The Primer

Hi. Hi. Welcome to Mindful Poly. Yeah. This is the primer episode. Our very first one. Woo. Well, it doesn't have to be the first one, but it's the explainer episode. Yeah. Okay. That's more accurate. So, this podcast, we're kind of picturing as a fun conversational exploration of poly and relationships and philosophy and all that stuff. We're kind of picturing as a fun conversational exploration of poly and relationships and philosophy and all sorts of fun things because that's our jam.

Yeah. We love talking about this stuff. Right. Absolutely. And have had so much fun over the years that we've been together talking about these things that it inspired us to start putting it to a microphone, putting it to recording. Yeah. So, maybe you're into this too. Maybe there are other people out there that are just geeked out about this stuff as we are and it'd be really fun to find them. I sure hope so. But that's future episode stuff.

For right now, we just want to talk to you about what this is going to be like. Yeah. A little background about us and what we're trying to do here and what we're hoping to achieve. Yes. Yeah. So. So, I am Fox. I have been poly for about seven years. I'm an artist, a musician. I am active in my local community. I do moderating of some forums and mentorship if it's requested. And I'm just into this stuff. I'm into talking about relationships. Yeah. We love talking about this. Both of us.

How do people work? What makes them think and feel the way they do? Yeah. And also, I'm a really big deconstructionist of current monogamous cultural societal teachings like all of our- Are norms or taboos? Yeah. Where these rules, these patterns come from. It's just so fascinating. Yeah. And I really get into it and I want to share it.

Cool. Well, I'm Nova. I've been poly for, I'm going to, I just keep throwing out about 10 years, we'll say, because I've definitely been non-monogamous for longer, maybe closer to 15, but somewhere in there, embracing the actual poly term. And so I've been around for what feels like an evolution of poly over time. It's changed and evolved. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's a lot more resources and a lot different ways of thinking about and understanding feelings.

So I sometimes am part of a panel at a local university. They do on different alternative sexualities. So I'm on their polyamory panel. That's been really fun for college students. Wonderful. In a sexuality class. That is one of the coolest things I think you do actually. Yeah, that's really fun. And then the other thing I've done, I did a presentation, which is part of where the mindful poly name came from.

I did a presentation at a polyamory conference about mindfulness and meditation and how those can intersect with poly and kind of help you with the big feels that come along with being poly. Yeah. I got so much out of your mindful poly talk. So yeah, and I will definitely be exploring that on one of our episodes. We'll dive into some mindfulness and meditation and the intersection there with how it can help with poly.

Another future episode teaser. Yes. Yes. We have a lot of ideas. We've got sort of some big topic areas that we know we want to explore. Like big feels. There's going to be a lot in there. Relationship dynamics. We'll be talking about doing episodes on all kinds of different structures, the forms different these relationships can take. We'll be doing some community focused episodes like support structures, future planning, you know, like there's so many cool episode ideas that we have coming up.

Yeah. We just keep coming up with more. We have a huge list. And we'd love to hear more too. Even though we have a big list and we're excited about them all, we'd love to hear feedback about what listeners would like to hear us talk about and what they're excited about and what they're thinking about. Yeah. Or even just challenges on things we talked about in the episode if you feel like maybe we didn't tackle a topic in the best way or we hadn't considered a different perspective or Please.

Yeah. I think that would be wonderful. Yeah. I would even love it if that was a regular segment on our episodes. Yeah, totally. Be like not a mea culpa, but more like a, you know, like, so here's what we got wrong last time. Yeah, totally. Or not even wrong, but maybe like hadn't didn't fully cover or didn't consider in the way that we covered. Clarifications, yeah. Or leave room for.

Sure. So speaking of, our website is mindfulpoly.com. Yes. So we're going to have our email addresses listed there and we would love to hear feedback. Yep. Please do. We'll probably remind you occasionally in the episodes as well. Or invite you or ask you to share your side of a particular topic. Exactly. Respond in the comments below. Yeah, right. How do you feel about this? The other thing that we'll have on the website is going to be a list of resources.

So we considered using this primer episode as an opportunity to provide some definitions for terms that are used a lot in poly. Just in case we have listeners that are just, you know, have never heard metamor or compersion or, you know, those kinds of things. Kitchen table. Yeah. Kitchen table. Oh yeah. That's where I eat, right? You put KTP on the outline and I was like, what is that?

But instead of going through and trying to define all those, we kind of figured it'd be a little more efficient to just encourage you if you're new to that and you want to explore those, just go check out our website. We'll have links to other resources. There's a lot of good ones out there. I think even what we're going to get into is that some of those terms are not set in stone, you know.

