This week’s episode goes straight for the tender spots—disability, guilt, surrender, messy healing, cultural expectations, accountability, and, yes… Beyoncé. It’s one of those conversations that reminds you why we started this show in the first place: to tell the truth about being human in a world that keeps demanding performance.

Taina opens with a vulnerable (and infuriatingly relatable) mess about navigating life with a disability while recovering from intense medical trauma, and the complicated guilt that comes with needing care instead of giving it. Becky names what’s underneath it all: grief for the life we thought we’d have. What follows is a wide-open, nuanced conversation about surrender, agency, capitalism’s lies about productivity, and the lifelong work of unlearning parentification.

From there, we spiral beautifully into:

• What accountability actually looks like (BD Wong, RF Kuang, publishing vs. Hollywood power, and why identity + industry shape what’s possible)
• How nuance gets flattened on the internet, and why that harms marginalized people most
• Jay-Z and Beyoncé attending a Brandy concert and the absolutely chaotic discourse about whether they “should” have said hi (Ray J… buddy… please log off)
• Spotify Wrapped: joy, community, surveillance capitalism, FOMO, manipulation, and why we’ll still post ours anyway
• The ways pop culture reveals our own longing to belong—and the pressure to be ethically perfect inside systems built on exploitation

It’s tender. It’s political. It’s petty. It’s deeply liberatory. In other words: peak Messy Liberation.

🎤 WE'RE PROUD MEMBERS OF THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE

We didn't record a new show this week, but we're happy to share this episode of The Empowered & Embodied Show with Taina Brown. It's so good! Enjoy!

This week’s episode of Messy Liberation is exactly what the name promises: deeply human, a little chaotic, politically charged, creatively fueled, and threaded with the kind of vulnerability most people only share with their therapist.

Becky opens up about the messy joy and stomach-turning self-doubt of writing her first book — including imposter syndrome, fears of co-opting liberatory work, the ethics of citation, and the tension between wanting to be seen and fearing the inevitable rejection that visibility invites.

Then Taina dives into her own mess: the viral rumor about Donald Trump allegedly performing a sexual act on Bill Clinton (yes, really), the cultural fallout, the misogyny underneath homophobia, and the horrifying normalization of sexual violence in politics and media.

It’s an episode that moves from book-writing anxiety… to Brene Brown… to Epstein… to consent… to cult dynamics… to “underage women” as a media phrase… to slow-burn lesbian jokes… to the existential absurdity of trying to hold nuance in a collapsing empire.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• The behind-the-scenes process of writing Becky’s liberatory business book
• Imposter syndrome, power, privilege, and the fear of getting it wrong
• The ethics of citation, accountability, and writing through a white lens
• Why visibility feels both intoxicating and terrifying
• How to engage in liberatory work without replicating harm
• The alleged Trump/Clinton sexual scandal and why it’s blowing up online
• Misogyny, homophobia, femininity-as-weakness, and power dynamics
• Why the phrase “underage women” is a dangerous media trap
• The GOP’s terrifying attempt to normalize sexual violence
• Laughing at the absurdity as a survival strategy
• Updates from last week’s messes (the school-board situation + relationship boundaries)
• The difference between mess that moves us forward and mess that destroys democracy

Resources + Mentions

• "Emergent Strategy" by adrienne maree brown
• The Messy Liberation Coaches Circle

🎤 Proud members of The Feminist Podcasters Collective; join us if you have a podcast at http://feministpodcastcollective.com/