There’s likely a friend in your life you watch everything with. The one who texts: are you watching this? before you’ve even finished the first episode. The one whose name comes up every time a new season drops. The one who made you watch the show in the first place, and then watched you fall in love with it and felt smug and happy about it for weeks.

For me, that friend is Holly Curtis.

Holly was my very first guest on this show back in January. She’s back! And we did something a little different and a whole lot of fun: we each picked our top five friendship shows of all time, independently, no comparing notes, no cheating, and then sat down and revealed them live.

A few on her list I could have guessed. A few were surprises. There was a lot of debating, embarrassingly enthusiastic gushing about shows we love, making the case for shows we haven’t seen, and then one overlap we’d somehow, inexplicably, never talked about before. That moment alone was worth the whole episode.

We get into the shows that become security blankets - the ones you return to on a hard week because the friendships inside them feel so genuine and warm it’s almost like being with people you love. Why certain stories find you at exactly the right moment in your life and never fully let go. The college or high school years you moved through at the same time as Felicity or Angela Chase. The Stranger Things rooftop moment that mirrors the one you had with your own people where you swore you’d stay together forever.

We even talk about the friendship show that led to me start this podcast.

But really, this episode is about so much more than the shows.

It’s about the shared ritual of watching something together. The post-episode group texts. The remember-when rewatches. The plot twist debates at 11pm. The way certain stories become inseparable from the people you experienced them with.

My camp friend Jenny put it best in a text message she sent me while we were prepping for this episode: she said watching The Pitt with her college friends brings back memories of how she used to make everyone watch the new episode of ER*—while also recording it on a VCR—before she’d let anyone go out to the bar. It wasn’t a rule about TV. It was about being together.

That’s the whole episode right there.

Sometimes what we remember most isn’t the plot or cliffhangers or the characters. It’s who we watched these shows with.

This episode is for anyone who has ever loved a show the way you love a friend. Or loved a friend the way you love a show.

Our Top Five Friendship Shows 💛:

The Joy of Watching Together:

Holly’s Friend Picks:

• Listen to the episode to hear the full lists, we’re not giving that away here, friends. 😊

• But Holly’s comfort rewatch right now is Stranger Things. She rewatched the whole thing with her kids so she could watch Sunny and Curtis experience it for the first time. That’s the thing about the right shows. You don’t just watch them once.

Join the campfire:

We want your list! What are your top five friendship shows?

What show do you always send to the friend you watch everything with?
Which shows are nostalgic, taking you right back to the times you spent together?

I want to know what I’m missing.

Post in the comments here or over on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow—we’re building a running list we’ll reveal soon and talking about it all week.

Leave a comment

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✱ Small claim to television fame: I worked on ER back in college and just after. So The Pitt isn’t only a great show, it’s connected to a core memory and the people I met on set.

The emotions, the giggles, the hormones, the fierceness with which we clung to one another and the heartbreaking ways we hurt.

Something small can transport me back to 8th grade, the hardest year of my young life, when the new girl - quickly making her move toward idol status, with my friends in awe of the pretty new human in the hall - found it insufferable to stand next to me in cheerleading formation and not a single soul would talk to me for three days.

Being 13 is a unique and formative time of life, and nothing shapes it like our friends.

So it was with great joy that I sat down with two 13-year-old friends: one, my daughter and favorite human, the other, the best friend she found and we got to keep.

They came with note cards. Prepared and eloquent in a way that moved me.

These were not the girls I in from middle school, and so much about our conversation gave me hope.

One of the quiet, constant worries of being a parent is whether your child will find their people. Not just friends, but real ones, the kind who show up, who call, who notice when something’s off. You watch them go off to school every day and you hope. You hope they are seen. You hope they are not alone. You hope someone chooses them the way you would choose them, if you were thirteen and standing in a recess line and you had to decide.

I know what it felt like when nobody did.

So witnessing Emma and Sierra unpack their friendship was a joy.

They talked about what their 8th grade is actually like. The friend group they’ve carefully built. The way not having social media has made them closer to the people right in front of them. The fact that they’ve never gone a whole class period being mad at each other - they always figure it out before the bell. The late-night phone calls that start with solving math problems and go on for hours about nothing and everything.

Their experience is so different from mine that it made me want to cry, in the best possible way. (I mostly held it together because my crying makes Emma uncomfortable.)

There is a particular kind of relief that comes from watching your child be loved well by her friends.

Not performative friendship but the real thing, where someone calls you their rock and means it, where you’d rather lose a boy than lose each other, where you show up with note cards because you take the conversation seriously. Watching Emma and Sierra together gives me a feeling I don’t have a perfect word for. Pride is part of it. Gratitude is part of it. Something like hope is the rest.

If this is the state of some teenage girls and their friendships right now, then I have more hope for this generation than I sometimes let myself feel.

There was also, for the record, a lot of laughter.

We also talk about Riverdale and the Mothman coincidence that had them both losing their minds in class. What they really think about their moms being friends. What they’d say to any kid still looking for their people. And what they each want the other to know, said out loud, on mic, at the end. I will not spoil that part.

This one is for anyone with a 13-year-old in their life. For every parent who has ever sent their kid off to school and quietly hoped someone would choose them. And for anyone who remembers their first real teenage friend - the one you’d call at nine at night just to talk.

Meet my Friends, Emma & Sierra 💛:

For Kids Still Finding Their People:

Emma & Sierra’s Friend Picks:

• The Keeper of the Lost Cities series, Duolingo streaks, thrifting, and late-night phone calls.

• Also, Riverdale on Netflix. (Emma’s mom recommends the old school Archie and Betty comics, which she still has stacks of in her parent’s cottage basement.)

