On December 3rd, 2012, Anna’s mum passed away. It fucking sucked. A lot has happened in the 13 years since, and as Anna says, living in the world without her does get easier—even if only in such tiny increments you barely notice. Still, grief is personal and unruly, and the only real way through it is to keep showing up for whatever you’re feeling in the moment.

In this episode, we read the letters we wrote to each other during the final days of Vera’s life. In sharing them with you, we hope that if you’ve been through something similar—or are in it now—you feel a little less alone. It’s a hard thing to move through, but we’re here for each other, and for you, in it.

This week, we talk about Anna’s mum, Vera, and wonder what she might think of our podcast. An excellent storyteller herself, she and Anna share a deep interest in people. But how would she feel about us sharing her story? We’ll never know for sure, though we get the sense she’s cheering us on. We also talk about the difficulty of living in the in-between—witnessing someone you love move through an end-of-life transition while still trying to figure out how to live your own life. As usual, there’s no roadmap for any of it, but we’re grateful for the people who love us through the messiness of figuring it out.

This week, we get into how, in our early adulthood, we were desperately trying to be “real grownups.” But now, in our mid-adulthood, the real trick seems to be learning how to be kids again. We talk about the trap of trying to be right or perfect, and how much better life gets when you can laugh at the detours, let go of the plan, and treat your mistakes as lessons instead of weapons.

This week, we’re joined by reporter and journalist Alison Hall. We had such a fun and real conversation with Alison about vulnerability as a super power, what her experience with cancer taught her about giving and receiving support, and how to invest in friendships that make you part of a community.

Alison is a correspondent for Inside Edition, where she became the first producer in the show’s history to be promoted to full-time on-air reporter. She’s spent the last decade covering major national stories, including reporting from the courthouses during the Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, and Jeffrey Epstein cases. Alison has covered the biggest stories of the last decade, from the Black Lives Matter movement to the unprecedented years of the pandemic and how Covid-19 has changed America.In 2025, Alison shared her own breast cancer journey publicly, becoming a powerful voice for early detection and women’s health. She’s appeared on CBS Mornings, The Drew Barrymore Show, and Good Morning Britain, and previously hosted her own podcast, Between Headlines.

Originally from Winnipeg and a graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University, she now lives in New York City with her husband and their Bernese Mountain Dog. Follow her at @alisonhalreporting on instagram and join her on her Substack, Between Headlines.

This week, some surprising parallels between our lives in 2012 and 2025 lead us into a conversation about childhood games, seeking answers in unexpected places, and dancing our way into healing. As usual, we try to help each other untangle the questions that never seem to go away — like why we have breakthroughs and then immediately forget everything we learned, and which practices actually help keep our lives (and our minds) organized.

This week, we’re talking about waiting, those in-between liminal spaces, and the biggest transition of all: death. Anna writes about waiting for her mom to make that crossing, and what it means to sit with the unknown. It’s tender and a little heavy, but we also talk about how facing death and our fear of it can make us more awake to life and the people we love right now.

In a shocking twist for this friendship podcast, this week we’re talking about friends. Our friendships shape so much of who we are, so why don’t we talk more about how to care for them? Romantic love gets all the advice columns and grand gestures, but what about the people who’ve seen us through everything? We talk about the grief that comes along with fading friendships, dig into why keeping current communication with our friends is so important, and wonder about what’s lost when we don’t share the day-to-day details of our lives with one another.

This week, we have a ready-for-television interlude in our letters. Anna has a very surprising encounter in a hospital elevator, and Sarah remembers some darkly satisfying dreams. This exchange from 2012 is a welcome distraction from the heaviness Anna was dealing with at the time - her mother’s terminal cancer. Plus, we ask each other for some advice! Tune in for some unhinged solutions for dealing with chronic pain, and practical tips for maintaining a love/hate relationship with long hair.

This week, we enter the chapter where Anna’s mother begins her end-of-life journey. After a few months back in New York, Anna learns her mother’s health has taken a sudden turn, and she returns to London to be with her in her final weeks. We talk about how the instinct to protect someone from the truth can come from love—but how honesty is often the deepest form of care. We also explore how we keep people alive through the stories we tell, and why every story has more than one side. Even though death and grief are tricky to talk about, we share these conversations because we know how much it helps to hear someone else say the thing you’ve been feeling. If they bring you a little comfort or clarity, that’s everything.

This week, we talk about belonging, sex as self-discovery, and learning from struggle. From feeling like an outsider to smashing the porcelain shell, we explore what it means to grow into who we really are.