chronic illness

Episode #132: What Healing Really Looks Like | A Conversation with Dana Christy

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TW: eating disorder cycles, bullying, queer shame, the holocaust, rape

When I was thinking about how I wanted to start this season, I knew I couldn’t get into any conversation and bring anyone on before speaking to the deepest thread of my personal life these last few months and since the end of season 5. Which is why I am so excited to share this conversation and human with you.

Dana Christy (they/she) — to me — is before anything, one of my deepest personal healers & someone I am grateful to call a friend. To the rest of the world, they are a queer and trauma informed certified Shiatsu practitioner, licensed Massage Therapist, and therapeutic yoga practitioner under the umbrella of her wellness practice WellSpring Healing Arts.

Dana studied bodywork and East Asian Medicine at Zen Shiatsu Chicago and earned yoga teaching certifications for children and adults with Global Family Yoga and Yogaview. Dana specializes in working with trauma, autoimmune conditions, chronic illness, and the LGBTQIAP+ community.

Things we talk about in todays episode:

  • The various roles we play in our day to day life

  • What I’ve been navigating within my own healing journey the last year

  • Chronic pain / symptoms

  • How to even begin to come home to your body

  • The bullshit narrative of healing in our culture today

  • The “healed people heal people” trend on Tik tok and why we hate it

  • WTF trauma even is

  • Yeast infections, queer shame, recovery, simple & accessible healing tools and beyond

Episode #106: Using Pleasure To Cope With Trauma And Grief - A Conversation with Alyssa Pressman

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Hi loves.

Todays episode is different — you may notice that there’s no typical intro music/snippets — because it didn’t feel right today. This week has been heavy. Hell, this year has been a fucking trip. And I wrestled with the idea of not releasing a podcast episode today — I wasn’t sure how we would be experiencing this post election day time. And when I woke up yesterday morning, in a mix of deep feels/sadness and hope for a brighter future in the US, I knew that this conversation, with a soul human of mine, was one that I needed to share with all of you today.

And with that, I’d like to introduce to you my friend and kindred spirit, Alyssa Pressman (she/her).

Alyssa is a Licensed Clinical Therapist & Certified Sex + Relationship Coach. She specializes in pleasure & joy post trauma, grief & with chronic illness. She loves supporting women in moving closer to themselves, to other people and to creating lives that feel in deep alignment with their unique desires. She is a BRCA1 mutation carrier like me, and a person living with chronic illness and pain. Reaching for joy and pleasure has been deeply healing for her. When not working, you can find her dancing, lounging, reading or cooking, usually scantily clad if not naked. She loves talking, learning and sharing on all things sex, relationships, death, healing & dark nights of the soul-you know, all the super casual things.

I invite you to take this one on a walk outside, or curl up with a cup of tea and absorb these words as a way to get away, for a moment, from the chaos. You are so loved.


Things we discuss in todays episode:

  • Alyssa’s wake up call around a chronic illness that made it impossible to have penetrative sex without serious pain in her younger twenties

  • How her work as a sex & relationship coach started to empower her sexually, in a more wholistic way

  • Pelvic floor struggles

  • BRCA and the other piece of the fear with our mutual diagnosis: ovarian cancer

  • Self pleasure practices & building a relationship with your pussy

  • How to claim your sexuality as your own and experience life changing pleasure

  • Redefining what sex and pleasure is

  • How to talk to your partner(s) around how to have more connected intimacy with one another

  • Boobs, the beauty of being un-partnered, using pleasure as a form of self care and beyond

photos by Kyle Wilson , Zeke D and Cam Frontain