Episodes

  • When a Mother Is Erased: Alexandra Lyashchenko's a.k.a. Ellie's Story

    When a Mother Is Erased: Alexandra Lyashchenko's a.k.a. Ellie's Story
    Apr 23 2026
    Imagine leaving a war-torn country for freedom in the West. Then imagine having your child taken from you by CPS and gender ideology. You can stop imagining; this is happening.This episode of Red Tent Storytellers holds a story that does not resolve cleanly. It exposes something far more difficult: what it means to fight when the system itself becomes the force you are fighting against.Ours hosts, Peeja and Hazel Moon Audio, bring forward Alexandra Lyashchenko, a mother whose life has been shaped by displacement, survival, and a relentless commitment to her children.Alexandra's story begins long before the present crisis. Born into the final years of the Soviet system, evacuated from Chernobyl as a child, and later immigrating to the United States in pursuit of stability, she built a life on the belief that systems could be trusted if you worked within them. That belief did not survive what came next.What unfolds is not a single event, but a pattern.Her daughter, described as bright, expressive, and sensitive, becomes the focus of escalating concern within school systems that respond not with support, but with labeling, isolation, and pressure. Over time, behavioral struggles are reframed, diagnoses accumulate, and authority shifts away from the family. What begins as confusion turns into confrontation.The breaking point arrives when Child Protective Services intervenes.Alexandra recounts the moment her daughter is removed from her home. Not as a dramatic rupture, but as something procedural, controlled, and irreversible. From that point forward, the story becomes a fight for visibility. Courtrooms where she cannot speak. Decisions made without her presence. Allegations that persist even after being dismissed. And a child placed into environments Ellie cannot meaningfully influence or protect.What makes this episode difficult to ignore is not only the scale of the loss, but the clarity with which Alexandra describes it. There is no abstraction here. Only a mother tracing the sequence of decisions that separated her from her child, step by step.At the same time, the conversation does not stay in collapse.She speaks about survival in precise terms. The daily reality of continuing to parent her son while carrying unresolved grief. The way trauma reshapes ordinary life. And the unexpected role of art, specifically neurographic drawing, as a tool for holding herself together when language fails.This is not a story about resolution.It is a record of endurance.And a reminder that behind every institutional decision, there are lives that do not return to what they were.If this conversation moved something in you, don’t leave it here.Follow Alexandra's work, read her writing, and share this episode.Subscribe to Alexandra on Substack to follow this horrifying ordeal in real-time.Alexandra on XRead more about this horrifying story as reported by ReduxxAnd if you believe women’s voices matter when the stakes are highest, join The Red Tent Collective.Follow TRTC on SocialsThis is where stories like this are not buriedMore coverage of this story:California Family Loses Custody Of Daughter After Refusing To Medically “Affirm” Her Transgender Identity | ReduxxChild Services Stole My Child and Transitioned Her! | Ellie | Beyond GenderCalifornia Mom Speaks Out After School Gender Identity Conflict | Guest Host Sonja ShawChild stolen by the California government, Ukrainian honey badger mom | BeGreaterA Mother’s Fight for Her Child: "School Mafias," Care Failures, and Gender Affirmation | Critical therapy Antidote
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    1 hr and 48 mins
  • When Art Becomes What Keeps You Alive with Skylar Gwynn

    When Art Becomes What Keeps You Alive with Skylar Gwynn
    Apr 16 2026

    Skylar did not find art as a hobby.

    She found it as a lifeline.

    Content Note: This episode includes strong language and discusses mental health, trauma, and survival. Listener discretion is advised.

    In this episode of Red Tent Storyteller, Peeja and Hazel Moon Audio sit with Skylar Gwynn as she traces the moment everything shifted. Deep depression. Not functioning. A life narrowing fast. And then, almost by accident, a set of oil paints.

    What follows is not a clean artistic journey. It is survival, translated into creation. From learning to paint from nothing, to rejecting rigid instruction, to studying under a mentor who taught her to see what is actually there, not what the mind assumes. Her work grows from realism into something deeper. Not just representation, but presence.

    Skylar speaks openly about what art became for her. A way to step outside her own mind. A way to stay. At one point, she is clear about the stakes. It was paint, or it was not making it through.

    The conversation moves through scale and process. Massive canvases. Layered color. Painting until something real emerges. But underneath all of it is something else. A relationship between art and something larger. Call it spirit. Call it energy. Call it God. For Skylar, creation is not solitary. It is collaborative. A channel, not just an act.

