Melissa Gould lost her husband Joel nearly nine years ago when their daughter, Sophie, was 13 years old. The mother and daughter processed the loss in their very own, very distinct ways: Sophie grieved mostly in silence as a young teen, not wanting to attract pity or stand out from her peers. Melissa grieved loudly – and then publicly, when her memoir, Widowish, came out last year. We talk to both Melissa and Sophie about how complicated it can be when grief takes different shapes in the family, and how their mother-daughter relationship is evolving into one between two adults.

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In this episode we celebrate the caregivers and chosen family members who bring so much into our lives. Yasmeen talks to sisters adrienne maree brown and autumn brown, hosts of the podcast  How To Survive The End of the World. As writers, facilitators, activists (and queer aunties), they know a lot about nurturing community. They discuss the growth of their relationship as parent/auntie, the radical possibilities of ‘auntiehood’, and the real work of nurturing chosen family.

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When the kids are away, how do parents play? Sure, we all have interests we can tick off and activities we like doing as grown-ups. But when that rare chunk of free time comes along, what’s going to serve you well in that moment? In this episode, Yasmeen explores how we can all figure out what we really want to do when we have time to ourselves – along with how we can find moments of personal freedom while parenting.  We reach out to  two “experts” on the matter: Yasmeen’s mom, who took up a long list of various activities over her years of raising kids, and Sara Shapouri, a mindfulness teacher who occasionally moonlights as an animal-costume-wearing musician.

Try a meditation for parents from Sara Shapouri in the Ten Percent Happier app. In this meditation, Sara helps you settle your nervous system and then ask: what do I need right now?

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Erin is a mother of three teenagers. As her oldest prepares to leave home, she wonders how she can go about strengthening their strained relationship. She wrote to Childproof for advice and we enlisted the help of veteran meditation teacher James Baraz, who has personal experience healing his own relationship with an adult child.

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Being a parent means dealing with a wild range of emotions all the time, both our own and those of our children. Sometimes we may feel rage, sometimes total elation. How are we supposed to make sense of that? Today we’re sharing the first two episodes of a new show at Ten Percent Happier called More Than a Feeling. It dives into the confusing, exhilarating, and messy world of human emotions — and how to make sense of them.

In More Than A Feeling’s first episode, we hear host Saleem Reshamwala grapple with defining emotions in the first place (we don’t always have the best language for this). Then, in an episode called “Get Me Out Of Here,” producer Mark Pagán goes deep on one emotion: fear. Specifically, his own fear of riding the New York City subway. We follow along for the (actual) ride.

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Tom Sheppard didn’t grow up with his parents, but he spent his life trying to learn more about them. When Tom was just 3 years old, his father killed his mother. That part he knew. But he never got the full story on why and how it all happened. What’s more, he knew that the relatives who were lovingly raising him were withholding information about the incident. They weren’t lying to him, but he never got the whole truth either. Until a handful of years ago. 

In this episode, Tom tells us about the secret his family kept. And how his yearning to uncover the details over the years helped define who he is as a father.

As a heads up, this episode contains depictions of violence.

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We know interrupted sleep comes with the job of raising kids, especially at the beginning. Night and day bleed into each other and, before long, we’re in a nonstop loop of pacing, rocking, changing, feeding and wondering: will I ever sleep again? 

In this episode we check in with a few under-slept parents about how a prolonged lack of rest has affected their lives and, in some cases, sense of self. We also talk with Dr. Lauren Whitehurst, a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in sleep, about how to be patient with our bodies and brains when we’re sleep-deprived.

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Having a job and having a child isn’t just a balancing act of two different roles. It’s a whole new identity to figure out — you are a working parent. But if you spend your efforts being devoted to work, and then devoted to kids, where does that leave… you know… you? How do you toggle between these different tasks and mindsets, draw firm boundaries between your work and home life, and still take time to check in with yourself? 

In this episode we’re sharing an adaptation of an article we did for the new parents issue of Romper, the online parenting magazine, focusing on mothers navigating the transition back to work after parental leave.

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When you think back to your own middle school experience: do you cringe? In her latest creative project, author and podcaster Hillary Frank goes deep into the discomforts of middle school. Her audio drama, Here Lies Me, centers on an eighth grade girl confronting issues of harassment, bullying, all-around awkwardness, and the loss of her childhood. Hillary first conceived of the story some 15 years ago, long before she was a parent herself. But she only brought it to life as a fiction podcast last year – coincidentally at the same time that her own daughter entered middle school. We talk with Hillary about how she immersed herself in what truly goes down in the eighth grade, and how that has – and has not – prepared her for this stage of parenting. 

You can find Here Lies Me wherever you get your podcasts—and check out their website: hereliesme.com

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Aubrey, a mother of three children with cognitive differences, has a habit of lying in bed at night and ruminating over the mistakes she feels that she’d made throughout the day. “Especially when you become a parent, your flaws take center stage,” she says. Although she’s been working on strategies to take better care of herself, she’s searching for a way to be kinder to herself when the chaos of her busy days feels like it’s too much. For an episode of Twenty Percent Happier that we’re sharing, Aubrey meets with Matthew Hepburn, a meditation teacher, to learn how to replace her nightly routine with a new practice: one that can help her ease up on herself when she feels like she’s falling short.

You can find more episodes of Twenty Percent Happier exclusively in the Ten Percent Happier app. https://www.tenpercent.com/twenty

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