We're constantly told to "be kind". But what does that actually mean and is being kind the same as being nice?

In this episode, Lisa explores the psychology behind niceness, kindness, people-pleasing, boundaries, and self-advocacy. Because sometimes nice keeps the moment comfortable, while kind requires honesty, a boundary, a difficult conversation or simply refusing to make yourself smaller for someone else.

When someone you love dies by suicide, grief can become tangled with questions, guilt, anger, shame, and an endless search for what you might have missed.

In this Lemon Slice, Lisa explores what can happen to a person’s ability to see options during a suicidal crisis and offers compassion for the people left behind. We’ll talk about hindsight, self-blame, the limits of love, and why someone’s final moments cannot tell the whole story of their life.

What if it's grief? In this episode of Loving Lemons, Lisa explores grief far beyond death and shares why grief became the focus of her work as a therapist. You will learn about the influential people that gave grief language and stages and how these stages are not linear. The episode ends with a conversation between Lisa and her 14-year-old daughter about a puppy, the inevitability of goodbye, and four words that may explain grief better than an entire episode ever could.

Because grief isn’t evidence that something has gone wrong. It is evidence that something mattered.

What if being hard on yourself isn’t actually making you better?

In this week's Lemon Slice, Lisa explores the third part of the emotional wellness triad, self-compassion - what it is and what it isn’t. The work of self-compassion researcher Dr. Kristin Neff will be the guide. This week we learned that self-reflection helps us look inward. Self-awareness helps us recognize what we see and self-compassion helps us stay kind to the person we find there.

In this episode of Loving Lemons, Lisa explores the surprising difference between self-reflection and self-awareness. Through psychology research, an interesting experiment with strawberry jam, and a deeply personal story about learning to recognize her own grief and discomfort while caring for her daughter, Lisa explores why looking inward doesn’t always lead to insight and how reflection can sometimes slip into rumination, self-criticism, or explanations that aren’t entirely true.

What if you didn’t have to believe every thought your brain handed you?

Intrusive thoughts can be frightening precisely because they feel so unlike us. A disturbing image, an unexpected fear, and endless what if's.

In this week's Lemon Slice, Lisa explains why unwanted thoughts happen, why trying desperately to get rid of them can sometimes give them even more attention, and how we can learn to relate to our thoughts differently.

Then, settle in for a gentle guided visualization to practice noticing thoughts without chasing, fighting, or becoming them.

What if we didn’t have to decide so quickly what everything means?

Good. Bad. Success. Failure. Blessing. Disaster. Our brains love a verdict—but sometimes we’re making one before the story is finished.

In this episode of Loving Lemons, Lisa explores the surprising freedom of neutrality: leaving space between what happens and the meaning we assign to it. Neutrality isn’t pretending painful things aren’t painful. It’s learning to leave the file open a little longer.

What do you do when a hard feeling shows up and you can’t make it go away?

In this week's Lemon Slice, Lisa walks listeners through the RAIN practice. A simple prayer or meditation for moments of anxiety, anger, fear, jealousy, or overwhelm.

The goal isn’t to make the feeling disappear. It’s to notice it without judgment and be curious about what it might be revealing. 

What if hope isn’t always helping us?

In this episode of Loving Lemons, Lisa explores Pema Chödrön’s provocative teaching to “abandon any hope of fruition” not as an invitation to give up, but as a way to stop requiring tomorrow to rescue us from today.

We’ll talk about the difference between hope and acceptance, how waiting for circumstances to change can keep us from fully inhabiting our lives, and what it means to say: This is here. And I’m here too. Now what?

Welcome to the first Lemon Slice episode. These are quick 10 min episodes that go live every Friday.

What happens to matrescence when motherhood doesn’t follow the expected path? In this follow-up episode, we expand the conversation to mothers whose babies die during pregnancy or at birth, and mothers of children with significant disabilities whose caregiving may continue for a lifetime. What happens when your body and identity begin preparing for a baby you never get to bring home? And what happens when the intense dependency of early motherhood doesn’t gradually lessen as your child grows? Motherhood doesn’t require a typical story to transform you. And every mother deserves language for what happened to her.