Refreshingly Human (2025)

10/07/2023

When TJ Wey was in preschool, a classmate hit zer with a harmful stereotype...

I was actually surprised it happened so early, but then I remembered that this happened to me in a different way at a young age.

What have you experienced with stereotypes that harmed the way you saw yourself? Or made you feel like the other?

Refreshingly Human is available wherever you get your podcasts.

08/07/2023

Have you ever used a stereotype to your advantage,

I can't say that I haven't and hearing TJ describe how stereotypes were actually useful to zir in forming and identity, got me thinking about my own experience of both embracing and fighting stereotypes.

What do you think? How have you used stereotypes to shape your own identity?

Refreshingly Human Podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts.

06/07/2023

Did you ever really think about the implications on our identity growing up in a different country from the generations before us?

Crossing the boundaries of culture can present significant challenges for children as they navigate the experience of being immersed in one culture at home while encountering a distinct culture in their broader environment. This situation often results in varying expectations and role models, which can send conflicting messages about social norms and have a complex impact on the development of one's identity.

In this episode of "Refreshingly Human," Hannah engages in a conversation with TJ Wey about her upbringing in America as the child of immigrant parents. They discuss how zhe learned to selectively adopt aspects of zir family heritage and the dominant culture, emphasizing the following points:

The profound impact of encountering racial profiling and micro-aggressions from a young age.

The process of reconciling conflicting information about societal expectations as we grow up and its influence on our identity development.

The significance of the movement, which encourages individuals to embrace their Asian identity to the extent they desire and selectively incorporate elements from various sources.

The changing landscape for multicultural children in terms of available resources that aid in integrating their diverse cultural backgrounds.

Refreshingly Human is available wherever you get your podcasts

04/07/2023

Just looking at my wedding album as I was trying to find a pic for content and this came up....

I remember specifically asking the photographer for a shot like this, Bollywood style :D

And I absolutely love it

my second wedding was a mashup of all the cultures I embody,

South African (shot at a popular beach location in South Africa)
Indian (Shiny beads and jewelry and being EXTRA)
Western (Red ballgown and tiara!)

And the best part none of this was intentionally designed to be this way, it's just exactly who I am

Share your multicultural mashups in a story and mention to spread the love of multicultural life!

30/06/2023

I think I'd be a movie star, or an influencer.

Or maybe a real housewife 🤣🤣 but I heard theres a dark side to the cast that is not great if you listened to the cult of real housewives by , so maybe not.

Rather watch the drama than be the drama I say!

30/06/2023

Have you had a conversation about the color of my skin growing up? (Let me know in the comments)

Well, I didn't, because I grew up in South Africa, where the color of my skin was considered 'normal.'

But then things changed when I moved to England. There, I quickly discovered that being brown meant being seen as different. It was a realization that shaped my identity as a brown person.

Reflecting on my upbringing in South Africa, I grew up in a multicultural bubble within a close-knit Indian South African community. Even though the majority of people in the country had a similar skin color, the remnants of the damaging apartheid era still affected the cultural dynamics in our society.

However, moving to England exposed me to new experiences of being "othered." I encountered instances where both individuals of my own race and British people treated me as different or outside the norm.

One unique aspect of my journey was joining a white family through marriage. This brought about curiosity from others about our cultural differences. At times, I felt like I was expected to represent all brown people, which was a heavy burden to bear.

In my podcast, I aim to shed light on these experiences and engage in thought-provoking and entertaining discussions. Through sharing personal anecdotes and having insightful conversations, I hope to challenge stereotypes, foster empathy, and celebrate the diverse tapestry of humanity.

I invite you to join me on the Refreshingly Human Podcast, where we can create a space where diverse voices are heard. Feel free to share your own experiences of prejudice and racism, as together, let's break barriers and embrace our shared humanity.

Tune in wherever you get your podcast!

29/06/2023

'She nitpicked on every little thing'

While processing both a 7-year marriage that ended in divorce, trying to find myself and slowly losing a religion that formed my entire reality, I had to deal with being gaslit and made to feel like a teenager all over again in my mid-twenties.

Discover the whole story on the latest episode of the Refreshingly Human Podcast

27/06/2023

I just remember feeling like I needed to leave.

