What happens when two people fall in love — and completely underestimate what comes next?

In this first of a two-part series, Amy and Josh get personal. They sit down together to talk about their own step-family journey, including the part they weren't prepared for at all: how hard it actually was.

They unpack the unrealistic expectations they carried into blending a family — the fantasy that everyone would just click — and what it really looked like when they didn't. They talk about the culture clash neither of them saw coming: two families, two sets of unspoken rules, two completely different ways of doing everything. And how building something new out of all of that wasn't a moment. It was years.

They also get honest about what was happening for their kids while they were deep in the honeymoon phase — because while Amy and Josh were riding a dopamine high, their children were quietly grieving the families they'd lost. That mismatch? It cost them. And they talk openly about the toll it took on their relationship.

This episode is full of the things they wish someone had told them sooner — and what they would do differently if they could go back.

If you're in a blended family, thinking about becoming one, or just trying to make sense of why it's been harder than you expected — this one's for you.

This is Part 2. If you haven't listened to Part 1, start there — though this episode can also stand on its own.

In the first episode, Amy Prieb walked through four moments of disclosure that were met with silence, redirection, and institutional failure. In this episode, she continues — and the stakes get higher, because the people failing her are no longer just family friends and boyfriends. They are licensed professionals, academic institutions, and the systems explicitly designed to help.

She describes a family therapy session in which her therapist — a credentialed professional from her own church community — instructed her to narrate every sexual act her father had ever committed against her body, in a room that contained her abuser. When she refused, the therapist offered the only alternative he could think of: her father would narrate it instead. She walked out. She was the only person in that room who understood what was actually happening.

She describes arriving in graduate school in her mid-thirties — training to become a therapist herself, in a Christian seminary — answering a direct question honestly in a human sexuality class, and being pulled aside afterward by a beloved mentor who told her the setting was inappropriate.

And then she asks the question that sits at the center of this entire conversation: Then where the hell is the setting?

Not at eleven. Not at fifteen. Not at sixteen. Not with CPS. Not in the therapy room. Not in graduate school. The cumulative answer to "not here, not now, not like this" is, and always was, never.

This episode connects every one of those moments to the Jeffrey Epstein files — to the DOJ releasing survivors' names while redacting perpetrators', to the millions of documents still withheld, to the survivors who have been fighting for decades to be heard by systems that were never built for them. And it ends with Amy speaking directly — to the children still in those houses, to the adults who are right now deciding whose side they're on, and to every institution that has ever dressed up self-protection as procedural caution.

This is not a sad story. This is an angry one. The anger is the point. And the anger is what healing actually looks like.

Content warning: This episode contains detailed discussion of childhood sexual abuse, therapeutic malpractice, institutional betrayal, religious coercion, and the Epstein investigation. It does not contain graphic descriptions of abuse.

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual abuse, RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7: 1-800-656-4673 or rainn.org

What do you do when you tell the truth — and the adults around you believe you, and still do nothing?

In this first part of a two-episode conversation, Amy Prieb— licensed marriage and family therapist and survivor of childhood sexual abuse — tells the stories of every time she tried to get help as a child and was silenced. Not because people didn't believe her. They did. But believing a child and protecting a child turned out to be two very different things.

Facilitated by Nikki Braaten, this conversation is honest, unflinching, and deeply informed by both lived experience and clinical understanding. Amy has done the work. She's not here to perform grief. She's here to name a system.

In this episode, she walks through four specific moments:

A boarding school disclosure at age 11, where her father minimized ongoing sexual abuse as "a few butt slaps" — and the adults accepted his version without question. A conversation at 15 with a trusted family friend who named mandatory reporting and then immediately steered her away from it, asking her instead to one day forgive her father at her wedding altar. A boyfriend at 16 who, upon hearing her disclosure, was overheard asking his friends how he could ever see her as a virgin now. And a CPS investigation that ended with a social worker slamming her notebook shut and citing the statute of limitations — while her abuser came home and began monitoring her every movement.

Each of these moments is connected to what is happening right now with the Jeffrey Epstein files — the largest release of child sexual abuse investigation documents in American history. Because the playbook is identical whether the abuser is a missionary father in Thailand or a billionaire in Manhattan. Minimize. Redirect. Invoke forgiveness. Cite jurisdiction. Protect the men.

Part 2 continues next week.

Content warning: This episode contains detailed discussion of childhood sexual abuse, institutional betrayal, religious coercion, purity culture, and the Epstein investigation. It does not contain graphic descriptions of abuse.

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual abuse, RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7: 1-800-656-4673 or rainn.org

The world outside can be a lot. Your relationship doesn't have to be.

