The Other Side

Dorsa Babaei grew up in Iran wearing clothes made by her mom, aunt, and grandma, three women in a friendly, never-ending competition over who had the best patterns. While neither of those women made it their living, it's because of them that Dorsa did - they are, essentially, the inspiration behind the Montreal based brand, dorsaLi . From Iran to India to Dubai to Montreal, Dorsa has built do...

If you’ve ever googled “Is this perimenopause or just me?” then this episode is for you. My sister Danielle was diagnosed with adenomyosis in 2018. Nobody told her. She found out five years later, by accident, reading her own medical chart, after my diagnosis turned up the same thing. My mom, Lorraine, didn't even know she was anemic until a lab tech tested her blood almost by chance. Her hem...

Two hours after giving birth at home, Sammi Dreiling passed out and lost her pulse. That's the day that started her hardest year - the one where losing her dad a month later and watching a decade of business work collapse pushed her and her husband, Dylan, to finally ask what they'd actually do if they were following their bliss. Sammi calls it her cocoon year: everything she'd buil...

Clarissa Arthur spent her early teenage years angry. The skipping school, running away, in and out of trouble with the police kind of angry. Then 3 weeks after she turned 17, standing in the bathroom at her high school, she found out she was pregnant. This is when she made the decision to change. This instinct - to keep moving forward even in a situation that could easily have derailed her - is wh...

Dr. Sam Hetz cold-emailed three Ottawa clinics that were offering Botox, asking for ten minutes of their time. One doctor graciously said yes, changing the direction of Sam's life. A decade later he's a partner of a 70-clinic, L'Oréal backed medical group, as well as the co-founder of Ottawa's first personalized, private, longevity-focused clinic, LifespanMD .  What makes this...

Michelle Weger fell asleep at a microscope in her first year of university and woke up with two black eyes. It took five years before anyone figured out why. As Michelle talks about living with narcolepsy we speak about the tendency to hide the parts of us that aren't so polished, and what can happen when we let our guard down. What you'll hear about: the 5 years of dead-end doctor visit...

My mom is 77. Her closest friends are four women she met when she was 16 and for almost a decade of their lives, she barely spoke to them. I went into this conversation expecting a nice story about a friend group that's lasted 60+ years. What I didn't expect was how the silence actually ended - not with a big reconciliation talk, but with two of them showing up at her door with a pie. Sh...

Erin McHarge was a 27 year old PhD student going about her life when she was told she has stage 4B endometrial cancer - and it's incurable.  But this isn't a "cancer episode". It's a conversation with someone more curious about her own life than afraid of it - and it changed how I think about mine. This is one of the most highly downloaded podcasts of the year and within m...

One of the most downloaded episodes in the history of this show - and it's the very first one I ever recorded <3 My friend Mandie lost her mom to cancer, and then her stepdad, 11 months later. Two parents, back to back, in under a year. We get into what actually gets you out of bed the day someone dies, running the Chicago Marathon four hours after finding out her mom had two months left,...

He spent 25 years inside some of the highest-stakes rooms in the Canadian government and he still describes himself as "not really a social guy." This past January Nadine sat down with Fraser Valentine to talk about what happens when the thing you built your whole identity around is about to end. It was just months before his retirement date and the conversation was so well received it r...

This month Mom & Sis joined me to talk about the moment a parent-child relationship quietly turns into a friendship - and the phone call Nadine got from a hotel in Quebec that made her realize her mom had already made that shift, years before she even noticed. This isn't a how-to-raise-your-kids episode. It's the other side of it: what it actually takes for a parent to step all the w...

Nagad is a therapist, and the jeweller behind Of Soleil , where she hand-shapes polymer clay into blueberries you'd swear were real, earrings inspired by basket weaving, and collections named for the instruments and scents of home. What got me wasn't the craft itself, gorgeous as it is - it's that every piece she makes is doing quiet, deliberate work: carrying her culture and memory...