Join the campfire:

Do you remember your 8th grade friendships? Was there someone who showed up for you the way Sierra shows up for Emma?

Tell me in the comments. Or just go text them right now.

Leave a comment below, or come find us on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow.

Leave a comment

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💌 Share this episode with the friend who got you through middle school

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✱ They approved all the photos before we started. Sierra had notes on the lighting for two of them. She has a future in photography. Emma has a future in public speaking and making everyone around her feel like the most important person in the room. I grew one of them in my body and I am still not over it.

Jeanne’s living room in Massachusetts is the kind of space that tells you everything about a person before they say a word. Art everywhere. Plants. Objects that have clearly traveled. You could feel the life that had been lived in and around that house, the intention behind every corner of it. And Alice’s home, which I walked through beforehand (appropriately noticing all her friendship paintings), had the same quality. Two women who had spent decades building something around themselves that reflected who they actually are.

I had known Alice for years. She’s one of those people who has a generosity of spirit that you just want to be near, creative and eloquent and genuinely curious about everyone she meets. She hired me once off a cover letter about beets, which tells you almost everything. I had never met Jeanne. I only knew her through the pieces Alice had shared: that they been fixed up by a mutual friend, that they had lived in the same corner of the world for decades, that they now swam together and sang in a community chorus and saved each other seats in the back row.

I also knew that Jeanne had just given the eulogy for a friend she had known since she was ten years old.

What I didn’t know was how fun it would be. How much we’d laugh. How the whole thing would feel both reverent and delightfully silly at the same time, which is, I think, what the best friendships actually feel like from the inside.

Jeanne’s story about her childhood friend is deeply moving, and I don’t want to give too much away here. But I will say there is a moment in this conversation that felt almost like a Steel Magnolias scene to me, the way grief and love and laughter showed up in the same breath, the way the people we want beside us when things get hard are always, always the ones who can still make us laugh. Jeanne said something in that moment to Alice that has lingered with me.

We also talked openly about aging. Alice is 71 and she does not soften it: it is, as she puts it, just fucking shocking. We talked about the pull of the community chorus and the specific joy of singing badly with people you love. We talked about grace, which Alice distinguishes from forgiveness very carefully, as the art of letting people be who they are in your company and just rolling with it. We talked about tile floors and handwritten notes and the tiny rituals that hold a long friendship together.

I drove home feeling like they had restored something in me. Like I had been let in on a gift. It was something sacred to witness, as if I had been given a glimpse of what friendship looks like if you just keep showing up for each other across all the years and all the versions of yourselves.

I want to be that for someone. I want someone to be that for me.

I am sincerely hoping Jeanne invites me to her next round of charades and Alice lets me into the chorus “cult”. I would like to stay in the warmth of their friendship for as long as they’ll have me.

This episode comes with a lot of laughs, a little heartbreak, and so much wisdom about how to love your people well. It’s for anyone who has friends they’ve known throughout their life, people they love deeply and are also a little terrified of losing.

Meet my Friends, Alice and Jeanne 💛:

Just Make a Bunch of Friends and Figure it Out

Alice & Jeanne’s Friend Picks:

• Alice: A community chorus. You don’t have to read music. You just have to show up and invite your friends.

  
  Also, anything by Anne Lamott, who I adore also. I just saw her on stage with Neal Allen at the Emerson Theater in Boston and can attest she is delightful in person as she is on the page. She, too, turns to her friends when she needs to keep the writing faith.)

• Jeanne: Charades! Or a handwritten note. She’s embracing in this in carrying on the legacy of her dear friend. Just find a card, write something true, and send it. Even if your handwriting is impossible to read. (Especially then.)

Join the campfire:

Is there a friend who has been with you through more than one version of yourself? Someone you're a little terrified of losing?

Tell me about them. Or forward this episode to that person right now, while you're thinking of them.

Leave a comment below, or come find us on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow.

Leave a comment

Listen, Share, Connect:

🎧 Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | or wherever you listen

⭐ Subscribe and leave a review—it genuinely helps more people find us

💌 Share this episode with the friend whose face just appeared in your mind

If this episode meant something to you, the kindest thing you can do is share it with one friend who needs it or leave a review. It helps more people find the campfire.

✱ We recorded this on a gray afternoon in Jeanne's living room, and at one point her husband Ted walked in while we were mid-conversation about friendships with men. He took it very well.

Not for more friends exactly, but for a friend nearby. Someone whose door you can walk to. Someone who knows your life because she’s actually in it.

I’ve spent most of my life having to drive to my people. I grew up in a remote part of Michigan where the nearest neighbor was a few miles away and every playdate meant a 15-minute drive. The one thing I always dreamed of was kids nearby and a friend whose house I could walk to. I didn’t know that dream was going to come true as an adult because of a school contact list and a text message that a stranger was brave enough to send.

Marcy had just moved back to the area—back into the house she grew up in, actually —and one day she was scanning the class list the school sent home, saw our name, and did the most courageous and most awkward-feeling thing most of us never do: she reached out.

She wrote and rewrote a mom-to-mom text 800 times before she finally sent it.

Hi, we live down the road. Do you want to be friends? And do your kids want to be friends?

On her end it felt creepy. Weird. Too much. On my end it felt like a gift had been dropped on the doorstep.

Little did she know that over here was someone who had grown up with no neighbors, who had always dreamed of kids on bikes and friends down the street. When her message came through, it had me feeling the pull towards her.

I wrote back: “Hey, friend. Come on over.”

And that was the beginning.

