Not Us Podcast

Angela and Samantha have dressed themselves as terrifying dolls for Halloween. Naturally, things get a little out of hand.

From elaborate costumes and questionable party outfits to the power of clothing and why we should never stop playing, the sisters explore what dressing up allows us to do that everyday life sometimes doesn't.

There's also a haunted elephant, a house full of creepy childhood dolls, ghost stories, fetish clubs and a very firm opinion about people who don't dress up for costume parties.

It's Halloween, it's ridiculous, and it's a reminder that growing older doesn't mean we have to grow out of having fun.

Welcome to Not Us.

When someone you love is diagnosed with cancer, your world changes too. But while everyone is focused on the person fighting the disease, what happens to the people standing beside them?

Michael and Claudia had spent almost their entire adult lives together. When Claudia was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer, their world became one of difficult decisions, medical appointments, changing plans and hope that somehow kept finding another place to land.

Michael was her husband. Samantha was one of her closest friends. Angela had survived cancer herself. Each experienced Claudia's illness differently, and each held onto hope in their own way.

In July, Claudia died.

In this deeply personal conversation, Michael shares what it felt like to be the partner who couldn't fix things, the decisions they made while still planning a future together, and the ordinary moments that now remind him she's gone.

There's grief, helplessness, friendship and love. But there's also laughter, Claudia's wonderfully dark sense of humour, a very elderly dog and some questionable dating restrictions.

Because Claudia was so much more than her diagnosis.

And cancer, while diagnosed in one person, changes the lives of everyone who loves them.

🎙️ Not Us Podcast with Angela, Samantha and Michael.

This week, Angela and Samantha welcome Jocelyn Broderick, relationship coach and certified conscious uncoupling coach, for a conversation that gets far messier than anyone's idea of an amicable breakup.

After 23 years together, Jocelyn and her partner went their separate ways. But through conscious uncoupling, she discovered something uncomfortable: some of the behaviours she'd blamed on him were also things she was doing herself, without even realising it.

And that changed everything about how she understood their relationship.

The three women get into the shame of divorce, affairs, emotional wounds, the agreements we make in relationships and never question, and why we so often wait until everything falls apart before asking ourselves the difficult questions.

There's heartbreak that felt worse than cancer. A confession about keying an ex's car. A sister who thinks a brick might have been more appropriate. And a very real question about whether staying in a relationship can sometimes be the bigger failure.

But there's also something unexpected in Jocelyn's story. She and her former partner still love and respect each other. Their romantic relationship ended, but they found a different way to be in each other's lives.

So what if the story you've been telling yourself about why your relationship didn't work isn't the whole story?

An honest, funny and sometimes uncomfortable Not Us conversation about love, blame, heartbreak and getting to know the person you've been bringing into every relationship: yourself.

Our guest: Jocelyn BroderickRelationship coach and certified conscious uncoupling coachInstagram: @jossiebrodEmail: [email protected]

Mentioned in this episode:Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After by Katherine Woodward Thomas.

Join Angela and Samantha every week on Not Us Podcast as they talk about change, choice and the messy bits in between.

#NotUsPodcast #ConsciousUncoupling #Relationships

One year. 45 episodes. And somehow, we're still talking to each other. 😂

When we started Not Us Podcast, we weren't entirely sure what we were doing — or how long we'd keep doing it. A year later, we're looking back at the conversations, guests, laughs and occasional disagreements that got us here.

From our nervous first recording to finding our voices (and figuring out just how much of Angela needs editing), it's been quite the year.

We're talking about the episodes that challenged our opinions, the moments that made us laugh, the subjects that made us nervous and what we've discovered about working together as sisters.

Because as much as we love each other, being sisters and being podcast partners aren't always quite the same thing.

There have been lessons, a few difficult moments and some truly questionable things said into microphones. But there have also been 45 episodes of curiosity, laughter and conversations we're glad we had.

So here's to our first year of Not Us — and whatever comes next.

In this episode: Our first year of podcasting, sister relationships, working together, favourite podcast moments, personal growth and the conversations that changed our thinking.

Subscribe to Not Us Podcast for honest conversations about life, relationships, identity, change and all the messy bits in between.

#NotUsPodcast #PodcastAnniversary #SistersPodcast #PodcastLife

Angela gets a week with more time to herself and something slightly annoying happens.

