Welcome to our 6th iteration of the ⁠Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause⁠ podcast: the Season of Orisii. Building on our international diasporic tour from last year, this season's theme is Orisii, or 'pairs' in the Afric language of Yoruba. We've invited different types of pairs to explore the through-line between menarche and menopause. You will hear parent/child, partner/lovers and siblings to offer their reflections and observations about this journey as individual and as Orisii. We, as people capable of menstruation, understand that each experience is unique and impacts both ourselves and the connections we have with our loved ones.

For this third episode of our Season of Orisii, we have sisters adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown.

Opening portals, multiverse traveling companions, and life beyond the end of the world: How can we stay grounded in the present moment, in this reality of constant change, decay, death, and rebirth, without feeling completely overwhelmed? And then what?

Surviving the various challenges within ourselves and in the world while navigating the transition between our changing identities of past, present, and future selves, all while supporting each other and remembering our individual needs. What if we redefined "self-centered" to mean the preservation of all aspects of ourselves, young, older, fragile, strong for iterative healing?

These are some of the themes and questions we explored with the Sisters Brown, adrienne, and Autumn on this episode and we can't think of a better way to kick off Black August during our Season of Orisii.

Black August is a time of year to honor our Black freedom fighters, political prisoners, and resistance against oppression via study, fasting, training and fighting. It is the antithesis of “celebration” and empty “homage.” Black August commemoration and practice place our collective struggle and sacrifice on center stage. More on the why of Black August here, detailed by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.

Meet adrienne and Autumn:

adrienne maree brown grows healing ideas in public through her multi-genre writing, her collaborations and her podcasts. Informed by 25 years of movement facilitation, somatics, Octavia E. Butler scholarship and her work as a doula, adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice as ideas and practices for transformation. She is the author/editor of several published texts, co-generator of a tarot deck and a developing musical ritual. adrienne's forthcoming book ⁠Loving Corrections⁠ will be released on August 20 from AK Press.

Autumn Brown is a musician, facilitator, and author of speculative fiction and creative non-fiction. As the front woman of the eponymous band, AUTUMN, she has created two EPs, ⁠The Animal in You and The Way Your Blood Beats⁠. Her writing has been featured in Revolutionary Mothering, Parenting 4 Social Justice, Octavia’s Brood, and Lightspeed Magazine. She co-hosts the podcast How to Survive the End of the World, and facilitates political education and movement strategy through the Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance.

To learn more about the Sisters Brown, check out the following links:

⁠adrienne maree brown⁠

⁠Autumn Brown⁠

⁠How to Survive the End of the World⁠

There she is—- neither

Super hero nor villain

Something in between

Inside the between

A life lived so many times

Familiar echoes

Between truth and dare

Lies all of the answers still…

YOU are your best thing

Black August Haiku, Omisade Burney-Scott

Show Notes:

Produced by Mariah M., Creative Director at BGG2SM

Hosted by Omisade Burney-Scott, Founder & Chief Curatorial Officer at BGG2SM

Edited by Kim Blocker of ⁠TDS Radio⁠

Theme music by Taj Scott

Season 6 Artwork by Assata Goff, artist & in-house Iconographer of BGG2SM

Season 6 of is sponsored by ⁠The Honey Pot Company⁠

Learn more about Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause at www.blackgirlsguidetosurvivingmenopause.com