About the Episode
I'm here! I made it! You're here! I'm so glad you made it too. This week, we're gonna lay the foundation of Bloom as You Grow podcast.
Links: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Anchor
Resources
Zaleska Jewelry
Zaleska Jewelry’s Instagram
Podcast Transcript
Hi, my name is Sarah and you're listening to the Bloom as You Grow podcast.
Thank you so much for being here with me. I am here. Finally. I'm so excited. I'm really just so happy and thrilled to finally get started because I feel like for a really long time, probably for as far back as I can remember, I've been somebody who has loved creativity. I have had so many different creative outlets and podcasting is something I've thought about doing for a very long time, and I've been encouraged to do so for a very long time, but as somebody who lives with anxiety and depression, I experienced a lot of self-doubt and fear. And I think for a very long time I didn't feel ready. I didn't feel like my ideas were fully developed and I really inhibited myself from just starting and seeing where things go. So, thank you for being here with me and joining me on this journey.
So, what is Bloom as You Grow? Why now? What's going on? What can you expect? Well, let's discuss. Let's talk.
Bloom as You Grow is a phrase that I made up. I haven't heard it before anyway. And to me, I'm in a season of my life where I'm starting to realize that life is really about continuous learning. One of my mantras is to learn, grow, and reinvent, which I believe is the cycle that we go through in life where we're constantly learning. And when we learn, we grow. And in that growth, we have to reinvent ourselves. We take that new knowledge, and we take the learning and the growth that we experience, and we have to figure out the output of that, like what to do and how to apply that into the context of our lives.
So, when I thought of the phrase Bloom as You Grow, I wanted to acknowledge that you don't just bloom once. Like, life isn't really about just constantly being self-critical or bullying yourself into this perfect vision of yourself, or a person that you are constantly striving to be, without also recognizing the growth that you've experienced up until that point. Like celebrating yourself, celebrating every point of growth, and every time that you can really see how much different you are now as opposed to who you were even a year ago, even a month ago. Which is not something that I feel that I have mastered in any way. It's something that I'm still continuing to work on.
So, the visual that I see is very specific, but it's of the rose bush in my backyard. I have a rosebush that is just so close to my heart. I see it when I look out my window and when it starts to bloom, I am just over the moon. I picture going and looking at that rose bush and seeing that there are some flowers that are fully in bloom, they've blossomed. And they're just absolutely stunning, but then there are also still some buds. They will also blossom into those fully bloomed flowers. It just takes time, and it takes patience.
So that's the name. That's where I got that mouthful of a name. So now, what is this? What can you expect? What is the podcast going to be about? Well, really, this is just an extension of who I am as a publicly vulnerable person. I have never shied away from sharing myself, and my story, and my life online on various platforms and being creative with it. I'm constantly sharing on Instagram. I'm just somebody that really isn't afraid to be an open book. I'm still obviously working on my communication skills. I won't say that I know exactly what to say all the time, but I am somebody who believes in sharing. I've never shied away from talking almost incessantly. So, I am just here to share. And I'm thinking the four words that come to mind when I think of my vision for this podcast, and what I imagine it to manifest as, are loving, healing, learning, and being.
When it comes to loving, I love love. I'm a hopeless romantic, but also, I love recognizing the intimacy in platonic relationships. I love connection. And it's not just about the relationships we have with people. I think that love can be quite vast and can be applied to so many aspects of our lives. And there's a lot of interests and hobbies and things that I love so deeply. So, the loving will be just anything that I love, anything that I'm really passionate about. So, you might hear me talk about things that really interest me. Like I'm somebody that loves art. I love music. I love books. I love visual art. I love poetry. You'll get to know more about me and what I love, but I also do want to take some time to talk about love and relationships, both in the platonic and romantic sense, because those are things that I'm quite interested in and are things that I experience.
When it comes to healing, I am on a more intentional path of healing. I am in therapy. I've been in therapy for I think a little over a year now (Woah!) I believe that I have a lot to learn in terms of healing and how to do so. I want to sort of share that experience with you as well and what I'm learning and what's working. And I think I'm really excited to have that be a part of this project because I think it's something that's really important.
And I think it's something that we can often struggle with because therapy has been immensely helpful for me and has been something that I've had the privilege to access, but I do acknowledge that therapy isn't something that works for everyone and it's also something that's extremely inaccessible. From a lot of different vantage points. Whether it be from the vantage point of ableism and actually being able to access and go to see a therapist, but then also just in the most general sense when we're talking about race and different experiences. There aren't always competent professionals, both culturally and just in a general sense people that can empathize and create a safe space for people to heal, and it could be retraumatizing.
