Only 9 months ago now, I was leaving a psychiatric hospital, the moment in my life that inspired me to create this podcast. The laughter and the joy during these months on Let Perfect Burn were moments where my depression lightened, because I felt full- I was having these intimate, rewarding conversations with my guests.

These women on the show were real, they were vulnerable, they were raw, they were gracious, they were funny, they made me laugh (hard) and they made me feel so very alive every single time I stepped in studio.

And while we say goodbye (just for now) I want to leave you with every guest from Season 1 reminding us that when you let perfect burn, what’s left can be really, really, beautiful.

Teddy Frank is a Licensed Master Social Worker, a Reichian Psychotherapist with a love for leadership facilitation and coaching in the corporate arena. Teddy works locally with scientists from Colorado State University that are looking at diversity, equity, justice, and inclusion within academia. Teddy works with collective trauma healing and ancestral healing, including her own, on what she names “The Hera’s Journey.” Throughout the recording of her Let Perfect Burn episode, I kept thinking, “She does THAT too?” Teddy’s passions are boundless, her convictions pure and fiery and her quest to understand and intuit humanity is unlike any other person’s I have experienced in my lifetime.

Teddy grew up in a tumultuous and violent family where there was sexual abuse. But for Teddy, her homelife didn’t sink her, it activated her. “My awakening was at the age of 19 with the women’s movement. I mean, the feminist movement was in full swing. And I became a leader of grassroots community organizing, leading the whole on sexual crimes against women.”

Teddy is a healer by nature and so she couldn’t pass up the opportunity for us to be in dialogue together for this episode, creating a safe and grounded place for me to take a step toward. “I’m different than you, Tara, but you are also in me, and I am also in you.” We spoke about being a woman and a mother and that in society, staying good and staying quiet often leads to a wider acceptance. Daring to express pain and speaking truth to trauma rocks the boat, but it is an act that Teddy describes as ‘an awakening’ which is born out of “feeling the pain of not conforming, of questioning worth and value.”

And what was so moving was that after speaking with Teddy, I started to realize that my ‘falling apart’ was something so universal to being human and that my strength to buck the norm of the ‘perfect woman’ was dare I say it, heroic.

By the end of Teddy’s beautiful interview, I started using different words to speak to my mental health crisis, my hospitalization and my falling apart.

“I am on the Hera’s journey, and I have had an awakening that has irrevocably changed my life.”

Highlights from Teddy:

"I remember five years old, my mother was very depressed. And I was sitting at the kitchen table across from her, and she was looking off to the side. And I looked directly at her and I said, 'Mommy, are you mad at me?' And she brought her gaze back, and she said, now finally resting in my eyes, 'No, honey, why would you think that?' And I said, 'I can't see myself in your eyes.' And in that moment, my five year old wisdom self said, 'My mom is not available to me.' And that's when we start to say, 'Okay, I need to take care of myself.'"

"So in a moment, our nervous systems get wired for survival and says, 'It's not okay to express my needs.' And so we develop these patterns that become the cracks in our psyche, the shadows in our soul. And that's what we then ride upon as nice girls, or as high performers in the world. Or, as you know, the sort of conforming to the female notion, which changes culturally but by Western dominant male standard says, 'You don't express your needs too strongly, because then you're aggressive. She's aggressive, she's angry.'"

Don't Miss a Beat.

My Website, Let Perfect Burn:
https://letperfectburn.com/

Follow my Instagram for news from me, Tara Beckett:
https://www.instagram.com/letperfectburn/

Connect With Teddy Frank:

Her Website:
https://www.humanenergetics.com/

Her LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/teddyfrank/

In this episode, I sit down with Christine Hamel, an artist, educator and author the book, Sounding Bodies: Identity, Injustice, and the Voice. Before she landed where she is, she studied art, critical theory, English, classical voice, and opera. She was even the first website designer for the Independent Film Channel. But at this moment, Christine feels like it may be time to knock it all down. “It’s getting to the point where I feel like just because I’ve found success or that people want me to do certain things, doesn’t mean I have to keep doing them. I really feel like it just needs to all fall apart.”

Christine thinks about her current life as petals needing to fall away to expose the core. Those petals may be hiding something bigger. She tells us that since the pandemic and since being in her later 40s, she just keeps asking, “Did I get a chance to try this thing? Did I get a chance to take a deep dive into that aspect of life that I found really meaningful or joyful? And did I do enough? Did I do enough good to alleviate suffering? Did I do enough to care for others?”

As the mother of a trans child, Christine must grapple with how to keep her child safe: “We are absolutely terrified about the world right now and absolutely terrified about what’s going on with anti-trans sentiment and legislation. We live in this fairly liberal community, but it’s not progressive in the ways that there’s definitely space to feel safe.”

