Transcript: Madison: Getting Ghosted and Winning a Local

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27 min readMar 3, 2021

Transcript for Hope This Finds Me Well Episode 5. Madison: Getting Ghosted and Winning a Local

Maria Passingham This episode touches on disordered eating, so if that is a difficult subject for you, you might want to skip this one.

Madison I had been watering myself down, I had been making myself try to be more palatable for people. When it’s like, I had worked so hard on myself to love myself. It’s like, why… why don’t I give people that same benefit of knowing that ‘me’ that I love? [theme music fades in]

MP You’re listening to Hope This Finds Me Well, a podcast about the past & future versions of ourselves and what we want to tell them. I’m MP, one of the three hosts of this podcast — SC and SS are here too.

Sophie Shin Hi Maria!

Steph Colbourn Hello, hello!

MP Each episode we speak to an amazing person who wrote a letter to their future selves and recently got it back. We want to know how it felt to read it years later, and where their life is at now. I am so excited to share today’s interview with you. This person really demonstrates self love and learning to be comfortable in your own skin. So, I was wondering how you both feel about this idea, kind of loving yourself fully, or how that impacts your relationships with others?

SS Uh, I like the idea of it.

MP Oh wow.

SS It’s fucking hard. It’s really hard, for me, at least.

SC I think the cool thing about this interview is that it seemed like sort of a practice. Something that she was working on, but you could obviously tell that she learned a lot. And becoming more loving of herself. Like I don’t think it was like a, you know, a light switch, where you’re like “okay, I love myself now!” It’s this practice or everyday decision.

SS What do you think MP?

MP I try not to, honestly, this is gonna sound weird. I try not to think about how I feel about myself too much. I kind of exist on like a pretty content level. But I’m scared that if I think about it, then I’ll like start thinking about things. I don’t like it. Like, what I use is that, that sounds really superficial. But is it keeps me riding high —

SS No, I don’t think that’s superficial, I mean, if it’s working for you, it’s working for you.

MP Yeah, I’m, I’m…happy with myself. Still doesn’t mean that anyone loves me.

SS Okay, those two things do not need to exist beside each other. One does not —

MP I don’t need anyone!

SS Well, but maybe let’s talk about that.

MP I mean, I just think that there’s this idea that you’re not ready to accept other people’s love, or it won’t even happen for you if you’re not kind of fully like at “peace with yourself” in inverted commas, or really love yourself. And I think I know a lot of people that hate themselves that have partners. So I don’t think that’s true. But also, I think that I think that it would definitely help have a more healthy relationship. And probably, it’s easier for other people to see the beautiful sides of yourself. You know, I’m not just talking physically, if you also appreciate that, like, definitely that’s in way easier.But I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive.

SS No, I think I agree with you on some points. I for a really long time I thought that was my mantra, like, how can I love someone else if I’m not fully okay with myself? But I’m slowly realizing that, Steph, I think you said it. It’s a constant choice every day to like, be okay with yourself. And I think it’s still okay being with someone else while you’re working on yourself, as long as you’re not relying on them to be fulfilling or to be doing that work for you in some kind of way. Does that make sense?

SC Yeah.

MP Okay, well, now that we’ve heard how we think about self love, and how it might be a journey, rather than a light switch, we should have our guest who has kind of been on that journey for a little while.

SC Take it away, Madison!

Madison My name is Madison. I am 25 years old. I live in Iowa City, Iowa. I’m an eating disorder prevention advocate. And I work at a hospital, in the organ transplant centre helping people get on the waitlist. I’m a performer. I love yoga, I love reading. I love cooking and baking, and anything that’s having to do with the kitchen. I love eating. And I’m, I started writing the Future Me letter, I can’t even tell you how I stumbled upon it, I don’t remember where it came from. I wrote it because I was about to make a huge transition in my life. And I thought, what a better way to look back at this really tumultuous time in my life, than with a letter of exactly what I was feeling.

[music]

“Dear future me,

Hi future me.

One year ago, you moved to a new city where you knew basically no one, with a job you didn’t love, and you were very unsure if at all. And now look at you, you have a supportive job that is fulfilling and fun. You won a local, gained friends and a support system and fell in love. This is one of the best years of your life, and it all started when you took that leap one year ago. It was hard and it was lonely. But now you have grown. I hope not much has changed in this last year. And it’s fun to hope that things stay the same. I only hope that you fall deeper in love with life and with yourself. We don’t know what the future will hold. But I can only hope for more of the same. Mads.”

