Not Alone

Turning 36 sparks a candid reset: a birthday without performance, a work summit that quieted imposter syndrome, and a surprising shift from tracking everything to trusting her body. She explores uncertainty, discernment, saying what she wants, and making more room for joy, play, and the life already unfolding.

Krista Williams, a spirituality and wellness educator, entrepreneur, and Almost 30 co-founder, joins a candid conversation about outgrowing achievement-driven lives. They explore trauma-fueled ambition, identity shifts, relationships after success, emotional healing, discernment, desire, and female friendship. Krista also shares thoughts on motherhood grief, sustainable success, and creating a more aligned, ease-filled life.

Dr. Michael Milobsky, a board-certified pediatrician, father of seven, and child-development specialist, explores why normal childhood behavior is increasingly pathologized. They discuss boys, girls, ADHD as a different operating system, smartphones, independence, parenting anxiety, postpartum distress, and the distinct roles of mothers and fathers. He also shares the life-changing story behind losing his leg and learning to listen to his body.

Serena Kerrigan, author, dating educator, and creator of the Serena Fucking Kerrigan brand, joins a candid conversation about confidence, vulnerability, and love. She unpacks the persona she built to hide insecurity, why successful women may armor themselves against connection, and how emotional safety changes dating. They also explore rejecting scarcity, trusting unexpected chemistry, and refusing to settle.

Dianna Cohen, founder of Crown Affair and creator of Take Your Time, built a beauty brand around slowing down. She shares why restraint can fuel growth, what burnout taught her about leadership, and how stepping away from the CEO role restored her creativity. They explore feminine energy, intuition, nervous-system regulation, building quietly, and protecting original ideas from social media noise.

Motherhood doesn’t always resemble the glowing picture we’re promised. This candid conversation explores exhaustion, boredom, identity loss, comparison, and the guilt of not loving every stage equally. It also considers how connection can deepen as children grow, and offers reassurance to mothers who feel out of place in the baby years.

