Embodiment for the Rest of Us – Season 3, Episode 11: Fawn McCool and Lisa Daughters
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Chavonne (she/her) and Jenn (she/her) interviewed Fawn McCool (she/her) and Lisa Daughters (she/her) about their embodiment journeys.
Fawn McCool (she/her pronouns), is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with a private practice based in Portland, Oregon. Her therapeutic approach is warm, nurturing, collaborative, engaged, and nerdy. She loves brain science so there MIGHT be some mention of neural plasticity or blaming of neural pathways along the way. She will shame the patriarchy, never you.
As an LCSW, she has worked in a variety of settings providing skilled trauma-informed services to families, women and children. She offers clinical therapeutic services in Tigard, OR and enjoys working with a wide variety of issues including but not limited to: trauma, depression, anxiety, OCD, ADHD, perinatal/postpartum mood and anxiety disorders, infant loss, and fertility issues.
She received her Masters of Social Work degree at California State University, Los Angeles in 2006. Her professional credentials include certification in Interpersonal Neurobiology through Portland State University and is Ample & Rooted trained.
Additionally, she has had the honor of presenting at several professional conferences focused on Neonatal Intensive Care Unit experiences, neuroscience & birth trauma, and behavioral health counseling in school based health centers.
She is an anti-racist, LGBTQ+ affirming, and HAES provider.
*
Lisa Daughters (she/her) is a HAES-aligned fat-positive, LGBTQIA+ allied, social justice informed Expressive Arts Therapist. She works with fat folx, LGBTQIA+ community, grief/loss, fertility struggles and pregnancy loss, relationship challenges, family dynamics – these are all near and dear to her. She has been serving clients as a professional counselor for 12 years, working with a variety of settings and concerns. She works from a person-centered approach, using humor, mindfulness, and acceptance as tools of healing and transformation. She believes in the need to broaden our view from seeing individual struggles as collective, moving towards solutions that foster interdependence and equity. She approaches counseling as a co-creation, and considers her role to be an insightful companion through the process. She trusts the inherent wholeness of each individual. I have specific training in Expressive Arts Therapy, which utilizes art-making as therapeutic.
Lisa is strongly anti-diet and diet-culture. She is involved in the fat liberation movement. And it’s impossible to talk about body politics without talking about racism, misogyny, and ableism. She is anti-capitalist, and anti-racist. She loves animals and spent years before becoming a therapist working with animals. She believes current social and economic structures have stripped our sense of community and our emotional experiences have been villainized and pathologized to the point that mental health is a growing challenge. She thinks it’s a disservice to focus only on individual health without also addressing community. She does not believe in the paternalistic dynamic that she has seen in the mental health world, and she thinks to do my work well she has to be continually learning.
Content Warning: discussion of privilege, discussion of diet culture, discussion of fatphobia, discussion of racism, discussion of fatphobia in the career space, discussion of mental health, discussion of chronic medical issues
Trigger Warnings:
39:23: Lisa discusses getting bariatric surgery
A few highlights:
15:05: Fawn and Lisa shares their understanding of embodiment and their own embodiment journeys
1:07:56: Fawn and Lisa discuss how the pandemic has affected their embodiment practices
Links from this episode:
All Cats Are On The Autism Spectrum
Persistent Drive for Autonomy (PDA)
Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria
Music: “Bees and Bumblebees (Abeilles et Bourdons), Op. 562” by Eugène Dédé through the Creative Commons License
Please follow us on social media:
Twitter: @embodimentus
Instagram: @embodimentfortherestofus
CAPTIONS
Season 3 Episode 11 is 1 hour, 43 minutes, and 59 seconds (1:43:59) long.
Chavonne: Hello there! I’m Chavonne McClay (she/her).
Jenn: And I’m Jenn Jackson (she/her).
Chavonne: This is Season 3 of Embodiment for the Rest of Us. A podcast series exploring topics and intersections that exist in fat, queer, and disability liberation!
Jenn: In this show, we interview those with lived experience and professionals alike to learn how they are affecting radical change and how we can all make this world a safer and more welcoming place for all humans who are historically and currently marginalized and should be centered, listened to, and supported.
Chavonne: Captions and content warnings are provided in the show notes for each episode, including specific time stamps, so that you can skip triggering content any time that feels supportive to you! This podcast is a representation of our co-host and guest experiences and may not be reflective of yours. These conversations are not medical advice, and are not a substitute for mental health or nutrition support.
Jenn: In addition, the conversations held here are not exhaustive in their scope or depth. These topics, these perspectives are not complete and are always in process. These are just highlights! Just like posts on social media, individual articles, or any other podcast, this is just a snapshot of the full picture.
Chavonne: We are always interested in any feedback on this process if something needs to be addressed. You can email us at Listener@EmbodimentForTheRestOfUs.com.
[1:36]
(C): Welcome to the 11th Episode of Season 3 of the Embodiment for the Rest of Us podcast, and the first of our two-part interview with our dear friends Fawn and Lisa! The raw vulnerability and hilarious, sweet banter is not to be missed.
(J): Fawn McCool (she/her), is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with a private practice based in Portland, Oregon. Her therapeutic approach is warm, nurturing, collaborative, engaged, and nerdy. She loves brain science so there MIGHT be some mention of neural plasticity or blaming of neural pathways along the way. She will shame the patriarchy, never you.
As an LCSW, she has worked in a variety of settings providing skilled trauma-informed services to families, women and children. She offers clinical therapeutic services in Tigard, OR and enjoys working with a wide variety of issues including but not limited to: trauma, depression, anxiety, OCD, ADHD, perinatal/postpartum mood and anxiety disorders, infant loss, and fertility issues.
She received her Masters of Social Work degree at California State University, Los Angeles in 2006. Her professional credentials include certification in Interpersonal Neurobiology through Portland State University and is Ample & Rooted trained.
Additionally, she has had the honor of presenting at several professional conferences focused on Neonatal Intensive Care Unit experiences, neuroscience & birth trauma, and behavioral health counseling in school based health centers.
She is an anti-racist, LGBTQ+ affirming, and HAES provider.
(C): Lisa Daughters (she/her) is a Health At Every Size (HAES)-aligned, fat-positive, LGBTQIA+ allied, social justice informed Expressive Arts Therapist.
Lisa works with fat folx, LGBTQIA+ community, grief/loss, fertility struggles and pregnancy loss, relationship challenges, family dynamics – these are all near and dear to her. Lisa is a great fit for people who’ve been to therapy before (maybe many times) but feel the need to dig deeper.
Lisa has been serving clients as a professional counselor for 12 years, working with a variety of settings and concerns. Lisa works from a person-centered approach, using humor, mindfulness, and acceptance as tools of healing and transformation. She is LGBTQIA+ affirming, HAES-informed, and social justice aligned. Lisa believes in the need to broaden our view from seeing individual struggles as collective, moving towards solutions that foster interdependence and equity. She approaches counseling as a co-creation, and considers her role to be an insightful companion through the process.
Lisa is strongly anti-diet and diet-culture. She is involved in the fat liberation movement. And it’s impossible to talk about body politics without talking about racism, misogyny, and ableism. Lisa is anti-capitalist, and anti-racist. She loves animals and spent years before becoming a therapist working with animals. Lisa believes current social and economic structures have stripped our sense of community and our emotional experiences have been villainized and pathologized to the point that mental health is a growing challenge. She thinks it’s a disservice to focus only on individual health without also addressing community. Lisa doesn’t believe in the paternalistic dynamic that is seen in the mental health world.
(J): Thank you so much for being here with us dear listeners! This season has been so incredible and touching for us. We can’t wait to share the second part with you in a couple weeks!
[5:17]
Jenn:
We are totally freaking out and pumped to have our dear friends, Fawn McCool and Lisa Daughters, she/her and she/her, here, who are joining us from Portland, Oregon for Fawn and Austin, Texas for Lisa. Welcome.
Fawn:
Yay.
Jenn:
We are obsessed and so excited. We’re all here together again in the same space. And you’re both going to love the script and questions, so I can’t wait.
Fawn:
Says the person who wrote it. I love that.
Jenn:
We have an ongoing conversation about this, where Fawn brings it up. So I thought I’d write it in here directly. So how are you doing in this moment, Fawn and Lisa?
Fawn:
Go ahead Lisa, take it away.
Lisa:
I’m doing great. It’s been a relaxed day. I’m ready. I’m pumped.
Fawn:
Okay. I wrote a whole bullet point journal entry about how I’m doing. I’m like, okay-
Lisa:
Do it.
Fawn:
I’m like, “I have to show up with, how am I doing?” Yeah, it’s the end of the year. So mom chaos is at an all time high. We’re recording this when there’s 10 more days left of school. So it’s this management of being excited to be in community of others because that’s when parents show up. There’s a lot of parent in the classroom activities, but also a lot of dysregulation because I’m neuro divergent and if someone sneezes at my schedule, I get all thrown off and disoriented. So yeah, I feel like it’s that Fergie London Bridges song. Every time they say, “Oh, shit.” That’s my… When there’s a schedule change, it’s like, “Oh, shit.” I hear it in my head. Anyway, so everything is unpredictable and fast-paced, but also so much community when I’m been isolated all winter. Yeah, so a lot of trying to be… To say no, but also show up and also be mindful about how do I want to spend my summer? Yeah. So that’s how I’m doing right now.
Jenn:
I love it. I love both.
Fawn:
Bring us a lot. I’ve actually been talking with a lot of my clients about Spring and Neuro divergent folks in spring. Jen, do you feel like spring is a big time for you or does it bring some dysregulation for you or anything?
Jenn:
Oh, yeah. Allergies dysregulate me, the temperature change really dysregulate me. My body capacity is at an all time low in my life this spring, it was hard. It still is. It’s a little better allergies. I don’t know if this is your experience Chavonne, but allergies are finally starting to decrease ever so slightly for me.
Chavonne:
No not for me.
Fawn:
They’re at an all time.