    There is also a cost.

    Portrait work becomes too heavy when it is tied to grief. Empathy turns creation into something painful. And so she shifts. Adjusts. Finds another way to keep creating without losing herself in it.

    This episode is not about becoming an artist.

    It is about what happens when something saves your life.

    And what you build from there.

    Follow Skylar on X

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    2 hrs and 2 mins
  • Cynthia Breheny: What It Takes to Reclaim Your Voice After a Life Shaped by Fear

    Cynthia Breheny: What It Takes to Reclaim Your Voice After a Life Shaped by Fear
    Apr 9 2026

    Cynthia Breheny does not speak from distance. She speaks from inside the life she survived.

    In this episode of Red Tent Storyteller, Peeja and Hazel Moon Audio sit with Cynthia as she traces a childhood shaped by instability, fear, and silence, and the path that led her to reclaim her voice through writing, art, and activism. From a low-income upbringing marked by chaos to navigating identity, trauma, and survival, her story does not move in a straight line. It moves through rupture, reflection, and rebuilding.

    What gives this conversation weight is its clarity around fear. Not as an abstract idea, but as something that shapes families, choices, and entire ways of seeing the world.

    Cynthia connects generational trauma, cultural displacement, and personal experience into something precise: fear can protect, but it can also trap.

    The conversation moves between past and present. From growing up without reliable guidance, to finding grounding through books and storytelling, to building real-world impact through her work and her book Don’t Feed the Fears. Her message is consistent across all of it: fear does not get to decide who you become.

    This episode is not about perfection.

    It is about awareness.

    And the moment you realize you can choose something different.

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    • Please Don’t Feed the Fears: Meet Fear. He’s small, anxious… and very hungry.

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    1 hr and 51 mins
  • Andreia Nobre: Keep Speaking When Silence Would Be Easier

    Andreia Nobre: Keep Speaking When Silence Would Be Easier
    Apr 2 2026

    Andreia Nobre speaks from a place most people never have to name out loud.

    In this episode of Red Tent Storyteller, Peeja and Hazel Moon Audio sit with Andreia as she reads from her work and reflects on a life shaped by survival, motherhood, and the long consequences of choices that were never truly hers to make.

    Her story moves through abuse, generational hardship, and the reality of becoming a mother under circumstances that cannot be simplified or softened.

    What gives this conversation weight is its clarity. Andreia does not attempt to reframe what happened to her in language that makes it easier to accept. She speaks directly about what it means to carry those experiences forward while still building something meaningful from them. Her writing becomes the mechanism through which she processes, connects, and refuses to disappear.

    Again and again, the conversation returns to a single idea: keep speaking. Not because it guarantees change, but because silence guarantees nothing does. Even when progress is slow. Even when agreement is partial. Even when the cost is personal.

    This episode is not about resolution.

    It is about endurance.

    And the women who decide, again and again, not to go quiet.

    Follow Andreia on X

    New book: "No Truce - The Quest For Life"Award-winning author for The Grumpy Guide to Radical Feminism.


    Join The Red Tent Collective — Subscribe to Ember, our member broadcast that delivers women’s stories, analysis, and resistance straight to your inbox.


    House Blackbird Studios: She is Peeja Blackbird and this is her art. Just Art. Just Her.


    Hazel Moon Audio: From her remote croft in the Wild Outer Hebrides, she brings stories to life as an audiobook narrator while growing willow and handcrafting baskets.
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    2 hrs and 1 min
  • Unfiltered, Unapproved, Unmoved: Jennifer Brown a.k.a Redhead Ranting™

    Unfiltered, Unapproved, Unmoved: Jennifer Brown a.k.a Redhead Ranting™
    Mar 26 2026

    Jennifer Brown, also known as Redhead Ranting™ on X, opens this conversation exactly where she stands: in truth, not agreement.

    Peeja and Nat La Pirate sitting in for Hazel Moon Audio, sit down with Jenn to trace the through-line of a woman who has always written, always observed, and ultimately chose to speak in her own voice without waiting for permission. From childhood journals to self-publishing, her path is not framed as ambition, but as inevitability. Writing was never the question. Only when to say it out loud.

    What quickly becomes clear is that this is not a conversation about craft. It is about positioning. Jennifer speaks plainly about the shift away from traditional publishing structures and toward independent platforms that allow women to create and distribute their work without ideological filtering. The barrier is no longer access. It is willingness.

