Shit We Don't Talk About

Ep. 89 - Women's Health and the Current Regime - Halley Kim

• Mia Voss • Episode 89

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From the dangerous realities of America's maternal healthcare system to the surprising origins of the anti-abortion movement, this episode with Halley Kim exposes truths about women's health that demand our attention.

Halley brings a uniquely powerful perspective as a former evangelical pastor's wife, registered nurse, doula, and lactation consultant who has witnessed firsthand the dangers women face during pregnancy and childbirth. Her harrowing account of watching a doula client die in the immediate postpartum period illustrates what statistics confirm: America has the worst maternal mortality rate among all developed nations despite spending the most on healthcare, with Black women facing 3-5 times higher risk than white women.

The conversation examines how current abortion bans are creating deadly situations for women with pregnancy complications, including cases where women are being criminalized for miscarriages. "Women are not being believed," Mia notes, referencing how even tennis star Serena Williams nearly died in childbirth because medical professionals dismissed her concerns—a problem that affects women of color at alarming rates.

Most eye-opening is the revelation about the strategic adoption of abortion as a political cause. As Halley explains, evangelical Christians didn't always focus on abortion until the "moral majority" needed a more palatable issue than opposing school desegregation. "It was never about abortion for the moral majority," she reveals. "It was about white supremacy." This historical context helps explain the disconnect between professed "pro-life" values and policies that endanger women's lives.

Despite the gravity of these topics, the episode offers pathways for hope and action. From supporting mutual aid networks to engaging in local politics and raising socially conscious children, Halley and Mia emphasize that individual actions matter. As fascism threatens democratic principles and Project 2025 looms, they remind listeners that staying informed and engaged is not optional—it's essential for protecting human rights.

Follow Halley @maybe_gods_a_midwife on Instagram for more insights on women's health, religious deconstruction, and social justice. This conversation represents the start of an important series you won't want to miss.

More about Halley:

Halley Kim is a writer and freelance editor in St. Louis, MO. Sheʼs also a former evangelical pastorʼs wife turned leftist heretic. In her nursing career she worked primarily with mothers and babies, also taking on the roles of doula, lactation consultant, midwifeʼs assistant, and educator. Halley spent a stint working in pastoral ministry herself within a progressive denomination (United Church of Christ). Halley is currently writing a book about power dynamics and Christianity, where she argues that a power-WITH God, such as a midwife, would have a dramatically more positive effect on society than the power-OVER God weʼve inherited. She and her husband Simon have three children, Gabriel, Phoebe, and Tabitha, and one fur-baby, Bruno. You can access her work on Instagram @maybe_gods_a_midwife or on Substack @halleywkim



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Mia Voss:

Hey, welcome to the latest episode of Shit. We Don't Talk About the podcast that takes on topics that need more open and honest discussion, which means some of these topics are triggering. So please take care when listening and I'll always give you a trigger warning. For instance, here's one Every episode contains swear words. You've been warned.

Mia Voss:

Make sure to check out the show notes, which include an accessibility transcript of the podcast and all of the links for our guests at shitwedontalkaboutpodcastcom of ours. My guest in this episode is Hallie Kim. She's also known as maybe God's a midwife on Instagram, which I love. She's a writer, evangelical heretic, former evangelical pastor's wife, sometimes a preacher, nurse, doula, lactation consultant and more. In this episode, we talk about women's health, maternal mortality rates and more, and this is the start of several episodes with Hallie.

Mia Voss:

So tune in. It gets good and feisty. Hi, hallie, I'm so happy to be here. I am so happy you're here as well, too. We're going to jump into identifiers and then we are starting off a series. So get ready, because I got introduced to Hallie through my cousin and once we started talking about all the different things that fire her up, that fire me up, we knew it would be a series. So I'm Mia Voss. I'm a blonde, 60 year old, white woman wearing a blue sweater, and I'm having a hot flash right now. So there you go. How about you Tell us about what you look like?

Halley Kim:

I'm Hallie Kim. I have a salt and pepper pixie haircut. I wear glasses. I'm currently wearing a gray hoodie and like a gingham hair tie.

Mia Voss:

I love everything behind you as well too. If you look, hallie has just a wonderful spread of different family photos which I think just like kind of loops into what we're going to talk about today, as well as family and what's going on with that crazy Christian right and how they're trying to mess everything up Yep.