For Christine, grieving is what letting perfect burn means for her. “It’s like a little bit of the Phoenix. It’s that sense of, “why hold on to that?” There’s time for other things now, but not for that."

Highlights from Christine:

"I'm ready to let go of some things. The pandemic was a catalyst for this understanding, which is that I don't need to do everything all at once. I'm tired of trying to hold up too many projects and too many obligations. And hopefully, I have another half of my life left, but when I really look at it, I think there are still things that I would like to be able to learn to do that I haven't done, or where I feel like I want to double down on things that actually feel like I'm making a difference in people's lives in a new way, in a profound or different and more, maybe more tangible way. "

"With the voice, we often use the word natural, as I mentioned, so our whole premise is just that our voices can't exist outside of culture, and they can't exist outside of politics and they're filled with identity, and that's a really good thing. And so, just to even conceptualize stripping the voice of markers of identity, like your race, and class, or ethnicity, or gender, to get to something neutral or natural underneath can do real harm."

"I think what I would like people to know is that it's really their issue if they can't interpret or understand gender diversity. Our kid, even if they are in a process of becoming, or iterating, who they are going to be, they also know themselves— they know what they need to be and they get it. It may not be fully defined, but their inner being is in a process that feels good and whole, and that the way you may be receiving our kid is really your own issue to work out."

Don't Miss a Beat.
Follow my Instagram for news from me, Tara Beckett:
https://www.instagram.com/letperfectburn/

Follow Christine Hamel on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/chwoodberry/

In this episode, I sit down with actor, singer, musician & songwriter, Eleri Ward. And if you have been listening to Let Perfect Burn, then you have heard Eleri's incredible voice and her soulful original music.

This summer, Eleri is opening for Josh Groban for his "Harmony Tour". Her signature indie-folk sound is most notable on her album A Perfect Little Death. This album was produced by Ghostlight Records, and features Eleri’s covers of Stephen Sondheim classics. In speaking about her amazing upcoming summer adventure, Eleri says, “I’m going to be doing this alone with the guitar, but in front of thousands of people. I’m freaked out. But also, excited AF about it.”

The genesis of A Perfect Little Death came during Covid. Eleri took to her walk-in closet and created an arrangement of the Sondheim song that she couldn’t get out of her head. Her Joanna Reprise arrangement and homemade video was created the next day, and before long, her social media posts took off. Over the course of a month, she recorded all 13 songs to create the album. She had a friend mix and master it. She took a Polaroid of herself holding a guitar for the album. She says, “When something is truly raw and organic, you can feel it. And I can’t help but wonder if that’s the thing that people have responded to.”

Eleri uses her reach to encourage others to put their work into the world and to make art from their authentic selves. “There’s something about people continuing and truly putting themselves out there, even if it’s uncomfortable or no one’s watching. Because you don’t know what can happen to that work that you put out years from now.”

Highlights from Eleri:

"It can be hard for me to let go and just trust that the audience's reaction is the truth versus my own inner experience that no one else is seeing. And I'm just I'm really, really hard on myself. And I'm working on not being so hard on myself. But it's definitely a double edged sword, because it's like, that clearly has worked for me in terms of working hard and being the best that I can possibly be."

"And it's like, jeez girl, give yourself a break—you're a human being. And they gave you a standing O, and that should be reason enough to ease up on yourself and believe that the imperfections of that performance gave them a special experience that they'll never get if they watch a video."

"A lot of the time as an artist, you don't even realize the gifts that you're giving people. And that is a really beautiful thing. I can't stress enough how important it is to me for people to fearlessly and continuously put their work out there. Because that is a gift they are giving, even if they have no idea they are giving it to somebody."

Don't Miss a Beat.
Follow my Instagram for news from me, Tara Beckett:
https://www.instagram.com/letperfectburn/

Listen to All of Eleri Ward's Music & Catch Her Shows:
https://www.instagram.com/eleriward/

In this episode, I talk with Artist, Musician and Educator, Paige Clark Perkinson. Paige was a working actor, when she decided to start her family. She talks about her struggles with anxiety and depression while her son was still in her belly, and how after he was born, she found herself questioning if the decision to create a family meant that parts of her would have to disappear. “Things were fine for a while. And then it came time to get back in the game and start acting again. And then there was this whole piece of guilt about where I spent my time. And I felt there was this resistance of my identity being limited to only a mother from then on. I had to say that I was an actor. I am an artist. How dare you? I got really defensive for a while.”