MP I love this letter. It’s so succinct, and cute, and uplifting, but also there’s so much in it, so many threads to pull, soooo let’s start pulling and unwind this story! First, I wanted to know: what was the city she moved to a year ago?

Madison So I was living in Iowa in the Quad Cities. And I make it seem pretty dramatic. Like I moved across the country, I moved an hour away.

SS Sometimes that’s a big deal, though!

Madison And it was for me, it was just kind of a point in my life where I had been in this place for five years. I had gone to school there, and then I had stayed afterwards. And it was one of those moments where everything just kind of aligned and, and my mom and I had this talk. She’s like, “I don’t think that that town has anything left for you. I think that you’ve taken everything that you can and I think it’s time to move”. And she tried to get me to move to the city that I live in now, a couple years ago when I first got my job here and I was so hesitant I cried, I don’t know why I was so scared of it. But so the letter that I wrote before this letter, I was literally sitting on my friend’s bed because I was living on her couch, like writing this letter to future me be like, Well, I hope this doesn’t suck. I hope things go okay.

SC So your mom was in the town that you were living in before? And you moved away?

Madison No, she was actually, she so um, I had moved from my hometown to my college town, which I lived in for a while. And I had gotten a job in the town that I live in now, and I was commuting an hour back and forth each way. And so she was not happy about that, she did not want me driving that much on a pretty dangerous interstate. So she had been trying for, for that entire year to be like, “why don’t you just move? Why don’t you just move, it’ll be easier”. But I was so scared because I had become so comfortable in this place. And I was like, “no, that’s okay, that’s scary. I don’t want to do that. It’s fine. I’ll just stay here. I’ll just keep driving”. And then literally just everything kind of came to a point. And I was like I don’t I don’t think I have a choice anymore. I think that this is the only thing that I can do. And it it makes sense. But oh my gosh, I was terrified.

SC Do you think there was a moment that made you realise that? like was there a catalyst moment that you were like, hey, I need to leave or like it’s my time to leave or…?

Madison I think it was kind of a lot of things, the fact that I, I had lived with a friend and an apartment for that year. And then I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I was applying to all these different jobs, different places and I had expected one of those to work out and then it didn’t so I was like I’m gonna be moving to this different city and then that didn’t work out. And my friend’s roommate who I was staying in her room while I was living with her, was like “I’m coming back now” so I didn’t have a place to live. So I literally went on Facebook marketplace and I found this sublet, surprisingly wonderful people surprisingly my price surprisingly they could let me move in as soon as possible. And then it was my mom saying “I think that this town kind of has given you all that it can give I don’t think that you’re gonna grow much as a person if you stay here I think you’re just kind of gonna stay the same” and it was it was that fear of me being stuck in the same place and and not growing and not changing at all that I was like, Oh my gosh, you’re right. I need to get out of here.

SS What a cool mom. I feel like there’s so many moms who instinctually will just be like, “no, no, you’re staying with me, like, why do you want to move don’t move, you’re fine here.”

But your mom is like, “I want what’s best for you. I can tell that you’re not growing here. Be free.”

Madison My mom has always been really good at kind of giving it to me straight. I remember I was dating this guy. And then he ghosted me on Valentine’s Day, which is a whole other story.

SS What the fuck?!

Madison And I remember just crying to my mom, and she was like “Madison, he wasn’t the one. You need to stop crying, you need to move on. He was not going to be the person you were going to be with for forever.”

SS I hope not!

Madison I mean, you’re right. It still hurts. But you’re right.

MP Yeah. I’m maybe not ready for that wisdom.

SC Wow. Yeah. Like, I can’t even imagine my mom would literally never tell me to move further away from her. My mom is constantly like, “you should move in with me”. And I’m like, “I’m not living with you. Thank you”.

Madison Well, and I’ll be getting ready for another big move coming up this year. I don’t quite know where yet. But now my mom is like, “don’t you want to stay close to home? Don’t you want to stay a little bit?”

SS Interesting! Is that a result of COVID things? Do you think? That now she’s like, oh, the world is so weird right now, do you think she’s now like, “oh, I want my baby back with me?”

