Middle Fingers Up

Boy moms… this Gup Shup is for us. After a recent conversation with my teenage son, I found myself reflecting on something I’ve been really intentional about while raising boys: creating a home where disagreement feels safe. IMO,  so many boys grow up learning how to keep the peace… by staying silent but not necessarily how to communicate through conflict. Especially in a lot of South Asian homes...

Some conversations stay with you because they answer questions. This one stayed with me because it opened more of them. Patty is back on the podcast after Episode 165 because honestly… we weren’t done yet. I love talking with  Patty because whenever we get together – on or off screen, we ask about the things we have been wondering about.  Last time we talked about the emotional world of children o...

This episode felt special to me. I sat down with Harvi — a soon-to-be high school graduate heading into psychology — for a conversation about growing up as children of immigrants, and honestly… it became so much bigger than I expected. We talked about the invisible weight so many of us carry: the love, sacrifice, and survival behind our parents’ journeys, alongside the pressure to achieve, be grat...

This episode is dedicated to our bodies. The Brown ones. The bloated ones. The strong ones. The “why is my head filled with negativity about my body" ones. I've been thinking a lot lately about how we  were taught to fix our bodies  before fully living in them. How little we learned to trust our gut, to understand the connection between mind and body. And how hard it is now to tune in. T...

In this episode, I sit down with  psychologist and writer Patty for a powerful conversation about the inner worlds of children of immigrants and how childhood conditioning continues to shape adult identity, relationships, and wellbeing. Patty brings both clinical expertise and lived experience as an Indian psychologist, a mother raising two biracial daughters, and someone navigating life and partn...

Wedding season is meant to be joyful, full of love, music, and celebration. However in this EP, we are naming what happens when you’re walking into those spaces carrying something else. A welcome back to guest to Mohini, who is here to share her experiences with  the in-between moments—the ones we don’t always name. The reality that you can be genuinely happy for someone you love… and still be gri...

Featured in The New Yorker and The Guardian, Sarah is a Nigerian child of immigrants, raised in the UK and now based in Canada, whose work as a cartoonist captures the quiet, in-between moments we don’t always have the language for. If you’ve ever found yourself in a room thinking, “why doesn’t this feel right anymore?”… this conversation will hit. We talk about what it means to make sense of ours...

In this episode, I sit down with artist, mother, and fellow Randhawa, Harleen, to explore what happens when we stop performing the lives expected of us and start expressing our truth. Having immigrated to Canada as a baby, Harleen grew up in the in-between, navigating identity as a child of Indian immigrants while learning who she needed to be to belong. She shares her journey through body image s...

A song comes on… and I’m not here anymore. I’m  in a neural time machine and 15 again. And I don’t just remember it—I feel it. In this episode, I sit down with Nikki—a therapist with a Master’s in Arts and Counselling, and who I like to refer to as the voice behind The Mental Health Stylist. She blends fashion, music, and therapeutic insight in a way that makes nostalgia feel… deeper. We talk abou...

We say it all the time: “I’m just here for the music.” But… are we? In this episode, I sit down with Ali from @itsrealitywithali  to unpack something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately — how pop culture stopped being “just entertainment” and became a reflection of power, politics, and the systems shaping our everyday lives. This conversation actually started in my own home. My kids have been as...

This episode is about shifting the way we think about our bodies — even as our day-to-day bumps up against old rules, comparisons, and messages (or should we say misogynies) we’ve inherited.  We are here to challenge  the pressure to look a certain way, diet culture, celebrity trends, or "finishing the plate". It’s about noticing what our bodies are actually carrying and listening withou...

Safe space. You’ve heard the term everywhere lately — but what does it actually mean? Who is responsible for the 'safety' part of the space? In this gup shup, we sit with a phrase that shows up everywhere lately: safe space. From social media to wellness circles to community conversations, the language is everywhere — but the experience doesn’t always match the label. Looking at the root...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up, we sit down with Rama Swamy, a pelvic floor practitioner and physiotherapist who immigrated from India, for a necessary and overdue conversation about women’s health — the parts we were never taught to understand, name, or advocate for. Drawing from her lived experience with pregnancy, birth, and postpartum recovery, Rama shares how cultural taboos, education...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up, I’m in conversation with Farida D, author of The Shit That Made Me a Feminist — a body of work that names the lived realities many women are taught to swallow quietly. Out of respect for her safety, this episode is audio-only .  Farida’s work — which centers women of color, power, rage, and structural inequality — does not allow her the privilege of visibility...

