Description

During 2023, the Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause continued to bushwack a maroon path for those menopause stories left at the margins by launching a diasporic tour that took our team to the UK, Harlem, Toronto, and Puerto Rico.

Our intergenerational team has learned to hold the “both/and” dynamic tension of curating storytelling spaces more deeply. We are infinitely grateful for the lessons we have learned from our travels together, community conversations, and partnerships that include:

• What it means to make offerings in communities where we do not reside
• What it means to partner with people who have different definitions and understandings of community, culture, justice, gender, healing, and liberation
• What it means to collaborate with BIPOC and queer creatives and artists who are infinitely talented and habitually underresourced
• What it means to hold intergenerational space in ways that don’t reinforce ageist tropes about who can offer wisdom, respect, power, and perspective
• What it means to create, in real-time, a culture of belonging and care for and with your team
• What it means to travel internationally as a team in ways that keep us safe from harm
• What it means to be patient, humble, and accountable
• What it means to try and fail
• What it means to try and soar

In this last episode of this very special season of the podcast, you will hear stories from our time in Toronto and team reflections from Puerto Rico. As you soak up this offering, we will leave you with these questions as 2023 comes to a close:

• What is the important liberatory work you want to do for your community and the spaces you occupy?
• What stories live inside you that are ready to be shared?

See you in 2024!

Episode Notes

Voices heard in this episode:

• Alexandra Jane, BGG2SM Social Media Manager
• Farhath Siddiqui, BGG2SM Hits the Road Videographer, Siddiqui Media
• Assata Goff, BGG2SM in-house artist
• Omisade Burney-Scott, Creator & CCO at the Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause

Feature Orisii interviewees:

• Amma Gyamfowa, Founder of Womanist Healing
• Georgina G., mother of Amma

Season 5 Host and Producer:

• Mariah M., Creative Director at the Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause

Score credits (all music free to use under Creative Commons Licensing):

• Moving Fast by Holden Excess
• Beauty all Around Us by Steven Beddall (AudioLibrary)
• AfroLove by The LadyProducer (AudioLibrary)
• BGG Season 4/5 Theme - Taj Scott

This season and the diasporic tour were made possible by our partners and sponsors at The Honey Pot Company, Kindra, Elektra Health and the Groundswell Fund.

For the past four years, the Black Girls’ Guide to Surviving Menopause has been a multi-media platform with Reproductive Justice, Black Feminism, and Healing Justice as our north star. At its core, this means we fundamentally believe that none of us are free until all of us are free, and when the most vulnerable of us are taken care of, all of society stands to benefit. BGG2SM unapologetically stands in solidarity with all marginalized people and their struggle for freedom, and their demand of their innate human rights.