Natalie
Hey Bec.

Rebecca
Today we are sitting down with Jen McNeely, founder of She Does the City, to talk about curating a site and a life.

Natalie
Let’s do some reframing.

Rebecca
Ooh, I knew you were going to sneak that in.

Natalie
Every time, baby.

Jen McNeely founded She Does the City in 2007. It was the first site of its kind for young women in Canada and it has received numerous awards and accolades, including being named Best Blog by NOW Toronto four times over. Described by The Globe and Mail as a trailblazer of authentic storytelling and community building, McNeely is a well-respected advocate for mental health and recovery since she began sharing her journey in 2012, and has spoken publicly about her recovery experience with alcohol use disorder and addiction on CBC’s The Current, Here and Now, TVO’s The Agenda, CityLine, and several other media outlets. McNeely has written for Toronto Life, Fashion Magazine, The Kit, and The Globe and Mail. In 2020, McNeely was nominated for the RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Award by Women of Influence.

Hi, Jen.

Jen
Hi!

Rebecca
Thanks for being here with us today to reframe curation.

Jen
Thanks for having me.

Rebecca
When did you start — I mean, it says here when you started She Does the City, so 2007, but we’re actually really curious about why. Is there some of a story connected to its beginnings?

Jen
There is, yeah. I was working at CBC at the time, and there was a lot of buzz about the internet, and the possibility of the internet. Honestly, most of the chatter happening at CBC at that time was that TV would be obsolete down the road, and that the internet was taking over. But nobody really understood what that meant. Facebook had just come out, and YouTube had just been sold for a billion dollars or something like that, and nobody really could wrap their head around what was happening. But there was a lot of excitement, and blogs were a thing that had just — at least, that’s when I started to take notice of them. It was a word that a lot of people just didn’t even know what that meant.

So that was part of it. The second part was that in the Canadian media landscape, there really wasn’t anything that I felt spoke to young women at that time that was honest and real and had an edge to it. A lot of women’s media, we’re talking 15 years ago, was very pink. I mean, I love the colour pink, we’ve always used it as part of our design, but it was very soft and sweetened, you know? It wasn’t the way that I talked with my friends, and so I felt like there was something missing — a voice that was missing. Then there was also a frustration that I had where I was, you know, 26, 27, working in media and feeling like I sometimes couldn’t be heard or respected the way I wanted to be. Also, you know, there was a culture — I’m not saying CBC culture, but office culture — I would get into the elevator on Monday and be like, “Oh hey, Fran, how’s it going?” and then they’d be like, “Well, it’s not Friday,” and I really felt like, “Gee, is that how I want to live, counting down to the weekend?”

It was a lot of different things happening at once, and I felt like, “Ok, if I try something, it feels like this is the time for me to go out and experiment.” I had learned a lot in my job there, and then before that I was at Alliance Atlantis, and I learned a lot in marketing and promotion there. But I didn’t have any extensive experience writing. Didn’t come from a journalism background, didn’t come from a creative writing background, just came from a communications background. That’s the birth story, I guess.

Rebecca
Were you kind of like, “I’m going to die if I keep working in this office culture,” that kind of thing of “I need to save myself”?

Jen
No, I wasn’t like that. But I was like, “Perhaps there’s something else, that I would find a little bit more creative fulfillment. Perhaps there’s opportunity in this web world, that I could try something out.”

Rebecca
You were always interested in other people, obviously, because you could have just written your own blog — which is what I did, actually, in 2008. I was mommy-blogging then, so I look at that date, I’m like, “2007, right.” 2008 was when Elsie (my daughter) was born, I was thinking, “Was that the height of mommy blogging?”

Jen
It was a big moment of it, for sure. I had assembled a group of my friends, and we sat around the backyard. At that point, I was still drinking, so we drank some beers and we talked about what is missing — like what do we want to read? What do we want to write about? What stories do we want to share? It was built about fun, more than anything. I don’t think we had any grand missions of changing the world, or doing anything like that. We just wanted to have fun and write about stuff that we liked, or that we thought was cool and people should know about. We talked, and we had a focus group, and I sent out some surveys. When we began, I think there was six or seven writers that were onboard.

