If you went through rush yourself, you probably remember the outfits, the nerves, the whispered politics. Now imagine watching your own daughter walk into that world — and discovering it’s gotten a whole lot more intense since you went to college.

At some universities, thousands of young women compete for a handful of spots at the most coveted houses. The pressure has grown so much that a whole new industry has emerged: rush consultants, also known as rush coaches, hired by families who want to give their daughters every possible edge before bid day.

We sat down with one of the most sought-after names in the business to pull back the curtain on how sorority recruitment really works today — and what parents can do to help.

Leslie stumbled into this world the way most great businesses are born — by solving a real problem for a friend. After guiding that friend's daughter through the sorority recruitment process, she realized how badly families needed someone in their corner. She founded Sorority Prep in 2015 and has since built a reputation as the secret weapon for families all over the country navigating one of college life's most competitive processes.

In this episode:

👉 Why sorority recruitment feels more competitive than ever.

👉 What a rush coach actually does.

👉 The do’s and don’ts of Rush Week.

👉 Why it can all be worth it/what sorority life offers.

👉 How Leslie parents her own children differently after doing this work.

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📱Please fill out our end-of-season Feedback Form; we need your help to come back bigger and better! 

📱Learn more about Sorority Prep and Leslie Cunningham. 

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Instagram: @barenakedmoms 

YouTube: @BareNakedMoms

As with any tale of struggle and survival (and ultimate triumph), there’s the story and then there’s the story. There’s the what that happened, and then there’s the how, the why, and all the huh in between.

Our guest today, author Amy Gallo Ryan, talks about her years-long infertility battle and everything in her universe that it shifted: her professional existence, her marriage, her sense of self, and her definition of motherhood (yes, she became a mom after 6 rounds of IVF!!). But there’s an even deeper, more universal tale Amy tells underneath plot field hat every human can relate to, reproductively challenged or not: wanting something so bad and not being able to make it happen, the feeling of falling short as a partner, imposter syndrome all around, and then complicated feelings about the thing you wanted so bad once it does actually happen.

Her honesty in her book You May Feel a Bit of Pressure and with Alanna and me on today’s show, is refreshing, and cup-filling. Like us, Amy is on a mission to reduce the loneliness people feel when they're knee-deep in the hard.

In this episode, we talk about:

👉 The mental, emotional, physical labor of trying (so hard) to have a baby

👉 What those with fertility challenges need to hear (and what they don’t)

👉 Everything in your life that changes when you’re in an IVF vortex

👉 Feeling alone makes everything hard harder.

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🔗 Find out more about Amy here: https://www.amygalloryan.com/

📱Follow us: https://www.instagram.com/barenakedmoms/

Our friend Stephen Lamberton was just eight years old when his father died by suicide. For the next four decades, he carried that loss at arm's length – something that happened in his family, something that was about his dad. But not really about him.

Then his own son turned eight.

The grief and trauma that Stephen never processed as a boy started to show up in his life as a father. Relatively minor moments with his kids would trigger waves of anger that felt out of proportion and difficult to control. He didn't understand what was happening. So he got help.

Now a volunteer with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Tree House Bereavement Center of Westchester, Stephen sits down with Milano and Alanna to talk about how unprocessed childhood trauma can quietly shape the kind of parent we become – and what it looks like to do something about it.

In this episode, we talk about:

👉 Parenting with unresolved trauma

👉 Childhood grief and emotional suppression

👉 Rage, resentment, and repair

👉 PTSD and fatherhood

👉 Vulnerability with children

👉 Breaking cycles instead of repeating them

👉 Healing after a parent’s suicide

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📱Learn more about the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Tree House Bereavement Center of Westchester. 

📱Follow us:

Instagram: @barenakedmoms 

YouTube: @BareNakedMoms

Sarah Vacchiano, General Council at United Artists and mom to three-year-old Gus, just published a novel. Soft Launch is a coming-of-adulthood tale based on Sarah’s 30-year-old self: freshly divorced, just graduated from law school, and working round the clock as a first year associate at a big NYC law firm.

All 40-something moms now, Alanna, Milano, and Sarah get into the idea of our past selves and reinvention. Is it possible to change course as a parent—or a professional after a certain age? 

Sarah and Milano, who both had Bipolar mothers, talk about the illusion of being “ready” for motherhood and squaring their own rocky upbringings with the childhoods they want for their kids.

This conversation reminds us that who we are when we’re 30 isn’t who we at 40 or 50. And that constant movement forward confirms we’re doing something right—in parenting and in life.  Fun fact: Sarah’s also launching a podcast called Civic EQ which is all about incorporating civics into everyday family life.

In This Episode:

👉 Becoming a mom when your own mom was mentally-ill.

👉 Raising civics-minded kids.

👉 Modeling vulnerability and reinvention for our kids.

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📩 Follow Sarah Vacchiano on Substack: https://substack.com/@sarahvacchiano

📱Follow us:

Instagram: @barenakedmoms 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BareNakedMoms

Behind every standout athlete (or artist or musician) is a parent cheering from the sidelines—snacks in hand, heart in throat. But what’s it like to raise three daughters who went on to make sports history together?

Meet Sarah Humphrey, mom to Nicole, Ashley, and Chloe—the trio who united at UNC to win the 2025 NCAA Women’s Lacrosse Championship. She shares the winding roads that led them there, how she found her calm at home amid flying lacrosse balls, and yes… some heated family moments leading up to the big game.

