White Women Wake Up

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Karen and Jonelle explore the idea of the “watchful dragon,” a concept borrowed from C.S. Lewis that describes the unconscious inner protector guarding our sense of safety and identity. This inner defense often activates when our beliefs feel challenged, especially in conversations about race, change, and belonging. Through personal stories, including a charged co...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of White Women Wake Up , Karen and Jonelle unpack the growing conversation around the “male loneliness epidemic” and ask a harder question: who is being asked to carry the emotional labor of fixing it? Moving past media narratives that frame men as victims and women as the solution, they explore how loneliness affects everyone and how patriarchy limits emotional li...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of White Women Wake Up , Karen and Jonelle dive into the complexities of authentic allyship. They share personal stories of confronting privilege—one involving the pitfalls of colorblindness in a multicultural workplace and another about shifting deep-seated biases in personal relationships. Through these reflections, they ask tough questions: Are their efforts per...

Send us Fan Mail This episode introduces a space for honest conversations about self-reflection, personal growth, and navigating privilege. We’ll unpack inherited biases, foster accountability, and explore ways to deepen understanding through open dialogue. Here is a summary of this episode: Different Life Perspectives: A millennial and a baby boomer share their unique experiences and lessons lear...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Karen and Jonelle dig into the rising wave of book bans and why they matter for anyone committed to waking up. Using their own childhood favorites and foundational reads as starting points, they explore how stories expand empathy, reveal hidden histories, and interrupt the narrow narratives many white women inherited. But with thousands of books banned in recent y...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Karen and Jonelle explore why stories of generosity often stop at the surface. Using examples from holiday giving, volunteer work, and media narratives, they examine how white culture celebrates the ladder that helps someone climb out of a difficult situation while rarely naming the systems that dug the hole in the first place. From incarceration debt to credit ba...

Send us Fan Mail Season 2 opens with a new way to approach growth. Instead of rigid goals shaped by productivity culture, Karen and Jonelle introduce their Bingo Card Intention Framework, a playful system for staying engaged in long-term bias work without shame or burnout. Inspired by a year of learning, discomfort, and community conversations, they explore how shifting from “goals” to “intentions...

Send us Fan Mail  ​​In this anniversary episode, Karen and Jonelle look back at one year of conversations, discomfort, learning, and unlearning. They revisit the heart of their work: examining how inherited biases shape everyday choices, relationships, and assumptions. Together, they explore how humility, listening, and self-awareness changed them more than they expected. What began as a plan to t...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Karen and Jonelle dig into the uncomfortable truth behind accepting people as they are. What starts as a conversation about expectations quickly becomes something more personal: why we struggle to accept the real people in our lives and how much grief sits beneath that struggle. Karen introduces self-discrepancy theory by E. Tory Higgins—the gap between who we are...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of White Women Wake Up , Karen and Jonelle explore how decades of movie tropes have quietly shaped our collective ideas about gender, race, and relationships. From Casablanca to The Goonies , they trace how stereotypes—women as “simps,” men as “bros,” and people of color as caricatures—still echo through modern storytelling. Jonelle reflects on her “classic movie c...

Send us Fan Mail This week, Karen and Jonelle dig into what it really means to let people be—without needing them to think, act, or believe like us. Karen shares how a moment at church triggered deep discomfort around conversion culture and her own lifelong urge to “help” others align with her values. Together, the two explore how white women are often taught to equate goodness with agreement and...

Send us Fan Mail Dual-language preschools were created to celebrate cultural and linguistic diversity, yet many are now being reshaped by privilege. This episode looks at how programs once designed for shared language learning have become popular among affluent white families, driving up costs and limiting access for others. Karen and Jonelle explore how good intentions—wanting children to experie...

Send us Fan Mail This week on White Women Wake Up , Karen and Jonelle take a hard look at the tradwife movement—a social media trend romanticizing “traditional” homemaking while quietly monetizing it. Behind the pastel aprons and vintage aesthetics lies a contradiction: many of these so-called traditional wives are entrepreneurs, influencers, and podcasters profiting from the very labor they claim...

