About Face

I took a break from podcasting because I didn't know how to tell my own stories anymore. There was shame, confusion, fear, and hardship around what I was going through- leaving my marriage, becoming a single mother, and learning to embrace the truth about my situation and my life. This episode is about the reality of why I had to leave my marriage, what I learned about processing the grief and trauma, and how stories and podcasters have given me strength and hope.

Dating after divorce or after 40 can be messy, but it's also a great time for self-growth, healing, and introspection. In this episode, Kate talks with Quintin Mecke, social activist, politician, and former mayoral candidate of San Francisco about healing in sex and love. This episode is a funny reflection on how they met doing storytelling in San Francisco, Kate's existential crisis when a sex tape is revealed, a relapse, polyamory, divorce, breakups and their misadventures in dating and healing. This episode explores personal healing, gender dynamics in marriage, family trauma, and how to heal ourselves to be ready for new and more mature love.

This is the first episode in a new season of About Face. Kate shares her personal journey with creating the podcast, what it means to be authentic, why being honest with ourselves is crucial to recovery. She shares about losing a guest to overdose, divorce, addiction recovery, sex and love addiction, her inspiration in the trans community, and the role of storytelling in recovery. If you want to heal, you have to be real. Here is the first episode on a journey of truth and finding authenticity in our lives and ourselves.

Last summer I got hypnotized for over two hours and I wanted to share about this experience as well as the relationship I found between narrative healing and subconscious imagery. In this episode I interview Marta Styczen about her hypnotherapy practice and we talk about my session, including the process of going under hypnosis, what it is really like, whether anyone is susceptible to hypnosis, what I learned, and how I found it to be such a powerful source of healing and information. While there was also a situation of what could be considered "past life regression," we also talked about the role of imagery, metaphor, and of course, narrative.  I talk about how the session unlocked some early experiences, some painful, but also awakened some understandings for me around relationships with men, my past, and my current energies. Marta shares about her Quantum Healing Hypnosis practice, the role of deep meditation, connecting with a higher self, and how she is self-recovered from schizophrenia.  We also talk about how language itself is an artificial construct and is limited in communicating some messages and ideas and how the right side of our brain uses imagery to tell stories.  For more information about Marta: current location & session booking via website www.selfhealing.work or IG @marta.styczen. Mental health advocacy projects: neurodivergencegallery.org & IG @neuro_gallery Instagram: @restorya FB: Kate Marlena-Restorya Restorya is a member of Bear Radio. Theme music by Kenichi and the Sun

Today I want to talk about something I call “Attachment Stories,” and it’s the stories that attach themselves to events, issues, or traits about ourselves, our families, communities etc. Basically, it’s the accompanying stories that might crop up in a damaging way. Many of you have probably heard this expression: “Pain inevitable, suffering is optional” an ancient Buddhist expression, made popular by Haruki Murakami. This quote is basically the premise of how to face attachment stories. That is to say that the human experience will inevitably involve pain: we will face hardship, loss, and eventually death, but the suffering that accompanies it will be of our own making. So, beyond the other Buddhist tenants of acceptance and impermanence, we can also look more practically at these attachment stories that really can exacerbate the suffering of our lives. In this episode I share about my own experiences in the last month- a new lockdown, my daughter's brain surgery last month, getting served divorce papers, and losing my apartment. I share about how these experience triggered my old self narratives and how I was able to reconnect with other stories around love, connection, and self-empowerment. 

I used to think I could insulate myself against pain or hardship by doing the right thing or making "good decisions." When my daughter was diagnosed with a rare brain condition, I had to face my greatest fears of illness, vulnerability, and a total loss of control. In this episode I share about going through the transition from denying and fighting against hardship and how learning to accept difficult fates and struggles has taught me about connection, humanity, and empathy.  This episode was inspired by an essay I wrote called, "The Things We Cannot Handle," originally published in Scary Mommy in 2017.  If you are interested in learning more about narrative please check out my website www.restoryatherapy.com and feel free to book a session with me.  You can find more content at Patreon and please consider subscribing to support my work.  https://www.patreon.com/join/restorya Email: kate@restoryatherapy.com @restorya on Instagram Facebook: Kate Marlena-Restorya Restorya is a member of Bear Radio, the premier English speaking podcast network of Berlin Our theme music is the song JEANNE by KENICHI & THE SUN from album White Fire which you can find here.