Madison Um, I think it’s the fact that my partner is in medical school, and so he’s going to be going somewhere for residency, and he’s from Seattle and wants to go back to Seattle. So the thought of having me across the country is a little bit scary. But at the same time, she’s like, “we could come visit you all the time”. I was like, “all right, whatever you want to do”.

SC Also, Seattle is like a really cool city.

Madison Yeah, Seattle’s beautiful.

SC So, seems like a good place to visit, though not necessarily during COVID, maybe.

SS I just think of a doctor doing residency in Seattle like that is Grey’s Anatomy like that, he’s gonna live the Grey’s Anatomy life.

Madison Oh I know. And she loves Grey’s Anatomy, and I had to break it to her, that’s probably not what it’s gonna be. But, but she’s adjusting.

[music]

SC Well, can we talk about your partner?

Madison Yeah, of course!

SC Is it the same partner as the, as the one in the letter?

Madison Yes. So I have…. I have a weird relationship with dating and that I, I’ve never really dated. And again, my mom coming in with wisdom. I remember when I was in high school, I was like, “everybody’s got boyfriends. Everybody’s going on dates. And nobody’s dating me”. And she looked at me. She’s like,” if you wanted a boyfriend you would have been, but you don’t right now, because you’re focusing on yourself, and you’re focusing on school, and that’s okay”. It’s like, “wow, all right. You’re right.” So I never-

SS Uh, your mom.

Madison She’s amazing. But so I had never really dated. I dated a guy in high school a little bit. I dated a guy in college. And then I just realised, like, I graduated college, and I didn’t really have anybody. And so I went on a couple dates, got ghosted, a lot. And then the first guy that I dated when I moved, was in medical school. And it’s funny, when you look back and you find things. It’s like, “oh, this is the reason why I’m here”. Because I think that he is the reason that I moved. I had to move to be able to meet him where he was at the right space in his life, and I was at the right space in my life. And it’s, when I talk about it in the letter. I like very underplay it, because I don’t think that I could have gotten through the move without him. He’s so supportive. And now we’re together, which is wonderful.

SS And moving together.

Madison Yeah.

SS That’s so exciting! How did you, how did y’all meet?

Madison We met on Bumble. Which is like, not a very cool story, considering that I worked and he went to school, like about 50 feet away. So we probably would have met in the hospital at some point, our paths would have converged. But you know, social media and technology just makes that a whole lot easier. Oh, the funny thing about my partner so I had matched with him and I had matched with this other guy at about the same time. And this other guy on paper, he was like, everything that I possibly wanted. He was like, “I love Harry Potter. I love riding my motorcycle, I love you know, going to wineries I love you know, cooking” and I was like, “oh my gosh,” so I sent him this message like “hi, I think I’m your perfect woman”. And my now boyfriend messaged me asking me if I knew the largest tumour that was ever removed from a human body because he had a podcast about medical trivia. And I was like “oh my god what the hell is this guy doing? Like he’s gonna murder me, he’s gonna murder me in a basement.

SC Yeah that is some murder shit. If someone sent me that I would be like ‘report’.

Madison But, but this other guy that I thought was perfect ended up ghosting me and then my partner now was like “I would really like to take you out to a hot yoga class. You can laugh at how inflexible I am. We can get bubble tea afterwards”. And I was like, “Yeah, let’s do it”.

SC I remove tumours of any size!

MP This is so unconventional.

SS Yeah, it’s like a parallel universe Grey’s Anatomy.

Madison Yes, very much so.

SC That’s awesome. Did you feel like ready? I don’t know. Did you feel… I don’t know how to phrase this, but like more ready to accept dating?

Madison Oh, absolutely. And I really think that the reason that things worked out so well with my partner now is because I was tired of dating, I was so tired of being like a diet version of myself that I thought would be easy to palette for people. So I was like, I’m not going to talk about my eating disorder. I’m not going to talk about the fact that I do pageants, I’m just gonna, you know, be very calm and, and if they like me, maybe then I’ll put things out there.

