Welcome to the 23rd episode of Woman Uncaged with Linda Katz and Laura Gates-Lupton

For kids, fun is a priority and their main motivator. So where does that go? Why, as adults, does fun have be slotted into "left over" time? Where did the freedom, that our younger selves thought we'd have as adults, go?

What is worth doing just for you? With no need for a particular outcome?

How does striving for a specific end goal strip our lives of fun?

How do we create fun in our adult lives? What are the conditions that allow for fun and spontaneity?

How do we re-envision adulthood?

Linda mentions Bill Plotkin's book Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche.

While we take a break between this season and the next, we invite you to join us in being flowful! Let's all make more space for fun and please let us know what you did with that space. We would truly love to hear. Email us at womanuncagedpodcast@gmail.com.

Thanks for being with us for Season One. We'll be back in a few weeks with Season Two!

~Linda's website: https://singingbirdcoaching.com/ ~Laura's Monday Money Missives: http://eepurl.com/dcJpRL

Welcome to episode 22 of the Woman Uncaged Podcast!

We discuss:

- Recent examples of the invisibility of women

- How women's invisibility impacts our physical wellness

- How patriarchy attempts to control women in myriad ways, including the how a bill was blocked that would protect access to contraception

- How certain people's opinions DO matter more depending on the issue

- Women and the medical system (the mystery of menopause, the success of female surgeons, and more!)

- The invisible and unconscious bias against women

- A hidden perk of being invisible to the patriarchal gaze

- The invitation to step into greater assertiveness as we age and why this can be so difficult

- How we are taught to be disempowered

- The stripping away of choice is a stripping away of power

Resources Mentioned:
Article by Lyz Lenz: https://lyz.substack.com/p/axis-of-snivel
And some actual info on the representation of women's issues in health research funding: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/underfunding-research-female-health-leaves-huge-money-mesk%C3%B3-md-phd/

As always, we'd love it if you would share your thoughts about this episode with us. You can email us at womanuncagedpodcast@gmail.com.

We love hearing from you!

~Linda's website: https://singingbirdcoaching.com/ ~Laura's Monday Money Missives: http://eepurl.com/dcJpRL

Welcome to episode 21 of the Woman Uncaged Podcast!

We discuss:

- Linda shares how she has started bringing the energy of work into so many areas of her life (working on ourselves, our bodies, our pets, our kids, our relationships...so much work!)
- How a desired end state that we are trying to engineer our way towards can infuse life with that work energy
- How work can be addictive even when it leads to burnout and exhaustion
- Allowing play to spontaneously emerge from boredom
- How the drive to treat everything like work is both an inner cage and outer cage
- Wanting others to see us as hard workers
- Feeling like our time and money don't belong to us and how that restricts our sense of agency
- Our implicit expectations of life when we've been doing everything "right"
- Laura shares the Comfy Chair Exercise by Michael Neill and how she used it in her own life
- How the energy of work blocks not only play, but also intuition, connection, magic, and synchronicity

Resources Mentioned:
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by James Hollis

As always, we'd love it if you would share your thoughts about this episode with us. You can email us at womanuncagedpodcast@gmail.com.

We love hearing from you!

~Linda's website: https://singingbirdcoaching.com/ ~Laura's Monday Money Missives: http://eepurl.com/dcJpRL

Welcome to episode 20 of the Woman Uncaged Podcast!

We discuss:
-Is it a midlife crisis or a midlife questioning?
-How failing to listen to the deeper questions and the deeper yearnings, may move us into crisis mode or physical symptoms.
-How does the male version differ from the female version?
-What are the opportunities of this stage?
-And what are the questions?
-How stuff doesn't make up a life.
-The difference of grief as an emotion vs. grief as a story.
-Midlife as its own developmental phase.
-Looking for role models.
-The myth of fixed identity.
-How to ride the wave of change.
-Bringing some adventure into mature adulthood.

As always, we'd love it if you would share your thoughts about this episode with us. You can email us at womanuncagedpodcast@gmail.com.

We love hearing from you!

Linda's website: https://singingbirdcoaching.com/
Laura's Monday Money Missives: https://www.dearlaura.net/letters

~Linda's website: https://singingbirdcoaching.com/ ~Laura's Monday Money Missives: http://eepurl.com/dcJpRL

Welcome to episode 19 of the Woman Uncaged podcast! In this week's episode, we use a topic that has been popping up in several of Laura's coaching sessions recently as a jumping off point to talk about money, relationships, reenvisioning work, and more.

We cover:

- Women in heterosexual marriages where the husband works a full-time job that he feels trapped in and the response is to want his wife to get a job and jump in the trap too

- Different work configurations Laura and Linda have experienced in their relationships, including Sophie's wisdom regarding the split between money and meaning

- What cultural drivers and gender biases could be contributing to husbands' desire for their wives to get back to a traditional "job" (when the finances don't require it)

- How the idea that "more is always better" keeps us trapped and adhering to the status quo

- How the fear of the unknown plays a part in our lives and relationships and how that relates to identity

- The issues around our current model of putting off joy till retirement aka when the work is done

- Redefining the whole darn idea of work and opting out of the matrix!

As always, we'd love it if you would share your thoughts about this episode with us. You can email us at womanuncagedpodcast@gmail.com.

We love hearing from you!

