Maya is 29! We start Episode 3 celebrating Maya’s last year of her twenties—birthday dinners, getting older, an extremely kind waiter, and the surprisingly controversial question: are tapas actually a good dinner?

But turning 29 also comes after what Maya describes as a long season of change and transformation. And lately, both of us have found ourselves confronting the same question: What are we still carrying that we need to let go of?

For Maya, letting go has meant walking away from the fantasy of a relationship when the reality wasn’t matching it—and realizing that she was accepting treatment she knew wasn’t enough. It has also meant loosening her grip on deeply held political identities, arguments, anger, and the hard exterior she developed to survive difficult seasons of her life. As those things fall away, she’s discovering a softer, more peaceful version of herself underneath them.

For Lauren, letting go means surrendering the need to control something none of us can actually control: what other people think of us. She shares how years of medical challenges, being unable to communicate what she was experiencing, and desperately wanting to be heard created an “operating system” of explaining, people-pleasing, questioning herself, and needing other people to understand her intentions.

We talk about what happens when circumstances and other people’s perceptions begin to govern our identities—and what it looks like to stop searching for validation outside of ourselves and instead move forward in the assurance of who God says we are.

Finally, we turn to Isaiah 43:18–19 and the promise that God is doing something new. We talk about sanctification, discernment, the wilderness, breaking old cycles, and having the courage to trust God when letting go means walking into something we can’t see yet.

Because maybe letting go isn’t just about what we’re leaving behind. Maybe it’s about finally making room for what God is trying to bring in.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit boldandinsecure.substack.com

What if the person you’re trying so hard to convince of your worth… is actually yourself?

In Episode 2 of Bold & Insecure, we start with a chaotic trip to the Hollywood sign—and an encounter in a parking lot that revealed something about both of us. One of us wanted to smooth everything over; the other wanted to stand her ground. Different reactions, but underneath them were some very familiar insecurities.

That conversation takes us back to childhood and the different ways we learned to measure our value. For one of us, worth became intertwined with achievement, being the “golden child,” and eventually having the perfect relationship and family. For the other, feeling unwanted and unsafe created a longing to finally be chosen—and a belief that becoming prettier, thinner, or more desirable might make her worthy of love.

We talk about how those beliefs followed us into relationships: chasing the feeling of “having it all,” attaching our worth to being chosen, and looking to another person to fill something much deeper.

But we’re learning something different now: love isn’t an achievement, and being loved by another person isn’t evidence of our worth. We don’t have to perform, prove, perfect, or defend ourselves in order to be enough.

And that leaves us with a bigger question: What actually is love?

Through 1 Corinthians 13:4–7, we look at the biblical picture of love—patient, kind, not self-seeking, not keeping a record of wrongs—and what that means when so much of what we’ve called “love” has been tangled up with insecurity, validation, fear, and the need to be chosen.

We’re still learning how to live this out. But maybe becoming secure isn’t about finally becoming worthy enough to receive love. Maybe it’s realizing we were never supposed to earn our worth in the first place.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit boldandinsecure.substack.com

In our first episode of Bold & Insecure, we share how two Jersey girls somehow found each other at a Bible study in California, why we connected so quickly, and how our very different stories led us to recognize something familiar in each other.We get vulnerable about explosive reactions, shame, feeling misunderstood, and the painful belief that our worst moments reveal who we really are. Sometimes something as small as a pinprick can feel like a severed limb—not because the present moment is actually that devastating, but because of everything underneath it.We also talk about what it means to bring that weakness before Christ through 2 Corinthians 12:9–10: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”This podcast isn't coming from two women who have everything figured out. We're in the process too. Bold & Insecure is about creating the kind of space we found in each other—a place to be honest about what we've carried, feel less alone in it, and believe that our stories don't have to end with the things that hurt us.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit boldandinsecure.substack.com