Semi-Together

It’s spooky season, and we’re talking about how to find our just-right amount of thrills and chills -- what feels fun or engaging for each of us (eustress), and what’s too much (distress). The amount of challenge that we desire in each arena of life can differ quite a bit, depending on our individual nervous system and season of life. What’s brave for one of us can be too extreme for another, and only we can know for ourselves.

----

Most of us aspire to live a good life. We may assume we know what that looks like, without asking what a good life looks like for us -- which may diverge quite a bit from cultural ideals. In this episode, we share research findings on the essential elements of general well-being and discuss how our own ideas of a good life have changed over time.

Links:

What feels restful to you? Some of us are so accustomed to doing and striving that we’re not quite sure anymore. Still, our minds and bodies need real rest to function, especially when we’re under stress. Coming off a restful week together in Spain, we discuss how to identify what renews your energy and carve out time for it. 

-----

Spring cleaning has a number of mental health benefits. It gives you a sense of control over your environment that can help you manage stress and anxiety in your daily life. And making your space more open and tidy is both calming and energizing. 

We share 5 guiding questions, with examples from our lives, to help you figure out:

• which types of spring cleaning will free up the most bandwidth for you
• what the good / better / best version of "done" looks like, and
• small steps you can take to get to “good.”

As humans trying to keep up with the lightning-fast pace of the modern world, many of us often feel overwhelmed. It may be in a certain area of life --  like health, work, family, or current events -- and commonly, it’s all of the above all at once.

In this episode, we share what overwhelm is and how to take small steps to break through it, including reading your body’s warning signs, calming your nervous system, and using “on-ramps” to move yourself forward. 

--

Links:

We bring in our husbands, Brian and Darren (a.k.a. The Dudes) to discuss our love languages and how they show up in our relationships.

Gary Chapman published the book “The 5 Love Languages” over 30 years ago. Since then, the concept of “love languages” have become an enduring part of our pop culture lexicon, beyond the original five from the book. People talk about their love languages being tacos or travel or solitude in an empty house.

What are your love languages, and has knowing them helped you in your relationships (of all kinds)? Tell us at podcast@semitogether.com.

-----

Resources:

We’ve always been amused by the holiday song that begins, “So this is Christmas,” because of its ambivalent vibe, like, “Welp, I guess this is happening.” But this opening line actually captures how we feel about the start of 2023..

In this episode, we talk about framing our intentions for the new year at a time when we’re both dealing with some big challenges and not feeling 100% peppy. However you’re feeling about the new year -- excited, apprehensive, optimistic, overwhelmed, or a blend of emotions -- is  okay. You get to decide how to start this new year the way that’s right for you and feel what you feel about it, no matter what anyone else is doing.

How are you approaching 2023? Tell us at podcast@semitogether.com.

Previous New Year’s episodes:

The holidays can be A LOT, especially when we’ve been in survival mode -- as many of us have been since the pandemic started. This has been a challenging year for us: Gill has been managing her cancer diagnosis and treatment, while Melia has been building her coaching business and moving to New York with her family.

There’s a lot of cultural pressure to make the holidays “the most wonderful time of the year,” but WE get to decide what our holidays look like. To lower stress and overwhelm and boost joy and connection, we start by zeroing in on what matters most to us. When our priority and intention is clear, we can let the rest go.

A few questions to ask yourself when considering baking cookies, buying gifts, going to holiday events, etc.:

• Do I want to do this?
• If I want to do this, what do I want from the experience? What matters most to me?
• How does it affect my body budget (deposits/withdrawals), and how do I plan to stay fueled?

A lot of us are going through major transitions right now: moving to new locations, changing jobs or relationship status, having kids, or going through losses or health challenges. Many of us are shifting into a new phase in our lives or re-evaluating our priorities due to the pandemic.

The bittersweet nature of many of these transitions has been on our minds lately for a variety of reasons. Melia and her family just moved from Jackson, MS to the Albany, NY area, away from many people and places they love. We recorded this episode together in person at our childhood home in Sonoma, CA, before our parents put the house on the market and move closer to us both.

We draw upon Susan Cain’s beautiful book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, as we cope with feelings of grief for what’s ending mixed with anticipation for what’s ahead. We share how we are embracing the bittersweet and, as always, feel it all.

When do you tend to feel bittersweet? What are some ways that embracing bittersweetness helps you through transitions? Tell us at podcast@semitogether.com.

Resources:

Our upbringing, culture, and traumatic experiences can disconnect us from our emotions and intuition. Many of us get stuck in our minds and stop noticing the pain or discomfort in our bodies, so we miss signals that are crucial to our well-being.

