Each week, we invite thought leaders and experts in the fields of art, design and self-help, to talk about their areas of expertise, share a secret and share what is exciting for them.
Almost everything will work again if you unplug for a few mintues inclduing you.
-Anne Lemott
Hey, it’s Carissa, and this is Bad at Keeping Secrets. Today, we’re diving into something I think we all feel but struggle to name: digital exhaustion. You know that feeling when you’ve been switching between instagram, tictok, email, and three different tabs, and suddenly you’re just... depleted?
My guest Paul Leonardi wrote a book called Digital Exhaustion, and we’re going to talk about what he calls the Exhaustion Triad (the real reasons our devices are wearing us down). It’s not just screen time. It’s about attention switching, the cognitive load of constantly deciding which tool to use next, and the emotional weight and anxiety of carrying all this information in our pockets.
We’ll also get into practical strategies for digital resilience, how to think about AI, and what it means to be “here, not elsewhere” - especially when you’re juggling worklaod, social ties, and parenting.
Check out more of Paul’s research at:
www.paulleonardi.com
If you are like me and days go by feeling overwhelmingly busy, and yet you get nothing done or the first thing you do when you wake up is look at your phone, and suddenly feel a sense of dread for the day and still cant kick the habit, this podcast is for you.
Send yourself some love and compassion this holiday. This has been a hard year. For everyone.
XO, Carissa
ALSO, the amazing Sophie Odira found me on IG and we both posted almost the same text at the same time! The universe is telling us we all are so tired… Check her out on https://soundcloud.com/sophie-odira-hansing. Her music is beautiful and SO relatable.
Send this to your tired friends…
PS This podcast is edited and mixed by Mark McDonald, the music is by my very own sister, Officially Quigley, and funded by me (cuz, I like doing this). If you want to support us, and need a last min gift for someone, visit check out our website www.peopleiveloved.com.
In celebration of darkness, this week I want to revisit my chat with Katherine May, a best-selling author and podcast host, of whom I adore in so many ways. I first heard about her with her book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times during the height of the lockdown in 2020. In so many ways, this book helped me let go of control and step back. That there is comfort in resting. I don’t know about you, but I needed permission to use rest as a way to keep going.
When I saw she had a new book coming out, I had to talk to her. I do these interviews because I love meeting people and I love sharing ideas that I feel are helpful in defining what it means to be alive in these times. And wow, Katherine does that. First, let me explain the title. For those of you who thought of rainbows and unicorns with this title, sadly, there are not any featured in this book. However, the elements here, are no less filled with wonder and magic. The book is organized around connecting with the Earth, Water, Fire, and Air - giving into the cyclical nature of being.
Western culture so often has us working against the seasons, nature, and each other. This leaves us feeling disconnected and often like we are swimming upstream (maybe this is just me? IDK) working against forces that naturally offer soothing moments.
I also pretend Katherine is a dictionary, and ask her how she would define terms that I feel like I don’t really have a grasp on even though I have spent my life using them freely. For what seems like forever, I have been trying to make a structure for meaning that reflects the world I have experienced. Perhaps you are doing this too? It feels like a longing for understanding and connection, a search for some truth (all the while knowing there probably is none…).
We re-define Enchantment, Rituals, Resilience, and how Katherine sees God in this moment. She, however, pushes back on the idea of fixed definitions altogether. And why it might feel good to feel small sometimes.
Sending softness and care your way, love always, Carissa
PS This podcast is self-funded by me. Because I love talking to people who I believe in, I am so lucky they say yes. With help from Stephanie Tsou (you rock!!!), (he helps make people’s podcast dreams a reality) and my lovely sister/soulmate, did the music.
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What If Motherhood Wasn’t Meant to Be Solo?
Monday, November 10, 2025 • Duration 32:42
Hi, it’s Carissa, and this is Bad at Keeping Secrets.
For the past few months, when people have asked what I am reading, I have replied a book about a mommune. I swear, everyone I told was interested in hearing more.
