Notes from a Fart Walk: The Anti-Optimization Episode Your Nervous System’s Been Begging For

Welcome to the second-ever Notes from a Fart Walk — your monthly, come-as-you-are digest for ambitious women who are tired of urgency, polarization, and performative “fix yourself” wisdom.

In this episode, Julie sinks into real-time, unpolished truth: the “recovering good girl” moment at a big event when her body was pleading to leave… and the shame spiral that followed when she looked around and assumed everyone else was “fine.” She unpacks why this isn’t a personal flaw — it’s inherited conditioning — and how self-trust is rebuilt through simple noticing, not more optimizing.

From there, she moves into what feels stinky and unfinished right now: body image narratives, perimenopause, and the deeper cultural roots of fatphobia and “health” standards — plus the permission to be in process, without needing a tidy conclusion. You’ll also hear what’s been keeping her up at night (in a nerdy, grounding way): curiosity about civics, systems, and how to stay informed without doom-scrolling or martyring yourself.

Then we shift into community as nervous system medicine — why “care in community” can still be exhausting when everything requires scheduling, childcare, money, or effort — and why Julie is fiercely committed to creating third spaces (game night, book club, analog friendship). There’s also a sweet detour into the dog-mom corner (Aspen: professional screen-time interventionist).

Finally, she brings it into Swim Practice + Swim Meet: easy “fed is best” nourishment in a full season, what’s on repeat in her headphones, what she’s reading, random facts you didn’t ask for, a big personal win (her memoir officially heading to developmental edit), and what’s firing her up — including protecting women’s sports and calling out a missing conversation in perimenopause: low energy availability / RED-S in athletic, driven women who are being sold one-size-fits-all menopause advice.

This episode is a permission slip to be a messy human in process… and still be a powerful, world-changing woman.

1. 06:29 — Urgency, Capitalism, and Why You Feel Like You’re Always Behind
2. 12:33 — Sink Into the Deep End: When Your Body Doesn’t Believe Your “Image”
3. 37:37 — It’s a Team Effort: Loneliness, Co-Regulation, and Building Third Spaces
4. 50:07 — Swim Practice: “Fed Is Best,” Soundtracks, Book Club, and Random Joy
5. 01:08:11 — Swim Meet: What I’m Fighting For (Women’s Sports + RED-S in Perimenopause)

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Transcript

Julie Granger (00:58)

Hey there, I'm really glad you're here in the Sink and Swim podcast. Before we get into today's episode, a little housekeeping. I wanna help you get oriented just so you know where you are, how the space works, and how to take care of yourself while you're listening. So first, a gentle invitation. As you listen or watch, see if you can listen not only with your ears or watch with your eyes.

but also by noticing what's going on inside your body. And that may change throughout the whole episode. And as you notice permission to know you don't need to fix anything, you don't need to analyze it, but just notice it. Some parts of you might feel seen. Some might feel exposed. Some parts might feel resistance or concern.

about what we're saying. Other parts might feel relief, encouragement, or they might want to reach through and help us or hug me if it's just me talking.

So notice how you feel as you settle in, whether you're listening in a quiet place or out on a walk or driving or in the middle of something.

and also how you feel when you're done.

That noticing is really sacred work.

And after you listen to the episode and notice, if you find yourself feeling the tug to stay connected to me or to the podcast or to any of my guests, please make sure to check the show notes and also make sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening right now. Now is a great time to go hit that subscribe button. And I'm not asking that for numbers, but because it lets the episodes find you,

without you having to remember or keep track. And if you like having something you can read or revisit or sit with more slowly, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and that's in the show notes as well.

You can also find clips and highlights on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Substack, and Facebook. All different platforms, different doorways to the same house. So choose whatever feels easiest for you. At any point today, later, or months from now, if something in you starts whispering, you know, I feel this nudge inside.

My life or my work looks really good on paper. Everything I've built should feel good, but that's not how I feel. And sometimes that can be a sign that it's time for deeper support and reorientation. And that's where working with me in a soul story mapping session comes in. It's a private one-on-one session, not a discovery call, not a sales conversation. It's an actual coaching space.

to map what's true for you right now and get clear on what wants to shift. Even if you don't do anything with it, we're just gonna map it out. All of the links to all of those things live in the show notes, so you don't have to hold any of this in your head, but I'm saying it now to orient you in case you're listening and something comes up and you wanna know where to go next. Okay, let's drop into today's episode now.

Julie Granger (03:54)

Welcome back to the Sink and Swim podcast to our second ever Notes from a Fart Walk episode. I'm so glad you're here. The first one was very fun and I got lots of really wonderful feedback about it. And if you're new here or you didn't tune into the first Notes from a Fart Walk episode, which was episode one of season two, I recommend you do so. But I'll give you just a little overview of what Notes from a Fart Walk is.

because it's kind of a funny name. I think that I came up with this idea because I'm super aware of how loud the world feels right now. Everything is urgent. Everything is polarized, especially online. Everyone's offering certainty, quick fixes, diagnoses, requiring you to be for or against some type of polarized issue.

how the algorithms work. And there's way too many pieces of advice and teaching that subtly or not so subtly point out what you're doing wrong. Spoiler alert, capitalism, even as it exists within the health and wellness industry, which you might think is there to help you, capitalism exists in the beauty industry.

It exists in the coaching and personal growth industry. This is sort of the intersection of where my work is. Capitalism only survives when you feel bad about yourself and you feel like there's always something to improve or make better or optimize. And it's not wrong to want to grow and improve, but when people are literally profiting off of creating problems, which you may not even realize they've done.

and then serving you the solution to fix that problem and leveraging your own insecurities and vulnerabilities that you may not even realize you have. That's a problem. So I created notes from a fart walk. Also in a place where there just aren't a lot of online spaces where you can just be seen, just be held and be celebrated for being a messy human.

in the process for doing the best you freaking can, who isn't piling on more to-do list items, more things you need to learn, and things that just make you feel like you're always behind and never quite enough. And so I wanted to create a space where you get to be just you. And I invite you to literally take this on a walk with you if you can, because

when we move our bodies, things take different shape in our minds and our hearts and our souls and our spirits. Things move through us in a different way. And I imagine if you and I went on a walk together, these are the kinds of things we might discuss that are off the cuff, that are unprocessed. It's like when my neighbor and I go on a walk about once a week and we just kind of

just process openly everything that we're experiencing in the world. And so this is me choosing to walk things through my body before I shape them into meaning, some type of hot takes, some type of polished lessons, some type of offer that I'm creating for you. And just being a human to human here with you. So thank you for being here. I invite you again to take it on a walk.

and to join me in this digest. It's like a newspaper. It's what's moving through me right now in this moment. And what I say today might be different for me a week from now. And I think sometimes we want to catch ourselves in these in the middle moments to integrate, incorporate, and allow things to land as they do and be really present with them and appreciate what they're here to teach us right now. And also be grateful that

give ourselves grace and be grateful that we're doing the best we can with the knowledge, tools, skills, energy, resources that we have today, but we may have a very different perspective on things tomorrow. And so I'm sharing what's half formed, what's still cooking, what's not polished, what's not optimized, what's not AI generated and what's not cleaned up for you. In fact, I was like putting on the blouse I chose. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see it, but I was putting it on today.

and I put on some earrings and a necklace that match it. And I felt myself being like, well, you got to clean yourself up and you got to make sure it all looks good. And I was like, no, that defeats the purpose. And while I still chose a cute necklace and cute earrings and a cute blouse, it was very much not for the sake of being polished. It's how I feel when I wear it. But I also, a week ago,

filmed a podcast episode and did a podcast episode where I was in my sweats with greasy hair and my glasses on. And I think that it's okay to give ourselves permission to just show up as we are. And in a world that expects you to be polished and perfect and look a certain way and talk a certain way and act a certain way, sometimes we forget that we're all just humaning. Humans on a human adventure. And it's okay to just be as you are.

