When I was nine and ten years old, we lived in SoCal. The summer days were long and hot & I refused to wear shoes. I’d run through the asphalt roads of our trailer park on leather-skinned feet. After more than one trip to the doctor to have plantar warts removed, my mother finally insisted that I start wearing my ‘jellies’ while playing outside. I eventually gave in, but not before defiantly announcing: “Fine! But you just wait and see… one day I will have a job where I don’t have to wear shoes!”
I won that argument in 2003 when I started managing a holistic fitness studio in downtown Portland. My bohemian spirit was right at home; I felt like I’d arrived.
But it wasn’t the modern-day utopia I imagined it would be. Turns out, the ‘cult’ure of the new age wellness industry is just a shined-up, laundered version of patriarchal norms. In Ep.33, I share the story of that time & how I separated from said-organization and eventually woke up from the trance of spiritual hierarchies & new age prosperity gospel.
Give Ep.33 a listen if you’d like to hear all about it.
