This week on The Well Woman Show, I interview Precious Brady-Davis. She is an award-winning diversity advocate, communications professional, and public speaker. She served for three years as the assistant director of diversity recruitment initiatives at Columbia College Chicago, her alma mater, implementing the campus-wide diversity initiative and providing leadership and oversight of national diversity recruitment and inclusion policies. Precious is married to Myles Brady and lives in Hyde Park on the South Side of Chicago, where they are raising their daughter. On the show, Precious shares her profound journey as a biracial, gender-nonconforming kid in foster care to becoming a fully actualized trans woman. We discuss:

• The struggles of growing up in foster care,
• The importance of advocating for yourself in the workplace,
• and Precious Brady-Davis’s struggles of being a fully actualized trans woman.

The book Precious recommended was My Vanishing Country: A Memoir by Bakari Sellers You can find the episode on overwork that Giovanna mentions at wellwomanlife.com/255show/ You can also continue the conversation in the Well Woman Life community group at wellwomanlife.com/community You can find notes from today’s show at wellwomanlife.com/258show. The Well Woman Show is thankful for the support from The Well Woman Academy™ at wellwomanlife.com/academy.

This week on The Well Woman Show, we dive into the topic of identity and create awareness around the identities we’ve been assigned, and explore how to align our behavior with our true identity.

We discuss aligning behaviors and habits with who you want to be.

Taking actions that match who you want to be.

Identity Inventory Activity:

What are the identities I was assigned?

What are the identities I want?

What are the behaviors or habits that I have?

Take some time to journal on the above questions, and join us to discuss it in the Well Woman Community Group.

All the information shared today can be found at the show notes at wellwomanlife.com/257show

You can also continue the conversation in the Well Woman Life community group at wellwomanlife.com/community

The Well Woman Show is thankful for the support from The Well Woman Academy™ at wellwomanlife.com/academy.

This week on the Well Woman Show, I talk to Ruby Warrington, author of Sober Curious, which asks people to reevaluate their relationship to alcohol. Other works include Material Girl, Mystical World (2017) and most recently The Sober Curious Reset (Dec 2020). Ruby has over 20 years of experience as a lifestyle journalist and editor, is the founder of self-publishing imprint Numinous Books, and is a leader in the “Now Age” wellness space.

We discuss:

• What it means to be sober-curious
• What the benefits are of quitting drinking
• How to feel more confident in your sober life

You can find notes from today’s show at wellwomanlife.com/256show.

The book Ruby is reading is Shuggie Bain: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) by Douglas Stuart

The Well Woman Show is thankful for the support from The Well Woman Academy™ at wellwomanlife.com/academy.

This week on The Well Woman Show we’re discussing overwork. Overwork is often accompanied by stress and exhaustion and while there are many explanations for why people overwork, the one that keeps coming up in this community of high achieving professional women is that of proving our value, proving our worth. We wrap our identity up so tightly with our professional achievements that we lost sight of the other parts of our lives that we want to thrive in. The other parts of our lives include our health, relationships and connection to a larger purpose.

So what do women get from chronic overwork? And from the game of constant achievement? Well for a while we get lots of accolades and success. But as we keep the cycle of overwork going, we become depleted. Our bodies, minds and spirits need more to thrive. And that depletion can lead to all kinds of crises. Like health, financial or relationship crises.

In order to stop the cycle of chronic overwork, we must look at the personal – what it is we really need, what overworking provides that we aren’t getting elsewhere. And we must look at the systems in place that keep us in chronic overwork – like demanding bosses and corporate cultural norms.

Using the Well Woman Life® Framework, we can being to understand this cycle, shift how we respond, and shift how we would like to navigate the broader systems we live in.

You can take the quiz to find out where you are in the Well Woman Life® Framework at wellwomanlife.com/quiz

You can find notes from today’s show at wellwomanlife.com/255show.

You can also continue the conversation in the Well Woman Life community group at wellwomanlife.com/community

The Well Woman Show is thankful for the support from The Well Woman Academy™ at wellwomanlife.com/academy.

This week on the Well Woman Show, I talk to Kristin Neff, PhD, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, conducting the first empirical studies on self-compassion almost twenty years ago. She is the author of the book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself and Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive.

We discuss:

What is self-compassion?

Why is it so hard to turn our compassion inward?

and

How do we find balance in our gender roles through self-compassion?

You can find notes from today’s show at wellwomanlife.com/254show.

Grab her books:

Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff

Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive by Kristin Neff

You can also continue the conversation in the Well Woman Life community group at wellwomanlife.com/community

The Well Woman Show is thankful for the support from The Well Woman Academy™ at wellwomanlife.com/academy.

On the Well Woman Show today, I interview my own mom for the final part of our Women We Come From series celebrating moms during the month of May.

