RETHINKING IT

May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month and I am so happy to share this conversation with Courtney Schutze from Splash of Lyme. Courtney is hosting her second Crushing Lyme awareness campaign this month. In this discussion we discuss Courtney's journey to a diagnosis of chronic Lyme, how it has changed her life, and how tools like journaling, meditation, and acceptance have supported her healing.

Lyme disease is often overlooked and misrepresented. I so admire people like Courtney who are willing to authentically share their health journeys to raise awareness and compassion.

GET TO KNOW COURTNEY SCHUTZE

• Follow Splash of Lyme on Instagram
• Courtney's post on living with Lyme
• Courtney's website

I love this episode because it's two friends just talking about our lives. Katie and I explore our complicated relationships with social media, why mental health matters, and how we're both trying to live less in our heads and more in our bodies.

This episode is brought to you by Let [a podcast] Out - Katie's DIY podcasting workshop. I created RETHINKING IT because of Let [a podcast] Out. By the end of the workshop, my first three episodes were recorded, edited, and released! I was the round one winner of the contest and an episode of my podcast was featured on Katie's podcast, Let it Out with Katie Dalebout! Registration for the spring 2020 class of Let [a podcast] Out is open now + early bird pricing ends on March 15. You can save an additional $25 with the code STEPHANIE.

"I have chronic illness and this is my normal. And that's okay." Hilary Pearlson is sharing her journey through a bone marrow transplant and healing from Ramsay Hunt Syndrome. Together we explore how to let go of our old lives and dreams and routines in order to surrender to the reality of living with chronic illnesses.

Chronic illness doesn't have to mean that we can't live a whole and full life. It means, though, that we have to rethink what wholeness looks like for us given the reality of illness. Hilary has reframed her experience to allow her to find purpose and connection. But she doesn't gloss over the dark moments. She vulnerably shares both the lessons and the struggles.

GET TO KNOW HILARY PEARLSON
HILARY PEARLSON is a Kundalini yoga and meditation teacher, intuitive guide, writer and creator of the conscious lifestyle blog, The Dreamerie. She was inspired to do this work through her health journey, living with chronic illness and surviving a bone marrow transplant at 21 years old.

In her practice she empowers clients to be their own healer, connect to clarity, clear space and live with intention.

She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY and works with clients virtually around the world as well as through her membership site, The Dreamer’s Collective.

LINKS

• Blog post about Hilary's bone marrow transplant
  * Blog post about Ramsay Hunt Syndrome
• Simply breathwork practice
• It's Not Your Money: How to Live Fully from Divine Abundance

It wasn’t until the doctor told me that my illness was incurable and untreatable that I realized how much I was clinging to the hope of a “cure” for whatever was wrong with me.

In this episode of RETHINKING IT, I am opening up about my recent health diagnosis and how it is forcing me to rethink my journey and what health and wholeness will look like for me.

Closing music: Moby Long Ambients1 Calm. Sleep. | Track LA1

My writing on chronic illness

In this episode, I explore grief and loss with Lisa Nagel. Our shared intention for this conversation is to support anyone moving through grief and to create the space to invite healing. Lisa shares so many insights around the grief process, how our society treats loss and grief, and what she means when she says that grief is an invitation. She also helps me rethink how I look at self-care by sharing a question she asks herself and her clients. It completely changed my approach to caring for myself in moments of stress, grief, or illness and I'm so grateful.

GET TO KNOW LISA NAGEL

LISA NAGEL is a guide and intuitive helping womxn resolve and heal personal and inherited trauma, move through grief with grace and live a life of sustainable aliveness and tenderly being fully human. She believes in gentle bravery, transformation that lasts and remembering that our stories aren’t over yet. Everything is still possible.

You can find her at wildsensitivesouls.com and follow her @wildsensitivesouls.

Lisa has created free playlists to help you feel and move through your grief. Listen to them here.

In this episode, Jennifer O'Neill and I are tackling the concept of self-love. So often we think self-love is the all or nothing, romanticized concept that we see on social media. Jennifer and I disagree and are sharing our versions of self-love and self-acceptance relating to body image, chronic illness, and work.

In my conversation with Jennifer, we share personal stories about rethinking our relationship to self-love. Self-love isn't about slapping an affirmation on top of our self-hatred and going about our days. We talk about how self-love is really about accepting yourself and being honest with yourself. It's about respecting yourself enough to nourish all parts of your being and getting curious about why you are making the choices that you are making.

