Community #62

Jaed Coffin:

I think Maine has always been this way. Typically, people in Maine and people outside of Maine, I think think of Maine as a place where there's a very strong sense of provincialism and sovereignty. But people were always coming in and out of here. But because of the landscape, it has a quietness that makes it feel like we have belonged here forever or something. Both of those are based on stereotypes that we play around with quite a bit.

Craig Lapine:

Our motto is Feeding our Hungry, Empowering our Families, Healing our Planet. And those are the three circles in we work.

Andrea Brown:

It's pulling these women together and not just us training them, but connecting them so that they find other people to bike with, to run with, to do swimming group swims with people at their level that they can train with to get to that next level.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast Show Number 62, Community and airing for the first time on November 18, 2012 on WLOB and WPEI Radio Portland, Maine. Today's show features Maine magazine writer and author Jed Coffin, Craig lapine, founder of Cultivating Community, and Julie Jordan Marchese and Andrea Brown of shejams. We specifically put the Community show right in front of Thanksgiving, and we did this because we understand that there are many ways in which people belong to communities. Author Seth Godin actually refers to these as tribes. And a tribe or a community can be what you're born into. It can be where you work, where you play, or simply built of the people that you love. I have communities built around my own life based on where I'm living. I've been in Maine since 1977, but also based on the fact that I'm the oldest of 10 children. I'm a doctor, I'm a writer, and I'm a Facebook picture taker on my early morning runs. And in many different ways I've created communities that make sense to me that feel good to me that nurture me. This Thanksgiving I'll be spending time with my extended family at Atlantic hall in Cape Porpoise right here in Maine. This is something that my family's been doing for many years because we simply have so many darn people involved in this community. But I love it. My nine year younger brothers and sisters and I and our spouses and our families and our significant others, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, my grandmother, we've all really come to enjoy this regular occasion at Atlantic hall because we consider it community building time. I'm very fortunate to have a family like this and a family that meets regularly right here in Maine. I hope you enjoy today's show with Maine Magazine writer and author Jed Coffin, who's going to talk about his experience with community and growing up in Brunswick and the work he's done for Maine Magazine, including the recent article what is a Mainer? Also Craig Lapine, who's developed a cultivating community presence, working in the environment, working with people, working with education and doing all kinds of interesting things over the last decade. And finally, Julie Jordan Marchese and Andrea Brown of SHE Jams, who have created a community around exercise and fitness and social outreach and well being on so many different levels. We hope you enjoy today's show. On today's Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we're talking about community. And I became interested in discussing this idea with author Jed Coffin because I read about an article he had written for Maine Magazine which I'm going to let him tell us about. But I think he has a lot of very cogent things, cogent insights about this topic. Thanks for coming in and having this conversation. So Real Manor, why did this become an article that Maine Magazine wanted you to write?

Jaed Coffin:

Let's see. I think I won't take too much credit for it. I know that Kevin and Susan and Sophie had this idea floating around the table for a while and for whatever reason, I feel like I end up with the honor or dishonor of tackling these kind of philosophical cultural questions in my career that are about culture, that are about communities, and they're about how we as individuals in living in the same space delineate who we are. So. So I'm not sure you know why this or Last September was the Mainer story, but I know that it was a long time coming. You know that I think there are some maintenance changing so quickly. It's such a dynamic place now. It's both a kind of brand of itself and also sort of Faceless, nameless quantity in many ways for the people that live here. So I think every once in a while, you have to step back and re. Articulate the world, the name that you're going to give a people or a place. Just as we might re examine American culture through literature and the arts, I think Maine, on its own terms, needs to figure out where it's going and who it is and ask that question over and over again.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, that is a little bit controversial, I would think. And also, you wrote an article about the casinos, which was, I think, somewhat controversial as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Do you find a lot of differing opinions when you talk to people as you're creating these articles?

Jaed Coffin:

Yeah, and I think I find different opinions, but I also have a. A pretty heightened sense of what those opinions are going to be before I enter a story. And because the media tries to do a pretty good job of laying out those opinions, the story for me, typically, is when I go into a world or a community with a certain set or lens through which to examine that community and then realize that the opinions I have or the opinions that the media offers are not really even part of the conversation in that community. And that's when you know you're dealing with good material and a real story. You know, typically, I think stories in Maine come down to financial versus moral polarities. You know, how are we going to keep money in our pockets? How are we going to keep people working while at the same time preserving the ethical imperatives that we think are central to who we are as a. As a culture and a state? You know, I know we appreciate our Yankee resourcefulness and are kind of close to the earth living. But on the other hand, we need to put food on our tables, and that comes at a certain cost and sacrifice.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Your first book, a Chant to soothe wild elephants, was written when you were relatively young.