Halley Kim:

I used to be a pastor's wife in within, like the evangelical church, which, as is common knowledge now, evangelicalism is a huge part of the reason why Trump was elected both times and continues to back this man, despite him being completely antithetical to everything Jesus taught. Completely antithetical to everything Jesus taught, and one of the ways that he continues to attack the populace is in terms of women's bodies and what happens to us.

Mia Voss:

I saw a really interesting meme or quote the other day and it said it's so bizarre that women's rights vary by state but men's don't. I feel like we can just hang up the phone right now, right, that kind of says it all, that kind of says it all.

Halley Kim:

And you know what, mia, I'm extra mad about this right now because I live in Missouri and Missouri just overturned the will of our voters regarding abortion rights. We voted just in November to reject an abortion ban and then our state legislature a couple of days ago was like no, we're not really a democracy, we don't want you to have control over your own body. We're going to keep that control, so nevermind band's back on.

Mia Voss:

That's been one of the most stunning things I've seen, and that's saying a lot, because there seems to be a new assault on democracy and our rights. But I was so excited for Missouri and there's a woman I follow named Piper, from Missouri. She had run for office. I fucking love her so much. Jess Piper is amazing yes, jess Piper from Missouri, and so she's really covered it a lot as well too. And the audacity of saying we don't like what you came up with as voters, too fucking bad. I swear a lot too, but I mean that especially so that really does loop into what we're talking about, because in saying that, I think that Christians love to wrap up their convenience of their ideas with well, this is what Jesus would have, and he wants to protect the children and the babies. I'm like no, you're very much pro-giving birth, but nothing to do with the care of the mother and maternal death rates.

Mia Voss:

And this is just why white women is high, let alone just in general.

Halley Kim:

Oh right, it's so much worse for women of color, and they're not even pro-children, they're only pro-birth. I mean, we are now seeing ICE agents zip tie children. For you know, quote unquote, deportation, really trafficking.

Mia Voss:

And taking away the legal rights too, because now they've got two, three, four-year-olds, I mean, yeah, this is no joke of like sitting there like trying to advocate for themselves because they've taken that away. So you're absolutely right, it is all about the pro-birth, but tell me what you feel like. Is this because of the lowering of the birth rates for white babies? Isn't it the lowering of the birth rates?

Halley Kim:

for white babies, isn't it? Yes, that's a blatant answer, because it's. I mean, there's just no way around it.

Mia Voss:

I mean that's true and I'm not, I'm saying in that like this is literally what, that, what they've said. I mean I believe JD Vance has been pretty obvious about that.

Halley Kim:

Oh yeah, and it was like you know, we'll pay you five grand if you'll have another baby, and just, I mean it's, it's so misogynistic and insulting. And yes, this is about the white supremacist fear of being you know, quote, unquote taken over. And you know, quote, unquote taken over. And you know America not being a majority white nation anymore, god forbid. And you know something about the anti-abortion crusade that is especially toxic. Is this idea that you know that there's like this co-option that's happened of Black Lives Matter, like well, you know the black baby. Like this co-option that's happened of Black Lives Matter, like, well, you know the black baby in the womb matters, like who's thinking about her. And it's so gross because it is actually parenting that has been that black women have been deprived of, like that, they have been told that they're, you know, unworthy of being mothers and have been sterilized without their consent and sadly, that is something that is still happening. So this idea, yeah, go ahead.

Mia Voss:

It's a hidden part of history, from what I understand as well too. The sterilization there I believe there's a really awful phrase for it as as well too, and I'll I'll have to look it up. That's something from the South of, like a Mississippi appendectomy or something like that that they had used to to sterilize women. So it's very convenient, and I know it feels like this podcast is just ranting, and I know that's what I do a lot too, but we need to kind of get this out of the truths that are out there, because I think that's the hardest part is is it's been couched and you know also with with social media and the way our news is being presented. A lot of what we're saying, you and I see it a lot because of our algorithm, but I think a lot of people aren't realizing that because it's so awful.

Halley Kim:

It is so awful. And in addition to my background being a pastor's wife, I'm also a registered nurse. I worked as a doula and a lactation consultant. I assisted midwives with births. So I've been in the hospital setting birth centers, home births. I've been around reproduction a lot, it's no joke.