The one where we stop pretending everything’s fine just to keep the peace. In this episode, I sit down with Kam Bassier  (from Episode 136: “You’re Not Lazy, You’re Burnt Out”) to talk about a tension so many BIPOC adults are carrying right now: Why are we — the kids of immigrant parents, BIPOC millennials and Gen Z — having conversations our families never could? Why does naming pain feel like be...

Taken from South Korea as a baby, removed from his culture, and told it’s for a “better life” that he "wasn't wanted".  This is the reality behind many international adoptions. In this episode, I speak with Moses, a therapist, advocate, and human being whose lived experience gives him a unique perspective on how 'adoption' functions as an industry of child trafficking. Thr...

I came across Shawn Ahmed’s work the way so many of us do now — through a moment of laughter that quietly turned into curiosity. What followed was a conversation that went far deeper than comedy. Shawn is a South Asian Canadian actor with an impressive body of work across television, film, and comedy — and in this episode, we talk about what lives beneath the credits. Growing up in that in-between...

We’ve all been in rooms where the energy doesn’t match the claim of being a safe space -  overthinking, comparing, and surface-level talk are what tends to go down instead. I sat down with Arunie, Psychologist with PCHS Calgary and co-host of Brown Girl Problems, for a conversation that goes beyond surface-level chats. Arunie highlights the truth behind the pressure to turn trauma into currency, a...

Reshma Kearney returns to Middle Fingers Up following Episode 128, where she first shared her experience of losing her husband to suicide and raising three children through grief. In this conversation, we go deeper — into what grief looks like over time, how it lives in the body, and how it quietly shapes our mental health, parenting, and sense of self. We talk about grief as an ongoing relationsh...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up, we sit down with Rahell, a 23-year-old mixed-race individual navigating identity, privilege, and growth. Rahell shares his experience as a “passing white kid” unpacking whiteness — what it meant to belong in some spaces, and what it cost in others. He talks about how hip-hop shaped his understanding of culture, power, and resistance, and the ongoing work of un...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up, I sit  down with Nisha Mody, the relational and trauma-informed coach known online as Healing Hype Girl. Nisha shares her raw journey from a childhood marked by strict expectations and silenced playfulness to navigating codependency in a marriage to an addict, ultimately choosing divorce, childfree living, and reclaiming her voice. Together, we get into the co...

Be A Tiger is an episode about what it really means to grow up as a South Asian girl who’s told to be strong… while also being told to stay quiet, stay small, and don’t make anyone uncomfortable. In this conversation with award-winning author Kelly Kaur, we step into the world of Letters to Singapore through Simran — this young brown girl who is trying to hold herself together as an immigrant stud...

Before we get into this episode, I want to name something real: there’s a moment in life when grief meets growth. Our guest Shri lived that moment. And today, she’s helping us understand it. Grief has a way of interrupting your life— but life never stops interrupting your grief. My guest today, Shri, knows this intimately. Within 18 months, she lost her father and sister… all while she was pregnan...

In this gup shup, I want to talk about something we don’t talk about enough — rebuilding our relationship with ourselves during perimenopause. Not the charts. Not the protein grams. Not the supplements or the workouts. Those matter — trust me, I’m on top of them. But I’m realizing I’m ready to focus on something deeper: How do I stay in relationship with myself while everything in me is shifting?...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up , I sit down with Christian Ortiz — Afro-Indigenous social scientist, technologist, and creator of Justice AIGPT — and this conversation hit me on so many levels. Christian grew up as a latchkey kid in 80s/90s Los Angeles and later confronted internalized racism, machismo, and white supremacy in the American South. With  a fierce single mother, and a lifetime o...