Auntea-Ology: The Antidote Dialogues

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Okay so... tea's ready. Welcome to Auntea-Ology, the podcast where we spill the tea on the ups, downs, and all the messiness in between of equity and social justice work. Hosts Mueni and Sobia bring a combined 20+ years of international development, equity, social justice, and academic work into the open, to tell the truth about what happens when good intentions fall short, systems silence us, and navigating the work risks our sanity. Join us as we bring our kitchen table conversations to listeners, sharing our experiences and the lessons we've learned along the way. Come curious. Leave knowing you're not alone. This is the antidote. And the poison? It's everything we're too scared to say out loud. Stay messy. Stay curious. Stay loving. New episodes drop every Sunday. Pour yourself a cup and pull up a seat. The aunties are talking.

  1. 1d ago

    Episode 16: Not Everything is Trauma (And That's Good News)

    Have you ever been told you caused harm when what you actually did was disagree? Or hold a boundary? Or tell the truth in a voice that wasn't soft enough for someone's liking? In this episode of Auntea-ology: The Antidote Dialogues, hosts Sobia Ali-Faisal and Mueni Mutinda ask a harder question. What happens when we take the language of trauma, language built to protect people, and start using it on each other in ways that protect no one? What happens when every tension becomes harm, every disagreement becomes violence, every boundary becomes an attack? Last time, we went deep into the body. We talked about the ghosts we carry, the ones that live in our shoulders, our jaws, our breath. And that was real. But here's the thing about listening to your body: once you start, you notice everything it flinches at. And not every flinch is a wound. Sometimes it's the discomfort of being challenged. Of being wrong. Of hearing something we don't want to hear. We tell three stories from three different workplaces, each one revealing a different way the language of harm gets used and misused. After each story, we sit with it and unpack it together. The stories: The Feedback That Landed as an AttackTwo Kinds of IgnoranceThe Tears That Did the WorkWe explore: When feedback feels like an attack, and when it is actually accountabilityThe difference between ignorance that's repairable and ignorance that's weaponizedHow "both sides" mediation flattens a targeted pattern and a learning curve into the same categoryHow white women's tears function as a credibility system, and what it costs the person being cried aboutHow ableism shapes the read on directness, especially for autistic peopleHow boundaries get recoded as hostility when the person setting them is racializedWhy a workplace with no vocabulary for tension collapses everything into harm, and when everything is harm, nothing isReflection Questions for You: Think about a time someone gave you feedback that stung. Was it harm, or was it accountability you didn't want to hear?Think about a time you called something harm. Was it? Or was it discomfort? Disagreement? A boundary you didn't like?Who in your life or your workplace is doing the labor of educating, and have you ever asked whether it's labor they chose?When you feel the tears coming, yours or someone else's, what are those tears doing in the room? Are they clarifying, or are they redirecting?What would change in your workplace if people could tell the difference between tension and harm, and responded to each one differently?And one last one, for when the room goes quiet: if you stopped calling every hard moment trauma, what would you have to actually deal with?What You'll Walk Away With: The reminder that the problem isn't that people feel things. The problem is what we do with those feelings when we're in rooms with other people who also feel things. We built the language of trauma to protect the vulnerable. And somehow it keeps getting turned into a weapon against them. The antidote is discernment. Slowing down enough to ask: Is this harm, or is this hard? Is this trauma, or is this tension? Is this a boundary, or is this a preference? We can't build a just world if every interaction has to be safe before anyone can be honest. Come asking "is this harm or is this hard?" Leave knowing the difference matters. Music credits: Intro Music from #Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/jeff-kaale/win License code: YHCOEFOGGBJ5NJQC Break Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/dan-barracuda/casuarinas License code:  USTCXFWEUZVQAUKT  Outro Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/cloudchord/dharma-feat-soul-food-horns License code: JLAYJCLEG7O9ZRPB   Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca  Follow us on: Instagram: @seed.room.consultingFacebook: Seed Room ConsultingLinkedIn: Seed Room Consulting