I’m sitting down with writer Domenica Ruta, author of All the Mothers—a stunning, raw, and deeply human novel about women whose lives intersect in unconventional ways. She created a mommune—mothers raising children, supporting each other, redefining what family, beauty and support can look like inspired by her own life.
We talk about what it actually means when we say things will “work out”—and what to do when they don’t.
This is about the myths we’ve been sold about the boundaries of friendships and romantic relationships. All The Mothers gives you the agency to expand what is possible for connection and community.
Get the book here:
If you want to support this podcast, and shop small this holiday season, check out our website peopleiveloved.com. We have cards, journals, and our best-selling ONLY GOOD THINGS Calendar
Get full access to BAD AT KEEPING SECRETS at
How to know when you need to leave...
Tuesday, October 21, 2025 • Duration 24:33
Today I’m joined by Jessica Baum, a psychotherapist and the author of Safe: A New Way of Looking at Attachment. Her book comes out next week! I promise you will love it. Or I hope you like it as much as I did.
How to Know When to Leave - Part 2 of my conversation with Jessica Baum
Lately, it feels like everyone is talking about attachment theory. I scroll online through articles and essays about attachment sometimes, curious, half-amused, half-heartbroken. There’s something oddly comforting about realizing how many of us are just trying to make sense of our patterns - to understand why connection can feel both like safety and danger at once. You guessed it, I am an anxious attachment most of the time. Asking myself the question, can I be anxious and worried and feel safe in my relationships?
And what it means to actually feel safe in a relationship - not just secure in theory, but calm in the body. Therapist Jessica Baum writes beautifully about this in her book, offering a roadmap for those of us who have spent a lifetime in survival mode. She talks about how attachment wounds - those early, invisible imprints - can shape the way we move through the world. How we seek love, and how we sometimes run from it.
What struck me most was her invitation to notice when our nervous systems are leading the way - when we’re in fight, flight, or freeze - and to find small, grounded ways back to trust. It’s not about fixing ourselves or finding the “right” partner. It’s about learning to recognize the moments when something inside us says:
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To Love Someone More Than Love Itself
Monday, October 13, 2025 • Duration 41:38
More Than Love: A Conversation on Grief, Legacy, and Becoming Ourselves
There are some stories that never stop unfolding, they just shift shape as we move through life. This week, I am talking with Natasha Gregson Wagner about her memoir More Than Love.
QUESTION: Who expanded your understanding of love? Margaret did for me. Why, I think it was entirely biological/magical.
Natasha writes about her mother, Natalie Wood, with such sensory tenderness: the scent of gardenia, the lullabies sung at night, the way love imprints itself through small, ordinary gestures. Listening to her describe those early memories, I kept thinking about how memory is a kind of architecture, built from scent, sound, and touch. It’s how we carry the people we lose.
In our conversation, Natasha spoke openly about the long silence that followed her mother’s death, and the slow, private decision to finally tell her story. The memoir isn’t just about setting the record straight, though it does that, but about reclaiming her mother as a whole person: complex, luminous, flawed, human. Writing became a way of making peace with all the versions of Natalie Wood that exist - it could only happen in our current moment of holding all the complexities of personhood.
BAD AT KEEPING SECRETS (me, Carissa Potter) wants you to be here:
We talked about how grief evolves, how as children, we absorb loss without language, and as adults, we circle back to it with new understanding. For Natasha, motherhood reshaped that journey. She spoke about seeing echoes of her own mother in the way she parents her daughter, and how that reflection brings both ache and comfort. It’s one of the paradoxes of love: the deeper it runs, the more it insists on making room for both presence and absence. What I mean by this is that humans understand and make meaning through contrast - the knowing and not knowing, the living with and living without.
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What Safe Feels Like.
Monday, September 29, 2025 • Duration 26:10
Today I’m joined by Jessica Baum, a psychotherapist and the author of Safe: A New Way of Looking at Attachment.