In this episode, we discuss why feeling your emotions matters and how to do it. We share practices that are teaching us to feel it all, and which you can use to do the same.

Wellllll 🤬🤬🤬

Sometimes things don’t go as planned. You realize that a situation is out of your control, there’s nothing you can do about it, and it just plain sucks.

This episode is unfortunately inspired by recent real-life events. We were supposed to meet in D.C. this month for some much-needed sister time, but the universe/ pandemic had other plans.

One of our coping mechanisms is thinking, “It’s all content,” when things don’t go our way. In that spirit, we share five strategies to help you deal with disappointment when reality falls short of your expectations.

If you’ve heard us refer to our Enneagram types in previous episodes (Melia is a 1, Gill is a 7) and wondered what the heck we were talking about, or if you are familiar with the Enneagram framework and want to learn more, this episode is for you!

We talk to our dear friend Alicia Ross, a certified Enneagram coach who is starting a new Enneagram training and coaching business this summer.

The pandemic has brought out the worst in most of us at some point – the way we act when we’re overwhelmed and scared. As challenging as this period is, it’s also an opportunity to look at why we do the things we do, even when we know they don’t serve us. Alicia shares:

• How the Enneagram personality system can help us understand these patterns, give us more compassion for ourselves and other people, and open up the space to make a different choice.
• Descriptions of the 9 Enneagram types in this context, highlighting what causes stress for each type, and how each can find more balance, peace, sanity, and connection.

For reference, we’ve included timestamps for each type:

• Overview of the Enneagram: What is it, how it’s useful, and how it differs from other personality systems -  4:48
• Type One, The Reformer - 22:59
• Type Two, The Helper - 33:29
• Type Three, The Achiever - 43:06
• Type Four, The Individualist - 52:41
• Type Five, The Investigator - 61:11
• Type Six, The Loyalist - 70:17
• Type Seven, The Enthusiast - 76:36
• Type Eight, The Challenger - 86:20
• Type Nine, The Peacemaker - 95:11

When we think about setting boundaries, many of us focus on external boundaries: the limits we set with other people around our time, physical space, privacy, etc. But internal boundaries – those we need to protect our inner worlds from outside influences – are just as important, and often more difficult to set and hold.

In this episode, we discuss what it looks like to have healthy internal boundaries that nurture our self-trust and confidence, and help us take responsibility for our actions and well-being. In our Get It Together / Got It Together segment, we each share the internal boundaries we want to strengthen, and the ones that we've done the work to establish.

Let us know how you manage your own internal boundaries. Which limits feel strong, and which are you still working on?

Heads up that this episode contains swearing.

As National Poetry Month begins, we discuss the power of poetry to express emotion, read some of our favorite poems, and share what they mean to us. Become a patron of the podcast on Patreon (linked below) and read a couple of poems we’ve written that are close to our hearts.

Gill gives a health update and thanks our people for all of their loving support. Melia reveals what is helping her sleep better after many restless nights.

We’d love to hear your favorite poems and the role that reading or writing poetry has played in your life. Email us or send a voice memo to podcast@semitogether.com.

Heads up that we talk about some serious personal health issues in this episode with a good bit of emotion and swearing. If any of this is too much for you right now, feel free to skip this episode, read the summary in the forthcoming show notes or come back to it later.

In this episode, we discuss how to show up for people in tough times, such as serious illness, loss, or other challenges they’re going through. When people we care about are hurting, we often want to do something to help but aren’t sure how.

Gill graciously shares her own recent health challenges, speaking about them publicly for the first time, to share what’s been helpful and not-so-helpful to her so far. Keep in mind that some of these are her personal preferences, but others will likely be universal.

We imagine that we’re not the only ones going through intense ups and downs right now, with the ongoing pandemic and winter weather. We’ve really been feeling the need to have things to look forward to, as well as everyday highlights we can count on, so in this episode we talk about Building Joy & Meaning into Every Day. 

We share the activities that bring each of us joy and meaning, with tips for intentionally making them part of our daily schedules, and what we’re looking forward to -- getting inventive when the list is too thin. We encourage you to borrow from our lists and tell us what’s on yours.

It’s been a wild ride during pandemic times, with many opportunities (welcome or not!) for us to practice the strategies we talk about on this podcast. Managing relationships in a new way -- with coworkers or friends, your family of origin or chosen family -- has been important but often challenging, especially when quarantining together at length.

Our husbands, Brian and Darren, are back for their third guest appearance on the podcast to talk with us about the biggest challenges, lessons learned, and silver linings during the nearly two years of the pandemic. We discuss the resources and outlets that have kept us (relatively) sane, and what we’d like to carry into the new normal, whenever it emerges.

