[00:00:00] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: Let there be discomfort. Right? Like, be more comfortable in an uncomfortable situation and trust that it'll play out a little bit better. It might take some time, it might leave you with some scratches or bruises, you know, but in the long run, like you're gonna learn something and hopefully become a better person for it.

Like I was raised by a single mom. I kind of got to do what I wanted to do, as long as I, you know, checked the other boxes and, and as I, you know, grow professionally, as I grow in my relationship and have this, you know, new family extension, I really found that doing the the responsible things allows me a lot more freedom and flexibility, and that shows up in my bank account, my financial health, my physical and nutritional health.

Welcome to Small Acts of Rebellion, a podcast where the unspoken narratives at the intersection of our personal and professional lives come to light. I'm your host, Heather Pridemore, your guide on this journey of discovery and defiance. Join me as we uncover the rebellious spirit that shapes our careers and lives.

It's time to own your story. Are you ready?

[00:01:21] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: Today's guest is Maggie Kinneberg, a multifaceted collaborator focused on intersections of food systems, learning experiences, and healthy individuals and communities. Previously, she led a social impact organization to distribute millions of pounds of emergency nutrition during the hardest times of the COVID-19 pandemic. She holds an unwavering commitment to embrace transformation. Cultivate resilience and co-create positive change. Maggie's diverse skills have been honed across small business management, supplemental instruction for first year college students, major event production, food access logistics and distribution, and nutrition and wellness education ranging from senior mobility and meditation to HITT and yoga. Maggie strives to sow nurturing and sustainable relations between people, planet, and source. So all generations thrive. She was raised in rural Michigan and has made Colorado home since 2010. Outside of work, you'll find this being enjoying Mother Earth's beauty and her husband and dog, or getting spunky in martial arts.

Welcome to the show, Maggie.

[00:02:28] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: Hey, thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:30] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: So I always like to say how I know people, right? And, and you are actually a, the result of a mutual connection. So, Tania Baxter, who was a guest on this first season of this podcast, you both know each other and that's ultimately how you and I met. And I think one of the things that was most interesting to me when I just was learning a little bit about you was the martial arts, which we are definitely gonna get to. But I just, I'm so glad you could be here today, Maggie. I'm looking forward to getting to know you a little bit better.

[00:02:58] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: Yeah. Thank you so much. I was really excited when you reached out and it's been a fun, you know, intersection for me to start sharing, which I know we'll get into as well. So, yeah.

[00:03:07] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: Yeah. So speaking of intersections, right? I am a huge fan of, uh, things, just really anything where there's sort of this, this place where things that don't normally come together or things that we don't normally think about coming together, they sort of like intersect. And to me that's a lot of where innovation comes from.

It's where a, a lot of novelty comes from. Part of this podcast is about the intersection of the personal and the professional. 'cause I think too often we try to sort of take them apart and compartmentalize them. But the reality is, is that they're very much like intertwined. And so I wanna talk about your work at the intersection of food systems learning and community health.

And I really wanna know how you first became interested in those areas, and then ultimately what ties them together for you.

[00:03:53] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: Yeah. Thank you. So I will probably talk in a little bit of circles for those couple of things because that's how it happens, right? Like kind of weaving them in. I think about braiding a lot when I talk about intersections. And so food systems was kind of my first launch in terms of a quote professional career.

Um, I had been working, randomly in a roofing company and then went back to school for my bachelor's and I started going back first for business and I was like, this is kind of boring 'cause I'm doing this all day at work and then I go to school and I do it at night. And so I switched over into nutrition.

For me it was just kind of the first few years of my own personal health journey. I grew up with, you know, the standard American diet and eating a lot of low cost foods, which doesn't always mean high nutrients density. And so I was starting to you know, find my own way through health. And that was a variation of, losing weight and then finding strength and finding ways that I liked to move, not just like exercise, which sounded so ugh at the time.

And so for me, switching my focus into nutrition allowed me to just go deep in something that I got really curious about for my own reasons. And that led me into working with different nonprofits for volunteering, I would do food recovery redistribution. I would do some, you know, community nutrition and education classes.

If you've heard of the Women's Bean Project or if any of the listeners have, it's a local Denver nonprofit and they support women who are getting back into the workforce. Maybe they've come through some hardships, including domestic violence or their own, intersection with the justice system, I think is how we say it now.

So there's a lot of different ways that people could kind of come into those programs and I just was soaking up any opportunity to get involved and share my, you know, excitement for nutrition and how many different ways there are to nourish the human body. So I found that through those programs, there became a little bit more rigidity in the pathway to, becoming a registered dietician.

I wasn't particularly interested in that clinical side. I was way more into the community side and working with low income populations as I grew up. And so for me, that started to shift me into like, well, what are other places where I can apply my knowledge and my, you know, passion or enthusiasm into a place where it ultimately benefits the whole person's health?

