Podcast Category: Parenting/Family (Relationships)

Social Media Sensation Melani Sanders Reminds Us That We Are Enough and We Do Not Care

Buckle up, friends — today’s episode is a whole ride in the best possible way. Our guest is Melani Sanders, the founder of the global We Do Not Care Movement™, a viral sisterhood of women who are reclaiming humor, agency, and sanity in the absolute circus that is perimenopause, menopause, and midlife.

Melani went from full-time mom of three to an overnight cultural phenomenon when a candid little reel she posted — “If you are in perimenopause, menopause, and beyond and simply do not care much anymore, let me hear from you” — blew up the internet and awakened millions of women who said, “Oh… same.” What began as one moment of honesty became a movement, a community, and now a book called The Official We Do Not Care Club Handbook,

A hysterectomy in 2024 sent Melani into early perimenopause, and suddenly everything she knew about her mind and body went off the rails. A meltdown in a Whole Foods parking lot became her personal wake-up call — the moment she stopped spiraling, started laughing, and began telling the unvarnished truth about hormone chaos, identity shifts, brain fog, midlife rage, caregiving, and the mental load women carry without complaint.

In today’s conversation, we talk about what perimenopause really feels like, how midlife reshapes our relationships and self-perception, and why humor can be a lifeline when your hormones are staging a coup. We also explore what it looks like to drop shame, release the pressure to hold it all together, and embrace this wild, transformative season with honesty, community, and a big ol’ dose of “we simply do not care.”

If you’re in perimenopause, menopause, or that hazy middle place where your brain, body, and identity are all renegotiating the terms — this episode will feel like being seen and understood. Melani is a treasure, and we cannot wait for you to meet her.

Kanika Chadda-Gupta On Becoming The Woman We Are Meant To Be In The Eye Of The Storm

Today’s guest is someone who instantly made an impression on Jen when they met at a Hello Sunshine event in Los Angeles. Within five minutes, Jen thought: “Okay… she’s one of us.” Warm, sharp, steady — Kanika Chadda-Gupta has a grounding presence that makes a whole room exhale.

An award-winning former CNN journalist and producer, Kanika built a thriving career in television news before motherhood rerouted her life in the most profound way. Born in India and raised in the U.S., her story is braided with themes many of us know intimately: immigration and bicultural identity, the expectations women inherit, the invisible labor we carry, and the constant negotiation between ambition, caregiving, and our own becoming.

Kanika is the creator and host of the beloved Total Mom Sense podcast, where she distills lived experience — raising children while caring for aging parents, navigating mental and emotional load, reinventing purpose in midlife — into practical wisdom for women who are doing it all and feeling all of it.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• What happens when life asks us to reevaluate our pace and priorities
• Staying rooted during seasons of huge responsibility
• Finding yourself in the middle of caregiving
• Reclaiming agency and identity in motherhood and beyond

If you’ve ever felt stretched thin between generations, pulled in every direction, or unsure how to follow your own calling while caring for everyone else — Kanika’s clarity and compassion will feel like a deep breath. This one is for all of us standing at the intersection of who we were, who we are, and who we’re still becoming.

Road Tripping with Jen + Kelly Corrigan: On Faith Shifts, Patriarchy, Divorce, Parenting, and Choosing Curiosity Over Certainty

In this Road Tripping episode, Jen is joined by one of her dearest friends — the brilliant and beloved author and interviewer, Kelly Corrigan. Kelly read Awake cover to cover (twice!) and came armed to the live Awake Book Tour event in Denver, Colorado with ten of her favorite lines from the book, inviting Jen to riff on each one in real time. What unfolds is a night of belly laughs, truth-telling, and deep reflection on faith, patriarchy, divorce, parenting adult kids, therapy, rebuilding your life, and why middle age is actually the most freeing chapter yet.

This conversation is Jen and Kelly at their absolute best: funny, wise, irreverent, and wide open.