Halley Kim:

I had a doula client, mia, who died in her immediate postpartum. Her baby was born still and then her uterus ruptured. That's what contributed to her baby's death. And then she I saw the life go out from her eyes. I called a code this. I mean she was, like you know, in her early 30s. And you know they want to tell us that abortion is so dangerous. No, pregnancy and childbirth are much more dangerous. My client was a white woman, but Black women are at a much higher risk of maternal mortality than white women three to five times higher. And just in general, you know we assume that, oh, it's America, we have great healthcare. I mean I don't know if we're really assuming that anymore. It's gotten pretty bad. But in general most people walking around aren't thinking that they might die in childbirth in America. But in reality we have the worst maternal mortality rate of all developed nations, despite spending the most money.

Mia Voss:

And that's why we call this the shit we don't talk about podcast. There are these misnomers and myths and things that are convenient for people to believe as well too, and this is why I love having these conversations, one with women who are mothers, or people who are mothers and not having children. I think there's just so much because I haven't been through that experience and I haven't had anyone who's necessarily been that close to the mortality, at least that I know of, that. I know of a lot of people, but I haven't had it in my immediate proximity in the recent especially, being a woman in menopause now. But I think it's so interesting how it's been fed to us that it's just this natural thing and things just kind of just pop along and everything's going great.

Mia Voss:

And then I did do a series on birth and death doulas and it was very, very eye-opening to me, and this was two and a half years ago, so this is before this current regime started, which really changed up, and maybe talk a little bit about that from your experience, holly, and how it was dangerous before when this happened, let alone in this current environment where women are not believed and I'll pop this in here too Think about Serena Williams I mean one of the most famous women and athletes in America and her husband, her white husband, had to advocate for her because they weren't listening to her and she's saying something is wrong and she almost died in childbirth Unbelievable.

Halley Kim:

Yes, she almost died in childbirth. She very easily could have died if her husband hadn't advocated for her because, like you just said, she was not being listened to. And this, you know, has very deep roots with this thinking that you know that Black women don't really experience pain as much as white women do and they're like you know, they're tough, which comes from slavery and Black women being breeders. It's abhorrent and continues to contribute to this idea that Black women are exaggerating their medical experiences when in fact they're human like all of us. And in terms of the danger under this second Trump regime, under this second Trump regime, every day there is a new horror.

Halley Kim:

Women are dying all over the place. It's been particularly publicized in Texas. Texas, like pretty much the whole South, immediately enacted anti-abortion laws after Roe v Wade was overturned, and you know, hello GOP. If you would ever listen to women and actually learn something about the human body, the female human body, then you would know that pregnancy sometimes goes wrong and that interventions have to happen to save a woman's life. We are now seeing women being arrested for miscarrying.

Mia Voss:

That one breaks my heart, hallie. It really does when I see that, and you as a doula, and that you've been in the trenches of this. The grief, so you've got this compounded grief of going through your experience and then being criminalized for it. And you have, of course, the young woman that's being cocooned with the child in. I think it's in Georgia right now as well too. So it is pretty stunning how I think I saw like a GOP Senator that was testifying and do you remember this with the it, convinced that ectopic pregnancies could be salvaged, and I was like dude, get all the fuck out of the way out of here.

Mia Voss:

Like just stop talking. First of all, if you are not a physician, a physician that advocates for women, or literally own a uterus stop talking.

Halley Kim:

Wouldn't that be great if we could require that, like if you don't have a uterus, then just get the fuck out of here.

Mia Voss:

I literally have it on cut and paste. I feel like almost of like it's sit all the way down. If you don't own the equipment, that applies to this conversation.

Halley Kim:

Right and it's. It's sad in a way that that feels necessary, like you know it could be. You know, in an ideal world, like we would just be interested in each other's experiences, that men would just give a damn about what happens to women. But that's not the world we live in and it is getting worse and worse, with Trump running the show and these women being arrested for miscarriages. I had a miscarriage myself in a Walgreens bathroom. I walked out of the place covered in blood, people saw me and I'm a white woman, so nothing happened to me.

Halley Kim:

But if I had a different skin tone, you know, and it was now under this was over 10 years ago. But I mean this is the reality of being, of being someone who has a uterus. I mean you did this awesome episode about periods and there was discussion about, you know just the reality of like, of leaking and like the middle school thing of needing a sweater to tie around your waist, and I mean you know that is so commonplace. There's just no, I mean, with a miscarriage it's a whole lot more blood and there's just no cultural awareness that that is a reality and that we don't actually have control over when we're bleeding, how much. We're bleeding where the bleeding starts. I wouldn't have scripted it to be in a fucking Walgreens, but that's where I was.

