Today, I’m sharing my response to an email I received from a mom named Rachel who is working from home with little kids, about to have another baby, and quietly drowning. Her message took me straight back to a season I don’t love remembering, when I was constantly exhausted, burnt out, feeling like I was failing as a mom, a wife, and a human.

We talk about the story our culture and universities sell young women about careers, “having it all,” and waiting to build a family, and why I don’t think we’re being honest about the tradeoffs. So I decided to share what I wish someone had told me at 18 and what I’m trying to model for my daughter, my sons, and even the college girls who babysit for us.

And then I take a pretty big pivot into something I cannot shake from my mind.

I have hit a breaking point politically. I voted for Donald Trump three times and have defended him. But the Epstein files, the protection of powerful people, and the way both parties seem willing to look the other way when kids are involved has pushed me to a place I didn’t expect to land. This isn’t about party loyalty for me anymore, it’s about children. And as a mom, I’m struggling to reconcile that with how our country is actually being run.

I don't have all of the answers, but I'm working through the questions out loud. From family, cultural lies, responsibility, and what I want the next generation of girls (and boys) to know before they end up in the same traps we did.

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Being Different with Liz Durham is a Palm Tree Pod Co. production

What if the biggest lie women are sold isn’t “have it all”…but “you can have it all at the same time”?

This week on Being Different, I sit down with Kate Zepernick — Georgia Tech grad, former consultant, high-achiever, and now mom — to talk about the stuff ambitious women are usually too polite (or too scared) to say out loud.

Kate’s lived the whole arc: the full-time grind, the “part-time” job that wasn’t actually part-time, the strategic career pivots, and eventually the decision to step away without losing herself in the process.

We get into:
- Why one kid is hard, but two kids changes everything
- Why daycare and childcare conversations make people weirdly defensive
- Why high-achieving women wait for permission to choose their families
- What it actually feels like to lose the praise and identity that come with work
- The gray, underused middle ground between full-time careers and staying home
- And the uncomfortable truth that a lot of families don’t really have the choices we pretend they do

This episode is for the woman who’s tired, conflicted, and quietly resentful of her job… but also terrified of who she’ll be without it.

If this conversation makes you feel seen and a little called out, good. That usually means you’re finally being honest with yourself.

Hear more from Kate on her podcast, The Momentum Show for Moms in Leadership and connect with her on Instagram @momentum.by.kate

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Liz Durham Instagram | Website
Subscribe Apple Podcast | Spotify

Being Different with Liz Durham is a Palm Tree Pod Co. production

This week's solo episode is sort of a follow-up to what I talked about last week about the show Landman. I wanted to spend more time on the character Rebecca, because she represents the version of woman I spent years trying to become. High-powered, serious, competitive, in control. The kind of woman we’re told to admire if we want to be respected. What I didn’t see at the time was how much of that mindset I was bringing home with me, and how destructive it was to my marriage and my family.

I talk about how being trained to compete like a man at work changed the way I related to my husband, how I turned into a control freak, and how I couldn’t turn that off once I became a mom. I wanted to believe I could just set boundaries but my work consistently came before my kids even though I hated that about myself. None of this is about saying women shouldn’t work or that ambition is bad, it’s about being honest with the reality of certain careers and personalities, and how pretending they don’t follow you home is a lie I believed for a long time.

In the second half of the episode, I talk about the Epstein files, the work my friends Nick Bryant and Alicia Owen are doing with Epstein Justice, and what it’s been like to come to terms with how abuse, trafficking, and blackmail actually operate in the real world. Not in a sensational way, but in quiet, protected systems that don’t seem to face consequences. I’m honest about how much anger and disillusionment that brought up for me, especially when it comes to politics, power, and the people we’re taught to trust.

This episode is me saying out loud what I wish I had understood earlier about success, power, family, and the trade-offs no one wants to talk about.

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Liz Durham Instagram | Website
Subscribe Apple Podcast | Spotify

Being Different with Liz Durham is a Palm Tree Pod Co. production