There are people you meet once and think about for years. Codie Sanchez is one of mine. She is the founder of Contrarian Thinking, a Forbes 2026 Top Creator, and one of the most powerful voices in business on the internet, the rare person in her world who says the quiet part out loud instead of selling you the highlight reel. A New York Times bestseller with a nine-figure portfolio of businesses most people will never see the inside of, and a way of talking that makes you sit up straight. So I asked her the thing I actually wanted to know. What's the most dishonest part of the entrepreneurship dream we're all being sold? And she did not flinch. We get into why most business owners don't run their businesses, their businesses run them. Why the thing you build to give you freedom so often ends up with you by the throat. The vacation test that Gary and I failed miserably. And her whole argument, the one behind her new book Own or Be Owned, that being needed is not the same thing as being free, and most of us confuse the two until it's very expensive to learn the difference. But this one got personal fast, because Codie is about to become a mother for the first time, at the exact moment she's releasing the biggest work of her career. So we talked about what happens to a woman who built the whole machine when she has to evolve into a different woman for the next chapter. Running a business with your husband. Softness and power, and how they actually meet in leadership. Whether we even want it all, or whether we've just never been asked what we actually want. This is for the woman who is burned out, or tired, or quietly talked herself out of starting the thing. The one who suspects most of what she sees online is a little bit fake, and is right. Codie is proof you can build the business and still have the life, but only if you're honest with yourself about which life that is first. This is Codie Sanchez. New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one. Follow Codie: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct BigDeal podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bigdeal/id1736593333 Preorder her book, Own or Be Owned: https://codiesanchez.com/book/ Follow Valeria: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog Follow Not Alone: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod Podcast: https://www.notalonepod.com/ Shop my look from this episode: https://shopmy.us/collections/7214312 Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky What we talked about: 3:00 Round two, and a whole new chapter 5:00 Should you even become an owner? 6:00 Everybody can build a $10 business, but should they 9:19 The most dishonest part of the entrepreneurship dream 10:30 Selling a dream that's missing all the context 12:36 The questions nobody asks before they start 13:46 The price of the visibility 14:50 What do you actually want, though 16:00 The first million is the hardest 18:30 The martyr trap 21:03 Profit and revenue, not vanity metrics 24:11 Everybody's doing the most 25:19 Getting your team invested and leveraged 28:00 I'm not happy, and I'm the one who built this 30:27 Being needed is not the same as being free 33:10 What women in particular have to unlearn 35:30 Knowing what your person actually wants 36:38 The asset nobody wants to buy 39:00 What's my real hourly wage? 42:53 This is our era, ladies 44:00 The vacation test, which Gary and I failed 46:23 It won't work if you want different things 47:28 The moment she realized she had to evolve 48:51 Fresh flowers, and building a company you want to be in 50:55 Creating something from nothing 52:17 A world builder 55:00 What if you want something different now 58:07 Running a business, and a marriage, at the same time 1:00:44 The bargain you don't want to make 1:02:44 We're more capable than we're told 1:03:38 It's okay to say you want less, too 1:06:15 Softness and power in leadership 1:08:02 Buy or build? 1:09:28 Time is the real currency 1:11:00 Rapid fire Disclaimer: The links in this description are sponsor or affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a credit or commission at no additional cost to you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At thirty-nine, Cat Pierce had no marriage, no career, no baby, and no plan. If you did the math on her life the way we're all quietly taught to, she was failing. The music money was gone. The marriage was over. She had never been the one left before, and suddenly she was. And then she said the thing that made me put my pen down. Underneath all of it, she felt a flicker of freedom. Because for the first time she could admit she wasn't fulfilled, and now she got to build the life she actually wanted. I found Cat the way half the internet did, one of those videos where her whole inner monologue plays across her face without a word, and I've been a little mesmerized ever since. I wanted to know what she was drinking. Turns out the answer is a life she made twice. First act: signed at nineteen, fifteen years on the road with her sister, opening for Coldplay and Elton John, writing the song that became the sound of an entire generation. Second act, the one that got me: a beauty line she started while trying to conceive, a tarot deck she drew by hand and published, a New York Times feature, a memoir, and a daughter she had at forty-four with donor eggs and a husband she called in by writing him down on a list. None of it happened on the timeline she thought she was failing. That's the whole thing. We get into the rockstar years and what fifteen years of needing to be seen quietly did to her. The collapse, and the strange grace that grew out of it. Whether she believes