Mia Voss:

Right, Right, and to have it again, a couple of different points on that too. One that you were able to this is a while ago and you were able to walk out of it, and so there's still the, I'm sure, the trauma that you carry from that experience just having only being in your isolated bubble, that even though it happened to you, you didn't have to pay any consequences for it, and now that's where we're at as well, too. Do you what? Give me some, even if it's conjecture or theories of what are some of the things you think that's led us to this much of a almost like a whiplash or a backlash of all the progress that we made from, let's say, from Obama coming into office, and even with Clinton being in office, we made a lot of progress, but do you have any theories, or any hypothetical especially being from a Christian background or having the religious background expound on that?

Halley Kim:

Yeah, I think the whiplash has several roots. I have several theories, one being that within conservative Christian culture, our life here on earth is minimized and heaven is emphasized. It's all about getting your ticket to heaven, getting saved by Jesus, and there is a lot of minimization on what is happening in the here and now. So you know. So who cares about climate change? And, yeah, you know, homelessness that's sad, but you know it's, it's everything is about after we die. So everyone's kind of just like eh about about what's happening right now.

Halley Kim:

And then, you know, part of the indoctrination in evangelical Christianity is that we're all wretched sinners and there's still a pervasive belief that what happens to people is deserved because they are, you know, reprobates and worms who are deserving of hell. We see this particularly within the queer and trans community. I mean just on the daily, you know. And it's Pride Month now, and I've already seen plenty of conservative Christians just going to town on their homophobia and their transphobia and saying that, essentially dehumanizing people. And you know, we know from slavery, from the Holocaust, from what we're seeing in Gaza right now, if you can dehumanize someone, then you can sleep at night while oppressing them, right. So if everyone's bad and deserves what happens to them. And if heaven and getting to heaven is all that really matters, then it becomes possible and even easy to not care about current reality.

Mia Voss:

Yeah, I know that was the noise that was me digesting that you just succinctly really hit these awful earmarks of really what it is, of how you can justify that.

Mia Voss:

And I keep coming back to this whole thing of we are finally seeing in real time how this all happened. And just to go back to an obvious example would be you know, 80, 90 years ago in Germany, it was like how did people get so awful? And it's like because of the otherism and making it okay to say it's a, you know it, but they look like this and the the biggest example we're seeing of this is but they came here illegally and people keep forgetting one. This is a civil issue, this is not a criminal issue, and you can only figure out if it's a criminal issue if you've done an investigation and you have a warrant for someone's arrest, right. So people are totally forgetting that. On a quick rant, it's so interesting too is that they're saying you know, oh, because they're freeloaders. I'm like you are getting people at their jobs and schools, so tell me how they're freeloading.

Mia Voss:

If you're pulling them from work, so at a job that we know that you wouldn't want. Very interesting too, and I think there was a post that you did that I liked this morning, and it was saying about how people have, like God's just saying, god's not saying I'm going to be this, you're like, he just doesn't. You don't have to be that, he's not going to be that big of a dick. What was it that you posted?

Halley Kim:

This, this, this Christian-y phrase God's ways are higher than our ways, is that? I mean? That was something that was said to me a lot within evangelical Christianity, when I would be, you know, upset about something like, like, my doula client dying. She was an atheist, by the way, so it wasn't just that she died, this horrible death that I witnessed while I was pregnant myself, but it was also that, uh, she and oh shoot, where was I going?

Mia Voss:

with this, Mia, Because I was saying and I just pulled it up it says Isaiah 50. It says God's way. You did this really and I'll post a link to it, you all. There's a couple different slides of the juxtaposition of how these quotes are taken, and I feel like it pairs very well with what you were just saying too, as far as how people are using it to one like we're not here that long, so don't worry about the climate change. I never thought about that. That is so deep. That's what she said. But yeah, your thing was Isaiah 55 says God is more compassionate than we are, Not more of a dick than we are.

Halley Kim:

Yes, Thank you for bringing me back. It's from the Bible, isaiah 55, this phrase God's ways are higher than our ways which is constantly used as a cop-out for like well, we can't understand the mind of God. He certainly has some holy reason for letting all these children die, or whatever it is, but if you go look at that scripture, it talks about God being more compassionate than us, about him pardoning man. Did they?

