Letters to Women - Exploring the Feminine Genius

My guest today in this final episode of the Letters to Daughters season is Brya Hanan. She’s a wife, mother, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Life Coach, and fellow pilgrim on the healing journey. Brya brings her Catholic tradition, professional and personal insights, and understanding of trauma to offer accompaniment and tools for interior integration and wholeness.

She weaves together Church teaching, Psychology, and Inne...

My guest today is Meg Hunter-Kilmer. Meg has been on the podcast so many times -- sometimes sitting at my table, sometimes from someone else’s home, this time from her OWN home! I first met Meg ten years ago at a Kansas Catholic College Student Convention and her love for Christ and his Church is such a joy to witness. When I started putting together the shows for this Letters to Daughters season, I knew I wanted Meg back on the sh...

My guest today is Dr. Natalie King. She’s a palliative care physician. Many of us are in a season where we are caregivers - maybe to a grandparent, a parent, another family member. But others of us are in a season where we can see that role of caregiver on the horizon Maybe you're noticing your parents health starting to decline, or you're seeing them make medical decisions and invite you into that process.

But regardless of the s...

Welcome to the Letters to Daughters season! . I love the line from Saint Pope John Paul II’s original Letter to Women: “Thank you, women who are daughters and women who are sisters! Into the heart of the family, and then of all society, you bring the richness of your sensitivity, your intuitiveness, your generosity and fidelity.”

This season, we’re exploring what living out the feminine genius in this vocation of daughter -- daught...

In this is the fourth and final episode in the Letters to Wives season, my guest is Melissa Grace Tablada. She’s a Catholic psychotherapist and fertility care practitioner. Throughout this Letters to Wives series, many of my guests have mentioned how marriage therapy radically changed their marriage for the better.

Melissa and I are talking about what you should be looking for in a marriage therapist, the lies that keep you from t...

In this third episode of the Letters to Wives season, my guest is Kathryn Whitaker. She’s been married to her husband, Scott, for almost thirty years. We’re talking about the advice she wishes she would go back and give herself, how hard seasons have impacted her marriage, and what she’s looking forward to in her marriage as her kids all grow up and leave the house. 

She’s also giving her advice on how to disagree with your spouse ...

In this second episode of the Letters to Wives season, Rebekah Olson and I are talking about what it looks like to run a business with your spouse—and her business, Ginger and Peach, happens to be a model-free lingerie company that she started out of her one room bedroom apartment.

Now she and her husband run a team of seamstresses all sewing from their homes in the US - and they partner with an ethical manufacturer in Nepal to br...

Ellen Holloway is my guest in this first episode of this Letters to Wives season! She is a Catholic Sexuality and Intimacy Coach and she's helping us learn how to have a great sex life without needing to go to confession.

The Catholic Church is actually incredibly PRO sex and intimacy … but where can you go to learn about the topics you just don’t want to Google? 

We’re talking about what to do when sex isn’t pleasurable for y...

Letters to Women is back with a brand new season: Letters to Wives. This season is inspired by the following line from Saint Pope John Paul II’s ‘Letter to Women’:

Thank you, women who are wives! You irrevocably join your future to that of your husbands, in a relationship of mutual giving, at the service of love and life.

This upcoming season is going to feature conversations on topics like sex and intimacy (and we’re getting into...

In this final episode of the Letters to Mothers season, we’re talking about one of the most difficult challenges you may face as a mother: having the first “talk” with your kids. You know the one—discussing their changing bodies and sex for the first time.

Where do you start? When do you start? How do you have those conversations in a way that makes sure they have the information they need without leaving them feeling overwhelmed o...

In this seventh episode of the Letters to Mothers season, we’re talking about liturgical living and creating traditions with our families. Is it possible to enter into the rhythms of the church without getting totally overwhelmed? How do you decide which feasts to celebrate, how to create traditions in your domestic church?

Maybe you’ve taken some quick glances through blogs and Pinterest only to be left feeling discouraged or com...

In this sixth episode of the Letters to Mothers season, we’re talking about infertility. What if you long for physical motherhood and spiritual motherhood feels like a consolation prize, like a second-rate motherhood?

What if you’re experiencing infertility, whether it’s a season of infertility with hope of a positive pregnancy test some day or permanent infertility and you wonder if you have any space in conversations about the fe...

In this fifth episode of the Letters to Mothers season, we’re talking about mothering our babies who we’ve lost in miscarriage, still birth, and infant loss. Losing a child is heartbreaking and devastating. For mothers who lose a child before or shortly after birth, this grief comes with distinct, sudden, and difficult questions about God, the Church, and who they are now as parents to the child they have lost.

If you’re looking f...

In this fourth episode of the Letters to Mothers series, Johanna Seagren joins me to discuss emotional regulation, our interior life, and burnout in our motherhood.

Parenting is hard work, and sometimes it’s louder, messier, more complicated, and packed with tantrums (yours included) than you expected.

So many times, we end up exhausted and feeling like this can’t be the vision that God had for your family. We’re diving into a co...

In this third episode of the Letters to Mothers series, Kimberly Henkel of Springs of Love joins me to discuss foster care and adoption.

We’re talking about how Kimberly and her husband Greg discerned the call to foster care. We’re also busting myths around adoption that might be holding you back from discerning that call as a family, and both of us are sharing our experiences as adoptive mothers. 

Whether you’re exploring the pos...

In this second episode of the Letters to Mothers series, Grace Stark from Natural Womanhood joins me to discuss fertility awareness and motherhood.

This is a conversation about authentic womens’ healthcare, how to grow in an appreciation of your fertility as a gift, and discerning the size of family that the Lord wants to build with and for you—and what to do if you’re not on the same page as your spouse in that discernment.

We a...

In this first episode of the Letters to Mothers season we’re talking about a topic that so many of us are familiar with—body image. It’s a topic we’ve talked about on the show, but I wanted to revisit it with a specific focus on that experience as mothers.

Joining me on the show today is Shelby Hirschman. She’s a nutrition therapist who specializes in intuitive eating, body acceptance, and recovery from chronic dieting and disor...