For my partner… On our first date, we talked about abortion, we talked about religion, we talked about eating disorders, we talked about, you know, advances in medicine, we talked about everything that you shouldn’t talk about on a first date. And for me, it was, it was so freeing, because it’s like, alright, well, I put everything out for this guy. If he doesn’t like me, then he just doesn’t like me. And that’s okay. Because somebody else will. Turns out he did so… it was just kind of, and I’ve had, I’ve had other experiences, not necessarily with dating, but with people that I’m like, this is who I am. I’m just gonna put it out. If you don’t like me, then that’s on you. You know, I did everything that I could to be true to myself.

SS Totally.

SC I love that expression, a diet version of your site. Is that common? That’s the first time I’ve heard that. I’m gonna use that though.

Madison I actually heard a drag queen talk about it when she was going on dates. And I was like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna take that because I think that was really like, oh, my gosh, I had been watering myself down, I had been making myself try to be more palatable for people. When it’s like, I had worked so hard on myself to love myself. It’s like, why… why don’t I give people that same benefit of knowing that ‘me’ that I love?

SC Especially if you like, start the conversation talking about tumours? I feel like that kind of opens up to talk about anything, right?

Madison Yeah.

MP I think that there’s so, so much like, 90% of online dating is just so boring. And people are just like, “how was your day?” Or like, “what’s your favourite food” and like, fine, we can talk about that. But you’re never gonna get to know me like that. And if we start on something like weird and unusual, where I want to talk to you were immediately going to have like, a more interesting conversation. And in 15 minutes, 30 minutes, I’m going to know whether like, you know, we can talk about something interesting, or whether this is already done, because like, we have wildly different views on this, like, move on, you know, like, I’ve only got so much time.

Madison Precisely.

MP It’s a great way to start things.

Madison It’s gonna be a great story to tell. And at the end of our first date, we were talking a lot about a lot of different things that I had laughed so hard, I was like, this is the best first date I’ve ever been on, like, I hope that he feels the same. I hope he kisses me or |I hope he asks me out, and at the end of it, he like patted me on the back and was like, “all right, keep in touch” and like, walked away, and then turned around and said, “okay, and listen to my podcast.” And I was like, I’m gonna kill this man. I’m gonna kill him. I just had the best first date of my life. And-

SS He wanted to plug his podcast!

Madison -and he said “keep in touch?” and plug his podcast? And then he texted me later was like, “I really enjoyed seeing you, we should do this again, but maybe when we’re not sweating buckets”, and I was like, “yeah, that’s that’s a little bit more like it”. Thank you.

SS Oh my god!

MP And only if you review me five stars.

Madison Make sure to like, comment and subscribe.

[music]

SS Is he still doing his podcast?

Madison It actually kind of died because medical school as it turns out, is really hard and you don’t have time for a lot of other things. But he’d be mad if I didn’t plug it. So Podphylaisx. And if you think it’s hard to remember, that’s also what I thought when I went on this first date, he was like, “please listen to my podcast”. I was like, “I don’t remember the name”.

SC Podphylaxis? What does phylaxis mean?

Madison Like prophylaxis? Prophylaxis is something that you give to like, prevent an illness. So they just changed the ‘pre’ to ‘pod’. They call it preventative medicine for your ears.

[music rise & fade out]

MP I want to ask about the end of your letter, because you’re obviously in a really good place when you wrote it. And you’re like, “I hope nothing changes, I hope things stay like this forever” and it’s like well…

SS And then 2020 happened.

Madison Yeah, and I was thinking a lot about this too, because I feel like there’s two different ways to look at the end of my letter and kind of everything that’s happened in between. It’s that everything has changed, or that nothing has changed. And I really feel it’s a little bit of both. It’s kind of like the more things change, the more they stay the same. Because while everything that I had planned for this year, all the events that I had planned, all the things that I thought maybe were going to happen, while those have all changed….I still have my job that I love, and I’ve taken on some new responsibilities. I have expanded my support circle, and even in these times of COVID, who reaches out to you and who you stay in contact with, I think says a lot about the friendships that you’ve made and who is really going to be there for you when times get tough.

SS Totally.

Madison And my partner and I live together now. And we live together all through quarantine and we didn’t kill each other. So really, things have changed a lot. But everything that I want it to stay the same, has. Everything has gotten immensely better because I’ve had a lot more time to focus on myself, I’ve had a lot more time to focus on my relationships, and my my job and my career. And it’s, it’s so rewarding to know that okay, even though everything changed last year, when I said, “I hope nothing changes”, the things that are important, and the things that I really wanted to stay the same are even better than before.

