It’s Both — Living in the Messy Middle

The messy middle isn't always something you can think your way through. Sometimes it lives in your body — in the shallow breath, the held-back cry, the emotions you've been managing instead of feeling. Jon Paul Crimi is a breathwork teacher who has spent 15 years helping people release what their minds can't process alone. He found this work through his dear friend Matthew Perry — and the grief of...

The messy middle of relationships isn't always dramatic. Sometimes it's the slow, quiet erosion of yourself — giving and giving and giving until you don't know where you end and everyone else begins. And not having a name for it until someone finally says it out loud. Vanessa Bennett is a licensed depth psychotherapist and author of The Motherhood Myth. She spent over a decade in corporate New Yor...

The messy middle isn't always about a crisis you can name. Sometimes it's quietly losing your sense of self inside a relationship that looks fine from the outside — and not having language for what's actually happening until years later. Dr. Jordin Wiggins is a naturopathic doctor, pleasure and intimacy coach, and founder of the Pleasure Collective. She built a thriving health clinic, checked ever...

The messy middle isn't always something you can talk your way through. Sometimes you just need a place to breathe. This is a meditation for the waiting. For the unknown. For the transition anxiety that sits in your body when you've made a decision but can't get to the other side of it yet — the knot in your stomach, the tightness in your chest that won't turn off no matter how many times you check...

The messy middle isn't always about a big dramatic moment. Sometimes it's the house that won't sell. The city you're grieving before you've even left. The goodbye that keeps getting delayed while life keeps demanding you show up anyway. This week I'm coming to you solo and I'm sharing where I am right now. We put our house on the market three months ago. We were under contract and then we weren't....

The messy middle looks different for everyone. Sometimes it's a major life transition. Sometimes it's the quiet, daily tension of living in a body you haven't fully made peace with yet. One year ago this week I sat down with one of my best friends — Heather, a therapist, a mom, and one of the most honest people I know — and we recorded the very first episode of It's Both. I'm re-releasing it this...

The messy middle doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes it arrives at 40 years old with three kids, a career you left behind, and a life you have to rebuild from the ground up — while you're still in the wreckage of the one you lost. Donna Jean Kendrick was 40 when her husband Greg died by suicide. What followed wasn't a clean grief arc. It was the duality of relief and devastation existing at...

The messy middle doesn't always look like one hard thing. Sometimes it looks like being biracial, bisexual, a therapist, a storyteller, a single dad, and a first-time memoirist — all at the same time, all in the same body, all navigating the anxiety of major life changes while asking the same question: who am I when I can't fit into one box? Johnzelle Anderson has been living in the duality his en...

The messy middle isn't always about a crisis you can name. Sometimes it's the slow realization that the timeline you had in your head — married by 30, partnered by 35 — just isn't happening. And instead of asking what's wrong with you, what if you asked something different? Shani Silver has been single for over 13 years. She's 43, she deleted her dating apps in 2019, and she wrote the book — liter...

The messy middle of being surrounded by people and still feeling completely alone. Jason Lange is a men's embodiment coach who helps men reconnect to their hearts, their bodies, and to each other. The data is staggering: in 1990, 3% of men reported having fewer than three close friends. By the late 2010s, that jumped to 15%. Post-COVID? Likely even higher. This is a conversation about life transit...

The messy middle of getting everything you thought you wanted — and still feeling empty. Cassidy Gard spent years at Good Morning America producing breaking news stories that shaped the national conversation. Emmy Award-winning TV producer. High-achieving. Living the dream in LA. And also carrying generational trauma from growing up with an alcoholic father, absorbing vicarious trauma from the sto...

Have you ever needed to talk to someone, but you didn't want their advice? You didn't want them to fix you or solve your problem or tell you what to do. You just needed someone to hear you. Not interrupt. Not redirect. Not make it better. Just... listen. The messy middle of holding it together everywhere else and falling apart inside. Erin Snow spent nearly 17 years as a legal advocate for survivo...

