Podcast
Braving the Waves
Hosted by Mikaela Brewer · EN
Author, speaker, researcher, and storyteller, Mikaela Brewer, brings us Braving the Waves & Bridging the Gap: Stories of Unsinkable Resilience & Resolvving Stigma. This podcast features a series of storytelling-focused conversations with youth in our communities. Inspired and guided by the powerful advocacy, care, and storytelling legacy at Resolvve and Unsinkable, Brewer speaks to some of today’s most empowering young storytellers, writers, musicians, comedians, activists and more about their mental health journey in a deeper, refreshing way.
Season 2 adds a new layer to storytelling. To complement the programs at Unsinkable & Resolvve's work supporting students, Mikaela offers another way to Brave the Waves: crafting words for moments that feel like they don't have any, especially for those who don't feel comfortable writing, speaking, or publicly sharing. Each week, Mikaela gathers anonymous voice notes, memories, journal entries, photos, drawings, and anything that captures a specific, meaningful moment, through a memory box form. She then creates a poem and episode to offer a comforting way to pause in a moment, preserve a memory, and feel seen/heard in it as it's given words and read aloud. Head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves to read more about the process and submit!
Season 1 of Braving the Waves featured a series of storytelling-focused conversations with youth in our communities. Inspired and guided by the powerful advocacy, care, and storytelling legacy at Resolvve and Unsinkable, Mikaela spoke with some of today’s most empowering young storytellers, writers, musicians, comedians, activists and more about their mental health journey in a deeper, refreshing way.
Resolvve, driven by a lack of comprehensive mental health literacy being taught in high schools and universities, aims to fill the gap by providing mental health education and rapid access to integrated therapeutic services.
Unsinkable, a charitable organization founded by Olympic hero and mental health advocate Silken Laumann, aims to use storytelling to help people #BridgeTheGap between struggling with their mental health and taking steps towards mental well-being.
55episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Half Way Alive
Feb 5, 202400:15:39Tap to summarizeEpisode Notes This week’s episode looks at some of the ways anxiety shows up in our minds, bodies, and souls—specifically the elements of it that aren’t as frequently spoken about. February 1st/2nd also marked the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, which is celebrated through many different cultural traditions. This episode discusses how even with seasonal shifts—especially the long-awaited ones between winter and spring—anxiety doesn’t always dissipate. Further, I’ve stretched and re-shaped the old villanelle poetic form for this poem. The villanelle, traditionally, offers a frame for struggling with establishing conversational tone and narrative possibility, reading in non-linear circles that resist telling a complete story. This form sounds and feels a lot like the experience of anxiety, and I hope the structure and words capture the mood, emotion, and memory, too. Here's an excerpt of the poem: We talk about aching waking up, but without breathless sensitivity, tents pitched for toilets, and angry skin, soul, and stomach, unable to speak. The eye of the storm must be halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox. Headache and dizziness. We don’t talk about aching with each type of waking. Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Transcribe →Rooms
Jan 22, 202400:17:23Tap to summarizeEpisode Notes This week we’re looking at both a childhood and adult memory, between which is a comparison trap and the growing awareness of it. Both moments are set in the same place—among the display rooms of Ikea. This episode and poem explore how easy it is to construct caricatures or imaginary people from our surroundings who are either better or less than ourselves (particularly the former). There is a delicate balance here between imagining (and moving toward) the life you want to live and romanticizing a perfect version that may never exist. This dynamic can further trap us into a pit of forgetting to be grateful for what’s in front of us, alongside recognizing those things we and others truly don’t have access to (due to financial reasons, discrimination, or other). This is a rich, deep topic and we hope you enjoy the episode! Here's an excerpt of the poem: Crack open your eyes now. Taste lingonberry-soaked soft serve cupped by cold fingers. Argumentative. Drowsy eyes. Stooped, sore neck. Gaze down. Notice the arrows shiver. Blink. You’ve been asleep for a long time. They’re not real. They’re cast from a projector concealed in the ceiling. Wander to display windows. They’re balconies of pale brick walls closer than any house is allowed to be built. Silly. The pre-constructed persona people with matching puppies from 101 Dalmatians live here, in Ikea. Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Transcribe →Instant Gram Recipe
Jan 15, 202400:16:58Tap to summarizeWe're so excited to share the first episode of 2024 with you. In the setting of a cozy kitchen, this poem captures our moments on social media with a twist. It explores the “Favourites” feature on Instagram, namely one way in which to use it mindfully: curating your relationship with social media. For example, carefully choosing a recipe of art, music, joy, passion, humour, social justice, activism, news, media, and environmental advocacy accounts (from diverse voices) for your 50 favourites, and returning to these for most of your daily social media allotment. Of course, this list is not exhaustive but hopefully is inspiring. Here's an excerpt of the poem: Pluck a slice—a leaf—of mint to nibble, and climb the creaky ladder to the pantry of cookbooks above the table, stools, and stove. It’s the laminated one— glossy and slick with clear plastic coils when peeled from its silicone case. Flip to chapter 20, part 24: Infinite Instant Grams Description: a nutritional 50-fragment finger food favourite Prep & cook time: 20-30 minutes. Listen to this week's episode to hear the full poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Transcribe →Words Cast for Two
