Who Sets This Clock?

This is a wrap on Season 2! Thanks so much for listening. For this episode, I brought on a very special guest, my very own mother. We focus on the story of how she found out she was pregnant with me. It has some twists and turns! We also get into: - How her upbringing shaped her early adulthood - What she wanted to be when she grew up - The emotions and her mentality around this time - Generationa...

Meet Cynthia. She is a close family friend of mine. Through her teens and 20s, she had a pretty normal life and always added a touch of realism to her perspective on things. In her 20s, she met her now husband and they were building a life together. In her 30s, while they were planning their dream destination wedding, Cynthia received a diagnosis that changed everything, including her timeline for...

Meet Allen. He is a friend through my husband, Zach. They are both part of a tight-knit group of friends that has kept in touch for over a decade. In this episode, we talk about quite a few different topics, including:  How he found his friend circles that he considers family (he has at least two!) Sharing the importance of hanging out regularly and staying in touch with friends Never really wanti...

Meet Caroline. She is my first out-of-college work bestie. We were so young with bright eyes bushy tails, and driven to get started on our professional career path. During our time together, we became quick friends and have stayed in touch ever since. In this episode, we get into:  Navigating her timeline with the focus on her career and not really thinking about marriage and having children Getti...

Meet Marissa. In this conversation, we get into a dialogue about making the choice to have kids or not. Her story brings in new topics to the pod, including her upbringing in Mexico and being a dual citizen. In this episode, she shares: Growing up in Mexico and being a dual citizen in America and how she navigated life across borders How her parents' working long hours across the border shaped her...

Meet Lili. She felt called to the caregiver role and remembers wanting to be a mom as early as 6. In this episode, we talk about her thoughts on motherhood, career aspirations, and her relationship journey with her husband, Gustavo. Topics include: ​Holding the duality of feeling the joy of being engaged and having concerns voiced by her family from the age gap between her and Gustavo  ​How Gustav...

Meet Jordan. He grew up in a long lineage of people in faith and was the pastor’s kid. That heavily influenced him to want a wife and marriage. In his mid-20s, things shifted and he started to focus on a partner.  In this episode, we talk about:  ​Experiences in the church that shifted his values in life ​Learning how to be ok with being single and being on his own in his 20s ​The meet-cute story...

Meet Viviana. She had her daughter at the age of 19 and people told her she would ruin her life. At that time, she felt like she had let people down. By moving forward with her pregnancy, she challenged the assumption that there’s only one right timeline for becoming a mom. Her story shows how you can still have a great life even when you follow the milestones of career, marriage, and having kids...

Season 2, let’s go! Meet Ashley Hall. Her various museum and zoo jobs over the past 17 years have been to talk to people about the natural world. Ashley wears many hats: author, paleontologist, naturalist, science communicator, cat parent, and more! I know Ashley because, at one point, we worked as museum educators together, and I learned a lot from her.  On her socials, you learn about science an...

This week, it’s just me talking to you! I reflect on my podcast experience with you. I do love a challenge and I share what I’ve learned from putting this together all by myself. I touch on how I’m fighting feelings of burn out, moments that I wanted to cry, my favorite parts, and much more. There have been multiple times I wanted to stop creating episodes but I’m glad I’ve kept going. I also reca...

Zach brings it all to the table. He shares how he never felt like he fit in in social circles and friendship groups starting in high school and how that led him to leave behind conventional timelines. He’s not one to conform because that’s what society says. We get into his thoughts on kids and marriage before and after he met me. We share how we figured out the joint decision not to have kids and...

Hannah shares how her career trajectory in her 20s prompted her to pause and embark on a journey to discover what she wanted out of life. That led her to type out a spreadsheet of what she desired in a partner. She discusses how in her thirties she found her husband and then grew her family into a family of four. From her life experiences, she says she doesn’t have life figured out but is comforta...

In this episode, I talk with my cousin and friend, Monica. We’re only two weeks apart! Recently, there have been a lot of big changes she’s adapting to, but they were thoughtful ones that she feels ready for. We talk about her life changes and milestones. We discuss her thoughts on her childfree life, which includes her journey with a PCOS diagnosis in her 20s and discovering uterine fibroids in h...

Gustavo hoped and dreamed that he would start a family right out of high school. But that ended up not being in the cards for him at that time. We go through his timelines and look into how he spent his 20s and 30s finding himself and building confidence.. All the while, he had fun and kept his heart and mind open to new opportunities. Then, in his 40s, he met his wife, and they had a son. He buil...

In this episode, I interview my sister’s best friend, Belen. She talks about how her timelines changed as she grew up. Early on, she thought she would be destined to be on one pathway, to repeat her mother’s timeline. But her viewpoint and perspective have changed a lot as she’s grown up. I love that she shares how she finds moments with her bestie, even though they live states apart. We end with...

In this episode, Leia and I talk about how she’s merging her career and creative project aspirations, like writing a book, with her desire to have a kid soon. She shares the societal and familial pressures she’s felt lately. Drawing from our own experiences, we get into how we can have better conversations with our friends who have kids. New episodes drop every Thursday.  Let’s Stay Connected: Ema...

My friend, Rocio, shares that she never pictured her wedding day and often resisted conventional timeline milestones. Now, at almost 40 years old, she talks with her husband about the possibility of adoption. She shares how her perspectives on life have changed over time, especially caring less about what other people think. Rocio shares many insightful, wise life lessons she’s learned along the w...

I talk with my friend, Frankie. He shares how growing up with loving and emotionally intelligent parents gave him the freedom to figure out his own pathways in life. We talk about the pressure, or lack of it, to follow traditional, heteronormative timelines, aka the American Dream. We get into the hope we both have for generational shifts that make more room for openness and, honestly, more privac...

I talk to one of my closest friends, Jenna, whom I met in our freshman year of college. We instantly hit it off. In college, we talked about having kids someday. I ended up changing my mind about it, and Jenna became a mother in her 30s. We work through these diverging pathways. In this episode, we walk through Jenna’s timeline towards motherhood. We get into the many factors that affected her tim...

My first guest, here we go! I have a conversation with one of my sisters, Rachel, the second youngest in our family. We dive deep into how she feels about where she is in life, how our childhood shaped our thoughts around having kids, and a term she’s created herself: “mom hugs.” Rachel shares how she navigates dating in her 30s, especially through the lens of seeing more men in her age range who...

Hi I’m Margarete, thanks for being here. I’m someone who’s deeply curious about the choices we make in life — especially around having kids — and how we navigate all the pressures tied to those decisions. I want to figure out better language on how to have conversations with friends and family when we start to grow our families ... or don’t. I’ll be bringing in many different perspectives and life...