So the agreement for the fart walk is we are opting out of urgency, performative wisdom, premature clarity, trying to use and leverage my own trauma or vulnerabilities or stories to give you some lesson that I haven't even metabolized yet. I think that sometimes we can be in the middle of something and try and jump to the lesson or try and see the bigger picture. And I think speeding that along really

really cheats us out of the human experience of being in the middle of it. Where sometimes you can't find the wisdom until you're way on the other side of it and you look back and there's something romantic about that, yet we romanticize needing to find the lesson in things as we're going through them. And that's quite dehumanizing. So we're opting out of that. I'm opting into honesty. I'm opting into noticing. I'm opting into

potentially humor, even if it's only humorous to me. I'm opting into nuance and contradiction instead of choosing a side, unless there's something I just feel very strongly about. showing up consistently without polish. I'm doing these once a month. So join me once a month for whatever is in the digest for notes from a fart walk. And before we dig into all of the

wonderful and random things I have to discuss today, I invite you to pause with me. Whether you're walking, whether you're sitting in your car, chopping vegetables in your kitchen, sitting on the couch in your living room in your jammies, or you're somewhere else. And I invite you to notice how your body feels right now.

and notice how it feels to be you today.

and plug in with your breath coming in and out of your nostrils. We'll just keep it very simple. That place where you can undoubtedly feel it.

And if your nostrils are clogged up or you're in a place where you can't breathe through your nose for some reason, the breath coming in and out of your mouth.

Without trying to make it a special breath or any type of analysis of your breath, just notice it for a couple in and out breaths.

being grateful for this steady presence that's always there even when you aren't paying attention to it, working behind the scenes for you. And maybe serving up a piece of gratitude for the fact that your body keeps you breathing without you having to control it. It's this one thing that you don't have to put on the to-do list to do right.

your body is going to increase your breath when it needs to decrease your breath when it needs to it's very, very wise.

And as you listen and drop into your body, I don't expect you to feel calm, to feel grounded. You don't have to feel fully focused. You don't have to be coming up with all sorts of intuitive wisdom with the things I say. I just invite you periodically if you can and if it feels available to notice as I talk and as you listen how it feels to be in your body in this moment, which might be different five minutes from now.

And just notice it, give yourself an opportunity to clock it. Come back to that breath in your nostrils or your mouth. I'll do my best to remind you, but no promises. So each episode I choose two to four pieces of each of the four main segments of the entire episode. So we've got the sink into the deep end segment that comes first. And then we have three other big segments after that.

They start from discussions from my innermost world all the way into moving into discussions of my outermost world, the things you might actually see out in the world, whether it's on social media or in my work or in my interactions with people in the community. So Sink Into the Deep End comes first, and there several different topics I'm going to sink into today. This is the part where I slow down enough to actually feel

and express what's going on inside of me. And why this one's so important to me is we aren't fully ourselves when our bodies don't believe us and our bodies are giving us information all the time on whether they believe that how we are self-expressing with others and with ourselves is actually our true self. And you know how that feels. It's like

when you are shape-shifting or you feel like you have to hide certain parts of you or edit certain parts of you when you're in interactions with certain people or in certain circumstances, or even with yourself, you hear a thought come across your mind and you might edit it to be a more positive thought or a more adult thought or a more grounded thought. Those are all ways that we've been taught to be something that our body doesn't believe that we are necessarily.

And so the deep end piece is the most deep digesting part. And we all know deep down, it's the part we skip over, the inner experience, our emotions, our identities, our inner narratives, those narratives that we don't even realize are going on inside of us. And it's the part we can't skip.

if we want to truly express ourselves authentically, both with ourselves and others, and also change, be change makers in the world. And we want that to come from a really rooted place that reflects who we really are and what we really value. And one of the things that gets us in trouble, especially as women, is if you were raised in a patriarchal, capitalistic, rooted in religion,

in some way, society, which most of us were, we were raised to be good girls. And so the first part of Sink into the Deep End that I will be sinking into is what I call the recovering good girl corner, where I talk about how I'm actively unwinding good girl conditioning, where I catch myself over explaining, where I might soften my edges, where I might self edit, where I feel the urge to be palatable or agreeable or useful.

And I'm talking about how this is showing up for me right here in real time, because I'm not going to position myself as someone who's on the other side of good girl conditioning. I do help people move through that themselves, but not because I've solved it all myself, but because I'm actively in the process as well. And there's a particular

topic that's been on my mind when it comes to how I show up.

and express who I am and what's important to me, not only like to other people, but also myself and how I listen to myself and how I respond to cues from my body, my emotions, my internal signals, instead of trying to override them or diagnose them or optimize them or outsource them to a way I'm supposed to be.

It's about reclaiming self-trust. It's not trying to be good or normal even, or improve myself in any way.

And it's where I invite simple noticing and curiosity instead of trying to explain myself or put myself in a box or make myself further along the path than I am. And I shared in last week's episode about

The shame that came over me when I was at a recent networking event at my alma mater and how my body was asking and pleading with me to leave.

And I looked around the room, this was a late night dinner after a full day of conference activities and learning and networking. And I noticed that nobody else seemed to be expressing that they might be tired, that they might feel burned out, that they might feel overwhelmed, that they might also wanna leave the event. And when I was looking at everybody on the surface,

the feeling my stomach dropped and I felt so alone. And voices came over me that said, what's wrong with you? Why can't you just stick it out? Why can't you be like everybody else?