And so that kind of got me into teaching fitness classes, the mindfulness, mobility, you know, joint mobility, working with seniors. And I just started to love that. And so, you know, as I said, like spiraling in on this, I, I then started teaching, what MSU Denver calls supplemental instruction. And so instead of being a teacher's aide, it's more for the students.

And so I would work with, first year students, whether they were, you know, fresh out of high school coming into college or later in life like I was when I went back to school and just helping people kind of get familiar with resources on campus, helping them with their study habits or building out their programs, and found that there's a lot of ways to connect with people through these little interactions.

It doesn't have to be such a specific like nutrition education protocol program. And that became really enjoyable for me, a good way to meet people. And it's like those tiny little conversations that can start to shift or spark something for someone else, like show that it's possible. And so continuing the weaving that brought me, you know, further into food systems, further into learning and education and adult education and all of that really like

comes together through community health for me. So working with nonprofit organizations, whether they're advancing heart health or reducing diabetes or helping people get connected to affordable housing resources, there's so many ways that people engage either in their neighborhood or their you know, wider region.

And so these kinds of community hubs just became really important to me. And that's how I got more involved into the work where I met Tania. I'll just say like broadly, the work I've done with nonprofits has been anything from event production, like you mentioned, fundraising and development, or logistics and distribution.

So kind of all across the board, but just using that kind of generalist approach be like, where can I be helpful? What can I do that's interesting and meaningful? And how do I do that to my own best ability?

[00:08:25] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: Yeah. There's a lot of things to sort of unpack there, Maggie. The first thing I want to kind of take a step back though on is in relation to your own sort of personal journey with what I'll call nutrition health, because as you've alluded to, health actually encompasses a really broad range of things in our lives that impact our health.

And, and you had sort of, alluded to kind of growing up with like your typical American diet and anecdotally I have like this funny story. So when my child was really young, they would eat anything and as soon as they got into the daycare and school system and got on sort of the typical, uh, we'll call it like USDA school diet, all of a sudden all they would eat was like kid food. And so just kind of an interesting anecdotal, thing about how we think about nutrition and health and, I mean there's, that's a whole other podcast, right, about as far

as like

about the food system. But I just wanted to know a little bit more about your personal story there, Maggie, in the sense that like were you trying, 'cause you mentioned curiosity, you got curious about it, but I was just wondering like, were you on some sort of personal journey, of your own health and of your own nutrition that kind of led you in that direction? Or was it sort of just like a, a nice sort of secondary thing where it's like, okay, I got curious about this thing and in, in that process, I was able then to also benefit from this sort of exploration and experience.

[00:09:50] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: Yeah, I love that question. I'd say it's mostly my own personal health journey that kind of led me down this road at first, and then, you know, as a secondary layer of that, like I wanted to do something good in the world, right? Like I think that's what a lot of people, especially young people today, they're like, I just wanna make a good difference or

do something that helps others live a better life or a more fulfilled life. And so once I started feeling a shift in my own personal health, physically and mentally and emotionally and spiritually, all these layers, that made me want to show other people that it's possible and it's not that hard. It's really doable.

And it's a lot of like small steps for the long term. You know, consistency over time equals results kind of a mantra there. And it doesn't have to be this like. Drastic, like starve yourself crazy, kind of a diet and like run for two hours a day. Like that sounded really awful. And so for me it was like these little nuggets that just kind of came over time, like year after year after year.

And so, I, you'd mentioned in my bio, I moved to Colorado in 2010 and at that time I was 20 years old. I was relatively freshly out of high school. Did my first couple years of college in Florida and I was in the poorest health of my life at that time. My family grew up, you know, I was raised in rural Michigan.

We lived on, you know, a really low budget. My mom was a single mom. My brother and I have different dads. Neither of them was in the picture. We leaned on my grandparents a ton, and so it was, you know, pretty bare bones a lot of times. And so we got used to eating that, like USDA standard American, like cheap calorie kind of a diet.

And so that just accumulated over the years in terms of my personal health. And thankfully I wasn't having any like major issues, but I saw a lot of that in my family. Diabetes, high blood pressure, likely there was some, you know, heart disease in the works, if not like underlying for a lot of them. And it just gets harder and harder to change those habits as people get older.

And so I felt like, you know. I either have to make a change or continue to be like unhappy in my own body. And so in 2010 was really when that like shifted for me. I had had a really sweet coworker at a grocery store back in Florida and she gave me this little yoga DVD and I tell everyone this story 'cause it's so silly, was a 2009, you know, yoga DVD, and this lady had her little finger symbols and I thought it was so funny.

And then I enjoyed it and I just kept being like, okay, this is harder than I thought. I'm like sweating in the living room doing this DVD, and this lady's in her little leotard, like so peaceful in these hard poses. I'm like, what is this? And so I just kept trying it, you know? And so that was my first like foray really into any kind of a physical movement practice.

