28. [Season 3!] Let’s Have a Sturdy Girl Summer
Welcome to Season 3, friends! In this first episode, we’re going to tackle what exactly it means to live a Sturdy Girl Summer.
Sturdy Girl Summer is about living a big, fun, full, adventurous life using our full energy for life’s experiences versus worrrying about our bodies.
The season episode lineup is chock full of tips, experiences, advice to improving our resilience, rocking the bikini, learning the kind of mirror talk that actually works, and how to get through the trap of comparison.
Tune in to the episode to learn about the quote that inspired these episodes. And be sure to check out the new merch when it launches!
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Jess: 0:03
Hello, friend, and welcome to Sturdy Girl, a podcast focused on strength, not size, where you'll hear conversations around healthy body image, cultivating confidence and being a resilient human in both body and mind. Sturdy Girl is a podcast where we shift the focus away from your appearance and on to living the big, rad life you deserve. And on to living the big rad life you deserve. Hello friends and welcome to season three of Sturdy Girl. We took a nice little what? Six week break, a little siesta, a little nap break to come back and be excited for summertime and for episode. I don't even know what episode number. This is Twenty eight, I think. Sure.
Megan: 0:45
Sure yeah, twenty eight.
Jess: 0:47
Yeah, but welcome friends. This episode is really just us setting up the scene for the season. Sturdy Girl Summer is the focus. What does that mean? To have a Sturdy Girl Summer? How can we have the most fun and show up and spend less energy on our bodies? I love it. Do you have any plans for the summer? I guess I've even asked you that we like sat down and reviewed all of our notes for these episodes and I just didn't even ask you.
Megan: 1:11
I know I don't think we asked each other Just like no, just go Such focus. Yeah, actually I think I got a lot this summer, but they're very contingent on my hand, so you know tbd okay.
Jess: 1:26
So if the hand is good, there's lots of bike riding, so I'm going to like whistler squamish, basically just canada.
Megan: 1:29
Okay, I'm gonna be in canada all summer. Utah, I'm going all over the place. But aside from that, no, probably try and use camper play outside.
Jess: 1:37
I know, just that is. That's the summer plans. Yeah, those are my summer plans, I know. So we just had when? Did we get back Last week from three weeks in Europe with my grandparents, which was an experience. Yes, I love my grandparents so much, but I did not realize how hard it would be to travel with older family members.
Megan: 1:57
I feel like the first time you told me that you were going with your grandparents, I was like oh, oh, my grandma is one of my favorite humans.
Jess: 2:03
Like she lived across the street from me until I was like, oh, oh, my grandma is one of my favorite humans. Like she lived across the street from me until I was almost through elementary school. Yeah, always been very close, but I don't think that I've ever spent three weeks straight and been responsible for their well-being and responsible for planning this trip and the foods that they eat and all the structure and all of those things, and so it just was. I learned a lot. How about we leave it at that? I learned a lot. Yes, on the trip we did Paris, athens and Corfu, an island on the Ionian Sea in Greece and yeah, I mean it was fun, it was beautiful and it was great. So that was kind of our. You know, we travel every May anyways. So then summers are strictly for outdoor adventures hiking, maybe, starting to bike with you, camping, hopefully a couple of backpacking trips. We didn't get out backpacking last summer and I was really bummed, so I think I'm going to try backpacking.
Megan: 2:51
I've still never done it. I still like to try bikepacking, which I think would be kind of fun Explain. I mean, I'm very not familiar with it, but it's basically backpacking on a bike. Usually it's like more of like a gravel bike and you kind of do adventures and you bring your camp supplies. So it's like it's even packing lighter than you probably would on foot because you're obviously not carrying a whole bag with you. But I think it'd be kind of fun.
Jess: 3:12
That sounds awesome. It reminds me of people who do like fast packing, so similar, very light.
Megan: 3:18
Okay, sounds fun. There's not much you can pack on a bike. Be able to ride significantly.
Jess: 3:22
Yes, yes, on trails, I'm assuming is what this is.
Megan: 3:25
yeah, okay that's awesome, so happy, almost summer.
Jess: 3:28
I know all the adventures rain outside we won't talk about it, we won't acknowledge it we will not acknowledge the pouring rain because by the time this episode comes out, be like 80 and sunny exactly.
Megan: 3:39
Yeah.
Jess: 3:39
Okay. So the whole premise of Sturdy Girl Summer was from a quote that I have seen a number of times in a number of places from Anne Lamott, and I'm just going to read this quote and then we'll talk a little bit more about what Sturdy Girl Summer is and what we have in store. So the quote is oh my God, what if you wake up someday and you're 65 or 75 and you never got your memoir or novel written? Or you didn't go swimming in those warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big, comfortable tummy, or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big, juicy, creative life of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid. It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen.
Jess: 4:29
I have read this quote so many times, especially because I can get so caught up in small things or the to-do list or things about my body that aren't the same or whatever it is, and then you realize let's fast forward. So spending this trip in Europe with my grandparents they're 75. What if you get to 75 and you have all these life regrets? What if you get to 75 and you're like I never did those things?