Listen in as Jen and Kelly discuss:

  • Growing up inside patriarchal faith systems and the lifelong impact of being taught not to trust your own intuition
  • Why Jen believes that curiosity has never led her wrong — but that certainty has led her down many dead ends
  • The moment that Jen realized the patriarchy harms everyone, including the men and boys she loves
  • How purity culture can shape (and warp) our early ideas about sex, marriage, and womanhood
  • Parenting through divorce and the shift from coaching to comforting
  • Therapy breakthroughs around conflict, attachment styles, codependency, and dropping the need to control others’ emotions

Beyond Words: Listening to a Hidden Community — Ky Dickens and The Telepathy Tapes

In today’s mind-bending episode, prepare to challenge everything you think you know. Today, we’re inviting listeners into a radically inclusive conversation that reimagines ideas about communication, consciousness, and human connection.

Award-winning filmmaker and storyteller Ky Dickens joins For the Love to discuss The Telepathy Tapes, her viral podcast documenting the lived experiences of nonspeaking individuals who communicate in ways long dismissed or misunderstood. Through careful listening, deep respect, and investigative rigor, the series challenges entrenched assumptions about intelligence, language, and who gets to be heard—and believed.

In conversation with hosts Jen and Amy, Ky explores how nonspeakers are expanding our understanding of connection beyond spoken language, giving insight into telepathic communication, shared consciousness, and relational presence. The episode centers the voices of a community historically excluded from public discourse and asks what becomes possible when we widen our definition of communication, dignity, and belonging.

Rather than sensationalizing the unexplained, this conversation treats nonspeakers as authoritative narrators of their own experiences—inviting listeners to confront ableism, reexamine bias, and consider how inclusion begins with attention.

Highlights from this Episode:

  • How nonspeaking individuals are redefining communication and agency

  • Dismissed yet fascinating topics like energy healing, animal communication, mediumship, and near-death experiences

  • “The Hill”: a shared metaphysical space described by nonspeakers as a site of connection

  • What these experiences reveal about consciousness, presence, and the enduring human need to belong

This episode is a powerful act of listening—one that expands empathy, affirms marginalized voices, and challenges audiences to imagine a more inclusive understanding of what it means to communicate and connect.

A Meditation on Motherhood, Midlife, and the Way We Begin Again: Tembi Locke on ‘Someday, Now’

Today’s guest is someone whose work has touched millions of hearts around the world. You probably fell in love with her through her luminous debut memoir ‘From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home’, which was later adapted into a limited series on Netflix and became a global success.

Tembi Locke has held many roles: accomplished author, producer, screenwriter, actor, artist, caregiver, child of divorce, mother through adoption, and widow to cancer. It is through her experiences in all of these spaces that Tembi has honed her ability to write, speak, and live from that rare place where grief and grace meet—where we can hold loss and love in the same breath.

Her newest work, Someday, Now, is an immersive, breathtaking, and deeply personal audio experience that takes us on a journey back to Sicily, a place layered with memory, love, and loss for Tembi, as she prepares to send her daughter off to college. Through reflection, family, and the beauty of place, Tembi invites us to consider what it means to re-nest—to reclaim identity, purpose, and joy in a season of profound transition.

Whether you’re launching a kid, starting over, or simply remembering how to listen to your own heart again, this episode will speak to you in this season.

Parents Have Feelings, Too: Why Your Emotional Health Is the Best Gift You Can Give Your Kids with Hilary Jacobs Hendel

If you have ever lost your cool with your kids and then felt the crushing wave of guilt that comes sweeping in after—this episode is for you.

This week, Jen and Amy sit down with psychotherapist and emotions educator Hilary Jacobs Hendel, author of ‘It’s Not Always Depression’ and the new book ‘Parents Have Feelings, Too’, to talk about what happens when we stop ignoring our own emotions and start bringing more calm, curiosity, and compassion into our families.

Hilary shares her groundbreaking Change Triangle model—a simple but powerful tool that helps us move from anxiety, shame, and reactivity to understanding what’s really underneath: our core emotions like anger, sadness, fear, and joy. Together, they unpack:

  • How to break cycles we inherited from our own parents
  • What “open-hearted parenting” looks like in real life
  • How to repair when we’ve said or done something we regret
  • And why healing our emotions may be the greatest legacy we give our kids

It’s a conversation full of science, self-compassion, and deep sighs of relief—a reminder that parents have feelings too, and that tending to them isn’t selfish; it’s sacred work. Whether you’re parenting toddlers, teens, or even adult children, there is something to serve you in this episode and it’s a great one to share with a friend.

