Honest to God

Ho, ho, hold on a second.

Welcome to the very first HTG holiday special, where we know you already know all about the importance of giving.

On today’s episode, we’re flipping the script and unwrapping the secret to Christmastime’s highest and most forgotten art: receiving. 

From singleness to budgeting and jealousy to exhaustion, we’re learning from every possible pustule of holiday frustration how to better position ourselves to receive an outpouring of favor and joy this year. We’re holding space for the things that threaten our capacity to celebrate—particularly around the holidays—and moving through them with vulnerability, accountability, and open hands.

Get yours this Christmas, honestly.

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What if I didn’t date my college boyfriend?

What if I never loved?

What if I believed the things they said about me? 

What if my parents never split?

What if I never left my childhood home?

What if I gave up on myself when I was at my lowest low?

Answering these questions and others on the season finale of Honest to God, an exploration of alternate timelines and the miracle of God’s grace in every single one.

TW: themes include abuse, sexual assault, depression

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Connect with me: @alyssakattan on Instagram & TikTok

This week on Honest to God, we’re tackling friendship: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Starting off where it all began (with crippling childhood social anxiety and a deep-set hatred of birthday parties), we’ll journey along the winding road that humbled me into someone worthy of those I get to call my friends today. We’ll encounter betrayal and emotional exhaustion, relational growing pains and painfully awkward attempts at being social, hyperfixation and hypocrisy, poorly ordered priorities, and an unwillingness to trust as we grow in understanding of how to be the kind of friend that we, ourselves, want and need.

On today’s episode, I realize it’s okay to walk away from places we’re unwanted, to not be scared of investing effort into a relationship, and to stop assuming everybody’s love languages are the same as mine. From first kisses to girl dates (iykyk), we’ll talk through strategies for maximizing confidence and minimizing panic while attempting to make new friends. Guarding your heart, taking full accountability for mistakes, resisting the urge to overshare, and finding comfort in silence are among the many skills sharpened along the way. By the end, we’ll have a better idea of how to leverage intentionality to help others blossom, even as we use boundaries and invitations to help our dearest friendships go the distance.

If Charli and Lorde could work it out on the remix, we’re working it out on this podcast.

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Connect with me: @alyssakattan on Instagram & TikTok

This one is for the girls tied up in invisible strings. And the guys. On today’s episode of Honest to God, we’re taking the gloves off and getting into the messy reality of past lives: the holds they still have over us, the doubt and fear they create in our hearts, and the perilous search for an escape hatch. Living a happy, healthy life in what may feel like a broken body or brain isn’t easy—this pursuit of deep peace begs some pretty sobering questions: Is faith worth anything? Is God truly enough? And for the hungering Christian, was I better off before Jesus? 

This week’s conversation investigates the empathy and competency of Christ to untangle the tightest of soul knots, whether the entanglement is with a particular person, vice, idea, or traumatic event. I talk about feeling tied to a stake in the ground somewhere in the landscape of my old ways, a place riddled with mistakes and memories I’d rather forget. I’ll explain how realizing that our strongest desires rarely equal our deepest desires changed my worldview, before unpacking the shame that comes with shifting appetites, suffering from intense but unmet needs, and carving better neural pathways. 

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Connect with me: @alyssakattan on Instagram & TikTok

After an unintentionally long break, we’re BACK and plunging immediately into the darkness. Kidding, but only kind of. This week on Honest to God, we’re dealing with loneliness: thief of light and maker of pain. I open up about my own wrestle with loneliness throughout the college years, but also reach back in time to understand how the nature of my childhood created voids in my adult self that lured me into destructive situations. From desperately wanting “someone to brush my teeth with,” to eventually learning how painful it can be to protect your peace, I talk through every unspoken and often embarrassing facet of navigating isolation.

We’ll get candid about struggling to get out of bed, the difference between company and companionship, throwing away our safety blankets, running from catastrophic temptation, and not hurting our own feelings. In calling out the obvious (people in college rarely look how they feel), we’ll discuss the desire to be hotter, smarter, nicer—a better friend—and ultimately learn how to use stretches of isolation to heal and grow tremendously. On today’s episode, we’re turning aloneness into both a construction site and a playground, a place to rebuild and (just maybe) have genuine fun.

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Connect with me: @alyssakattan on Instagram & TikTok

EVERYBODY PAUSE: HTG IS 10 EPISODES OLD AND YOUR GIRL IS 22!!!!!! On today’s episode, we’re getting real about growing up. I’m putting a momentary pin in the birthday festivities to talk through all of the fears and flaws I know I need to confront and deconstruct in my twenties. Freshly out of what I’ve coined as the “honeymoon phase” of this notoriously determinative decade, I’m faced with a nauseating cocktail—equal parts the drive to work in order to control my future and an acceptance of my utter lack of control over it—that separates me from my dreams.