I had skated through like, you know, PE in school and everything and done the bare minimum, but, but once I got this feeling of like, I. I'm capable of something hard and it actually is enjoyable. Even though it might be uncomfortable, it's worth it in the long run. It kind of shifted my mindset of like that reward center.

And so that led me into, I. You know, hiking and then I was living up in the mountains of Colorado, up in Clear Creek County, and I was able to go adventure in this beautiful landscape and learn to snowboard. And I just got, you know, really inspired to have a more active life and to be physically capable of doing things that looked like fun even though they were hard.

And so that led me even further into more, like bicycling, and that was my main mode of transportation. When I was at MSU Denver, I would sprint on my bike downtown like a crazy person to get to class on time, but that was, you know, something that would wake me up. I'd feel energized once I got to school instead of just like sitting on the light rail or driving and parking.

And so just like these little things started clicking in for me, and so I decided in 2015 to do a a fitness teacher training, I was doing a clean trade at a local movement studio that's now no longer here. And they gave me this amazing discount. I was like

barely scraping by paying my own bills in college. And I was like, sure, I guess I'll do this thing on the side. And, and was just inspired by all the people around me. Like people with very different body types, people with very different backgrounds, you know, different, professional abilities and just everybody showing up and cheering each other on to do something challenging like

a crazy spin class at 5:30 in the morning or a, you know, a fusion class where we'd be doing weights and HITT right after riding the bike. And I was like, this effing sucks. Why am I doing this? Oh my gosh. And then by the end of it I'm like, oh, okay. You know, like this feeling of being proud, after an accomplishment.

And so. Again, that like reward center just kept feeding me forward. But I think what, what was the ultimate like motivation underneath like, okay, this feels good. I'm accomplishing something new. The biggest thing that I started to learn through that teacher training was like, what do I want to feel like in my body as I get older and looking at my family and my family health history on my mom's side, I was like

it's not statistically great, you know, Midwest, rural diet, like, especially like you said, totally different podcasts, but the more that people got away from small farms and like producing their own food, the less positive health outcomes there are. And, and so the more that I got into my own health practice, I was like, I, I wanna do this for the 80-year-old version of Maggie.

I'm not doing this for the current version, right? Like I wanna be able to live an independent life. I wanna be able to go on adventures, I wanna get out into nature and not roll my ankle and not be afraid to fall. And I wanna be able to like reach my own top cupboard when I'm 90 or whatever that is. And so I.

I started to appreciate the importance of building that up today so that it's there for the long haul. And so, like I said earlier, it's the ability to feel that shift in body and mind was something that inspired me to want to share that with others.

And that has come out in a lot of different ways. You know, sometimes it's nutrition classes or movement classes, or having my neighbors come over and lift weights with me in the gym or now, you know, practicing and sharing some, intro martial arts in terms of jujitsu and judo or tai chi. Like these are things that are

really enjoyable to share and also lead to, you know, a long, healthy life ideally.

[00:16:49] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: That's an interesting segue 'cause one of the other things I wanted to sort of zoom in on was this reference to like community. So, I think early on you were sort of, you used the word community and community has certainly been a bit of an area I've gotten curious about because it shows up in so many different forms.

And so I would just be curious like kind of while we're on this topic of these intersections where you see community kind of fitting in there and then how, like how, what is community to you? Like how are you finding, building, experiencing community for yourself?

[00:17:29] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: I love this question as well. It's something that comes up a lot in the work that I do. So I'll say first for me, community is a lot of different layers and slices. You know, I almost think about it as like a data set that you can pull subsets of. So broadly speaking, I think about community as being all the people in the region where I live.

So we could say like the Denver Metro community, I could say, the Lakewood community where I live here, or I could be super specific and say the Juujitsu community that I attend a small gym at, I think in different like demographics of it as well. So like I am half Malaysian. I've been building a community of Asian friends throughout the metro area.

That has been really meaningful to me 'cause I didn't have that growing up. And so there's that, you know, slice as well. There's the immediate family and friend community that we're tied to and kind of hold ourselves accountable to. But then on that like larger layer that I mentioned. You know, there might be people in that quote community that I've never met or never spoken to, or don't interact with or have very different beliefs from, but we're still in the same place and we're still drawing from the same resources, which to me, is one way to define.

So I think there's a lot of different ways to define it. I think it depends on, you know, what the intention is, right? So like in a work setting or in a nonprofit setting, like are you drawing feedback from a community that's going to inform a policy of some sort. Are you drawing feedback from a subset of that community that has political views that you're trying to understand and change or influence?

And so there's a lot of different ways that people, come to that definition. So I like to think of it in those kind of layers and subsets.