Chavonne:
It’s kicking up for me, so I’m really allergic to the grass. So it’s like this is grass season. That’s my highest one. So I…
Jenn:
That’s the only allergy I don’t have unless I roll around in it and then I’ll break out and hide somewhere. But if I do not roll around in it, I act. This is it, of the whole year. This is the only allergy time I don’t have.
Chavonne:
Oh, this is my worst. Yeah.
Jenn:
We’re going to kick into cactus flowers in, I don’t know, within two months or three months. And that also gets me. We’re going to… Chamisa Cactus have this beautiful, gorgeous, if you drive from New Mexico to where you are, Lisa in Texas, if we drove between them, there’s this huge stretch by Lubbock just before Lubbock on the way from me to you, it’s just endless pink. But just being in the car in that, if I was to do that now I’ve learned that once. I should not do that. I actually can’t breathe. It’s hard to breathe for a while.
Chavonne:
We text each other on a daily basis about how awful chamisa is during that season.
Jenn:
So something that I’m trying to do, my body capacity is really… I can’t now that…
Chavonne:
I love it. I haven’t heard this in years and now it’s in my head. That’s awesome.
Jenn:
My body capacity is so low, but I have maybe a half an hour each morning, so my mom and I… And it helps me the rest of the day in my body. So I try to do it, but I’m trying to get rid of Chamisa, this desert plant that blooms in the fall. I’m trying to get things that bloomed last fall out of my yard to make way for our garden. We have raised beds. We’re trying to put them in the same place, but they’re taproot. I have no idea how many feed deep, but we’ve decided we’re not going any further. We got a chainsaw, but every time I go near this plant, the pollen that’s still there from last October or November or whatever, I actually wear a mask to do this work. I’ve worn a respirator, the kind you’re supposed to use for working with asbestos, trying to…
Fawn:
Yeah, that’s how my husband mows the grass. I mean, he looks like he’s full on in an hazmat suit out there of grass allergies.
Jenn:
So to answer your question, in a really long way, yes, it’s very [inaudible].
Chavonne:
She jennified the answer.
Fawn:
That’s so sad because flowering cactus season sounded so sexy, but…
Jenn:
Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s gorgeous.
Chavonne:
I just cannot breathe. It’s gorgeous.
Jenn:
The wind… if you’re in a car, it’s like the wind blowing, so it just comes in your air conditioning. I can walk around it now because prickly pairs that are in blue now I can walk around it, but if it’s windy, I avoid that area. I won’t go over there so I at least can have some protection.
Fawn:
So yeah, neuro divergence in springtime, it’s a moment. It’s a moment for us. But also one more thing on how I’m doing. My daughter, my eldest ran a 5K with Girls On The Run recently, just like… Was it two weekends ago? That was such an inspiring experience for me as a mama holding a sign watching her. She was sick, so sick and had to… She couldn’t go to the school dance. She couldn’t go to birthday parties. She woke up that morning and I was like, “I really don’t think you should do this.” She’s like, “I’ve been training for 11 weeks. I am doing this.” And her and her daddy held hands the entire 5K, and they walked and they sat down at every bench along the way and they crossed that finish line and she got her first medal and then she had popsicles with her friends that did this. I don’t know if you guys… Are you all familiar with Girls on the Run?
Jenn:
I don’t know.
Fawn:
Oh, it’s this beautiful program at the schools while they do it in parks too, I mean, but it’s essentially they train for a 5K together. It is gender… It’s inclusive. So it’s anyone who identifies as female and they meet twice a week and they have these little mini lessons about emotions and coping and building community and building an inclusive community. And so twice a week she would go after school and spend time in community with girls getting to know each other, just learning coping skills, learning embodiment skills. It truly was so… I am on a high from it, just from all this inclusion and just girls learning about their bodies and how to connect to their bodies and be in connection with others, but also doing this very individual type sport where you can move it your own pace and it’s okay. So anyway, to summarize that, that’s how I’m doing.
Jenn:
I love you. My brain is like, “Yes, yes, yes.”
Fawn:
Exactly. That’s how I’m doing Girls On the Ride.
Jenn:
No, I love how with all of you. That’s a beautiful answer to that. I love it.
Fawn:
Because sometimes how you’re doing is how your kids are doing. As a mom, I find it really hard to separate that.
Jenn:
Not always, but often. Yeah, absolutely.
Fawn:
It’s so hard to separate that.
Chavonne:
Yeah, I say that all the time. I’m like, I’m not… Being a mother is not my only thing, but it is the thing. So often it’s just, okay, here we are. This is what’s important right now. So yeah, absolutely. I’m so glad that you had that experience with her. It’s really special.
Fawn:
Oh, you guys, y’all should check. It’s truly an amazing program.
Jenn:
I do not think I’ve heard of that before. So I’m going to check it out.
Chavonne:
Let’s check out.
Fawn:
I’ll send you a picture to include maybe in my bio or the show notes or whatever of these, of my middle daughter just hugging my older daughter and then I’m embracing in this hug and just watching her big sister who is neuro divergent twice over, who never gets to be the star of the show really. But my middle is always the star, jazz hands always. And watching her look up to her big sister and be like, “I want to do that.” And then they embraced at the end and I was just like, “I love this moment for my oldest. I love that she got to be the star of this show.” It was really cool. Anyway, wonderful.
Lisa:
Okay, enough about me. Sorry.
Jenn:
This is about you, so don’t apologize and thank you sharing.
[15:05]
Chavonne:
It’s about you both, absolutely. As we start this conversation about being present to and in our bodies, I’d love to start with asking a centering question about the themes of our podcast and how they occurred to you. Can you both share with us what embodiment means to you and what your embodiment journey has been like? If you’d like to share that as well.
Fawn:
Should we rock paper, scissors. What do you think, Lisa?
Lisa:
You want me to go?
Fawn:
Oh my God. Okay. I took notes. Is this what I get now? Okay. So I-
Chavonne:
This is what you get for being prepared.
Fawn:
I was telling everyone at the beginning, at the beginning when we were just catching up that I took notes because I’m neuro divergent and everyone that you’ve had Kimber, oh my God, everyone is just like, “You’ve had some brilliant freaking minds on this podcast.” And I’m like, “I need to show up.” So I took a lot of notes and as I was taking notes for this question, I realized I think in bullet points, I don’t think in sentences or full complete thoughts. So you might get a lot of bullet points here. Okay, so what does my embodiment, what does it mean to me? I think I’ve been toying around with so many different things, but I think to me it’s a connection to my inner knowing, inner, and I think for me, embodiment is freedom.
I think for me, it feels like freedom, when I have access to it. That’s when I know, because I think there are so many times in my embodiment journey that I have felt so unfree. And so that is something that I feel like I can really pinpoint as I am in my inner knowing. And I think that it means to me that this reclamation of needs free from input of others, free from capitalism, patriarchy, ableist opinions. Maybe that’s another way of saying having great boundaries, I don’t know. But it’s this reclamation of needs and understanding and acceptance of the impact relationships have on me. I can’t remember which podcast you talked about, RSD Jen, but that’s how I knew I had ADHD was when I read about RSD.
Jenn:
Me too.
Fawn:
Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria. It was like, oh my God, this is me to a T. This is why relationships are terrifying sometimes because there’s always this perceived sense of judgment and it just spirals me. And so embodiment to me is just being able to accept that relationships maybe have that impact on me, but winning that battle with RSD and my executive functioning issues and not hiding from relationships is a really embodied experience, not hiding. And then centering bottom up thinking and listening and creating space for that interpretation. Dan Siegel, I think it’s Dan Siegel talks about top down thinking, bottom up thinking. And my brain is so tired, it wants to just be done, and my body wants to take over so badly. And as someone with executive functioning stuff, it’s like I want to just be like, “Yes, throw it out the window, throw that brain out the window. Let your body do the work.” So that to me is embodiment the bullet pointed definition for me, which I think is going to be very different from someone that’s not neuro divergent with the trauma history. Right?
Jenn:
Before you go, Lisa, I want to… Something that you said. This is my summary of that, of the bullet points. Not hiding, but showing up messy is actually very embodied for you. It’s very embodied for me too. I would rather avoid every cell in my body. It’s deeper for me sometimes than RSD, like PDA, which is now referred to as Persistent Drive for Autonomy, where it’s like…
Fawn:
Wait, what did you just say? Persistent Drive for Autonomy, not pathological demand avoidance?
Jenn:
It’s either, it’s shortened to just demand avoidance, like skipping the pathological or persistent drive for autonomy depending on what country you’re in. What’s that?
Fawn:
I just got this book, see, I’m showing Jenn right now, The Family Experience to PDA, because I started seeing someone to help me with my relationship with my oldest, and she’s like, “Oh, it sounds like you daughter has this, and sorry, the name is so terrible.” And this is like, “Oh, this is what’s going on big time.”
Jenn:
Yeah. So RSD was my first clue, but it was actually a clue that I internalized and embedded in myself from really problematic therapists that I was actually the problem. That’s what a lot of my early therapy centered on. It’s a lot of the stuff. It was not trauma-informed clearly. Right? It was like, “But Jenn, you really are allowed. Right? But Jen, you really are hard to deal with.” That kind of stuff. Like “Jen, you’re not a great listener.” I actually realized recently almost all of my inner critical dialogue is from two therapists in my twenties. They told me these things, but in trauma-informed therapy in the last decade plus, I just realized the other day I’m on my 11th year of trauma-informed therapy without knowing it was that at first. But really truly knowing that for the last seven years, RSD is my brain’s way of trying to protect me.
It’s super normal for neuro divergent me. I need to sit in that zone and get to know it so that I can help other people understand that and be in communication with me even when RSD is going on so I can be in communication with them. And on the deeper body level, the PDA stuff, Persistent Drive for Autonomy, that phrase really ignites something in me versus taking the P out and making it demand avoidance. It’s our inner rebellious teen by another name. It becomes a persistent, lifelong experience is how I kind of view this, that when something is not our idea and we feel so unsafe because it’s not our idea, our body just starts reacting to, “That’s not my idea. That’s not safe.” Every new idea.
