Happy World Menopause Month!

This year, the Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause has been deepening our intergenerational narrative shift work by co-creating peer learning exchanges to normalize the menopause experience of Black people in the UK, New York, Toronto, and Puerto Rico. We are also co-hosting intergenerational menopause storytelling events called "Orisii" ( "pairs" in Yoruba).

The peer learning and the Orisii dinner are being offered in partnership with community-based women-led organizations. We identified each of these locations because of their strong Black diasporic communities. We have local partners on the ground, or we are seeking to connect with more partners on the ground. In addition to the events we co-host, BGG2SM is documenting our learning during our travels, introducing how each partnering organization works to normalize menopause for Black and Queer communities and sharing stories from participants about their experiences with their bodies, identities, and relationships.

So.... our podcasts in Season 5 will sound a little different. Think if "This American Life" was centering on Black intergenerational menopausal stories.... LET'S GO!

This summer, the BGG2SM team traveled to Harlem, New York, and was blessed to partner with long-time friend and sister of the heart, Ebony Noelle Golden, Founder and CEO of Betty's Daugther Arts Collaborative.

Ebony is a performance artist, scholar, and culture strategist whose work consists of site-specific performance rituals and live art installations that explore relationships between creativity and liberation.

For the last decade, she has collaboratively created site-specific public art performances grounded in authentic community storytelling. Each time, she has felt that those folks who joined herself and her collaborators on their creative journey had been enveloped into the project itself—no longer audience members, but co-conspirators or co-performers.

We had a great time hosting three amazing gatherings for people Global Majority who are living and thriving in New York. These included the Menopausal Multiverse Cocktail Hour, Peer Learning Dinner, and Orisii Intergenerational Dinner using the Say More deck. We were also honored to interview singer, composer, creative, performer, and our Beloved, YahZarah, and her mother Beverly about their memories of their first menstrual cycle, bodily autonomy, agency, and sovereignty.

Themes explored in this episode include:

Right Relationship Partnership
Spiritual Reciprocity
Care and Wellness
Agency and Autonomy
Shame
Being at home inside your body
Rites of Passage
Intergenerational Healing

Voices heard in this episode:

Ebony Noelle Golden, Harlem Community Partner & Founder of Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative

Omisade Burney-Scott, Creator & CCO at the Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause

Mona Eltahawy, global feminist & guest at Orisii dinner | featured on Season 2, Episode 5 of the BGG2SM Podcast

Feature Orisii interviewees:

YahZarah, singer, daughter & mother of 1

Ms. Beverly, children's author, former educator & forever mother

Host: Mariah M., Creative Director at the Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause

Score credits:

Sunflower by Soyb

Lude Illa by Joe Bagale

Sweet as Honey by Topher Mohr and Alex Elena

All music free to use under Creative Commons Licensing via AudioLibrary

Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0

Thank you to our partnering sponsors, The Honey Pot Company, Kindra, and Elektra Health for making this leg of the BGG2SM Hits the Road possible!

Next Stop Puerto Rico! Stay Tuned!