I hated the thought of being an addict or an alcoholic. I would often point to my external successes as a straight A student, a lawyer, having a good job and other markers of "well-being" to distract from my problem with alcohol, my depression, anxiety, and my pain. After going through recovery I've noticed that so many addicts are actually "successful" in many other areas of their lives. But, how is this narrative of success preventing them from getting help? Today I am bringing you an interview that I did over the summer with Eilene Zimmerman who I first discovered after reading her viral article in the New York Times called, “The Lawyer, The Addict.” I actually was doing my own research on this intersection between lawyers and addiction and this was a fascinating story about Eilene and her husband Peter, a high-powered attorney who died of a drug overdose, without her even knowing he had an addiction. What is interesting to me about this story is the many ways that our cultural representations of addiction and drug and alcohol use mask the reality that these problems happen at every level of society and this rise of white collar addiction is actually a testament to some of the systemic issues arising from materialism, wealth, spiritual or emotional detachment and the pressure of career or financial success. This interview is actually a conversation about her story and her book Smacked, which is currently being optioned for film by Elizabeth Moss and her film company Love & Squalor, who you might know from Madmen and The Handmaid’s Tale. We talk about why attorneys have a propensity for addiction, co-dependency and marriage to an addict, and why the competition and conditioning of the legal profession is killing lawyers. Eilene also shares about her own trauma recovery, and how writing a memoir and her story helped her overcome grief, loss, and reclaim her sense of self. Email: kate@restoryatherapy.com @restorya on Instagram Facebook: Kate Marlena-Restorya Restorya is a member of Bear Radio, the premier English speaking podcast network of Berlin Our theme music is the song JEANNE by KENICHI & THE SUN from album White Fire which you can find here.        

I love gratitude lists, but I think sometimes the pressure to focus on the positive (and shaming for negative thinking) can be destructive. In this episode I want to share my experience with learning to acknowledge some of the challenges in my life, taking an honest approach to hardship. This is about self compassion and learning to get real when things kind of suck. 

Break-ups are HARD and the heartache can last years. This episode explores the relationship between self-identity and break-ups and why the pain is often because of the stories we tell ourselves about why things ended. Whether you left a 20 year marriage or you got ghosted after a few Tinder dates, this episode is for you. Kate explores four steps to narrative healing: 1- What stories are you telling yourself about the relationship or the break-up? 2- What stories are you telling yourself about YOURSELF? What power does this story have over you? 3- Challenge negative biases and beliefs around these stories. 4- Recall and remember the positive things you have learned, what you might take forward, and the strengths you showed during and after the end of a relationship. This is one example of how narrative work can help in empowerment, self discovery, and personal transformation. www.restoryatherapy.com Insta: @restorya Facebook: Kate Marlena- Restorya Restorya is a member of Bear Radio, the premier English-speaking podcast network of Berlin.  Theme Music: Jeanne by Kenichi and the Sun from the album White Fire

So. many of us are suffering from the collective grief of this pandemic and it's been manifesting in various ways- pressures on our relationships, money stress, health fears, feelings of isolation, and the unknown. There is also a depressive element- not knowing how we will be moving forward for the next year, the inability to make plans, and this pressing feeling of, "Will this ever end?"   Kate talks about her own struggles with the grief and loss, the inability to travel out of a foreign country, the unknowns, and the fears and stress of social distancing. She talks about narratives that can be limiting including stages of grief, and other ways that we can embrace and overcome this new world with hope and authenticity.    I am currently taking new clients but I have only a few spots left so book now!   Contact: www.restoryatherapy.com Facebook: Kate Marlena-Restorya Insta: @restorya  Music: "Jeanne" by Kenichi and the Sun on the album White Fire available now. 