They're evolving and changing and, you know, some people might think of kitchen table poly one way and we might think of it another. So that's even another layer to all of this is like we could offer a definition but it's not like there's one definition. It's not definitive. Yeah.

So. We're not authorities. All right. So another thing that you should know about our show is we use nicknames for the various people in our life. This was chosen to protect the privacy because we may be talking about a topic. I mean, our primary focus will be on discussing a topic, but we may be able to illuminate on our thinking by sharing personal stories that is like this is where I'm coming from when I think about this.

Yeah. Yeah. I think personal stories add like a little spice to the story. You know, like if we were just like talking about everything from a flat like perspective of like this is the textbook definition, then you're kind of missing out on something. And we've part of why we're sharing our experiences because we have had lots of experiences and we've talked to lots of people who have lots of experiences and we're hoping to bring some of that to the podcast.

And so yeah, so the nicknames are not just to protect privacy. They're also like if that person's not here and not present and not able to share their part of what's happening, we don't want them to necessarily be named or called out. Without a chance to express what their experience of that same thing was like. So we're going to be sharing everything from our perspective and our perspective is going to be based in nicknames.

If we ever bring people on the show who we've talked about, they will have the opportunity to decide if they want to offer their real names or offer a different nickname or whatever they want to do. In a lot of cases, these nicknames were chosen by the people themselves. Yes. So my favorite story about the nicknames is that we've chosen to use nicknames that are all based in music, so musicians or it's largely musicians.

And when we first started doing it, we were coming up with names and then we asked, we just started sharing back and forth what they would be. And then we reached out to the people in our lives and said, what do you think about this nickname? And they all got so excited about picking their own names. But my favorite part was not just even that, because that was glorious. But that was my favorite part is that none of them were like, well, what you're going to talk about me in a podcast?

I don't know. Like, what are you going to say about me? Or I don't know how to feel. All of them were just like, oh, oh, I want to be so and so. Well, yeah, you can be that. Yeah. And I felt so trusted. Yeah. Trusted and supported for sure. People are excited that we're doing this. Yeah, that felt good. Yeah, that felt really good. Oh, yeah. So I mean, Nova's going to do all our editing. That's one of the reasons why I was excited to start this. I just want an editor.

You know, I don't want a podcast where we talk for a half hour and 10 percent of it is usable. Yeah. Our goal is to keep these short, sweet, but fun and playful. So that's our show. Yeah, or at least our primer. Yep. We hope you have now a better idea of what you're getting into with our show.

Thanks for coming. I hope you had fun. Yeah, we did. I did. I definitely did. Oh, well, I guess the only other thing to bring up is sometimes our episodes might bring up some heavy topics, some big feels, some considerations. And so I don't know, I think a sign off that we'd like to bring up is to share a little story. Let's tell the story that leads to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were having drinks and it was a little busy. You could tell our server was a bit stressed.

Yeah, which is always rough. And then she brought our drinks finally and then just accidentally, oops, dropped one, spilled everywhere. Huge mess. It happens. It does. Yeah, and so we were just totally chill about it. I think she was concerned. We were fine. It's like, it's okay. It's just a drink and you just bring it on. Yeah, and then she kind of was too.

She had this moment of like, I felt like she kind of paused and gave herself some compassion and the line she delivered has stuck with us ever since, which is I'm just a spirit having a human experience and we're like, damn. Deep. Oh yeah. Nice. Yeah, so are we. So are we. Love it. Love that kind of self-compassion. Yeah, so we use that on ourselves often.

If you're at the end of any of our episodes, if you're caught in some feels or kind of like applying some of the things we're talking about to your own life and sorting it all out and just remember that you're having a human experience. We're just human. Yeah, we're all just human. So having a human experience. Yeah. We're only human. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah. You don't have to be perfect. You can feel the difficult things. Perfect would actually be a bit boring. I hope that you aren't perfect.

Honest. Honest. I hope you're a mess. No, okay. Okay, okay, okay. That's right. I mean, obviously it's a good thing to try to train ourselves out of the black or white thinking like, well, if you're not perfect, then you must be horrible. Yeah. Like, anyway. I'm only human. Yeah. That's fine. Yeah. I'm so happy to be here. You are. Yeah. You're so cute to be here. It's nice to see you. It's nice to see you too. And you listener. Welcome back. They're always the best looking ones in the room.

I mean, we have the best audience. I know. Dapper AF. Oh, I get so shy around them. I admire them so much. Such cuties. Yes. I'm all nervous. Follow Twitter.