I’ve concluded, though, that I do have full control over the kind of person I become, and today I’m choosing to take full accountability for her. She yearns to love and protect herself better, serve others more meaningfully, improve at listening, walk with more faith in God (even when He feels far away), and increase in self control. We’ll look at the correlation between interruptibility and joy, the tendency of the world to put us to shame, our habit of seeking validation over truth + secretly desiring for others to experience our own lack, and the reluctance of Jesus to swoop in and disappear our troubles. Here’s to my most exciting year and most uncomfortable conversation yet.

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Connect with me: @alyssakattan on Instagram & TikTok

On today’s episode of Honest to God, I’m joined by the one and only Mark Vaselkiv: Baltimore’s (and Brooklyn’s) favorite finance bro, father, husband, teacher, community leader, patron of the arts, and follower of Christ. From first-gen Ukrainian American kid to Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price, Mark recounts the decades of sacrifice, insecurity, hustle, and “friendly skepticism” that cultivated underneath him the sweet, sweet life he lives today.

Mark shares about being fired from his first job, having an existential crisis at 26, and coping with chronic insomnia + ruthless anxiety to illuminate all the ways that the steady hand of God ushered him along in impossible circumstances. We discuss the idea of redemptive suffering—built on the thought that “we are not called to a comfortable existence”—and radical generosity, a practice that has profoundly shaped Mark’s identity and community impact. We’ll talk about learning where to draw the line to avoid crashing and burning, losing trust in the world and its institutions, male domination, and finally, Mark’s secret recipe for a rich and happy home.

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Connect with me: @alyssakattan on Instagram & TikTok

So…I graduated college last week. Cue forty-five minute rant of every brutally honest thought and unpopular opinion I’ve held inside for the past four years! Haha! On today’s episode of HTG, we’re going off-script. I sit down in my cap and gown to review allllll the complicated emotions and realizations surrounding not only graduation, but the whole of my (now complete) experience at Johns Hopkins University.

We’ll talk about evolving friendships, life in a new city, career panic, social anxiety + insecurity, and the search for community + steadiness amid abruptly changing circumstances. I review how the challenges I faced during undergrad better equipped me for the future, even if I used to feel like they’d ruined everything forever. We get underneath the glittery blanket that media throws over the college experience and consider how to walk away from campus with peace and confidence despite the manifold forms of loss, mistreatment, and confusion that these most formative years present to us. 

Follow the podcast: @honesttogodpod on Instagram & TikTok

Connect with me: @alyssakattan on Instagram & TikTok

TW: mention of SA, grief/loss

On today’s episode of Honest to God, I’m joined by the one and only Allie McFadden, a dear mentor and friend (and mom and wife and actress and photographer and vocalist and former gymnast). Always a pillar of wisdom and inspiration, Allie comes to pour out heartfelt wisdom and sobering truths about our favorite domestic fantasies—marriage and motherhood—while reflecting on everything she wishes she knew at the start of her twenties about love, career, confidence, and more.

We talk about serving false gods, feeling like a sellout, managing the pain of heartbreak, and being overwhelmed by desire. In considering how Christlike femininity functions amidst all of this, we discuss the separation of our capacity to be desired from our outward beauty and sexuality, in addition to the rhythms that keep us afloat in suffocating seasons. Allie shares about the unexpected joys and struggles of starting a family, as she teaches us how to enjoy the beauty of the time in between.

Follow the Podcast: @honesttogodpod on Instagram & TikTok

Connect with me: @alyssakattan on Instagram & TikTok

If you’re going to listen to any episode of HTG in full, let it be this one. On today’s podcast, we skip the sugar and plunge straight into the biting truth about prayer: one of organized religion’s most powerful and controversial pillars. We’ll talk about feeling betrayed by God, questioning His goodness, and what the church gets wrong. If you, too, have ever given up on prayer, stared evil down the barrel, or hated existing in your own head, you’re in good company.

I open up about wanting to be a better person, learning to forgive the unforgivable, and declaring my fantasies to God, before sharing skeptically-tested strategies for rekindling and elevating your relationship with prayer. This week’s episode prioritizes vulnerability in order to expose the striking, transformative, dynamic reality of prayer, our most precious art and most formidable tool.

TW: SA references

Follow the podcast: @honesttogodpod on Instagram & TikTok

Connect with me: @alyssakattan on Instagram & TikTok