Jaed Coffin:

Yeah, it came out in 2008. I wrote most of it when I was 26 or 27, and this described

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

an experience with a community of a very different sort. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Jaed Coffin:

Sure. Well, that community is several hours east of Bangkok, Thailand, and in the village where my mom is from. She left that village right before or during the Vietnam War, I think, in 1967. Met my father, who was a soldier in the Vietnam War. In 68, they were in northeastern Thailand together on a military base. And not long afterward, my mother left Thailand and her village for good to be in America. At this point, she's been in America longer than she was ever alive in Thailand. Which is sort of the tipping point, I think, for a lot of immigrants. So I. 20 years after I was. Or 30 years after she came to America, when I was 21, I left college for several months, about the duration of a summer, and went back to her village to be a monk in the local temple, Buddhist temple, the same temple where my grandfather and uncles had been monks. So that community was obviously very different than the community of Midcoast Maine or the community of my. Of Brunswick High School. I was surrounded by a lot of family, but also by a culture where, because of the size of the village and the intimacy of Thai culture, everyone knew all sorts of things about me. I was a religious figure, along with about 35 other men who were my age and older. And the community functioned in what I would think of as a much more connected way. At the time, this was in 2001. I don't recall there being Internet access anywhere. There was a Dunkin donuts and a 7 11, but there was certainly not Facebook or emails or, you know, and as a monk, I was really expected to carry a certain spiritual symbolism and positioning in the community. People would come to me. I was 21 years old after my junior year at Middlebury. You know, I really felt that I was in no position to be a purveyor of knowledge. But people would come to me and ask me, you know, how to pick a proper wife and where to invest in rice or in a fish market or whatever, as if I had this access to this important knowledge because of my spiritual practice, which was also quite ignorant and limited. So I tried to get that across in the book. I think a lot of people thought I set out to write a seven story mountain, you know, like a religious text, but it was not. That was not my intention.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When you and I spoke, you mentioned that you have, I believe, a tradition of healers in your family. Somebody is the equivalent of. I don't want to say medicine man, because I guess that sounds really. Maybe, I don't know. But did that influence your desire to go forward and find yourself in some way when you were 21?

Jaed Coffin:

Well, you know, I had memories. This comes up in the book. Early on, I had memories of my grandfather practicing medicine in a very traditional way. You know, I remember people coming to the front steps of our little house next to the canal and rubbing ointments in people's shoulders and using moxibustion and such to heal them. We have a lot of Chinese blood in our family line, so I don't know if it was passed Down. I know very little about that past. I have memories and probably some invented fantasies about how effective that healing was. I remember walking barefoot through the village and cutting my foot open and. And my grandfather like reaching to this top shelf. He didn't speak English, I didn't speak Thai at that time. And pulling this really gnarly looking bottle with like a clump of moss in it or something and some liquid and rubbing it all over my foot and then the wound being gone the next day. That's a pretty. I don't know if anything could do that, but like that, that's how I remember it, you know, which says something, I suppose. My mother's a psychiatric nurse, which is a tough job. My father, he just retired, but for a time was a staff psychologist for the National Guard. So he was working with all the troops who came home from Iraq and Afghanistan back into New England, acclimating them to their normal lives. And my wife is a restorative yoga teacher. So, you know, I'm pretty well covered I guess in the healing department. I don't know where my healing work comes, but I'm sure it rears its head somehow.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I've spoken to more than one person who's actually read your book and has found some healing or inspiration in that. And I think that when you and I had a conversation previously, you said that it often seems that for some reason people will still look to you for insight or knowledge or reflection. I mean that's a heavy something to have been holding onto even from your early years.