  2. Oct 25

    Episode 15: The Body Keeps the Score of Empire

    Have you ever walked into a room and felt your whole body tense up before you even knew why? Your jaw tightens. Your breath goes shallow. Something in you remembers what your mind has forgotten. In this second Halloween episode of Auntea-ology: The Antidote Dialogues, hosts Sobia Ali-Faisal and Mueni Mutinda tell a ghost story. But the haunted house in this story isn't on a hill at the edge of town. It's your body. Because colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy don't just live in policies and institutions. They live in our shoulders. Our breath. Our guts. In the exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. Mueni shares a story about the house that remembers. It started small. A jaw she couldn't unclench. Shoulders that crept up toward her ears and stayed there. A tightness in her chest every Sunday night before the week began. She did what we're taught to do. She thought her way through it. She read the books, named the patterns, explained her own stress in three languages. And still, the cold spot remained. When she finally stopped trying to exorcise it and just sat with it, she realized it wasn't one ghost. It was many. We explore: How systems show up in the bodyThe body as archive, and what we inherit without choosingWhy thinking isn't enough, and why insight alone doesn't healSomatic practice as resistanceWhy these systems need us disconnected from our bodies, and what becomes possible when we reconnectWhat peace with your own body looks like, even when it still hurtsThis episode includes a short, gentle somatic practice led by Sobia, walking listeners through their own house, from the foundation to the cold spot to the shaking out of hands. Everything is offered as a choice, so you stay in charge of your own body. Reflection Questions for You: Where is the cold spot in your house, and how long has it been there?Whose ghost are you carrying that was never yours to hold?What does your body know that your mind keeps arguing with?If rest were resistance, what would you refuse this week?What would it feel like to stop haunting yourself with someone else's rules?And one last one, for when the lights are off and the house is quiet: if your body could finally speak freely, what would it tell you?Care Note: This episode touches on intergenerational and racial trauma. If something is surfacing for you, that's not a sign you did anything wrong. It's your house speaking. Be gentle with yourself. Feel your feet on the ground. Breathe a little slower. Drink some water. Move your body in whatever way feels good. And you don't have to hold it alone. Reach out to someone you trust. If it feels heavy, a trauma-informed therapist or practitioner can walk with you through it. If you're ever in crisis or feel unsafe, please contact your local crisis line or emergency services. What You'll Walk Away With: The reminder that dis-ease, the headaches, the gut that won't settle, the exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch, isn't a personal failure. Sometimes it's the house telling the truth about what it's lived through. The haunting isn't over. But you don't have to be afraid of your own house. You can learn to live in it. All of it. Even the rooms that remember. Come haunted by your own body. Leave knowing you can turn toward the ghosts. Music credits: Intro Music from #Uppbeat: Win by Jeff Kaale https://uppbeat.io/t/jeff-kaale/win License code: YHCOEFOGGBJ5NJQC Intro Music from #Uppbeat: 'Ursula Bones' by Roger Gabaldà https://uppbeat.io/c/roger-gabalda  License code:  KUDVPTMFJEEUKISY  Background Music from #Uppbeat:  'Gnossienne No.1 - Erik Satie' by Locran https://uppbeat.io/c/locran   License code: RDX8IJFIBV9IOOLB   Outro Music from #Uppbeat: 'Ursula Bones' by Roger Gabaldà https://uppbeat.io/c/roger-gabalda  License code:  KUDVPTMFJEEUKISY   Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca  Follow us on: Instagram: @seed.room.consultingFacebook: Seed Room ConsultingLinkedIn: Seed Room Consulting