Send us Fan Mail This week, Karen and Jonelle explore how language shapes awareness—and accountability. What many call “food deserts” are not barren by nature but by design. Coined by activists like Kerry Washington, the term food apartheid more accurately names the systems that segregate communities from affordable, nutritious food. Together, they unpack how profit-driven zoning and racialized ne...

Send us Fan Mail Karen and Jonelle explore a term that’s been circulating in activist spaces— white women apathy. But as they dig deeper, they realize the issue isn’t indifference, it’s burnout. Many white women doing diversity and justice work feel emotionally drained, unsure how to keep showing up when progress feels slow or unseen. The hosts challenge the idea that exhaustion equals disengageme...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of White Women Wake Up , Karen and Jonelle explore the concept of psychological safety and why it matters in both personal relationships and professional spaces. Drawing from research by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson and examples from workplaces like Google, they discuss how true safety means creating an environment where people can admit mistakes, share concerns...

Send us Fan Mail Hard conversations shape us—yet too often we avoid them, shut them down, or mistake venting for dialogue. Karen and Jonelle take a closer look at what really happens when conflict rises at the dinner table or online, from visceral reactions in the body to the cycle of rehearsed narratives that keep us stuck. They draw on both personal stories and research to show why silence is ne...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of White Women Wake Up , Karen and Jonelle examine social identity theory—the idea that our self-esteem is often tied to group membership, which leads us to view our “in-group” as good and “outsiders” as bad. Using recent violent events as a lens, they explore why some tragedies spark widespread outcry while others are met with silence. From media coverage that ove...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of White Women Wake Up , Karen and Jonelle explore how interdependence transforms the way we challenge bias and build belonging. White women are often taught to strive for independence—doing it all alone—or to slip into codependence, losing themselves in the needs of others. Interdependence offers another path: a shared practice of mutual care, accountability, and...

Send us Fan Mail In Episode 40 of White Women Wake Up , Karen and Jonelle turn their attention to ableism and its everyday impact. They explore how neurodivergent people are often pressured to mask to fit into neurotypical expectations, and why this demand for assimilation can be harmful rather than supportive. Drawing from teaching, personal experience, and lived realities, the hosts highlight ho...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of White Women Wake Up , Karen and Jonelle unpack the tension between cultural expectations of “niceness” and the need for authentic clarity. They reflect on how generations of white women have been socialized to prioritize politeness, avoid conflict, and mask their true feelings, often at the expense of vulnerability and growth. Drawing from research on emotional...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of White Women Wake Up , Karen and Jonelle unpack the hidden layers of cultural appropriation in today’s wellness industry. From yoga studios with no South Asian teachers to trendy sound baths, sage burning, and mindfulness retreats, they examine how many white women’s wellness practices borrow heavily from other cultures without honoring their origins. The hosts e...

Send us Fan Mail In Episode 37, Karen and Jonelle pull back the curtain on coded language—those seemingly harmless words that hide bias in plain sight. They introduce the CODE scan (Context, Othering, Denied specifics, Echo) as a quick litmus test for spotting dog-whistles in conversation. Real-world examples abound: a car-dealer who calls residents “weird,” Maude Littleton’s smear of the Jewish L...

Send us Fan Mail Karen and Jonelle tackle when imaginative empathy crosses into cultural appropriation. Jonelle defines appropriation as writers “taking ownership… and not giving honor, research, or credit to its heritage”. She flags 2024 data: more than half of novels with LGBTQ protagonists were written by straight authors, proving demand often outruns authentic representation. Karen defends art...

Send us Fan Mail Episode 35 explores the roots of bias inside our households. Jonelle opens with eye-opening research: babies only exposed to their own race 90 percent of the time start favoring faces like theirs by six to nine months, and children aged five to twelve already show a pro-white bias on implicit tests. The hosts note that just one ten-minute, color-conscious conversation with a paren...