Middle Fingers Up

Some conversations stay with you because they answer questions. This one stayed with me because it opened more of them. Patty is back on the podcast after Episode 165 because honestly… we weren’t done yet. I love talking with  Patty because whenever we get together – on or off screen, we ask about the things we have been wondering about. 
Last time we talked about the emotional world of children of immigrants. The guilt. The ob...

This episode felt special to me.

I sat down with Harvi — a soon-to-be high school graduate heading into psychology — for a conversation about growing up as children of immigrants, and honestly… it became so much bigger than I expected.

We talked about the invisible weight so many of us carry: the love, sacrifice, and survival behind our parents’ journeys, alongside the pressure to achieve, be grateful, stay “good,...

This episode is dedicated to our bodies.
The Brown ones. The bloated ones. The strong ones. The “why is my head filled with negativity about my body" ones.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how we  were taught to fix our bodies  before fully living in them. How little we learned to trust our gut, to understand the connection between mind and body. And how hard it is now to tune in.

This week on M...

In this episode, I sit down with  psychologist and writer Patty for a powerful conversation about the inner worlds of children of immigrants and how childhood conditioning continues to shape adult identity, relationships, and wellbeing.

Patty brings both clinical expertise and lived experience as an Indian psychologist, a mother raising two biracial daughters, and someone navigating life and partnership across race and cul...

Wedding season is meant to be joyful, full of love, music, and celebration.
However in this EP, we are naming what happens when you’re walking into those spaces carrying something else.

A welcome back to guest to Mohini, who is here to share her experiences with  the in-between moments—the ones we don’t always name. The reality that you can be genuinely happy for someone you love… and still be grieving, questioning, or...

Featured in The New Yorker and The Guardian, Sarah is a Nigerian child of immigrants, raised in the UK and now based in Canada, whose work as a cartoonist captures the quiet, in-between moments we don’t always have the language for.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a room thinking, “why doesn’t this feel right anymore?”… this conversation will hit.

We talk about what it means to make sense of ourselves in a world ...

In this episode, I sit down with artist, mother, and fellow Randhawa, Harleen, to explore what happens when we stop performing the lives expected of us and start expressing our truth.

Having immigrated to Canada as a baby, Harleen grew up in the in-between, navigating identity as a child of Indian immigrants while learning who she needed to be to belong. She shares her journey through body image struggles, fat shaming, and...

A song comes on… and I’m not here anymore. I’m  in a neural time machine and 15 again. And I don’t just remember it—I feel it.

In this episode, I sit down with Nikki—a therapist with a Master’s in Arts and Counselling, and who I like to refer to as the voice behind The Mental Health Stylist. She blends fashion, music, and therapeutic insight in a way that makes nostalgia feel… deeper.

We talk about neural nostalgi...

We say it all the time: “I’m just here for the music.”
But… are we?

In this episode, I sit down with Ali from @itsrealitywithali  to unpack something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately — how pop culture stopped being “just entertainment” and became a reflection of power, politics, and the systems shaping our everyday lives.

This conversation actually started in my own home. My kids have been asking question...

This episode is about shifting the way we think about our bodies — even as our day-to-day bumps up against old rules, comparisons, and messages (or should we say misogynies) we’ve inherited. 

We are here to challenge  the pressure to look a certain way, diet culture, celebrity trends, or "finishing the plate". It’s about noticing what our bodies are actually carrying and listening without shame.

Have you ever looked in the ...

Safe space. You’ve heard the term everywhere lately — but what does it actually mean? Who is responsible for the 'safety' part of the space?

In this gup shup, we sit with a phrase that shows up everywhere lately: safe space.

From social media to wellness circles to community conversations, the language is everywhere — but the experience doesn’t always match the label.

Looking at the roots of safe spaces i...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up, we sit down with Rama Swamy, a pelvic floor practitioner and physiotherapist who immigrated from India, for a necessary and overdue conversation about women’s health — the parts we were never taught to understand, name, or advocate for.

Drawing from her lived experience with pregnancy, birth, and postpartum recovery, Rama shares how cultural taboos, education gaps, and the normalizatio...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up, I’m in conversation with Farida D, author of The Shit That Made Me a Feminist — a body of work that names the lived realities many women are taught to swallow quietly.

Out of respect for her safety, this episode is audio-only.  Farida’s work — which centers women of color, power, rage, and structural inequality — does not allow her the privilege of visibility without risk. And yet, she...

The one where we stop pretending everything’s fine just to keep the peace.

In this episode, I sit down with Kam Bassier  (from Episode 136: “You’re Not Lazy, You’re Burnt Out”) to talk about a tension so many BIPOC adults are carrying right now:

Why are we — the kids of immigrant parents, BIPOC millennials and Gen Z — having conversations our families never could?
Why does naming pain feel like betrayal?
A...

Taken from South Korea as a baby, removed from his culture, and told it’s for a “better life” that he "wasn't wanted".  This is the reality behind many international adoptions.

In this episode, I speak with Moses, a therapist, advocate, and human being whose lived experience gives him a unique perspective on how 'adoption' functions as an industry of child trafficking. Through his work, he challenges the nar...

I came across Shawn Ahmed’s work the way so many of us do now — through a moment of laughter that quietly turned into curiosity. What followed was a conversation that went far deeper than comedy.

Shawn is a South Asian Canadian actor with an impressive body of work across television, film, and comedy — and in this episode, we talk about what lives beneath the credits. Growing up in that in-between space — being Canadian wh...

We’ve all been in rooms where the energy doesn’t match the claim of being a safe space -  overthinking, comparing, and surface-level talk are what tends to go down instead. I sat down with Arunie, Psychologist with PCHS Calgary and co-host of Brown Girl Problems, for a conversation that goes beyond surface-level chats. Arunie highlights the truth behind the pressure to turn trauma into currency, and what it takes to build connectio...

Reshma Kearney returns to Middle Fingers Up following Episode 128, where she first shared her experience of losing her husband to suicide and raising three children through grief. In this conversation, we go deeper — into what grief looks like over time, how it lives in the body, and how it quietly shapes our mental health, parenting, and sense of self.

We talk about grief as an ongoing relationship rather than something t...

In this episode of Middle Fingers Up, we sit down with Rahell, a 23-year-old mixed-race individual navigating identity, privilege, and growth.

Rahell shares his experience as a “passing white kid” unpacking whiteness — what it meant to belong in some spaces, and what it cost in others. He talks about how hip-hop shaped his understanding of culture, power, and resistance, and the ongoing work of unlearning misogyny with hon...