Join Mariana for a conversation with Ruthie Ackerman, author of The Mother’s Code.

Long before Ruthie became a mother, she had already learned how to take care of other people. Growing up with a mother struggling with mental illness and a brother with complex medical needs, she became a caretaker early—and learned to mold herself into the person other people needed her to be. That pattern followed her into adulthood, love, marriage, and eventually the question of whether she wanted to become a mother herself.

In this conversation, Ruthie reflects on waiting to be chosen in relationships, becoming the “easygoing” woman who didn’t need too much, leaving a loving marriage for an uncertain future, freezing her eggs, infertility and donor conception, and finally discovering a version of motherhood that didn't require giving herself away. At 49, she is also confronting a larger question: after spending so much of our lives becoming who we think we're supposed to be, how do we learn to hear ourselves again?

We talk about caregiving, freedom, feminism, fertility, motherhood, control, grief, creativity, identity, and the tension between being rewarded for pretending and wanting desperately to be known for who we really are.

INNER LIVES PODCAST
✍🏻 Read the essays on Substack: https://marianacrestani.substack.com
▶ Watch on YouTube: @InnerLivesPodcast
📸 Follow on Instagram: @innerlivespod
🌐 Website: https://www.innerlivespodcast.com

MARIANA
📸 Instagram: @marianaccrestani
🌐 Website: https://www.marianacrestani.com

RUTHIE
📸 Instagram: @ruackerman
🌐 Website: www.ruthieackerman.com

Episode 12 — Chapters

00:00 “I Realized I Was Kind of Faking It”
00:41 The Final Interview of Season One
03:25 Ruthie’s Earliest Picture of Motherhood
07:17 Becoming a Caregiver Before Becoming a Mother
14:29 Growing Up Too Soon
16:19 Searching for Freedom
19:30 “Do I Actually Want What Everyone Else Wants?”
25:24 Waiting to Be Chosen
28:03 Becoming the “Pick Me Girl”
36:35 Why Motherhood Felt Suffocating
39:11 Freezing Her Eggs—and Freezing the Decision
41:58 “He Was a Good Man. Why Would I Leave?”
48:12 When the Plan Fell Apart
58:43 Discovering “Outlaw Motherhood”
1:04:29 What She’d Tell Her Younger Self
1:08:41 What Ruthie’s Story Left Me Thinking About

Join Mariana for a conversation with Meghan Krempetz.

As a little girl, Meghan was imaginative, playful, and always creating worlds of her own. Then adulthood brought responsibility, motherhood, loneliness, divorce, and the slow realization that somewhere along the way, she wasn’t entirely sure who she was anymore.

Now, approaching 57, Meghan has built a life that feels deeply her own—filled with friendship, creativity, meaningful work, grown children who genuinely want to be around her, and a sense that there is still so much left to discover.

In this conversation, we explore motherhood and the loss of independence, becoming capable too young, loneliness inside marriage, divorce, friendship and community, finding yourself again through work, aging without trying to recreate a younger version of yourself, and what it means to hold on to the parts of you that were always really yours.

INNER LIVES PODCAST
✍🏻 Substack: https://substack.com/@marianaccrestani
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/innerlivespod/
🌐 https://www.innerlivespodcast.com

MARIANA CRESTANI
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marianaccrestani/
🌐 https://www.marianacrestani.com

MEGHAN KREMPETZ
Director, Little Mountain Preschool

Join Mariana for a conversation with Keltie Maguire about one of the biggest decisions a woman can make: whether or not to become a mother.

For most of her life, Keltie assumed she would eventually have children. Growing up, she couldn't think of a single woman in her life who had chosen otherwise. But as she got older, she found herself waiting for the certainty everyone told her would eventually come—and it never did. What followed was a long process of questioning what she actually wanted, what she believed she was supposed to want, and why not wanting motherhood made her feel broken, different, and less feminine.

Keltie and Mariana talk about fear, uncertainty, marriage, freedom, meaning, the life Keltie ultimately chose, and what happens when we give ourselves permission to question the paths we've inherited.

Because underneath the question of whether or not to have children is something much bigger: How do we know which desires are actually ours?

