Season 3 - Episode 8 - SPECIFIC PLANS & FIGHTING AGAINST A CULTURAL NARRATIVE

Season 3 - Episode 7 - CULTURAL IDENTITY, APOLOGIES, GHOSTING

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Season 3 of the Wise Not Withered Podcast. Season 3 focuses on behind-the-scenes happenings and musings. The 5 key points this month are as follows:

1. Strange for a young woman to be doing a project focused on older women? Many people have thought so!
2. Characters that still need a writer or illustrator:
   1. Candace - illustrator
   2. Tala - writer
   3. Elizaveta - illustrator
   4. Blind Assassin - both writer & illustrator
3. Cultural belonging - being biracial and my experience sharing that with writers and illustrators; getting triggered by one writer that felt super connected to her own heritage
4. Respectfully letting people down; my thoughts on apologizing
5. A little painful and I feel resistance in looking through emails I sent over the years; feelings of shame coming up in messages never answered; my thoughts on ghosting

Season 3 - Episode 6 - MEDITATIVE AGE EXERCISE, ANOTHER STORY EXCERPT

Thanks for tuning in to this month's episode of the Wise Not Withered Podcast, where I continue to talk about more behind-the-scenes ideas in this giant project. The 5 key points are as follows:

1. Insane to-do lists
2. What Season 2 might have been
3. My own voice and growth - hiding behind insincerity, something I've been self-conscious of for a while
4. Meditative Age Exercise - envision yourself from ages 1 - 100
5. Revisit Basira - read the first few pages of her story

Listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Podbean!

Season 3 - Episode 5 - PROJECT MANAGEMENT, PATIENCE, AND FEEDBACK

Thanks for tuning in to this month's episode of the Wise Not Withered Podcast! Episode 5 of Season 3 is here, where I continue my deep dive into the process of creating Wise Not Withered, being open and vulnerable with my experiences. Today's 5 key points are as follows:

1. Project Management
2. Time zone differences; must be soooooo clear when planning real-time meetings!!
3. People come, people go
4. Patience... I check in, contribute, trust, and let go
5. Waking up to an illustrator's feedback; my inner little girl's triggered reaction

Listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Podbean!

Season 3 - Episode 4 - JUST TRUST

Welcome to the Wise Not Withered Podcast! It's Episode 4 of Season 3, where I dive into behind-the-scenes stories and experiences that I've been through over the last four years since starting this project in earnest. The five key points of today's episode are as follows:

1. Accidentally thought a male artist was a woman...!
2. Learning, growing — being right where you are in your life
3. Painful conflict with a potential writer
4. Feeling discouraged — focus on what's going WELL
5. "Just Trust"

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Podbean!

Season 3 - Episode 3 - LAWYERS, CONTRACTS, GRAMMAR, AND TEENAGERS

Welcome to Season 3 of the Wise Not Withered Podcast! It's Episode 3, and here are my five key points for today:

1. Entertainment Lawyers
2. THE CONTRACT!!
3. The first 10 episodes: interviews with wise women from my own life
4. Originally 12-15 characters until I realized I NEEDED MOOOORE!!
5. Mentoring teenagers

Listen to the entire episode on Podbean, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify!

Season 3 - Episode 2 - DEATH, MUSIC, AND QUESTIONS

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 2 of the Wise Not Withered Podcast! There are five key points today. The summary is as follows:

1. Character idea that ended up getting scrapped/merged. 86-year-old musician (guitarist, singer-songwriter, composer) who tours for six months with husband who is terminally ill and eventually passes - my own ideas and open-ended thoughts about death
2. Podcast theme music - first draft, but who cares? Musical influences from various corners of the world
3. Cold emails - my original spiel (which did change a bit over time)
4. The beauty and magic in asking and being asked questions - shows interest and enthusiasm, and inspires a clearer vision on the creative's side
5. Zoom/Skype/FaceTime calls, "Friendly Interviews" - what does it mean to build a community? Spoiler: I am actually asking, because I don't know the answer myself

Season 3 - Episode 1 - LOVE OVER FEAR

It's Season 3 of the Wise Not Withered Podcast! This season is a personal challenge for myself, while also an opportunity for me to open up about all of the experiences I've gone through over the last three and a half years since beginning this project in earnest. Instead of reading from a script as I have done in the past twenty-five episodes, I will be writing five key points and riffing on those in a free-form talking style.

The key points for today's episode are as follows:

1. Love over fear
2. Hundreds of cold emails
3. Scouring Behance and Instagram for art and poems
4. Many self-pep talks
5. Plan things, but be open to challenges and keep pushing forward

Mermaid Queen – CASSIKA

Hello and welcome to Week 25 of the Wise Not Withered Character Showcase! Today I am thrilled to present the LAST character of the project: Cassika, our 86-year-old Mermaid Queen!! Cassika's writer is Jumleni, from New York, and her illustrator is Marina, from Egypt!

I found Jumleni on Instagram, while searching for some kind of hashtags about poetry. Her words grabbed at me and I was so excited when she responded positively to my cold DM inviting her onto the project.

And Marina was one of the very first people I recruited onto the project, after finding her on UpWork! It's very fitting that both of these artists' names are Marina (the illustrator's first name and the writer's middle name), and they both gravitated toward the Mermaid Queen character. I'm not sure how I thought of the name Cassika, but it came to me somehow, and it stuck!

Cassika's story's plot came to me all at once one night. I had been sending emails back and forth with the illustrator Marina, trying to come up with some ideas, and this whole thing just poured out of me.

Read the full transcript of this episode on wisenotwithered.com!

Super-Mom – FARAH

Welcome to Week 24 of the Wise Not Withered Character Showcase! This week I am happy to introduce Farah, our 45-year-old Super-Mom! Farah is a school teacher, and a struggling widowed mother of two, dealing with depression and insomnia. I thought it would be interesting for Farah’s superpowers to develop in her middle age, rather than in her teen years or twenties—again, we are trying to break the mold of a woman’s “prime” being only in her child-rearing years. Many of the amazing wise women in this project are purposely childless; I thought it was of utmost importance to show that bearing children is not a goal for every single woman, and it is also not the “ultimate” goal for a woman, as though having a child is where her added value to society ends.

That said, it was also important to me to include many mothers and mother figures in this project, since so many real women are mothers, and being a mother is an irrevocable identity that many women take pride and joy in. And to add in some more diversity, which is one of the more subtle yet extremely important aspects of this project, we decided that Farah would be a widow, forced by circumstance to raise her children on her own.

Farah’s writer is Tilyan, who was born and raised in Kenya, and identifies culturally as Persian, specifically Balouch. Farah’s illustrator is Stef, who is German. I found both of these artists on Instagram, where Tilyan had posted some beautiful poetry and Stef has some amazing character illustrations.

Read the rest of this showcase's transcript on wisenotwithered.com!