Jaed Coffin:

Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, it's hard not to talk about this without feeling a little bit self important. But you know, I know that as a kid, you know, I got picked to be the captain of various teams and to often I think was looked, looked to to provide inspiration or support or stability in difficult times that I went through with a few friends, you know, and part of that is maybe a kind of natural thing ness about me. But also I feel like I like that work, you know, and I'm willing to have that conversation. So, so I, so I. People maybe notice that about me, you know, I'm sort of a softie, you know, I don't, I'm not. I've done a lot of kind of fighting dangerous stuff. But I am not a confrontational person, you know, and prefer compromise innately to putting my foot down on issues and have always felt very compelled to move between circles, demographic and ethnic and racial and whatever that are separated by various gaps. You know, I like, you know, As a teenager, I used to hitchhike around a lot, and I just loved, like, entering people's lives that I might not enter another, you know, at Middlebury College or at Brunswick High School or, you know, and that was always very exciting to me. So sometimes I feel like, yeah, it's about healing, but also I like being an interpreter of different cultures and different ideas and accessing those ideas and bringing them to other people. So that seems to be kind of the origin of a lot of that work.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, you aren't willing to maybe put your foot down in some ways, but you did write a book called that's coming out this spring, Rough House Friday, that talks about actually fighting in Alaska. So where does that come from within you?

Jaed Coffin:

Yeah, well, I know that I. I had a handful of fights in this bar, and then I fought Golden Gloves in Northeast out of the Portland Boxing Club. And I definitely was not the kind of fighter that would punch first. I'd have to get hit first before I could really do anything to another person. But I think it has to do with intimacy, and obviously not in an erotic way, but intimacy of kind of a spiritual intimacy that you experience with a person you fight. You know, there's really. Everything falls away and you're left only with, you know, you and the ring and your opponent. And all the distinctions that typically separate us, class and. And money and identity, kind of disappear, and you're just left with a bare person and a bare soul. And I really like that experience, and I think I kind of long for that experience in the same way that the writers who I really admired as a younger man and that I still admire now, I think they were searching for that ephemeral, ineffable, spiritual kind of intimacy. Also, you know, for this book, I've been reading into the Wild a lot. Not so much because my book is similar to this book, but. Or to into the Wild, but the aims of, you know, Alexander Supertramp or, you know, he was after something that he couldn't really put his finger on and might or might not have been there, but I find myself kind of hunting down that same thing, you know, and. And I find it in other people. I find it in cityscapes and, you know, natural landscapes. So, yeah, I'm not really sure where. People have asked me many times, you know, how does the. How can you be a monk and a boxer? Because, of course, you get start to get identified by the books you write. I don't see them very, very differently. Typically, I say both are very aesthetic disciplines so on and so forth. But when it comes down to it, I think it's about intimacy and stripping away all the things that separate us as individuals from. And I kind of put this in quotes from really who we really are, you know, and that. You know, I could say soul, but that seems like a problematic term too. Anyway,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. We've long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the topic is Tom Shepard of Shepherd Financial.

Jaed Coffin:

This morning, my wife and thousands of others from the running community are lined up at the start of the Philadelphia Marathon. Me and friends from my lacrosse community are set to face off against each other at the Rack over in Westbrook. Many of us work hard in one community and play hard in another to keep connected to our passion for life. We do well at work and play, but how well is our pursuit of health and money connected to our need to build wealth in ourselves and in our communities? If you're interested in learning more about how financial planning can inform your game, or looking to use your game to motivate you to a better relationship to money, give us a call at Shepherd Financial, 8474032. Your community of friends may thank you someday for stepping up to the line and sharing your gifts. Let us help you evolve with your money.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It seems interesting that in Maine. My family is from Maine. I've lived in Maine a long time. Went away, came back. Seemed interesting that we've had this military presence in Maine that sort of brought people from away to places like Brunswick.

Jaed Coffin:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you experienced this, I imagine, as a Brunswick high school student, because that was before the base actually kind of closed down. Do you think that that had an impact on the culture of that particular town and maybe other towns like it in Maine?

