There is so much going on in my stomach right now. You could call them butterflies, but that wouldn’t quite capture it.
Today, Inner Lives launches into the world, while life feels as though it is moving in every direction at once. I’ve noticed something over the years: change rarely arrives quietly in my life. The biggest shifts usually seem to arrive disguised as chaos.
This time it arrived as some combination of renovating an old house, raising two little girls, trying to care for a marriage that deserved more time than it was getting, trying to keep work moving forward, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, deciding that this was somehow the right moment to launch one of the most vulnerable projects I have ever created. And then, because life apparently appreciates symbolism, Ryan and I got norovirus at exactly the same time.
For a few days the launch I had imagined disappeared completely. I had pictured waking up excited, watching the first downloads come in, responding to sweet messages from friends, maybe ending the day with dinner as a family. Ryan would come home and we’d each have our own can of kombucha because, after all, it was launch day.
Instead, my mother-in-law quietly became the person holding our family together. She cooked for the girls, cared for them, checked on us, and somehow managed to care for toddlers and sick adults simultaneously without ever making it look difficult.
The house kept moving because she kept moving. And because this project has me thinking about women all the time, I found myself thinking about another version of womanhood entirely. The version of womanhood that exists after the years of carrying everything.
This week, that woman took care of us.
It feels strangely fitting that on the brink of launching a podcast about real life, I found myself so deeply in the middle of a real-life messy moment. Because maybe that is what Inner Lives has been about all along: not the polished version of our lives, and not the version that fits neatly into introductions or social media captions.
The podcast is about the inner lives that exist underneath the visible ones. The contradictions we carry. The questions we don't always say out loud. The versions of ourselves we are becoming while trying to hold together everything we have already built.
As the founder of this project, today I could be seen as the woman launching something into the world, but I am also the person who needed someone else to bring me tea this week. I am the mother who was still mothering whenever the medication kicked in and I had an hour of energy to give. I am the daughter calling her mom for comfort. And somehow, in the middle of all of that, I am also the woman who has never felt more alive.
Because perhaps real life was never meant to pause while we waited for the right moment to begin. Perhaps the conditions were never going to be perfect.
The work enters the world alongside the life that created it.
And today, the conversations begin.
Episode 01: What Burnout Taught Me About Success
with Nino Kvernadze
Nino had to be the first episode.
One of my first close friends in the United States, a sister I never had, and a woman I deeply admire.
An immigrant, a mother, a leader, and someone whose life has been shaped by constant reinvention across countries, cultures, and identities.
For years she embodied something many modern women quietly aspire to: ambition, achievement, competence, and independence. Until her body asked a harder question:
What is success actually for?
We talk about ambition, burnout, motherhood, chronic pain, identity, and enoughness.
Listen on: Spotify, or Apple Podcast.
Episode 02: I Thought Love Meant Sacrifice
with Megan Sales
Megan’s story is one that I suspect almost every woman will recognize herself in.
A conversation about love, people-pleasing, perfectionism, loneliness, and the quiet ways women learn to earn their worth through endless giving.
For years she embodied something many women quietly aspire to: being needed, being dependable, being good, and being loved.
Until she was forced to ask a harder question:
What happens when the version of love you were taught requires losing yourself?
We talk about self-abandonment, grief, relationships, identity, and the difficult work of learning that love and sacrifice were never meant to be the same thing.
Listen on: Spotify, or Apple Podcast.
Thank you for being here at the beginning. I have no idea what this project will become. I only know that the conversations we’ve been hungry for deserve a place to live.
Welcome to Inner Lives!
Mari
If you’d like to support this project, subscribe to this publication and stay for the conversations to come.
And if someone came to mind while reading this, send it to her.
Inner Lives was never meant to be consumed alone.
It was always meant to be shared.