Rebecca
And has it changed shape? Do you still associate it with that fun, or has it taken on a more serious…?

Jen
Yeah, it’s definitely taken on different roles as I’ve matured, as media has changed. There’s so many movements that have happened since we started — life was totally different than in 2007 than it is today, at least from my perspective. I mean, of course that sense of adventure is still there. I think we started with our tagline like, “Every day should be an adventure,” and that is still there. But over time, we became more about amplifying voices that didn’t get the space, becoming a platform for women to share their stories. Recovery became a huge theme in 2012, when I started writing about it, and then we’ve had lots of people contribute about recovery and what that means to them — it’s such a broad subject, so it can mean so many different things. It can mean cancer, it can mean divorce, it can mean grief, it can mean addiction, it can mean sexual assault — so we started really focusing on personal essays, sharing things that people weren’t sharing prior to that, that much. So that was another chapter. Then we had the comedy chapter, where we had a lot of writers that were comedians. And then now with Touchwood. Obviously, all these things are part of our story, but I would say looking at art and film and books is now much more of a major focus. I mean, it always has been, but how that merges with recovery, and how we use art and the power of storytelling to heal — those are the main chapters that have happened along the way. Motherhood was also something we never touched in the early days.

Rebecca
Ok, this is coming up for us, because a lot of people tell us about our podcast that they’re shocked or surprised that we’re willing to be so vulnerable, because we talk about our own lives. I was thinking with She Does the City, when you’ve used your platform to be vocal about recovery, do you get tired of being so vulnerable? That’s one question. And do you associate this platform with rawness? Do you know what I’m saying? Sometimes you’re just like, “I don’t want to see that because I just need to, you know, go watch a Hallmark movie.” (Which is what we talked about today on the podcast.) Like, “I just can’t right now,” or how do you deal with that, because you’ve evolved so much?

Jen
Every once in a while I pop on and I share something about my life — whether it’s addiction-related or something else, that’s not what I’m thinking of doing all the time. For myself, I think a long time ago, I decided I don’t really want to write only about addiction. That’s like one dimension of who I am. I don’t want to be defined like that. I don’t want that to define my expertise either, or my interests. So I feel like I’ve always just followed my curiosity and my passions and what turns me on and gets me excited. Some days that’s street art, and some days that’s a new book, and some days that’s some woman’s cool project that she’s doing from her basement. I mean, other than the fact that it’s about amplifying and providing a platform to share these things, and that intersection of healing, I don’t overthink stuff too much, you know? It’s sort of like what pulls me in.

Natalie
I came up with the idea of curation for this piece because I was so struck by having just written that street art piece for you — I was moved, to be honest, that when I sent you my little pitch, you were very immediately like, “That’s a really good idea. I like that idea. That’s something I could do something with.” And I wondered: did I actually hit on some theme that you had had for that month that you were building in your head that it was going to fit in? And so then it made me ponder the notion of curation in a space like She Does the City, where when things are put together, they tell a different story than what they just do on their own. Is there a curatorial process that’s happening per month or per year with the way that you vision for how you put She Does the City together?

Jen
I would say a constant is looking at art as healing. When you sent in your pitch, I loved it for so many reasons. I love street art, because everybody has access to it. It makes life interesting on the street, it makes neighbourhoods more… gives them different dimensions, and it’s probably my favourite kind of art. But then I also loved how you were using it to inspire conversations with your son about heavy issues of war. So to me that hit like a bunch of checkmarks of what we’re interested in — it’s about changing conversations, shifting perspectives, education, art, and how all those things come together.

