Jada is our Queen

We descend in this episode - a bit more into the weight and the dark. Recorded around the time of George Floyd's death, we cover topics such as where the hell did this all start to go wrong? The recognition that whiteness can be weaponised. The differences between the US and the UK in terms of racism - and whether there really are any. Julia commits one of the big white faux pas things - which is asking the black woman to tell her what to do about it all. Bernadette adds provocation as always. And Chas graces everyone with the depth of the primal scream she feels around all this. It is a meaty one.

We fangirl on Jada Pinkett-Smith, cover the double standards women have to contend with when it comes to their sex, denounce female competition and talk about how we navigate life above and beyond these oppressive standards as best we can.

In this Christmas day episode, Julia, Bernadette & I discuss keeping our curiosity alive enough to continue having adventures as we go into middle age. Menopause is a wild, no joke, never-in-our-ken adventure where physical sensations are new and alarming, nothing is stable, and sleep escapes us, leaving utter tiredness behind. We talk about how ill prepared we are for this helluva trip because life forced us to live OUTSIDE the natural cycles of our bodies. 2020, the year of that disruptive number, FOUR, has brought a huge pause for large swathes of the population and we ponder if people will enter more fully into the matrix or resist it’s tug to a facsimile of comfort. We’re feeling what it might be like to go with the flow, rather than get buried in the status quo. We also dive into the taboo of older women staying sexual and turned-on. What does that look like? How do we get past the conditioning that would have us be invisible? What does the empowering flow of just being ourselves give us, when being ourselves is inherently undesirable and wrong? We talk about persevering through the darkness. Just a note. We are new podcasters and on a huge technical learning curve, we ask you to bear with the occasional glitch in the recording - each time we do this we get better at making this a great experience for you. Love. Julia, Bernadette, Chas

This week we cover all sorts of terrain - literally. From London to Switzerland to Mexico and back again. And we discuss what makes us move, whether politics is relevant, and how losing the fear of death is really the key to everything. We talk about the spell-like quality of Covid. And Bernadette helps by telling us how her parents were so scared to go grocery shopping because of the virus, that they ate a rotten chicken and nearly died of food poisoning. 'Cos you gotta laugh really, in times such as these.

In this episode we look into entitlement as a block to receiving. Chas tells us how she used to do this in a big way and how she finally saw through her entitlement and - in her words - grew up and out of it. We also explore how uncomfortable it is when people throw their entitlement at you and why that means they will sometimes get the thing, but it never means they get the deeper thing. Ie - connection. We meander into the concept of social activism vs personal responsibility - whether the two can ever meet and whether perhaps they should? Like in an ideal world, we might work towards marrying personal responsibility within our lives, with identifying and overthrowing limiting/harmful social contexts. We end our discussion, as we often do, by centering into the power of our desire to circumnavigate all of this. Oh and we also tell you some news about Bernadette - who is given to disappearing into the jungle every now and again.

EVERYTHING CAN BE A MAGIC ADVENTURE – YOU ONLY HAVE TO DECIDE THAT IT IS SO... Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road. Dag Hammarskjold On the first day of Brexit, Julia and I discuss the changing nature of the traditional idea of adventure in our lives. We talk about how the ebb and flow of how our travels and our environment affect how we operate minute to minute. Talking of commodities, we now know that data is the new oil, and that humans, as the source of data, have become the new commodity. Arguably perhaps, data has become the new colonisation and we see if we can turn that to our advantage by going on the adventure of learning this data inspired new language.

Why is the feminine seen as being so dangerous? And what happens when we take a descent into that realm? Julia and Chas talk again around their favourite subject - desire - and hit some emotional depths with what it's meant for them in their lives. Why is feminine desire so feared and shamed? What does it take to suppress desire? Plus we also talk about the size of our collective bosom. Just because.

How Low Can You Go? This week, we set out to create a podcast based on lighter material, but weightier subjects to hand would not allow it. Chas, still shocked from experiencing extreme and unwarranted verbal abuse at work, brought that experience to the pre-recording table. That microcosmic incident came at a time that Meghan Markle was being strongly censured by the British press for speaking out about her treatment by them and members of the extended British royal family. The first news reports regarding the murder of Sarah Everard was breaking, with women paying their respects to her being strong armed by the police. And the attack and vilification of female leaders around the world was on the agenda of many discussion panels and talk shows. In our podcast, Julia questions the aggressive shouting down of women or poc who dare to put themselves in the public sphere right in the face of the construct that dismisses their worries, fears and concerns. And we dare to come up with a possible solution to uphold these courageous people in solidarity and support. Thanks for listening and for posting your comments and suggestions. Please keep them coming, we’re loving them.

In an attempt to focus on the positive and not get dragged into conversations about the emerging New World Order, Brexit or anything else depressing and potentially even frightening, Chas and Julia speak their use of gratitudes in life and practice. They contemplate how gratitudes can be used as a bypassing tool too, taking us away from the fruits of skilfully navigating the down. And they suggest ways as to how we can skillfully navigate down turns in life and use them for increased personal power. They explore the everyday grit of how gratitudes can work person over time and how it is one of their favourite tools for inspiration. And how it is always the small, baby steps in a good direction that move us forward. Chas gets up close and personal too - gratitudes are not just fluffy new age platitudes. She cites them as one of the main practices that brought her out of a suicidal depression. www.julialally.com

Chas and Julia talk around the houses and ask difficult questions such as is the digitisation of life the penultimate act of colonisation? Is it leading us into a whole new era of slavery? Chas mentions how she has never really seen any of this go away, and how annoying it is when people who are accustomed to comfort are always shocked when episodes of racism are publicly aired. She was taught to efface the more jarring parts of her personality as a black woman in order to survive, and warns us that we really cannot walk quietly into darker times. Resistance and grace are paramount. We can at any point withdraw our consent.