If you resonate with that in any way, you're at a big event and you are like looking at your watch, you're kind of looking at the door, you're calculating how early you can leave or how long you should stay to make it worth your while or to meet the people and make an impact and make an appearance, whatever it is, right? And you want to leave. We've all been there in some way, shape or form. Even if you're like a super extrovert and you love being around big groups of people. And

I didn't necessarily have the opportunity to just leave. So there were some environmental circumstances that were out of my control. were, we went to the event, we were taken in a shuttle. And so I had to wait for the first shuttle to take me back home. And what I did was I felt that

shame come over me. I felt those questions come over me. And I immediately, instead of responding to them in a way that felt authentic to who I really am, I put on my good girl face. I was like, no, we shouldn't be feeling that right now. You need to try harder. And so I looked around the room and I found someone to talk to and slapped on a smile.

and went and talked to this person while I waited for the shuttles to come and it was like secretly watching my watch, like counting down the minutes to when I could leave. And I just remember getting on the shuttle when it was time to finally leave and feeling this exhale, not just from my breath, but also like my whole body exhaled because I had plastered on an image of myself that I thought I should be.

that I thought was worthy, that I thought was the right way to be in this type of setting, instead of allowing myself to be and feel what was actually true for me, what my body actually believed. And there's lots of other circumstances like social obligation, like not making a scene, not being the weirdo. But when I look back on it, I think about how

I actually had so many other options in that moment, which I can only now see in retrospect when you're in kind of a shame spiral, it's very difficult to feel like you have choice and options. But I could have plastered myself to the wall and been a wallflower and scrolled my phone. And I'm not sure anyone would have cared or judged me. But at the time, I felt like there was this huge microscope on me and it would have looked

weird to do anything but what everyone else was doing. And I could have walked outside. It was a nice day. I could have just gone for a walk. But that didn't even register in my mind at the time. And we're so conditioned to override our body signals in service to being the image or fitting a narrative or shape shifting

Whether the thoughts and the narratives we have around that are true or not, that's how we're wired. And I'm sharing this because...

I think that we as women blame ourselves when we feel shame, when we're not thinking the way we should, when we're not acting the way we should. The self-help world might look at me and be like, well, you just need to work on your limiting beliefs or your trauma or whatever it is that got you into this mess. And that's true. None of that's wrong. But at the same time, the story behind the shame isn't just mine. It's systemic. It's a story I've inherited.

and internalized over decades of my life, mostly from our culture that prioritizes productivity, extroversion, gregariousness, and pushing yourself past your body's limits in the name of quote, being a people person. And if you've never read the book Quiet, I highly recommend it, especially if you're introverted or highly sensitive, because it really talks about

trying to be introverted and highly sensitive in a world that values all of those things, especially in the type of environment that I was in.

And so it can be very, very easy to internalize and self blame when you feel really uncomfortable in a situation. It can be very easy to override how you're feeling and try and be something else. So try and fix it or polish it. It can be very easy to edit your thoughts or your narrative about what's going on in that moment and what you should or shouldn't be doing. And I just want to offer with love and compassion and grace that

All of those things you're thinking you should or shouldn't be doing, they're not all your narratives. You didn't choose to put those thoughts in your head. You inherited them. And once you become aware of that, then you do have choice on whether or not you want to keep those narratives. And usually working through those narratives and letting them go requires some type of beautiful therapy or support or whatever.

If you're feeling that way in a certain situation and your body is sending you cues and you're starting to notice them and you do override them, there's no shame in that. It's okay if you do. You haven't failed at like self-care. And also if you do want to do something about them or you do want to honor your body's cues, that's also okay. There have been plenty of opportunities where I've been in events or

networking groups or weddings or places where I'm like peopled out and I just don't want to be there anymore and I honor it and I leave or I do plaster myself to the wall and suddenly seem engrossed in my phone or whatever it is, you know? And that's completely okay to do. there's...

There's no right way to be, there's no right way to self-care, there's no right way to honor your body's signals. We do the best we can with the tools and skills and resources and energy that we have at any given moment. And the next time I find myself in this type of situation, I now have this experience to fall back on, on how it felt in my body to override my signals, to feel the clench in my jaw just finally relax.

when I got on the bus to go back to my hotel and feel that exhale come over my body, that felt good to finally release the tension I was holding, but also helped bring me back to myself and to feel that return and give myself an opportunity to maybe release the tension or come back to myself even sooner next time instead of overriding it.

over and over and over again. It's just a practice. It's something we can't fully embody and fully learn perfectly every single time, but we can get a little bit better every single time that we find ourselves in those situations.

So that is the recovering good girl corner. Thanks for coming to that one. The next part of sinking into the deep end is something that feels really stinky right now. It's something that I am currently fully in process on. I'm not ready to give you some piece of wisdom. I am by no means an expert at it. I am unintegrated.

and I'm not here to give you any meaningful conclusion on it. So I'm in the process of doing a women's somatic therapy training. It's equal parts for me as an individual, but also giving me lots of tools and skills for working with clients. And part of the training is going through the historical and cultural narratives and influences on women in how we view and see our bodies.

So one of the principles that I love that the instructor ⁓ is teaching is, you know, we can tell people all day to get in their bodies. By the way, this is a great time for me to invite you to drop into yours and feel your breath again. So please do so.

But I'm making an assumption, which I'll acknowledge even by saying that, that you feel safe being in your body. It's a big assumption that you are aware of how to even be in your body. Because as I just mentioned in the last section, we are cultured to be out of our bodies and to not be in tune. Or maybe there's been some type of very difficult situation or trauma or challenge or health issue that the intelligent response of your body was to escape your body.

And so.

it's important to acknowledge when you are a deeply sensing and deeply feeling and deeply intuiting guide for someone else, but also just a guide for yourself that again, it's not just your narratives on how you see and experience your body, but there's so many cultural narratives and influences and systemic influences on how you view and see your body. And the specific thing that maybe shook me awake,

this week, which I've heard a million times, but it just for whatever reason, the iteration of it that I heard this week finally landed, was seeing the research behind how the concept of fatphobia, fat shaming, body shaming is rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, and the transatlantic slave trade. Maybe it's just how she

explained it, the instructor in the course, just my, was available to hear it and have it land in my body in a way, was just really poignant to me. And she also dug into how it is not necessarily a marker of health to try and make a larger body smaller.

could call that weight loss. There's more than enough research now that proves that BMI is not a correlate of what we might define as health. BMI was invented by a mathematician in the 1800s and then it was adopted by Health Insurance Company basically as a reason to not pay for things, which was then adopted by the healthcare industry to

create a problem for you that they would then solve for you. But also the health industry has plenty of discrimination towards people who are in larger bodies and they don't give them the care they need. So it's just this whole big paradox and ironic mess. So that's not to say that people's lives aren't changed for the better and they don't feel healthier or more well.

when they lose weight or have bariatric surgery or take weight loss pills or whatever it is they choose to do or need to do. But what we know in the research that I'm learning in this course that no one taught me in my medical training was that

It's the stigma of existing in a larger body in a culture that for centuries now has created an otherness of larger bodies. And that's rooted in the otherness that was created in larger bodies that were part of the transatlantic slave trade, the otherness created by the slender white European image of colonialism.

So it's more dangerous to be in the larger body and exist in a society that has the shame and stigma of the larger body than to actually be in the body that's larger. And what they're starting to see, and this is difficult for me to parse out because I'm not an expert at it, is like what we might call obesity might be more linked to the emotional root and the spiritual root of

things and that's leading to high cholesterol and other correlates of obesity, then, and what's actually unhealthy is the more emotional and spiritual dilemma behind it than the actual size of the body and shape of the body.

And you don't have to be classified as obese or fat or be in a, I don't know what we might define as a larger body. I don't even know what that is for this to matter. And that's where it really landed with me because as a woman in perimenopause with a rapidly changing body, one that has always been fairly, it's white, first of all, and has always been athletic and slender and is of Western European descent. I now have softer edges. My blouse, even the one I put on today, fits a little tighter.