Natalie
So there’s one writer that I have spent some time with named Goris, and he has talked about how curation as a process is what actually helps to cure art of it sickness. I think it’s a really interesting framing, because I don’t know that I would have ever have seen art as inherently sick. But what he means (or at least I think what he means) by that is that art just is. Art is made, and then is, and it exists, but it’s the curatorial process that gives it life, or a voice. I guess I’m wondering if this idea relates or resonates for you in terms of what you do with She Does the City. You’ve already mentioned amplification, but do you ever feel like you’re giving a number of stories together a voice for what the art can do for the world?

Jen
Yeah. Again, I don’t think I have a grand plan that I could explain to you. It’s more based on emotional reaction and gut instinct than some kind of thesis. But we do try to fit it into themes, and I do think that we’re always looking for art that is daring, art that is showing a perspective that isn’t seen as much. I went on a walk before this podcast and I was thinking, “What does that statement mean to me?” and I was like, “I’m not totally sure.” When I think about Mother’s Day, for instance, mostly, if you were to say, “What is there most out there?” When you’re listening to the radio, when you’re watching the stuff on your feed, advertisements, promotions, stuff in your inbox, what is mostly being pushed for Mother’s Day? And then you look at it, and it’s like: flowers and spas, and self-care — that kind of stuff. And sure, that’s all lovely and nice. But for Mother’s Day, we decided to explore stories that inspire deeper conversations about motherhood, and also reflect a wider spectrum of what that actually means. Because it doesn’t just mean flowers and spa, and so we have what I think is a really beautiful assortment of stories that have been publishing since last week about choosing not to be a mom, and what motherhood means when you’re non-binary — how do you fit into that? Raising a biracial child, when you yourself don’t even feel that connected to your culture or heritage. Being 19 and having a baby on your own and carving a path that nobody agrees with.

I think when you’re thinking about curating, we put a call out for people to send pitches in about motherhood for Mother’s Day, and I don’t think we had, at the get-go, “We want to show this and this and this.” It’s almost like what we received is what the inspiration is, right? I wouldn’t have thought about some of the essays that we received. There’s even one about a woman sharing that her mother was treated for mental health in the 60s at CAMH in a way that we would never treat mental health today, and the impact that played out on her life. A month ago, I wouldn’t have been like, “We’re looking for that piece.” I mean, there’s so much talent out there, and there’s so much creativity, and I’m always blown away by it, especially with this New Voices initiative. These are people who have less than 20 bylines. Many of them have never been published, and yet the talent, the writing, the quality is exceptional.

Rebecca
In some ways, what I hear you saying is it’s almost just juxtaposition becomes curation. Ideas just do resonate differently when they’re put together.

Jen
They take on their own life, right? I would say that if there’s one thread that binds at all, it must be ‘daring’ — I don’t know, I feel like the people who write for She Does the City, they have a lot of life and a lot of love in them. They’re trying things and they’re out there and they’re experimenting, and they’re not settling for whatever subscribed path was given to them. I think that’s probably a common thread.

Rebecca
Maybe they’re creating out of love. I was talking with another artist, and she was saying she realized for herself that she creates out of love, and it was a revelation for her to see that not every artist does create out of that place.

Jen
Yeah, a lot of artists created out of pain.

Rebecca
Or hate, or whatever is driving them in that moment. So it’s not always love. So maybe that is a common thread that you’ve just identified. Do you see yourself as a creative? Would you fit yourself more into curator?

Jen
I think I’m somebody who doesn’t feel like an expert in one area. I write, I organize, I edit, I host events, I have a knack for marketing. I don’t think that I excel at one particular thing. Am I a creative? Yeah, I guess so, because I fall into that moreso. I’m more creative than I am business, I think — but honestly, I don’t even know. If there’s a circle and there’s a creative over here and a businessperson over here, I’m somewhere in the middle.

Rebecca
Because sometimes I hear women say things like that, and I really resonate with that. Do you see that as a strength?