At first it was pure logistics: carpools, Halloweens in the cul-de-sac, quick conversations in the kitchen at pickup. But somewhere in there, something shifted.

Our daughters would actually scheme to make sure one of us had to do drop-off because they knew it meant an extra hour of us standing in the kitchen talking.

Ten-minute drives to book club became tiny therapy sessions. One night, sitting in the car on the way in, I told Marcy: I can’t go in yet. Can we drive around and talk first? That was the moment she stopped being my daughter’s friend’s mom and became one of the people I call when life is really happening.

Now our girls are teenagers and the season has changed completely. We’re not making plans around them anymore, we’re making plans for ourselves. Early morning coffees while they sleep off sleepovers. “Talk me down before I yell at a kid” texts.

There is a particular kind of relief in having someone in the foxhole with you in this season. Someone who knows your kid almost as well as you do, who has watched her grow up in your kitchen and theirs, who can text you: she’s okay, she’s just having a day.

Marcy also brings something to our friendship I love: her professional lens.

She’s a CliftonStrengths coach, which means she can spot your wiring—your superpower and your kryptonite—in about five minutes. I love chatting about what your strengths reveal about friendship chemistry, and why understanding each other’s wiring can soften those little frictions before they pile up. When she sees my Achiever-Maximizer side spinning out, she already knows what’s happening. And I know the same about her.

One of my favorite parts of this conversation is when we talk about bringing back the afternoon pop-over.

So much of our modern life is scheduled, digital, and carefully coordinated. And yet some of the most joyful, grounding moments in my friendship with Marcy have come from incredibly simple, analog things—a knock on the door and “are you free for a walk?”, knowing which door is always unlocked, borrowing sugar or letting each other’s dogs out, her daughter Reese just showing up at our house because she knows she’s always welcome.

It sounds small. To me, it feels like the thing my childhood self was always searching for: a village you can actually walk to.

This is a story about neighborhood friendship, mothering teenage girls, and the quiet magic of the people who live within biking distance on the block.

It’s also an invitation: sometimes the bravest thing we can do is text the person down the street and say, “Do you want to be friends?”

Have a listen 💛:

Sending the “Do You Want to Be Friends?” Text

Marcy’s Friend Picks:

• Depends on the friend. She’s magical at finding the one thing each friend needs most in their life. For me, it’s the local coffee shops.

• The most recent find we’re loving? Swell House here in York, Maine.

Join the campfire:

Have you ever made a friend in the neighborhood who ended up changing your life?

Or is there someone on your street you’ve been meaning to text but haven’t quite found the courage? Hit reply and tell me about them.

Or forward this to the friend down your own street and let them know they’re one of your people.

Leave a comment below, or come find us on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow.

Leave a comment

Listen, Share, Connect:

🎧 Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | or wherever you listen

⭐ Subscribe and leave a review—it genuinely helps more people find us

💌 Share this episode with the friend whose face just appeared in your mind

If this episode meant something to you, the kindest thing you can do is share it with one friend who needs it or leave a review. It helps more people find the campfire.

✱ We recorded this on a Sunday morning while both our daughters were asleep at sleepovers. Which meant we had a rare moment to ourselves in the house. Very on brand for a friendship that started in a kitchen at pickup.

I did not expect this show to change my own friendships.

I thought I was making something for you. A campfire for other people to gather around. I’d show up, have the conversations, send them out into the world, and hope they brought joy and deeper connections to others. That was the plan.

What I didn’t plan for was my own friends showing up in my inbox differently. Saying things they hadn’t said before. Asking questions they’d never thought to ask. One told me the show had sparked something - a deep joy and appreciation for friendship she hadn’t stopped to feel in years. One told me, hilariously, that she wanted to defend me to my other friends. (I’m still not entirely sure what that means but I am completely here for it.) One told me to stop apologizing so much. To give myself the grace I give everyone else.

I have been talking to my friends my whole life.

And somehow, making a show about friendship is the thing that finally made me talk to them about the friendship itself.

That’s what this week’s episode is about. Not a guest, just me, halfway through the season, wanting to sit with you for a minute before we keep going. Because something powerful is happening around this campfire that I didn’t see coming, and I think it matters more than we knew.

Women are reaching out to friends they’d lost. Forwarding episodes to sisters with no note except this is us. Making teary phone calls from their cars. Sending the text they’d been sitting on for months. And every guest who has sat across from me - single one - has said some version of the same thing: I’ve never been asked these questions before.

Who among us has?

I have a feeling that if you went to your person this week, the one whose face just appeared in your mind, and asked her something real about your friendship itself, something would shift. I know it because I’ve watched it happen, episode after episode, in my own life and in yours.

When you finally turn the lens that way, something powerful shifts. Your friendship becomes more intentional, more honest, more seen.

This episode is my attempt to give you the questions. And to tell you: you don’t need a podcast to ask them.

This episode is for anyone who has spent years talking to their friends and never once talked about the friendship itself.

Oh and stay tuned to the episode to hear a little teaser of who’s coming up in the back half of the season. I genuinely cannot wait for you to meet who’s coming to this couch next.

Amy’s Friend Pick:

• Social Print Studio — my favorite place to print photos of my friends. Because the people who matter deserve to be on your walls, not just your camera roll.

  
  Here’s a snapshot of my friendship wall, made with their square prints:

  

Join the campfire:

What question would you most want to ask your closest friend?

Go strike up a conversation over coffee or your weighted vest walk.
(Today, not tomorrow.)

Start with this: What’s your favorite memory of us?
Or be brave and ask: What do you most need from me?

Then come back and tell me what happened.

