The Rebel MFA Way Podcast

If you haven’t heard the news by now, the title probably gave it away. I’m starting a podcast! Surprise! But actually, it’s really not. People have been telling me for years that I should start a podcast. And now, I finally have.

The Rebel MFA Way Podcast is my newest Quietly Ambitious goal and if you’re confused about what that means, go read my article “Quietly Ambitious” and then come back here. You’ll understand it more deeply through that lens.

I talk about the origins of the podcast in Episode One of the podcast, but for folx just tuning in, I wanted to give you the write-up of the origin story here, too, because it’s an important one that bears repeating.

So as I said, I’ve been saying no to starting a podcast for a lot of years now. Like more years than I can count. I’ve been told over and over again that I should start one. Every time an opportunity to start a podcast has been brought up, some part of my intuition has kicked in and said, “No. Not yet.” And it’s been very strong. I listen to that intuition most of the time. For the past year though, an idea for a podcast has been brewing at the back of my brain. Simmering. Stewing. Gestating.

And in the last few weeks, a very primal part of me suddenly woke up craving two things.

The first thing was conversational connection. You know, the kind of connection you have when you dig deep into a topic with a friend or group of friends that you could seemingly talk to for hours. I realized getting small tastes of it in pockets here and there had only left me hungry for more. Like a ravenous vampire seeking that endless supply of fresh blood and trying and failing to subsist on the false stand-ins, I understood that nothing beats the real thing. Nothing fills the tank like the buzz of the live wire between a group of people who feel safe enough to talk about everything from what they had for breakfast to the most heart-wrenchingly hard shit in life.

This realization led me to start thinking about what already existed to fill this need and I came up empty-handed. I mean, sure, maybe it does exist. But it didn’t feel accessible to me. It didn’t feel accessible to my friends.

I also started to see that there were very few podcasts out there where the hosts or people leading the discussions were just… ordinary. That intersectionality of ordinary people living ordinary lives dealing with things we all struggle with but never hear about. The thing is… Our stories and our thoughts matter, but no one is hearing them. No one is hearing the both / and sides. No one is hearing that ordinary people are both healing AND struggling. No one is hearing that ordinary people are living with mental illness AND learning how to manage it successfully. No one is hearing that ordinary millennials are struggling financially AND living decent fulfilling lives.

We need stories of the both / and.

And we’re not getting them.

That’s why I wanted to start this podcast and why I want my friends to come to join me for most of the journey.

That being said, the second craving I had was more selfish and self-serving.

It stems from this deep, deep desire within me to want to share, share, and share what I’m learning.

Even from a young age, one of my superpowers has been the ability to consume massive amounts of information very quickly, deconstruct it, connect it with other things, and then spit it back out to share it.

The problem I’ve faced with this is that 1. It often takes me longer to spit it back out in the current formats I’ve been using up to now and 2. I haven’t felt like there’s really been anyone who cares. And while number #2 may still be true, at least now I can talk into the void and repurpose what I’m saying, even if no one gives a shit.

So those two cravings combined with the intuitive full body YES I received (along with a few nudges from close friends) confirmed that starting a podcast at this time was something I should do.

So now that you have a better idea of the origin story for this podcast, I hope you find yourself curious and intrigued by what’s to come because the truth is, I don’t even know.

That’s part of the beauty of what I want this podcast to sound and feel like. A bit like a melting pot of themes and topics and voices because that’s what life is.

I can tell you for sure that there will be a lot about storytelling because that is my specialty.

I can also tell you that rebellion will also be top of mind often, hence the title of the podcast.

In fact, why don’t we take a little mini detour for a second and talk about the name while I have you here?

You’re probably asking yourself now, Hmm, what does The Rebel MFA Way have to do with what she plans to talk about?

And the answer is… everything.

As you all know, I’ve been running with the Rebel MFA theme for quite some time now, stemming all the way back to the project I started in 2022 with My Rebel MFA Degree. And from there it has obviously grown to include the Sanctuary, a publishing arm, a blogging platform, and now, this podcast.

The ethos of The Rebel MFA Way is simple really — it’s going against the grain of what’s always been done. It’s a challenge to the status quo that says, “what if I did it a different way?” It’s a message of empowerment to those who have felt silenced, shut down, or turned away because they felt they were never “good enough.”

The Rebel MFA Way is not so much a brand or a theme as much as it is a way of living life. It’s saying NO to the confines that society, culture, and oppression have placed on us, and saying YES to the stirrings that living inside your soul, your creativity, and your heart.

So that’s why The Rebel MFA Way Podcast is really the perfect title and the perfect home for this adventure and journey.

And I hope that you’ll join us in it.

You can learn more about the podcast at its home on Substack by clicking here and subscribing to get new episodes sent straight to your inbox.