Jen
It can be both. I think it’s a gift to be interested in a lot of things, but it might mean that I won’t necessarily become a best-selling author, or an award-winning filmmaker — but I have a world that I have created that I enjoy. I feel like I’ve become less ambitious, but I feel like in my 20s when I started this thing, I was like, “I’m out to make millions of dollars,” — and then I was like, “Whoa, that’s not going to happen.” Now it’s more about how do I want to spend each day — how do I find joy out of this, and fulfillment, and feel like I’m getting back a bit, and do some work that I’m proud of? I didn’t think like that when I was younger.

Natalie
I don’t think any of us do. I think that sometimes when I think back on my 22-year-old self, when I started in teaching, I really thought I was going to change teaching — I was going to change education writ large.

Rebecca
You were going to change the whole profession?

Natalie
I was going to change everything. And then, 20 years later, I’m still looking to change things but it’s changing myself, it’s changing certain parts — whether it’s my classroom online or in person, or maybe a day for a kid. So it’s very interesting how one’s vision… is it narrowing, or is it distilling down or something — you know what I mean? Into a finer point of something beautiful?

Jen
I think it’s maybe living life and then getting a little bit more real with what’s possible, and also just knowing that you don’t have infinite amounts of energy — you have to figure out where to put it.

Natalie
In the way that you shape She Does the City, how does that play out in terms of your own shaping of your life? How are you curating your life, Jen?

Jen
Well, I mean, now I feel like…

Rebecca
Do you set a word? Do you have a word intention? Do you set a word for a season?

Jen
Yeah, honestly, ‘slow’ is probably something that I’m clinging to these days. Probably the first ten years of She Does the City, the pace felt frantic. I felt like a hamster on a wheel constantly. I definitely have very full days still, but I really have learned the importance of integrating things like nature and exercise and friendship. It doesn’t mean that I get there all the time. I definitely feel like, since the pandemic, I haven’t been a good enough friend to many of my close friends as I could be — I just feel like I have this much space, and then I don’t have time for the other things. But ‘slow,’ to me, is a word that I keep thinking about. I also think when I slow down that I think better, right? I actually do better work when I slow the pace down. And saying no is something that I’m constantly working at, as well. It’s great to be able to say yes to a gazillion different pitches and things, but at the end of the day you end up overwhelming yourself, and then you end up disappointing people because you can’t do it all. So that’s another thing that I’ve been working at. So those are two pretty selfish goals, I would say — trying to change my own day-to-day living. I think with She Does the City, we have a solid direction and we feel really good about the work we’re doing. We just want to keep evolving and working on growing that. But with myself, I still feel like I have a lot of things that I’m personally trying to work on. I’m not succeeding at the slow thing that well. I got this slow journal over the holidays for January 2022, I’ve only put in one entry. So even though it’s in my head, it’s not necessarily in practice.

Natalie
Or that truly is a slow practice. So there’s something lovely in that, potentially.

Rebecca
Oh, there you go — reframing, Nat.

Natalie
Oh, I’m telling you.

Rebecca
So do you get tired of speaking about recovery, since that has been something you’ve been speaking about since 2012, really?

Jen
I don’t really, because it’s changed so much. The space has changed so dramatically since then. Now there are so many more ways to talk about recovery, and people are talking about recovery in so many different ways. There’s so many different pathways to recovery that are being acknowledged and recognized than there were back then. Back then, when you talked about recovery, it felt like it was AA or nothing else. You know, rehab, AA, or nothing else. People were scared to talk about different options to AA, because there’s a cohort of people in AA that would come after you if you spoke against it, because you’re not supposed to. I mean, AA is what got me sober and I have a huge amount of gratitude for the program, and it works for many people and it’s often the first place that I tell people to go. But like anything in life, there’s not only one way to do things. There’s not one way to become a writer, there’s not one way to become a filmmaker, there’s not one way to have a baby, right? So the fact that anybody even could say, “This is the only way that you can recover,” is just bonkers. But people were genuinely scared to talk about it.

