IG  over here.

And if you'd like more from me - my coaching or my writing - you'll find both over on my website, or catch the more personal stuff on my Substack. 

See you next week, on The Other Side x

@the_otherside_pod

My mom is 77. Her closest friends are four women she met when she was 16 and for almost a decade of their lives, she barely spoke to them.

I went into this conversation expecting a nice story about a friend group that's lasted 60+ years. What I didn't expect was how the silence actually ended - not with a big reconciliation talk, but with two of them showing up at her door with a pie. She still calls it an olive branch.

This week I chose one of the top downloaded podcasts of the year to re-release - the one where mom, sis and I talk about friendships. The ones that go quiet. The ones that end in divorce. And the ones that stay, in different ways, through the many ebbs and flows of life. 

I've thought of this conversation often since we recorded it last Fall. It's made me nostalgic for friends I've lost, and it's made me feel the deepest of love for the ones with staying power. 

Mom has a theory that friendships just have a clock that runs out on them. I'm still not sure if that's the most comforting thing I've ever heard or the hardest.

Do me a favour and share it this episode with your friend - the one you thought of while listening.

And if you'd like more from me - my coaching or my writing - you'll find both over on my website, or catch the more personal stuff on my Substack. 

See you next week, on The Other Side x

@the_otherside_pod

Erin McHarge was a 27 year old PhD student going about her life when she was told she has stage 4B endometrial cancer - and it's incurable. 

But this isn't a "cancer episode". It's a conversation with someone more curious about her own life than afraid of it - and it changed how I think about mine.

This is one of the most highly downloaded podcasts of the year and within minutes you'll see why. I originally released it as a two-part but now I'm letting it be what it was - a long conversation with a good friend who also happens to be living people's worst nightmare. 

We talk about what it costs to be calm and articulate while doctors dismiss you for it; the 13 days her diagnosis sat in her chart before anyone told her; getting married in front of a fireplace because the dock wedding got rained out; finishing a PhD you might not live to use; and grieving a future that was never guaranteed to begin with.

This episode has never left me, and I don't think it will leave you either. Do me a favour and share it. Pass it along to someone you thought of while listening. 

If you'd like more from Erin, here's her Substack. 

And if you'd like more from me - my coaching or my writing - you'll find both over on my website, or catch the more personal stuff on my Substack. 

See you next week, on The Other Side x

@the_otherside_pod