Paige talks about raising her son, who is one quarter Korean, when both she and her mother weren’t raised in the Korean culture. “It’s been a weird experience to be singled out and excluded for something that I really don’t feel a part of. I don’t get the benefits of being part of a community. But I get the detriments of being excluded, because I look like I’m part of that community.”

What started as Paige’s “day job” working as an arts educator, has now become her primary focus. She is still an artist, she is still an actor, she is still a musician, but they have moved to the background of her life. She loves her students, she loves her job, but she acknowledges the little deaths she has had to go through in her life. “I am mourning expectations, mourning the loss of these hopes. That’s definitely how I would describe even my reaction to wanting a girl but having a boy. I was mourning the expectation. And I will be happy about what I do get. But first I need to mourn the change.”

Highlights from Paige:

"Whether it's at nine in the morning, and they're asleep or it's at eight o'clock at night, when we're in tech rehearsal and tensions are running high, I think about using my powers for good. Theater tips over into the realm of non-academic. It gets really personal and emotional and I thrive on being there for them. I gives me purpose, it gives me meaning."

"So that's how I'm approaching having a quarter racial, Korean son— helping him notice the differences in other kids around him. We live in a diverse neighborhood, I think, and in the summertime, he'll say, 'Oh their skin is brown' and I will tell him that yes, some people's skin is brown, some is peach, some is very dark and that is all okay."

"I wish at 18 I had believed that. I wish I could have stood in my own beauty and my own power at that age. Saying it now, I think I'm definitely trying to more mindfully do that for myself. I am 35. I weigh more now than I did when I was 18. But I can still say, "You're beautiful. You're enough. You look great. "

Don't Miss a Beat.
Follow my Instagram for news from me, Tara Beckett:
https://www.instagram.com/letperfectburn/

Paige Clark Perkinson on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/vpclark/

Original Music for Let Perfect Burn by Eleri Ward
https://www.instagram.com/eleriward/

In this episode, I sit down with Emily Krempholtz, a writer, creator, and an all-around amazing human that I have the pleasure of calling my book coach as I write my memoir. In her interview, she takes us through her life going from doing what she thought she should, to now doing what she loves. “I knew that writing books was what I wanted to do for a living. I knew that working with stories was what I wanted to be when I grew up. And even knowing that, it took me a really long time. I let a lot of people talk me into going to college for a major that was a lot more practical than what I wanted to be doing, which was creative writing.”

Emily believes in the magic of the world, infusing it into her books and passion projects while also acknowledging the need to pay the bills with her non-fiction work. While her work that pays the bills is compartmentalized in one half of her brain, her creative work is where her heart lies. “And it’s hard, you know. You put your book out there to say, “here is a little piece of my soul, I’m giving it to you,” and then to have someone come back and say, “no thanks, this isn’t for me.”

Inevitably, pieces of Emily’s life became woven into her novels and she shares how important it is for writers to give themselves the grace of being a human being. “So suddenly I was writing a book about grief when I was kind of actively grieving and that was really difficult. And so I poured a lot of that emotion into this book and then I also had to put it down for a little while. And that's something I think not enough writers talk about is sometimes, you know, it's okay to set something aside.”

Highlights from Emily:

“I think we have these points where, in a perfect world, we'd be able to go back and edit our lives and edit the way we did things in the past, but we don't have that. We are slaves to time in the real world in a way that we aren't when we're writing. And being able to take the hindsight, to take the lessons that we learned from that first draft of our lives, and take that breaking point and say, okay.”

“There is no one right way to write a book. There's no one right way to do something. There's a lot of different schools of thought about how to create a book, because it is, it's this huge thing. It is multi-dimensional, it is complex, and when done right, you should never be able to just sit down and spit out a book without, and say, okay, this is perfect. This is exactly what I intended it to be.”

“Let Perfect Burn means abandoning those shoulds—abandoning that sense of this is what I'm supposed to be doing to get to where I am, focusing on the things that you can control and saying fuck it to the rest.”

Don't Miss a Beat.
Follow my Instagram for news from me, Tara Beckett:
https://www.instagram.com/letperfectburn/


Emily’s Website:
https://emilykrempholtz.com/

In this episode, I sit down with the wildly funny, authentic-as-hell Michelle Cove, the Senior Communications Manager for Experience Camps for Grieving Children. When Michelle was 20 years old, she lost her father. She continued by living in a state of shock, until 12 years later, she fell apart. She was in a loving, supportive marriage with a young child, and the trauma of her young adulthood hit hard. “It threw me because I didn’t know why. And the reason why was that I was safe. I was in a stable place, all around me. There were signs that said it’s okay now to fall apart.”