Now there’s way more literature available — so many more memoirs (especially written by women) about what recovery looks like. The whole AA program was built for men — it was in the 40s that it was written. The language is very difficult to even say. It’s just made for men, and women were not seen as the ones in recovery. They were seen as the caregivers to put a blanket over the man who was drunk. The space has changed so much. There’s movements like She Recovers and other things that acknowledge that everybody has their own journey, and we have to honour those individual journeys — otherwise people can’t recover. We have to respect them. Harm-reduction is something that has received a lot of coverage in recent years that, again, was something that people were scared to talk about. So the subject is infinitely fascinating, and also the root of how it’s connected to trauma. Obviously trauma is a subject that you could talk about forever and ever and ever, and never even fully understand. Most people who have alcohol use disorder are also struggling with other things, whether it’s anxiety, depression, self-harm, eating disorder. Understanding the way that all those things come together, you could talk about that till the end of time. I don’t get bored of it, but sometimes I just don’t want to write about it myself.

As I grow older, I myself am like a little bit more… I’m a lot more private. Not a little, I’m a lot more private than I used to be. I used to write about my sex life, I used to write about a lot of things that I just wouldn’t now. I don’t mind talking openly about stuff, but when I think about when I was 28 and I would go out and get drunk and write about all the crazy adventures that I had, and the idea that now makes me cringe. I would never want to open myself up publicly in that way now.

Rebecca
I did find your article interesting about mom and wine culture. I’ve thought about that a lot since.

Jen
It’s a really touchy subject. It definitely hits a lot of nerves. I think what really shocked me was when I became a mom, I was always in those mom spaces, like on Facebook groups and that kind of thing. What shocked me was that every time somebody would post something like, “Ugh, my two-year-old, having a crazy tantrum, I don’t know what to do,” then it would always be like, “Well, you can always go to the LCBO,” or, “There’s always a bottle of wine in the fridge,” or whatever. That kind of conversation was so prevalent, it felt like there was more peer pressure in that space. Again, we’re talking about — my son is eight now, so we’re talking about seven years ago, six years ago. Things were different, people were not sharing pictures of themselves breastfeeding when I was a new mom. People were not talking about recovery. It was a different world. But that discourse of leaning on alcohol as the way to manage difficult moments in motherhood was obscene.

I remember finally after a few months being like, “Hey, not all of us can do that,” in one of these spaces, and people were like, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,” and whatever. I am not against drinking wine at all. My husband is a sommelier. For the longest time, I received more wine at my front door than probably anybody in the west end of Toronto. I’m not anti-wine, or anti-drinking, or anti-celebrating. It’s something that doesn’t work for me, but I have a lot of respect for people in hospitality and restauranteurs and winemakers and all that kind of thing. So I’m not anti-it by any means, but I am really against that ‘mommy needs wine’ culture. I think when I’m talking about that, it’s referring to memes, it’s referring to the way it’s in entertainment, it’s referring to dumb socks you get at gift stores, and that kind of thing.

Natalie
Magnets.

Jen
Yeah, like all that kind of stuff.

Rebecca
Dishcloths.

Jen
Yeah, exactly. And in these forums where people are going for help — like, actually need help and support — and then this is like, “Ha ha ha ha ha! Just have a glass!” So I felt it was really destructive, but I also saw the destruction. I saw the women coming into recovery like, “God help me, I cannot go to bed without a bottle of wine every night. I wake up hungover. I can’t be there for my kids the way I want to. My marriage is falling apart. I’m throwing up.” And I remember when I published that, when that piece got published in The Star and The Kit, I remember there was huge backlash. There were certain mom groups that were like, “Don’t tell us what to do!” and like, “Fuck her!” and all that kind of stuff. It really exploded.

