This is it, folks! The last and final episode of the last and final season of The Beautifull Project podcast.

And to honor the beautiful end of this beautiful work, we've chosen to talk about death, about the ways in which the end of a thing can give meaning to its life. We talk about our bodies and why it matters so much that we spend the days we have just learning to live in them. We make as much room for the mystery of the ending as we did for the beauty of our beginnings. And we'd love to have you keep us company for this conversation.

We can't have a season about coming back to our bodies without having a little talk about trauma, can we? Absolutely not!

While trauma seems to be a trending topic these days, the truth is that we're only beginning to understand the impact of trauma on our bodies. But while we may not know everything there is to know, we know enough to start taking on our trauma and carving out a path back to ourselves, directly through the experiences we've survived.

Listen in as Annika O'Melia LCSW, LISW offers her clinical wisdom and a bit of her own story as a hopeful invitation to consider how we might find some freedom on the other side of fear.

Interested in EMDR? Check out QC Psychotherapy   to find a provider.

If there's one place where diet culture runs deep, it's definitely in our relationship with food. From counting points to tracking macros, there is no shortage of suggestions out there that will continually remind us that we can't possibly be trusted to know how to nourish ourselves.

But Michelle Russell has a different idea. As a certified Intuitive Eating Registered Dietitian, Michelle knows that food doesn't have to be this way. She knows that it IS possible to learn how to trust ourselves WITH ourselves. She knows that food freedom is well within our reach, and she joins the pod today to talk about how to make it happen.

Find Michelle at www.michellerussellrd.com and follow her on Facebook and Instagram

This episode is a how-to for healing your relationship with moving your body.

Kali Eastin, owner of the Kalioke Movement Lounge, brings a bit of her own story to the mic, but also grounds this whole conversation in solid science about what it means for us to move our bodies. She provides a path back to ourselves, using movement to get there, and ditching diet culture along the way.

If you want to believe movement is meant for you, too, then this is the conversation to get you going.

And if you want more after the episode, follow Kali on Facebook, Instagram, or check out her latest blog here.

Teri and Marylee talk about diet culture and body image from a white and a Black perspective. 

Hosts Sarah Stevens and Teri Voyna discuss changes to the podcast

"If I'd been in a car accident and had a bone sticking out of my leg, would I get to the ER and have them refuse to fix my broken leg because I'm fat? Would they wait until I lost weight to pursue treatment? No. Of course not. This isn't different, but I still can't get what I need."

Teri was one of our favorite storytellers in Season One, and she's back to talk about all things medicine and marginalized bodies by sharing her own story of seeking care while living in a fat body. This is an important conversation about the complexities of being fat in a fatphobic world, and leaves the audience with an opportunity to observe their own bias about bodies. 

Adriane is a survivor of human trafficking and shares her story in this episode. She tells her truth from beginning to end, and is hoping this act of courage will allow her to let go of the past and step into the power of her present life. 

"I thought I lived a life where people saw me, and they don't.

Because I didn't even see myself.

And by "saw me," I mean people saw me as a black woman. I didn't see myself as a black woman. I thought I did. But I didn't."

Delia is a woman, a wife, a mother, and a force of a human being. In this episode, she shares her own reckoning with race, and its impact in her life. As she assesses a "world on fire," she offers the audience a way forward with her invitation to "rise from the ashes." 

She is an ordinary woman sharing extraordinary truth. And she's waiting for you to be her witness.

"I just want to go back. To a time when we don't have fear. When we're not so sheltered from each other, from the external relationships with each other. I just want to go back.

Welcome to the first interview of The Spilling Stories, a special series dedicated to abandoning the idea that we need to hold it all together and showcasing the grit it takes to allow ourselves to spill over.

These are stories of resilience, of ordinary women who are willing to let their grief take up space, so that it can serve their greatness.

In today's episode, we sat down with Katie Thompson, owner and curator of THE Market - A Journey to Joy. Katie's shop is home to 40 small business owners, all of whom she feels a personal sense of responsibility for. Add to that Katie's roles as wife, daughter, and mother, and she finds herself in a position of trying to be a lot of things to a lot of people. We talk about holding it all together, and spilling over a little when we need. 

"It doesn't do me any good to try to struggle to the surface until I've touched the bottom. If you don't let yourself go to the bottom where you can actually find your feet, it's hard to know which way is up.

So, part of it for me is allowing myself the full sink, allowing myself to fall apart."

Welcome to the first interview of The Spilling Stories, a special series dedicated to abandoning the idea that we need to hold it all together and showcasing the grit it takes to allow ourselves to spill over.

These are stories of resilience, of ordinary women who are willing to let their grief take up space, so that it can serve their greatness.

In this episode, Sarah invited her wife Becky to the mic to talk about all of the spilling over that has happened in their home, in their marriage, and with their kids during the early days of the pandemic in the United States. Becky works with this metaphor about slipping into her sadness, but having to go all the way to the bottom so that she push off from there and know which way to swim to find the surface.

It is beautiful. And it’s just the beginning of the stories we will share here in this place.

Stay with us.