Spelade
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Often while riding her Harley Davidson and always driven by her immense love for this planet and the cultures that inhabit it, there is almost no wild and untouched place on this planet to which Betsy Huelskamp has not traveled. Despite having practically no time to train, and facing life-threatening hostility from the men around her, she reached over 27,000 feet on Mount Everest. In this episode, Betsy talks to us about the Death Zone on Everest, the life-changing empowerment of riding a motorbike, the devastating losses of loved ones she’s experienced along the way, and how her faith keeps her tirelessly pushing boundaries. For Betsy, getting older means growing into her freedom, even if it comes with a price.
“People see me as being this wild easy going free spirit. But "free" has a price and you can't be free, truly free if you're trapped in your own body's prison. You can't be free if you're addicted to something that controls you, like drugs. You can't be free if you're in a marriage that is somehow turning into your jail. So for me, I'm always focusing on keeping my little girl free.”
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*Please note that this content contains sensitive information regarding mental health and topics related to suicide. The extraordinary artist, poet, model and mental health activist, Riya Hamid, opens up to us about the very brave and honest work she is doing on Instagram surrounding her own personal struggles with mental health, a subject that is all too taboo and that needs to come to the surface, because we all struggle with mental health in one way or another. She describes what it was like to grow up the eldest daughter of immigrant parents from Bangladesh, turning her back on the Muslim religion as a teen, but reconnecting with her past by wearing saris and learning to cook the traditional dishes of her mentally ill mother as a way to care for the wounded child within. Riya holds nothing back as she reveals the truth about her hospitalizations and the difference between passive suicidal ideation and suicidal intention. She explains that it’s possible to have an apparently fun life on the exterior while still being in excruciating pain on the inside. “There just needs to be a revolution in the way that we talk about mental health. Across the entire world, there's not a place where people openly talk about it and I'm sick of it. People deal with this daily, people lose lives. These conversations are bound to make people uncomfortable because it's the first time we're having them and it's actually a good sign, it's supposed to. To an outsider, I'm a person who's popular on social media and I'm attractive and I dress well and I have friends so what could possibly be wrong? What could I have possibly have been through? Every day I get messages from people who accuse me of faking my mental illness and my Go Fund Me because they see me having a good time and people don't realize that those two things can exist concurrently. I can have a good time and still be a mentally ill person.” *A note to all listeners that if you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, please call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. Thank you.
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We greatly admire New York-based fashion designer, Mara Hoffman. Her designs and principles stand out in a sea of homogeneity and “buy more” culture. The former dancer studied at Parsons School of Design in New York and London’s Central Saint Martins College. She was “discovered” by Sex and the City stylist, Patricia Field, who sold Mara’s samples in her shop. We sat down with Mara in her 6th Avenue studio to talk getting comfortable with change by facing our mortality, not being too attached to the identities we create for ourselves, and how we have to work for our happiness. We discovered why she’s not actually that passionate about the fashion industry because “it can make people feel kind of lousy...it's completely warped our sense of consuming, in that we ‘need’ all this stuff that we don't need.” Ultimately, Mara’s message is to “let it go to let it grow...Imagine holding a seed in a clenched fist...It's really hard to let things go but that's where the growth is; it's on that other side.”
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Coined the ‘Social Justice Astrologer’ and a rock “star” to us, Chani Nicholas’ readings make you feel as if she is speaking to you personally in the deepest, most intuitive, profound, psychological, and empowering way. She talks to us about how her relationship with the planets as early as 8 years old, was the first thing that made her feel seen, having grown up neglected while locked in a “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll party” on the side of a mountain, finding love at 38 just when she thought she would never have “the family,” and choosing life in her darkest times: “I was sitting watching a sunbeam on the forest floor and I went into a kind of meditation and a lot of time passed because the patch of light was one place and by the time I realized what had happened it was at another, but it was this experience of literally feeling the part of me that was separated turn around and see me and literally making a choice...it was an experience of choosing myself and choosing to see what was worth saving in myself.”
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