🎙️ Buckle up listeners, because your favorite unscripted, child led chatcast, "She Sounds Like Me," is BACK and more radiant than ever before! 🚀 After a year-long hiatus, we’re here to fill your ears and hearts with the empowering conversations between the two of us - Rachael Laya & Cyla Grace Hoffman. 🌍 In this exhilarating comeback episode, your hosts delve into the amazing adventures and profound insights gathered during their year away. 🗺️ Journey with them as they share their evolutions, revelations and topics resonating in the heart of a 5th grader, aligned for Season 5. 🤩 ✨ Expect laughter, tears, and plenty of heartwarming moments as we reignite the "She Sounds Like Me" community. It’s the perfect time to jump back on board and celebrate the diversity, strength, and brilliance of women everywhere! 🎉 Tune in, get inspired, and let’s make Season 5 the most unforgettable one yet! 🌟 Are you ready? Your adventure with "She Sounds Like Me" restarts NOW! 🎧 #SheSoundsLikeMe #Season5 #TheComeback

This week we celebrate a season of gratitude with a deep discussion on what it means to truly be grateful. We share our families daily gratitude practice and what it means to lead with a grateful heart when it comes to communicating with those you love. Cyla speaks on how to create a ripple effect of love and appreciation, and how to pick yourself up and feel more grateful when things feel low. Like we always say, “gratitude is the attitude” and we are very grateful for YOU. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

We are BACK with Season 4 of the She Sounds Like Me Podcast, after a few months off enjoying the summer and de-stressing our covid conscious lives. Normalizing rest and reconnection, while reflecting on all this past year has taught us, and BOY has it taught us A LOT. Today we are also celebrating the right to VOTE, as we mark the Midterm Elections in 2022 with a kid driven chatcast about what it means to rock your vote. Listen in on a touch of history, herstory and the importance of our elections.

Season 3 comes to a close with a light-hearted conversation about confidence. What is confidence anyways? How do we channel it, get more of it, feel it in our bodies and replenish it when we are feeling low? With an excerpt from Cyla’s interview with Joy Cho, on A Kid’s Book About Confidence, we hear another perspective on the subject and what happens to our confidence when we compare ourselves to others. Find more Joy at ohjoy.com | @ohjoy + @ohjoyco and her book “A Kids Book About Confidence” at akidsco.com Listen in to the complete conversation she has with Cyla coming soon to @akidsco social media pages. 

This episode may be sensitive for some listeners as we discuss the events of the senseless school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. There are no words to describe how we are all feeling on the heels of another school shooting, but no one's pain is worse than the parents that have lost their own. Our hearts go out to all those families affected by this vile and senseless act. In today's episode, we work through what we are both feeling, how the current times shape active shooter preparedness in schools, how “hard lockdown” drills work and why, red flags on social media and how to move through and take action. For more information and a free copy of A Kids Book About School Shootings please visit www.akidsbookabout.co To make donations, volunteer, take action and get involved in progression on gun reform, safety and support for those affected by gun violence please support www.everytown.org & www.momsdemandaction.org

And so it begins. Name calling, teasing, whispers, dirty looks. Tricks of the bully business as old as the ages, and it is still as shocking and sad for all involved the day it begins for our kids. Bully behavior is happening earlier and earlier these days, with the help of the internet and social media, so how can we teach our kids how to prepare and handle this hurtful behavior from the start? This week, Cyla explains a bit of how this started for her and shares some tips on how to cope from a kids perspective. We also tap into resources from our favs, A Kids Book About Bullying by Elizabeth Tom for more insight. Grown ups of girls can also learn how to apply real world techniques from the incredibly helpful book No More Mean Girls, written by child and adolescent psychotherapist Katie Hurley. Grab your kids and listen in. Together, let’s remind them to treat others how they wish to be treated and that kindness really does make the world go ‘round.

Do you believe anything is possible? What if we told you it might just be? How do we keep those doors open for our kids? This is just the start of how to explain what manifestation means and there's no better person to help explain it than the "Queen Of Manifestation" herself, Jen Mazer. Join us as Jen shares practical ways to encourage big dreams and help the whole family visualize greater possibilities for themselves and the world. Part 2 of 2.

Do you believe anything is possible? What if we told you it might just be? How do we keep those doors open for our kids? This is just the start of how to explain what manifestation means and there's no better person to help explain it than the "Queen Of Manifestation" herself, Jen Mazer. Join us as Jen shares practical ways to encourage big dreams and help the whole family visualize greater possibilities for themselves and the world. Part 1 of 2.

