Voice Hugs

How much can one stranger's story actually change your life? When Viv's husband suffered a serious burn last year, the thing that got him through recovery wasn't a doctor or a product—it was a blog he stumbled on by chance where one man quietly documented his own recovery journey 🩹 That little blog cracked open a big conversation: why shared stories make us feel less alone, what the internet felt...

Why is it so hard to answer a simple "how are you” sometimes? You see someone you haven't seen in months, they give their little life update, it's your turn, and your brain just… buffers 🍥 This exact moment happened to both of us recently, and it cracked open something bigger: how social interactions can mirror back what we’re actually going through, why we downplay big life changes (hi, pregnanc...

How do you make a decision when there are 24 kinds of everything and the algorithm has an opinion on all of it? 🌀 From the grocery store to your For You page, we're more overwhelmed by information than any generation before us. Whether we’re aware of it or not, this is quietly running our moods, our spending, and our sense of self. We get into a study that proves too many options make us worse at...

Sometimes you just need a lighthearted one 🃏 We pulled out a get-to-know-you card game and answered 20 questions—from "what fictional world would you absolutely not survive in?" to "if your life had a warning label, what would it say?" It got chaotic fast: dinosaurs, zombies, Ro's very confident belief she'd be amazing at literally everything, and one warning label Viv agreed with a little too qu...

How do you get through a hard season when you can't see the end of it? There's an "unwritten rule" that says every long stretch of hardship is followed by a quantum leap—all it requires is that you don't give up on yourself ❤️ We get honest about what a hard season actually feels like day to day (not the cleaned-up version), why "high-functioning" struggling is so easy to miss, and where the line...

How can we dream bigger when life has trained us to play it small? As kids we wanted everything, unapologetically—then somewhere along the way we learned to want less, to be realistic, to play it safe 🌱 We get into where that voice actually comes from (hint: you didn't come up with it), why it's so easy to see everyone else “playing small,” and the honest, unglamorous story of how Ro finally got...

Viv came back from a work conference with a story she hasn't been able to shake: a Japanese company’s chairman hands every new employee a 100-year calendar and says, “Somewhere on this page is the date of your death.” 🕰️🤯👀 A little morbid, sure, but it's really about awareness. Awareness that our time here is finite, and that most of us don't waste it dramatically… we waste it accidentally (hi,...

How do you actually know when you're ready to have a baby? It's one of the biggest questions of your 20s and 30s, and no one really prepares you for how much of it is both emotional AND logistical. This was a question from our Aussie listener, Nat—thanks for writing in!! 💌 We break motherhood readiness into two parts: the logistical (finances, division of labor, gender roles, and the conversation...

100 episodes in, and we finally sat down and asked ourselves the questions we'd been avoiding: What have we built?? Do we still want to do it? And where do we actually want it to go from here? 🥹 We're getting honest about the parts of Voice Hugs we've never really said out loud—how we've (not) treated it, what we're a little scared of, and what it would take to dream bigger without losing the sof...

❣️ MUG HUGS LAUNCH + GIVEAWAY BELOW ❣️ Four years. One hundred episodes. We still can't believe we get to say that out loud 🥺 What started as two perfectionists in Ro's parent’s living room—taking a full 30min to record a two-sentence intro—somehow became 100 episodes of us growing up along side one another. This really is one is a giant love letter to YOU. Whether you've been here since day...

Am I behind? Am I stuck? Is everyone else moving forward except me? We received an email from you feeling behind in all aspects of life—from career to relationships. We hear you & we feel you 🥹 In today’s episode, we’re getting into the difference between feeling behind and feeling stuck (they're not the same thing and it matters!), why comparison has existed since literally the dawn of time, wha...

How do I be single? How do I date myself? How do I be alone? We’ve talked a lot about relationships in Season 3, but we have yet to tackle one of the most important things we can do for our current or future relationships: work on the relationship we have with OURSELVES 🫶 Viv made herself stay single through all four seasons of the year because she wanted to know she could handle the holidays alo...

Alright, you know how we say "embracing all seasons of life with open arms" every single episode?? Well, we took a personality assessment and it turns out neither of us are on the warm and accepting side of the spectrum 👀 Exposed!! But honestly that's kind of the whole point of this episode xoxo Viv puts on her professional DISC facilitator hat for the pod and walks us through the four communicat...