Jaed Coffin:

Yeah, definitely. I loved hanging out with the Navy kids because, you know, they were like, it would be January, you know, and we'd be in the middle of basketball season, and then some kid with a Southern accent would show up who grew up in, you know, Alabama or something. And out of nowhere, it was like this imported culture came into our little community, you know, And I remember going into base housing to play pickup basketball games against the Navy kids, and

Craig Lapine:

they

Jaed Coffin:

were here for a year and a half or for the length of a deployment and then gone, you know? And I won't say that Brunswick was like a flourishing crock pot of culture or anything like that, but I do know that it made me aware of other ways of being that was good. I don't think it made me deeply empathetic or respectful or tolerant or anything, but it kept my head out of the fog just enough to. To remind me that there are other ways to do it, you know, I had this pen pal named Johnny Finley for a long time. We were best friends. His. His mom was Filipina. And I don't know, maybe that we connected some way culturally, but we were quite young. And then he moved. And then for like six years, we used to. I used to get letters from San Diego, fpo, San Diego, you know, and. And. And that was cool, you know, I don't know what Johnny Findlay's up to now, but I still remember the day he left, you know, and our tearful goodbye when we were in second grade. And that's neat. You know, I think Maine has always been this way. Typically, people in Maine and people outside of Maine, I think, think of Maine as a place where there's a sort of not indigenous but very strong sense of provincialism and sovereignty. But Maine's always historically been a dynamic, you know, this was the first stopping point, you know, and then the exploration of the New World, you know, and there was fish markets and the beaver trade and people were always coming in and out of here. But because of the landscape, it has a quietness that makes it feel like we have belonged here forever or something. And both of those are based on stereotypes that we play around with quite a bit.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have one book out, a chant to soothe wild elephants, which I would recommend to our listeners. If they haven't already read it, they should read it. You have another one coming out this spring, Rough House Friday. What else is on the horizon for you?

Jaed Coffin:

Geez, I don't know. I think I'm going to keep writing. I'm trying to structure my life now professionally, so that I will never do anything but write until lunchtime. So I do things like trying to check my email between 5pm and noon so that I have a precious little pure brain to do my writing work. I have some book ideas that I'd like to undertake that won't require much research or, well, will require research, but not much travel. I've got a book idea that would take place up in the Mekong Delta in Thailand, that I'd probably drag my my girls up to Thailand to live in some village for a while. I don't know. We'll have to run that by my wife. And then I'm not sure what's next. I like the work I do now. I teach a little bit and I do a lot of carpentry type work off and on. But I have a sense that something is shifting. I know all the people that I really admire are civic leaders in some way, and I don't think I admire them without some kind of intention buried beneath that admiration. So it doesn't mean that I'm announcing my, you know, my entrance into the next gubernatorial election. But it might not be politics, it might not be anything explicit, but I do feel myself called to the kind of statesman period of my life. You know, I've done a lot of hiding out and lurking in the shadows, and now I feel like there's some opportunity in the world, you know, as opposed to on the fringes of it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How can people find out more about your books or the work you're doing?

Jaed Coffin:

I've got a website and I think at this point if you google my name, all the dirt is there. So. And on my website there's also an email address and I always make this offer to audiences big and small that I meet with that feel free to email me. I always say that. And I remember I spoke in front of, I don't know, about a thousand people at Florida International University a year and a half ago. And I thought, okay, these are all college kids. Maybe I'll get five or six emails. I think I got three. So I love to hear from people and it's not a problem to be in touch. I really enjoy that element of my work. If that wasn't there, I don't know what would be in it for me ultimately.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, thank you. We've been speaking with Jed Coffin, author and contributor to Maine Magazine. And also I don't think we mentioned this, but Peacher at the Stonecoast MFA program. So we're really grateful that you came in to talk to us about community on this pre Thanksgiving show.

Jaed Coffin:

Great. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Today's Thanksgiving show is all about community because we know that various people around the state are getting together in groups with their families and communities and we thought it would be an important day to introduce Craig Lapine from Cultivating Community to talk on this very subject. Thanks for coming in.

Craig Lapine:

Thanks for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now, cultivating community is something that grew out of multiple different interests of yours. Talk to me about that.

Craig Lapine:

Well, I was a schoolteacher and I was interested in food and growing food as a way to get youth connected with the land and the sources that sustain us all here. Biological, social, spiritual, how we're all rooted. So. So that was one impulse. I'm very interested in issues of social justice and hunger is one of the more visible examples of unfairness in our world. And so working on that issue and just food's capacity to bring people together and create community, you know, as an environmentalist, I think a lot of the challenges that we face can be a little daunting when you think about our challenges around energy and housing and things like that. The thing about the food piece of that conversation is that a local and sustainable food system is actually more joyful and more tasty and more nutritious. And so it's a solution that works for us as a species that also doesn't actually mean any loss. There's a lot of, just a lot of gifts in that path.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now, before I ask you a little bit more about cultivating community, it was interesting when I connected with you about cultivating community, you wrote me back and you said, I think I knew your brother. So you and I already had a community connection. You taught my brother 9th grade English at Yarmouth High School. That is correct, yeah, Quite a few years ago now. My brother Brian. Is this something that you find in Maine is that community connections are already in existence and it's something that strengthening is really been a function that you've engaged in?

