Season 1 - Wrap Up
Show Notes
TW: This episode mentions eating disorders and sexual assault.
Jessica emphasizes the importance of sharing stories and experiences as a way to connect and ignite empathy. She voices her belief that creating a supportive community is crucial for artists and humans to feel safe and well. Jessica also highlights the need for to take care of oneself holistically in order to sustainably fight for change.
Transcript
Jessica Altchiler
Hello and welcome to the story project. I am your host Jessica Altshuler and today I am here by myself to mainly thank you for listening to the podcast so far. As has been expressed many times already, this has been a long time coming and it has been incredibly challenging and healing and beautiful to put it out into the world and I am so grateful to you for spending even one minute listening and letting these beautiful artists' stories impact your day. I am very aware that so far in the podcast, we're talking a lot about our negative experiences and issues that we've had within the industry with not a lot of tangible solutions or proposals for making change. And honestly, that is fine with me for now because...
Our stories are what connect us to each other. Our stories and sharing our experiences and our emotions and our feelings are what ignite empathy for each other. And that connection is what we need in order to fight a sustainable and effective fight. We need to get to know each other. We need to be humans with each other. We need to fully support each other in every sense of the word. We need artists and humans alike to be emotionally and physically and artistically and expressively safe, and mentally safe and well. And I really do believe that starts with telling our stories. Being vulnerable is an act of generosity. Being authentic is an act of bravery. And tearing down the walls that we have built up to protect ourselves is what will allow us to connect to each other and come together stronger to make a difference in the world.
I also firmly believe that healing ourselves and voicing our own journeys does connect with social justice and making larger changes within the world. Because when I'm sitting here with an eating disorder where I'm completely dissociated from my body from a sexual assault, or I have untreated depression and anxiety, I cannot fathom having the sustainable energy to fight and to make necessary changes. I don't think that we need to...pause our social justice efforts in order to heal ourselves. I just think that they go hand in hand. My heartbreak at what is happening at the hands of power and money hungry, abusive, fucked up leaders around the world and in our own country can leave me in a puddle on the floor or it can make me invigorated and hopeful in my own power and the power that we have as a community.
There is so much more that I want to do with this podcast and I am so excited for it. I want to keep supporting artists and telling their stories. I believe that our industry is just a microcosm of the fucked up structures and systems of the world at large. But also, fuck there is so much pain and if we can come together and laugh and love and encourage and support and lift each other up, I fucking want to do that.
So thank you to everyone who was interviewed and every audience member for season one. I am so excited to keep going. And please connect with me. Let me know who and what you wanna hear. Let me know how you're doing. Let me know what I and we can put out that will just make your life a little better. And we'll talk more soon.