And I have pants hanging in my closet that don't even fit anymore. So I'd be lying if I told you I don't look in the mirror and feel things or think things about my body size and shape. It's just a complete lie. And I don't look like what you might think of when you think of larger body, fat or obese. I'm nowhere close. I'll acknowledge that. But that doesn't mean I'm not affected by the narratives, which I'm now recognizing come from places that predate

my life that I never had a choice on whether I opted into those narratives or not. I adopted them without realizing it. These narratives were even more twisted as someone who was trained in the medical field to have a certain opinion, have certain expertise and knowledge around obesity that may or may not actually be fully

a medical body problem. And of course these narratives come to me through ads, articles, and even in my own health and wellness providers offering advice and fixes in the name of concern and health when it's just so difficult to like separate out.

the stigma that comes with fat, fatphobia, fat shaming, obesity, larger bodies. Like, is it actually in the name of health or is it because we're discriminating against those things? So very unprocessed, very sobering to know that there's a lot more that goes into it than simply looking at the body, looking at markers of health and wellness on a physical level. And the way that it affects us

whether we're physically living in larger bodies or not, and how I don't know what to do with this information, like for myself, for my own self-image, health practices, all other things I do. But that's why I'm passing it along as unfinished, because I don't need to know what to do at this moment. It's allowed to be in process. I'm allowed to

tell people about things as a health and wellness expert and say, you know what, I don't know. I don't actually know what all this means. I don't know what I'm gonna do about it. I just know that there's something here that is not what it seems and it's not what I was taught. And I'm acknowledging that I'm in the process of learning and I hope that you have the courage and.

support and wherewithal for whatever it is you might be working through, whether it's this issue or many others, to give yourself the opportunity to say those types of things too.

The last section of the Sink into the Deep End is questions that keep me up. So this is where I share the things that I have been Googling or noodling on or researching like proverbially late at night. It often is late at night. go down rabbit holes, but it's not because I'm looking for answers, but because some part of me deep inside of me is very curious and loves to learn. And that curiosity won't shut up.

And so in a world that's very politically polarizing, what I've noticed is instead of doom scrolling, I'm feeling a lot more grounded, we could say regulated, when I allow myself to nerd out and review the actual truth about the United States government, lawmaking rules, procedures. It's like a throwback to high school government class, even elementary school when we learned civics for the first time.

If you ever watched Schoolhouse Rock with I'm Just a Bill on Capitol Hill, this is what I'm talking about. it helps me become informed.

rather than following rhetoric online that might actually not be true. And I'm talking about it from all sides of the political spectrum. And getting into the more like emotionally heightened versions of stories and actually getting into, well, what's actually really true? What's possible? What's not possible? How far could someone take this bending the rules or breaking the rules, et cetera?

What are, where are the actual checks and balances? Why do politicians act the way they do? What actually influences them? What, where is my energy best used in learning about these things, but also in taking action? And so getting clear on those types of things has been really, really helpful. For example, becoming really informed before I reach out to my senators and Congress.

person. It helps me to get clear on things like whether boycotting certain companies like Amazon, for example, or AI or Meta is actually doing the damage I think, like I've been told it's doing, or if there are more effective ways to inspire change without being a martyr about it and like sacrificing things and resources that might actually be helpful to me, or changing my lifestyle tremendously simply on principle. And it's okay if you do that.

not shaming or judging that, but I think that martyrdom can be really accessible when we're really upset about things where we cause ourselves to hurt unnecessarily on principle when nobody's watching or listening and it causes more harm to you than good. And so...

It's been really helpful and it's a much better use of my energy than doom scrolling or getting caught in comments sections, which is very easy to do sometimes. But when I do get overcome with feeling anxious or doubtful, it's a way to right the ship and see that there's actually quite a number of guardrails up and that people really do want what's good for the, I would say the common good.

And there's actually quite a lot of movement in a positive direction happening that you can't see, but you do have to be willing to slow down and look

below the surface for those types of things. So that's what I've been doing is looking below the surface and asking informed questions and asking why and getting behind the rhetoric. And that can feel really emotionally grounding and clearing. And if you're curious about all the places I've been looking and researching, reach out, I'm happy to share more on that.

So the next segment is, it's a team effort. And this is where I look at the people around me, the relationships, the people who make it easier to express myself and be myself and the ones who make it harder. I look at who's studying me, who scrambles me and who gives me room to be the most honest. I think we can all think about who those people are. As the first part of this,

It's a team effort segment. I talk about what it's like to exist among other humans as a millennial woman. And this could be anything from perimenopause, the fatigue of adulting, hashtag adulting. Differences, I'm picking up among generations, the double binds that come at this age and stage of life. And it's quite observational and not prescriptive even though this is

an age group and a niche and a stage that I work with professionally. But really it's more for me to share my experience of it. And I talked about this in last month's notes from a fart walk.

I think what's really interesting is there's, maybe you felt it too, but there's a movement.

among women of all ages, but definitely the millennial age to go back to what we might call analog friendship, traditional friendships, more girls' nights, more things like book club and just going on a walk for the sake of going on a walk. I saw something recently called the doorbell friend, which is the friend who just drops by for the sake of, I was in the neighborhood and I thought of you.

instead of everything having to be scheduled and polished and regimented and planned and energy taxing, it's friendship and gathering in third spaces for the sake of doing so. Because most of us are affected in some way by what's being talked about a little bit more in the world in the loneliness epidemic. And there's quite a lot of research coming out about the effects of loneliness.

on your long-term health being worse for you than things like smoking. You're a woman who cares for your family. You're a woman who cares for your work. As an entrepreneur, I absolutely care about my work. It's like another baby. You care for yourself and everyone else, but no one's caring for you necessarily.

Or if you are receiving care, it has to be curated, paid for, or a high energy drain to show up in community and be cared for. I think of an example of that. And this is going to sound kind of ironic. And it's also no shade on this particular group and event. But I think about I recently went to a nervous system reset, sound bath, like a breath work session almost, like a group gathering meditation.

to calm your nervous system in community, which is a beautiful thing and a wonderful thing that a local Pilati studio has as an offering. And I can't wait to attend more of them. But just as an example, you have to get in the car. You have to bring, you you get to, there's an option to bring blankets and pillows and things to make you feel more comfortable. Some people might choose to shower before they go. There might be scheduling childcare. There might be...

making sure the dog's taken care of. There might be handing off something to a partner to make sure they can handle it while you're away. Still takes energy, know, like a bit of organizational traveling energy, which is different than I'm going to walk through the neighborhood and run into my neighbor in the driveway and we're just going to talk about how our day went, right? And so...

I think that it can be a high energy drain to be cared for in community as a woman in this age group. And for some women, they might feel like they're losing the art of co-regulation in just natural everyday community. Again, everything's planned, scheduled, et cetera, or they're giving to everybody else. For me, it's tricky because there's less of what we might call a default community.

