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Lighten Up with Melanie Dale

Author Melanie Dale is perpetually trying to figure out how we can all calm the heck down about parenting, friendship, getting older, and the world around us. Each episode she chats with a friend about ways we can let go and lighten up.
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Now displaying: March, 2018

Lighten Up with Melanie Dale

I use laughter as a coping strategy for life’s messes and this podcast to externally process everything going on in my mind, from books to the zombie apocalypse. Each episode I invite a friend to join me and we discuss hot topics, relationships, faith, trends, books, movies, and the latest developments on important things like Netflix and Twitter. I ask them how they lighten up and how they’re sharing the light in their communities. My goal is for you to feel like you’re sitting in the room with us while we eat Nerds Ropes, cackle hysterically, and solve all the world’s problems.
Mar 27, 2018

It's time for our monthly crossover with Sarah Bragg, where we take a topic and talk about how to lighten up about it over here and how to survive it over on her podcast, Surviving Sarah. This month we're tackling marriage, and oh my gosh, on today's Lighten Up episode we're lightening up about sex in marriage. Sarah and I start off sharing our engagement stories - spoiler alert, Sarah robbed the cradle and mine's poop-related. We talk about when you can start farting in front of each other, and then obviously, farting is a perfect segue to sex...in some alternate reality. We have some real talk about sex, when sex is hard, lowering our expectations, planning it during those busy parenting years, how infertility destroyed my sex life, intimacy versus efficiency, and how your marriage doesn't have to look like anybody else's. Let's talk about sex baby...so listen in and lighten up!

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Mar 20, 2018

Alex and I got married almost 18 years ago and one of the first books I was given was a cute, little stripey book that contained a window into the minds of men. On today's episode, social researcher and best-selling author Shaunti Feldhahn joins me and tells the story of how she ended up writing her bestselling book, For Women Only. Then she shares how she thinks we need to lighten up and we talk about her new devotional, Find Rest, and what her research uncovered about the primary causes of stress for women. She talks about the eight essential elements of rest, the definition of true rest, self care and soul care, and then I get her to tell us her not-guilty-at-all beach read pleasure. Feeling tired and stressed? Listen in and lighten up.

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Mar 13, 2018

Spring has sprung, or at least it should spring sometime in the next month or two depending on where you live, and today I've brought back my friend Kari Sowers to teach us how to lighten up about gardening. I do not do that thing, but Kari explains everything a beginner needs to know for starting a garden and overcoming our fear of killing plants. And I share my story of vermiculture worm genocide. Oh, also, Kari helps me understand sexually impotent neutered GMO seeds, I talk about plant sex, and in this one half hour episode I somehow managed to say "gonads" twice. So there's something in here for everyone. Whether you have a green thumb or thumb your nose at the outdoors like I do, listen in and lighten up!

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Kari Sowers is an Intellectual Property attorney turned non-profit justice worker turned stay at home mom to three fantastic daughters. She lives in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and strongly believes that each person is created to be creative. Her gardening past includes snapping beans with her grandma, roof top gardening in downtown Los Angeles, directing a community garden in Portland, Oregon and now backyard "micro-farming" in the Show-Me State. Hang out with Kari online @KariSowers on Instagram and Twitter.

Mar 6, 2018

Today I'm talking with Kate Motaung about how she moved to South Africa and fell in love...with South Africa and her husband. She shares her story of living in South Africa, raising kids cross culturally, being in an interracial relationship in post-apartheid South Africa, and finding laughter in the midst of her mom's cancer. Then we talk about her writer's group Five Minute Friday and her new memoir, A Place to Land. You are going to love Kate and her fascinating story, so listen in and lighten up!

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