When work is overwhelming, family is complicated, and the news feels like too much — a securely attached relationship can be one of the most powerful stabilizing forces in your life. Not because it solves the external chaos, but because it gives you somewhere solid to stand while you face it.

In this episode, Amy explores one of the most quietly powerful truths she sees in her therapy practice: that a healthy, secure relationship functions like armor. When you can look at your partner and know — you are there for me, we are in this together, I am not alone — the hard stuff outside becomes genuinely more manageable.

In this Yurtism, you'll explore:

What happens when one woman looks around at all the fragmented, expensive, exhausting ways women are supposed to "fix" themselves — one course, one coach, one four-figure program at a time — and decides there's a better way?

Instagram: @thecrewcc

www.mariwuellnercoaching.com

https://the-crew-100.circle.so/checkout/the-crew?affiliate_code=35784f

What does it really take to grow up — and grow together?

In this deeply personal episode, a mother and adult daughter sit down for an honest, unfiltered conversation about one of the most powerful relationships in a woman's life. From the turbulent teenage years to the surprising shift into adulthood, they unpack the arguments that were never really about what they seemed, the moments that changed everything, and the things that — no matter how much time passes — never change at all.

They explore:

This episode is for every daughter who has ever felt misunderstood by her mom. For every mother watching her child become someone new. For anyone who has ever loved someone so deeply that it made things complicated.

Real. Raw. Relatable.

What does it actually take to build nourishing, lasting relationships in midlife — and how do you stop dating someone's potential and start seeing who they really are?

Join Michelle Foy (entrepreneur, mom of three, adventure lover, and Enneagram 7) and Katie Silver (realtor, business owner, soccer-playing mom of two, and born connector) as they have the honest, laugh-out-loud, sometimes-uncomfortable conversations that midlife women are hungry for.

Michelle and Katie bring their real-world experience as small business owners in Washington, single mothers, and women navigating midlife dating to explore what healthy relationships actually look like — and what they don't. No filters, no performance, just two women figuring it out together.

Each episode tackles the questions you've been asking yourself at 2am: What are your true non-negotiables in love? How do you spot green flags and red flags early — before you're already attached? What does it mean to want a relationship vs. need one? How do you ask for help in a culture that prizes independence? And how do you unlearn the toxic relationship habits that weren't even yours to begin with?

Whether you're newly single after divorce, dating after 40, re-entering the dating world in your 50s, healing from a difficult relationship, or just trying to understand your own attachment style and emotional needs — this podcast meets you exactly where you are.

New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe, leave a review, and share with the woman in your life who needs this conversation.

Michelle Foy owns Marathon Cleaners

https://usemarathon.com/

Katie Silver, Salute Homes

https://salutehomesnw.com/

Your partner isn't wrong. They're just different.

One of the most consistent patterns in happy, lasting relationships is that partners stop trying to change each other and start learning to work with each other. They accept that differences aren't defects — and instead of relitigating the same frustrations over and over, they find ways to compromise, negotiate, and meet in the middle.

In this episode, Amy  gets personal — sharing how someone who can't stand waiting ended up in a relationship with someone who arrives everywhere early. Not a dealbreaker. Not a character flaw. Just a difference that needed a system.

In this Yurtism, you'll explore:

Some truths about relationships don't need a whole hour to land — they just need the right words.

Yurtisms are bite-sized insights drawn from years of sitting with real people in real relationships, inside an actual yurt. Each episode distills one near-universal truth that keeps showing up in couples and individual therapy — the kind of thing that makes people pause mid-session and say, "I've never heard it put that way before."

No long-winded theory. No homework. Just 5 to 10 minutes of grounded, honest perspective on the patterns that shape how we love, fight, connect, and grow.

Pull up a chair — or a cushion — and come sit in the yurt for a minute.

What happens when the life you've built no longer feels like home?

In this episode, Amy sits down with Elise and Kim — a couple in the middle of one of the boldest decisions two people can make together. They're not just changing addresses. They're reimagining their entire lives in pursuit of something that felt increasingly out of reach where they were: safety, freedom, and a community where they truly belong.

Elise and Kim share how they met, how their relationship has grown, and what it has looked like to navigate a massive life transition as a couple — including the moments where they weren't on the same page, and how they found their way back to each other through the hard conversations.

This episode gets honest about what it costs to choose yourself. The grief of leaving behind friendships, family closeness, and the familiar. The way a big decision can simultaneously bring a couple closer and push them to their edges. And what it actually looks like to work through fear, uncertainty, and love all at once.

If you've ever felt like the place you're from couldn't quite hold who you're becoming — this one is for you.