I needed to get out of an environment that really and truly held me down.

But I was only 18 at the time and I felt like I had few choices, I finished school with very average grades, my chances of getting a scholarship were little to none.

I had limited funds and knew nothing about moving away from and making it on my own.

So what did I do?

I married the first man who asked me…

And I remember crying in the bathroom the night before my wedding, because I knew that that was not what I wanted.

But everything was ready, my family worked so hard to get it all together, I couldn’t disappoint them now.

So I was married.

And I was married for 7 years.

Before I was right back at that place where I felt like I needed to leave.

Listen to the latest episode of the Refreshingly Human Podcast, where I am interviewed by TJ Wey from about how I turned my life around, even when it felt like I had little choice in the matter.

26/06/2023

I took control of my narrative when it felt like I had very little choice.

What if you got to choose how your story ends? For too long in my life I felt like I was lacking a choice.

I grew up in an Islamic family where societal roles and expectations for girls and women were full of rules, there were so many do’s and don’ts. It felt as if my entire existence was defined by these predetermined notions, leaving little room for me to truly discover who I was,

Check out my latest blog post using the link in comments to read the full article

Link in Comments

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23/06/2023

I just recorded an episode called 'I moved to ENgland and realised I was Brown'

I HAD SO MUCH FUN RECORDING IT!

I'll be dropping it next week comment below if you would like a reminder when its out

24/05/2023

👋🏽Can we get real for a minute? ⁠
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How many times have you felt like you weren’t doing enough, after observing someone else who seems to have it all together?⁠
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Honestly, I can be so freaking hard on myself,⁠
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From feeling like others seem to be further along than me, to feeling like I’m not working as hard as I ‘should’ be.⁠
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This is why this quote from S1E4 so resonated with me,⁠
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Carly Jo Bell really gets honest about both what things looked like on the outside when she was working to the grind, and what was really happening behind the scene,⁠
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This is truly a refreshingly honest conversation about hard work and getting results, and it’s not the type of conversation you usually hear!⁠
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In fact, we totally want to reframe the word ‘Hard’ and get clearer on what the work looks like for each individual.⁠
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Tune in to Releasing the Shoulds podcast wherever you get your podcasts,⁠
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Don’t forget to subscribe and rate our podcast! ⁠
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Link in BIO ⁠
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12/05/2023

We Have FINALLY DONE IT, I am on Patreon! If you want to support our work and see this podcast grow and flourish check out the patron page here:

https://patreon.com/user?u=80964812

01/03/2023

I was stood at a bar minding my own business and she come up to me, some stranger

Her greeting ‘Are you from India?’

Me smiles politely and says ‘Actually I’m from South Africa’

I was walking on my way to a meeting, and she comes up to me, a stranger,

Her greeting ‘Are you from India?’

Me ‘No’

She ‘Can you take my picture…’

While I find these interactions amusing, they also slightly annoy me on some level

Simply because growing up South African, with parents and grandparents that grew up South African,

Finding my identity as someone who’s 3rd generation Indian (and never actually been to India) has been a life long game,

Which is way I identify SO much with TJ’s story in ep 2 of Releasing the shoulds of being human,

TJ is American, and zer parents are Chinese

I absolutely enjoyed talking to TJ about zer own experiences of
having to choose between being American and being Chinese, and eventually finding an identity that fitted and felt right!

I wonder if this is something you can relate to on some level as well,

Let us know in the comments

And hey if you love the episode throw us some love by rating and reviewing us,

Link to the episode in the Comments 🔗

27/02/2023

I’ve been thinking a lot about my personal brand…

What does Hannah Pillow stand for

What are my values? Why am I showing up in this space and when I walk into a room what do I want people to take away from being in my company?

Full disclosure, I recently discovered I am Neuro-diverse, and I am in the process of getting tested while actively finding ways to manage my symptoms (So many which I didnt even know where a neuro diverse thing!)

Before I made this discovery about myself, I honestly felt like my brain was breaking down,

Like I just COULD NOT manage life, and in the pass I would put these periods down to being highly stressed out,

But I am now living my best life so far, and yet still I have these really dark thoughts that things are just too hard, life is just too hard.