Mia Voss:

twist that one, oh my gosh, right, and please go follow Hallie. I know we'll have it in here, but her handle is maybe underscore gods, underscore a underscore midwife. Oh my gosh, it's so much good content and you talk a lot about the Christian easy button and I think that's what we're seeing with this. Even back on the topic of maternal mortality, the slippery slope of it does lead to the otherism and yes, especially it being Pride Month, I mean Pride is so much more this month than I mean. This is life or death shit which is what.

Mia Voss:

Pride started with either. It was a riot, it wasn't a party. I mean, we have a good time with it and I love my rainbow shoes that I'm wearing, but it's a really serious thing that we're at right now. So I have such a hard time and I think they're really doubling down the Christian right. What do you call them? By the way, I love to call them Christians with a K, small k, or KKK.

Halley Kim:

Christians Right, not the dollar part of the time. I often call them evangelicals because that is, yeah, I like that. I often call them evangelicals because that is yeah, that's the word that's thrown around in my circles or fundamentalists, and there's some debate about if evangelicals and fundamentalists are the same or not. And you know I could go down a rabbit hole on that because there's degrees of harm and some of the you know, quote unquote like softer evangelical churches use the tactic of saying like well, we're not like them. You know, we let women talk here. We're so progressive. And it's a trap because you are being oppressed by people who are like very sugary, sweet and mostly nice to you.

Mia Voss:

Yeah, that spiritual bypassing the live, love, light, live type of thing which also keeps anybody from feeling in any feelings of bringing things up, don't be so dark, don't be so dramatic, live, laugh, love the whole thing. And it does bypass any of the uncomfortable conversations which happen. And if y'all look back on some of my episodes you know I did a whole two-parter about growing up in a cult spoiler alert, it wasn't fun, the name of it in a boarder gang Christian cult and they really and I really didn't know about that phrase high control until even the last couple of years. It just makes so much sense. But there is the low control, yeah.

Halley Kim:

Just a second. Oh, no, worries, where's the top cabinet key? Honey, I'm in the middle of something. I can't help you with that right now.

Mia Voss:

This is our real life podcast, and we mean business.

Halley Kim:

I love my dog barking either.

Mia Voss:

I also do so. This is what it looks like, y'all, and I think that the most important thing about that and we're going to get into this in our seriously, this is going to be a whole, a whole series, and you're going to love it. You're going to love it, we mean it, and I want men listening to this as well too, because it's not helping if it's just, I mean, women can. We are advocating, but we need everybody on board or tackling what Hallie and I are talking about, because it's really, really serious. But yeah, we're going to. We're going to get into the whole series of high control, obviously, and then also, what kind of lost my train of thought on that, because there's so much with what were the slippery slope of the control thing, of how we get silenced.

Halley Kim:

Yes.

Mia Voss:

Right, interesting that again, and you, you brought it up at the very beginning of this the irony of the people that have brought Trump on board, which here's an interesting one too. I don't know who was the who was the pastor and his wife that had the guy that was the poor boy down in Florida and they got busted. Do you remember this one? Yeah, junior, right, yeah, so the irony of it almost kind of started with him because, from what I understand, he was really advocating for Trump back in the day. Then this whole thing broke, but then they also were kind of helping him get out of it. Trump's attorney was, but it was almost like too late, even though and even his um Falwell's people were like this guy's kind of a nutbag, right, no, it's bad yeah.

Halley Kim:

When Falwell's saying that yeah, it's bad.

Mia Voss:

Right, right, and and or his people were like are you sure you want to like advocate for this guy? But it was too late. And I know that's actually what from what I understand and if you're you may remember too with the Christian right, with the abortion issue, like that really wasn't an issue for a lot of people back in the the like seventies. And then they use religion for this shit. God damn it. I say that with my whole entire chest. God damn it.

Halley Kim:

Girl. Yeah, when I learned about the evolution of the moral majority like picking abortion as their pet issue, it enraged me and I mean I'll go ahead and talk about it a little bit now, because everyone needs to know this. It wasn't ever about abortion for the moral majority, it was about white supremacy. But it was going to look real bad for the right to say well, we don't want black kids at our schools, we don't want colleges to be desegregated. But that is what they wanted. And they thought of a cover, and the cover was abortion. We're going to get everybody opposing abortion, even though yesterday we didn't really give a shit about it, because that's how we're going to get what we want. And there's a pastor I forget his name, but there's this. He had a quote years ago about how, you know, the unborn is like the most convenient victim because they don't ask anything of you. They, you know, are by nature like wholly innocent because they're fetuses. And there's such great emotional power behind that right. We want to save the babies.