Megan: 4:45
I never had the experiences that I wanted.
Jess: 4:47
Yeah, I let the size of my body or my worry about these body parts hold me back and I don't want that and I don't want that for any of our listeners. I want us to be able to live the life, and so that's the premise of Sturdy Girl Summer. Because when we envision our I'm going to say perfect summer dream with me for a minute. I understand that most of our listeners are adults with responsibilities, with kids, with families, with fur children, let's say. But we're being realistic, but we're also just.
Jess: 5:13
We envision like how does that feel to have the perfect summer? It's being present. We're wearing less clothes because it's warm outside and we feel neutral or even good in our body. We romanticize the small things. We're able to look in the mirror and find neutral things to say about ourselves, instead of tearing ourselves down. It's going to the pool and not wanting to keep the cover up on the entire time or compare ourselves to all the other mom bodies there. For me personally, I remember summer as a teenager. I grew up on the coast and now Oregon coast. Summers are not necessarily warm, but we would have they're not your typical beach summer.
Jess: 5:45
No, but we would have summer days and, my God, when we did like the bonfires music on the beach, we'd be like shorts and a swimsuit top and I just imagine being able to take a deep breath and being fully present in my body. Now, as a teenager, was I fully present? Absolutely not, but that's what I envision as like that perfect summer being fully present in my body and my surroundings and with the important people in my life. Those perfect summer vibes. Like how do we get there? We want to stop focusing our energy on getting smaller and learning to live bigger, like distilling it down for the summer. That is what I want for you, the listener. It's not about getting smaller. It's not about changing our body. It's about how do we live a bigger life. I'm like sitting here and trying not to clap while I say these things.
Megan: 6:27
There's a lot of hand motions going on right now. Blake would not like to edit out that audio. Let's give him a challenge, it's fine.
Jess: 6:34
I say this and I understand the work that goes into this, but learning how to stop wasting our energy on how our body looks, how it might appear to others, and learning how to be present, getting out of our head and into our lives. It means doing the things you want to do, no matter how your body appears or how you think it might look. We want you to live a big life. Summertime means warmer weather, means less clothing, and we understand how much of a trigger that can be for really the majority of us. Summertime means more outdoor activities for a lot of us and our bodies can move and jiggle in different ways. We have more skin exposed that maybe we haven't noticed how it moves, or see photos or videos afterwards and you're like, oh my gosh, and you can get into these body image spirals and we want to move away from that and live bigger. Have I made that like super?
Megan: 7:18
clear yet.
Jess: 7:20
Don't worry about the jiggle or the belly or all the things. What are the things you enjoy doing, the clothes you enjoy wearing All of Sturdy Girl Summer. We're going to cover so many topics to empower you to do the things you want wear the bikini or the shorts or the crop top or whatever and be able to do that internal work. And there's so much good coming. So we want you to join us in Sturdy Girl Summer. So we have a couple different things at the end of each summer month. So last day of June, last day of July, last day of August, we're going to do a giveaway for someone who tags Sturdy Girl on Instagram. So it's Sturdy Girl underscore or does the hashtag Sturdy Girl Summer. We'll be keeping track of all of these, but picking someone who comes to tell us how you're living bigger this summer, how are you getting out of your body and into your life, out of your head into all the summer fun and activities. We are releasing Sturdy Girl Summer shirts as of the day that this recording is coming out, so June 7th, and we're doing everything pre-order. So we'll have pre-order open for about two weeks, so the 7th through the 21st, and then everything will be rolling out and I did see them. They're cute. I'm really excited. We have a couple of different designs.
Jess: 8:28
We finally found tank tops that we like that was a struggle in itself.
Jess: 8:32
Oh my gosh, there were so many that as Sturdy Girl, we really strive to be inclusive and not have something be sizing what's the word I want? Like sizing demeaning in a way A couple of the brands, like four of the brands we tried. I'm like trying on a size large and it feels like it fits like a kid's large. Or then you try the unisex sizing and it's way too big and you're trying to figure out like I don't want people to order these shirts and think like, well, I'm a t-shirt size large and then they order a tank top size large and it's way too small. Yeah, and you don't want to be like OK, if you were a unisex size large, you need to order an XXL in the tank top. Like that just sucks and it's so annoying, like we don't want to tie worth to clothing sizes by that level of just frustration or things just fitting weird. Tank tops are always hard. I'm telling you I'm just going to cut T-shirts and make tank tops, like that's what I do a lot of times.
Megan: 9:20
Yeah, I mean, that's what I do for my t-shirts, though, honestly, like anytime I get like a volunteer shirt or something like that, I'm like, just give it a little large, I'll make it a crop top.
Jess: 9:27
Exactly, but yeah, that's Sturdy Girl Summer. Check out our shirts, tag us on Instagram, join in our hashtag Sturdy Girl Summer. We will be sharing more about our summer adventures as well, and we will catch you next Friday, friends, bye.