Dr. Jared Gerston has been treating Nadine's body for years using a technique called PDTR. When she went to see him for what she assumed was pickleball-related neck pain and walked out pain free, learning it had nothing to do with her favourite past-time and, instead, was her nervous system still reacting to an old injury, she knew it was time to mic him up!  This isn't really an episode...

Rebecca Rowe believes your body has never once been the problem. The clothes are. That's why she is so steadfast in helping people find themselves in their closets - and in their day to day.  This week Nadine sits down with Rebecca, education-led personal stylist and former fashion designer, to chat about everything from the fashion industry, to studying at Pratt Institutes's School of D...

This week Nadine sits down with Ro Nwosu - movement educator, studio owner, single mom, and self-proclaimed "weird gal who loves fairies" - for a conversation that starts with childhood comfort foods and ends somewhere much deeper; the slow, sneaky unraveling of burnout, and what it actually takes to come back from it. Ro gets honest about the years she said yes to everything - the studi...

It's the last Wednesday of the month which means mom and sis are on the pod! And this week the three of us find ourselves together in Calgary at my brother's home to celebrate our nephew (and grandson's) grade 12 graduation. Of course we had to give our two cents so we asked one another - what would you say to an 18 year old standing on the edge of everything? Mom/Lorraine, 77, who...

This week Nadine sat down with Meagan and Megan - same name, different paths, and somehow the co-founders of Daughters of the River , a jewelry brand born out of communal living and a shared love of making things in the Ottawa Valley. Megan has been making jewelry (and ceramics) for what feels like her whole life - a born creator, she spent years experimenting, soaking up mentorship opportunities,...

This week Nadine invited Hillory on the pod to talk about divorce - she said yes, as long as what we could actually talk about was love <3 For Hillory, they are one in the same.  Hillory Tenute is a First Nations leader, advocate, entrepreneur, founder of Lodge Consulting , beader, auntie, and dog mom whose approach to relationships will genuinely make you rethink everything you think you know...

Amanda Ruddy knows how to throw a party. But this conversation isn't really about parties. It's about growing up the oldest of five kids in six years, in a house that was always a gathering place. It's about spending years wondering if your name opened doors that your talent was supposed to. It's about losing your mom three weeks before the biggest event of your career and show...

What does 77 years of living actually look like? Mom will tell you, and she won't sugarcoat it either.  This month mom and sis join Nadine and they get into the big stuff - what years were actually easy (spoiler alert: none of them, really), who mom worried about most and why, and what it felt like to watch each of her three kids leave the nest one by one. There's also chats about debt,...

Content warning: infant loss Part 2 of 2 with the wonderful Emma Mitchell. If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, start there first. We pick up right where we left off, inside the NICU, where Emma spent every single day with her daughter Evie, who was born at 23 weeks and 6 days. We talk about the moment everything shifted, the decision she and Devin made together, and the 43 minutes they&apo...

Content warning: infant loss Emma Mitchell is Evie's mom. She's also a pickleball obsessive, a Canadian music lover, a former open mic host, and one of the most honest and open humans I've had the pleasure of sitting across from. We start the conversation talking about pickleball outfits (because of course we do) and then we go somewhere really deep and really real. Emma never let h...

What happens when the rug gets pulled out from under you? Amira believes you were always meant to land exactly where you did. This week, listen in as Nadine sits down with Amira de Vera, entertainment publicist and founder of Project Four PR , for a conversation that wanders, beautifully, from books to burnout to the Burnt Toast Theory. Amira shares how she stumbled into the Public Relations world...

They're backkkkkkkk. The last Wednesday of the month means mom and sis join Nadine for a conversation that starts with a laundry disagreement and ends with all three of them in tears. This one is special <3 It began with a simple idea, a book club of sorts. All three of them agreed to read Being Mortal  by Atul Gawande but when they hopped on to chat about it, it turned into something unex...

Jen Alvarenga was 18 years old when she left Honduras for Ottawa with a plan - get an education, go back home and work for the family business. That was over two decades ago and well, she's still here and she's shaping her adopted city with as much love and care as if she were born and raised in it. Jen is the co-founder of GoodStory , a real estate team in Ottawa that has quietly become...