    The conversation holds on one central principle: you do not need to agree with someone to respect them. Jenn describes choosing her circles based on character, not alignment. People who stand in what they believe, even when she disagrees, earn more respect than those who reshape themselves to fit expectations.

    There is also a deeper current running underneath. A growing refusal to trust institutions that have proven unreliable. Jennifer speaks to the impact of being misled, and how that shifts how you move through the world, who you listen to, and what you are willing to accept without question.

    At the same time, the episode does not drift into isolation. It comes back to something practical. Women supporting women in ways that actually move the needle. Leaving reviews. Sharing work. Building visibility deliberately. Not waiting to be discovered, but making sure each other is seen.

    Jennifer Brown does not position herself as part of a movement. She resists that framing. What she offers instead is something more durable. Speak honestly. Create anyway. Stand in it.

    Nothing in this episode asks for agreement.

    It asks for character.

    And for women willing to use their voice without softening it to be accepted.

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    1 hr and 56 mins
  • N.A.A. from the Archives: Save Women's Sports with Coach Linda Blade, Marshi Smith, and Guests!

    N.A.A. from the Archives: Save Women's Sports with Coach Linda Blade, Marshi Smith, and Guests!
    Jan 30 2026
    This archival episode of North American Angst turns its focus to another arena where women are being told to surrender quietly: sport.Peeja, Emmi, and Carol bring together athletes and advocates who have spent their lives inside competitive sport, only to watch policies reshape women’s categories in ways they say undermine fairness and opportunity. Coach and author Linda Blade and former NCAA champion swimmer Marshi Smith speak candidly about the moment each realized that women’s competition was being redefined without meaningful debate, and what it means for girls now coming up through the system.What makes this conversation land is not ideology but experience. Stories surface of young athletes losing podium places, scholarships, and confidence. Coaches speak privately while fearing professional consequences. Parents worry about daughters competing in environments they feel are no longer fair. Meanwhile, women who raise concerns face backlash while institutions insist the changes are necessary and settled.The discussion moves beyond wins and losses to what sport actually builds. Both Blade and Smith describe how athletics shaped their own lives, opening doors to education, careers, and personal confidence. For them, protecting women’s sport is not nostalgia or exclusion. It is about preserving a pathway that has allowed generations of women to compete, grow, and succeed on equal terms.The episode also explores the growing legal and political pushback now unfolding across North America. Lawsuits against governing bodies, proposed legislation, and grassroots organizing are beginning to challenge policies that once seemed untouchable. Women who once spoke only in private are now stepping forward publicly, often at personal cost.Throughout the conversation, one theme repeats: silence was expected. Resistance was not.Blade and Smith describe a movement slowly gaining confidence as more athletes, parents, and supporters decide they are no longer willing to accept policies they believe harm female competitors. They argue that meaningful change will come not from outrage alone, but from sustained public pressure, legal action, and everyday people refusing to look away.This episode ultimately serves as both record and rallying point. It captures a moment when women in sport are deciding whether to stand down or stand firm.And it leaves listeners with a question that extends well beyond athletics: when fairness becomes negotiable, who pays the price?Nothing in this conversation asks for anger alone.It asks for courage.Because the girls competing now do not get to choose the policies shaping their futures.The responsibility to change them falls to everyone watching from the outside.Check out Unsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial are Destroying Sport by Linda BladeLearn more about ICONSICONS on XFollow Coach Blade on XFollow Marshi Smith on XThe tent remains open. The fire does not go out.Truth survives because women carry it.Sign up to The Quill and get the latest from The Red Tent Collective.Have tech skills? Need tech skills? Become an official member.
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    1 hr and 59 mins
  • N.A.A. from the Archives: Heather Mason & Amie Ichikawa on Keeping Prisons Single Sex #KPSS

