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

Refusing Limits: The Day The Chadors Flew with Coach Linda Blade

This episode of Red Tent Storytellers [https://www.theredtentcollective.org/the-scarlet-frequency] begins high in the mountains of Bolivia and stretches across Olympic stadiums, Islamic republics, hidden women’s spaces, and the growing global battle over truth itself. Hosted by Peeja [https://x.com/blackbirdpeeja] and Hazel Moon Audio [https://x.com/HazelMoonAudio], this conversation with Coach Linda Blade [https://x.com/coachblade] is not simply about sport. It is about what happens when a woman spends an entire lifetime refusing to shrink herself to fit the expectations around her. Linda Blade was born in Bolivia to Canadian missionary parents translating the Bible into Quechua. Long before she became an internationally recognized advocate for women’s sports, she was a fiercely athletic little girl sprinting through mountain roads, training in secret corners of South America, and becoming a national champion before most teenagers know who they are. What follows is extraordinary. Linda recounts training under a world-class German coach in Bolivia before earning NCAA recruitment offers, competing internationally for Canada, and witnessing firsthand the corruption and doping scandals that defined elite athletics in the 1980s. But the episode reaches another level when she describes the moment World Athletics sent her into post-revolution Iran as the first Western woman invited to teach women how to coach girls in sport. What she found there changed her permanently. Women hidden beneath black chadors suddenly exploding into color inside female-only athletic spaces. Former champions showing her photo albums with parts of their bodies ripped from the images by family members. Quiet confessions about freedom, fear, ambition, and survival. Linda describes the experience not as abstract politics, but as a visceral warning about how quickly women’s rights can disappear when ideology overtakes reality. What makes this conversation unforgettable is Linda herself. She speaks with the intensity of someone who has lived many lives already, but also with deep optimism about human potential. For Linda, sport was never simply competition. It was proof that excellence exists, that truth matters, and that women deserve spaces where they can fully become who they are without apology. This episode is not merely a life story. It is a warning. And it is a defense of freedom from someone who has watched entire societies lose it in real time. Linda is a former Canadian national heptathlon champion, international athletics coach, researcher, and advocate for women’s sports. Her career has taken her from Bolivia to Nigeria, Iran, Kenya, Europe, India, and beyond through decades of coaching, teaching, and international athletics development work. She has coached Olympic-level athletes, worked with World Athletics development programs, and became one of the leading public voices defending sex-based categories in sport. She is also co-author of Unsporting [https://www.amazon.ca/Unsporting-Activism-Science-Denial-Destroying/dp/1777198682], a landmark book examining gender ideology and fairness in women’s athletics. Her work combines elite athletic expertise with firsthand global experience witnessing how ideology, culture, and politics shape the lives of women across radically different societies. * Follow Dr. Blade on X [https://x.com/coachbladev] * Unsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial are Destroying Sport [https://www.amazon.ca/Unsporting-Activism-Science-Denial-Destroying/dp/1777198682] * Sports Illustrated, '97 | Teach coaching, see the world traveling to third world countries to train coaches is Linda blade's idea of a perfect summer vacation [https://web.archive.org/web/20190916063650/https://www.si.com/vault/1997/08/25/231031/teach-coaching-see-the-world-traveling-to-third-world-countries-to-train-coaches-is-linda-blades-idea-of-a-perfect-summer-vacation] * Looking for a way to support Canadian TERVEN? Unsure who what where when how and why? Support the BIGGEST ongoing charter challenge in Canada by donating to: * @cawsbar [https://x.com/cawsbar]: https://cawsbar.ca/donations [https://t.co/xTjJBfgJNX] * @JCCFCanada [https://x.com/JCCFCanada]: https://jccf.ca/donate/ [https://t.co/uDoIsmKZD4] Join The Red Tent Collective The conversations happening here matter because women’s voices matter. If you’re tired of being told to stay quiet, stay agreeable, or stay small, you are not alone. Join a growing network of women committed to truth, reality, storytelling, freedom, and unapologetic conversation. Become part of The Red Tent Collective [https://www.theredtentcollective.org/pricing-plans] and help build the spaces women were told they no longer deserve.