  3. Oct 18

    Episode 14: Three Ghosts at the Gate: A Halloween Story About Gatekeeping

    Have you ever stood at a door you knew you belonged behind, and watched someone refuse to open it? Have you ever felt the cold shock of being kept out? Not by a stranger. Not by an enemy. But by someone whose face you know. Someone whose story mirrors your own. Someone who should have opened the door without you even having to knock. In this episode of Auntea-ology: The Antidote Dialogues, hosts Sobia Ali-Faisal and Mueni Mutinda do something different. It's Halloween season. The veil is thin. And they're telling ghost stories. But not the kind with vampires and werewolves. Not the kind you can dismiss as fiction. These ghosts are real. They haunt every community. Every workplace. Every movement. Every room where belonging is decided. And they don't rattle chains. They don't wail in the night. They don't announce themselves. They whisper. They watch. They wait. They follow you home. They sit beside you at meetings. They smile at you across the table. They look familiar. They feel familiar. They might even be you. We're talking about gatekeeping: the good, the bad, and the ugly. And we're introducing you to three ghosts who haunt the thresholds. We explore: The spectrum of gatekeeping, from protective to oppressive to betrayingWhy gatekeeping happens: scarcity, proximity to power, internalized oppression, fear of exposureHow the Protector can become the Panel if it stops asking "Are you safe?" and starts asking "Are you one of us?"Why the Doppelgänger frightens us more than the PanelWhat the antidote looks like: opening the door, recognizing there's enough room, being honest about our own woundsAnd the hardest question of all: when you stand at the gate, which ghost are you?Reflection Questions for You: Which ghost have you encountered at the gates you've tried to walk through?Which ghost do you recognize in yourself? Are you the Protector, keeping harm out and your people safe? Are you the Panel, keeping people out because they don't fit your idea of who belongs? Or are you the Doppelgänger, keeping your own people out because you're afraid there isn't room for both of you?Which ghost do you want to be?What You'll Walk Away With: The reminder that we don't have to be haunted forever. We can choose to be different. We can choose to open the door. The Protector protects. The Panel excludes. The Doppelgänger betrays. But what if there's a fourth ghost? The one who opens the door. The one who says, "Come in. There's room for you too." Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (running throughout November) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca Come haunted by the gate. Leave knowing you can choose to open the door. Music credits: Intro Music from #Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/jeff-kaale/win License code: YHCOEFOGGBJ5NJQC Intro Music from #Uppbeat: 'Ursula Bones' by Roger Gabaldà https://uppbeat.io/c/roger-gabalda  License code:  KUDVPTMFJEEUKISY  Background Music from #Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/kevin-macleod/come-play-with-me  License code: PKEPHJ6G17ZLFGKL  Background Music from #Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/c/danijel-zambo  License code: SOSWXQ5GBHRXQCD6  Outro Music from #Uppbeat: 'Ursula Bones' by Roger Gabaldà https://uppbeat.io/c/roger-gabalda  License code:  KUDVPTMFJEEUKISY   Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca  Follow us on: Instagram: @seed.room.consultingFacebook: Seed Room ConsultingLinkedIn: Seed Room Consulting