Craig Lapine:

I have found that. And I am, you know, I'm new to this. I've only lived in Maine for 14 years, so I'm kind of a newcomer by a lot of standards. But yes, I think Maine is a wonderfully close knit place where people are, yeah, people are connected, people are looking out for each other. I really appreciate, especially compared to some other places that I've lived, just what that instills in terms of the civility and the depth of the conversation. Because, you know, you're going to be in relationship with people for a long time. And so people I think are very good about not burning bridges and really trying to get to solutions that work. And I have the. I'm fortunate to be at a lot of tables around the state and in different conversations where people from very, very different backgrounds, I mean if you can imagine sort of fishermen and people who regulate fisheries or farmers that want to farm in a certain way and farmers that want to farm in a very different way and those coming into a conflict and people by and large, even though they may differ profoundly on a philosophical level, can still be respectful and try to move the conversation forward. And I really value that about this place.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what is cultivating community? What are the different aspects of this organization that you've been putting your heart and soul in for more than a decade now.

Craig Lapine:

Yeah, well, our, our motto is feeding our hungry, Empowering our families, healing our planet. And so if you can think of those three as circles, one is about community food security, one is about community empowerment, one is about community sustainability. And those are the three circles in which we work. And agriculture and food systems is the throughpiece for all of those. So right now, what that looks like is our community food security. Our anti hunger work is mostly built around a farmer's market and farm stand initiative where we're trying to bring, literally create access points for people that may not have a lot of resources to get fresh, local produce and they can use, if they're receiving federal nutrition benefits, to put food on the table, which 1 in 4 Maine families are, they can use those benefits at those farm stands, at those farmers markets that we're partnering with. We also have a free and sliding scale CSA and an ElderShare program. So we're trying to get food out to people in ways that work for them and also work for farmers, because that's an important part. And that sort of jumps us to the next circle, which is the community empowerment piece. Even though we have a lot of hungry people in this state and a lot of people for whom food is out of reach. The other part of the conversation, which sometimes can be awkward to engage when we have that state, is that people now pay historically low percentages of their family budget for food. And I happen to think people actually should be paying more for food and less for the kinds of stuff that I think we can all agree is kind of killing us and the planet. And if we did that, one of the things about people paying historically low percentages of their income for food food is that it's very, very hard to make a living as a farmer. So on the one hand, we have all these hungry people. We're trying to create pathways for them to be able to access healthy food. On the other hand, we're trying to support farmers and we run a, in particular, a refugee farmer training program. So people trying to build businesses around farming. And it's really important for farmers to be able to get a fair price for their food. And there's a whole bunch of conversations around our own food policy and subsidies and things that sort of bundled up in that question and that challenge. And another piece of our community empowerment work is really, and this is coming from my roots as a teacher is around youth. And so we run teen Programs first jobs programs in the summer called Youth Growers and Grow Interns. We partner with lots and lots of schools that want to use school gardens and food as a way to teach leadership and stewardship. And then that third circle around community sustainability really has to do with the kind of agriculture that we practice and where we practice it. We think cities can produce a lot more of the food. You know, we think we can shorten the distance between, you know, field and table and that helps. And then just the way that one treats the land so that you're putting back as much as you're taking out. All of those pieces work together. We hope.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

If people who are listening have an interest in getting involved in cultivating community, what types of things are available that they might be able to help you with and how can they find out more?

Craig Lapine:

