We Weren't Told

A tattoo on the wrist of an 80-year-old woman I met in Wisconsin, some feedback from a faithful listener, and a book that finally convinced me to stop waiting for my ducks to get in a row. It's a short one this week, because I'm practising what I preach! Let's get our shit together, well -- TOGETHER!

In this episode we're:

• Revisiting the woman over 80 I met in Wisconsin, and the "Stay curious" tattoo she got when she turned 80.
• Thanking Fran, my faithful listener and now pen pal, for feedback that's already changing the show.
• Practising active listening: putting down the urge to get defensive or answer back, and opening up to receive.
• Unpacking the biggest gem from Get Your Shit Together by Sarah Knight: don't let perfectionism stand in the way of progress.
• Encouraging you to stop waiting on the ducks to get in a row and just start the thing.

Missed the Wisconsin story? Listen to Episode 22.

And if you want to hear where the book first came up, catch last week's Episode 25.

Grab your drink or your iced coffee, my friend. It's go time.

Come say hi on Instagram 🫶🏽

@iamangelbr | @iamwewerenttoldpodcast

I turned 43 yesterday, and it felt less like arriving somewhere and more like the moment on a sports massage table when a deep knot finally releases — painful, then unexpectedly lighter.

In this episode we're:

• Revisiting what my 40th birthday looked like compared to yesterday, and what changed in between.
• Naming the ache of celebrating without my sisters there, and how joy and sadness sat in the same room all night.
• Unpacking why turning 43 feels like a knot releasing rather than everything clicking into place.
• Sitting with everything I thought I'd settled by 40 coming back up for examination instead.
• Asking whether the breaking apart in our 40s might actually be the work, not the failure.

If this one hits close, go back and listen to Episode 7: Crashout Season — same terrain, different season.

Grab your drink or your iced coffee, my friend. It's go time.

Come say hi on Instagram 🫶🏽

@iamangelbr | @iamwewerenttoldpodcast

I haven't posted on Instagram in about two weeks — not because I decided to, but because my body decided for me. It all started with a weird afternoon nap and a headache that showed up the moment I thought about posting.

In this episode we're:

• Unpacking the difference between being a memory maker and a content creator, and how easy it is to get the two confused.
• Paying attention to when your body flags that something is wrong emotionally and energetically.
• Revisiting what Instagram felt like for us millennials when it launched, versus what it quietly became.
• Sitting with my own complicity in the performance, even when I'm trying to just show up as me.
• Questioning whether documenting a life and actually living it can secretly start working against each other.

Grab your drink or your iced coffee, my friend. It's go time.

Come say hi on Instagram 🫶🏽

@iamangelbr | @iamwewerenttoldpodcast

** TW: Discussions of suicide and filicide. Please take care while listening **

I've been sitting with the Lindsay Clancy case — a mother who strangled her three children and then tried to take her own life after repeatedly telling doctors and family she was in mental crisis — and what it surfaced about the gap between the motherhood millennial women were promised, and the one nobody prepared us for.

In this episode we're:

• Unpacking what the Lindsay Clancy case actually surfaced, and why this isn't about delivering a verdict.
• Coming to grips with how a woman who reached out for help repeatedly still fell through the gaps in the system.
• Revisiting the arrival narrative we were handed about motherhood, and what it left out.
• Sitting with why perfectionism can intensify, not soften, once a baby arrives.
• Holding two truths at once — grief for three children who were stripped of their lives and accountability for a system that failed their mother — without letting either cancel out the other.

If you know a mother who is struggling — not performing struggle, actually struggling — show up. Ask the direct question. And if you are that mother: you deserve real support, not just reassurance that you're doing great.

Grab your drink or your iced coffee, my friend. It's go time.

Come say hi on Instagram 🫶🏽

@iamangelbr | @iamwewerenttoldpodcast

I missed an episode last week because I was deep in the administration of my father's estate — and then I went to Wisconsin, to the writing workshop I'd impulsively booked, and let a wave of grief knock me over on an island with no memories of him waiting for me.

In this episode we're:

• Naming why I missed last week, and choosing grace over discipline when I needed it
• Revisiting the impulse trip to Madeline Island and what it meant to make it there with my mother
• Sitting with the sobbing, snot-crying wave of grief that finally had room to move in a place with no associations
• Unpacking my writing coach's idea that sometimes you don't fix a pattern, you interrupt it
• Naming what it felt like to get nourishment — creativity, silence, community, grief — all in one unplanned yes.

What pattern are you living inside of right now? And what would it mean to interrupt it — not dramatically, just genuinely?

Grab your drink or your iced coffee, my friend. It's go time.

Come say hi on Instagram 🫶🏽

@iamangelbr | @iamwewerenttoldpodcast

A family member told me to remember "positive memories only" about my late father, and it made me so angry I couldn't speak -- until I did.