Food is so basic and primal and yet so many of us suffer from disordered eating--why? This isn't about extreme cases of anorexia, bulimia, or overeating (though it could be), but the many little ways that we are tortured by food management, food restriction, and the disordered relationships we have with food because of personal, family, cultural and systemic narratives. In this episode Kate talks with food psychology coach Laura Lloyd about the narratives we have about food, our bodies, and exercise. Do you suffer from disordered eating? Have a subconscious aversion to exercise? Do you hate team sports or think maybe you just "aren't that kind of person" to work out? What conclusions have we drawn about food, our bodies, and exercise because of early childhood experiences? What narratives and messages have we inherited from our families of origin and culture? Do you have narratives about managing our food and weight?  This episode also delves into larger narratives of food and our bodies and the role of capitalism, as a focus on production keeps us from having a sacred relationship with the food we eat.  Laura Lloyd Coaching www.lauralloyd.co/gift Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lauralloydfoodpsychologysavvy Kate Leone Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/restoryatherapy Instagram: @restorya To book a session contact me at restoryatherapy.com

When you think of the most important stories of your life, they are often about relationships. What stories you tell about yourself and your life often begin with family, parental bonds, siblings, and events that involved these important relationships. Whether you have strong bonds with your family or you have severed ties, you likely continue to have stories and narratives around your early life and how these relationships shaped who you are. I met Aidan “Taco” Jones when he did a stand-up show in Berlin. Most of his bit was about how his Australian mother got pregnant while traveling in Columbia and how he never met his father until this past year. It was as hilarious as it was also heartbreaking and such an insight into his life and the role of humor in his personal growth and healing.  This episode is about the stories of our childhood, how they shape our identity and sense of self, and how returning and uncovering some of these unattended stories can help us towards healing and understanding. We also talk about mixed race identity, cultural identity, being raised by a non-biological parent, and the importance of self-acceptance.  Find Aiden here: Podcast: Sitting Under a Tree www.aidantacojonnes.com Instagram: @aidanjonescomedy If you’ve been a subscriber to the show, thanks for listening to About Face or Restorya and if you’re new, welcome. If you didn’t already know this, I am also practicing as a narrative therapist here in Berlin and clients abroad who want to reach me by Skype. Those sessions can be booked through my website at  www.restoryatherapy.com Find me on Facebook: Kate Marlena-Restorya Insta: @Restorya Please consider leaving me a review on iTunes. You’ve probably heard this a 100 x by every podcaster, but it truly helps! I really like to provide this content and will continue to do so but as a creator it would really help me out to continue to grow my audience. Restorya is a member of Bear Radio, the premier English speaking podcast network of Berlin Our Theme music is the song Jeanne JEANNE by KENICHI & THE SUN from the upcoming Album "White Fire" to be released in September 2020  

In 2017, my 18-month old daughter had to have brain scans for a suspected tumor. While in the hospital, she didn't wake up from the anesthetic. It turned out she had caught a superbug while being tested, but the doctors told me that she should also be tested for lung cancer, blood cancers, among other really scary diagnoses. All of this was something I had to navigate in a foreign country, in a foreign language.   Literally, the scariest week of my life.   Eventually she was diagnosed with Chiari Malformation and doctors have since wanted to perform an invasive brain stem surgery/decompression surgery. Last week they told me again that she needs this intervention, but I am terrified. Also, she has no symptoms, which makes the decision making process incredibly difficult and really triggering for me.   In this week's episode, I share what it is like to experience this real fear I am having, but also the ways that I am coping. I will continue to discuss fear inventories and how to use our fears as a gateway towards reframing our values and purpose. This isn't about shifting away from pain and fear, but actually leaning into it, using somatic understanding, so that we can get clear and mindful about how to process and make decisions with confidence.   Facebook: Kate Marlena-Restorya Instagram: @Restorya   Tara Brach and the R.A.I.N. Meditation https://www.tarabrach.com/rain/   #chiarimalformation #podcast #fears #mentalhealth #recovery #meditation #somatics #transformation   If you're already a listener please please consider leaving a review. It would mean a lot to have your support!

