Teddy Frank is a Licensed Master Social Worker, a Reichian Psychotherapist with a love for leadership facilitation and coaching in the corporate arena. Teddy works locally with scientists from Colorado State University that are looking at diversity, equity, justice, and inclusion within academia. Teddy works with collective trauma healing and ancestral healing, including her own, on what she names “The Hera’s Journey.” Throughout the recording of her Let Perfect Burn episode, I kept thinking, “She does THAT too?” Teddy’s passions are boundless, her convictions pure and fiery and her quest to understand and intuit humanity is unlike any other person’s I have experienced in my lifetime. 

Teddy grew up in a tumultuous and violent family where there was sexual abuse. But for Teddy, her homelife didn’t sink her, it activated her. “My awakening was at the age of 19 with the women’s movement. I mean, the feminist movement was in full swing. And I became a leader of grassroots community organizing, leading the whole on sexual crimes against women.”

Teddy is a healer by nature and so she couldn’t pass up the opportunity for us to be in dialogue together for this episode, creating a safe and grounded place for me to take a step toward. “I’m different than you, Tara, but you are also in me, and I am also in you.” We spoke about being a woman and a mother and that in society, staying good and staying quiet often leads to a wider acceptance. Daring to express pain and speaking truth to trauma rocks the boat, but it is an act that Teddy describes as ‘an awakening’ which is born out of “feeling the pain of not conforming, of questioning worth and value.” 

And what was so moving was that after speaking with Teddy, I started to realize that my ‘falling apart’ was something so universal to being human and that my strength to buck the norm of the ‘perfect woman’ was dare I say it, heroic. 

By the end of Teddy’s beautiful interview, I started using different words to speak to my mental health crisis, my hospitalization and my falling apart. 

“I am on the Hera’s journey, and I have had an awakening that has irrevocably changed my life.”

Highlights from Teddy:

"I remember five years old, my mother was very depressed. And I was sitting at the kitchen table across from her, and she was looking off to the side. And I looked directly at her and I said, 'Mommy, are you mad at me?' And she brought her gaze back, and she said, now finally resting in my eyes, 'No, honey, why would you think that?' And I said, 'I can't see myself in your eyes.' And in that moment, my five year old wisdom self said, 'My mom is not available to me.' And that's when we start to say, 'Okay, I need to take care of myself.'"

"So in a moment, our nervous systems get wired for survival and says, 'It's not okay to express my needs.' And so we develop these patterns that become the cracks in our psyche, the shadows in our soul. And that's what we then ride upon as nice girls, or as high performers in the world. Or, as you know, the sort of conforming to the female notion, which changes culturally but by Western dominant male standard says, 'You don't express your needs too strongly, because then you're aggressive. She's aggressive, she's angry.'"

Don't Miss a Beat.

My Website, Let Perfect Burn:
https://letperfectburn.com/

Follow my Instagram for news from me, Tara Beckett:
https://www.instagram.com/letperfectburn/

Connect With Teddy Frank:

Her Website:
https://www.humanenergetics.com/

Her LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/teddyfrank/

Comedian Antonia Lassar self-identifies as 60% Jewish, 30% Chronic Illness and 10% Bisexual chaos and recently their standup addressed embracing the term disabled. “Prior to this, I was like, ‘Yes, I’m exhausted all the time. Yes, when I lie down, I choke on my own stomach acid. Yes, I don’t poop.’ But that’s not because I’m sick. I was like, ‘That’s because I am morally inferior.’”

During this set, Antonia’s crowd laughed, but Antonia shines in their ability to take truth and push the envelope one more time. “And I know that you might hear all those symptoms and be like, ‘Obviously that’s an illness and not moral decay’ but you are seriously understanding my Jewish capacity for self-blame. Okay, I’m like, ‘What about my diet and lifestyle caused the Holocaust?’”

Before coming to LA to focus on their career as a comedian, Antonia toured college campuses addressing sexual assault with their work, Post Traumatic Super Delightful. Antonia is a victim of sexual assault and in their work they utilize comedy to challenge the expectations of the perfect survivor. “Trustworthiness is big. They need to have the education level that we believe that they are trustworthy enough to actually speak accurately about their experience. And a lot of my work really dives into this critique of our expectations of the perfect survivor.”

In their interview, Antonia takes us through the challenging, and sometimes devastating, path to create art after falling apart. “Suddenly, my body totally broke down and it was, to me, a message from the heavens being like, all right, this has gone on long enough. You're literally killing your body at this point. You need to get your art back together.”

Highlights from Antonia:

“For some artists and for some people like me who's mental health, when it deteriorates, it manifests as me stopping to produce. But just getting art and writing out of me is a health behavior. It keeps me healthy to keep getting art out of me. Also, physically, like when I'm unhealthy, I can't poop. You know, they feel very tied in my body. It's like, I've got to get my art out. I've got to get my shit out. It's all got to come out.”

“So, I mean, it was crazy. It was such an unusual experience to watch your body stop working, you know? And I started getting so malnourished, because I literally wasn't able to eat food over two years, that's how long this took. But I finally got to the point where I felt ready to put my work out into the world. I have been putting a lot of sketches and comedy content out on social media, which to the outside observer, I think just looks like any regular comedian putting sketches on social media. But for me, it's like the tail end of this epic healing journey. And, it's a really important step and it's been really healing just to finally get it out.”

“I just moved to LA which is also a big part of this journey. I moved to LA to fully invest in my career as a comedian and it's so exciting and also as soon as I got here, all of my physical and mental health flared up and I immediately felt all the old patterns come back. You know, not wanting to create, not wanting to put myself out there as well as just physically having a hard time. So, it is not linear. All these things are because I took this big next step on the path. It triggered this big kind of backslide. Yeah, it's not like a clean and simple process. It's taking a long time.”

Don't Miss a Beat.

Follow my Instagram for news from me, Tara Beckett:
https://www.instagram.com/letperfectburn/

And my Website:
letperfectburn.com

Follow Antonia Here:
https://linktr.ee/antonialastar

 Liz’s Website:
https://lizsweigart.com/contact