October's Podcast of the Month: Stuff Mom Never Told You

How I feel about this podcast can best be summed up by a text I sent my partner after listening to a few episodes of SMNTY: "listen to this podcast. You will understand my life".

I love how this podcast speaks to the lives of women and aims to openly discuss this in the context of intersecting identities like race, sexual orientation, abuse history, and so on. I love that it helps me find words to describe what I'm experiencing and what my clients are experiencing, when I didn't know there were words for it (or couldn't find them easily).

The two hosts are fierce, feminist, and so funny. The two episodes that stood out to me recently have to do with boundaries and communication. They really come from a worldview that I can respect – they believe that there’s nothing wrong with the way you communicate. They recognize that women are often made to believe that how they’re communicating is just “too much” in one way or another (too assertive, too bossy, too whiny, etc). They tackle all sorts of topics, but the two that most closely connect with boundaries are:
 
“Policing Women’s Speech” - People love giving women advice on how to speak at work. But is this advice always grounded in fact? E&B break it down.
 
"Negotiation No-No’s" - Negotiating a salary or promotion can be nerve-wracking. Here are all the mistakes we’ve made, so you don’t have to.

I absolutely learned some things in the negotiation episode that I wish I had known back in the days of working for someone else. I'm glad to know it now as I help women navigate career moves, especially because what's shared in the episode acknowledges the specific barriers that women contend with, and the advice is evidence-based.

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