I don't work in a workplace. I don't even go to a coworking space because we don't have one of those in my town where I'm just around other people naturally. don't jump, drop into someone's office to just see how their day's going or bounce an idea off of them. I don't have that because I work from home and I'm a solo entrepreneur. I talk to people, you know, I talk to clients, I talk to colleagues through Zoom calls, through this podcast and all those kinds of things, but it's different.

when it's in person and it's just you and your natural habitat. The other default community that I don't have access to as a woman in her 40s is I'm not a parent of human children. And even with my dogs, I don't go to the dog park because neither of my dogs is a great candidate for the dog park. And so I'm not kind of just naturally around other parents. And some...

moms from what I hear really like that. And some people don't want their community to just be moms. But those default community pieces can be really difficult to find. And there is a growing conversation about third spaces where you're not in community at work, you're not in community and family, and not even in community in your default categories like friendship or even like sports training.

Crossfitters, that kind of thing, but a third space where you exist for the sake of existing in community, not because you're doing some sort of project or productive thing together. And so that's been something that in feeling the loneliness that's come up since COVID and even before that, and really being in a different stage of life where I just can feel the importance of co-regulation is for me, I'm just relentlessly

unapologetically committed to nurturing the third space. For me, that's looked like last month I started it. I kicked it off mostly for neighbors and a couple of friends who are nearby game night, a monthly game night. Our next one is tomorrow. I'm so excited about this. It's truly a come as you are situation. I'm not, as the host, putting in a lot of effort. I might make sure the toilet is not.

gross, you know? But otherwise not overly clean my house, overly prepare, know, put out lots of food, spend a lot of money. It's not a party. It's simple, hey, come, we have games. Last month we played Cards Against Humanity. It was hilarious. And it was such a way to just get to know people in a way, we're not producing anything. is play and fun and gathering for the sake of gathering.

And it was so beautiful and wonderful and so enriching.

I've also been attending a book club at our local indie bookstore. And what's so beautiful about that is someone else is organizing it and holding it. It does take some effort to show up for sure. You do have to read the book. I mean, you don't have to, but it's advisable. But it's a way that I'm receiving gathering and community and surrounding myself with people who are like-minded because we obviously all agreed to read the same book.

and people who are interested in a deeper intellectual discussion about what they're reading and how that reflects the world around us. And I love that kind of thing. I love deep discussions. I love it for the sake of doing it, you know? And what's beautiful about being someone in her 40s at book club is I'm not writing a paper on it. It's not a college class. It's doing it for the sake of doing it. However imperfect, however messy it is, it's so...

beautiful. And what I love about it all again is there's no productive reason. It's not journal club. It's not to support my work, although it does support my work because it supports the human who's doing the work. But in none of these experiences are we discussing work. It's not a networking experience. I'm not leveraging friendship to try and grow my business. We're just celebrating the art of being together and pleasure and

humaning in spaces that aren't related to any type of performance or productivity or output or anything like that. So.

If you're curious about building third spaces, I hope that wherever you live and wherever you are, you have been able to find them. And if not, maybe you are being called to create them. And I'd be so curious what would be really fun for you or what would feel really nourishing to you. So please feel free to reach out and share with me what you're doing, because it might give me some ideas.

The next piece of It's a Team effort is the dog mom corner. So I mentioned I'm not a mom of humans. I am a mom of dogs who I jokingly and maybe not so jokingly will say are my biological children. And I love my dogs. I was thinking this morning about one of my dogs Aspen. She sleeps in our bed.

And one of my favorite things to do in the morning is roll over, cuddle up with her and just actually use it as a drop in moment into my body and experience what cuddling and co-regulation actually feel like versus like what they look like or should be. And this morning I was just reflecting on how I felt my head

relax even like 10 % more into the pillow that it was lying on. I felt my heart rate slow. I just felt this sense of like oneness with her. I could feel my breath almost sinking in with hers. And I felt her almost like lean into me, you the weight of her lean into me. And she like picked up her head and put it on my...

my arm and she cuddled in and nuzzled in, you know? And it's such a beautiful thing sometimes to just have those moments where we drop in. So here's another great time as you're listening, picturing that, whether it's with your dog or another human or your child or a stuffed animal or a tree that you might be hugging or putting your toes in the ground, of picturing a time recently where you've actually felt that.

co-regulation from something or someone else.

And if you haven't, that's OK too. That might be something that you long for.

And here in this moment noticing in your nose.

or your mouth, the air going in and out, and just savoring that sensation of whatever that felt like or whatever it is you long to feel in physical touch co-regulation with someone else. You also might not be a real physical touch kind of person, which is also okay. So whatever that looks like for you sitting with someone, conversing, receiving a compliment, words of affirmation.

and coming back to your breath and just asking yourself if there's anything you long for with that.

The other thing that's so beautiful and co-regulatory with my dog and Aspen, I have two dogs, Aspen tends to be my other half. Chipper is our cattle dog and he is very much the personality of my husband. Aspen is very much my person, so to speak, even though she's a dog. Aspen is so co-regulatory to me in that.

She, over the last maybe year or so, has really become expressive and she protests when I'm on my phone. And we jokingly call our phones our rectangles. She's very expressive about her protests. She paws at us. She whines. She growls. There have been many occasions where she will come and use her nose and push our phones out of our hands.

She did it yesterday with my laptop actually, which is a very different kind of rectangle, but still a rectangle. And what I've started to joke and say is I don't need a brick or a screen time app. I have Aspen. And it's humbling and sobering to experience the reminders from a dog.

who has never used technology and has no idea what it is. But for them to pick up on maybe my heart rate has sped up while I'm on my phone. Maybe there's an expression on my face that is one of consternation because I'm reading something that's stressing me out. maybe I'm excited and she wants to be a part of it. Maybe I'm reading something I love and I'm But it's so interesting to just picture and almost think about

how it must be for a dog to see us on screens. I picture, you know, neither of my dogs is in this room right now, but how it would be for them to view through their eyes, like I'm sitting here leaning into a microphone, staring at a very large computer screen with my desktop computer, facing the corner of my office. Like how, how must that look to a dog? It's very strange, right? It's very unnatural.

So it makes perfect sense to me that Aspen has developed a protest of that. And she's so attuned to me. And why wouldn't she speak up? know, it can be a little annoying sometimes. Sometimes when I like need to be doing something on my phone, I have to like hide my phone or go in another room. Because I don't want to stress her out, you know, but it is.

such a beautiful reminder to put the screen down when I do have the ability, bandwidth, and wherewithal to do so. All right. So that's the, it's a team effort section of the notes from a fart walk. So we can't fully express who we are unless the people around us are able to hold us in our wholeness. So it's like the deep, our deep ends ideally are held by the people around us, but sometimes the people around us

make us hesitate on how we express or they protest how we express. And it can actually be quite dysregulatory when the people around us or the narratives that we've been fed from the culture around us cause us to self edit. So I find that the sink into the deep end and the it's a team effort sections kind of go hand in hand with each other in terms of being your fullest, most authentic self.

in the world. The next section, which I call swim practice, is where we take our authentic self-expression and our ways we show up in community and how we actually put things into real visible life, into habits, rituals, choices, patterns, the good ones and the messy ones that help us fully show the world who we are. And one way that we do that

that it's how we nourish ourselves for better or worse, literally and metaphorically. The first section of swim practice is what's cooking in my kitchen. So if we're talking about literal nourishment, literal food, which I think goes really beautifully with the previous section on body image, body shame, et cetera. And I think that...