[00:19:20] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: Very interesting. I, I can't help but keep thinking about food. And not like food because I'm hungry, but just food, because food like meals, right, can sometimes bring together community. But also because food is such a like big topic right now. And so some of the things that are kind of just like playing out in my mind right now, Maggie, and I'm just curious to kind of get your perspective or take on it. I'm thinking about like the high price of eggs, right? Uh, eggs are

one of those sort of staple items. Everybody needs them. You know, I think for a long time they were actually a very affordable sort of whole food item and now they've gotten a little bit costly. I think about, I follow this one account on Instagram that's like, Dollar Tree dinners and she basically

goes to the Dollar Tree and she's able to pull items from the freezer section, from the, you know, shelf stable, like aisle. And she puts together these very inexpensive meals for like a family of four. I think the one I watched today was $9 and she made enough food for four

people to sit down and have a meal.

But I mean, to the point we made earlier, that type of eating isn't always the most healthy. And so it's like, you know, people who are maybe struggling with like food security are having to make these sort of compromises between sort of the, the feelings of like fullness and, at least having the calories to produce energy and, and to make them, to build that community, to be able to sit around a table as a family versus kind of being on more of like a health focused, uh, journey. And, and I don't really know where I'm going with this, Maggie. I just think it's really very topical and top of mind right now. And um, you know, for what it's worth, like food is one of those things I hate to think about. There are two things I hate to think about food and money, and yet they're probably the two most important things to think about.

But they're

just areas

that I like because I grew up in a blue collar family because I know what it's like to be on welfare and to sort of be without the money and food are very easy areas for me to feel, um, very, um, anxious by. Right? So there are areas that, that bring a lot of sort of

emotion

behind them, even when I don't want to acknowledge it or don't notice that it's there.

It's there because that's how I grew up. And so I'm just like wondering in this current environment that we're in, knowing that prices are going up on especially whole foods, and all of that like. Any just initial thoughts or reactions? Like, we don't have to go down a, a big sort of political, you know, angle.

I'm just curious like what your general take perspective, like philosophy or feelings about kind of the, the world that we're living in right now when it comes to food.

[00:22:03] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: Yeah, it is absolutely very topical and top of mind for people every single day right now. This is something that I still care and think about probably every hour, if not more. The intersection now of food and money and that food insecurity feeling, or, that challenge of meeting nutritional needs or energy needs. There's, there's a natural tendency, I think, to have a bit of tension there, and it, it feels more challenging because of the insane amount of information's available to people with very different opinions and perspectives on what's healthy, what's smart, what's, non-toxic, right?

What's like the trendy thing. And personally, you know, I'm not dogmatic about really anything in the world. So I think there's a lot of different ways to eat a healthy diet, and to live a healthy life. I'll say some, things that really resonated with me out of what you shared is that, you know, growing up on food stamps, snap, wic, depending on food pantries, wherever we could, making every meal stretch as long as we could, like, some of those things show up for me

still very frequently in terms of how we nourish ourselves, my husband and myself and, and even our dog. Like we try to like stretch everything. We try to get the best, you know, unit economic price on everything. But we also focus on like real simple foods. You know, like you don't have to eat some fancy, trendy diet that's like.

It's feeding, um, you know, like a very small meal size. You can eat a good volume with really simple foods. And honestly, like we keep it real basic on a weekday, especially, like some kind of protein. Usually chicken or beef, sometimes some pork, definitely some eggs. A lot of like chickpeas and garbanzo beans.

And then always some kind of like rice or potato or something super simple and then some kind of veggie and like you can do a lot of that on basic budgets. We get a lot of things from Costco in bulk now, just to have 'em quick and ready. Like the frozen stuff works really well, makes it fast and easy.

Like I don't have to take two hours to prepare a meal and I can make something that's gonna last me like several days for lunches 'cause if I buy a lunch downtown, when I'm working at that office, I'm gonna spend at least 15, probably $20. If I get a drink, add another freaking $7 on top of that. And then all of a sudden there's like

my vacation budget gone. You know, it goes really quickly these days. So I say all that because there's a lot of, there's a lot of confusion and like unnecessary like complexity when people start thinking about food and nutrition. But really if we think back to like four or five generations ago, like what did those

great-great-great grandparents or ancestors eat. That was pretty basic. You can do a lot of good with that. I'll say on another angle in terms of challenges with the state of affairs, um, in terms of federal benefits and the anxiety that comes around that like it's real, right? And like it's a constant challenge for people in low to moderate to kind of middle incomes right now as well.

Like the trade-offs between buying the food that we want or need, paying for rent or mortgage, paying for car repairs, or gas or medical bills, or healthcare. Even with insurance, a doctor's visit could be several hundred dollars depending on what's going on, right? And so it's, it's a constant like weighing of options and priorities that makes things really challenging.

And I see that in data sets from affordable housing and social determinants of health, and people accessing food pantries today that are in quote, higher income brackets than what the providers are used to. But you know, none of us should be surprised, honestly, like that's, that's what we're gonna be facing for a little while now.