Dec 18, 202300:08:41Tap to summarizeEpisode Notes This poem is our last of 2023, and because we didn’t have a submission for today, I wanted to write something that will carry you through the next few weeks. Many of us are venturing into and/or celebrating various holidays, and this poem offers a reminder—for you and me—that whatever we feel amid this season, is well within its right to need space. The season is rich, but not just with joy. Here's the full poem, because it's quite short: Be still love, I’ll say. When we listen, all will be felt and is okay. Now feel dearest one, exactly where you are now. Touch, taste, smell, see, hear. Even rage, stress, hurt while the raw rye rises ripe. Even forlorn, lost. Feel those energies within the bravest spirit. I believe it’s yours. When you can’t believe, hear this spell spoken for two— faith held just for you. Listen to this week's episode to hear the poem and some comforting notes. If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Transcribe →This is a Safe Space to Write
Dec 11, 202300:19:56Tap to summarizeEpisode Notes Today’s poem brings us into a relationship between someone struggling and a friend they find support in speaking with. Because these two people don’t live close to one another—and haven’t met in person—the friend has offered their text chain as a space to write, share, be vulnerable, and journal, even if the friend isn’t always able to reply. This poem is in the voice of the person struggling, who shares their honest, co-existing gratitude for and complicated wrestle with this dynamic. Here's a snippet: But the grass can’t be greener if I’ve never even known grass or green. It’s in your holding of my hand without absorbing what it holds. In loving the hand itself. Because all hands are a nebula moulding galactic weather patterns, “Write here, anytime” is you saying: here is my open hand and though it will never be yours to use you can hold it with one hand while the other keeps writing. Keeps fighting. Listen to this week's episode to hear the rest of the poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Transcribe →The Day the Sky Broke Open
Dec 4, 202300:16:05Tap to summarizeEpisode Notes Today’s poem reflects something that’s been on my heart—the paradox between “tomorrow isn’t promised” and “there’s no rush.” As a young person with dreams, this is difficult to navigate at times, especially since I’ve personally experienced the deaths of several young people in my life, and we’re witnessing mass youth death across the globe. With this in mind, I’ve caught myself asking: how dare I take my time with a project that might be needed yesterday. But I also know that intentionality, thoughtfulness, and patience are deeply essential responsibilities. And they require space and rest. This poem walks between these lines, even though I don’t have an explicit answer. I hope you enjoy it. Here's a snippet: But I do know, at just 25, that chasing dreams demands delay if we rush— if we believe that we’re only worthy of them if we witness their birthright inhale faster. Listen in to this week's episode to hear the rest of the poem! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Transcribe →Drawing Lines
Nov 27, 202300:19:58Tap to summarizeEpisode Notes This week’s poem pilots us into an argument between a child and their father that has soured, where he has reverted to hurtful, personal attacks. The voice in this poem carries us deeper into this instance—the child’s acknowledgement of overwhelm; a moment of mindful connecting to their five senses; and a deep compassion and awareness of the seed of their father’s hurt. At the end of the poem, there is a call—the narrator speaking to themselves—to understand the root of rot, boundaries, and capacity to both hold space and invite those who have caused harm into it—if they’re willing. Here is a snippet of Drawing Lines: There was a time I thought my own mental, spiritual, and physical shame needed forensics when there was no crime. They just needed love, breath, and space. I cannot force you to change your mind, but I can offer safety for openness to having your mind changed. Listen in to this week's episode to hear the rest of Drawing Lines. If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves!
Transcribe →My Family Writes a Will
Nov 20, 202300:11:42Tap to summarizeEpisode Notes This week’s poem welcomes us into a family during the years-long process of writing a will, which in turn, requires a hovering awareness of death. This family’s experience asks us to redefine what hovering means, and how we choose to greet something that we’ve been taught to fear or feel uncomfortable about. It emphasizes the need to make space for conversations, thoughts, feelings, and emotions well in advance of death. Here is a snippet of My Family Writes a Will: Though seemingly dark, body-shaped coffins, shadows are, rather, a place for life’s quiet, rebirth, rest, and growth because, if we love death thoroughly, they will say: by the love you’ve left, I’m deeply impressed, by not fearing me, I offer you the sea, or perhaps a tree, or anywhere else you wish to be free Listen in to this week's episode to hear the rest of My Family Writes A Will. If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves!
Transcribe →Stuffed Silence
Nov 13, 202300:20:46Tap to summarizeEpisode Notes This week’s poem excavates the complicated nature of receiving and replying to messages from someone who knows we're struggling and is lovingly checking in on us. It unpacks the nooks and crannies of this dynamic—such as the tension between gratitude and somatic reactions—and why responding is not as simple as it seems. Here is a snippet of Stuffed Silence: I’m impotent. Can’t generate letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, but a bare-boned poem. Anxiety splashes and churns acid up the walls of my stomach reading your worry. Overwhelm casts cross, sweeping shadows against uncapacious chest walls writing a response. Panic squeezes breath & blood from my heartbeat—a bean crushed by knife face— tapping send. Listen in to this week's episode to hear the rest of Stuffed Silence! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Transcribe →Morning Moons
Nov 6, 202300:05:47Tap to summarizeEpisode Notes This week’s poem expands a simple moment—gathering breakfast early in the morning of October 28th—by juxtaposing it with deeper reflections. Here is a snippet of Morning Moons: The blueberries thawed, too. So even in a muted blackout, the moon is relentlessly bold, blood cascades thick, and pistachios rupture shells— ripe, rich, raw, and ready. Listen in to this week's episode to hear the rest of Morning Moons! If you’d like to share your moment or memory on the podcast, please head to tinyurl.com/bravingthewaves.
Transcribe →