Nourishing is such a hot topic. You can look anywhere online and get advice on what you should and shouldn't be doing, on how you're feeding yourself, especially if you're in peri-metapause. For me, February, which we're rounding the corner on the end of February, I'm filming this and recording it on February 26th. February was very full for me. And for lots of reasons, none of them good or bad.

I was in a state where I could not be bothered to do any type of creative cooking. Over the winter, I had a beautiful ritual that I called Super Sunday, where I created a different soup every Sunday that basically fed us all week. And I loved kind of exploring different soups to make, different things to mix in, different things to just dump out of the fridge in the pantry that somehow turned into a soup. In February, dinners have been fast, convenient.

usually pre-prepared. There hasn't been a lot of creative energy. And I think a big part of that without necessarily fully analyzing myself is February has been full in the best way in terms of pouring creative energy into my work. And we all as humans have a certain capacity to our creativity. And I think I tapped it out, you know, work-wise. And I'm so overjoyed with that. And I just didn't have a whole lot left for creativity when it comes to the kitchen.

And I love cooking. So it's not that I was like depriving myself of that. It's just, I channeled my creative efforts in one way and obviously still value nourishing myself in a way that's kind to my system and of course my husband's system. So I figured out different ways to nourish myself and I tend to value the

concept of fed is best. It doesn't just apply to feeding newborns. I think that applies to all humans. And so if you're someone who's anti-processed food, everything has to be perfectly organic and clean, while I do value all of those things, I don't think it's a place to invest my energy too much in trying to make it perfect. And we have detox pathways in our body.

And what I believe is what's more toxic is holding yourself to perfect or optimization or certain standards in the interest of quote unquote being healthy or look healthy, but actually in your body feel like strain stress and way too much for you to carry. So sometimes we need to make choices for reasons that our schedules are full or we're just tapped out creatively.

Sometimes we need to make choices for medical reasons where we do choose more, we choose different things. I won't even say better or worse, because I don't believe in good and bad food. But I think it can be a slippery slope into good girl culture when we hold ourselves to certain rules and standards in how we nourish ourselves that don't match with what our bodies are asking of us in certain seasons. So in my kitchen.

Right now I have been tapping into some favorite quick, easy, peasy meal prep and even meal ideas that, you know, in this season are really working for me I wanted to share those. I love a really good bagged salad where literally everything is in there that you would put in and on the salad, including the dressing. Big fan. We have some really good ones. We've been shopping at Aldi a lot.

and I love them. and it's a really easy and inexpensive way to get vegetables, to get really good flavor, and to get flavor combinations that I might not think to put together. so I also love, I really love unique flavor combinations in food. I'm a total foodie at heart. So someone else putting in the effort and creative energy is welcome with something like a bagged salad.

The next thing I love that I also love to put on the bag salad is pre-pulled rotisserie chicken. I also love a good rotisserie chicken, but I often ask Daniel to pull it for me. For some reason, the act of pulling the chicken is so gross to me. I just don't like getting the chicken under my fingernails. Anyway, so when it's pre-pulled, even better. And they have that at Aldi. By the way, this is not an ad for Aldi.

a big fan. But Aldi, if you're listening and you want to give me a sponsorship, I'm totally game. The other thing I really love, and I don't actually get these from Aldi, I get them from our local big supermarket or our local organic market, is really, really good pre-made soups. So I love making soup, big fan of the Instant Pot, but right now even dumping things into the Instant Pot and figuring out the combinations of them, that is way too much creative energy for my brain.

So really good pre-made soups is really fun, not to mention, again, people at the store or the people who come up with the soup ideas sometimes have ideas that I don't. So it also gives me ideas of maybe soups I'll make in another season. They'll be really good. The last part of what's in my kitchen are like the quick grab things that are nutrient dense and making sure I'm getting enough.

calories because I have a long history of working through lunch and forgetting. So when it's easy for me to grab, it also will remind me to slow down and actually eat versus if I've got to prepare a big thing. And I'm definitely not a Sunday meal prep for lunch kind of girl. Absolutely not. Part of working from home, the beauty of it is I can just open the fridge and put something together.

So I'm a big fan of hard-boiled eggs, whether I make them and I will make them in the instant pot or I buy them pre-hard-boiled, they're actually fairly inexpensive. Frozen protein waffles are a place I'm definitely dropping into recently. Really big fan of those. I love a good pancake and I love pastries and I feel like it kind of scratches the itch for both of those things in the morning.

And I love to have some type of carbohydrate in the morning. For me, it works really well for my body. So that's been a really fun thing to tap into and try different flavors and different brands and that kind of thing. Huge fan of string cheese. I actually eat that almost every morning with my frozen protein waffles. But also a really great snack on the go snack for if I'm running to an appointment or something like that. Also a huge fan of baby carrots, pre-cut celery, and hummus.

Great way to get some vegetables along with the bagged salad. But I can take it with me somewhere as well, or just have it when I'm at my computer. Again, without too much thinking or like vegetable chopping. And lastly, something I'm really into lately is yogurt and or yogurt smoothies post-workout. Kind of ticks all the boxes of really beautiful carbohydrate protein and fat after a workout.

to replenish, which I find has been a real game changer in perimenopause when a more intense workout is going to drain me and I need more recovery or I'm doing some type of strength training. I find those types of things to be helpful. So I would also be curious what types of things you find are super fast and super helpful All right, the next thing on...

when practice the ways that I am putting into action what I value. This is the section on soundtrack, what's playing in my ears and why certain lyrics won't let me go. So.

if you know me. Maybe you don't know me. Maybe you're new. Something to know about me is I am a huge, unapologetic, committed Taylor Swift fan. And I am late to life becoming a Taylor Swift fan. I became a fan two years ago at age 40. I went to the Heirs tour three times. I'm totally obsessed. I know every song at this point. I'm in the lore. I'm totally in Swifty Kingdom, all the things.

⁓ And her recent album that came out in October, The Life of a Showgirl. I'm a big fan, although I will say it's not my favorite Taylor Swift album, but I do love it. if you're watching on YouTube, my nails are currently painted orange and mint green as an homage to that album. I think it's such a creative combination of color and two colors I never would have put together or worn, but I do love them. The soundtrack.

from this album, the two songs, I love most of the songs on the album. There's not a skip track for me, but the two that I keep coming back to are Opalite and Father Figure. Opalite, feel like really speaks to, first of all, the music video just came out and it's such an homage to the upbringing of the millennial woman or the person who,

lived through the 90s. If you haven't watched the music video, I highly recommend it. It's so creative and so good and genius. The song is a bop. You can't not dance or wiggle or smile when you hear it. It's like the golden retriever of songs. And it has such beautiful lyrics about finding happiness after a hard time.

And the music video itself really speaks to the woman who's feeling lonely, whether it's lonely in romantic relationships or lonely from them, lonely in friendship, lonely in family, feeling exiled in some way. then she... And the lyrics make it okay, like kind of normalize that we've all been there. And...

It's okay to feel lonely and there's not necessarily anything wrong with you. And then there's an overcoming of the loneliness and finding happiness again in relationship. I think it's so beautiful. And personally speaking to what I already mentioned about the cultivating friendship thing, I think it really resonates with me for that reason. I've overcome, know, friendship breakups and all kinds of things in the last several years that were very difficult.

