Boy moms… this Gup Shup is for us. After a recent conversation with my teenage son, I found myself reflecting on something I’ve been really intentional about while raising boys: creating a home where disagreement feels safe. IMO, so many boys grow up learning how to keep the peace… by staying silent but not necessarily how to communicate through conflict. Especially in a lot of South Asian homes where boys are deeply loved, protected, and prioritized — but sometimes unintentionally tau...

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 obedience. The pressure. The ways so many of us learned to...

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,” and keep everything together. And while preparing for this episode, I reali...

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 Middle Fingers Up, I sit down with Andrea: a South Asian mental health professional...

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 culture. Together, we explore how obedience, guilt, silence, a...

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 processing something in your own life at the same time. We get into ...

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 that once taught us to suppress more than we expressed. From the question of “...

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 the pressure to be the “good girl, a version of herself shaped by fam...

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 nostalgia—why music hits our body before our mind can catch up, and why the same ...

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 questions like, “What’s this celebrity’s controversy?” — and it made me realize how d...