Fear is so basic, primal, but also gets at the role of narrative in our lives is fear. Fear is an instinct of course, it drives us to make decisions, to do or not do things. It can get in the way of moving forward, but of course it also has this evolutionary advantage of keeping us safe from harm. Fear narratives can be based on societal messaging, family of origin stories, experiences, and even cultural mythologies, but it is important to understand where our fears are coming from and whether they are authentic and real or if they are just limiting beliefs.   In this episode I share a story about how a family origin story resurfaced while I was on a road trip in Portugal last week and how the fear narrative left me with a stolen wallet. I will also share how learning to inventory fear helped me make one of the most important decisions of my life-- to leave my marriage.    If you are struggling with a life transition, consider working with me directly. I am a certified narrative therapist and work with individuals, couples and groups. You can book individual sessions through my website at www.restoryatherapy.com Facebook: Restorya Therapy Instagram: @restorya Our theme music is the song Jeanne by Kenichi and the Sun from the upcoming album White Fire to be released in September 2020. 

This podcast is broadly looking at the way that stories and reimagined narratives can help us shut down negative thinking patterns, deconstruct damaging systemic narratives, and take the power back in reimagining our own lives. My guest today is Hannah Joy Graves a.k.a. Cult Mother a tarot card reader in Berlin who you also heard on an earlier episode of About Face. While the reading of tarot is by no means scientific or having proven healing powers in a medical way, I do think that it has the power to do what narrative therapy also does, which is look for the answers that lie within us. Like narrative therapy, tarot opens up new possibilities for understanding and gives the individual the power to look at themselves and their lives in a new way. This was something I realized after my own readings with Hannah. It wasn’t about fortune telling, it was about seeing the way that my life circumstances could be approached differently. I love seeing the way life stories drive individual empowerment and the narrative healing happening in so many different practices. Hannah Joy Graves- Cult Mother Tarot Insta: @CultMotherTarot Mental Health Benefits of Reading Tarot by Elly Belle Music by Kenichi and the Sun

I started my work in activism at more of the macro level. I went to law school and studied international human rights at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. this where George Floyd was murdered and sort of the starting point of the protests against police brutality in the U.S. When I was there I was working for the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of prison inmates. One of my jobs was to read the letters from the inmates, to decide if they had a claim. Now I can tell you what I was doing was listening, to stories, to emotions, to pain and loss. I was all in.   The problem was that I was acting like a lawyer, And a lawyer’s job, is not about stories, or empathy, or emotions or heart. A lawyers job is to decide whether these facts square with the law. I would normally take these letters and put them in a pile that said, “NO CASE.” What that meant was that whatever personal experiences and injustices were at the heart of these inmate letters, they were not meaningful enough to make a mark on the law. This was sort of the beginning of my questioning the role of the law, my ability to work within the confines of the legal system, that I could see was deeply flawed and had so many blind spots.   The personal is political and making sense of our past, how these personal stories and narratives are impacted and influenced by larger institutions of power do matter.   So, I was very interested in this role of narrative and began work in literary theory as a Ph.D. student at NYU. I was interested in the role of narrative in the law, power structures. This sort of paved the way for me over the years, to have this base understanding of stories, and narrative, as a source of power and justice, but also as the real source of activism, healing and recovery.   As a writer, I’ve always believed in translating my inner experience to the outer world, and in some ways that act in itself felt political. I am now a trained narrative therapist which means that I;m really looking at how systemic issues influence the individual, which brings me to tonights topic.. emotions. Emotions drive us, emotions are the root of passion and activism, and if you think about it they really begin in our bodies. I am doing somatic work in embodied activism which is really about learning how to see the body as the center point for any work at the individual and institutional level. How do we learn to become embodied, to see our bodies as a source of power and also often the place of oppression, because of race, gender, sexual orientation. Where does this all begin, in the body. But by becoming aware of our bodies. Becoming mindful of the body, we can begin to take back power.   So, back to emotions. If you have never done this before. I want you to close your eyes and think about how emotions manifest in your body. When you’re scared, is your chest tight, does anger start in your gut, does excitement cause your fingers to shake. We experience emotions in our bodies and this is one way to reconnect to get really in touch with where you are in your body emotionally, so that you can channel it. Many times people don’t stop to feel their emotions, but they actually are a physical experience, and instead of thinking of emotions as something to get out, like a catharsis, it can be more helpful to think of them as a kind of territory in your body, a place where you can live them experience them, and use them as a way to fuel your power.   I could talk more about this, but I wanted to just give that quick intro into the potential of narrative and storytelling gin transformational healing but also make this connection to somatic healing and embodied activism. You can learn more about my community healing and work at restoryatherapy.com and I will also read this poem, which I think for me is a personal reflection on the relationship between this inner and outer world…   Formless   From the rooftops, that carve a pathway Towards the steeple, the clouds thin and even Where birds perch, on the stone meridian The leaves that grow tired and fold. Beneath this lapping sky, that once belonged to us.   In the milky sunset haze, the shadows crawl north. And we wait, now, for the face of night. Her glow, the mysteries, that lie beneath. The stories that unfurl between promises Between the sheets, the windows and walls There was us. And then, the world.   Dampened lust, our bodies, we are lost in Formlessness, beyond the rings of ecstasy We know these lines, the edges of being, Where we wait to be discovered, Uncovered, and lifted, elevated beyond White crests, the carnal rain.   The walls are dirty with time. And tell us more than we want to remember. So we silence them, with only our eyes. There was nothing left to bare. Secret eddies of lost thrown stones. There was nothing left for us to bare.   And this time, we will need a map, To guide us from these rooms, to tell us Where to go, how to be, the way we were. Out there in here or in here, out there. The desert has never touched the ocean. The sun can only long to kiss moon.   From pink to blue to summer night. It wasn’t long until the hum of the street, The dog barking, pulling at the leash, Life is awakened, in the dark. The wind beckons, not forgotten From the windows, we hear her calls, It’s a beat, a force we won’t forsake.     Kate Marlena Leone July 13, 2020  

