Season 3 Trailer: Welcome Back to the Genius Womxn Podcast!
Welcome back everyone!
I'm so thrilled to welcome you back to Season 3 of our Genius Womxn podcast. This season we continue to host in-depth conversations with amazing brave womxn pursuing their wildest dreams. We do that with the hopes of inspiring you, our dear listeners.
Over the break, I took some time off and watched a new series that just came out on Netflix called “Shadow and Bone.” The show’s creator Leigh Bardugo once gave a speech at the Miami book fair that really resonated with me. So much that I thought I’d share it with you here on the podcast.
“There is no expiration date to this. I didn't publish my first book until I was 37. And I'm not just speaking to the young writers or to the people who will be embraced as wunderkinds. But to the people who are maybe working a job they hate, or feeling uninspired, or who are wondering if there is anything left. If the tombstone will read ‘Had Potential.’
And you know what - Nah. Actually, we're one of the few professions where being young, dewy, and spry has little to do with it.
But I think there is a certain amount of shame that accompanies the sense that you should have accomplished more by a particular age. That the dream belongs to a different kind of person, a younger person, an able-bodied person, a person without kids.
There is a myth that this career, this creative life, belongs to a different human being. So I think there is a certain amount of shame that comes along with those thoughts that say ‘I'm 35 and I haven't written that book. ‘I'm 45. I'm 55.’
And it just does not matter.
There is such a desire for good stories that you cannot let that stand in your way. You cannot let those illusions, those myths stand in your way. And in fact, I think those myths are predominantly created to hold people back, particularly women.
You're only valuable if you're young. You're only valuable if you're the smartest person in the room. You're only valuable if you're pretty. You're only valuable if you're thin. You're only valuable if you're able-bodied. You're only valuable if you accomplish this by this particular age, if you hit the bestsellers list, if you sell a novel, if you have an adaptation made.
It's all BS.
It's all designed to make you feel bad so you don't achieve anything. So I'm here to say you need to ignore that. I'm here to say that you're in a war with the existing culture that we have that does not want you to make your art. And your job as an artist is to make art when no one cares and when no one is looking.”
— Leigh Bardugo, Creator of Shadow and Bone and New York Times Best Selling Author
This season you will hear from womxn like Nikki Vargas, a Columbia born, New York based travel editor, book author, and founder of the Unearth Women Magazine, who share her journey of success and failures on the road to her vision.
“We're getting to this point as a society and as a culture that it's so important to spotlight the other experience. Tto spotlight people that might not ever have a spotlight. To give a platform to marginalized communities. To lift the voices of people that are discriminated against. And people who have blogs, who have social media following, who have these platforms, it's becoming more and more of a responsibility to do that.”
— Nikki Vargas, Founder of Unearth Women Magazine
You will also hear from people like Youmie Jean-Francois, a Haitian-born, New York-raised travel and wellness entrepreneur who has a brilliant and poignant message for you right here on our podcast.
“We're afraid to stop and be honest about things in our lives. About who we are. About who we've been even. There were times where people in my life were like, ‘Well, you can say this better.’ And I'm like, ‘No, you need to toughen up and you need to do that.’ I just wanted people to just get it and not work on myself. I wouldn't recognize how I needed to show up for people in a certain way that they needed me. And when I started recognizing that, ‘Hey, Youmie? Maybe you should really listen a little bit more. Maybe you should just be kinder to yourself because maybe that's why you're not so kind to other people.’ It changed things. But I had to look at myself. And if you're not willing to look at yourself genuinely, honestly, it's going to be really hard for you to show up as your full self in this world.”
— Youmie Jean-Francois, Travel and Wellness Entrepreneur
We've planned a lot of amazing episodes for you this season and I can't wait to share all of that with you! I really hope you join us on this journey of celebrating incredible womxn creators as we gain confidence and support to go after our own creative dreams.
All you have to do right now is make sure you're subscribed to this podcast in your favorite podcast player of choice so you don't miss our episodes when we get started. Thank you so much for listening and for giving yourself this space for your creative dreams to take shape.
Want to know how you can start publishing your travel stories? Download my step-by-step guide to publishing your stories and start sending your ideas out into the world!
Featured on the show:
Check out our membership community, The Circle, the place where brilliant womxn creators in travel media go to claim their dreams, get support, take action, and build their dream creative lives. Join us now to be part of our June 5, 2021 creative retreat!
Come join us in the Genius Womxn Facebook Group
Interested in travel writing or photography? Join the waitlist for our travel journalism masterclass, Storytellers In Action, in which we help womxn creators get a footing in the travel media space, dream big, work through our fears, and take action
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