it’s nothing. I’m fine.

Raising Daughters After Deconstruction: Healing, Patriarchy & Conscious Parenting | Nikki & Aric

What does it really look like to break generational cycles when you're still healing from them yourself? Nikki and Aric sit down for an honest conversation about raising daughters after leaving high-control religion — and what it takes to parent intentionally when the old scripts are still running in the background. They talk about unpacking patriarchy in the small, everyday moments (not just the big philosophical conversations), what it means to let their girls feel the full range of emotions when they were raised to dismiss or suppress their own, and how they navigate real-time parenting disagreements as a couple — especially when their daughters are watching. This episode goes deep on: what repair actually looks like after losing it as a parent, how they're building community and belonging outside of religion, the beliefs that have been surprisingly hard to let go of even when they know they want something different, and the moments that have stopped them in their tracks and reminded them that something is working. If you're deconstructing, healing generational trauma, or trying to raise kids differently than you were raised — this one is for you. Topics covered: * Conscious parenting after religious deconstruction * Healing from high-control religion and patriarchy * Raising emotionally healthy daughters * Breaking generational cycles * Parenting triggers and self-awareness * Emotional validation and co-regulation * Building community outside of church * Repair and rupture in parenting * Navigating differences as a parenting team

Yurtism #3: The Power of Rituals — Why Intentional Habits Are the Quiet Foundation of Strong Relationships

It's the little things — done consistently — that hold relationships together. Rituals and traditions might sound like holidays and big gestures, but in healthy relationships they're often much simpler than that. A morning check-in. A weekly date night. The way you always say goodbye before leaving the house. These small, repeated moments create something relationships and families deeply need: predictability, security, and the feeling that we do this together. In this episode, Amy explores why intentional rituals are one of the most underrated tools in a healthy relationship — and why our busy, overscheduled lives make them so easy to let slip. When we stop being deliberate about the habits that connect us, we often don't notice the drift until it's been a while. In this Yurtism, you'll explore: * Why rituals create the sense of safety and assurance that relationships thrive on * How busy lives quietly erode the habits that keep couples and families connected * Simple ways to be more intentional about building traditions that you can count on You don't have to do something grand. You just have to do something — reliably.

Step-Parenting Part 1: What Nobody Told Us

What happens when two people fall in love — and completely underestimate what comes next? In this first of a two-part series, Amy and Josh get personal. They sit down together to talk about their own step-family journey, including the part they weren't prepared for at all: how hard it actually was. They unpack the unrealistic expectations they carried into blending a family — the fantasy that everyone would just click — and what it really looked like when they didn't. They talk about the culture clash neither of them saw coming: two families, two sets of unspoken rules, two completely different ways of doing everything. And how building something new out of all of that wasn't a moment. It was years. They also get honest about what was happening for their kids while they were deep in the honeymoon phase — because while Amy and Josh were riding a dopamine high, their children were quietly grieving the families they'd lost. That mismatch? It cost them. And they talk openly about the toll it took on their relationship. This episode is full of the things they wish someone had told them sooner — and what they would do differently if they could go back. If you're in a blended family, thinking about becoming one, or just trying to make sense of why it's been harder than you expected — this one's for you.

They Believed Me. They Did Nothing. (Part 2) — When the Systems Meant to Help You Serve the Abuser

This is Part 2. If you haven't listened to Part 1, start there — though this episode can also stand on its own. In the first episode, Amy Prieb walked through four moments of disclosure that were met with silence, redirection, and institutional failure. In this episode, she continues — and the stakes get higher, because the people failing her are no longer just family friends and boyfriends. They are licensed professionals, academic institutions, and the systems explicitly designed to help. She describes a family therapy session in which her therapist — a credentialed professional from her own church community — instructed her to narrate every sexual act her father had ever committed against her body, in a room that contained her abuser. When she refused, the therapist offered the only alternative he could think of: her father would narrate it instead. She walked out. She was the only person in that room who understood what was actually happening. She describes arriving in graduate school in her mid-thirties — training to become a therapist herself, in a Christian seminary — answering a direct question honestly in a human sexuality class, and being pulled aside afterward by a beloved mentor who told her the setting was inappropriate. And then she asks the question that sits at the center of this entire conversation: Then where the hell is the setting? Not at eleven. Not at fifteen. Not at sixteen. Not with CPS. Not in the therapy room. Not in graduate school. The cumulative answer to "not here, not now, not like this" is, and always was, never. This episode connects every one of those moments to the Jeffrey Epstein files — to the DOJ releasing survivors' names while redacting perpetrators', to the millions of documents still withheld, to the survivors who have been fighting for decades to be heard by systems that were never built for them. And it ends with Amy speaking directly — to the children still in those houses, to the adults who are right now deciding whose side they're on, and to every institution that has ever dressed up self-protection as procedural caution. This is not a sad story. This is an angry one. The anger is the point. And the anger is what healing actually looks like.   Content warning: This episode contains detailed discussion of childhood sexual abuse, therapeutic malpractice, institutional betrayal, religious coercion, and the Epstein investigation. It does not contain graphic descriptions of abuse. If you or someone you know has experienced sexual abuse, RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7: 1-800-656-4673 or rainn.org

They Believed Me. They Did Nothing. (Part 1) — Child Sexual Abuse, Patriarchy, and the Epstein Files

What do you do when you tell the truth — and the adults around you believe you, and still do nothing? In this first part of a two-episode conversation, Amy Prieb— licensed marriage and family therapist and survivor of childhood sexual abuse — tells the stories of every time she tried to get help as a child and was silenced. Not because people didn't believe her. They did. But believing a child and protecting a child turned out to be two very different things. Facilitated by Nikki Braaten, this conversation is honest, unflinching, and deeply informed by both lived experience and clinical understanding. Amy has done the work. She's not here to perform grief. She's here to name a system. In this episode, she walks through four specific moments: A boarding school disclosure at age 11, where her father minimized ongoing sexual abuse as "a few butt slaps" — and the adults accepted his version without question. A conversation at 15 with a trusted family friend who named mandatory reporting and then immediately steered her away from it, asking her instead to one day forgive her father at her wedding altar. A boyfriend at 16 who, upon hearing her disclosure, was overheard asking his friends how he could ever see her as a virgin now. And a CPS investigation that ended with a social worker slamming her notebook shut and citing the statute of limitations — while her abuser came home and began monitoring her every movement. Each of these moments is connected to what is happening right now with the Jeffrey Epstein files — the largest release of child sexual abuse investigation documents in American history. Because the playbook is identical whether the abuser is a missionary father in Thailand or a billionaire in Manhattan. Minimize. Redirect. Invoke forgiveness. Cite jurisdiction. Protect the men. Part 2 continues next week.   Content warning: This episode contains detailed discussion of childhood sexual abuse, institutional betrayal, religious coercion, purity culture, and the Epstein investigation. It does not contain graphic descriptions of abuse. If you or someone you know has experienced sexual abuse, RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7: 1-800-656-4673 or rainn.org