A TENDER SPACE

Season 1, Episode 3

On today’s episode, we’re talking about healing the trauma that’s been passed down through our lineages and disrupting the social conditioning that we inherited from the systems we are part of. More specifically, we’re exploring the mother wound and how it was shaped by patriarchy.

Our guest today is Bethany Webster. Bethany is considered a global expert on healing the Mother Wound. She is a writer, international speaker and transformational coach. Bethany started blogging in 2013 about the Mother Wound and quickly experienced worldwide demand for her work. Through blending research on intergenerational trauma, feminist theory, and psychology with her own personal story, Bethany’s work is the result of decades of research and her own journey of healing. Bethany speaks, consults and mentors around the world sharing her growing body of work that is raising the standard of women’s leadership and personal development. Learn more at www.bethanywebster.com

Listen on Spotify or Apple, or join our Substack community.

Season 1, Episode 2

On this episode, we’re talking about body liberation. More specifically, we’re exploring what it means to navigate a fat-phobic world while living in a fat body AND how we can find pleasure and joy while doing so. We’ll also talk about how people who don’t live in fat bodies can educate themselves and become better allies.

Our guest today is Dawn Serra. Dawn Serra is a white, cis, queer, fat, disabled therapist specializing in relationships, pleasure, and body trust. She is the co-founder of Tend and Cultivate Counselling, Canada’s first mental health group practice providing trauma-informed, weight-neutral, radical mental health care for people in bigger bodies. The nexus of her work is tending to the places where we are most tender and cultivating the things that contribute to our aliveness – joy, pleasure, connection, satisfaction, and wonder.

Below are the authors, activists and works named in our conversation:
– Belly of the Beast: The politics of fatness as anti-blackness
– Fearing the Black Body: The racial origins of fat phobia
– Gloria Lucas of Nalgona Positivity Pride
– Your Fat Friend: a film by Jeanie Finlay
– Quote from scholar Lauren Munro of Toronto Metropolitan University (accidentally said Tara in the interview) writes, “Fat bodies do not simply move through hostile spaces, they are marked by them (bruises, scrapes, scars). Spatial injustice is the intentional exclusion of fat bodies in public spaces. These issues create access barriers to joy, happiness, belonging.”

Listen on Spotify or Apple, or join our Substack community.

Season 1, Episode 1

On this episode, we’re talking about healing with friends.

Heather has just recently launched her book, Where Tenderness Lives, and during the writing of that book, she spent a lot of time in conversation with her close friend Saleha Alsheri.

Born and raised in Saudi Arabia for the first half of her life, Saleha came to Winnipeg as an international student in 2007. She finished her second B.A. in Psychology in Canada, then pursued her Masters in Cognitive Neuroscience from the Netherlands, and returned to Canada for a Masters of Counselling Psychology. Saleha is now a licensed psychotherapist working with various communities and providing culturally adjusted therapy to visible minorities in two different languages. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her three kids and she thrives on deep and meaningful conversations with her friends.

In this conversation, Heather and Saleha will talk about the history of their friendship and how it became a place where they could both heal and grow.

Listen on Spotify or Apple, or join our Substack community.