INNER LIVES PODCAST
✍🏻 Read the essays on Substack: https://marianacrestani.substack.com
▶ Watch on YouTube: @InnerLivesPodcast
📸 Follow on Instagram: @innerlivespod
🌐 Website: https://www.innerlivespodcast.com

MARIANA
📸 Instagram: @marianaccrestani
🌐 Website: https://www.marianacrestani.com

KELTIE
📸 Instagram: @kidsorchildfree
🌐 Website: www.kidsorchildfree.com

Join Mariana for a conversation with Juliana, a former brand strategist and U.S. diplomat who became a model and wellness creator in her 50s.

For much of her life, Juliana was always moving toward the next experience: living around the world, changing careers, raising children, and building the life she wanted. Then, in her late 40s, something changed. On paper, her life had finally come together. Inside her body, it felt like everything was beginning to fall apart.

In this conversation, we explore beauty and ambition, the beliefs women inherit about getting older, what happens when a body that once did everything you asked of it begins asking something different of you, and why Juliana refuses to believe that a woman's best years have to be behind her.

INNER LIVES PODCAST
✍🏻 Read the essays on Substack: https://marianacrestani.substack.com
▶ Watch on YouTube: @InnerLivesPodcast
📸 Follow on Instagram: @innerlivespod
🌐 Website: https://www.innerlivespodcast.com

MARIANA
📸 Instagram: @marianaccrestani
🌐 Website: https://www.marianacrestani.com

JULIANA
📸 Instagram: @silverhighligts1971
🌐 Website: www.silverhighlights1971.com

Join Mariana for Part Two of her conversation with Nicolette Amarillas.

When we first sat down, Nicolette was in the middle of a season she was still trying to understand. She talked openly about aging, sadness, identity, belonging, and the feeling that her life didn’t look the way she thought it would.

A few months later, we sat down again. And something had shifted.

This time, our conversation went deeper into the parts of ourselves we’re often less willing to admit out loud: ambition, jealousy, money, appearance, the desire for more—and the judgment that can come with wanting any of it.

We talk about what happens when a career becomes part of your identity, the grief of losing it, therapy, self-worth, aging, body image, eating disorders, relationships, and what it means to stop fighting the parts of yourself you once believed made you a bad person.

CONTENT NOTE: This episode includes a candid conversation about eating disorders, body image, food, and exercise. Please listen with care if these topics may be difficult for you.

INNER LIVES PODCAST
✍🏻 Read the essays on Substack: https://marianacrestani.substack.com
▶ Watch on YouTube: @InnerLivesPodcast
📸 Follow on Instagram: @innerlivespod
🌐 Website: https://www.innerlivespodcast.com

MARIANA
📸 Instagram: @marianaccrestani
🌐 Website: https://www.marianacrestani.com

NICOLETTE
📸 Instagram: @nicolette.amarillas

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction
01:16 What Changed Since Our First Conversation?
04:38 Why I Was Sadder Than People Realized
10:02 Losing the Job That Became My Identity
18:55 Is It Wrong to Want More?
20:34 I Thought I Was a Bad Person
29:57 The Relationships That Carry Us Through
38:39 Accepting That I’m Not Someone Who Settles
44:52 Aging, Body Image & Perimenopause
49:39 My Complicated Relationship With Food and My Body
56:42 What My Eating Disorder Cost Me
1:04:42 What Would My Grandmother Think of Me Now?

Join Mariana for a conversation with Ruchi Pinniger. Ruchi spent years on Wall Street before building Watch Her Prosper, a company devoted to helping women understand their money and redefine what prosperity can look like.

But her own relationship with money began much earlier. After experiencing profound loss at a young age, Ruchi went on to build a life defined by independence, ambition, and financial success. Along the way, she began questioning some of the beliefs many of us carry about money: what we think it will give us, what it can protect us from, and why feeling financially secure doesn't always mean feeling safe.

In this conversation, we explore the money stories we inherit, women and financial independence, marriage and financial power, ambition, motherhood, loss, uncertainty, and the complicated relationship between having enough and feeling like we have enough. 