I’m sorry, but I see these people who are in dire situations. I’ve known mothers to die from this. It can escalate so quickly. It starts off as a way to unwind, and then it becomes a dependency. Then it becomes earlier and earlier in the day, and then all of a sudden, you’re checking your watch and it’s 4:30, and you’re like, “Oh my God, when am I going to get that first glass of wine?” and then it can get worse, because that’s the way addiction works, mostly. It doesn’t get easier, it gets worse. It is a genuine problem, and it’s still a huge problem. Especially with the pandemic, I think that really has impacted the way people drink and cope. My thought is that there’s a woman on every block deeply suffering. Every classroom of kids, you’ve got at least one parent that’s barely holding on. So I think it’s a major, major problem in society — not going away anytime soon.

Natalie
I’m just going back to how you prefaced what you do with She Does the City, because it makes it all the more palpably beautiful to me that your idea is that you’ve got these people who have so much love for the art, and for what they want to share. That vision, it’s underscoring everything you’re saying here — like the love you have for the person who’s struggling with addiction. Therefore the love for self, for the you that struggled for the time that you did. You’re doing really beautiful art with your life. That’s beautiful.

Jen
Well, thank you. I think when I told that story, it’s because I had to tell that story. I felt like I was living a lie. Even when I went to events, I was like, “I can’t even socialize anymore, because I can’t drink.” People were noticing that I was changing and it just felt like I had this big secret. I think as anybody who’s creative, whether you’re a writer or a musician or an artist or something, it naturally wants to come out of you. Whatever that is — that secret. I also think that secrets are toxic. I think that secrets poison us. So when I shared that, I wasn’t doing it for the greater good of society, I was doing it because I needed to get it out of me. As soon as I did, it was the most liberating feeling. That doesn’t mean that I encourage people to go out and write their most troubled part of their life, not at all. I waited like a year and a half of sobriety before I even did that — a lot of people, they’re five days sober, then they rush out, and they’re like, “Woo!” — and then backfires.

Anyways, I think that for me, I understood the power of sharing my own story for my own reasons. Also then I began to see all these people are sending me messages: “I think I have a problem,” “I identify with what you said,” — and they felt alone. Again, now we’re in a space where that vulnerable sharing is everywhere — on Instagram, and people are constantly sharing these difficult truths about trauma they’ve experienced. It’s always been there, but to a much lesser degree, because people didn’t have a personal platform ten years ago. Sure, there was Facebook, but people weren’t really comfortable using it necessarily that way. So that space has really grown because everybody has the power now with technology to put themselves out there.

Rebecca
One of my favourite books recently is — do you know the author Melissa Febos? She has a memoir called Body Work.

Jen
Oh, right. Yeah.

Rebecca
It’s really wonderful. She’s got her own big story, but one of the lines I just found so powerful in it is that she’s like: she needed to tell her story. To save her own life, she needed to say these things. That has just continued to strike me, and it kind of sounds like what you’re saying a little bit. You needed to speak these truths.

Jen
Yeah. It was probably the only time in my life where I felt like this has to come out. This has to come out of me. I can’t keep this inside anymore. I haven’t felt that way about other things. I didn’t feel that way when I had my son — I didn’t feel like I needed to write about the birth. But I felt with this, I did.

Natalie
As a way to do a little fun ending for our amazing conversation here, we have a speed round.

Jen
Oh, God.

Rebecca
I chose the questions, so they’re a little heavier than for a typical speed round. So I’m sorry.

Natalie
The point of it, even though they’re a bit on the deeper side — well, you said that, Bec, I don’t know. I actually think she can do this no problem.

Rebecca
Don’t overthink it.

Natalie
I’m going to do the first one. We’ll go every other, Bec. You ready?

Rebecca
Ok.

Natalie
Because it’ll be changing voices. What’s the last new skill you learned?

Jen
I have a new camera — a new actual camera, not on my phone, and I’ve been taking more pictures. I don’t think I’ve perfected that. I’ve been rehearsing fractions again with my son, and so I’ve been learning those again, starting with the basics.

Rebecca
What’s a common myth or something people misunderstand about your profession?