Happy New Year! We recorded this episode on the last day of 2021 (together in person, yay!!).

Our topic is Start the New Year with a Vision – which is especially timely as we’re ringing in 2022, but you can do this any time you want to reflect on and reset your goals and intentions. In this episode, we:

• Share a 2021 Get It Together / Got It Together roundup
• Discuss why having a vision helps set an intentional course for the new year and beyond
• Share guiding questions to think about + ideas for creating your vision in a relaxed and enjoyable way
• Talk about why we love making vision collages to start the new year
• Share which goals and intentions made it to our own vision collages

As the busyness of the holiday season ramps up, we're feeling the need to simplify our tasks. We’ll talk about how we’re doing with the holiday hustle, then share tips for shrinking your list down to the things that really matter to you. By letting the rest go, you’ll feel calmer and have more quality time with your loved ones.

Today’s episode is a little different. We often mention our dear friend Katie, who has transformed herself over the years from a melancholy teenager into a contented adult. After healing past traumas and learning to practice radical acceptance through years of therapy, she became a therapist herself. Now she helps her clients make the same kinds of positive changes in their lives.

When Katie visited Jackson this summer, Melia insisted that she share her secrets, the practices that help her find happiness within herself, in the here and now. She tells us how cognitive-behavioral techniques -- choosing our thoughts and actions -- can change not only our feelings in the moment, but also our overall sense of happiness and fulfillment.

Perfectionism is a recurring theme of Semi-Together – and the root of many of the things we struggle with, as we learn to show up authentically and treat ourselves with compassion.

Buckle up: it’s Halloween season, and we’re talking about fear! Fear is a primitive emotion that evolved to protect us from real threats, but it can also hold us back from taking risks that would likely benefit us.

We discuss:

• How fear affects our brains and bodies – keeping us safe from short-term threats but causing harm in an ongoing state
• What scared us as kids and what scares us now – both the tangible and the existential
• Why the content we consumed as kids in the ‘80s was legit terrifying
• Strategies for dealing with intangible fears that aren’t actually life-threatening

How do you deal with things that scare you? What advice about fear would you like to share?

* Content warning: In this episode, we talk about our fears as kids and adults, including scary media at about a PG-13 level. We also touch on some deeper existential fears. If these things may be triggering for you, feel free to skip this episode or parts of it. Toward the end, we talk about how to deal with fear, which we all need to do in some way, and we hope those takeaways are helpful. 

October is ADHD Awareness Month.Even if ADHD is not a part of your life, as far as you know, we hope you listen – because it’s likely that you know someone or are someone with undiagnosed ADHD whose life could change with treatment.

And if you don’t have ADHD but struggle with some of the symptoms, like distractibility and procrastination, you’ll likely find the same kinds of strategies helpful.

We interview Melia’s friend and talented artist Ginger Williams Cook, who was recently diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 40, one year after Melia’s diagnosis at the same age.

We talk to Ginger about:

• How grief shaped her life and her journey as an artist
• Her diagnosis story and how she overcame some of the roadblocks she faced
• Challenges and gifts of ADHD as an artist and a mom
• How she channels some of her ADHD superpowers, like creativity and hyperfocus
• Strategies and supports that help her thrive with ADHD

Content warning: We discuss mental health issues and briefly touch on suicide in this episode.

Our topic in this episode is a fun one: making time for more play! We know how important play is for kids. But when we grow up, we somehow start thinking about play as optional or frivolous or childish. Spoiler alert: it’s none of those things and is actually fundamental to our health and well being!

We share:

- The science behind the importance of play at any age
- Examples of types of play and play styles
- Obstacles that can get in the way of play as adults
- Our experiences with play as kids and as adults
- 4 strategies for making time for more play every day

What’s your favorite way to play as an adult? How do you make sure you get recess during your day?

We are so happy to be back with a new season after our summer break. We missed you, and the opportunity to talk things through with each other. Our last minisode at the end of May was called Emerging from Our Cocoons. Welp! How innocent we were. Now we’re halfway back in our cocoons, trying to navigate this weird in-between period.

We check in on what’s been going on and share five ways to deal with uncertainty and frequent change. Along with the launch of Melia’s new practice, Rising Spiral Coaching, we introduce a new segment. In Rising Spiral, we each share a challenge that we keep encountering and track our progress on our learning spirals.

As we re-enter the world and find our new normal, we want to be intentional about what we’re putting back into our lives and what we’re leaving behind. We revisit our minisode from April 2020, “What Do We Carry Forward?” to see what still resonates.