In our conversation, Jessica opens up about her own journey from anxious attachment to a place of safety, and she helps us explore the deeper forces that shape our relationships: from the hemispheres of the brain and implicit memories, to the ways our bodies hold trauma and longing. Together, we look at how “little me” (the younger parts of ourselves) influence patterns we repeat, and how becoming conscious of those patterns can transform not only our relationships but the way we show up in the world.
We also talk about the importance of community, the power of rupture and repair in intimacy, and how building emotional anchors can help us feel held and supported - even in the hardest moments. Jessica shares so much wisdom, from neuroscience to lived experience, all with the invitation to see ourselves as evolving, spiraling beings who are always capable of deeper safety and connection.
This is such a rich conversation, we actually decided to release it in two parts. And a bonus - Jessica has also created some free gifts for you, including a resource on attachment beyond labels and a video conversation with her mentor, Bonnie Badenoch.
Before we start I just wanted to invite you to come hang with Ruthie Ackerman and I at Womb House Books on Wednesday, September 24 · 6:30 - 8:30pm PDT.
It is a small gathering where we will do some exercises from my book, and have some time to explore motherhood and ambivalence, together.
Space is limited, sign up here! It’s free. We just want to make a space to talk about these things if they are lingering on your mind too.
For the longest time, I believed I’d just know whether I wanted to be a mom. Like a bolt of clarity would strike. But the truth is, I didn’t know. Not really. And for a long time, I thought I had to choose—between being an artist and being a mother. But here’s the thing:
I’m greedy. I want both.
And I think I’m not alone.
The world doesn’t make much space for the in-between—the questions, the ambivalence, the complexity of redefining what motherhood can look like. There's pressure to decide, to know, to fit within timelines and expectations. But what happens when we don’t? What happens when we still don’t know, even as time presses on? At 42 I am still trying to reconcile what the “right” thing is for my life and have come to terms with I will probably never really know.
This week, I sat down with the writer Ruthie Ackerman to talk about her new book, The Mother Code. Reading it was like having someone reach into my head and put my most private, unspoken thoughts onto the page. Ruthie names the tension so many of us feel—the biological clock ticking louder with each year, the internal tug-of-war between art and family, freedom and rootedness.
Get full access to BAD AT KEEPING SECRETS at
Ask this post a question
Wednesday, August 27, 2025 • Duration 38:02
What if you had a magic 8 ball… but it actually knew you? And instead of spitting out “Ask again later,” it handed you a question so sharp, or so tender, that you couldn’t help but see yourself differently.
Today, I’m talking with designer and author Vicki Tan about her new book, Ask This Book a Question. It’s part fortune-teller, part behavioral science, and part mischievous friend who calls you out just enough.
We talk about how she decided which questions made the cut, the biases and stories that shape how we see the world, and how to make decisions that actually line up with your values. We’ll get into psychic moments, Google searches, and whether a question itself can be a comfort, or even a kind of prayer.
If you’ve ever wished for a guide to help you choose, change, or just sit with the uncertainty, you might find it here. And don’t worry - this book won’t tell your secrets. It’ll just ask you better ones.
Sending love, Carissa
Get your copy of ASK THIS BOOK A QUESTION at your favorite bookstore or here.
PS I’m doing a brunch with Happy Women Dinners next month! Sunday, September 7th, noon to 2pm at a private home in the Oakland Hills.
To reserve a seat, email jill@happywomendinners.com. The ticket ($150) includes a signed copy of Breathe Through It, a delicious brunch, a Q&A with me and Tara Schuster, and some hang time with other women.
PPS Bad At Keeping Secrets is a podcast by Carissa Potter (me). The audio was produced by Officially Quigley, and the sound editing was done by Mark helps people start podcasts, and I highly recommend him if you have been thinking about starting one. You can sign up for a free meeting with him .
Get full access to BAD AT KEEPING SECRETS at
Holding the s**t show of grief.
Wednesday, July 23, 2025 • Duration 49:45
Hi. It’s Carissa and this is bad at keeping secrets. How do you feel sad? What does grief look like? This week I have the pleasure sit down with Carla Fernandez to talk about something we all carry but don’t really know how to hold: grief. Her book, Renegade Greif, demands space for loss, offering tools, rituals, and language for navigating our sadness in a world that too often tells us to move on. If you’re yearning for a way to work with your sorrow, or just need permission to feel, this conversationis for you.
Grief isn’t something we get over. It’s something we move with, slowly, awkwardly, and sometimes beautifully. In today’s conversation, I sit down with Carla, co-founder of The Dinner Party and a renegade in the world of grief work. Together, we explore the ways grief shapes us, not just emotionally, but biologically. We talk about the awkwardness of support, the quiet power of altars, the strange rituals that help us stay human, and the long, looping journey (I hate this word but it is what came to mind) of learning to live with loss.
This episode is for anyone who's ever wondered if they're grieving the “right” way, anyone who’s been asked to show up for someone else when they were breaking inside, and anyone trying to find meaning in the mess.
Grief isn’t linear. But community, ritual, and honest conversation? They help.
What do you do that helps you get through the day?
Need permission to share your story? This episode is for you.
This week, I talk with psychologist and author Dr. Jessica Zucker about grief, vulnerability, and her new book Normalize It.
Got something you’re spiraling on? If you’re human, you probably do. InNormalize It, Dr. Zucker makes a powerful case for speaking up, and offers a framework for how to actually do it. I first found her work when I was navigating pregnancy loss, her book I Had a Miscarriage talked me through it, gently. Since then I have gifted it to all the people in my life dealing with this weird loss that often goes unspoken.
Jessica shares her own story of pregnancy loss, and how it shaped her career and her capacity for truth-telling. We both believe in the power of vulnerability, and in creating things that help people feel less alone.
What is something you are wanting to talk about? I will be here with you…
The audio is in the post. Listen when you’re walking, folding laundry, or hiding in the bathroom from your children.
With love & scraps of hope,Carissa
PS
PPS I’m doing a series of events with Happy Women Dinners in the Fall— one in the SF Bay Area and one in Los Angeles. To reserve a seat, email jill@happywomendinners.com. The ticket ($150) includes a signed copy of Breathe Through It, dinner/brunch, a Q&A with me and Tara Schuster, and some hang time with other women.
* FAMILY UPDATE: We found out that M doesn’t need insulin yet! So we are enjoying our days before that comes into play for us… Diabetes is super common in people who have Cystic Fibrosis. Feeling less depressed about health stuff today. BUT also, she likes shoes. I was never into shoes… but we went shopping for the first time alone together and she wanted to try on all the fancy stuff…
* I just finished a mural at a local house in Berkeley. I love it so much I had to share it here:
OH my gosh. Thank you so much for listening. And I would love to hear about your ideal way to feel less alone in motherhood:
Love, Carissa
BAD AT KEEPING SECRETS is so glad you are here. We would love to continue the conversation.
And maybe that’s the hardest part - knowing when to stay and when to leave.
Because secure love isn’t supposed to feel like walking on eggshells or constantly trying to earn your place. It’s supposed to feel like warmth, like ease, like a deep breath. Sometimes, the bravest thing we can do is to stop running from the ache inside us long enough to listen to it.
Healing, it turns out, is less about perfection and more about noticing - the small shifts, the moments of calm, the people who make your nervous system sigh in relief. Making a space between the stimuli and our actions.
Maybe that’s what we’re all looking for. Not just to be loved, but to feel safe enough to stay - or safe enough to go.
This is such a rich conversation, and the second part is my favorite. And a bonus - Jessica has also created some free gifts for you, including a resource on attachment beyond labels and a video conversation with her mentor, Bonnie Badenoch.
There’s a moment in our conversation, where Natasha says she’s learned to hold love and loss together without needing one to cancel the other. That feels like the heart of her story. Whether through writing, filmmaking, or simply living, she’s found ways to let memory breathe, not as something that defines her, but as something that continues to expand her.
We also talked about fairness, or rather, the absence of it. Natasha described how, as a child, she believed life was supposed to make sense, and how she’s since learned to live within its mystery instead. Her spiritual path, not unlike my own, reflects a search for grace in a world that doesn’t always offer answers.
