In this episode of The Discomfort Practice, Betsy is joined by Katherine Wela Bogen - scholar, activist, storyteller, and self-described "joyful little freak" - for a conversation that refuses to stay in its lane (in the best possible way). Katie, as she's known to her friends, is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology researching the intersections of bisexual identity, sexual trauma, sexual functioning, and kink. She has published more than 30 peer-reviewed papers, hosts the political podcast Superhumanizer, and has just released her debut novel Queering Him - the first in the Avra and Kiran trilogy.

They talk about the particular loneliness of being a multi-hyphenate; the tension of being a storyteller who is also a rigorous scientist and a justice activist; growing up queer and Jewish in rural Connecticut; the grassroots, intergenerational nature of rural queer organizing; purity culture in activist spaces (yes, that purity culture); and why the internet may be doing something genuinely sick to our capacity for human connection. Oh, and they coin a new term: queer-narc. You're welcome.

This is a rich, wide-ranging, deeply honest conversation about sovereignty, disruption, and what it means to hold a fully realized identity in a world that keeps trying to flatten you.

• The tension of being a scholar-activist-storyteller, and why each community will always think you're betraying the others

• How the skills we sharpen to keep ourselves safe become our superpowers

• Signing a "closeting contract" at boarding school, and what that taught Katie about using intellectual excellence as a shield

• Growing up queer and Jewish in a majority-Christian rural Connecticut town, and the casual antisemitism that surrounded her Holocaust-survivor grandfather

• How rural queer activism works - whisper networks, safe parents, rainbow sidewalks painted in the dark, and the teachers whose doors you know are open

• Activist perfectionism and online purity culture: "Why are you being such a cop?"

• Impact vs intent, and why a well-meaning neighbour is not your enemy

• Katie's debut novel Queering Him: two flawed, bisexual adolescents asking the hard questions about desire, kink, fetishization, and queerness, and why readers who want to cancel fictional teenagers might want to look inward

• What the kink community models about accountability, community repair, and anti-carceral approaches to harm

• COVID, the digital age, and what we've lost by moving so much of human life onto a screen

• Final thought: Don't let the internet take your humanity from you.

Katherine Wela Bogen (she/her) is a bisexual, Jewish scholar-activist and storyteller whose work sits at the intersections of consent, kink, pleasure politics, and self-advocacy. She is currently completing her doctoral degree in clinical psychology (NIH-funded research on bisexual identity, sexual trauma, sexual functioning, and kink). She has published more than 30 peer-reviewed papers and hosts the political podcast Superhumanizer. Her public-facing platform is k.w.bogen, where she reaches over 500,000 followers with millions of monthly views. Her debut novel Queering Him - the first in the Avra and Kiran trilogy - is out now. Books two and three follow in January 2027 and January 2028 respectively, with two spin-off novels to follow.

Find Katie:

• Instagram / social: @k.w.bogen

• Podcast: Superhumanizer

• Novel: Queering Him (Avra and Kiran trilogy, Book 1) - available wherever books are sold

• Queering Him by Katherine Wela Bogen (Avra and Kiran trilogy, Book 1)

• Podcast: Superhumanizer

• Katie mentioned sharing academic articles on queer rurality in shownotes; check her social platforms for those links

Follow Betsy on Instagram: @thebetsyreed

Subscribe to the podcast and leave a five-star written review - it genuinely helps get The Discomfort Practice out into the world.

Read Betsy's Substack, Voice Notes from the Edge: substack.com/@thebetsyreed

Work with Betsy - coaching, the Embodied Leadership Lab membership, community circles, and People Like Us dinners across Europe: embodiedleadershiplab.com

In this solo episode of The Discomfort Practice, Betsy reflects on the deeply inconvenient timing of becoming wildly, viscerally alive in the middle of grappling with mortality.

A few months after a cancer diagnosis and before chemotherapy has even begun, she finds herself blindsided by something she genuinely did not expect: a crush. Not a sensible attraction. A full nervous-system hijack. The kind that turns a self-aware adult woman into a fluttery teenage disaster because someone walks into a room.

But beneath the humour is something deeper.

This episode explores what happens when the body you've suddenly begun relating to through fear, uncertainty and medical language unexpectedly remembers desire, curiosity, embodiment and aliveness. It's about eros as life force. About mortality sharpening beauty. About the absurdity and sacredness of still being emotionally movable in the middle of the unknown.

It's definitely existential, ya'll.

In this episode, Betsy explores:

• Why a crush feels strangely healing during a cancer diagnosis

• Mortality, identity and the fear of becoming untethered from yourself

• Erotic aliveness as animating life force

• The nervous system's refusal to become purely practical

• Why being deeply affected is sometimes evidence of being deeply alive

The Discomfort Practice explores the uncomfortable edges where personal growth, leadership, embodiment and systems change intersect.

Follow Betsy for more reflections on reinvention, eros, uncertainty and building a life that feels vividly alive.

Follow Betsy on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thebetsyreed
Subscribe to The Discomfort Practice wherever you listen to podcasts
Join her on Substack at The Betsy Reed: substack.com/thebetsyreed
Work with Betsy: www.embodiedleadershiplab.com

In this solo episode of The Discomfort Practice, Betsy reflects on what happens when life blows apart the illusion of linearity, and why that rupture may be the beginning of something far more honest.

A few weeks after unexpectedly being diagnosed with cancer and undergoing surgery, Betsy finds herself in a strange in-between space: giving keynote speeches and being invited into rooms of influence, while simultaneously asking for financial grace, facing chemotherapy and confronting the uncomfortable realities of building an unconventional life.

This is an episode about the collision between external accomplishment and internal uncertainty. About the shame that emerges when you compare your real life to an imaginary timeline. And about what becomes possible when you stop treating your life like it's late.

Betsy explores the myth of the "correct" life path - marriage, stability, financial security, certainty - and what it means to consciously choose freedom, creativity, reinvention, and impact instead. She speaks candidly about the sharper edges of that choice: ageing alone, financial precarity, mortality, identity and the fear that maybe none of it adds up the way you thought it would.

But she also asks a different question:
What if life is not a ladder, but a series of eras, chapters, and initiations?
What if this moment is not failure, but intermission before the next becoming?

In this episode, Betsy explores:

• Why cancer shattered the illusion of "later"
• The shame that comes from comparing human lives to linear timelines
• The difference between external achievement and internal alignment
• Choosing freedom over safety and the costs and gifts of that path
• What ageing, uncertainty, and mortality reveal about what actually matters
• Why this chapter may be less about proving herself and more about becoming fully herself
• Embodied Leadership Lab as work born from lived experience, not polished theory
• How to stop treating your life as though it's somehow behind schedule

The Discomfort Practice explores the uncomfortable edges where personal growth, leadership, culture, and systems change intersect. If this episode landed for you, follow Betsy for more reflections on embodiment, reinvention, and building a life that is fully your own.

Follow Betsy on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thebetsyreed
Subscribe to The Discomfort Practice wherever you listen to podcasts - and leave a five-star review (it genuinely helps)
Join her on Substack at The Betsy Reed for (Voice) Notes from the Edge: substack.com/thebetsyreed
Work with Betsy - coaching, consulting, speaking, embodied leadership sessions, and Embodied Leadership Lab: www.betsy-reed.com