Jen
A lot of people ask me, “Do I have another job?” And I’m like, “No, I don’t have another job. My day is extremely full. I have a lot to do.” I know a lot of people can manage that, but I always feel a little bit insulted when somebody asks me that, because I’m like, “No, this is it. This is it.”

Natalie
Ok, what’s the most fun thing you did today?

Jen
Ok, so I don’t know if this is fun, but I did take myself out for a walk after work. My phone is currently completely out of order because I’ve had the same phone for seven years, and it died. So I went for a walk without it, and I just sat down and I listened to a robin sing and I watched a pile of ants by my feet, and I did that for ten minutes, almost meditating on the ants. Then I even poured a bit of coffee out to see if they would go trickle towards it. I wouldn’t say that’s fun, but it was a nice way to end the day.

Rebecca
How would your siblings or close friends describe you? Is there a word, a couple words?

Jen
I think they would say that I have a lot of bizarre stories, which I do. A lot of those do not see the light of day on the site, but I have a lot of friends who are like, “One day, you’ve got to put all these weird stories into a book and write them and share them.” Maybe ‘gross’? ‘Gross’ might be a word that people close to me… maybe? I do a lot of imitations, too, which I don’t usually do for anybody other than close friends.

Rebecca
And why would your friends call you gross? I want an example, Jen. That’s awesome.

Jen
I don’t know. I talked about a lot of dirty things, and I find a lot of pleasure in the same sort of humour that maybe a little kid would. I say a lot of things that shock people, let’s say my inner circle, but not publicly. Not online, or on She Does the City. That was probably a weird thing to say, ‘gross.’

Natalie
I like it. We’re into weird. Ok, last two. What do you need to be creative?

Jen
I need time. I need time to myself, and I try to carve that out. I try to go for a walk every day. That is not happening lately, but I really do try to do that. And I need time to be quiet and think. That’s something that has definitely come from motherhood — getting less and less time, and then really feeling like I need it so much. So trying to carve out that space is really important for me.

Rebecca
Ok, last one. What did you eat for dinner, or what are you eating for dinner?

Jen
I actually don’t know what I’m eating for dinner because I have a partner who is an exceptional home cook. I am very lucky and fortunate that he does 90% of the cooking around here. So I don’t know what I’m having for dinner yet, but I can guarantee you it’s going to be impressive. In the past week, we’ve had octopus. He is fermenting some ramps downstairs that he collected in the wild. We are a family that eats a lot of experimental food.

Natalie
Ok, we need to hang out, team. This is a very inspiring conversation. I’m excited.

Rebecca
I want to be in the inner circle, knowing all these weird stories.

Natalie
I want to hear all the gross details.

Jen
Now I regret that one, sharing that one.

Rebecca
No, I think that makes me really like you. Not everyone would admit to that.

Natalie
Or just name it.

Rebecca
Name the body humour that we like. Our mother is really into — our mother is so funny, because she’s very poised and put together, but she loves body humour.

Natalie
Yeah. We’ve had the talk on this show about scatological humour all over the place, so there you go.

Jen
Well, yeah. You can’t have a seven-year-old or an eight-year-old without that in your face all the time.

Natalie
Absolutely. Captain Underpants is a thing for a reason.

Jen
Yeah.

Natalie
Jen, thank you for this.

Jen
Thank you.

Natalie
This was wonderful, and we really appreciate it, and we will continue these conversations, I hope.

Jen
Sounds good. I really appreciate it too. Now I’m just going to walk away and think, “Why did I say that I was gross? Of all the things, why did I say that?”

Natalie
Thanks a lot. I will talk to you soon.

Jen
All right. Take care. Love getting to chat with you.

Rebecca
Bye.

Natalie
Bye.

Jen
Thanks, bye bye.

Rebecca
Oh yes, some house business. Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is actually really important. Consider a donation on Patreon if these reframing conversations have supported you or someone you know. And please sign up for our Sister On! newsletter which we send out every Friday. It comes with an original recipe from Nat which, I tell you, her recipes are really good. All the links are in our show notes. Love, Sister On!