And so I think it’s so important to play in that zone. It’s kept me from embodiment. I have been disembodied instead of RSD and PDA for so much of my life, I’m trying to be embodied in those spaces. So just really, that’s messy. I mean, this is an explicit podcast. It’s messy as… It is so messy for me and people in my life. It’s really messy. Two people experiencing PDA in a conversation directed at each other as one of the messiest human dynamics I can think of.
It ends relationships. I had a 20-year relationship end that I now realize it was like a PDA RSD battle back and forth, but it ended that relationship. I will never have a relationship with that person. I already tried to bring up this topic and they told me to fuck off. It’s a permanent state, right? With this other person. Honestly, I don’t miss them, so it’s okay. But anyway, I’ve realized that in the trying to repair how much I didn’t need to do it anyway, that happens sometimes, right? And as it’s like, “Hmm, I’m trying to repair.” And you’re like, “Listen, that is who we are now.” And I’m like, “Okay.”
Fawn:
Well because of this Persistent Drive for Autonomy, it really requires low demand relationships. That’s the first thing. And it’s like for… I don’t know if I have this, but my daughter certainly does, and I can see why. Being autistic, having ADHD, having cognitive delays, having speech delays her whole life, people have been telling her how to show up, when to show up, how to do this, what’s right, what’s wrong. And so at a certain point, it’s just like, “Fuck you. Let me do it myself. I am smart.” It’s almost like a backlash to other people telling you what it’s like capitalism and patriarchy and ableism and all these things that people have been showing up and telling you, you should be for all these years.
And she’s like, “Step back. I will tell you what I should be.” And unfortunately, sweet girl, she doesn’t possess the safety skills yet to do her own thing. But I get it. Before she was showing me with biting when she was three, she was showing us with biting when someone would grab her hand and walk her into the bathroom when she didn’t want to go. And now she says, “It’s none of your business.” Or calls me an asshole, which fine. We swear a lot at home. Asshole is term of endearment, sort of. But I get it. I get where it comes from. I get why it’s…
Chavonne:
Seems very self-protective.
Fawn:
Yeah. And its just like it’s a boundary in a way. It’s like, “I am smart. I am worthy of autonomy.” Which is what our values as social workers is, right? That everyone is. And so yeah, it’s almost a really beautiful thing. It makes me sad though. It makes me sad that this is maybe that it can impact relationships and because I do think it stems from a place of just not being valued, not feeling like you are valued, like you said in therapy, Jenn. Anyway-
Jenn:
Children are people too. My first decade of therapy was from 13 to 23. They did not treat me like a child as a person too. That’s a major loss that I am mourning as a 40-year-old adult. I wasn’t wrong at that time. I was just not seen as an entire person.
Fawn:
Yeah.
Jenn:
Yeah.
Fawn:
We don’t value our children.
Jenn:
They’re people too.
Fawn:
The hiding thing, when you think about it, and we segregate neuro divergence, right? I have had to fight for inclusion for my daughter. We moved, when she entered kindergarten, we moved a whole nother… To a different town because it had an inclusive school district because for IEP we went to for the town we were in, told us, “No, she belongs in an isolated autism only class.” They call it communication. Shout out Beaverton School District, you suck. So we moved to an inclusive school district because the idea of hiring lawyers and fighting for inclusion, which I fully believed in, was out of reach, out of not going to be good for me mentally. And so she’s in the classroom 80% of the time. They were going to exclude her into an autism classroom that they called communication a hundred percent of the time. And so when we think about hiding the mess, it’s like, because fucking duh.
We were told from five years old on, actually earlier than that, I had preschools deny her entrance because she had autism. They didn’t even want to interview her. And they can’t because preschools are private and they’re not regulated in that way. They cannot include anybody. So I had to go back to school at Portland State University to get her into their preschool. They would accept her. They were inclusive while I worked full-time and was a mom, I had to go back and get a fricking graduate, take graduate classes to get her in there. Because from such a young age, she has been told to hide her mess. So I know why we hide. It’s so obvious. We have been trained to hide our whole lives. So to reclaim that as a part of my embodiment and to allow her to show up in this persistent driver autonomy way and accept it. Is like… That feels like stepping into power for me.
Lisa:
Ooh. I feel that in my bones.
Fawn:
I’m so sorry, Lisa. I really want to hear from you because you’re the most brilliant mind. And I’m going to mute now.
Jenn:
You can take up space here, Fawn, and thank you for doing so. Absolutely.
Fawn:
Thank you and I took up so much space, and now I can’t wait for Lisa to do it.
Lisa:
Just the right amount. Thank you. I’m going to do the art therapy thing and give you an image. To answer your question, I want to do an interpretive dance.
Jenn:
Oh, yes. Oh, we haven’t had that. Oh, I’m chills. I’m so excited. Okay, I’ll start.
Lisa:
No, I’m just kidding. It’s not interpretive dance, picture it Sicily. No, the thing that popped into my head when I read this question was this fat babe pool party that I went to last year. And it wasn’t the first one that I’ve ever been to. I had been to a lot of fat positive events in my early twenties in California, but there haven’t been a lot of them available to me since then. And there’s this moment where I’m standing there next to the pool, I’m in line for the bathroom, and I’m just in my little bikini that it looks like a pink marshmallow sailor. It’s just the cutest thing. But I’m there just in my little bikini, waiting in line for the bathroom. I’m surrounded by other fat people, various body shapes and sizes and differences in their bodies. And I remember just standing there and the breeze is blowing and feeling more me and more free than I had in probably decades. And I remembered that feeling from my early twenties being at fat positive events.
And it’s almost like I don’t even recognize sometimes how there are these layers of barriers in front of me between me and the world. And until I’m in a moment where I am in my pink marshmallow, sailor bikini, surrounded by other safe people and fat bodies where I’m not an anomaly, I don’t stand out, just another fat person. The falling away of these layers of barrier between me and the world that I don’t even necessarily recognize until they are…
Lisa:
… world that I don’t even necessarily recognize until they are gone. And that’s the image that came to me when I read that question. And I guess I would say some elements of what Fawn said really rang true, and that there’s a certain amount of hiding and a certain amount of, I would say freedom is part of that definition and the connection to myself and the ability to show up messy. I think I have the opposite neurodivergence of y’all because mine brings me very inward and brings me very still. As I lean into kindness for myself, it’s a lot less doing. There’s just a lot less, it’s much less performing and much less rushing in to fill the space and appeasing and trying to placate. It’s just being still for me. So, I recognize embodiment as a safety, as a connection between my inner world and my outer world. And when the more of those layers that are between me and the world have dropped.
Chavonne:
Both of your answers are perfect. Absolutely perfect. And I feel really emotional and really grateful to be able to have heard both of them. And I think for both of them, it’s about not hiding because we’ve been told since birth, no matter what our circumstances in some way that we’re wrong and that we deserve to hide and that we’re supposed to hide. And for me, embodiment is not being willing to do that anymore. So, that’s really powerful.
Jenn:
All I’m going to say is I’m positively bawling. It’s like a slow, steady stream, but… fucking love you two. And also, how dare you make me cry so hard this early on.
Fawn:
Lisa, you lived the Shrill life because seriously, you guys, when you saw that shrill, I mean you lived it, but when I saw that scene, I remember being changed. Feeling changed by looking at that pool party, by watching this Addie Bryant be sexual in sexy underwear on screen. It was fucking changing. You got to experience that, I can’t even imagine what that would be like IRL and not just watching it on screen.
Chavonne:
Yeah, totally.
Lisa:
Yeah. I actually did a lot of that in my early twenties, and it was messy. I mean, it was a messy time. I was 20 and ridiculous. But there were events where fat women, fat people got to show up in sexy clothes and lingerie and bathing suits and just be in social situations that are so often prohibitive for us that we are told from the moment we hit puberty that are not for us.
So, being able to have these social experiences where all of those barriers are gone and you just have the regular normal difficulties of socialization and not the added, like “This isn’t for you,” parts. There’s something about that that is majestic. It’s magic. And even though there’s messiness, and it was silly and ridiculous at times, just in, as you gather, a group of people can be, the things that a lot of people got from watching Shrill were things that I got to live and experience. And I can’t even tell you how it feels. I remember going to this, what they call a bash in my twenties, early twenties, and it was almost like this, I don’t know, what would you call a group of fat people? A murder of fat people showed up to this hotel.
Fawn:
Oh, murder like crows. I love it.
Lisa:
What’s the other one? Like a constitution of fat people.
Fawn:
No, can we keep it murder because I’m so into that.
Jenn:
Oh my God, the murder muffins. I’m sorry.
Lisa:
… descend upon this hotel, and so then the entire population of this hotel, of occupants of this hotel shifts from whatever the average amount of fat people exist in the world, whatever the regular ratio is, it wildly shifted into then just fat people are the norm and the thins are not. And it’s such a radical experience. It was so interesting to walk around and see thin people, but see them as not the primary group in this space. And walk around and be like, well, you’re the odd one here.
And so I can freely walk up and down these halls with my swimsuit on and not worry because so is everyone else. That’s such a powerful experience. And I think that’s a little bit of what people… A glimpse of what people saw in that pool party in Shrill. And even just the whole season or the whole show of seeing just fat people doing things. It’s so powerful. But I think the moment of just realizing how many fears are not there, how many hesitations are dropped, or how different it feels to just stand there and be and not be mentally apologizing or trying to will myself to be smaller or less visible or quieter or whatever. But just being there, relaxed is… It’s pretty amazing.
Chavonne:
Magical, majestic is exactly the word that comes to mind.
Jenn:
Yeah, magical, majestic, mess of murder muffins.
Fawn:
I love that you brought back muffins. I feel like no one’s going to know what we’re talking about.
Jenn:
It’s a private joke between us.
Fawn:
But I also feel like the name of this podcast should be the Murder Muffins. For sure.
Lisa, as you were talking, I was thinking about the next question on the script. Well, I feel like you asked it Chavonne, like this journey, right?
Jenn:
Oh, yeah.
