Safe Space with Carleigh and Cacey Carleigh and Cacey Madden

Happy Thursday, beautiful people! Sharing Ryan's story last episode was so cathartic and important, but like with any long story, we felt like there were a few things we missed that matter to mention. Consider this a little follow up, if you will! In this week's episode, we continue the conversation around him and his journey incarcerated. We also dive deeper into some of the current advocacy work we are doing and where we hope to head with it.

If you’ve followed us on Instagram for even just a few days, chances are you’ve seen our brother Ryan posted somewhere along the way. We've shared bits and pieces about Ryan's wrongful conviction, his death, and our grief journey as a family, but we haven't felt ready to dive deep into what happened until now. It wouldn't be possible to explain his whole life or the extent of our brother's vibrance or importance to us in one podcast episode. Rather, our hope for today’s episode is to further contextualize not only the work we do in justice reform, but why we are so passionate about sharing Ryan and his beautiful humanity with the world the way that we do. We couldn’t be more proud to be your baby sisters, Ryry. You’ll live through us forever. We miss you. We love you.

Competition by nature is a double edged sword that can be both an asset, and a liability. In today’s episode, we talk about how stifling it feels to run into competitive energy, and how we’re trying to combat that energy in our lives as we expand our horizons and explore different passions. We also chat about how important it is to loudly support what and who you love - and finding genuine joy in other people's success. We live in a beautifully abundant world so let’s start acting like it a bit more!

There is a lotttttt going on in our world at all times, and social media has created a space where there is constant dialogue about current events. Besides just general information fatigue, it can be uncomfortable for people to know how/when/if they should share their opinions or speak out under pressure to take sides or make statements on social media. So how do we handle it? In today's episode we talk about what we feel are respectful and meaningful ways to show up in tough conversations online, and times where it might not be our place to speak loudly, but rather, to listen and learn.

Spirituality can be an uncomfortable subject to speak openly about! Everyone has their own belief systems, as they should, and we hope our take encourages open mindedness and tolerance of others - whether you have zero connection to spirituality or you are heavily invested in your faith journey. We talk about some of our personal sticking points with religion, what opened us up to the concept of spirituality, and where we're at with it today - including things we haven't fully decided on where we stand! We hope regardless of your beliefs that you feel safe in this conversation. Love you

Our first video episode and we chose such a light topic - grief! We recently experienced the 5 year anniversary of our brother's passing and we had some thoughts and memories to share about who he was, and our experience moving through grief. We sprinkle in plenty of laughs too because how the hell does anyone get through life without laughing?? Love you guys.