EPISODE 34: LAUGH OUT LOUD: BE FANCY FREE AND BUILD COMMUNITY

Listeners: We encourage you to tell us your embarrassing stories @ [email protected]!

EPISODE SUMMARY:

Do you have an embarrassing story that you haven’t told a soul? What’s truly stopping you from letting go of the feelings of shame and gaining the power back from that experience? Our guest today has decided to give women the opportunity and platform to tell their embarrassing stories allowing them to gain permission within themselves to laugh at the situation while simultaneously giving her community the ability to connect and laugh with them. In today’s episode, we are joined by Joanne Jarrett, host of Fancy Free Podcast, where her main mission is to help women overcome their embarrassment and turn it into a positive, uplifting, and joyful experience that you will love to listen to! In this episode, we share the importance of allowing yourself permission to laugh at yourself. Through laughter you will be regaining your power while connecting with other women who have gone through similar situations!

Joanne Jarrett

Joanne Jarrett is a family physician turned stay-at-home mom, writer, and cozy clothes designer! After publishing an embarrassing experience on her website, Cozy Clothes Blog, she received an outpouring of responses from women who had been in similar experiences. This response inspired Joanne to create the Fancy Free Podcast, a place where women could tell each other there stories in a welcoming and uplifting community. Joanne’s goal was to help women laugh at their experiences, to connect with others and relate in each other’s experiences, and to be comforted by the knowledge that you are not alone! Joanne uses her podcast to build deep connections with her guest through embarrassing stories while offering a laugh to other women who may need that freedom as well.

Joanne’s 3 Steps to Making People Feel Better:

The next time that you have an embarrassing moment happen to you, consider what it might mean to someone else to hear it. It may bring a laugh, a deeper connection, or a lifeline thrown out to another in a vulnerable time.

Change Your Mindset

Try going through your life looking for not so fancy moments. Change how you see the embarrassing moment even as it is happening. Joanne is someone who loves to laugh and appreciates when things are funny so if you go through life with the mindset of having these not so fancy moments that you can turn into gifts it will help those moments not be as painful.

Look for Opportunities

Anytime someone does something embarrassing and you feel like you can make them feel better think of a time that you can reach out to them—pull them aside, text, or email. Look for opportunities where you can turn an embarrassing moment around for somebody.

Just Do It

Take that 30 seconds of brave and see what ripple effects of joy come from being vulnerable and sharing these moments with people. There should be less shame in the world, and this is one way that we can move shame for each other!

Normalizing the Taboo

There are so many moments in our life that we feel mortified. In midlife, it can be a hard time that we must band together and scrap the taboos. Finding like-minded people helps other women in midlife and beyond realize that all these experiences are just part of life. As we get older, it’s important to remember to not take everything so serious. We have enough serious things in our lives that laughing at our embarrassing stories can add a little humor into it all.

Midlife can be a time where it may be easier to open up about these embarrassing moments in our life. It’s important for us to model this behavior to younger woman to show them the freedom that comes in finding the joy in an experience.

At Hot Flashes and Cool Topics AND Fancy Free Podcast, you will find an inviting space of laughing, deep moments, and normalizing some of the things that we all go through.

In this episode, we discuss…

[0:01] Show Introduction

[0:23] Introducing the Guest

[4:00] Start of the Interview

[4:43] How Did Fancy Free Start?

[9:15] Deep Connections

[11:07] Joanne’s Reason for Fancy Free

[13:10] The Sense of Community

[17:08] Do as I Do

[19:41] Stopping Shame in the Moment

[22:51] Alleviating Embarrassment Example

[27:27] 3 Steps to Making People Feel Better