Telling your story is a feminist act, with Kristin Tweedale

telling your story is a feminist act, nurturing habit podcast episode 20 with host Doña Bumgarner and guest Kristin Tweedale

telling your story is a feminist act, nurturing habit podcast episode 20 with host Doña Bumgarner and guest Kristin Tweedale

Since it is July, I'm going to tell you a summer camp story.When I was a young teenager, I went to a week-long summer camp. I went every summer for five or six years. And there was this girl there that a group of us loved to hate.I don't remember why. I don't even remember her name. I remember she had blonde, curly hair. She was pretty. Once she'd said something that hurt my feelings, and then some of the other girls didn't like her so I just jumped in with them.Except one summer, somehow I ended up in a conversation with her. And she told me something about her life away from camp - again, I can't remember the details - but what I heard in that story was that she was actually more like me than not like me. And suddenly I just saw her as a girl who said something thoughtless to me once, and probably didn't even mean to hurt my feelings. And once I saw that, I could never un-see it.By which I mean, I couldn't really dislike her any more. Because she was just like me. Because I said stupid things sometimes, and probably hurt people's feelings sometimes. Because I was just like her. Because I knew was it was like to be disliked by a group and not even know why. We became friends after that, because seeing her as a real person, not as a "mean girl," made her really interesting, and then I wanted to get to know her. And yeah, I do recognize that the mean girl in this story is actually me.That shift came about just because she was willing to be vulnerable and tell me something real about herself, even though maybe she suspected I didn't like her.This is the power of telling our true stories, and this is much of what I talk to my guest Kristin Tweedale about this week. Kristin is better known as rukristin on the web, where she is known as a feminist scrapbooker, author of 100 Days Of All About Me, and founder of the Awesome Ladies Project and the Crafty Ass Female podcast.Kristin knows that the authenticity that comes from telling our real, everyday stories is a kind of self-care, and that it can build connections and community, two things she feels really strongly about. You can tell your stories with pictures and pretty paper (and we talk about that more, too) or you can tell your stories in some other medium. But please, tell them.Listen to Episode 20 now in the play bar below (reload your browser if you don't see it). Or find the episode in iTunes or your favorite mobile podcast player.And while you are there, will you please leave a rating or a review. That feedback helps more people find the show, and helps me land a greater variety of guests for you to listen to. And I love hearing what you have to say!Links for this episode

Where to find Kristin:

podcast, Season 2DoñaKristin Tweedale, scrapbooking, storytellingComment