One reel and forty-four messages later from strangers in their own grief, I've made a decision I didn't expect to make, and I'm officially opening a new chapter.

In this episode we're:

• Unpacking what it means when well-meaning people hand grieving people a script for how to feel;
• Naming grief as love with nowhere to go, and why its intensity is a measure, not a malfunction;
• Sitting with the forty-four messages that came in after I said the quiet part out loud;
• Talking openly about being on antidepressants and why that stigma needs to be set down;
• Widening the definition of grief to include the living — the people who are still here but out of reach.

Grab your drink or your iced coffee, my friend. It's go time.

Come say hi on Instagram 🫶🏽

@iamangelbr | @iamwewerenttoldpodcast

Click below to see my reel:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DbrBI4bTNn6/

CJ and I just celebrated sixteen years of marriage with less than twenty hours away in the Blue Mountains. Nope, not afull weekend, and nope, not a fancy resort -- just a quiet, small Airbnb room in the mountains. As a result, I finally understood something my writing mentor tried to explain when I was sixteen years old, about what a long time actually means.

In this episode we're:- Revisiting a lesson from my late writing mentor

- Naming the difference between knowing something intellectually and actually feeling it in your body;

- Sitting with what it means to receive twentyhours fully instead of mourning the weekend it wasn't, and what that shows up as in your own life;

- Asking what it would look like to stop waitingfor the right conditions to enjoy what's already available.

Grab your drink or your iced coffee, my friend. It's go time.

Come say hi on Instagram 🫶🏽

 @iamangelbr | @iamwewerenttoldpodcast

I hosted Girls Night In: Hobbies Edition last Saturday — pyjamas, wings, a colouring book from the pharmacy — because a particular type of silence has opened up in my life in the past few months, which made me realize I hadn't been tending my friendships the way they deserved. Turns out gathering my girls with something slow and screen-free to do with our hands was exactly what I needed.

In this episode we're talking about:

• Unpacking why female friendship doesn't keep on its own the way the "official" relationships in our lives do.
• Revisiting the vacuum that appears when the people you rely on most quietly become unavailable.
• Naming the difference between knowing someone will always be there and actually gathering them.
• Tracing how a pharmacy colouring book became real, unexpected therapy homework.
• Sitting with what it means to treat gathering your women as maintenance, not indulgence.

When is the last time you gathered your women? Not for a birthday, not for an occasion — just gathered them. Because if it's been a while, maybe that's the thing you need to do next.

Grab your drink or your iced coffee, my friend. It's go time.

Come say hi on Instagram 🫶🏽

@iamangelbr | @iamwewerenttoldpodcast

Millennial girlies, pull up a chair — and no, for once, not at your therapist's.

I just closed my eyes and put a very large writing workshop bill on my credit card — flights, a ferry, the whole thing — and felt the exact same rush I felt in my twenties buying eighty dollar perfumes I couldn't afford. It sent me down a rabbit hole about where my money stuff actually comes from, and whether twenty years later I've grown at all.

In this episode we're:

• Revisiting the eighty dollar perfumes, the actual debt collectors, and what "freedom" felt like the first time I had a credit card;
• Tracing the money story I inherited before I ever made a financial decision of my own;
• Naming the difference between being told to be independent and actually being taught what to do with access;
• Sitting with whether Wisconsin is growth or just a more expensive, more defensible version of the same impulse;
• Unpacking why the education-to-work pipeline never had a chapter for the emotional history of money.

What is your money story — not your bank balance — your actual story? What are your eighty dollar perfumes?

Grab your drink or your iced coffee, my friend. It's go time.

Come say hi on Instagram 🫶🏽

@iamangelbr | @iamwewerenttoldpodcast

Millennial girlies, pull up a chair — and no, for once, not at your therapist's.

A fifteen-second video landed in my high school group chat this week. It was a video of our alma mater's newest graduating class -- cap and gown, hotel ballroom, the whole thing. It sent me straight back to the cafeteria where my class got ours instead. Thirty-one years later, I'm realizing I never actually got over it.

In this episode we're talking about:

• The graduation we were promised versus what we actually got;
• Unpacking what it does to a teen to be told "Because I said so" by an authority who never has to explain herself;
• Watching how one video in a group chat can turn a room of grown women back into fifteen-year-olds;
• Sitting with the people who hurt us, move on, transform, and never once look back;
• Naming the difference between actually processing something versus performing that you're over it;
• Is there a fifteen year old in you somewhere, still standing in a cafeteria, still holding something she was never allowed to put down?

Grab your drink or your iced coffee, my friend. It's go time.

Come say hi on Instagram 🫶🏽

@iamangelbr | @iamwewerenttoldpodcast