When dating feels like a minefield, do we keep trying? Does our inner hopeless romantic fade away with age? Is online dating being replaced by a need to regain real connection? We’re joined by special guest Chima, Izzy’s fiance, as we get into the topic from different perspectives. Tune in as the couple reflect on what took them from liking each other's profiles to saying yes to a long life together. We also share our online dating profile red and green flags, how being open-minded can lead to unexpected connections and offer our thoughts on staying hopeful yet grounded in these streets!   02:34 Chima and Izzy’s Journal: From Hinge to Engagement 11:10 Understanding Deal Breakers and Red Flags 16:45 Romance and Realism: Balancing Expectations 32:06 The Importance of Intentionality in Dating 33:41 Navigating Online Dating and the Shift to In-Person 49:12 The Search for Good Partners 55:50 Living a Full Life Beyond Relationships

This episode kicks off with a quick catch-up on how life has been since June, where we both celebrated our birthdays! Then we delve into the world of ADHD with a word of the day that almost has Thembe stumped! How might we better understand ADHD? How can people living with it be less misunderstood? Is it a superpower or a curse? Join us as we explore this topic through our respective stages of learning about it more deeply and getting a recent diagnosis. In the spirit of unmasking, we share some of the day-to-day experiences that we now look back on with new awareness about our own coping mechanisms and quirks.

What feelings come up when you think of the words failure or fear? When the journey is not Instagrammable, how do we shift our focus to the process rather than the end goal? How do we fail quicker? Join us as we talk about how our relationships to the f word have shifted to embrace the necessary learning and growth opportunities it provides. We get vulnerable by sharing our previous moments of failure and what they taught us. We also make a case for the importance of trying, before Thembe closes us out with a special reading of a poem.   You can also subscribe to Thembe’s substack here: https://thembemvula.substack.com/

We're thrilled to bring you our first special guest feature of the season so far! Eugene is Co-Founder and one-third of Social Matters, a consultancy specialising in Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (EDIB). So, what does belonging look like in the workplace and how do we keep on doing the work of inclusion? Does it even still matter? Whilst Izzy brings her professional EDIB expertise and Thembe offers thoughtful reflections, Eugene shares knowledgeable insights from his work at Social Matters and beyond. Together, we discuss the current landscape of EDIB, share our observations when comparing the UK to the state of play in the US and dig into what bringing our authentic selves to work and life truly means. Follow and find out more about Social Matters here: https://linktr.ee/Socialmatterspodcast

Join us as we introduce a new Somewhat Grown feature: the Silly Billy Awards! This is where we hold space for our imperfections and embrace silly moments in a lighthearted way. We also talk about what makes community important and the struggles we face when seeking it out. Is there a real difference between community and friendship? Other highlights include Izzy sharing the exciting life update of her recent engagement(!) and how culture and upbringing can shape our idea of community. We hope you enjoy this one. Check out Yoga and Pints Men’s wellness group on Instagram at @yogaandpints

We’re back and we missed you all! Wondering what we’ve been up to since 2023? What’s new from 2024 and 2025? How it feels to transition from our twenties to thirties? Join us as we reflect on our highlights from the past year, including turning 30, adventures in Barbados and reconnecting with family in Nigeria and South Africa respectively. We also discuss the importance of rest, career qualms, together with redundancy and navigating life changes. There’s a lot to catch up on and we hope you enjoy listening! You can now also watch this episode on our BRAND NEW YouTube channel: Somewhat_Grown.

How does healing take place when the hurt is still fresh? How much benefit of the doubt should we give to people who consistently move a bit mad? What role does self forgiveness play in helping us to forgive others? Join us as we reflect on what has gotten us through 2023, what we look forward to embracing more of in the new year and share what we're learning about forgiveness. We hope you enjoy this final episode of season two!

Joined by two male guests who also happen to be our good friends, we talk about the differences we noticed in how we were raised based on our gender. How were cultural norms played out or challenged as you were growing up, and how does that affect you now? How do we take accountability to become better humans?  Listen as we all chime in on our second audience question about gender differences and family dynamics.

How do you stay connected to your passion when it goes from a hobby into a means for your livelihood? How do you pursue the thing you love in a way that remains soul nourishing? We’re joined by award winning poet and founder of Writerz n Scribez, Jemilea Wisdom-Baako (@PoeticJemz) as we respond to an audience question on whether to chase your dreams as a self starter or financial stability. Jemilea shares her key learnings about asking for help, the importance of fostering well being at work and how creativity can bring healing. We also discuss how to deal with falling out of love with our passion and to evolve with our aspirations. Have your notes app open for this one because it’s full of gems!