Michelle takes us on her journey that led to her current professional role as the Senior Communications Manager for Experience Camps for Grieving Children. The campers are young people who have lost a parent or parent figure or a sibling. With Covid, Michelle has seen even more applications for campers whose loved one has died of overdose or suicide, the pandemic making life, especially in communities of color, impossible, exacerbated by the lack of mental health access.

Michelle brings her life experience to her organization in her daily work, getting the word out about the camp, amongst other missions. She focuses on education for supporting those grieving: “If we are talking about grief, or if we’re talking about depression or anxiety or anybody facing any adversity— just sitting with them, not trying to fix it, or give them your wisdom. Nobody needs your advice. Just, ‘that sounds hard.’ Or, ‘I want to hear what it’s like for you.’ Or, ‘I’m just listening.’”

Highlights from Michelle:

"And I realized that Goddammit, there were gifts from the death of my Dad. And the biggest one was I don't take time for granted."

"You're valuable just because you're valuable. You're worthwhile because you're you. And everything after that is just extensions of what you want to put out into the world. And it's such a different way to live when you really get that."

"I think authenticity is the hottest thing in the world. People showing you who they really are— take me or leave me. This is me. I don't know what's better than that. I love showing up that way and I love it in other people. It's the thing I find the most attractive."

Don't Miss a Beat.
Follow my Instagram for news from me, Tara Beckett:
https://www.instagram.com/letperfectburn/

Learn more about Michelle Cove:
http://www.michellecove.com/

Experience Camps for Grieving Children:
https://experiencecamps.org/

Original Music for Let Perfect Burn by Eleri Ward
https://www.instagram.com/eleriward/

Comedian Antonia Lassar self-identifies as 60% Jewish, 30% Chronic Illness and 10% Bisexual chaos and recently their standup addressed embracing the term disabled. “Prior to this, I was like, ‘Yes, I’m exhausted all the time. Yes, when I lie down, I choke on my own stomach acid. Yes, I don’t poop.’ But that’s not because I’m sick. I was like, ‘That’s because I am morally inferior.’”

During this set, Antonia’s crowd laughed, but Antonia shines in their ability to take truth and push the envelope one more time. “And I know that you might hear all those symptoms and be like, ‘Obviously that’s an illness and not moral decay’ but you are seriously understanding my Jewish capacity for self-blame. Okay, I’m like, ‘What about my diet and lifestyle caused the Holocaust?’”

Before coming to LA to focus on their career as a comedian, Antonia toured college campuses addressing sexual assault with their work, Post Traumatic Super Delightful. Antonia is a victim of sexual assault and in their work they utilize comedy to challenge the expectations of the perfect survivor. “Trustworthiness is big. They need to have the education level that we believe that they are trustworthy enough to actually speak accurately about their experience. And a lot of my work really dives into this critique of our expectations of the perfect survivor.”

In their interview, Antonia takes us through the challenging, and sometimes devastating, path to create art after falling apart. “Suddenly, my body totally broke down and it was, to me, a message from the heavens being like, all right, this has gone on long enough. You're literally killing your body at this point. You need to get your art back together.”

Highlights from Antonia:

“For some artists and for some people like me who's mental health, when it deteriorates, it manifests as me stopping to produce. But just getting art and writing out of me is a health behavior. It keeps me healthy to keep getting art out of me. Also, physically, like when I'm unhealthy, I can't poop. You know, they feel very tied in my body. It's like, I've got to get my art out. I've got to get my shit out. It's all got to come out.”

“So, I mean, it was crazy. It was such an unusual experience to watch your body stop working, you know? And I started getting so malnourished, because I literally wasn't able to eat food over two years, that's how long this took. But I finally got to the point where I felt ready to put my work out into the world. I have been putting a lot of sketches and comedy content out on social media, which to the outside observer, I think just looks like any regular comedian putting sketches on social media. But for me, it's like the tail end of this epic healing journey. And, it's a really important step and it's been really healing just to finally get it out.”

“I just moved to LA which is also a big part of this journey. I moved to LA to fully invest in my career as a comedian and it's so exciting and also as soon as I got here, all of my physical and mental health flared up and I immediately felt all the old patterns come back. You know, not wanting to create, not wanting to put myself out there as well as just physically having a hard time. So, it is not linear. All these things are because I took this big next step on the path. It triggered this big kind of backslide. Yeah, it's not like a clean and simple process. It's taking a long time.”

Don't Miss a Beat.

Follow my Instagram for news from me, Tara Beckett:
https://www.instagram.com/letperfectburn/

And my Website:
letperfectburn.com

Follow Antonia Here:
https://linktr.ee/antonialastar