The idea sprouted in 2016.

I was going through a hard time and in between my school semesters, I decided to go on a solo trip to Guatemala in an attempt to find myself again.

The universe has a funny way of helping you out sometimes and what started off as an amazing trip quickly turned into a nightmare.

After only a few days I developed some kind of sun rash on my arm and scratched it. It became out of control and all of a sudden I looked like I had a very contagious disease. As it turns out, I had developed a staph infection. I was incredibly miserable and itchy, so I isolated myself and tried to survive the last 5 days I had in the country.

To distract myself, I went for a barefoot run on a beautiful black sand beach and posted a picture on Instagram along with a handful of hashtags like #wanderlust #newstart #solotravel… Meanwhile, I looked like a leper, was crying on the phone to my mom and praying for time to go by faster.

My prayers were only answered with bedbugs crawling all over me and an allergic reaction to the bites, on top of the staph infection. It seemed like the universe had a personal vendetta against me…Thankfully my sense of humour wasn’t completely gone and I laughed at the irony of my social media post.

#notsoblessed

Once I got back home, I told my Guatemala story to my friends and they had a good laugh. It made me realize that struggles make others feel better. Because we all have them. So I don’t know why we are so busy trying to maintain this constant illusion of success. This sparked an idea…

I felt so isolated on my trip and seeing the disconnect between my reality and my social media posts made me realize that I wanted to do something about that. I had recently discovered podcasts and I was immediately hooked.

The fact that I could listen to them anytime, anywhere, helped me clear my head and made my boring commute from home to school fascinating and educative. I thought it was the perfect medium to reach people.

I really wanted to produce a podcast myself but I didn’t know where to start, or what exactly it would be about.

I’m often described as blunt, straight forward or just plain rude (hah) and I’m not afraid to speak up. Sometimes it backfires but most of the time it pays off. I use these traits to open up honestly and close the gap between the perfect life we see online and the struggle it takes to navigate tough situations.

I knew I wanted to use my voice to discuss topics that most people can’t or won’t talk about.

It took a long time for the idea to fully form and develop (3 years...yikes!) but it is finally what I imagined it would be. Being a bit of a perfectionist made the process even longer but I’m starting to be able to let it go and accept that nothing is ever perfect.

I believe that sharing the struggles we undergo will bring people together. I hope you can get something out of it too.

-Claire

The team

*Remember, the pictures below are a hightened version of reality.

Special thanks to: