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This week, you're stuck with me for a solo episode on what it actually looks like when I travel for work. I'm walking through my exact packing system (mouth tape included), the carry-on I've used for almost 10 years, and the loyalty programs I will defend to the death.

In this casual check-in, I share my TSA Touchless routine at Logan, why I'll do just about anything to avoid checking a bag or booking a red-eye, and my perfected flight uniform. I also run through a few rapid-fire favorites — what I'm reading, watching, and scrolling right now — and give you a first look at the podcast's brand new rebrand with Kate Zeitler of Zeitler Designs.

What I Cover:

• Why I'm calling my days frenetic, full, and fun right now, and what "summer max" mode looks like with two kids in the thick of it
• The exact contents of my carry-on bag: two laptops, AirPods, backup wired headphones, the dongle that Bluetooths my headphones to the seatback screen, and the needlepoint that keeps my hands busy at takeoff and landing
• Why I've used the same Away carry-on for almost 10 years and my biggest travel hot take: pick an airline, hotel brand, and rental car brand early and stay loyal to it
• Why I'll do almost anything to avoid checking a bag or booking a red-eye, including the brutal red-eye this spring that cured me for good
• My TSA Touchless routine at Logan (faster than the PreCheck line these days) and why Clear's value has "degraded" for me even though it's free with Amex Platinum
• Packing scrubs for hospital site visits versus real clothes for team trips, plus my perfected flight uniform: white tee, joggers, a topper, and sneakers
• My Uber rules for the ride to the airport (no chitchat, please) and when I choose to drive myself instead
• The podcast's brand new look, courtesy of Kate Zeitler of Zeitler Designs, and why I'm rolling it out gradually instead of waiting for one big coordinated launch

Three Words to Describe My Days Right Now: Frenetic. Full. Fun.

PRODUCTS & BRANDS MENTIONED

• Away (bigger carry-on suitcase)
• Alex Mill weekday tote
• L.L.Bean boat and tote
• Cuyana bags
• Kindle
• AirPods / AirPod Max
• Seatback Bluetooth dongle (for headphones to the TV screen)

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This week, we're sitting down with Karina Monesson, a workforce researcher at Great Place to Work and mom of four girls (ages 1, 3, 6, and 11) in South Florida.  Karina shares what it's like to run a three-and-a-half-hour bedtime marathon every night, wear a continuous glucose monitor that shows her blood sugar spiking from stress alone, and grow a food forest of mango, avocado, and banana trees in her tiny backyard.

In this deeply open conversation, Karina shares about getting sober at 24, sending her oldest to sleep-away camp (and the backlash she got online for it), and the two "balls" she's currently dropping — movement and time with her husband. We talk about the Ellyn Satter Division of Responsibility that ended dinner-table battles, why she nurses each baby well past a year, and why leaving a comfortable, safe job became the moment that changed her career trajectory forever.

What We Cover:

• Why she describes her days as loud, long, and purposeful, and the bedtime marathon (7pm to 10:30pm) that comes with raising four girls ages 1 to 11.
• Her path from entry-level PR to executive ghostwriter to leading workforce research at Great Place to Work, and the moment she found the courage to leave a "comfortable, safe" job.
• Getting sober at 24 and why she's more proud of her recovery than ashamed of her addiction.
• Sending her 10-year-old to sleepaway camp for the first time (and the backlash she got online), plus what "The Anxious Generation" taught her about independence.
• The Ellyn Satter Division of Responsibility that ended dinner-table battles and how she’s become a no recipe cook, and why it’s her superpower.
• Building a .2-acre food forest in her South Florida backyard with mango, avocado, and banana trees, and the joy of feeding her family something she grew herself.
• The two "balls" she's dropping right now — movement and time with her husband — and finally learning to ask for the village support she needed.
• Why she's building "Corporate Homemaker" on Instagram around one tagline: "We can be both."

I could have talked with Karina for hours, and I think you're going to feel the same way!

Connect with Karina:

• Instagram: @corporate.homemaker
• LinkedIn: Karina Monesson

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This week, we're sitting down with Hannah Rosenberg, a poet and writer whose first book, "Same," came out this past October. Hannah shares what it's like to write about your own life as it's happening, four months postpartum with a newborn and a three-year-old, catching poems in parked cars and the gaps between camp drop-off and coffee with friends.

In this week’s conversation, Hannah opens up about spending years believing poetry could only be a hobby, the pandemic goal that changed everything (a new poem every week for a year), and the wild week—one month before she planned to quit her job—when two editors from different publishing houses reached out within days of each other. We talk about her winding path from medical anthropology to full-time writing, why movement is her number one reset, and why walks with her family are her favorite part of the day.

What We Cover:

• Why she describes her days as chaotic, fun, and optimistic, and the four-thing morning goal (stretch, coffee, water, contacts) that makes or breaks the day.
• Her unexpected path from rejected MFA poetry applications to a master's in medical anthropology in London and five years at Boston Children's Hospital.
• The August 2020 goal to share a new poem every week for a year with no plan beyond that—and how it became both a lifeline and a whole community.
• The almost-too-good-to-be-true week two editors from major publishing houses reached out, a month before she was set to quit, and how "Same" ended up published on two continents at once.
• Working when your creative work is your life: catching ideas in parked cars, stealing two hours on a Saturday, and why bigger projects feel foggy postpartum.
• Why movement is her number one reset and the Fit4Mom class that checks the social, fitness, and baby-in-the-stroller boxes all in one hour.
• Treating adult friendship "like dating" (just exchange the numbers!) and why the phone is her best friend right now.
• What she's letting go of right now (the house, date nights) and why the "roommate phase" of marriage four months postpartum is completely okay.

Connect with Hannah:

• Instagram: @hannahrowrites
• Website: hannahrowrites.com
• Book: Same (available anywhere books are sold)

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This week, we're sitting down with Sabina Hitchen, founder of Press for Success and mom to a seven-year-old in Portland, Maine. Sabina shares what it's like to wake by 5am for a solo walk that doubles as her idea generator, run a PR company with her husband (who she hired away from his own media career), and touch an actual tree before she can stop being "PR Sabina" for the day.

In this honest conversation, Sabina opens up about pivoting from a planned law career to teaching high school history to accidentally landing in PR after Googling "What is PR?" the week she got the job, and setting down her podcast dreams because they weren't the priority right now. We talk about finally letting her VA team triage 100-plus daily emails, the ChatGPT-scripted "Abra Pajama" game that gets her daughter dressed in ten seconds, and why every "too much" trait people once told her to tone down is what makes Press for Success work.

What We Cover:

• The 5am wake-up she never thought she’d want, the solo walk that doubles as her mental health check-in and idea machine, and the roll of 20-plus voice DMs she sends friends and clients before her family is up.
• How she Googled "What is PR?" the week she landed her first publicity job and stumbled into repping the original "mompreneurs" almost 20 years ago, eventually building Press for Success for small business owners.
• Why she hired her own husband away from his media consultancy, and the standing 10am and 3pm check-ins that keep the business from swallowing their marriage.
• Setting down the podcast she'd planned to launch this year, and the half-trained Beach to Beacon 10K alongside it, because something had to give.
• The parenting-advice ChatGPT bot she built herself, the "Abra Pajama" trick that gets her daughter dressed in ten seconds, and splitting chores into non-negotiables versus paid extras.
• Letting her VA team fully run her inbox for the first time this year (hundreds of emails a day) and what convinced her to loosen her grip.
• Working through her wedding week, and even a Zoom call on her honeymoon, before learning to actually unplug on vacation.
• Why sunflowers took over her backyard from spilled squirrel feed, and the new birdwatching and tennis obsessions replacing New York energy with Maine mornings.

Connect with Sabina:

• Instagram: @SabinaKnows
• Website: pressforsuccess.com

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This week, we're sitting down with Barbara Mighdoll, owner and CEO of MNT Studio — the first wellness social club combining Pilates, co-working, sauna, and childcare — who also runs the marketing agency behind her brand New Modern Mom and just co-founded Roam Collective, a family sabbatical company. Barbara shares what it's like to grow one Pilates studio into seven locations in two years.

In this week’s conversation, Barbara opens up about leaving a job after panic attacks over her boss's emails, acquiring a Pilates studio three months after quitting corporate, and the nine-week trip to Portugal that turned into a total business pivot. We talk about selling out a six-week family trip to Spain in 28 minutes, why she doesn't eat dinner with her kids, running her household on five shared Google calendars, and why she's finally comfortable letting "urgent" things fall behind the important ones.

What We Cover:

• Why she describes her days as "structured yet chaotic, social yet isolated, fulfilled yet exhausted" — and the theory that two things can always be true at once
• The system behind her mornings - 6:30am wake-up, movement, and walking to school with her husband before the workday starts
• Acquiring a Pilates studio three months after quitting a toxic corporate job, the nine-week trip to Portugal that changed everything, and growing one studio into a wellness social club on track for seven locations by year's end
• How a chance meeting in Nice turned into Roam Collective, a family sabbatical company that sold out its first program in San Sebastian in 28 minutes (and its August cohort in 18)
• Why she doesn't eat dinner with her kids, the Trader Joe's haul and five sauces that make bowl night easy, her nightly movement practice, and the ChatGPT prompt she built to pull recipes from her favorite food blogs
• The math behind choosing an au pair over a nanny or daycare and the built-in Thursday date night that requires zero planning
• Running her household on five shared Google calendars, a dry-erase wall calendar, and a house manager who handles the chores no one wants to fight about
• Managing an autoimmune disease with twice-monthly IV treatments, the "self-discovery zone" and twice-yearly off-sites with her husband that keep her from burning out, and why she hasn't taken a single day off in two years

Connect with Barbara:

• Instagram: @newmodernmom
• Substack: New Modern Mom
• Podcast: The New Modern Mom Podcast (relaunching this summer)

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This week, we're sitting down with Lydia Fenet, the world's leading charity auctioneer who has raised over a billion dollars for nonprofits, founder of a talent agency for auctioneers, two-time author (her first book optioned by Hulu), and mom of three living in Tribeca. Lydia shares what it's like to spend 90 nights a year on stage, run a household where her day "starts at 7pm," and red-eye home from California just to make the morning school drop-off.

In this week’s conversation, Lydia opens up about leaving Christie's after 23 years to bet on herself, the partnership rules that keep her marriage and travel schedule from breaking, and learning to hold life together "with duct tape and Popsicle sticks." We talk about the hangover that changed her career, treating every work trip as a vacation, parenting three very different kids in the city, and why she's letting perfection drop on purpose.

What We Cover:

• How a brand-new puppy turned her whole life into "a 24-hour clock" — including the English Springer Spaniel who rides the NYC subway to school drop-off every morning
• The margarita-hangover night, eight years in, when she dropped the "strict British auctioneer" persona, just joked with the crowd, and realized "comedy is what makes people pay attention and bid"
• How she travels as a working mom — first flight out, red-eye home after night auctions, and treating every trip as a vacation so the beautiful hotel rooms never feel lonely
• The "big red X" calendar system that protects family dates years out, the trade offs that sometimes need to happen
• Why her day "starts at 7pm," and the rule that saved her marriage to her husband (also her company's CFO): "when I'm gone, I slide out" — no quarterbacking from afar
• Being Type A about work but refusing to be at home, holding things together "with duct tape and Popsicle sticks," and the one ball she's dropping on purpose: perfection
• The Greenlight allowance system (a dollar per year of age), why praise notes work on her youngest where punishment backfires, and why the kids pack their own bags — one sock and all
• Why she won't let her 13-year-old have social media even though she lives on Instagram, and how they’ve approached screens and devices for the family

Connect with Lydia:

• Instagram: @lydiafenet
• LinkedIn: Lydia Fenet

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Rachel Hochhauser was killing time on her phone in a hospital waiting room — her husband recovering from emergency brain surgery, her 18-month-old at home — when a meme of Cinderella's evil stepmother stopped her cold. "This isn't a villain. She's just trying to take care of her two daughters." That spark became "Lady Tremaine," her debut novel, a Reese's Book Club pick and instant New York Times bestseller. And that's only one of her jobs.

In this week's conversation, Rachel walks us through a day split between two full careers — novelist and founder of the design company Piecework (which just acquired Areaware) — all run inside the hours her childcare allows. She's refreshingly candid about the half-premade dinners, the outsourcing that's keeping the train on the tracks, and why she's stopped apologizing for any of it.

What We Cover:

• How a meme spotted during her husband's recovery became a New York Times bestselling novel
• How she runs two careers — author and design-company founder — entirely within childcare hours, and calls the system "designed so no one will thrive"
• Her honest take on dinner: Trader Joe's goat cheese ravioli, roast vegetables, and zero guilt
• Why lunch is non-negotiable, and what it means on the rare day she skips it
• Reframing outsourcing from "luxury" to "mental health" — the nanny who comes early, the cleaner, the handyman
• The analog notebook sorted by role, her inbox-zero system, and the $5 recipe app that holds it together
• Why "forced" creativity inside tight constraints is just as valuable as the lightning-strike kind
• Her most middle-aged joys: fancy grocery runs, pickled beans, and collecting 19th-century Blue Flow pottery

Connect with Rachel:

• Instagram: @hochhauser
• Piecework
• Substack: Great Fanfare
• Read her debut novel: Lady Tremaine

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Emilie Dayan Hill got her start in finance by pure luck — a phone call that came as she was literally climbing into a moving truck, leaving Mississippi for Atlanta with no job and no connections. A decade later, she's a partner and high net worth investment advisor at a major investment firm, and the writer behind Finance That Feels, where she's reshaping the way women relate to money.

In this week’s conversation, Emilie traces a wildly non-linear path — a violin scholarship, a theater-kid past, a dream grad program in Paris she walked away from — and the identity crisis that came with not having it all figured out. She's refreshingly open about the anxiety and postpartum depression she's lived with, the introversion most people never guess, and why she describes her days, only half-jokingly, as a "snowball."

