Mary's Cup of Tea: the Self Love Podcast for Women – Details, episodes & analysis

If making friends feels hard, then this episode is for you. You will learn... - why making friends as an adult feels hard - exactly WHERE you’ll find your people - how to make friends who live close to you - actionable tips to help you find, keep, and strengthen your friendships Our guest, Kat Vellos, is a trusted expert on the power of cultivating meaningful friendships. She’s a speaker and author of the book, We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships. She’s also the creator of the Better than Small Talk conversation cards and the Better Conversations Calendar. Her work helps people transform disconnection and platonic longing into authentic connection and belonging. In her former career as a user experience designer at Slack and Pandora, she helped millions of people find music they love and enjoy work a lot more. While working full-time at both of those iconic companies, Kat spent her free time researching and writing her debut book We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships. She couldn’t stop herself from writing this book because the thirty-something friendship desert is real and she refused to take “how about we meet up in six weeks?” for an answer. So she used her UX research-n-design superpowers to explore the question “how might we design a better experience of adult friendship and simultaneously put a sizable dent in the loneliness epidemic?” Thousands of readers use her book to improve their friendships every day and her writing is read in over 100 countries. She’s been interviewed by The New York Times, NPR, Communication Arts, The Good Life Project, and many more. Sign up for Kat’s newsletter here and check out her course, Platonic Action Lab. And if you enjoyed this episode, screenshot it and share it on social media! Make sure to tag @maryspodcast Mentioned In This Episode... How Long Til’ Black Future Month? by N.K. JemisinEp. 195 on Mary’s Cup of Tea: The Most Underrated EmotionWhat if friendship is easier than you think?

(Trigger Warning: Talk of EDs & Fatphobia)

Dear Mary,

How do I navigate friendship with a very fatphobic and generally-judgmental friend?

She is someone I met when I had anorexia. A lot of what we bonded over was the understanding of restrictive eating, because she had struggled with that as well. She is former military and has a lot of military influences to the way she views health and fitness, as well as having parents who engrained fatphobia into her. They would literally sit in the car outside grocery stores and make fun of fat people leaving(not to their faces). Her views and the vocalization of them hurt my soul, they are not an outlook on other people I have ever had, nor would want to have. She talks about these things pretty frequently. A lot of the things she says I would never want my younger sister hearing because I don't want those hurtful views in her head.

I know you wonder, this person sounds awful, why do you have this friend? She is in many ways a wonderful person and a good friend. She is thoughtful, she and I just click in many ways, she is giving and loving to the people close to her, I could go on about qualities I love. But lately my feelings toward her are not good. I don't want to be around her because inevitably she will end up saying some things that really bum me out. I want her to be a lifelong friend, I want to be there for her for anything, I want to babysit her kids...but I would never want her views to be shared with mine.

How do I talk to her about this? Though we challenge each other's views pretty often and are used to confrontation, she is not looking to change her mind on this. For months now I have been avoiding spending as much time around her. Neither of us have many other friends...she is a treasured person for me. What's your advice on keeping or losing a friend because of this?

If you enjoyed this Dear Mary episode, share and tag @maryspodcast on social media!

Get Mary’s self-love books:

The Gift of Self-Love, an interactive workbook that will help you build confidence, recognize your worth, and learn to finally love yourself. 100 Days of Self-Love, a guided journal with 100 prompts to help you calm self-criticism and learn to love who you are.

If you’re going through a difficult time, here are 5 reminders to ground you in self-love. You will learn... - Where mantras originate from and why they’re helpful - How to work with your mindset to gain greater perspective - What to tell yourself when you’re going through a hard time Which one of these affirmations resonated with you the most? Or do you have your own mantra that you love? Let me know by tagging [@maryspodcast](https://www.instagram.com/maryspodcast/) in your IG stories! Get Mary’s self-love book + journal: - [*The Gift of Self-Love*](https://maryscupoftea.com/gift-of-self-love): a workbook that will help you build confidence, recognize your worth, and learn to finally love yourself - [*100 Days of Self-Love](https://www.notion.so/3c0dadab63e54f34982830413ea57a14?pvs=21):* a guided journal with 100 prompts to help you calm self-criticism and learn to love who you are Mentioned In This Episode... 240 votes TikTok by @imdaven: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFwo3So6/

Mary talks about 3 ways to balance body positivity with the pursuit of health. She hopes you will see that contrary to misconceptions on the internet, body positivity and health are actually one and the same. You will learn how to... - approach food with a non-diety, yet health-focused, mindset - think about movement in a way that isn’t body or weight loss focused - trust your body after years of trying to control it Remember: accepting, loving, and caring for your body is the healthiest thing for you. Don’t let diet culture tell you otherwise! Mary has a NEW BOOK coming out on November 15th: 100 Days of Self-Love, a guided journal to help you calm self-criticism and learn to love who you are. Pre-order it today to get the audiobook for free by visiting [maryscupoftea.com/journal](http://maryscupoftea.com/journal). We are also celebrating over 1 million podcast downloads thanks to all of you self-lovers!!! Thank you so much for supporting this small show over the years. If you have 60 seconds to tell us what you love about the show, we would greatly appreciate a review on Apple or a rating on Spotify. Always love hearing from you!