And so that's why I think it really comes back around to education, that it doesn't have to be so complicated. It doesn't have to be so expensive. We can do, we can do a lot when we're intentional about how we utilize our resources. I don't always love the phrase like, you know, do more with less, but sometimes it does kind of come down to that and, and being honest with ourselves about like, what do we really need?

Versus what do we just want to have? Right? And a lot of the more expensive foods can be some of those value added, you know, more processed things. When you look at the, comparison of cost to nutrients, and I say nutrients specifically 'cause I don't mean just calories because sure, somebody, you know, especially anyone accessing a food pantry, if they're experiencing homelessness, like they can get calories.

For sure, but are those calories also coming with micronutrients that are going to help prevent, prevent disease or protect them from disease, likely not. And so that's a really intense trade off that, you know, comes down to the individual to make that decision for themselves. But I think it's also a big responsibility to the food providers to say, what values are we putting forward, right?

Like, do we just want to give away calories at the potential expense of long-term health, or can we do kind of a both/and? Like, yes, this will help you get through today. And let's teach you how to use some other resources that can give you more nutrition that can help protect for future sickness or illness.

So, it's a hard spot for sure, but like you said, that's a whole other podcast. We could go deep into the realm of like, nutrition, functional medicine, like health coaching and all those kinds of things 'cause there's a lot of nuance. And a lot of, um, I don't know a lot of ways to just like bring it back to basics.

[00:27:53] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: yeah, I think a lot of what you're saying, Maggie, that I like, if I had to sum up just like health in general, right? So whether we're talking about food health, movement, you know, physical body mobility health, you know, you talked about housing. I think all of those concepts are incredibly simple, but they're not always easy, right? So like,

you know, people being in various types of circumstances, conceptually, we all sort of understand all of these components as the sort of building blocks of a life, right? You

have to eat, you have to move, you have to have a place to live ideally, you know, and, and so these are all sort of, these like essentials and yet it's not always easy to, to have them to get the right combination of them, you know, and there's so many different, variables that can impact access to these things. And sometimes that is health, right? Like sometimes your, your health is actually impacted by your health, right? And so your accessibility to certain like health is actually impacted by other aspects of your health. And so I just think, again, could be a whole other conversation, but definitely I think at the intersection of a lot of these things that we're talking about today.

And so I do wanna just kind of take a little bit of a side step and I wanna talk about movement specifically. You're in the martial arts space. It's one of the things, like I said, I thought was most interesting about you when I, when I very first met you 'cause I was just like, well, that's cool. 'cause I think martial arts is interesting. I have never done any martial arts. I think the closest I got was maybe some like Tae Bo in like the two thousands. I, I did some Tae Bo, and really enjoyed it. Like kickboxing. I did some kickboxing in a studio with like the bags and stuff and so I, I guess I have some martial arts inclinations, but I've never made like the full commitment. And so I am just wanting to talk to you a little bit more about that because it's something that you've excelled at, right? You're, you've won awards, you've competed. This isn't just like, I do this on the weekends to get my fitness in. This is like something that's like, you're taking pretty serious. And so I'm just curious like how did you get into martial arts and then what kind of kept you dedicated to training and eventually competing in all the things that you do?

[00:30:05] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: Well, I'll just say, you know, I. I try to not take myself too seriously in general. Um, I definitely enjoy this kind of movement. It's been a surprise for me honestly, though. My previous experience, you know, in yoga and with like mobility flow and HITT classes and spin classes and rock climbing, like all of those things were just like fun to do with friends.

You know, it's easy to go to a class and then go get lunch or take a walk or whatever. Sounds fun. And so yeah, martial arts kind of came to me, if that makes sense. So the first form was Tai Chi. So I had a small movement studio. That's how I met my now husband. We were teaching there together. He had a gym later on and I taught some classes there.

But at that tiny little studio back in 2017, um, there was an artist that participated in that co-op space and she was like, Hey, you should meet this guy. He teaches Tai Chi. Maybe he could teach with you. And he has become a really wonderful, meaningful mentor and father figure, honestly for me. And so he shared the Tai Chiwan style.

We've learned a couple long forms and a couple short forms, but really what I held onto and grasped onto the most at first was the Daoist meditation. So just a very simple technique. There's graduated levels of it, of course, but the very simple technique of like. Sitting, breathing, becoming, you know, full as a vessel and then empty as a vessel and, and allowing that space to just move and flow.

It was something I really needed at the time, you know, and still very much need on a regular basis. I think we all do. To be able to like sit with myself and just be with it. Whatever thoughts or feelings or, you know, frustrations or anxieties or whatever was happening in that day, like I can just let it be there.

It's not necessarily just gonna go away magically or disappear, but to start to create the capacity to hold space for myself, and, and create a little bit more of like a self-trust as well. Like when I started teaching that Daoist meditation, I would often say to people like, whatever thoughts or like radio is happening in your head, just kind of set it down on a little mental shelf for now, and trust that you'll come back to it.