~Linda's website: https://singingbirdcoaching.com/ ~Laura's Monday Money Missives: http://eepurl.com/dcJpRL

In our 18th episode of the Woman Uncaged Podcast, Laura welcomes a special guest to the Woman Uncaged Podcast. Julie Falatko is an award-winning, prolific children's author, who also teaches online classes, and writes a fabulous newsletter on Substack called Do The Work.

Julie and I discuss:
-what counts as "work"
-does work have to be hard and unenjoyable?
-why do we feel guilty when we enjoy work?
-why do we value the misery of work over the joy?
-the question Julie asked herself that has led to her joyful productivity
-Julie's writing process and the challenges of writing
-how writing takes time, including that Julie's next book Help Wanted: One Rooster took 10 years to be published
-Julie's desire that we get off social media and write those great books we're always thinking about writing
-how your writing, and your creativity, is not a corporate agenda

We mention these books:
Sacred Success by Barbara Stanny Huson
Filterworld: HOW ALGORITHMS FLATTENED CULTURE By Kyle Chayka

I also mentioned an article I thought was called "The Blanding of America." I was wrong about that. I confused the article with another I had read in the NY Times called "America, the Bland" and another in the Boston Globe called "The Blanding of America." The actual article I was referring to is called "The Age of Average" by Alex Murrell. It's fascinating and worth the read!

Julie's website: https://juliefalatko.com/
Julie's Substack (which I highly recommend): https://juliefalatko.substack.com/

Laura's Monday Money Missives: https://www.dearlaura.net/letters

As always, we'd love it if you would share your thoughts about this episode with us. You can email us at womanuncagedpodcast@gmail.com.

We love hearing from you!

~Linda's website: https://singingbirdcoaching.com/ ~Laura's Monday Money Missives: http://eepurl.com/dcJpRL

Welcome to episode 17 of the Woman Uncaged Podcast. This conversation was prompted by newsletter that Laura wrote, of which the subject line was very similar to this episode! (You can read that Monday Missive here, if you wish: https://us17.campaign-archive.com/?u=ed5e7ea6928f28b2d95ef8fb3&id=d77933f7a0.)

We talk about:
-the struggles we've had as women in business when it comes to promoting ourselves, and why it is that every single time we do, people unsubscribe from our lists.
-why it's important that we acknowledge and embrace the fact that, yes, we are in business to make money
-how we can all move past the idea that it's virtuous as a women to be self-less
-why our circle of care needs to include us and isn't a binary choice
-the discomfort of having needs
-how we've separated money from the relational
-how having models helps and normalizes asking for money
-the ways we've been taught to let others reward us, rather than asserting our needs
-how we can support other women in business
-how important it is to fill our cups in order to face unsubscribes (or other "rejection")
-the truth about entrepreneurship (it's not as glamourous as IG might have you believe)
-Helen Luke's book: The Way of Woman

If you missed our Sistermind Roundtable on Visibility for Women in Business, at which we both spoke, you can listen to the private podcast replay: https://podcasts.bcast.fm/sistermind-private-podcast/fd9ba910-bb21-11ee-a5eb-836300e9cabb
or watch us (and our fellow presenters) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3piDKTWxL8.

Linda's website: https://singingbirdcoaching.com/
Laura's Monday Money Missives: https://www.dearlaura.net/letters

As always, we'd love it if you would share your thoughts about this episode with us. You can email us at womanuncagedpodcast@gmail.com.

We love hearing from you!

~Linda's website: https://singingbirdcoaching.com/ ~Laura's Monday Money Missives: http://eepurl.com/dcJpRL

Welcome to the 16th episode of the Woman Uncaged Podcast with Laura Gates-Lupton and Linda Katz! Today we are diving into women DOING. SO. MUCH.

In this episode, Linda shares why she fell apart when Ursa's dog food order was late (as her husband said, "I don't think this is just about the dog food...") and Laura speaks about feeling proud of herself for cancelling brunch.

Other topics we explore include:
- When you're you doing so much and yet it still never feels like enough
- Why we need to carve out space to ADD what feels nourishing and exciting
- Why time management isn't enough and might actually be problematic in itself!
- The fear of letting balls drop
- What are the expectations that we put on ourselves and that society puts on us that lead us to a place of burnout?
- Why talking about "perennial problems" isn't just complaining and is actually vital
- Looking to male models doesn't work (sorry Cal Newport!)
- How we need the flexibility to meet what arises and what that has to do with releasing control
- Discerning and knowing what matters to us is key to preventing doing too much

We refer to:
- This song by Trevor Hall and Emory Hall about letting go of the old story: https://open.spotify.com/track/0yjJg8qTkgYuD2bvt4kKZl?si=15416ee86fca4dc3
- Slow Productivity and Deep Work by Cal Newport: https://calnewport.com/

Come see us live at our next Sistermind Roundtable!
We will be speaking, along with four other amazing women, on the topic of Visibility for Women in Business. The six of us will each present for 10 minutes, followed by 15 minutes of Q & A.

When: April 24 at 3:30 - 4:45 pm EDT
Where: via Zoom
Register here: https://larisanoonan.myflodesk.com/roundtable

This is a free, no-pitch, no-sell event and you will not be added to any other business email list. Please spread the word! We would love to see a world in which women are no longer afraid to be fully visible.

As always, share your thoughts about this episode with us! You can email us at womanuncagedpodcast@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you!

Linda's website: https://singingbirdcoaching.com/
Laura's Monday Money Missives: https://www.dearlaura.net/letters

~Linda's website: https://singingbirdcoaching.com/ ~Laura's Monday Money Missives: http://eepurl.com/dcJpRL