we're all a little bit witches. And the line I keep repeating to every woman I know: you can miss every timeline you ever set for yourself and still land somewhere better than the place you were aiming. This is for the woman who watches everyone else hit the milestones and keeps quietly moving her own goalposts back. The one grieving a version of her life that never showed up, not yet realizing a completely different one already did. You are not behind. You are not late. You're just early to a life you haven't met yet. This is Cat Pierce. New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one. FOLLOW CAT Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamcatdog Omen Beauty on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/omenbycatpierce Omen Beauty + The Omen Oracle Deck: https://omenbycatpierce.com/ FOLLOW VALERIA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog FOLLOW NOT ALONE Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod Website: https://www.notalonepod.com/ Shop Valeria’s look from this episode: https://shopmy.us/shop/collections/7077651 Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT 02:16 The timeline every woman is scared of 03:11 The video where her inner talk showed up on her face 05:23 Leno, Letterman, and the rockstar years 06:10 From nineteen to her mid-thirties 07:00 What the industry taught her about being seen 09:00 Learning to read a room and grab a crowd 11:18 Saying, “That’s actually not what I want” 13:07 Being asked to show up as herself now 15:44 We’re constantly healing 17:13 The breakup that broke her open 19:22 Thirty-nine, and everything gone at once 20:54 No one is coming to save you 22:00 The maternal instinct she didn’t expect 24:46 A real blow to the ego 25:53 Drawing the first tarot cards to survive it 27:36 Feeling like she had failed 28:47 Freezing eggs and the hot topic nobody says out loud 31:00 Writing it down and calling him in with a list 35:23 You can miss the timeline and still find a way 36:01 Starting Omen Beauty while trying to conceive 37:43 The new dream and the donor egg decision 40:00 What it actually costs, financially and otherwise 42:21 Growing into a different kind of mother 44:16 Happy with one and the sister comparison 45:17 The frequency, the knowing, and trusting herself 49:00 Tarot, oracle decks, and where the art came from 51:30 You need the dark soil to grow something good 53:58 Do you believe we’re all witches? 55:30 We have more power than we’re taught 58:19 Learning to be by yourself 59:22 The Disney story we were sold 01:00:17 Shockingly low maintenance 01:04:30 The memoir and connecting all the dots 01:08:46 To the woman who’s single, tired, and sure she’s behind 01:11:27 You might just be recharging 01:13:06 Rapid fire DISCLAIMER Some links in this description may be sponsor or affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a credit or commission at no additional cost to you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have a complicated relationship with parenting experts. I usually leave them feeling worse than when I walked in, one more list of things I'm apparently getting wrong. So I sat down with Dr. Becky Kennedy, the most trusted parenting expert in the country, half braced to feel like a failure again. Instead I said the quiet thing out loud. I'm tired. I'm so tired. And the woman who wrote the book looked at me and said, me too. We're the first generation of parents in a world that never turns off. Then she told me the only thing she'll call herself an expert in is imperfect parenting, and something in me unclenched for the first time in about a year. Because here's what nobody hands you with the baby: the exhaustion isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. Sometimes it's just proof of how much you're carrying. We get into all of it. Why our kids' feelings run the entire household now, and how that even happened. Whether we're performing motherhood for an invisible audience instead of just living it. And the line I genuinely cannot shake, that optimizing for our kids' happiness is the fastest way to optimize their anxiety. She also asked me one question I was too embarrassed to answer honestly. How often are you just around your kid, quiet, not on your phone? Reader, I did not have a good answer. Somewhere in there I had to admit I don't fully know what I'm doing as a mother, and she let me off the hook in the best way: nobody does. The whole conversation kept landing on two words. Do less. So much less. I cannot tell you how good it felt to be told that by the one person allowed to say it. This is for the mom who reads every book, holds every boundary, names every feeling before it becomes a tantrum, and still lies awake certain she's the one getting it wrong. You're not. You're just tired, and you've been sold a version of good mom that was never real. This is Dr. Becky Kennedy, and I left this one lighter than I've felt in a long time. New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one. FOLLOW DR. BECKY Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbeckyatgoodinside Good Inside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodinside Good Inside with Dr. Becky Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-inside-with-dr-becky/id1561689671 Good Inside: https://www.goodinside.com/ FOLLOW VALERIA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog FOLLOW NOT ALONE Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod Podcast: https://www.notalonepod.com/ SHOP Shop my look from this episode: https://shopmy.us/shop/collections/6585812 Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT 2:00 My tricky relationship with parenting experts 3:30 I'm sick of it, and I don't think doing it all made me a better mom 6:10 When did being a good mom mean never stopping? 