SS Oh, that’s so great.

SC I don’t know if there’s like, I don’t even know how to say this, because it’s gonna make me sound like such a bitch. But like, I don’t think I don’t think I’ve ever like looked around me and been like, “oh, I would like everything to stay the same.”

Madison First of all, I don’t think that you’re a bitch for wanting, things to change because that’s the way that our society has kind of trained us to think, we’re always striving to have like the next biggest house, or the next job, move for the next relationship, and move to that next point. But I was so tired of feeling exhausted with myself for not getting to that next step quick enough, or not getting to them, where I thought my friends would get to them. Like most of my friends right now are married. And I’m not, and some of them are having kids, and I’m not. I got so tired of just trying to fit into whatever society thought that I should be doing next.

So I had to do a lot of work on myself and understand that it’s okay to just be as I am right now, I don’t constantly have to be working. I don’t constantly have to be going out and chasing this next thing. So it’s really, really nice when I could finally come to that place in myself. It’s like, “wow, I hope nothing changes. I hope things stay exactly the same”. And maybe while they didn’t quite stay the same in the way that I thought they did, the things that are important stayed the same.

SS That’s beautiful.

SC Yeah, it is beautiful. Like even just to realise about yourself, like not even the circumstances you’re living in, but that like you’re happy with who you are right now, I think it’s like a beautiful thing that maybe we don’t like admit to ourselves. Or don’t stop to think or take the time to want to admit to ourselves really.

SS Yeah, it’s hard. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way either SC so…I’m with you.

Madison It’s not something that comes on my mind every day, either. It’s something that I do have to make, like a conscious decision of saying, “okay, I’m feeling overwhelmed right now. But are the things that I’m worried about really going to matter in five years? Or is spending time working on the person that I am inside? Is that gonna matter in five years?” And I guarantee you that it is not every day that I feel that, I was feeling really good on the day that I wrote that letter.

SC Do you remember receiving this letter?

Madison Yeah, I do. And I had gotten like a, a message a couple days before that’s like “your letter’s on the way”. And I had forgotten that I had wrote it to myself. And I was like, [gasp] “I can’t, what did I write? What I write? I’m so excited. What was I doing a year ago?” I got so excited. And I remember, I had like, woken up as soon as I could like, I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes. And it had come through. And so I spent time reading it, like on my phone in bed. And I was just like, wow, if I could go back and tell a year ago me everything that was gonna happen. She probably would not believe me. But also, I don’t think that I would want to go back and change anything. Like I wouldn’t change anything about the way that things happen. And I definitely, I have the privilege of being very lucky that I appreciate that things didn’t change that much. I understand that this has ruined a lot of people’s lives and it is taken way too many lives. And so I understand that I have a great privilege and saying that like wow, I have a great life. I hope nothing changes. So I know that that’s very specific to me and, and not applicable to the general public, but it definitely made me feel like “oh, she was so naive. So cute.”

[music]

MP I love how she treats herself. It’s like with kindness but also appreciating that she’s grown and changed a bit and kind of sees the innocence in past-Madison.

So.. I feel like we’ve started to pick this thing apart, but there’s something that was dropped in earlier that we have to pick up.

MP In your letter, you talk about winning a local… I don’t know what that is. But a little while ago, you mentioned a pageant…

Madison Yeah, I compete in the Miss America system.

MP [gasps]

SS Cool.

SC I thought ‘winning a local’ meant like, getting a boyfriend…. who’s like local to the place that you moved.

Madison I won a local!

MP Oh that’s amazing.

SC I thought you were being like, silly. Oh my god, I’m so silly…oh my god.

SS I’m gonna start using that though.

Madison Oh no no no no no.

SS That is so funny,

Madison I won a local!

MP A holiday fling: won a local.

SC I’m so sorry.

Madison I really love that.

But so, I competed in the Miss America programme in Iowa. And in order to qualify for a state competition, you have to win a local competition first. And it’s kind of a long story that’ll summarise as quickly as I can. I tried to compete in 2016 when they still had swimsuit, and I had a relapse of my eating disorder. And so I kind of shut the door on that. And I said, “okay, this clearly isn’t for me. I need to focus on myself and I need to make sure that I’m in the healthiest mind and body that I can be”.