Leave a comment

Listen, Share, Connect:

🎧 Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | or wherever you listen

⭐ Subscribe and leave a review—it genuinely helps more people find us

💌 Share with the friend who became family and tag us to win a handwritten note and a little something in the mail

🛼 Come connect with on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow.

*A favorite friend of yours, and mine!, is coming back: This time to talk about the joy of co-watching your favorite shows with friends, and which ones about friendship we’re most obsessed with right now. Get your own lists ready, my friends, it’s going to be a good one.

You know the ones: you meet by chance, have a reason to connect, and one thing leads to another and you couldn’t imagine life without them.

That’s the friend Sarah has been for me.

We’ve been in each other’s lives for thirteen years. She was 23 when we met. I was almost 40. She worked at my daughter’s outdoor school, and from the first time I picked Emma up and felt the ease of her, I just knew. This girl is going to be in my life.

What I didn’t know was how true that would turn out to be, or how many layers it would have.

Teacher. Nanny. Creative collaborator. Co-traveler to California when Max was tiny. House sitter. The person who quietly watched me figure out how to mother, find my voice, build things and break things and build again.

And now, in a few months, someone I get the honor of watching step into motherhood herself.

Recording this conversation felt like exhaling. Sarah is one of those people who makes everything feel possible and none of it feel heavy. She’s the rays to my sunshine. The person I’ve always wanted more of around me.

But what surprised me, and I think will surprise you too, is how much I’d never actually asked her. What did it feel like on her side of all of it? Were there moments she wanted to pull back? Was I asking too much?

Her answers moved me. Because what felt vulnerable or big to me was never a burden for her. She just got me. And that, it turns out, is the whole thing.

There’s also a story in here that gives me chills still. Sarah found her late father’s painting at a thrift store — a bird on a cliff, in his hand — on the same day a healer had described that exact image appearing in her energy field. I gifted her that session and was on the other end of her voice notes as it unfolded. I remember feeling it with her in real time. It’s the kind of moment that reminds you why having a friend who holds space for your grief and your signs is one of the most sacred things there is.

We also talk about the Venn diagram of friendship that gets chunkier every year, what frozen pizza has to do with friendship resilience, pebbling as a love language, and what Sarah hopes her baby learns from watching her show up for her people.

Plus, pulling oracle cards (our favorite joint activity) and the spirituality of friendship: how sometimes you just feel intuitively what what your friend feels.

This episode is for anyone who has someone in their life who shouldn’t be their person on paper—and is anyway. For those who follow the chemistry in friendship, not the rules.

Have a listen 💛:

Friendship as a Venn Diagram: Chunky in the Middle :

Sarah’s Friend Picks:

• The Infinity Pillow — the circular travel pillow that fits the exact nook in your neck that regular pillows miss. Sarah sleeps with hers, travels with hers, and is already plotting to get me one. High recommendation from a woman who takes her sleep very seriously.

• Coffee—yes, coffee. But specifically: bringing a friend a cup as a love language. Sarah spent years quietly slipping me a decaf when I said I didn’t need the caffeine but clearly needed the ritual. That’s friendship.

• Follow your new friend Sarah over on Instagram.

Join the campfire:

Is there someone in your life who shouldn’t be your person on paper—different age, different stage, different world—and yet they’re one of the most important relationships you have?

Tell us about them. Tag them. Let them know the Venn diagram is chunky.

And if this episode makes you want to reach out to someone you’ve been meaning to: please do it. Today, not tomorrow.

Leave a comment below, or come find us on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow.

Leave a comment

Listen, Share, Connect:

🎧 Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | or wherever you listen

⭐ Subscribe and leave a review—it genuinely helps more people find us

💌 Share with the friend who became family and tag us to win a handwritten note and a little something in the mail

*Sarah and I recorded this episode twice. The first attempt had audio issues we couldn’t save. She showed up for take two without a single complaint. Which is the most Sarah thing that could have happened — and tells you everything you need to know about her. She’s been there for so many figure it out moments in my life. She just stands witness and says: “I got you, girl.”

I have been wanting to have this conversation for a long time. This week I sit down with —executive coach, wordsmith, and honestly, someone I’ve admired from a slight distance since the moment we met. We found each other through a women’s network at one of the hardest moments of my life. I was letting go of a decade of work and pretty lost, and she was the person who helped me find solid ground. Turns out, that’s kind of her thing.

She’s the friend you call when your husband’s left you, when the business is ending, when everything’s up in the air. She showed up for this conversation exactly like that—no small talk, no warm up, straight to what’s real.

What I didn’t expect was how open she would be about her own story. Katharine spent years between seven and sixteen deliberately becoming “weird” so she’d never have to say goodbye to anyone again. She was lonely in ways that would break your heart, and she turned all of it into one of the most extraordinary superpowers I’ve ever encountered.

She is a student of human nature in the deepest way, and sitting with her for this conversation felt like a gift.

Oh, and she actually co-owns a seven-bedroom vacation home with sixteen of her closest friends! A life-long dream of mine (and all my camp friends). We go into all the details: The Burning Man origin story, the legal docs, the hard money conversations, and what it felt like to stand on that deck and know she’d be there with her people when she’s 80.

I may have gotten a little emotional. Who among us hasn’t texted a friend a property picturing that same beautiful thing?

We also talk about working out your attachment issues on your friends before calling in a partner, the midlife shift from big adventures to being woven into each other’s everyday life, and why the fastest shortcut to real friendship is skipping straight to what’s true.

This one really stuck with me. I think you’ll adore Katharine, too. It’s for anyone who has a friendship they’ve been meaning to lean into—and a vacation home with their people they’ve been meaning to stop just dreaming about.