  4. Oct 11

    Episode 13: The Truth I Haven't Said Out Loud

    Have you ever felt something was wrong, deeply, quietly wrong, and known you weren't ready to say it out loud? We've talked about radical honesty. About telling the truth when it costs you. But today we're going somewhere harder. Today we're talking about the truth you haven't even said to yourself yet, and the voices in your head that tell you you're not allowed to. In this episode of Auntea-ology: The Antidote Dialogues, hosts Sobia Ali-Faisal and Mueni Mutinda sit with the dissonance that lives under the skin. Mueni shares a truth she's barely admitted to herself: she is unwilling to be honest about what she needs and what she wants, because she's afraid the people around her can't handle the truth of it. Underneath that fear is the quiet weight of economic safety, the knowledge that speaking has real costs. And underneath that is a chorus of voices she's carried her whole life. She is the eldest daughter. The one who carries, who holds, who makes things okay so others don't have to worry. She is highly educated, and education was supposed to be her liberation, yet here she is, in a life full of choices she made, feeling like she has none. She is African-Canadian, raised between worlds, fluent in the codes of both, belonging fully to neither. She is ambitious, and she wants to build, to grow, to matter. And every one of those parts carries a script. We explore: Why the dissonance is intersectional, not one script, but the collision of manyHow internalized expectation becomes the subtlest form of controlWhat it costs to stay silent, in the body, in relationships, in work, and in the quietest currency of all: losing track of yourselfTricia Hersey's teaching that rest is a form of resistancebell hooks on love as an act of will, and how we're taught to betray ourselves in the name of belongingThe difference between living your truth and proving itWhy acceptance isn't resignation, it's the groundwork for a new dreamReflection Questions for You: What is the truth you're not saying out loud, and who would you be if you said it?What is your silence costing you, and who is collecting the payment?Whose voice is in your head when you tell yourself that wanting is selfish?If you stopped trying to prove yourself, what would you have energy left for?Where in your life are you surviving as a cog, and what is one small way you could step out this week?What would it look like to make peace with where you are, not as resignation, but as the groundwork for a new dream?What You'll Walk Away With: The reminder that the dissonance is the messenger, speaking in the voices of every woman, every eldest daughter, every immigrant, every person who was ever taught that their worth depends on what they give. The work is to finally recognize the the voices for what they are: inheritance. And inheritance can be set down. Rest is not a reward you earn. It's a right you were born with. And the life you want, the one on your own terms, you don't have to apologize for wanting it. That's not selfishness. That's the truest love there is: the decision to stay whole enough to actually be present. Music credits: Intro Music from #Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/jeff-kaale/win License code: YHCOEFOGGBJ5NJQC Break Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/night-drift/saffron  License code:  2Y45KDNTW2PA1MTO  Outro Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/cloudchord/dharma-feat-soul-food-horns License code: JLAYJCLEG7O9ZRPB  Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca  Follow us on: Instagram: @seed.room.consultingFacebook: Seed Room ConsultingLinkedIn: Seed Room Consulting

  5. Oct 4

    Episode 12: Neurodivergence Is Not a Deficit. The Workplace Is.

    Have you ever been told that you're the problem, not because of anything you actually did, but because of who you are? Have you ever been labelled "too much"? Too blunt. Too direct. Too honest. Too intense. Too awkward. Too different. And no matter how good your work is, no matter how kind your intentions, that label follows you everywhere, shaping how people see you, how they treat you, and whether they decide you belong. In this episode of Auntea-ology: The Antidote Dialogues, hosts Sobia Ali-Faisal and Mueni Mutinda spill the tea on neurodivergence in the workplace and what it costs to exist in spaces that were never built for your brain. Sobia shares a deeply personal story from her time in a supervisory role, where she supported a staff member who is autistic. What she witnessed, and what happened when she tried to protect them, changed how she sees everything. We explore: Why "professionalism" is often just neurotypical norms dressed up as neutralityWhat it means to be labelled "too much" for simply existing as yourselfThe exhaustion of masking, and the message that your natural way of being is a problem to be fixedHow marginalized people get pitted against each other while institutions do nothingThe difference between accommodation ("how do we help you fit in?") and liberation ("how do we change the environment so you don't have to?")Why progressive spaces so often fail neurodivergent people, and why the people causing harm rarely see themselves as harmfulReflection Questions for You: Have you ever been labelled "too much"? What did that label cost you?Where have you seen neurotypical norms disguised as "professionalism" or "team fit"?What's the difference between being included and being required to perform someone else's version of normal?If you're not neurodivergent, when was the last time you examined how your comfort depends on someone else shrinking?What would it look like to move from accommodation to liberation in your workplace, your community, your own mind?What You'll Walk Away With: The reminder that the problem was never you. The problem was a workplace that refused to see your humanity. The problem was a culture that demanded you perform neurotypicality, then called you difficult when you couldn't. And the people who caused harm? They thought they were the good ones. That's the most terrifying part. So if you're listening to this and you think, "I would never do that" - sit with that. Because we all think that. And if we're not careful, we become the people we think we're not. Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca Come feeling "too much." Leave knowing you were never the problem. Music credits: Intro Music from #Uppbeat: 'Win' by Jeff Kaale at https://uppbeat.io/t/jeff-kaale/win License code: YHCOEFOGGBJ5NJQC  Break Music from #Uppbeat: 'Velvet Cashmere' by Jeff Kaale at https://uppbeat.io/c/jeff-kaale/velvet-cashmere License code:  TAZF4H0U881S0EXQ  Outro Music from #Uppbeat 'Dharma ft Soul Food Horns' by Cloudchord at https://uppbeat.io/t/cloudchord/dharma-feat-soul-food-horns License code: JLAYJCLEG7O9ZRPB   Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca  Follow us on: Instagram: @seed.room.consultingFacebook: Seed Room ConsultingLinkedIn: Seed Room Consulting