    N.A.A. from the Archives: Heather Mason & Amie Ichikawa on Keeping Prisons Single Sex #KPSS
    Jan 19 2026
    This archival episode of North American Angst opens a door most people never look behind.Peeja & Carol, hosts of N.A.A., bring together women who have lived the reality of incarceration and emerged determined to speak. Heather Mason and Amy Ichikawa, both formerly imprisoned, recount what happens inside women’s prisons when policy abandons biological reality. Their testimony moves from Canada to the United States, tracing how institutional language has been used to justify the placement of male offenders into female facilities, often without consent, warning, or recourse for the women already there.What makes this episode devastating is not theory but specificity. Mothers describe fear inside mother and child units. Women recount locking themselves in rooms to avoid harassment or assault. Guards are disciplined for objecting to strip searches of male inmates. Complaints vanish. Charges are not laid. Survival becomes a strategy of silence. The system functions not because it protects women, but because it exhausts them.This episode stands as documentation. It preserves voices that institutions prefer remain unheard. And it makes one thing unmistakably clear: when truth is buried, women are expected to absorb the cost.Heather Mason speaks with the clarity of someone who has seen the machinery from the inside. Formerly incarcerated at Grand Valley Institution for Women, she has since become one of the most consistent advocates for sex-segregated prisons in Canada. Her work includes organizing nationwide protests, documenting institutional failures, and giving voice to women who cannot safely speak for themselves. She understands not only the policy language, but how it plays out on the ground, day after day, inside prison walls.Amy Ichikawa brings a parallel authority shaped by five years in a California state prison and subsequent advocacy in the United States. Her work began when women inside reached out in fear as new policies took effect. She now acts as a point of contact, connector, and defender for incarcerated women navigating assaults, retaliation, and bureaucratic stonewalling. Her involvement in documentary work with the Independent Women’s Forum has helped surface stories that would otherwise remain hidden.Together, Heather and Amy offer something rare: cross-border clarity. Their accounts differ in jurisdiction but align in outcome. When women’s safety is treated as negotiable, harm follows predictably.Nothing in this episode asks for outrage alone.It asks for responsibility.These women cannot protest. They cannot speak freely. They cannot risk being labeled difficult, hateful, or non-compliant. That burden falls to those on the outside.Take the next step:Follow Heather on XFollow caWsbar on XHistory in the Making: Follow caWsbar's Charter ChallengeFollow Amie Ichikawa on XVisit Women II WomenSupport Women II Women's sponsorship of SB 311The tent remains open.The fire does not go out.Truth survives because women carry it.Sign up to The Quill and get the latest from The Red Tent Collective.Have tech skills? Need tech skills? Become an official member.
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    2 hrs and 5 mins
  • N.A.A. from the Archives: Lisa Bildy on Justice, Gender and Speech in Canada

    N.A.A. from the Archives: Lisa Bildy on Justice, Gender and Speech in Canada
    Jan 7 2026
    This episode is a reckoning.In a raw, unflinching conversation, the ladies of North American Angst sit down with Lisa Bildy, a Canadian constitutional lawyer and Executive Director of the Free Speech Union Canada, to confront the slow erosion of free expression across professional life in Canada. What begins as her personal story — a trial lawyer turned homeschooling mother turned reluctant dissident — unfolds into a chilling map of how ideological enforcement has crept into law societies, professional regulators, universities, healthcare, education, and beyond.Lisa walks us through the landmark battles she’s fought: from helping dismantle compelled DEI oaths within the legal profession, to defending nurse and women’s rights advocate Amy Hamm against a 22-day tribunal for gender-critical speech expressed entirely outside her workplace. Again and again, we hear the same pattern: regulators asserting authority over private speech, conscience, and belief — backed by human rights frameworks that now punish dissent rather than protect liberty.This episode is not despair — it’s a warning and a call to arms. A reminder that history moves in cycles, that silence is never neutral, and that freedom only survives when ordinary people are willing to stand visibly, imperfectly, and together.Lisa is not a commentator. She is a front-line defender.She has:Successfully helped dismantle compelled ideological pledges within Canada’s legal professionDefended professionals targeted by regulators for lawful, off-duty speechFought precedent-setting cases involving gender-critical beliefs, free expression, and conscience rightsHelped launch Free Speech Union Canada, part of an international network pushing back against global speech suppressionHer authority comes not from theory, but from consequence. She knows what it costs — professionally, socially, emotionally — to refuse ideological compliance. And she shows up anyway.When Lisa says, “The debate didn’t end — it never began,” she isn’t speculating. She’s describing the machinery she’s seen from the inside.This episode makes one thing unmistakably clear:Freedom does not disappear overnight.It disappears case by case, silence by silence, professional by professional.Follow and connect with Lisa on X — support the work of Free Speech Union Canada and those defending civil liberties on the ground.Follow caWsbar's Charter Challenge⁠ — the biggest case on the books in Canada. Follow Carol, Emmi Pinkhurst, and Peeja, North American Angst Hosts, on XThe fire is lit. Your voice belongs here.Join The Red Tent Collective; let's light up the world.Read this episode's blog article.
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    2 hrs