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

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 [https://x.com/blackbirdpeeja] and Hazel Moon Audio [https://x.com/HazelMoonAudio], bring forward Alexandra Lyashchenko [https://x.com/AlyashchenkoX], 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 [https://honeybadgerukrainian.substack.com/] to follow this horrifying ordeal in real-time. * Alexandra on X [https://x.com/AlyashchenkoX] * Read more about this horrifying story as reported by Reduxx [https://reduxx.info/california-family-loses-custody-of-daughter-after-refusing-to-medically-affirm-her-transgender-identity/] And if you believe women’s voices matter when the stakes are highest, join The Red Tent Collective. [https://www.theredtentcollective.org/pricing-plans] Follow TRTC on Socials [https://www.theredtentcollective.org/links]This is where stories like this are not buried More coverage of this story: * California Family Loses Custody Of Daughter After Refusing To Medically “Affirm” Her Transgender Identity | Reduxx [https://reduxx.info/california-family-loses-custody-of-daughter-after-refusing-to-medically-affirm-her-transgender-identity/] * Child Services Stole My Child and Transitioned Her! | Ellie | Beyond Gender [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWsW-a57Rc0] * California Mom Speaks Out After School Gender Identity Conflict | Guest Host Sonja Shaw [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXB2djYVMFI] * Child stolen by the California government, Ukrainian honey badger mom | BeGreater [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdEcaqebTfo] * A Mother’s Fight for Her Child: "School Mafias," Care Failures, and Gender Affirmation | Critical therapy Antidote [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwASymlRDMc]

When Art Becomes What Keeps You Alive with Skylar Gwynn

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 [https://x.com/blackbirdpeeja] and Hazel Moon Audio [https://x.com/HazelMoonAudio] sit with Skylar Gwynn [https://x.com/GwynnSkylar] 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 [https://x.com/GwynnSkylar] If this conversation resonates, step deeper into the work. Join Ember and receive these stories directly. [https://www.theredtentcollective.org/pricing-plans]

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

Cynthia Breheny [https://x.com/PTElephant] does not speak from distance. She speaks from inside the life she survived. In this episode of Red Tent Storyteller, Peeja [https://x.com/blackbirdpeeja] and Hazel Moon Audio [https://x.com/HazelMoonAudio] 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. [https://theparadoxinstitute.org/books/please-dont-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. * Follow Cynthia on X [https://x.com/PTElephant] * The Paradox Institute: [https://x.com/PdxInstitute] Restoring biological reality to science education through bold, visual media. * Please Don’t Feed the Fears: [https://theparadoxinstitute.org/books/please-dont-feed-the-fears] Meet Fear. He’s small, anxious… and very hungry. If this conversation resonates, step deeper into the work. * Join Ember and receive these stories directly [https://www.theredtentcollective.org/pricing-plans] * They told us it wasn't happening, so we mapped it. [https://www.theredtentcollective.org/transgender-crime-map] * Follow The Red Tent Collective on X [https://x.com/TheRedTentCo]

Andreia Nobre: Keep Speaking When Silence Would Be Easier

Andreia Nobre [https://x.com/Andreia_O_Nobre] speaks from a place most people never have to name out loud. In this episode of Red Tent Storyteller, Peeja [https://x.com/blackbirdpeeja] and Hazel Moon Audio [https://x.com/HazelMoonAudio] 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 [https://x.com/Andreia_O_Nobre] New book: "No Truce - The Quest For Life"Award-winning author for The Grumpy Guide to Radical Feminism. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08N98DGZ9] Join The Red Tent Collective [https://www.theredtentcollective.org/pricing-plans] — Subscribe to Ember, our member broadcast that delivers women’s stories, analysis, and resistance straight to your inbox. House Blackbird Studios: [https://www.youtube.com/@HouseBlackbirdStudios] She is Peeja Blackbird and this is her art. Just Art. Just Her. Hazel Moon Audio: [https://www.hazelmoonaudio.com/] From her remote croft in the Wild Outer Hebrides, she brings stories to life as an audiobook narrator while growing willow and handcrafting baskets.