What We Cover:

• The 5:00 AM "nook" — a converted-attic nest with a lamp and a rocking chair — where she writes before her daughter arrives "fully dressed in sequins and sparkly boots" to announce the day has started
• How a single phone call, mid-move from Oxford to Atlanta, turned a 24-year-old executive assistant into a CFA charterholder and firm partner
• The dream Paris grad program she dropped out of — "one of the lowest points in my life" — and why she trusted her gut anyway
• Why she started Finance That Feels: women weren't showing up to their own money meetings, and the statistics on who outlives whom
• Her case that money is "just a tool" — and why the finance industry is completely unprepared for how personal and psychological the work really is
• The standing Monday-night babysitter, BeltLine bike rides, and bar-hopping that brought "so much lightness" back to her marriage
• Her anti-snowball toolkit: hot yoga twice a week, a 45-minute infrared sauna, tennis, and 15 rose bushes that drop her cortisol on contact
• Her take-every-day PTO philosophy — she refuses to roll over vacation — and how it mirrors the way she thinks about money

Connect with Emilie:

• Substack: Finance That Feels
• Instagram: @emiliedayanhill
• Website: https://www.emiliedayanhill.com/

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Melissa Hines never planned to own a business. She just refused to compromise on care — and that single non-negotiable turned a one-woman practice into Wellest Integrative Health, a Back Bay pelvic floor PT clinic with seven practitioners and an expansion already underway. In this episode, Melissa pulls back the curtain on building what she calls her "third baby" while raising two actual ones just outside Boston.

In this week’s conversation, Melissa shares the hard transition into motherhood — her daughter was born in June 2020, at the height of the pandemic, when she had to close her clinic and struggled to bond — and how it took two years to feel balanced. She talks about the bout of pneumonia that finally forced her to put her own body first, the clarity of deciding two kids is enough, and what it actually looks like to build a business around the life you want.

What We Cover:

• What pelvic floor PT actually treats — and the 18-year-old patient who'd seen 15 specialists before everything changed for Melissa
• The non-negotiable that "forced" her to start her own practice, and the five years she spent just treating patients before letting herself become a CEO
• Why she calls her growing business her "third baby"
• The honest truth about not bonding with her newborn during a pandemic — and why she now normalizes it for her own patients
• How she decided two kids was her number, including a refreshingly candid take on the finances
• The winter pneumonia that made her stop "running ragged" — and the healer-trade economy of acupuncture and myofascial release she's built
• Her family-as-nanny setup: parents two days, in-laws two days, a babysitter two doors down
• The unicorns that pop up in Asana, the shared Google calendar her husband "has no idea" about, and the quarterly women's retreats to Portugal, Vegas, and Savannah
• What her shy, rule-following younger self would never believe about the risk-taking CEO she became

Connect with Melissa:

• Website: wellesthealth.com
• Instagram: @wellesthealth
• LinkedIn: Melissa Hines

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Francesca Cervero has been a full-time yoga teacher for 21 years — and she will tell you, this is her passion. Francesca has evolved her teaching from 40-50hr weeks in person in New York, to now teaching exactly when her son is in school virtually.

In this week’s conversation, Francesca shares how a serious hip injury at 23 (she was walking with a cane while teaching full-time in New York City) redirected her from dance to yoga permanently, why she deliberately compressed her career after becoming a mom, and what she means when she says movement should be "nutrient-dense" — tailored to each person's specific asymmetries, not performed for an audience.

What We Cover:

• How a hip injury at 23 — that happened in a yoga class — ended her dance career and launched a 21-year teaching career (and why she'd never describe yoga as having simply "healed" her)
• The morning routine she protects fiercely before 7:00am: bone broth before coffee, reading, and a 10-to-15-minute meditation practice
• What she means when she calls movement "nutrient-dense" — and why she believes yoga cannot be both a healing practice and a performative one at the same time
• Teaching yoga virtually since March 13, 2020, and why the transition worked so well she never looked back (even when the world reopened)
• Why she keeps dinner so simple you "could hardly call it cooking" (Whole Foods grilled chicken, Trader Joe's orange chicken, sous vide Costco steak) — and the intentional decision behind it
• Finding her people after moving to the suburbs eight months pregnant: the PACE new mom group, a neighborhood WhatsApp with 25 families under four, and what it actually takes to make new friends in your 30s
• The activism chapter she didn't see coming — going to Capitol Hill with Chamber of Mothers, co-founding a local Singing Resistance chapter, and having to buy pants that weren't leggings for the first time in years
• What her 22-year-old NYC self — who was climbing walls at 3:00am on a Tuesday — would think of dinner at 5:30 every single night and lights out before 10

Connect with Francesca:

• Instagram: @francescaservero
• Website: francescaservero.com
• Virtual Studio: stillnessandmovement.com

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