Have a listen:

In this episode, we talk about:

• Becoming “weird” at seven so she’d never have to say goodbye again

• The chameleon superpower born from lonely seasons

• Why shared experience is the fastest shortcut to real friendship

• Co-owning a house with sixteen friends — the legal docs, the money talks, the joy

• Working out your attachment issues on your friends first

• The midlife shift from big adventures to everyday life woven together

• Building things with your people: bake sale to school board to vacation home

Friendship in Midlife: Coming Over While You Do Dishes:

Katharine’s Friend Picks:

• Matrix by Lauren Groff — the literary fiction she recommends to everyone right now. Set in medieval times, wildly feminist, a little witchy, and deeply matriarchal. Perfect for when the news is too much and you need to retreat into something extraordinary.

• An Akashic Records Reading with Tiffany — Katharine’s most likely brunch recommendation. A channel for your guides who can answer anything — from what to charge for your next offer to what your heart needs to hear right now.

• Want the docs to get start on your dream vacation home with friends?
  Katharine and her friend @ have got you covered: start here for the full story (and legal doc examples!).

• Follow your new friend Katharine at The Idea Shift here on Substack and over on her website.
  

Join the campfire:

Have you ever dreamed about co‑owning a place with your closest friends?

Or is there someone in your orbit you’ve been admiring from a slight distance, a friendship you’ve been meaning to lean into but haven’t quite yet?

Tell us who you’d buy a house with. Where would it be?

Leave a comment

Listen, Share, Connect:

🎧 Listen to the episode above, or wherever you get your podcasts

📺 The 1‑min show trailer is here

⭐ Subscribe and leave us a review: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | or wherever you listen

💌 Share this episode with a friend you’d buy a house with…or the one you’ve been meaning to get closer to. Tag us @theyeahnoforsureshow to enter to win a handwritten note and a little something in the mail.

*Katharine didn’t know what “for sure” meant before we recorded. She asked me to explain the context beforehand, which felt very on brand for someone who moved countries five times growing up. She did great with it in the lightening round!

What happens when the person who’s known you your whole life becomes your closest friend—and what does it take to actually get there?

This week I sit down with my amazing sister Megan, the only person on earth who has seen every version of me—the awkward ones and the becoming ones, even the mullet haircut ones—for a fun conversation we should have had years ago. With a six-year age gap between us, we weren’t always close. We were siblings growing up in different worlds, and there were seasons where I wasn’t the sister I wanted to be. (Raise your hand if you’ve been there and would go back 🙋‍♀️.) This is the honest story of how we found our way to real sisterhood and chose each other as friends in our early twenties and midlife.

Megan is a speech-language pathologist who is quietly changing the world for children and families, a mother of three, a bread baker, a thrifter, and the person whose name on my phone makes everything feel a little more okay. She was also, for a while, the little sister I was too caught up in my own inner circle to truly see. This episode is my attempt to say that out loud—and to ask her what it was really like.

We get into the camp summer where Megan wanted into my inner circle and I wasn’t paying attention, the slow burn of becoming actual friends through motherhood, a fight in Chicago I’m not proud of, and what sisters bring to friendship that nobody else can. We talk about aging parents, the sister-in-laws who became dear friends, staying close across distance when life has taken you in different directions, and the Yeah, No, For Sure lightning round (including whether Dad actually likes me better).

One of her answers surprised me. One made me emotional. And one involves Santa Claus, a boombox, and Amy Grant at Christmas.

This episode is for anyone who has a sister they love, a sister relationship that’s complicated, or has ever wondered whether the person who’s known you longest could also be the one who knows you best.

Have a listen:

In this episode, we talk about:

• The six-year age gap that made us strangers before it made us close

• The camp summer Megan wanted into my inner circle — and what I missed

• The slow burn: how motherhood finally brought us together as real friends

• A fight in Chicago, mutual accountability, and what repair actually looks like between sisters

• What sisters bring to friendship that literally nobody else can

• Aging parents and the shorthand that only siblings have

• Sister-in-laws as the insiders who are also outsiders — and why that’s a gift

• Staying close across distance when life has taken you in different directions

• The Disney World story

• Plus, a Santa Claus spoiler alert

Megan’s Friend Picks: Megan’s current favorites for the friends in your life:

• Thrifting — her love language and her recommendation for everyone. Buy less, buy secondhand, feel better about all of it. (It runs in the family - she, my brother Andy and sister-in-law Katie are the best at it I know.)

• Self-tanner drops — by Beauty by Earth because some of us (hi, melanoma) are vampires who still want a sun-kissed glow. A few drops in your moisturizer and you’re golden. Literally.

• A really great tote bag — the RUX 70L organized, hard-sided, fits-everything kind that makes you feel like you have your life together even when you don’t.

Join the campfire:

Talk to us: When did your sister become your friend? Was there a moment, or was it a slow burn?

And if it’s complicated, that’s welcome here too. Tell us your stories and tag your sister people.

Leave a comment

If this episode makes you want to call your sister - or whoever your sister is in your life - please do it. Today, not tomorrow. Send them this episode and tell them you’re thinking of them.

Follow the show on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode, and come hang out with us on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow for behind-the-scenes moments and campfire energy.

*Fun fact! Megan came prepared to this episode with her own Yeah, No, For Sure questions for me. I did not see that coming. Sisters, it turns out, always find a way to get the last word.

My friend Alisa said something in the first few minutes of our conversation that really moved me.

“I suck at friendship.”

Not apologetically. Not in hesitation. Just as a plain, true thing.

