Get to Know Michele: The Heart Behind Fishnets & Fries

transcript

Ep. 3 Meet Michele
[00:00:00] Hey there, you’re listening to Fishnets and Fries, but before we dive in, I want to acknowledge that this podcast is being recorded on the unceded and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, past, present, and future. As an uninvited settler on these lands, I’m committed to my ongoing journey of decolonization and learning.

And I invite you to join me in this important work. Hi, I’m Michelle Mateus, and this is your invitation. To get messy, get real, and get into conversations that matter. Whether you’re here for the first time or coming back for a second. Grab those fries and let’s dig in.

Welcome to fishnets and fries. Episode three, and this is going to be me all by myself telling you a little bit more about who I am and why I’m here and what you can expect from this podcast. My name is Michele Mateus and it’s so funny when I say my name, now people are often like, Oh, Have I been saying your name wrong all this time?

Nope. I [00:01:00] often used to introduce myself as Michelle and sometimes I still do. I’m Brazilian and we immigrated here when I was just a little wee one and apparently my parents wanted to give me a unique name. My mom really wanted to name me Gabriela, but my dad really loved Michele. And so they went with it.

Little did they know when they immigrated to Canada, that so many females born in 1977 were named Michelle and it drove my mom bonkers. Anytime people would say my name, she’d always correct them and tell them it was Michellie. It’s not really said like that. I’m exaggerating. It’s Michele. And I was always like no, mom, it’s fine.

It’s fine. Michelle’s fine. Because nobody could pronounce my last name and having the one L really seems to trip people up. It was really bizarre. So I spent my whole life just going with Michelle. It’s fine, Michelle. Still now, if you call me Michelle, it’s fine. But when I turned [00:02:00] 40, I made this commitment to myself that sometimes has been hard to uphold to own my name.

It’s Michele. And if you hear Brazilian, family or friends, or if you grew up around me, you’ll know that. My inner circle when I was growing up used to always call me that because I’d hear my parents call me that. I’m trying real hard to own my name. And it’s okay if you say it wrong. It’s not wrong because I introduce myself.

My husband always says, that’s how you introduced yourself to me. I’m like, it’s true. It is how. So there you go. There’s a little bit of background about my name. I am Brazilian. I am an uninvited settler here on Turtle Island, also known as Canada. I came here with my two parents and I have a brother. And yeah, we were the only Brazilians around, so we didn’t really have community. My parents made community with other immigrants. I had a really amazing, diverse upbringing.

My community was really diverse. The neighborhood I grew up in was called Harewood, and so people [00:03:00] used to call it Scarewood. I look back on it now, I’m like, I could ride my bike everywhere. I had a lot of fun. Yeah, I think all in, it was good. Now there was a lot of, Not so good, but we’re not going to get into that now.

And what was one of my biggest loves growing up and continues to be my biggest love is music and food. I love to cook. My mom loved to cook. My grandma loved to cook. Always in the kitchen. And I have such fond memories of that. So I love to cook. doing that as well. Not on demand, not making dinner.

But I do love the opportunity to be in the kitchen with an awesome playlist on in the background, grooving to whatever feels in alignment in that moment. Because music is such a connection to my body, a connection to how I’m feeling, a release, all of it.

I love music so much. The biggest thing about me that connects [00:04:00] to this podcast is I have an insatiable curiosity. I wanted to be a journalist when I grew up, when I was a little kiddo and all the way up until honestly even partway through university, I’m like, what am I doing here studying this?

I really wanted to be a journalist and the reason why I didn’t was fear. I had a lot of fear around, , moving across the country and going to a, I’m a big university. I wanted to go to Ryerson in Toronto and that terrified me. Fast forwarding to who I am now and being a photographer and using my camera and telling stories and having a blog and really pouring my heart and soul into my work.

This podcast is really an extension of that. And I’m really excited to, especially in this season of my life. which has all kinds of complexities. This podcast for me is an opportunity to connect, to tell stories and amplify voices, and that’s something that I have been committed to through my photography work.

I’m also a total [00:05:00] empath, quirky kind of soul, and I just can’t stop. At time of recording, this is being recorded at 1 a. m. in the morning because, hey, that’s how I roll. I love the night. I am a total night owl. So that’s some little fun tidbits about me. Now about this podcast, I wanted to start this podcast, to be honest, as a creative outlet and a way for connection.

I am a mother to a neurodivergent kiddo who has a lot of support needs right now, which has really forced us to alter our lives to be there for him. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. And I’m so grateful to have the privilege to be able to do that.

It’s not easy. And I. I’m here a lot and I quickly am the kind of person that gets cabin fever. I often describe myself to be like a wolf. I love to be in community, run with the pack, be with others, and I love to be by [00:06:00] myself. Like the whole introverted, extroverted thing, that’s me big time.

Everybody thinks I’m an extrovert, but I’m not. I realized later in my life, no, I need to be by myself. I need to recharge. That actually is a big thing that photography brought for me as well, this opportunity to be by myself with post processing and in my own creative space, listening to my music

Recharging. I absolutely love it. And I’m so grateful for photography because it allowed me to connect with my creativity, which is something I never really did in my younger years of my life. And I’ve realized how important creativity is for me and having a creative outlet. And because this season that I’m in right now has made it so that I have to change how I work and how often I can work, which is fine.