Finding out Im neurodiverse has honestly given me this relief that nothing is wrong with me,

I have just been trying to live like a neurotypical, exhausting myself and MASKING SO MUCH

And now I can breathe

Now I can understand these huge highs and lows my brain goes through

Now I can speak more openly (both to myself in my brain, and to the people I want to talk to this about)

The reason I mention this, is because it is so tied in to how I want to present,

As the founder of Refreshingly Human and Releasing the Shoulds of Being human podcasts, I have a very specific brand that I want to live and breathe both on my podcasts and in my life

And I totally delayed the launch of Releasing the shoulds of being human, because after finding out Im on the spectrum, I started to second guess my opinion on the subject matter.

But then I realised,

Being on the spectrum gives me this neurospicy power,

It allows me, and always has allowed me, to be a keen observer of human nature,

And there is no better super power when my brand and values start with being AUTHENTICALLY human,

With creating a space for us to be human, make mistakes, stumble and fall on the road to becoming the best versions of ourselves.

Being human to me means:

- Having the ability to express our emotions in a healthy way
- Being able to recognise our strengths and weaknesses without giving too much meaning to either
- Being able to be ourselves in a world that tries to mould us
- Being able to work on self development in a healthy way that MAKES SENSE TO US
- Being able to create our own rules to what it means to be authenticity you
- Being able to recognise when we hurt others, and learning to grow from that in a comfortable manner that makes sense to US

I am so glad I am back to being in the podcaster seat, promoting these values,

And I am hoping to step more into my authentic unabashed self going forward,

Rebelling against the shoulds placed on how I should show up

And stepping 100% into how I WANT to show up

CHEERS TO FREEDOM

CHEERS TO BEING HUMAN

CHEERS TO SELF GROWTH

CHEERS TO LIFE

Lots of love

Hannah P

23/02/2023

I was not allowed to just be human

New episode alert

Releasing the shoulds podcast

Available on all podcast platforms

21/02/2023

Did you grow up in a community with a strong cultural identity? How did that shape who you are today?

Those of us who did learned from a young age what was expected of us as girls and as women, and it can take a long time to liberate ourselves from who we were taught we “should” be and discover who we actually are.

For Hannah, that inquiry meant removing herself from her family, her husband and her country of origin, and striking out alone.

In the debut episode of her new podcast, Releasing the shoulds of being human, Hannah Pillow is interviewed by TJ Wey about her journey of radical emancipation from an Islamic family to being an entrepreneur in her country of choice and founding a company that supports powerful women creating more freedom and possibility for women worldwide. Highlights of her story include:
Growing up in an Islamic family with the cultural expectations for women and her complex relationship with her mother
Choosing marriage as an escape route from family and landing in another unhealthy environment
Emancipating herself from her culture of origin through divorce and leaving her religion
Finding a true escape route by qualifying as a teacher in secret and getting a visa to leave the country
Returning to our childhood environments having built a life and identity we are proud of
"There was very little room for me to be a human being growing up. There were so many things that weren’t allowed because of this controlled environment that I was growing up in, because reputation was so important within the community. And reputation would often be disguised as wanting the best for me because of religion; that came with a lot of expectations that I had to be a clone of my mother. This is basically the influence of what I should be.”

Hannah Pillow,
S1 E1, Releasing the shoulds of being human

🎙️Available on all podcast platforms

24/01/2023

😱I just wanted to SCREAM

There was a time in my life where I was constantly told how perfect I had to be,

Things were SO black and white

I was either a good person or a bad person,

Pretty or ugly,

Fat or thin,

There was no golden inbetween,

A space to simply be

I couldn’t have emotions, this would mean I was too moody,

I couldn’t have an opinion, this would mean I was too arrogant,

I WANTED TO SCREAM

I remember back then my life felt so small.

The first episode of Releasing the
Shoulds of being human explores my story of Releasing the should of being the perfect little brown girl,

Sign up for the waitlist to be the first few to hear this episode

🔗Link in Bio ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Refreshingly Human

10/07/2023

08/07/2023

06/07/2023

04/07/2023

30/06/2023

30/06/2023

29/06/2023

27/06/2023

26/06/2023

23/06/2023

24/05/2023

12/05/2023

01/03/2023

27/02/2023

23/02/2023

21/02/2023

24/01/2023

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