And what amazed me wasn’t just the admission, it was how honestly she could look at herself. How she could talk about the friends she’s lost, sit with what her role was in it, and tell me what she’s learning to do differently now. That kind of self-reflection is rare and beautiful.

Alisa is a birth doula, founder of Let’s Talk Birthy, amateur cattle rancher, and the woman who became my founder doula during the hardest years of building Pumpspotting. She loves people deeply. She listens in a way that makes you feel completely seen. But for Alisa, friendship has always meant something really specific: a depth of connection, a level of knowing, the kind where you’d give someone a kidney without thinking twice. And when she measures her friendships against that, she’s honest about where things haven’t worked out.

There’s grief in this conversation—real grief for friends who mattered deeply and are no longer there. But there’s also so much hope and possibility in where she is now.

Alisa is in a beautiful new moment in midlife. Her kids are grown, her calendar has space she’s never had before, and for the first time, she’s choosing friends with real intention. People who match who she actually is in this season of life. She calls them intentional friendships, and describes what they feel like: lighter, more honest, nobody performing. It made me think about what that kind of friendship could look like for all of us when we finally give ourselves permission to choose.

We also get into the teenage daughter years. Alisa’s relationship with her daughter was brutal for a stretch—she doesn’t sugarcoat it—and she made it to the other side. They are now, genuinely, best friends. She told me what a child psychiatrist told her that changed everything, and gave me hope that Emma and I, too, can survive our season.

This conversation stayed with me long after we stopped recording. Stay with it all the way through: it gets richer as it goes.

Have a listen:

In this episode:

• Why Alisa says she sucks at friendship, and the specific, unsparing way she means it

• The grief of losing friends you loved and sitting honestly with your own role in it

• What intentional friendship looks like in your 50s when you’re finally choosing people for who you actually are now

• The kidney definition: who would you give one to, and what that tells you about your friendships

• “If you have two people you can call at 2am, you’re already ahead of the game”

• The teenage daughter years: the advice that changed everything, and gave me so much hope for friendship on the other side
  

Alisa’s Friend Pick: She cannot stop gifting the Besque Magic Body Oil — the one she says 400 million women apparently discovered before her. High recommendation from a woman who has never met a beauty product she didn’t like.

Join the campfire:

Who would you give a kidney to? Drop their name in the comments and tag them. Let them know they made the list.

Leave a comment

There's someone in your life who needs this conversation.
Maybe they've lost a friendship and wonder what their part was. Maybe their friendships don't quite fit who they are anymore. Maybe they're surviving the teenage daughter years and need to hear it gets better. Send them this episode.

Follow the show and come find us on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow.

*Alisa was one of the first people who knew this show was coming: she’s been cheering it on from the very beginning. Getting to have her on the couch felt like exactly the right kind of full-circle moment.

What happens when your app agency consultant becomes your reality TV co‑star, your startup builder of an impossible idea, and one of your deepest soulmate friends?

Ever had a friend who’d join your wildest pitch?
This is the story of friendship forged in fire.*

In this episode, I sit down with tech founder Lindsey Witmer Collins, the brilliant software architect and tech founder, who saw my Pumpspotting pitch deck and told me I’d be successful in our first meeting. (Obviously, I loved her from day one.)

Lindsey is the friend who said yes to pitching on a moving escalator to Gwyneth Paltrow and Will.i.am, who dreamed up the Breast Express with me at 4 a.m. over tequila after we got rejected, and who spent years in the trenches building a movement that changed the conversation around breastfeeding in America.

We get into the serendipitous mutual friend who introduced us, what Lindsey saw in that original orange‑and‑teal PowerPoint that made her want to work with me, and how we ended up as the very first pitch on the very first episode of Apple TV’s Planet of the Apps.

We talk about standing on that floor getting all green lights from celebrity mentors and still being told no, the devastating rejection that led to our most brilliant idea: a teal‑and‑pink boob‑covered Breast Express and tour the country.

But mostly, we talk about what it takes to build impossible things together. The isolation of being an inventor, the importance of being truly seen in the trenches, and why our friendship survived when the business didn’t. Plus the beautiful role reversal happening now, where I get to support Lindsey’s dream of Scribbly Books after all those years she held me together on her couch.

This isn’t about perfect partnerships. It’s about the messy, ambitious, life-changing kind of friendship where someone matches your vision and says “let’s do it” instead of “are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Have a listen:

In this episode, we get into:

• How a Costa Rica wellness retreat led to meeting your soulmate business friend

• What Lindsey saw in Amy’s pitch deck that made her know she’d succeed

• Pitching on a moving escalator to Gwyneth Paltrow, Will.i.am, Gary Vee, and Jessica Alba

• Getting all green lights on Apple’s Planet of the Apps and still being rejected

• The 4 a.m. tequila margarita moment that birthed the Breast Express

• Building a teal‑and‑pink boob bus and touring the country (Vogue, BBC, local news everywhere)

• What it actually costs emotionally to invent something that’s never existed before

• Why building businesses together can destroy or deepen friendship, and what makes the difference

• The beautiful role reversal: supporting each other’s dreams across a decade

• Soulmate friends vs. acquaintances we call friends (and why the precious few matter so much)

• AI, social fabric, and why we need to learn our UPS driver’s name

• Plus: Why Midwest friends are the best friends, Lindsey’s legendary gift‑giving, and whether you should say yes to reality TV with your friends
  

Perfect for anyone building something big and impossible right now, wondering if friendships can survive when businesses don’t, or looking for that one person who says “let’s build a bus” instead of “are you sure?”

Lindsey’s Friend Picks

Lindsey’s current obsessions she’s gifting to all her friends:

• Small dogs (Happy will make you want one.)