In This Episode:

👉 Talent vs. hustle (and why grit always wins)

👉 Why being “great at everything” is overrated

👉 The question their little brother never wants to hear again

👉 What Sarah wishes she’d known when the girls were just starting out

📱Follow Nicole, Ashley, Chloe & Chloe Humphrey Lacrosse

Follow us:

📱 Instagram: @barenakedmoms

▶️ YouTube: @barenakedmoms

In June 2020, my oldest friend, Candace, lost her husband (and father of their three young kids). Rusty went to the ER thinking he had COVID, and he never left. He died in the hospital three days later—not from COVID, but from Acute Myeloid Leukemia, which had hijacked his body in the mere six months since his last wellness checkup.

Candace talks to us about chugging along as a mother of three young children (ages 6, 4, and 2 at the time) amidst this hellish trauma of tragic, sudden loss. The amazing yet simple things people did for her in the early days (coffee fairies, Costco fairies, laundry fairies), the resources that really moved the needle for her and her kids, the advice she’d give to someone new to grief, how this experience has changed her as a mother—Candace shares all of this (and more) with Alanna and Milano.

In This Episode:

👉 Three things someone who loses their spouse and parenting partner needs to know

👉 Social Media is an amazing resource for people in grief

👉 What to do and say to someone experiencing loss and grief

👉 How grief changes you as a parent

👉 Grieving fully leads to living fully

📱 Follow us on Instagram

Paul Tough’s New York Times Magazine article “Have We Been Thinking About ADHD All Wrong?” really stirred the ADHD pot by calling BS on so much of the collective reasoning around what ADHD is and how to treat it. Is it nature (biology)? Is it nurture (environment)? What does “having it” really mean? And how do you go about “having it” less, or not at all?

Milano, who, along with two of her three kids (so far!) “has” ADHD, came away from Tough’s article with a strong thoughts and feelings—a response made all the more complicated by the fact that she’s a big fan of Tough’s work, including his bestselling books How Children Succeed and Helping Children Succeed. Milano had so many questions and counterpoints scribbled in the margins of the article, she asked him to come on the show and get into all of it. 

Paul and Milano (Alanna is just a producer on this one) unpack so many layers of this incredibly slippery subject. And they offer each other different ways of looking at each one of those layers. Trust - you do NOT want to miss this rich, fascinating conversation that deepens the bigger ADHD conversation and helps explain why the topic—and the response to Tough’s article— is so heated. 

In This Episode:

👉 The symptoms and causes of ADHD

👉 Hotly debated treatments for ADHD: biology, environment, or both?

👉 Why the glasses metaphor doesn’t work

👉 When medication is the right path 

👉 Links between ADHD and Trauma

🔗 Learn more about Paul

📱 Follow us on Instagram @barenakedmoms

Most of us are doing our absolute best when it comes to feeding our kids. But are our well-intentioned choices helping build a healthy relationship with food… or quietly making things harder?

In this episode, eating disorder specialist and mom of two Dr. Lauren Ozbolt unpacks the “perfect storm” of factors that can lead to disordered eating in kids and teens. She also explains how family dynamics and cultural messages play a powerful role and what actually makes a difference in everyday life. The result is a grounded, hopeful conversation that replaces fear with clarity—and gives parents concrete tools they can use right away.

In This Episode:

👉 Why high-achieving, perfection-prone kids can be especially vulnerable

👉 How our food histories and past generations shape kids’ eating relationships

👉 Why regular family meals matter more than you think

👉 Why labeling foods as “good” or “bad” can backfire

👉 The most reassuring truth of all: When eating disorders are identified early and treated aggressively, recovery is very possible.

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📱Learn more about Dr. Ozbolt

📱Follow us: @barenakedmoms

Ever plan a family vacation for months only to come home thinking, we could’ve done that better? Between the money, the logistics, and the kids, traveling as a fam can be A LOT. 

That’s why we sat down with Jacqui Gifford, Editor-in-Chief of Travel + Leisure, to get her smartest, most practical tips for globetrotting with kids. A lifelong traveler—born in Japan and raised in Saudi Arabia and Qatar—Jacqui now lives in New York City and travels the world with her husband and 10-year-old son whenever she can. You may have seen her sharing her expert advice on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNBC, and MSNBC.

So listen up and come home with happier kids, great stories, and way fewer “never doing this again” moments.

In This Episode:

👉 When it comes to vacations with your kids, why Jacqui believes you should go big or stay home (and plan a great staycation). 

👉 Last-minute family travel: possible or impossible? 

👉 The surprising family travel hack involving European cities. 

👉 The best way to use frequent flier miles when traveling with your family. 

👉 What this intimidatingly well-traveled mom packs in her suitcase. 

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📱Travel + Leisure Website 

📱Follow Jacqui Gifford: @jacquigiff

📱Follow us: @barenakedmoms

After having her first child nine years ago, Adrienne Harper started Bundles of Joy, an incredible organization that provides critical items to families living in poverty throughout New York City and Westchester County. 

There’s a gap in social services that you don’t know or think about unless you’re caught in it: Even families who receive the benefits of free shelter and public assistance still lack essentials like clothing, diapers, shoes, school supplies, and so on. Bundles of Joy is the leading provider of such essentials—thanks to Adrienne’s vision, passion, and dogged commitment. 

Adrienne takes us back to how it all started for her, why social work is so important for kids and families to engage in, and actual ways to make it happen for YOUR family.

In This Episode:

👉 Asking for help takes courage.

👉 Rich or poor, motherhood is the great equalizer.

👉 The major impact of diapers.

👉 What families in need really need. 

👉 What volunteering kids and families gain from helping less fortunate families.

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🎁 Donate to Bundles of Joy

📱 Follow Bundles of Joy: @bundlesofjoyny

📱 Follow us: @barenakedmoms