And whatever's important, we'll come back to you. Otherwise, if it's just like fleeting thoughts. Let 'em go, let 'em, you know, pass like clouds in the sky. And so that first form was what really kind of hooked me in. You know, I was always a fan of like kung fu and martial arts movies when I was a kid. Like, loved those, but never saw myself like doing any of that.

And so, that practice slowly, I don't know, kind of condensed this energy later on. And so when a couple friends that were, you know, previous co-teachers at one of those studios, asked if I wanted to come try a Jiujitsu class, I was like, sure, okay. Sounds like a fun way to move. And I was, like I said earlier, like never a fan of like long runs or doing like

boring exercise. And so I was gamed to try something different and it was a women's only jujitsu class. We were learning from a really amazing, UFC fighter, martial artist, black belt in the 10th Planet system. She has a gym down in Boca Raton, Florida. And so she was just like this amazing powerhouse to me, and I was like, hell yeah, I wanna learn more about this.

Like, why would I not? It felt very empowering. It felt like a new type of confidence to learn a skill that could protect me if needed. And I never, you know, really practiced martial arts from a place of like self-protection or, um, self-defense. That wasn't my initial reason for getting into it. But that has become a reason that I love it.

I don't walk around the world like I'm afraid of something or someone, but I think it's important to kind of hold that energy for ourselves if we're in a questionable situation or out late or something. Like, I want to feel confident, confident that I can handle myself in some, in some way.

And so that, kind of started unfolding more with just going to some of these random classes. Like I started meeting a really wonderful community and a lot of really cool ladies and guys that were like really easy and nice to train with. So I, just got kind of hooked by the puzzle of it, honestly.

The ability to have patience and allow the setup to come for a particular move or, you know, quote, submission is what became really, I don't know, exciting and fun for me. I found that it was like a little bit of like chess, but with your physical body. And then, I don't know, just like finding these little things that could fit together in a chain.

It's a very interesting practice. I think it's, it's so close quarters, right? That like you have to be comfortable with yourself to like, remember how to breathe and be okay with someone like probably smashing on your face a little bit or like their armpits in your face or like whatever weird is gonna happen, like,

don't take it personally, don't make it weird. Um, and I just started like picking up these little random things that I was like, no, I never would've like intentionally come into this sport. Like it just kind of happened and unfolded. And so the, uh, the judo that we practice now as well, has become like kind of an add-on to Jiujitsu for us.

We really love it for the, like, wrestling and takedowns that you would have like at the beginning of a match. But the, the competitions are just a really fun way for me to test myself. So, like I said, I don't take myself too seriously. I have a good time. But I really do believe in, in challenging ourselves to grow and just see what's, what's in there.

You know, there's some days where like I'll go to practice and having a good time and then all of a sudden like flip a switch or like turn the notch up and all of a sudden I'm like doing a judo takedown that I didn't even know that I had in my toolkit. You know? And, and that is an exciting, like self-realization and again, like confidence boost empowerment.

But it's been really fun and I think it, like, it shows us the, the importance of allowing that space for flow. So kind of coming back around to the meditation side of it, like. You can go crazy hard intensity, you know, or you could have some little like mental warfare and play a game with it and create some tricks and surprises and like make space for a better situation, or turn a bad situation into a really good one.

So there's a lot of, there's a lot of like mindfulness aspects that I find show up in the practice if you choose to look for them. 

[00:37:16] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: So it sounds like, just, just from what you just said, Maggie, there's a lot of like lessons that you've taken away from your martial arts, and so I'm just curious like, like those principles, those lessons that you're finding, how are they influencing other things? Right? So your approach to food systems, community resilience or leadership, and I think you've started kind of alluding, but I, I just wanna go like a little bit deeper.

[00:37:40] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: Yeah, so some of those, uh, little hints are the patience, and believing in a state of flow and, I'd say allowing space for other people to move first. I think something that I really started to appreciate in Judo and you know, I'm just, to be clear for all listeners, like I've only been doing this for like two and a half years consistently, you know, and it's, it's something that I hope to be doing for many years to come.

So I'm still, at kind of the beginning of a very long road. And I'll just say my husband and I both are blue belts in jujitsu. You know, that's typically white, blue, uh, purple, brown, black. And then in judo we're yellow belts. And that makes you all the way through, you know, white, yellow. Orange, green, purple, brown, black.

I think I missed a blue in there, but, we'll skip past that part. I say that because there's so much more ahead, and so I think that too has come out in how I view my, you know, professional work in the world that just because we're like starting to get better at something, by no means, means that we know all of it.

And so in terms of working with community members, practicing a sense of patience and flow and, and in, you know, mindfulness and meditation, there's a concept of like priming the pump. Water doesn't just come up out of the ground, you know, unless you're by a stream or a river. But if you're going to like, have a well.