And the song feels like an ode and an homage to my own personal process and that. And it's such an upbeat and positive tune that it feels celebratory and empowering while also being so validating and affirming that we all go through this process, which is what Taylor is so good about with her songs, not just in the lyrics, but also in the the sound of the song.

The other song which comes right after Opalite on the album is Father Figure. And first of all, I love that she incorporates the song titled the same by George Michael. And there's an homage to George Michael in the Opalite music video, which I love. But what I love about it is there's so many lyrical poetic ways you could look at that song and

going back to the good girl corner of this podcast, it really kind of speaks to the good girl who had somebody up on a pedestal or was in some type of power differential in her life. Whether it was a mentor, whether it was an actual father, whether it was a romantic relationship, whether it was...

teacher or something like that. And that mentor didn't necessarily have the person's best interest in mind and or was only there for the person when it

elevated the status or the image of the mentor or the person in the power position more. And the song really walks through the gradual waking up of the person, the lower person in the power differential and how they take their power back and eventually like spin the entire differential and bring in a lot of sort of overcoming and empowerment and

kinds of things. I am butchering this explanation, but it's a great song. It has an incredible tune to it. And there's like a key change at the end where she goes from singing in a lower octave to a higher octave. And the key change itself has its own symbolism and poeticness to it that I think is so beautiful. So if you're not a Taylor Swift fan,

I highly recommend you look into these and if you are, I'm so curious your thoughts on this album as well.

All right, two more parts of, actually, three more parts of this one practice section. The next one is all about book club, where I talk about what I'm reading or what I'd like to read. So I started this year with a lot of reading. Life has been full, as I mentioned in February. I read two books earlier this month, but later this month, my attention hasn't been settled quite enough to just sit down and enjoy a fiction book. And I go through phases of that.

But there's one book in my TBR that I'm excited about reading, is Project Hail Mary. I don't typically read a lot of science fiction. Not because I'm not interested, but just because it's not what I typically just gravitate towards. But I loved The Martian and I recently saw a friend who is very much into science fiction talking about this book.

online and also my local bookstore hosted book club on this book last night that I did not attend because I did not read the book yet. And so I'm very, very eager to read this book and tap into a genre that I don't read very often. And if you are into science fiction, I definitely welcome your thoughts on other science fiction books that might be fun for me to explore. All right, the next piece of swim practice are random facts you never asked for.

and I kind of already mentioned it in the section of sinking into the deep end of my going down rabbit holes with questions that keep me up at night, I gave you the internal process of how I do that to sometimes help with things that make me anxious or unsettled. But I also do it simply because I have an insatiable curiosity.

And I love learning purely for delight, for the sake of learning, learning things that I will never do anything with. I tend to go down rabbit holes. love reading maps on Google Maps. I love following rivers on maps. I know so much about waterways. I can't tell you why, but I just do. I love glaciers. I love history. I love strange facts, purely for the delight of it. Recently...

I saw a meme that had the most interesting strange fact, this sort of geography but more linguistics. So there's two countries you might be familiar with in Europe, Sweden and Denmark. If you take the first three letters of both of those words, you get Sweden. You might have to write this down to take a look at it. If you take the last letters after the first three of each of those words, you get Denmark.

Again, take a look at the spelling of each. It's just fascinating. It means nothing, I don't think, but it's so cool. And those countries are right next to each other. Hmm. That's a random fact you never asked for. The last part of swim practice, the actions, the things I'm doing purely to make me feel more alive and to...

put into action my self-expression in the world is shine and brag. These are my wins, big or small, that don't necessarily relate to my work. That bring me delight. So I mentioned this on a podcast interview with Elizabeth Lyons in season one. Elizabeth is a book writing coach and an editor.

and a multi-time published author. So on that podcast, I it was the first time I publicly said that I was writing a book. And actually, right before I recorded the podcast with her, I completed my book, which is a memoir, looking at all of my life and times and the lessons learned during my experience with cancer. From the time I finished it to...

Now here in February I recorded that with her I believe it was October or September even of 2025. I've been in the editing process. I sent it off to a good friend who is my beta like first beta reader. She read the whole thing gave me feedback on it and now I've taken that feedback incorporated some edits and now the memoir is officially off to its first editor.

I'm so excited about that because it also means, well, I'm just excited and nervous because it's really vulnerable. Outside of a good friend who is there to kind of hype me up and give me constructive feedback, but a lot of positive feedback too, this is where I'm going to get a lot more constructive feedback. And it's called a developmental edit. So it's a much more 30,000 foot view on the book. And so, you know.

She may hate it, but at the same time, I'm so excited to take any of that feedback and make the book even stronger and even better and even more of a reflection on who I am and who I've become. So that's a huge win and moving the book along in the next step towards publishing, which I don't exactly have a goal for when that's going to be. loosely, I'd say maybe before the end of the year. So stay tuned on that.

All right, the last section of the Notes from a Fart Walk podcast episode is the swim meet. So this is really my leg of the relay race, the grand relay race of life where I take my place in the bigger picture, how I contribute to the world, how I belong in community, how I...

bring my magic and my expertise and unique contribution. And so I'm going to have a whole podcast episode about later this month about the silent rivalries that exist in women in healthcare. So stay tuned for that. And I have so many takes on that, but that's just something that has been

on my heart for a long time. And I think that for someone who coaches women in healthcare and women who are moving out of the healthcare space or trying to find more purpose and happiness within the healthcare space, this is a thing that we don't talk about that much. Cause it's kind of like hush, hush. You don't want to say that out loud. I may alienate people, but I think it's so important to talk about because I think there's a lot of things that

Our bodies as women in healthcare might pick up when we're interacting with female colleagues. They just don't feel good. There's something that might not feel good. And you might blame yourself sort of like I did when I was in that networking event, which was not a healthcare event by the way. But you might think it's something wrong with you, but I just want to offer, and I'll talk about this more on the podcast episode on it is if your body's picking up on something.

in a peer-to-peer interaction or even in like a course or a group of healthcare peers, it might be an accurate read on something in the system or the environment. Maybe there's a power dynamic, speaking of power dynamics, that actually isn't that great or that healthy and it might not actually be you, it might be the system. And so more on that coming up, but I just wanted to name it because one of the parts of

This part of the notes from a fart walk episode is what I call the healthcare and entrepreneurial woman corner. And that's something that I've just been moving through. So stay tuned on that. It's unfinished here in this podcast, but it'll be very much more finished and polished in the actual episode dedicated to it. The next thing in this part of the Swamee contribution is the causes I'm supporting right.

now, what I'm donating to, what I'm paying attention to, what I'm speaking out against, without feeling like I have to. It's where my heart is actually being led. What feels really aligned for me, what's firing me up. And something particularly going on, I was a collegiate swimmer at Duke University. I've always been in the swim community, and the swim community is very small. Everyone knows, everyone in some way,

by no more than one degree of separation. Recently, a friend of mine who has a daughter who swims at Marshall University informed the world, and her daughter did as well, that Marshall University out of nowhere cut their women's Division I swimming and diving program. With no notice, they did this the week before the women's end of season championship meet when they should have been.