• OJS‑M sparkly nail polish from Olive & June (so forgiving when it chips you can’t even tell)

• Lake Pajamas for maximum coziness (I got them for Christmas & am also in love)

Special mention: Check out Lindsey’s company Scribbly Books, where she creates magical custom illustrated storybooks featuring your kids as the main characters. Every page is a work of art and my kids are obsessed.

Join the campfire conversation

Talk to us: Who’s the friend who said “let’s do it” instead of “are you sure?” Have you ever had a friendship forged through building something impossible together? Tell us your stories.

Leave a comment

If you’re building something big right now and you have that one friend who doesn’t ask “are you sure?” but says “let’s figure it out”, send them this episode. Tell them you see them.

Follow the show on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode, and come hang out with us on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow for behind‑the‑scenes moments and campfire energy.

*Fun fact: When we say friendship forged in fire we mean it: Lindsey and I have been in many high-stakes scenarios together from reality TV to big investor pitches (while pumping) to live QVC. Talk about trust…she’s seen me at my most nervous and vulnerable and still stuck around.

If you’ve been following along, you know this podcast was born from one of the hardest seasons of my life. Closing Pumpspotting after a decade. Navigating perimenopause. Aging parents. Kids getting bigger. Outgrowing communities and identities I’d built my entire life around. Everything was shifting and I felt so lost and so lonely.

And the thing that saved me? Friendship. The real kind. The kind where you call someone from a parking lot and they just know you’re not okay.

It spurred me to bring friendship conversations - the joy, connection, curiosity, heartbreak, and celebration - forward. To celebrate the people who love their people and crave more like me.

Today we release the first two episodes!

Episode 1: The Friend Who Made This Show is my story. Why I decided to light this campfire, why friendship matters so damn much, and why I think we all need permission to talk about this beautiful, messy, vital thing more than we do.

Episode 2: The Friend You Almost Lost is my conversation with Holly Curtis—the brilliant creative director who designed this entire brand, my sauna companion, and the friend I almost lost. We get into the Newport Folk Festival moment where everything almost fractured, the pitch-black house where she delivered my tear-stained apology letter at midnight, and what it actually costs to show up for your people. Also matching metallic snowsuits. It’s vulnerable and funny and real.

I’m not a friendship expert. I’m just someone who has lived this: the spark of connection, the courage it takes to put yourself out there, the heartbreak of growing apart, the joy of being truly seen. And I wanted to create a space where we could all talk about it together.

So here’s what would mean the world to me:

Listen. Both episodes are live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Share it with someone who needs it. If you have that one friend who’s shown up in your darkest moments - send them Episode 2. If you’re in the messy middle craving more connection - send Episode 1 to someone who gets it.

Tell me your story. Drop a comment: Who’s the friend you call from parking lots? What season of friendship are you in right now?

I’m so grateful you’re here. This wouldn’t exist without all of you. Everyone who’s been cheering me on, everyone who said “yes, this matters,” everyone who’s shared their own friendship stories with me over the past year.

Nothing is inner circle here. Pull up a chair. You’re part of this now.

With so much love, your friend:
Amy

P.S. Come hang out on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow for all the behind-the-scenes and campfire moments.

*And yes, take out the trash day is a real thing for Holly and I. It’s an amazing way to clear the physical - and emotional - garbage in your world. (And not forget to put out the bins.) Give it a try!

What happens when a friendship hits a breaking point, and you choose to repair it instead of run?

In this first guest episode, I sit down for an honest conversation with Holly Curtis, brilliant creative director, sauna companion, and the friend who answered the phone when I had my first panic attack in an orthodontist parking lot.

Holly and I have been friends for a decade, since our kids were 18 months old. I’m one of the only people Holly is truly vulnerable with besides her partner. But we almost lost each other. We get into the Newport Folk Festival moment where our friendship nearly fractured, the pitch-black house at midnight where Holly delivered a tear-stained apology letter, and why we both decided this friendship was worth the hard work of repair.

We talk about what it actually costs to show up for your people—yes, the panic-attack phone calls from parking lots and job-loss spirals while gripping the steering wheel, but also the matching metallic snowsuits that got us through Covid outdoor fires, being on each other’s emergency contact lists for literally everything, and constantly lowering our expectations while being really excited when plans actually happen. Holly shares why deep friendship means letting someone see past all the baggage you’re not quiet about, and what makes this kind of relationship worth fighting for.

This isn’t about perfect friendship. It’s about the messy, vulnerable, life-saving kind that catches you when you’re falling apart and says, “I can feel that you’re not okay.”

“I have a lot of baggage and I am not quiet about it. So a lot of people know a lot about me but maybe don’t really know me.”

Perfect for anyone who’s ever almost lost a friend, wonders if deep friendship is still possible in midlife, or needs permission to call someone crying from the parking lot.

In this episode, we talk about:

• The orthodontist parking lot panic attack that changed everything

• Why Holly is on all of Amy’s emergency contact lists (and vice versa)

• The friendship rupture at Newport Folk Festival - and how we repaired it

• Why not every friendship needs the same level of depth (and how to know when you’ve found your person)

• Lowering expectations and being really excited when things actually happen

• What it means to architect joyful, uncomplicated friendships for our kids

• Plus, which friendship show is better: Gilmore Girls or Parenthood (discuss in the comments!)

Holly’s Friend Pick: Holly’s heavily gifted item for all her friends? Wooden Spoon Magic Magnesium. Her nightly ritual for better sleep in the post-pandemic, pre-menopause spiral we’re all living through. “I think all of us were having trouble sleeping...and that was the one thing that I changed.” Way better than another glass of rosé before bed.