So, therapy is something that I, again, have really, really benefited from but I do understand that it's not something that everyone can access even financially as well (I forgot to mention that.) But it's something that I'm learning a lot from. I also learn a lot from different resources in books and really studying all the different ways that we can practice healing and practice being more self-aware, being more self-compassionate, loving ourselves better, taking care of ourselves better, self-care. So, I will absolutely be touching on that.
Learning. I love to learn. I love learning new things. I'm a very curious person and I think that I'm always striving to learn more and I'm a lifelong learner. I don't believe that I know it all, even though I am really proud of myself and what I've been able to learn and accomplish throughout my life so far.
So, there's a lot of different topics that I feel that I could learn more about. Especially things that come to the top of my mind, which is only a very small fraction, pertain to gentrification, anti-oppressive practice.
And I think just generally I'm somebody that is in the season of my life where I am immensely grateful to the people that share their experiences and their stories, and really open my eyes to just how vastly different people can see the world and can experience the world. I think that I'm somebody who wants to hold space for these stories and these people, maybe have some people on the podcast, because I think it's important, especially as somebody who has a lot of points of privilege in my intersectional identity. I am able-bodied. And white. Even class-wise. I just have a lot of points of privilege. So, I experience the world in ways that are ultimately to my benefit and I don't have a lot of experience in parts of the world that aren't accepting of me, I guess. I don't know how to say that. I guess I feel like my privilege really just makes me quite ignorant sometimes to what can happen and what's happening in the world around me. So, I try to make intentional space and time to learn more about other people's experiences and what's going on in the world. So, I will likely touch on that as well.
And the last word I had mentioned is being. So, how can we exist? But I'm serious. I think that this is really going to be close to healing, but I'm in a season in my life where I want to learn more about my wellbeing. I want to learn more about how to interact with the world around me in safer ways, how to be, and be mindful of myself and just figure out how to obtain peace in my life.
I think there's this expectation that we should all be striving for happiness. Like, my mom is always asking me, “are you happy,” and is somebody who believes that happiness in life is what we should all have and what we should all strive for. Which I believe, totally! Happiness is great. But I'm in a season of my life where I realize, especially when it comes to my mental health, sometimes happiness is hard, and it can cause me a lot of anxiety when I'm not happy or if I experience sadness or something happens.
So, I think that something that I really have been trying to strive for and aim for is peace. I want peace in my life because especially as a person living with anxiety, peace is really hard to keep up. But yeah, I think that, again, I’m really lucky. I'm in a season in my life where I am really focusing on my wellbeing and how to practice self-compassion, self-care, and what parts of my life make it easier to feel good. And just everything that pertains to my wellbeing overall. So, I'm gonna be doing a lot of work, intentional work, looking into things that will make me feel good. And I don't want to say healthy. I think that's kind of problematic, but just things that pertain to my well-being and making me feel better.
So, is all that very vague? Yes.
Understand that part of the reason why I really like this podcast name, being a name that surrounds growth, is that I really think that this podcast will be a space where I'm going to be growing into it. And I'm going to find my niche. I don't want it to be something that's super rigid or something that I'm stressed out about thinking, "Oh, it has to have a very specific topic. It has to have a very specific theme." I do feel like a lot of what I've spoken about generally falls under lifestyle. This isn't just going to spontaneously turn into a sports podcast. I mean, I might talk about the Raptors. I might! Because that is my home in my heart, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I don't live in Toronto, by the way, I live in Vancouver. But I'm from Toronto.
But I will say that I'm somebody who, like I've touched on briefly, that can talk incessantly and is curious about a lot of things and I think that just honing this podcast down to one specific topic will be something that I won't be excited about and I won't want to do. And I just don't feel like it has a lot of sustainability and longevity.
So, this is a very personal project. It's a passion project and it's something that I want to give space for to be something that is continuously growing.
So, in terms of expectations overall, I would like you to expect it to be a biweekly podcast. Likely on Thursdays. It won't be weekly, I think for a little while, just because of where my life is at right now. I'm deciding to launch this podcast at a very interesting time because November/December is historically [busy] just due to my job and my life. My birthday is in December, the holidays are in December. I participate in the holidays. It's a chaotic time. So, I am aiming for bi-weekly for the time being, because I think that is what I can reasonably accomplish, but that's not to say that that won't change. I would love for this to become a weekly podcast. But I think for now, what I feel is the most attainable is biweekly.
And in terms of the formats, I want to start with this podcast as a podcast. So just audio, but I think I have some ideas and some cool projects that might involve visuals for people that don't really listen to podcasts or aren't into just the audio aspect. We'll see, again, like I've discussed many times by this point: I'm really interested in learning, and I'm interested in growth, and I'm interested in trying to push myself to try new things and to not be scared of something maybe not working if I just try it.