Melia geeks out over the process of metamorphosis, which her daughter’s preschool class has been observing. Did you know that caterpillars dissolve themselves into a goo of cells inside the chrysalis, then grow completely new parts to become a butterfly? The magic of this transformation, and the metaphor for reinventing ourselves as we emerge from COVID quarantine, blows our minds.

Links:

April 2020 Minisode: What Do We Carry Forward?

We both share how we’re feeling after speaking so honestly about our mental health journeys in Ep. 54: Let’s Talk About Mental health. We get emotional as we each recount a terrifying close call that made us grateful to be alive, a wake-up call to remember in tough times. Melia sets the record straight in a For the Record segment, on topics like medication and how to talk about mental health. We encourage you to share these conversations with your loved ones and start your own. Being able to talk about these things can quite literally save lives.

We talk about mental health – ours, yours, and everyone’s – and why it’s so critical to normalize talking about it. We share our own personal experiences, terms to use and avoid, strategies to care for your mental health, and tips for supporting others.

Note: We get into some serious topics including suicide and use adult language, so you may want to listen with headphones.

Nostalgia is powerful – and it turns out, experiencing it regularly can boost our mental health, especially during difficult times. In this episode, we share:

• Our own experiences with leaning into nostalgia this past year (hello, ‘90s jams, TV show revivals, and fave childhood books!)
  
• Research about nostalgia’s many benefits – like counteracting loneliness, boredom, anxiety and meaninglessness, and promoting healthy coping strategies and feelings of belonging
  
• A few tips for intentionally incorporating more nostalgia into your day-to-day life
  

We look back on the concepts, tips, and takeaways from our first 50 episodes, choosing 10 that have changed us the most and inspired the most listener response:

Join us in a fun and liberating exercise: The F**k It List. Think of it as the anti-Bucket List. Instead of “Things to do before you die,” it’s “Things to stop doing so you can fully live.” It’s a list of things that don’t bring you closer to the life you want, and therefore bring you farther away from it.

The F**k It List can include big or small things that you may have done out of obligation, or optics, or in service of goals you used to have, but you are consciously letting go of. Because you get to decide!

We share some of the items on our current lists, then talk about some of the questions you can ask yourself to make your own F**k It List.

Language warning: Even though we usually keep our language clean, the title of this episode just doesn’t have the same power if we sanitize it. So you may want to listen with headphones.

Back in Ep. 13, Stop Shoulding, we discussed why “should” is a word rooted in expectation, obligation, and criticism. Since then, we’ve mostly eliminated it from our vocabulary, which has felt liberating and has significantly boosted our happiness.

Even so, there are still plenty of silent shoulds lurking in our thoughts. Though we may not even be aware of them, they are nonetheless driving our feelings and actions. We surface our most common silent shoulds about career, family (including The Mommy Wars), and life in general and reframe them in a more intentional way. Ultimately, we believe there is no “should” -- WE get to decide what we want and choose to do, and so do you!

Do you ever feel anxious about not knowing what your calling is, because you’re interested in so many things? Well, you may be a Scanner, and the good news is that you don’t have to limit yourself to just one thing.

When Melia talked in In Ep. 47 about identifying her core purpose, Gill shared some anxiety about still figuring hers out. Soon after (perhaps by kismet!), she discovered the book Refuse to Choose!: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love, by Barbara Sher, which describes two types of people: Scanners and Divers.

Scanners like to scan the horizon for a variety of interests instead of deep-diving into just one. A Diver, on the other hand, is happy being completely absorbed by one field. Melia and Gill talk about which identity resonates for each of them and invite you to share, too.

Happy New Year! It’s FINALLY 2021.

Melia and Gill talk about what they’re taking forward with them from last year, and what they’re happy to leave behind. They check in on how their 2020 goals ended up going in spite of it all, share how they’re paring down their goals for the new year, and offer a few tips to help you think about your own goals.

Big caveat: Survival is still the primary goal right now. If you want to set goals for the year, great! If not, totally understandable. You make the rules, and you don’t have to do anything. If you do set goals, focus on what you truly want, instead of what you think you “should” do.

It’s going to be a different kind of holiday season this year, and it’s important to acknowledge and accept the range of emotions we’re feeling. "Good vibes only" isn't realistic or helpful. We are human, and living through very challenging times.

Even in normal years, the holidays can be tough or emotional for a lot of reasons, and the expectation that we will be merry all the time can make us feel even worse.

Melia and Gill share a few ways we can all make space and grace to feel it all this holiday season – accepting what we can’t do, looking for what we can do, embracing an “all vibes welcome” mindset, and making a “Want To Do” list.