How do you choose to push through when it comes to what you’ve committed to? Whether you do sports, art, dance, music, gymnastics or all of the above - making a commitment takes practice, patience and perseverance. Not only to yourself, but to your teammates, coaches, teachers and parents. In this episode, Rachael and Cyla talk about what it takes to stick to those commitments, why it’s important and a few helpful tips to build a mindset that will help support your passions over the years and activities to come. Tune in!

Coronavirus, Covid-19, the Rona, whatever you call it, wherever you live, the global pandemic that started in 2019 still trudges on along with all the worries, fears and concerns that comes with it. What does a virus actually mean? What is an Epidemiologist? What have we learned and how can we move forward? With help from A Kids Book About Covid-19, written by Social Epidemiologist, Malia Jones - Cyla and Rachael explore these answers together. Sharing their own personal experiences and how the virus and the pandemic has affected their family. Tune in.

This one is a bit on the heavy side friends, as we talk candidly about death, the process of dying and grieving those we love when they pass on. Listen in on our secular (non-religious) conversation about it all, in a podcast recorded soon after the sudden loss of a family member. As always, this is a made for kids episode, and the talks between us are supported by A Kids Book About Death by Author Taryn Schuelke. Dad, this one's for you. You are loved and will be missed more than you know.

Ahh.. the beginning of a new year, filled with opportunities, new goals and… more screen time?!? Thanks to the uptick in the new Omicron variant and the rise of Covid-19 cases in our region, school kicked off with a virtual start to the new year. After months of in-person classes, Cyla and Rachael talk about the pows and wows of learning in this way, and the major setbacks of online school for elementary students. Plus, what it will means for them both when the kids finally go back.

Welp, it was 21 months in the making but the Hoff House finally got hit with the Coronavirus just a few days before Christmas. Rachael tests positive, while Cyla and her Dad remain negative and the whole house quarantines over the holiday break, cancelling plans with friends and family. Not exactly the outcome we were hoping for but there are some silver linings along the way, and as always, much to be grateful for.

Our episode order might be off (oy!), but our Gratitude is always on point. This episode was a pre-Thanksgiving convo where we spoke about how we can incorporate more gratitude into our daily habits. Why it’s important to share openly, and how to share more gratitude together. This episode also dives into our #MegaMitzvah benefit for One Warm Coat with some special shout outs along the way. Join the conversation by sharing why you are grateful this season with us at www.shesoundslikeme.com

Happy Hanukkah friends! Sharing loads of love, light and levity around this wonderful celebration. As Jew"ish" people, Cyla and Rachael have found fun resources like JewBelong.org and DaysUnited.org to help explain these stories and recall them over these important holidays. This episode shares some of those stories! While this season can lead to a lot of receiving, there is also an opportunity to give! We are proud to share the details of another #MegaMitzvah that benefited OneWarmCoat.org and the children of Devereux Georgia. Listen along, and share the light and a little laughter within us all.

This week's episode is all about gamification, and how to add fun and value to the more mundane tasks of an ordinary day. We talk about some varied methods of interactive point systems and how to apply them to incentivise each other to achieve greatness and be rewarded. On the flip side, gamification can create bad habits as well, especially when it comes to technology. Listen in!

Back with part two of the Major Meltdown episode and Cyla kicks it off with a surprise Mama Meditation too good not to share. She also goes into more detail on the monster emotions going on inside, when negative energy is taking over. A process she calls Feel, Heal, Deal. Brace yourself for some big ideas from this little co-host on the second part of this touching conversation.

Major meltdowns are just a part of parenting and every human we know has experienced it. But how does this feel from a kids perspective? What happens in their brains and how do they need to cope? We tackle this topic head on, fresh off the heels of one of Cyla's biggest meltdowns to date, and she openly shares what she needs to get through it. Part 1 of 2.

This week, we dive in to the transition back to public school from the hybrid homeschool model adopted during the year that was quarantine. Cyla talks about big emotions and gives some great analogies for processing it all.

We are BACK with Season 3 of the She Sounds Like Me Podcast, after a few months off enjoying the summer and de-stressing our covid conscious lives. Normalizing rest and reconnection, while reflecting on all this past year has taught us. Today we are also celebrating the one year anniversary of the show, and most importantly, The International Day of the Girl Child, according to UNICEF. This year's theme: "Digital Generation, Our Generation" so join us for a discussion on this and more on the show!