Well, they should certainly start by going to the website cultivatingcommunity.org and there's a little box on the front page of the website that says, I think it says receive our newsletter. And if you just put your email in there, you'll get, and I promise we don't send out a lot of emails. You won't get, you know, you won't get buried in spam, but you'll find out what we're doing. And that includes volunteer opportunities. There's a range, you know, with any organization we have a range of needs. There's really kind of hands on stuff and that is obviously heavier during the growing season. So this is the Thanksgiving show. Our 2012 growing season is pretty much put to bed at this point. But starting in February when the greenhouses start up, and then in April when we get outside, you know, we've got a lot of work to do and we welcome individuals, families, large groups to come and, and help us do that. And then we also have organizational needs, you know, and like any nonprofit, we're always, you know, somewhat under resourced. So, you know, we just get a lot of help on lots of things. Communications, outreach, you know, another thing, another thing that people could definitely do and they would get notice in the spring if this was a way they wanted to get involved is if they could just, if they wanted to buy a community supported agriculture share from one of the refugee farmers in our program. That's a huge benefit to the work that we're trying to do. Those farmers market collectively under the banner of Fresh Start Farms. So I would encourage people to buy a Fresh Start Farm csa, visit one of our neighborhood farm stands in the spring when we open back up, maybe volunteer to help out with one of our school gardens. We're always looking for volunteers and we do a pretty interesting volunteer training if you want to spend a day and kind of get certified as a school garden implementer. So there are lots of ways to plug in.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And can people also donate money?

Craig Lapine:

People can always donate money.

Jaed Coffin:

Yes.

Craig Lapine:

Thank you. Yeah. And, and that's super easy. There's a, there's a donate now button on our website. If you'd rather write a check. You can see how that you can go to the website again. Cultivatingcommunity.org and all that information is there. Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you have a Facebook page too.

Craig Lapine:

We do. We actually have. We actually have two. We've got an organizational one. And if you're particularly interested in our youth programs, Cultivating Community Youth Programs has a Facebook page as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One final question. Why do you think this notion of community has become so much more important of elite?

Jaed Coffin:

Hmm.

Craig Lapine:

I guess what I would say is

Jaed Coffin:

I think

Craig Lapine:

we're in the middle of an interesting transition. You know, where we went from a world of lots of kind of independent local communities through a phase where there was this huge integration and homogenization, I would guess where the sort of slightly monolithic consumer based, I would say American culture emerged. And there have always been doubters and naysayers in that. People who have paved the groundwork for what's happening now. Where I say we're sort of rediscovering the opportunity for lots and lots of, of interconnected but still local and largely self sufficient economies and communities. I think that that's where so all of the new communications technology allows that interconnectedness. But people I think are rediscovering the value and in some cases the necessity of having really strong local communities as well that are, you know, that are working together and fairly and all that

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

well, I appreciate all the work you're doing to create community and to build on the community that we've had here in our great state of Maine. So thank you for coming in and talking to us. We've been talking with Craig Lapine from Cultivating Community.

Craig Lapine:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As we get ready to head into Thanksgiving, I think a lot about families because of course those are our primary communities. But I also think about other groups that make up communities. And one of these groups I know is very active in the Portland area community. And this is the shejams organization. Now we had Julie Jordan Marchese come on and speak with us very early on in the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour last fall talking about try for a cure. So thanks for coming back and being part of our conversation again today.

Julie Jordan Marchese:

Thank you for having me back.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And we also have Andrea Brown representing shejams. And she's got her own really impressive set of credentials, including being a coach and doing multiple triathlons and doing director of recruiting services at ProSearch. So thanks for coming in and also being here with us.

Andrea Brown:

I'm excited to be here. Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So first of all, shejams, what is it and why did you call it that?

Andrea Brown:

Well, the name is actually was interesting because we spent a lot of time trying to come up with something that captured the idea of pulling women together and being active. That had some excitement to it. And and there's a lot of organizations out there who have claims to names. And we really came down to Julie, Andrea and Melissa Jam. She Jams. So there's a little it fits what we are trying to accomplish with the jams. She Jams. But the names came together on that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I like it. So you're missing the third member of your jam at this point.

Julie Jordan Marchese:

The fourth. Yeah. Corrine. Well, she came in after so we're going to rename her at some point.

Andrea Brown:

We were going to add a saint before the end of her last name. So we had an S. I see.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay. All right. Well, so tell me, what is she jams? What do you do and why does it represent a community of sorts?

Julie Jordan Marchese:

Well, Sheet Jams is a group of women coming together with a common goal. And usually our goal is to train together, but we're much more than that. We do a lot of community outreach. It's a social networking club where we share ideas and what each other does. So it's just really a group of women that like to get together and do things together in a social and non competitive atmosphere. And so we do a lot of cool things like volunteering and we put on races and we do all sorts of things in the community.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And what are you training for?

