One of the reasons we communicate so well is because we offer intricately different viewpoints of the world. And although we do life a bit differently, we are in-step with one another in many shared goals and some important core values.
We are sisters-in-law walking through this life together as best friends; a united front as family for each other and for Tonia’s daughters, who of course are Vanessa’s nieces.
Our different perspectives help to foster important conversations and help our community and audience of 40-something women start their own conversations pertaining to the few important topics we discussed today. How do we impact the people around us? What ways can we better support ourselves, our women friends and the next generations of women?
Grab your coffee, let’s chat!
The definition of mental load for us is the anticipation of everyone else’s needs and making sure everything is taken care of so your household runs smoothly. The effort and execution it takes for a woman to do that is far more than meets the eye, even if you’re really paying attention.
It’s the size of a massive sombrero - breaking our backs and putting us off balance. Have you seen that reel going around on social media?
How many times has your partner asked you what they need to get from the grocery store and if you mention more than two things they ask for a list. Make your own damn list! You have your phone in your hands, send yourself a text with the items I’m giving you while I’m probably doing three things at once on my own to do list. Ladies, do you feel this way? We are emotionally and mentally exhausted at the end of the day from constantly catching and keeping up with the joneses.
Come and join us for the conversation!
From the real-time discovery that we were triggering each other with our own duties in the home (a light-hearted joke, of course), we realize a lot of what women should be doing is what makes the most sense for her own family.
Traditional roles aren’t functional in our day and more women are out shattering glass ceilings, providing for their families alongside their partners. Many women are even the bread-winners!
Tonia discusses the harshness of what was expected of her as a daughter and the extreme punishments handed down to her when she didn’t meet her now-estranged mother’s unrealistic expectations. One of the punishments she talks about is a 4pm curfew for about long length of time during her high school years before finally moving out on her own at 17.
Vanessa discusses how traditional roles feel outdated for us and yet we strongly feel it’s none of our business how another family runs their household or how a woman chooses to live her life.
No one should have any expectations of how a grown woman lives her life except for herself.
While we started with a Gabor Maté quote about how feeling all of the emotions about a specific situation helps us to achieve forgiveness, we really sat in the feelings of anger itself. How do you handle your anger? One of Gabor Maté's famous quotes explains, "It's not about getting better, it's about getting better at feeling". Join us in having this difficult but important conversation.
Heavy conversation starters happening in toady’s episode of QCP. Tonia and Vanessa dig into important issues we all faced as children and discover the changes Tonia is making to raise her daughters with information to support and guide them through the big decisions they’ll need to make in their lives. There are a few laughs along the way as we discover her daughter has accidentally seen daddy’s private parts and shares how shocked she is that daddy has a long vulva.
We quickly dive back into discussions where Vanessa felt like her body had never been her own, realizing she thought her purpose was to be an object for the men in her life whom she was meant to serve. Our intention with this conversation and the many uncomfortable turns taken is to build up the understanding that sharing more information with our children can help to set them up with a tool box full of security and empowerment. Inside of that tool kit is where they will reach when faced with hard situations so they make better decisions than we did.
We are setting the kids up with tools they can use in every situation for their whole lives and empowering them to always connect with themselves first. We want to teach them to trust their authenticity and teach them to listen and always questions their body’s many sirens.
Every ten episodes of Quality Coffee Podcast Tonia and Vanessa will spend the show answering questions the other has about their life’s experiences. As the podcast grows our audience is invited to send in their burning questions for this forty-something duo. One today’s episode discussions lead us through having children after never expecting to, what it would be like to live a day in each others shoes and then a super fun lightning round that ends in a super cute finale. We look forward to continuing our vulnerable and raw relationships with you all!
One of the most important questions we have as 40-something women is how we can improve our sleeping habits? In this episode of Quality Coffee Podcast Tonia and Vanessa share small shifts like monitoring water intake before bed so they’re not waking up through the night, meeting with their respective naturopaths for more concrete answers, and learning more about the path to quality health and sleep by taking out the guesswork. If this description sounds sleepy, we also promise tons of explicit language and not to bore the pants off you!
Sleep is paramount to our health journeys as we close in on middle age, especially with both of us navigating autoimmune diseases. We know we're not alone! Join the conversation with us and be sure to follow along with us on your favourite social media channels, too!
Learning to find balance in a space where constant forward motion is the culture is of the highest importance when protecting your peace. Both of us agree that we want the projects and businesses we are working on both together and separately to be successful and we will do the work to make that happen. However, neither one of us is willing to sacrifice our health to do it. We are having these unscripted conversations to discover even more about ourselves right here with you in the hopes of being the conversation starters you might need to get your own ball rolling. You don't have to be an entrepreneur to hustle - we do that in many aspects of our lives. Let us know how you relate! Enjoy the show.