A Lantern for Others in Dark Spaces: Jen Hatmaker on Sharing Her Most Tender Story

The day has finally arrived—Awake is officially out in the world. In this episode, Jen Hatmaker opens up about a story she’s held tightly for years, a story she’s finally ready to share.

Jen takes us behind the scenes of writing Awake—a memoir told in vivid vignettes and written in real-time, as if each scene was recounted the very day it happened. The book is broken into three parts: The End, The Middle, and The Beginning, tracking Jen’s own process of healing and awakening to a number of realizations and truths.

Jen walks us down that path of recovery while honoring the many women who held up lanterns along the way and gave her the courage to keep going. She reflects on the process of confronting the deep-rooted systems of patriarchy, purity culture, body shame, and the shaky foundation that once defined her marriage.

This book isn’t just about the patterns, behaviors, codependency, and attachment wounds that shaped Jen’s story—it’s also about the joy of stepping into a new beginning. And most of all, it’s about you. Because it was your presence, your listening, and your courage that made her brave enough to tell it.

Now, it’s yours.

“You’re So Brave”: Tyler Merritt Turns the Tables on Jen in Part 2 of Their Vulnerable Conversation

In Part 2 of this episode, we push even deeper — into the personal, the creative, the brave, and the sometimes scary places we go when we dare to  tell the truth. This time, Tyler Merritt has turned the tables on Jen and he’s asking the questions! 

We talk about what it’s like to be seen, judged, misunderstood — and still choose honesty. We talk about Awake and the vulnerability involved with retelling the painful and unvarnished parts of your story. We talk about fear. And we talk about the joy we’ve found in the middle of it all. So let’s jump back in.

In this second installment:

  • Jen talks about the last time that she felt truly brave and what it felt like to unearth and expose some of the most tender and personal moments of her life in such an honest and examining way
  • Tyler asks Jen who was her best model of kindness at a young age
  • Jen shares the song that is reflecting her current vibe in the world
  • And Tyler asks Jen what she wishes more people understood about her

Whales, Boats, and Vulnerability with Tyler Merritt

Recorded live from the Oregon coast on the final day of MeCamp, this special two-part conversation between Jen and her partner Tyler Merritt is the perfect blend of hilarity, heart, and honesty.

In Part 1, Jen and Tyler share stories from their MeCamp adventures — including a whale-watching excursion that got a little too close for comfort, and a near-death boat ride they’ll never forget. They also reflect on the power of personal storytelling, how vulnerability has shown up in their lives and work, and why telling the truth (even when it’s awkward) can be both healing and hilarious.

Discussing the impact of Tyler’s viral video “Before You Call the Cops” to Jen’s reflections on her upcoming book “Awake,” this conversation reveals the transformative potential of embracing vulnerability. Tune in to discover how opening up about our most personal stories can not only heal us but also inspire others to see themselves in our narratives.

  • Tyler talks about the most awkward moment he’s ever had because he opted to be vulnerable and honest instead of protecting his pride
  • He and Jen discuss the hardest truths they’ve ever had to tell themselves
  • And Tyler goes back into the annals to reveal his most embarrassing moment as a performer on stage

 

[ENCORE] Matrescence: Unraveling the Myths and Realities of Being a Mother with Lucy Jones

Today we’re revisiting the profound biological, psychological and social shifts experienced when becoming a mother – a process known as “matrescence.” Jen sits down with science journalist Lucy Jones, who experienced a seismic identity shift that arose after the birth of her first child.  

Lucy and Jen unpack groundbreaking neuroscience research and they expose the deep-rooted myths and unrealistic expectations surrounding modern motherhood. From the minimizing of postpartum struggles to the pressure of “natural birthing” ideals, Lucy reveals how these systemic fictions can breed shame, isolation and maternal mental health crises.

Jen and Lucy discuss:

  • The concept of “matrescence” – the biological, psychological and social transition to becoming a mother that renders profound identity changes
  • How modern cultural myths and idealized notions of motherhood as blissful and “natural” can be deeply alienating and contribute to maternal mental health issues
  • The systemic lack of scientific research and societal rituals to prepare and support women through the seismic transformation of matrescence
  • The need to construct new narratives, share vulnerable experiences, and build community care around the modern realities of the matrescence