You have to prime this pump so that it then starts coming. And so I believe that that applies in working with communities as well. Like there has to be trust built before ideas are shared before, you know, there can be a, a more mutual and reciprocal relationship. And so that same kind of concept shows up there for me.

But I think back to that like push pull, like having a little bit of like tension and conflict and friction can be really beneficial. It doesn't have to be this like passive perfect world, right? It's not. And so in the same style of, you know, being in a competition, like I have to create a little bit of a, a friction there in order to then create movement.

And so I've really come to believe in constructive conflict, you know, in a professional setting and, and just having people that go along with everything or soften everything to be like perfectly phrased or, you know, only nice. Like, doesn't always get to the root of what needs to be expressed or let out.

That feels like a roundabout way of saying like, let there be discomfort. Right? Like, be more comfortable in an uncomfortable situation and trust that it'll play out a little bit better. It might take some time, it might leave you with some scratches or bruises, you know, but in the long run, like you're gonna learn something and hopefully become a better person for it.

And so. I think a third concept that I would share is, uh, this comes from Jocko, who's a, you know, Navy Seal, really incredible person to, learn some hard lessons from, not at all how I was raised, but I've come to appreciate his concept of discipline equals freedom. And it feels really true in my life.

Like I was raised by a single mom. I kind of got to do what I wanted to do, um, as long as I, you know, checked the other boxes and, and as I, you know, grow professionally, as I grow in my relationship and have this, you know, new family extension, I really found that doing the the responsible things allows me a lot more freedom and flexibility, and that shows up in my bank account, my financial health, my physical and nutritional health.

And so it doesn't have to be this feeling of like oh, you know, woe is me sacrifice. This is so hard. Like I just wanna play, you know, like Peter Pan kind of mindset, but like it's worth it to do the, the responsible thing. Like, and it actually creates another sense of accomplishment and reward. And then once that, once that is done, now I can go do all the other fun stuff that I want to do.

But if I don't do it that way, and I just play all the time, then I'm probably gonna have this like nagging sense of anxiety of like, oh, I didn't finish this one thing. I didn't pay this one bill. I am not making my, you know, goals for X, Y, Z. And so that, that concept is something that I've really come to appreciate in, you know,

a physical sense and then also in a professional sense as well, like doing the slow, consistent kind of brick by brick work leads to a much more creative, and interconnected sense of freedom for me. 

[00:42:34] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: Yeah, that's, uh, I resonate with that because, and, and, and in a much smaller scale, but, you know, when I was in, a role back in the day, uh, I used to have a very systematized approach to preparing for meetings. And someone once asked me, they were like, well, if you're so rigid in your preparation, how are you going to be able to sort of deal with the unknown variables?

And I said, well, because I prepare a certain way that frees my mind to be able to deal with the unexpected. So if

I always

go into every of these types of scenarios where it was the same kind of meeting, right? And I know that there's like, let's just say five things that I always know when I walk in. Then I don't have to worry about the things I don't know because I know those five foundational things. And then

whatever happens after that, I am sort of mentally free to deal with, uh, as it comes. And so I really resonate with this idea that a certain amount of discipline results in a certain amount of freedom. I think that that makes a lot of sense. Um, and it sounds like, uh, you have just sort of embodied that, uh, as a, as a sort of life philosophy. Which I think is kind of an interesting segue because I wanted to talk a little bit more about spirituality and so, you know, we've already discussed to, to a degree community, but spirituality is like another aspect of, of, you know, your world and your bio mentioned sewing nurturing and sustainable relations between people, planet, and source. And so I really wanna understand how spirituality or a sense of purpose guide your work and what it, like, what does it mean to truly thrive as an individual and as a community? And it's, it's kind of, interesting because one of the things I've noticed as you've been talking to me this whole time, Maggie, is that your values are very clearly the through line, right? So everything we've discussed so far, to me, my perception is that your values are very clearly a through line.

But could you talk a little bit more about like, values, spirituality and, and even to some degree community and how those things really, you know, what it really means to truly thrive with those conditions.

[00:44:48] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: Yeah. Yeah. This is, I just wanna say how much I love the conversation so far because I appreciate the, the concept you mentioned earlier of bringing together the, you know, personal life and the work life. And for me, this is sometimes an uncomfortable place. Like I don't usually, get deep into conversations about spirituality with people when I'm in a work quote, you know, work setting.

But it is such a major fuel for my own energy and sense of purpose in this world. And I, you know, again, kind of came around to that through like having that, you know, now like father figure Tai Chi, teacher, mentor, who is a master in, in that lineage. It was kind of a gift from the universe and I

grew up in a much more, relatively open-minded, but like unstructured, um, spirituality. And there was sometimes where I'd go to a, you know, Methodist church with my grandma if she wanted to. For the most part though, like our family didn't go to church consistently for many years, really until the end of my grandfather's life when he joined the Mormon church in

rural Michigan. And so it was, you know, like a couple of years when I was in elementary school that we would go to the, you know, services there. But it wasn't anything that I really like felt connected to. I think the thing that did create a sense of connection, uh, again, surprisingly was being in a couple of youth groups with friends.