  6. Sep 27

    Episode 11: The Community Hangover: Staying Connected After You've Been Burned

    Have you ever been so burned by a community that you started to wonder if belonging was even possible anymore? You finally leave the space that was breaking you. You breathe. You sleep. You start to feel like yourself again. And then you realize: I'm lonely. Not because you're alone. But because you don't trust anyone anymore. In this episode of Auntea-ology: The Antidote Dialogues, hosts Sobia Ali-Faisal and Mueni Mutinda spill the tea on the part nobody warns you about: the community hangover. Mueni shares a deeply personal story of working for an organization she loved. It was relationship-based work that felt like passion, not a job. When she resigned to protect her mental health, her resignation was denied and turned into an immediate dismissal. The deepest cut wasn't losing the role. It was being denied the chance to transition the relationships and work she'd built with care. She was severed from her community overnight. We explore: Why the burn isn't always the exit - sometimes it's the severing from people and meaningThe difference between grieving a job and grieving a communityHow shame gets misplaced onto the person who chose themselvesWhat it means to hold a scar with tenderness instead of shameThe trap of white saviourism and how it can be just as patronizing and harmful to racialized people as outright hostilityWhy staying connected doesn't always mean staying in the roomAnd, of course, the antidoteReflection Questions for You: When you think about the community that burned you, what are you actually grieving? The people? The work? The version of yourself that belonged there?Was there a moment where you chose yourself, and the system called it a betrayal? What did that teach you?Is there a scar you're still holding with shame that might actually be ready to be held with tenderness?What would it look like to stay connected to community without abandoning yourself this time?What You'll Walk Away With: The reminder that choosing yourself is not betrayal. That grief is the correct response to losing community. And that the love you poured into that work is still doing its work in the world, even if they shut the door. Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca Music credits: Intro Music from #Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/jeff-kaale/win License code: YHCOEFOGGBJ5NJQC Break Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/night-drift/caravanserai License code: JX058BTX1MJ0MDDC Outro Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/cloudchord/dharma-feat-soul-food-horns License code: JLAYJCLEG7O9ZRPB  Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca  Follow us on: Instagram: @seed.room.consultingFacebook: Seed Room ConsultingLinkedIn: Seed Room Consulting

    Episode 11: The Community Hangover: Staying Connected After You've Been Burned

  7. Sep 20

    Episode 10: The Cost of Staying / Better to Exit | Auntea-Ology: The Antidote Dialogues

    Have you ever had to choose between staying and leaving...and realized both options cost you something? In Episode 10 of Auntea-ology: The Antidote Dialogues, hosts Sobia Ali-Faisal and Mueni Mutinda spill the tea on the choice no one warns you about. Do you stay....or do you go? Because staying costs you. Your body. Your sanity. Your sense of self. You wake up tired and go to bed tired and somewhere in between you forget why you started. But leaving also costs you. The community. The mission. The people who can't leave. The guilt of walking away when the work isn't done. In this episode: Sobia shares a story that will hit home for anyone who's been pushed out: fired from her role as Director of EDI and Human Rights, not because of performance, but because her solidarity with Palestinians was deemed "incompatible" with her job.We explore the impossible math of staying or leaving, and why both options can be right and wrong at the same time.We name what happens when a new leader walks in, ignores the processes already in place, and makes an irreversible decision in 48 hours, without ever asking for your side of the story.We ask the question that changes everything: How much more will you let it cost you before you go?Reflection Questions for You: What's the cost of staying, and are you willing to keep paying it?If you left tomorrow, what would you miss, and what would you be relieved to leave behind?Have you ever confused speed with strength, in yourself or in someone else?If you've been pushed out, fired, or forced to leave, can you separate what happened from what you're worth?What You'll Walk Away With: Permission to name the math out loud. A reframe: leaving is not failure - it's survival. And the reminder that the decision is often already made in your bones. You just have to be willing to listen. Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca Come stuck between staying and leaving. Leave knowing you're not alone in the math. Music credits: Intro Music from #Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/jeff-kaale/win License code: YHCOEFOGGBJ5NJQC Break Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/night-drift/saffron License code: 2Y45KDNTW2PA1MTO Outro Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/cloudchord/dharma-feat-soul-food-horns License code: JLAYJCLEG7O9ZRPB  Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca  Follow us on: Instagram: @seed.room.consultingFacebook: Seed Room ConsultingLinkedIn: Seed Room Consulting

