Rich Queer Aunties

We're back for Part 2 — and this time, we're getting into the practice. What does reciprocity in friendship actually look like when you're not just talking about it, but living it?

Lola tells the story of sensing "a disturbance in the force" and reaching out to Christabel — a micro-rupture that could've gone sideways five years ago but instead became a masterclass in showing up for your people. Kachi shares why she's not afraid to look someone in the eye and say, "Would you like to be friends with me? Could you show up for me in this way?" — and why that directness makes people deeply uncomfortable. We talk about building care infrastructure (yes, including setting up your own meal train before surgery), why "let me know what you need" is not enough, and how to be the friend who shows up even when you don't know how.

Then we go there: GoFundMe ethics, mutual aid, and what community responsibility actually looks like when people take without reciprocating.

Christabel grounds the conversation in ancestral practice — from West African village structures to susu collective savings — and reminds us that none of us are well under capitalism, white supremacy, or colonialism, so maybe we should stop treating friendship like a test and start treating it like infrastructure.

We close with friendship evolution: how to navigate the grief of becoming different people, whether you need to have "the closing conversation" or just close the tab, and why Lola is learning to X out of relationships without guilt. Plus, a rapid-fire round on the friendship practices we're cultivating, letting go of, and what friendship liberation looks like.

If you enjoyed this episode, rate and review us because it really helps. Leave a comment and forward it to one friend today.

Stay connected:

Instagram: @richqueeraunties | @christabelmintahgalloway | @Qingkachi

Catch you in the next one.

XO, 

Christabel & Kachi.

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Keywords: adult friendship, friendship as a practice, friendship and consent, rupture and repair in friendship, proximity vs. intimacy, queer friendship, Black friendship, friendship boundaries, community vs. friendship, parasocial relationships, acquaintance vs. friend, Rich Queer Aunties, friendship skills, making friends after leaving religion, friendship and migration

Is friendship something that just happens to you, or is it a practice you have to actually learn? This week on Rich Queer Aunties, we sit down with Lola to talk about what it takes to build friendships sturdy enough to survive late-stage capitalism, migration, queerness, and becoming your full self.

We get into it: growing up in high-control religious households and how that shaped our relationship to trust, the difference between proximity and intimacy, and why friendship requires consent and agency — not just vibes. Lola breaks down why she stopped handing out the friendship card to anyone who asked, and why "letting things take the time they deserve" has become her guiding mantra. We debate whether rupture has to happen for a friendship to deepen (big R vs. little r), Christabel shares the hard lesson from a 27-year friendship that never saw conflict until it ended, and we all get honest about the parasocial intimacy culture that passes for friendship in places like Oakland.

Plus: why you can't collect friends like Infinity Stones, why acquaintanceship is a valid and underrated category, and why Christabel believes you're either her friend, her community member, or her enemy — and you'll know which one you are.

If you've ever wondered whether you're doing friendship wrong, or whether the people around you are actually your friends — this one's for you.

If you enjoyed this episode, rate and review us because it really helps. Leave a comment and forward it to one friend today.

Stay connected:

Instagram: @richqueeraunties | @christabelmintahgalloway | @Qingkachi

Catch you in the next one.

XO, 

Christabel & Kachi.

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Keywords: adult friendship, friendship as a practice, friendship and consent, rupture and repair in friendship, proximity vs. intimacy, queer friendship, Black friendship, friendship boundaries, community vs. friendship, parasocial relationships, acquaintance vs. friend, Rich Queer Aunties, friendship skills, making friends after leaving religion, friendship and migration

In this episode of Rich Queer Aunties, Christabel and Kachi go down the rabbit hole: how far back does Western influence actually go in Igbo land, and what does that mean for the way we talk about “African culture” today?

Christabel went down a research rabbit hole after someone on Instagram told her that Africans must have been beating their children long before colonialism, otherwise why is it so widespread today? She went looking. What she found should make every person of African descent pause.

In this episode, Christabel and Kachi trace the actual timeline: 500 years of colonial contact, a British model of child-rearing that was explicitly theological, and an Igbo cosmology in which children were revered as reincarnated ancestors sacred beings you could lose if you struck them too hard. This is not ancient African tradition. It is colonial management practice, repackaged as culture and handed down as inheritance.