Mia Voss:

David Barnhart, thank you, yep, that's it, the Unborn, a convenient group to advocate for. Oh my God, that's mind blowing because it's in its simple truth, yeah.

Halley Kim:

Yeah, so it was never about the babies. And here we are. I think maybe most of the judges who voted in Roe v Wade to legalize abortion, several of them were Republicans. I kind of think most of them were. You can double check me on that. But it wasn't a thing, mia, it was not a thing.

Mia Voss:

No, and it's just such to our detriment and again that we had these high mortality rates. That proves to and I talked about it in the menopause episodes and as well as the period ones of the lack of research that we have for women. And somebody did a really tongue-in-cheek, awful joke the other day. They were like, well, why don't we just yeah, we really got the whole problems with women solved, so let's just go on to having our vaginas vagisilled and whatever, like re what do they call it? When you do like the fluff and buff with your who, Like there's something where you can do like make your lips look better or whatever, like because we've got everything solved, so well, let's focus on that. You know what I'm talking about.

Mia Voss:

Like a special douche or something, right it's actually like something you can do to like make it look better on the outside, which is the irony, like the last thing I want to worry about is how this thing looks to all you all but they're saying it kind of the tongue in cheek of that because we've solved all the other problems with what women have, with periods and childbirth and the whole thing, and just real quick and I want to put some sources in there too, of how, when you're talking about the moral majority, if you have any movies or any documentaries that you think are really good, that nail that down let me know, and I'll put those in the show notes too, because I think that's the one thing we really do need to people need to understand is what we just briefly touched on is that it is.

Mia Voss:

it was never about abortion. It was the convenience of the issue and the convenience of making sure we had the power right.

Halley Kim:

Yes, Well, I learned about it from Glennon Doyle in her book Untamed oh, that's right. Yes, yeah, I think it's in her chapter called Decals. It's about how you know the idea of Jesus just being like this little, this little decal that you show off but not really having like a major impact on the way you treat other people. And Jamar Tisby wrote a book called the Color of Compromise which is about the long history of white supremacy in the Christian church in America and it is absolutely devastating and so well-researched. And he discusses, you know, the real issue, the racism around desegregation and how they needed a quote unquote nice way to get their way without saying the things out loud. Today we're just saying the things out loud, they're just saying all of it because they've been. You know what's the word.

Mia Voss:

Being given permission. Permission, yes, they really have such a great point too, Holly, because it really is the quiet part out loud now, which is not very comforting. I mean, think about Joni. What's her nuts? What's that twat's name?

Mia Voss:

Because I'm so mean I love the twat and cunt are my two favorite new words, but sometimes when I post it I spell it with a V C-V-N-T. Joni Ernst, Joni Ernst, we're all going to die thing. And then she doubles down of like oh, I'm sorry. I'm sure you've probably heard about the tooth fairy too. I'm like this is where it is worrisome too, because I think a lot of them aren't worried about being reelected and they can act like this because they're getting some kind of power grab or money grab or something that allows them to have this absolute ease and alacrity of saying the shittiest parts. So we're going to, I'm going to let you go, because I know we're running out of time, because we're going to do another episode. Do you have any parting advice for us right now for some action items?

Halley Kim:

You know, I have such mixed feelings about the whole like calling your senators and representatives thing, like I'm doing it, but also I'm really I'm mad that the people who are in Congress, who aren't absolute filth, are not doing more. I understand they're in the minority, but that's my major frustration with Washington, that the Democrats are like, oh, they're breaking. The Democrats are like, oh, they're breaking the rules. And then, but they don't do anything meaningful to stop the Republicans from breaking all the rules. Um, so I am calling I'm my representative just is like a ghost woman, like she, um, just never has had a town hall.

Halley Kim:

Um, so I'm dealing with that. I mean talking about all of it being a person who is out there in the world, who makes it clear to others that they are a safe person to come to. I mean I in my parenting. Sometimes I feel like it's such a small, insignificant thing, but it's not. I'm raising three people and we talk about social justice and we talk about how, you know, some of their friends have two moms instead of a mom and dad, and who cares, and we talk about unhoused people and why there are unhoused people, and you know just all the things little special sauce things.

