3AM Thoughts – Part 2

This is the episode we intended to record last week before life hijacked the conversation.

Welcome to the real 3AM thoughts. The kind that show up when the house is quiet, your brain decides sleep is optional, and suddenly you’re unpacking your entire personality at 2:47 in the morning.

In this episode we dive into the thoughts that keep us up at night… and naturally spiral into some very honest and slightly unhinged conversations along the way.

Liz opens up about body dysmorphia and how, for a long time, intimacy became tied to validation. Being wanted felt like proof she was enough. It’s an honest look at how self image, relationships, and the need to feel desired can quietly shape the way we connect with people.

Jess unpacks her lifelong habit of “mothering” everyone. Friends. Partners. Kids. Probably strangers in the grocery store if we’re being honest. She talks about how when someone pulls away or she removes someone from her life, it doesn’t just feel like setting a boundary. It feels like abandoning a child. Which leads into a deeper realization about childhood abandonment and how it still shows up in adulthood… especially when it comes to holding on a little too tightly as your kids start gaining independence.

Valerie drops one of those thoughts that makes the room go quiet for a second. Sometimes healing isn’t about learning how to survive the dark parts of your life. Sometimes it’s about learning how to handle joy when it finally shows up.

Liz then hits us with a question that sends everyone straight into reflection mode: How old were you the first time you were forced to be strong?

From there Jess jumps into one of her hot takes… People are incredibly insecure about their looks, but somehow very confident about their character. Which… honestly explains a lot about the internet.

Valerie then dives headfirst into another one of her deep philosophical spirals about how sometimes we subconsciously choose partners that remind us of the parent who hurt us the most.

Also, in classic Valerie fashion, she introduces a new unnecessarily large vocabulary word into the podcast.

New Word Alert: Anthropologic.

And because no Unhinged Memoirs episode ends in a normal or mature way, we wrap things up by reading an email from a listener asking us to do an episode about “Tummy Sticks.”

Yes. That’s exactly what you think it means.

Apparently we’re adding childish slang for anatomy to our future episode list now.

Stay tuned.