They also get into what it costs us today: hiding tattoos from parents who are themselves 500 years removed from knowing any better, calling queerness un-African, policing each other's bodies, performing respectability for a version of culture that was installed by the people who beat the original one out of us.

And the question that sits underneath all of it: if not our generation, who is actually doing the work of re-indigenization?

This is the first of many conversations on what it looks like to come home.

If you enjoyed this episode, rate and review us because it really helps. Leave a comment and forward it to one friend today.

Stay connected:

Instagram: @richqueeraunties | @christabelmintahgalloway | @Qingkachi

Catch you in the next one.

XO, 

Christabel & Kachi.

We tried to record this episode three times. Between technological difficulties and actual conflict while making a podcast about repair, the irony was not lost on us. We're here now. And we have a lot to say.

This is Part 2 of our conversation on rupture and repair in intimate relationships,  the ones you grew up in, the ones you chose, and the ones you're still trying to figure out how to stay in. This episode gets into the gritty of it: what aftercare actually looks like when nobody modeled it for you, what happens in your nervous system in the middle of a fight, and why the repair skills you're practicing with the wrong person are still worth developing.

We talk about:

We also get into something we don't hear discussed enough: why people will stay in disappointing romantic relationships for years and throw away a friendship over something minor. And what Audre Lorde has to do with all of it.

This is not dating advice. This is relational advice. And it applies to every relationship you are trying to build a life inside of.

Resources mentioned: Relational Skills for Liberation Workbook and The Repair Manual — get your copy here.

If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a comment, review, question and share with one friend today. 

xo, C&K

Episode: Money Loves Circles - Working with Friends ft. Lola

In this groundbreaking first guest episode, Christabel sits down with Oakland-based stylist Lola to challenge one of capitalism's biggest lies: "Don't mix business with friendship."

In This Episode:

About Lola: Lola is an Oakland-based stylist, creative, and dear friend to Christabel and Kachi. She styles WNBA players and helps people unlearn the conditioning that ruins personal style, creating closets that future generations will fight over.

Find Lola:

Timestamps:

Key Quotes: "Money loves circles" - on how wealth circulates among the wealthy "I don't believe in being lonely at the top" "If you can work with your microaggressive boss, you can work with your friend"

If you enjoyed this episode, can you do two things for us please:

See you in the next one.

Ps. the video version is on YouTube if you're a visual person. 

In this deeply vulnerable Part 1 episode, Christabel and Kachi peel back the layers of their origin stories to understand how they learned to navigate conflict, safety, and love.

Coming from two distinct backgrounds, both shaped by the violence of the Biafran genocide survivors and the silence of a strict religious household, we explore the survival strategies that saved us as children but challenged us as adults.

In this episode, we discuss:

The Fighter vs. The Performer: How Christabel learned to "fight back" and "hulk out" as a parentified daughter, while Kachi learned to "perform goodness" and embrace silence to survive a high-control environment.

The Cost of Survival: The impact of domestic violence, physical abuse, and the pressure to be a "good child" on our nervous systems.

Queer Identity in the Shadows: Kachi opens up about navigating lesbian identity in a Nigerian Catholic all girls boarding school and the internal conflict of hiding to stay safe.

Two Paths to Healing: We break down the myth that there is only one way to heal. We discuss how Kachi found herself through solitude, sobriety, and psilocybin , while Christabel needed to heal in relationship to witness her own triggers.

Join us as we trace our attachment styles back to the source and prepare the ground for Part 2.

Find us on Instagram @richqueeraunties @christabelmintahgalloway @qingkachi

If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review, rate us and share with one person today to help the algorithm do its thing to get this to the people who need it.

XO, Your Rich Queer Aunties

Christabel & Kachi

Christabel and Kachi are back. Two queer Igbo aunties, newly engaged, talking honestly about what it means to choose a lesbian life in the shadow of homophobic parents, church aunties, and colonial expectations.

In this episode they unpack what engagement and turning forty have stirred up. Christabel shares what it is to propose after two divorces and a Jehovah’s Witness childhood. Kachi talks about returning to the community they grew up in with Christabel who is fully tatted and pierced and feeling the monitoring spirits in the room. Together they name the grief of parents who will never fully celebrate their love, and the freedom that comes from refusing to hide.