INNER LIVES PODCAST
✍🏻 Read the essays on Substack: https://marianacrestani.substack.com
▶ Watch on YouTube: @InnerLivesPodcast
📸 Follow on Instagram: @innerlivespod
🌐 Website: https://www.innerlivespodcast.com

MARIANA
📸 Instagram: @marianaccrestani
🌐 Website: https://www.marianacrestani.com

RUCHI
📸 Instagram: @watchherprosper | @ruchipinniger
🌐 Website: https://www.watchherprosper.com

STEP INTO PROSPERITY WITH RUCHI
Join Ruchi for her upcoming Redefining Prosperity™ Workshop, a live virtual reset designed to shift your beliefs, energy, and rituals around money. Reconnect with your deeper truth beyond your income goals and identify the patterns keeping you stuck in a financial fog. You'll move from scarcity into certainty and leave with a vision-led, practical plan to unlock Your Prosperous Life™, rooted in joy, peace, and financial empowerment.

🎟️ Workshop details + registration:
https://watchherprosper.com/redefining-prosperity-workshop/

💫 Inner Lives listeners receive $100 off with code: INNERLIVES
Offer available through Sept 23rd.

Join Mariana for a conversation with Nicolette Amarillas. Nicolette built a career helping people become stronger. As a coach, entrepreneur, and creator, she spent years building a life that, from the outside, looked like she had everything figured out. But after losing her job, she found herself asking deeper questions about belonging, identity, and what it really means to feel at home in your own life.

In Part One of our conversation, we explore job loss, aging, social media, self-worth, loneliness, grief, and the lifelong search for a place—and a version of ourselves—that finally feels like home.

A few months later, we sat down together again. She was still asking many of the same questions, but something had shifted. Part Two picks up where this conversation leaves off.

INNER LIVES PODCAST
✍🏻 Read the essays on Substack: https://marianacrestani.substack.com
▶ Watch on YouTube: @InnerLivesPodcast
📸 Follow on Instagram: @innerlivespod
🌐 Website: https://www.innerlivespodcast.com

MARIANA
📸 Instagram: @marianaccrestani
🌐 Website: https://www.marianacrestani.com

NICOLETTE
📸 Instagram: @nicolette.amarillas

Join Mariana for a conversation with Annemieke Umberg. Annemieke shares what happened after she left corporate life, fell in love, and set sail around the world with her young family in search of a different way of living. But somewhere along the journey, she began asking a different question altogether.

Together, we explore ambition, motherhood, intuition, reinvention, slowing down, and what happens when the life you've built no longer feels like the answer you were looking for.

INNER LIVES PODCAST
✍🏻 Read the essays on Substack: https://marianacrestani.substack.com
▶ Watch on YouTube: @InnerLivesPodcast
📸 Follow on Instagram: @innerlivespod
🌐 Website: https://www.innerlivespodcast.com

MARIANA
📸 Instagram: @marianaccrestani
🌐 Website: https://www.marianacrestani.com

ANNEMIEKE
📸 Instagram: @annemiekeumberg

Sara Brown spent years collecting labels. A Division I athlete. A Google executive. A mother of three. An entrepreneur. A podcast host. But somewhere along the way, she began asking a different question: What if none of those labels are actually who I am?

We talk about identity, ambition, motherhood, entrepreneurship, self-worth, belonging, reinvention, and what happens when we stop introducing ourselves by our accomplishments and begin trusting that who we are exists beneath every title we've ever held.

Inner Lives continues beyond the microphone.

Subscribe to receive essays and reflections exploring the questions behind the conversations:
Inner Lives on Substack

Listen to the podcast and explore all episodes:
 Inner Lives Podcast

Follow along:
 Instagram: @innerlivespod
Mariana: @marianaccrestani

Connect with Sara:
Instagram: @themotherspod
Website: themothersmedia.co

Maggie Dickens spent much of her life becoming exactly who she thought everyone else wanted her to be. A therapist, community builder, and founder of Unapologetically Childfree, she has spent years helping women reconnect with themselves after a lifetime of people pleasing, perfectionism, and seeking belonging through achievement.

We talk about emotional neglect, codependency, body image, perfectionism, community, choosing a childfree life, redefining love, and the quiet work of letting go of the versions of ourselves built to earn acceptance.

Inner Lives continues beyond the microphone.

Subscribe to receive essays and reflections exploring the questions behind the conversations:
Inner Lives on Substack

Listen to the podcast and explore all episodes:
 Inner Lives Podcast

Follow along:
 Instagram: @innerlivespod
Mariana: @marianaccrestani

Connect with Maggie:
 Instagram: @maggiegetsreal
Website: maggiedickens.com