So that's the general gist of what I'm hoping to do here and what you'll see.
And the last question that I had mentioned at the beginning that I hope to answer for you is why now? What took so long? So many people have been asking me to do this, and I'm not just conforming to peer pressure, because again, this is something that I'm very excited to do, and I'm very happy to do. But I have had people ask me to do this for a long time.
One of my friends, I hope she listens to this. Hi, Martha! She messaged me once and she said, “your voice helps me with my anxiety!” And I just want to thank everyone really. She's not the only one. There have been so many people that have just been so encouraging and are such beautiful people in my life. And I want to thank every single one of you for just taking even a moment to be excited or ask me if I'm doing this podcast and following up with me. Or comment on a post that I've made of myself recording.
Just because, I think, again, being somebody who lives with anxiety, I experience a lot of self-doubt and there are times where I'm like, “oh, why am I - why should I do a podcast? Like, what can I bring that will add something new to this medium?” Or especially as someone who has a lot of privilege, like, “what is my voice really going to add? Am I just taking space where I shouldn't be?” But you know what, I think that it doesn't have to be that deep. I think I really want to start taking up more space. And just give me more importance and more value and recognize that I can just do something because I want to do something. And because it's something that will bring joy to my life because I get to create, and I get to try something new, and I get to do something that I feel like will be really fun for me to do.
And I think that it's really important that I go back to my more creative roots because I have participated in creativity in the past couple of years more so to just show people that I love them, I guess, and make gifts for people. My arts and crafts roots. But I haven't really done a lot of creative projects that have just been for me or have just involved me.
So, I'm very excited about that. And I think it's also going to be a really beautiful marker of my growth as a person. And I hope it's going to be a space where I get to connect with people.
So that's a little bit of why, and a little bit of gratitude towards everybody who has been asking for this and has been just outstandingly supportive. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Again.
So, I know this is gonna be a short podcast episode. I want to say it's a pilot episode in a way, even though I know pilot is more so a television thing. But I mostly just wanted to lay down the foundation for the podcast, so I will be wrapping it up now. And one of the ideas that I had that I hope to continue in all of my episodes is to end every podcast episode with an affirmation.
Affirmations, I believe, are just so beautiful and are so important. I think they can really add something to your day, to your life. Because I think that sometimes, the way we can ground ourselves the best is just to have really simple phrases or quotes or something that we can read and look at and say, "Oh, I'm going to be okay. Yeah, this is true. And this is what I need right now." I am trying to incorporate affirmations in my life more, and I would love to gift that to you as well, so you leave the podcast and you're like, "Oh!" To put it simply.
So, the affirmation that I will be reciting today is from a really beautiful person local here to Vancouver. Her name is Sylvia Tennant. Sylvia Tennant is the woman behind Zaleska Jewelry. Anyone who knows me knows that I am Zaleska's biggest fan. Like I kind of talked about with the loving, that I'll extend on now, when I love something, sometimes I can just love it so hard, and I can be really supportive. Zaleska Jewelry is one of those things that I just love really hard. I think that Sylvia is one of the nicest, warmest people that I've met here in Vancouver, but also her line of jewelry is absolutely just so stunning and intentional.
Because the way she describes Zaleska, at the very least the short description that she puts on her Instagram, is that Zaleska is gemstone jewelry for energetic self-care. Isn't that amazing? She just really goes into detail about all the different gems she uses, what those gems can do for you, and how they can help you. And it's beautiful. Like, I'm probably not even doing her line the amount of justice that it deserves so please check her out. You can find her on Instagram @zaleskajewelry.
Anyway, so on to the affirmation. She has a necklace that has three marquise-cut moonstones and the marquise moonstones each represent a phrase that she uses as an affirmation. I'm going to look it up now because I want to make sure that I do this the justice that it deserves. So, the affirmation is as follows: I am here. I am whole, I am loved.
I'm going to repeat that so you can take a moment to maybe close your eye, write it down so you can recite it to yourself later, or whatever works for you. However, you want to experience this or internalize this affirmation. One more time: I am here. I am whole, I am loved.
Okay. That is all for me. Again, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for listening. I am honestly just over the moon to be doing this and I hope to see you next time. And I hope you're healing well. Okay, bye.
I’d love to hear from you!
Want to send in some feedback or a suggestion for a future episode? You can send me an e-mail at bloomasyougrow@gmail.com. You can also come say hi on Instagram @bloomasyougrow.
Leave Me a Voicemail
I would love to pass the mic to listeners who want to share an affirmation that resonates with them. If you’re interested in participating, you can record and send in a voicemail here.
SpeakPipe only allows for 5 minutes of recording, but if you would like to share your name or a bit about what you love most about your affirmation, please feel free to do so! I would love to include that as well!
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