Julie Jordan Marchese:

Well, right now we train for all sorts of different things, but I think it started with Try for a Cure and we felt that Try for a Cure is a real bonding moment for women. So we felt that maybe leading up to the triathlon it might be an opportunity for women to bond more training together. And so now we do a multitude of things. Try for a Cure. It might be the Maine Marathon. It could be your first 5k, it could be swimming peaks to Portland. It could be anything. Some people just join to be part of the social atmosphere of what we do. So you could join for all sorts of reasons.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I should back up and just ask for. I know anybody who's been listening and I know, of course everybody has listened to every single episode of this show. So they know what Tribe for a Cure is. But let's just pretend that they don't know what Try for a Cure is. We mentioned this on our recent breast health show when Meredith Strangber just came in and the Maine Cancer Foundation. But just a little background on that.

Julie Jordan Marchese:

Sure. Try for a Cure is an all women's triathlon that is put on by Maine Cancer Foundation. And triathlon is swimming 1/3 of a mile, biking 15 miles and then running a 5K at the end, which is 3.1 miles. Each woman is required to raise $350 collectively over the years. We're now the race last year raised $1.2 million. I think it's definitely one of the largest fundraisers in the state. Maine Cancer foundation is a really cool organization. It's from Maine. It puts all its money back into Maine for cancer research and patient support right here. So it does really good things for the people of Maine. And you know, cancer is one of the leading diseases that we have here. So it benefits us all by getting together and doing a race of the sort. But you know, the race over the year has become very popular. It's very difficult to get in because we can only allow so many. So people talk about it a lot. They want to do it. There's, you know, I think we've probably attracted, over the years over 5,000 different women have done it. And each year there's always somebody new that's doing it for the first time. So it's quite a. It's the race to be in if you're a woman. So and you can participate. I mean, even men can volunteer and donate. So we get a lot of people involved in such a great cause and

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Maine Magazine, who happens to be a sponsor of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour, is also a sponsor sponsor of Try for a Cure.

Julie Jordan Marchese:

They certainly are not just Try for a Cure, but Maine Cancer foundation in general. They support the organization all year round, which is really a nice partnership.

Andrea Brown:

I was going to add part of shejams coming together is too in the tri for the care. I think this year we were talking earlier, 80% of the women who had signed up had never done it. And for a woman to say, hey, I'm going to do this triathlon, they get all excited, their friends get all excited, and then they realize, oh, my gosh, I've got to learn how to swim, bike, and run and put all three together. How do I do that? And that was part of putting shoe jams together, was taking those beginning athletes, those women who maybe had done one segment of a triathlon or maybe none, and giving them the confidence and the skill, skills and the training to be able to complete it and complete it safely and have people that they can train with. Because it's intimidating to walk into a bike store and you know, you've got these $8,000 bikes hanging off the ceiling, and you're thinking, okay, so I want to spend about $600, and I just want to ride this, and I want, you know, what does that mean? So it's. We've partnered up with the bike shops. They. We do workshops or socials on them where we teach them how to maintain their bikes. And it's pulling these women together and not just us training them, but connecting them so that they find other people to bike with, to run with, to do swimming, group swims with people at their level that they can train with to get to that next level.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How long have you been in existence?

Andrea Brown:

We just completed our third triathlon training season. So we started in March of 2010.

Julie Jordan Marchese:

10.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And how long, I mean, how many women have you actually worked with? Is it all women?

Julie Jordan Marchese:

It's all women. And I think we have had over 200 members, 225 members over the last three years. So, you know, we have some women that come to be a member because we have great discounts on wetsuits, because we've partnered with national companies that will give us discounts because our group is so large. And we do have a great group. I mean, a large group of women. And it's overwhelming at times to go to places like Try for a Cure and see us in our uniforms. But not only are we racing, we're volunteering. We're doing lots of Things and it's not just race focused. So we actually put on a flash mob this year at the beginning of Try for a Cure, which was a real hit. It really started the race off in a really upbeat.

Andrea Brown:

Good energy.

Julie Jordan Marchese:

Yeah, really good energy. And I think people enjoyed that. So we do some really fun stuff.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What about when someone gets injured

Craig Lapine:

and

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

isn't able to be a part of this group, at least from a training standpoint, are you able to support that person and include them in other ways?

Julie Jordan Marchese:

Sure. All the races that we do, we're a part in more than just racing. So, you know, they can volunteer on the course. They can come and, you know, help us with administrative work. They can be a volunteer coordinator for our volunteer jobs that we do out in the community. So we have lots of ways. We don't have many women that get hurt.

