About Face

I want to start at the beginning, with birth. This episode includes my own story about a traumatic birth and my interview with visual artist and writer, Carmen Winant, to talk about her work, My Birth, the powerful installation at the MoMA, the missing and misrepresentations of birth in cultural representations as well as the challenges in the transition into motherhood. In addition to birth, we also talked about feminism in motherhood, and the potential for political action around these specific women’s issues, birth, and parenting. For more information about Carmen Winant here is a link to her website: carmenwinant.com A few mentions. About Face is a member of Bear Radio, the premier English speaking podcast network of Berlin. Music for this episode was provided by Miss Kenichi.  

How do we learn to accept ourselves and our past? Jason and I follow up on the destruction that ended in death and loss in a story about recovery and reparations. We talk about how to let go, the gratitude and peace that can be found in survival, how his own recovery made him realize an authentic life. We also talk about forgiving ourselves and our parents and why people who are more sensitive to the world are more likely to become addicts.  Stay connected with us on Twitter @AboutFacePod, or on our Facebook page. You can also stop by the website at aboutfacepodcast.com and consider making a donation to show your support. And a few music credits. Most of the tracks used on this episode are the creative inventions of my guest, Jason Snell under the artist name, The Space Where She Was from the albums, What we Lost and How to Play. You also heard original music from Miss Kenichi from her album Fox.  Don’t forget to check out some of the other featured programs on Bear Radio, the premier English speaking podc

“I was looking at the world and it started to flatten out and I realized, this is what it’s like to die. Everything starts to lose meaning. . . it just becomes a flat image.” - Jason Snell. I interviewed Jason Snell while he was in Europe, in Berlin, on his trips between Paris and Warsaw and Italy, before he heads back to either Iowa or L.A., or somewhere in between, wherever he decides to land for the next weeks or months. As I’m nearing my ninth month of pregnancy, becoming even more firmly planted, sometimes feeling immobile, I can admire the freedom, independence and that open quality of not knowing where you are going next. Sitting down with him, felt like time-traveling, both of us, revisiting the ghosts of our old selves.  I was reminded me how stories unfold in time and space, how sometimes we are not sure where one ends and another begins. There are the kind of stories that happen in an instant, a car accident, a trauma, a sudden loss, and then there are those that can span years, decades, even a lif

The human body, it’s complicated and mysterious systems, directly influences our emotions, our response to memory, and simply, how we interact with the world and with life. Inhabiting our bodies is more than just the machinery of living, moving, and acting. It’s how we identify, how we relate and perceive ourselves and our environment. It is not a surprise that it is the human body that often takes the toll when we are suffering, or in pain. Or that many of us turn against our own bodies during times of

Songs used in the episode: "Leaving Naples" & "Just What I Want" from the EP "Seeing Naples" with Sick rat  "Cold Season" from the EP "INFP" with Undogmatic Link to INFP:  https://concretecee.bandcamp.com/album/infp Link to Seeing Naples:  https://sickrat.bandcamp.com/…/sick-rat-cedric-till-seeing-…

Family secrets--what are yours? Every family has them. I have some that I can’t put on this podcast, though I really contemplated doing so just to air them, for myself. In the end it just seemed too heavy, too much, too revealing for those involved. But they are right at the tip of my tongue. Part of me thinks that airing them will be liberating, giving voice to my own experiences and my pain, but the other side of me says, no it’s self -indulgent, and too many people would get hurt. Silence can break an individual, but the truth can tear a family apart…so how do we decide, what to say, what not to say, when is it our own burden to bear? Most families struggle with balancing the bonds of cohesion and the needs of individuals. Individual truth. Individual desires. Individual crisis and struggles. We are going to talk about what it means to suffer because of family, also when it’s time to get distance or even sever ties for the sake of your own wellness and truth. This is a painful About Face—but one that can

How do we overcome our challenges and manifest change? How do we decide the next right step without being held back by fears? Larry Tee is a renown DJ, music producer, and fashion designer and has made a life out of starting over, creative entrepreneurship, and using his own intuition and passion to manifest positivity and change in his career and life. Larry Tee was one of the original Club Kids and arrived on the New York scene with his good friend, Rupaul in the late 80s.

In this episode Kate sits down with a woman she calls Ally. Her guest didn't want to be identified by name or expose others who were involved in this story. This episode is about how she struggled to reconcile feminism and motherhood, personal freedom and security, as well as the "grass is always greener" myths surrounding romantic relationships and singledom. Kate also discusses her own struggle with losing the freedom that comes with detachment and the pressures faced by unmarried women in their 20s and 30s and beyond. It is an episode that deals with the personal struggles we have inside and outside our relationships, and how to evolve personally when we choose to have commitments.   Ally chose to remain an anonymous guest, but we have used some stock photos to promote the episode. Just a note so that no one is confused by these images...

This episode explores the complexities of growing up as a gay Mormon. Sam opens up about the struggles he faced while at Brigham Young University, threats from the community, the possibility of expulsion, and what it was like to graduate as one of the first openly gay students at BYU nearly 20 years ago. We talk about his life since graduation, including recovery from alcohol addiction, his experiences with other "cults" and the spirituality of travel.

Susie Kahlich has always been brassy, even back to her early years in Chicago and punk rock days in 1980s New York. In this episode, we sit down and talk about the impact of sexual assault, the night she was brutally attacked in L.A. and her life’s work teaching self-defense to women. We did this interview before the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, before the #metoo campaign went viral. At the time, not even two months ago, it did feel like no one was talking about all the forms of harassment and assault that don’t involve penetration or rape that doesn’t involve a stranger or violence, but is still, just as painful, just as unwanted.  And we all know that it has everything to do with power. Even the conversation felt so cutting, and yet beneath the surface, both of us simmering with this feeling, this anger and agitation and fear and rage about what we knew had happened to us, what had happened to others, and this consuming, feeling that there was so much to say, so much unsaid. This episode is about sexual

About Face is a show about turning points, how we show up fo