Fawn:
Right. And what is your embodiment journey? It’s interesting to hear you talk about your twenties really being in your body and connecting to other fat folks showing up in their sexy… Feeling their bodies. For me, my twenties were about diet culture, and I wonder, I was a little curious about how my life would’ve been different and fit.
For me, it became diet culture and athleticism. And the athleticism was a gift. That was a gift that was a piece of my body that I never knew I could participate in because I didn’t have permission as a fat kid to be athletic. And so apparently it took diet culture to give me permission, and now I feel that permission as a fat woman. But yeah, it’s just like I wonder how many of us, their twenties got to be that experience and then how many of us, our twenties was still chasing diet culture and maybe stupid boys and whatever else.
Jenn:
Or both.
Chavonne:
And girls and them’s.
Fawn:
And girls, and them’s.
Chavonne:
Chasing stupids, just chasing stupid people.
Jenn:
Yeah.
Lisa:
And it’s marked for me because when I turned 25, I moved out of California and the culture shift was really stark because that did not exist outside of where I was from.
Fawn:
So Cal, No Cal? Middle Cal.
Lisa:
Southern California,
Fawn:
Okay, okay.
Lisa:
Southern California. So then when I moved to Arizona, it just didn’t exist. It just didn’t exist. And the funny thing was then I fell right back into… I had come up in from 19 to maybe 25, I really had a fat positive therapist at the time. I was immersed in size acceptance and body positivity at the time, and then I moved away and there was none of it. And I had this kind of revival of diet culture in my life, which is when I ended up doing more weight cycling and actually did bariatric surgery when I was 28. And it was through the torture and failure of those things that I returned back to that eventually. Just out of despair, right? Out of being broken by all of it.
Chavonne:
I’m sorry that happened.
Fawn:
Like a divorce.
Chavonne:
Yeah.
Fawn:
Like leaving a toxic relationship and returning to the love of your life from high school… Who also needed growing to do, but they’re good now.
Lisa:
Yeah, it was, I think more powerful the second time… I mean, it was the folly of youth when you’re 22 feeling like you can take over the world because I mean you don’t know any different. And then finding intersections of trying to find community and build community in the ways that fatness prohibits that or complicates that. Driving this desire to change the body or to shrink, to be able to access care and support and love, that then I think is behind a lot of people’s attempt to win at diet culture. And then finding the despair of that’s not, it’s not actually… That’s all… It’s a scam. Then you’re grieving that access point to those things.
Chavonne:
Yeah. That’s something that Jenn and I have talked about a bit. Well, I’ve been bringing it up. I feel like every fucking month for the last eight months is how there’s this grief cycle of feeling like I’ve “figured it out” and then I didn’t, and then I’m back in this cycle of feeling the grief of being in this body, of feeling the grief of… And I love my body, but the grief of losing that anticipation of when I look like this, when this happens, et cetera. And no matter how much work I’ve done on this throughout my lifetime, it feels like it’s a constant recommitting to this belief that I am enough and not inherently wrong.
Fawn:
And the embodiment of that, right?
Chavonne:
Yeah.
Jenn:
This is the most notes I’ve ever taken. I’m on page four, but I don’t write notes like this, but I’m not surprised that with the four of us together, I’m taking notes like this. I always take a lot of notes, but I’m not… I’m dreaming at the same time as I’m listening, at the same time as I am responding, at the same time as I’m just sharing the space with you all. It’s like a very expanded experience within me right now, a really embodied experience.
So, I’ve been dreaming, I was like, what if it’s not weight cycling? What about embodiment cycling? Or what if we remove the cycle itself? What if it’s embodiment, leveling up? What if it’s the deepening of embodying? What if it’s reclaiming? What if it’s claiming for the first time is actually something I’m sitting with and feeling a lot of feelings about right now?
And what if it’s just communing as embodied people and just seeing what that’s like. That’s actually what I’m feeling here right now. Like what’s it like? And this was my experience when we met in training and became text besties. Right? Our little muffin friends. We are muffin crew or I’m trying to remember all the things and confused that, but squad, we’ve been a squad too.
Just being embodied together and being really transparent about how that’s hard makes me have this desire to embody deeper. And I’m just sort of recognizing that in this moment, that’s what I think this dreaming is, where I’m like, Ooh. That language of don’t weight cycle, it’s harmful. A lot of that does not sit well in my body. And I’m like, okay, well, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Then that space, having it pointed out to us, that it’s diet culture and here’s the isms and the phobias and everything that’s in… The misas that are in there.
Chavonne:
Oh, no, sorry.
Jenn:
I never know. Fatmisa is the thing I was trying to truncate.
Chavonne:
I can never say it. Yeah, yeah.
Jenn:
I can’t… When I wrote the word reclaiming, I was like, no, it’s not reclaiming. I’m claiming something for the first time in this space with you all. And I’m just, it’s a new feeling, in therapy right now, and I’m like, oh my gosh, did I meet my needs that day? And my therapist being like, “Uh yes.”
And I’m like, well, how do you know that because I clearly do not have an experience of that in my body. I don’t even trust that they said that to me. It’s been wild to realize I don’t meet my own needs because I don’t see them because I’m not embodied. I’m not finding them. I’m not able to listen even when I am trying to listen.
So, I’m just like, it’s not a ‘re’. I love the re-words, but I’m like, wait, what if it’s not the re-words at all? Reclaim, restore, revisit. What if it’s not those? What if it’s just the first time? I’m just exploring that in my dreaming with you all as I’m sitting here. It’s very nourishing. Just as that my response isn’t to be like, that was really hard and that’s where it stays. But to be like, I wonder what dreaming about this would be like. So thank you for the momentum. That’s my experience right now with you all. There’s some sort of beautiful momentum that’s going to make me cry again, but it’s just lovely.
Fawn:
See, I think that’s how I feel about you all is it feels safe to be… I think the relationship between you two, Jenn and Chavonne has always been goals for me because I just feel like the way you two give each other permission to just be who you are has always been so beautiful. I mean, the way you two ping pong off each other and give each other just so much love and support is just, it makes me feel safe to be around you guys. And it’s been a real gift for me. But Chavonne, you said something about going back and forth between accepting your body or hating your body, whatever, and it’s like, well, how could we not? When every time you take a trip, you have to worry about a seatbelt or…
Chavonne:
Correct.
Fawn:
… fitting. Or the way people are going to look at you when you take a space or when you go shopping and you can’t because there’s no size inclusive stores or finding a motherfucking sports bra that will fit small titties with the wide band. Like god damn not all of us have big old boobies people.
Chavonne:
That’s so true.
Fawn:
Make us small titty fat people bras.
Chavonne:
Yes.
Fawn:
So that I don’t have to order online. So it’s… Capitalism in my opinion, it’s like I feel kicked down, and so I can love my body all I want, but if I can’t address it, hoist them up.
Chavonne:
Right.
Fawn:
Like, travel in peace without worrying about getting charged extra because I weigh more, because that was a thing for a second. God damn, it just feels like there’s no… No one wants us to, it’s obviously so fucking dangerous for us to love our bodies.
Chavonne:
Right, I can’t love myself into an airplane seat.
Fawn:
I can’t.
Chavonne:
No matter what I’m… It’s going to be uncomfortable. I can’t love myself that. That’s not going to happen. I can’t love myself into all kinds of things. You’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. Yeah. Society is telling you on a daily basis, your body is wrong. Your body… There’s something inherently wrong with you and you don’t have enough whatever for it not to look that way, which is not true. It’s just not true.
Fawn:
Totally. So, of course we’re going to keep cycling that way because it’s like… And I also think the community, I have a seatbelt extender and I had this dream about it becoming the traveling sisterhood pants thing where it just goes from fat woman to fat woman, and we just like… And it’s just like the thing that brings us traveling fat women together. But it’s so hard to build even community, and so we are so isolated in it thinking we’re the only one with that seatbelt expander.
Chavonne:
Yeah.
Fawn:
And it’s just, it’s, yeah, all those things, I think is the reason for the cycling, not you. You’re doing an amazing job.
Lisa:
I kind of like to think of it as the interaction itself. We’re always going to be having to restore… I don’t know if that re-word is a problem, Jenn, but…
Jenn:
It’s not a problem.
Lisa:
We’re going to be constantly restoring what the world is eroding.
Chavonne:
Yeah.
Lisa:
So you’re almost always going to have to have an arsenal of people, resources, safe places that you land to remind you of that energy, of that space and that feeling, because the world will tell you a thousand times a day in a million, billion ways that you should be smaller and that you’re not okay and that you don’t fit. And that includes intersections with disability…
Chavonne:
Yes, yes.
Lisa:
And the current state of inaccessibility of the world for people with disabilities…
Chavonne:
Absolutely.
Lisa:
… or who are immunocompromised in the ways that they’re excluded from the world at this moment by the failure to manage Covid or for people to collectively care for each other through that. So you add those intersections together and people just feel, endlessly, like I’m not fitting and not welcome and not comfortable in the world. And there is the need to continually refresh and reestablish the connection with everything that you’ve created. Any kind of self-love that you’ve created, any kind of belief in your own worthiness, you are sort of over and over again re-advancing that against the incoming forces of the world.
Chavonne:
Absolutely. It makes me think, so I say this often, but I grew up in the recovery world as a therapist, so I worked in rehabs, I did IOP, et cetera, et cetera, and I told my therapist this two weeks ago how it feels like when you think of relapse prevention, which is a whole thing, or harm reduction, and at least the descent into diet culture doesn’t last as long for me. I have a faster… Sorry, Jenn re-uptake… But I’m like…
Jenn:
No, I like the ‘re’. In the cycles, re-words are so important.
Chavonne:
Yeah.
Jenn:
Those completely resonate. No, please, please.
Chavonne:
Before I get back into it and I lay there, I live there for a long time now, it’s like, oh wait, this is bullshit. This is stupid. It doesn’t last as long. So, at least that… When you talked about… Jenn, when you talked about not ‘re’, but you want to claim it, and you said maybe it’s a leveling up. Maybe it’s just this long-term claim.