When I had moved to Florida, I was really just looking to make friends. And so I would go to like youth group after school every once in a while because that's where my friends went and I wanted to hang out. And so the thing that caught me by surprise was during some of those services they would have, you know, praise songs.

And I was like, okay, sure. Like I'm into it. But it was really surprising the sense of like, I dunno, being like overcome with a sense of awe and gratitude for the life that we get to live. And I like to keep things, like I said, non-dogmatic, super simple, kinda keeping the basics. And so for me, as I learned more about Hinduism through yoga, as I learned more about Buddhism through various books and readings, and as I got more into Daoist meditation, like,

I started seeing some of these like similarities, and for me, a lot of it is rooted in gratitude for life. Like we get to live on this floating, watery, rocky planet. Spinning around in the universe with billions of other stars that we, you know, can kind of see from far away. But we don't know if there's other life like us out there.

And so whether you look at it from a scientific standpoint or from a religious standpoint, I don't know. I just, I think it's pretty freaking amazing that we get to do this, that I get to have like really beautiful conversations with people that I get to watch plants grow in my backyard, that we get to have family members birthed from the womb of someone else.

And it's to me just, you know, beautiful and miraculous. And so I say all of that because that sense of like simple gratitude and appreciation for what is as opposed to like, you know, sheer nothing, is the, the basis for me. And so whether that is, coming out through my statement of like, connection to a sense of source or through my own personal belief of like having a sense of self and a sense of purpose in the world.

Like, I think that these things get kind of woven in together in how I express that because, you know, I wanna live a sense of meaning in this world. Like, whatever, you know, however long I get to live. I want it to matter, you know, even if it's just enough for me. Like I don't care who knows my name after I die.

I don't care at all, honestly. But what I do want is to know that I made some kind of positive impact in the world around me as I'm here. And that brings us back to community. So. Like I said, you know, kind of at the beginning of this, like however we choose to define community, we are sharing resources, we're accessing similar water sources and you know, food systems and we're breathing the same air at the bare minimum, you know, so having that as a reminder, you know, that whatever I do impacts others, I think should inspire us to want to do better because that idea of

karma or reciprocation of like, whatever I put out into the world is gonna come back to me in some way and vice versa, like what I receive, I can, you know, hopefully put out there again too. I would hope that people are then inspired to want to live a, you know, a good life and help others do the same. And that's

That's just kind of part of how I think and believe and act in the world. And I would love to see more of that honestly. And I don't care what, uh, style of church or place of worship or whatever people come from, I think if we choose to look for some of those common values in act in a way that's reciprocal, you know, with the earth, with each other, um, I think we could live a lot happier life.

That's for sure.

[00:50:19] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: Well, I think there's a lot to hope for in there, Maggie. I, I feel like our, our current state of being feels very. Divisive. And, uh, what you're suggesting is more of a convergence of commonality and, I think that that could, there are aspects of that that could be very beneficial in a time, especially like what we're dealing with right now. But we are coming to the end of our show, Maggie, and every, um, I like to end every episode by saying if someone was like, this episode was way too long. I did not listen. What is one takeaway you would want someone to take from our conversation today?

[00:50:57] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: I think just that general theme of intersectionality, you know, interconnectedness, holism, or holistic approaches and, and recognizing that there is you know, there's beauty in being a generalist, I think. You know, we look at our medical system and people get like super fixated on a, a specialization, but when you can look at the system as a whole, when you can look at the big picture and you see where things connect and come together, I think it makes a lot more fun and interesting and effective in the long run.

I wanna be able to see the nuance in any given challenge and, and move toward a solution that will, you know, ideally address multiple facets, not just one thing. So yeah, I would say. Definitely interconnectedness and, and being able to weave these different parts of ourselves into the way that we engage with the world and, and not be afraid to like show the weird parts of who we are.

'cause I think it makes it more interesting, you know, like I, I love when I get to see my colleagues in a different light, beyond just what their resume shows. And so it's something that I'm practicing doing as well as like letting the rest of my personality come out in the work that I do.

[00:52:07] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: Well, Maggie, I have enjoyed this conversation so much. I feel like I could talk to you for hours. It was actually really hard to just keep us a little bit focused. There were so many places I would've happily gone on a tangent with you. Thank you so much for the time and for being willing to be on the show.

[00:52:23] maggie-guest209_1_03-14-2025_123329: Thank you. Thanks for letting me ramble and talk about all kinds of things, so really grateful for you and we'll see you soon.

[00:52:30] heather_1_03-14-2025_123329: If you enjoyed this episode and are seeking to redefine success on your own terms, subscribe to Small Acts of Rebellion and join a community that celebrates authenticity and personal growth.