Last week we looked back to the movies and female characters who helped shaped the way we see the world women inhabit…and could inhabit. It was a great reminder that pop culture can play a significant role in influencing people’s lives. So is it crazy to think the reverse is possible - that the recipients of such influence could turn around and be creators? We don’t think so. If you’re an avid listener you might have noticed that every once in a while we pitch ideas into the universe - things we’d love to see on stage, screen, the telly or our laptop. And a few times we couldn’t help but feel our ideas have manifested (hello, “Worn Stories” on Netflix!). Plus…more women creators please! That’s definitely a Not Small Thing.

We’re women of action, so while we could wait around for Netflix to realize that we’re brilliant, creative, and have our fingers on the pulse of the entertainment-watching public so we should definitely be in charge of programming, we decided to just pitch and see. And we couldn’t do this one alone, so our special guest is storyteller, illustrator, and uber creative genius Amy Ignatow - whose name you might recognize as co-creator of the infamous “Shut up Geoff” mug! And boy do we have you covered in this episode. We warm up by sharing (or in some cases oversharing) some of our current faves, so if you need reccos on what to watch, we have the reccos. Then we move on to an epic pitch session that surely will get us showrunner gigs. We’re only one idea away from glory!

Warning, things get weird. That’s an Ignatow special!

Awards season is officially behind us, and while both of us did a lousy job of keeping up this past year, we couldn’t help but stop and ponder the role movies have played in each of our lives. During our formative years we were lucky to see women portrayed as adventurers, saviors, leaders, risk-takers, barrier-breakers, and survivors. We saw ourselves as the funniest of friends, the nurturing mother, the fed up wife, a different kind of boss, a cool rider, young girls searching for home, or as the woman putting the men around them in their place. We saw the characteristics we hoped to one day embody ourselves - smart, driven, capable, unapologetic, complex, funny, and uncompromising. (Oh, and able to carry a tune and dance). And just as importantly we saw what we didn’t want for our own lives. 

In this episode we travel back to the movies and female characters who helped shaped the way we see the world women inhabit…and could inhabit. It’s a conversation about why representation matters and how important it is to see yourself, your choices, and your dreams portrayed and validated for all to see. Which naturally leads to a conversation about how long it has taken for movies to tell more diverse stories, and how we owe it to our sisters to take in those stories and see their worlds as important as our own.

We mention no fewer than thirty movies and talk at length about many of them. Head over to the episode page and enjoy the trailers and/or special treats from the ones that were super-formative and made up the bulk of our conversation. 

In part one, we covered the mind-body connection through lots of angles with the help of  Dr. Dan Ratner, a psychologist who specializes in the alleviation of physical symptoms deriving from, or exacerbated by, psychological causes.  In part two, we expand on the variety emotional circumstances that can create physical illness - from childhood experiences through generational and collective trauma. We also spend some time talking about the signs you might be experiencing physical pain or illness due to anxiety or trauma, the importance of safety during healing, and finding the right fit for therapy. 

We hope this episode gives you some practical information and ideas for what to do next if you’re experiencing this kind of pain. But bigger than that, we hope our experiences show that you can overcome hard things - or in the words of our guest feel “bravely hopeful in a world where cynicism is revered.” 

Like our previous episode, trigger warnings abound in this episode about chronic pain, grief and trauma from violence. Be kind to yourself and listen with extreme care.

Discussed in this episode:

Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert

More information on the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study