2018 I had the chance to choreograph the Miss Wisconsin State competition, and I loved it. I loved meeting all the girls I loved being in that competition and the Tuesday that we got back in that competition, Miss America said that they’re no longer doing swimsuit. And I broke down in tears in the bathroom because I had fallen in love with this organisation. I wanted to do it so bad, but I knew I couldn’t do it in a swimsuit because I could not put myself through that pain and that hurt anymore. So as soon as they said, we’re not doing swimsuit anymore, I just started bawling. And I was like, “oh my god, this is my time. This is what I’m doing.” And so I signed up for my first competition, got first runner up, signed up for my second competition, got first runner up, signed up for my third competition…. didn’t even place. And so I was, I was very frustrated with it. I was like, “you know what? It doesn’t even matter if I don’t win this next one, I’m probably not going to do it anymore. Like, it’s a lot of fun. But it’s just a lot of time.” And I did not do any prep for it. I was on vacation right before and then I won.

SC Wow.

SS Congrats!

Madison Oh, thank you. And it had again, just come at that time, after I’d moved. I had done all these competitions before I had moved. And it was just another thing that was like, wow, I must really be in the right place, because everything just kind of fell as it should. It kind of fell into my lap. Like, obviously, I worked for it. And, and I had confidence in what I had done so far. But it was just like, “wow, okay, I can do this, I can, I can do this. This could be what I do!”

SS Good for you.

Madison Which was just such a, such a cool experience to be like, “alright, everything that I’ve worked for can pay off.”

SC Wow, that’s so amazing.

MP Congratulations.

SS Also, thank you for being so open about your, like, your struggles with eating disorders. And I just feel like sometimes in that space, in the pageant space, there’s this, I don’t know, you obviously know better than us, but like this need to be perfect and like not really talk about your struggles, maybe…. So just the fact that you’re like being open about that. And also that you knew it wasn’t good for you to do it in a way that wasn’t safe. So, like congrats on winning, but also congrats on like doing that work on yourself as well, because that’s important.

MP Yeah, winning safely.

Madison Well, thank you. I, when I had first tried to compete, everybody has to have a social impact initiative, something that you want to promote through your service. And so in 2016, mine was something about health literacy, which I still think is super important. But when the competition switched, I knew that I had to do something that was so central to me, and something that was so important, it changed my life. So my entire platform that I run on is body positivity and teaching young women about how to have a healthy relationship with their body, and with food, and with exercise, and how to find those, those science in those symptoms in your peers and your classmates. So that nobody hopefully ever asked to go through what I go through again.

SC I feel like from the outside, like the Miss America pageant, or even like pageantry in general, kind of gets shit on for being like, you know, this like shiny thing where a bunch of women are, like competing against each other and comparing themselves to each other, and blah, blah, blah, and like, that, obviously, sometimes can be harmful, but you are within the organisation and have had experience like with parts of it being harmful to you, and parts of it being like super healthy and good for you? Like, can you talk about how it’s good? Because like, I I never hear that perspective

Madison Oh, absolutely. And I think a lot of people have that exact experience, and that’s why, that’s why I think that there is the vision that pageants are kind of demeaning to women. But as soon as you talk to somebody like me, or somebody who’s been in the Miss America organisation, I think you learn very quickly that we’re, we’re not a beauty pageant really anymore. We’re a scholarship competition. But Miss USA, which is very similar system to Miss America has the swimsuit portion still. And I’ve had the great fortune of meeting a lot of those women, and they are so kind, and so uplifting.

It seems really catty, almost to say like, okay, well, we’re gonna judge women on how they look. And you think that automatically that means that we’re all in competition with each other. When at the end of the day, it’s a competition with yourself. I know that I can’t control what anybody else does. But if I did the best that I can, if I spoke all of my ideals, and if I, if I told the judges what I want to do, if I performed my talent, well, and I presented myself with grace and poise, and that’s all that I can do at the end of the day. And if they didn’t see that in me, and they saw it in somebody else, then that’s amazing for that girl.

MP Okay, quick interruption, and then we’ll get right back to it. I just have to know what would you do as your talent if you were in a pageant?

SS I would pick someone out of the crowd, and ask them what their mood is, and find a TikTok to match that mood.

MP Yes, I love that.

SC It’s like, what’s it like, Tik Tok…

SS Psychic, I am a TikTok psychic.