We saw this quote about Beef on Netflix that said “everyone is with the wrong person” and it got us thinking “how do you know you’re with the right person?’”🌀 We share our college theory about the red string of fate getting tangled by modern dating, why butterflies in your stomach are actually your nervous system detecting a threat and not love, and what it really means to show up as yourself in...

Our sweetest bbs, this one came out of us like a wave we didn't see coming 🥹 We mentioned in our 3rd Hugs Hotline (https://open.spotify.com/episode/7mqDW2aTcHj99nzeDP0wKy?si=sGY_l5YHT6CuCtXlQlko_w) how much we looove growing older… but it recently dawned on us that - oh! there’s actually plenty for us to grieve from our past selves 👀 As Viv is entering her third trimester and feeling the weight...

Our sweetest bbs, the day hath cometh. We’ve been wanting to talk about social media for many years now, and instead of just talking about it, we decided to do something about it. For the plot. And to no ones surprise, our screen time went downnnnn unda 🪸🐬🐚✨ We get into phantom scrolling (the first hour was brutal), the boredom that turns into creativity, and the friends we actually called ins...

This week's episode is extra special 🥹 We're answering your Hugs Hotline voicemails from our bed, on our very first Voice Hugs retreat!! The two of us haven't gone on a trip together since we were in our early 20s, so this was already special before we pressed record, and then we pressed record and heard your voices 😭 You called in with really beautiful and honest questions, from navigating a qu...

Okay so we've been keeping a secret 👀 One of us is pregnant… and we're finally sharing everything!!! From the moment she found out, to the feelings nobody warned her about, to the dog who somehow knew before she did 🐶 We talk about wanting to be a mom since literally six years old, getting pregnant ten days after the wedding (!?!!), and then the unexpected part: sitting on the bathroom floor in...

Have you ever given a friend advice, watched them nod along, and then do the exact opposite? Or caught yourself nagging your partner about the same thing for the hundredth time knowing full well it's not going to work? Yeah, us too 😅 This episode we're breaking down The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins — a deceptively simple framework that's honestly changed how we think about every relationship in...

Hi besties, when was the last time you made a new friend in the wild? We’ll go first: It’s been a long while for both of us. This episode we're getting honest about community: what it actually means, why it's so much harder to build as an adult, and why some of us would rather homebody than put ourselves out there. Viv spent months at a ceramics studio without saying hi to a single person 👀 Ro sh...

Ever come back from a trip completely convinced you need to uproot your entire life? Yeah, that was Viv after three days in New York 😅 This episode we're talking about romanticizing—the places we dream about living, the highlight reels we replay after a breakup, and why our brains do this in the first place. Viv walks us through her full New York whirlwind (Harry Styles, Times Square, rats and al...

Why does a "good” day always seem to mean a "productive” day? And why does resting, actually resting, come with this wave of guilt that makes you feel like you're falling behind? In this episode, we're unpacking our complicated relationship with productivity and rest. Ro takes us through her full arc—from waking up at 4:30am during her peak hustle era, to making burnout content until her audience...

Ever seen a quote that made you pause mid-scroll and immediately text to your best friend? That's exactly what happened when Ro stumbled this one 👀 We spent this episode unpacking what that flip means for us—from Viv's confession that she has a really hard time trusting people, to Ro projecting her stress onto James (his words not ours 🙃), to why saying sorry feels like the hardest thing in the...

Hi, you’ve reached Hugs Hotline ☎️✨  Today we have the pleasure of listening to our very first VOICEMAILS from our listeners 🥹 You left the sweetest messages with questions and we’re answering them all - from navigating the anxiety of feeling like the least liked person in your friend group, to compromising with your partner during wedding planning, to healing after a breakup as a generally anxi...

Ever been left on read and convinced yourself it's because they secretly hate you? 😅 Yeah, us too. In this episode, we're diving into The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and pairing it with the psychology concept of "rupture and repair." How do we stop taking things so personally? How do we catch ourselves before we spiral into Assumption Land? And how do we actually repair when things get mes...