Arielle Estoria is back on the show to talk to us being a multi-passionate creator. Arielle Estoria is a Spoken Word Poet, a Writer and Author, as well as an Emcee, Speaker and Actor. You will learn about... - how yoga can be incredibly healing to your relationship with your body - what it means to be multi-passionate and how to embrace it as a GIFT - how Arielle practices rest and boundaries as a soulfilled creator Remember: the real work is rest. Follow Arielle on Instagram: @arielleestoria Arielle’s new book The Unfolding is coming spring 2023. Pre-order it here: https://amzn.to/3S7ne6m And if you enjoyed this episode, screenshot it and share it on social media! Make sure to tag @maryspodcast and @arielleestoria Mentioned In This Episode... Listen to Mary’s previous conversation with Arielle (Episode #21) Why Some of Us Don’t Have One True Calling TEDx Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/emilie_wapnick_why_some_of_us_don_t_have_one_true_calling?language=en

In this episode, Mary talks about her struggles with... struggle. You will learn about... - finding or having more meaning in our lives - enjoying life without trying to fix everything that is ”wrong with you” - lack of connection making us want to fill a void Remember: You are enough, your life is enough and who you are at your core is totally okay. If you enjoyed this episode, screenshot it and tag @maryspodcast on social media! Mary is so excited to announce that her NEW BOOK, 100 Days of Self-Love, is now available for you to pre-order at [maryscupoftea.com/journal](http://maryscupoftea.com/journal) Make sure you pre-order the journal by November 1st so that you can get the audiobook for freeeee! Mentioned In This Episode... Episode #61: Stop Trying to Be Happy (and Do This Instead)

Mary is joined by Melody Godfred to talk about how self-love shows up in our lives, especially post pandemic. You will learn... - how self-love shows up in motherhood and parenting - why achievements don’t always bring joy - the intrinsic power women hold and how to embrace it Remember: the goal is not to check the boxes for the sake of “success”; it’s to get closer to YOUR aligned center and be able to live authentically. Melody Godfred is the Self Love Philosopher. As a poet, author and speaker, she is devoted to empowering people to love themselves and transform their lives. Her poetry has been featured by *Oprah Magazine* and *T*o*day with Hoda and Jenna*, among others, for its wisdom and ability to deeply resonate and uplift. Her bestselling debut poetry collection, *Self Love Poetry: for Thinkers & Feelers*, was recognized as one of the best poetry books of 2021 by *Woman’s Day*, and her self love guided journal, *The ABCs of Self Love*, was recently featured by Hudson Booksellers at over 300 airports across the United States. Melody’s new poetry collection, *The Shift: Poetry for a New Perspective*, is set to be published on September 27, 2022 by Andrews McMeel Publishing and is designed to reframe how we see and move through this brave new, post-pandemic world. Follow Melody on Instagram: @fredandfar Learn more about Melody’s self-love poetry books here: [https://www.melodygodfred.com](https://www.melodygodfred.com/) And if you enjoyed this episode, screenshot it and share it on social media! Make sure to tag @maryspodcast and @fredandfar

Mary shares the details about her new book, 100 Days of Self Love! It’s a journal that complements her first book, The Gift of Self Love, to help you continue to grow on your self love journey! There are 100 journal prompts accompanied by little musings by Mary to help guide you. 100 Days of Self Love is now available for pre-order! And if you pre-order now, Mary will send you a copy of the audiobook version for free as a special thank you gift! Go to [maryscupoftea.com/journal](https://maryscupoftea.com/100-days-of-self-love) to pre-order and fill out the form by October 31 to receive your audiobook!

Mary is so excited to announce that her NEW BOOK, 100 Days of Self-Love, is now available for you to pre-order at [maryscupoftea.com/journal](http://maryscupoftea.com/journal) After publishing my first book, *The Gift of Self-Love*, many of you asked for a tool that would help you build a daily practice of self-love into your life. I wrote *100 Days of Self-Love* you do just that. It’s got 100 journaling prompts that cover ALL areas of life—body, identity, purpose, relationships, and more—so you can really think of it as a metaphorical multivitamin for self-love, something to keep you going or GROWING on your self-love journey. Go to [maryscupoftea.com/journal](http://maryscupoftea.com/journal) to learn more about this new self-love journal! Make sure you pre-order the journal by November 1st so that you can get the audiobook for freeeee! This solo episode is about what I’ve learned after writing and publishing 2 self-love books. I talk about… - My writing process including how I deal with challenges - Tips for overcoming self-criticism as a creator - Why you MUST share your gifts with the world Remember: do. the damn. thing. I believe in you and I will keep reminding you of that until you start believing in yourself.

In today’s episode, Mary gives a little pep talk around what to do when you’re having a bad day. You will learn how to... - shift your mood when you have a bad moment in your day - define what a bad day means to you and what is contributing to those feelings - define what a good day looks like for you Remember: We need to work on untying and detaching our mood on external factors. If you enjoyed this episode, screenshot it and tag @maryspodcast on social media! And make sure to get Mary’s book, The Gift of Self-Love: https://maryscupoftea.com/gift-of-self-love. It’s a self-love workbook that will help you build confidence, recognize your worth, and learn to finally love yourself. Available in stores and online, worldwide!