9:05 Why we hear a mother want less and think she loves them less 11:40 She's tired too, even as the one everyone runs to 13:30 Around your kids versus actually with them 16:20 The performance of motherhood 18:30 Optimizing for their comfort at every moment 21:15 Happy kids don't become happy adults the way we think 24:00 Optimizing for happiness optimizes for anxiety 26:30 The two words that change everything: I believe you 29:03 Why fixing their feelings backfires 33:10 The death of the tiger mom 36:40 The childhoods we came from 40:00 Raising them entitled without meaning to 42:23 Stop negotiating the same thing every day 45:30 A firm boundary and real empathy at the same time 49:15 What she actually does at seven in the morning 52:00 She doesn't parent like Dr. Becky either 55:30 Do less. So much less 58:42 You yell, I yell, and then we repair 1:02:41 Repair is the whole thing 1:05:30 This isn't really a parenting book 1:07:05 Perfect parenting was never the goal DISCLAIMER The links in this description are sponsor or affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a credit or commission at no additional cost to you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I think I'm a little over the mental health conversation. I know how that sounds, so stay with me. I believe in therapy. It has helped me more than I can say, and I'll keep doing the work. This isn't about anxiety, or burnout, or real trauma. Those are their own conversations, and they matter. This is about something else, something that started out helpful and quietly turned into something I'm not sure is helping us anymore. Here's what I keep noticing. Every uncomfortable feeling has become a red flag. Every hard week has to mean something. We've built this whole vocabulary, attachment style, nervous system, activated, aligned, not aligned, and we've started reaching for it to describe a bad Wednesday. Somewhere in there we forgot the difference between something being hard and something being wrong. They feel almost the same in the body. They are not the same thing. So I get into how you actually tell them apart, because that's the muscle I think we've lost. Hard gets quieter when you sit with it. Wrong gets louder. Hard makes you bigger. Wrong makes you smaller. Hard moves through and ends. Wrong feels the same today as it did three months ago. And then I get honest about my own life, the modeling shoot at fourteen where I froze, the year I moved to Canada and was depressed the whole time and stayed anyway, marrying Gary at twenty-one through all the judgment, filming my first videos alone and cringing the entire time. If I'd read any of that as a sign to stop, I wouldn't have the life I have now. I'm not saying this from the other side of it. I'm in it this week, still catching myself calling something "not aligned" when the truth is I was just scared. But I'd rather be the woman who tried the thing and complained the whole way than the one who protected her peace so carefully she never learned anything about herself. There's a difference between protecting your peace and protecting your potential. This one's a developing conversation, and I want to keep having it with you. New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one. Follow Valeria: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog Follow Not Alone: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod Podcast: https://www.notalonepod.com/ Shop my look from this episode: https://shopmy.us/collections/6814030 Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky What we talked about: (1:03) I think I'm ready to say some truths (1:23) I'm a little over the mental health conversation (1:49) What I actually mean, and what I believe in (2:11) The stuff I'm not talking about: anxiety, burnout, real trauma (2:46) Every uncomfortable feeling has become a red flag (3:04) The whole vocabulary we've built (3:46) Borrowing that language for things that are just hard (4:46) We're making ourselves scared of our own lives (5:02) The difference between hard and wrong (6:26) If they feel the same in the body, how do you tell? (7:19) One: hard gets quieter, wrong gets louder (7:56) Two: hard makes you bigger, wrong makes you smaller (8:41) Three: hard moves, wrong stays (9:18) Every version of me I'm proud of came from discomfort (9:48) Fourteen, and frozen at the modeling shoot (10:25) Moving to Canada at twenty, depressed for a year, and staying (11:03) Marrying Gary at twenty-one, and the judgment (11:36) Filming alone, cringing, wanting to quit (12:34) My mom, the loudest voice in my head (12:46) Her story: a single mother starting over with nothing (13:23) She had to trust herself because there was nothing else (14:20) The millennial load, and the muscle we lost (15:25) I'm not speaking from the other side. I'm in it this week (16:05) The cage of overhealing (16:21) Feeling a hard thing without naming it (16:51) The difference between rest and avoidance (17:12) Catching myself using the language to avoid (17:52) The version of me who feels ready is never coming (18:35) To the woman who's quietly tired of all of it (19:00) You're allowed to feel things without diagnosing them (19:49) Protecting your peace vs protecting your potential (20:14) I'd rather be the woman who tried the thing (20:18) A developing conversation. Tell me where you stand Disclaimer: The links in this description are sponsored or affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a credit or commission at no additional cost to you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices