Coffee With Parents

Kari Anderson (she/her) is located in California. She has two children, and is happily married to her husband, Sam.
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Kari and I have a dynamic conversation about coming of age stories, funny toddler anecdotes, and the complexities we both experience raising biracial children in our current cultural climate.
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Kari and I go way back to being next door neighbors as elementary school kids.  It was fun, and at times difficult, to address our upbringings from our new adult perspectives.
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Listen in love, heart with your heart, and enjoy Kari on Coffee With Parents!

Cynthia Epstein (she/her) is located in California. She has two children and co-parents with their Father. She works in the veterinary field and absolutely loves what she does for a living.
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Cynthia and I have a great conversation about parenting through the loss of her uterus due to cancer as well as the loss of her Father, being adopted from an interracial family into an interracial family, and how Disneyland helped her parenting journey.
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I was so happy to chat with Cynthia about such a huge spectrum of topics. This episode could have easily been 3 hours if we’d let ourselves keep going!
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Listen in love, heart with your heart, and enjoy Cynthia on Coffee With Parents!

Hey Human Beans! As a token of gratitude, I’d like to recite these love letters to everyone who helped me put together season 1 of Coffee With Parents.  Including you, the listeners, the Human Beans who make this podcast possible.

Dear Kay, Anna, Eugenia, Joy, Joseph, Birth Team, and Listeners,
Thank you and I love you.
Love, Torrey

Post-PAR-tum adj./n./v.

1. The newly actualized, yet permanent expression of the mind, body, and spirit realized after natural evacuation of the uterus (miscarriage), medical/ or self-compelled evacuation of the uterus (abortion), evacuation of the uterus by birth, and/or during embodied parenthood characterized by, but not limited to, one or more of the following:
   
   1. Specific hormonal shifts in the brain and body
      
   2. Lactation
      
   3. Vaginal bleeding
      
   4. Perennial soreness
      
   5. Hemorrhoids
      
   6. Uterine cramps
      
   7. Stretch marks
      
   8. Exhaustion
      
   9. Tears of joy/ sadness/ anger/ frustration/ existentialism/ love/ and/or no reason what-so-ever
      

The final piece of my personal parenting journey, Part 3: My Postpartum Story, talks about how I define “Postpartum,” the wholistic care I received in early postpartum from my Doula, Anna, and my Midwife, Tema, and addresses the need for a better culture surrounding postpartum care in the US. At the end, Anna and Joseph help me answer some of your postpartum-related questions in the “Spill the Beans” segment. Listen in love. Hear with your heart. And enjoy part 3 of my personal parenting journey, My Postpartum Story!

This special release is a heart offering for the upcoming April 2021 new moon (4/11/2021), but can be listened to during any phase of the moon at any time. It's a poem meant to be received as a meditation. Sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and let this ode to the moon hold you for 11 minutes and 11 seconds. 

"Then, I felt like I needed to push.  This was it! The big moment! The second stage of labor! I was feeling all the things! Physically and emotionally.  I started pushing In several different positions, for several hours.  Spoiler alert: this ended up only being about two thirds of the way through my labor."

Here is part TWO of a three part series talking about my personal parenting journey - My Birth! My birth Mother, Joy, and my Partner, Joseph - both present at my birth - join in with their perspectives to talk about my Birth Story in this episode.
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We talk about two spontaneous changes in my birth place, a few c-section scares, the cervical lip in the way, 42 hours of labor, the joy of seeing our baby girl, and the first-night snuggles with our fresh babe.
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Listen in love, hear with your heart, and enjoy my birth story on episode 4 of Coffee With Parents!

"His jaw drops. He starts crying and I’m suddenly hyper aware that there are people everywhere at this pumpkin patch and I start to feel kind of bad that I forced him into this vulnerable moment in public. But, nonetheless, there we were, our parenthood journey had begun."

On this episode, I talk about my pregnancy with my daughter, Yemaya.  There's a lot of up's, downs, twists, turns, and baby socks involved in this story.  Listen to why I had to change my entire birth team in my third trimester! 

The last part of the episode is the "Spill the Beans" segment where I sit with postpartum doula and reproductive justice advocate, Anna Forsberg and we answer YOUR questions! Have a question? Write in: cwppodcast@gmail.com

Listen in love, hear with your heart, and enjoy my pregnancy story on this episode of Coffee With Parents!

Kay Partridge (she/her) is located in North Carolina.  She has 4 children, owns a dance studio - Juxtaposition Studios, and is happily married to her husband, Matt.  Kay and I have a great conversation about some of the ways her parenting style is different from her parents', how her kids see her c-section scar, and gush over holding squishy newborns.  Kay is such a joy, and brings her community together through dance.  Listen in love, hear with your heart, and enjoy Kay on Coffee With Parents!

Here's the Juxtaposition Studios website where you can support Kay and the kids in her community: http://juxtapositionstudios.com/index.html 

Hey Human Beans! I’m Torrey, and I love coffee, but more importantly, I love families.

Coffee with Parents eagerly explores All the fascinating facets of families.

This podcast seeks to shine a bright, colorful light on the kaleidoscope of parents and families that exist in this world. I aim to speak with single parents, queer parents, adoptive parents, parents of children with special needs, parents struggling with addiction and mental illness - a full spectrum of families around the world.

We will dig deep. Have big belly laughs. Embrace ugly crying. And sip that sweet caffeinated cup.

One thing you may notice on Coffee with Parents is that, unless I’m referring to myself or someone I know who uses a gendered pronoun, gender neutral language will be used over heteronormative language.

I’d also like to acknowledge that I, myself, am a white, cis-gendered woman in a hetero-passing relationship with one healthy child. I hold some privileges that may not always be comfortable for parents with less privilege than I who are often oppressed and/ or erased by society. I am here and I’m showing up and I’m attempting to use my privilege to dismantle systems that Oppress people however imperfect that may look. Not doing it perfectly is not an excuse not to do better.

I ask guests to come as they are. No expectations of feeling great and abundant and confident, only that they feel safe and like they can handle being on a podcast at the moment. You may not always hear people on their best day or in their best moments and that’s okay, it’s part of the rawness and real ness and there’s magic in the space of authenticity.

So as you listen, listen in love. Hear with your heart. And enjoy, Coffee with Parents.