What tensions arise between staying on top of work and being kind to yourself? Who gets let down sometimes by how you choose to spend your time? How do you overcome the discomfort of being alone? In this episode, we take a bit of time to do something that we can struggle to make enough space for in our day to day grind: pausing to come up for air. In keeping with our love of speaking authentically, our conversation centres around that golden check in question: how are you really?

We recently turned twenty-nine which means we’re approaching the big adult age of thirty! How do you handle the internal and external pressures that come with reaching a certain age? How do you balance enjoying where you are now with looking forward to where you hope to be in the future? How has journeying through your twenties reshaped your goals and unmet expectations? Listen as we discuss our true feelings about approaching the milestone of turning 30 and meeting the new versions of ourselves dawning on the horizon ahead.

This episode is all about boundaries. How do we cope with the grief from losing a relationship to newly set boundaries? How do we know when it's time to let someone go in order to honour ourselves? What role do our feelings play in deciding our boundaries? Following on from our season 1 episode on boundaries, we go deeper into lessons learned about respecting them since then. To round up, we share our hopes for stepping into age 29 this month (shout out to our fellow June babies)!

We're thrilled to bring you this season's longer episode on therapy, with our first ever guest feature! Joined by psychotherapist Oby Bamidele (@obybamidele), we learn about her journey into becoming a therapist, hear her professional perspective on truth vs myths about therapy, how to navigate opening the pandora's box of our unprocessed feelings and what is truly at the heart of self care and self love: knowing your boundaries. Acknowledging how daunting the process of starting therapy is, we also discuss how to find the right therapist for you. Along with opening up about our journeys with therapy, we also want to share some recommended resources for exploring your own therapeutic journey and mental upkeep for anyone who needs it: UK counselling directory - www.bacp.co.uk The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network - www.baatn.org.uk Global counselling directory/articles for self help - www psychologytoday.com Remote/flexible counselling options - www.betterhelp.com Affordable relationship based counselling - www.relate.org.uk Find out if your employer or local authority provides free counselling services

In this episode we continue our conversation about faith and how it has progressed with us into our adulthood. Does the way you practise your beliefs look different now to before you became somewhat grown? How have small or significant external happenings such as the pandemic influenced your world view? Listen as we talk about what happens when you've said Jesus take the wheel and He doesn’t even start the car, and what we’re learning about what faith means to us.

What does it look like to live out your world views as you evolve through different life stages? How do our beliefs ebb and flow as we mature? How do we bring up this sensitive aspect of our personal lives in the context of work? In this episode we answer an audience question about whether change comes by force or by choice and start a conversation about how our Christian upbringing plays out in each of our lives now.

How do you strike the balance between being responsible and living your best life? In the freedom of living independently as adults, who are you accountable to? What do you privilege in the pursuit of self discovery? Join us as we unpack how we’ve navigated risk taking, identifying our limits and the idea of being perfect in relation to becoming our authentic selves.

Your two favourite twenty-somethings figuring out adulting are back for a new season! We return from our hiatus since the summer of 2022 and catch you up on what’s happened in our lives since then. Highlights include Thembe’s travel adventures, Izzy’s professional break-throughs featuring rubbing shoulders with celebrities and reflections on lessons learned from the previous year, like knowing when to block a guy. We also discuss our intentions for the new year. What’s your word for the year?

As we come to the end of the road for season one, we conclude our conversations on heartbreak by exploring what happens when platonic friendships fade. Are there conversations that can make or break a friendship? How do you trust that a friendship will survive rocky moments? How do we approach the crossroads of growing apart from bonds we once thought would last forever? We answer a listener's question, share the importance of holding space for feelings and for a person to evolve, and look forward to what the next stage of the year brings. We hope you enjoy it!

How do you love someone and let them go? Is there such a thing as ‘the one’ or the right person? Buckle up because in this part two episode we go a bit deeper into heartbreak. Join us as we dive into the difference between fear and love; ideas of romantic love that we have outgrown, and those that still hold true. We also reflect on the lessons heartbreak has taught us and what helped us emerge on the other side of it, rounded off with some heartbreak song recommendations (for one hour max, though)!

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, we are delving into the subject of love. Is the four letter word a forever word? What happens when a relationship ends, or doesn't even get to start, yet love lingers? What coping mechanisms can be put in place to navigate through the pain of heartbreak? Join us as we unpack what we think it takes to love, its importance as a factor in a working relationship, and how to heal when it turns into heartbreak.