She feels really good.

She's back at the gym. She's swimming. She's steaming. She's doing the things she used to naturally make time for when she was single — and it raises a fairly obvious question:

If we already know what makes us feel better, why do we stop doing it?

Angela and Samantha compare the things they each need to feel like themselves — movement, stillness, nature, sleep, creativity and, importantly, time alone.

But the conversation quickly becomes less about what they should be doing and more about why those things become optional the moment work gets demanding, life gets busy or another person enters the picture.

Can you protect time for yourself without feeling selfish?

And when everything can't be a priority, why are our own needs so often the easiest thing to negotiate?

Plus, Samantha discovers that being called short is apparently one of her boundaries.

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Everyone wants an honest relationship.

Until the truth is something we'd rather not hear.

Do you need to know how many people your partner has slept with? What they say to their friends? Who they're attracted to? What's on their phone? And if they make a mistake, do you always want them to confess?

Angela and Samantha start with a seemingly simple rule — don't lie to me — and very quickly discover that honesty gets complicated when real people, feelings and consequences enter the picture.

Because telling the truth can be loving. It can also be selfish. Privacy can be healthy. Secrecy can be destructive. And sometimes when someone says “I'm fine,” they're not lying — they haven't worked out the truth themselves yet.

So perhaps there's another side to demanding honesty from the people we love:

Can we actually handle the truth we're asking for?

And if we want people to be honest with us, what kind of space are we creating for the answer?

#NotUsPodcast #Relationships #Honesty #Trust #RelationshipTalk #Lying

Some connections are easy to explain. Others we simply feel.

With animal communicator and death doula Capella Riley, Angela and Samantha step into the possibility that the boundaries we place between ourselves, animals, nature — even life and death — may not be quite as solid as we imagine.

It leads them back to their own inexplicable moments: animals who arrived when they were needed, things they somehow knew, the beings they've loved and lost, and connections that don't feel as though they disappeared when a body did.

You don't have to share Capella's beliefs.

But perhaps we've all experienced something that makes us wonder: What if we're not as separate as we think?

Angela has always been the girly girl. Long blonde hair, lashes, dresses, romantic leads. Samantha has muscles, lives happily in cargo pants and will correct you fairly quickly if you confuse assertive with butch.

Both women consider themselves feminine.

So why is it so easy for someone looking at them to decide that one is somehow more feminine than the other?

And then the conversation gets more personal.

Angela always wanted to become a mother. She doesn't feel less feminine because she didn't, but she admits she sometimes wonders whether she missed part of the "complete woman experience" she expected to have. Samantha never wanted motherhood in the same way and doesn't connect it to feeling like a woman at all.

So what actually makes us feel like women?

Our bodies? Clothes? Hair? Motherhood? Being nurturing? How we behave in relationships? Or have we inherited a strange collection of conditions for femininity and womanhood that we're still trying to make sense of?

Also, apparently calling Angela agreeable is a surprisingly efficient way to ruin her afternoon.

A celebrity dies and millions of people who never met them can feel genuine loss. Angela gets it. Samantha is more likely to Google what happened and then move on, which naturally leads to Angela calling her a block of ice.

But why do we care?

The sisters talk about parasocial relationships, Princess Diana, Nelson Mandela and the strange experience of grieving someone who had no idea you existed. Then the conversation gets closer to home.

They talk about losing friends, parents and beloved animals. Angela shares how surviving cancer changed her relationship with death, while Samantha talks about losing a close friend and why grief doesn't always look the way other people expect it to.

There are also funeral plans, a Pinterest board, a proposed Last Supper, spontaneous combustion and a surprisingly detailed discussion about how they'd each prefer to die. Because apparently mortality needed production notes.

Eventually they land on The Dash: the tiny line between the date we're born and the date we die.

We don't know when that second date is coming.

Does knowing that change the way we live now?

#NotUsPodcast #Grief #CelebrityDeath #ParasocialRelationships #Mortality #LifeAndDeath #Podcast

Angela thinks Samantha is a witch.

Samantha wants evidence.

That simple conversation opens the door to a much bigger discussion about labels, history, religion and why women who didn't conform have so often been misunderstood.

Maybe witches were never the real story.

Maybe the labels were.