Jade Oates, is a writer, poet and the editor in chief of The Mandarin, an online literary magazine based in California. Through the unique, personal and inspired writings shared in The Mandarin she has sought to cultivate and celebrate a New Romanticism, that is, the creative, individual, magically real, and yet naturally grounded landscapes of emotion experienced by humanity.

During her collegiate career she was recognized as Honors Scholar of the Year in 2017, and in 2020 earned her degree from Cal Berkeley. Professionally, she gives herself to opportunities in writing, editing, journalism, and publishing and is also interested in brand storytelling.

Jade believes in our outer selves reflecting and embodying our inner through fashion, color and words, in the light of wisdom, that art itself is the test of the artisan, in giving form to the invisible and invincible summer within us all, and in ever developing one's own personal magical realism manifesto.

Dr. Tracey Hunter is a clinical psychologist, relationship coach and Schema Therapy practitioner based on the Gold Coast of Australia. 

She received your PhD in clinical psychology at Griffith University, Gold Coast in 2005 and made the Academic Excellence List for her thesis work. She is also author of several publications that dissect the relationships between child development, depression, and peer relationships.

Tracey's aim is to help people get in touch with disconnected parts of the self so that they can create inner harmony and thrive in intimate relationships. Through the experiential techniques of Schema Therapy, her clients are able to bring unconscious patterns and wounds into awareness, to heal, and to gain clarity about core emotional needs and values. She also focuses on women ready to step into their feminine power and create loving and energizing relationships.

Tracey believes humans are fascinating and resilient, that underneath our protective layers, we seek a more satisfying experience of life, and that one of the most important journeys we can take as humans is the exploration of the effects on our lives of the messages we received in childhood about love, connection, self-expression, and worthiness.

To celebrate our 100th episode, we invited three of our listeners to be guests and talk about how they are meeting the physical, cognitive and emotional challenges of life.

David Robles is a program supervisor at the largest therapeutic residential non-profit in Oregon where he provides support to youth in need. He and Daniel have traveled distant lands together, have bled together through both the creation of stories and the living of our own. He has stood by Daniel during the most difficult moments of his life embodying his values of safety, consistency, emotional awareness and abiding presence. David values articulation, heightened cognitive and physical performance, solution based thinking, nuanced and effective trauma therapy, the light, the dark, the shadows between, and that the cat is but isn’t necessarily always both in and not in the box.

Parker Denae is on a journey of growth that is currently both at its beginnings, and has been happening for many years. The journey is one of learning to love and care for herself, including giving her younger self what she didn't have growing up, and at the same time fostering your overall growth into a strong and stable woman that little girl can rely on. She also plays roller derby, works hard, and plays harder. She is one of the most lively and unexpectedly raucous and at the same time intentional and perfectly genuine people we have known. She values speaking what she believes, questioning those beliefs, and in yeses to adventure, whether it be of the body, the mind, or the heart. 

Mike Lepis' professional life has been helping large companies connect with their employees. He is an entrepreneur and married to an entrepreneur. He considers himself a work in progress and have recently been processing and recovering from challenging life events via embracing therapy, self-reflection, and movement. You have two children and to help with your parenting challenges, you lead a group for dad’s of neurodiverse kids. Mike, you believe in creating space to support others, in process, togetherness in collaboration and co-creation, insight driven strategy and actionable plans both personally and professionally.

Ron Cecil was born in New Mexico, where he fell in love with rock climbing, the divine, and smoking cigarettes in secret. He has degrees in Biblical Literature and psychology, and though destined to be a cowboy, or preacher, he instead ran large companies both domestically and abroad until in 2015, he started guiding men toward mental, physical and emotional health. Ron's parents were married 13 times, creating in him a devotion to understanding what might make a healthy marriage. He's been partnered since 2009 and father to a daughter and adopted son. In 2020, you completed his dream of speed-climbing Yosemite's Half Dome. Later that year, he co-founded the podcast, Cutting for Sign and doubled down on his passion for writing via a modern western called Midland set in the high desert where he grew up. Ron believes in authenticity, in almost pulling that heist he's been scheming but instead writing it into his book, in caring for our sometimes skittish nervous systems, in long cold showers along warm beaches, in friendship, in bucking shame, in leaning on the world so it can lean back, and in relaxing into the surprising discomfort of living his future now.