It’s claiming more and more and more and more rather than having to reclaim it. Just claim, claim, claim, claim, claim. So that’s kind of sitting with me and what both you have said, Lisa and Fawn of like this… Of course, the world’s telling you that you have to do this, but hopefully those kind of buying into it or feeling smacked down into the earth by it doesn’t last as long, I hope.
Jenn:
Oh, fuck yes. Okay. Chavonne, Fawn, Lisa, yes. And you know what word you’re all making me think. I just did it in alphabetical order. I never know how to say people’s names. That’s why I always do it alphabetically. Okay. You were all making me think about the word rebound. That the rebound period, how quickly we do it…
Chavonne:
Yes.
Jenn:
How empowered we feel while doing it, how connected we feel to ourselves and to the process of what we’re actually interested in, right? Our intentions and actions and everything that’s in the direction in front of us that we choose, that I just was like, wow. And now I’m really connecting with this word rebound, which I’ve never really connected with before. Not in any of its connotations. I’m like, okay, but everything’s not necessarily a rebound just because it looks like a cycle or a habit to someone else. It’s a very judgmental word in some context, but I’m just sitting with the rebound gets to be our choice. How quickly? How deeply, right?
Sometimes I’m like, I’m just going to go back to doing the intuitive things and I’m not going to think about what just happened because I can’t do that right now. And sometimes it’s like, I need to dig into this. I need to journal about it, right? I need to get into my anxious protective spaces and see what I have to say about this. Let me actually explore them. It’s a really dynamic word to me right now. Maybe that’s even another word. It’s like the dynamics are up to us. We have autonomous choice. We can use our voice, our agency, to come back to ourselves faster and more clearly, but not having to even do that permanently. What if the last three months have sucked? You don’t have to rebound fast, do your thing that you need to do right now.
So, I’m just sitting in, it’s like… I don’t know, I always say delicious. I’m such a fucking dietician, but it’s so deliciously self to be honest and transparent with what we need in those times so that the rebound can be ours. I actually want to reclaim, rebound. So I’m back in my re-words. I’m just all the way back there.
No mood lasts very long for me, right? Hello, very much inattentive, ADHD, I can’t even pay attention to a single mood for very long, but it’s like there’s a thing I’ve learned to embrace that used to really get under my skin, but it’s like, so what if I bounce around? I like being dynamic. Get over it self and other people. I love it. So anyway, that’s what I’m sitting with. It’s fucking powerful as it always is.
Fawn:
I think I’m the opposite of you right now, Jenn. As I was looking through my journey, my bullet pointed decades. I broke it down by decades. My embodiment…
Chavonne:
Love this.
Fawn:
… by decades. And actually I think where a lot of us get stuck is in the ‘re’ because it almost is because it’s not allowing yourself to grieve and start afresh. The divorce isn’t happening. It’s just like a “Let’s make it work. We’re in couples counseling mode.” You know what I mean?
Chavonne:
Yes.
Fawn:
And I think that, that happens so much between… Especially for birthing folks, when we have a baby, because there’s so much loss. There’s so much loss of autonomy, of freedom, of a sense of self, of who you are, of a complete identity. And your body as you once knew it, is fully different. And so you have all these birthing people chasing to reclaim something that is never going to be again. Without maybe some intervention that might not… I don’t know, whatever. So, but what I mean, maybe some surgical lifts and tucks, and blah, blah. So, it almost didn’t…
Fawn:
So it almost, in a way, there’s power in starting fresh too. Like I was thinking is you were talking earlier about the I’m letting go of re or it’s just a claim and I’m like, God, that would’ve been so freeing in my thirties and maybe even my forties, to just never feel like to just say goodbye. That was nice. It was nice to know you. What’s this look like? And start new. I think there’s power in that.
Jenn:
Ooh, the death of a version of us.
Fawn:
Or maybe just the laying to rest. Why is it got to be death?
Jenn:
Because I always go to death.
Lisa:
Because we already decided on-
Chavonne:
Murder.
Lisa:
We decided on murder.
Fawn:
Murder.
Jenn:
One of the features of my PDA is that I will kill anyone at any time, anywhere anyhow, like they’re dead to me forever. It’s one of the features. So I’ve turned it into a joke for myself, right? Where it’s like-
Fawn:
It’s my feature too.
Jenn:
It’s a hardwired feature.
Chavonne:
I didn’t know that was a neuro divergence thing. I thought it was just a Pisces thing for me. I’m like, I don’t even remember you exist.
Jenn:
Well, every human on earth can experience RSD and PDA. I think that’s something to normalize. We pretend that no one does it, but every human on earth has that capacity depending on how dysregulated we get for whatever reason. But for it to be persistent, you can go to bed thinking about it. I wake up anxiously at 2:00 AM with RSD thoughts. I wake up in the morning and then my body is shut off. To me, it’s actually a major part of my capacity and capability leaving my body because I’m facing it in a trauma-informed way. But sometimes I wake up and for four days straight, I’m in a PDA space. I envisioned punching my own dog. I’m never going to punch broccoli. Broccoli, you can’t even listen to this. But I would never punch you, but I’m like, get off my leg. Everything needs to be my choice from the moment I wake up. And so for a split second, even my own sweet, precious, like goofy dog is like dead to me.
Chavonne:
He’s such a sweet goober dog.
Jenn:
But it’s a very real battle I want to acknowledge. So it’s a joke for me. So I said it really casually, but no, I kill things. It’s what I do with my PDA.
Fawn:
I get it.
Jenn:
Yeah, we do. But I want to normalize that language because it’s the only thing that makes me wake up. So this morning, broccoli was laying on my legs and I woke up and I wanted to punch my dog right first night. And then I was like, oh, silly boy scoot. Right? It’s like I just got engaged with just getting him off my legs, which he absolutely did not. It went absolutely nowhere. Nowhere. I had no progress, but it was fine because I was like, I’m just going to pretend like I can do this right now. And it just made everything-
Fawn:
The definition of parenting.
Chavonne:
It really, I was just thinking. I was like, I feel like I have a persistent drive for autonomy as a mother, because I want you to be less independent. I want you to be more independent. I just need something different. I just need something different. Yeah. Starting by getting the off my legs. Yeah, exactly. Less than dependent. When he’s starting to go to daycare, will you please let me put your goddamn pants on? But let me do that.
Jenn:
I actually got out of bed and I was lifting the edge of the comforter. You’ll roll over nothing. He did everything in his power to stay in that exact place and they look at me like, Ooh, is this some sort of game? And I’m like, you better get off my legs. Right?
Chavonne:
So he’s a toddler.
Jenn:
Oh, he is. There’s a beautiful book for kids. All dogs have a ADHD. All cats have autism. Great, great great books, amazing books.
Fawn:
I haven’t heard of these books. Is this real?
Jenn:
It’s real. The analogies are incredible and they teach me a lot. I need to learn things like that. Teach it to me. I’m a three to five year old, so I actually read this kind of book. It’s part of my therapy, like self therapy, my own, like I’m going to read kids’ books about these topics. Like bodies are cool. I actually read that book regularly.
Chavonne:
Love that book.
Jenn:
It teaches me a lot of shit.
Chavonne:
I read it all the time to my kids, yeah.
Jenn:
But all kids have autism. Sorry, all cats have autism is like, hmm, will I be a self-diagnosed that this book is about me and then I want access to my life versus I’m going to get diagnosed and now I might not be able to have a surgery decision made by me in the future. Other ableism, patriarchal things, but all dogs have ADHD. So also an ADHD brain is like a toddler brain that has stained a toddler brain in certain function and therefore our bodies as well. Even our response to safety and security or lack thereof is very toddlers. Really?
Lisa:
You think so, for ADHD?
Jenn:
Oh yeah.
Lisa:
How is a toddler as? Because I feel like I will cut a bitch if I sense any danger.
Jenn:
So will a toddler Fawn. So will a toddler.
Lisa:
Do you think your toddler would not? My toddler would.
Chavonne:
My kids would leave me in a ditch today.
Fawn:
You’re right.
Jenn:
Right? They’re like, make me mac and cheese with hot dogs on the side and you make it and they’re like, how dare you.
Lisa:
Or I will fuck you up. Yeah.
Chavonne:
How fucking dare you. I have never liked mac and cheese. How fucking dare you?
Jenn:
That was 10 minutes ago me. How could you not recognize how different I am? That is so my brain.
Chavonne:
I guess I ate three pots of it yesterday but how dare you.
Fawn:
Is this why they’re so triggering?
Jenn:
So that book, all dogs have ADHD actually made me realize that my own nibblings are very triggering for me at times. I’m on a FaceTime or something with them and I’m totally zoning out because I’m like, why are you inside my brain and why won’t you stop saying it to me? I’m like, I can’t be so visible in this conversation and they’re just telling me a story. My oldest nibbling right now is like, don’t forget every time about everything, like anything. Don’t forget.
Lisa:
You don’t got to call me out like that, bro.
Lisa:
My daughter’s favorite thing right now is I’ll never talk to you again. Never talk to me again she said.
Fawn:
Oh man, she’s icing you out.
Ice queen.
Lisa:
She’s a Sagittarius.
Chavonne:
Okay, okay. My Aquarius is if he doesn’t get his way, he’s like, then I won’t be happy. I’m like.
Fawn:
Oh, he knows that that cuts you to your core Chavonne. That fixing you as a mom, that makes me like oh my god, that made my heart explode.
Chavonne:
But then I’m like, but you don’t have to be happy. Then I have to go back and be like, okay, let’s talk about joy. Let’s talk about happiness. It’s a whole fucking thing.
Fawn:
Oh my God, he know that that’s going to mess with you. Oh, I love that so much.
Jenn:
So my PDA side will also, it’s not just pushing buttons, right? I will stab you in the front, in the side, in the back, on the side of your face.
Like the thoughts that occur to me when I’m like, I’m feeling really now. I’m like, I’m feeling really unsafe and I’m feeling really insecure because all I want to do is drown my partner.