SC Yeah, TikTok psychic.

SS I spend hours a day on it. So I better be at this point. That’s just an funnier way of saying I have no talents. So.

SS I don’t know what my talent would be. What’s your talent?

MP Oh, I also agree that I have no talent!

SS Remember that self love thing we were talking about?

MP I’m good at speed walking? Can I have that as a talent?

SC Oh, yes!

SS Heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, toe.

MP If I go on walks with some friends, I’ll just be powering and someone will have to say please, can you slow down because I can’t keep up. It’s natural. But I train it by powering to the supermarket and back.

SS I’m just picturing where on a stage just speed walking in a circle.

MP Just doing laps?

SC I can sing. I don’t know what I would do. I could, I think that is maybe a weird talent is I think if someone gave me like, any five ingredients, there should be a cooking show. Like that’s like five ingredients, and you have to make a meal from them. I feel like I’d be really good at that. So when you pull the audience for their mood, pull them for what their fav ingredient, too. We can do a TikTok cook off. And Maria will just be pacing around us very quickly.

SS Can’t wait.

SC You said for a second, “oh, we’re gonna make a move, but we don’t know where” but then you said potentially Seattle…. So I’m just wondering if we can ask about that?

Madison Yeah, so at the end of medical school, if you want to pursue residency, what you do is you make a big list of places that you would like to go to residency, which is depending on your specialty anywhere from like three to six years for us, it’ll be like three to four years. And so my partner right now is compiling a list of everywhere that he might want to go, things that he might want to practice in. And basically you go on a bunch of interviews, all those systems rank you, and then you rank the list. And then you don’t really know where you’re going until middle of March. So we’re in the process right now of applying, of figuring out places that we might want to go where we might want to live, places that would be good for his specialties, but I won’t know where we’re headed until March. So it’s a little scary.

SC Yeah. And like, how does that feel with, your recent-ish experience moving there? Like, do you feel excited? Or do you feel like do you feel more prepared or less prepared?

Madison I feel way less prepared, because that was, the move at first was like an hour away. And well, I knew like one person there, but now it’s gonna be moving practically anywhere across the country, I will still have my partner, but he’s gonna be going through a very stressful situation. And making friends as adults is so hard and I’m gonna have to go make so many friends I’m gonna have to make adjustments. But I like to fall back on the fact that I love doing theatre so I can always get involved in that. I’m going to be a mentor in the Miss America programme for the rest of my life if things all worked out well, so I can always fall back on that. I love yoga, so I’ll make friends where I can, it’s just always still very scary.

SC Yeah, of course.

SS I have no doubt that you will, you’ll kill it. You seem like someone who just make stuff happen. So … yeah keep going.

Madison Thank you.

[music]

MP I think Sophie, you’re absolutely right. She can really do anything that she sets her mind to. I mean, she’s already proved that she can just move to a new city and make stuff happen and like, find a partner that she loves, and get a good job and all that. And now she’s doing it again. And I have such utter faith in her which is, you know, I think there are a lot of these conversations, we, through their self belief, we kind of have that reflected back on us. And it feels kind of empowering and inspiring, and I just love it.

MP Yeah, we’re like so hard on women, too. I feel like that’s a theme coming up in this episode like talking about pageantry. And, you know, we’re like, especially hard I mean, we’re hard on ourselves, but I think society is like really hard on women. And so it’s nice to see someone who’s like defying other people’s judgement and like using her own experience to help other women also defy other people’s judgment of themselves.

SS Yeah, totally. Thank you, Madison. [theme music fades in]

MP Okay credits! Thank you so much to Madison, we can’t wait to hear where you end up.

I know you’ll find friends and make it your home and take the place by storm! This podcast is an Edit Audio production, hosted and produced by SC Colbourn, SS Shin, and MP Passingham.

Our amazing Edit Audio team helped us build this and every episode! Audio Network provided a lot of the music, and thanks to Matt for creating FutureMe, and collaborating with us on this show by getting us in touch with letter writers! You can visi FutureMe.org to write your own letter, and if you’ve been writing to yourself and want to talk to us email us at hello@editaud.io, you can also find the email address in the shownotes.

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editaudio

Podcast Production House. Women, nb, and trans owned and operated. Passionate about getting marginalized voices heard. hello@editaud.io