Mia Voss:

So I do a lot of animal rescue and a lot of fostering, and so what'll happen sometimes is to be like I could never do that. We're so glad that you do and I'm like that's great, but find your version of that right. Whatever you have the capacity to do that and you being like starting in your home thing. That is a huge piece of it, because these are going to be the next generation I don't know what their gen is called, but that you know and is it alpha Right that are going to be affecting the change, but you're also empowering them to be aware of what's going on now. That was not something that me, as a Gen Z, had at all, so I think that's important. Mutual aid is huge being involved locally, finding these meetings that you can go to, even if it's your HOA board or your city council or something where you're like hey you know, I see you Right, right, yeah, well, and these things overlap, right.

Halley Kim:

Like me not buying anything from Amazon. Also me talking to my children about how I know you love Amazon, but this is why we're not buying that from Amazon.

Mia Voss:

That's huge, yes. And then locally sourcing Yep, right, we're doing the locally sourced thing and the slower down version of it. We've really been taught to want that convenience and very much even thrive on that convenience, and now it's like no, just go on Etsy and order it slowly, right? So the whole thing, even with Target. We have the no Kings Day coming up on June 14th, which makes this a little bit less of an evergreen thing, but I don't care. Look it up if you're, if you've seen it afterwards, I do feel like that. The buying and selecting things very thoughtfully is a huge piece as well too. And then be ready for mutual aid.

Halley Kim:

Yep. Oh, I'll be out there for the parade or not? The parade, the anti parade, yep, yep and mutual aid. We just had a tornado destroy a big swath of St.

Mia Voss:

Louis and like it's only like a week and a half right, yeah, yeah, yeah, my neighborhood. Now you did. It's only like a week and a half right, yeah, yeah, yeah, my neighborhood. Now, all of a sudden, josh Hawley's singing a different fucking tune. Oh, he is. I just always see that, this race thing, and then the video of him running like two hours later.

Mia Voss:

And we have Lauren Bobert here in Colorado, even as great as Colorado is. But I think another action item really is paying attention to what's going on locally. As a quick aside, I got to go to a very small event where Ilhan Omar was speaking. It was really nerdy, pretty hardcore. But what was really neat about that event? There were a lot of state representation of first time uh, black women, hispanic women and Muslim women who are serving in the state here in Colorado. So to see that and it just was we're in you know, somebody's private living room, like with all this power in there, oh God, it was incredible. So like even seeing and getting to know these local representatives who are doing the work in your area. I think that's a huge piece to it as well, too. These are, that's our tax dollars, yep, yep. So so get to know them and find out what they're doing.

Mia Voss:

All right, Well, we're going to wrap this up. So we're I'm not sure what our next might be a continuation of this, but we have a lot of topics that we want to cover and we want you to to feel informed and inspired and enraged. You got to get pretty mad right now, but you also have to balance it so you're not just flaming out all the time. I don't know how to do that when I'm working on it. It's so hard, it's so hard. Oh.

Halley Kim:

God, all right, it's a struggle. It means we're doing it kind of right.

Mia Voss:

Thank you, I agree, I think we do get fed. This ease is the way that you know you're doing things right, and this is not the time, not when there's fascism descending. No, and it really like no joke. Y'all. We're not just using that as a cutesy little thing. Maybe two years ago we knew it was coming, but Project 2025, they are doing exactly what they said they were going to do, and I'm going to find some links so you can follow that as well, too, because I have some really great content creators that I like on Instagram who are kind of laying it out pretty like blow by blow of like you think this is a joke. No, he's doing what he said he would.

Halley Kim:

All right, send me all the things.

Mia Voss:

Yep, we'll share all those, and we'll share them all with you as well too, so you'll see us back together again sometime soon on another episode. Hallie, thank you for letting me get I just said it to the other gal getting a hit off your spiritual bong, because it's really good.

Halley Kim:

Oh, I'm so glad, I'm so glad. Thanks so much, mia. Thank you Till next time, yes.

Mia Voss:

Hey, thanks for tuning in. You can check out the show notes and guest links at shitwedontalkaboutpodcastcom. If you liked this episode, please subscribe and give it a like or leave a review, especially if it's a good one. See you next time. Bye.