That’s all I want to do. Not really. I’m not literally going to do it. I also think it’s important to acknowledge that these thoughts are super normal. But anyway, just being like, I’m so angry. So with those feelings, so I’ve imagined I’ve created a body image about something really dramatic. It’s normal. But anyway, in those moments I’m like, I need to go lay down by myself in my bed with the fan on in the room and the blinds down and I just need to give myself a fricking toddler minute. I actually refer to them as toddler minutes. I just need, actually, when I wake up like that, in that p d a space, before I knew that term, I used to say, I am not ready for human consumption. I would tell everyone not ready for human consumption. I forgot what the letters are now, but I used to text it.
You text, I’m like, here’s the acronym. Right? Hello. I know we have this scheduled today, but I have woken up and that’s the space that I’m in. I like to acknowledge it. My body is clearly going through something. So I feel so similar to a toddler to name this in an embodiment way where it’s like I didn’t have a choice about that. I feel that that must be a toddler experience. I don’t remember. Who knows? But it’s what I imagine the experience is where I wake up and it’s like, today, everyone will be dead to me by the end of the day if they are not yet already dead to me and tomorrow it’ll just be like, Hey, everything’s normal. But that’s what the experience is like.
Fawn:
Okay, so how do you manage that and see patients that are going to push your every button? Like how do you go from toddlerhood to like professional, Jenn?
Lisa:
Let me go back and think about that experience.
Lisa:
Professional. I’m answering for me, as Jenn says it.
Chavonne:
Do it, do it.
Lisa:
Professional Lisa is a different person. We don’t, I don’t know, It’s like-
Chavonne:
Love it.
Lisa:
I love her. She’s amazing. We’re not the same person.
Chavonne:
Totally get that.
Jenn:
Well yeah, clinician-
Lisa:
Capacity that I do not have.
Jenn:
Yeah, clinician me is a different version of me. And you know what I’ve started to do, and I acknowledge this with people that I’ve had to do this with in the past and will have to do again in the future is I cannot do this today. I normalize that. It may sound weird for a dietician to say that, but I do stuff. Go to a social work training for a year and meet you all and now we’re all best. We’re having this podcast where it’s like I want to normalize that we get to be people including myself, and there could be disability considerations in the room, not just for myself.
I imagine I need to check in with myself and think about this at a future time when I’m having this experience, but I think I could be really triggering for someone how loud I am. Like PDA me is pretty darn forceful. I don’t have a lot of nuance to me. So showing up for that work, I might have a really extended period of time of not seeing clients. I have done it before. I will do it again where it’s like I need to have space. So let’s talk about a key example that Chavonne and I have acknowledged recently. I didn’t do anything from Thanksgiving of last year through New Year’s. I didn’t do anything. It was really important. It feels different in my body right now to even answer this question. The embodiment stays with me from this time that it’s okay to say I can’t today.
I think I would write in the cancellation notes like Jen is ill. I would probably just write that because I’m not going to write it in my own HR. Like this is what’s happening. But like there is, I don’t know. I think it’s important to acknowledge it is part of maybe my inner child healing, my rebellious teen, maybe all of Ericson’s psychosocial stages of me, which we can definitely experience before 65. I think that it’s a chance to be embodied for me to be peace out, not today or peace out. Not this week or peace out, not this month. And it’s even hard to say because there’s a particular perception of showing up anyway and not being a human being and eating disorder work and really hard disordered period, whatever work, it’s hard, but I think it’s important. I have been doing this for a decade and I’ve never given myself this time before, just forcing myself anyway, and I really like clinician me.
Is it me? Yeah, I’m mostly my human self in there, but there’s another element. I listen clearly. My brain is different in that space. I can access myself, and this is before being medicated for ADHD. I could access myself differently in that space. I used to have to nap afterwards. It was exhausting. I don’t go beyond my limits anymore. That’s different. But it’s That’s a really interesting question. I’m a different person. I would like parts work or something like that. That right. I am a different part. Kind of like when Lisa was saying, I was like, oh yeah, it’s a different part of me. It is a bit of a performance, but it’s not a mask. It’s not a high mask. It’s not any other kind of mask. It doesn’t change who I am, but it is like a highlight reel of me that feels really, so it is a mask. Okay, hold on. It is a mask, but it’s not a high mask. It’s not exhausting me. It’s not my identity as separate from who I actually am. It’s just like a highlight reel of that, right? I want to jump in and be like, Hey, let’s normalize just checking in about our day and do that the whole time. I would do that over and over again, but I don’t do that. I am like, how are you? Let’s focus on you. It’s a different kind of part. Wow.
Lisa:
Yeah.
[1:07:56]
Jenn:
Okay, I’m obsessed with this conversation so far. I want to keep going. As human beings, how has this ongoing pandemic affected your embodiment practices in ways that challenge your processes, especially in things we’ve already mentioned so far, right? All of its inherent ableism, virtue, signaling, and unquote back to normal energy that is of the current and ongoing moment.
Lisa:
I’ll go first this time. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it so much. I’m definitely an at-risk person. Also. I have a four-year-old and I live in Texas, which means nobody. The pandemic ended a long time ago according to everybody here, and when you were talking about springtime, what I was thinking was here, the summer is so oppressive that there’s just no outside time really that feels comfortable, at least for me and a fat body and the ways that the humidity affects my breathing outside stuff is really hard to access during the summer for me and indoor stuff is not safe. So it’s incredibly isolating to have the intersections of single parent disability fatness the climate and the ongoing persistent adamant we will not take precautions. There are no safe spaces. So as you were talking about coming to life in spring, I was thinking about how I feel like there’s a grieving that happens. I’m entering into the season of being very excluded and very uncomfortable.
The little neighborhood pool is kind of our only safe space, but it definitely becomes very indoors and very disconnected from people, which then I find to be a little bit disembodied because when I’m sort of reverse seasonal effective in a way because reverse seasons I should say, because it is very isolating. So I was talking about going to the movies with my daughter and trying to get her used to going, but really having to be careful about what times we’re picking and what movies we’re picking. Because the one time we went to the movies and it was full, I was full of anxiety the entire time and the only two people in the theater masking in a mostly full theater, and so there’s a lot of anxiety, which is inherently embodying for me. I felt like I needed to go back and watch the movie again because I was mostly focused on are we safe? Are we safe? Are we safe? And you add that to the, are we safe? Are we safe? In terms of size and are we safe? Are we safe? Because I have a child to watch for. It’s extremely isolating and demoralizing. It sort of feels like I’m the only one on the planet, at least locally there. I’m the only one on the planet still taking these kinds of precautions.
Jenn:
I want to take a moment and normalize that because for those, I am very similar in my life in terms of Covid caution. Just like I don’t have enjoyed not having cold and flu seasons caution as well. Why do we have to give each other stuff over and over again? Maybe this is a different world now. Maybe it should be. We have a protocol for my bubble. My bubble with my partner, my dog and I and my parents across the street. You want to interact with us, you come into the bubble. So Sivan has done that. We’ve done game day. We do that safely. I so appreciated Sivan. Sivan is game for that, right? Sivan is safe. As we mentioned earlier
Chavonne:
That morning and test before and whatever we have to do.
Jenn:
Oh man, did we love these rapid PCR tests that you could get that they’ve now gone bankrupt and been bought by Pfizer, those fuckers. Anyway, so we were in a test into our bubble experience, but literally this morning my partner and my mom and I were talking about we need a decontamination procedure because we cannot safely protect this bubble in the same way anymore. So I happen to have some of those PCR tests. We stocked up on them, but I don’t have that many. Right? My dad is a movie extra. You’re not safe on movie sets anymore. They were the last thing that was still safe, but even that isn’t, so we need decontamination. So my dad can still do his thing in retirement that is bringing him so much joy in life and we can all still feel safe.
We need a UV light in a room that no one’s in where your clothes get decontaminated, antimicrobial shower when you’re done, sleep in a separate bedroom from my mom. Those kinds of things. There’s like a nose and nose swab. There’s mouthwash that you can do that has 0.07% CPC. I mean we are heavily researched over here. It’s something, but it’s so isolating, Lisa, as you were saying that I’m like, we’re like, we’re going to be so isolated If it’s just a test into our bubble procedure, we don’t have access to the things that are accurate anymore. We have to decontaminate ourselves each other, ask other people to do it. We’re just starting to play with it actually. But this is a hyper focus slash hyper fixation of mine. It depends on exactly what the context is, but it’s both this pretty constant where I’m like, what are the public health people saying?
What are the people in hashtag NEIS void, which is a disability hashtag of being left behind and unheard and unseen when there are actual human beings present? What are people doing to keep themselves safe? What are people doing as a, I need to do something right? I’m in this space all the time. I have insomnia. That’s still ongoing. It’s better than ever, but that’s what I do in the middle of the night. It actually helps me go back to sleep, right? Oh, we can UVD contaminate our clothing if we leave it in this tiny room overnight noted to self. I basically email it to myself and the next day like, oh no, I was looking at so many things because all the emails, but there’s just that feeling of isolation is so strong and the lack of collective care is so evident to me that my body can’t help but be drawn to hyper-focusing and hyper fixating about what can be done.
At first, I thought it was nothing, right? But I’ve done, so May 11th was several weeks ago. Now I have no idea how much time, but several weeks ago. So I’ve had enough time to explore in space so it doesn’t feel as hopeless as it did where it’s all gone. There’s also the, in March, hospitals didn’t have mass, and I’m a very susceptible person. I’m a highly immunocompromised, a multiple directions person. Almost all of my yearly doctor appointments, of which there are 12 or 15, we’re now in a situation where no one was wearing a mask in the place where people are sick to go receive their care, and it’s been pretty disorienting and I want to dissociate and I got food poisoning last month. But also all that stuff like I derealized according to my therapist for the first time that I can recognize in my life like this is different.
This is not just your normal dissociation. I feel so unsafe and I feel so isolated. I’m like, well, I guess I’m going all the way to the back of myself, like an image of I’m going all the way to the back of my brain and I’m just going to hang out there. I’m not going to be in the real world. For a while, I actually didn’t even feel my anxiety for an entire week. It’s never happened in my life. I was like, oh no, it’s finally happened. All of my emotions turned off. I’ve maxed them out or something was how I approached that. I seem to have got to my limit, but actually my body’s like, you know what? No more of that conscious self. We’re just not going to do that with you right now. You need to chill out. You need to have some space.