Kate interviews Aisling Ní Chába about her internal experience with gender identity from childhood, growing up in an abusive family and repressive Catholic community in Glasgow. She talks about the challenges she faced in finding institutional support and how transitioning forced her to confront gender binary narratives on the personal level as well as in academia as an archaeologist. I did this interview about a week before she entered the hospital for vaginoplasty or gender confirmation surgery. We are talking about gender, but also the underlying scientific narratives that can impact self-identity especially related to bio-constructs.

I'm a divorced, single mom, an alcoholic, I suffer from depression and anxiety, among some other things, and yes, all of this sounds really shitty, but it's not really the story of my life. The way we talk about ourselves and our experiences matters. This episode is about how we can learn to separate ourselves and our identity from our problems, how avoiding certain labels can inhibit our ability to get help, and the role of narrative therapy in finding solutions. 

Stories tell us about where we come from, who we are. They give us meaning and purpose. And without some understanding of how they influence us, a story can keep us in bad habits. I want to use my own life as an example of how my own stories kept me from healing, and how learning new narratives gave me room to heal. I started drinking alcoholically when I was about 16, though I wouldn’t have admitted it. I did know something was “wrong” especially after I wound up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning on my 16th birthday, however, no amount of therapists, family interventionists, even doctors could have persuaded me that I had a problem with alcohol, or that I was an alcoholic. But why? In some ways, it was obvious even then. One of the most powerful transformations I have made in my life was the recovery from alcoholism. This began with the pain of admitting something was wrong and connecting with my own narratives around alcoholism, failure, perfectionism, self-worth, and love. For me, getting sober meant reframing the entire story I had told about myself and my place in the world. ⠀ In this week's podcast I am going to talk about the role of narrative in my own life, not directly from the perspective of narrative therapy, but the power of storytelling, listening to others, community sharing, and how creating meaning gave me the power to break through limitations to connect with a higher and more empowered self. ⠀ ⠀

In our first episode of Restorya, Kate talks about the evolution of About Face and why she’s changed the show and the content to introduce her work in narrative therapy. She shares the origin story of About Face, her own experience with getting sober and recovery through narrative and storytelling and how creating hope around narrative can be beneficial in moving beyond our pain and trauma. Kate delves into what narrative therapy is, her own experience with studying narrative for 20 years and how narrative therapy methods can help you to come to a deeper understanding of yourself, your identity, and create responses to your life in an authentic and empowered way.