They explore grief as an alchemical practice for queer African babies. What happens when you stop waiting for your family to change, tell the truth anyway, and let yourself mourn the parents you wish you had. How grief purifies, how boundaries shift, and how standing in your reality becomes an offering to the ancestors and to the next generation of queer Africans.

If you are the obedient child who turned into the rebellious queer adult, if you are tired of hiding from your family while holding everyone else together, this conversation is for you.

Find us on Instagram @richqueeraunties @christabelmintahgalloway @qingkachi

If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review, rate us and share with one person today to help the algorithm do its thing to get this to the people who need it.

XO, Your Rich Queer Aunties

Christabel & Kachi

We keep saying we have mother wounds, but what if the real injury is deeper than our mothers? In this episode, we ask the question no one wants to touch: Who are our mothers, really? Not the role they performed. Not the fears they passed down. But the person underneath all that patriarchal survival.

Christabel and Kachi crack open a deeply personal conversation about rage, abandonment, girlhood, queerness, and what it means to love our mothers without excusing the harm. From forced obedience to performative connection, we explore how patriarchy trains us to mistrust other women, and how healing means confronting the system, not scapegoating each other.

If you've ever felt triggered by other women, if you're grieving the relationship you never had with your mother, if you’re trying to change the dance by changing your own steps, this one’s for you.

If you enjoy our work, please comment/rate/share. This is what helps us get known so we can make money doing work we love.

✨ If you’re in the Bay Area, come be in the room with us for The Gathering on June 21. It’s a lush, intimate night of expertly made cocktails, radically honest conversation, and real community around the theme of Love and Rage.

→ ⁠Get your ticket⁠

Want a deeper way to practice this work?

The Relational Skills for Liberation workbook is your companion, especially if you’re learning how to show up for yourself and others without performing perfection.

→ ⁠Download the workbook⁠

Want early access to future workshops and behind-the-scenes reflections?

→ ⁠Join the waitlist⁠

CONNECT WITH US

📸 Instagram: ⁠@richqueeraunties⁠ | ⁠@christabelmintahgalloway⁠ | ⁠@qingkachi

Love & Rage — What Did You Inherit and What Are You Choosing?

This is our first video upload. Let us know what you think! Should we do more videos?

How do we honor our rage without becoming who harmed us? In this episode of Rich Queer Aunties, we talk about love and rage, what we inherited, what we’re choosing instead, and how we’re learning to hold both without abandoning ourselves.

We speak as African daughters, as queer folks, as partners learning to fight fair, and as children unlearning obedience as the price of love. This conversation is honest, tender, and necessary.

We explore:

• ​Why rage felt safer than softness in many of our homes

✨ If you’re in the Bay Area, come be in the room with us for The Gathering on June 21. It’s a lush, intimate night of expertly made cocktails, radically honest conversation, and real community around the theme of Love and Rage.

→ Get your ticket

Want a deeper way to practice this work?

The Relational Skills for Liberation workbook is your companion, especially if you’re learning how to show up for yourself and others without performing perfection.

→ Download the workbook

Want early access to future workshops and behind-the-scenes reflections?

→ Join the waitlist

—

CONNECT WITH US

📸 Instagram: @richqueeraunties | @christabelmintahgalloway | @qingkachi

In this raw and reflective episode of Rich Queer Aunties, Christabel and Kachi use the hit show Severance as a powerful metaphor for the emotional fragmentation many of us endure, especially queer, Black, immigrant, and formerly religious folks.

Through deeply personal storytelling, they explore themes of reintegration, rage, community, grief, and the courage it takes to reclaim your full self in a world that rewards compartmentalization. From family estrangement to navigating therapy, medicine, and chosen family, this conversation is a reminder that healing isn’t clean, but it’s real.

Whether you’ve seen Severance or not, this episode invites you to reflect: What parts of yourself have you severed to survive? And what would it take to live from a place of wholeness?

⁠Kachi⁠ on Instagram for more offerings and a good time! 

Tune in and let’s get into it.