The messy middle of making a decision your brain knows is right, but your body doesn't believe yet. I'm moving my family across the country. Logically, I know it's the right choice. But my body? My body is still holding onto the fear, the anxiety, the grief of what I'm leaving behind. This is a conversation about life transitions, major life changes, and the gap between knowing something is right...

Living in the messy middle for three years. Lane Igoudin and his husband Jonathan raised two babies — a newborn and a one-year-old — while not knowing if the court would let them keep them. They were shut out of the court cases determining their daughters' futures. As an interracial, same-sex couple during the pre-marriage equality era, their relationship wasn't legally recognized. And the birth m...

The messy middle of parenting can look like following every rule you were given — and watching your family fall apart anyway. Marissa Franks Burt, author of The Myth of Good Christian Parenting, joins Nikki P to talk about what happens when a parenting blueprint promises outcomes it can't deliver — the prosperity gospel of family life, the spiritual authority that silenced parental instincts, and...

What happens when the version of strength you've been taught stops working — and being a "strong man" makes you a terrible father? Olaolu Ogunyemi is a leadership speaker, author, and U.S. Marine Officer who became a dad at 19. He thought leadership meant being the hammer. Then he yelled at his three-year-old daughter and watched her break. That moment changed everything — and put him face-to-face...

Zach Watson thought he was a good partner. Then he asked if the blueberry muffins were too hot — 90 seconds after watching his wife pull them from the oven. That's when he realized: he wasn't just missing the point. He was adding to her mental load. His marriage almost ended in 2018, not because he was a bad guy, but because he didn't see what his wife was carrying alone. This is a conversation ab...

What if the "difficult" kid isn't the problem — it's that we're responding to their energy instead of the actual situation? Dr. Bethany Bildeau (Dr. B) went from hiding in school bathrooms with panic attacks to becoming the sensory and behavioral specialist who helps the kids everyone else has given up on. She knows what it's like to be labeled "the problem." Now she works with students with traum...

What does it feel like when starting over isn't a choice — it's just what's left? The anxiety of rebuilding your identity after years of making yourself smaller is real. And the overthinking that follows — Am I doing this right? Was it my fault? Who am I without this? — can be relentless. This conversation is for anyone navigating the messy middle of major life changes after losing themselves comp...

Feeling hijacked by anxiety and overthinking every decision — like you're constantly "neck up" in your head, unable to just be? Joanna Hardis is a therapist and author who went from white-knuckling through life to learning how to be "neck down" — staying in her body instead of spiraling in her thoughts. She navigated the messy middle of major life changes through divorce, single parenting three ki...

The messy middle of a life transition sometimes starts with a question you're too scared to ask out loud — and Nikki P sat on hers for years before she finally sent it in. This is a solo episode about the moment an identity shift begins: ten years ago, Nikki wrote in a question about love, limits, and faith to a podcast — and Rob Bell answered it. His response moved her from people-pleasing to sel...

The messy middle of a belief shift can feel like betrayal — like you're walking away from everything that once kept you safe, and the anxiety isn't a sign something's wrong. It might be a sign you're finally being honest. Nashville minister David Moses Perez joins Nikki P to talk about navigating the identity shift of believing differently — that gap between who you were and who you're becoming as...

The messy middle of losing your theology can feel like losing a language — you don't know how to talk about what you believe anymore, because the words you had were built inside a system that's no longer standing. Brian Recker, author of Hell Bent, joins Nikki P to talk about what starting over looks like after fear-based faith collapses — the anxiety that follows deconstruction, the grief of cert...

Linda Kay Klein, author of Pure, grew up in purity culture. It took years to unlearn the shame. This is a conversation about navigating the messy middle of major life changes after religious trauma. About the transition anxiety that comes when you're trying to rewrite the messages your body absorbed before you could even name them. For anyone deconstructing purity culture and realizing the grief i...

What if the anxiety and overthinking aren't because you don't know what to do — but because you're afraid of what you already know? In Part 2 of my conversation with Rob Bell, we talk about the difference between overthinking as avoidance and trusting your inner knowing. About navigating the messy middle of major life changes when your gut is telling you one thing and your fear is screaming anothe...