It came from a food poisoning space, but it made me think about all this stuff. That’s a lot of where I went, so I really feel that, and so a lot of what I’m saying is this is how I’m trying to protect myself and I am going into my anxious modes and all that stuff, but also it was really quiet and really dark, and it’s not just for a week, but it was solid for a week straight. Everyone’s worrying about me. It’s a whole different level of things. What’s going on With Jen, it was like I didn’t exist for a while outside of myself. It’s that isolating that my body’s like, should we just isolate forever? Should we just completely disconnect from our emotions? Should we not even be in reality dealing with this? I mean, that’s how isolating it is. It’s so deep. I don’t know. For some reason I felt compelled to say that’s how deep it gets for me. I’m lost deep within myself in those moments, how much it affects me and my choices.
Lisa:
I feel like I’ve been trying to expand my community because I don’t really have a whole lot. I don’t have any family, and trying to build community is so difficult trying to meet people because you are assessing constantly. If we have the same understandings of safety and to what degree are you willing to accommodate my need for that safety, and I find that that’s really impactful on my outlook with people and my relationships because to me it is that deep, right? It is that deep. If people in my life aren’t willing to be safe to then protect me and my child because aside from my daughter’s pretty whatever, average and healthy and all that, and we’re all vaccinated and still, I don’t want her to get it, and if I get it and something happens, it’s just me. It’s just me. So there are layers of threat to it, so the pressure it puts on existing relationships when people are out doing things that I’m not comfortable having that level of exposure then exposed to me. It’s hard.
There’s a tension there of how are you showing care for me when you are doing those things. If we are then going to be in community with each other, it’s hard to step around those pain points for me, really, when there are relationships where people aren’t willing to do that or have a level of exposure that I’m not willing to then chance in my world, those relationships have really fallen away or are tense, and so then when I’m trying to make community, there are so many layers of things that I feel like shove me to the margins between fatness and disability and Covid caution and being a single parent that I just feel like I become the witch of the woods, which I’m fine with to some degree, but it mostly just makes me when you say, do I want to deal with reality? I don’t want to deal with reality, and so I stay in my home.
I just stay in my home. There was some solace to going out and being in nature and being alone and letting a kid play on a playground when it’s nice outside, but in the heat it is very much like we are going into a cave and we’re probably not going to emerge a lot because it is, like I said, it is that serious. The isolation, the loneliness, the disconnect, because even when you’re in relationship, if we’re not sharing a level of care, if we’re not caring for each other based on who needs the safety, it doesn’t, those relationships are still strain. If there isn’t shared community that is willing to meet those needs. It’s sad,
Jenn:
And I want to name because you were just talking about your child there. It is so complex. I have no children in my bubble. There’s no one going to school. There’s no one who has to make a choice about daycare, about school-
Jenn:
… school. There’s no one who has to make a choice about daycare, about school. You do, Lisa. And I also think there’s a lot of nuance there about what has been normalized in those situations. The initial pandemic response was, “Hey, people who have to work from home now, your kids are also going to be there.” There’s no separation or space from them. That is not a tenable reality for people either, and so there is a lot of nuance to that. I am enjoying our passion right now, Lisa. It’s important to me.
Some of these things, I’m like, should I even say these things? It feels important to say it. This is the truth for me because of the context and the truth and non-truths and cognitive dissonance and outright willful ignorance and all sorts of things that are part of this conversation, and a societal structure and organizational structure on individual and private levels that do not support us as a collective caring for each other. It’s patriarchal in nature. It’s capitalistic in nature. It’s fucking ableist in nature. We’re actually really having a disability conversation right now.
I also want to acknowledge there are people who are severely immunocompromised who may not have the level of privilege that we’re even talking about right now, that they don’t have a choice about that. And I just want to name that, because in my passion place, I want to ignore that that’s a reality. I want to be mad at everyone. My PDA shit wants to come up and they’re all fucking dead to me, but they’re not. I care about those people too, and so I just wanted to say that. It’s not against anything that you and I were saying. I just wanted to add that for me. That felt like a heart song to sing.
Lisa:
No, but I actually think that’s the bigger question of what has this been like, is that it is ongoing negotiation, constant and ongoing negotiation, and constant and ongoing assessment of options and needs and balancing of different demands. Because my daughter does need to go to daycare, and I’m at a point where I potentially could enroll her in a pre-K thing that would cost me less money. As a poor single parent, that is alluring. Do I want to send her to school? These are the things that I’m having to balance that there are no good answers to.
And I think, like we talk about, that’s my answer to your question about how is the pandemic affecting embodiment, is that it is a constant negotiation. It’s a constant, like there are no good answers. It’s a constant reassessing of safety. What does safety mean as cases drop or rise, as people come in and come out, and as vaccines come out or situations change as my daughter grows. She’s lived more of her life post-pandemic than pre, and so it’s constant reconfiguring constantly, and I feel like my brain is steaming all of the time, trying to weigh decisions and maneuver through the world always keeping this in mind.
It just is extra labor constantly to figure out, what is the right move? What is the next move? What are we okay doing? What are we not okay doing? Where’s the threat? How do we mitigate it. Over and over and rinse and repeat every single day, and I have a deep rage I’m maybe not ready to touch, that other people aren’t doing that or are not doing it, have not done it, left it behind them. It’s not an option for us.
Fawn:
My daughter was born the day she turned 29 weeks. We were in the NICU for eight weeks and I had PTSD from that. The hand-washing, if someone didn’t wash their hands next to me thoroughly, I would fucking lose it. I can’t imagine going through the NICU for all these years, which is what you’re describing. It’s like a prison. I don’t feel as scared of COVID for me personally, but I do understand what that was like to feel like it was… If anybody brought in RSV into that NICU and then the prison that was post-NICU, and nobody understanding, just fucking wash your hands before you hold her.
So anyway, it’s like I feel like this is the only way I can relate to this fear. Because for us, the pandemic stole so much. When you talk about embodiment, it was like a fucking missing person’s case. It’s like the serial episode. Has anyone seen Vaughn’s embodiment? It’s gone and still is the case of the missing embodiment. But for us, we started the pandemic BLM. I’m in Portland. There’s so much trauma in the streets. My daughter lost her second best friend in two years. She moved. We had no bubble. We had no one.
And my daughter woke up one day crying, said she didn’t know who she was anymore, because she didn’t feel like herself anymore. And that killed me, because having autism and having ADHD and having no school, that was her only connection to others. I had to put a seven-year-old on an SSRI. That was a fucking crazy, depressing time. And I was pregnant and I had lost my childcare, and my oldest is in crisis. It stole so much from us and we didn’t even lose a loved one. Yeah. For us, watching her go to a birthday party again is just like, oh my God. It’s just everything.
It means so much to me to watch her have access to these things, and it just makes me so sad that there might be others that don’t get to experience that yet or can’t because of this black and white thinking. But also, I feel like I would give anything to let her, I would give my life to let her attend a fucking birthday party again, because to watch her experiencing that was so hard. I didn’t realize how not ready I am to talk about this, but I just feel like it was so much trauma for us.
Jenn:
Yeah. [inaudible] give you a hug.
Fawn:
So embodiment, just even think about that. It’s just like, who cares about that? I just want my daughter not say she doesn’t feel like herself anymore. Kids were committing suicide due to isolation. It was awful. I just feel so conflicted. And you’re right, the executive functioning strain, ugh. But just the pure isolation of it was so much trauma. Why is this so fucking emotional? This whole…
Jenn:
Because it’s real.
Fawn:
I don’t cry. What is happening here? Did you guys see me cry in that whole year we were together? Probably, but…
Chavonne:
It is a really hard place to be. As I’m sitting and listening, I’m like, I understand… I’m trying to say it without sounding defensive, but I understand people who have kept their bubble to a certain degree, and I also understand where we have loosened ours quite a bit, and it just feels like a constant struggle. I had this conversation with a friend of mine, where she was willing to do things with our kids that I would never do, and I was willing to do things with kids that she would never do. It’s just so hard. It’s hard. There’s no cut and dry answer, and I think that’s been a hard thing for the pandemic as well.
My kids were in daycare. My oldest was home for two months straight, and then was home an additional month while we had someone who moved in with us. She’s a really good friend of mine, but she basically did the nanny thing for us because she’s such a great friend. And then my kids went, and then he went back, and then I had a baby May 2020. And then he went in four months, because my postpartum depression was so bad with my first kiddo that I was terrified to keep them home. I don’t know who I am if my kids are home all the time. And that sounds awful to say, but that’s just what it is.
Fawn:
Oh God, that sounds so normal. Are you kidding?
Chavonne:
Yeah, yeah.
Fawn:
I’ve never heard anything more normal in my life. Not awful. Truth.
Chavonne:
I say all the time, I’m a terrible mother if I have to mother my kids 24/7.
Fawn:
Same.
Chavonne:
I already know that. It’s just what it is. And even having them in daycare and having to deal with the guilt of it, and having my mother-in-law telling me that I’m a terrible mother for doing it, and my mother saying things because of it. It’s what we had to do, because Mom can’t survive. Mom is already on antidepressants and can barely get out of bed half the time, because she just had another kid in the middle of this. So we all do what we have to do, and I try to have so much grace around that.
Like I said, there are things I’ve done that people wouldn’t and vice versa. There are certain things I’m very… Like if you don’t get vaccinated, you don’t get to hang out with my family. That’s just the truth of it. But also, we all just have to… But that’s one thing, I actually don’t waffle on that at all. I just do not. But other things, I’m like, I think we’re all just trying to figure it out, so it just sucks. It sucks. The pandemic brought me good things, but it also sucked a whole bunch. And we’ve made choices with our kids that we’re still making, that make it so I haven’t seen Jenn for quite some time, and that’s just kind of where we are right now. Yeah.