As we ended our conversation, Natasha spoke about finding her own voice, apart from the legacy she was born into. “I used to think I had to live up to something,” she said. “Now I just want to live from something, from truth, from love, from my own story.”
It struck me that More Than Love isn’t only a title, or a feeling, it’s a direction. A way of saying there’s always something beyond what we think love is. Something that carries us forward, even when we think we’ve reached the end and understand it all.
Next week, Natasha and I will host a workshop on grief and resilience in Marin with Happy Women Dinners. It’s a gathering for anyone walking through loss or transformation, or just wants to hang out and talk about hard stuff. We’ll share our own stories, hold space for others, and explore what it means to live fully while holding the weight of what’s been lost.
Share this with someone who is navigating the loss and love of a parent or child who might relate and feel less alone…
I am not going to pretend to know what healing is, but it could be: not erasing the past, but learning how to walk with it, gently, openly, and with love. To wake up each morning, connect with other humans and go to bed each night. To seek out the people who push your understanding of love to be more than what it once was.
XO, Carissa
PS I break down a few times during this podcast over M’s health issues - I am not the best interviewer but Natasha was so kind and offered me the support of a good friend, for which I am so grateful.
PPS RSVP for our day event Oct 19th from 10-4pm to jill@happywomendinners.com
* Maternal ambivalence, the not being 100% sure if you want kids—how common it is, and how rarely we talk about it
* Redefining family narratives and how the women who raised us shape what we imagine for ourselves
* The desire to do life/motherhood differently—even when we don’t know what “different” looks like
* What is enoughness in life? Specifically, how delusional we are in romantic relationships.
Ruthie’s honesty cracked something open for me, and I think it will for you too. Whether you’re a parent, never want kids, feel unsure, or just love real conversations about the messiness of personhood, this episode is for you.
I’m so excited to share this one with you. I hope it resonates as deeply with you as it did with me.
If you know someone who is feeling ambivalent about life, motherhood, and art, I would be delighted if you shared this with them…
With love and curiosity,Carissa
PS Grab a copy of The Mother Code here. And I am a die-hard fan of Ruthie’s substack here:
PPS Bad At Keeping Secrets is a podcast by Carissa Potter (me). The audio was produced by Officially Quigley, and the sound editing was done by Mark McDonald. Mark helps people start podcasts, and I highly recommend him if you have been thinking about starting one. You can sign up for a free meeting with him here.
BAD AT KEEPING SECRETS is a podcast I do because I love doing it. Thanks for finding it. And getting up this morning. You rock.
PS I’m doing a series of events with Happy Women Dinners in the Fall— one in the SF Bay Area and one in Los Angeles.
To reserve a seat, email jill@happywomendinners.com. The ticket ($150) includes a signed copy of Breathe Through It, dinner/brunch, a Q&A with me and Tara Schuster, and some hang time with other women.
SAN FRANCISCO: Sunday, September 7th, 12pm-2:00pm (private home in the Oakland Hills)
LOS ANGELES: Thursday, October 23rd, 6:30pm-8:30pm (private home in Encino)
There will be other events to come!
PPS Bad At Keeping Secrets is a podcast by Carissa Potter (me). The audio was produced by Officially Quigley, and the sound editing was done by Mark McDonald. Mark helps people start podcasts, and I highly recommend him if you have been thinking about starting one. You can sign up for a free meeting with him here.
SAN FRANCISCO: Sunday, September 7th, 12pm-2:00pm (private home in the Oakland Hills)
LOS ANGELES: Thursday, October 23rd, 6:30pm-8:30pm (private home in Encino)
There will be other events to come!
PPPS Bad At Keeping Secrets is a podcast by Carissa Potter (me). The audio was produced by Officially Quigley, and the sound editing was done by Mark McDonald. Mark helps people start podcasts, and I highly recommend him if you have been thinking about starting one. You can sign up for a free meeting with him here.
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