Grab yours with code YEAHNOFORSURE for 10% off.

(This is an affiliate link however any purchases help keep this campfire going, and we only share what we friends actually love.)

Join the campfire conversation:

Talk to us: Who’s the friend you call from parking lots? Have you ever had a friendship rupture that you chose to repair? Tell us your stories and tag your friends.

Leave a comment

If you have that one friend who’s shown up for you in your darkest parking‑lot moment - send them this episode. Tell them you’re thinking of them.

Follow the show on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode, and come hang out with us on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow for behind-the-scenes moments and campfire energy.

**Fun fact! Holly is the creative brain behind our Yeah, No, For Sure brand. She’s the one who came up with the idea of the asterisk, because every friendship has them: those tiny, specific moments that no one else would understand. The footnotes are what make every friendship better, so keep an eye out for our annotations…it’s where the good stuff happens.

Welcome, welcome to the very first episode of The Yeah, No, For Sure Show!

If you find yourself in the messy middle of life - full calendar, empty tank, craving your friends who truly get you - this episode is for you. I’m Amy, Mainer, mother, friendship architect. I’m sharing the story of how friendship quite literally saved me in one of the hardest seasons of my life, how connecting people has always been at my core, and why giving friendship the mic feels more urgent than ever.

From the loneliness epidemic to the quiet ache of outgrowing old friendships, I talk about the beautiful, vulnerable, energizing, and sometimes heartbreaking reality of trying to find and keep your people. I get raw about the moment everything shifted - closing a decade-long business while navigating aging parents and perimenopause, outgrowing the identity I’d built my life around, and realizing I needed friends more than ever.

You’ll hear why this isn’t an advice show—and why I don’t claim to be a “friendship expert”—but rather a campfire for women who love their people and are still craving something more. I share my vision for the show: calling up my favorite humans, talking about the seasons of friendship we all move through, and making sure you never feel like you’re failing at something everyone else has figured out.

“Sometimes it’ll be a variety show. Sometimes it’ll be a roadshow. I guarantee it’ll be a shit show. Because friendship is not about perfection. It’s about the beautiful messiness of showing up for one another.”*

In this episode, we talk about:

• What it feels like to be in the “messy middle” of life and friendship.

• The loneliness epidemic and why so many of us feel disconnected, even when our lives are full.

• Outgrowing old identities, communities, and friendships - and what comes next.

• How friendship can be joyful, complex, transformative, and imperfect all at once.

• Why this show is designed to feel like you’re the third friend at the table.

Join the campfire conversation:

You made it! Now let’s be friends: jump in on the conversation!

Share a favorite friend story or what brought you here in the comments. We’re building a community of people who love their people and aren’t afraid to talk about the beautiful mess of friendship.

Leave a comment

Follow the show on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode, and come hang out with us on Instagram @theyeahnoforsureshow for behind-the-scenes moments and campfire energy.

If this episode made you feel seen, send it to a friend - then go text your people.

*We’re already thinking about the road show: feel free to weigh in on where the friendship epicenter is calling. (We know it’s your neighborhood!)

LISTEN here or wherever you enjoy your podcasts.

They save us. They crack us up. They show up when life implodes. They make everything better and shape our lives.

I’m Amy VanHaren, and I’m kind of obsessed with friendship.

I’ve spent 25 years building communities—connecting hundreds of thousands of people through brands like Patagonia, Amy’s Kitchen, and Pumpspotting. And I’ve learned that the magic isn’t in the platform or the programming. It’s in what happens when people feel seen, when they find their people, when they remember they’re not alone.

So today, I’m launching something I’ve been dreaming about for a long time.

The Yeah, No, For Sure Show is the podcast where friendship takes the mic. Starting February 4, I’m sitting down with my favorite humans every Wednesday to talk about the thing that matters most: the beautiful, messy, transformative reality of friendship.

We’re talking about every season: mom friends, camp friends, perimenopause friends, soul friends, energy-sucking friends. The spark of new connection. The heartbreak of growing apart. Making friends after your kids are born or your marriage ends or you move across the country.

This isn’t a how-to podcast. I’m not here to fix anyone or teach you the “right way” to do friendship. This is where we hold space on the couch for the conversations that matter, witnessing the universal magic, the moments where friendship changes everything. We’ll unpack the joy and complexity of connection: the first meetings, the pure delight, the fucking up and recovering, the grief. The stories of the friends who shape us. You’ll hear yourself in these conversations. You’ll be inspired to reach out to your friends. And hopefully, feel a little less alone.

But this is more than a podcast, too.

This is a community. A sacred space where we honor and celebrate friendship, share our collective stories, and remember that we’re not failing at something everyone else has figured out.

The trailer drops today. 🙌 Listen below to hear what we’re building here.

What happens next:

Episodes start February 4. Every Wednesday at 5:30am, a new conversation drops—and then you come back here to share your stories, connect with others, and keep the conversation going. (I’ll have fun chat prompts!)

Plus, you’ll get weekly reflections on friendship, community, and prompts to connect with your people and the best friend favorites - the collective intel in your group chats on what to read, watch, and obsess over next.

Subscribe below to get it all. 👇

Then? Text your people. Forward this. Share yeahnoforsure.show. Bring your friends to the couch.

Nothing is inner circle here. You’re part of this now.

Your turn:

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about your closest friendships? Drop it in the comments: I read every response and your thoughts inspire where we go next.

Shall we get started? Yeah, No, For Sure!

Your friend,
Amy

Subscribe now

Hit subscribe. Text your people. Pull up a chair.

Join the community:
yeahnoforsure.show
@theyeahnoforsureshow