Fawn:
We’re in Portland, so we were probably the last state to go back to school. I think too, there’s a cultural difference being where y’all are, because they hung on to just masking and isolation for so much longer. The prioritization of bars and gyms being open when my neurodivergent child couldn’t see other children, while I was vomiting daily because I was pregnant with our third. How you can prioritize that, bars and gyms and restaurants, but not libraries and schools? It was just like, okay, this is really every man for themselves. This is just so fucked up. Even in Oregon, and schools were closed for so long, everyone went back before us, everyone.
I have so much anger still from it and rage, and just the way it was handled, the way it’s being handled. And we don’t have access to the tools even to handle it well right now, to not have black and white thinking. We’re set up to do all or nothing thinking, because there’s no options anymore. We don’t know when COVID is spiking, because we’ve gone to the doctor how many times in this past couple of weeks? And not once have we gotten a COVID test from them or swabbed from really anything, quite frankly, because our medical system is in complete crisis, complete crisis.
Chavonne:
Absolutely.
Fawn:
And part of me is like, is this why we’re going into this All or nothing thinking, to mask that our medical system is completely falling and crumbling around us? I don’t trust any of the way it’s playing out. And it sucks, because everyone’s still in so much pain and we don’t even know how to start conversations about it. You guys do obviously, but thank you for that.
Jenn:
Well, thank you all for holding space. It’s really, really, really not an easy conversation. It’s a real time, real life, ongoing, who the fuck knows kind of conversation that has so many levels of nebulous morass, murkiness shit that I don’t know how to be in any one moment about it. I just appreciate it. I appreciate its nuances. There’s the haves and the have nots in this sort of conversation. And so the people who have made decisions about, “We have to make things quote unquote go back to normal,” have the financial and cultural access to have their air be perfectly clean and maintain all their testing. It’s just not given to us. That’s not lost on me either.
And even the haves and the have nots is not a black or white thing. There’s layers to that too, because everything that I said, I can go hyper fixate. I can go buy all those things that I found. I have access to those things. I can bring them into my home. I can try them out. It is not cheap, what I just said. That’s hundreds of dollars, what I just said, and it’s going to be ongoing because things are going to run out. That’s not what people who were on disability have access to with $1,000 to $1,400 a month, not allowed to have any savings. It’s who need the healthcare system and medical industrial complex to stay as it was, not as it currently is.
Disability wait times are three years to even get on disability, to get access to snap. See, when I start to go into the reality of it, my body is trying to shut down, so I’m just going to stop myself and just notice that and try not to continue.
Lisa:
Don’t you think too, each of us mentioned whatever personal traumas you went through as all of this was happening, that in terms of the embodiment conversation, I think that I am so much more… Everything’s right at the surface and so much has not been processed collectively, and if we were isolated and dealing with our traumas, how much of that we have not processed. I divorced in the middle of all of this, became a single parent. People had babies. People had health issues and lost loved ones. And all of that, I feel is just sitting there. Because from a therapy perspective, if we won’t process that until we access safety, when is it safe? When is it going to be safe?
And so we’re just stockpiling this trauma collectively and individually that I think is just keeping, that I notice personally my fuse is short, my emotions are right at the surface. I have much shorter bandwidth and capacity because of all the executive functioning it requires to negotiate in the world within whatever conditions that you’re working under. And so all of that, just there’s so much more this fog of gnats around as you’re trying to just exist because of all of this unprocessed trauma and unprocessed personal experiences that happened all in isolation that we might not even know about.
Jenn:
Yeah, it’s hard to be human when we’re not in an environment that says, “Go ahead, be human.” In fact, what if you aren’t from here forward? Oof! My body does not like ending on that note today, and yet this is the note that we’re going to end on today. Because, dear listeners, we’ve asked Vaughn and Lisa to come back again, so there’ll be a part two to this conversation near the end of the season. And I just appreciate you both so much and this space, in this real space, and I really hope that we all have some time later tonight to just sit with some parts of where this is in our bodies and be even the tiniest bit embodied.
Because it is not sitting with me in a bad way, but it is sitting with me in a pretty deep and real and present way. And I don’t know if that’s what it’s like for each of you, but it just like, let’s take care of ourselves. I care about you. I wish collectively we were in the same room so we could build a nest together and have some hot drinks and have a hilarious conversation about muffins and not this. And so I just extend to each of you-
Chavonne:
Cold drinks. Please, cold drinks.
Jenn:
Oh-
Chavonne:
I want a cold drink.
Jenn:
I was going to say actually, if there’s a fire or if it’s any day other than the 10 coldest days of the year, I’m going to need some ice in my drink.
Fawn:
The rawness though, and I do feel like this place is again, a safe space to experience rawness and processing and know that it’s not going to come with judgment. And I think that’s so, it’s a rare space to find right now too. Everyone is-
Jenn:
I’m the most in here with Chavonne, thank you, Chavonne, than I am anywhere else. I can do things in here that I cannot do anywhere else. I can’t. I don’t even have access to do it.
Fawn:
So honestly, leaving on this note feels like I just feel great gratitude towards you all, because it’s not something I get to feel personally often outside of a therapy room. So it’s just like, thank you. Thank you for creating this space. Thank you for allowing these tears to flow. Thank you for just being who you lovely humans are and just creating safety in rawness and togetherness and all the ness.
Chavonne:
I have two thoughts, and I’m trying not to dig into this, “Let’s end it on a positive note. Let me say something happy, because that’s who I am.” But I am feeling, one thing that’s really popping up for me is that the pandemic is a shit show, of course, but if it had not happened, I would not have met any of the three of you and I’m grateful for that.
Jenn:
That’s true.
Chavonne:
So grateful.
Jenn:
That is absolutely true, because our program became virtual because of the pandemic.
Chavonne:
Yes.
Jenn:
Vaughn and I wouldn’t have been-
Chavonne:
If it were us, it’d be like, “Oh, well.”
Jenn:
Lisa, none of us would’ve been there.
Chavonne:
Exactly, just Lisa.
Jenn:
Thank you for reminding me.
Lisa:
I would’ve been alone with the other people.
Chavonne:
I know.
Fawn:
That would’ve been hard, IRL and alone with certain friends?
Chavonne:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I’m grateful for that. And then I was also thinking we should just, even if we’re not recording, just do this more often where we eat muffins and talk.
Jenn:
Oh, please.
Chavonne:
Because I could use that.
Jenn:
Oh my gosh! I will send you each muffins that we will eat together.
Chavonne:
Okay.
Fawn:
Murder muffins.
Lisa:
Muffins of the month.
Chavonne:
Yes! I’m already like, which one do we do first? Because I feel like we’re going to have thoughts about that.
Jenn:
I’m [inaudible].
Chavonne:
If you send me an orange, whatever one, I’ll throw it against the wall.
Fawn:
I love that. Oh.
Jenn:
Oh my gosh. Yes, yes. Yes, please. Any final thoughts, Lisa? Just want to give you space before we end.
Lisa:
I was just curious, if we were all a Golden Girl, which ones would we be?
Chavonne:
Dorothy.
Lisa:
Sophia, Sophia.
Jenn:
I have been wanting to be each of them at some point in my life, but Dorothy is for right now.
Lisa:
No, that’s not… Okay.
Chavonne:
I do have to say, every car I’ve ever owned has been named after a Golden Girl, and I have had so many cars that my current one is Estelle Getty. Because now I’m going to the actual actors-
Lisa:
That’s my girl.
Chavonne:
– and my next one is going to be, I think Rue. No, have I had Rue? It’s going to be Rue McClanahan, I’m pretty sure.
Jenn:
Oh my God, I love it.
Chavonne:
Yeah. But this one, when I get mad, I’m like, “Stella, damn it. Just get it together, Stella.” She’s an old girl too, so.
Fawn:
I don’t know. I feel like-
Lisa:
Come on. This is incredibly important.
Fawn:
I know, but I think I’m a little bit Dorothy, a little bit Betty White. Who’s her character?
Jenn:
Yeah, I’m a little bit-
Chavonne:
Rose Nylund.
Jenn:
Yeah, Rose. I’m a little bit Rose.
Fawn:
I’m a little Rose and a little bit… If those two had a baby, that’s who I’d be.
Jenn:
I mean, Rose is the-
Fawn:
I’m a Gemini, so that makes sense.
Jenn:
Rose is the most neurodivergently coded character on that show. That is usually my answer, but I’m Dorothy right now.
Fawn:
Yeah. I feel like I’m a mashup of the two.
Lisa:
I love it.
Jenn:
This was incredibly important, Lisa.
Chavonne:
Yes.
Lisa:
[inaudible
Jenn:
We should not have ended on any other note today. I can’t wait for you both to be back.
Lisa:
Me too. Me too.
Fawn:
I can’t wait to be back.
Jenn:
Where we dive in some more. I mean, we dive. When people come back, we call that a deep dive. But we’re already doing that, so I’m going to have to think of a deeper thing than a deep dive, because we’ve already started on the deep dive level.
Lisa:
Like scuba, or I don’t know.
Fawn:
You turned my bullets into… Yeah, my bullet points went off diving boards. Thanks, guys.
Chavonne:
I loved it.
Jenn:
You’re welcome.
Chavonne:
It was really powerful.
Jenn:
Oh my gosh. The Mariana Trench, that’s where we’re going next.
Chavonne:
I love it.
Jenn:
Or just more deep dive about new things, one or the other.
Chavonne:
No, I love it. I love it.
Jenn:
I had to think of that name. That was the pause that was happening.
Chavonne:
So good.
Jenn:
Okay. I love you both. I love you, Chavonne. I love you, Fawn.
Chavonne:
We love you both.
Jenn:
I love you, Lisa.
Chavonne:
Yes, love all of you. Yes.
Fawn:
I love you too.
Jenn:
I can’t wait to do it again. And thank you so much for just being you. I’m safe in this space with you. No alteration, only expansion of our safety and security and space with you. Love you.
Fawn:
Love you too. Bye.
Chavonne:
Bye.