Andrea Brown:

Thank gosh, I'm knocking on wood here.

Julie Jordan Marchese:

Yeah. But there are times where people have to stop for a while and then they come back. So thank gosh, they're not hurt.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I was thinking also not maybe just injured, but maybe people who aren't able to jump in and do a triathlon right away for whatever reason, or maybe they have some other physical something that's kind of holding them back from completely doing the training piece of it.

Andrea Brown:

I think part of it is being part of the community. Whether you're racing something or you're there being a part of it. I know we had our own shoe jams try as part of the Rev3 race this August. And we had a lot of women do relay, but we had a lot of women just down there cheering. I think we were the best, biggest consolidated group. CHEERING and we weren't just cheering for our women. We were cheering for every single athlete who came through, whether they were the pros coming through or, you know, the person who's biking 10 miles an hour and they're just doing this. And it was really, it was really inspiring to see all these people pull together, you know, be there really early, really early on a Sunday morning and cheering for this whole, whole group and community and people who had come from all over the place. I think we made again, it just comes down to you're encouraging all those other people in the community. Whether you're racing or not racing, you're connected.

Julie Jordan Marchese:

Yeah. With each one of our races, like when we did a partnership with Rev3. Rev3 happens to be a national triathlon company that I would say would compete with what most people hear about Ironman. They gave us 300 community spots in which we had to raise funds. And so we did a really good job of recruiting women that had to raise money. So at that particular race, we were, the community funded part of the race. And we raised $12,000 for Maine Cancer foundation, which was really great. Now we're taking it back to our members, and we're going to allow them to come up with nonprofits that they want to support and vote on. And so it'll be interesting this year what their passions are for nonprofits. And then, you know, we'll choose from the top and decide who will support with different races. So each one of our races does have a fundraising component. And so what we do always is giving back to our communities, and we try to keep everything local, which is really nice.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How do people find out about she jams?

Andrea Brown:

Word of mouth, I think, for the most part. Or just seeing us out there, you know, again, if we're at any kind of event, there's a lot of pink. A lot of pink going on.

Julie Jordan Marchese:

A lot of noise.

Andrea Brown:

There's a lot of noise. Yeah. There's a lot of cheering. There's a lot. Nobody's out there alone if they're part of our group.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And do you have a Facebook page or a website?

Julie Jordan Marchese:

We have a Facebook page, Shejams, and then we have a website, www.shejams.com. and on there it talks about opportunities to join us, why you would join us, the races that we do, the

Andrea Brown:

programs that we run.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it sounds like if somebody has questions, they can either see one of your members in the crowd or they can go to your website or your Facebook page and connect that way and maybe figure out what might be the best option in terms of being part of your community.

Andrea Brown:

Absolutely.

Julie Jordan Marchese:

Yeah. That's the wonderful thing about being all women. Women talk, and if they have a good experience, they talk about their good experience. And so I think we've been really successful at, you know, most of our members bring in friends and say that you have to be part of this club. It's great. So word of mouth has worked well for us along with our Facebook pages and things like that.

Andrea Brown:

And we have a really central core group of women who have been with us from the beginning. It's really cool to see how they've developed and changed physically, socially, with the support. Just the feeling of connectivity. It's very tangible.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, we've been speaking with Andrea Brown and Julie Jordan Marchese from shejams. I really appreciate your coming in and telling me about your group and spending some time with me today.

Julie Jordan Marchese:

Thank you for having us.

Andrea Brown:

Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Thank you. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast Show Number 62, Community, airing for the first time on November 18, 2012 on WLOB and WPEI Radio Portland, Maine. Our guests today have included Maine Magazine writer and author Jed Coffin, Craig Lepine, founder of Cultivating Community, and Julie Jordan Marchese and Andrea Brown of she Jams. For more information on our guests, go to Dr. Org. For more information on upcoming guests, our blog or what's going on in our wellness world, visit our Facebook page and like us under Dr. Lisa. Also, be sure to put us on your feeds so that we show up on a regular basis. We hope that you support the sponsors who make this show possible and we wish all of our American listeners a very happiest of Thanksgivings. We are grateful to have you. We give thanks for you on a regular basis and we give thanks for the families and communities that support you. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle thanking my family and my community. May you have a bountiful life.