Melia and Gill interview Daman Tiwana and Khyati Thakur, hosts of the excellent podcast Brown Girls Read. They chat about books, cocktails, and cultural differences – plus the habit-changing strategies that have helped them the most after reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Daman and Khyati met for the first time at a women’s book club meetup and started their podcast earlier this year. Both Daman and Khyati lived in India until they moved to the US for their masters programs, and their discussions about books are through the lens of their unique perspectives and experiences as immigrants and women of color in the US.

We’ve all been through a lot in 2020, and the weeks leading up to the presidential election were especially stressful and emotional. It’s time to press the reset button to renew our energy and hope.

Melia and Gill recorded this episode two days after Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were announced as the next president and vice president of the United States. They talk about how they’re dealing with intense emotions from the past few weeks (and years!) and how the book Burnout: The Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski has been a game-changer. They share strategies – like movement, laughter, and creative expression – they’re using to move through stress cycles and avoid burnout and chronic stress.

October is ADHD Awareness Month, and Melia has some surprising news to share: she was recently diagnosed with ADHD, at age 40. 😲 ADHD is often missed in girls and women – and a big misconception is that it’s limited to physically hyperactive boys.

In this episode:

• Melia talks about her experience, the grief and relief she feels with her diagnosis, and the resources and strategies that are helping her
  
• Melia and Gill debunk five common myths around ADHD
  
• They interview Dr. Michelle Frank, a clinical psychologist who co-wrote a workbook for women with ADHD, who shares strategies for thriving with ADHD
  

Two reasons to listen:

• It’s likely that you know someone or are someone with undiagnosed ADHD whose life could change with treatment.
  
• If you don’t have ADHD but struggle with some of the symptoms, like distractibility and procrastination, you’ll likely find the same kinds of strategies helpful.
  

Feeling stressed, exhausted, and anxious as the coronavirus pandemic wears on? Saaaaaame. We’re in a period of collective trauma and global uncertainty, and it’s natural that we are less productive and not our best selves right now.

It’s important to acknowledge that suffering, and the grief about what we can't do right now – AND focus on what we can still do, finding meaningful moments to carry us through. Melia and Gill talk about coping with existential ennui and mini meltdowns, and six ways to find connection and joy in each day.

The Golden Rule – Treat others how you’d like to be treated – is easy to understand. It’s actually the Reverse Golden Rule that is much more challenging to live by: Treat yourself how you’d like others to be treated.

Melia and Gill discuss why science says it’s so important to be kind to yourself and share five  researched-backed strategies for embracing the Reverse Golden Rule in your everyday life.

Melia and Gill talk about a quote from Amy Poehler’s wonderful memoir, Yes, Please that has helped them be less judgmental of others: “Good for her! Not for me. That is the motto women should constantly repeat over and over again. Good for her! Not for me.”

They share examples of where “Good for her, not for me” has been most helpful – including in relation to parenting, body image and appearance, and big life decisions – plus four tips on how to say it yourself (and mean it sincerely!).

Melia and Gill discuss the Buddhist parable of the second arrow – the additional pain we cause ourselves when unwelcome things happen – and how to dodge it. This idea can be summed up by an old Buddhist saying made popular by writer Haruki Murakami: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

We feel the first arrow when we experience something painful, and it’s healthy to acknowledge that pain. But often we shoot a second arrow into ourselves by resisting the pain and turning it into anger, shame, criticism, rumination, etc. Melia and Gill share their second arrows of choice and tips for dodging them.

Melia and Gill talk to April Snow, a licensed psychotherapist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works with highly sensitive introverts, perfectionists, and high achievers to overcome anxiety, embrace their strengths, and create a life on their own terms.

April talks about why sensitivity is a strength – not a weakness, as we’re often told! – that we can channel to make a positive difference in our lives and the world. She shares advice for sensitive people and recovering perfectionists on how to prioritize self-care, set boundaries, cultivate self-compassion, let go of unrealistic expectations, and learn to thrive.

In the first new episode after their season break, Melia and Gill revisit the 20 for 2020 goals they set in January. The past few months have been exceptionally tough: the global pandemic and its repercussions, the long-overdue reckoning with racial injustice, and the mental load and uncertainty about the future that comes with all of it.

Melia and Gill discuss how their goals have changed since the beginning of the year and what’s important to them for the rest of 2020. They share how they’re refocusing on some goals and letting go of the rest – plus four tips to help you reimagine your own goals.

Melia and Gill share how they’re taking careful steps toward a new normal during COVID-19. They discuss the mental and physical health benefits of music and share ways to use music as therapy.