GET TO KNOW JENNIFER O'NEILL

JENNIFER O'NEILL is a graduate of The Institute for Integrative​ ​Nutrition and is on a mission to help women free their bodies​ ​from the pain of dieting and negative body image, and lead​ ​them to a life of freedom, balance, and joy around eating and​ ​fitness. She put herself through diet hell for nearly 30 years of​ ​her life and knows that it’s simply not worth it. She guides her​ ​clients to take action around food, fitness, and body image from​ ​an aligned place of love instead of hate. It is only by changing​ ​our minds about ourselves that we can then begin to learn that​ ​the love we are so desperately seeking is already inside of us.

• Connect with Jennifer O'Neill on Instagram
• Purchase Jennifer's workbook: Free Yourself from Body Prison
• Learn about the health coach training program that Jennifer and I completed

In this episode I guide you through one of my favorite meditations for relaxation - a body scan. This is a great meditation to practice before bed or whenever you need to reconnect to yourself, your breath, and your body.

Music: Moby Long Ambients1 Calm. Sleep. | Track LA7

I'm kicking off the new year and season 2 of RETHINKING IT with a really engaging conversation with Ruby Warrington. Ruby just released her second book, Sober Curious, and together we share our personal experiences with alcohol, talk about the reasons we drank, feeling like not drinking wasn't even an option in a world that normalizes alcohol, and how being sober curious allowed us to be more present in our lives and stop hiding and get comfortable in our own skin by having sober firsts.

In my conversation with Ruby, we share personal stories about rethinking our relationships with alcohol. We do so without judgment - judgment of ourselves or of others who are drinking. Ruby highlights how her Sober Curious journey is exactly that - her journey. And that's the point of her book: that each other us gets curious about why we drink, how it makes us feel, and what type of relationship we truly want with alcohol. And the more we begin to question alcohol, the more we begin to turn off autopilot in all areas of our lives.

GET TO KNOW RUBY WARRINGTON

RUBY WARRINGTON is a lifestyle writer and former features editor of the UK's Sunday Times Style supplement. In 2013, she created The Numinous, an online magazine that bridges the gap between the mystical and the mainstream. She is also the cofounder of Moon Club, an online mentoring program for spiritual activists, and "sober curious" event series Club SODA NYC. She now lives in New York City with her husband, Simon (a.k.a. "The Pisces").

• Connect with Ruby Warrington and The Numinous on Instagram
• The Numinous online magazine
• Get your copy of Material Girl, Mystical World
• Get your copy of Sober Curious
• Ruby's podcast, The Now Age

Season One Finale!
Do you ever feel crazy around food? Like find yourself standing with the freezer door open eating ice cream as fast as you can because tomorrow you "can't" have the ice cream crazy around food? Or maybe you're always stressing about what you "should" eat or determining your worth based on what you did eat? Today's guest, Isabel Foxen Duke can help. She is on a mission to help you stop feeling crazy around food.

In this episode we dig into why we even feel crazy around food and Isabel shares her personal journey with binge-eating and how she was able to break the diet cycle. Isabel doesn't hold back which is why I was so excited to have this conversation. She calls out diet culture, wellness culture, and fat phobia.

I know that you're going to love this conversation as much as I loved having it.

Learn more about Isabel Foxen Duke

Isabel Foxen Duke is the Creator of Stop Fighting Food — a free video training program for women who want to "stop feeling crazy around food." After years of trying to overcome emotional eating, binge-eating and chronic weight-cycling through "traditional" and alternative approaches, Isabel discovered some radical new ways to get women over their "food issues" once and for all — not just by shifting the mindsets of individuals, but by challenging the dominant diet culture as a whole. A fixture and thought-leader in the greater body-positive movement, Isabel has been featured in the Huffington Post,  Elle Magazine, XOJane, and has been praised by Ricki Lake. Her writing and free guide, How To Not Eat Cake, can be found at www.isabelfoxenduke.com and you can watch her free video training series at www.stopfightingfood.com.

In this week's episode Stephanie talks to Michelle Maros, mindfulness expert and co-founder and creative director of Peaceful Mind Peaceful Life, a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering inner peace, wellness, and equality. In our conversation we rethink activism, politics, and how to truly live a peaceful life.

Michelle shares about her journey to Peaceful Mind Peaceful Life, what it's like to work with her mother (aka Peaceful Barb), and how the Parkland school tragedy led to the creation of a fellowship to mentor the next generation of leaders.

Learn more about Michelle Maros

She teaches regular meditation workshops and seminars on mindfulness, meditation, and personal empowerment at the Boca Raton Regional Hospital and Florida Atlantic University. She is passionate about mentoring the next generation of leaders. She currently teaches mindfulness tools to teens through The Barb Schmidt Fellowship for Cultivating Community Involvement, Activism, and Social Change at Florida Atlantic University.

Connect with Michelle Maros

• Follow her on Instagram
• Follow Peaceful Mind Peaceful Life
• Learn more about Peaceful Mind Peaceful Life
• The Barb Schmidt Fellowship