My mom, Carol Macfie Lange was born in Scotland and now lives between Andalusia, Spain, Oxford, England and New Mexico. She holds a degree in Theatre Arts from Greer Garson Theatre and a post graduate degree in English from Westminster College, Oxford. She is the author of several books, including a historical fiction trilogy about an Alpujarran village in Franco’s Spain. She has two daughters, two step daughters, six grandchildren in Oxfordshire, two in New Mexico, four in Ohio, and one adopted grandson in Spain.

We discuss:

1. How her upbringing impacted her parenting methods.

2. The importance embracing travel and other cultures.

3. The importance of trusting what you’re good at without needing external validation.

All the information shared today can be found at the show notes at wellwomanlife.com/253show

The books she’s reading are:

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela by Nelson Mandela

You can find Carol’s books on Amazon.

You can also continue the conversation in the Well Woman Life community group at wellwomanlife.com/community

The Well Woman Show is thankful for the support from The Well Woman Academy™ at wellwomanlife.com/academy.

On the Well Woman Show today, guest host Alicia Ortega interviews her mom, Rebecca Ortega, as part of our Women We Come From series celebrating moms during the month of May.

Alicia Ortega is Co-Founder and Co-Director of Native Women Lead, an organization dedicated to growing, supporting, and advocating for Native Women in positions of leadership through business and entrepreneurship with a goal to revolutionize systems and inspire innovation by investing in Native Women in business. Alicia holds a BBA in Organizational Management and two MBA degrees in Marketing and Management of Technology from the University of New Mexico Anderson School of Management. She also brings over a decade of experience working with minority and tribally owned and operated businesses and entities from start-ups to established businesses. As the former Executive Director of the All Pueblo Council of Governors, she has extensive knowledge in working with the 20 Pueblos of New Mexico’s tribal leadership on critical issues affecting tribal communities including health, education, state, and federal legislation, natural resources, elder issues, and youth initiatives. She is a recipient of the 2019 New Mexico Distinguished Public Service Award from the New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. Alicia currently serves as a Commissioner on the City of Albuquerque Commission on American Indian and Alaska Native Affairs and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) Tribal Nations Advisory Council. She is also an artist and active community member and enjoys volunteering and supporting organizations close to her heart including the American Indian Business Association and the Native Guitars Tour Organization.

She’ll be interviewing her mom, Rebecca Ortega who is from the Pueblos of Santa Clara and Pojoaque. She is a wife to her husband of 44 years, Adan Ortega, and mother to her three children, Adam, Mario, Alicia, and Son-in-law Dennis, and grandchildren Neva and Ezra. Rebecca is a graduate of New Mexico Highlands University Class of 1976 where she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work with a minor in Psychology. Working for the All Indian Pueblo Council, she provided career education counseling and workshops to Native American high school students in the 1970s. She also worked as an Academic Advisor at the University of Albuquerque in the 1980s. As a bilingual Tewa woman, she is also very passionate about preserving the Tewa language spoken by the Northern Pueblos of New Mexico and has participated in various efforts through the years that provide Tewa language classes and certifications of Tewa language teachers. She also enjoys working alongside other language preservation organizers including the Tribal Language Consortium through the University of New Mexico.

They discuss:

1 Gaining strength from our ancestors

2 The excitement of having Native Women in positions of power

3 Holding on to our culture and language

All the information shared today can be found at the show notes at wellwomanlife.com/252show

Check out Alicia’s previous interview: https://wellwomanlife.com/231show/

You can also continue the conversation in the Well Woman Life community group at wellwomanlife.com/community

The Well Woman Show is thankful for the support from The Well Woman Academy™ at wellwomanlife.com/academy.

Welcome to The Women We Come From: a special series for and about our moms and leadership during the month of May on the Well Woman Show. I’m your host Giovanna Rossi, and I’ll be joined all month long by guest hosts interviewing their mothers about life, love, leadership and the wisdom they passed on to their daughters. The stories they share will make you laugh and cry, but most of all they help us honor the hard work of being a woman, a mom and a leader. All the best and most effective leadership skills – really everything we need to grow into compassionate, driven, smart leaders- are passed down to us through these generations of strong women.

Today’s program will feature clips from all four hosts and full interviews can be heard on the Well Woman Show podcast at NPR.org during the month of May

You can find all the details at wellwomanlife.com/250show

You can hear Celestina’s full episode at wellwomanlife.com/249show

Then next week we’ll be featuring Babsy Sinandile’s full interview, and on May 26th, we’ll have Alicia Ortega’s interview. We end the series with my interview with my mom on June 2nd.

You can also continue the conversation in the Well Woman Life community group at wellwomanlife.com/community

The Well Woman Show is thankful for the support from The Well Woman Academy™ at wellwomanlife.com/academy.