I only have one kiddo and I want to be there for him. And so this podcast. is an extension of my creativity [00:07:00] and my insatiable desire and interest to know people, to talk with people, to hear people’s stories, to tell their stories, to amplify their voices, and to inspire others through these connections. I was just talking to a friend recently about how difficult it can be to be in community when you are a parent with a child with high support needs and I selfishly, this podcast while I’m bringing it out to you and hope that these conversations inspire you and encourage you to live a more bold and bodacious, fabulous life one Friday time, I’m also doing this to feed my own soul.

So it’s win for all of us, I hope. So , that’s a little bit about me, a little bit about why I wanted to start this podcast, and now I’m going to tell you a little bit about why fishnets and why fries. For the last five years, I’ve I’ve been a professional photographer for 10 years and I used to photograph weddings [00:08:00] and I photographed everything under the sun, friends, everything it seems like.

 And in the last five years, I converted my kids playroom into a home studio, and I’ve been doing a lot of intimate portraiture here, also known as boudoir, and Absolutely love fishnets. There’s just something so alluring about fishnets and just saying it makes me a little chill up my spine. And I love alliteration.

And to be honest, I actually originally wanted to call this podcast for the love of F words because I love F words and there’s so many wonderful F words that point back to the conversations I want to have. The number one being I’m a feminist and I’m not ashamed to say that and I’m an intersectional feminist.

That’s the only way to be a feminist. We have to de center white voices and bring in voices of all women, including trans women. And yeah, that’s where the love of F words came from. And then I was like, okay, not quite. And then I [00:09:00] started thinking about what inspired me to have this podcast, which is having these awesome conversations with my friends, often over food.

And I was like, oh my gosh, fishnets and fries, who doesn’t love fishnets and who doesn’t love fries? And let me just tell you, stay it with me. Fishnets and fries. Doesn’t it make you smile? It makes me smile so big. Let’s try it again. Fishnets and fries. So the idea came from this allure of the boudoir and , having this fun night out with your friends and sitting around a table, shooting the shit.

eating a bowl of fries and laughing and having deep conversations, maybe silly conversations, maybe wild conversations, maybe sexy conversations. And so that’s where the idea for the name was born. I personally absolutely love it and I hope that you love it too.

There’s so much more I want to say, and we’re going to have lots of time to get into more of the insider scoop [00:10:00] on who I am and what I stand for. I think over time that will all start to unravel as you listen to this podcast. I want to take this opportunity to thank those that have been cheering me on, my friends, Oh my gosh.

Just so excited for me. I love you all. Also thank you all for being there through some pretty hard times in my life over the last four years as we navigate this world of parenting. A neurodivergent kiddo with high support needs. Yeah. I appreciate you I also want to take this opportunity to thank my husband. My tech support because I hate tech, even though I love it so much and I use it so often and I’m terrible at trying to figure it out. I do not like reading instructions.
I’m one of these people just, I just want to try and figure it out. I think it’s because reading is difficult for me and learning that it’s difficult for my son too. It’s so interesting going through the process of learning more about my son. I’m always like, okay, yep. I may [00:11:00] have that too. I have curiosities about my neurodivergence and learning that I was ADHD later in life made huge amount of sense.

And I have other curiosities still to unveil there. My husband, Back to him. He helps me with that because he likes to read instructions and he’s very detail focused and without him this podcast would not ever have happened. So thank you Don for your endless tech support and dealing with my frustrations as I want to pull my hair out and throw the mic out the window.

 So I’m going to wrap this intro up. I hope that these little tidbits were fun to learn about me. I feel like there’s so much more. I was just like, what else can I tell you? What else can I tell you? But maybe I should hold back because I’m not going to tell everything on the first date folks.

Okay. You’re going to have to continue to listen. And as I interview my guests, you’ll learn more about me and more about this podcast. And I also want to say a big disclaimer here that this podcast is going to get messy. [00:12:00] I’m going to get messy. I’m going to make mistakes. We may make mistakes with language and call me in, things are always evolving.

That’s what this podcast is also all about. We need to be able to have difficult conversations as well as fun conversations and acknowledge that it might get messy. I’m all about embracing the messy. If I wasn’t, if I didn’t have my humor and humility, yeah, it probably wouldn’t be. I, yeah, it’s an important part of my life is humor.
I love comedy movies. I love to laugh and it’s, I really think it’s what’s kept me. grounded through a lot of my life experiences. I hope that we can make you laugh here as well as inspire you and encourage you to look inward and look outward. I really want this podcast to be about meeting at the intersection of self love and collective liberation.
We [00:13:00] really need to be coming together. As well as doing our inner work and we cannot come together if we don’t do our inner work, right? So they go hand in hand and self love has been so co opted by capitalism. I’m really hoping that as we have these conversations, we can deconstruct that and inspire you that self love doesn’t have to be a big day at the spa that, maybe you can or can’t afford money wise or time wise, but there’s so many small ways that we can practice that.

 I’m really hoping that these conversations will inspire that as well.
All right, friends, I need to log off. I need to go to bed. It is incredibly late. So thank you for being here and stay tuned for more amazing guests that I have lined up. I’m not going to spill the tea. You’re going to have to subscribe and listen.

And I look forward to connecting with you on our next episode of Fish, Nets, and Fries. Peace.
Thanks for diving into another episode of Fishnets and Fries. If these conversations are feeding your soul, don’t forget to subscribe and share the love. [00:14:00] Until next time, keep it hot, keep it real and keep it fabulous.