winding down their season, getting excited about going to the meet, priming their bodies, priming their minds, priming their spirits for top performance. It's everything they worked for all year, maybe even in their whole career. And the administration of the university dropped this news on them. Furthermore, they dropped the news on them after, for weeks, leading them to believe that they were actually going to support the program and grow the program. They had just hired new coaches. And then they changed course and basically did a 180.

psych, we're actually cutting your program. And of course that's devastating. And of course, you know, there's a business in college sport and that's what the administration chalks it up to. They said the sport's costing them too much money to maintain the pool at the university. It's outdated. It needs repairs. It's costing them too much money. But what they didn't do was provide the actual bookkeeping to prove that. And a lot of the athletes and their parents and all kinds of stakeholders

did some research to show that it was a lie. And there's a lot of suspicion that it's in the NIL era of college and NCAA sport and the commercialization of college sport and all of that professionalization of college sport that there's a lot of factors at play here. But the sports and the people that it will inevitably affect the most are Olympic sports, including swimming.

and women's sports because they are less revenue generating than men's sports in general. And so this is bigger than one program being cut. It's bigger than a swimming program being cut. It's the future of women's sports. It's the future of women's opportunity. And I will put in the show notes a petition you can sign specifically to...

protest the cutting of the Marshall University Women's Swimming and Diving Program. And I would so appreciate it on behalf of being a member of the swimming community, but more so being a fierce supporter of women's sport across the world. So if you have a moment, please click on the show notes and sign. It would mean a lot to not just me, but so many people in the community. All right. The last section of the Swim Meet.

is what's grinding my gears? What's grinding my gears in a professional context? And what I love about this topic is I have a whole interview I'm doing with experts on this next week, so I don't have to be the expert here in this episode, which again fits the fart walk theme because I'm not here to teach you a million things.

I am being in the health and wellness world, being in the coaching world, being at the intersection of perimenopause in my own life, but also with the clients I serve. I have noticed obviously perimenopause is having a moment on the internet.

And even being a female athlete in perimenopause is having a moment, being an active woman in perimenopause. There's lots of people offering strength training, physical conditioning, nutrition, health and wellness advice. But there's very, very few people speaking out about the intersection of low energy availability in perimenopause and low energy availability

moving into more medical phenomenon studied in younger female athletes, such as relative energy deficiency in sport or REDs and the female athlete triad. REDs affects not just females by its classification terms, and it affects people of all ages. The female athlete triad only affects females or menstruating people. So it's a bit more limiting, but there's similar processes.

What's grinding my gears is the lack of education, critical thinking, question asking, or inclusion of considerations for low energy availability within my own colleagues. In the perimenopause and menopause space, there's a heavy emphasis on hormone replacement, strength training, dieting, without looking at the whole picture of the athletic, ambitious, often entrepreneurial and career-driven.

perimenopausal women, woman, who might also be a busy mom juggling a billion things, right? There's such an emphasis on diet culture, on body size, as I already mentioned, wellness, optimization culture, detoxing, longevity, cheating death, all different ways of saying the same thing. But unfortunately, those things can get the woman in perimenopause.

who's athletic and a lot of trouble, if from a very good place, she subscribes to all of the teachings without considering that perhaps a lot of that advice doesn't apply to her as an athlete. And the truth is at this age, the body, the energy, focus, sex drive, stamina, it's all changing. And a very driven, cares a lot about her body, cares a lot about her health, cares a lot about her performance woman is gonna probably try and do all the right things, has the best of intentions, but...

risks making her perimenopausal journey worse by trying to exercise more, lift more, eat less, limit carbs, focus heavily on protein without adequate fueling from other macro sources, and then masking it with hormone replacement. I love hormone replacement, big fan, but it's possible that

the low hormones that occur in perimenopause aren't just because of changing ovarian function, but also because of how much you're training. And I'm not saying train less, I'm saying we need a whole different way of supporting active and athletic women who are very driven in this age group. I not only have a lot of clinical expertise and research experience in this area, but personally, I am this person.

And even with a really fantastic team of providers that I've worked tirelessly to build, there's a lot of guesswork, even for me, to fill in gaps on a suspicion I have that I've tilted towards reds most of my life. As a female athlete, it's very difficult not to. But the problem is there aren't great spaces for people who work at this intersection. I actually just today, earlier today,

did an interview with Dr. Jessica Drummond, mentor, colleague, friend of mine, the founder of the Integrative Women's Health Institute. She mentioned it briefly. She's a great expert working at this intersection. But she has her niche. She has her company. She trains clinicians, which I am so grateful for. But that's not in the mainstream. And my hope would be that it eventually moves into mainstream. It's becoming more mainstream to talk about reds in younger athletes, which I so appreciate.

But as often happens, things lag behind in the perimenopausal and menopausal space, which I'm learning firsthand as a woman in this age group now. So if you're in that age group and you're curious about that, please reach out to me. I'm happy to pass along resources, talk about it with you, talk about my experience, offer...

places to look and people to talk to if you're curious about how your athletic or training pursuits might be affecting your hormones. And you don't want to follow generalized perimenopausal or even athletic woman advice for this age group without taking into consideration that you might actually be in a red state as well. All right. So that is all four segments of the Notes from a Fart Walk podcast.

our very second one here in March. Thank you for being here and I invite you to pause again and notice where your body is.

What's shifted since you first checked in? What might feel more tense, more relaxed?

How does the breath feel coming in and out of your nose and mouth? Is it moving more freely? Does it feel more strained? Is there anything in how you feel on how it feels to be you today or in this moment that's different or the same as before?

Is there anything that's asking to be set down?

Are there any questions you have? Did anything come up that you might want to explore more?

And if so,

I have lots of ways you can do that. First of all, visit the show notes for anything I mentioned, like signing the petition about Marshall University.

This month I will be hosting my first Just Be with Julie meditative session on

Monday, March 16th. So this episode is released on March the 4th.

12 days later, it's a live virtual meditation contemplative coaching session. It's free, completely free.

If you haven't already, make sure you're on the Notes from a Fart Walk newsletter list so you can get all of this stuff in written digest form to your inbox, especially the times you forget to tune into the podcast. But that digest will also remind you to tune into the podcast if you don't want to miss it. And lastly, if anything I've said has brought up something in you that makes you realize there's something that needs to shift.

whether it's in your deepest deep end, something internally, something in your team effort, your relationships, something in how you actually live out what you value in the actions, habits and rituals you do, or something in your work. And you wanna shift from where you are now to something different. You have the opportunity to work with me in what I call soul story mapping sessions where we...

sit down together over 90 minutes and map out where you are right now, what's no longer working for you. Envision where it is you want to go and literally draw the map that your soul is telling you to get to where you want to go. Because sometimes we get frozen in all of our ideas and all the things we want to fix and change and move about ourselves, but we don't quite know what to do first. That's exactly what soul story mapping is for.

Click the link in the show notes if you're curious about that and book a session with me.

Thank you again for being here. Thank you for walking with me. May you give yourself perhaps one moment this month to take yourself on an actual fart walk. Let things move, let things be in process without needing to come up with an answer or resolution. And I'll see you for the next one.