There I said it.

I own that I expect presence in my relationships and this is a tall order in 2025--with so much distraction and things to pay attention to.

Listen in to hear about the difference between healthy expectations and ones that weigh a relationship down, why we gossip and how it fills a gap when presence is too hard, and why I believe we need to demand presence from the people in our lives and from ourselves. 

In this episode, I share about a time when I lost my sense of wonder.

Overly responsible children tend to become overly responsible adults, and these adults have a hard time being comfortable with the fluidity and chaos that comes with wonder.

Listen in to hear how getting lost, giving up attachment to reassurance, learning what's really underneath striving, and more helped me find my way back to my childlike spirit. 

Do visionaries have any fun?

I notice those of us that curate amazing experiences for others, sometimes have the LEAST fun.

We give away the thing we need and we are afraid to own we expect something in return.

In this episode I share about my struggle not with saying the hard things, but letting people into HOW I feel while I say the hard thing.

Why don't we want people to hear the cracks in our voice, see us gulp, admit we want an affirmation?

Listen in to learn about what we can glean from the Pratfall Effect--research shows us that we can be MORE likeable when we expose our blunders. 

In this episode I share about an interaction I had with a friend, when I started to question if I did something wrong because of a shift in her affect that I observed at dinner.

I unpack this interaction by describing why we are hypervigilant to others and reference Meg Josephson's, LCSW, new best-selling book "Are You Mad at Me?" to help us understand where this question comes from.

You will learn about why asking this question enables us to leave ourselves, and instead, how to stay close to ourselves and tolerate the uncertainty of life better. 

This week I share about my desire to teach someone a lesson when I felt wrong.

I unpack why we go into teacher mode when we are hurt or disrespected, and how this actually harms connection rather than fosters it.

As humans, we often try to use our heads to solve problems of the heart, and then we wonder why our kids/friends/partners don't hear us--we are speaking with cognition, when others are in a realm of emotion.

Listen in to hear how I did the thing I didn't want to do (reveal my heart, because it made me feel like I was giving up more power) and how it ultimately got me what I wanted: heard and more connected.

In this episode, I share about a time someone walked away from me because they didn’t want to see me, and I pursued this person, even with their back turned to me.

I unpack what was happening for me, and explore the reasons why we knock on closed doors even when they continue not to open for us.

This week I explore the times I've said "I can make this work," as a way to avoid the inner knowing that something isn't working, that I don't like what I am doing, or who I am spending time with.

I dig into the psychological reasons why women try to make it work and my process of digging into what's underneath it with definiteness and discernment.

It's a topic that we don't want to talk about, but sometimes our needs for our friends, our longings and our fears that get kicked up in friendship, reveal unmet needs we have for our mother.

In this episode I unpack how the mother wound might show up in women's friendships (unrealistic expectations, unclear needs, advice giving, feelings of abandonment, etc) and how totally ok this is.

I also share how to navigate this in a way that makes the friendship closer, not that kills it (which often happens when the mother wound isn't made explicit).

This week, I invite my 7 year old daughter on the podcast to talk about our relationship with mistakes.

She shares about how she disliked her mistakes and what she did to shift that.

I share about how I learned to hide my mistakes to secure belonging (an important fear-driven behavior that perfectionists take, as well as people who have marginalized identities), and how this podcast has helped me expose and celebrate them.

Also, we add ways well meaning caregivers try to convince their kids their mistakes aren't real, rather than leaning into the fact that we all make mistakes, we shouldn't stop--but we can honor them together. 

In this episode I trace the path of the needless person in relationships--she comes across as if she's down with anything, gets angry along the way, and then buries her needs through partner critique, and creates the scenario of her biggest fear realized: she will be a burden.

In reality, it's not her needs that are a burden to the other, it's that they are a burden to herself. Listen in as I share how I rooted myself in my needs, a visualization of a firmly planted oak tree with flexible branches, and how me owning my needs inspired my partner to own his.

I don't want to record a podcast this week and it got me thinking about what do we do when we are not in the mood?

Why do we really procrastinate (hint: we don't procrastinate tasks, we procrastinate feelings that those texts bring up).

In this week's podcast, I talk about sharing one true thing and getting to know the variations in my "I don't want tos." I don't want to talk about this, but I will.

I also throw out the idea of being our best selves and replace it with an invitation to be our mediocre selves. Will you join me there? 

I wandered through a farmers market and started to question if I should live a life like this.

In this episode, I talk about how many of us tell ourselves what we want is the thing (the body, the house, the relationship, the job title), but what we really want is the wanting itself: to feel connected to the sense of possibility that the wanting provides.

Listen in to hear about how I've shifted my relationship to wanting (Hint, it's being willing to have what I have) and the finding out that wanting is always different than having. 

What happens when we hold a mirror up to one another and don't like the reflection?

My husband and I get into how we've learned to express shame and anger in a way that fosters connection instead of ruptures it.

We learned that perfectionism is just trying to prevent us from feeling shame, but what do we do when shame and anger are present and hot, prompting us to lash out, shut down, or run away?

We get into the things we feel shame about--finances, sexual attractions, grey hair. Listen in this week, we really "go there."

In this episode, my husband joins me to discuss how we fought in the past and how we fight differently now.

This is one of the best episodes yet--I use my lens as a couples therapist to get real about how we remain disconnected, when we really want to be close, and what I had to do to get the intimacy that I so craved. Hint: It had a lot to do with how I was showing up, even though I wanted to blame him. 

Esther Perel says in every relationship, there's someone who is more afraid of losing themselves and someone who is more afraid of losing the relationship.

In this episode, I share about how I went from being the person afraid of being alone to the person who is more afraid of not being myself.

I explore the fear of being alone and why we busy ourselves to avoid it, along with how we sneakily avoid our pain points by placing them in our parents and friends.

I offer up a way to come back home to yourself.

There I said it,

Sometimes choosing health is the boring thing to do. My biggest fear was settling and not living the biggest juiciest life. And yet, what if our biggest fear is what we need?

Listen in as I talk about data on choice, why we shouldn’t strive to not be triggered, and differentiate between complacency and contentment.

Many times we tell ourselves we are "torn," to avoid having to sit with the fear of making the decision we know we need to make.

I share about a difficult choice point in my life, how I went toward my fear, and explore we want to know WHY before we take the leap.

I also share a song that helped me lean into the sorrow, without the why, and share some of that sorrow with all of you. 

We choose what's familiar, not what is best for us.

We enact dynamics that remind us of childhood and the emotions that we felt the most, not the ones we want to feel.

Listen is as I talk about my compulsivity toward drama and high intensity experiences and what data is saying about the relationship between the increase in anxiety and the decrease in the willingness to fuck up.

Why do women, including myself in the past, hate their bellies no matter the size?

As a therapist of nearly a decade, I have noticed it's the number 1 body part women wish was different. This episode is about what ancient wisdom and feminist psychotherapy says about the belly and what is so scary about "trusting our guts."

I share about my journey toward being tender to this space in a culture that has told me to hate it

(if I rage against myself then I will not rage against the system that makes me dislike myself).

I wanted to be seen, but I didn't want people to know about the wanting.

What is it about revealing effort and desperation that feels so wrong?

Come join me as I explore the underpinnings of human desperation, the desire to be seen, and how we play peekaboo as adults--showing the parts of ourselves that actually conceal the parts that we wish others would see.