  8. Sep 13

    Episode 9: The Yes that Breaks You | Auntea-Ology: The Antidote Dialogues

    Have you ever said yes, when every part of you was screaming no? In Episode 9 of Auntea-ology: The Antidote Dialogues, hosts Sobia Ali-Faisal and Mueni Mutinda spill the tea on the yes you regret. The one that cost you sleep. Boundaries. A piece of yourself. We're talking about why saying no feels impossible when you have no leverage, even when you do have leverage but don't feel it. What you lose every time you say yes to survive. And the tiny acts of resistance that cost nothing but change everything. In this episode: Mueni shares a story that will hit home for anyone who's ever ignored that quiet, insistent voice: in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of a move, she took a job that looked perfect on paper, but came with a sinking feeling she couldn't shake. She signed the contract anyway. And the cost was immediate: anxiety, stress, exhaustion, illness.We explore the difference between a yes that comes from abundance and a yes that comes from fear and why the latter always costs you something.We name the quietest form of oppression: the voice that tells you your experience doesn't count, that you have no leverage, that you should be grateful for what you have.We ask the question nobody asks out loud: What would it cost you to say no and what does it cost you when you don't?Reflection Questions for You: What yes are you carrying right now that you wish you could take back?When did your body try to tell you something was wrong - and you didn't listen?What would it take for you to trust that life would take care of you if you said no?What's one tiny act of resistance you could take this week to honor your truth?What You'll Walk Away With: Permission to pause. Permission to listen to your body. Permission to say no—even when it feels impossible. And a reminder that you have more power than you think. Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca Come exhausted. Leave with the permission to say no. Music credits: Intro Music from #Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/jeff-kaale/win License code: YHCOEFOGGBJ5NJQC Break Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/arnito/istanbul License code: KPHGPNBALDLXPKIW Outro Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/cloudchord/dharma-feat-soul-food-horns License code: JLAYJCLEG7O9ZRPB  Join the conversation deeper: www.seedroom.ca 🍵 Monthly Auntea-ology gatherings (live, confidential) 📘 Online course: Navigating Conflict in Social Justice Spaces 📚 Resources & Toolkits for self-awareness, radical honesty, and allyship 🧭 Coaching & consulting for teams and leaders navigating these tensions 📧 Free discovery calls: info@seedroom.ca  Follow us on: Instagram: @seed.room.consultingFacebook: Seed Room ConsultingLinkedIn: Seed Room Consulting

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Okay so... tea's ready. Welcome to Auntea-Ology, the podcast where we spill the tea on the ups, downs, and all the messiness in between of equity and social justice work. Hosts Mueni and Sobia bring a combined 20+ years of international development, equity, social justice, and academic work into the open, to tell the truth about what happens when good intentions fall short, systems silence us, and navigating the work risks our sanity. Join us as we bring our kitchen table conversations to listeners, sharing our experiences and the lessons we've learned along the way. Come curious. Leave knowing you're not alone. This is the antidote. And the poison? It's everything we're too scared to say out loud. Stay messy. Stay curious. Stay loving. New episodes drop every Sunday. Pour yourself a cup and pull up a seat. The aunties are talking.

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