This conversation plays out quite naturally as Tonia and Vanessa explore ways they've learned to navigate the transition into their forties. The calmer years come from experience and the ever underestimated component of time all wrapped up in one, suggesting that our time to become better peoples ever evolving. We used to avoid pain or confrontation and now we appreciate the value in these discussions. We leave too much to the imagination when we're not direct or clear about who we are, what expectations we have and how we'd like things to be in our own lives. Join the discussion with us...
Tonia and Vanessa are ferocious and funny in this episode of Quality Coffee Podcast. Although in the beginning stages of their journey with perimenopause they address old, closed-minded stereotypes while shedding light on their experiences with common symptoms nobody talks about. Rage, sweats, changes in libido are just a few we’ve come across in the early stages we’re currently facing and we know through conversation with our elder millennial women friends we’re not alone. This episode is going to make you laugh and make you feel seen. Don’t miss it!
We love a good deep dive into making sense of our triggers or crutches to better understand ourselves and the world around us. No one gets out of this life unscathed. Equipped with this knowledge, and that of the different attachment styles, we can pursue our relationships with more care. Protecting our peace is essential to becoming the people we want to be and it also means we have to hold ourselves accountable for the company we keep. Learning about your attachment style just might be a key to unlocking the next level of healing for you!
Something just clicked when we turned forty and a calmness we hadn’t felt before took over where chaos had once ensued. Did anybody else feel that? Protecting your peace became a quiet job, an inside job. It took forty-something years to learn how to let the energy run its course before you stepped in, if you really did at all. That’s a huge part of how we are staying ready these days. Special thanks to Kevin Hart for inspiring this episode of the show. He talks about keeping his material up to snuff at all times so that when he is called on to perform he always has a set ready to go. Stay ready. We now heed this advice in many aspects of our lives which when broken down to its core always brings us back to protecting our peace. Think about the kind of energy you take out into the world if you haven’t showered yet and your kid’s school calls because they’re sick. Did you shower and get ready first thing this morning or do you wait until the last minute? What if the doorbell rings? What if you need to step out and you run into a friend? Are you ready? Stay ahead of the game, jump into the conversation with us and start taking every action you can to protect your peace, too. Let’s go!
Time, presence and respect are vital to healthy boundaries and positive experiences. Boundaries are challenging and can feel really uncomfortable to talk about as well as to establish in our lives. As we continue this hard talk that even has us stumbling here and there, we discuss the perspective of how a boundary can feel a lot like a gift to you from you. These tools are intended to protect your peace and provide you with a safe environment to be yourself. Boundaries, while oftentimes are silently put in place, can also be met with conflict when those who were benefitting from your lack of clear boundaries no longer have the access to you they’d grown very accustom to. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty together.
Over a cup of quality coffee that Vanessa says smells like it would come out of her pores, we share our deeply personal reasons behind wanting better for the next generation, specifically in relation to Tonia’s daughters who, of course, are Vanessa’s nieces. Throughout our relationship we’ve discovered and processed the many ways we both want to positively impact the kids and how we can create more vulnerable and safe environments for them to thrive in because they weren’t always available to us growing up. What elder millennial can’t relate to that sentiment?
Rather than looking back and judging the past we’re rocket boosting the next generation with tools we wished we’d had from the lessons it took to heal and break cycles along the way. We talk about Tonia’s 10 year estrangement from her mother and a glimpse at the experience that finally allowed her to make peace with such a terrifying, empowering decision.
Are we perfect? F*ck no! It’s about perspective and love. It’s about connection and integrity. It’s about autonomy and honesty. And we’re jam packing episode two with all of it. Who is influencing your children and helping to mold their future? Who is in your village? What do those environments look like and how are you fostering vulnerability and safety? Let’s have the hard conversations together.
When we boil it down, fundamentally all we want as women is to be seen and heard for who we are. In this introductory episode of Quality Coffee Podcast Tonia & Vanessa discuss their shared gifts of open communication and how our kryptonite as young women seemed to transform into these valuable skills that now help us navigate our lives and relationships. Hardships, including facing our fears (hello, world, we are now podcasters?! What!), leads to realizations about ourselves and how we function in the world. These conversations in episode one unravel some of those earliest childhood woes and how we have come to appreciate the hardships for the value they’ve shown us in our lives leading up to today. What is it they say about being thankful for your past because you wouldn’t be who you are today without it? 40-something elder millennial women, and to everyone who has reached the time in their life where we are no longer ok with “good enough”, this podcast is dedicated to you!