After Hours With Amanda

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about mental health, therapy, shame, faith, anxiety, and why getting support should not feel like something we have to hide. I share what mental health looked like in my family growing up, how my mom’s breakdown shaped the way I saw therapy, how my brother’s addiction keeps me passionate about people not suffering alone, and why I think thera...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about gentle parenting, humanizing kids, autonomy, emotional regulation, and why seeing my tiny humans as people does not mean I am just trying to be their friend. I get into why I call them tiny humans, building responsibility through little daily moments, the myth that gentle parenting is permissive, yelling, silent treatment, apologies, bo...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about the first day of school, mom guilt, motherhood, and why I do not think motherhood is just something happening to me. I think it is also something happening for me. I share the note one of my girls left me, the poem that wrecked me, why I miss my tiny humans when they go back to school, and how motherhood has helped me become more myself...

In this season two episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about empathy, self-love, self-sabotage, therapy, and what it actually means to be kind to myself when nobody else is listening. This one starts with therapy and physical activity, but it turns into a bigger conversation about Doc Martens, old wounds, motherhood, online criticism, comparison, and why empathy helps me parent my tiny...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m sharing a therapy revelation about trauma, EMDR, fear, grief, and learning to lean into the happy instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop. This one gets tender. I talk about my fear of death, the sudden loss of my mom, my brother’s death, dissociation, faith, and the Harry Potter metaphor that cracked something open for me in therapy. The scar...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m kicking off a new movie parallels and parenting series with Hook. I’m talking about adulthood, parenthood, summer, fun, expectations, and why so many of us were taught that growing up means letting the magic disappear. The feast scene got me, y’all. Peter cannot see what is right in front of him until he starts to believe again, and honestly, how oft...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about parenting without ego and learning to see tiny humans as people before we see them as titles. I share a school decision that taught me how easily parenting can become about my comfort, my identity, or my fear instead of what my child actually needs. From there, I get into mom guilt, therapy, authority, peer pressure, collaboration, safe...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about identity, growing up, and the pressure we put on kids to know who they are going to be before they have even had time to live. This one started with Toy Story 3, Andy leaving Woody, and one of my girls realizing that maybe Andy was scared too. From there, I get into college pressure, career day, motherhood, therapy, emotional calluses,...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about the phrase “just wait till you have kids” and why it can feel so invalidating when someone is trying to share that they are tired, overwhelmed, or struggling. This one is about parenting, empathy, one upping, unmet needs, and learning to meet people with questions instead of comparison. I get into marriage, tiny humans, therapy exhausti...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about kids, weight, body image, diet culture, and the way our tiny people internalize what we verbalize about ourselves. I share why I do not talk to my kids about weight, what I learned from watching my mom struggle with her body, my own history with body image and an eating disorder, and the mental battle that can still show up over somethi...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m sharing my relationship with Jesus and how I lost my religion but found relationship. This is not me trying to convert or convince anyone. It is my story of growing up around Christianity, feeling hurt by hypocrisy, walking away from faith, carrying shame, and slowly finding my way back through people who loved me without trying to fix me. I talk abo...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m reflecting on empowerment, control, and the kind of relationship we actually want with the tiny people in our lives. The reminder is simple: no one knows what they are doing, so maybe the goal is not to control our kids into becoming who we think they should be. Maybe the goal is to empower them in the ways we wish someone had empowered us. This one...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about spanking, discipline, emotional regulation, and why I’m learning to humanize my tiny people instead of parenting from fear, ego, or other people’s opinions. I share the moment that made me rethink spanking, what I’m learning about giving kids tools instead of shame, and why so much of parenting starts with the fact that we’ve never been...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about protecting versus projecting in parenting, with a little help from One Tree Hill and the emotional baggage of Dan Scott. I get into motherhood, gentle parenting, body image, childhood trauma, the rules we inherit, and the question I cannot stop asking myself: is my parenting happening to my kids or for my kids? This is not about having...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about responding instead of reacting when our kids have big feelings. We get into bedtime, Target tears, iPads, communication, boundaries, and why I’m trying to see crying less as manipulation and more as a tiny human asking for help. I’m not sharing this as someone who has it all figured out. I’m learning in real time, apologizing when I nee...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about parenting, projection, and the moments when our kids remind us that they are not tiny versions of us. They are tiny humans with their own thoughts, feelings, choices, and stories. I share what I’m learning about pausing before I jump in with advice, asking better questions, and creating a safe place where my kids can come to me without...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about resilience, distance learning, emotional regulation, and the pressure to bounce back before we have actually processed what happened. After a chaotic day with school pickups, Wi Fi issues, meetings, and one very frazzled mom moment, I started thinking about how often we praise kids and adults for being “resilient” when maybe what we rea...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about other people’s opinions, identity, worry, and the way we can spend so much energy imagining what people think about us. From lunchroom anxiety to college campus fear, mom group insecurity, social media comments, laundry piles named Eduardo and Celine, and finally buying the Doc Martens, this one is about learning to stop handing your id...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about motherhood, identity, and the middle ground between “I am barely surviving” and “everything is Pinterest perfect.” This one came from hearing people say mom content online makes motherhood look terrifying, like becoming a mom means losing yourself completely. So I’m getting into feeling unequipped, having two emotions at once, the refil...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about feeling underqualified as a parent and why “I don’t know what I’m doing” does not have to mean failure. I’m sharing the story of leaving the hospital with London, realizing no magical parenting knowledge had arrived, and wondering why it was harder to adopt a cat than leave with a baby. This one is about parenting without ego, learning...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about parenting, school pressure, milestones, and the quiet spiral that can happen when your child needs extra support. This one started with an email from Page’s school, and it made me think about expectations, identity, emotional growth, and how easy it is to make our kids’ progress feel like a reflection of us. I’m sharing stories about Ho...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about motherhood, identity, and the misconception that being a good mom means losing yourself. I’m sharing a very Amanda story about dating Blake, E. coli, stool samples, and the first time he told me he loved me, and somehow, yes, it connects back to motherhood. This one is about the slow ways we hand over pieces of ourselves, the mom guilt...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about mom shaming, judgment, and why insecurity can make us act like crabs in a bucket. I’m sharing the Target parking lot diaper story, the birth plan comment I never forgot, and the way motherhood can bring out comparison around epidurals, breastfeeding, formula, screen time, sugar, tantrums, and all the tiny choices people suddenly have op...

Grab your coffee, your Coke, your kombucha, or in my case today, maybe a butter croissant, because y’all, we need to talk about the inner voice we give our kids. In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about parenting, self talk, emotional regulation, and the way our tiny humans start building their inner dialogue way earlier than we sometimes realize. This one started with a momen...

In this episode of After Hours With Amanda, I’m talking about motherhood, identity, and the fear that you somehow lose yourself after having kids. After my third baby, I felt underwater, overwhelmed, and unsure which way was up. But over time, I started wondering if motherhood was not erasing me, but growing me. This is not expert advice. It’s just me learning out loud about tiny people, personal...